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I would love to add to this story, but I'm afraid I would too quickly stunt some of your intended plot hooks.

In any event, it's always a joy to see you publish a chapter Chompy. :)

I had a feeling you would enjoy that ;)

Yay for new sphinxes

:S alright was afraid of that, well feel free to delete or lock this thread then.

Hi there, we don't do account deletion on this site.

you think you can rename your episodes to follow my naming scheme?

Pretty much. :) Just more of a passive force instead of an irrevocable personality change.

Thanks for answering.

In the "New Normal" chapter Jon was living chubby goth Zoe's life and Zoe was living Jon/Mina's life. Then Zoe makes the bet for "this to be the new normal. I'm Mina, You're Zoe." So with the last few lines in that chapter I was expecting them to fully take on the life/name/personality/friends/likes/dislikes/desires etc of the life they were living at the time and for that to just seem normal to them even though they still remember the change. From your explanation that seems to be more or less what happened, just maybe not as extreme as I was expecting.

I'm looking forward to upcoming chapters.

Mostly it was a way to purge the thumbwars bet cleanly, so the reader wouldn't have to keep up with an ever complicating web of bets and conditions. That said... Minor spoiler alert, I think that any compulsions from the bets are cleared up too. They don't actually have to live the lives given to them by bets anymore... They just think they do, and they're being carried by the momentum of what's already changed. So for example, Zoe didn't have to bet to change her eating habits, and Jon didn't have to bet to remove the corset at home. Those aspects of their lives weren't enforced by bets anymore, they were just normal habits and personality traits. I think they'll start figuring it out in the subsequent chapters. There's a few story beats I want to hit on, but hopefully things will pick up a bit now. I think everything is in place for me to take the overall story where I want it to go, I just have to figure out a few things to catalyze that outcome.

I think I'm a little over halfway done at this point.

I'm enjoying this path a lot, but I'm a little confused about what exactly changed when Jon living Zoe's life became Zoe for real and Zoe living Jon/Mina's life became Mina for real. Their names, ages and personalities obviously changed but they still seem to have some of their previous interests in wanting the laptop and bookshelf back.

This episode was written in 2007, and it shows. Video rentals aren't really a thing anymore in the age of streaming, where if you want to 'try before you buy', you can always stream a movie on a streaming service. Streaming movies wasn't a thing back in 2007 so this is an interesting time capsule.

Hey thanks. :) I'm glad you enjoy it. I've just found a bit of inspiration, and I'm totally pantsing this story.

Hey btw. I had my naming method backwards you might want to swap the title and link names to match my posts.

Not sure if I want to go this route, but going to charge forward for now.

Snap, you’ve been on a roll Perri! I’ve genuinely been on the edge of my seat with these last few chapters.

I don't recall if I included this in the earlier chapters or not, but in my mind Zoe was increasingly desperate to change back into "normal" Zoe from goth because she was reaching the point that she didn't want to turn back. When she was teasing Jon it was meant to be a self revealing taunt, and now that Jon is goth Zoe he would have to deal with that pressure.

She's one of those people who isn't comfortable going to the bathroom in other people's houses?

I noticed I made a mistake when I wrote "Did Jon Still Inherit the Stone?". I forgot that Nobody14 had established that Stephanie was supposed to take Jon to the Brewers right after she picked him up from the Kims' place. I put in the part about Stephanie having to go to the bathroom to repair my error.

As I wrote this, it occurred to me that no one accounted for what happened to Sarah McMillan and Stephanie Wright on Tuesday before they became Sarah Barry and Stephanie Sanders on Wednesday. It would be neat if an explanation could be integrated into some future plot development.

Maybe Sarah Barry and Sarah Kim have inherited some trait from Sarah X on Tuesday. Similarly, Stephanie Sanders and Stephanie Nguyen might have something in common with Stephanie Y on Tuesday.

Or not - and even if not, if the dormant/resurfacing hypothesis above turns out to be correct, Tuesday traits lost on Wednesday and Thursday might reappear on some later day.

Maybe if a person born into family 1 has traits A, B, and C, the stone tries to make as many of those traits surface if that person is reborn in family 2. Maybe the nature/nurture of family 2 enables A and B to be expressed but not C. A later swap could put that "girl" (however defined) into family 3 where trait C could be expressed but not A and B (which have been replaced by traits acquired from family 2!).

I'm not happy with the way I covered Dan Madison's backstory three times in the first part. That was unintentional - and the sort of thing that would be fixed in a rewrite. I was going with the flow of the words as they came out, and that flow circled back twice. When I speak, I often cycle back to reinforce earlier points. I've done that here, but it doesn't look as good in writing. I hope it's not painful to read.

I got the name "Daniel" for Jon's grandfather from Anonymous51.

I've revived some old names from the past:

Katie Shepard, last seen here
the original Christina Pasternak
? Hale; I've named this girl Brooke; she was replaced by Tina on Tuesday and Jennifer (no last name given; a brunette cheerleader on Wednesday who used to be Jennifer Taylor on Tuesday)
Amber Wellington

Dan Madison's academic career was loosely inspired by Keith Taylor's.

Thank you for the nice comments and the suggestion, a character sheet is in the works.

Not necessarily no McMillans...they just don't live in that house. As for Jon...he's commenting on the fact he's figured out he doesn't know how to stop these guys from doing their work...but he didn't actually try to get Sarah to remember being Sarah McMillan...to snap her out of it.

I was curious to see how your continuation would differ from mine. This was worth the wait! You took bits of mine and built upon them.

"One of the workmen headed toward the sign on the mailbox, adding the name Meshida to it, weathering it so it did not look new."

Looks like there might not be any McMillans in the new reality.

"And...I didn't try to convince Sarah she wasn't my sister...to see if I could reach the old Sarah."

Not sure if Jon is implying whether he wants to recruit his sister Sarah or not. In 2009 you wrote a branch where Sarah is in Jon's family and has no memory of her old self but decides to help Mikey who remembers the old reality. Jon doesn't necessarily need Sarah to be her old self or want herself to be a McMillan again to recruit her for the team. Brown-haired Sarah might be motivated by a sense of justice toward others. She might think what the workmen are doing is wrong and might want to stop them - even if such efforts might erase the only self she knows now.

Bardinga,

I second Samantha on the character sheet. Maybe it can be in the Forum and you can edit it as the universe grows.

Impressive debut from you. I need to reread this branch and get to know the characters better before I dare to write about them. You seem to have deeply thought this through, and I'm reluctant to mess up whatever plans you may have.

I was stuck trying to figure out why Susan didn't get to play and was hoping The Guest or you would come up with something - and you did! Much better than the vague notions I had in mind which didn't involve the coach or Sarah - just another player (Rachel's granddaugther Brianna rather than Makayla Brusnikov), much less lead to a great scene in which Jon gets serious and Sarah loves it!

When I started this branch in 2008 I never imagined it'd lead to some soul-searching stuff like this. Thank you.

"Honestly, that boy used to be so reliable"

Maybe the previous babysitter whom Jon replaced was!

"who was only on his second wife of the week" - LOL

"despite the fact she'd been young people the only a few hours beforehand" - my other favorite line

"She was fairly experienced as a waitress in her mind, but earlier that day, she hadn't even known how to drive, or that showing off her chest got better tips."

Wondering how the waitress got swapped since I'm assuming an "experienced" waitress wouldn't be a high school student working part-time. Ah, I've got an idea ... hope it doesn't ruin your plans.

Have you considered making a character sheet for this universe or joining the FB Discord? This is an intriguing branch.

The boilerplate text about continuity errors is probably 20 years old and nobody really cares about it. Also, you should be able to edit or delete posts.

This one said it is female? https://www.peanut-app.io/blog/korean-baby-girl-names I admit, my Korean is nonexistent.

I wish I could continue this, but I don't know enough about soccer or eight-year-old girls to formulate a plausible answer from Susan.

BTW, Seo-jun (neat "Susan" sorta-soundalike!) is normally a male name in Korean. It was the #1 male name in South Korea in 2019. But I have known a Korean woman whose name sounded like a man's name in Korean, so why not? The only trouble I have is coming up with a Korean name component pronounced "jun" that could be interpreted as masculine. ("Seo" can be a female Korean name component.) Maybe in the current reality, Susan's mother wanted a son and stuck with the name she would have given a son!

I was a bit surprised to see the name "Yeong-ja" for a young girl because "-ja" is an old-fashioned suffix, a remnant of the Japanese colonial period - a Korean translation of "-ko" in Japanese girls' names. ("-ko" is now similarly out of style in Japan.) I once ran into a group of elderly Korean women born during Japanese colonial rule, and their names ended in "-ja."

I liked the use of "Umma"! Although it's unrelated to English, it sounds just enough like English mommy-words to be understood in context.

I had to heavily revise this episode to make it conform with what Nobody14 established in "Where were you?".

At the moment, the beginning of this episode doesn't conform exactly with the ending of "Was There Anything Good about Jon's New Life?", but I hope the moderators will approve my revised ending to smoothen out the continuity.

Note to moderators: I'd like to change "When Jon went to his room to grab his backpack" to "When Jon bent down to grab his backpack" as in "Jon's New Sisters" because Jon didn't go to his new room (and doesn't even know where it is!).

Well, I did some googling, not exactly extensive research. It depends on how sophisticated your thief is. Athena isn't....she just knows enough to get to it before it locks. They'll turn off mobile and wifi so you can't find it or wipe it. Sometimes they'll put it in a signal blocking pouch if they can't yet turn it off. It is easy enough to force it to wipe and then repurpose it. But if there is someone more savvy, they can do other things...not everyone protects their phone well.

Thanks for picking up where I left off with the phone! I may have considered having the phone being taken by someone else, but I definitely did not explore that possibility in depth.
You make me wonder if Athena's new criminal tendencies were inherited from the girl she replaced - or if they're a carryover from Betty Lou Drucker who might have been a petty thief in her teens.

I've had my phone stolen, and you've given some idea of what might have happened to it! Shudder!

The Guest, I forgot that I had somehow (accidentally?) pinned my home as a location in my iPhone's map app. I suppose that if I could forget that, a flustered Jon could forget that too.

Imagine if Jon Nguyen hadn't pinned his home unlike Jon Madison. Jon would have opened his map app and looked for a pin that didn't exist.

I should have had Jon try to use his phone to go home, but I'll let the episode stand as is, since I hadn't made a continuity-violating error requiring correction.

I have it in my phone as a preset for Google Maps navigation.

This is good...not what I was planning, which I might still do...but I'm curious where you will go.

Linda is a single mother in some branches and married in others...hard to keep track.

No problem. When I finally started writing here again for the first time in over a year, I got off to a bad start by contradicting what Nobody14 wrote about Sophie Burger ("a little shorter than other girls her age") and making her replacement Keun-hye, an adult Korean woman, taller. I fixed that right away.

Lately I've used the "View story so far" function multiple times so I can have all the episodes from start to finish open in multiple adjacent tabs for reference. I try to check things as I write. This branch dates back fourteen years, so it's unlikely anyone has all the details in active memory. Recently I rediscovered that I had given Zoe's first swapped form a last name (Monaghan) two years ago.

As for asking...many people also have their address in their phone or the house phone.

I considered having Jon find his address on his phone, but I myself don't have mine on my phone, so I had him wander town instead to give him something to do while pondering what was happening. In real life I find long walks useful when I'm overwhelmed.

Linda is a single mother in some branches and married in others...hard to keep track.

As for asking...many people also have their address in their phone or the house phone.

Why didn’t I make Jon simply ask Tiffany where his house was? Maybe I should have. But I’m thinking that Jon is uncomfortable with the new Tiffany and is reluctant to speak to her again. Also, he’s freaked out by the fact that she now lives in what used to be his house. I imagine her house being subtly different from his: same physical structure but different car, stuff in the yard, etc. That almost-but-not-quiteness has shaken up Jon and left him unable to think clearly.

A note about Jon's father: Back in 2008 when I started this branch in "Random family swaps", I made a brief reference to him:

He [Jon] heard footsteps in the hallway outside his bedroom. They were too light to be his father's, but too loud to be his little brother Mikey's.

However, Jon's father was never mentioned again in the branch, and in "Another Mystery", The Guest established that Julie Madison was a "single mother."

I'm assuming that Linda Madison was also a single mother, or else Jon would have said something about losing her father when Julie became his mother.

To reconcile those 2008 and 2022 episodes, I propose that Jon's father is still alive and that in the initial reality, he still visited his ex-wife's household on occasion, so Jon would know what his heavy footsteps would sound like.

Question: Is Jon's original father a Madison, or did Linda Madison keep her last name and give that name to her children?

Great before/after contrasts!

A future episode might reveal some degree of continuity between old and new beyond the retention of first names. The previous Manning and Donovan might’ve been slightly different from this duo, and not just because their first names were different.

Neat to see the Carly McGill/Samantha Sanders scene again but from another perspective!