yeuxverts00

[yeuxverts00]

erm I would like snippets of everything how do I choose 😭 but especially my emotional damage payment Cedarry (and the NottPott, and the Dean fic 😍🫴🏻)

If a single one of these had a shareable snippet I would be sending to you (it would probably already be in your inbox) so instead I’ll just talk about all of them.

I have waffled on the Cedarry because if I just make it a prequel one-shot I still have to live knowing how it ends and that feels a bit like punching myself in the heart. So. Maybe self-contained, ‘do not ask me about the butterfly implications of this’ AU set a few years prior where they are sent on various reconnaissance missions and have to go broom-flying over different parts of the Empire. Everyone lives! Maybe!

The NottPott has been in my head the longest, it is extremely silly. I just really want an HP version of the scene from the Spiderhunt episode of New Girl. Harry is reluctantly trying to convince Theo to romantically consider Hermione (who is really in love with Draco) while Theo thinks he’s trying to convince him to purchase whatever fun wizarding analog for a popcorn machine I come up with. Chaos ensues. I will probably call it Acromantula Hunt, it will be like 2000 words at most, expect to see it in 5 to 7 business years.

Dean Goes To Magical Architecture School — I just know in my heart Dean would be a great magical architect. Hermione can be there, she is probably trying to save the world through better urban planning, it will go poorly. Draco has paid a term’s worth of tuition purely because he wants to figure out how to build a lair inside a volcano.

[yeuxverts00]

Sinnerman 👀

Tomione/Post-apocalyptic scenario set sometime post second wizarding war and inspired by Nina Simone’s Sinnerman in which Hermione is attempting to fix the world and needs information from Tom Riddle in the past to do it. Consequential time travel makes my head hurt, so whatever this is it won’t be a fix-it.

There is a gigantic caveat on this one as I recently proposed marriage according to cultural customs of fanfic writers and asked neilistic if she’d like to write a Tomione with me when we’re done with the current project (maybe this next one won’t be 400K words!) (honestly the way we trend it will probably be longer💀). But no plan and/or title survives first contact with a co-writer (as it should be) so if this is the idea we end up working with it may get stripped for parts or cannibalized or what have you, or maybe we will write something entirely different, who’s to say. If it isn’t this though I will eventually write this one, I have too much Jörmungandr related brain-rot to not put it somewhere.

[yeuxverts00]

WIP Game

rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thanks to @malfoyesque and @zeebee3 for the tag!

I am a serial WIP monogamist / one WIP at a time kind of woman so my list is pretty short. Everything below either already has hundreds of thousands of words written on it already, OR one single scene and two pages worth of world building so I don’t forget.

The Lights That Burn

Bloodtoll

The Crack in Everything

Sinnerman

Beyond that I can barely count these as WIPs, they’re essentially just plot bunnies

Dean goes to magical architecture school

NottPott popcorn machine

A funeral and four weddings

A handful of one-shot what-if ‘AU of my AU’ scenarios from TLTB requested by my favorite people in the world as payment for the emotional damage I’ve caused them (including but not limited to a Theomione, a Sirimione, a Cedarry, and the Kingsley/Bellatrix literally no one has ever or will ever ask for)

Splitting the difference and tagging somewhere between four and eight people (and apologies if I’m repeat tagging anyone) @thetacowrites @b-lovedhunter @landbeorht @molivierposts @serenergen @asifyoucouldoutreadme

[yeuxverts00]

WIP Game!!

rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

ahah ahahaha ahahhahah ahahahahhahahaha this will be good. Thank you beautiful @zeebee3 for the tag!!

A Gentleman's Guide to Remaining Pure

Cakeverse

Deflower Draco - Dreomione

Deflower Draco - Easy H

Deflower Draco - KYWU Part 2

drugs

Durmbatons Draco

[title redacted until Daddyfest reveals 🤫]

Love Island sandbox

Miss Congeniality

Neville???

Overturned sandbox

Pilot

Reverse trope

Ronsy

Seven Minutes in Hell

Tell Me What You Want

The Sorrows of Young Malfoy

Untitled Document

Untitled Document

And.... sorry 20 people, you're being tagged. It's the rules, and I grew up in the 90s/00s. I heard all those chain mail stories and I'm not being cursed or whatever.

Tagging @driftycities @achromatics @molivierposts @b-lovedhunter @serpent-sortia-ao3 @morgan-magic @charingfae @yeuxverts00 @maidenrevenge @willowingscribe @viridianrynn @thetacowrites @autumnweeen @katbenimble @writer-swift-knight @landbeorht @so-scarlett-maroon @onebedtorulethemall @sultrynuns @loquaciousmskat

[yeuxverts00]

WIP Game

rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thank you @erin-orolin and @holygnocchi for the tag!

I am a chronic WIP-starter, as you'll see, so some of these were blessed with a few thousand words and a little pat on the head before being tucked to bed, but most of these get touched every few months as the mood strikes. Only a few are truly neglected children (looking at you B&O and NAMA, soz)

Titles are the absolute last thing I do because they're usually pulled from the body of the fic somewhere, which means I have to write the dang thing to figure out what to call it. So, good luck interpreting these 🤝

B&O

NAMA

YDIFM

UBGch3

Auror partners

bop it twist it pull it

cutecutefrog

DCch2

Good Dog

good job, mum

Hermione/Cormac

Hermione/Malfoy men

Inexperienced

NottPott

Susan fic

Textfic

Yorkshire Gold crackfic

Char bday SLs

teratophilia

Distraction

Panville

Marriage of Convenience

NHEA infidelity

Durmstrang

Salvus/Securus

Veela

Wankless

Finishing School

I don't think I have 28 friends on here (weep) so I will tag a handful and anyone else who wants to, consider yourself tagged by me! yay fun!

tagging @molivierposts @yeuxverts00 @youhavemyswordandmybow @malfoyesque @parksandfiction @morgan-magic @writer-swift-knight @aurorasleeps-27

[yeuxverts00]

(Art I did for Chapter 37 of The Lights That Burn)

He thinks about his plans. He’s closer. He’s been consolidating his own connections. Building his political scaffolding. Nearly there. He’ll save her.

No, her fingers say. Not plans. Memories.

He thinks about being warm. About coats and cloaks and costs. He thinks about his mother casting warming charms on him as a child. He thinks about the ways that exist to tell someone you love them.

I warm you and one day you’ll warm someone else.

He realises he’s never told her. Even now he doesn’t tell her, although she must know? And maybe he isn’t broken and maybe he hasn’t broken and maybe there will be hope for him like she carries inside herself. Like he swims in now.

He’s never spoken the words out loud. But he says it to her anyway.

And then he was back with her, his wand clenched in one hand, while the other drifted along the swell of her hip, the dip of her waist, the curve of her breast, the line of her neck. And all the while she kept fingers on the pulse of his mind, staring out of his eyes and back into her own, while he did the same.

He thought about a different kind of warmth this time. How she had a burning star inside her—the light of an entire sun. And when he kissed her, sometimes the sun was in him too.

He thought about how she would move her hands. The graceful twist of a wrist, a gesture of extension, a slow roll of the palm, her fingers dancing and crawling over each other like they were playing invisible piano keys. The silent melody would sign his name in the stars of her freckles—one day the dragon constellation realigning over her clavicle, the next on her cheek, or her forearm.

Each time an unspoken message.

I carry your name within me.

I have written you on every inch of my body.

I love you.

She didn’t say it out loud. But she said it anyway.

It was written on him too.

Do it, she whispered.

“Expecto Patronum,” he breathed back.

It flowed like a river. Like her river. Slowly and then faster, faster, until aethereal silver was pooling and swelling and rising—more than he had ever seen. It trickled across sheets and over his legs. Over hers, gathering momentum.

Blooming and unspooling behind her. Above her now. Looking down on them both. Coalescing and unfurling.

A wingspan that stretched across the entire width of the room.

He hadn’t known, and yet the knowledge was already there. The rightness yawned and awakened inside him along with the silvery spectral form that took its place at her back. Its maw was a crown. Its spread wings were her own. And the light limned every part of her with a backlit glow that coloured her hair the same as his white blond.

She wouldn’t turn her head—he knew with the same certainty as he knew his own thoughts that she was not ready to drop the threads that bound them yet. But it didn’t matter; she could see what he saw through his eyes.

He took in every silvered curve and the undeniable manifestation of their own love, and power, and joy. He knew he would remember her this way for as long as he walked the Earth. The heat of its breath seared itself into his mind.

His patronus was a dragon. And not only his. Hers. Theirs.

She was a fire-breather too.

[yeuxverts00]

Enemies to lovers, actions vs words is my fave characterization of Draco (or any MMC) and you do it perfectly in TLTB. Would you ever consider writing an original story? I'd read it a mill times like I do TLTB!

That is incredibly flattering, thank you! Yeah I also have brain worms over the specific sort of MMC that absolutely cannot, under any circumstance, allow himself to feel his feeling—it will be Very Bad, you see?—and someone comes along (the worst possible person, actually) and puts a small crack in this thing, whatever it is he’s telling himself he is using to protect himself from The Feeling, and now there’s a little bit of light getting in from the other side, but he’s gotta look away. And he’s going to keep shutting his eyes, and covering his face, and turning his head until this thing is totally obliterated, and he is finally forced to crack an eyelid under the full force of a very bright light in his face, and guess what? That’s just the beginning. Now he’s actually looking it, he’s acknowledged it, and so what? Doesn’t mean it’s fixed the problem, and it turns out maybe he was just a little bit right to think he should keep this shield up because with it gone Jesus Fucking Christ you are very intense about this, Sir. And so on.

In any case, original fiction isn’t something I would ever rule out if the right story came along or the right collaboration, or any of the thousands of other variables that have to align to make that a reality. The stories I’m most drawn to telling already lean fairly hard into AU territory, world-building, and the study of character archetype rather than these borrowed characters themselves, so I don’t necessarily see that as an issue, but on the other side of it there really are a lot of variables. I already have a very demanding career in a creative industry, and burnout is a real thing—there’s something to be said for not monetizing one’s hobbies.

Writing fanfic is very enjoyable! There’s no pressure, any deadlines are self-imposed, and at its most pure, it’s an incredible community made up of people who love the same blorbos, who want to share gifts that they’ve made with love, and are repaid with in love.

On top of that, I am very creatively fuelled by constraints. In my day job a project isn’t a real project until you know the details and the budget and the client’s goals and preferences and without those things it’s very boring. Where is the fun of a solution that doesn’t actually have problems it’s solving? The creative energy I get out of figuring out a way to superimpose a very AU sort of world onto the pre-existing constraints of HP and still make it feel rich, and textured and justifiable when held up next to canon is pretty significant to me. So all that to say, I’m not the sort of person to preemptively rule things out, but I have no immediate plans in that direction.

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 42 — The Lights That Burn

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57596311/chapters/157456792

[yeuxverts00]

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL!!! Collage is such a beautiful, versatile art and this is absolutely gorgeous. Red Heart!!! The hawthorn print! GAH, ALL OF IT! Chapter 42 was a very big deal to me and I am deeply honored by this, thank you so much @piedrafundamental

In honor of @yeuxverts00 earth-shattering chapter 42 of The Lights That Burn, I’ve made a collage to express and showcase the sheer power of that moment in the arena.

Works sourced:

Amphitiatri Romani, Wenceslaus Hollar, ca. 1650, The Met

Flicker and Gleam of Fire, Karl Schrag, 1959, Art Institute of Chicago

Amulet, 8th - 3rd century BCE, British Museum

Red Heart, David Goldes, 1985, Art Institute of Chicago

Chinese Hawthorn Print, 17th century, British Museum

Dragon, Spain, The Met

[yeuxverts00]

Hi! I can't put into words how amazing I think TLTB is. I am in awe of you and can't quite grasp how you have been able to put this together. I bow at your altar and beg for your to give me more chapters. (Since this is roman inspired, is a blood sacrifice required or will some food suffice?)

To my question, is now (before part 4) a good time to start a re-read, or is there another point up ahead where it will fit better? I have planned to do read it from the beginning before it ends (oh, the horror) and wondered if there is good point to do it. I have been along since the first chapter, and I tremble at the thought of this masterpiece ending.

Sending you all the love!

WOW, what encouraging and kind words to be offered on this lovely Tuesday afternoon, thank you very much!

As to how I put the story together I am a nerd about process and will happily discuss it at absolutely any time in [probably painful] detail, but since that wasn’t actually your question I’ll refrain for the time being.

I do love a good snack, and my writing time usually finds me Liz-Lemon-style working on my night cheese, but I think right now the only sacrifice required is (maybe unfortunately) your patience. We are getting there though! 12 chapters left (+ 1 faux chapter divider for the Part IV epigraph).

Without spoilers, I think right now would probably be an excellent time for a reread if you were looking to do that.

Reasons why (MAJOR spoilers for beyond Chapter 40), and a possible alternative (potentially a touch spoilery for a chapter coming up in Part IV) below the cut.

I have “there’s a heist in there somewhere” in my tags and that was ostensibly to broadly reference the ministry prison break at the end of Part II, but I always kind of considered Hermione’s actions at the end of Part III to be the real heist of the story. She doesn’t have a team backing her up this time, and she’s got a lot less time to plan, but she puts that plan in place based on a lot of breadcrumbs she’s gathered over the course of the fic, carries it through, heists herself and GTFOs. I think that a reread from the beginning might make sense at this point so you can see where some of those breadcrumbs (my ‘Chekov’s everything’ I guess) entered the picture. You also may have gathered that Part IV is going to involve a bit of a time jump and there is a touch of a fresh start there that makes this a logical place for that.

However, I will say that there’s another chapter that possibly makes sense, and it’s primarily because it required me to do my own reread while I was writing it. There are some chapters, usually the more actiony ones for me, that tend to feel very shit while writing them. When Neilistic and I alpha for each other, we have a joke by now where after sending the other person a chapter or scene we instruct/ask to pitch it/laptop/ourselves out a [low] window. Usually, with a lot of reassurance and a bit of distance, the chapter will actually read great, but sometimes you will be very gently told some stuff needs another look.

This was Chapter 52 for me, and although I can generally bang out a 5K chapter draft in a few days, it took me a couple weeks, because after the first unsatisfactory pass I went back and reread, not from the beginning, but starting at Part III, and I think refreshing myself on all the events of how it played out served the chapter really well. I ended up adding about 2K words, which is what happens whenever I “edit” anything.

Beyond that, there is some backstory information more related to a few side characters in the coming chapters that details in a reread might be more enjoyable to experience after you know what to look for, but totally up to you.

Thank you once again for such a lovely message—it’s very wonderful to know you’ve been along for the ride since the very beginning, and I wish you all the love back!

[yeuxverts00]

U didn’t post an excerpt from this week’s chapter on blueskyy :,((

I did not, it’s true! It turns out there is absolutely no part of Chapter 43 that I could post without massive spoilers, so you have my apology there, but the good news is that it will be up in approximately 15 hours in its entirety 💚

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 41 — The Lights That Burn

Wherein things are looking a bit grim for Hermione

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57596311/chapters/157456705

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 40 — The Lights That Burn

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57596311/chapters/157456624

[yeuxverts00]

Chapter 39 — The Lights That Burn

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57596311/chapters/157456534

[yeuxverts00]

Watching the mummy 1999 for shits and giggles, thought it'd be fun to bitch abt the inaccurate hieroglyphs now that I know smth abt all that. Disappointed and disgusted to find out that they hired an egyptologist consultant and the hieroglyphs are actually well done. Night ruined

[yeuxverts00]

I love TLTB!! The chapters always go by so fast it feels like i wait all week only for them to end as soon as i start reading 😭😭 that’s how good the story is, i usually love short chapters but with this story even if every chapter was 15k words i’d still want more by the end

That is a truly lovely compliment to receive, thank you so much!

Chapter lengths are a funny thing, aren’t they? As a reader I do love a nice hefty boi chapter — if I’m following a WIP regularly there is nothing so delightful as seeing an email in my inbox that says the chapter is 15K+ (Sidenote to say that I know there is theoretically an extension that does this, but I really wish chapter length was available information somewhere on AO3. Obviously the information exists, because it shows up in a subscription email, but that’s the only place you can find it.) But I know there are readers out there who do things like read on their lunch break, or the train, and something that long might mean their experience is a bit interrupted.

As a writer, all things being equal, I tend to gravitate towards chapter lengths around 5K. I usually have a least a couple main things I’ll want to focus on in a chapter, whether that be a particular character moment or event or what have you, and I find I generally need between 1500-3500 words for each. I’m a really strong proponent of a chapter being however long feels right though. On the project I’m currently co-writing with neilistic our chapter lengths are trending way longer (because we are both real fucking wordy and we are covering more like 3-4 of whatever those main things are per chapter).

I am very curious to find out how TLTB will read for people once the rest of it is posted and people can read it at a faster clip — I intentionally tried to pace it fairly relentlessly, and I suspect that may lend itself to longer sittings with it, but who knows.

On a somewhat tangential note, chapter length can also be pretty consequential to anyone attempting to do a podfic of someone’s work. I haven’t really mentioned this much, but since the information is technically out there, my very lovely and talented friend PandaPatronus is currently at the beginning stages of working on a podfic for TLTB, and shared with me one of the most visually satisfying spreadsheets I’ve ever seen in my life. She told me that TLTB is the most consistent chapter-length fic she has worked on so far (which matters when you are formulating an attack plan as to recording something, but also good to have an idea how long you’re going to need to be speaking out loud. For reference, 8K translates to about an hour long recording for her).

A screen grab from said visually satisfying spreadsheet (whose aesthetics truly soothed the ridges of my brain) below the cut:

[yeuxverts00]

okay but the American education system literally didn't tell us how to defend against horse archers