Schedule and Rules 2026

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 23:19:20 GMT

Posted by: embraidery

Just Unrequited is a fanfiction exchange all about unrequited feelings and one-sided attraction!

Collection | Tagset | AutoApp

Email me at modembraidery@gmail.com for any questions about the exchange.

2026 Schedule

All times are 14:59 PDT | 21:59 UTC

Nominations: April 25th-May 1st

Signups: May 1st-8th

Fics Due: June 12th

Fics Revealed: June 19th

Authors Revealed: June 26th

Note on the Theme

Participants will match on the freeforms Unrequited Romantic Attraction, Unrequited Sexual Attraction, and Unrequited Romantic and Sexual Attraction. Optional details can of course be used to specify whether the requested characters are strangers, enemies, friends, in some sort of romantic or sexual relationship, etc.

There’s no requirement either for the character with the feelings to know for sure that they’re unrequited, or for the character who doesn’t return the feelings to know about the feelings at all. However, the intention is to focus on one-sided or uneven feelings between characters. Mutual pining scenarios where both/all of the characters in a ship think their feelings are unrequited isn’t within the scope of this exchange.

Something that is in scope, however, is characters engaging in activity they think of as sexual and/or romantic despite not feeling that attraction, like a character who isn’t sexually interested in their partner having sex anyway, for xyz reason. As long as the focus is on that unrequitedness in some way!

Guidelines and Rules

Participants must be at least 18 years old.

Nominations

Each participant may nominate up to 10 fandoms with 1-20 relationships for each. The tagset is here.

RPF is eligible. All ships must be composed only of people who are at least 18 years old and famous in their own right. The mod reserves the right to reject nominations as needed.

OW and Creator’s Choice of Fandom are eligible. Please remember to specify characters’ gender if that matters to you; you won’t be able to DNW specific gender configurations in your signup.

Please nominate crossover ships under Crossover Fandom and do disambiguate!

Nomination Format

Other than crossovers, ship nominations don’t need to be disambiguated. (They’ll be formatted in such a way that they won’t come with associations from AO3 and end up in the wrong fandom.) They should not be alphabetised, either, since they’ll be organised by who in the ship has feelings.

We will match on the unrequitedness freeforms. This will hopefully cover us for a variety of relationship configurations! The type of attraction won’t be baked into the ship tag, but the direction of the one-sided feelings will be. So, for example, Alice for Bob (as in “Alice has feelings for Bob”) means that some aspect of Alice’s feelings for Bob is not mutual. She might have unrequited sexual and/or romantic interest; they might be sleeping together and only Alice is romantically interested; or they might be romantically involved but only Alice is sexually interested; or whatever else you might dream up.

Alice has feelings for Bob. Nominate it as Alice for Bob.

Cody has feelings for both Derek and Ernie. Nominate it as Cody for Derek & Ernie, or Cody for Derek/Ernie, depending on your desired dynamic. (Or Cody for Derek/Ernie/Farah/George…, etc!)

Farah and George both have feelings for Heidi. Nominate it as Farah & George for Heidi, or Farah/George for Heidi, depending on your desired dynamic.

If you have a different dynamic in mind, nominate as close as you can get and specify the rest in your signup. (For example, if you want Cody with unrequited feelings for Derek but not for Derek’s boyfriend Ernie, nominate as Cody for Derek and suggest Derek/Ernie in your optional details.) Of course, you won’t be guaranteed to match on that more complicated dynamic.

Signups

You may make 1-10 requests, each with 1-20 relationships and 1-3 unrequitedness tags. (While I will do my best to find pinch hitters, I will only delay reveals for outstanding PHs that have requests for 3 unique fandoms.)

You may request each fandom multiple times!

Requesting “Any” relationship means requesting any character or relationship for that fandom in the tagset, not in the canon.

Please indicate any Do Not Wants in the optional details box. Keep them nonjudgemental (no “gross kinks”) and relatively specific (“dead dove” is not specific).

You may make 1-10 offers with 1-20 relationships and 1-3 unrequitedness tags for each. Yes, you may make only 1 offer, but please keep an eye on requests to make sure there is someone you can create for!

If your offers don’t match any requests when signups close, I will contact you. You’ll have 24 hours to email me amendments to your offers to match to someone, or to let me know that you’ll be dropping out. After 24 hours with no response, I'll delete your signup.

Assignments and Treats

You will receive an assignment that matches one of your offer(s) on fandom, relationship, and unrequitedness.

In order to fulfil your assignment, you must write a complete story of at least 1,000 words. It must, in some way, focus on the unrequited feelings specified in one of their ship tags and with one of their unrequitedness tags. It must also abide by their DNWs.

OW can only be given as a Creator's Choice of Fandom gift if the recipient has opted into receiving OW.

No part of your assignment may be created by artificial neural network programs like ChatGPT.

Please don’t discuss the details of your assignment in public! Authors should stay anonymous until reveals. In order to keep the secret, if you have any questions for your recipient, email me at modembraidery@gmail.com.

Treats are gifts written for specific recipients or for the collection. They don’t have to meet the minimum wordcount, but must still focus on a ship and unrequitedness tag requested by the recipient and abide by DNWs (if for a specific recipient).

Any other questions? Just comment here or email me!

comments

Just Unrequited Exchange

Schedule and Rules 2026