How to sign up for Black Emporium!

[blackemporiummod]

Yes sweet nuglets, it’s that time of year again: Time to sign up for Black Emporium!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN-UP!

Helpful Links:

How to Guide || Requests on Ao3 || Tagset || Nominations Spreadsheet || Request Database || Parent Collection (All Past Years)

Signups end: July 16, 2022 @ 8:00PM EDT || Countdown

CHANGES THIS YEAR

RATINGS: For both offers and requests, you must select the Ao3 rating(s) that you are interested in creating/receiving. Please note you must be 18+ to offer/request Mature or Explicit level gifts.

TREATS: Located in the “Characters” field of your requests, you must decide whether you are opting-in to treats for your requested relationships. This field does not apply to your offers.

A more detailed explanation of the changes can be found here!

1. Sign in to Ao3

If you don’t have an Ao3 account, contact the mods for help!

2. Go to the Black Emporium signup field (link)

3. Scroll to the “Requests” field

There are several different components of this field:

Characters: This is really the TREATS field! Select between one and four of the options to indicate what types of treats (if any) you would like to receive for your relationship(s). 

• No Treats: you do not want to have a treat created for you, for this relationship
• Fic Treats: you are open to receiving a fic treat for this relationship
• Art Treats: you are open to receiving an art treat for this relationship
• Multi-Recip Fic Treats: you are open to receiving a fic treat that will be gifted to more than one person requesting this relationship
• Multi-Recip Art Treats: you are open to receiving an art treat that will be gifted to more than one person requesting this relationship

You do not have to select the same treat option for all your requests, but keep in mind that whatever option you select will go for all the relationships in that request field (if you are entering more than one).

Relationships: Enter one, two, or three approved relationships that you would like to see in a fanwork created for you. This field will autosuggest approved pairings. If your relationship does not show up, it may be that you have fallen victim to a known bug of Ao3’s that we cannot fix, wherein relationships in a tagset do not autofill. If this happens, simply type it in as it appears in the tagset.

Additional Tags: You can request fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting “any” is treated the same as selecting both.

Ratings: Select between one and four ratings that you would like to have for your gift. 

The four ratings are:

• General Audiences - suitable for someone of any age. no violence and/or sexual content (The “G/PG” of ratings)
• Teen and Up Audiences - some adult language, and referenced adult themes such as sex and violence is okay. (the “PG-13” of ratings)
• Mature - More inclusion of onscreen implicit violence & sex, and adult/darker subject matter. But not explicit gore nor sexual content. (The “R” of ratings)
• Explicit - Explicit, on screen heavy violence & gore, and explicitly written sexual acts or nudity in art (The “NC-17” of ratings)

If you’re not sure where your boundary lies, we would encourage you to err on the side of caution. You may also browse past Black Emporium works to see what past participants have done.

Letter: If you have written a letter on an external website (such as Tumblr/Wordpress/Dreamwidth/Google Docs), you may link it here.

Description: Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you would like to see in a fanwork, both in general and for specific pairings. Good things to include (in this box, a letter, or both) are general likes and dislikes and Do Not Wants. Please remember to put your DNW’s (do not wants) in the Ao3 sign up form - we can only take action if you put your DNW in your Ao3 sign-up form because it is the only thing we can absolutely guarantee that your creator will be able to access.

Remember that anyone who creates fanwork for you must respect your Do Not Wants. If you do not enter anything into this box, and you do not have a link to a letter, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s). If you have any preferences or things you do not want, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved.

Here are some things commonly put in the description box:

Likes/Wants:

- Frequently it can be considered helpful to your author or artist if they have some idea of what you like to see, and what you don’t. For example:

I love F!Adaar/Sera because I think the idea of them merrily pranking their way around Skyhold is so much fun. Please don’t write me something sad about them.

Do Not Wants:

- Stuff that makes you uncomfortable, or just plain stuff that is Not Your Thing. While the Black Emporium does not believe in kink shaming or otherwise insulting people for their own personal taste, we do want people to let their artists or authors know what their limits are. You don’t have to give any reasons for this; “no x/y/z” gives your creator plenty of info to discern where your limits are.

We can only take action if someone writes you something against your DNWs if it is in your sign-up.

Prompts:

Prompts can be just about anything, but they’re meant to be ideas that you’d like to see that can help give your artist or author something to work off of. Sometimes this can be a prompt or a question you’d like explored (for example: What if Solas found himself falling for M!Trevelyan? How would he feel about potentially falling for a human?) or an idea you’d love to see (Josie and M!Cadash snuggled up in front of a fire, please!) or just a few words of inspiration (Leliana/Josephine - secrets, lies, ravens).

Details about your character(s):

It is fairly common for people to give basic descriptions of their characters if it is a character where their appearance or personality may vary (ex: Wardens/Hawkes/Inquisitors), particularly if fanart is requested. These descriptions can be very basic indeed (ex: purple hawke), or extremely detailed (ex: This is Celeste Trevelyan, she loves her squad more than life itself, pink hair, dusky-rose skin, built like she could bench press you six ways from sunday).

Things you should not put in the description field:

“I would like anything but nasty [kink]. I think people who write that are gross and nasty.”

Please do not insult people who like something you dislike. It’s Not For You, and That’s Okay. “No [kink]” expresses this much better than a long explanation of why you don’t like [kink].

“I’m only choosing this to get to three nominations. Please don’t write it.”

While we know someone who signs up for a, b and z may want a and/or b more than z, but please don’t scream to your author or artist that what you may well match on is something you don’t want as much as other pairings. Writing something like this also reduces your chance at treats as well.

“Even though I said I wanted M!Solavellan, I’m fine with F!Solavellan too if you like that better.”

Please don’t tell people that you’d be alright with non-nominated pairings, as fics with only non-nominated pairings cannot be added to the collection.

Minimums and Maximums in Requests:

You are required to fill out a minimum of four request fields (Required: Characters, Relationships, Additional Tags, Ratings; Optional: Letter, Description). Remember that you may put between ONE and THREE relationships per request field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is thirty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 request fields, so if you fill 2 out with 3 requests in each “request box”, Ao3 will still want you to add one more – it’s a good rule of thumb to fill at least three out with one request, then double up as you wish.

4. Continue to the “Offers” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationships:

Enter one, two, or three approved relationships that you would like to create for. This field will autosuggest approved pairings. If your pairing does not show up, it may be that you have fallen victim to a known bug of Ao3’s that we cannot fix, wherein pairings in a tagset do not autofill. If this happens, simply type it in as it appears in the tagset. If it continues to give an error, please drop us a comment with the pairing so we can figure out what’s going on. 

You also have the option to select any relationship.

By selecting “Any Relationship,” that means that you are willing to write or draw fanwork for, literally, ANY of the approved pairings.

The only limitation we will accept will be be a limitation of what category of relationship you want to create for: eg, Any F/F, Any M/M, Any F/M, Any Multi, Any Other, or Any Nonbinary. Anything else WILL BE REJECTED. You may NOT use this option to say, for example, “Any Cullen pairing”. This option is for any and all of the approved pairings in your designated category/categories. Do not use this option unless you are sure that any is truly what you want.

Additional Tags:

You can offer to create fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting “any” is treated the same as selecting both.

Ratings: Select between one and four ratings that you would like to create for your assignment. 

The four ratings are:

• General Audiences - suitable for someone of any age. no violence and/or sexual content (The “G/PG” of ratings)
• Teen and Up Audiences - some adult language, and referenced adult themes such as sex and violence is okay. (the “PG-13” of ratings)
• Mature - More inclusion of onscreen implicit violence & sex, and adult/darker subject matter. But not explicit gore nor sexual content. (The “R” of ratings)
• Explicit - Explicit, on screen heavy violence & gore, and explicitly written sexual acts or nudity in art (The “NC-17” of ratings)

If you’re not sure where your boundary lies, we would encourage you to err on the side of caution. You may also browse past Black Emporium works to see what past participants have done.

Comments for mods:

Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you will and won’t create. As with your requests, you can provide general likes and dislikes as well as things that you absolutely will not do. 

If there is someone signed up you absolutely do not want to create for, please write “don’t match me to x” here; we won’t ask details, we just won’t match and this will be a fully confidential field. If you hate nugs, put it here, and we’ll make sure you get at least one nug-free prompt and, ideally, a nug-free sign-up. 

We want you to have an assignment you’ll be happy about, so if you’ve got something that would be triggering for you to create for, let us know. We can only take action based on our own knowledge, so the more information we have the better we can try to match you with what you really want. 

If you do not enter anything into this box, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s) selected. If you have any preferences or do not wants, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved. None of the mods will blab over whatever you write; we just want you to have the best time possible with your assignment.

Minimums and Maximums in Offers:

You are required to fill out a minimum of three offer fields (Required: Relationship, Additional Tags, Ratings; Optional: Comments to mods). Remember that you may put between ONE and THREE relationships per offer field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is thirty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 offer fields, so if you fill 2 offer fields out with 2 offers in each “box”, Ao3 will still want you to add one more offer field even though you have one over the minimum required amount of offers – it’s a good rule of thumb to fill at least three offer fields, each with one offer, then go back and double up or not, as you wish.

A Note on Matching

Black Emporium runs on OR matching, which means that you will match on one relationship out of the ones that you offer and request. You are guaranteed to match on ONE relationship; you may match on more, you may not. For your assignment, you can create what you matched on OR you can create any other relationship on their sign-up form. You will only have to write or draw for ONE request, not all of them. The minimums will be one piece of artwork or one 1,000 word fic.