A Supremely Black Tai Affair

Fandom. Science. Lethal Diseases. Stuff!

[setissma]

indigo

I... think some people might still follow me on here?

If yes: 130K of Harry/Draco friends to lovers/single dads/everyone knows they're dating but them, just because the world is on fire. Enjoy. Or something.

indigo, harry/draco, all kinds of NC-17, 130K.

Draco had at least four folders open on his desk, at least one of which contained a number of graphic photographs of a homicide scene. He sighed. “I’m in the middle of this. And the fact that they’re willing to let me verify it is, in fact, an indication that they’re telling the truth.” Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, not once in your entire career has a voluntary alibi verification turned out to be deceptive, it’s a criminal waste of resources, we ought to be using the forensic legilimency department for matters that only they can address.”

Draco leaned back in his chair. “It’s almost as if I’ve attempted to make this point before.”

“It’s almost as if the Ministry doesn’t share your opinion on it,” Harry countered. “It’ll take five minutes.”

[setissma]

counterpoint

Hello, crazy people of tumblr! If you're like, "Man, I haven't seen this chick here in 2.5 years, I thought she quit existing," you'd be 100% correct. I've been frontline-COVID-healthcare-worker-ing it up, in all the worst possible ways. The downside: too busy attempting to save lives to write things. The upside: I have chipped away at what just might be the most ridiculous fic I have ever written. Enter: 62,000 words of Harry Potter x Pern AU. I have telepathic dragons. I have Hermione/Draco. I have Harry being something of a full time disaster. (If you have read the books, you should probably be aware that Harry is absolutely a full time disaster.) You don't have to have read Pern to read this. A quick wikipedia search or that one book you read like 20 years ago will be just fine. Please heed the content warning at the front: you can trust me to write a story with actual consent, but you can't trust me to avoid Brit-pick triggering word spellings such as "color" and "favorite." counterpoint, draco/hermione, explicit, 62,000 words. It was cold on the far side of the mountain, even in summer, but the enormous rocks held the sun’s heat late into the day. Sometimes, when the whole thing felt too impossible, Hermione took a book and went to watch the afternoon storms roll in across the plains and into the valley.

[setissma]

Umm, I got bored and combined like four fandom cliches just because I could. Have some short holiday fluff. No promises on quality, it was written during weekend conference calls. (I have like eighteen fics in my “to finish” folder where some combination of people get snowed in. I finally finished one! Look at me go.) Merry, Draco/Hermione, R, 4200 words.

“I’m not actually sure Harry’s coming,” Hermione said, looking out the window again. “You’d think after an entire decade with magic, he’d have figured out how to use a portkey.”

[setissma]

I was eating pho with friends a month ago, and there were these people on a first date next to us having the world’s most intense discussion about their polyamorous relationship boundaries. And I was like, “Hah, people in real life do this in Vietnamese restaurants, I can totally do it in fanfic.” Someone also pointed out in comments a while ago that I never add Draco to an existing Harry/Hermione relationship, which I found intriguing.

So I then took the brilliant step of combining like three Love Actually storylines with a weird dose of Red, White, and Royal Blue into an excessively long non-magical AU. Um. I don’t really know. It just kind of happened. Things this fic has: 1. Tumblr jokes. 2. Texting. 3. Harry as the prime minister and Draco as the British prince BECAUSE I CAN AND IT’S CHRISTMAS. 4. Draco being adorably awkward and anxious at all times. 5. Talking about relationships. 6. It’s like only dialogue again, but at this point, that is on brand for me. Things this fic does not have: 1. Magic, which is deeply annoying when you’ve spent literally a decade being able to write someone summoning a wine glass and now have to physically have them walk into a kitchen. 2. NO CASUAL SEX, which is not on brand for me Merry Christmas! Camelot, Harry/Draco/Hermione, NC-17, 23,000 words “I was…” Draco was watching her in the dim glow coming from the streetlight just outside the window. “I was his first call when something happened in the middle of the night. I was the first person he texted when the plane touched down. I got all his secrets. I knew him by heart. And then you came along.”

[setissma]

Look! I wrote another coda for Vendetta that is literally longer than Vendetta. Hold my beer. Here is my open disclaimer: I know Harry/Pansy is not the pairing you hope and dream of from me. I know you saw this post and were like, “Yay! A new fic!” and then looked at it more closely and felt vaguely horrified that I wrote something that didn’t involve Draco OR Hermione. But I do not care, because this is a sidebar ship that brings me excessive joy. Here is my secondary disclaimer: this entire fic is dialogue. If you hate that, let’s be honest, you may want to abandon ship on reading anything from me ever again. But I DID try to use the word “said” significantly less, so at least some of you will be happy. Maybe. Probably. For the people in comments who expressed enthusiasm for this idea: this one is for you. Freefall, Harry/Pansy, R, 13300 words. Harry checked his watch for a third time. Pansy was actively tapping her foot, looking annoyed, and when she saw him do it, she downed the rest of her drink. “I’m calling it,” she said. “Either something came up at work or they’re shagging in some utterly inappropriate place and forgot about dinner.”

[setissma]

Everyone is always like, “What is the best thing you’ve ever written?” That is hard for an author to answer, people! I love pieces of everything. But, if forced, I would probably say Vendetta. So owing to the fact that it’s my favorite (and the version of Draco in my head that I like best) I decided I wanted to go mess around in that universe some more.

I offer fair warning that if you don’t like my dialogue only stuff, you are REALLY NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS, so skip it. (Do not read this and then comment with, “But I wish there was less dialogue and more introspection!” You have been warned.) Also, it probably makes absolutely no sense unless you read Vendetta first, so go do that.

Foundation, Draco/Hermione, R, 5300 words. “I know I said I didn’t mind the books,” Draco said, leaning against the porch railing, “but that was eight boxes ago. And before you told me that I had to carry them in.”

[setissma]

Hi, strangers. I disappeared for about a year due to my overwhelmingly taxing (but also overwhelmingly great!) job, and then I basically worked on seven different fics simultaneously. This makes it super challenging to finish anything. You know how all those productivity seminars told you that multitasking was the root of all evil? Yes. Yes, they were correct. Happy Valentine’s Day! This is quite possibly the most hilariously dumb thing I’ve ever written. “What does one do with the dumb sexy vampire cliche in Harry Potter World?” I thought to myself, at some point, and this emerged. 1. Vampire sex needs more consent, yo. 2. I realized in the course of writing this that basically everything I write involves casual sex turning into an actual thing. Why is that? I have no clue. 3. JKR had this interview where she was comparing the dangers of Ye Old Horcrux Diary to a cell phone, and I was like, wait, wait, can I? CAN I WRITE WIZARDING TEXTING?! 4. As a corollary to #3, if you hate my dialogue only stuff, you are REALLY going to hate this fic.

Sundown, Hermione/Draco, R, 11,100 words. “'We’ll just go on this delightful missing-persons case in the Carpathians,’ they said,” Pansy said. “'It will be the perfect opportunity to continue with our cavalier attitude toward authority and tendency toward reckless behavior,’ they said.”  

[setissma]

Downside: I started a new job last week that includes a two hour commute, so I basically have time to make dinner and collapse into bed face first after work. I have thus become an incredibly slow writer. Upside: the thing I am working on (slowly) is pretty great. What’s that, you say? I keep writing everyone as stable and thirty and it’s incredibly boring? Totally going the teenager route. Everyone is twice as dumb as usual and about four thousand times more stupid about sex.* But, I mean, as a consolation prize, there are dragons. * If you thought you didn’t need Draco Malfoy being generally hopeless about everything and getting intensely flustered about second base**, you thought incorrectly. ** British people, the fact that I can’t use the American baseball sex metaphor ruins my life on a regular basis. Why don’t you have baseball? Why has no one come up with some sort of equivalent with rugby or cricket or some other Very British sport? Damn you all.

[setissma]

I have a 20,000 word H/D/H fic that I stuck in the “abandon” folder because I couldn’t figure out how to finish it, except now I’m spending my Saturday afternoon trying to figure out how to finish it because it has a really witty joke about lethifolds that I can’t seem to work into anything else. If you ever wondered about my writing process, it’s pretty much a) googling poisonous plants for the 4000th time so I don’t accidentally reuse one and b) laughing at my own really bad jokes. PS. No one panic, the two things I’m procrastinating on are both Hermione/Draco. At least one of them will get finished eventually. Right? Right. PPS. I know Tumblr isn’t livejournal, but whatever. Sometimes I want to update the world on my thoughts instead of sharing photos of attractive humans and cool interior design ideas. I’m old school, clearly.

[setissma]

Sometimes, people leave comments on my fic, and sometimes those comments are secretly inspirational. So thanks to a) to whomever said, “I only ever read H/D/H fics where Harry and Hermione are together first, I haven’t seen the other pairings much!” and b) to the person who resulted in me commenting, “This isn’t the fic where they get together through casual threesomes!” This fic is also c) owes things to all the people who were like, “Ooh, hot sex!” at all the fade-to-black scenes in Vendetta. (I was initially like, “Sex? Where? What are you people talking about?”) So, you know, I pretty much combined all these ideas and went, “Here, hold my beer.” Ways this is like Vendetta: there is literally only dialogue and actions. You have been warned. Ways this is not like Vendetta: you should also be warned that I decided to write something where everyone was a functional adult. This fic is very lacking in drama and angst. It is not, however, lacking in sex. There is a lot of sex. Voussoir, Harry/Draco/Hermione, NC-17, 13,000 words. “So,” Draco said. “Are you coming over?” He was leaning against the bar, watching Harry across the room. “I don’t know,” Hermione said. “Are you asking?”

[setissma]

Happy New Year! I’m starting 2018 by meeting all your needs on the “pretending to be married while undercover Aurors” fic front. What can I say? I like cliches.

PS. In the Word document of fic ideas, this one was, “Hermione likes sex! SECRET AGENT SPIES!!! Beach! What the hell do wizards go long term undercover for???” I feel like this might still be a decent summary. PPS. This fic has a fox animagus (GUESS WHO) but literally zero fox puns. None. Zip. Zilch. Do you know how much restraint that took, people? I deserve a commendation.

Dépaysement, Hermione/Draco, NC-17, 35500 words.

“We’re actually banking on the media attention,” Harry said, mildly. “I don’t want you going as someone else.”

“She’s going to have to go with someone else,” Malfoy said. “End of story.”

[setissma]

Merry Christmas! Here’s that Avalanche coda I kept promising. (I’m trying to finish two other things. Will that happen by Christmas? WHO KNOWS!) Also, this contains what I feel is the funniest line I have ever written. I have laughed every time I’ve done an editing read-through. (Harry being an irreverent smart ass is basically my favorite thing to write.)

Crystalline, Hermione/Draco, 4100 words, PG-13.

[setissma]

I have three 15-20K+ fics that are done except for sex scenes. Would you like to guess what I am writing tonight? If your guess is “starting a fourth one because sex scenes contain basically no dialogue and are really boring to write and I hate them,” you would be 100% correct. 

[setissma]

1. How many Christmas fics is it possible for me to work on simultaneously? I don’t know, I don’t appear to have reached an upper limit yet. 2. This process would probably be a lot easier if I stopped using file names such as “hdh_something” or “christmasthing1″or “christmasthing2″or  “maybechristmasthing.” 3. As a delightful bonus, I pulled this stunt last year, so I have badly named files from 2016 too. Woo! 4. My plan is to win and profit!

[setissma]

I wrote like 15K of this one thing, decided I didn’t like it, and am now up to 7K on this other thing. I should just combine them, and then I could have like 22K of have-a-threesome-for-Christmas plus ridiculous-fic-trope-Draco/Hermione-Auroring thing. No one’s going to notice that switch in the middle.

[setissma]

The problem with finishing a bunch of stuff in a row is that your “ideas! to do!” folder turns into a wasteland of things a) you have poached for the stuff you just wrote or b) things you didn’t want to write in the first place. I need ideas, people. I will take literally anything. Jobs! Relationship status weirdness! Themes! Settings! Plants you really like! Otherwise, based on my ideas folder, I am going to throw together hate sex, the Amazon rainforest, and undercover work. (I have a PDF in there on electric eel taxonomy and I’m not afraid to use it. Actually, I’m pretty sure that was an inadvertent save into the wrong folder, but still.) That’s not going to end well. Please save me from myself and reply to this or send me an ask with ideas. Something. Anything. No promises I will use it, but it will at least keep me from writing undercover botany.

[setissma]

Look. I did this thing. It was meant to be a, you know, writing exercise. Growth! Development! Better skills! Except now it’s a 12,000 word writing exercise, so screw it. I was trying to see how much characterization I could get across through dialogue alone! ...then I wrote an entire fic that is exclusively actions and dialogue. I don’t know, man. I really don’t. This fic: a) spends literally no time inside anyone’s head, ever, and b) is in competition for the most off-screen sex scenes I could manage in 12,000 words. Vendetta, Hermione/Draco, R, 12,700 words. “Well,” Hermione said. “That was…” “A spectacularly bad idea?” Draco said.