fic complete!

Chapter 4 of Soloist is up, and wow, look who's here, it's the other characters of the hit anime Yuri!!! on Ice! Featuring: little Yuuri, grown-up Yuuri, Yuuri's mom, Victor flopping around in his baffling lovesick way, and a Celestino who isn't just on TV. This is the last chapter! It's complete! (Here's the link to chapter 1 again.)

Given that this is mostly backstory, I think it probably works without canon knowledge, though it gives away the twist of the show.

Normally when I announce a fic over here I include some thoughts about the process of writing it, but this one is honestly just too big. I know 30k isn't a novel, but I'm a fan-creature of small outputs, so it's fully half of all the words I've ever posted to AO3; and I've been thinking about it for a long time. If I were to write a post like that it would have to include:

• seeing dance performances that matter to you but you can't explain why
• celibate characters who live solidly in the body and aren't monks or ascetics or something
• what does it mean to move "like a woman" in a pre-choreographed figure skating program?
• why is this a soulmate AU at all, why isn't it just about an unmarried and/or asexual and/or aromantic person
• the way you fill up a living space that has one person in it
• the thing I read that I hoped would teach me about life for women in Tokyo but ended up just being an analysis of Lost in Translation
• deleting one hundred instances of the word "just"
• tracking down food from home when you're living abroad
• the Pacific Standard artisanal toast story and how I think about it every day
• listening to this playlist on repeat, lest this strike anyone as a sad story

So do feel free to come round if you want to chat about any of those things.