#dancesofdarkness

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

there were two major driving forces in the writing of this fic for me: first, the headcanon that kiyoko is aro/ace, and second, the desire to give kiyoko some kind of character development to parallel the other third-years.  (because i feel that the importance of the manager is often underappreciated, and people forget that while yes, daichi and suga and asahi had a lot of strength and determination to keep their team with few members and a bad record, kiyoko also had a lot to do with it.)  i wanted anyone reading the fic to gain appreciation and understanding of kiyoko, both as a person in relation to the other people on her team, and as a strong female character with multiple dimensions and a fully developed personality.  and, of course, i wanted people to agree with my aro/ace headcanon.  as i said in my author’s notes: shimizu kiyoko is an aro/ace goddess!  fight me!!!!

2. What scene did you first put down?

the first one.  usually when i come up with a story idea, i can picture a couple of scenes very clearly - often the first scene and/or the last scene.  (the middle is always a Challenge.)  and in this case, i could clearly see tiny first-year kiyoko sitting down in her guidance counselor’s office and telling him that she wanted to go to med school, and she didn’t care what she had to do as long as it led to that goal.  she’s very determined in a quiet, subtle way - it’s something i admire a lot about her, and as a result something i wanted to portray in the fic from very early on.  (the relationships between characters developed later.)

3. What’s your favorite line of narration?

i really like the last line, because i’m always a slut for symbolism:

She tilts her face up to the sky, and for a moment, she can almost imagine a flock of crows soaring far above her.  A flock of crows – sleek, black, and glorious, with no chance of ever falling.

4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

this isn’t a single line, but i really like the part in which kiyoko stands up to old coach ukai for the first time - it’s the perfect match of strong-willed and polite, i think:

Kiyoko meets her coach’s gaze evenly, ignoring the tingling of her spine.  It feels like she’s staring down an angry mother bear.  “I’m not like ‘these guys.’  I don’t have a future in volleyball.  My goal is to go to a top university, then medical school, and become a doctor, and I can’t do that if I have good grades.  Good grades take a lot of work, and – well, I don’t know about you, but I do like having time to sleep once I get home from practice.”

Coach Ukai opens his mouth to retaliate, but Kiyoko isn’t done.  “Look,” she tells him, “I’ve helped this team.  I pay attention during practices and during games.  I see where improvements are needed, and I help to make those improvements happen.  So what if I care more about my grade in biology than about this club?  With all due respect, sensei, do you think you can find another manager who will be as good at this job as I am?  If you do, you can take me out of the club.  But if not, please allow me to continue studying when I have free moments.”

5. What part was hardest to write?

the parts with minor sexual harassment were challenging to write.  i don’t have a lot of experience with sexual harassment myself, so putting myself into the shoes of someone experiencing it was very scary - both because i was imagining the situation with myself in kiyoko’s place, and because i wanted to portray the experience accurately.  i also wanted to find a way to resolve the conflict (with tanaka and noya especially) in a way that was believable, respectful to kiyoko, and helped tanaka and noya gain a better understanding of why what they were doing was wrong.  the way kiyoko is portrayed in season one of the anime made me pretty uncomfortable (see: why it’s used as an example in this poem), so i wanted to resolve that in some way, but it was a hard balance to find.  i think i did it okay, though - or at least, i haven’t gotten any negative comments about it yet.

8. Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

the part about tutoring is definitely inspired by my own experience.

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

not really, other than the fact that it was definitely a lot shorter, originally.  i started out thinking, okay, i’ll write a few cool scenes with kiyoko kicking ass and then it … became 12k.  what the hell.  a lot of changes also came from the fact that i started writing the fic before i’d read the manga (and only the first season of the anime was out at that point), so i ended up adding in yachi and the parts with tutoring before the summer training camp very quickly and awkwardly to accommodate canon.

11. What do you like best about this fic?

i really like how i portrayed the relationships between kiyoko and the other third-years.  i care about all of the third-years so much (see: the sappy daichi fic i wrote yesterday), and i really wanted to convey how much they love each other and depend upon each other - including kiyoko in that relationship.  the part near the end in which the third-years decide to stay is one of my favorites (kiyoko calls the other third-years in her narration, and i am quietly screaming in the background.)

12. What do you like least about this fic?

like with a lot of my fics, i wish i’d spent more time with it and done more editing.  i did some editing, but i didn’t have a very good hq!! beta at that point, so there are definitely places with awkward description and/or confusing language.

i also think there aren’t enough other girls in this fic - if i’d read more of the manga before finishing it, or hadn’t finished it so quickly, i likely would have written more about kiyoko’s relationship with yachi (which i don’t see as romantic on her end, because of the aforementioned aro/ace headcanon, but i do think is a great relationship that i love writing.)  i also wish i’d included a scene or two with michimiya, and maybe something with the other managers at the training camp.  for all that i love cool female characters on their own, the friendships between cool female characters are so good and so important.  we need more strong women supporting other strong women in media, and we need it now.

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

i think what i already mentioned - that kiyoko is a strong, complex character, even though she doesn’t say a lot or have a really obviously important role in the anime/manga.  and, y’know, that she’s aro/ace.  because she is.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

mostly i reminded myself how much i love writing character studies (which is: a lot.)  writing this fic made me want to write character studies for yachi, michimiya, saeko, every female manager we’ve seen in the manga.  (i really love the johzengi manager especially - she’s so !!!!!)

these aren’t fics i’m going to write really soon, necessarily, because i want to spend a lot of time on them.  i want them to be fics i’m proud of.  because, for all of “north is everywhere”’s faults, i’m very proud of it - it’s not my most popular fic on ao3 by far, and that does bother me somewhat (why must fandom always treat its gay boys better than its awesome girls), but for a fic like this, i don’t need hundreds of kudos to be happy that i spent time and effort on something.  the product itself is enough.