torachan | 3 Weeks for DW: Transfic Mini Fest

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3 Weeks for DW: Transfic Mini Fest

ETA: While cis people are more than welcome to participate (and many have), please be aware that this is not for you or about you. The goal of this fest is to increase representation of trans people in fanfic and to celebrate the diversity of the trans community. I would like this fest first and foremost to be a safe space for trans people, one in which we are the norm and don't have to explain or justify ourselves. Both prompts and fills may contain terms, concepts, etc. that are unfamiliar to cis people. If you find yourself confused, hit up Google or Wikipedia. Do not ask people here to educate you.

three_weeks_for_dw starts on Monday the 26th, so I want to start collecting prompts for the transfic mini fest.

This is going to work like a kink meme, with one prompt per comment and then people post fills directly in response to the prompts. It will be open for new prompts during the fest as well, but I wanted to get the prompting started a little early so that there is stuff there once the fest officially starts.

Please don't post any fills until Monday (in your timezone), but you can start writing right away if something catches your eye.

Since I'm not compiling prompts, there's no specific format. Be as brief or detailed as you like, but make sure to include the fandom and characters (or specify "any fandom/character").

Prompts can be from any fandom, RPF or FPF, and can focus on either canonically trans characters or characters who are trans for the purposes of the fic. Prompts can be het, slash, or gen. No restrictions on rating. Really, no restrictions on anything, except be respectful, which should go without saying.

Prompts do not have to be "about" being trans. They can be something as simple as a pairing or a pairing + word/kink/lyrics. The point is simply to have more stories starring trans people. So if you want to write about issues, that's cool. If you just want to write a PWP, that's fine, too. Just one or more of the main characters in the fic needs to be trans. You can specify in your prompt who you want to be trans and whether you want them to be mtf or ftm, or you can not specify anything and leave it up to the writer.

For the purposes of this fest, trans means anyone who does not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. Genderqueer and intersex characters are also welcome.

What I am not looking for is traditional "genderswap" fic, stories about cis people crossdressing, etc. and if you choose to leave/fill a prompt for intersex characters, please no sci-fi/fantasy "hermaphrodites", only real intersex conditions.

Feel free to ask questions if anything is unclear.

Anon commenting is on, so feel free to leave anon prompts and fills if you want.

After posting a fill, consider reposting to

transfic or (after the three weeks are up) the trans stories collection on AO3. If you post to AO3, there is now a canonical tag for the fest that you can use. And of course I'll be adding all fics to my transfic master list on delicious. :)

ETA (4/26/10): It is now the 26th in my timezone! You may begin posting fills!

A few guidelines for posting:

If posting a fill longer than will fit in one comment box, please post any subsequent parts as replies to the fill, rather than the prompt, so that it may be more easily linked.

Please put "fill" and the title of your fic (if you have one) in the subject line, so it's easier for people to find the fics.

Prompts can be answered more than once.

You may repost immediately on your DW or in another DW comm, but remember, no reposting outside of DW until three weeks after the date you post the fill.

ETA (5/18/10): The three weeks are over, but I will not be officially closing the fest. Please continue to leave both prompts and fills as long as you like.

The master list of fills is here.

I will have a master list of prompts at some point in the future as well, but it's a bigger job.

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Moz slides the well-worn page across the table, and Neal hesitates a moment before picking it up. “I can’t believe you kept that all these years,” he is saying, again, and Neal ignores it, again. His eyes skip past Certificate Of Live Birth at the top and fall on a line further down; his thumb comes to rest on a tiny, innocuous F. He smiles a little sadly.

“It’s history, Moz.”

The birth certificate was the first thing he’d ever stolen — really stolen, from grownups, not convinced the kid in the next bunk to hand over by flashing a gap-toothed smile and a promise-not-to-tell. The first three things he’d stolen, actually, because when you’re eight and can’t understand why the grownups keep insisting you’re a girl, you tend to be clumsy and none too clever about hiding places. The nuns had confiscated it twice.

“Ava, why do you keep trying to steal that thing?” Brittany Nicole asked one day when they were just-nine. That morning, attempt number two had been thwarted — he liked words like thwarted, and used them as often as possible even if they made Brittany roll her eyes — and he was sulking.

“Call me Frank,” said Ava Caffrey.

That made Brittany scrunch up her freckled nose over a bite of peanut butter sandwich. “That’s a stupid name.”

Peter asks, “Have you ever met a woman who didn’t...” and Neal does a mental double-take. He thinks sometimes that Peter knows every detail of his life, past, present, and future. He laughs it off, and Peter doesn’t press.

With Brittany’s help, Attempt Number Three turned into months of planning, with charts and schemes and more deviousness than Ava... than Frank had thought possible. She was right, though. They set the date of the heist (another spectacular word!) for Christmas Eve, when half the staff was home with their families and all the kids were stuffing themselves with dry turkey and overcooked pies. Brittany provided the distraction, because she could cry on cue, and found a cave nearby for a hiding place. They met there afterwards, shivering in the New England frost and huddling together and clutching their spoils. He put his head on her shoulder and turned his face up to hers and was absolutely sure he would never love anyone else in the whole entire world.

“Nice job, Av...Frank,” she whispered.

He bit his lip. “You’re right. That is a stupid name. Maybe... I feel like a Dean. Or maybe Danny. Like Danny Ocean!”

She studied his face for a very long moment, thinking. “Neal,” she said finally. “Your name is Neal. With an A.”

It was three years into chasing him that Peter finally tracked down the real birth records, Neal finds out later. The ones the FBI officially knows about are the excellent forgery Neal made and slipped into the Massachussetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics —hardcopy and electronic— when he was sixteen, that recorded his name as Neal Caffrey and didn’t have a tiny innocuous glaring F anywhere. Peter never put the real ones in his file.

“Why didn’t you ever tell them?” Neal asks him once, after prison, after the anklet. It’s late, they’re sitting at Peter’s dining room table, and El is pouring wine in the kitchen. She doesn’t look up, but the angle of her head shifts and Neal knows she’s listening.

Peter’s doing that little half-smile he usually does when he’s on the phone with El, or when her back is turned, but he doesn’t answer.

El’s hand appears over Neal’s shoulder, handing a glass of red to Peter, and she rests her hands on Neal’s shoulders, leans over so her lips are by his ear. Neal doesn’t look away from Peter, and it’s like the answer is coming from him, and maybe it is.

“Because he wasn’t chasing Ava Caffrey,” El murmurs, and kisses his cheek.

Peter’s half-smile becomes a grin as Neal jumps, and he meets his wife’s eyes above Neal’s head and Neal could swear he winks.

“You’re not chasing me anymore either,” Neal says, recovering.

“Nope,” Peter returns, and taps Neal’s wrist with one finger. “Now we’ve got you.”

The week before he turned ten, Neal Caffrey ran away for the first time. He begged Brittany to come too, but she told him she wasn’t quite that devious...quite that lubricious, Neal thinks, and besides, somebody had to stay behind as a distraction right? Neal tried really hard not to cry, and it almost worked.

It’s getting light when the three of them — Peter, El, and their Neal — finish the bottle of wine. The bit of paper, the ragged bit of history that waited for years in a deposit box in DC until Neal had Moz retrieve it, sits carefully folded in the Burke’s safe. It seems like the best place, for now.

====== Note: If anyone wants to run with this into a porny place, or fill in more of the backstory, HAVE AT.

<3 <3 <3

BEST. THING. EVER.

Eeeee thank you! I totally want to meet tiny not-a-girl-dammit Neal now. And ruffle his hair. <3

OMG so completely awesome.
And El! Dear El! the dynamic between the three of them, and how off balance El and Peter and keep Neal is delicious.
I also love Neal's strange relationship with his original birth certificate, a very interesting part of keeping things and only taking things that are important or personal. The ambiguity of "It's history."

You know, I tried writing it with just Peter and found that El really wanted to be in that scene too. She completes them. And an expert antiquities forger would have a...complicated take on history, I think. :P

I'm glad you enjoyed!

This is great.

I'm glad you liked it. :)

I love this! Especially El.

Thank you! El is the best. <3

I love the answer El gives, and Neal's many-times-stolen birth certificate. And the vocabulary, bless.

Neal just strikes me as the kind of kid who used fancy poetic words ALL THE TIME. ("Honesty is a more dangerous game", after all... *g*)

Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Love. it.

Glad you liked it!

Also, I love your icon, is that from a promo shot?

Re: fill: Certificate Of Life (White Collar)

scheherezhad - 2010-04-30 04:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: fill: Certificate Of Life (White Collar)

gelasius - 2010-04-30 13:50 (UTC) - Expand

Ooh, very cool.

Yay, thank you. :)

I like this a lot! Oh, Neal. <3

Oh, Neal, indeed. *pets him*

THIS IS THE COOLEST. SO MUCH COOL. I absolutely love the thought of Peter uncovering the original documents, looking at them, and thinking "Naaaaah." And El! And young Neal! And Brittany, who I find I really really love.