This is one of the best fic memes that I've seen. I love most of these questions.

My fic

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?
2: What scene did you first put down?
3: What’s your favorite line of narration?
4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?
5: What part was hardest to write?
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
7: Where did the title come from?
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
12: What do you like least about this fic?
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/641063.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Last night, in search of stuff that was 'like' (for a given value of 'like') Yuri!!! on Ice, I stayed up late reading through Check Please from the beginning.

Rather than explain it in depth, I'll just link to this (spoilery) primer: The Queer Hockey Bros Webcomic You Should Be Reading.

I enjoyed it and found it a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Although my current assessment is "doesn't hold a candle to YoI," I remember that my first assessment of YoI on Dreamwidth was the notably lukewarm "I may be kind of enjoying it... the romance is rather sweet." Interestingly, although the relationship between Jack and Bitty in Check Please has zero ambiguity, we see less of its development than we do of the relationship between Victor and Yuuri. I felt that the narrative skips over a lot, but I suppose that just leaves space for fandom to fill in. There definitely seems to be some good fic available, and a surprising amount of it – over 5000 works!

More observations:
• It's an achievement that this managed to make me feel sympathetic about hockey bros. To be fair, they're Massachusetts liberal arts college bros, who may be a slightly different breed.
• Unlike YoI, this is set in a universe where homophobia exists, but embedded within a basically homophobia-free college and sports team. I feel like we're going to get a collision with the wider world soon, as the characters are closeted beyond the sphere of friends and family, and wonder how it's going to turn out.
• It's interesting how this has many of the same themes as YoI but combined in different ways. YoI if Victor had Yuuri's anxiety and JJ's pushy Canadian family.

In conclusion, or perhaps in a complete derail, I really want to read a proper longfic from someone who knows their sports where Victor ends up going into hockey instead of figure skating. Including his journey from KHL to NHL. It would be most obvious to have him playing for SKA Saint Petersburg – which means he'd still be based at Yubileyny Sports Palace! – but I love the names of some of the other teams. Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Traktor Chelyabinsk, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. Victor is slightly shorter than the average NHL player (though they'd probably just lie and say he was 6 feet even), and certainly a good deal lighter, but the latter would be mainly down to the difference in training regimens. Anyway, it would be interesting, but very much not something that I could write.

ETA: Dear God, I just realised that 'Check Please!' has an exclamation point in its title too. This really is a metric of how gay a source text is, isn't it?

ETA 2: Evgeni Plushenko plays hockey on an amateur team! How did I not know this? So interesting.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/640777.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

A common complaint, I know, but I really feel like any one of these avocations could take up most of my free time. I can probably manage to do one and a half of them well, simultaneously.

• Write fiction (in English)
• Read in English
• Keep up my Icelandic
• Learn Russian
• Learn French
• Take up cycling
• Watch television (cycling plus occasional dramas of note)

To say nothing of seeing friends, getting out and about, and napping (one of my favourite leisure activities).

Since the start of the year I've basically been writing fic, plus watching a bit of cycling and cross-country skiing. I have literally only finished reading one book, which is unusual for me. Once I finish my current WIP (which has been IP since early December, shame), I'm going to give myself permission to put fiction on the back burner and properly turn my attention to Russian – which has a bit of a timetable given that I'm going back to Russia in August. But then I'll be in France in a few weeks, and Brussels at the end of May, so... French? A little French? And it's not as if I've run out of fic ideas...

You see what I mean about there not being enough hours in the day.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/640070.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

In 2015 I posted 42k of fic and my stats look like this (after two years, mind you):

• Kudos: 107
• Comment Threads: 61
• Bookmarks: 3
• Hits: 1825

So far this year I've posed 42k of fic, and my stats look like this:

• Kudos: 2429
• Comment Threads: 284
• Bookmarks: 664
• Hits: 20874

This has been your daily reminder that life isn't fair!

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/639496.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Prompted by discussion with el_staplador, I finally decided to post this ficlet.

Now I can say that I've referenced St. John Chrysostom in the notes of a fanfic. Life goals you didn't know you had.

crowned in glory (700 words) by Naraht
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Additional Tags: Wedding Planning, Cultural Differences, Russian Orthodoxy
Summary: Victor and Yuuri are planning a wedding. In fact, to accomodate all their cultural traditions, they're planning three. For the Russian one, Victor is thinking a cathedral and golden crowns. Never mind that he's not religious.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/639485.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

the Master and Margarita (3893 words) by Naraht
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lilia Baranovskaya/Yakov Feltsman
Characters: Yakov Feltsman, Lilia Baranovskaya
Additional Tags: 1980s, Soviet Union, Moscow, Cold War, Jewish Characters, Antisemitism, First Meeting, First Time
Series: Part 4 of trials of Coach Yakov
Summary: In 1980, Yakov Feltsman is the USSR's skating hero. At a dull official reception, he defends his loyalty to the motherland – and makes the acquaintance of a beautiful young dancer from the Bolshoi.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/639208.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

The pound-to-krona exchange rate is absolutely ruinous at the moment. I may have obsessively visited Iceland during the roughly five years when it was actually financially possible for me to do so.

This has not stopped me buying Icelandic books, as I have to read something (logical fallacy ahoy), but I've decided not to go for that Dracula edition for the time being.

***

My hairstyle choices are disturbingly influenced by fannishness. I cut my hair short for the first time when I was about 12 because of Kira Nerys. Then I grew it out while doing my DPhil in a spate of Victorianism. My current incarnation of very short hair was, I thought, fairly secure. It was only getting shaggy because I've been too fiendishly busy to get to the salon. But... everyone on Yuri!!! on Ice is growing their hair out.

And suddenly having a floppy, eye-length half fringe combined with a weird hairline (widow's peak in my case) seems like Awesome Fashion. (See icon.) Maybe I'll just get a trim after all.

Is it weird to bring a picture of Victor Nikiforov to your hairdresser? ;)

***

Absolutely loving the Tour of Andalusia. Rather minor race unexpectedly enlivened by epic Contador/Valverde rivalry. And Matt Stephens' commentary on Eurosport is coming into its own. He's a much better foil for Carlton Kirby than Sean Kelly.

(Kirbyism of the race : "Just clearing his nasal passages there. Preparing for battle.")

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/638740.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

This is the most bizarre story. You can't make these things up.

Via a Metafilter post, the tale of a Dracula scholar who discovered an early Icelandic translation that seems to be far more of a collaboration between Stoker and the translator than anything else. At first I wondered whether the post itself was fiction, but it clearly isn't.

The scholar, Hans Corneel de Roos, points out that the serialisation is available online via digitised newspapers, but annoyingly doesn't link to it. Here is the first instalment, the foreword by Bram Stoker. You can follow along after that by jumping to the next 'tölublað' (issue). Fjallkonan was a major Icelandic newspaper (and the translator its founder and editor).

An English translation of the Icelandic 'translation' has now been published. Maybe we'll get a new Icelandic edition too?

Here's an article in Icelandic about the news: Unusual Icelandic translation of Dracula wakes attention overseas

ETA: Here is a much longer article by de Roos about the discovery.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/638633.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I've received the most hilarious fanfic as a gift from nineveh_uk. I begged her to write it and she did! I love it like Plushenko loves his gold medals. <3

Round and Golden (1542 words) by Nineveh_uk
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Christophe Giacometti/Victor Nikiforov
Characters: Yakov Feltsman, Victor Nikiforov, Christophe Giacometti
Additional Tags: creative use of an Olympic medal, Mentors, teenage skaters, Pre-Canon, no actual on-screen sex
Summary:

Victor has won gold at the Turin Olympics, and Yakov should be enjoying a well-earned rest. At least, he would be if Victor and Chris hadn't decided to put Victor's gold medal to some creative use...

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/638038.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So this is... I don't know whether 'crack' is quite the right description or not. (I mean, it's based on the philosophy of a real Russian figure skating coach.) But I certainly had way too much fun writing it!

not even with your hand (3055 words) by Naraht
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Yakov Feltsman & Victor Nikiforov, Christophe Giacometti/Victor Nikiforov, Anya/Georgi Popovich, Yakov Feltsman & Yuri Plisetsky, Lilia Baranovskaya/Yakov Feltsman, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Characters: Yakov Feltsman, Victor Nikiforov, Christophe Giacometti, Georgi Popovich, Anya (Yuri!!! on Ice), Yuri Plisetsky, Lilia Baranovskaya
Additional Tags: Caught in the Act, Orgasm Denial, Masturbation, Break Up, Abstinence, First Kiss
Series: Part 3 of trials of Coach Yakov
Summary: No sex while you're competing – this is Yakov's rule. His athletes often have other ideas.

This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/637835.html. Please comment there using OpenID.