'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