Today it took two passes to finish the final Fourth Revision edit of Spanner Chapter 1. The first was to edit in the Heteronormative Crusader trope involving every faction except the Socialist Revolutionaries and add the new idea that came to me that all the hoverboarders involved in the Spanner Incident, not just Shira, are left-handed. The second was to clear up any remaining errors I found, some of which turned out to have been unchanged since the Second Revistion. I finished at exactly 9:45 Seattle time.
First pass: I inserted one new subscene to the scene on the airplane with Jennifer and the Socialist Revolutionary hijackers in which a Corporate hostage gay-baits them and gets his neck broken by a butch lesbian (a character I imported from the Project Notebooks and added to the SRO group). Turns out her girlfriend is the older Saionji sister, Hime (not Miho as I called her in the Chapter 3 R4 jailbreak scene), another import from the Project Notebooks, now appearing several chapters before Arisa so far (Arisa first appears in Chapter 8 R3). At the end of the Shira-vs.-Oliver fight scene, Oliver now gay-baits the cops arresting him and gets beaten with cattle prods for his trouble (poor, poor serial killer!). I also added the first signs of a pair of cultural details foregrounded in Chapter 3 and involving tattoos: that Rocker culture pretty much requires tattoos (distinct from the deliberately hideous and even demonic tattoos that identify gangsters) and that Moral Enforcers and other factionalists frequently have all their tattoos removed (and it shows). The Rocker tattoo thing also comes up in Chapter 7, when it comes up that tattooing is the mark of Rocker adulthood and begins at 18 (Chapter 7 is when Shira turns 15; the Shelley twins, who have a heavily tattooed gothpunk-singer mother, will turn 16 in Chapter 24).
Second pass: I actually spent more time on this, since in addition to correcting the remaining continuity errors (and a few remaining typos), I looked for places to insert mentions that Shira, Karen, Sparks, Arisa, and Steve/Deth Pussy are all The Southpaw. These just happen to be the characters most directly involved in the Spanner Incident, and they all ride hoverboards. Which one threw the monkeywrench? To quote Shira: "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you" (she winks). The detail that Shira is left-handed becomes important later because of the notoriously unfair advantage that left-handers have in fencing and similar fighting sports; when the swordfighting turns deadly in Chapter 11, that advantage allows her to survive. It also gives her an advantage in martial arts; several rivals she fights have specifically right-handed styles which allow her to dominate them. In the first pass, I inserted the detail that Ariel is also left-handed — but what does she have to do with the Spanner Incident, or is it just another misdirection? Her left-handedness will likely become important later. (Leila, by contrast, is ambidextrous, a detail I won't even mention until at least Chapter 5 but becomes important to Chapter 15.)
Two passes, one to edit things in and one to (mainly) correct the remaining errors, and now Chapter 1 is complete at last! Even so, I'll probably make one last read-through just to be sure. There may still be a few stray errors, but nothing more needs to be edited in. It's almost ready for publication. Now to make that cover I've been procrastinating...
Next: Interlude 3. We know IP Defender Leggett is determined to keep the Richter-Thomases and their band from reclaiming creative control of their songs from the MIAA. But why does he have a special hatred for Shira in particular? Interlude 3 explains why — once I edit it.
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