a question of time - Archive of Nov prompts

[fay_e]

I still want to do the fic commentary for a question of time (AO3 link), but it's such a major undertaking.

Instead, I've been doing bite-sized prompts from #TimeTravelAuthors on bsky, so I decided to collate the answers in this post.

This is the November edition, I'll back up the December edition another day. The numbers are the days in November.



Nov 1: Story introduction

"a question of time" is a crossover fanfic featuring my two fave time travellers: Akemi Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Dave Strider from Homestuck.

Homura thought she had lost her time travel powers thanks to her best friend's wish. Dave's arrival makes Homura rethink her assumptions.


Nov 3: Escapes

Homura uses her time stop to escape a lot, but I want to show this particular escape in my fanfic:

"The magical girl who left parts of her soul on your gem and your ribbon won't like hearing that at all." The thud of her shopping basket echoed the click of her shield. Color drained from the world around, even from Bro, as the time stop left just Dave and Homura as stark spots of technicolor in a monochrome canvas. The disbelief on Homura's face now mirrored her expression when Dave had let go of her hand at the fountain. This time, Dave should reach out for her, right? The moment of hesitation cost him. Before his hand could close around hers, she had already turned to go, the brush of her hair against the back of his hand betraying how close he'd gotten.

Nov 5: Race

"a question of time" is a little about race but more being an outsider in multiple senses of the word, as Dave outright says in this extract:

So now Dave was a gaijin, a foreigner in a sea of Japanese students, who probably thought they were doing a bang up job of hiding their stares and whispers as he walked past. Like they could, with how many cliques there already were because Dave was a Late Joiner (so the US school term worked differently from Japan's, they could deal).

Dave could handle stares, especially after beating SBURB just to end up on an Earth reset to the way it was before the game.

Day 7: Something orange
My fanfic features a version of Dirk Strider who has orange as his personal colour. Including in chats.




Nov 9: Saturday excerpt with the word "bird"

I used birds to show some side effects of time!

Homura had not directly observed Strider's time powers before due to her focus on the Wraith fight. She'd made sure she didn't have that distraction when he was playing tag with Kyouko. When he had used his time powers on Kyouko's wards, she had seen the time lapse of the wards reversing, right down to the flow of magic back to their very source.

Now everything that she saw around her had its very own time trail of after-images. Birds in mid-flight still showed the ghostly shadow of where they had been feeding before being startled. Students greeting each other waved with the after image of their hands in various positions, like flip comic panels translated into 3D. The top of the pedestrian crossing lights still glowed ghostly red, stark against the currently lit green in the bottom half.

Nov 11: Kindness

Kindness is the driving force behind "a question of time", though Homura wrongly attributes the kindness to someone else.

Watching Strider reminded Homura of the very first time that she had transferred to Mitakihara, all those timelines ago. That was why she had directed Strider to the right place on the first day of school. It was also why, when the bell for the lunch break sounded, she had stopped when she saw that Strider had remained in his seat, while students hovered behind him and whispered among themselves. Was this how Madoka had felt watching Homura hunched over her desk with the force of all the attention?

Madoka would have done something for Strider, too. But since it was Homura and not Madoka who was here, Homura owed it to Madoka to do something about this.

Nov 13: Clothes

Turned out that Homura had a shield that worked like Mr. Egbert’s wallet. The shield Homura sported on her arm now did fit with the rest of her magical girl outfit. Who knew that glass and gears set in a silver shield went with somber white and purple?

Nov 15: Anyone running out of time?

-SPOILERS, click here if you want to skip

- Spoilers in the next paragraph -

In Madoka's new universe, Homura has actually lost her time magic, but not the device that helps her use her time magic. So I thought it would be fun to show the scene where Homura analyses her shield that has run out of time.

The after-images of the text that had been on the screen faded with time until the blankness of the window confronted her.

To get over the uncomfortable blankness, Homura wrote out the magic that she used to have first. Time winding, both on her eyes and moving through time. Time stop. All were limited by how much sand there was in her shield.

She transformed to summon her shield now, just to make sure that her memories of the other timelines weren't interfering with her memories of when she'd last seen it in this timeline. She unfastened it from her arm, and rested it in her lap. It was as she thought - the sand wasn't even in the wrong side of the shield. The sand completely didn't exist, because there was no meeting with Madoka to redo.

She shoved her shield from her lap, which dispelled before it hit the floor.

Nov 17: Time Travel Direction

Dave Strider uses modified turntables to time travel, so he can both travel forward and backwards in time, and even pause in "time stop".

Here's a snippet of Dave describing the process:

Dave wasn't the kind to go bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. But it was his turn to infuse enough of his power to add his own glow, the light coincidentally taking the shapes of familiar gears. That was how he knew he could send his records spinning.

Instead of time catching on his timetables during a rewind, fast forwarding felt more like a slide, like a skateboard going down a ramp until enough of a time differential had built and speed started to come into things. As long as the board felt like it was under their feet, it should be fine.

Nov 19: Love

Of course there's love in my story, it's tagged Madoka/Homura and Dave/Homura.

But they're all 14 to 15 year olds where love is too big a word. Dave even jokes about it in this snippet:

Homura was looking at their linked hands rather than at Dave. “This is about the mess I've gotten you into since we woke up in this barrier.”

"I think you've gotten into a bigger mess with your girlfriend and her girlfriend, Miki. If Miki's girlfriend is Sakura and Sakura's girlfriend is Tomoe... are you Tomoe's girlfriend to close the loop? Or does Tomoe have a harem, given her hunt for her latest target?"

"It isn't what you think it is.” Homura almost sounded like she was repeating her earlier doubts.

Nov 21: Travel through space

The only reason the crossover works is because I made one of the characters travel universes. Dave and Homura even debate if that counts as travel through space over food that Dave forced Homura to eat.

"What's behind the door?"

Just the universe that SBURB owed them. Dave echoed Homura's pace of fry eating in the hope that would help him figure out the right words. "If I can't get my alien friends to join our orbit, that's the other option."

They both reached for their next fry at the same time, though Dave was able to ninja nab his fry to avoid a straight on collision. Homura nibbled on her latest fry as she digested what he had said to come up with her next question, "So the door helps you travel through space?"

Did traveling to another universe count as travel through space? "Do I look like I know? If we're talking stereotypes, I'm a McCoy, not a Scotty. It probably helps with travelling through space-time."

Nov 23: Excerpt with believe/d

Characters believe in a lot of things in my fic "a question of time", but I have to go with this excerpt:

Dave lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “If you want the game guide definition, someone told me a Knight of Time exploits the flow of time as a weapon, since Knights are all about using things as weapons. I’ve never done things by the book and went full on Temporal Templar, but I’ve done my share of timeline wrangling, including keeping timelines on the right track.”

Was this timeline created by Madoka's wish meant to be the right track? Was this why Homura was meeting the anomaly of Dave Strider for the first time? If the Knight of Time did function according to Strider's description, this timeline was proof that Madoka's wish was the right choice.

Homura wanted to believe that Madoka's wish was the right choice.

Nov 25: Gatherings

One of the characters is Tomoe Mami, who loves to gather the characters for tea. But the first time the six main characters all gather in the same place is for a pizza party.

Tomoe coughed and joined them in using English. "It was a surprise to see Harley-san at my school. Have you been to the high school before?"

"I looked up your high school on the map for patrol later! Once I knew the distance and could go get you!"

"For a pizza party," Tomoe said slowly, as if she still didn't believe it.

"Pizza party!" Jade declared, and bounced over to Homura and Dave.

Dave surrendered the pizza he was holding to Jade, because someone had to make proper introductions around here. "You've arrived at the premium penthouse pizza party courtesy of Jumpin' Jade, we've got a surf and turf set up here. Sakura and Bro have the surf, over here's the turf."

Nov 27: Comfort

Characters in "a question of time" shift between comfort and discomfort with time powers and various languages over the story. Here's a few characters being uncomfortable with each other:

The comparison earned an uncomfortable cough from Tomoe. "If that's how you want to look at it. It's a good thing that you don't know any of this. That means whatever you use to fight Wraiths doesn't rely on grief cubes. What do you use to fight Wraiths?"

"A shitty sword, not anything with a name or forged in a manga fire."

Sakura piped up again without pausing in picking up grief cubes. "He also broke apart my wards when I challenged him. It felt like accelerated decay of whatever he touches."

He’d never been on the receiving end of time powers before Homura’s attempt, maybe it could feel that way? So he said, "Didn't use that ability on Wraiths, in case it was like reversing Godzilla into radioactive glop." What he was more sure of was that he wasn’t enjoying this live demo of the magical girl rumor network by Sakura, and that the more Tomoe asked questions, the more he didn’t want to elaborate.

Nov 29 was the same promo as the top.

Prompts fully updated! Hope you enjoyed reading!