The collection is no longer anonymous, marking the end of this round, although it will remain open for late treats. Many thanks to everyone who took part, whether that was as a signed up participant, a pinch hitter, a beta, a cheerleader or simply reading and commenting on the works in the collection.

The final pinch hit has now been claimed. Barring any unexpected developments, we are on track for the collection to be revealed at 19:59 UTC on Friday 2 September.

Countdown to reveals

Update 2022-09-02 0659 UTC: all participants who completed their own assignment now have a gift, so reveals will definitely be going ahead on this schedule. If you have any final edits to make, please ensure that you do so in the next 13 hours.

A quick note to say that there are now some new requests for Post-deadline Pinch Hit #2; the fandoms are:

• Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021)
• Creator's Choice of Fandom
• Original Work

Head over to the pinch hit post for details.

The deadline has now passed and there are eight pinch hits which need to be filled before the collection can open. Collection opening is scheduled for 19:59 UTC on Friday 26th, and the deadline for these pinch hits is 19:59 UTC on Wednesday 24th, but this is open to negotiation.

To claim, please comment here clearly indicating which of these pinch hits you are interested in picking up, and your AO3 username. All comments are screened.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help out!

NOTE ADDED 24 August 2022: this pinch hit post is no longer being updated, please check the community's pinch hit tag for the most recent pinch hit post.

( CLAIMED! Post-deadline Pinch Hit #1 - DCU (Comics), DCEU, Young Justice (Cartoon), Original Work )

( Post-deadline Pinch Hit #2 - Baldur's Gate, Book of the Ancestor Series, Critical Role )

( CLAIMED! Post-deadline Pinch Hit #3 - Bloodbound, Queen B, America's Most Eligible )

( Post-deadline Pinch Hit #4 - Andromeda Six, Starship Promise, Fate/Grand Order )

( Post-deadline Pinch Hit #5 - Marvel 616, Crossover Fandom (BtVS/F:TWS), Spider-Man (Video Games 2018-2020) )

( CLAIMED! Post-deadline Pinch Hit #6 - Riverdale, Person of Interest, All About Us )

( CLAIMED! Post-deadline Pinch Hit #7 - Assault Lily Bouquet, Code Vein, Octopath Traveler, Izetta: the Last Witch, Katana Maidens )

( Post-deadline Pinch Hit #8 - Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road, Star Trek: Enterprise, Genshin Impact, Heaven Will Be Mine )

There are four current pinch hits - two readvertised and two new. At present, the deadline for these is the same as regular assignments (19:59 UTC on Friday 19 August), but this is open to negotiation. To claim, leave a comment on this post (all comments are screened), indicating the pinch hit you are interested in and giving your AO3 username. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

NOTE ADDED 16 August 2008: This pinch hit post is no longer being updated. Please check the community's pinch hits tag for the latest pinch hit post.

( Pinch Hit #4 - Andromeda Six, Starship Promise, Fate/Grand Order )

( Pinch Hit #5 - Marvel 616, Crossover Fandom, Spider-Man (VG) )

( CLAIMED! Pinch Hit #7 - DCU (Comics), DCEU, Young Justice, Original Work )

( Pinch Hit #8 - Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road, Star Trek: Enterprise, Genshin Impact, Heaven Will Be Mine )

Assignments should now be available via email to the address associated with your AO3 account or directly via your AO3 assignments page.

If there is a problem with your assignment, please get in touch via email (femslashafterdark.mods@gmx.com) or dreamwidth direct message to the fadmods account.

Sadly, we had to delete two sign ups without having heard from the participants involved. If this was due to an issue with our email about the situation reaching you, please do get in touch and we'll see what we can do about getting you a gift - we have saved copies of both sign ups.

There are a number of initial pinch hits, which will follow within the next 24 hours.

We have run the first phase of matching and there are a small number of people we need to make further contact with.  Please check the email address associated with your AO3 account if the initial letter of your username falls within the first half of the alphabet.

Assignments will be at least another 24 hours while we wait to hear back from the individuals concerned.

Tomorrow at 4 July, is when signups will be closing at 19:59 UTC.

Please make sure all adjustments to your signup are completed beforehand.

Countdown clock: [x]

The tag set is now closed for nominations and we are now moving into the tag set clean up phase. If you have the time to look through the tags, it would be really helpful to know about:

• Tags with misspelled character names
  
• Tags that are duplicated within the same fandom, or are "wandering" to appear in more than one distinct fandom (note: the same fandom appearing multiple times in different types is not a bug and also not something exchange mods have any control over) - we have run checks for these but some may remain
  
• Tags that are not exact duplicates but are functionally the same as one another (e.g. "A/B" and "B/A" both nominated, or "A/B" and "C/B" where A and C are two names for the same character)
  
• Tags you nominated which were approved but appear to have vanished (if this has happened, it is probably a side-effect of fixing some other tag set issue)
  
• Tags that are ineligible (a reminder of the eligibility criteria, in full: "All characters in each ship must canonically identify as women, or a reader/viewer must be able to reasonably infer that they do.")

We do also have a few remaining queries that we would appreciate input from the nominators on; if we don't receive responses to these within the next 24 hours, we will proceed on our best judgement in order to be ready to open sign ups on time on Friday.

New queries

Grishaverse (books)/Shadow and Bone (TV) - in both of these fandoms, ships are nominated which appear to involve characters who do not appear in that version (as far as we can tell, Ulla, who is nominated in three ships for the show, seems to be a books-only character, while Luda, who is nominated in one ship for the books, appears to be a TV-only character). If these characters do exist within the relevant versions, please provide evidence.

Wedding Peach - for the tag "Hanasaki Momoko | Wedding Peach/Original Succubus Character", we can't find direct confirmation online that succubi exist within the canon, although it doesn't seem unlikely

Original Work - in "Female Plane Passengers/Female Plane Passenger (OW)" is the "s" intentional?

What If...? (TV 2021) - given the plethora of different versions of the characters in this series, a more specific tag than "Peggy Carter/Natasha Romanov (What If ...?)" might be helpful - we assume the intent is the pairing from the "What If ... The Watcher Broke His Oath?" episode?

Outstanding from previous queries post

Arrowverse - it looks as though "Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers" would fit best under "Supergirl (TV 2015)" so if we don't hear anything, we will move this to that fandom.

Dangan Ronpa - we erroneously approved an "All Media Types" fandom here, which we have now removed; the characters in the nominated pairings (the pairing tags are currently in the "Unassociated" section at the bottom of the tag set) all appear to come from "Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc" so we plan to move the tags originally listed under AMT to that fandom unless another suitable fandom is suggested, with evidence.

Wicked - unless there are strong arguments against it, we intend to change the fandom name from "Wicked - All Media Types" to "Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman"

Tag set | Countdown to end of nominations

We're just over halfway through the nominations stage; thanks to everyone who has nominated so far. We do have a few queries and clarifications at this stage. For some of these, we will need to hear from the original nominator; to demonstrate this, please link to your nominations page, which will be in the format "https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/11661/nominations/[6 digit number]" - only you and mods can view this, and the information visible on that page does not identify you in any way.

Creator's Choice of Fandom

We have received a nomination for this with the tag "Any Female Character/Any Female Character". This type of nomination has not been used in FAD before but we have decided to allow it. Please note:

• we will be interpreting it to mean that the creator has complete freedom of choice over what canon and characters to use - they will not need to be ones from the tag set, but they should be existing characters for whom a fan work is being created, not Original Work
  
• "Any Female Character/Any Female Character" will be the only tag in this fandom (i.e. we will not be accepting tags in the same style as are seen in Original Work equesting characters that fit specific dynamics)

Please note that when requesting you should only request this tag if you are willing to receive a gift for which you may be completely canon-blind. At the end of this round, we will evaluate whether to continue allowing this type of tag in future rounds.

Use of "and" in tags

A number of fandoms have tags nominated in the format "A and B" rather than "A/B". Since "A&B" is commonly used for platonic relationships, "and" could be confusing.

All Media Types

We try to avoid "All Media Types" fandoms as being overly broad (with the sole exception of Clone Wars, because of idiosyncracies in the AO3 tag structure).

However, we have accidentally let through "Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types"; please could the nominator let us know a more specific fandom we can move these nominations to?

There is also a pending nomination for "Wicked - All Media Types"; is it OK to change this to "Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman" or would some other fandom tag suit better?

Specific fandoms

Arrowverse

The nominations guidelines ask for the general "Arrowverse" fandom tag (which is synned to Arrow the show on the AO3 backend) not to be used. On approving the tag for Arrow (the show), we discovered three nominations for the general "Arrowverse" tag were pulled through to that fandom. Please could the nominators of the following confirm whether or not they are happy with these tags appearing in the tag set under Arrow, or if they would prefer them under another show or "Crossover Fandom"?

• Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers (Arrowverse)
  
• Kara Danvers and Cat Grant (Arrowverse)
  
• Ryan Wilder and Sophie Moore (Arrowverse)

It is likely that you will not be able to change the fandom for yourself in the nominations, since AO3 takes the approval of Arrow as meaning that Arrowverse is also approved; please comment here instead. (Please also note that the second and third of these also require clarification on the "and", as above.)

Bridgerton

The tag "Penelope Featherington/Penelope Featherington" is nominated - unless this series has taken an unexpected SF/fantasy turn, it seems unlikely this is some sort of selfcest situation. Please could the nominator clarify the intent?