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Recursive Exchange is a fanwork exchange for requesting fanfiction and fanart of other fanworks! Recursive fanfiction is frequently called "fic of fic" and (in a fannish context) recursion essentially means treating a fanwork as a canon source material. A gift exchange is a fanwork challenge where participants sign up to create a fanwork and in return receive a fanwork as a gift. For this exchange, participants may create/receive a fic of 1000 words or a finished piece of drawn art.

The stages of the exchange are:

You can find specific information about nominations, sign ups, assignments, and posting on our our dreamwidth!

SCHEDULE
Nominations open: May 10th
Signups open (noms still open): May 17th
Nominations close: May 25th
Signups close: May 26th
Assignments out: ideally May 29th
Assignments due: July 9th
Work reveals: July 23rd
Creator reveals: July 30th

Closing times 10pm EDT.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

"Recursive" is a pretty new term, fannishly speaking, and hasn't gotten a lot of discussion. In order to be clear, here is a list of terms and definitions as well as examples.

Canon

As a noun this means the "source, or sources, considered authoritative by the fannish community" (Fanlore article) and as an adjective means something is accurate to the authoritative sources.

Example: Harry Potter is the canon for Harry Potter fics. It's a canon fact that Harry Potter wears glasses.

Fanwork

A fanwork is "a creative work produced by one or more fans, generally intended for other fans" in which some element of the canon "is taken and incorporated into a new creative piece. The taken element can be the characters, world setting, plot, stories, still images, video clips, or something else from the source." (Fanlore article)

Example: A fan named Alice writes a Harry Potter fanfiction called Harry Without Glasses where Harry loses his glasses and fights a Death Eater.

Recursive fanwork

Fanworks are recursive when the canon they are created for is itself also a fanwork. This is most typically applied to writing fanfiction about another fanfiction, but can also apply to drawing fanart of a fic, writing fanfiction based on a vid, etc. (Fanlore article)

Example: Benny reads Alice's Harry Potter fic, Harry Without Glasses, and writes a new fic called Harry Gets His Glasses Back about Harry finding his glasses after the fight.

Example: Carla reads Harry Without Glasses and draws a picture of Harry without glasses fighting the Death Eater.
In the examples above, Benny's fic Harry Gets His Glasses Back and Carla's drawings are both recursive fanworks because they treat Harry Gets His Glasses Back as an authoritative source for their fanworks — in other words, Harry Gets His Glasses Back by Alice is the canon for Benny and Carla's recursive fanworks!

Recursed, "to recurse"

As a verb, this is the act of making a recursive fanfiction As an adjective, it usually refers to a fanwork which has had a recursive fanwork created for it, usually in reference to a specific recursive fanwork.

Example: Benny liked Alice's fic so much he recursed it by writing Harry Gets His Glasses Back. Alice's fic Harry Without Glasses is a recursed fanfiction.
Example: Participants in the Recursive Exchange will nominate fanworks that they want to recurse.

Parent fandom

For the purposes of this exchange, the parent fandom is the fandom a recursed fic is itself a fanwork of.

Example: The parent fandom of Alice's fic Harry Without His Glasses is Harry Potter.

This is kind of another way to say "canon" but comes without the implication of the parent fandom being an authoritative source when one is discussing recursive fic, and makes it possible to talk about tagset organization without tripping all over ourselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REMIXING AND RECURSING? CAN I CREATE A REMIX FOR RECURSIVE EXCHANGE?
Remixing is a fannish practice without one single, widely-agreed upon definition — some people define it very narrowly, others very broadly — but Remix Revival's definition is: "A remix is when you take someone else's fic or art and write/draw it the way you would have." Fanlore's basic definition is this: "a remix is a fanwork that is a re-envisioned version of an earlier fanwork."

By Remix Revival's definition, probably no remix would ever count as recursive. By Fanlore's definition, well, it probably depends on what you take "re-envisioning" to mean.

No matter what your exact, personal definition of remixes is, it's undeniable that remixes are not primarily focused on keeping any particular part of each remixed work. Some remix challenges may have rules about what you have to keep (the pairing, for instance, or "the basic plot") but remixers are free to take and leave any part of the remixed work, with the caveat that the two fics should probably be recognizably related at the end. Remixes created for remix exchanges generally are not gifts — remixing is, in essence, an exercise that's about deciding what part of a fanwork is both essential and interesting, and creating a new work that the remixer feels captures those interesting and essential things. It's about the way the remixer approaches creating the thing, not about what exactly the final product turns out to be.

For Recursive Exchange, you should not approach the work you're going to recurse the way you would approach a work you wanted to remix. Participants in Recursive Exchange are requesting recursive works of the fanworks that they want more of, the way we all generally want more of a canon when we write non-recursive fanworks!*

That being said, most common remix techniques are also perfectly normal fanfiction techniques, so you can definitely write/draw a prequel, sequel, POV swap, for want of a nail fic, a change of the ending, a missing scene, etc. Just treat the requested fanwork like set canon, rather than something to re-envision, and remember that unlike Remix Revival works made for this exchange are gifts, and should be something you think your recip will like. (You don't have to consider what the recursed work's original creator would like, though, unless of course they are also your recip!)

(*Okay, all of us have probably been in or known someone in a fandom where everyone was writing fic because they were like "I could do this canon's concept but BETTER" but that's probably not a vibe we should bring to recursive fic unless it jives with your recip's requests!)

WHY CAN'T I NOMINATE SPECIFIC CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIPS?
Creating a tagset for all the fanworks we want to recurse is already a lot of work on both the moderator and nomination side of things, not to mention eventually getting everyone a gift! We like matching on characters/relationships in many other exchanges, but we were worried it would be a logistical nightmare.

CAN I REQUEST MY OWN FANWORKS?
Yes! Please do! You will still need to provide a permission statement, however.

CAN I OFFER MY OWN FANWORKS?
Sure! Technically writing a sequel to or AU of your own fic and the like isn't actually making a recursive fanwork, but it will definitely otherwise fulfill requests and that's what matters most.

CAN I TREAT THE COLLECTION?
Yeah! The more the merrier. Please only treat the collection with recursive works that have been accepted into the tagset.

You can find the full rules about nominations, sign-ups, assignments and posting on our dreamwidth. Here are some key highlights: