All Japan Competition
Yukimura! I have kept your promise! All I wanted was for Rikkai to win, and to have helped them reach their goal beyond thrills me! *sobs with joy for the team*
Yeah, you all knew I wrote that.
(To view the fic better, increase the font size/text zoom size. It will be easier on your eyes)
I wibbled for months over this. I was going to write Kamio/Kirihara initially, but I couldn't be bothered because I fell in love with the idea of YanaKiri. However, there isn't much fic out there for them, which was disappointing on one hand, but motivating, too.
It was hard. I kept asking myself, since I couldn't do the rarepair category with this pairing, why on EARTH would Renji ever want to get with Akaya? That's the big question. What on earth do they have in common? How can they stand each other? Why wouldn't Renji be more interested in someone like Inui, with whom he shares a lot in common? To me, Inui would drive Renji insane with his data, because as much as they both play Data Tennis, it's very different. I went back to the manga a lot and found that Renji only uses numerical values and percentages twice, and both instances are when he is goading Inui. I tried to pick Renji's brain- a task in itself- to understand him. He likes literature, okay, so what? He isn't the nice golden boy, heis one of Rikkai's three MONSTERS, okay, so what?
And then there was Akaya.
To me, YanaKiri works because they are different people. Not opposites- they have similar goals and drives to winning- but more complimentary. Jet Monster's doujinshi show a number of scenes where Renji helps Akaya with homework- I liked this. It was a place to embellish, to work with. Akaya very clearly- as shown by both the anime and the manga- wants to be on the same level as his senpais. He wants to impress them. He wants to be one of them. And mostly, he wants to BEAT them.
For me, Rikkai is one big happy family, in a similar way that Seigaku is to other fans. Well, maybe not a family, but they are comrades in arms. They aren't friends, per se, because they have such strong individual strengths that there will always be an underlying rivalry between them all- something that I don't see between all of the members of Seigaku. This is another thing I thought a lot about. Friends, rivals, lovers- can it all work?
And Mizuki- he was initially inspired by my thoughts that it was him who Ann knocked down the stairs at the Senbatsu. I had Mizuki and Kirihara confused when I first watched the series, because I watched bits and pieces before filling in various arcs. I thought to myself that if I could mistake a resemblance between the two of them, maybe other characters could as well. And I admit I added this bit to prove that Mizuki CAN be paired with other people that Fuji, Yuuta or Akazawa.
This fic was extremely frustrating to write, as I know you all put up with my constant whining and "i suck so hard" comments on LJ. It wasn't easy- the pairing made me re-evaluate a lot of the Rikkai arc and various relationships. It was also hard because this pairing doesn't have a lot of love in my corner of LJ. Most people prefer the Data Pair. Hence, I admit I added a no-no Data Pair scene as a spiteful little extra. That, and I wanted to try to get across my point of view why I don't think the Data Pair would work. It's not for everyone, just like YanaKiri isn't either.
Now, I wanted to thank some people. Firstly, to koneko_meow and whisper132 for the beta work, a huge task and a fast turn around. Especially to Whisper, who beat pronouns into me with a stick, told me no to all of the parsing and making me ask myself why the hell I was still writing. Tough love, and I still have rots more to work on. So thank you.
Also to ver2frog and shikishi for reading bits and pieces and being so encouraging during a time when I was more fried than friend-worthy.
And to sioniann, who even though she doesn't realize she helped, reading all of her awesome Data Pair helped me sort out some of my own feelings towards them, as well as the nature of YanaKiri.
So yeah, that's my story. I wasn't expecting this at all, to be honest. I was hoping a few people might read and enjoy this piece, but that was about it. So thank you, and to those who guessed it was me, well, you were right. I guess I do have a style after all, ne? ;)
Also, side note- because I am still working and then toodling off for a couple days up north, I won't post this piece on LJ until later next week.
Now, since I have written Sanada-POV fic and Yanagi-POV fic, all that is left is Yukimura-POV. Which I have already started, don't worry, but the going has been slow recently in terms of writing. :/