Fridge / the light of day is fading

• Confirmed by Word of God to be a series of coincidence, but there are multiple plot details and characters that follow Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.
  • Princess Aurora was cursed to die at the age of sixteen. Victor was sixteen the year he skated to The Lilac Fairy (in the Eros costume), which was Yuuri's introduction to him. Yuri on Ice canon establishes Victor as being the "prince" of the skating world, in the same episode that he wears the pink Stammi Vicino costume. Disney's Sleeping Beauty (a partial adaptation of Tchaikovsky) makes Aurora's Iconic Outfit a pink dress, which was changed to blue a few times - Yuuri's Grand Prix Final skate outfit color.
  • The evil witch Carabosse cursed Aurora because she was slighted by not being invited to the christening. In Elisabeth canon, Death gatecrashed Elisabeth's wedding during Der letzte Tanz to gloat that she will eventually be his (that is, die). In the fic proper, Death kissed Victor before Yuuri could fully pull Victor back to the light and spoil years of machinations.
  • Carabosse appeared at Aurora's birthday party as a cloaked stranger, only revealing herself after the princess has collapsed. Death disguised himself as Yuuri, only dropping the guise a split second to Victor before he delivers the fatal kiss.
  • Carabosse can either be played by a ballerina or ballerino in drag. Death has been portrayed in Japan in various productions by actors and actresses alike. Funnily enough, the original casting description for Death in German and Austrian productions (per the likes of Uwe Kröger and Máté Kamarás), as well as the usual Takarazuka Revue portrayal of him, sounds like Victor: silver-haired Bishounen.
• The Lilac Fairy was performed by Victor in the Junior Worlds held in Sofia, Bulgaria. Sofia - as in the name of his dead younger sister.
• The author's pseudonym comes from Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats, specifically the lines "Of beechen green and shadows numberless/Singest of summer in full-throated ease."
  • Rudolf, Victor's Elisabeth counterpart, was born in the summer. One of the gardens at Schönbrunn Palace, the Habsburg summer residence, was renamed for the Crown Prince. Rudolf killed himself in winter, the season that Victor was born and Sofia died. The season with the least "light of day"...
  • Death and Rudolf's duet, the song whose English title was borrowed for the fic, is called "Die Schatten werden länger" (The Shadows Grow Longer) in the original German.
  • Several lines in Nightingale can be interpreted into the fic.
  Darkling I listen, and for many a time
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,
  Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme
  To take into the air my quiet breath;
  [...] Fled is that music:- Do I wake, or sleep?
• Regarding the Flower Motifs:
  • In Vietnamese culture, an equal number of white and red roses (Sofia and Yuuri) are placed on altars for the deceased. Women who died childless, as Sofia did, only get white roses.
  • Blue roses are achieved by dyeing white roses. Victor's life experiences was caused by the derailment of Sofia's existence.
    • Furthermore, in a meta sense: Victor's entire Dark and Troubled Past, as well as his Character Arc in this fic, was created by an alteration of Yuri!!! on Ice canon.
  • White roses used to symbolize love until they were replaced by red roses. Sofia relinquishes her role as guardian of Victor's wellbeing to Yuuri, and passes into the light.
• In Chapter Three, the first thing Death does when he takes to the ice is creating three perfect circles, changing feet in the middle - a serpentine figure (meaning "snake-like").