hephaestiions

[hephaestiions]

'24 retrospective

thank you, @kamaela & @hollyhawthorn for the tag on ruminations from 2024, we're going to pretend i'm not a whole week late to it.

sometime in— march?— i got high and thought— wouldn't it be fantastic if draco and harry did that too? started writing what became almost 7k words of porn with feelings about harry being taken care of, which marked a return to ao3 and my first fic since 2021. win! i posted some shorter, quicker stuff to tumblr, of which i particularly enjoyed writing this auror partners transfer request, about harry, lettuce & embroidery yarn, and grace.

it's been a year of figuring out style & character, what works, what doesn't, what holds weight & water, slips, comes back. which is mostly to say it's been a year of drafts, writing & scrapping, letting things marinate in docs, coming up with several thousand wips & resisting the urge to take down older fics and repost them in a style i agree with more now.

2024 was also the year of getting into reccing, which i've enjoyed far, far more than i expected. my three author reclists for plor, wolf & tacky were my favourite to do, i loved the immersive invite of them. given my need to devour back catalogues of every author i adore, i'm hoping to continue these; we are well and truly blessed with enough writers here to keep me going for a lifetime.

writing (mostly) individual recs for hprecfest was also absolutely glorious. i have so much to say about works that stick with me, and saying it all to get others to go delight in them was brilliantly fulfilling. the process made me write my own love letters to reccing & reccers & the light they are in fandom, which may be my own most cherished post. i don't always have the bandwidth to write or read new stuff, but showing love like this keeps me involved, immersed, and importantly, very happy.

i've read a lot this year & listing everything will unfortunately have us cataloguing the colours of the sky. instead, i'm going to make a list of what i consider my priority tbr of fics & authors, people & works i wanted to get around to this year, couldn't, want to gorge myself on soon.

@garagepaperback wrote 300k words in 9 works this year, and i need to read every one as soon as possible. their style demands savouring & i've saved up so much garagefic for when i have the time to do them justice. @eleadore writes such a deliciously abrasive, petulant drarry dynamic; i'm really, really looking forward to being in A Mood to cut my teeth on their diamonds. (additional shoutout to the remaining reads these two's pile with @yiiiiiiiikes25, reserved for when i need a good smut fix). i read @kamaela's got me started earlier in the year, fell in love with their sharp characters & sharper writing & now everything else they've written, but especially mirror, me is up, up there in needing to be read asap. everything i've read by @sleepstxtic has been fantastic, fantastic, but rush was especially spectacular & i am foaming at the mouth to get to the other two sports fics in the series.

@dodgerkedavra's clear, warm light looks absolutely epic, can't wait to sink my teeth into it (and everything else from dodger's catalogue i haven't read yet). @epitomereally's LA, who am i to love you? has some fantastic tags, a fascinating summary & been on my mfl for an age. this is also maybe-perhaps-potentially the year to work through @mintawasalreadytaken's tit for tat which sits at almost 400k & promises my favourite things (angst & porn), but even if not, it is the year to read the rest of minta's catalogue that i haven't gotten to yet.

& finally, i'm bad at wips, but i'm so very, very excited for @tackytigerfic's first watch of night to finish posting so i can swim around in it.

this is a v small sampling of everything i hope to read this year, i've left out so many wonderful, wonderful authors whom i will end up loving. the goal is to read slower, read steadier, take my time with craft & phrasing, work through catalogues i admire & leave myself space to appreciate with care & specificity.

in the other life of odds and ends and grad school and employment, it was a weird year, kind of a— nothing year? scales weren't tipped too far in either direction, which is different, which demands recalibration, which has left me time & energy in measures i usually don't have. dawn has broken over this fresh swivel around the sun and i'm allowing myself some slivers of tentative, brittle hope. it's new, and i'm putting stock in that being a good thing.

paging everyone i've mentioned above to tell me what you're hoping to do more of in 2025 (fandom/otherwise) if you'd like! cheerleading all of you from here <3

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was just organising my tbr when @hollyhawthorn's tag came through so here are 9 books for 2025 i'm excited to read (excluding required reading & theory):

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Hellooo honey!! For what I wanna know about you: rec me your 3 favorite fics (doesn't have to be drarry or even hp but literally just your 3 favorite fics).

If that's too difficult to narrow down, then how about your 3 favorite fic tropes?

hi phoebe!!!

you sent me this ask almost 2 years ago (sorry!) and part of the reason I didn't answer then (besides being horrible at following through with ask games) is that i find it so hard to pick a favourite!

most of the fics I read are drarry, and there's such a plethora of Good Food out there that it's really impossible to narrow it down at all. so I thought I'd share some fics that have been on my mind, recently!

Don't Fear the Reaper by Anonymous

this was my erised gift and I can't recommend it highly enough! it has everything I adore. I even sent it to my mom and she really enjoyed it, too.

this story is life affirming. it's about death, kind of. it's mostly about life, and how to live it. so many hilarious, delightful, wise moments.

Every Breath You Take by @hephaestiions

I've been chewing on my own MCD wip for a while now, and whenever I think about that theme this fic is always at the front of my mind. I think "Oh my darling" is branded on my heart forever now.

their relationship in this fic is in the tragic stage of near-total breakdown (think worse than divorce, because the love is still there), and Scorpius's POV shines.

Find New Ways by @skeptiquewrites

a gorgeous, heart-massaging meditation on marriage. prose that uplifts as it describes.

if anyone reads any of these after seeing this rec, please feel free to come chat with me about them or leave a comment!

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@kamaela tagged me to show y’all gifs with no titles from my favourite movies! as someone who grew up without a tv and has, till date, watched apprx 40 movies, this one’s going to be 🥲

paging anyone who hasn’t done this to tag me in your recs!

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spiked eggnog with a hint of veritaserum

for @itsphantasmagoria, merry christmas!! <3

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[11] d/s

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leyendecker-ish sherlock 🎻

kofi

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I’ll be good, I’ll be good (For all of the times I never could)

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Touch

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Remus Lupin

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“The ocean came up on their left, so close and so vast Jean wasn’t sure how the cars weren’t sliding off the road into it. (…) Maybe it was the tint in his visor, but the sky looked deep enough to get lost in. (…) Oh, he thought. It’s so big.”

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This is my first post and my first time on this app, I’m so confused 😭

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our dearest camilla

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So If any of of you want to see a lil more..... here's the link

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Day 27: smokin’ hot fic

📚 Trine by @yiiiiiiiikes25 / toyourdetriment

Draco/Harry/Teddy, 9.1 k, E

Summary:

Teddy throws a match.

I've found this fic via @hephaestiions’s gorgeous rec of this fic for day 13 prompt. Unfortunately, I was on a train on my way to work at that moment. So then of course I have been thinking about this fic ALL DAY. This ravishing art by @eleadore did not help. Not at all 😅

Regrettably, I do not have words to describe how fucking precious that fic was to me and how WORTH of my whole-day anticipation. It was everything I love in this ship and more and my literal bookmark on AO3 is just the below xd

I would simply suggest hephaestiions’s rec (linked above), there’s really nothing more I can say apart from emphasizing just how MUCH I love Draco being mad at Harry on Teddy’s behalf. And how wonderfully bratty Teddy is in this fic “Calling one Harry Potter, miraculously ready to fuck me? A mister Draco Malfoy alleges he handled in mere moments what I couldn’t in years.” Fucking flirt. “Are you out here, Potter, can you verify the—“ 🥵

This fic is part of the pile, and it truly is a pile of Good Shit™, so make sure to check that out!!

Honorable mention

To birdsofshore and her Euphoria which is just one of the hottest fics I’ve ever read. It’s one of those moments in your life when, as Scorp nicely put it in this very fic, you're "just staring and staring, and part of my mind is screaming, noooo, and the rest of it is saying, hell yes.”

Oh well, the heart wants, what is wants 😅 MIND THE TAGS but don't let them drive you away xd

Thank you for this smokin’ hot prompt @hprecfest and see you in the next one!

[hephaestiions]

Ron is background buzz, warm and honeyed solace, voice like a blanket, like a balm. Draco, though. The world is in serrated focus around him. 

Harry is— three sheets to the wind and a goopy mess at the kitchen counter where they’ve gathered for coffee. 

“I hadn’t thought it through,” Draco’s saying. “The matter of you being my boss’ younger brother.” The two of them have been talking for ages, a lulling rhythm. Harry hasn’t kept up with what they’re saying, words and phrases souping in and out of his grasp. “Maybe this encounter isn’t quite as calamitous as I thought.” 

“Cala— cal— calamitous,” Harry stumbles over Ron’s reply. “Who the fuck says that shit while drunk?” 

They both turn to him. “You’re drunk,” Ron says, so affectionate that Harry wants a hug, to be held in that glow. “If it didn’t mean being left alone with Malfoy here, I’d put you to bed.” 

Harry looks to Draco, anxious, but he doesn’t seem offended. Smirky, rather. “Right, yes, Potter, you’re all that’s standing between Weasley and I having a go right at my Aunt Walburga’s kitchen counter.” The smirk fades and the tips of his ears turn crimson. He shifts, taps his foot. “Like— a duel! With wands! Having a go at each other with our wands— oh, Merlin.” Draco’s shoulders come higher up by his ears with every word. 

“Maybe you should also be put to bed,” Ron says after a pause, low and amused and rich. 

“And would you tuck me in?” Draco asks and immediately bites his lip, hard. “Morgana, what is the matter with me today?”

“Today,” Harry mutters.

@kamaela tagged me to do trash tuesday/wip wednesday on this delicious snippet that had me frothing, drooling, snarling, etc (big boy auror turned needy mess! dear LORD). my contribution is the latest unedited snip from my @dronarryfest wip that i'm having a ball of a time writing. paging everyone who sees this & would like to share their trash or treasures!

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I love how, once neil clocks that it’s wymack at millport to recruit him, one of the first things neil thinks about is dan’s strength as the foxes’ captain. her perseverance and leadership skills are even evident to someone like neil who’s only watching or reading about games through media analysis that’s always skewed against the foxes