natasha & clint secret santa @ livejournal 

inkvoices — Secret Santa Update [+0]

inkvoices — Secret Santa Submissions Post [+5]

inkvoices — Secret Santa Volunteers Post [+18]

inkvoices — Secret Santa Assignments Are Sent! [+0]

inkvoices — ONE DAY LEFT TO TAKE YOUR PICK! [+13]

inkvoices — Secret Santa: Choices Post [+0]

inkvoices — ONE DAY LEFT TO JOIN SECRET SANTA! [+54]

inkvoices — Secret Santa Sign Up Post [+27]

NOTE: AGE OF ULTRON DISCUSSION POST IS HERE. Thanking you :)

a post-Age Of Ultron message from your mods

Here’s a little tour of what we like to call ‘our bar’ (as in this is the best bar and lots of bar jokes) and the good yacht (other pairings have ships, we have a yacht!) Clint/Natasha.

( tour behind the cut: about us, things that happen around here, and some links relevant to your interestsCollapse )

Tags: admin stuff, introductions, psas should have a tag, really important stuff, this is the very best bar

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SUBMITTED THEIR SCECRET SANTA GIFTS! They\'re all shiny and you\'re all wonderful :D Now we just need to add the finishing touches of banners and schedule the posting... There\'s one more ATTF scheduled for your delight and entertainment, and then SECRET SANTA IS ON THE WAY.

If anyone would like to help with banner making or graphics making we\'re always looking for helping hands, so still feel free to comment to this post, the volunteer post, or just message me.

every single person taking part, which is fantastic, seriously, THANK YOU ALL. Although there\'s still four of you left to comment on the Submissions Post with your titles and baner blurbs, you know who you are ;) If you can please do that ASAP that\'d be brilliant.

The deadline for Secret Santa 2015 is fast approaching on

MIDNIGHT DECEMBER 6TH (that’s midnight in whatever time zone you live in) so here’s some REALLY IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT YOU REALLY NEED TO READ aka your three step guide to submitting your Secret Santa gift. Paying attention to this post will make the lives of you, your mods, your pinch hitters, and your graphic makers so very much easier. If you have any questions at all about anything please just ask, even in a PM or an email if you’re shy. Thank you :)

Complete your Secret Santa gift by the deadline of SUNDAY 6th DECEMBER. That’s finished, beta read if you wanted, all polished and ready to be gift-wrapped.

community rules (on how to warn, plagiarism, etc) and the exchange rules (gifts need to focus on Clint and/or Natasha and be a minimum of 1,000 and a maximum of 10,000 words) apply, so make sure you followed those.

Send your gifts to be_compromised at hotmail dot com – wrapping them up as follows:

Create an email. The subject line should be: YOUR LJ NAME + Secret Santa Gift

Place this header at the top of your fic or in the main body of your email. Use it

exactly as it is, just copy and paste, fill it in and replace the capital letter parts with the relevant names:

<!-- <b>A Gift From:</b> <lj user="YOUR LJ NAME HERE"> --> <b>Type Of Gift:</b> (Fic/Gift Basket) <b>Title:</b> <b>A Gift For:</b> <lj user="GIFTEE\'s LJ NAME HERE"> <b>Rating:</b> <b>Warnings:</b> <b>Summary/Prompt Used:</b> <b>Author\'s Note:</b> LJ cut text(s) (if you\'d like something besides the default):

FIC should be submitted as an email attachment, preferably as a Word or .doc, but it can be a plain text or .txt file. If your fic is longer than will fit in a single LJ post, or if you would like it to be posted as chapters, please indicate in BIG CAPITALS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE A BREAK HERE kind of thing. All fics MUST be html coded if you want words to be bold or italic etc. There is a guide to html on livejournal here and feel free to ask questions before you submit. Otherwise your fic will be posted as submitted.

ART/GRAPHICS should be submitted as attached files, NOT links to already uploaded works. To keep you anonymous we will upload them to the community’s photobucket account. Please specify if multiple art peices should be in any particular order, and if you have any blurbs or captions etc.

VID/MIXES also need to be anonymous. Please submit the actual work or a link to a privately shared file and we will upload it to a community media account anonymously. Cover art should be submitted as per art/graphics.

EVERYONE MUST COMMENT TO THIS POST BY MIDNIGHT SUNDAY 6TH DECEMBER. EVEN IF YOU HAVE AN EXTENSION. We need this for banner making as well as a check in and confirmation list. All comments are screened.

<b>My gift is for:</b> (your giftee) <b>My gift type is: (fic/gift basket) <b>Title:</b> (yes even if you haven’t finished it yet, we need this for the banner) <b>Banner Blurb:</b> (we really don\'t want loads of detail, just an idea of the theme or tone of your gift so that we can tailor our gift banners. Something like \'snow, sad\' or \'pirates AU\' or \'dark fic\'. <b>Submission:</b> (I have submitted/I have an extension until X date/this is a submitted pinch hit/this is a pinch hit due on X date)

If for any reason you think that you won’t be able to submit by the deadline of SUNDAY 6TH DECEMBER

you need to let us know as soon as possible. We don’t yell, we just want to make sure that everyone who participates gets a gift and that everyone taking part in all capacities has as few worries as possible.

If you can’t submit by the deadline a pinch hitter will automatically be assigned. If you then manage to submit by an agreed extended deadline the pinch-hit will become a community gift.

If you don’t let us know by the 6th December deadline that you can’t submit we will assume that you have dropped out. If you don’t submit by the agreed extension we will also assume that you have dropped out. In both of these cases the gift for you will be reassigned as a community gift and we will rely on your pinch hitter. Once assumed to have dropped out we will not be able to accept late gifts as part of the exchange.

This is an anonymous gift exchange, so please don’t post or upload your gift elsewhere until after the reveals.

We aim to start posting gifts on December 19th/20th. Once all gifts have been posted we will have the reveals, at which point there will be a master post and an AO3 collection for this year’s exchange if you want to cross post your work.

Tags: really important stuff, secret santa 2015

Hi All! This is a post for pinch hitters, graphics makers, beta readers, community gift givers, and cheerleaders. You can join in with any or all of this regardless of whether you’ve signed up to the Secret Santa gift exchange or not. Want to dip your toes in the water or missed out on sign ups? Community gift! Fancy gifting banners? Graphics team! Want to encourage and enable other people? Cheerlead! We like to make this festive thing fun for everyone :)

We will be automatically assigning pinch hitters to anyone who doesn’t submit their gift by the deadline of December 6th, which should hopefully give you a decent amount of time to create a gift before we start posting. If people then do manage to submit their gift by an agreed extension your pinch-hit would be assigned as a gift to the community as a whole, but no less appreciated! We will let you know as soon as a pinch hit is needed, so either when the deadline has passed or earlier if people let us know in advance that they’re dropping out. Gifts needs to be a minimum of 1,000 words or the art equivalent and ideally we’d like pinch hits to be completed by December 13th.

If this sounds like something you’d like to do please comment to this post with:

Type Of Gift: gift type you’re willing to pinch-hit for, fic and/or gift basket (which is anything arty or anything arty combined with a short fic)

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: If we get plenty of pinch hitters showing interest we can match you up a bit so you get something you think you’d be good at or would have fun with, so what are your strengths or likes? Genres, AU, comics…? No guarantees, but we’ll try!

There are two types of graphics in Secret Santa. The first is participation graphics, such as banners or icons. The second is the epic banner making we like to do, where we create a banner for every gift. When Secret Santa exchange participants reach the deadline we collate their titles, who the gift is for, and some general theme or idea of what the gift is about, then a team of graphics makers get creative in time for banners to be added to the top of all gifts when they’re posted.

If either or both of these sounds like something you’d be interested in

please comment to this post with your email address (or PM me your email address) if we don’t already have it from this year’s Secret Santa and what type of graphics you’d like to make. We’ll then email around the details and organisation as we go.

Of course if you’d just like to create some Secret Santa or seasonally inspired icons, advertising banners, or anything else do feel free to share!

To make things friendly and easy, if you’d like to offer your beta reading skills for someone’s Secret Santa fic please comment to this post saying

BETA VOLUNTEER and a bit about your style and strengths as a beta reader.

For both volunteers and people requesting beta readers, we had a discussion on beta readers and how to ask for them a while back here that might come in useful. (The information on who’s available to beta read on that post is old though.)

If you’re unsure of how to approach a beta reader remember it’s a creative exchange. Beta readers do it for the fun of it and to help you :) And if either of you think that the other’s style isn’t for you that’s absolutely fine and you can part ways with a smile. You might want to tell your prospective beta reader: how long your fic is, your deadline (if other than the 5th December), the rating and any warnings or triggers, what you’re stuck on if there’s something specific or even general like you’re worried about your grammar or an action scene.

This is what it says on the tin: a gift for the community. If you missed signing up to Secret Santa this year, fancy just dipping your toes in the water, or would like to write something extra, you can create a community gift.

create something fic or arty, following the usual rules of the comm, and post it in December, or during Secret Santa posting time, saying that it’s a gift for the community.

the rules and guidelines of Secret Santa, just create whatever you want instead of something specifically for someone’s prompt or request. Wait until the post on how to submit gifts anonymously as part of Secret Santa, which will be by email, and then submit your gift the same way by the same deadline, including commenting to the completed post with your title and banner theme and when you submit state clearly your LJ name and that this is a community gift. Your gift will then be posted anonymously as part of the exchange as a gift for the whole community. (There will be no deadline extensions for this. If you don’t meet the deadline you can still post ‘the simple way’.)

You can create as many ‘simple way’ community gifts as you like, but only ONE Secret Santa anon community gift. (This can be in addition to your actual Secret Santa gift if you’re part of the exchange.)

We need you! To comment, squee, join in, get excited, and make this comm the place it is!

If you’d like to get even more involved as a cheerleader you can also comment below with

CHEERLEADER AT THE READY. People who have signed up for the Secret Santa exchange or who’re creating a community gift can then team up with you in whatever way works for you to encourage them. This might be reading their fic in progress and letting them know what you like and don’t like, it might be contacting them every so often to ask where they’re up to, it might be sending them pictures of Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson, whatever works!

All assignments for Secret Santa have now been emailed.

If you haven\'t received an assignment please comment to this post or send me a PM. Please do check your spam folder, that your email account allows emails from be_compromised at hotmail dot com, and that you\'ve provided us with your correct email address, because we\'re going to be emailing you again in future!

Watch this space for information on community gifts, graphics team, beta reading, pinch hits, and cheerleading...coming soon!

This is your reminder that there\'s just one day left to say which gift requests you\'d like to fill for Secret Santa.

SECRET SANTA CHOICES POST HERE Deadline for choices is 18:00 GMT Thursday 15th October!

And choices are over. Keep your eyes peeled for your assignment emails!

Okay folks, here\'s how this works: below is an anonymised list of what people have said they would like to receive as a gift in the Secret Santa exchange. People taking part reply to this post with a comment - which will be screened - saying what their FIRST, SECOND, and THIRD choices would be for which request they\'d like to write for. We will then use these choices to help match people up.

- you\'re not guaranteed your choices, but we will be using these to match you up as best we can and keeping to your choices as much as possible

18:00 GMT Thursday 15th October to comment with your choices or we\'ll match you up without one. - your match will be sent to you by the end of the week by email, so

please check your emails including your spam folder for anything that comes from be_compromised@hotmail.com and let us know if you don\'t receive anything by Monday.

This is your reminder that Secret Santa sign ups close at

MIDNIGHT SATURDAY 10TH OCTOBER. SIGN UP POST HERE. We have 12 sign ups so far. Last year was around 34. Any more for any more?

SECRET SANTA 2015 SIGN UPS ARE NOW CLOSED AND THE CHOICES POST IS UP.

Hello wonderful bar, it’s Secret Santa sign up time! Please read the following information carefully as we’ve made some changes for this year, and please do follow the instructions for the sign up form because it makes everything easier. Thanking you!

CHOICES POST: will go up shortly after and be available until

An exchange is where you sign up with ideas for what kind of gift you’d like and what kind of gift you\'d like to give, then everyone gets a gift and makes a gift, and it\'s all anonymous until reveals at the end. For this exchange gifts can be EITHER a fic OR a gift basket.

This post is to sign up to take part in the exchange. We also like to have a graphics team, for gift banners and other goodies, pinch-hitters, beta readers, and cheerleaders, so there’ll be another post later on for people interested in those. And community gifts are always welcome. You can do any or all of these extra things regardless of whether you’re in the exchange or not.

2) Your gifts need to have a focus on Clint and/or Natasha – solo or as friends, partners, lovers, colleagues, spouses, enemies… We love other characters and welcome fics with all pairings and no pairing group gen fics, but the focus of our comm are on these two. SEE THIS POST and message a mod if you have any questions.

3) Fics must be a MINIMUM of 1,000 words and a MAXIMUM of 10,000 words. Gift Baskets are the arty option, but should be the equivalent of the same length fic. They can be made up of art (such as a wallpaper, painting, picset, or graphic manip), a fanmix (minimum cover and 5 tracks), icons (minimum 10), or a combination or any of these, or a combination of these and a short fic (minimum 500 words).

anonymous exchange, so don’t reveal who your giftee is until after the reveals!

If at any point during this exchange you feel you won’t be able to submit your gift by the deadline

please do let us know straight away by email or PM. We don’t yell, we just want to make sure that everyone who participates gets a gift.

To keep things fair, for participants, pinch-hitters, and your mods, if you don’t submit by the deadline a pinch-hitter will automatically be assigned. If you submit by the agreed extension date the pinch-hit will be a community gift, and if you don’t then whatever you create will not be posted as part of the exchange and the gift for you will be reassigned as a community gift. We’ll still love you, but please be considerate of your fellow bar members and mods – unlike Santa’s elves your mods can’t work logistical magic.

TO TAKE PART IN THE EXCHANGE AS A GIFT GIVER AND RECEIVER

To take part please copy and paste the sign up form into a comment and fill it in.

Comments are screened to keep them anonymous. After the sign up deadline of

Midnight Saturday 10th October we will do a public post of all the anon requests, to which you will be able to comment with your preferences, so which request you’d like to create for. (Like we did earlier this year for the AU Exchange.)

You’re not guaranteed your choices, but we will be using these to match you up as best we can and keeping to your choices as much as possible. We aim to match everyone up in the best combinations possible, but we make no guarantees of perfection! Please feel free to include lots of info in your sign up form; it actually makes things easier, both for matching and for whoever gets you as an assignment.

Once matching has been done you will receive your assignment by email. We’ll provide information closer to the time on how to submit your gifts, but this will also be by email. Remember, this is an anonymous exchange!

For questions: there’s a thread at the top of this post that we will keep un-screening the comments on so we can chat.

Copy and paste into a comment to this post:

<b>Email:</b> <b>TO RECIEVE Gift Type:</b> <b>Prompts:</b> <b>Yes please:</b> <b>No thank you:</b> <b>Post Age of Ultron Preference:</b> <b>TO GIVE Gift Type:</b> <b>I’d like to:</b> <b>I’d rather not:</b> <b>Absolutely Not:</b> <b>Post Age of Ultron Preference:</b>