When I was working on the eyes fiddling with one slider had sometimes influenced other features as well, so it was probably best to get the broad changes like body-shape out of the way first and change the details later.
My finger hovered over the 'Underwear only'-option, while I tried to convince myself that I wasn't being a pervert. I did need to see what I was doing, and her baggy shirt only allowed educated guesses at what lay beneath. But it didn't feel right, taking a peek at what would soon be a real girl without having her consent. But weeelll... there wasn't a big difference between female underwear and a bikini, and seeing women in bikinis was ok, And I really needed to do this.
Much to my acute embarrassment a quick tap, left her standing in nothing but cotton-briefs! I tried to avert my gaze as best I could as I frantically swiped at the underwear menu and chose the first option I saw.
I try to be a classy guy but seeing a half-dressed girl "“ even a slightly chubby one with a bad haircut "“ still had me shivering with excitement while I tried not to dwell on the memory of her modest bust - (now covered with a light-blue bra).
Once I had gotten a grip on my emotions I started designing my girlfriend in earnest:
Turning the bushy mess to a sleek straight mane, resulted in a '+3 Convenience' which was kind of interesting considering hair length didn't impact the point balance. A quick experiment showed that even Rapunzel-style hair didn't do anything. Probably because hair-styles were rather easy to change yourself. With an disappointed sigh I restored the hair to a more manageable shoulder-length; it would have been an easy way to get some more points without long-term consequences.
Changing the color from a drab brown to a rich gold as an afterthought, got a predictable '+1 Attractive'.
Right now my Galateas hair was pretty much the same length, so her bangs were obscuring the top half of her face (a bit like a Japanese ghost girl "“ well a blonde Japanese ghost) but I didn't want to mess around with hairstyles just yet. In a moment of inspiration I added a hairband so I'd have a clear view of her face and as if to prove my earlier point about making the sweeping changes first, her lashes had lightened along with her hair, lessening the impact of the eyes somewhat. I'd have to remember to restore them later.
Actually.... the hairband had just been a stop-gap measure but this barely tamed mane really suited her, she looked a bit like ...like.....ah yes! Like a stocky Gwen from that 'Spectacular Wallcrawler' cartoon I'd watched a few years back. God I'd loved that series!
I had heard that the character had recently got her own spin-off as Arachnid-Gwen, but so far I hadn't had the funds to buy one. Still... I couldn't contain a chuckle at the thought that I wouldn't be the first guy fantasizing about dating a super-heroine, but I was probably the first who had a real shot at living that dream!
A quick skim of the "Perks"-menu didn't turn up any superpowers but there were some really fascinating options, that while not superpowers wouldn't look out of place in a wiki-article about some non-powered vigilante like Bat-family or the Question.
Of course taking them all would mean I'd also have to stock up on enough drawbacks to turn my future girlfriend into a dysfunctional mess. Which might be appropriate for a comic-book character but for the person you'll probably spend your life with.....? Not a wise choice.
With a sigh I crossed most of the stuff relating to combat from my mental list. Speaking of costs....
Choosing new Research/spells/Feats or other special abilities had always been my favorite part in PC-games so I couldn't wait to start to dig into the available options in earnest. But experience had taught me that I had a bad habit of spending all my resources on cool things while neglecting the boring stuff. So I set the current status as default, clicked 'Acceptance' when asked if I was sure about applying the changes and grudgingly spent a few minutes familiarizing myself with the available choices to get an estimate for the budget I'd have to allocate for mundane but practical stuff.
Trying to open the "Personality"-menu yielded a message window telling me
'Edit Denied.
Set to: Default + Initial Boyfriend predetermined .
Current Disposition: 'Tomboy''
Well the entity had mentioned needing my help mostly for the body so that made sense. And a tomboy did mesh pretty well with my memories of Gwen, soooo..... no problem there I suppose.
"Current Lifestyle" was set to 'Default: Automatic Adjustment'. The only other choice was 'Blank Start ' which awarded a lot of points for inconvenience, probably because it meant she didn't have any prior life. Not a fate I was keen on inflicting on anyone.
Which left only her appearance: As with the hair, anything that could be acquired by a bit of hard work was mostly free or cost a pittance when taking to extremes, like turning her into a hulking mountain of muscle. Anything dependent on the genetic lottery usually added or subtracted a small amount of points depending on whether it made her life harder (being 4''5) or easier ( having straight hair instead of a bushy mess).
I considered changing her name too, but I was not sure she'd appreciate 'Gwendolyn', so I settled on 'Victoria'. Once I was done she'd definitely be a winner, after all.
So all in all I wouldn't have to worry overmuch about keeping points in reserve.
Happy with the good news I started humming the iconic song about doing whatever a spider can and got back to browsing the "Perks" section.
The anticipation of the plain girl on the screen/stall door turning into a bona-fide ass-kicker in love with me, had me shivering with excitement again. Or perhaps the feeling of cold tiles beneath my naked feet was getting to me? Odd. Didn't I wear sneakers a....
It seemed like my benefactor was eager to get done. I shrugged. I had been feeling a bit strange ever since I had hit 'Apply changes', but every time I started to space out the entity had interrupted my train of thought. With a mental shrug I got my head back in the game: Not wasting a gods time was a small price to pay for a perfect girlfriend after all.
I spent the next minutes picking and reshuffling different combinations of perks, trying to separate the actually useful traits from the ones that were only cool in concept. Being some sort of Kung Fu death-machine didn't have a lot of real-life applications after all. I mean as much as I liked the idea of dating a female vigilante, I didn't actually expect my Gwen to go out and beat up muggers. I have a bit of a perfectionist streak when it comes to character-optimization, and being unable to know what the rest of a tree looked like without committing to it first added a slight gambling factor made the whole process even more exciting. Consequently it took me a while until I finally settled on what I considered a nice interlocking combinations of useful perks with the occasional cute or funny thing thrown into the mixture. The ones I liked best were:
"Perfect Pitch" The listening to my enthusiastic butchering the intro-melody, had made my first choice rather easy, when this perk turned out to be pretty cheap. Only increasing Attractiveness and Convenience a smidgen. The mental image my girlfriend happily humming show tunes, was rather fetching.
"Serpent body" was a must for someone based of a female Mr. Parker. He did contort into pretty uncomfortable looking poses all the time, so Victoria should be really flexible too. Also "“ I was loathe to admit "“ while I was a bit unclear on the specifics, the rumors about it being useful in the bedroom were a nice incentive too. Since this one was definitely a keeper I unlocked the advanced version, but it just turned out to be more of the same thing. Cheaper too, probably because there was no big difference between really flexible and REALLY REALLY flexible in everyday life.
"Mantis Eyes" and everything else that improved her reflexes and reaction-speed was also a must. Quick reaction speed was at least somewhat useful in real life, and I really wanted to see how close I could get to the famed tingling 'Arachnid'-sense.
"Eternal body" mostly caught my eye because it cost three points instead of the usual increments of ten making it ridiculous cheap. It also had the longest description I had seen yet, so it took me a while to understand the gist of it: Victorias body would stay in shape unless something pretty drastic happened. The metaphor about swine suggested binge-eating for weeks on end, would be considered drastic. I could think of a few people who would probably be willing to kill if it meant never having to worry about their weight or keeping their hard-earned figure. Or loosing their hair in case of Uncle Paul. That kind of envy was probably what the last paragraph was talking about when he cautioned that there was high price to be paid for choosing 'Eternal Body'. It also mentioned something about my will being tested: Something that was pretty obvious in hindsight: Granting eternal beauty to my personal Galatea was probably very easy for some self-proclaimed love-god - and admittedly very tempting in the short term. But it wouldn't make it easier to wrangle with my own body-issues in the long run. I already felt like some clumsy oaf around pretty girls and losing my hair probably wouldn't do me any favors there.
On the other hand it was hardly fair to squander such an opportunity for Victoria. Especially after I already choose the Loyalty-quirks to make wrangling my insecurities a bit easier!
With a quick swipe I paid the price before I could chicken out. A '+5 Attractive -2 Convenience' popped up over Victorias head. But since it didn't impact my available points, I didn't pay much mind to it. Talents with intrinsic stat-changes were pretty common after all.
When I tried to unlock the next item down the tree so I couldn't chicken out later, a second popup appeared after the familiar first one about locking all previous choices. This one asked if I was sure I was willing to pay the future price. Well that I wasn't entirely sure about that was the whole point of locking it, so I choose 'Acceptance' again without giving myself time to go over it again.
The unlocked "Times Mercy" mentioned something about time granting boons but forgoing it's rightful tax, which I took as aging really well not being included in the first perk after all. Fair enough, getting old probably counted as drastic circumstances too. The point-cost was pretty low so I decided to check out the last option of the tree.
"Abundant" was another odd one. It used all points I hadn't spent once finished so ' The touch of a loving hand may yield bountiful harvest of surprise where nothing grows.' Well it didn't' cost anything so why not take it too.
There were not a lot of points remaining after going a bit overboard with the latest series of perks. Better to finish the basics first as I'd planned to do before I got sidetracked by the idea of bringing a comic to life.
