THINK PIECE: 2018 Olympic Ice Skating Is Basically Yuri On Ice Season 2

Man, I am such a klutz.

On the first day back from break, I tripped on my sneaker laces as I descended from the two-to-four escalator, slipped on the wilted remnants of Indicator flowers that were meant for my lover, and flipped over the wall of the Senior Bar! Luckily, I landed on the backs of several seniors. What was even more fortunate is that they remained dormant, resting like the vegetables at the bottom of the barrel at the Farmers Market that everyone sees but doesn’t purchase from.

I looked up and saw that an underclassman was struggling to attach a T.V. antenna to the archaic television that the Student Union hides in their room. I was even more baffled to find a dimly lit village of beanbag chairs surrounding the T.V., housing at least a dozen students cradling katsudon bowls in their hands. Having heard me crash behind them, they shot me death glares that could have sent a school dean back to Hell.

Ignoring them, I walked over to my peer handling the antennae. Somehow, we were able to adjust the rabbit-like ears so that the static screen was able to depict—

“The OLYMPICS?” I was flabbergasted at the sight of Miu Suzaki and Ryuichi Kihara skating on the screen until I heard the gentle piano notes of a familiar tune: “Yuri On Ice,” a song from an anime of the same name. The ground shook beneath all of us as we tilted our heads to the fandom heavens and engaged in the ultimate act of fangirling: the Squee.

At this point, one of the seniors escaped from her vegetative senioritis and regained consciousness. “Yeah, I’m not impressed. ‘Yuri On Ice’ had no actual yuri in it.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she sniffled. “What a letdown. There wasn’t even a HINT of sapphic interaction between any of the female skaters.” Hey, she was right: the show had only featured a single yaoi couple, with (according to the fans) implications of several other male/male pairings hidden between all the fanservice.

An underclassman slapped her on the back. “Hey, you slept through the entire rivalry between solo figure skaters Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva.” She grinned. “How much do you want to bet that their ‘rivalry’ is really hidden ‘sexual tension?’’’ In her excitement, she pulled out a projector and showed Medvedeva’s tweets about YOI, her cosplay of the show’s main character, and several suggestive fanarts of her and Zagitova.

Suddenly, there was an eruption of confetti and the emergence of a spotlight behind us. A man on rollerblades made a sassy entrance. I sharply inhaled when I recognized him behind the unique costume and cosmetics that he donned. This was no weirdo. It was former ice skater Johnny Weir.

“Can you hear,” he slowly sang before he sighed, “my heartbeat?” He smiled as the tune from the YOI opening fluttered from his lips. “Medvedeva and Zagitova totally have something going on, and we can’t just skate past it.”

Before I could argue with him, SING! directors and producers angrily stormed in on the scene.

“Out of our way!” They commanded. Weir, terrified, did a Lutz jump in order to evade them. “You WEEBS need to get back to REHEARSAL—”

They paused and looked over at the beanbags. In Weir’s spotlight, I realized that the seats weren’t actually beanbags. They were YOI-themed body pillows.

“Uhm, wow. This is…impressive.” The directors were in a mix of both shock and awe.

“Fandoms have a way of unifying people,” I said.

The junior director took this as an opportunity to release previously pent-up anger. “Honestly, why can’t we have a theme like THIS?"

The directors huddled in a circle. I tried eavesdropping on their conversation, but their aura of secrecy was so intense that when I came near, it pushed me back.

“Alright,” they finally said in unison. “It’s settled. SING! 2019 is going to go where no SING! performance has gone before. All the grades will team up to perform…” They paused for dramatic effect.

“Yuri On Ice.”