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So I'm reading Yuri on Ice fic again.
"Masha, it's 2021," you may say. "Masha, this fandom's been dead and gone for at least three years." Too bad! It's happening and I'm going to tell you all about it!
So how I got here was, a mutual linked to a fire emblem three houses fic she highly recommended, and I read it, and it was great, so I went through the author's posted fics to see if there's anything else in there I might like. And there was Yuri On Ice! (It's rated E but it's actually M.) And it was great, so as I usually do if I read something that really grabs me, I checked the author's bookmarks to see if they've been reading anything else I might also enjoy. And to my delight, Caramelized not only bookmarks fics they rec, but also adds commentary that explains why they enjoyed certain fics. So I chewed through their 45 YOI bookmarks like a caterpillar chewing through a pile of leaves.
Yuri on Ice is a very solid and tight story. A 12 episode anime isn't a lot of content for ficwriters to work from, there's no complicated fantasy worldbuilding to explore, not even a very large cast. The side characters get minimal development, but for the most part they don't feel like they really need more development. The pieces that make up the canon are very clearly defined, like lego blocks building a YOI-shaped house.
Which is why it's so fun for fanfic writers to disassemble that house and build a new one, or the same house with a different brick pattern, or this metaphor is getting away from me but you know what I mean right.
"Vicchan lives" is a popular AU tag in the fandom, not just because dogs dying is super sad and no one wants it to happen ever, but also because that event was what kicked off the entire plot in canon so if it never happened, how would that have changed the story? Would Yuuri have performed well at the GPF, and not gotten smashed at the banquet? Would he have fucked up anyway?
There are a lot of places in the story where someone could've done something differently and changed the entire flow of the narrative. Victor could've forgotten the banquet as well. Yuuri could've remembered it. Victor could've remembered, but not flown to Hasetsu. The triplets could've not filmed Yuuri skating. And yet, there's something so wonderful about watching Victor and Yuuri fall in love no matter how they get there, because they're just meant to be like that.
"Masha, it's 2021," you may say. "Masha, this fandom's been dead and gone for at least three years." Too bad! It's happening and I'm going to tell you all about it!
So how I got here was, a mutual linked to a fire emblem three houses fic she highly recommended, and I read it, and it was great, so I went through the author's posted fics to see if there's anything else in there I might like. And there was Yuri On Ice! (It's rated E but it's actually M.) And it was great, so as I usually do if I read something that really grabs me, I checked the author's bookmarks to see if they've been reading anything else I might also enjoy. And to my delight, Caramelized not only bookmarks fics they rec, but also adds commentary that explains why they enjoyed certain fics. So I chewed through their 45 YOI bookmarks like a caterpillar chewing through a pile of leaves.
Yuri on Ice is a very solid and tight story. A 12 episode anime isn't a lot of content for ficwriters to work from, there's no complicated fantasy worldbuilding to explore, not even a very large cast. The side characters get minimal development, but for the most part they don't feel like they really need more development. The pieces that make up the canon are very clearly defined, like lego blocks building a YOI-shaped house.
Which is why it's so fun for fanfic writers to disassemble that house and build a new one, or the same house with a different brick pattern, or this metaphor is getting away from me but you know what I mean right.
"Vicchan lives" is a popular AU tag in the fandom, not just because dogs dying is super sad and no one wants it to happen ever, but also because that event was what kicked off the entire plot in canon so if it never happened, how would that have changed the story? Would Yuuri have performed well at the GPF, and not gotten smashed at the banquet? Would he have fucked up anyway?
There are a lot of places in the story where someone could've done something differently and changed the entire flow of the narrative. Victor could've forgotten the banquet as well. Yuuri could've remembered it. Victor could've remembered, but not flown to Hasetsu. The triplets could've not filmed Yuuri skating. And yet, there's something so wonderful about watching Victor and Yuuri fall in love no matter how they get there, because they're just meant to be like that.
"something amazing happened and i am so sad" by Caramelized is a fic about what if Yuuri never went to Detroit and instead trained with Yakov, and how his relationship with Viktor could've developed differently if they'd met younger than in canon, and it's thoughtful and deliberate and fresh and I love it. One of the things I love about it, and about other YOI AU fics, is the way it handles the unintentional unreliability of Yuuri as a point of view character. When you watch the show for the first time you're like "why is Victor acting like that" until the end of episode 10 of 12, but in fic (written after episode 10 aired, naturally. Pre-reveal fics are hilarious but unintentionally so) you and the author both know what happened and Yuuri, whose head you're in, is the only one who doesn't. A good fic makes that dramatic irony so tense you can feel it in your bones, and it is so fun.
Even AUs fully divorced from canon, like fantasy or other celebrity AUs that use the canon beats like the blackout banquet event, can create Variations on the Theme that is Victor and Yuuri's love that feel compelling, interesting, and authentic. My favorite of those since the early days of the fandom will always be the 7 Days-inspired AU "lie to make me like you" by cityboys, a character and relationship study masterpiece of a fic.
Anyway, YOI is one of my favoritest things in the world, saved my life, got me back into fandom and fanfiction (both reading and writing) in a big way, my real life best friend described watching it for the first time with me as "meeting Masha's other best friend", and I'm glad there's so much good fic for it out there that lets me continue to experience these characters and their beautiful, bittersweet romance and love for figure skating.
Sometimes YOI fic authors are wrong about Russian stuff and that annoys me a lot but! subject for another post.
Even AUs fully divorced from canon, like fantasy or other celebrity AUs that use the canon beats like the blackout banquet event, can create Variations on the Theme that is Victor and Yuuri's love that feel compelling, interesting, and authentic. My favorite of those since the early days of the fandom will always be the 7 Days-inspired AU "lie to make me like you" by cityboys, a character and relationship study masterpiece of a fic.
Anyway, YOI is one of my favoritest things in the world, saved my life, got me back into fandom and fanfiction (both reading and writing) in a big way, my real life best friend described watching it for the first time with me as "meeting Masha's other best friend", and I'm glad there's so much good fic for it out there that lets me continue to experience these characters and their beautiful, bittersweet romance and love for figure skating.
Sometimes YOI fic authors are wrong about Russian stuff and that annoys me a lot but! subject for another post.