#tackytiger

art inspired by first watch of night by @tackytigerfic

“Rosie!” Harry shouted joyfully from somewhere over their heads, and then they heard a “woah” and the creak of something old and wooden, and looked up just in time to see Harry, holding one of the fencing swords from the training room, balanced on the upper bannister of the mezzanine stairs, his body twisting lithely away from a flashing flurry of something.

When you decide to bind a book using black on black, it's not going to be easy to photograph. Just in case you were wondering.

@toomuchplor and I decided to do a little exchange of this fantastic fic, and this was the one I sent to her.

It's a long, long, long fic (274k) (and yet, I still didn't want it to end) and I couldn't decide if I wanted to bind it all in one volume and attempt to round it, or just leave it flat, even though it would be very thick, but then it occurred to me (or a friend suggested) that I could split it into two volumes!

So that's what I did. You know what was really cool? I divided it at the halfway point, after chapter 10, which worked out well. The page count was very similar, and the second volume had 11 chapters, so it was all very even.

But what I discovered was that the last line of chapter 10 is the same as the very last chapter of the book! I don't know if it was a coincidence or on purpose, but I thought it was neat. (I suppose that could be considered a spoiler which is why I'm not specifying what the actual sentence is, so please put this out of your mind if you haven't read this yet and you find yourself at the end of chapter 10.)

So anyway. Okay. I now had two volumes and had to decide how I wanted to differentiate them. I was going to do one white and one black, and while that would have looked cool, I fear it would have insinuated some kind of meaning (light vs dark) that isn't necessarily like, the first half vs the second half. And one of the ideas that had been knocking around my head was "searchlights". So that's where I went with the covers. I wanted all black, and I found a great sparkly black HTV (sorta starry nightish, you know) and went from there. I'm quite happy with how it came out!

Except I meant for the two searchlights to be facing away from each other when you put both volumes next to each other, but if that's the only mistake I made, I can live with that.

I'm especially proud of the silhouettes on the spine, they both started as photographs that I pulled into Adobe Capture and was able to turn into SVGs so they could be cut by my silhouette. And I'm extra proud of my Silhouette for keeping Harry's glasses intact. (I tried just finding clip art of silhouettes (too many uses of that word here) but for whatever reason, most silhouettes are of businessmen?!? Anyway. It all worked out.

The title pages for each volume are slightly different too. The first has one figure, the second has two. Just a little thing.

The bookmark charms are a little 1 and 2 I made with shrinky dink material.

More details:

Fanfic Classics Series ⏳🪐🌌 This batch of fanfiction deals with the multiverse!!! Time travel!!! Imminent thoughts about life and death!! Past lives and dreams of a future together — get ready to witness a love for the ages.

the earth from a distance by spqr

A Beginner’s Guide to the Afterlife by mcsyndrome

Us, infinite (unfortunately) by @thecouchsofa

"An Emerald In The Sky" by @corvuscrowned

In Every Universe by @skeptiquewrites

Our Little Life by @tackytigerfic

Dwelling by aideomai

there will be time, there will be time by @amywaterwings

Harry Potter and the Future He Doesn't Really Want, Thanks. by orphan_account

Everything is Relative to You by @thehoneybeet

The Star Splitter by @oflights

art credits + some cover commentary under the cut :)

[Podfic] Zoom by @tackytigerfic (M, 20 minutes)

Just a quick little fic for Harry's birthday.

Happy birthday, Tacky!

I hope your day is sweet as pie and filled to the brim with goodness. I hope you get to sit down with a cup of something warm and breathe. I hope you have your loved ones doting on you today and every day. 🤍

day 21 of @hprecfest — a fic rated M | previous recs

author rec! more importantly: tacky rec! evocative, poignant & mature (heh), @tackytigerfic's works are charmed slices of aching life. tacky has a gift for making a meal out of the mundane: their style is imbued with the hush of a glade, something quiet that burrows under your skin and expands there. writing about magic lends itself to the excitement of outlandish predicaments— fuck or die marriage bonds, werewolves, time travel— but i love how tacky takes these improbabilities as opportunities to explore the vulnerable and common humanity that fuels love, friendship, desire, grief. i'd take a chance on tacky's spin on every ship, every trope & every circumstance, purely because i'm convinced they'd take as good care of me as a reader as they do their brilliant, complicated, messy characters.

i chose tacky's M-rated works because i think they best demonstrate how narrative pleasure can, and often does, lie outside the graphic. for an action-oriented, fast-paced reader like me, fics that hold my attention through careful tension & hard-earned payoff are especially enthralling. everything tacky writes, regardless of rating, is glorious & an instant recommendation, but when i think of especially fascinating work with a rating that doesn't usually hold space in my preferences, it's these:

between the power lines (M, 3.2k)

For Harry Potter, all roads eventually lead to Draco Malfoy.

an elaboration & attestation to my personal maxim: to fall in or out of love with someone, take a trip with them. glory be that these two do, glory be that it's the former. this fic stretches and softens with every word, like resin in the sun.

the long fall (M, 3.6k)

It's supposed to be a simple house renovation, and maybe it's just the paint fumes, but Harry is feeling dizzy around Draco Malfoy. And what's the real meaning of family, anyway?

vignettes from a life & love that glow hotter with every change. every word exchanged carries the weight of so much history, care & consideration. the dynamic is sweet & achy, a take on new parenthood that leans entirely into the uncertainty & joy of changing realities.

last offices (M, 6.7k) (mcd)

It didn't seem fair that Malfoy was dead, and Harry was supposed to just keep on living without him.

i reread everything before reccing, but i couldn't bring myself to reread this one because of the sharp, acute devastation of it. pain, regret, grief, dialled up to the extreme and done shatteringly well. the non-linearity of this fic is especially cruel; the heartbreak is never allowed to settle. 100% recommended!

our little life (M, 7.2k)

Sometimes Harry dreams. Only they're not really dreams at all, and Malfoy is always in them. It's time travel, but not as we know it, and Harry just needs a good night's sleep.

entire lives woven into snippets of togetherness, the call of something distant yet inevitable. harry dreams of universes with draco, which is to say, harry dreams of universes where he's loved. also includes the absolutely stellar line: Harry wondered if there was any possible universe in which Malfoy wasn’t an absolute dick about his dad.

take the moon (M, 15k)

Harry Potter has always wanted a family of his own, and when a deadly blood curse forces him into a marriage bond with his best friend Draco Malfoy, it looks like he might just have found one. This isn't the story of the marriage. This is the story of two hurt and damaged men who learned how hard they could work for the sake of love.

two men who don't quite know how to allow what they want fully into their lives, a slow crunch of yearning, the even heat of a dynamic that holds itself away from the brink, brilliantly satisfying when they give into the fall.

Standing in the Way by @tackytigerfic (Rated E, 12,345)

Weasley sent his Patronus to Hogwarts. The little terrier leapt frantically down the Great Hall, threading through the tables until it reached the Headmistress, panting, tongue lolling.

Even the children knew there was something very wrong, Edward Lupin sitting up straight at the Hufflepuff table as the Patronus began to convey its message. Attack on the Ministry… wards falling… act of terrorism… magical traces…. Weasley’s voice rang out, calm as anything, nothing but the essential information.

And then, as the charm began to waver and flicker, its sound distorted like a Wireless going out of tune, his final warning. No magic, no brooms, stay where you are. I repeat, no magic—

February: 2,323,232 words read

- In a Year’s Turning - hoko_onchi (89,366)

- 9 1/2 Days - magpie_fngrl (69,600)

- Telling the Bees - hiimcibee (31,986)

- The Golden Boy - flightinflame (53,232)

- In Over My Head - greenisthecolour (184,128)

- We Can Be Pirates - cowboilikeme (356,948)

- What The Fuck Draco Malfoy - Silverhood (70,073)

- Broken Mind Fractured Soul - SensiblyTainted (370,079)

- Shadows Within The Light - SensiblyTainted (434,612)

- Flying With Tattered Wings - SensiblyTainted (59,544). (Guys, SensiblyTainted is SeriouslyTalented - it’s a big series, but it was so worth it!)

- The Scent of Soft Rains - dodgerkedavra (20,087)

- Underwater Love - melanie_bxx (26,839)

- Dear Uncle Plume - eidheann (16,266)

- Benevolence - XxTheDarkLordxX (11,034)

- A Little Less Than Civil - froggy-o (3,943)

- Brevem Conspectrum - lauren3210 (11,707)

- Starting Positions - bixgirl1 (8,224)

- Shades of You - BloodyFlammable (11,645)

- Ageless - EerieBarbarian (9,659)

- Good For You - dodgerkedavra (4,534)

- All of the Above - Iq_traintracks (2,778)

- Étoile des neiges’ - BloodyFlammable (32,577)

- Kings Crossing - Alphabet_City (42,726)

- Chasing Coffee - Yesimawriter (5,633)

- Little Love - Ladderofyears (33,522)

- Among the Elements - sweet_s0rr0w (8,303)

- I’ll Keep You (Safe and Sound) - arminaa (13,445)

- If You Miss It, Try Again - dodgerkedavra (23,948)

- Pull My Hair a Little Harder Please - batondecannelle (21,062)

- Sea Change - eleadore (40,000)

- You First, Loser - zeitgeistic (6,372)

- (Un)Calculated Risk - loveglowsinthedark (6,917)

- Full of Millions of Stars - alexmeg (14,705)(Sequel to A Big Black Sky… I basically cried the whole time.)

- Take the Moon - tackytiger (15,192)

- Five Little Things - bixgirl1 (6,197)

- Just a Ring - BeigeSocks (200,967) (Burned through this baby in like 2 days. POV Draco, add in some Jegulus? Wonderful.

- The Way You Say My Name - InnerLilith (5,382)