Extreme Timed Challenge Exchange 2026
The fastest gift exchange around. Objectively a bad idea. 48 hours of hyperfocus.
Schedule: (All times in EDT)
Tag Nominations Opens, Discord Opens: 0:01 August 20
Tag Nominations Closes: Midnight August 26
A03 Sign Up Opens 0:01 August 27
A03 Sign Up closes: Midnight September 2
Creation Phase: Noon EDT September 5 - Noon EDT September 7
Treating Week: September 7- September 14
Discord Closes: Noon September 14
Everybody admires everyone else's work: September 7 - Ongoing
The exchange is multifandom, and open to artists, writers, web weavers, and podficcers. Fandoms do not have to have a canonized Ao3 tag to participate.
You must be a member of the Discord, for communication purposes.
Once assigned, participants will have 48 hours to deliver their gift.
Artists are expected to deliver a decent sketch on unlined paper, Writers and Podficcers have a 300 word minimum, Web Weavers are expected to deliver 3-element weave.
No AI-Generated content. You are expected to create your gift yourself during the time of the exchange.
This exchange will be operating on DL:DR when it comes to what the mods will police and what we ask you to respect in terms of other people’s requests. The single exception is RPF, which has additional rules.
RPF is allowed. Persons nominated for RPF must be famous in their own right and over the age of 18. Persons famous chiefly for their participation in facist regimes or as serial killers will not be considered for nomination. Mods reserve the right to reject RPF nominations in poor taste.
Original Work is allowed. Use the "Original Work" fandom. If it is important to you that a person within a specific pairing is a specific gender, make that clear within the tag, for example "Middle-aged King (M)/His Loyal Bodyguard (NB) (Original Work)".
Please note that for filling OW requests that can be interpreted as historical such as "Invading Soldier/Teenage Boy", real-life wars are considered opt in, not opt out. If someone receives a gift about a real-life conflict more recent than 1850 AD without having opted into that we will take them to emergency pinch hits if it's brought to our attention.
As this is a 13+ exchange, there is no NSFW allowed, even if you’re sure that both you and your recipient are adults. This applies both to sexual content and to extreme (e-rated) gore.
To increase matching options, tags must be seconded (nominated twice) to make it into the tag set. Because of this, tag nominations will be collected through a google form.
You can nominate tags for up to ten fandoms, with up to twenty tags nominated in each.
You will have one week to submit relationships and characters to a tag set, one week to write your prompts, and 48 hours to deliver your gift.
Participants are required to request at least three fandoms (with associated prompts), and offer to create around at least three fandoms.
To help your creator out, you must offer either a list of likes or prompts that contains at least one element that works for each art form that you have opted into. If you opt into art, you must give at least one art prompt or like that works for art in your signup, and the same for fic, podfic, or web weaves.
Please include anything you absolutely don't want to receive (Do Not Wants) in the Optional Details field in your AO3 signup. Only DNWs in the Ao3 signup will be enforced, and mods will not enforce DNWs that are overly restrictive, unclear, or used to box a recipient into a specific gift (i.e. "nothing gross", or "I don't want anything that isn't a space au with the mc's other major love interest dead off screen".)
This exchange uses Ao3's matching algorithm, and as such, you need an Ao3 Account.
Make sure the email attached to your AO3 account is one that a) you check regularly, and b) are comfortable with exchange mods seeing. You can verify your email here: archiveofourown.org/users/[your ao3 name here]/change_email
As per Ao3 and Discord’s TOS, you must be at least 13.
Nominate Tags [form available in the discord]
Tag Nomination Rules Here,
Things We Do Differently Than Other Exchanges Here
Intro to how to sign up for an Ao3 Exchange Here. Variant using a gifter letter here. A note on what Solo tags mean in practice here.
Sign up for Ao3 Here (there is a waiting queue.)
Additional Challenges (just for fun):
One Day: Fulfil your gift within 24 hours.
Word Count: Write or Podfic 5k or more on a single gift.
Art: Produce a fully-rendered and coloured (lined if that's your style) art piece with at least two characters, or a 10-panel comic with clean pencils or simple inks, within the 48 hours of the exchange.
Web Weave: Produce a 20-element weave.
Multi-media: Make at least 2 gifts that meets gift minimums for different gift forms— art, fic, web weave, and/or podfic.
Multi-fandom: Make at least three 3 gifts that meet gift minimums from three different fandoms.
Why? Because it seemed like a terrible idea.
How do I sign up/How do I format tags/Are you using OR matching: Signup FAQ on the Ao3 collection here)
Further Questions? Join the Discord Here
