Thanks for the feedback.
I'm glad you enjoyed those last couple paragraphs. I remember I rewriting them a couple times so it didn't sound repetitive. There is also a shift in tone throughout the chapter, and I was struggling to make the shift not as extreme. In earlier drafts, Karyn was all over the place: first playful and laughing in one paragraph, then angry a paragraph later, then playful again and finally horny at the end. It took a couple passes through to smooth it out.
What I love about branches like Hat Picks, Safe Stealing, Karyn the Patchwork Girl, Successful Test. ,etc... is how crazy they can get. You have 2 characters constantly trying to one up each other getting more and more off the wall transformations. These branches rarely go beyond the Poof! transformation though. I love imagining how the characters lives are affected on longer timescales (~1-2 days). What is their new daily-life like?
As a side note, I've also been working with a branch off of "Emily Comes back into the Room", where you get the same story as Successful Test, but with 3 people making wishes, which gets extremely complex pretty fast. Person A makes a wish about B and C, then B (under the influence of A's wish) makes a wish about A and C, then C (who is by now very altered) makes a wish on A and B. When they all meet up, all 3 of them view each all differently and remember the reality before their wish as all unique. This idea sounds really fun to me, but is also complicated to explore what everyone is feeling throughout the game. Everyone has a unique perspective that can get pretty hard to keep track of. Especially if you go into a Round 2 for the game.
Having 2 bodies would definitely be more simple and easier to write, but I wanted it to be a bit more complex than a simple duality: Yin/Yang, On/Off, Gay/Straight. I wanted more confusion on the characters part (but hopefully not on the reader's part)
That being said, I am struggling a bit to come up ideas for the 4 bodies. I envision Jon as traditionally an introverted guy, who doesn't get out too much: Not too many friends, but he's generally happy with his situation. With his new bodies however, he finds himself thrust into new activities he never considered before and finds himself enjoying himself quite a lot.
Through his new Athletic Body he finds himself interested in Sports for the first time and begins to make new friends on the team. He's very much a Tomboy with this body, but the personality doesn't like that label. He develops a comradeship with a couple other girls and really enjoys hanging out with them. He even gets pretty close with one of them.
I feel like that could be a strong arc. But when I try to think about the other bodies, I struggle to make them distinct. Who is the cheerleader body? Is she athletic too and close with a squad of girls? If so, what aspects of her character are distinct? Is she a bit more flirty? If that's the case, who is the "Slutty Body"? (I get the impression that personality probably wouldn't like that label, and when she enters the story may ask her name to be something like... Punk Jon, or something similar). I think the "Girly Jon" would be more shy and closed off than the others (if only just to make her unique from Cheerleader Jon). Perhaps Girly Jon doesn't have too much going for her, and she feels unimportant: kind of like a Middle Child Syndrome. Or maybe that would fit better with the Slutty Body and the Girly Body is very quiet, studious and self-driven. The "Good Girl", so to speak.
There's also the question of how the world views Jon. Do they all view him as a single person? In which case only 1 of the bodies would need to show up for class? Or do they all know but still treat each body as a unique person? Or does Jon keep his hive mind secret and pretend all bodies are unique people.
These would be the things going on at School Life in between chapters where Jon and Karyn sneak off to pick from the hat to get some really off-the-wall changes. :)
Sorry if that's hard to read. Just trying to brainstorm. I'm welcome to suggestions.
