Arctic Light

Reveals are here, but since Ao3 is still having trouble, if you wrote/drew something in the collection that hasn't been revealed yet, you can force it to reveal by editing to take it out of the collection, save, and then edit again to put it back in. (If it's your actual assignment you can skip the second step because it automatically puts it back in. If you do need to edit it back in, type "trickortreatex2018" into the collection box; it won't autofill.)

Anyway, I wrote 6 things!

In Plain Sight (White Collar)
Mozzie helps Theo with his Halloween costume. This will certainly end well.

A quick treat I wrote after seeing a request for a WC Halloween story. I haven't written WC in ages and it was fun to revisit it.

Echo Echo (Defenders)
The Defenders, post-Snap.

I really wanted to treat Defendersverse requests, since I got really into it during the Trick or Treat writing period! This recipient said they liked ghosts and apocalypses, they wanted post-IW fic for Defenders, and they didn't mind if it was dark or sad. (Though really I think this is more hopeful than anything.) So this is a ghost-story version where the dusted characters stick around as ghosts. I had fun fitting the style of each section to the general style/tone of canon and the characters' canonical relationships, so Matt is like "GHOSTS DON'T EXIST, THIS ISN'T HAPPENING" while his ghosts chase him around the city trying to get him to eat a goddamn sandwich, etc. (Takes place after all current Defendersverse series and therefore contains spoilers for all of them. I wrote it before DD3 but it turns out to be compliant with it, go figure.)

All The Way Down (Alliance-Union)
Downbelow Station missing scene/tag. When the Norway pulled out of Pell at the climax, her riderships were left behind. This is what happened to one of them.

My actual assignment. I was delighted to be matched to chomiji and get to write the Hellburner characters again. This is something I've been thinking about ever since reading Downbelow Station and thinking about the Hellburner characters piloting one of its riderships and getting left behind. Canon actually contradicts this slightly, which I didn't realize 'til I'd written most of this - but oh well, I guess it's a slight AU.

Flowers for the Dead, Chocolate for the Living (Alliance-Union)
Halloween in space.

And then chomiji ended up on the treatless list, so I decided to use one of their actual prompts this time (because they give great prompts!) and write the Hellburner characters encountering Halloween (or more like an outer-space mash-up of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos).

Sanctuary (Punisher)
The Liebermans get a late-night visitor.

A not-so-anonymous-as-it-might-have-been treat for rachelmanija.

Soul Survivors (Benjamin January)
Ben still has a scar, a pale twist of flesh on the inside of his arm.

Another treat for someone on the treatless list. They listed soulmate AUs as something they like, so I thought about that in context of the Ben January books (which are set in the antebellum South) and came to what I guess is the second most depressing possible conclusion about soulmates in a world with hereditary chattel slavery. That being said, I don't think this fic itself is depressing at all, I mean, no less so than canon; I tried to get that bittersweet-hopeful tone that canon does so well. (I still wish I'd been able to come up with a less punny title for a story this serious, but that's the title that decided to stick.)

The Fall Fest at collarcorner (patterned after Fandom Stocking) is done and all the gifts are revealed! You can check it out at the LJ community or the AO3 community (note: the AO3 collection doesn't have everything; most of the shorter ficlets, art, etc are at the LJ community posts only).

I wrote the following gifts:

Sweet Escape - Elizabeth takes over Neal's bakery after his "death."

Wings So Bright - Neal wingfic, also for my h/c bingo "wings" square. Neal's favorite memory from his early childhood was going flying with his mother; he didn't yet know that no one else could see her wings.

Happy Paws - Having found out that the FBI agent chasing him has a puppy, Neal can't resist trying to make friends with it.

Three Restaurants - Three times Sara and Peter had lunch or dinner together, from pre- to post-series.

Harvest Moon - Alex character study.

Untitled Peter & Neal ficlet for the prompt "near miss."


And I also have some great stuff in my treat basket - art, fics, a fic cover and more!

The Long Winter (22295 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke
Characters: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, Diana Berrigan
Additional Tags: Original Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark
Summary: When things fall apart, you just have to keep going. This is a post-season-four AU that was 95% written during the season four hiatus; then of course season five came along and jossed it thoroughly.

So I finally finished and posted this, which I wrote most of back in 2013. It's kind of dark and kind of bitter, and I will freely admit that at least some of the writing process for this fic was basically therapy in fic form, an outlet for my mixed feelings about season four. I still feel somewhat ambivalent about posting it, but I didn't want to put in all that work and then stick it in a drawer. You should know going in that it doesn't end happily for all of the characters; however, it's not a deathfic or a total miseryfest. Feel free to ask me questions if there's something specific you need to know before reading.

Some of my yuletide stories got recced! \o/ That's very flattering; I'm not sure if it's happened before. And after not doing it for a couple of years, it's nice to participate again. I didn't sign up officially, but I did write three treats. Two are in the same fandom; one is in a different fandom. None are fandoms I've written before. And while two of the stories are not, I think, particularly recognizable as mine, one is SO OBVIOUSLY a trope I'm into that I think it will surprise no one at reveals. There are your clues. :D

I also wrote a longish White Collar fic during the couple of weeks around Christmas, that I was posting in installments to AO3, which is done now.

Watcher in the Storm (15211 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey
Characters: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Mozzie (White Collar), June Ellington, Elizabeth Burke
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Reunions
Summary: Six months post-finale, Peter and Neal still haven't seen each other. But that changes when Neal becomes ill. Written for this prompt on collarcorner.

Also over at collarcorner, there is a poll and discussion on what to do with the comm in 2016.

I still feel lousy, and while I couldn't sleep last night, I started writing a White Collar thing that is, apparently, an attempt to make myself feel better by giving these characters an infinitely worse day than the one I'm having.

It has all the makings of something that will never be finished, though, because I started with a vague idea and a desire to write ALL THE ANGST EVER, and then I kind of went off the rails, and now I don't know where the hell this is going to end up. So I figured I'd post what I have, and maybe it will develop into an actual story later, or maybe this is all you're going to get. Fair warning!

( Diana found out about Peter's death a week after she'd started her new job in DC. )

The Fandom Stockings are revealed! Mine is here and I got lots of lovely stuff -- pictures and ficlets and recs and greetings. I'm delighted with it. :D

I did not manage to get to all the stockings I wanted to fill this year, but I ended up writing a fair amount of stuff, though it's mostly unfinished snippets. Here's what I wrote this year:

White Collar:
A scene from an AU in which Peter is a criminal and Neal is an agent for veleda_k
Post-finale reunion ficlet for leesa_perrie
A different post-finale reunion ficlet for pipilj
A little more of the Iceland fic I posted in comments awhile back for aqwt101 (here's the other piece)
A little more of the White Collar/October Daye fusion Frith and I share for frith_in_thorns (following on directly from the snippet she wrote for me last fandom stocking)
Snippets from a post-finale Christmas story for sheron
Werewolf Peter playing in the snow for kanarek13
Diana is afflicted with Theo's uncles for sheenianni
(the latter two written as snippets in my own comments as thank-yous to people who gave me something when I hadn't given them anything!)

MCU:
Scene from a fic in which Bucky never gets his memories back but becomes friends with Steve anyway for trobadora

btw, it is perfectly fine with me if people who aren't the recipient comment on these; I think it's perfectly fine, although you might wait 'til the recipient has a chance to comment first if they haven't yet. :D I would have posted some of them on AO3, but none are really finished enough to do that (and the only one which actually is a complete story, Veleda's story, has a major plot hole that needs to be fixed >_>).

I wrote a brief(ish) fic set after the White Collar finale, for my h/c bingo "hallucinations" square:

White For Forgiveness (2200 words, Sara-centric, post-finale w/major spoilers)

Title: Afterparty
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: canon ones
Word Count: 2400
Summary: 6x04 missing scene. Peter's in too deep to get out, but at least he's not the only one. For my h/c bingo "arrest" square.
Crossposted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2724341

( Afterparty - contains 6x04 spoilers )

Last night we watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And so ... I wrote a snippet of a White Collar fusion. (WHAT.) This is not an actual fic, just a vignette, and it basically stops in the middle of a scene. I don't know if it's going to grow into the epic story it apparently wants to be, but I figured I'd toss it out there.

There are only the mildest of spoilers for the movie. If you know who the Winter Soldier is, you basically don't have to worry about being spoiled. If you aren't familiar with the Marvel universe, you can assume "generic spy shenanigans with bionic soldiers" and proceed accordingly.

( White Collar/Winter Soldier fusion (about 2500 wds) )

I am sleepy and don't feel like doing anything of the many things I should actually be doing. SO HAVE SOME FIC INSTEAD.

Title: Through the Storm and Safe to Shore
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 9300
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Post-5x13, Neal's captors convince him that Peter is dead. For a prompt by leesa_perrie at collarcorner.
Notes: Thanks to frith_in_thorns for beta and cheerleading! .... and a special thanks for talking me out of my rather bleak original ending. This one is much better. :)
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1265761

( Through the Storm and Safe to Shore )