Recent comments

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!

I’m sorry if I sound too critical. I love this episode, and I upvoted it. I want to continue the story from here but am not certain about some of the details.

“Of course, she'd only been a freshman for a day. Before that, she had been a sophomore, and the day before, a Junior. Unlike some, her changes had been minor, as she'd gone up or down one year...but not anymore.”

I’m confused by “up … one year”.

It seems that until the wish took effect on Tuesday at 3:47 PM, Rachel was a junior. Then she became a sophomore.

And on Wednesday she became a freshman.

And now on Thursday she joins the class of ’54 (?).

Until that sudden age boost, it looks like she was just going down a year at a time.

Nobody14 established in “On the Bench” that one of the soccer players was eight. So I made Ji-woo eight too.

If Rachel is now eighty-six, she would’ve been born around 1936, assuming this story is set in 2022. So when she was eight, Roosevelt was in office - Ike wouldn’t be in until she was about seventeen.

Possibilities:

she’s old and getting her presidents confused

she was thinking of FDR and not Ike

she’s seventy-six which would make her eight when Ike was in office in 1954

I’m guessing “Wacjowski” is a typo for “Wachowski” since I think “cj” is unusual in Polish. http://www.herby.com.pl/indexslo.html , a database of Polish surnames, doesn’t contain “Wacjowski”.

“Palimpsest” is a nice metaphor for swaps and could be a title for this branch if it were published as a standalone novel.

Thanks for immediately picking up where my episode left off!

I was hoping this episode might reveal who the female director was and had once been, but perhaps that can come up later.

I hadn’t thought of diversity as a factor in the director’s mind. That, um, could set the stage for what happens next.

The director being irritated by the song “Tomorrow” cracked me up.

Three great things about Rachel:

a reminder that theater requires more than actors
first character mentioned who’s gone up and down a year

(probably a very common effect of the wish, but this episode is the first time that such little shifts have been explicitly pointed out)

first elderly character

I fixed a continuity error of mine: I originally made Connie tall, but neither Keun-hye nor Sophie were tall, so that made no sense, and I decided to have Keun-hye and Sophie have the same height and build.

A note on Keun-hye’s last name: Korean women keep their surnames after marriage. So she remains a Lee even after marrying Mr. Kim. However, her two daughters take their father’s surname.

I was considering writing an episode in which Jon said no, but this is even better!

Happy to see this branch resurrected after 16 months!

Having Tiffany belong to an unfamiliar family rather than having her join the family of an established character is a nice touch.

For reasons I don't really understand this is one of my favourite branches.

Author’s Note
Karyn at this point is still overall female in appearance (present hyper-dongs excepted) just super-jacked. Of course she still has her stone-imposed “big boobs and long blonde hair”.

But I might have a way to have some more fun with this later. ;-)

I love this storyline. Always happy to see it added to.

My spelling of John is all over the place, which is the canon one?

Thanks a lot. Glad to hear you're enjoying it.

This series is great, I absolutely love it. Probably best writing especially concerning their relationship I have read in a long long while. I am eagerly looking forward to the continuation.

I'm liking a lot. I think it's about time for Biff and Karyn meeting each other ◕‿◕ It will be pretty interesting when Biff realises that "his" ex husband is a girl that thinks she's a man.

Great idea! Can't wait to read more. Love how John will be at the mercy of David!

Glad you are back :) Happy new year.

Just a random side note, Zoe was supposed to mention noticing that Karyn was super into Jon's boobs at dinner... but I wrote the thing realised I hadn't included that and couldn't find a good way to insert it without disrupting the flow. It wasn't super important, just sort of Zoe teasing Jon.

Maybe at some point she'll have a chance to ask Karyn about that directly. That seems more interesting anyway, though I have no idea when a conversation between Zoe and Karyn might happen before the wish ends. Karyn's gotten off lightly when it comes to the consequences of the time limited wishes and some awkward conversations would be fitting.

Their is very much a reason why it works for the sister but not for Mephi or Karen.

Happy there is more to this story line!

Thanks. I admit I wasn't sure, felt like the pacing is too fast in some areas here. There is a bit more to it but this is from what Terry saw, and how a demon terrified him... not just that of course, but made him feel negative about himself.

@Mary
If ya got a good idea and are in the mood, always feel free to write a continuation of my stuff! It means way more to me than just upvotes or anything like that.

Ok this adds a much appreciated depth to Terry's character, Also, could the motive of this flashback be Terry turning into a demon himself and being more vulnerable to dark emotions?

Hey, I might try and add to this soon if you guys don't mind! Love your work! My idea is to have Jon wish that his new husband, mother, Karyn, and Zoe know he really was Jon and not Sue, either from some imagined accident or intentionally. I think it adds to the humiliation if people know Jon isn't a horny milf, but can't help but act like one. And it gives him some directive as his family might try and help them out but judge him for being so lewd. I think this would establish the husband as the antagonist, who has the stone, who isn't willing to give up his amazing life and wonderfully, sexy wife. I think Karyn should be the friend who wants to help, mom be the type of person who secretly enjoys it since she has a new friend, and Zoe who just finds it hilarious after the full effects kick in. What do yall think?