Fic Commentary - Pt 3/? for a question of time

[fay_e]

Did you know that a question of time (link goes to the fic on AO3) was supposed to be entirely in Bro Strider's POV?

I blame this on coming across the kancho entry of Gaijin Smash while I was mainlining Homestuck. As I was reading, I had the undeniable thought in my head - if Bro Strider was a JET teacher, he would be immune to all this.

The idea just stuck in my head and wouldn't leave, and then grew an entire verse. I didn't know much about Japanese schools, but I could steal Mitakihara schools right? I could even get some DaveHomu in!

So much so that the thesis statement for this cross-over verse, even though it wasn't the very first thing that I wrote, was the undeniable core of the verse. Here's the "thesis statement" in its entirety:

There are days when I still get confused, when there are too many people and my shades are a mite too quiet and my age isn't quite what I think it should be. Houston was one of those place where I was getting confused - where I both grew up there and didn't, where everything was where I knew it would be and yet wasn't.

So that's why I decided to ollie outie from Houston and get ourselves to a brand new place. Somewhere where that would be confusing for the both of us. If I was getting used to an Earth without trolls, well then, shit what about Dave that had as many lives to live through.

Dave wasn't happy with it. We didn't talk about it, but we know each other by now. Striders don't talk through words, we're all about the action. I guess that's why he didn't stop me. He could tell with how quickly I was making arrangements that I really wanted out of here. He went along by wrapping up his things just as quickly. Hell, I was so proud of him that I nearly booked us a ticket out to see Jake and Jade. Hey, the Pacific Ocean is more than just a big lake ok. But the teaching program I was applying to didn't let us do that, so we both had to suck it up and just go straight to Japan.

Japan is... woah. Words don't really do it justice. It was a whole new other place that neither of us had been before, with or without shitty anime representations. It was foreign. It was new. I loved it.

Dave liked it, but he was still a little hung up on not really getting his happily ever after - he seemed to think that the reward for saving the world ought to be retiring in a small town and becoming dust in the wind or some shit.

This bit makes me cringe. This is fandom Bro Strider to the MAX.

That's why when Hussie pulled the "Bro Strider was abusive" thing, this entire fic screeched to a halt. This was even worse than trying to find clockwork!Dave Strider in canon. This was being told all of my favorite fics with Bro Strider in them were wrong.

I also couldn't ignore it. If Bro Strider was abusive, should I be dicking around and letting him teach children. Would Dave even go to Japan without the entire spiel that I wrote about? Oh shit, they ended up on Earth C, Japan C might not even have kancho as a thing at all.

I couldn't think my way around it in 2012. So I stopped adding to the file with the fic, and put it away.

Fast forward to 2019. While looking for things to do during the pandemic, I found the very first snippet I wrote of the verse, which starts with a Dave POV:

It's during the English lesson that Dave spots the creature.

For a moment, he thinks that his riffing off with Bro during his lesson was so biznasty that it spontaneously opened up a worm hole and started dumping bizarre creatures, and he and Bro will have to save the whole world with the power of song. But then the creature just hops up onto Sakura's bag and starts napping, which isn't quite in keeping with alien overlords that want to take over the world, so Dave puts down his metaphorical sword and slouches back to just watch it.

It's a really bizarre thing, as if someone thought yo sup dawg I heard you like ears so I put some ears in your ears so you hear while you hear. Then that someone added bling to those ears, and also decided that pink, red and white was a rad combo. Definitely a new species of Hello Kitty.

I love that bit. I love it so much. I love the 2012 humour of the "yo sup dawg" and a new species of Hello Kitty. I should continue it!!!

... and then I found another Bro Strider pov snippet.

When they said that it was fancy school, they weren't joking around.

Fancy architecture, glass everywhere and its own clock tower. Dave ought to get a kick out of the last one. Even the school's PA system was fancy. That deserved a hat tug, so I gave it one. Dave too deemed it worthy of a glasses push.

When I was done surveying the poshness, I asked, "Need me to walk you to your homeroom?"

"Bro," said Dave in a long suffering tone. "I'm not 5."

"Shit, was that 11 years ago already? You're still plenty short." I ruffled his hair. That he let me do that was a sign he wasn't as chill as he was pretending to be. He did pull away when he had enough. I took the hint. "Go find something to entertain yourself that doesn't involve breaking things."

He set off in the direction where I had playfully shoved him, sparing a brief wave as he went. I watched him go until he was out of sight. Hey, I'm an old man, I can get sentimental. Besides, I had time. Bitches weren't going to know what hit them.

... how was I going to get around the Bro Strider POV?

In the days of the pandemic, I read my old fic and found a lot of new fics. One of the new fics had Bro Strider interacting with Dirk Strider (the run and go by deserts) and more importantly, Dirk Strider in Bro Strider's body (Defragmentation by Katreal). Both were on versions of Earth that were like the one that SBURB had started from.

My mind was blown in several ways. One, it was possible to have original Earth as it was shown in Act 1 (and I suppose Jane's version in Act 6) turn up in fic. Two, these two authors had made non-fanon Bro pretty interesting, and even made him a different enough person from Dirk Strider for the interactions between their characters to be so engaging. But the last was the most shocking - Dirk Strider in Bro's body could be a THING??? I could write fun stuff with Dirk Strider's sensitivities, while keeping the "adult figure" of the fic??? Maybe Dirk had even read the same blog entries that I had, and decided that he definitely wanted to join the JET if he ever got to the original Earth.

Now inspired, I picked up the cross-over verse again and started writing.

And now that you have all the backstory, I can start on the fic commentary proper! Link to that coming soon. In the meantime, check the other parts via links or the tags.

Part 2 || Part 4