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!

It takes a community to support an exchange! If you’d like to pinch hit for the be_compromised Secret Santa gift exchange 2025 in addition to participating, or instead of participating, please comment to this post with the following:

Contact info - your email address and/or discord handle: Your AO3 user name/handle: Absolutely Not: (Things that are an absolute no for you, such as anything triggering, character death, certain ratings, things that you will not do) Kinda Like: (No guarantees, but we can try to match you to something you'd like!)

The rules of Secret Santa 2025 will apply to any pinch hits eg. gifts must be a minimum of 1,000 words. The deadline for the Secret Santa exchange is 16:00 GMT Monday 8 December and we aim to post/reveal gifts the week starting 15 December. We will be assigning pinch hitters to anyone who defaults in advance of this deadline or on this deadline. If any participants arrange an extension date with the mods we will set that extension deadline in advance of the planned posting dates. This means pinch hitters will have anywhere between weeks to a few days to complete a pinch hit, but we hope to give you at least a week.

We will let you know by email (from be_compromised@hotmail.com so please make sure that’s approved and not classed as spam) or discord private message as soon as a pinch hit is needed, with the details of the assignment, to check if you’re still free and able to help.

There is no deadline to sign up for pinch hitting, but if you can give us an idea early on it will help the mods if we have any early defaults or if we spot a pinch hit that we think you might particularly like to do.

Comments to this post will be screened. If you have any questions please reply to the questions/comments thread at the top and we will un-screen those manually to reply. (We are not able to reply to comments here without un-screening them.)

Thank you! <3