#i'll trawl ao3 later probably

[buckybarnesss]

the idea of korra asking mako to teach her lightening bending has imbedded itself in my brain.

anyone know of fics on this subject?

[secretlystephaniebrown]

Rereading GCSS bc it is in someone's bookmarks I'm trawling through and I had A Thought. So question: Would you ever consider writing a snippet where Harley and Guy politely discuss custody?

So you know, I've been sitting on this for a while, going "I'll write a snippet for this eventually."

And then whoops.

I don't think this is a snippet anymore.

Enjoy!

On Ao3

--

Guy Gardner meets Harleen Quinzel for the first time on the day of Crystal Brown’s wedding.

Guy was what the bridesmaid’s had dubbed a “Guysmaid” which was hilarious. He didn’t like Arthur, but he was willing to keep the peace because it made Crystal happy, and she was practically glowing, and only partially because she was three months pregnant under that concoction of taffeta and lace that was a wedding dress.

Harley wasn’t in the wedding, mostly because while Arthur and Guy got into aggressive staring contests on occasion and argued about petty things, Arthur hated Harley.

Which, in Guy’s book, signified that Harley was obviously a great person.

Once the actual ceremony was over, and Guy had managed to snag his dance with Crystal, which had Ma Bellinger having yet another fit about his involvement in the wedding as a whole, he grabbed two beers and went in search of the brunette.

They didn’t exactly get along, in the end. They were very dissimilar people. He was loud and abrasive and ready for a fight at all times, with a chip on his shoulder and a heart of gold. She was, in those days, a doctor with a romantic streak, with a bad tendency to psychoanalyze people after she had a few drinks.

They didn’t fight, because it was a wedding, and neither wanted to upset Crystal.

But in the end, they withdrew to their separate corners (Harley to the college friends, Guy to the Bellingers) and mutually resolved to spend as little time as possible with the other.

And then, a few months later, Crystal had the baby.

Harley gets the call first. Then, after Crystal rejects every single one of Arthur’s suggestions for godfather, Crystal calls Guy.

Guy is only a little bitter about coming second, but he gets that Crystal wanted someone more local first. He’s in Michigan, in those days, playing college football and working through his degree in special education, and he’s not sure where he’s going to end up next. Even if Harley leaves Gotham, she’ll probably just go to New York, which is hardly any distance at all from New Jersey.

He does, however, double down on spoiling Stephanie every chance he gets.

And when Harley disappears and becomes Harley Quinn…

Well, he triples down instead. He’s got to make up the difference, you see.

----

Harley and Guy both get the call at the same time, because the social workers in question aren’t sure how to find Harley, and Guy’s got an out of state area code on his phone number, so they’re not sure if he’s even available.

Guy has a slight head start, since the call to him is direct, rather than having to go through Harley’s mom, but Robinson Park is closer to Manchester, so Harley has a shorter drive.

Harley gets there first, in the end, by a slender margin, which is probably for the best, because if Guy witnessed her be confused about Crystal and Steph, he might have thrown something.

Guy shows up a few moments later, before Harley even gets in the house.

He looks at Harley, and squints for a moment, because of the blonde hair, but he places the heavy New York accent quickly enough.

Harley, now that she’s in the right mindset, recognizes him as well, and the two manage to keep their mouths shut until the social worker is out of the house and Steph is upstairs packing.

Then they start the hushed-tones argument.

“If you think for a moment I’m letting you take her to the Joker,” Guy says through gritted teeth.

“I’m not—we’re broken up! I’ve got a house! Well, it’s Selina’s house technically, but Mister J’s in Arkham right now, he’s not—anyways, you live out of state!”

“At least she’ll be safe with me,” Guy snaps, because he’d been friends with Bruce Wayne long enough to know a few things about Gotham City.

“She’d be safe!” Harley protested hotly. “I’d never let anything happen to her!”

“It’s fucking Gotham,” he points out. “Nothing’s safe here!”

“You really want to take her away from her mom?” Harley retorts. “And school starts soon, you want to… uproot her life? It’s good for a kid to have stability?”

Something shifts in Guy’s face. “Fuck. Crystal.” He points at Harley. “Put a pin in this, because we’re not done here. I need to make a call. I’m getting Crystal moved to a better facility.”

“Hey, I was going to do that!” Harley protested. “How do you have that sort of money?”

“I don’t. But I can call in a favor,” Guy said. He steps outside to make the call.

Harley puffs her bangs irritably, and then winces when she spots Stephanie Brown’s ponytail poking around the corner, obviously eavesdropping.

In the end, Harley suspects she knows how this is going to go. They’re probably going to have to take the issue to Steph herself.

Living with three supervillains but staying local, or going to Rhode Island to live with her Uncle Guy, who she actually vaguely knows?

If it weren’t for the fact that Stephanie Brown is so obviously Crystal’s daughter, Harley wouldn’t put money on her own chances of custody.

But then she starts hearing shouting coming from outside and she throws open the door to find out what’s going on, and she and Stephanie both get full view of Guy transforming into a Green Lantern to yell at Batman.

… huh.

Yeah, this is going to be tricky.

--

Steph doesn’t really. Know what’s happening anymore.

Her long-lost godmother is actually Harley Quinn, and she lives in a mansion in Gotham City with Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Uncle Guy, who she hasn’t really seen in-person since she was five, but who she knows from birthday cards and Christmas presents and fuzzy childhood memories, is apparently Green Lantern, and he lives in Rhode Island with the Justice League.

Also, he knows Batman, and is yelling at Batman for showing up at her house.

Guy clearly puts it together that she’s Spoiler on the spot, but he doesn’t call her out for it because Harley is there, but he lets Batman talk to her.

Before Batman can leave, but after he’s given her a communicator to contact him in emergencies, a third car pulls into the driveway, and Poison Ivy and a woman wearing a pantsuit that she assumes is Catwoman get out, and then Harley comes out of the house, and there’s more yelling.

Guy asks her if she wants to go inside to finish packing while the grownups hash it out, and she tells him no, since her life is being yelled about, and he shrugs and lets her stay.

He does give her a Zesti from the fridge though and lets her order pizza before he wades into the fight.

She sits down on the couch, watching Harley Quinn loudly promise to not break the Joker out of Arkham if she gets custody of Steph, while Guy points out that she’s a felon, and if it weren’t for the fact that Gotham City is a certified disaster zone, Harley wouldn’t even be eligible for custody.

Which sets Catwoman off about felon disenfranchisement and Batman looks like he has a headache, which is objectively hilarious.

She suspects that, no matter where she ends up next (she’s leaning towards going with Uncle Guy, personally, because even though Poison Ivy and Catwoman seem chill, it might be nice to live with people who aren’t supervillains for a while, plus Uncle Guy apparently lives with Big Barda, who is objectively one of the coolest people in the whole galaxy), her life will never be the same.

[festivalofthe12]

No but it really is starting to settle on me just how much MORE popular Yuki/Kakeru is since the new anime came out.

Like: I recently regained access to my old livejournal from the late 00s!!!! And unfortunately I made that after the height of my Fruits Basket phase, but I still did make some mention of Yuki/Kakeru... And, well.

18) A pairing that is woefully unappreciated! YUKI/FRICKINGKAKERU. I swear, there's less than a PAGE of this on fanfic.net. Less than a PAGE. Geez, it's implied SO MUCH in so many scenes, even WITHOUT the whole 'I'll brake up with you' thing. Bloody fandom, don't appreciate good characters and pairings when they see them... (8/3/2008)

And as I implied in an earlier post, while I was trawling through the Ao3 tag (still on-going!!) I decided to give myself a blast from the past and re-read through the Yuki S. and Kakeru M. filter on ff.net, which I remember checking religiously. Today? Three pages.

Ao3 has 10 pages and 200 works!!!

And even then, like, lately I've been going through my old bookmarks (sadly I've only found one Yuki/Kakeru, which I'd already remembered anyway), with a current focus on Zuko/Aang. Well, even just by googling I can immediately summon up whole rec lists of livejournal snippets and fic memes and the like, so I was excited to see what I could dig out for Yukeru, since I certainly remember Fruits Basket having a big presence on that site!

Nothing. Literally, I haven't found anything yet. Save a livejournal comm with exactly three posts, long-dead.

Of course, it makes sense that the new anime brought in new fans: Kakeru famously never showed up in the old anime, so people would only have ever even met him if they read through to, what? Volume 8? Later? of the manga. And I do recall the fandom being far less... Yuki-positive, back then. Yuki/Kyou was a popular ship, of course, and Yuki/Haru was around, but those ships had Kyou and Haru fans behind them; you'd only ship Yukeru if you were really invested in Yuki himself.

But it's still just boggling me. I did find Yuki/Kakeru rec lists, but they're all from the last few years. They alone have as much fanfic as ff.net had of Yukeru total back in 2008, when Kakeru had surely existed for a good half a decade at least, even in English.

Is there something about the current fanfiction landscape that is far more amenable to Yuki/Kakeru? Probably, yeah, I think: it's a pairing very situated for queer coming-of-age found family type stories, which are much more popular now. (Not that they never existed before! But fandom was much less... consciously activist-y. Maybe I'm just betraying my age back then, but it was much more common to ship boys simply because they were ~smexy~ together, as I think I myself cringefully wrote about Yuki/Kyou in my very first livejournal post...)

And it's. Such a strange feeling. I remember when I realised that season 2 of the anime had come out, and on a whim deciding to check the Yuki/Kakeru fanfic tag on ao3. And I thought I found only a small number! And I read one, and went 'oh cool, my old ship has Plural New Works!' and moved on!!! I truly had no IDEA there were so MANY... or that they were so GOOD.

Yuki/Kakeru was one of the first ships I ever wrote. The fic was very long and I'm sure very bad, though unfortunately this is from the period of my writings lost to time, so I'll sadly never be able to check it out for my (current) self. I think it was the first lemon I ever wrote; on a Pirates of the Caribbean fic I exclaimed that this second lemon was much better than my first, and I have a sneaking suspicion Yuki/Kakeru is who my 14-or-so old self had written like that.

I made a friend on ff.net because they were one of the very few Yuki/Kakeru writers. I have a visceral memory of coming upon the 'I'll break up with you' scene while reading the manga at school during lunch, and how I immediately exclaimed it aloud in great excitement, startling a poor teacher who had been talking to one of my friends and no doubt knew me as being very quiet. I'm sure I must have drawn it in all sorts of little doodles; I saved a lot of my old high school arts, so maybe I should try going through those as well?

I don't know. I'm just feeling a great sense of awe, I guess, haha. That ship was *so important to me*, and it was *so hard* to find anyone else who felt as strongly as me! (My friends all liked Fruits Basket with me, of course, but we've always tended to have divergent ship tastes.) And right beneath my nose, it has had a renaissance! It sprouted and bloomed and then went dormant again while I twiddled my thumbs, vaguely promising myself that I'd get back to the new anime at some point or other!

God I just. REALLY wish I'd been paying attention while the anime was airing, hahaha. :') My inner child has been so thoroughly validated by this all, that this ship I cared so much about really IS as great and important and meaningful as I'd always thought it was! But how must it have been to be in the thick of it all, when the ship tags were thriving? When I could've seen the new viewer's reactions to famous scenes? When everyone else was thinking about Yukeru as much as I have been, this last month or so?

But I'm not only unhappy. i can't not be grateful that these people have come and made works which I can still now and enjoy, and that there are still certainly people around to like my silly little Yukeru posts and even maybe make new ones. Things are so much better now than they were back then.

It's just. Incredible. Why didn't any of this happen back then?! Why did this Understanding take so long to spread and percolate?!? I don't know. But I'm happy. My younger self... is so, so happy. :'DDD