Nominations are LIVE!

[acequeenking]

Time to get to nominating this year’s delicious rare pairs!

When
nominating, please fill in “Mass Effect – All Media Types” in the
fandom box.

As a reminder, both gen (&) and romantic (/) relationsips tags are allowed for this exchange. Please don’t hesitate to send questions to the inbox!

And if you haven’t already joined the Discord server, it’s a great place to hang out and talk rare pairs.

Nominations will be open until January 19 at 6PM EST

We’ve had a few new people inquire just how to nominate, and for a guide to find out how to do so, please read below:

1) Go to the Ao3 Tagset Page for Spectre Requistions while logged into Ao3. A tagset is what most Ao3 fan exchanges use to determine what relationships (in Spec Rec’s case) or other criteria are used for a fanfiction exchange. If a pairing is not nominated, it will not be able to be used for sign-ups, regardless of whether it would have been eligible otherwise. (eg, Suvi/Chakwas, while certainly being eligible as far as total works go, won’t be an option to ask for if it’s not nominated.) 

If you don’t have an Ao3 account, contact the mods, we’ll be happy to help you get one with an invite link!

If you do have an AO3 account, it should look like this in the upper right corner:

2) Click the Nominate Button.

You should wind up with a page that looks like this:

3) Fill out the Nominations Sheet.

For fandom, please use “Mass Effect - All Media Types”. We only use Mass Effect - All Media Types because it gives us the highest chance of getting that sweet, sweet Mass Effect content in there regardless of potentially sticky couples (for example: crossovers between a book and a game, or between he Mass Effect Trilogy and Andromeda) and because Ao3 frankly doesn’t like it when we have couples wandering through other groups.

For Relationships, any pairing/threesome/moresome with under 200 completed works is allowed. For most pairings, Ao3 should help autocomplete it for you -- but if you come up with a very original pairing (or AO3 is feeling unhelpful), it may require you to type in the full thing. If it does not auto-complete, don’t worry - you can still submit it! Pairings should be in alphabetical order. One pairing per line, please!

4) Submit your Nominations! Just click the button on the bottom, and you should be off off and away!

FAQ:

 How can I tell what is under 200 completed fics? I’m not a mind reader, C-sec officer!

You can search AO3′s tags here to find pairings for a given character (canonical only gives you pairings big enough that Ao3 has declared them canonical categories). It should look something like this:

If you see a number under 200 here, you-re golden! Submit away. If it’s over 200 here, however, don’t despair - check the completed works. For example:

Doesn’t look eligible if you just do a tag search. However, if you click the tag and then go through the works for the couple, do a search for completed works only and you might be surprised!

To do this, look at the “Sort and Filter” sidebar and scroll down until you reach this field:

Click complete works only. And in this case, you’d find this couple is, in fact, eligible!

What if I accidentally nominate something that’s not eligible? Will I get in trouble?

Nah. You might wind up with it being rejected, but we assume most people have good faith in their nominations.

How many things can I nominate?

10 pairings - so choose carefully what you’d like to see and write. That covers both Andromeda and Trilogy.

Can I nominate even if I’m not sure I’ll sign up?

Of course! Nominating isn’t a binding process - you’re only voting for what you’d like to see. You don’t have to sign up after nominating things - in fact, nominations are anonymous, so we can’t tell what you’ve nominated.

Are there any special rules/restrictions on what I can/can’t nominate?

Only the 200 work maximum on what’s allowed in.

Can I nominate Original Characters?

Yes - ish. We allow original characters who are defined enough to give the person who matches you something to go on, but not so much so they have to do an exhaustive amount of researh on a fanon character. For example:

Good OC nominations:

Female Asari Spectre/Female Cerberus Agent - both these roles are defined in terms of what sort of pairing they want (f/f), and the two roles give someone an idea of who these people are without being excessively limiting.

Not-so-good:

Communicaitons Officer/Male Original Character: both of these are too vague. We’re not sure whether this person wants m/m, f/m, or a third category for the Communication’s Officer; Male Original Character is so nebulously defined that we’re not sure just who that might be.

Female Shepard/Batarian(s) - We don’t know who these batarians are, or how many of them there are. “Five Male Batarian Pilots” tells us a lot more.

Male Shepard/Legion/Ebony Raven Darkmayne (My oc) - While we encourage you to add details about your shepards, it’s very hard to write for original characters someone has formed whole cloth. Please nominate your OC in more generic terms - you can add in those details in optional details, but this way the writer or artist has more wiggle room for what will suit their fic, and you have more options of matching more people since you aren’t limited to one interpretation of a concept.

A good rule of thumb is if you can sum up an OC in five non-proper nouns, it’s probably a valid nomination.

Can I nominate crossovers?

Yes! Crossovers between different Mass Effect properties are more then welcome! Just please, if the character you’re crossing over doesn’t hail from a Mass Effect canon, add in the canon next to the character name, eg “Darth Vader (Star Wars)/Garrus Vakarian.”