eccentric_hat

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.