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⏳️ ONE MONTH LEFT!

How's everyone doing with one month left until the due date, August 20th? We hope you're having fun and look forward to the end of the event! We at the mod team cheer you on!

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⏳️ ASSIGNMENTS SENT !!

We do apologize for the delay in doing so, but everyone should now have received their assignments! As always, feel free to ask questions if you have any or if you have anything you'd like to clarify.

Reminder that we allow the creation of treats, whether you're part of the exchange or not! You can look through requests here on the AutoAO3 app.

Most importantly, happy creating! Good luck to everyone!

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⏳️ SIGN-UPS ARE NOW CLOSED!

Thank you so much to everyone who signed up for the Link Click Exchange! This is a long post, but: what happens now? We will be contacting you for...

Assignments! They'll be sent out on June 22nd, so again, please do make sure you check your email regularly!

Any mistakes, such as placeholders being left somewhere they shouldn't, completely blank details fields, and/or unenforceable DNWs. Mods will be checking over sign-ups for this, and we will be giving the option to make last-minute changes.

Pinch hitters! Initial pinch hits will be posted to a publicly-accessible Google Document. The document link will be posted onto social media, in our Discord, and will be visible in the AO3 collection's profile.

Additionally:

If you still have any changes you'd like to make to your sign-up, mods will have to manually edit them, but we won't be making any changes without prior permission!

Unmatchable creators (people whose offers don't match any participant's for 1 medium, character/relationship, and additional tag, therefore cannot be assigned a recipient) will be given 24 hours to add an offer to make themself matchable, otherwise will have their sign-ups deleted.

DNMs (do not match-es) are available upon request, but should be emailed to the mods with both your and your DNM's AO3 username, and an explanation of what you would like us to answer with if your DNM attempts to pick up your pinch hit. Please do not provide a reason for the DNM.

Pinch hits (recipients who are guaranteed gifts and don't have creators) can be claimed by anyone, including those who aren't signed up, by emailing the mods.

Reminder that we will not be able to enforce any DNWs that aren't in line with the rules, but we may suggest changes in wording.

See you on the other side, everyone!

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⏳️ 24 HOURS LEFT BEFORE SIGN-UPS CLOSE!

if you haven't already signed up, you can do so here at the sgdlr exchange ao3 collection! make sure to get your sign-up in before it closes!

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Hi everyone! Just a reminder as the end of the sign-up period approaches— mods will be checking over sign-ups after the 19th for what looks like mistakes (e.g. placeholders being left somewhere they shouldn't, completely blank details fields) or unenforceable DNWs, and we will be giving the option to make last-minute changes, but if you'd like you can ask us to doublecheck your sign-up prior to that to make sure it's okay.

Please note that mods will have to make manual edits to sign-ups for any changes you want to make after sign-ups close, i.e. when you can no longer edit your sign-up by yourself. We won't be making any changes without prior permission!

Communication, including notifying participants if they are unmatchable (i.e. when we can't match you to someone else) to make changes, will be carried out via email, so once again reminding everyone to make sure the email connected to your AO3 account is one you check regularly.

We will not be mandating changes in DNWs, per se, but we will not be able to enforce any DNWs that aren't in line with the rules so we may suggest changes in wording.

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does the challenge have an official policy on comments? 👀 (mandatory, encouraged, no obligation?)

Hi! We heavily encourage you to comment on works gifted to you, since your creator will likely be looking forward to and nervous about your reaction to a gift tailored to you, and we hope to encourage a culture of commenting on other works produced during exchange as well. However, we have no official policy nor penalties on not doing so!

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⏳️ A WEEK LEFT TILL SIGNUPS CLOSE!

you can sign up to exchange here before June 19th! hope to see you there :)

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Note: we've been seeing a lot of people hesitant about signing up recently— we'd love to have anyone in the exchange, and highly encourage signing up!

But, if you're unsure about it, we'd also like to say that lurkers throughout and past the sign-up period are welcome. If you're not signed up, we fully welcome and appreciate both pinch hitting (i.e. picking up an assignment for someone whose creator has dropped out) and treats (i.e. fully optional additional gifts) from people outside the exchange. We'll also have opportunities for pinch hitters to leave prompts that can be filled as treats to thank them later in the process!

This is to say: even if you're unsure about formally signing up, feel free to stick around and just watch to see if you're enticed into anything, both on our social media platforms and in the event discord.

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Likes/Prompts

This is a resource on how to pick out details/information to provide in your exchange sign-up for the Link Click/SGDLR Exchange.

Likes/prompts help to offer your creator a jumping-off point. These aren’t binding and can be ignored (inclusion is optional for both you and your creator), but: your creator usually wants to make something you’ll enjoy; it helps to give them a place to start from and allows them to tailor their work more to your tastes.

Other Links: 1. Guide to Optional Details // 2. DNW (Do Not Wants) // 3. Likes/Prompts

How do I craft a list of general likes? 

General likes tend to be tropes, themes, AUs, and plots you enjoy— what do you hunt for when you’re looking for fic on AO3? What immediately makes you light up to see? What tags make you immediately click on something? Write down anything you can think of yourself enjoying, no matter how rambling, broad, or overly-specific. We have 20 fairly broad additional tags as options to help guide your creator in knowing what your taste is— you can elaborate on what appeals to you about the ones you chose.

You may want to get inspiration from weeding through a list of tropes/kinks/cliches like this, or you may want to look through other exchanges’ requests (stealing likes and DNW is a time-honored tradition).

What about more character/relationship/fandom-specific likes?

This is in essence an excuse to talk about what you like about your favorite characters/relationships and about how you see them. Why do you care about this character/relationship? How do you interpret this character/relationship? What are you looking for from them— do you want to see this character getting their hair braided by someone they like, to see them wrecked, or to see them get wrapped in a blanket sobbing into their love interest’s chest? 

Feel free to ramble into half-coherent character/dynamic analysis or to talk about what you really really look forward from them in canon vs what you’re craving desperately in fic. Talk about why you love Link Click itself and what parts of it appeal to you the most. Themes, specific episodes, specific dynamics, and so.

For prompts: an easy formula can be “[Character/relationship] but [trope/AU/etc]”— taking things you like and applying them towards the characters/relationships you’ve requested. If you have more specific things in mind, this guide is a good resource to help you brainstorm and elaborate on prompting.

NSFW likes/prompts:

If you are looking for sexual content in your gift, please don’t be shy about requesting and about including NSFW likes/prompts. Looking through the requests of an exchange like this currently running exchange can help to pick up common NSFW tags you’d like to see— if your preference is to go much less specific than that, sticking to more vague likes and moods in your NSFW likes is possible: e.g. “I prefer focus on sappy, romantic feelings” vs “I prefer aggressiveness and messiness,” etc. 

Even one or two likes generally make a difference to suggest what you’d enjoy. While people can write sex into your gift regardless, a fair amount of people will either exclude it altogether or stick to what their interpretation of safe/tame is if you’re not vocal about what you’d prefer. If you’re worried about getting PWP as a focus but are not opposed to sexual content in general, you can add in a clarifying note of “DNW porn-without-plot, but [with plot/as character study/as a minor part of the work/etc] is fine.” On the other hand, if you’re aiming to get something wholly SFW and would dislike anything else, we recommend placing “sexual content” on your list of DNW.

This resource is a good breakdown of how to prompt for art and to make artist-friendly prompts— in essence, if you’re requesting art, it’s good to include general moods/outfits/postures/color palettes and to stay away from prompts that require a narrative progression. It’s best to stick to something that can be conveyed in one image.

Note: we don’t allow boxing creators into writing/drawing NSFW and have geared the exchange towards both kinds of content— if you have NSFW likes, please make it a point to include SFW likes as well!

In general: provide options! Don’t box your creator in with exactly one prompt or very hyper-specific likes— this puts pressure on them to write towards that prompt/like, whether or not you intend it, and can make them feel like they’re disappointing you if they can’t write towards that. Give them a variety to choose from! Make it clear you’ll enjoy whatever they create, so long as [broader/more mood-based likes to help guide them].

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DNW (Do Not Wants)

This is a resource on how to pick out details/information to provide in your exchange sign-up for the Link Click/SGDLR Exchange.

DNW are used to notify your creator of things that would ruin a gift for you and are binding— the mods will interfere if your gift contains anything you have DNW-ed. Your list of DNW should include triggers, squicks, things that you’d filter out when searching AO3, etc.

Other Links: 1. Guide to Optional Details // 2. DNW (Do Not Wants) // 3. Likes/Prompts

What to avoid here:

Boxing your creator in. "No unicorns" is fine, but "Nothing except for unicorns" is not. The latter would be unenforceable and is better framed as a like than a DNW— e.g. “I would like it if you included unicorns.”

DNW-ing a part of canon. "Avoid focusing on time travel" is fine, but "Time travel cannot exist" is not, because Link Click canon includes time travel. This is considered unenforceable.

Value judgements. "No cotton candy" is fine; "Cotton candy is gross and too-sweet, anyone who would want it has horrible taste" is not. The mods may contact you to edit your sign-up if you do this. (Notably: people have very different reasons for their DNW and what informs those preferences. Please don’t take your creator’s DNW list as a value judgement either.)

Vagueness and grey areas. “No bad writing/art” is an unenforceable DNW; “Only canon characterization” is similarly unenforceable. There are limitations on what can be moderated, and it would be unfair to have the mods make judgements on what counts as bad writing or what counts as fanon vs canon.

Your DNW are the most important part of your sign-up. DNW should be clearly labeled and easy to parse as your DNW (e.g. “DNW: spiders, bugs” as opposed to “I would prefer no spiders”). Please be specific in listing what you don’t want!

Why is this important? This helps the mods and your creator in making sure you get a gift you’re happy with! While mods can make easy decisions on obvious bad-faith gifts, in most cases: there are gray areas because your creator intends to write/draw you something you’d like and accidentally trips onto something that ruins the gift for you— we want to be able to clarify this, and to have a clear line of what we can enforce as moderators in terms of DNW. Your creator wants to know what would make their work bad for you too!

What are some ideas to include in your DNW? Any triggers/squicks/etc. Any relationships you’d like to not see (this can be phrased as “DNW unrequested ships” or “DNW ships except for [x, y, z]”). Anything you’re so picky about that you think no one is capable of writing it right. Anything you automatically filter out when searching through AO3, and anything that immediately makes you hit the back button when reading a fic. Tropes and kinks you don’t want to see.

Please don’t automatically think “no one would write this unrequested” and neglect items you’d hate to see in your gift, such as: a NOTP you’d prefer to avoid, some sort of dead dove content (incest, rape/noncon, underage sex under [age], etc (be specific!)), specific kinks (and sexual content altogether), or a trope such as soulmates or genderbends.

People—especially in a monofandom exchange like this one, where they’re often new to exchange etiquette—will have different standards than you do, and (again) it makes it easier on the mods to have a clear guideline of what is and isn’t acceptable to write for you, as well as to know when we need to step in.

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Guide to Optional Details

The Link Click/SGDLR Exchange is several participant’s first exchange on AO3! We wanted to compile some basic points to help sign up and which might help your creator write/draw something for you that you’d like to see.

While leaving a mostly-blank sign-up is an option, we’d like to make sure everyone’s familiar with how to elaborate on that if they so choose.

Preliminary notes:

To make your sign-up look cleaner, you may want to include dropdowns or formatting! AO3 allows basic HTML in terms of bolding and italics, and you can use the <details> and <summary> tags to include dropdowns.

A typical way to divide details in your sign-ups is to split up the text into sections for general likes, fandom-specific (in this case, character/relationship-specific) likes, and DNW. These can be split further into SFW and NSFW (e.g. SFW likes and NSFW likes), and can include a section for different mediums such as art likes/prompts.

You may want to look through some other exchanges to get ideas of what sign-ups should typically look like, or or steal ideas for your likes/DNW. Scrolling through the most recent rounds of Candy Hearts and Trick or Treat (two of the biggest multifandom exchanges) can help with this, if you’re curious.

We'll be splitting this into three different posts to avoid running too long!

Links: 1. Guide to Optional Details // 2. DNW (Do Not Wants) // 3. Likes/Prompts

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⏳️ SIGN-UPS ARE OFFICIALLY OPEN!

The time is finally here! Sign-ups will be open from June 4th to June 19th. Here are some links we've compiled that you'll probably need:

First: the rules and guidelines

Find the sign-up form here!

What is an exchange letter?

And another guide to exchange letters!

For artists: options for image hosting on AO3

Guide to requesting art on AO3 exchanges

The Auto AO3 app for viewing requests, if you'd like!

IMPORTANT NOTES!

Please read the rules and guidelines before you sign-up. As always, feel free to send in any questions via Tumblr asks, Neospring, or on our Discord server.

Communication from mods, including assignments, will be primarily via email, so please make sure the email connected to the AO3 account you use sign up to the exchange is one that you check regularly!

And above all: have fun! Go wild!

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⏳️ NOMINATIONS CLOSED!

thank you all for the crazy turnout we've had so far ❤️ see you in approximately 48 hours when signups open!

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⏳️ A LITTLE OVER 24 HOURS LEFT BEFORE NOMINATIONS CLOSE!

if you haven't already, you can add tags to the tagset here — about two days after nominations close, sign ups will open!

super excited to move onto the next phase of this event!! see you all on the other side 💖

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⏳️ A little over a week left until signups open for the exchange!

nominate characters and relationships for the tagset here! refer to the links in our pinned post for further information, as always!

excited to see the turnout ❤️

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the nominations period is still ongoing!

☆ LINK CLICK EXCHANGE 2025 ☆

Welcome to the Link Click Exchange 2025! In this event, participants will be creating one piece of fanfic or fanart for a recipient, and receive a gift of their desired medium in return. Any ship, any character, any type of art or fic — do as your heart desires.

Important links while we finalize details!

Overview & rules

Tagset to nominate tags before signups!

Discord server (for easier communication; optional though useful if you'd like notifications about deadlines, etc. Communication from mods will usually be carried out through email.)

Neospring (to inquire about the event, for those who do not have a Tumblr account)

The schedule (subject to change)!

From now to 2nd June: Nominations

4th June to 19th June: Sign-ups

22nd June: Assignments out

August 20th: Assignments due

Work reveals: August 27th

Creator reveals: September 3rd

(Reveal dates subject to change— the collection will be held till all guaranteed gifts are given.)

Looking forward to seeing your creations during this event!

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Omg Link Click exchange!!

One question, is it only for the donghua or will the live action canon also be eligible?

hello! unfortunately, that's a no; only the donghua is eligible as none of the mods are familiar enough with other adaptations and most likely neither are most participants.