Chapter Text
“Ugh, another typo…”
The author grimaced as they read through the earliest of their writing. They had lost count of the number of times they had attempted to go through their story from the beginning.
“…I should’ve included a comment from Luz at that moment,” they grumbled as they pressed on. However, progress was honestly a struggle. The errors and strange formatting decisions their past self made were proving to be a much greater distraction than they originally anticipated. Finally, they stopped, closing the page, once again abandoning their latest attempt to reread their work from the beginning.
“I can’t keep doing this…” the Author sighed. “Eventually, I'm going to have to finish a read through to refamiliarize myself with the plot. I’m going to contradict myself, or accidentally drop a subplot… maybe… it’s finally time to start those rewrites of the early chapters.”
“HALT!”
A sudden flash of light temporarily blinded the writer and a massive, but adorably pudgy entity appeared in the room, floating in a high-tech futuristic high chair.
“IT IS I, TIME BABY!” the infantile tyrant of the future announced dramatically, “I CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO REWRITE WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN!!! FOR TO DO SO WOULD BE TO REWRITE TIME ITSELF!”
Time Baby’s intimidating presence was immediately undermined when he unexpectedly spit up on himself a bit. The time deity and the Author stared at each other awkwardly as an automated nanny droid deployed itself out of the floating high chair to wipe the fluid away from its charge’s mouth.
“Uh… at least, from the perspective of the characters, it would be…” Time Baby sheepishly added, once he was clean.
“I… suppose,” the Author replied, still put off slightly by Time Baby’s sudden appearance, “but the rewrites need to happen, and if I’m being honest, they’re long overdue.”
“Then I’m afraid I have no choice but to put you in my mouth and gum you to death,” Time Baby declared, furrowing his brow in determination at the mortal, “and be aware, I have begun teething, so it will be extra painful!”
The Author quickly slapped both of their hands over their eyes. Time Baby’s own eyes widened in shock and they began frantically looking around in a panic. “H-hey! Where did you go?!”
“You forget that I’m a parent myself, Time Baby,” the Author said, blindly feeling their way towards the exit. “As such, I know that you, like all babies, have no sense of object permanence and thus, are susceptible to… peekaboo.”
“YOU FIEND!” the godly infant shouted, angrily slapping his fat little hands on his high chair’s tray, sending cosmic cheerios flying everywhere. “You won’t get away with this!”
“I’m not trying to get away with it, Time Baby,” the Author explained, before ducking into the hall to hide. “I just need to buy myself time to hopefully convince you to allow the rewrites to happen.”
“Hmm…” Time Baby hummed in thought, before nodding. “Very well… you may speak your case. However, if you fail to convince me, I’ll call my time agents in to get past your insidious peekaboo.”
“Thank you, Time Baby,” the Author said, sighing in relief. “To start with, I’m not planning on making any major changes to the story with the rewrites. The broad strokes of what’s happened so far will remain unchanged. The only things that will change are some corrections and inserting additional dialogue. In fact, the biggest changes will only be turning chapters two and four into actual full reactions instead of just the discussions they mostly were originally. Furthermore, the rewrites will be closer in quality to the later chapters and give any potential new readers a better idea of what to expect from the story as a whole. Lastly. I’m slowly approaching points of the story where I need to reference moments from the early episodes… and they’re severely lacking to say the least.”
“I see…” Time Baby replied, now intrigued, “but what of the original writing? What if there are readers that enjoy the chapters you plan to rewrite as they currently are? Or worse, what if you accidentally create a plot hole that didn’t previously exist? What then?”
“Well, what if I kept the original chapters in an archive of some kind?” the Author suggested. “Then, readers can go through and read through the chapters as they originally were published as well as let them know which chapters have been rewritten …as embarrassing as that would be for me,” they muttered regretfully. “This would also allow me to easily go back through the old chapters if I do accidentally create any new plot holes and reference the original writing to help fix them quickly.”
“This is… acceptable,” Time Baby declared, nodding sagely, although his head teetered slightly as he struggled to keep it upright. “As long as you don’t make major changes to your own canon, I will allow you to go through with these rewrites!”
“Thank you, Time Baby,” the Author said in relief, stepping back into the room.
“So, what chapters will you be rewriting then?” Time Baby questioned curiously.
“Chapters two and four for sure,” the Author answered as they grabbed a broom to sweep up the cosmic cereal from earlier. “Those two need it the most out of all the early chapters, seeing as they’re not even full reactions for the most part. After that? I’ll have to see, maybe put it up to a reader vote. However, that’s way off. I plan to take my time with these first two rewrites. I don’t want them to detract from the current chapters too much after all.”
“Yes… you originally planned to have the Chapter two rewrite ready by now, didn’t you?”
The Author coughed awkwardly, glancing away from Time Baby as they swept up the mess their surprise guest had caused. “The last two months have been very busy for me, and on top of that, I… had to redo the episode summaries for chapter two almost entirely from scratch,” they reluctantly admitted. “That took longer than I expected… and in turn, I ended up neglecting working on chapter 35 almost entirely. I need to make up for lost time on it. I still intend to continue working on the rewrites, but the readers shouldn’t expect any of them too soon.
“Hm… I’d offer you a Time Wish to fix the issue, but I don’t appreciate that you subjected me to Peekaboo, so you’ll have to deal with it through your boring mundane mortal ways!" Time Baby taunted. “Enjoy teaching yourself proper time management skills, you ADHD-addled jerk!”
The infant god finally vanished, leaving the Author alone, who shamefully bowed their head toward the ground and sighed.
“Man… I suck at time management…”