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Title: Kate Bishop & the Exchange School Written for High Adrenaline Exchange 2025 Characters: Kate, Clint, and a lot of others Rating: T Summary: Shield Academy sends twelve of its best and brightest students to Hogwarts as part of a student exchange program. Or that's how everyone is billing it. Personally, Kate thinks Fury just took the opportunity to get his chief source of headaches out of his nonexistent hair for a whole school year. First things first, however, they have to get through the Hogwart's Sorting Ceremony. Won't that be fun?

LINK

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Title: A Squib's Garden Written for Alternate Universe 5K 2024 Characters: Petunia, Lily, Severus Rating: T Summary: Petunia Hazel Evans enjoyed a well-tended garden, a well-kept house, and a well-made cup of tea. Her belongings would be in perfect order before she left her room, while her closet would be organized every Sunday to ensure her weekday morning preparations went like clockwork. Some people might call that obsessive and consider her a neat freak. She preferred to think of herself as prepared and proper. However, none of her order or organization could have prepared her for the sudden right turn in her life when she helped Lily and Severus with their Hogwarts homework.

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Title: A Perfect Match Written for Love You a Latte 2024 Characters: Hades, Persephone Rating: T Summary: One day Persephone would have to remember to find a way to thank the Fates.

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Title: A Family Reunion Written for FFFX 2024 Characters: Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill Rating: T Summary: Although the Friends of Narnia might have gone on to separate lives and their own adventures, they would reunited every Christmas as the very least. However, that being said, the High King could summon them to a meeting should he deem it necessary and they would drop everything to answer his call. Peter has called them to New York at the end of summer 1952, and Susan can only worry about what might have prompted her older brother - a veteran agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. - to summon his court.

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Title: Caledonia Written for FFFX 2024 Characters: Juliette, Nick, Sean, Monroe, Rosalee Rating: T Summary: Juliette Silverton knew a few things beyond all questioning. And when a package that arrived at the house made Rosalee nervous, it meant something was about to change. Good change or bad change, but it definitely meant a change.

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Title: A School Apart Written for FFFX 2024 Characters: Pinocchio, Lampwick, Alice Rating: G Summary: Pinocchio is off to his new school of magic at Collège en Rêves and he hopes to make his father proud. First and foremost, however, he needs to be Sorted.

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I really don't understand how "without getting kudos or comments a fanfiction author is going to assume that people who clicked their fic didn't like it" became a controversial take.

I don't know why some people think an author should imagine, or guess that people who click their fic enjoyed it it when nobody is telling them that.

If you're re-reading a fic constantly, or leaving it up in your tab so that it re-loads every day for a hundred days the author is not going to know that unless you tell them. They'd love to hear it. It would make their day.

And if you don't tell them you liked their fic, there's no reason for them to assume you did.

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Title: Fire & Frost Written for Candy Hearts Exchange 2025 Characters: Severus Snape & Hermione Granger Rating: T Summary: Hermione Granger, heroine of the Wizarding World and brightest witch of her age, groaned and stretched her arms over her head as she walked down the corridor towards the potions classroom. It would be another long day of preparing for the upcoming school year, and she wanted to question her entire outlook on life.

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Title: An Immortal Cycle Written for Candy Hearts Exchange 2025 Characters: Eros & Psyche Rating: T Summary: Eros remembers the lives he has lived before in the cycle of immortality. He also remembers the emptiness of his life before he found the woman who filled the empty pieces of his heart and completed his soul.

LINK

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The 2025 Fanfic Reading Challenge

Welcome to another year of the Fanfic Reading Challenge (FRC)!

I won't bore you with the history of the challenge, this year, but I will welcome you to check out past posts that do explain some of it, as well as include a brief overview of what, exactly, this challenge is, though it does change year to year. (Essentially you read fics to complete goals and win bragging points and an artsy badge.)

This year is especially different, as I had the extreme pleasure of having @noxsoulmate as a partner in crime in keeping me hostage on track to completing this year's FRC. Another valued member of the mod team is @jandjsalmon and speaks for all of us if you need questions answered!

As for the challenge....

This is, indeed, a challenge. Of course.

First of all... you must obviously read fanfiction. As if you don't already!

You also need to download and make your own copy of the spreadsheet, which can be found here, as well as below in the important links section.

To participate in the challenge, you read fics that match the tasks in the challenge. An example of a task can be: "read a fic with a title containing the word purple in it." Should be easy! Of course, there are harder ones.

Which is why there are different modes of challenge to the FRC. These are as follows:

Participation (Complete 1 task)

Regular Mode (Complete 80 tasks)

Hard Mode (Complete 150 tasks)

Extreme Mode (Complete 220 tasks)

Complete (Complete 250 tasks)

The challenge lasts from January 1st, 2025, to December 31st, 2025.

There are badges that go with the modes completed, and even a secret 6th badge that will be fairly obvious if you look at the spreadsheet! Doesn't mean it'll be easy to complete though. *smirks* (Blame Noxy)

Most important of all: this challenge operates on the honour system. We don't check your work, or your reading logs (see below), so I mean, I guess if you want to be slippery with the rules, you do you, and that's on your conscience, but honestly it's so much fun to see how much you can get done by following the letter of the law/tasks! You can be slippery even with following the tasks fully. It's great fun. ;D

I think that's enough for an intro, really, maybe too much.

Important Links and Reading Logs/Trackers

As there is a component of the FRC that includes tracking numbers of words read, most of us use a reading log/tracker to keep count of how many fics we read, including data such as words, of course, chapters, month completed, ship, author, title, fandom, link to the fic, and such. It's a great place to mark what fics you want to read in the future as well!

This year we have FOUR trackers on offer, quite different from one another, so take a look, play around with them and check out their "intros", and choose according to what you think will work best for you!

Fic Tracking Sheets

Juulna's 2025 Reading Log

Noxy's 2025 Reading Log

2025 Jandy's Fic Tracker

Taru's Fic Tracker 2025

Discord

We have a blast on Discord. From general chatter to sharing pet pics to being there for each other during the tough times to forming lasting friendships and making friendships you’d never make in a ship- or fandom-specific Discord, to asking for help ‘rolling the dice’ (pick a number between 1-10!) to choose the next fic to read, to finding some of the really challenging task fills in fandoms people might not have ever read but are willing to try, or finding fandoms someone has never read and is very tentative about stepping out of their box, but they’re being 100% supported and know they don’t need to complete the fic for it to count for the task, stepping out of their comfort zone… we’ve formed a very odd group of, if not friends, then companions (but there are definite friendships that have formed!! Just ask the people who have started watching NHL and NFL together in our off topic channel!).

In any case, our Discord is not necessary, but it is a worthy and tactical element to completing many of the tasks of this challenge. 💙

And.... without further ado....!

The 2025 Fanfic Reading Challenge! (link)

There is an info/rules page as the first sheet on the spreadsheet that should fill in any further questions you have. It also has more contact info than just this page if you have any further questions and perhaps need a more immediate answer for your needs.

*Occasionally you will run into something that looks like an error, and it may in fact be one! Let us know if you see it. It's hard not to make a mistake on as large a spreadsheet as this.*

Please, first of all, have fun and just read fanfiction that you enjoy! I (Juulna) did that last year and didn't even come close to completing the entire challenge, and I still had a blast because I was enjoying what I was reading and rereading. Others took the challenge right to the completed end. Others forgot about it halfway through but still had fun, and some even went back and filled in the sheet for a really good showing! The challenge is what you make of it, what you want from it. So... just have fun. Read fic. Smile. Enjoy. :)

Second of all... well, we would love if you signal boost this post!!!!

Third of all, we do have our pinned post that includes a link to this page and that will include a link to our Discord and all our trackers as well, including past links for memento and informative purposes.

Thank you, and a blessed 2025 to all!

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Title: At the Rose & Quill Written for @be-compromised Secret Santa 2024 Characters: Laura Barton with cameos from Clint Barton & Kate Bishop (Also, technically Laura/Clint/Natasha, but that's mostly behind the scenes) Rating: G Summary: Serenity and knowledge go hand-in-hand at the Rose & Quill, and Laura loves the serenity it brings her odd little family.

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Title: A Christmas Invitation Written for @be-compromised Secret Santa 2024 Characters: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanoff Rating: T Summary: Natasha might be stubborn, but Clint could wait her out . . . and he had good reason to be patient.

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"yOuR nOt GeRmAn, yOur AmErIcAn"

Okay, bestie, let me explain something to you that is very important to American culture — very, very few of us are ethnically American. When an American says they are "German" or "Irish" or "Italian" they aren't talking about citizenship. They are talking about ethnicity.

The U.S. is primarily a country of immigrants. Everyone says we "don't have a culture" or we have a "bastardized version of *insert culture*" but that's not true!!!! Our culture is made up of American Immigrant Culture!!!! American Italian food isn't "fake Italian food" — it's the innovation of Italian Immigrants who used traditional Italian food along with the ingredients that were more accessible to them in the States. It might not be the food "of Italy" but it is the food of proud sons and daughters of Italy who are also proud Americans. And you can be both.

When American culture is treated as a rip-off of every other culture, we are essentially dishonoring the memory of very brave men and women who chose to leave their homelands under unfortunate circumstances. Men and women who didn't have much money, but did what they could. Used the materials they had. And still managed to make something beautiful out of it. When you leave your home, it doesn't stop being part of your identity — it just looks a little different now. You pass on your old traditions to your children and your children's children, and along the way, new ones are created. Cultures mix and create subcultures. And it's beautiful. It's good. It's primally human.

If I'm not "German" care to explain to me my pasty white skin? Or my last name? Or all the post cards written to and from Germany that we have upstairs in a box? Or the name of my town? Or my grandparents' first language? Or the fact that my American Church, in the year 2024, still sings "Stille Nacht" at every Christmas Eve mass? Sure, I'm not fully German, but the awareness of where I have come from makes up a huge part of my understanding of myself and my place in this world. I was raised in a German Catholic farmtown, and it shows. It shows in the way we worship, and our work ethic, and our reverence for family life.

When an American calls themselves "German" or "Irish" or "Italian" they mean that's where their blood comes from. And it's okay for them to care about that. It's okay for them to care about their roots. It's a major part of American culture.

If you want to "respect" world cultures, you can't just pick and choose which ones are "real" according to you.

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Title: Clint's Kitten Written for Fic in a Box 2024 Characters: Clint Barton & Kate Bishop Rating: E Notes: Vampire AU Summary: When Kate comes under psychic attack, she has to trust Clint to save her. How that saving happens . . . well, that's a happy bonus.

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Title: Emerging from Shadows Written for Fic in a Box 2024 Characters: Goosefat Bill, The Mage, Maggie, Arthur Rating: T Summary: William might have expected any number of secrets to be revealed when the Mage chose to speak, but he can honestly say he never saw this one coming.

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Title: Curiosity Written for Kids Come First Exchange 2024 Characters: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanoff Rating: M Notes: I've rated this as Mature, but it is probably better rated as a T+. However, given the nature of some of the implications, I didn't want to go with the lower rating. Just to be safe. Summary: “Son of a bitch, you’re a kid.” When Clint met Natasha . . .

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Title: Snow White - A Hope Reborn Written for Kids Come First Exchange 2024 Characters: Will & Lilli Hoffman Rating: T Summary: After the death of the witch, Will needed to take a minute or two . . . but Lilli also needed reassurance.

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