Hunting the Unicorn

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Harsher in Hindsight: The Fanfic.


"Here is there, and high is low; all may be undone. What is true, no two men know; what is gone is gone." Fairy tales are harder to live through than you'd think.
—The story's summary.

Written by CrossoverQueen (aka Sharysa), this is a character study of Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson from Glee. Like many Klaine-centric fanfics, Hunting the Unicorn takes place before and during Kurt's time at Dalton Academy. Unlike many such fanfics, it is influenced by The Last Unicorn and written in a similar style.

The author originally planned it as a short piece that addressed Kurt's characterization switch from the beginning of the show to the episode "Sexy," but she discovered that the Dalton Arc and the novel's plot and themes matched up very well in her head, and the story quickly became a Deconstruction Fic of Kurt and Blaine's relationship. It draws parallels between the Glee characters and those of The Last Unicorn, though with the current length, they are becoming much looser.

Excerpts and poetry from the novel set each chapter's tone, and several scenes are inspired by parts of the book. While it is certainly not a happy story, there are lighter moments that keep it from being too depressing.

Read it on FanFiction.Net, Livejournal's Gleefic community, or on the unrelated Gleefic Archive, where it gained status as a Featured Story. It is also on Archive of Our Own here.

Tropes used in Hunting the Unicorn include:

You make me better. You make me better, and now you're going to leave, and I have this--stupid feeling that you won't come back. Because no one ever comes back to me, Kurt, especially not someone like you.

  • Love Makes You Crazy: In Nikos. See If I Can't Have You above.
  • Love Martyr: Blaine for his father and Kurt. His father is neglectful as opposed to a stereotypical homophobe, and Kurt genuinely cares about him, but the above quote has some ugly implications. Especially since Blaine's not a virgin.
    • Blaine is now a full member of Love Martyrdom, what with making excuses for his Parental Neglect and sleeping with someone to try and feel closer to him.
  • May-September Romance: Besides Kurt, at least two of Blaine's past love interests are older. Jeremiah's older, Terry works for UPS while Blaine's still in school, and the guy in The Princess is implied to be older since Kyle puts so much emphasis on Blaine being sixteen. Alex is older, too.
  • Meaningful Echo: Not exact echoes, but:

Kurt to Blaine: Can you stay here for a while?[1] (Blaine does.)

Blaine to Kurt: Would you want to stay with me?[2] (Kurt wouldn't.)

Blaine: I wanted him to stay with me.[3] (It didn't work.)

  • Men Don't Cry: Averted. It's okay for men to cry when they go through as much as Kurt does. Or if their heart is utterly broken like Blaine's is.
    • Or if they're getting therapy and facing particularly hard mistakes.
    • Or if they're locked in a basement with no memory of the past half-hour and desperately calling their neglectful dad for help.
  • Mood Whiplash: Nikos is equal parts absurd, terrifying, and heartwarming. One reviewer couldn't stop laughing.
  • Mundane Utility: Wes can re-route an entire school's worth of security cameras (or at least a significant portion of them), and he uses it to secretly record Kurt and Blaine. He also has a near-100% success rate in betting pools, about anything, and uses it for solving Warbler drama.
  • My Beloved Smother: Blaine's mother disapproves of Blaine's singing, though it's not as clear-cut as most examples: She's Filipino, grew up poor, and doesn't want Blaine to end up a Starving Artist. Wes calls her traditional despite his own mother being Filipino.
    • Played With in The Princess--after Kurt talks about how crazy Burt would go in Blaine's situation, Blaine's mother doesn't take Blaine losing his virginity very seriously.
  • Nakama: The New Directions. The Warblers are also close-knit and care a lot about Kurt and Blaine's relationship. When Blaine implies that his situation with Kurt has happened before (with even worse consequences), they're rightly pissed.

Nick: We need to find that bastard and rip his fucking kneecaps out!

    • They also set up a buddy system to keep track of Blaine once David realizes Blaine is getting stalked.
    • Wes and David force Alex to kidnap them because they won't leave Blaine alone. The other Warblers are helping the police look for them.
  • No Name Given: Blaine's first.
  • Non-Indicative Name: The Princess and The Butterfly are two of the biggest Wham Chapters in the story.
  • Noodle Incident: How did Blaine end up stranded in the rain with a drunk Wes and David? Wes won a bet.
    • David and Wes once hospitalized Blaine's dad while the Andersons' mansion was being renovated. It made the paramedics laugh at him.
    • Nick was dragged into therapy earlier in the year. When someone asks him about it, he just flips the guy off with a Death Glare.
    • The Warblers worked with the drama students once, and they refuse to do it again.
  • Oblivious to Love: Blaine, so much. And with The Butterfly, it has a terrifying bent.
  • Oh Crap: When David realizes that Blaine's stalker has slipped past campus security disguised as a delivery guy.
  • One of Us: A lot of readers are tropers, and some have read The Last Unicorn.
  • Papa Wolf / Mama Bear: Greg, Burt, and Carole, in a strong contrast to Blaine's parents. Emphasized in King Haggard, where Luke asks Greg why he didn't find out Blaine got kidnapped until hours later.

Greg: I didn't call you because I was looking for Blaine.

David: We need to subtly change his goal from transferring back there to staying with Blaine. (beat) At Dalton.

Brandon: We're about to serenade a complete fucking stranger.
Nick: Yeah, I vote in favor of fucking that.
David: According to what I learned in Psych, inexplicable crying means that something's been fucked over!

Sarah: Hunting the unicorn--the way you are, just looking for it--that means you're trying to make yourself better.

  • Too Dumb to Live: Blaine, physically and emotionally.
  • Twofer Token Minority: Blaine is a gay hapa[4]. Terry Hanari is also a gay Asian.
  • Undercover Cop Reveal: Greg is Jerry.
  • The Unfavorite: Blaine. When he tries to call home and get a ride from his dad, it takes three tries and his brother finally answers. It's implied this has happened before.
  • Unlucky High School Friend: Terry, to Blaine.
  • Unreliable Narrator: It's realistic unreliability (they're teenagers, after all), but there's a lot of misconceptions going around. On a technical note, the narration is third-person limited rather than omniscient, which skews a lot of things towards whoever is the narrator at the moment.
    • Alex is very unreliable. His sugary introduction in The Creatures of Night contrasts sharply with what he actually does in Nikos.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Only the freshmen at Dalton care that four Warblers are hauling Blaine around like a sack of potatoes. Apparently, they do this for at least one of their number every year.
    • Ms. Bradford bumps into Nick and Jeff, who are both soaking wet, and Nick is acting strangely (because he's high, but she doesn't know this). She immediately "gives the nurse a head's up."
  • Used To Be A Good Father: Luke Anderson, which is why Blaine's Love Martyrdom is so depressing. In a subversion (inversion?), it's a wonder Blaine's stayed a sweet kid.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Blaine.
  • Wham! Episode: The Clock, The Princess, and the second half of The Butterfly.
    • Nikos.
  • Wham! Line: After all the Warblers' mostly-affectionate jokes at Blaine's lacking sex drive, "I'm not a virgin" hits really hard.
    • "Having a rough patch, Tom?" Said to the dean by Greg.
  • What You Are in the Dark: Played With during The Clock for Kurt and Blaine; they're having a heartfelt talk about Kurt's transfer, and don't know they're being taped by the Warblers. Which leads to a subversion of The Power of Love--Blaine really has changed for the better and they're both head-over-heels for each other, but Kurt is too independent to be content with staying at Dalton.
    • David and Wes don't know they're being recorded either. When they need to decide between calling 911 or running, which would risk Blaine getting run over, they Take a Third Option by forcing Alex to kidnap all three of them.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Jesus Christ, Blaine.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: The Warblers think Kurt and Blaine are a fairy tale couple and desperately want them to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, this story is based on two deconstructions of that very thing.
  • Wrong Guy First: Heavily implied with Blaine. Confirmed in The Princess.
  • X Meets Y: Glee meets The Last Unicorn, of course.
  • You Are Too Late: The police find Wes and David in Alex's basement, but Blaine panicked and ran off two hours earlier.
  • You Need to Get Laid: The Warblers think Blaine should. Inverted; getting laid was a huge factor in why he's so uptight.
  • Zany Scheme: The Warblers try these to make Kurt stay at Dalton. They fail to various degrees.
    • They try to change Kurt's ringtone to a "Love overcomes all" song (Aqualung's "Brighter Than Sunshine"), but accidentally change it to a sad song (Augustana's "Boston"). Kurt's just confused.
    • They hack Blaine's Facebook to send Kurt a marriage request and a five-page poem. As gay marriage is still largely illegal in the US, it's a sore spot for Blaine.

Jeff: Thank god we didn't get the rings.

    • They lock Kurt and Blaine in the closet. Their motive isn't even recognized, since it's such a standard prank.
  1. He's literally asking Blaine to stay with him.
  2. He's asking if Kurt would stay with him at Dalton, given the choice.
  3. The reason he slept with the first guy he dated.
  4. half-Asian