#hd-cluefest

[primavera-cerezos]

Fic claim: Violent Delights

Rated E | 20k words | Self-prompt for @hd-cluefest

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, blood and gore, murder, crime scenes, referenced child abuse, referenced animal abuse, moral ambiguity, intoxicated sex, death by strangulation, serial killings, graphic depictions of corpses, death of a child (off screen).

Enticements: Miserable Draco, super sexy/magically powerful Harry, switching, rimming, case fic, overuse of Romeo & Juliet quotes.

Summary:

Draco Malfoy's life should be going very well. He's engaged to a wonderful man and in line for the Head Auror job. He's been made lead investigator on a serial murder case, trying to figure out who is killing off the scum of the wizarding world, one by one.

So what if he's kind of miserable? Things always get better.

Right?

Read it on AO3

Yall. I wrote a 20k fic!!!

I know what you're thinking. Those warnings? Prima? Impossible. And you're right! I started writing this and then I had no idea how to make angst happen. Cue @vukovich, who read it and was like, "This is okay but you're gonna have to blow some shit up here, here, and here." Thank fuck for her. I would have written myself into so many walls if I didn't have Vuk in my head (and my DMs) telling me to be mean to my characters.

My other fantastic beta, without whose invaluable feedback I would have definitely given up on this, was @skeptiquewrites! I also have to thank @tontonguetonks for fixing my very sad French <3

Last, if you want to read this but the tags are a lot for you, I am more than happy to spoil it in any way you need.

[hd-cluefest]

👀The stakeout starts here — H/D Cluefest, coming soon... 🔎

This new anonymous Drarry fest is a celebration of the Mystery genre. 

Rules and Guidelines can be found here. 

Prompting will open on 1st November. The full calendar is available here.

 Your mods for this fest are p1013 🧤, thefifthbiscuit 🧐, and EvAEleanor 🕵️

[the-starryknight]

FIC REC: Cruel River

Author: @tinyhistory​ / aka Eleventy7 (unrevealed, part of @hd-cluefest​​) Rating: T Length: 67k Warnings: Graphic Descriptions of Violence Additional warnings:  Child Death (off-screen), Minor Character Deaths, Attempted Murder, Drowning, Strangulation, Hanging, Violence, Blood and Injury, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Gaslighting, Psychological Horror, Haunting, Ghosts, Memory Loss, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, War (off-screen)

Many thanks to @sitp-recs​ and @onbeinganangel​ for advice & feedback in writing this rec and to @fw00shy​ for letting me shout about this fic as I was reading it!

Summary: Draco inherits a castle deep in the Scottish highlands, and discovers it’s haunted by more than just ghosts.

I was sold from the first mention that this fic draws from elements of the Haunting series (Haunting of Hill House/Haunting of Bly Manor) and found myself head over heels in love with it from the first chapter.  These are just a few of the reasons why I loved it so dearly:

Complex, detailed, and compelling worldbuilding: Set in a non-magical world, we meet Draco soon after Lucius’ death and he is a beautiful Draco, all aristocratic poise and sharp wit. Though there is no Wizarding War looming in his past, there is a certain darkness that surrounds him, especially in his relationship with his father, who haunts this fic in more ways than one.

“Mr Malfoy,” Draco says. “My father is dead. Now I’m Mr Malfoy. You never called my father by his first name, did you?”  

Found family and re-finding family: Even without Hogwarts, there is that special and timeless bond between Draco & Harry that feels age-old and tinged with something slightly dark.  But Harry isn’t the only one Draco finds in the distant Scottish castle, there is also Ron and Hermione, Molly Weasley, and a brief appearance of Ginny and Luna (Linny!!! Property inspectors!!!) who each serve to make the world feel full.

“Luna specialises in wildlife conservation,” Ginny adds. “Or, as I like to tell people — she’s fauna, I’m flora. Well, shall we have a look?”

A slow and romantic build for Drarry: Handyman Harry is gentle and thoughtful, compelled to the castle despite his better instincts.  They have an immediate affinity, an undeniable mutual understanding. The author builds on this initial spark, drawing out their friendship and care for each other (bed sharing! chess playing! an absolutely terrifying case of mistaken identity!). Their new story mixes with a young Draco and Harry and a story even older than the both of them.

“Well...” Harry hesitates. “I hadn’t fallen asleep accidentally. I stayed on purpose. I just… had a feeling. That I might be needed. I’ve the same feeling tonight.”

This fic is richly written, poignant and atmospheric.  The author has created such a compelling story, full of rich and unusual characterizations, a world that feels novel-like in its depth and breadth, and gorgeous prose that sings with tension and drama and care.  Pick it up only when you have the hours to read the fic all the way through because you certainly won’t want to put it down.  

"Is treise dithis a dol thar an atha, na fad’o’ chèile.”

Read it here on Ao3 & reblog the fest post!

[hd-cluefest]

Cluefest Submission Guide 2021

Hi folks!

Here’s a handy guide to turning in your case files for H/D Clue Fest. Don’t worry if you’re not there yet — there’s still pretty much a whole month to go until the deadline. (that’s the 15th of February - drop us an email any time if you think you might need an extension)

All fics, art and podfics for Clue Fest will be hosted on AO3, in the Clue Fest 2021 collection, so you’ll need an AO3 account to submit. If you don’t already have one, we have a few available so drop us an email at [email protected] and we can get one sent out to you.

Clue Fest is an anonymous fest (Authors/Artists/Podficcers will be revealed on 15th April after all works have been posted) so we ask that you don’t post your work or anything to indicate which work is yours anywhere else until after the Reveal. We also ask participants not to reply to comments on their works until after the fest has finished too, so that nobody guesses who you are from your comment style. (Artists and Podficcers - although it might be clear which work is yours, we’d ask that you to stick to the same anonymity restrictions as the Fic writers in the interest of fairness)

Instructions under the cut!

Step One

Go to the collection (linked above), which should look like this:

Click the button on the top right which says “Post to Collection” — doing it this way means you’re much less likely to accidentally de-anon yourself.

Step Two

Enter your rating, warnings, categories and other tags. For more information on ratings and warning, you can click the little question marks next to each one. There’s also helpful information about tags here and a spreadsheet of common trigger tags made by the lovely @veelawings​ here.

Please take particular care to tag any potentially sensitive material/themes in your works — for example, the nature of the fest means there may be violent crimes described in the text.

Step Three

Add your title, summary, and any notes. There’s some good advice on writing summaries here. The notes section is for any extra information you might want to give about the fic, and a space where you can thank your alpha/beta readers. (so that you don’t accidentally give away any clues to your identity, please use initials or codenames while the fest is anonymous.)

An important step here is to add the Fest Mod account as a co-author. We won’t make any changes to your work, this just allows us to add a footer note about the fest and to update the posting date when your post. We will remove the mod account after reveals.

You can do this by checking the box that reads “add co-creators” typing “HD_cluefest” and selecting us from the drop-down.

Step Four

In Associations, next to “post to collections/challenges” H/D Cluefest 2021 should have been autofilled by AO3. If this hasn’t happened, please do so. This is the most important step in the process as posting to the collection is what ensures your fic will be anonymous.

This is also the part where you can mark that your fic is a podfic of another work, or gift a work to your prompter. Clue Fest isn’t a gift exchange, so this is completely optional. Please don’t gift the work to your prompter if the work contains anything that the prompter listed as a trigger/squick on the prompting form.

If your work is a multi-chapter fic, ticking the box for this will open up the option to add chapters. (more on this later)

There’s then a couple of privacy settings, which you’re welcome to use if it makes you more comfortable.

Step Five

Paste the text of your fic! Be aware that some strange things can happen when copy/pasting text from some programs into AO3. If you’re using google docs for instance, it may add unnecessary spaces or not copy over italics. There are a few workarounds for this, including the script linked here for converting your formatting to HTML.

For art and podfic, you will need to host your work elsewhere and embed it into AO3. If you need any help with this, get in touch.

Step Five (and a half)

If you’ve ticked the box for a multi-chapter work, there’ll now be a button up at the top right of the page to “add chapter”

Clicking this will take you to a page where you can add the text of the next chapter, add a chapter title and chapter summary, and add further chapters as needed.

Step Six

Click preview and have a look over your work to make sure everything looks ok, then take a deep breath and hit ‘Post’. While it’s anonymous, your work won’t show in your works page on A03 but don’t panic, it hasn’t vanished! You’ll see it if you click “works in collections”, and it will be listed on your statistics page.

Step Seven

Send us an email with the below info about your work, so we can use this as the header when we share your work on Tumblr. Please send the template below to [email protected]

Title:

Author/Artist/Podficcer: (AO3 username)

Tumblr URL: (if you have one, for reveals)

Prompt # or Self-Prompt:

Rating:

Word Count or Medium:

Warnings:

Summary: (or a short description of the artwork)

Link to the work:

Step Eight

Relax! We’ll take it from here.

[hd-cluefest]

Prompting opens Nov 1st

[hd-cluefest]

Fest Rules

Introducing H/D ClueFest

H/D ClueFest is an anonymous prompt-based Drarry fest which celebrates the Mystery genre.

Bring us your casefics and whodunnits and family intrigues. Bring us codes and ciphers, long-lost relatives, hardboiled detectives and elaborate schemes. Mysterious inheritances, spies, something on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite remember? You’re in the right place.

Please be aware that there may be adult themes in the prompts and in the works produced for the fest. Under 18’s may want to think carefully about whether to read and/or participate. Tags, warnings, and ratings are your friends!

How do you know if your work/idea fits the fest?

We’re open to both fic and art.

For fic - a mystery, and the characters’ attempts to solve it, should be central to the plot. What kind of mystery? That’s up to you, but to give you a flavour of what we’re looking for, it could be about:

a crime

a disappearance

a family secret

a hidden identity

a missing object

a conspiracy

lost memories

Art is harder to define, but should be in keeping with the theme of the fest and with the prompt you choose. We do expect drawings or illustrations, rather than banners or photo manipulations. If you’re not sure what you’re planning fits, please get in touch with the fest mods.

Prompting

Prompting will open 1st November 2020

Prompts will be submitted via an Airtable form

Prompts should include a key question to be answered, e.g. “What does Malfoy know about the recent string of murders?”, “Why is Potter late to the office every Thursday?”, “Who stole the House Cup”, “Harry can’t remember what he did last week, but he knows it has something to do with Draco. What’s that blond git hiding?”

We suggest keeping prompts brief and open-ended

Prompts won’t have a special request section, but will include a space for potential squicks or triggers

Closes 15th December 2020

Self-Prompting

Self-prompting is very welcome

Please don’t submit self-prompts through the prompting form

There will be an option on the claiming form to submit self-prompts

Claiming

Opens 1st December 2020

Each prompt can be claimed once for fic and once for art

Claiming will be done via an Airtable form

Collaborations are welcome - you can claim as a team/partnership

Closes 1st January 2021

Submissions

Due 15th February 2021

The minimum word count for fic is 1000 words

We accept podfic, but you must     - Have the author’s permission     - Pick a fic that is at least 1000 words     - Email the mods at [email protected] so we can verify the fic fits the fest theme

While you’re writing/drawing/creating your submission, and until reveals have gone up, please keep your work anonymous. This means not discussing it in public (e.g. Tumblr, Discord) or showing it to anyone, except for a reasonable number of alpha/beta reader(s)/cheerleaders

We will have a standarised fest watermark you can use if you want to keep your artwork anonymous, but we understand concerns over art reposting, so artists can use their own watermark if they wish to

All works must be beta read before submitting. If you’re having trouble finding a beta reader, please let us know and we will try to help

You can submit your work by posting it on AO3 and adding it to our AO3 collection - we’ll give full details on how to do this nearer the submissions deadline.

You’ll need to add the fest account (HD_Cluefest) as an author of the work, so we can update the date of your work when it posts

There’s no obligation to gift your fic/art to your prompter, but you can if you want to

If you need to drop out for some reason, please let us know as soon as possible

Get in touch as soon as you think you might need an extension, and we’ll see what we can do

Once you’ve submitted your work to the collection, email the Meddling Mods at [email protected] with the submissions header

Submissions Header

Title:

Author or Artist: (AO3)

Tumblr: (for reveals)

Prompt # or Self-Prompt:

Rating:

Word Count or Medium:

Warnings:

Summary: (or a short description of the artwork)

Link to the work:

Posting and Reveals

Posting starts 1st March 2021

On Sundays, there will be a wrap-up post of the week’s works

This is our first time running this fest, so we’re not sure yet exactly how long posting will be - it depends how many works we get

Reveals are tentatively set for 15th April 2021, but this is subject to change depending on how long posting lasts

Contacting the Mods

Please do not message the mods individually through Tumblr/Discord etc. about fest issues. You can reach us at [email protected]

- Those Meddling Mods: p1013, TheFifthBiscuit, EvAEleanor

[hd-cluefest]

Fest Calendar

Prompting: 1 November - 15 December 2020

Claiming: 1 December 2020 - 1 January 2021

Due: 15 February 2021

Posting: 1 March 2021

Reveals: 15 April 2021