A Lar by any other name

Welcome to this year's Halloween Trick or Treat Prompt Challenge! PLEASE READ HOW TO PLAY BEFORE LOOKING BEHIND THE CUT OR SCROLLING DOWN

How To Play:

Behind the cut is a list of 10 'Trick' prompts and 10 'Treat' prompts. These are mostly simple one or two word prompts. Tricks are darker (eg Blood, Graveyard) and Treats are lighter (eg Apples, Warm Scarf). You can interpret them however you like.

There are lots of ways to select prompts! You can:
- Choose a Trick or Treat, and pick a number from 1 to 10, BEFORE you look at the prompts and then ta-da, that’s your surprise prompt.
- Look at the prompts and then choose one that you'd like to create for or feel inspired by.
- Choose multiple prompts before or after you look at them.
- Or any other way you can think of playing that ends up with you having at least one prompt from the list below. (Ask a friend to pick for you. Roll a dice. Have fun with it!)
- Inspired by a comm discord chat, if you’d like a challenge, you could also ‘reverse’ the prompts and write darker fills for Treats and fluff for Tricks.

Once you have your prompt(s), your challenge is to create a fill. This can be fanfic, art, moodboards, fanvids, podfic... absolutely anything you like.

Then post your fill, in a comment to this post or wherever you like posting. Please comment to this post with: a title, author name, rating, any warnings or 'choose not to warn', and a LINK to your fill or your complete fill. (Similar to promptathon, this is so people know what they're clicking on and so we can create a masterlist at the end!)

You can post your fills any time from now until 18:00 GMT Friday 31 October. (The aim is to post the masterlist on Halloween or that weekend.) If you've not filled your prompt by then, Halloween has gone, whoosh, don't worry about it because Secret Santa is around the corner...


If you post any fills, links to fills, or generally any halloween recs you think would relevant to our interests on tumblr, please use the 'clintasha' tag and/or tag be_compromised so we can reblog on the comm tumblr, where we have been busy queuing autumn and halloween themed fun for you for the next few weeks - along with any whumptober and other event things we spot!


Rules:

- The rules of the Comm apply. As a reminder, this includes providing a rating and either 'no warnings apply' / 'choose not to warn' / provide warnings (ie as on AO3) so no one gets an unwanted scare.

- We're a community for fans of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, individually as well as paired together as friends, partners, lovers, spouses, or any combination. For this challenge we welcome all things Marvel, including other characters and pairings (and threesomes or moresomes), although we'd ask for Clint or Natasha to feature in there somewhere.

- You can choose and fill as many tricks and treats as you like, or just stick with one. Multiple people can choose the same prompt/s. You can pick a Trick AND a Treat and combine them in one prompt if you like, or write one for each. You can combine multiple prompts. You can write just one prompt, or you can complete one and then come back for more. Whatever you choose!

- There's no minimum word count or the art equivalent for creations. For example, fics can be flash fics or three sentences. There's also no maximum - if you feel inspired to write a longer fic or rec multiple things, please feel free. However, this is a no pressure, short challenge!

- You don't need to be a member of the community to take part. You don't need a dreamwidth account to take part, but if you comment anonymously to this post please do include some kind of online handle so we can credit you for your fill.

- There is a comment thread at the top of this post for any questions, comments, and any halloween type recs that you would like to share. You can also @ a mod on the comm discord.

- Have fun!

( Halloween Trick or Treat Prompts Behind The Cut )

Hi All and welcome to Secret Santa 2025!

This is a Clint Barton and/or Natasha Romanoff end of year fic exchange where matching is based on prompts and everything is anonymous until the author reveals at the end. You don't need to be a member of the be_compromised community to take part, however almost all of the exchange will be taking place on AO3, so you will need an AO3 account; if you don't have one and would like an invite code please contact a mod. Prompt Choices is the one element that will be done on dreamwidth.

While this is labelled a 'Secret Santa' as it takes place in the run up to Christmas, fics do NOT have to be related to Christmas, New Year, winter etc. We welcome celebrations of other holidays and no theme at all. However we understand if you would rather not take part due to the labelling. We wish you all a happy holiday season <3

TIMELINE:

SIGN UP: from now until 16:00 GMT Monday 13 October

CHOICES POST: will then go up as soon as possible on dreamwidth and be available until 16:00 GMT Sunday 19 October

ASSIGNMENTS SENT OUT: we aim to have these to you within the following few days. (If all participants make their choices earlier, then we'll aim to get assignments out earlier!)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 16:00 GMT Monday 8 December (This is to allow time for pinch hits if/where needed.)

GIFT POSTING/REVEALS: Dependent on if participants submit on time / any pinch hit requirements, we aim to reveal gifts the week starting 15 December.

AUTHOR REVEALS: We aim to reveal authors between then and before 25 December, allowing for some time to read gifts while the authors are anonymous.

HOW TO TAKE PART IN THE EXCHANGE:

SIGN UP HERE AT AO3.

Full information on how to take part is on AO3, which includes providing at least 4 and no more than 6 prompts. These prompts, and any additional notes from the ‘Details/Description’ section will be anonymised and posted to the community dreamwidth in a choices post.

You MUST reply in a comment to that Choices Post with your top three picks of which requests you’d like to create for. You don't need a dreamwidth account to do this; you can comment using OpenID or anonymously, however please remember to include your AO3 handle in your comment so we know who you are! (More information will be available in the Choices Post.) This will be available as soon as possible following the closing of sign ups until 16:00 GMT Sunday 19 October. (If all participants comment earlier we will try to get matching and assignments out faster.)

We then use your choices to manually match participants in the exchange. We can’t guarantee that you’ll get your choices but we do try our best!

Assignments will be sent out via AO3 and you'll have until the deadline of 16:00 GMT Monday 8 December to submit your gifts.

We will then reveal gifts in the week leading up to Christmas (aiming for the week starting 15 December exact dates to be confirmed depending on any pinch hit requirements) and authors will be revealed between then and 25 December.

You can also sign up as a pinch hitter for this event as well as or instead of taking part in the main exchange on dreamwidth here.

And/or you can volunteer to be a beta reader in the community discord Writing Help channel, create clintasha graphics and art to inspire and keep us going, and cheerlead - what would fandom be without cheerleaders?! We LOVE comments and encouragement and all the great stuff that makes this comm the place it is <3

RULES:

1) We're a community for fans of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, individually as well as paired together as friends, partners, lovers, spouses, or any combination. We welcome all things Marvel, including other characters and pairings (and threesomes or moresomes). For this exchange, at least ONE of your prompts MUST focus on Clint/Natasha or Clint & Natasha, OR be a generic prompt (with no specific characters or pairings), to enable everyone who takes part to have a prompt they know that they can fill. All gifts should include Clint and/or Natasha in some capacity.

2) Fics must be a MINIMUM of 1,000 words and should preferably be no more than 10,000 words.

3) Please treat everyone with respect. This includes no character bashing or ship wars. (Saying what you like: yes. Disparaging what other people like: no.) Bigotry will not be tolerated. Our community is a positive fandom space.

4) No plagarism. For the purposes of this exchange, we also ask that you do not use AI or chatbots to create fics. We are interested in what YOU create, and in what YOU put your time and effort into.

5) As we're a community primarily focussed on fictional characters, we ask you please not to post any Real Person Fanfiction.

6) All fics must include a rating and either appropriate AO3 warnings OR ‘choose not to warn’ if/as applicable.

7) This is an anonymous exchange, so please don’t reveal who your giftee is until after the reveals! Please feel free to let people know that you're taking part, however please don't link to a gift letter, share your prompts, post your gift elsewhere, identify yourself in an author note, or otherwise reveal yourself until the author reveals at the end of the exchange. For people who have taken part in our annual exchange before, a reminder to please try to make your request/prompts different to previous years to help keep things anonymous!

ANY QUESTIONS?

We will maintain an FAQ on AO3 for this exchange.

For general queries that wouldn't reveal your offer/request information and that you're comfortable sharing, you can reply to this post. Comments will not be screened and will be viewable to everyone. Or you can send an ask to the be_compromised tumblr, or @ a mod on the the community discord.

If you would like to contact a mod directly and/or privately to keep your question anonymous, the fattest way is to @ a mod on discord. You can also message us on any social media platform that you spot us, or send a direct message to the be_compromised tumblr, although it may take us longer to see and get back to you.

Your mods are inkvoices, franztastisch aka CloudAtlas on tumblr and discord, and gsparkle.

Happy writing!