Yuri!!! on Ice Fanfic

Art by YukariKitsune9

One of the reasons I don’t try to keep up with a lot of fandoms is that new fandoms tend to derail me from existing projects. In this case, I was working on A Lon Story in late 2015 and early 2016, got derailed by Merlin, got derailed from Merlin by Check Please, and got derailed from Check Please by these ridiculous boys in love doing ice sport, to quote Ngozi.

Check Please and Yuri on Ice marked a sea change for me in how I approach fanfic. It used to be that all of my fanfic was either filling in plot holes or canon divergent because I didn’t like what the writers did in canon. In both of my current obsessions, I love the source work, and am working beyond the canon to explore where I thought the stories might go. In the case of Yuri on Ice, the finale left us with a satisfying story arc, but a lot of questions, and I took a more real-world approach in tackling those questions.

In this fandom, all my stories are part of a larger arc. The featured image here is from one of the last stories in the series and was done by YukariKitsune9 as part of a big bang project.

Translations on Ice

Yuuri and Victor sort out their communication breakdowns after Season 1, but then what? This series takes place in a world more closely adjacent to ours, where homophobia exists, Russia as a political entity is Not Friendly, and our skaters have to learn to find their way on an unbeaten path.

Having friends in high places (specifically a Gulfstream G650 private airplane) helps. It’s much easier to find yourself when you have a way of getting places quickly in a pinch.

This spans from the end of Season 1 through late spring of 2018, and follows Victor, Yuuri and Yuri (and friends) through the busiest, best, and most difficult years of their lives.

It is approximately 97% canon-compliant for season 1. The largest point of divergence is that in this version of the story, homophobia exists and the political situation is roughly what we have now.

The series as a whole is complex, with a variety of smut, fluff and the occasional helping of angst. It is, ultimately, a happy story, but it is not an easy one.

Check Please Fanfic

I don’t have a lot of art for my Check Please fanfic, which is surprising, given that I have so many stories in the fandom. In most fandoms, I will do one long story or a long series of stories, all within the same universe. Check, Please! has inspired me so many times, in big was and in small, that it is by far my biggest category on AO3.

This art is for my newest Check Please fic, as of this writing, a project I did for Fandom Loves Puerto Rico. The prompt was hilarious and detailed enough that I was able to churn out about 5000 words in a few hours, once the preliminary discussion was over about what the prompt would entail. What a joy to write!

Just Guys Baking Pies

Josh Urben is just a guy from Ohio who wants to play hockey in the NHL. It’s an honor to stay with Jack Zimmermann during his rookie year. He never believed all that gossip anyway. And he has the nicest roommate, who is such an amazing cook. They’re such good friends! If only they’d stop trying to get Josh on social media…

My longer series is one I started in March of 2016, while I was in the middle of writing my Merlin fic. It’s a much more complex, serious set of stories about coming out, going public, parenting and finding ways to happiness, even when the situation is terrible and overwhelming. Mind the tags on AO3!

Actually, I Do Make the Rules

Mama Bittle’s Rule Number One

Rule number one is that Mama Loves You. Maybe Dicky has forgotten that? Suzanne Bittle decides it’s time to remind him. Of that, and that nothing on the internet is ever private.

Halo Violations and Defensive Holding: Coach’s Rules

“My son is gay, and he’s the most caring, kind, gentle soul I’ve ever known, and I’d much rather sit in hell with him forever than spend a moment in a heaven that included someone as hateful as you.”

“I’ve got kids dying here, killing themselves, getting beaten to death, not even for being gay, but because someone said they might be gay.”

“We don’t treat people like that. We don’t let our friends treat people like that. We don’t let people get treated that way.”

Equal Protection: School Rules

“It doesn’t matter here on this campus if you believe that homosexuality is a sin, or if you think it is the best thing since the invention of the spray tan. The fact of the matter is that gay and lesbian and bisexual people exist. … And everyone, every single student has a right to come to this school and learn without harassment, no matter how different they are from the good ‘ol strappin’ southern white boys we glorify so readily here.”

“I have spent twenty years keeping quiet about the things I’ve seen. I will not be quiet about it for another day. I call myself a decent man. I hear people every day talking about how important manners are in the South. How we are good and moral and superior because of that morality. And I want to believe it. I want to see it. And I think it’s time we stop paying lip service to the idea that we are decent people and start actually acting like decent people.”

“The difference between life and death isn’t who they are. It’s who you are. You can be a hero, or a villain here. There are no innocent bystanders.”

Rule Number Two

“You’re telling me that Jack Zimmermann scores a hat trick every time that boy shows up at a game?”

“I like watching him score,” Bitty said. “I guess he scores a little more when I’m there?”

Jack coughed. Bitty blushed. “Goals. He scores goals when I’m there.”

In which the media is TRYING, okay? And our heroes take control.

Broken Rules

Sometimes life changes really quickly. Sometimes everything happens at once. Sometimes the worst things and the best things are intertwined. Sometimes there are things that can’t be fixed, can’t be solved, only survived.

Or: This is what happens when I blithely decide, “Oh, well, at least they wouldn’t end up in THAT situation,” and then my brain explains to me exactly how they COULD.

Healing Rules

Directly following Broken Rules, our heroes come to grips with a new reality.

There are more short pieces in the fandom, but these are the main stories. They contain many gay, lesbian, and bi characters, as well as several trans and nonbinary characters and a main OC in the later stories who is aro/ace. There are also a number of PoC characters both canon and OC.

Complementarity, Etc.—The Merlin Fic

Merlin dressed in ornate robes, holding a dragon staff

Cover of Merlin fanfic by Procoffeinating with lettering by Jenrose

Complementarity, Entanglement and the Uncertainty of Destiny —or— A Feminist Mage in King Arthur’s Court

Summary:

Merlin was once told that Arthur would rise again at the hour of Camelot’s greatest need. But a thousand years pass, with no Arthur. When the last war comes, and the world dies, and Arthur still doesn’t return, Merlin suddenly realises that the hour of Camelot’s greatest need… was a thousand years ago. Sometimes he’s a bit slow on the uptake. Fortunately, he’s figured out how to go back. What would YOU do if you had 2000 years of experience in the body of a 17 year old, and absolutely nothing left to lose?

Okay, so I started watching Merlin early in 2016, and was immediately captivated by the characters and irate at what the writers did to them over time. I managed to get through the series by basically chanting to myself, “The fanfiction is gonna be great!”

It was. I read a lot of fanfic, not thinking I would write any myself because there was so much.

Then I started rewatching the first season, and hit episode 8, and realized, “If Merlin could go back in time and fix things, this is the moment he’d go back to.”

And then I thought, “You know, in at least one Merlin story, Merlin lived backward. And in this series, Merlin is able to control time, a little.”

The next thing I knew, I was diving into writing the denouement everyone needed after that horrible series finale.

Someone asked me while I was writing, “Where is the conflict?”

And I said, “The series had enough conflict for a thousand lifetimes, shut up.”

So this is the angstiest fluff I’ve ever written, or the fluffiest angst, but it ends up being an engaging “What if” that gives us everything we wanted:

Merlin using his magic freely, and to great effect
Merlin stopping Uther, saving Morgana and Arthur and pretty much everyone
Arthur alive and well and completely gobsmacked
An overt love story
Lance and Gwen finding their happy ending
A giant magical library
Uncorrupted female characters who are not evil or spies
And oh, yeah… humanity is saved, war is over, and hunger is ended.
And that’s all in under a week!

The neat thing about this project is that I signed up for a Big Bang, and was assigned an amazing artist, Procoffeinating. She did so much amazing work, full color illustrations which appear at several points in the story. This featured image was the front cover. Read the whole fic to see the rest!