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Well, this episode is one that's designed to set up the next part of the story. And we get to check in on some people we haven't seen in this branch in a while.

Meagan Graison, Ashley Thompson, and Brooke Stevenson were in early branches as Sarah's cheerleading teammates, but they failed to make it into the quasi-canon. Tiffany Sanders, Melissa Smith, Amber Levine, Allison Wright, and Erika Weber ended up becoming more widely seen, and some of them even got to do more than just be 'clique filler'. I've brought back Meagan, Ashley, and Brooke as cheerleaders for Lake Point's rival school, Forestville High. FB is just a big series of alternate universes, so it made sense to me that in some realities, these characters still exist, but just go to a different school.

Penny Pegany is a new to Fiction Branches character who makes her first appearance here after being previously mentioned as Peggy Pegany's daughter.

As for the Cheerleader Gun, the one that was in Mr. Matheson's box and which Jay turned in to the principal is currently (as of this episode) in Principal Davison's safe. The news reports are talking about the many, many, others that have been discovered all over the world. And of course there's at least one in the upper levels of MTI HQ, as Samantha has reported. As long as I'm here using this comment section for Author's Notes, I decided to clear up some confusion.

Still more to come. Sarah's going to be really upset at what I have planned later on. :)

Except if it worked that way, wishing the branch would be red would have worked in the introductory chapter.

That's the exact one! Thank you so much :)

https://fictionbranches.net/fb/story/15404

I assume this is what your talking about.

What, so he wishes to fix Karyn’s bloody nose but not to restore his sister’s body’s virginity? She’s probably pregnant with Biff’s dog-limbed child now ffs. Should have also made Sarah only able to make dog sounds when within 20 feet of the stone or when she tries to tell anyone else about it while they’re at it (and to prevent her from telling anyone by other means such as typing), to be sure she can never steal the stone and use it.

"Jon realized with a start that the room's large window was dark, before putting together she'd crossed several timezones. If she was in Japan, as she seemed to be, it would be like 2-3 am, no wonder there weren't students around."
Nice attention to detail!

More of what I can spit out on a bored Thursday: just buildup for now.

In my defence, i did write this episode a long time ago, i wasn't as good a writer as i am now, i'd change a fair few things given the chance if i was to revisit this story, but the real issue is, is it appropriate to pretend something never happened or leave it up as a learning experience?

Practically speaking if memory serves, I was trying to make Karyn the snarky friend closer to a Willow/Buffy type than actively malicious, but obviously didn't convey it very well back then.

He refers to his legs as "his legs"? So he talks about himself in the 3rd person?

Giving another reminder of “why the hell are Jon and Karyn even friends in the first place”. Why would he be friends with a girl that is constantly spouting off sexist crap about boys right in front of him and why would she be friends with one of those boys that she has such contempt for and thinks only is motivated by one thing? This doesn’t seem to be something that is commonly being considered. I keep coming back to the same thought that there are things that must have happened before the initial story, that they weren’t friends to begin with but only are now because of a wish gone wrong.

@Anonymous51 You're welcome! It was such a fun storyline, I had to see where it would go

Thanks for adding these episodes to this story. I look forward to more.

What I don’t understand is how this fulfills the wish "I wish you would understand how I feel!". Jon is being given quite a different experience than anything Sarah has ever lived through. There are a number of possible plot hooks for that choice of words that do fulfill the actual wish but this really isn’t one of them. I mean it’s a premise that’s certainly interesting but it’s in no way with Sarah asked for.

To anyone at this crossroads, know that the correct and canonical path is the 2nd one, entitled Jon isn’t quite gone, even though it has far fewer chapters from it. It was written by the creator of parts 4 through 7 and is much better written with Sarah not just a completely flat psychopath character as usual in this section, while the first one is just anonymous51... content... with others stemming off from it.

Thank you for adding the chapter.

oh, I thought it would go horribly wrong because Jon has been demented but that was actually not a disaster of a wish after all.

This episode was fun to write. I loved working in references to various other branches in YAWYW.

The characters of Ryan Leeson, Rachel McLewis, and Teresa Talton originated in my Transformation Guns story branch. All other characters who appear or are mentioned originated elsewhere.

No no, please keep cooking. I'm interested in wherever this is going.

Zelo, I must admit I was pretty uncomfortable writing the description of Sarah's horrific fate, but it was pretty much what pakkwiman established earlier. Will there be some hope for Sarah? We'll have to wait and see.

Hope you stick around for the episode immediately following. THAT one was fun for me to write.

I'm suddenly glad this story isn't told through a visual medium.

I really need to get in the habit of writing just whenever I'm bored, so, this came to mind. I have almost nothing planned from here.

No Karyn, even was about 9 chapters ago.

After complaining about it not being "fair", the only thing she should be able to do is to see him naked, so yes she absolutely is going too far by torturing him. I hope he takes back control because I hate it when they turn out like this.

This story was from https://thechangingmirror.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2553

And it was Rewritten by me. Although it was bad grammar and misspelling from the start as I managed to fix it, I hope you guys are okay with it. Plus, feel free to add and comment.

Might be the best. Definitely the dumbest. I'm here for every synthesized beat

Zelo, thanks for the comment. Anyway, Athena's involvement was set up by the previous writer, who left off over a decade ago. To those following this branch from the beginning, it's sort of a 'Reverse Whodunnit' where the audience already knows 'whodunnit' and the suspense revolves around when others in the cast will figure out who did what to who. To those picking up from where Athena becomes the protagonist, it's more of a regular whodunnit. But in both cases, there's still some mystery: We don't yet know who the various Stone Switchers are - we just know there are at least six of them in this branch, and each has their own yet to be revealed motive for seeking the Original Stone. And we also don't know some of the other consequences of the wishes yet.

I'll admit I messed up a bit with the one wish for Laura Mathis to be returned. That implies that the owner of the Omission Stone found the original stone, when in this branch it was the owner of the Charity Stone who found Jon and switched the stones. But that's easy enough to explain: Jon's not the only one who got the stones switched on them. Shortly after the Charity Stone holding Stone Swticher took the Original Stone from Jon, the Omission Stone owner found the former Charity Stone holding Stone Switcher and stole the Original Stone from them, leaving them with the Omission Stone. This will probably come up in the story if it becomes important.

Anyway, I have some ideas for some further revelations and twists involving what's going on in Lake Point. But anyway, glad you're enjoying it.

I started reading this branch around when Athena became the main character, so I'm actually at the same page as her, discovering stuff at the same time as she does. Gotta say, it's pretty interesting.

A fitting end, but the wishes totally contradict, especially when the victim is specified by name, but then again maybe Sarah was just renamed to have many names and the subject of all the wishes made in 2nd person, I guess that’s maybe plausible. But I like the end with the lab where they are studying her as an alien specimen.

So weak. A bad dream? This is the appropriate time to literally send Sarah to hell for all eternity.

Originally, both this and the previous episode were going to be the same episode, but it was getting a bit long and I thought it would be better if the reading of the list happened in another episode.

Those who've read the very first episode of YAWYW carefully know that Jon made a few wishes prior to showing Karyn the stone and turning the branch blue. It was implied those wishes were minor, nothing major, so in my speculation of those wishes, I made them similar to the wishes about the branch.

Anyway, I had fun writing all those wishes for the list. I figured there'd be plenty of wishes made, and not all of the other stones' wishes would be about finding the original stone.

Well that was a crummy ending! And I guess after this much time, probably neither wokka nor hyral will come back to finish it. Either one of them I could accept as a canonical authority.

lifesmainantagonist - Well, it may comfort you to know that there are some branches where the antagonists end up facing consequences while some protagonists begin work on cleaning up the messes. Of course, anyone can have the tables be turned on the antagonist. But of course it's more satisfying if there's a build-up leading to it, instead of it coming so sudden that it's like 'And then the antagonist crossed the street and was hit by a truck'.

This is quite possible the best and stupidest thing I've ever written. Here's a link to Aha - Take On Me

The problem is that all the ‘writers’ don’t have any ambition to actually have the story reach a resolution, they just have whatever conflict is in progress continue for another chapter and have Sarah torturing everyone and then they leave and someone else comes along and does the same thing and it drags on and on and on. This thing needs an ending and honestly I think the best way for it to end is for someone to take her by surprise, like someone who survived their ordeal and knows she’s a monster but has freedom of action, maybe one of the students from the first class after giving the teacher-turned dog a command, leaves school and returns with a gun and then shoots her in the head from behind. And then, after she’s dead, then everyone has to make sense of things and pick up the pieces and to figure out the situation they eventually go to her home and find Jon and Karyn, Jon being mentally incapacitated, but Karyn shrunken but able to tell them what is going on, and then they can finally resolve things with the stone taken off of Sarah’s corpse, the end. The story needs an ending and it needs someone with the ambition to actually do it. I’m tired of almost all of them ending like this, just this indefinite status quo of Sarah torturing everyone or some other horrible situation of some sort that never ends because new people just come along and all they do is just continue what’s already happening with more of the same.

@lifesmainantagonist the stone is gone. Karyn asked Jon's family if they had seen it.

Thanks for adding. You're #1

Well, I left the comment partly to reassure you that yes, it DID get noticed. You've got some interesting starting posts here, and I don't want them overlooked, so I'm doing what I can to help.

Thank you. With all the posts I didn't think it would get noticed :)

Funnily enough in the German game The Dark Eye, there is a thing called Egg-born, I believe it is from maybe Slavic or Germanic folklore? Anyway, it refers to a type of Witch that is born from an Egg, they are unusually beautiful and charismatic and age much slower than normal humans, I chose this option for my Raven Witch character because I thought it sounded fun, now I am wondering if this is the basis for this world's egg laying humans, in this alternative reality, has the mythical egg born become a fact of life for many women? Probably not but it is fun to speculate on this , for me :D

12 views since Feb 2001, wow in the low traffic region of this website now

Bored aliens messing with humans? This has some potential.

Special thanks to Mattisguy for helping to inspire parts of this episode, particularly the discussion of Scarlett's last name.

Anyway, Scarlett's been turning up in various branches here and there, and I thought I'd elaborate on her status as a mentor for Athena. This seemed like a good branch to do it, as Athena needed someone to talk to who might help her to at the very least find out what happened.

Loved how I was able to post an episode set mostly in the Occult Store on the day before Halloween. I'll probably have more in this branch some time after Halloween, but for now, the 'Eureka' moment is a good place to leave off until next time.

That's a very petty suggestion. Very small-minded premise. Gender role reversal, please. That's extremely specific and it's your interest personally, obviously. The reason the "you are what you wish" story is an intriguing starting point (and better than your plan) is because it could be anything, do anything. It has unlimited potential, not constrained to be one thing. Now it's not the only possible thing that could be like that. The beginning of Futurama also comes to mind. Guy gets frozen, wakes up in the distant future and things are very different. Again, unlimited potential, with no specific plot hook required. I don't know, maybe someone should put that in the drafting board? Call it "Butcherama" or something in deference as a head nod to the fact that it's not a new idea but goes in a completely different direction? But that's the direction that any such template seed story should take. It should allow for the part 2 to be anything. I mean there's also vast displacement in space premise, not just time. So the "Farscape" template in addition to the Futurama one, not that it's actually fundamentally different. And the Japanese "isekai" premise, but they make it horrible by always making it exactly the same thing, namely always a swords and sorcery universe which behaves exactly like a video game (though there's no reason it needs to be that, just a completely other reality with no constraints like that). But almost anything else, would be so provincial, so specific and inevitably would be too constraining people lacking that particular interest/fetish to write about something they don't want to write about.