Sign ups for the Spectre Requisitions exchange are now open and you may sign up from January 27th to February 11th. You must fill out at least three unique requests and three unique offers. (Requests and offers do not necessarily have to be the same!).
NEW THIS YEAR!
Treats will be considered OPT-IN. You will need to enable treats on Ao3, AND include your preferences for treats in each request. If you do NOT specify treat preferences, we will assume you do not want to receive any treats!
You can use the following template to state your treat preferences: Open to Treats: Yes / No
Open to Treat types: Fanart, Fanfiction
Open to Multi-recip treats: Yes / No
If you are open to all types of treats, you can simply say "Treats welcome!"
We have added a RATINGS box to sign-ups! The box is not mandatory and non-binding but will help with determining who is or is not interested in smut. If you are open to creating or receiving smut, SELECT the "Explicit" option for that offer/request. Please note that this is NOT a guarantee that you will be matched, in either direction, with someone who has opted in to smut; and even if you do match in that manner, you're not obligated to create smut (nor are they obligated to create smut for you).
How do you enable treats? Go to âMy Dashboardâ on your Ao3 account, select âPreferencesâ from the sidebar, scroll down to âCollections, Challenges and Gifts,â and make sure that the âAllow Anyone to Gift Me Worksâ box is checked.
NOW THAT SAID: SIGN UP! SIGN UP! SIGN-UP! CLICK HERE TO SIGN-UP!
You can go back and edit your Sign Up Form up until February 11th, 8:00PM EST. (Countdown here!)
How Do I Sign Up? Instructions beneath the cut:
1) Go to the Sign Up Form at AO3.
2) Start writing in the name of your favorite character/pairing from the nominations. Donât forget to check the spreadsheet if you need inspiration!
3) The box should start to autofill your pairing as you type (if it doesnât, that is a known Ao3 bug, and if you type it exactly as it is in the tagset, it will accept it). Select your pairing of choice. You can choose two pairings per request, and may have ten requests total.
The two requests do not need to be related; it is simply a way to try to get around the Ao3 restriction of only having 10 sign-up boxes.
4) Decide whether you would like to potentially receive fanart or fanfic, or both. Check the applicable box(es).
5) The RATINGS box on each request indicates whether or not you are open to receiving smut. The box is not mandatory and non-binding but will help with determining who is or is not interested in smut. Please CHECK the "Explicit" box if you want to receive smut; and leave it unchecked if you do not want to receive smut.
6) In the "Description" box, you MUST include:
-Any Do Not Wants (DNWs) for the requested relationship(s). We cannot enforce DNWs that are not contained in your Ao3 signup.
-Whether you are opting in to treats or not. If you are opting in, you must say which kind of treats you are open to receiving. If you do NOT specify treat preferences, we will assume you do not want to receive any treats!
You can use the following template to state your treat preferences:
Open to Treats: Yes / No
Open to Treat types: Fanart, Fanfiction
Open to Multi-recip treats: Yes / No
If you are open to all types of treats, you can simply say "Treats welcome!"
You MAY include:
-Prompts, general likes/dislikes -- this is used to help your assigned creator know what sort of gift you would most like to receive!
7) Repeat between 3-10 times, as you like!
8) You may write a letter that goes more in-depth and post it to your tumblr, dreamwidth, public google doc, or another platform, and then fill in the URL in the letter box.
9) Fill out your offers. You must fill out at least three unique pairings you would be okay with writing and can choose one or two pairings to fill in per request.
10) The ratings box on each offer indicates whether or not you are open to receiving smut. The box is not mandatory and non-binding but will help with determining who is or is not interested in smut. Please CHECK the "Explicit" box if you want to create smut; and leave it unchecked if you do not want to create smut.
A BIG WARNING ABOUT USING âANY PAIRINGSâ: You may choose to offer ANY, but this means you could be matched to ANYONE who has signed up for the archive. Exchange participants beware of this, do NOT pick Any Pairings if you are not up for a challenge!
The only limits we will allow on "any" requests by are the following parameters:
the category of relationship, eg Gen, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, or Other: you will get a sign up with at least one request of the chosen category. Can be combined with setting.
the game setting: at least one request will be set in Trilogy or Andromeda, depending or your pick; this can be combined with the above, e.g. "Any trilogy Multi" or "Any Andromeda F/F"
ANY Protagonist Shepard pairing: At least one pairing will feature a Commander Shepard (this restriction will not match Hannah Shepard or Clone Shepard.) You may combine this with a relationship category, e.g., "any Female Shepard F/F".
ANY Protagonist Ryder pairing: You will be matched with a sign up featuring at least one sign-up with a Ryder character (this request will not match Alec Ryder or Ellen Ryder requests). You may combine this with a relationship category, e.g., "any Male Ryder M/M".
No other limits may be selected so chose this CAREFULLY.
11) In the notes, please include any notes for the mods that might help the mods in matching you. For example: "I won't write varren fighting" or "Please do not match me to Councilor Udina". These notes are confidential between the mods and you, and are not shared with your match (or anyone else). You don't have to give reasons; just letting us know what your boundaries are is enough for us to hopefully better match you, and we don't share any information given with other people.
12) Click submit! And welcome to the Mass Effect Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchange!
Works have been revealed and our congratulation posts are slowly rolling out through both last week and this one. With that in mind, things are drawing to a close, and weâd like to make two brief announcements for next year:Â
1) Please take this survey and give us feedback about this year! Feedback helps make us improve each year so knowing what you like, what you didnât - all of that is like catnip to us. The survey is short, completely anonymous, and all questions beyond the first are optional - but the more information we get, the better we can make SpecRecs for next year.Â
CLICK HERE TO TAKE OUR SHORT SURVEY!
2) While we may have more rules changes depending on feedback, we do have two rule changes we are making up front for next year:Â
Please do not place works into collections other than SpecRecs2018 until after Author/Artist Reveals! When you place it into a collection of your other works, it is easy to deduce who the author/artist is since other, non-anonymous works will have your name on it. Please feel free to add it to any collection after reveals, however; this is purely to preserve anonymity on works during the opening week.Â
Please do not write extreme kinks that your recip does not ask for without double-checking with the mods! We donât want anyone think weâre going to morality police on this, but weâve noticed a bit of an uptick in people getting more extreme kinks than they asked for and people not exactly knowing what those kinks are. Extreme kink when asked for - yes, please, all the more!
 As for what we define as extreme kink, it is somewhat of a nebulous term but would roughly include things that are not in the common, fandom vernacular in regards to sex. For example, Turians having hidden genitals is something that most people who read E-rated fiction featuring turian characters would probably be comfortable reading. However, writing Turians having hidden tentacles that slowly devour their lovers (ie vore tentacles) might be a bit left-of-field for your recipient. We ask people to use common sense and to always be comfortable asking through the mods if youâre not sure, and definitively to continue doing a great job tagging your kinks.
 Again, this rule is to help both authors/artists and their recips make and receive something both can enjoy, not to make you feel bad for writing extreme kink (PLZ, we love it) or to play morality police. If your recip asks for Thorian tentacle mind-control porn, by all the means, write it for them!Â
