We hope you are all as excited as we are for this year’s fest! It's going to be brilliant.

We have made several changes/updates this year, so please give these a thorough read if you are considering signing up for the fest, even if you've participated in the past.

If you'd like to promote the fest, you can find some lovely banners here!

Please check out our FAQ for more information about the fest, found here!

Fest Timeline: Sign-ups open: July 14 (9AM EDT | 2PM BST) Sign-ups close: July 20 (6PM EDT | 11PM BST) Assignments will be sent out by: July 23 Check-in #1: September 4 Check-in #2: October 2 Fic and Art due: November 3 Posting starts: December 1 Big Reveal: January 5

Rules

1. You must be over the age of 18 to participate as either a writer or an artist, even if you are not creating explicit content. You must be over 18 to view entries labelled as containing explicit content.

2. Sign-ups will open on Friday, July 14th and will be hosted on Dreamwidth for the 2023 fest. People who wish to participate must fill out the sign-up form and paste it as a comment to the sign-up post. Placeholder sign-ups (in which you or your proxy simply post "placeholder for [name]") are allowed but your spot in the fest will be forfeited if you don't fill out and post your completed sign-up form within 24 hours. In order to be eligible to sign up for this fest, you must have previously created at least one original Draco/Harry work that meets the fest criteria (at least 2.5k or the equivalent in art) before July 14th for whatever medium you are signing up for (i.e. if you are signing up as an author, you must have posted a Draco/Harry fanfic that meets the requirements for fanfic). This work must be the participant's original work and cannot include AI-generated content, it must have been beta read, and must be complete/posted in its entirety prior to the start of signups. Works in progress do not count towards this requirement. If this work was written for an anonymous fest, the work must be revealed with you listed as the author as of July 14th. If you are interested in creating non- or unconventionally-representative artworks (e.g., works where Harry and/or Draco are not represented in human or creature form or at all, works that focus on inanimate objects, or works that are purely abstract), please contact the mods about how best to sign up. Please note that H/D Erised should be focused on Harry/Draco as an endgame romantic dyad, even if Harry and/or Draco are in triads, polycules, or other relationships along the way. We also ask that all participants follow H/D Erised on Tumblr or Dreamwidth (both is okay too, if you prefer!); we've found that having everyone in the same virtual spaces helps foster a sense of community and increases the odds that everyone sees important updates and, of course, the wonderful works created for the fest! Please take the decision to sign-up seriously. Once you've committed, there will be a gifter putting lots of time and love into creating a gift for you, a giftee eagerly awaiting your submission, and mods crossing their fingers that they won't have to find a million pinch hitters at the last minute. If you're not entirely sure you want to write or draw for the fest, or if your commitments to other fests (or work, life, etc.) might keep you from completing your Erised submission, then participate as a reader/commenter. We love those guys. They're the best. If you had to drop out from last year's fest for any reason, and are interested in participating this year, please email the mod account to confirm your eligibility.

3. We will be capping the number of writers at 35. There will be no cap as to the number of artists.

4. Sign-ups will close on July 20th and will be first come, first served. Proxy sign-ups will be allowed. If you would like to sign-up as a collaboration between two people, please email the mod account prior to sign-ups. We will not be allowing collaborations that have not first been discussed with the mods. This includes commissioning related works during the fest, unless (a) the person you commission is sworn to and agrees to abide by complete and total secrecy in accordance with fest rules, and (b) the commission posts after fest reveals. A commission accompanying an H/D Erised work cannot be posted on AO3 or any social media platform during the duration of the fest and cannot be part of the official Erised gift to your recipient..

5. The mods will begin matching gifters with giftees and will send out assignments by July 23rd. Please fill out your sign-up form carefully. We will do our absolute best to pair you with someone compatible, and will be better able to pair you with a great gifter and giftee if we have a clear idea of what you do or don’t want to receive, and what you are and are not up for creating. If you are extremely unhappy with your assignment, we will consider finding you a new giftee, but please only do this if you are absolutely certain you won't be able to fulfil your initial assignment. Matching participants is time-consuming for the mods, and changes can be stressful.

6. Once you receive your assignment and have completed your jig of happy-assignment glee, please email the mods to let us know you've received and accepted your assignment. If for some reason you may be unavailable to respond within a week of receiving your assignment, you must let the mods know before sign-ups close on July 20th. If you have not responded within one week of receiving your assignment email, you may be dropped from the fest.

7. GET TO WORK. Start writing. Start drawing and painting. If you want some additional inspiration to help you create something your giftee will really love, you could consider stalking their journal, tumblr, recs, bookmarks, and fic or art, to discover all their likes/dislikes and idiosyncrasies. If you’re unsure about whether or not they’ll really love something, remember that they’ve listed a contact person who can field just those kinds of questions.

8. There will be TWO MANDATORY check ins for the 2023 fest. The first check-in will be on Monday, September 4th and we'll be sending you an email asking you to answer a few quick questions about your work. We will not ask you to submit anything at this time, though you are, of course, welcome to! We know that the creative process can be fickle and we will not hold you to anything you've dreamed up at this point, but do want to make sure that you’ve given your giftee’s sign-up serious thought and that you’re not waiting until the last minute to get started. The second check-in will be on Monday, October 2nd, and we'll require participants to send a current WIP so that we have an idea of what you are planning on submitting and where you're at in the process. If you do not think you will be able to complete your assignment, this would be a good time to let the mods know. You must respond to these emails. If we do not hear from you within one week of either of the mandatory check-ins, you may be dropped from the fest. If you know in advance that you will be unavailable to respond within a week of the September 4th or October 2nd check-in dates, please let the mods know ahead of time so that we can make alternate arrangements without dropping you from the fest!

9. On or before November 3rd, email your completed assignment as an attachment to the mods at hderised@gmail.com. Fic must be in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format. We cannot accept shared google docs or PDFs. If you are working from a google doc, you can copy-paste into word or, in google docs, you can go to "File >Download as > Microsoft Word (.docx)." Art must be in .jpg, .png, or .gif format. If you are creating a video, please contact the mods so we can work out how to host. Your email must also contain your header. You are welcome to submit chaptered fics. When submitting, please include all the chapters in a single word document, with each chapter CLEARLY LABELLED and starting on a fresh page. That will make it easier on the mods when uploading the fic in chapters to AO3. You will, of course, be on time and not require an extension, because you are awesome.

10. Should you be the slightly less timely, yet nevertheless awesome sort, and require an extension, please beg ask the mods for it as soon as possible. Then the following will happen: If you email us to ask for an extension, you are required to give us an estimate of your eventual final word count, an estimate of how much time you need to finish the piece, and to attach your work in progress so we can see that you are in the process of fulfilling your commitment to your giftee and the fest. Not having your work typed up at this point is not a valid excuse for not attaching your WIP to your email. If you think you may need an extension, please plan ahead and have your WIP prepared. Please note that, given the number of moving pieces in an exchange fest, we may not be able to give you as much as an extension as you've requested; for instance, asking for a two-week extension does not guarantee that you will receive a two-week extension. This goes for everyone, whether you've been in fandom for aeons and have participated in a million previous fests or are a brand-spanking-newbie. Decisions about extensions will be made on the basis of your WIP. If, by November 3rd, you've clearly demonstrated effort in completing your assignment but just need a bit more time, it won't be a problem. Second extensions will be given on the same basis, and must demonstrate that sufficient work has been done on the piece during the first extension. Third extensions… Well. Let's just hope that doesn't happen.

11. Fic must be 2,500 words or longer. There is no upper word count limit. Art must show the same level of time and commitment. All H/D Erised submissions must be original, human-made creations; work that is created by AI is not permitted. Remember, someone is out there eagerly anticipating your tailor-made gift for them!

12. Your fic or art must work as a stand alone piece. Submissions cannot be part of another series or a sequel/prequel or remix of other work. It cannot have been previously posted anywhere and it cannot be posted to or shared on any platform, even in part (including outlines, snippets, excerpts, outtakes, screencaps of drafts, discussion of ideas/plot points/challenges, etc.), during the creation period. If you are an artist or writer who would like to include another type of work in your submission (e.g. if you are a writer who would like to create art or an artist who would like to include a ficlet or drabble with your work) please contact the mods before beginning that work. Additionally, note that images cannot be under copyright or contain copyrighted material that does not belong to the creator. If images are in the public domain, creators must provide links to the works so that mods can quickly and efficiently check copyright status. Ultimately, creators are responsible for copyrighted content included in their works. Creators should be aware that using copyrighted works is a violation of AO3's TOS (which state that "Reproductions of entire copyrighted works—whether songs, poems, transcripts, or other material—are not allowed without the consent of the copyright owner.") and may result in their work being removed from the archive, may create issues for H/D Erised and AO3, and may result in legal liability for copyright infringement.

13. All submissions must be thoroughly betaed with no exceptions. This includes artwork. The mods reserve the right to ask you to get a second beta if we feel your submission isn't clean enough to post. We will be putting up a volunteer beta post, but if you have trouble finding someone to beta your work, contact the mods at hderised@gmail.com and we will help you.

14. Participants may submit work with either basic HTML or NO HTML. More information can be found in our Style Guide. If you're planning to use basic HTML, we recommend checking out the following link as a reference: phoenixacid's A N00b's Guide to HTML. If you are including coding beyond the basics (bolding, underlining, italics, etc.), such as CSS coding, please contact the mods; coding that compromises anonymity may not be permitted.

15. The mods reserve the right to correct obvious typos/misspellings/grammar mistakes and faulty HTML in your submissions without first asking permission. To double-check your canonical spellings and capitalisation before submitting, check out potterwords’s Potterwords III or The HP Lexicon We have put together an H/D Erised style guide, which addresses frequently asked questions about spelling and grammar (including Britpicking and canonical spelling). We encourage participants to look through it. You can find it here. The mods also reserve the right to return any fic or artwork for revision if we feel it does not meet quality standards or if it includes your giftee’s dislikes.

16. Please ensure that your submission meets the requests made in your giftee's sign-up. As an exchange fest, part of the beauty of participating in H/D Erised is in receiving a gift made specifically for you—and in seeing how someone else’s sign-up can inspire you as a creator!! We expect that all participants will take their giftee’s sign-ups seriously as a starting off point, and will create work that caters specifically to what their recipient most loves about H/D. And we hope that’s part of why you’re here—to create works that other members of the community will love for years to come! In the spirit of gift-giving, H/D Erised might not be the best place to develop an idea you’ve already been working on, and it isn’t a place where you should submit creations that you’re working on for your own edification (or that are inspired by prompts outside of your giftee’s sign-ups, headcanons or art you’ve enjoyed, other fic or art, etc.). Even if you tweak a pre-existing idea or WIP to avoid your recipient’s dislikes, they may well be able to tell that your gift isn’t really designed for them, and that sort of disappointment is a hard thing for everyone involved. It’s possible, of course—because we do our very best to ensure that you’re matched with a giftee whose likes and dislikes are a good match for what you want to write!!—that the plot bunny that’s been nipping at your heels will be a good match for your giftee—but you shouldn’t plan on it. Gifts should be designed specifically to account for your recipient’s likes, dislikes, and prompts, and we very much hope that you’ll take their sign-up as your primary inspiration. That doesn’t mean that your creation needs to include everything they’ve listed, and we know that might not even be possible or advisable!! Nor does it mean that you need to stick exactly with their prompts, or that recipients should expect that their gifters will create to their exact prompts or their entire list of likes! But creations should respect the general spirit of giftees’ sign-ups, and should be created with an eye towards creating something your specific recipient will love, first and foremost. If your gift includes things that your recipient has said they do not want, we’ll have to either ask you to edit the piece or, if editing isn’t possible, we’ll have to reject it. Of course, we really, really, don’t want to have to do that, and after you’ve put in so much time and energy, we’re sure you won’t want that either! So please, again, make sure that your creation is designed with your recipients likes and dislikes in mind!

17. DO NOT reveal your identity to anyone other than your beta(s) before the reveal. Do not sign your art or post it to your Deviantart account or tumblr. Do not share excerpts, partial drafts, outtakes, word counts, or spoilery details/plot points of your work in writing sprints or writing communities, in response to tumblr asks, or in friends-locked journal posts. This is an anonymous gift exchange and we wouldn't want the surprise to be spoiled. Please don't post any part of your fic or art anywhere until after the BIG REVEAL on January 5, 2024. If you share any information that might give away your identity, or any other creator's, before reveals, you may not be allowed to participate in future H/D Erised fests.

18. If you flake (if you lead us on for weeks, don’t respond to emails, fail to turn in your assignment, or generally play silly buggers and make our lives hell) you won't be allowed to play next year or in any other fests we mod, and if mods from other fests reach out to ask us whether they can rely on you to come through on an extension or pinch-hit, we’ll have to be honest in saying that that wasn’t our experience with you. Don't be that person. We know you won't be, because YOU ARE AWESOME.

19. You can include anything you like in your fic as long as a) it fits with what your giftee requested, b) it doesn't clash with what they asked to be excluded, and c) it's clearly a Harry/Draco oriented story. There are no other content limitations. We do, however, require you to include warnings in your header, and to be thoughtful about which warnings are appropriate. "Appropriate" is ultimately up to the discretion of both the creator and the mods, and the mods reserve the right to add warnings to your work for the duration of the fest, though you can, of course, remove any mod-added warnings after reveals. If you feel that a particular tag would spoil a plot point we will work with you to find an approach that works (e.g. adding a "please see author’s note" tag and directing people who might need it to a full warning in the end notes). While we prefer not to add additional warnings and will use restraint in doing so, Erised posts during a time of year that may be particularly difficult or sensitive for people, and there are many things that may seem unremarkable to creators but that may nevertheless present serious challenges for community members who are mired in the stresses of the holiday season. We fully support, and will go to bat for, your ability to create any content you and your recipient will like; we also don’t want your fic to get flamed and we do want to minimise the possibility that any of our creators, recipients, readers, viewers, or commenters will stumble upon content that causes serious distress. So please bear with us, and please warn carefully. We also ask all participants to include some recognition of work that directly inspires their own. This could take the form of a link, acknowledgement in the notes, and/or formal citation. Participants do NOT need to do this for things that are broadly considered part of fanon. Rather, if, for instance, your work follows the plot of a movie or written work or if it draws language or images directly from another work, that source material should be acknowledged. Your work absolutely does not have to be Christmas, holiday, or winter oriented! Mentions of winter holidays or winter weather are entirely optional—remember, plenty of readers may not celebrate winter holidays, or may live in a part of the world where it doesn’t snow or get chilly in December, or may just appreciate a variety of stories and settings! And while we will be thrilled to post happy, feel-good romances you should also feel free to tear our hearts out, if that should be your and your giftee's desires. Lastly, while there are no limits on the length of fic for Erised, please bear in mind that your giftee may struggle to find the time to read a longer work during the holiday season, and that many past reader favourites have been under 25k—bigger is not necessarily better!

20. We will be hosting all fest works at our hd_erised collection on Archive of Our Own. This means that all participants will need to have an AO3 account. If you do not already have an account when you sign up for the fest, the mods can provide you with a registration code. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the process please take a look at this post explaining how posting to AO3 will work. This process means that authors are able to make changes to their fics after they've been submitted. Please reserve this for minor edits only. If you feel the need to edit/revise your fic beyond very minor, line-edit-level change, please contact the mods. We put a lot of effort into proofing and coordinating posting, and all of that can get rather mangled if a participant decides to add 2k and a new ending to their fic without the mods' knowledge.

21. After much discussion, and much feedback from our community, H/D Erised transitioned away from using livejournal as a platform because it is run in accordance with Russian law, and therefore supports censorship and bans "gay propaganda." The hd_erised LJ account will remain as-is, as an archive of past fests and as part of fandom history.

22. Participants are expected to comment on their gifts, hopefully in a timely and thoughtful manner. After all, this is a gift exchange, which means somebody is creating something just for you, in the hopes that you’ll love it to bits. Gifts might not follow your exact prompts or incorporate every single like, but please assume that your gifter did their very best to make something special for you. Participants who do not leave a comment acknowledging their gifts may not be allowed to participate in future exchanges. Additionally, though this is not a formal requirement, we strongly encourage participants to not only comment on their gift, but also on the other submissions. We understand that December is a busy month for many of you, both in real life and in fandom, but comments are a great way to spread the love and are an important part of building and maintaining our fannish community. We don't expect you to read and comment on every entry, but if you are a participant, we think it only reasonable that you make a good faith effort to support your peers in the fest.

23. Please include the following header template in your submission email: Header for Fic Title: Author: Recipient: Pairing(s): Character(s) Tags: AO3 only Rating: Word Count: Tags: Summary: Author's Notes: Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. Header for Art Title: Artist: Recipient: Pairing(s): Character(s) Tags: AO3 only Rating: Art Medium: Tags: Summary: Artist's Notes: Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. Header for Fic + Art Title: Creator: Recipient: Pairing(s): Character(s) Tags: AO3 only Rating: Word Count: Art Medium: Tags: Summary: Creator's Notes: Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.

Please direct any questions or comments to hderised@gmail.com. Do not PM the mod account or message us individually. We don’t check messages on dreamwidth or tumblr and make all decisions about extensions and such as a team. In order to ensure that we see your message and can respond quickly, please direct all hd_erised related communication toward our shared email hderised@gmail.com rather than messaging us through tumblr or contacting individual mods directly. Feel free to email or pm us if you'd just like to chat for fun, though!

Helpful Resources:
flyingcarpet's Guide to Participating in Fic Exchanges.
capitu's 8 ½ Fail-Safe Ways To Write A Comment.
dictacontrion's Appreciation without Anxiety: Commenting 101.
phoenixacid's A N00b's Guide to html.
potterwords’s Potterwords III: Index of Canonical Spelling and Capitalisation
The HP Lexicon