#ficcingmud

I'm not gonna say much about the series here since I already do more than enough rambling in my other blog, but it's one of my favorite BL series (whether or not it's in my Top 5 depends on the day, but with the anime currently airing it's definitely up there right now). Apart from all the praises I've given it in my other blog, it's such a great universe to work with fic-wise, as there is a lot about the world that could use more expansion.

This fic isn't too ambitious in that regard, though, as it follows a simple plot: Seiichirou wants to get something for Aresh's birthday. It did let me include several characters beyond Aresh and Seiichirou, as while I think the main couple is great, they're surrounded by such a colorful cast that I wanted to at least include some of them.

I also did some rambling about canon birthdays in the footnotes, so I'll just include that here since I'm really curious: Are there more clues as to when their birthdays are?

If AO3 allowed it, this would be the actual title of the fic:

For those unfamiliar, the Greek letter sigma is usually used to denote the sum of a sequence of numbers. The expression above is one of the possible sigma notations for the title of this fic, 3 + 2 + 1. This is also why I made the traditional 5+1 format into a 3+2+1, because I wanted to make the mathematical pun.

Continuing the puns, since Sigma's family don't have official names yet, I went ahead and also gave his father and mother Greek letters as names. I even had one noted down for his younger sister, but I didn't get a chance to use it.

I mention this multiple times in the A/Ns and in the comments, but I got into YOI very, very late. I definitely heard about it during its heyday since one of my friends was a big fan, but I only actually watched it in 2023. That was about a year and a half after I got sucked into the BL wormhole, but I could definitely sense why the show was a big deal when it first aired.

Viktuuri being one of the main couples was a pretty obvious decision for me, but Seungchuchu being the other one was a much later decision. It ultimately came down to how I was reading a bunch of Phichit and Seung-gil fics when I finally decided to sit down and start writing this idea that's been brewing in my head for months, and it was because of writing this fic that they've ended up becoming my favorite what-if pairing in the fandom.

I also knew from the onset that social media was gonna play a big role in this fic, and that I wanted to signify that by making the social media posts part of the text. If I was more savvy with AO3's tools, I would've done some formatting, but I'm unfortunately not, so I made do with basic text formatting and spacing.

In the very first outline of this fic, Yuuri was the only one running the YouTube channel, and Phichit was going to be the first skater he interviewed since they would still be roommates in Detroit. I eventually settled on making both of them YouTubers, though, since Phichit's personality is pretty perfect for the role, and I can't really imagine Yuuri taking the place of Sean Evans from Hot Ones or Amelia Dimoldenberg from Chicken Shop Date (the two main inspirations for the in-universe YouTube channel).

Aside from Phichit and Yuuri, one other important figure behind the YouTube channel is Ketty Abelashvili, who in the main series we only know as the composer of Yuuri's song for his free skate. We do know that she's one of Phichit and Yuuri's college friends, so I took advantage of that and made her a pretty significant supporting character. I had a lot of fun filling in the blanks of her personality, and I do think I needed someone like her to balance out the channel. You can argue that the main relationship should actually be Phichit and Yuuri and Ketty's friendship.

Speaking of, a lot of the blanks I filled in the skaters' personalities I made from a hodgepodge of the little tidbits I found from googling as well as headcanons I formed from the YOI fics I've read. A lot of Phichit and Seung-gil's dynamic was inspired by a bunch of my favorite Seungchuchu fics, while things like Otabek being a coffee aficionado or Yuri being a good cook were all lifted from certain fics I've enjoyed.

On that note, when I took a writing break earlier this year, I posted a doc with a bunch of YOI fics that inspired this and called it the Skaterview Moodboard. I wanted to include it here too since it's technically also a partial fic rec list, though my full list of recs would be twice the size. There are so many gems on AO3 that I had the absolute pleasure of binging after watching the series.

The fic takes Phichit, Yuuri, and Ketty to two of the six Grand Prix events, and I needed to have specific skaters present in those events for the plot. I also needed the six GPF skaters to be set in stone, so I ended up having to map out all six events just to make sure that what I wanted to do was possible. Here's what I ended up with. I admittedly didn't do too much research in how these events end up with which skaters, but the only hard rule I followed was that a skater doesn't attend two consecutive events. (Slight spoilers for some of the plot, but I think it's a bit hard to gauge which are the plot-relevant bits here just from this screenshot haha):

I made a bunch of minor OCs to populate the universe, from ISU officials to the skaters' teams, but probably my favorite group of OCs are the commenters that frequently show up in the social media posts. It was fun giving them a bit of a throughline in their comments across the fic, and writing those comments is always the funnest part of putting together a chapter for me.

This is the first longfic I've finished and posted on AO3, and it's such a different experience from writing a one-shot. I still prefer writing the latter, but I do see the appeal of writing longfics now. If ever I decide to write another one, I'll probably wait until I've finished the first draft of the entire thing - with this one I banked chapters in advance until the latter ones, where I posted them as a wrote them.

My favorite Cherry Magic arc (so far? I've read until Volume 14 of the manga at this point) is the Nagasaki arc, as I believe that's the arc where we see the most character growth in Adachi and Kurosawa. Even if we don't count the fact that this is the arc where the mind-reading powers vanish, the way they both deal with the decision about Adachi's new role and eventual (temporary) separation moves their relationship along in a very satisfying pace, and I'm not at all surprised that it's this arc that leads to the proposal and eventual marriage. (I enjoyed the Cherry Magic anime a lot, but my biggest criticism is how they rushed this arc, as it felt like they suddenly ran out of episodes to explore its nuances.)

This one-shot deals with the aftermath of that arc, as I really do think Adachi returns to Tokyo a changed man in more ways than one. He doesn't become a company ace or anything, but I'd like to think he carries himself much better at that point, which wouldn't go unnoticed. So I wanted to see how Kurosawa, with all his jealous tendencies, would react to the fact that his precious angel has suddenly become more visible to his coworkers.

Part of the ways he deals with that jealousy in this one-shot is to have a helpful conversation with Fujisaki, who recontextualizes the whole situation for him. I love Fujisaki a lot, and since I was first introduced to Cherry Magic via the Japanese TV series, my aroacespec heart immediately latched on to the fact that she's also aroace, even if that's only apparent in that version of Cherry Magic and not exactly explored in the manga or anime (and, from what I remember, not at all applicable to her character in the Thai TV series).

Shirabashi was only really introduced to me from browsing fics on AO3 and lurking the tags here, but it has quickly become one of my favorite what-if pairings. They just feel like they would work so well together. I really hope they meet in canon soon.

I mentioned this in the author's notes on AO3, but I was inspired by "Ringing in My Head" by chromyrose for this one-shot. I admittedly didn't realize it while making the draft, but there are certain character beats and dynamics from that fic that I ended up using as inspiration for this. I really like that one-shot, so check it out!

I also feel like this is reusing some ideas from one of my older Shirabashi fics, "Assist," though I'd argue that it's a pretty different approach to the idea of setting these two up on a date. But is this what the kids mean when they say you're "reheating nachos"? Lmao just out-of-touch millennial things.