#tackytiger

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

Just a quick little fic for Harry's birthday.

"First Watch of Night" by @tackytigerfic

I read this as it was being posted and it is such a well-crafted story!

Harry Potter defeated Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts on May 2nd, 1998. But what if he didn't? Seven years after the Battle, and Harry is locked in a war he can't seem to win. The last thing he needs is one Draco Malfoy arriving into his HQ to disrupt everything—let alone two Draco Malfoys.

This book is heavy! I made the font 1pt smaller than what I usually go with and it still ended up at nearly 700 pages.

More images and me yappin' under the cut :)

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:

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.

Day 5: a romantic fic

📚 Wield Me by @tackytigerfic

Draco/Harry + Teddy (or as the author has smartly labelled it – „a Drarry fic but with some Teddy kissing”), 10k, E

Summary:

Draco Malfoy, blacksmith, is renowned through the magical world for his skill and exquisite creations. He could quite easily spend the rest of his days making pretty trinkets for the fae court, and being handsomely rewarded for the privilege. But why take the easy route when instead he could get involved in a dangerous mission with Unspeakable Harry Potter (who also happens to be Draco's... well, he's something, isn't he? A little story about learning to strike while the iron is hot.

Hiiiiiii, I am a bit behind schedule, but I’m still here!! And it’s all Tacky’s fault to be honest, whole of my fic part of brain was taken hostage by their newest WIP First Watch of Night. Go and check it out so you can understand my poor brain’s state of mind.

Anyway! For today’s (eee 3 days ago's? 😇) prompt I have chosen another one of Tacky’s stories, which I have inhaled some time ago and which hasn’t left my (poor, poor) brain since. I was a bit hesitant about Teddy’s involvement before I started it and after, well... I have been converted to Drarry + Teddy triad forever. It has been my obsession from this very day :D

I love a good competent boys fic and competent craftsman is even better. And here, all three of them tick the box in their own way. I love the striking difference between Harry and Draco who are mature and more down-to-earth while Teddy is boisterous, fearless (in an afraid-but-still-does-it way). With a hint of ignorance even, typical for his age and so like Harry whe he was his age.

Long story short, Draco makes a sword for Teddy, at Harry’s request. The way the creation process is thought of and described is magical all in itself. My favourtie part is, of course, that it demands the magical involvement of all three of them. Not to mention all the flower symbolism for which I have a special soft place in my heart:

„Lupin flowerheads, of course. Yarrow for protection, and courage. Sunflowers—a bit on the nose, Draco thought, but they didn’t have to be subtle about this. Celandine too, for escape, Draco reciting the names and meaning of each blossom as they took it in turns to drop them into the dark water.”

„(...) azaleas for homesickness and the desire to return to a place of safety, yellow roses for family. Not to mention all the runework they had spent hours working on. Draco rolled his eyes at them. Othala. Harry had traced it over and over in the water, and then Draco had hammered the essence of it into the metal with his sweat and his fire. Homecoming.”

Not to mention the sword has the wolf’s head pommel, contains grains of stag horn and Remus’s wedding band. The blade’s name is Lux and it’s a she, PLEASE SOMEONE DRAW IT.

The very idea of why they need the sword is a fandom special, lots of us masterminding about this particular mystery. Reading this text, I thought this mission could actually work. Such a smart idea! I don’t want to spoil the details, so you’ll have to go and read it for yourself to find out :D PLUS, I love the symbollism of Teddy going into this mission with vital artifacts from both Harry and Draco. It gives the protection sentiment - I would personally love to palpably have something from the man (men xd) I love, were I to leave for whatever reason. It would provide reassurance, I think, without them even being one-of-a-kind magical artifacts.

Anyway, if producing and sharing something for protection of your loved ones is not the very definition of romantic, then I really don’t know what is 😅

Spoilers under the cut with some of my favourite quotes, mainly revolving around the H/D+T dynamics. There’s a lot, so think hard about reading on, maybe it’s just better to go ahead and have a quick read, it’s 10k after all, and what’s that for us, professional readers 😂

Thanks a lot for today @hprecfest and @tackytigerfic and see you in the next one!

🌻🌺🌾 ᛟ 🌒⚡🐺

After way too long on my marked for later, I finally read Modern Love by @tackytigerfic, and have to exclaim, what was I doing with my time before this??

This is a story that is as gentle as it is intense, as general as it is intimate, as grounded as it is idealistic.

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. 🤍