2025 Schedule + Rules

[sleepymod]

Early Bird Gets The Word is a fic and art exchange inspired by nightonficmountain for small and inactive fandoms.

Schedule:

Nominations: April 20^th 21:00 to April 30^th 21:00 EDT
Signups: May 3^rd 20:00 to May 14^th 20:00 EDT
Assignments: Out by May 18^th 08:00 EDT
Deadline: June 22^nd 23:00 EDT
Collection opens: July 2^nd 20:00 EDT
Creator reveals: July 9^th 20:00 EDT

Tagset | Signups | Collection


What is Early Bird Gets The Word?

Early Bird Gets The Word is a fic and art exchange inspired by Night On Fic Mountain for small and inactive fandoms. Participants sign up to write a story of at least 1,000 words or create art in a fandom someone else has requested. In return, they will receive a story of at least 1,000 words or art in a fandom they have requested.

Participants must be over 18 years of age.

When does this take place?

The challenge takes place as spring transitions to summer. Please refer to the year’s schedule for details.

Why is this exchange called Early Bird Gets The Word?

We wanted something to do with awakening sleepy-headed fandoms, so we were thinking of phrases that had to do with the morning and waking up. “The early bird gets the worm” was suggested, albeit with a massive typo (because the mod was sleep deprived, ironically--or perhaps unironically), and the name stuck.

Nominations

Inactive fandoms (that are sleepy that you want to rouse!!!) qualify if they have 50 or fewer new stories in English with over 1k words on AO3 since 1st January 2025, excluding any stories posted to Yuletide collections at the time that Nominations open. Crossover fandoms will be accepted if both fandoms are eligible under the 50 rule.

Please refer to this year's nomination guidelines.

You may nominate solo characters (Solo: Character name), platonic relationships (&), and romantic relationships (/).
All nominations must be disambiguated.

How did you come up with the qualifying number 50?

We used advanced rocket science to make this calculation.

Requests

You are allowed between three (3) and ten (10) fandom requests, with up to ten (10) characters/relationships in each. You will receive a gift featuring one (1) of the characters/relationships you requested. If you would like to receive a gift featuring any of the nominated characters/relationships in a fandom, click the "Any" box.

For both requests and offers, you are required to choose one (1) or two (2) of the following freeform tags: *Fanart, Fanfiction*. This is the medium in which you are requesting to receive your gift as well as offering to create a gift.

If you request 'Any' characters/relationships for a fandom, your creator is allowed to write or draw about any of the nominated characters or relationships in the tagset for the fandom they matched with you on.

Offers

You are allowed between four (4) and ten (10) fandom offers, with between two (2) and ten (10) characters/relationships in each. If a fandom you want to offer has only 1 character/relationship in the tagset, click the "Any" box. If you would like to create a gift featuring any of the nominated characters/relationships in a fandom, click the "Any" box as well.

For both requests and offers, you are required to choose one (1) or two (2) of the following freeform tags: *Fanart, Fanfiction*. This is the medium in which you are requesting to receive your gift as well as offering to create a gift.

Matching

Assignment matching will be done on AO3. Participants will match on one (1) fandom AND one (1) relationship tag AND one (1) additional tag (Fanfic or Fanart). Requests will be visible during the signup period, so please ensure that your offers are able to match with at least one other person who has signed up to the exchange. Unmatchable participants will be sent an email, after which they will have twenty-four hours (24) to add or edit their offers. If you are sent one of these emails and you do not respond to add/edit your offers within twenty-four hours, your signup will be deleted.

This exchange honours Do Not Match requests. Please send an email to the mod email with your AO3 username, as well as the AO3 username you do not want to match with. You do not need to give a reason for your DNM request - we will not be asking you for one, either.

Assignments

Fic

Gifts must be at least 1000 words in one of the requester's fandoms, featuring one or more of the characters or relationships they requested.

Art

Gifts must be an original (traditional or digital) piece created entirely by the artist. It should be detailed lineart at a minimum. It should not be drawn on lined paper. Minimum size should be 500 000 pixels (for example 710 pixels x 710 pixels or 500 pixels x 1000 pixels). It should be in one of the requester's fandoms, featuring one or more of the characters or relationships they requested.

All gifts must adhere to the recipient’s DNWs. If a DNW is included, the creator of that gift may be banned from future participation, and the participant will qualify for an Emergency Pinch Hit.

Pinch Hits

Pinch Hits will be posted here on the Dreamwidth community. Comments on the Pinch Hit post will be screened; to claim a PH, reply to the post with your AO3 username, the PH number you want to claim along with the AO3 username for the PH you are claiming. Anonymous comments will be enabled, and no dreamwidth account will be required for claiming. You do not need to be signed up with the exchange either, however your gift must adhere to the recipient's DNWs.

All questions can be directed to sleepymod@mailfence.com. Alternatively, you may send us questions over Dreamwidth PM or as a reply to any of the posts in this community.

Comments

[lavenderandrue]

Hi mods! Just to confirm, would fandoms with 0 works on AO3 and/or no canonical tag still qualify? Thank you!

[sleepymod]

Hey hey! Absolute they would qualify, they would definitely have less than 50 new posts on AO3!

[lavenderandrue]

I figured that was the case but wanted to triple check, thank you!

[maisycat]

So excited by this exchange concept!! Can I check - to qualify, does the whole fandom have to have had less than 50 works since 1st Jan, or does it count if the specific ship has had less than 50 - e.g. say the fandom itself has had 100 works, but the ship has had 20?

[sleepymod]

Awesome!! Yes, the entire fandom has to have less than 50 works, and they should be new works. If a fandom comes in at 50 but some of the works were published before Jan 1st 2025 and updated since publication to the date nominations open, those works will not count towards the total tally.

[maisycat]

OK, thank you! :-)

[maulester]

Hello! The post says that a fandom counts as inactive if it has under 50 stories since January, but does this include artworks?

[sleepymod]

Hey! We will not be counting artworks posted from 1st Jan 2025 towards the 50 tally.

ETA: Works counted in the 50 tally must have at least 1000 words; if an artwork posted is accompanied in the same AO3 published piece by writing from 1000 words and above, it will count towards the tally.

[(Anonymous)]

It would be really helpful if you included this information on the main post and also if it has to be complete or in English and if crossovers count, like other exchanges do.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[unhindered_dreams]

Do stories that aren't in English count towards the 50 cutoff limit?

Are canon character/original character ship noms allowed?

[sleepymod]

1. Stories not in English do not count towards the tally.

2. Canon character/ Original Work character is a crossover ship, and currently Original Work has about 7900 new works that are complete, of at least 1000 words and are in English since 1st Jan 2025, so the nomination will not qualify.

[alcyoneusgalaxy]

Thank you for running this, super excited to promo all my rare/inactive canons! Will there be an option for worldbuilding as a nomination or just characters and relationships?

[sleepymod]

Thank you! We're excited to see your rare/inactive fandoms!

As for worldbuilding, sorry, I’m afraid we will only have characters and relationships this time around

[wideeyedloner]

This sounds amazing! So excited.

[sleepymod]

Looking forward to having you join us!

[(Anonymous)]

For disambiguations, how would they be formatted ideally?
For example, for a book series Hive Mind by Janet Edwards, which disambiguation would be preferred?
(Hive Mind) or (Hive Mind - Janet Edwards) or (Hive Mind Series - Janet Edwards)

[sleepymod]

All of them would be fine, but to save on characters (Hive Mind) would probably be ideal.

[billykaplan]

Very excited! Just submitted yet another fandom as I realized one of my beloved pieces of media only has thirteen complete works since the new year!

[sleepymod]

Whoohoo!!! Time to wake this sleepy fandom up, we say!

[gavilan]

If I want to nominate a crossover ship where both fandoms are below the 50-work limit, how should I format the nomination?

[sleepymod]

Hello! So you'd nominate it under "Crossover Fandom", and you would disambiguate each character accordingly. For example, the ones we have currently in the tag set look like this:

Luo Fei (Detective L)/Luo Fusheng (Granting You a Dreamlike Life)

Akara-184 (The Red Strings Club) & Sleeper (Citizen Sleeper)

[gavilan]

Thank you! Ok, yeah, I thought I did it wrong (don't submit noms when sleep deprived lol). Please remove "Han Chen/Luo Fusheng (美人为馅 | Memory Lost (TV))" from the Memory Lost list, that was supposed to be a crossover. I'll nominate it properly now!

[sleepymod]

Thank you for letting us know! I've removed it from the Memory Lost list

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! :) What counts and doesn’t count as distinct fandoms in this exchange?

[sleepymod]

Hi! Distinct means the fandom cannot be repeated as a request. You have to have at least 3 unique fandoms as requests, and 4 unique fandoms as offers. If you need any further help with the AO3 sign up form, please reach out again!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I meant, can fandoms ever be too closely related to count as distinct? For example, a book and its adaptation? (The AO3 tags for them are separate.)

[sleepymod]

If we have tags for both in our tag set, they count as distinct from one another so you can request both of them and they will be considered unique fandoms.

[(Anonymous)]

Yay, that's fantastic, thank you! :)

[lavenderandrue]

Hello! I just wanted to give mods a heads up that it seems like the latest AO3 update has caused a handful of tags to become unassociated. There are currently 9 tags floating in unassociated.

[sleepymod]

Oh dear... Thanks so much for dropping us a message! We'll reassociate them ASAP.

Re: E-mail

[sleepymod]

Hello

Thank you for reaching out! I've just replied to your email! <3

(also screened your comment just in case you do not want your email visible to others ^^")