The Young Ones - Love & Mobsters

Series Metadata

Creator:
Series Begun:
2014-06-22
Series Updated:
2014-09-06
Description:

The boys are transplanted from a television universe to a fanfiction one, unbeknownst to them. But the real change comes when Jerzei comes to collect their final month's rent, and Mike surprises him with his own plans. How will the boys cope with suddenly finding themselves attached to the mob? And how will Rick and Vyvyan react when they suddenly realize they've been thinking the same about each other all along?

Slash-heavy, Rick/Vyv-centric, but involving all four boys (gen) wherever possible/plausible, with an attempt to include the same kind of disjointed, genre whiplash, Rule of Funny vs. appropriate Plot Armor removal (or weakening), 4th wall breakage, most-likely-not-of-this-dimension feel as the show - only fanfiction-ized.

Notes:

Acknowledgments
Thank you to arcanemoody, my awesome and incredibly patient beta reader, and one of the best (and most prolific) writers in the fandom. (Hey R - It's finally done! *squee*). She helped me with the inception of this series, and I am really grateful for her insight, and willingness to put up with me. XD

Dedications
To the TYO fandom, here's to doubling the number of TYO fics on AO3 - now let's hope they're halfway decent. *crosses fingers*

And to Rik Mayall, whose death was the slap in the face necessary for me to get off my ass and finally finish this thing. You will be greatly missed, and I'm sorry that the only tribute I have to offer is a series of stories depicting you and your creative partner snogging the hell out of each other (among other things) in great detail.

(Ridiculously Long) Notes
Love & Mobsters is a labor of love three years in the making. It is the longest fic series I've ever written, containing the most fics written for any one of my fandoms. Because it takes place after the main canon, and because of their shift in occupation, you can basically think of it as an AU - especially since the boys had to be resurrected from the dead in order to write it. But really, the mob angle is an excuse for the boys to continue to be Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - instead of being students who don't go to school, they'll be mobsters who don't go to work. Except when they do. ;)

This series was inspired by a desire to see my own head-canon in print - as they say, if you want to read it, write it. I love the TYO fandom, small as it is, but there were always some things I wanted to see, but didn't. The general fandom's Vyvyan, for example, is typically very dark and anti-social, and while that makes for some great (and I mean amazing) reads, it never really resonated with my image of Vyv as a cheerful, friendly, helpful, insanely violent near-psychopath. Given what we know about him from canon, you'd think he would be very dark indeed - but he somehow isn't. Canon's Vyv is proactive, creative, social, even happy-go-lucky - when he isn't screaming at Rick or beating Neil over the head with something - and sometimes even when he is. He's clearly uncomfortable with (verbal or otherwise) displays of affection, but he's also seemingly comfortable interacting with people on a surface level. I always found that characterization fascinating, and wondered what it would be like to play with it.

Also (and this was a huge factor), Rick/Vyv in TYO fandom is typically full of pre-relationship and origin fics. There really are very few examples of an established relationship between the two. And while I understand that their pre-relationship dynamic is incredibly fun to write (oh boy, do I), I wanted to see what happened if I got them together and then let them, well, grow up a little bit. I actually really love the result, and I think you'll find that while my Rick and Vyv are certainly different by the end of this series, they've still retained elements of the things we, as fans, love about them and their dynamic.

Finally, I wanted to see more fic involving all four of the guys. While this series is most definitely Rick/Vyv-centric, Mike and Neil are certainly not left out, because I love what happens when all four of them interact. And because I love Neil and want to see more of him. <3

In order for this series to work the way I wanted it to, timeline-wise, I had to take one liberty/make one assumption that many don't: this series assumes that the boys' stay at University followed the timeline (in years) of the series' airing. That is to say, it assumes Demolition takes place near the beginning of their first term, while Summer Holiday marks the end of their second. Don't ask me how they managed to pass the first term. Call it movie magic or invoke the MST3K mantra, just go with me on this. ;)

While this series does contain stories which can be read as stand-alone, they really do follow a continuity - by the end, our boys are somewhat unlike themselves at the beginning. The ones which can be read as a stand-alone story will be marked as such in their summaries & tags.

And yes, the title of the series is inspired by the Doctor Who episode of the (nearly) same name. And no, the two have literally nothing to do with each other. I just love the name, because the series is comprised of exactly what it says on the tin.

Stats:
Words:
112,234
Works:
19
Complete:
Yes
Bookmarks:
23

Listing Series