Thanks to everyone who quoted/responded.
I do get that it's supposed to be different. I'm just finding that reading these two variations of the timeline side by side gets things muddled in my head a little bit because I sometimes forget what is supposed to be canon or normal to one version but not the other. Like today really focuses on Anna generally being nice and a bit timid/flighty, but in the main series it contrasts with that version of her going a bit dark and seeming like she's resolved herself to possibly screwing Rachel and others over in her pursuit of getting things "on the right track" for the story.
My issue is not that I don't understand what's going on in either story, it's just that I'm used to these sorts of stories following in sequence and not necessarily being published side-by-side when they tend to go in starkly opposing directions with the overlapping characters at the same time.
and I say this as someone who usually has no issues with time travel/parallel universe/groundhog day loop/sliding doors type stories where you have to keep the iterations and differentiations straight in your head. I love that kind of stuff. Maybe this is just different because it's not one story using that as a narrative device, but two distinct stories using the concept as a launching pad.