AO3 Writer: HuntressFirefall
Username: HuntressFirefall
Tumblr: HuntressFirefall • Twitter: BurnMyHeartOut
Name: MJ
AO3 Icon:
Firefall, my Elf alter ego created by a friend and drawn by me.
Preferred Genre in Writing: I’ve only been doing fanfiction for about a year, so I don’t have a “favorite” per se. I’m most comfortable writing fantasy and about things/situations I know well.
Works: The first fanfic I wrote for YOI (and really only the second overall) was Learning and Laughter, which came to me immediately after binge-watching YOI during New Year’s Week 2017. I kept it to myself for months, until reading fanfic for the show (something else I’d also never done before) made me decide to join AO3. I was nervous about posting it but once it got a favorable response, I got more confident and I started thinking about what else I could write.
Because I had only ever written my own original work, I wasn’t really sure how the fan fiction genre worked so I stuck with what I knew. The result was Of Selves and Souls, a fantasy AU set in an original universe I’d been developing for many years. At age 12, Yuri is with Mari when he falls down a cliff into a ravine and nearly dies until he is healed by a Unicorn. As he comes of age, he finds that the Unicorn’s magic has affected him in a way he never expected: it is changing him into a different species of Unicorn that inhabit a humanoid body. Later in the story we meet Victor aka Vitanya, who is a “classic” Unicorn that shape-shifts into the “Immortal”, or humanoid, type Unicorn. Eventually, Yuri finds out his destiny involves a lot more than just being gifted with sacred magic. The one-shot Taking Root is a companion story that I wrote once OSAS was finished. (The original story this universe came from is also posted in my works, however it is not a YOI fic.)
The fic I just finished, that is the longest thing I’ve ever written, is called All The World’s Indeed A Stage (And We Are Merely Players). It is a singing competition AU that is 99% American Idol-inspired and 1% Eurovision-inspired due to the international contestants element. It ended up being much, much longer than I anticipated because I discovered trying to describe singing and performance is very difficult; because of the AI format, I also basically had to write for a large ensemble cast where I utilized just about every YOI character I could in some way, from bit parts to the eventual Top 12. The story encompasses the entire AI/singing competition journey, from auditions, to Hollywood Week, a special Showcase round and finally, the top 12 finalists competing for the title of Grand Prix Superstar, with a musical theme they must work within each week. When I couldn’t portray exactly what I wanted to with words regarding their singing, I started making a playlist on Spotify that went with the fic. I’m very happy with how it turned out and I had fun paralleling canon stuff from the anime as I wrote.
About:
I’ve been writing for a really long time, in some shape or form, but it was always either RP involving established characters or my own original work. The Mythological fantasy universe that Of Selves and Souls is set in has been my baby since I was in my late teens (which was… quite a while ago, lol). I hadn’t been really inspired to write or get back to my art for about 10 years, with a few bursts of creativity here and there, until YOI somehow rebooted all that for me.
My writing style doesn’t follow any specific ‘genres’ per se; my writing is more like a fantasy-writer’s format where things build up and plot elements are revealed slowly. I only in my most recent writing have started to experiment with writing explicit scenes, but I prefer to use them sparingly. I stay away from extreme angst and death in my stories; if there is death it’s usually minor OCs that are in the background or something that happened in the past (see OSAS). Overall I’m still finding my way in fanfic and my style is different than a lot of the fanfiction work I’ve read (or at least I feel like it is). I’m hoping to do sequels to both Stage and OSAS, and will add things I’ve learned about the YOI fanfic genre from reading others’ works along the way to my own style, while hopefully still staying “me”. :)
