RelationShipping is a gift exchange for incest ships. Gifts are art, fic, or podfic that feature at least one of a recipient's requested ships.

2026 Schedule

Nominations: Saturday, August 1–Sunday, August 9

Sign-ups: Wednesday, August 12–Friday, August 21

Assignments out: No later than Sunday, August 23

Deadline: Sunday, October 4 (countdown)

Work reveals: Friday, October 16

All times are 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

Tagset | AO3 Collection | Automagic App

The best way to contact the mod is by commenting on the Contact the Mod post, which has comment screening turned on. You can also reach out via private message to rshipmod.

Nominations

• Nominations will run Saturday, 1st of August through Sunday, 9th of August, opening probably in the morning of the 1st and closing at 11:59PM on the 9th.
• Each participant may nominate up to 10 fandoms, with up to 20 relationships per fandom.
• Any fandom of any size is eligible for nomination.
• Only / ships (romantic and/or sexual) are permitted; all nominated & ships will be edited into / ships by the mod (if the / ship has not been nominated) or rejected (if the / ship has been nominated already).
• This exchange casts an intentionally wide net in defining incest. Blood relations, adoptive or blended family members, clones, characters who clearly consider each other family, selfcest, and related AUs.
• All characters are eligible for selfcest ships. If you want to specify selfcest with versions of a character from a specific property (e.g. Spock (TOS)/Spock (AOS)) or from a specific point in the canon (e.g. Pre-Serum Steve Rogers/Post-Serum Steve Rogers (MCU)), you can bake it into your nomination! If it’s not specified, though, a creator will not be required to adhere to your specific vision.
• All characters are eligible for related AUs, including characters who are not canonically related, or changing the relationships of canonically related characters. If you nominate characters who are not canonically related without further disambiguation (e.g., Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (ACD Holmes)), a creator will not be required to adhere to your specific vision. Feel free to bake in details, including gender changes (e.g., sister!Sherlock Holmes/sister!Mycroft Holmes (ACD Holmes)).
• If you are nominating a ship whose family relation is ambiguous, often headcanoned about, was retconned, informed by a spin-off or later canon that a creator might reasonably not be familiar with, or is otherwise easy to miss, you may want to bake that relationship into your ship nomination (e.g., father!All for One/son!Midoriya Izuku (BnHA) or half-brother!Maliketh/half-sister!Marika (Elden Ring)). If you choose not to bake it into a nomination, that’s fine too, but depending on the situation the mod might not approve an emergency pinch hit if it seems unreasonable to have expected a creator to have the same interpretation of a relationship you did when nominating it.
• When nominating relationships, please remove diacritics and piping from character names, and put characters in alphabetical order by family name and then by given name. Because you are removing piping, different names used for different “versions” of the same characters might prove helpful for selfcest nominations (e.g., Femto/Griffith (Berserk) or Octavian/Augustus (Historical RPF)).
• Crossover fandoms are welcome, whether for cross-fandom selfcest (e.g. Sherlock Holmes (ACD Holmes)/Gregory House (House, M.D.)), related characters who appear across separate canons (e.g., Vincent Vega (Pulp Fiction)/Vic Vega (Reservoir Dogs)), or related AUs involving characters from different fandoms (e.g., sister!Rey (SWST)/sister!Natasha Romanov (MCU)). These should be nominated under Crossover Fandom.
• Real Person Fiction is welcome. No family members who are not famous in their own right. No one under 18 years old who was born after 1900. No Nazis or people from the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries who are famous primarily for war crimes. Mod reserves the right to reject other RPF ships without explanation.
• Original Works are welcome, and should be nominated under Original Work. OW ships should clearly indicate family relationships.
• Threesomes and moresomes are welcome. At least two characters in a ship should be related in some way. If you want to ensure that a ship is depicted as two characters who are related and a third unrelated, for example, feel free to bake it in (e.g., Luke Skywalker/Leia Organa/unrelated!Han Solo (SWOT)), whether or not those relationships are canonical. Use your best judgement!

Signups

• All participants must be 18+. If the mod finds out you are under 18, you will be banned from the exchange.
• You can request 1–10 fandoms with 1–20 ships and a choice of fiction, art, podfic, or a combination. You must request at least 3 unique fandoms to be guaranteed a gift. Two unique fandoms plus a crossover between those fandoms does not count as three unique fandoms.
• You can offer 1–10 fandoms with 1–20 ships and a choice of fiction, art, podfic, or a combination.
• If no offers match your requests, your requests will go out as a pinch hit.
• If no requests match your offers, the mod will contact you to see if there is anything else you can offer. If you do not reply within 24 hours or there is nothing else you can offer, your signup will be deleted.
• Dear Creator letters may be linked to in your signup in order to give your gifter further details on your likes and dislikes. These are optional.
• Please include anything you absolutely don't want to receive (Do Not Wants) in the Optional Details field in your AO3 signup. In the event that a DNW is included in your gift, only reasonable DNWs in your signup will be enforced.
  • If DNWs differ between Optional Details and Dear Creator letter, the DNWs in the Optional Details are the set which will be enforced.
  • DNWs that contradict a requested ship will not be enforced. This includes DNWs such as “DNW parent/child incest” if you have requested a related AU ship which does not bake in another type of relationship. If you feel very strongly on the matter, you can nominate the relationship with your preference baked in. You can also use the Optional Details or Dear Creator letter to express your preferred relationship dynamic, but this is not enforceable. Optional Details Are Optional.
  • DNWs cannot be used to box your creator into producing a very specific work (e.g., DNW anything but a coffeeshop AU).
  • “Background/unrequested incest” is a reasonable DNW, as is “background/unrequested [specific type of] incest”. However, if you list incest as a DNW, your signup will be deleted.

Assignments

• Assignments are only guaranteed to match on one fandom, one ship and one medium.
• Fanfic requirements: A completed work with a minimum of 500 words. Fic should be created entirely by you to fulfill a specific request by your recipient, and must omit your recipient's DNWs. Generative text/AI is not permitted.
• Fanart requirements: A clean sketch on unlined paper. Art should be created entirely by you to fulfill a specific request by your recipient, and must omit your recipient's DNWs. Generative art/AI and manips are not permitted.
• Podfic requirements: One complete and edited podfic of a text that is at least 500 words. Podficcers may produce podfic of a pre-existing work (with the author's permission) OR write and record a fic for this exchange. In the latter case, the minimum is only 250 words, but both the text and audio must be posted (either separately or in the same work). Podfic should be created entirely by you to fulfill a specific request by your recipient, and must omit your recipient's DNWs. Text-to-speech digitally created narration is not permitted.
• Your assignment must focus on a requested ship, and it must include romantic and/or sexual content involving that ship, such as romantic or other non-platonic love, pining, kissing, or sex.
• You only have to produce one work for your recipient. It does not need to be about the fandom/ship you matched on, but it must be something they requested, and must omit their DNWs for that request.
• If you have questions for your recipient about their request or DNWs, you can reach out to the mod through the Contact the Mod page for clarification.
• Please refrain from discussing your assignment in public/namespace until creators are revealed. Creators may not include any identifying information in their fanwork, with exceptions for: (1) artists, who may sign or watermark their work, and (2) podficcers who may wish to record their username in their introduction. In addition, podficcers are not expected to alter their voices to preserve anonymity.
• If your assignment does not match the fandoms/ships you offered, contact the mod as soon as possible. If you would like to swap your assignment for an open pinch hit, contact the mod. It will not be possible to change assignments for any other reason.

Posting

• Navigate to your AO3 dashboard, click on 'Assignments', find your RelationShipping assignment, and click 'Fulfill'.
• To maintain anonymity, do not post your work elsewhere before creator reveals.
• You can edit your work after posting it, but your gift must be complete enough to stand as is by the deadline. Works that end abruptly mid-scene are considered incomplete. Works labeled with more chapters than they have (e.g. "Chapter 1/2" and only one chapter is posted) are considered incomplete.
• Saved drafts do not fulfill assignments. Please ensure that you post your gift!

Defaulting

• If you cannot finish your gift, please default.
• To default: navigate to your AO3 dashboard, click 'Assignments', locate your RelationShipping assignment and click 'Default'. You do not need to contact the mod or explain why you defaulted.
• There is no penalty for defaulting before the deadline. However, if you default and your creator also defaults, you will not be assigned a pinch hitter.
• If you have not posted a complete, acceptable gift by the deadline, the mod will default you. You will need to post a full gift for any request in the 2026 exchange (excluding your own) before you will be permitted to participate in any further rounds.

Pinch Hits

• Pinch hits will be posted to the Dreamwidth community.
• Please reply to the pinch hit post to claim a pinch hit, giving your AO3 name as well as the AO3 name of the person whose pinch hit you want; if you are successful, the mod will officially assign the pinch hit to you through AO3.
• You can claim a pinch hit even if you aren't signed up for the exchange, but you will need an AO3 account.
• You don't need to specify which of the person's requests you intend to fulfill.
• If you have an open assignment and would like to swap it for an open pinch hit, please contact the mod.

Treats

• You can create additional gifts for other participants and post them to the exchange collection as treats.
• To do this, navigate to the collection and click 'Post to Collection'. You will need to manually add the name of your intended recipient - please check this carefully!
• Treats do not have to fulfil the minimum word count but must fulfil a recipient's request (including a requested fandom/relationship/medium, and excluding all DNWs).
• You are welcome to post a treat to the collection without specifying a recipient, so long as it features a nominated pairing. Simply follow the steps above but leave the recipient field blank.
• You are welcome to create treats even if you aren't signed up for the exchange.
• Treats will not become main gifts for this exchange.
• If you do not wish to receive treats and/or you do not have treating enabled in your AO3 preferences, you must clearly state this in your signup. To enable treats, go to this link (substituting your username): https://archiveofourown.org/users/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/preferences and check the box next to 'Allow anyone to gift me works.'

Comments

• Participants are expected to comment on the gifts created for them. Participants who do not comment by the start of the next round will be banned from that round and future rounds of this exchange.
• If you default, you are still expected to comment on any gifts created for you.
• If you receive a gift that contains one of your DNWs, doesn't match any of your requests, or otherwise goes against the exchange rules, you are not obliged to comment. However, if this happens, please contact the mod as soon as possible.

Misc.

• The aim of this exchange is to create gifts that the recipients will enjoy. If you break the rules above or are found to be participating in bad faith (e.g. signing up with multiple accounts in bad faith, acting spitefully toward the mod or other participants), you will be banned from participation.
• The mod will look over gifts before reveals to ensure that there are not obviously unfinished works, broken art links, etc, but many DNWs are only going to be obvious to readers familiar with the canon, so the mod does not attempt to catch broken DNWs ahead of time. Please reach out as soon as possible if you believe you have received a DNW or an otherwise inappropriate gift, and the mod will do their best to mollify the situation either by contacting the assigned creator to correct a mistaken upload, or posting an Emergency Pinch Hit.
• It is an unfortunate reality that sometimes a gift is not very good, or upsets you in unexpected ways. The mod is sympathetic to this, but cannot put out Emergency Pinch Hits for assignments that were fulfilled in good faith and without breaking any DNWs or contradicting any information requested from the recipient through the mod.

Thanks to thedevilchicken for the original version of these rules, and to thedevilchicken, ictus, magnadoodle, emeraldsandrubies, and any previous anonymous moderators for previously managing this exchange!