4 - The Ghost in You

Previous Chapter: 3 - Strain

Next Chapter: 5 - A Strange Guest

Keith only knows a few ways to compensate his trauma when it's triggered. He's been in that cycle for a while already.

There's also another important change: While in the old version this was the first hint for an eating disorder Keith originally had, I removed this struggle now. He does eat unhealthy stuff and lost his trained shape because of that, but he doesn't have an eating disorder anymore. Reason is that I completely removed his rather heavy (no pun intended) weight struggles. He did gain a bit, but it won't be more than that. I just realized that I don't want to keep this theme in this story, it doesn't fit and the plot is complex enough already. Also, honestly I think Keith isn't the type for that. He has very strong ideals and no matter how bad he feels, he wouldn't completely lose sight of them ever.

So he does struggle, but it's not at all excessive. I want to portray him more as a fighter, too. And another reason is, of course, that sharing this story is much more easy if his weight struggles are more moderate. It's not a secret that these issues pushed away potential readers in the past, and tbh I'm too exhausted to keep fighting about this.

I figured that there's not enough room for treating the 'body diversity' themes in this story. I'd rather do a completely different story where I can focus more on that and have less of other themes in the future.