Level Horizon

by nyxysabyss

In a perfect world, everything works out. His leveler would still have his wings. They wouldn't be separated from their families, entire lives abandoned. They'd never fight, never wonder over what they've lost, never fear the future. But Kageyama knows better than anyone that the world isn't perfect. He's also learned to smile in spite of that. Post 'Level Pair' (*not)drabbles 0.o

38. AUTHOR NOTES FOR LEVEL HORIZON

What follows herein is nothing more than my personal ramblings… basically a mess of thought vomit babble XD

SO…Horizon Stats (Again, a nod to Iron Rose for coming up with the name, you are wonderful):

Total Word Count: 179,617 (more than double the total for Pair)

Total Chapters: 37 (seven more than Pair)

Total Pages: 263 (nearly twice as many as Pair)

Longest Chapter: Kiyoko's Epilogue (16.5k words) by, like, 7000 words I think

Shortest Chapter: Year Thee 1-9 where Tanaka first meets Natsu at around 2000 words.

Chapters I struggled most with: Most of the last five and for sure the Epilogue, but those were probably more motivational issues than chapter difficulty. Lev's was hard to get right, and Bokuto's were rocky as well. Daichi's action chapter in the snake nest was a task, too, because of the pacing and research that went into it. Horizon in general was tougher to hash out than Pair because the story was a lot less fluid and bridging events was a challenge with the time lapses.

Chapters I enjoyed most: Any of Kei's (especially around kids) or Tobio's… and most any time Kuroo was being his awesome self. I liked Yachi's when Hina's wings finally emerged.

People with the most POVs: Iwa (4), and Kageyama, Suga, Tsukki, Tanaka, Kenma (all with 3 apiece)

Leveler Series Stats (Both Pair and Horizon):

Total Word Count: 262,232

Total Chapters: 67

Total Pages: 406

People with the most POVs: Kageyama (21), Shouyou (11), Suga and Iwa (4 each), Tsukki, Kuroo, Tanaka, Kenma (3 each)

I originally only had 30 chaps more or less planned for Horizon and started posting once I'd blocked out about 25 chapters. That would have satisfied my 80% completion rule just fine (30 days should be enough to finish the last five right?). Except it ended up being another 7 chapters on top of that, the eipilogue long enough to have been three, so I wasn't nearly as far along in the completion as I intended. Every chapter of Horizon took me probably two to three solid days to put together, sometimes more; contrast that to Pair where I was turning out sometimes two in one day.

Again, I must give a nod to Craziiwolf for her wonderful art that ignited this series into being. If you haven't wandered over to tumblr and checked out her account, you definitely should: . Like seriously, you are missing out. She has so many fascinating AUs, and if you look for the khwinged tag, you can trace her art back to the earliest ones in this AU that touched this Leveler series off for me. She is extremely gifted and her style is breathtaking.

In what inspired me to write the second installment? People asked about things like Natsu, Oikawa, do they ever go home, and when does Hinata get his wings back, which in turn generated more plunnies that all attacked me with a vengeance and you can only beat them back with a stick for so long. I had the world and characters all established after Pair, so it wasn't TOO hard to kick them into line for another round once I had something of a plotline (this was the biggest struggle for me with Horizon at first).

The live counterparts that I used for reference with each of the following characters:

Crows: Kageyama, Nishinoya, Azumane, Tanaka, Suwamura, Iwaizumi, Yamaguchi, Shimizu, Oikawa, Saeko, Ukai

Altamira Oriole: Shoyou and Natsu

White Ibis: Tsukishima

Grey Shrike Thrush: Sugawara

Painted Bunting—female: Yachi

Great Horned Owl: Bokuto

rare Black Barn Owl: Akaashi

Green-eyed Russian Blue: Lev

Gold-eyed Bombay: Kuroo

Red Somali Cat: Yaku

Mottled Bengal: Kenma:

The scope of Horizon was considerably bigger than Pair and it had me constantly doubling back to make sure I was keeping details straight… I have no idea how all of you guys managed. The revolving door of POVs was also a challenge—it totally ended up being a study in character analysis with each of the different people. I even ran into issues on occasion of being stuck in the wrong 'voice' sometimes when I'd switch between chapters. If you count the brief Oikawa POV at the very end, I got all of the beach group except Natsu and the key players in the rookery (Iwa and Oikawa) and Sheru Bay (Ukai). Really the only other person I felt like I missed who had a significant part might have been Saeko.

I really tried to focus on the journey these characters underwent and the changes in their mindsets rather than the development of relationships, but still tried to pay attention to platonic ties in particular. As such, certain characters lent themselves to situations better and others were sometimes more ideal when I was searching for a particular emotion, so it was sometimes a task to decide who got to own the particular POV I was working on. I also rarely had POVs where everyone was there, because keeping track of them all and including them all in a meaningful way is difficult for me. It is far easier to deal with two to six people all wanting a part of the action as opposed to fifteen XD

Someone pointed out for me the one person I completely forgot about when tying up loose ends in the epilogue. I honest to god meant to get at least a footnote in about Akiteru. I'd even gone over the epilogue two or three times trying to make sure I'd gotten everything, and it still somehow slipped thru the cracks.

Synoptic background on Akiteru, Tsukki, & Yams: Yamaguchi had a hard time being surrounded by reminders of the family he'd lost, so Tsukki took him and just up and left on a whim for a change of pace. And just never informed Akiteru of his plans really… he's a terrible brother. I imagine Tsukki would regret that after the fact when he realizes that Akiteru never left that place in the event he and Yams ever came back, and since he doesn't really deal well with anger and piercing negative emotions like guilt, I think his not returning home would be a bid to avoid facing his own poor choices rather than for anything Akiteru had done. For the record, I imagine that Yamaguchi would have sent him a tournament invite at some point and Akiteru would come watch them play at every tournament from that point on.

KUROO. My black cat quickly became one of my favorite characters of the series way back before we had more than just the brief glimpse of him at the end of Pair. If there is one character that I made all but invulnerable and a pivotal figure to the Leveler series, it would be Kuroo. He got all the best parts, all the biggest responsibilities, and all the flashiest power plays. He rarely appeared out of his element, and he often had the largest contributing impact in a bind with his knowledge base and instincts. I gave him so much of the powerful leadership role that Daichi, who I feel really should have had more influence with that regard, got all but pushed out of it.

I feel like Horizon really failed several of the other Karasuno guys though, too, and not just Daichi. Asahi ended up almost a background character, and Noya ended up seeming a lot more oblivious and vague to me than I think he actually is. In the anime, the little libero feels more aggressive and decisive with an impulsively hardline drive to reach whatever his goal is, unapologetic and frank in his demeanor even if sympathetic toward his teammates' struggles. Yamaguchi got relegated to the edges of the story a lot too, kept on the sidelines and viewed mostly through Tsukki's eyes. I don't think we got much chance to really see the quiet strength that he harbors. While I didn't struggle to write Suga so much, his POVs ended up being a lot of observation and analysis of a situation rather than actual character building I think. And no matter how much I like him, I feel like I also made Tanaka a bit more mature and less combative than he is… and with a disturbing absence of shirt removal, in retrospect.

As always, I felt like I missed on Oikawa throughout the series, but I also struggled with Bokuto, and to an extent, Noya, and then there was Lev – oh, my god, LEV, that bipolar chapter had me wanting to bang my head on a wall. I love the tall goofy feline, he and Yaku are hilarious, but I couldn't get him to sync right and I had to conclude that I had as poor a grasp on the grey cat as I do on the Grand King. I could write Lev just fine when he wasn't in the driver seat, but the moment I handed him the keys, it was straight to the docks, rent a rowboat, forget the oars, and set myself adrift in the middle of the ocean, because I was fucking lost trying to write him. I mean, it was also a scene with Oikawa, so we might as well have shackled me to a cannon ball and tossed me out of the boat while we were out there for the way it ended up a one-two punch of 'characters I suck at writing'. I mean, scenes with Oikawa were no better and the equivalent of getting into a bullpen and attempting to wrestle with a rabid alien Tooru, but hey, I'd kind of come to terms with that by the time I'd hit Lev's chapter.

I had praise for Tsukki's and Kuroo's chapters, but they were also some of the smoothest ones I did. I always enjoyed the snark and banter of these two almost as much as I enjoyed the soft moments between KageHina. Kageyama's chapters always wrote easy, too, because I think I share a lot in common with him mentally. Hinata's chapters always ended up overloaded with some of the most colorful/desperate emotions because he's this colorful person, but I hate when he's portrayed as an airhead. I don't think he's as emptyheaded as a lot of people seem to think; despite his poor grades (a result of not finding class as important as volleyball more than lack of intelligence), and I think he's remarkably perceptive given how he can make friends with anyone. It takes a scary degree of attentiveness to be able to navigate social networking like that, and I think that often just gets translated into bubbly idiocy rather than the sharp intellect it requires.

It irked me a little, but I think I wrote Natsu way young; she was supposed to be eleven or twelve in human years, but she came off around nine or ten to me. I feel like her situation having been a captive, never learning to read/write crow or really speak it for centuries helps ease that discrepancy, but if I had a better grasp on kids, I think she'd have come out a little different. I also wasn't able to just bring her in and say 'aw, look, the siblings are reunited, they will just remember each other and everything will be all happy now' either.

When they were separated, she was a toddler and Shouyou was like seven-ish in human yaers, both very young; she spent that entire time with snakes, he grew up a sentry. Their experiences when they meet again at this point are so vastly different, they'd be staring at each other across the vast chasm of their separate pasts, each set on a completely different path by the lives they've lived in each other's absence. I couldn't easily just force them back into a smooth sibling relationship and have it feel normal, so I had her leaning on Tanaka all the more.

I have to say THANK YOU to all you wonderful people for not crucifying me for making Tanaka & Natsu levelers. They are one of my oblique ships, but I have zero inclination toward romantic adult/child relationships. The headcanon inside my head is and always has been of Natsu having returned home on a visit from college, and she stops into his family café that he now runs for dinner one day, and he totally drops for her. You can read Horizon however you like, but if anything more develops between them, it would have to be on Natsu's terms when she is older—I did my damnedest to make sure to always keep their interactions strictly platonic even if amusing.

I also adore Saeko and Ukai, but this one is for far less pure reasons: p/92mY9F. If I'm honest, I find Ukai to be one of the most attractive characters in HQ, but then, I also like characters who buck the system a bit, and I was on that Saeko/Ukai ship before I realized it had left port. I have a brother who isn't that unlike Ukai with something of a slight tendency toward delinquency, and seeing him holding his hours-old son where him being a parent had seemed like one of the great follies of the universe at one point was surreal (for the record, I think he's actually one of the best dads, everything he does now is for his kid).

So, big confession—I ship KuroTsukki more than TsukkiYama so I had something of a hard time forcing them into their other common ships. I love the clash of personalities between those two and I could have gone back and forth all day with the ribbing and the witty insults between them. Really, I would be going along on a chapter and one of them would do something I hadn't intended them to do because it was Kuroo & Tsukki in the scene and it just fell onto the page, and I would have to rebuke them and be like 'No, go back and play with your other ships'. Their interactions never had to be forced or planned like I'd have to do with KuroKen or TsukkiYama sometimes. This was one of the big reasons I had little to no remorse not making TsukkiYama levelers.

I'm also kinda really against the idea of 'preordained soulmates' and 'fate' in general, too. Fate is a fickle bitch—chaotic, cold, unforgiving, and uncaring to the pain she deals to her pawns. I would hate to be at her mercy with no chance to guide my own future, and I kinda used TsukkiYama to give that idea a figurative 'fuck you'. To me, their relationship would be one of the 'most profound/honest' ones of the series because it doesn't bridge off a leveler bond and it exists in spite of it. I.E. Tsukki's personality in a nutshell: fuck the world.

I did feel like the leveler theme was overdone with the number of them that popped up like dandelions in a suburban yard. Don't get me wrong, I love how it came out and everything, but we went from levelers being myth at the beginning of Pair to 'levelers… levelers everywhere' in Horizon. It was quite unrealistic to me that they all ended up with a leveler after knowing basically no one else who had before that point. But Nyx is a pushover and ya'll love your ships, so here we are lol

I have to apologize… the girls kind of got sidelined for a lot of the story and only ended up with one chapter each. I did have like fifteen other guys to choose from all the time, but I kind of kept them in the background because I had a harder time getting into the girls' heads than the others (seriously, girls are the most complex creatures on the planet, I swear). I knew that might be a problem, so I structured it so Shimizu would have the pivotal role of being the author, and I gave them a backstory that would make it easier to justify them always staying at home when the group split on their little field trips. I did feel like that backstory massively forced Shimizu out of character in particular, but that was how it played out. I like to think that the epilogue was long enough to make up for keeping them out of the spotlight so much XD

I also kind of felt like the epilogue itself was subpar. I didn't actually hash out either Volley game between the beach group and the rookery, and the beach group and the eagles, because I was lazy and didn't want to hunt thru game tapes to come up with play sequences. And I also couldn't bring myself to force anyone but an offbeat no-name player from Shiratorizawa into the role of attacker. I feel like snake mind control like Craziiwolf had mentioned would have stretched the limits of my leveler AU, and even if I find Shiratorizawa to be arrogant and kind of dick-ish, I still don't think any of the players are evil so I couldn't make them do something like that simply out of spite.

I did feel like there really should have been a pair somewhere along the way that ended up biting it just to drive the point home that they are mortally linked, and it's not just a plot device that never gets exercised/put into action. I very nearly almost killed DaiSuga… the stories you remember the most are the ones that hit you the hardest emotionally. When everyone stays safe and that happy end is virtually assured, a story loses its potency as far as memorability, because happiness is often an emotion that fades far faster than sadness/sorrow.

When you think about it, which memories stand out more to you from childhood? The one where you were totally ecstatic to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels the first time, or the one where your stomach curled in dread after you broke Mom's favorite vase? The birthday sleepover with all your friends, or the gut-wrenching fear and guilt of that first big fight with them where you felt like the world was falling to pieces around you?

Humans often remember negative things far more clearly and keenly than they do the happy ones simply because pain (both emotional and physical) is a fantastically effective teacher even if we never realized those were learning experiences at the time. We learned not to play ball in the house and break Mom's vase because we got spanked. We learned not to tease our friends past their tolerance because we were ostracized and lonely for a week. A story won't necessarily give you a learning experience, but it can evoke the same emotions that highlight our own memories, both good—and bad.

I think this is why stories like 'Game of Thrones' and the 'Hunger Games' are so well known. They are filled with horror and tragedy, they don't shy from making their readers feel the full brunt of sadness or pain. The characters you love the most create the biggest impact when they are lost; that's why writers always kill off the most 'pure' or 'likeable' character. By making you feel that pain, they also ensure that you remember that story much more keenly than say the 'Twilight' series where no one dies except their enemies (I think? Don't quote me on this, I didn't finish the series… Nyx found a depressing love triangle thing centered on a rather bland MC to be… even more depressing. And Nyx lives in Seattle and it doesn't rain like that in the summer).

Speaking of learning experiences, though…

Level Pair and Level Horizon were a big one for me. I tackled several things I had little confidence in and I think I know how to approach them better in the future because of it. I worked through a large variety of POVs (nineteen different people total, yikes) when I've only ever had 2 or three in anything else I've written. I took on a full-scale combat scene (Daichi's chapter in the snake nest), I tried a natural disaster (Kenma's, Noya's, and Ukai's chapters with the earthquake/tsunami), I attempted several injuries that required far more research than I had anticipated, and I attempted a time lapse plot movement. Oh, and I also tried a brief POV from the bane of my existence this whole story, Oikawa at the end there (so really, 20 POVs).

And most of all, I brought it up for an audience to review. Thank you all for your critiques and comments; your remarks always kept me smiling and even shaped the story on occasion (yay Kuroo/Oikawa encounter!). And another first for me… I've gotten a variety of death threats and even a stalking one (so bonus, I guess?). Apparently, this is a rite of passage for authors, so I suppose I can check that off the list. Seriously. You guys crack me up lol

I had someone ask on tumblr about my writing process for a large work like this. When I write, I will rough out my chapters—kind of block out what needs to happen, maybe scratch out a key dialogue exchange going thru my head so I don't lose it, sketch the scene into infancy. The second time across it, I'm fleshing it out in full, and the third time I will format (since everything starts out in block text for me), and add in the final notes/details/editing down excess to keep the story more fluid. The last read thru is basically a QC check to make sure everything flows well and makes sense and if I need to pull more out—or if something is just straight up stupid.

When it comes to writing blocks, I force out one line to bridge the scene I'm on to the next part, clumsy and awful as it might be, and highlight it. I will leave it and come back, rework it at a later point, but the critical thing is that I'm not inhibiting the flow of words in my head. The longer it stays stopped for me, the more likely I am to either lose the motivation, or lose the best way the upcoming scene should play out.

When it comes to a scene where I know point A and point B, but don't quite know how to get from A to B, I will sleep on it a night, talk it out in the car or shower by myself (yeesh, its embarrassing to admit this; I am going to feel completely awkward if I'm the only idiot who talks to themselves in traffic on the way to work), and reread the chapter ahead of it to get the feel for how it should progress. It doesn't always work and sometimes I end up forcing the progression between A and B a little… good examples would be Asahi's chapter in Pair, both of Bokuto's chapters, Kenma's after Yaku shows up, Noya's during the earthquake, Lev's chapter, and Shimizu's epilogue. They don't feel nearly as smooth as others to me, like they're stiff and stilted (or maybe schizophrenic, I'm not sure), and the characters tend to fall OC I think.

When I'm really in gear for writing, I can have any music on in the background and be fine, but if I'm struggling to focus, it can't have words in it that I understand or it turns into a distraction, and I will sometimes turn it off altogether. I'm weird and can't have a TV going or I get exactly nothing done. But when I'm in the right frame of mind, I can write to the exclusion of all else. I will wake up early and then almost be late for work, I will forgo meals, I will not leave the house, I won't even get dressed out of my pjs if it's a weekend. My SO is the best and has been the most tolerant person when it comes to my writing and he will pointedly leave me be for hours on end when I'm in one of my shut-in moods… but he has commented that it will be nice to have me back for a while after all this XD

I've been writing for over ten years. It started out as just teenage angst (holy balls, cringey, you have no idea) that evolved into 'I want to tell a real story'. I kid you not, by the time I graduated HS, I was writing on anything and everything... there may be some random little plot ideas still in one of the english books that my school has probably long since replaced (Sorry Miss Vintz). My mom regularly chastised me for writing on my hands when I didn't have a notebook, and by the time I hit college, I was writing through half my classes (*ahem* do at your own risk because you are entirely liable to be asked what you're doing, and explaining is not only impossible, but embarrassing- especially in a math class)

I have so many plot bunnies, I can't find the damn sun anymore. If I'm honest, a lot of these start out as freaky vivid dreams… but the curious thing about dreams for me—they often disintegrate from my mind within a few hours after waking, sometimes minutes. Anytime I get a new one, I will scratch out a synopsis in my 'plunnie' file to revisit and maybe use/expand on later, and I won't necessarily remember them until I revisit the notes I'd jotted down. None of these are usually ever really enough to spin an entire story out of, but they are an excellent source to pull on for ideas (the race pits were actually a modification of one of these, and so was the lore around remembrance trees).

I struggle with blocks and uncooperative characters constantly. I get bouts of motivational lag (like at the end of Horizon, really guys, my apologies). Details regularly fall through the cracks. I have three unpublished novels and a host of others that are partially complete—of which I get details mixed between them all the time. One of those series is my next project to try and finish and perhaps take to a publisher.

I'll probably never quit writing. Anyone can make it to where I am, but it takes a lot of dedication and will. A lot of people have a hard time with that unless they are like me and used it as an outlet (this isn't a bid for pity, but for those who are curious, writing was my escape from a sucky HS experience), but if you want to be a writer, by all means. Dream big, work hard, and don't ever stop writing.

Thank you all for sticking with me through this roller coaster of a fanfiction and for your patience with my irregularities in my posting schedule. I am not a very confident person in general, so I know how intimidating it can be to leave reviews or comments (I rarely leave reviews on anything I read—I'm awful, I know). I'm a mouse in real life and I shit you not, I debated for like a week before knocking back a shot of whiskey and hitting the 'post' button on Level Pair with the intent to sit back and watch the fireworks—or the bonfire, whichever way that went. I have to say there were far more fireworks than bonfires ;)

Thank you all for welcoming me to this wonderfully open and forgiving writing community. I've received glowing reviews and constructive criticism and kind words of support and encouragement; not once did I ever feel attacked or belittled or really even that uncomfortable. I couldn't have asked for a better audience, and I have sincerely loved reading your reviews and enjoyed getting to know my readers a bit more. I can guarantee you all that if I have any more for this AU or fandom, or any other, I will bring my work back to offer up for your thoughts any day.

As of right now, I don't really have anything further planned for this series—I pretty much burned through all the plunnies I had for it with a bucket of gasoline and a blow torch. I've toyed with the idea of semi-willingly exploring some of the origins of the characters in Horizon (Kuroo/Kenma/the fox, Tsukki and Yams, Lev, Yaku, and perhaps chibi Karasuno Unit members), but I have no plot or real substance to back any of it and little motivation to really come up with it, so I will probably shelve it for the time being. If anyone ever wants to talk or say hi or, I don't know, rant, about anything, I have accounts on AO3, Tumblr, Wattpad, and FFnet all under Nyxysabyss… feel free to ping me at any point, I guarantee you I read everything that is sent to me and I will try to respond.

As always, have a perfectly fantastic evening, guys. Nyx signing off ;)