Useful pages for creators: How to Participate | Creator FAQ | Example Sign-up | Fanwork & Fan Labor Examples

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CHOOSING STARTING BID/BID INCREMENTS

We know that some of you aren’t sure what you should put as your starting bid and bid increment. We’re here to help! While we can’t give you specific numbers as everyone’s auctions are different, we hope this section will help you come to a decision.

In general, we encourage creators to set their starting bid fairly low as it invites bidders to make that first bid and do the same for their bid increment. Remember, the bid increment is just the minimum that the next bid has to increase by—people can place higher bids!

If you have specific tiers of content/cost (e.g., $10–$20 for line art, $21–$40 for color) in your work description, you may want to have your bidding increments align with those in some way. You can see what we mean by tiers in the “work description” section of our example art auction sign-up form. You can also see how previous creators phrased things on our MTH offerings Tumblr through searching by auction type (https://mthofferings.tumblr.com/tagged/auction:+TYPEHERE). Replace “TYPEHERE” with one of the following: art, beta, craft, digital, fic, podfic, translation, video or labor.

Consider how long it’ll take you to complete the work and how much you’d be willing to bid on the offered work if you were a bidder. Additionally, remember that all the money raised goes directly to charity. The prices you come up with might not be the same as your commission rates if you have any. In previous years, we had people choose starting bids that were a little lower than they usually charge for commissions in the spirit of charity. That said, while we don’t recommend starting off too high (unless maybe if you’re offering something very unique, difficult to make, and/or made with expensive material), we don’t want people to devalue themselves either! Go with something you’re comfortable with.

If you’re still unsure of how to price your labor, try reaching out to friends who have participated as creators in previous fandom charity auctions to ask if they can help you with your starting bid/bid increment. You can see all our past creators here. You can also join our Discord server and ask there.

OFFERING MULTIPLE AUCTIONS FOR DIFFERENT SHIPS

Are you thinking of offering an auction for rarepairs or underrepresented characters/relationships, especially those featuring POC, F/F, and/or female-focused works?

One of the missions of MTH is to make sure that the whole Marvel fandom is represented and loved. There’s a plethora of reasons why some characters and relationships fly under the radar, and we want to do our best to make sure that we’re spotlighting them as much as possible.

Remember that you can have up to three auctions! If you’re offering popular characters/relationships as well as rarepairs or underrepresented characters/relationships, you can dedicate some auctions to your popular pairings and other auctions to your underrepresented pairings. Event history shows that if a rarepair is in the same auction as a popular pairing, it’s usually the popular pairing that gets a fanwork.

Going with this option means that people can duke it out for larger ship(s) on the “big ship” auction(s), you’ll get to create for the underrepresented characters and relationships that you love, and people who have a hard time finding content or a chance to receive/commission works with underrepresented characters/relationships get more works for them. A win/win situation, all around.

You’re into Steve/Tony and M’Baku/T’Challa, and you want to write anything you can about Nat? Make them three separate auctions! How about drawing Steve/Bucky and Carol/Maria? Two auctions will ensure that you don’t have to choose. You can do both. 

The Marvel multiverse is vast, with countless characters and universes, and we want to celebrate and see more of that in MTH. In addition to this “tips for creators” section, we’ll also be creating auction spotlight posts during Auction Week to help bidders discover these offerings more easily. 

OFFERING ANY/ALL CHARACTERS OR SHIPS

Are you open to offering fanworks or services for many characters and relationships and unsure how to express that while adhering to our guidelines? Here’s our advice!

Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the ten relationships you select on your sign-up form are just the top ten relationships you’d like to create for the most. You’re welcome to say that you’re interested in other characters/relationships in your work description and that bidders should ask you if you’re willing to make something for a specific character or relationship. You may also announce extra information when you share your auction post during Preview Week and Auction Week.

We also want to explain why we have ten relationship slots (other than length constraints):

  • If you list every relationship you’ve ever liked, you may struggle to make fanworks for relationships you’re no longer invested in or characters you’re not as familiar with. The same applies if you list something like “all gen and ships – MCU,” which we don’t allow, as that encompasses thousands of relationships! We don’t want you to be bored or miserable nor do we want bidders to be disappointed if they see that the person they bid on doesn’t care about or is unhappy with what they’re making
  • Not providing any or enough specificity makes it difficult for people to find you
  • It’s hard for you to stick out. We had hundreds of auctions in previous years and expect to have a large number this year as well. Most bidders search for people who like, or at least offer, their favorite characters and relationships. Someone who does that is a safer and more appealing bet than someone offering “anything”

That said, some people are genuinely open to making something for many characters, relationships, universes, etc., and specific relationships matter less in some situations (e.g., you’re making a scarf decorated in symbols associated with a character like an hourglass for Natasha).

If this applies to you, we recommend picking up to ten fandom, Character/Any, or character-centric options that you’re most interested in. This provides flexibility and covers a lot of ground but is still narrower than “any character in any of the Marvel universes.”

You can see all the fandom options we have here.

  • Fandoms – You can offer “any gen,” “any ship,” or “any gen and ship” (e.g., Black Panther fandom any gen and ship)
  • Character/Any – These options aren’t in the link above as there are too many to list, but you can select them in the relationship drop-down menu on the sign-up form by writing Character/Any (e.g., Pepper Potts/Any). If the character doesn’t show up in the drop-down, refer to the ship and gen pairing sections on the list to see how we’ve written their names
  • Character-centric – Same as above except you write Character name-centric (e.g., Kamala Khan-centric). You can choose this option if you’re up for platonic relationships between a character and any or all Marvel characters. For any romantic relationships, please use “Character/Any” instead as mentioned in the bullet above.

Make sure to specify what universes you’d like to offer each option in. You can have an unlimited number of universes for each relationship.

Keep in mind that someone may ask for something that you dislike or have never considered or created for before if you offer these options unless you list exceptions in your DNWs or work description.

Bear in mind that you may not receive a prompt until months later, so try to gauge what Future!You would be happy to do! This is our way of trying to make the creative process as smooth and enjoyable as possible for you.

OFFERING SINGLE CHARACTER AUCTIONS

Maybe you’re the opposite of those people who want to offer anything and everything (see section above). Maybe you want to focus all your love and attention on a single character. All those options we have in our relationship drop-down are great…but how do you show that you only want to offer solo character works?

The answer is simple. All you have to do is 1) choose “Character name-centric” (e.g., Natasha Romanov-centric) in the relationship section and 2) choose the universe(s) you’d like to offer the work in. If you don’t see the character on the drop-down menu, tick the “A ship or universe I want to include is not on this list” checkbox at the bottom of the relationship section and type Character name-centric – universe (e.g., Natasha Romanov-centric – 616) in the text box that appears.

If you’re only looking to make something for that one character, please specify that in your work description. For instance, your work description can be something like:

Handmade Natasha Romanov crochet doll, approximately 7 inches tall. If the bid reaches the following amounts, I’ll throw in extra accessories:

  • $___ – arrow necklace
  • $___ – arrow necklace and widow bites
  • $___ – arrow necklace, widow bites, and batons

You can offer a list of separate individual characters that your winner can choose from as well. In that case, the options you choose in the relationship section might look like this:

  • Natasha Romanov-centric – any universe
  • America Chavez-centric – 616
  • Misty Knight-centric – 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
  • Colleen Wing-centric – 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

And maybe your work description will look something like:

I’d love to create a fanvid focusing on any of the characters I listed, whether it’s a vid based on a specific song, a fic trailer, or something else! I’m also open to making videos for other characters. If you don’t see your favorite on this list, contact me and I’ll let you know if I can do one for that character.

Don’t forget to specify which universes you’d like to offer each character in! You can choose as many universes as you’d like for each character choice or state “any universe” if you’re up for all of them or universes don’t really apply for your auction. Here are all the universes we have; if you don’t see the universe you want, feel free to write it in. 

Once you have all that, you’re set!