I Will NEVER Get Over This Arrow Placement 🥹

In case you forgot how beautiful he is here’s a reminder

My first completed fanbinding! There were so many fun typesetting elements I had trouble narrowing the photos down but I didn't include everything. My favorites are definitely the music QR codes and the meta AO3 fics.

Until My Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches by @kazliin

‘…Of all the rivalries in the world of sports over the years, perhaps none has become so legendary as that of Russian figure skater Viktor Nikiforov and his rival, Japanese Yuuri Katsuki…’

A single event changes the course of Yuuri’s life, throwing him into a bitter rivalry with Viktor Nikiforov that spans across his entire skating career. But as the years go on, rivalry and hatred begin to develop into something very different and Yuuri doesn’t seem to be able to stay away, no matter how hard he tries.

Hatred and love are two sides of the same coin and even though everything changes, some things are still meant to be.

Technical stuff and bonus photos below the cut.

General

197,692 Words / 11 x 8.5 Paper / 500 pgs

Title Font & Chapter Number Font: Just Signature

Chapter Title & Body Font: Adobe Caslon Pro

Misc Fonts: Georgia, Lucida Sans, Zilla Slab, PT Serif, Segoe UI

Designed, typeset, and bound by me.

Programs used: InDesign and BookletCreator.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for enemies to lovers and this fic executes the trope beautifully. It was one of my very first fics on AO3 and since then I have read it countless times. The fic diverges from canon in a single moment and what proceeds is one of the best Victuuri fics of all time.

Materials

This was the first ficbinding project that made it off of my computer. The original plan was to keep the book thinner by scaling the page size up to 11 x 8.5, but obviously that didn't work. I ordered short grain 11 x 17 sheets from Nicole Nikolas Modern Paper Goods and printed with my large-format inkjet printer (which used more cyan and magenta than I would have expected).

Once my signatures were printed I realized just how massive this thing was, and in that moment I decided the casing was going to be leather. I ordered Royal Blue leathers from Peggy Sue Also Leather's Dutchess Collection. And while I waited for that to come in I hand-painted the chapter numbers using Dreamland Watercolor's Beta and a fluid writer. The color changing effect wasn't as dramatic as I hoped but it still turned out gorgeous.

I decided not to complicate things too much and left the spine flat and the edges deckled. I used the basic method of sewing tapes and spaced five of them out across the spine. The headbands are actually Vintage Petersham Grosgrain Magenta ribbons from Fini Ribbon that I folded over some string I had laying around. I also made my own endpapers from Strathmore drawing sheets and more of the Beta watercolor which I sprayed over the sheets using a cheap paintbrush.

I created an embossed frame on the cover by layering chipboard on top of the 0.098" Davey Binder's Board I ordered from Talas. Then I cut out a window so that I could do the title out of watercolor. I didn't have a pairing knife for the leather so I tried sanding down the edges to help minimize the thickness of the folds. I am actually not sure if this helped or not but the leather turned out better than I thought. The only issue was that I didn't have enough of an overlap at the top and bottom on the inside of the book board, and the endpapers couldn't cover the seam properly. I came up with the solution of adding a second layer of chipboard that I covered in light blue construction paper. I made it to the same dimensions as the Davey Board and then glued everything together with pva. I really like the effect it has and it also worked out as a base to paint the title onto.

Typesetting

Typesetting this fic was a lot of fun because of all the social media aspects included in the fic. This included articles, Reddit threads, Twitter posts, Instagram posts, Youtube videos, Tumblr posts, and even meta AO3 fic summaries. I did my best to match the real-life counterparts as best as I could. I ended up using Segoe UI for most of the social media typesetting. The articles used Zilla Slab for the title and PT Serif for the body. The AO3 summaries were the most complicated as they used Georgia and Lucida Sans fonts and jpeg graphics.

The other really exciting element I incorporated was the music. Kaz used music throughout the fic as a very imporvictant part of the storytelling. Yuuri and Victor communicate through their skating and their routines and the music is what brings those routines to life. I placed QR codes in the margins at the start of each routine. It is so cool to hold your camera up and suddenly have the music playing from your phone as you read! I also included an appendix of the music so that when QR codes become obsolete the music is still accessible.

ᵎᵎ 🛼 ˖ִ ࣪✰₊ ⊹˚

Viktor is the one who narrates episode 10, the one who tells the story of the Sochi GPF banquet. Viktor is the one who tells us how much champagne Yuuri drank and how miserable he looked while he was there, long before Yuuri ever approached Viktor.

Viktor was paying attention to Yuuri. Long before the tie came off and the stripper pole got involved, Viktor was watching him.

Maybe it was because of how Yuuri rejected his offer for a photo. Maybe it was because he thought Yuuri was cute. Maybe he was also miserable and didn’t want to be there and appreciated that there was someone there who looked just as exhausted as he felt.

But Viktor was the one paying attention to Yuuri.

“Gazing up at the cherry tree, Yuuri was radiant in violet robes and a golden-yellow sash as he stood in a swirl of pink blossoms. Viktor wished he had a camera then; to preserve Yuuri’s unassuming beauty and keep it with him: under his jacket, close to his heart.”

(Zanka - Chapter 8)

——

I’m still obsessing over Zanka by the wonderful @dreaming-fireflies, so instead of working on deadline things, my brain wanted to doodle Yuuri/Aoyagi from her fic instead. 8D 

Amazingly, the Japanese font I used here was written by “Aoyagi Kouzan” - it was meant to be!

I would love to see that spy au of your au ;)

(this is from this post yes??)

#……#inspo#tmfu au#??#an au of our au#oh myg oodness#picture: vitya as the spy#yuuri as the quote unquote normal person#yuuri is just honestly thrilled that this cute boy wants to socialize with him#meanwhile vitya#is like !!!!!! yakov u didnt tell me my contact was HOT#yakov: i… i gave the intel assignment to alexei……… vitya he his twice your age….. vitya what..

we are currently having technical difficulties but look at these hilarious msgs that @thecookiemonster77 sent me

OKAY SO:

Yuuri is at his favorite cafe

he just finished teaching his last class of the semester 

its a study of how pop culture influences and portrays political issues, with a special focus on the cold war and red scare propaganda 

its his favorite class to teach

in walks: Viktor Nikiforov, world renowned secret agent, so beautiful he’s been blessed by Aphrodite herself, ready to get in & get the intel & get out again, quote unquote heartbreaker of the international espionage community

(he’s actually a massive dork but shhh yuuri doesnt know that yet. he doesnt know anything yet, except that this world-shatteringly cute guy just stormed in through the cafe doors and––

–– and he’s making a beeline for Yuuri?

“Illya,” Viktor says very seriously, “we have a situation here that needs your special talents. Are you free?”

“No man is free who works for a living. But, I’m available,” Yuuri replies automatically.

they both stare for a second

Yuuri, because holy shit this hot guy just marched up to him and quoted the man from UNCLE, yuuri’s favorite TV show???

Viktor, because holy shit his intel officer is cute

they spend the next three hours together, during which neither of them figure out that they’re having two different conversations

and yeah, sometimes viktor says something weird, but he’s also very cute and he blushes a lot whenever yuuri laughs, which. is very endearing. 

they agree to meet at the same place tomorrow because viktor has somehow never heard of From Russia With Love and so Yuuri needs to lend him his own copy

(its a digitally remastered dvd and it came with a collectors tin and a poster. phichit got it for him for his last birthday)

yakov doesnt understand why alexei calls him screaming about how vitya never showed up.

“What do you mean? He says the meeting went fine. He also seemed…. rather…taken with you. Um.”

hi hi I enjoy your analysis posts so much!! do you have any thoughts on the undercurrent of performance that runs throughout yuri on ice - re Victor ' 'performance' nikiforov (contrasted with yuuri's (and yurio, eventually) absence of a persona while skating) and the whole episode 3 premise of the trio trying to perform an emotion until it clicks (highlighting yuuri's eros monologue arc specifically) while the program itself is constructed by someone who at that point doesn't fully comprehend the extent of the emotion he puts into the sp. not to forget the performance inherent to sport in and of itself! sorry if this doesn't make any sense I hope you're having a good day tysm for reading!!

Hello, I hope your day is going well too! It was wonderful to wake up and see your ask in my inbox xxx

Oh boy, of course I have thoughts. I spent a little while trying to figure out how to condense all of them, but no matter what I do it seems like this post is going to be pretty long.

As you said, Viktor can certainly be very performative, which we see throughout the show as he reminisces about his career and tries to discover what role Yuuri expects him to play. He doesn’t show emotion unless he has to and he’s very concerned with his image – always going out of his way to interact with fans (and scolding Yuuri when he doesn’t do the same). He has a persona of sorts, putting on the air of Viktor Nikiforov: Living Legend, 5-time GPF Champion, 5-time Worlds Champion, Olympian, etc etc. There is little room in his life for him to simply be himself, instead shelving his own wants and desires to embrace the idea of who he thinks he’s supposed to be. 

On the ice, however, is a completely different story. This is where I veer off partially into headcanon because we unfortunately don’t know much about Viktor’s backstory (curse you Mappa!!!), so I need to speculate a bit. I have always viewed Viktor as someone who feels things quite deeply. He’s very passionate and emotional, but has incredible self-control and keeps himself reigned in. The ice is where he lets that go a bit, allowing himself to feel what he feels and express it through his skating. 

Evidence for this is present in how he choreographs and selects the music for his routines, giving him full creative control and the chance to embrace whatever he feels he will do best with. Stammi Vicino is heartbreaking, and lonely, and desperate – all things I would likely associate with Viktor at the beginning of the series. 

It’s present in how he coaches, always falling back on his own experiences as a skater to guide Yuuri and Yurio. When he begins to give advice, he tends to reflect on how Yakov coached him rather than coming up with something entirely new that better serves the different personalities of the Yuris. This implies to the audience that all of his attempts to get Yuri-squared to connect with the emotion at the heart of their short programs is how he himself worked on his programs. 

It’s present in one of my favorite Viktor quotes from the entire show, a little moment in episode 2 or 3 where Yurio is frustrated with Agape and trying to get Viktor to tell him what’s wrong, and Viktor says something along the lines of “It’s an emotion, why would I bother trying to explain it in words?” The feelings he presents on the ice are just that: feelings. They are important to him and sometimes indescribable, a little window into the truth of who he is that he keeps closely guarded at all other times. 

Viktor off the ice knows when to smile for the cameras and flash a wink to the crowd, keeping his image perfectly tailored to the one he wants to present. Viktor on the ice is able to let the artifice fade away and become, for just a moment, wholly himself. He would never tell anyone that he is lonely, but he skates Stammi Vicino as if it’s an extension of himself. 

The point you brought up regarding the fact that Viktor choreographed routines for emotions he may not understand is SO interesting to me because I have never even considered it! I think about Viktor a lot, and switch between two opposing ideas of him depending on how I’m feeling that day:

Viktor has known unconditional love, whether through his parents (I pretty firmly believe his family was not active in his life) or through Yakov (one of my favorite headcanons) or through Makkachin, even. Makkachin may not be quite the same thing, but he may not know any better and is therefore using that as his inspiration. Or, maybe he feels unconditional love for something/someone else. 

Viktor does not know unconditional love. He has never had anyone who could give him that, which is why Yuuri is very important and such a big deal and he needed to get on a plane to Japan IMMEDIATELY!!!

Depending on which of these you subscribe to (or a secret third option, perhaps) then Viktor’s ability to choreograph Yuri and Yuuri’s short programs is very interesting. He truly seems to have a grasp on Eros and Agape in a way that Yuri-squared struggles with. Since he encourages them to feel those emotions deeply in order to skate them correctly and those routines were originally for him, it means he must feel them deeply enough to think them worthy of creating and presenting to the world. 

So that’s how I view Viktor. When he is skating, he is not a performer, but a performance – the entertainment he produces is not the end goal, it merely comes from watching him be himself. And that authenticity is what makes him such a wonderful skater. 

Yuuri’s battle starts with him NEEDING to perform something (the tale of the katsudon fatale, how could we ever forget) and ends with him finally being able to draw upon himself for his skate. Creating some sort of narrative and slipping into a persona helps get him off the ground, but it’s really like a set of training wheels Viktor tries to get him to shed as their story progresses. It’s why his Yuri on Ice free skate is so important to his journey as a skater – there’s nothing for him to perform, just him being himself. To properly execute the program, he must be Yuuri, aware of the journey he has taken and each iteration he has been, mastering all of it to embrace who he is now. It must be less of a performance and more of a confession to those watching. 

Yurio’s Agape is so powerful for the same reasons! It’s because it comes from his own personal experiences with his grandpa, who he loves dearly. He needs to embrace that softer side of himself that he hides behind the prickly angsty exterior to truly do his program justice. 

“We call everything on the ice love” is very important because on the ice is when a skater’s truths must emerge. This is when they are most authentically themself, and when love therefore shines the brightest. 

I hope I answered your questions, and I’m sorry if I got a bit rambly there at any point! This was a very fun topic to discuss and if anyone has any thoughts I’d love to hear them. I have this account because I have things that I love that I want to share with other people and to hear about the things they love in turn, so it genuinely makes my day when I get to do that.

Thank you for the ask!

Some of my old favourites

Viktor coming up with the absurdest shit to find out why his crush doesn't want him will never not be funny 🤣

But hey, he's a creative genius! His brain must be running rampant with the wildest theories why the pretty boy who flirted with him at the GPF banquet keeps rejecting him while feverishly searching for smarter courtship methods other than asking for sex.

yuri on ice hits so deep for me bc how it portrays a story abt reigniting one’s passion. w alot of sports animes a big aspect of the story is making ur way up from the very bottom - (which don’t get me wrong, i absolutely LOVE), but the professional level is is usually the conclusion. the end goal. but in truth, as obvious it may be, professionals are still human. they can and will make mistakes and theres that added pressure of supposedly being the best in their field which only adds to the crushing weight of their passion.

yuuri katsuki is already a well established, professional figure skater (despire how he may describe himself). but he’s at a loss. he’s suffered a crushing defeat and made plenty mistakes and he’s reached a point in his life where he’s unsure of how much further his passion will take him. hes loved figure skating, always has, but that love has begun to dwindle inside of him as his insecurities and anxiety takes over.

but the comes viktor. he comes into his life, and things begin to change. he finds love again. for his sport - the art he’s been cultivating since he was a child, for the people around him, family and friends, understanding just how much they have been and will continue to support him, and of course, for viktor. slowly, but surely, he’s changed.

and when i watch him, i can’t help but feel like i’ve changed a little too