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 (/) relationship tags are allowed for this exchange. Any relationship that fulfils the criteria below is eligible! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask the mods!

ELIGIBILITY RULES:

• A pairing must have 200 or less works when viewed with completed works OR
• NEW: A pairing may have over 200 works, but when viewed with completed works and otp:true parameters, the amount of remaining works is both under 200 and less than 1/3rd of the total number of works. 

For Example:

* If Adrian Victus/Steve Cortez has 138 works, then it will be accepted as it has less than 200 works. No further filtering is needed.

* If Volus God (Self-Declared)/Liara’s Hanar Half-Sister has over 200 works, but when searched with the above parameters, only has 5 works, it would be allowed as it would have met the under the 1:3rd ratio rule.

* If Brooks/Krogan Wondering About Fish on the Citadel has over 200 works, but when searched with OTP: true and completed works parameters, has 100 works, then it would not be allowed, as the ratio between the completed works and completed works with just the pairing (otp:true) would be too high to qualify. This new rule is meant to help pairings that are commonly used as “side pairings” but rarely are featured in works where they are the focus.

If you have any questions on those rules or you just want to hang out and talk Mass Effect pairs beyond the most popular ones, consider joining us at Our Discord server. It’s a great place to hang out and talk rare pairs.

If this is your first year or you just want a  guide to find out how to do nominations, please read below:

1) Go to the Ao3 Tagset Page for Spectre Requisitions 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 an 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. (Example: 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 and you’re logged in, you should see this button in the corner that says “Nominate”:

2) Click the Nominate Button.

You should wind up with a page that looks like this, with 1 fandom tag and lots of relationship fields to fill out:

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 the Mass Effect Trilogy and Andromeda, or crossovers between other media and Mass Effect) and because Ao3 frankly doesn’t
like it when we have couples wandering through different fandoms in the tagset.

For Relationships, any pairing/threesome/moresome that meets the eligibility rules. 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 of names. 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, which are bolded; it does not matter for spec recs whether or not your pairing is canonical). It should look something like this:

If you see a number under 200 here for your pairing, you’re golden! Submit away. If it’s over 200 here, however, don’t despair - check the completed works. For example, let’s look at this couple, Garrus/Tali:

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

To do this search for completed works, look at the “Sort and Filter” sidebar and scroll down until you reach the “More Options” field and under “All Works”:

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

However, let’s say you look at the couple and find they are still over 200, as in the example below?

Well, there is one last thing to check:

Go back to the sidebar, then down to More Options and scroll down to “Search within results”:

OTP: True will show you ONLY the works that are tagged with JUST the target couple. When you sort and filter, you will see a total. In this example’s case, that number is 30:

What this means is that off the 204 works in Garrus/Tali right now, only 30 only focus on Garrus/Tali as a couple. As a result, the ratio of otp:true works to completed works is less than 1/3rd of the total, and the couple would be allowed to participate.

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 operate in good faith in their nominations. If we reject a couple, we will always put it in the spreadsheet for the year linked on the sidebar with a reason why.

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, and all the novels, comics, etc.

Can I nominate, even if I’m not sure I’ll sign up or don’t plan on signing 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 eligibility rules.

Can I nominate Original Characters?

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

Allowable OC nominations:

Female Asari Spectre/Female Cerberus Agent - both these roles are defined in terms of what category 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-allowable:

Communications Officer/Male Original Character: both of these are too vague. We’re not sure whether this person wants a male, female, nonbinary, or other gender 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 or other OCs, it’s very hard to write for original characters someone else has formed. Please nominate your OC in more generic terms (ex Male Shepard/Legion/Original Female Goffic Hogwarts Student).  You can add in names and descriptions in optional details in your sign up, but this way the writer or artist has more wiggle room for what will suit their fic or art, 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-name nouns or less, it’s probably a valid nomination.

Can I nominate crossovers?

Yes!

Crossovers between different Mass Effect properties are welcome and all crossovers between the different universes are as well! 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."