Sign Ups Are Open!

[maythe4th]

Sign Up Form

Signups for May the 4th Be With You 2021 are a go! You may make a minimum of three and a maximum of ten requests, with up to five relationships per request. (Relationships are defined as "Character: Name (SW)," "Character A & Character B," or "Character A/Character B" and so on per the nominated tags.) You may offer a minimum of four and a maximum of ten offers, with up to five relationships per offer. This means a total of fifty possible requests and fifty possible offers. You can link to a letter but please do not link to a placeholder letter or a locked letter.

Please list your DNWs in your signups. Your creator will be asked to abide by your Do Not Wants but we can only confirm those listed in the AO3 signup fields.

If you have preferences about how to refer to characters with multiple names, or about specific eras you're interested in, you should consider listing these in your signup or letter. Character tags are in their current format to make our lives easier wrangling the tag set. If you prefer "Din Djarin" being referred to as "Mando" or "Ben Solo | Kylo Ren" being referred to as "Ben" please say so to give your artist or writer a hand in creating a gift you want.

You may continue to request additional tags be added to the tag set in the comments of this post. However, we cannot guarantee new tags will be added to the tag request spreadsheets.

Double-check your requests and offers. Selecting "Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker" when you intended to select "Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker" will result in very different matches.

By signing up, you agree to to write a story of no less than 500 words, or to create a piece of fan art no smaller than 500 x 500 pixels that can stand as a completed work. Works will be due no later than 11:59 PM UTC (8 PM Eastern Daylight Time) on April 25, 2021. Due to frequent AO3 glitches, we strongly encourage you to upload early. Note that works in Draft mode will not be accepted as fulfilling your assignment, and that the Archive software automatically deletes unposted drafts after a certain time. ("Certain" in this case is usually defined as "the worst possible.")

Keep in mind that Star Wars is a large and varied fandom, and there is room for everyone. Your squick is another fan's kink, your NOTP is someone else's OTP, your most hated film is someone's favorite movie of all time, and your most despised character is the next fan's woobie. Avoid character bashing, kinkshaming, and ship wars in your sign up and when creating your fanworks. Try to abide by the "be excellent to each other" credo, or at minimum, the "don't be a dick" standard.

There is a known bug in the AO3 software that will not display all tags. If your tag does not autopopulate, you can copy and paste it directly from the tag set, which can be found here. If you still have a problem signing up, let us know as soon as possible.

Signups will go until 11:59 PM UTC (8 PM Eastern Daylight Time) Saturday, March 13, 2021. We will put up a timer closer to the end. You may edit your sign-up until then.

The full FAQ can be found on the May the 4th 2021 profile on AO3. You can comment here with any questions about signups or matching, or you can send an email to maythe4thmod@gmail.com.

Comments

[innitmarvelous_og]

Okay this is the first time I am looking at this and I am confused about the offers part and whether or not I understood it. So we uh have to offer like four different things we can create like fics and stuff?

[maythe4th]

Hi!

Yes. If you're new to the AO3 signup process, I can walk you through the basics. Feel free to scroll past anything you already know!

- Click the link to the Sign Up Form.
- In the Requests, select at least three and up to fifty tags. Everything will be in the Relationships field, whether it's romantic "/" or platonic "&" or even a single character request.
- Select if you want your gift to be fanfic, fanart, or if you would be happy with either one.
- In the Optional Details field, write a blurb about what you want for those tags, including a Do Not Want list. (For example, maybe you don't want your selected characters to be killed off in the story.)
- Multiple prompts are not necessary but they give your potential writer/artist an idea of the things you like.

This is the part you were asking about:

- In the Offers section, you have to choose at least four and up to fifty tags that you are willing to write a 500 word story (minimum, if you want to write 50,000 words, go for it) about or draw a picture about. By signing up, you are agreeing that you will make something for that relationship or character for someone else who has requested that tag.

If you go here you can see what people have already asked for. 50-100 people tend to sign up every year so there will be more requests rolling in.

There are two schools of thought about offers. Some people offer the things they want to write/draw, and don't worry about who is asking. Others watch the signups and decide what to offer based on who is asking for something they're interested in writing/drawing for. At the end of signups, I go through to see that everyone has someone they can write/draw for, and if there's no one asking for what you're offering, I will ask you to add offers to match someone's (your choice of person, not mine) request. AO3 has a program that matches people's offers to other people's requests. After matching is run, you will be emailed your assignment, which should match up to one of your offers. The recipient's request will have other tags you didn't offer. You are only responsible for creating one story or drawing about one tag in your assignment, abiding by your recipient's listed Do Not Wants. The rest of their signup and their letter if they have one are there to give you an idea of what they want in their gift.

- On or before April 25th, go to your AO3 profile page, select the Assignments page at the far left, and click "Fulfill" to post your assignment.
- If you find you can't fulfill your assignment, you can click the "Default" button instead and I will find someone else to create for your recipient. Note that if you Default, you are not guaranteed a gift of your own.
- At just past midnight UTC on May 4th, all the gifts become visible. If you have turned in an assignment that meets the minimum requirements (500 words/500x500 pixels, focuses on one requested tag, does not contain any Do not Wants), you are guaranteed to receive a gift.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

[innitmarvelous_og]

Thanks for the explanation :-) I don't know if I will sign up but at least I understand it better now.

[maythe4th]

You're welcome!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! I'd love to sign up for this event, but I'm a little confused about how the requests work. What's the point of putting multiple relationships in a request if only one is getting matched? And can we request the same relationship multiple times with different prompts? Similarly for offers, should we just put one relationship per offer if that's how the matching works? Also, what's a Dear Yoda letter and how is it different to the DNW/prompts section? Sorry for all the questions, I've read the FAQ and sign-up form but want to make sure I've understood it all before I sign up!

[maythe4th]

Hi! I'm glad you asked!

Our minimum number of matching requests per person is set to 3, and our minimum number of offers is set to 4. That means everyone who signs up must choose a minimum of 3 unique ship tags (which could be characters or platonic relationships too) to request. Many people in prior rounds wanted to ask for more possible ships so we opened the settings to allow for more offers and requests for anyone who wants them. Yes, you still only match on one and the matching software treats each tag you list as a unique request or offer.

In each request box, you could request a single ship and list twenty different prompts if you'd like, or a list of things you always like in fic or art. The request box on AO3 should minimally list things you absolutely do not want in your gift. For example, maybe you do not want a gift where Obi-Wan is dead or a gift with mentions of Jabba the Hutt. You can say that. (Stay polite with your DNWs. Characters and plot points you don't like may be the favorites of the person assigned to write or draw for you.)

You can link to a letter (The "Dear Yoda" letter) you've written, a Tumblr post or a Dreamwidth post for example, where you go into more detail about why you like the characters you're asking for. You can list fifty more prompts in your Dear Yoda if you like. That goes into the provided box. You can also leave that blank and put everything into the signup field.

Please reach out with any other questions you have. I'm happy to walk you through the process.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, that's cleared everything up!