Little Black Dress Exchange

This is the last day to get your nominations in! Nominations close 9am UTC April 30 2022 (click here for a countdown).

Tagset | Nomination Guidelines

Good luck getting in your last-minute noms!

Nominations for Little Black Dress 2022 are now open! Please read the guidelines below, even if you regularly participate in exchanges.


1. All characters must be disambiguated, even if they wouldn't usually need to be. Disambiguation means putting the fandom name in parentheses next to the character e.g. Marta Cabrera (Knives Out). It's very possible several characters will be nominated in several different canon iterations, so please disambiguate as specifically as possible or characters will go wandering. If you nominate Leia Organa in Star Wars—All Media Types, disambiguate with (SW—AMT) and not just Star Wars.

2. For big sprawling canons, make sure you only nominate All Media Types if you are truly requesting that character within any media type. Note that you cannot DNW a subset of canon. For instance, if you would like Leia paired with any character in any Star Wars media except for the video games, you cannot request her in Star Wars—All Media Types and DNW video game pairings. You can, however, request her in the Original Trilogy and then opt-in for crossovers in any Star Wars media except for video games. If in doubt, nominate your character in a smaller piece of your canon and opt-in to the larger one.

3. As a general note, please bear in mind that the fandom you nominate a character under will determine the available set of characters to ship them with, so consider this carefully.

4. Participants may nominate 1-10 characters in 1-10 fandoms.

( Fandom-specific guidelines, RPF guidelines, rule 63 guidelines )

The 2022 Tagset can be found here. Nominations will remain open for one week, until 9am UTC April 30 2022 (click here for a countdown). Nomination queries will be posted here at the comm, so please check back if your nominations haven't been accepted. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to comment here.

Happy nomming!

Nominations have closed! Thank you to everyone who nominated, the tagset looks great. Over the next two days, I'll be combing the tagset for any duplicates and wandering tags. Please take a moment to check the tagset and ensure all your noms have made it in, and that they're in the right place (e.g. if you requested an 'All Media Types' version, double-check it's there and not in a more specific iteration, and vice versa). I only rejected nominations if they were duplicates, so if your nomination has been rejected and it's not already in the tagset, please let me know so I can add it for you.


Nomination Queries:

1. James Bond (Classic Movies)
Regarding a previous nomination query, it's been pointed out to me that the "classic movies" notation is established in this fandom, and is in fact an AO3 canonical, so I have accepted these nominations as they are and this has been marked as resolved.

2. 그 악녀를 조심하세요! | Beware of the Villainess! (Webcomic)
I've received nominations for Jake Foddebrat and Melissa Foddebrat. However a quick google suggests that these are the same characters as Jake Podebrat and Melissa Podebrat, who are already in the tagset. Could someone in the fandom confirm if these are distinct characters? Google suggests that these names have two different translations.


Forgot to nominate?

No sweat. I'm happy to add characters to the tagset until signups for the main collection open on May 16. Please post your nominations here formatted exactly as you'd like for them to appear in the tagset and I will add them for you.

I can make tagset modifications (adding tags, correcting mispellings, etc.) until 9am UTC May 16. After that, signups for the main collection will open and no further changes can be made. The tagset will remain closed during signups for the main collection, and will reopen again once assignments have gone out so anyone who wishes to add tags for the LBD Madness prompt meme may do so.

There's little over three days left to nominate! Thank you to everyone who has pointed out tagset inconsistencies such as duplicates or wandering tags, I will address these shortly. In the meantime, I have a nomination query:

James Bond (Classic movies)
James Bond (James Bond Classic Movies)
M (James Bond Classic Movies)
Moneypenny (James Bond Classic Movies)

Could the nominator please specify what they mean by Bond Classic Movies? As far as I know, this is not well defined. Please specify an actor e.g. James Bond (Roger Moore Movies), an era e.g. James Bond Movies (1973-1989), or an alternate way of defining this period. Or if this notation is well known in Bond fandom, please let me know. If I do not hear from you by close of nominations on May 14, this fandom will be changed to James Bond Movies (1962-1989).

Nominations for Little Black Dress 2021 are now open! Please read the guidelines below, even if you regularly participate in exchanges.


1. All characters must be disambiguated, even if they wouldn't usually need to be. Disambiguation means putting the fandom name in parentheses next to the character e.g. Marta Cabrera (Knives Out). It's very possible several characters will be nominated in several different canon iterations, so please disambiguate as specifically as possible or characters will go wandering. If you nominate Leia Organa in Star Wars—All Media Types, disambiguate with (SW—AMT) and not just Star Wars.

2. For big sprawling canons, make sure you only nominate All Media Types if you are truly requesting that character within any media type. Note that you cannot DNW a subset of canon. For instance, if you would like Leia paired with any character in any Star Wars media except for the video games, you cannot request her in Star Wars—All Media Types and DNW video game pairings. You can, however, request her in the Original Trilogy and then opt-in for crossovers in any Star Wars media except for video games.

3. If in doubt, nominate your character in a smaller piece of your canon and opt-in to the larger one.

4. As a general note, please bear in mind that the fandom you nominate a character under will determine the available set of characters to ship them with, so consider this carefully.

5. Participants may nominate 1-10 characters in 1-10 fandoms.

( Fandom-specific guidelines, RPF guidelines, rule 63 guidelines )

The 2021 Tagset can be found here. Nominations will remain open for one week, until 9am UTC May 14 2021 (click here for a countdown). Nomination queries will be posted here at the comm, so please check back if your nominations haven't been accepted. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to comment here.

Happy nomming!

It's getting to crunch time! Nominations close in less than 22hrs, so now's the time to get in those last-minute noms! Click here for the tagset, and here for a countdown.

At present, there are no active queries at the nomination query post. Because all nominations have been approved as of now, if you don't see your nomination or it appears in a different format from what you'd prefer, please review our list of resolved queries. Feel free to leave a comment if you still have any questions or concerns, as we're more than happy to make alterations if necessary.

Finally, thank you to everyone who's alerted us to duplicate or wandering tags! This is massively helpful. We've set aside a couple of days prior to signups to give the tagset a bit of a spruce and take care of those errant noms, and we appreciate you giving us the heads up in advance.

Good luck getting those final noms in!

We're a few days into noms and we're really excited to see the tagset taking shape! Thank you to everyone who's nominated so far. There are currently four active queries in the nomination clarification post pertaining to the fandoms A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, and Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch. If you've nominated in these fandoms, please take a look!

As a general note, please remember to disambiguate your tags. This means putting the fandom next to your requested character in parentheses e.g. Elsa (Frozen). This is particularly important in this exchange, as the fandom you request will define the scope of the ships your requested character may appear in. This is doubly important if your requested character appears in several fandoms e.g. Bruce Wayne (Batman: The Animated Series), Bruce Wayne (Nolan Movies), Bruce Wayne (DC Comics), Bruce Wayne (Arkham Knight Video Game)... let's just say Bruce Wayne gets around a lot.

Which brings us to...

Clarification on All Media Types (AMT) Nominations:

You are welcome to nominate your characters in their AMT fandom if you truly want them to be shipped with any character from literally all media types. To use the Bruce Wayne example again, this means potentially receiving Bruce Wayne/comicsverse!Joker, Bruce Wayne/DCEU!Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne/legoBatman!Dick Grayson... there's a lot out there. If you request Bruce Wayne (Batman-AMT) then you will get any version of Bruce Wayne, but if you're only interested in a particular version (e.g. DCEU), you can nominate him as DCEU!Bruce Wayne (Batman-AMT) under the Batman - AMT fandom, and this ensures you will receive DCEU Bruce Wayne shipped with another character from any Batman media type. Keep in mind you can't DNW subfandoms, so it's better to nominate the subfandom you're interested in and opt into other subfandoms, rather than nominate AMT with the expectation of opting out of a particular subfandom.

Finally, we'd like to extend our thanks to you all for being patient as we hash out these finer details. You guys are a creative bunch, and you're coming up with scenarios and combinations that we hadn't originally anticipated, so we've had to clarify our stance on these situations as they arise. We would have liked to have provided you with all the information upfront, but we appreciate your understanding as we get this exchange off the ground.

Comments have been disabled on this post in the interests of keeping all of our nomination clarification in a centralised location. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so here.