As Canada’s figure skating sweethearts are celebrated across the globe, the number of fantasy stories about them continues to rise. The longtime chemistry between Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir has been a great inspiration for creative writers to take the duo’s story into fantasyland.

Ever since the duo claimed gold medals in Pyeongchang, there has been an increase in stories on fan fiction platforms like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own. Eden Lackner, an English literature instructor at the University of Calgary, told CTV News Channel numbers on Archive of Our Own alone have jumped from 160 stories yesterday to 197 this morning.

So what is fan fiction? Lackner, who specializes in the medium, explained what this type of storytelling is all about.

“It’s when fans find themselves interested in a particular media property…and they are basically inspired to write stories about them,” Lackner said. “It’s a creative act and one that honestly if there is media about it, there’s stories somewhere about it.”

With the widespread media attention surrounding the decorated athletes, there has been a recent increase in stories across a multitude of genres. One story on Archive of Our Own called “Spaces and Hollow Places,” is the most popular in the archive. Surpassing 16,000 hits, the story’s description teases, “When a partnership of eighteen years is put to the test, Tessa and Scott must rediscover who they are.”

Another title, “Now I am become Death (the destroyer of our world),” injects the couple into a ‘Hunger Games’ style world.

“There are ones that are going to be traditional romances, there’s going to be ones that are perhaps more interested in angst. They’ll be ones that even have fantasy or science-fiction bents to them. Fan fiction itself is something that really stretches across genres,” she said.

Lackner believes the reason behind Virtue and Moir being the centre of all the recent fiction is due to their already real-life compelling story. Add the sport of ice dance, the length of their career, and their prowess to the mix, and writers are compelled to play with the “what-ifs” of the pair’s relationship.

“All that sort of works together and feeds that creative notion and really gives fans of the sport, of Scott and Tessa in general, the impetus to really be creative in their own right.”

Although the couple denies a romantic relationship, it seems many people on the internet refuse to accept that.