fic* in a box!

Hello friends! It’s almost time for us to begin nominations pre-gaming. We have additional updates concerning the schedule, the rules post, and the medium opt-ins.

Time is shifted forward on all deadlines

We are updating the schedule to have an earlier deadline time this year. Last year, we found ourselves pushing checks and deadlines off to the next day on behind-the-scenes things, and realized that we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to do admin-y stuff. The new deadline will hopefully allow us to keep on top of the schedule.

All deadlines are now 10:00 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 10:00 PM EST

(This is two hours earlier than before.)

Rule post updates:

We've significantly revised parts of the rules so that they're clearer to new participants and easier for everyone to find info in. We didn’t add anything we weren't already enforcing). The new rules will be posted by the end of the day July 22nd, and available for your perusal at that time!

The updated sections are:

• Official Communication (under "Participant Expectations")
• Sign Ups (whole section)
• Do Not Match Requests (under "Sign Ups", but calling this out specifically because it has more instructions now!)
• Swaps (whole section)
• Assignments (whole section)

We hope these updates will lead to a smoother experience for everyone!

We have a few more medium tweaks

We thought we were done but we found a couple more lying around, oops.

Illustrated Text (Visual Medium & Text Medium)

We updated this ruleset's description to more clearly explain that when you fill an illustrated text medium, the work as a whole needs to fill a requested relationship-field tag, but the individual parts don't.

For example, if you were filling an A/B relationship tag for a recip who'd opted into Medium Opt-In: Illustrated Text (Art & Writing) - In-Universe Newspaper Front Page then you need to make a newspaper front page that has both text and fanart and which depicts A/B in a romantic and/or sexual light…but the art or text components themselves don't individually need to both be shippy.

Medium Opt-In: Writing - Game Walkthrough
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Translation Analysis
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Product Description

These three mediums will now be updated to have “In-Universe” in front of them. The new tags will be:

• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Game Walkthrough
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Translation Analysis
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Product Description

Medium Opt-In: Writing - TTRPG Supplement

TTRPG Supplements will be moving into the Instructions Ruleset. This will allow any TTRPG Supplement to gain wordcount for included art or photos that may accompany the medium. The updated tag will be “Medium Opt-In: Instructions - TTRPG Supplement”

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - In-Universe Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Meta Infographic

We are condensing the Infographics tags down to two. “In-Universe Infographics” and “Meta Infographics” cover the two types of infographics that have been made in past rounds of the event, and we decided that this is a sufficiently small number of tags that they don’t need an umbrella tag. The “Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic” tag will be retired.

Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard
Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)

We are condensing the Storyboard tags down to one. The “of Canon Scene(s)” specification for the second tag feels more appropriate for the optional details of a request rather than part of a medium tag. We will be retiring the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)” tag, and will retain the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard” tag.

Hello friends! Below is the schedule for FIAB 2025, which will run Late July-November instead of August-November.

Schedule changes, in brief:

• We've added in extra time for mod admin tasks such as tagset clean up and request checking.
• We've given you a full 2 week sign up period
• We've added a couple days of extra time to the creation period.

This extra time will help us utilize our helpers better because we won't have such tight scheduling! It will also allow for the possibility that the swaps puzzle will take longer than in previous years – we don't want to punish swappers with less creation time if it takes us longer than usual to get swaps out, so just building a little extra time into the creation period seemed best.

The rest of this post will cover:

• Updates to several specific medium tags and medium rules.
• A slight change to the way OCs can be nominated.

Discord server reminder! Fic In A Box is a complex exchange even for exchange veterans, so we thought that if we were going to invite a bunch of new people to the exchange we should provide a space where they can ask lots of questions throughout the process. This server is open to everyone (we won't kick you out if you've been doing FIAB for years already) but its purpose is to help people participate in the exchange, so it will probably be most useful/enjoyable if you're kinda confused about the exchange. Like FIAB itself, the server is an 18+ Choose Not To Warn space.

Join the FIAB Newbie Discord! (link)

2025 Schedule:

July 24th-August 2: Nominations Pre-Gaming (participants can load tags from last year’s tagset into this tagset)
August 3-12: Nominations
August 13-16: Nominations Cleanup
August 17-August 31: Signups
August 20: Swap requests open
September 6: Assignments Out By This Date
September 7: Swap requests close
October 19: Assignments Due
November 9: Last Day To Submit Makeup Assignments
November 15: Work Reveals
November 29: Creator Reveals

All deadlines are at 11:59 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 11:59 PM EST

New In 2025

Mediums Rules Updates

Art Ruleset

We'll be adjusting the language for the ruleset to make it clear that if multiple characters are requested they must all be visibly within the artwork.

We will also be adding "Papercraft" (creating an image using layered paper cut into the necessary shapes) as a style to the ruleset. This will be a possible style for any art tag that doesn't specify another style (such as "Drawn") and can be requested specifically by nominating the desired art tags with at "Papercraft - " prefix.

Multimedia Works

We'll be adding more guidance for the requirements if combining two different requested medium tags into a multimedia work in the Posting Guidelines.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Printable Sticker Page Layout

We are changing the rules for stickers to clarify a medium-checking issue we had last year. New rules will set a minimum number of stickers per sheet (five unique stickers per sheet), for an equivalent of 2k per sticker sheet.

Medium Opt-In: Audio - Fanmix
Medium Opt-In: Audio - FST (Fan Soundtrack)

These tags will be merged into the tag "Medium Opt-In: Audio - Fanmix/FST (Fan Soundtrack)"

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Cross Stitch Pattern

We will be updating the rules for this medium to clarify that you can't auto-generate a cross stitch pattern from pre-existing art.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Web-based choice-based IF not hosted on AO3
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Twine
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Ink
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Interactive Fiction - AO3 style Choose Your Own Adventure
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Visual Novel

We will be restructuring all of these tags into the following four tags:

• Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - AO3-style Choose Your Own Adventure
• Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Choice-Based IF Not Hosted On AO3
• Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Illustrated AO3-style Choose Your Own Adventure
• Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Interactive Fiction - Illustrated Choice-Based IF Not Hosted On AO3

Length Opt-In: Drabble
Length Opt-In: Double Drabble
Length Opt-In: Triple Drabble

These are being changed to the following:

• Length Opt-In: Drabble (100 Words Exactly)
• Length Opt-In: Double Drabble (200 Words Exactly)
• Length Opt-In: Triple Drabble (300 Words Exactly)

Length Opt-In: Drabble Series

We are removing this tag because it caused some confusion last year. If you'd like to request drabble series please mention it in your optional details. Drabble series of over 1000 words are opt out (similar to other fic formats such as 5+1 things), and for drabble series of under 1000 words you may opt-in within your optional details while requesting a drabble tag.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Craftwork

These tags will be adjusted to have an equivalent of 2k.

Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Recipe book
Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Cocktail Recipes

For clarity these will be singularized into:

• Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Recipe
• Medium Opt-In: Instructions - Cocktail Recipe

In addition it will be clarified in the rules that recipes are required to be the original creations of the poster.

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Sheet Music - Arrangement of Music From Canon
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Arrangement/Cover Music
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Song Parody
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Commentary Track
Medium Opt-In: Audio - Commentary Track - MST3K Style

It's been brought to our attention that someone received a warning from AO3 for posting an arrangement of sheet music from a canon song. The last thing we want to do is risk anyone getting a copyright related warning from AO3 due to a medium in this exchange, so since all of the above tags involve copyrighted music or audio in some way, we're removing them from the tagset.

Nominations Rules Updates

Original Character(s) nominations will not be accepted. This is because "Original Character(s)" is meant to mean either Original Character (singular) or Original Characters (plural) but we've seen some evidence that people who want just one or the other are selecting this phrasing simply because it's common in canonicals.

Tentatively, we will try out simply editing these nominations to be singular if they come up on the AO3 interface, but if that's too burdensome we will reject like all other incorrect tags.

Medium Rulesets

The mediums are all organized into rulesets that will tell you what the minimums and equivalents are for that subset of medium tags. Every medium tag is prefixed with the ruleset that you need to check! For example if a tag says "Medium Opt In: Art - [tag]" then you should head down to the Art section!

Most rulesets have multiple options for minimums and equivalents. Your work only needs to meet one of the options.

It is possible that one tag may fit into multiple mediums. If that's the case then it may have multiple tags. To account for this, during signups this year you will be able to add as many Opt-In tags as you want to the "Optional Tags" field.

While anon rules are important, they aren't reasonable in all cases so exceptions have been built into the rulesets. During the anon period it's expected that everyone should still act as though the works are anon even if the name is visible (this means no naming the creator and no claiming the work in namespace until after creator reveals).

If posting a work that requires the use of an outside account, please follow the anon rules above. In addition, if possible you must embed your work on AO3. If embedding is impossible, you must put something besides a link into your AO3 work: a screenshot, an example, instructions, and/or similar -- think of this like giftwrapping. It doesn't need to be complex, it just needs to be enough to count as a fanwork per the Archive Terms of Service [link].

• In the tagset (link)
• In the medium tag checklist (link) which will generate comma separated lists to use in signups.

If you want a medium added, or think that we've missed a medium option for one of the existing mediums, please head over to the medium nomination page and request it here (link)!