Christine L.'s profile

Lots of great stuff here! Loved the whole discussion between Kyla, Zoe, and Athena, and the added twist and turns.

The whole discussion about 'within earshot' definitely makes sense. It's a good theory on how that particular aspect of the Stone's magic works. The explanation Athena comes up with in this episode, that if someone at least perceives that a wish is being made, it still counts as 'earshot' even if they didn't catch everything and only mostly lip-read, makes perfect sense. Loved that 'Eureka' moment.

Yes, this one is a long one, but it was well worth it. This might be my favorite episode of this particular variation of the McMillan Triplets/Hidden Wisher story so far.

Pretty fun stuff so far. It's nice to see that there are some new ideas around, and people doing things that haven't already been done before. While I was there for the Discord chat mentioning the idea, I didn't know if it'd ever happen.

Some pretty good work there. I'm sure it took a while to come up with the lyrics for the song, and imagine how the basic YAWYW translates as a musical. This was a pretty clever handling of the usual 'Jon and Karyn realize they've made an accidental wish and are freaking out' scenario, done in musical form. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

I'll see where this goes, and maybe do my own take on this. There's at least one character I introduced as an addition to Lake Point's 'theatre' crowd who might fit in with this scenario.

Interesting idea focusing on Jennifer Taylor. I included her and her twin sister in Transformation Guns and the Wishing Coins branches, though they might play a slightly larger role in Wishing Coins due to an early wish in that branch involving them. But I think this is the first time we've seen Jennifer Taylor as a viewpoint character in a branch, since (as noted in the episode), she's usually just a bit player and part of the Lake Point ensemble.

Of all the Switched Stones, the Donut Stone is probably the easiest to spot right away, given how different it looks from the normal stone. One would have to be in a dark room and making wishes in the dark to mistake it for the original stone.

I can see where you might feel the desire to do a branch with a 'nerfed' version of the original stone, given all it's capable of in other branches. Even with the range limitation and the 'wishes can't contradict previous wishes' restriction, the stone COULD be way too easy a solution to many of the problems the protagonists face. To the point where writers often have to found ways of keeping the stone out of the way until the magic chaos spreads to outside the stone's range. Or maybe an antagonist gets the stone and makes so many crazy wishes that by the time the protagonists get the stone back, there's such a big mess to clean up that they don't know where to start.

I'll be the first to admit that wishing for information can be a bit of a writing shortcut, but sometimes we end up resorting to it if it helps move things along faster. Of course the initial premise raises a lot of questions as to why Jon's grandfather didn't know the range of the stone and trusted Jon with it in the first place (and since a lot of branches involve Jon messing up with the stone and accidentally creating a big mess, people start wondering even more). But of course we do sometimes come up with some explanations for these.

Interesting take here. There are several possibilities as to why Kyla seems to remember who she was before the wish even though she doesn't appear to have heard the wish. Let's assume for the moment that it's the regular wishing stone being used, with the rules we're familiar with.

Possibility one: Kyla somehow got some charm that protects her memories without knowing it. Maybe Athena lost such a thing, Kyla picked it up not knowing what it was (much like how we assume the wisher discovered the stone before making a wish and realizing it was a magic stone that granted wishes), and had it on her when the wish was made.

Two: The wisher wanted Kyla to remember.

Three: Kyla seeing them mouthing something was enough to count as 'hearing the wish' for some reason.

But my guess is Two, that the wisher wanted Kyla to be aware of the change. They were looking Kyla right in the eye after all from across the room. It makes more sense that my third possibility (if seeing someone mouth a wish counted as hearing it, then anyone who happened to be looking in the wisher's direction at the time would also be aware of the changes). So my guess is the wisher wanted at least one person to be aware of the changes. Perhaps they felt they were doing the nerd crowd a favor and wanted to be sure at least one of them knew about it.

Wow! There's a LOT to unpack here. The first part explains why the wisher created the McMillan Triplets, but then we get the reveal of the wisher's identity, and that whole confrontation in Richard McMillan's office.

Stephanie Wright's a character that often isn't developed that much. This might be the first branch I've seen in where she plays a much bigger role than just being 'clique filler'. I too honestly can't blame her for what she did, even if her actions are questionable. Guys in positions of power tend not to even notice the little people who get crushed by their actions, let alone care.

I could write a whole essay about this episode if I wanted to. In any case, it's a great one. All the important characters have believable motivations. People like this episode's version of Richard McMillan certainly exist in real life, as do people like Esme and of course people like Stephanie and her family whose lives were ruined by the actions of rich people in higher places. Having a true to life situation to start with, but adding a powerful magical reality warping artifact to the mix, works beautifully. A wonderful combination of 'realistic' and 'fantastic' elements.

Some mixed results here. I'd say the first flash resulted in a fairer version of Ms. Huang, who's willing to let Athena go to the nurse's office if she really is feeling unwell, though isn't going to allow Zoe to accompany her. The second flash, however, resulted in a Ms. Huang whose good looks might be too much of a distraction. There's no question the original Ms. Huang had some issues and it wasn't fair to take them out on her students, but this might create a different set of problems.

Indeed. That's the sort of unfortunate phrasing that makes for a character's tragic backstory. (And I've seen similar things happen in recent TV shows).

Well, we still don't know who's making these changes, and if they have some sort of goal in mind or are doing it just to mess with people. But long before the 'FLASH', we could pretty much eliminate Lily Vanderfield as a suspect, as the presence of the McMillan Triplets (prior to the FLASH) was actually messing things up for her. She had nothing to gain from creating the McMillan Triplets. And then the FLASH occured, with another change in reality. Perhaps whoever made the changes didn't intend for Lily to end up losing out due to Jenni's getting the position of class president instead of her, and made another wish to make things just a bit better for Lily. Or perhaps they're just messing around. Who knows?

Anyway, I think we can probably assume whoever is making the changes had some means of watching these people. The timing of each reality altering FLASH does seem to indicate they know where their targets are and what they're doing.

And now I think I know what's going on here. Several branches have played with the idea that outside the range of the wishing stone, people aren't affected and therefore remember things the way they were before the wishing stone changed things, but very few have really played it up much. It seems here, we're seeing a branch from the viewpoint of someone who's been away from town for a while, and while he was gone, there were a LOT of changes made. And so far, everyone he's encountered is acting as if things were always the way they are now.

Arnold Leeson has no context whatsoever for this, as he's unaware of the existence of magical reality-altering artifacts with a range limitation. Let's see where things go from here.

In one branch, I had it stated that 'Madison' was Jon's mother's maiden name, while the father's last name was Gibson. Meanwhile, Jon's grandfather, due to his interest in magical artifacts, got the nickname 'Merlin' in the community of people with similar interests.

I think I've had a few long episode titles myself, and the title made me laugh out loud. It turned out there was a lot more to laugh about here, as this becomes a parody of the previously presented scenario, taking it to its logical and most ridiculous extremes. And then, in the best tradition of Monty Python classic sketches, it ends when it degenerates into hilarious nonsensical silliness.

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

I copied and pasted the last paragraph from the previous episode, to give this continuation a bit of context. Since this cliffhanger had been there for over a decade teasing how Athena might be the key to making things better for those affected by the horrific outcome of the Charity Stone's wishes, I thought it okay to write my take on where the story might go from there.

I couldn't resist including references to McMillan Tech Industries characters I introduced in my Transformation Guns stories (just about everyone except Richard McMillan and Samantha Duncan made their first Fiction Branches appearances there. Lake Point High School's drama club student and critic Starla Stanfield also debuted there, and has gone on to play a significant role in my Wishing Coins episodes). And it made sense to me that Samantha Duncan and her friends from Research and Development would be among those trying to stop the disaster before it happened.

I also managed to work in a way for both the Gibson and Madison surnames for Jon and Zoe's family to co-exist.

Anyway, I'll probably get back to this soon, as I already have an idea as to who Athena could contact to find out more about how the current situation came to be. That person is another already existing quasi-canon character who we don't see very often.

A recipe for disaster? I think so, too. After reading a lot of the branches involving the Obvious Stone and the Proximity Stone and seeing the trouble THOSE stones cause, I was wondering what would happen if you had a combination of those stones. This episode is the starting point for many possibilities as to what could happen as a result of someone using the Obvious Proximity Stone.

@lifesmainantagonist Indeed, this is one of the darker scenarios within Fiction Branches. As far as the Charity Stone goes, its function is to give a free wish to whoever was a target of a wish someone made while holding the Charity Stone (free wish meaning they don't have to be holding the Charity Stone, or know it exists, or be anywhere in its immediate vicinity, for their wish to be granted). So even though the name of this particular imitation of the wishing stone might SOUND nice, wishes made from it don't necessarily have to have nice outcomes. Like the regular wishing stone, poorly thought out wishes can lead to dangerous consequences.

I think since then, Gibson seems to be the preferred last name for Jon. Madison is still used only in continuations of branches/stories where it was previously established to be his surname. In most branches these days, it's Gibson.

I've been wondering just what they were going to do about Zoe. Like Taylor, I was wondering whether or not them letting Zoe in on the whole thing the way they did with Program J would be a good idea, given Zoe's rebellious personality. With Program J, they were able to win her over with "We're giving you a better life than what you had before, and if everything goes well, then it could become even better than that, as long as you're a good supporting character in Sarah and/or Karyn's lives". With that in mind, I wondered what they could offer Zoe/Cici/Program Z that would get her to cooperate for the good of the show and everyone involved with it (both the in-show cast mostly unaware of their status as characters in a show, and the behind the scenes team like Elias Ellis, Taylor, Josephine and the rest).

As it turns out, they've got an idea, though it looks like it's going to be a bit hard on Taylor. Wondering whether or not it's going to work out, and if Mackenzie will have to be let in on what's going on as well, or if they can avoid it for now. In any case, the clear lesson we take from this is that regardless of how a show is made, problems that happen behind the scenes will almost certainly affect what goes on in the universe of the show itself.

I think the Occult Shop has also turned up in other stories and branches patroned by the original Goths (Athena and the rest). It's good to see that the new Goths also believe in supporting local businesses. :)

If I were in this situation, I'd be looking for something I could use as a blindfold, so I could avoid seeing a group of people I don't want to be like. Of course, the drawback to that would be that people would be asking all sorts of questions about why I'm covering my eyes, and I'd be afraid that if I told them there were magic sticky notes that placed curses on the people who read them, they'd think I was crazy or something.

Okay, here's an 'in universe' comment from a fan of KS Chronicles.

KSFANGIRL30: This new revamped season (Junior Year take two?) is off to a great start. New girl Julia seems like she has the potential to shake up the dynamics a bit. Nice to see Karyn interacting with more people now, and I was pleasantly surprised to see her meet with Zoe in the hall. With Jon out of the picture, Zoe needs more people to interact with outside of Athena and the Goth crowd. (Don't get me wrong, Athena's awesome, but Zoe needs to do more than just give Athena another Goth to talk to - Zelda and Sabrina already fill that role). As for Rebecca, Karyn seems to be avoiding her, which makes me wonder just how big a role Rebecca's going to play: Maybe some people overhyped her importance? Oh, and it's good to see more of characters like Yuki who haven't had much screentime.

(out of universe now): All in all, pretty great stuff. Wondering what further twists will occur both in the KS Chronicles show and behind the scenes.

Okay, let me see if I can do an 'in-universe' review, writing from the perspective of one of the audience members.

KSFANGIRL30: Loving the revamp! New characters and some interesting new dynamics. Looking forward to seeing Karyn interact with the rest of the cast, but for now the Sarah portions are a lot of fun. The new girl MacKenzie is awesome! The scene where she one-upped Sarah telling everyone about her mother and the famous people she met made me LOL! I'm looking forward to seeing more of how the new girl interacts with both of our leads. One thing is strange, though: What's the story with Lexi's twin? Is it just me, or does she seem vaguely reminiscent of someone else? I'm not sure who right now, but it does seem kind of strange. Maybe it'll be made clear if she gets more screentime in the episodes.

(Out of universe now). Seriously, this is great stuff. One of my favorite FB stories in quite a while.

LOVING this storyline! This episode was especially fun seeing Sarah's reactions to MacKenzie's stories about her mother and the famous people she's met. Great stuff!

Author's notes:

This episode was starting to get long, so I decided most of the Restoration Gun discussion could wait for the next episode.

Some episodes pick up directly from where the previous one left off, such as this one. In this case, it was necessary, as the last one ended on a cliffhanger that needed to be addressed right away.

But sometimes, an episode will pick up some minutes after the end of a previous episode, such as between Episode 99 on this path (where Coakley volunteers for the Restoration Gun session) and Episode 100 (the incident at the office where Coakley's Restoration goes wrong). There's a number of minutes between the end of that discussion, and the beginning of the sequence in the office, during which Samantha and Arnie could indeed have told Ryann (who was Ryan at the time) about the previous incidents with Peggy Pegany. Sometimes, to keep a story moving, it might be best to say a few conversations happened offscreen.

Since Peggy's start on the road to redemption took up a large portion of the episode, I'm saving the further discussion of what to do about the Restoration Gun situation for the next episode. Working on that now as I type this.

This branch didn't have many of the usual cast of characters, but I couldn't resist bringing Tiffany Sanders in since she would be just the sort of person to pick up the Lover Girl Lipstick not knowing what it was, and possibly kiss someone with it. You're right, though, that in this scenario according to the rules given in the lipstick, Karyn would SUSPECT that some unsuspecting straight girl might be kissing boys with the Lover Girl Lipstick and thus increasing the local lesbian population. Maye if she were in the right place at the right time to see something happen, she might suspect something. But she wouldn't be able to have her suspicions confirmed unless she made the right wish with the wishing stone or something like that.

But if that doesn't happen, then you're right that in this scenario, it's hard for there to be an 'Oh my God, what have I done?' moment given what the note states about how everyone's memories but the one are affected.

As for Tiffany, in most branches she's mostly attracted to the jocks so she's probably likely to kiss a Jock before she and Jon were to cross paths.

For those closely following the story, the barker, princess, fast food worker, and butler forms were not previously mentioned. They were the 'and many others' spoken of back in the Transformation Guns episode 'Transformation mania! Things spiral out of control!'. The female headbanger, the kindly old grandmother, and the scary guy with a hockey mask, however, were all mentioned in that episode. And the masked fellow was mentioned again during Coakley's session two episodes ago, so the dark twist that brings about this episode's cliffhanger doesn't come out of nowhere. I hope it was set up properly.

Initially, it was just going to be a one-off, but once I started thinking about how Ryan and the others were going to want to try using the Restoration Guns on the Board members, I began thinking of the possible consequences, and this scenario came to mind.

This will conclude the patient sessions. What I have planned next is where all this setup will pay off. There will be some new twists to come in the coming episodes I have in mind. Hopefully, the patient sessions weren't too long or tedious. I tried my best to make them different from each other, and give different insights.

Been thinking of adding my own continuation to this one. My guess is that it'll probably take one or two more of 'the right wishes' (meaning 'gendered' wishes) before they realize just what's up with the stone.

Hmm. It sounds like the Jon of this branch remembers the events of several different branches, meaning the end of this episode wouldn't be the first time a wish 'rebooted' things. It seems a little bit ridiculous that all of those events would have happened within one timeline without some form of 'turning back time'.

So, is Jon deliberately making a vague wish at the end of this episode? If indeed he, Karyn, Sarah, and the rest of the cast have gone through all the craziness mentioned in this episode and more, it seems like this version of Jon would know all about the dangers of making vague unspecific wishes like "I wish something interesting would happen" or (as in the case with this episode) "I wish it had gone a bit differently". So is he deliberately doing it this time deciding "Things are so messed up it's not like we've got anything to lose", and hoping for the best?

This episode and the previous one are largely warmup acts for what I have planned to come, where things will indeed not be resolved so easily and so neatly. There will be some crazy and dark twists ahead. In the meantime, I decided to follow up on the earlier mentions of Mime Gun activity at MTI. I thought of having a character describe Peggy as the Harley Quinn to Stragey's Joker, but decided the reference would only be distracting. In any case, this episode is pretty light, given what I have in mind to come just a bit later.

I thought it was best to use a fictional President (Elizabeth Loughty) and a fictional Russian President (Andre Sedulov). Any mention of real-world figures of the past twenty years would have only distracted from the story. And if any real people with those names actually run for public office and win after the date of this episode's posting, it's a complete coincidence.

Anyway, this episode's main purpose is to further illustrate the world at large's reactions to the big world-changing event about four hours or so later.

If the dating is right, this is the first appearance of both Steve "The Stud" Farber and Mike "Moose" Matthews. So yes, they've been around YAWYW almost as long as Jon, Karyn, and Sarah (who of course appeared in the first episode).

The first part of the episode addresses a plot hole. As Ms. Cork, The Guest, Matisguy, and a few others noted on the Discord chat, YAWYW's first episode takes place after spring break, which is after high school football season is over. And earlier, I at least implied that there was a scheduled football game between Lake Point High School and its rival Forestville High. While I didn't mention football specifically (it could have been soccer, which is still played in spring), it was at least implied.

So I came up with the whole 'the schools agreed on an out-of-season 'tiebreaker' football game' idea as a way to resolve the plot hole. Of course that'll only be relevant if indeed there's a game later on in the story. But anyway, for those who still want to have a high school football game in their branches despite it being after spring break, there are certainly plenty of ways to get around that. And this is just one such way.

Thanks. I also responded in the forum to your earlier post. As we can see here, Athena is already preparing herself for the possible consequences of magic being 'outed' to the world.

I think I'll give hints as to what I've planned next. A few speeches from fictional world leaders and political figures, as well as returning to MTI to deal with the risks involved with trying to help those changed in the board room Random Gun craziness. As we move in to Day Two and beyond, there will be further conflicts in Lake Point and beyond as people confront all the changes.

Lunchlady Enid Parkes and school nurse Dawn Carrington first appeared in the Transformation Guns branch. Enid Parkes has since appeared in the Wishing Coins branch. Both of them are well-meaning, friendly people normally. Enid Parkes genuinely wishes to do the best she can with what resources the cafeteria has to offer and Nurse Carrington is devoted to helping people. I thought it made sense to bring them in at this point, since we hadn't really heard of what the cafeteria staff were doing during this crisis, and of course Athena's injury required the attention of a nurse.

That picture looks a lot like Katarina Klaes from My Next Life as a Villainess. Which is a fun show about a girl who gets isekai'd into the life of her favorite game's villainess, and tries to avoid the various terrible fates that befell the villainess in the original game's multiple endings. It's all the more fun that she ends up changing the game's storyline without even realizing it at certain points.

After seeing a wish for a 'super hot sports car' in the Barter Stone branch, I thought "Oh, I've just GOT to use that wish with the Literal Stone." Since it didn't quite fit in with the existing storyline where Jon gets stuck in the school wall, I thought the best place for it would be where Jon's outside at the front porch, where the unexpected results of the wish taken too literally would be noticed right away.

Interesting idea. However, I think it'd be good to have a written description of Jon's new form, instead of relying on a picture.That way, if the picture doesn't appear for whatever reason, we still know what the genie looks like.

Loved this episode!

Looks like between Gladys' stunning weight loss and the confrontation between Nadine and Sarah, the school's population is going to have a lot to talk about and gossip about between classes. And so much mystery here. What is this new church and the Cotierettes all about? We'll have to wait and see.

A good start to a potentially interesting storyline.

A fun little musing about how much has changed since 2000. I can't say I miss dial-up Internet.

I love the meta-commentary on this one. As someone who's been writing episodes in the same branch for over a decade, and only now is that branch moving past the first day, I can certainly appreciate how this episode points out how time passes at different rates for our protagonists and for us in the real world.

Well, I provided enough clues so that if anyone actually wanted to work out that treasure hunt math puzzle from a few episodes back, they can do it, but I suspect most people don't come to FB for math puzzles. :) Anyway, I deliberately left the other Transformation Guns in the box unidentified so that I could move the story forward from 'Day one' while still leaving it open for new Transformation Guns that haven't been mentioned before to be revealed later.

This is probably the most detailed description of a math class in Fiction Branches. I also managed to find a use for the 'tables' feature in Markdown, working it in to the episode in a manner that makes sense.

I know this site is titled Fiction Branches (meaning the events depicted in all the story content here are fictitious and any similarity to actual events is coincidental), but I still felt compelled to write that disclaimer at the start of this episode anyway, just in case someone wandered in and saw this out of context. I thought it best to err on the side of caution.

It's possible that a wishing coin could reverse a stone wish, or vice versa. And maybe another wishing coin could reverse another wishing coin wish. Of course, I have a few ideas in mind. Especially about what might happen when two people make seemingly mutually exclusive wishes on wishing coins at the same time.

So yes, the letter ends up being very long and taking up most of the episode's length, but there's a lot that needed to be addressed. This is mostly setup for all sorts of other possibilities, with the letter explaining the Wishing Coins being pretty much the equivalent of the letter explaining the wishing stone in the very first episode.

Thanks for the upvote! I had more fun writing this episode than the expository episode that follows, because I generally like writing not just about wishes and magic, but also about the consequences of the way wishes are worded.

I also had fun giving lunchlady Enid Parkes (an extremely minor bit player in the Transformation Guns branch) a moment in the spotlight. While the students of various cliques and communities get plenty of episodes focusing on them in Fiction Branches, it's not often we give the cafeteria staff much attention.

I edited this and the other episodes a bit to refer to the new building as a Performing Arts Center, so as not to confuse it with a real life chain of music stores.

I had a power failure TWICE while working on this episode. Fortunately, I saved most of it to text. And it allowed me more time to revise things I wasn't satisfied with. I greatly shortened Samantha's recap of what happened, and worked in some more material with Rachel and the transformed Richard McMillan.

So, yeah. The moral of this episode is: Don't use some weird transformation ray on your boss, or you'll not only get fired but get stuck in some form different than the one you started out with. :)

I'm trying to figure out how time travel is supposed to work here. What Zelda's saying makes a certain amount of sense, in that the stone was still capable of telling them all this information about the death bubble and its origin, even though it was currently several light years out of the stone's range.

However, if the wish she makes at the end of the episode comes true, then things would be different. If all of them knew yesterday what they did today, they wouldn't have the same conversation that led to the wish being made. Unless you go for the 'branching timelines' theory of time travel. I'm thinking of adding something here addressing that and the possible consequences of that.

"Athena DeVries exhaled a puff of air through her nose in that way one does when stumbling across something mildly funny on the internet." I'll admit I've done that a number of times myself.

Just wondering: Is Zelda Lorentz supposed to be Zelda Whitefield (Zoe and Athena's cybergoth friend from other branches), or is she a different Zelda introduced in this particular branch?

These days the word 'hero' is an accepted term for a heroic person of any gender. But I suppose the old wizard here is used to it being a gender-specific term.

Interesting reading an episode set in 2020 but written years before then. :)

I couldn't resist this one, a way of working in one of the new additions to the Lake Point High School cast I introduced in another branch into this one. This wish seems like one someone like Starla Stanfield would seem likely to make. And of course while this wish will certainly have its consequences infrastructure wise (parking is likely to be a problem given the school's new neighbor), there's still plenty of potential for more wish mischief here.

I thought of putting a meta-comment in the dialogue about how the day's been so long it feels like it's lasted eleven years, but I couldn't get it to work organically. In any case, I think it's clear by now that the story is about to move beyond Day One, which has lasted quite a while. I have a few ideas as to how to move the Transformation Guns story on to the next day, but first I have to do more with MTI. More to come later.

Nicole's flashbacks are both from earlier episodes in this branch. This episode's a bit lengthy with people telling each other what happened elsewhere and thus being full of recaps, but it's to set up what I have planned as a followup, where we'll finally get back to Sarah and Karyn and find out what's been taking them so long.

Is this episode the earliest appearance of both Steve "The Stud" Farber and Nicole Tiller? Looks like it predates the previously reported first mention of Steve Farber.

This episode may set a new Fiction Branches record for most transformations in a single episode. I"d like to add that I usually like to give transformations more room to breathe, but in this case I felt an exception was necessary. It made sense given the unpredictable nature of the Random Gun, and where the story was going in general.

I'd like to add as a disclaimer that the views of Nadine Ferguson do not reflect the views of the author. It's just that Nadine comes from a very strict religious background that views any magic outside the scope of its teachings as 'black magic' or 'evil', whether it is or not. So this naturally leads her to clashes with Athena. In many branches, she serves as the 'foil' to Athena (with Athena being the member of the Goth community with an interest in magical items and stuff associated with witches, spells, and so on).

So of course with her very limited world view, she views just about all magic outside of baptism to be wicked.

Melony Tyne, meanwhile, is usually a nice person who tries to be friendly with people. So she probably shows more patience with Nadine than many of the other characters in this branch would.

Much of this chapter (aside from the end) is basically told from Nadine's viewpoint, so she doesn't know what happened at the Principal's office earlier in the story. She hasn't heard about the Babe Gun and its effects yet, so she doesn't know how Nicole and Melissa became more attractive, nor does she recognize Chris Morgan. And she certainly doesn't know the delirious girl is Steve Farber.

I say this just for the benefit of those who stumbled in and hadn't read the episodes leading up to this one yet.

Just taking a break from my usual branches to check back in on this amusing premise. I'm surprised someone else didn't use this trope in this context.

Well, I mention several different possibilities as to how this one could turn out. Feel free to use any of them, and come up with more I didn't think of.

Special thanks to Cork for suggesting the names for Athena's pendants.

This episode is a bit of a 'rest and examine the situation' sort of episode, a kind of a breather to answer a few questions. Before, of course, we get back to more twists and turns, and transformations, and other developments in various places.

What Perri said above is correct. The upvote may be encouraging, but it doesn't really say much. A recent episode I wrote got an upvote, but I don't know where the upvote was because of the transformations in it, the pop culture references, the humor, the awkward conversation in the hallway prior to all that, or some combination of the above. Or maybe the upvoter just like the episode in general.

In any case, it's best not to take upvotes too seriously. They're not that much different than the 'like' function on social media sites.

Oh, and I LOVE the names of the cats. Clearly whoever named them is a fan of a certain popular sci-fi franchise.

I love this one! It's a cute story here. Of course the human characters are likely to be really confused about how this reunion came about.

The cafeteria chaos episodes were fun to write. I liked being able to work in a lot of the Lake Point High School 'quasi-canon' characters into this one, and include some pop culture references.

Clyde Meehan and Starla Stanfield are new additions to the Lake Point High School cast, as is the lunch lady Enid Parkes. Everyone else in this episode has appeared in at least a few other branches besides this Transformation Guns story.

If you know the song being referenced, feel free to play it during this episode. In my mind, it starts just as Athena tells Jay "I've got this", and ends when Coach Barry blows the whistle to indicate the fight's over.

There have been a number of branches where Athena has some variant of an anti-magic pendant. One variant protects its wearer from magic, and the other variant just protects them from memory or personality alteration. I decided that in this branch, Athena would have one of each variant. It made sense to me.

As for the premonition, it probably came around the same time as Jon's unfortunate wish that "something interesting would happen", but Athena doesn't know about that yet at this point in the story.

And so here I fix what (to me, anyway) was a plot hole with Gladys Brewer. I always pictured Lake Point's MTI branch building to be far, far in another part of town from Lake Point High School. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought there was no way Gladys Brewer (in her pre-Babe Gun form) could just run all the way from McMillan Tech Industries to the high school, and get there at the moment she did.

I also needed to account for where Mycroft Brewer was, so that we know where all of the six Transformation Gun collaborators are at this point in the story. So I establish here that Mycroft drove Gladys home, and then Gladys left home and went to the school, taking with her the Fat Gun she had stolen from MTI. (This Fat Gun was in the batch Jeffries teleported to the non-basement levels of the building).

Jessica Davis is another one of those cheerleaders that appears in several branches, though not as often as Tiffany Sanders, Melissa Smith, and Amber Levine. She's only occasionally used, and while she has run into Athena in some branches, I don't think she has been in the same episodes as Jay Duncan and Leonard Drullers (though she might have, and I just haven't seen them). It makes sense, however, that she doesn't usually interact with them, as they're not in her usual social circles.

It's fun to sometimes have the opportunity to end an episode with at least two cliffhangers. Here, we've got one at MTI, and one at the school. I plan on adding more soon.

If these Transformation Guns are from MTI, then they must be from the other two batches Jeffries was trying to teleport to the Pittsburgh branch of MTI when the Teleportation Chamber's power source overloaded. Perhaps they didn't reach their intended destination. I pretty much left it vague as to what happened to those specific batches.

Aside from those two batches, all Transformation Guns outside of MTI (Lake Point Branch) and Lake Point High School are the result of the wave from the overload transforming normal guns into Transformation Guns. They were, in effect, created outside of MTI so they didn't come directly from there.

Anyway, up to the episode this branches off of, the fate of those last two batches of Transformation Guns that Jeffries sent through the teleport was left ambiguous so these COULD be (at least in this spinoff branch) those last two batches. However, there's no Random Gun in either of those two branches. Samantha switched one with a Restoration Gun, and removed the other one just before the teleport.

I probably won't add to this spinoff branch, as I didn't really want to get Mikey involved in all this.

Well, as Principal Davison notes in this episode, the change only happened an hour ago, so it's too early to tell how it will affect society. But some Transformation Guns are more obviously troublesome than others. And I've thought of ways some people might object to even the more obviously beneficial ones, like the Jock Gun. Will professional athletes be thrilled at the idea that anyone can make themselves into perfect athletic shape, meaning that they aren't as special any more?

Glad you liked the Babe Gun scene. It's one of my favorites, and was fun to write. Not just the transformation itself, but the reactions of Jacques and the audience to it. Anyway, I'm planning on writing more material with the Babe Gun in the near future. Stay tuned.

As far as depth goes, this is nothing. Branches like 'The Bench', 'Musical Closets', and 'Iridescent Sun' have an insane amount of episodes, most of them by the same author.

Anyway, I've got more twists to come. Including some that will make the whole problem a lot harder to solve by using the most obvious method.

Indeed. This is why I always keep a 'Whole Story so Far' open in another tab when writing new episodes in a long-running thread.

For example, in Transformation Guns, I keep that tab open so that when I think about bringing in another member of the quasi-canon cast, I have to look back and see if they've appeared or been mentioned before, and if so what was their last known status and whereabouts in the story leading up to the episode I'm writing.

And the more characters (quasi-canon or new ones introduced in that story) one brings in and the more they get changed, swapped, or whatever, the more you have to keep track of. It can be tricky, but as long as one looks back on what's come before frequently, it can be managed.

I would, but DIscord seems to be having troubles. The 'invite' expired for some reason.

The other principals mentioned are all principals of Jon and Karyn's high school in other branches. Principal Davison is the one that appears in the most branches. But I thought it'd be fun to mention the others as existing in the world this branch is set in, but as former principals or ones that were in the running at the same time as Simon Davison, but didn't get the job in this particular branch. I made sure they were all 'default' principals in those branches (as opposed to those who later get the job via magical shenanigans).

It's been a while since I ended an episode with a 'who gets transformed' cliffhanger. Loved doing that. Got some more twists to come, including the origin of the Transformation Guns.

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.

Pretty good. I added a few bits of information.

In this case, it'd require a LOT of complicated wishes to pull off a 'time travel' solution. It'd require knowledge of both space and time, and knowing just when and where to time travel to, how to reach the alien civilization that set off the universe-destroying weapon in the first place, and all sorts of other things. I might add more to that story along those lines, along with exploring the viability of another solution Zoe mentions when she learns of the full scale of the impending disaster.

Well, in order to reach the actual source of the problem, Jon and Karyn would have to not only travel back in time two billion years, but also a place two billion light years from Earth. The way I understand it, the alien civilization that created the universe-destroying weapon was most likely the first to be destroyed by it, so traveling to their home world in the present day is out of the question - it was destroyed two billion years ago. Nothing's left but a void in which nothing could survive.

Wishing to time travel first would also present its problems, as what would one day become the Earth we know might not be easily survivable. Of course our protagonists don't really have much to lose at this point. They're in a situation that's way over the Godzilla Threshold (the term TV Tropes gives to a situation so dire that anything that might help solve it, no matter how dangerous, crazy, or bizarre - is called for because things are so bad that these things really wouldn't make the situation worse. Our protagonists literally have nothing to lose.

In the next episode, Zoe has an idea, even though she suggests it sarcastically. But would everyone go along with it? Unlikely. In any case, saving the world (or at least its population) is not going to be an easy task, given what we've already established. It will require clear-headed thinking, ideas bounced around, and taking risks. Among other things.

This episode was hard to write. It's one thing writing an episode that recaps things that happened ten or more previous episodes ago, but it's another to have to recap things that were established only one or two episodes ago. It can lead to things seeming a bit repetitive. But due to the nature of this episode (it being mostly about Jon telling Karyn what he himself just learned), it's kind of unavoidable.

Well, the deck seems stacked against them. I do have some ideas for what comes next, though, as well as a possible way to save humanity. But of course it won't be easy or quick. The whole point of this branch seems to be that there are some situations that not even the magic wishing stone can provide an easy fix for, so one just has to look for some way to try to salvage things while still acknowledging the limits of the stone's power.

I know that in other branches, Jon or other characters have successfully wished away the stone's range limitation, but I always felt that was a bit too easy. We of course know there has to be a reason Jon's grandfather didn't do this: Either he felt it was better that the stone DID have a range limitation, or he DID try but found he couldn't increase the range that way. In any case, I feel it works for THIS particular branch that increasing the stone's limitation requires jumping through more hoops (metaphorically speaking) AND requires more time than our protagonists have.

Wow. This has to be the darkest, bleakest premise I've seen in YAWYW. It's not surprising no one has added to it, including the original author

However, the situation isn't completely hopeless. There might be SOME way around it. Some way not mentioned in the episode above. I have a few ideas, and I'm thinking of adding on to this one.

Speculating on how social media is effected by the stone's magic and the range limitation is something that only occasionally comes up in in Fiction Branches. Some others have similarly noted that people's social media accounts wouldn't change when people are changed by the stone, so I thought I'd do this little take on that premise here. A lot has changed online since Fiction Branches and You Are What You WIsh began, and more recent episodes reflect such changes.

That last one is certainly important, because it certainly is something that bugs me about a lot of the 'Switched Stones' branches. I think if I ever write for more of those branches, I'll make sure Jon catches on pretty quick that the replacement stone isn't the original stone.

I don't know. Seems WAY too easy an 'out'.

Now THIS is a scary concept! And if our mysterious stone-switcher knew precisely which stone it was instead of just picking a stone at random, then clearly we have to wonder just what they were thinking. (But of course the great thing about Fiction Branches is that each of us can eventually sort out the motive later on in the story).