Chocolate Box
| Gift Exchange | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Chocolate Box |
| Date(s): | 2015–ongoing[note 1] |
| Moderator(s): | chocolateboxmod, thecatmod |
| Founder: | chocolateboxmod |
| Type: | ship matching |
| Scope: | ships, both romantic and gen |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| URL: | https://chocolateboxcomm.dreamwidth.org/ https://archiveofourown.org/collections/chocolatebox chocolateboxmod[at]gmail |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Chocolate Box is a gift exchange where participants are matched based on ships. They then produce either fanfiction or fanart; Chocolate Box is a low-effort exchange modeled after Trick or Treat, so fanfiction produced as a main assignment only has to be 300 words and fanart only has to be "a nice sketch that is not on lined paper."[1]
Gift reveals take place on Valentine's Day, February 14. Chocolate Box is the second-largest multifandom exchange (Yuletide being the largest), with more than 600 participants taking part in 2020.
History
The anon meme fail_fandomanon has a reoccurring thread for discussing bangs, fests, and exchanges, where many multifandom exchanges have started. The multifandom exchange Trick or Treat started up in 2014 because of a discussion in that thread, and after it was over a nonnie wished for a similar exchange in the spring, specifically suggesting "something Valentine's day-ish"[2] and several other nonnies agreed that that sounded like a great idea. Trick or Treat's 300 word minimum was cited as desirable, specifically, and maybe a theme of love, although one nonnie noted that this hypothetical exchange should be sure to allow "threesomes and gen",[3] noting that ideally it would "not limited to ship fics even if the overall theme is love. It could allow friendship, parental love, love between siblings, creepy obsessive stalkers with one-sided fixation on someone etc."[3]
The idea didn't take off until after the 2015 round of Trick or Treat, when nonnies in the ToT postmortem thread on November 7, 2015 again discussed wanting an exchange like ToT but for ship matching instead of character matching.
It started with one nonny saying:
This subthread received 69 comments from other nonnies who were enthused at the prospect of being able to match on ships and eager to discuss what the Valentine's Day exchange might look like. One nonnie suggested that it be called "Valentine Box"[5] but another suggested Chocolate Box, "Where every little fic is a delicious candy."[6] Another nonnie added, "And you never know what you're gonna get!"[7]
On November 14, a nonnie replied to the Bangs, Fests, & Exchanges subthread Exchanges You Want To See saying:
That trick or treat styled Valentine's exchange people keep thinking of.
Someone with more organizational skills/time than me please start it![8]
Two other nonnies replied that they'd also like to see the exchange but couldn't run it, and then a third nonnie said:
I'd love to run it, and I have experience in running exchanges, but I don't want to step on toes if someone else is running it, or if my vision is too different to what everyone wants. I'd want to run it using gen and ship combinations, using / and & tags for matching purposes, and I'm not sure if people want that or not. Other than that, it'd be a 300 word minimum and open to fandoms of any size.
Is this what people would like?[9]
It turns out that that was exactly what nonnies would like, especially if they could request just & or just / tags for matching. In the same thread there was also a desire for a more general crossover pairing exchange that would allow & and / matching, because "Crossovering only matches on fandoms within a group. ShipSwap and Rarepairs allow crossover ships, but it's only romance and the odds of matching on those requests are very low."[10] This is a desire that Chocolate Box would eventually fill, as on the 16th of November, the nonnie who would become chocoboxmod came back to the BFE thread to make a Chocolate Box subthread that started with this post:
All right, we're doing this!
Here's what I have so far:
1) Minimum of 300 words, all fandoms allowed. Art will be allowed, but as I am not an artist I don't know what 300 words would look like, art wise. Is T or T's description of art at the nice sketch stage equivalent to 300 words?
2) Nominations are by character combinations with & and / to be used to indicate gen or shipfic (or "hugs" and "kisses"). The & and / will be enforced pretty strictly, so no using a / tag to request genfic, or using a & tag to request shipfic. Matching is "OR" but given that you're matching on character combos, that's to be expected! Participants can request all / combos, all & combos, or a mixture of the two.
3) The community will be on DW. The exchange itself is run on AO3.
4) Prompts will be visible during signup. At the close of signups I'll start to create a searchable spreadsheet of all prompts as well.
5) Crossover character combinations are allowed.
I'm now trying to work out the timetable. So far, this is what I have.
Nominations: 25 December -31 December.
Signups: 1 January - 7 January
Assignments out: 7–8 January
Assignments due: 7 February
Archive revealed: 14 FebruaryI am aware that we're up against Yuletide at the beginning and Shipswap at the end, but I really want to hit 14 February for gift reveals. I can see why no exchanges really start up during this period, it's really hard to avoid Yuletide! Hopefully that won't be too detrimental.
I'll probably start getting the administrative stuff up and ready over the next week or two, and start advertising in the first week of December.[11]
The subthread received 80 replies, including the Fandom Growth Exchange mods chiming in to say that the Chocolate Box mod wouldn't have to worry about maxing out the servers during matching.[12] The mod confirmed poly relationships and gen groups of more than two characters would be allowed[13] and expanded the nomination period to start on December 20 to allow for the more complex wrangling involved with & and / tags.[14] When nominations opened, there was some confusion about if Chocolate Box was a female-oriented exchange because it had come up in a thread earlier in the month about Galentine's Day not running.[15]
Rounds & Statistics
Chocolate Box has had five rounds which have used 998 distinct fandom tags and produced 3,843 works as of the beginning of June, 2019. In 2023, Chocolate Box did not hold a round, and a similarly formatted exchange, Candy Hearts, ran in its place.
| Round | Fandoms | Participants | Works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 (2016) | 276 | 292 | 617 |
| Round 2 (2017) | 354 | 402 | 773 |
| Round 3 (2018) | 441 | 495 | 1142 |
| Round 4 (2019) | 534 | 621 | 1307 |
| Round 5 (2020) | 504 | 618 | 1280 |
| Round 6 | 512 | 585 | 1090 |
| Round 7 (2022) | 517 | 563 | 1133 |
Round 1
Round 1 ran on this schedule:
- Nominations: 20–29 December
- Signups: 1–7 January
- Assignments go out: by 10 January
- Posting deadline: 7 February
- Story reveal: 14 February
- Author reveal: 21 February[16]
Most popular fandoms, based on fic written:
| Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tolkien | 46 | Especially The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings |
| Star Wars | 43 | Especially The Force Awakens |
| Marvel Cinematic Universe | 32 | Especially Captain America Movieverse and Jessica Jones |
| Harry Potter | 24 | Mostly marked gen and/or m/m |
| Original Work | 22 | |
| Professional Wrestling | 19 | Especially World Wrestling Entertainment |
The signup summary has a breakdown of fandoms by requests/offers.
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
Round 2
Round 2 ran on this schedule:
- Nominations: 20–29 December
- Signups: 1–7 January
- Assignments go out: by 10 January
- Posting deadline: 7 February
- Story reveal: 14 February
- Author reveal: 21 February[17]
The most popular fandoms, based on fic written:
| Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Star Wars | 88 | especially Rogue One |
| Yuri!!! on Ice | 41 | |
| Harry Potter | 39 | Including Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them |
| Original Work | 36 | |
| Marvel Cinematic Universe | 29 | Especially Captain America Movieverse and Agent Carter |
| Star Trek | 14 |
The signup summary has a breakdown of fandoms by requests/offers.
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
| Ship | Fandom | Works |
|---|---|---|
| Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov | Yuri!!! on Ice | 7 |
| Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus | Rogue One | 5 |
| Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter | Harry Potter | 4 |
| Original Male Character/Original Male Character | Original Work | 4 |
| Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo | Star Wars | 4 |
| Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood | The Mortal Instruments/Shadowhunters | 4 |
| Javert/Jean Valjean | Les Mis | 4 |
Round 3
Round 3 ran on this schedule:
- Nominations: 18–29 December
- Signups: 1–7 January
- Assignments go out: by 10 January
- Posting deadline: 7 February
- Story reveal: 14 February
- Author reveal: 19 February[18]
The most popular fandoms/ships, based on fic written:
| Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Star Wars | 121 | Mostly the Sequel Trilogy |
| Original Work | 116 | Mostly F/F |
| Marvel Cinematic Universe | 71 | |
| Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling | 40 | |
| Star Trek | 22 |
The signup summary has a breakdown of fandoms by requests/offers.
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
| Ship | Fandom | Works |
|---|---|---|
| Original Female Character/Original Female Character | Original Work | 17 |
| Original Male Character/Original Male Character | Original Work | 8 |
| Leia Organa/Han Solo | Star Wars | 6 |
| Javert/Jean Valjean | Les Mis | 6 |
| Original Female Character/Original Male Character | Original Work | 5 |
| Loki/Thor | Thor Movieverse | 5 |
Round 4
Round 4 ran on this schedule:
- Nominations: 18–28 December
- Signups: 1–7 January
- Assignments go out: by 10 January
- Posting deadline: 7 February
- Story reveal: 14 February
- Author reveal: 19 February[19]
The most popular fandoms/ships, based on fic written:
| Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Original Work | 97 | |
| Marvel Cinematic Universe | 78 | Especially the Captain America Movieverse |
| Star Wars | 68 | All Media Types and the Sequel Trilogy |
| Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling | 25 | |
| Professional Wrestling | 20 | World Wrestling Entertainment |
The signup summary has a breakdown of fandoms by requests/offers.
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
| Ship | Fandom | Works |
|---|---|---|
| Original Male Character/Original Male Character | Original Work | 24 |
| Original Female Character/Original Female Character | Original Work | 9 |
| Peter Parker/Tony Stark | Marvel Cinematic Universe | 8 |
| Hades/Persephone | Hellenistic Religion & Lore | 8 |
| James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers | Marvel Cinematic Universe | 7 |
Round 5
Round 5 ran on this schedule:
Nominations: 20–28 December
Signups: 1–7 January
Assignments go out: by 10 January
Posting deadline: 7 February
Story reveal: 14 February
Author reveal: 21 February
The most popular fandoms/ships, based on fic written:
| Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Original Work | 107 | |
| Star Wars Sequel Trilogy | 57 | |
| Marvel Cinematic Universe | 60 | |
| Person of Interest (TV) | 25 | |
| Fire Emblem: Three Houses | 24 |
The signup summary has a breakdown of fandoms by requests/offers.
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
| Ship | Fandom | Works | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Male Character/Original Male Character | Original Work | 21 | 33 Original Works were marked with the M/M category. |
| Rey/Ben Solo Kylo Ren | Star Wars Sequel Trilogy | 18 | |
| Original Female Character/Original Female Character | Original Work | 15 | 43 Original Works were marked with the F/F category. |
| Peter Parker/Tony Stark | Marvel Cinematic Universe | 13 | |
| Harold Finch/John Reese | Person of Interest | 8 |
It is worth noting that not all Original Works were tagged with canonical ships. Although the most common OW category was F/F with 43 marks, only 15 of those works were also tagged Original Female Character/Original Female Character. There were also 12 F/M Original Works, although not enough fics were tagged Original Female Character/Original Male Character to appear on the table above.
Round 7
Round 4 ran on this schedule:
- Nominations: 18 - 28 December
- Signups: 1-7 January
- Assignments go out: by 10 January
- Posting deadline: 7 February
- Story reveal: 14 February
- Author reveal: 19 February [20]
Most popular ships, based on fic written:
| Ship | Fandom | Works |
|---|---|---|
| Original Female Character/Original Female Character | Original Work | 15 |
| The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov | Shadow and Bone | 9 |
| Original Male Character/Original Male Character (13) | Original Work | 8 |
| Sophie Beckett/Benedict Bridgerton | Bridgerton | 7 |
| John/Arthur Lester | 6 |
Notes & References
Notes
- ^ Technically the first round started in 2015, since nominations tend to start at the tail end of December, but sign ups and reveals happen fully in January and February. The first round's AO3 collection is called "chocolatebox2015" but the second round is called "chocolatebox2017" even though no year was skipped.
References
- ^ Chocolate Box Round 1 announcement on Fandom Calendar
- ^ Nonnie on November 8th, 2014, here
- ^ a b Nonnie on November 8th, 2014, here
- ^ Nonnie on November 7th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 7th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 8th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 8th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 14th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie-who-would-be-chocoboxmod on November 14th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 14th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie-who-would-be-chocoboxmod on November 16th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 16th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 16th, 2015, here.
- ^ Nonnie on November 16th, 2015, here.
- ^ This thread on December 20th, 2015.
- ^ Chocobox Round 1 Profile
- ^ Round 2 Profile
- ^ Round 3 Profile
- ^ Round 4 Profile
- ^ https://archiveofourown.org/collections/chocolatebox2022/profile