All For One: Chimera

[Durolord]

Hey everyone!

Quick heads-up before we get going again: I've gone back and rewritten every chapter from 1.1 to 1.6. The new versions are already up and replace the old ones. The story is the same. Greg still has the worst lunch of his life, still walks into the Lung fight, still takes something he shouldn't, and still ends up in his backyard getting interrogated by a girl and a lot of bugs. What's different is how it's told, plus a handful of details I wasn't happy with.

You don't have to reread, but if you want to, now's a good time. Here's what changed.

Overall

• Tighter prose. Every chapter is about 15 to 25 percent shorter. I cut a lot of over-explaining, repeated beats and "the way you..." comparisons, so scenes get to the point faster.
• Less repetition. A few phrases were showing up again and again: "the grain in the air," Taylor's "lenses," the engine being "polite," Greg's oh no oh no oh no, and the "it's just stress, a migraine" beat. Each one now shows up once or twice, where it actually lands.

Characters

• Greg's mom, not his dad. The parent at home is now Greg's mom. His dad isn't in the picture. That means the Monday breakfast lie in 1.6 is told to her, and she's the one dozing in front of the TV in 1.2 and 1.5.
• Greg's "better Gregs" are now faces he wears. In the old version, Greg imagined better versions of himself. Now they're faces he's practiced in the bathroom mirror for years and puts on for different situations: the easygoing one for lunch tables, the sharp one, the calm one for teachers, the quiet one. They aren't separate voices or people. They're just masks he picks out, and in 1.1 he realizes none of them would have changed how that lunch went.
• Greg's look. Greg now has blond hair and blue eyes, not brown and brown. The gold tint in the mirror in 1.5 shows up against blue now.
• Greg covers his face. On the Lung night, he pulls his hood up and wears a gray fleece neck gaiter over his nose (added in 1.2, because PHO never forgets a face). Nobody sees his face that night, and Taylor only gets his eyes, a bit of blond hair, his voice and the Winslow hoodie.

Timeline and continuity

• The fight happens at night. Greg now leaves the house at 9:40 p.m., not 6:20, which matches the time of the fight and his getting home at 1:40 a.m. The streets in 1.2 are a night scene now.
• The walk home. 1.4 no longer says the walk home took an hour and he "didn't feel most of it," since 1.5 shows him feeling every block of it.
• The weekend is accounted for. The fight is on a Friday, and 1.6 opens on Monday. Now his mom works doubles all weekend and Greg sleeps through most of it, hood up, staying off PHO. When he gets home on Friday night, there are no missed calls on his phone.
• How Taylor found him. In 1.5 she thinks his voice is familiar. In 1.6 she says it took her until Sunday to place it, and the phone book did the rest.
• The eyeshine. Greg's eyes catching the light now happens at the end of the first block, and Taylor's tracking matches. She follows him two blocks and loses him at the fence where he talks to the engine.
• Small fixes. Taylor is now "the only person who knew what he'd done," not "the second person ever to see what he was" (others had seen him). Greg's PHO handle, XxVoid_CowboyxX, is now named in 1.6, so you don't need to know it from canon.

What's next

That's all of it. The rewrite is done, the changes are in, and regular posting starts again this Friday.

Thanks for sticking with Greg, and with me. See you Friday!