Serious

Series Metadata

Series begun:
2009-11-17
Series updated:
2011-12-23
Works included:
9
Complete:
No
Word count:
113,504
Author:
Description:

Several decades-worth of boys playing tennis, falling in love, and occasionally being brilliant morons.

It's my habit to keep details from one story as "history" for others. This doesn't mean you have to read them all, or that you have to read them in order. I also like to keep the individual stories readable as self-contained units. Comedy, drama or what have you, I've taken every effort to make this timeline fit 100% into my personal fusion of the manga and anime realities -- although I make no guarantees for events in Shin Prince of Tennis, since the series started after my timeline was constructed.

I call it "Serious" although most of the stories are written as fluffy humor (and those that aren't will still have happy endings). The term isn't so much a title as a way to separate this universe from the crack stories I've got simmering on my back burner. There's more to it than that (see Series Notes), but that's enough to be getting on with. You know, it's "my serious stuff".

Notes:

Once upon the early days of the 21st century, the appellation "Serious" was an obscure reference to a line in a Fuji Yuuta song, "Blood":

Close by, and yet so far away, I want to take hold of my chosen destination
Because I'm not a genius, I've got my serious will to succeed
So I'm not just anybody -- I am always me

I'd planned to take "Serious" as the new title for a Tezuka/Fuji story previously called "Change the World", as a reference to the fact that within the story Tezuka and Fuji aren't preternaturally gifted at starting and maintaining a relationship -- so they have to learn how to communicate, cooperate, and make being in love work if what they want is to be together. Back then, it was the only Prince of Tennis fic I had any plans to write. Then, while the first draft blew up in my face and I rebuilt the concept into the completely unrecognizable "Since Last Goodbye" (and its sequel, "Right By Your Side", and prequel, "One-Track Mind"), a whole universe built up around it.

I suppose I started calling the other stories "part of the Serious universe" because they were "in the same universe as 'Serious'," but it quickly became a way to denote fics where I adhered to a basically realistic worldview. (As realistic as TeniPuri gets -- as opposed to crack fics where everyone forced Tezuka to go clubbing, and where the captain and his dime-store pulp novel inner monologue have extreme trouble not taking advantage of Fuji on the dance floor. That fic and the sequels will be coming eventually, in the "Grand Slam" timeline, but not til the whole dang thing is done because it's six chapters of nearly uninterrupted Stream of Consciousness narration.) On the other hand, you could say that every story in this universe, for every pairing, plays into the basic theme that love happens when you're not just fooling around. Everybody -- in their own, unique way -- learns to be serious about giving it their all.

And of course, the best reason to be serious is because you're having fun. ^_^

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