Matisguy's profile

This is a wonderful chapter as always, but I'm starting to become especially infatuated with the characterization of the Princess in Jon's thoughts, here. She's super cute, from what I'm gathering; well done!

All rise for another post from the Great and Mighty Enjeubleu! bows

Seriously, though, ditto to what Mary said. This chapter is fantastic.

This is deliciously evil.

I had no idea this episode was going to be this long, but honestly I wanted all these ideas out there and published before moving onto whatever else. Now, I sleep.

Is this your first post on the site? It's a promising start!

We'll watch your career with great interest!

I see it as normal. Same as the rest of the site, actually: everything that should be bold is bold, everything that should be italicized is, etc. Maybe it's an issue with your own browser or smth?

Wrote this one thanks to a bet on the Discord. Gave me a lot more trouble than I thought to write. Was in a very weird state of mind for most of it, honestly.

........?
!
?!?
!!!!!

Jon and Sarah's dynamic is starting to remind me of this ngl

....................

Slowly raises hand

Slow and somber round of applause

If you heard some kind of music in your head while reading this, I'll consider it a win.

MaryMary (aka. tango) threw out the basic idea for this on the Discord about a week ago, and it was rattling around in my head enough that I had to make at least a one-off out of it.

Posted with apologies to anyone who actually has this condition (I hope I got it right!) but this is a headcanon about Athena I've been contemplating for quite a while. Was really excited to write this episode tbh.

Welcome back!

Wanted something short and quick. Hopefully there's still enough there to make the words all count.

With the holiday season and all its madness finally behind me I can finally get back to writing semi-regularly again. Not gonna lie, though, I wasn't really as excited for this episode, at least not as much as for those that ought to follow after.

The traditional root for branches like that, where someone gets the idea that few new rules or constraints on the wishing could lead to some extra fun, is the old classic Switched Stone episode, found here: ( https://fictionbranches.net/fb/story/22496 ). But no offense, this episode kinda doesn't feel like that? It strikes me more as one of the handful where The Stone itself takes center stage, where the fun to be had is in daydreaming where it came from, how the magic works, what it's place in the cosmos is, etc. I've written a few episodes like that myself, in fact. In my experience, they don't tend to get as much traction, though. Readers and Writers seem to be more attracted to stories where Jon and co. come first and the Stone comes second, not the other way around.

Looks like another author going through their "But how does the Stone ACTUALLY work!?" Phase. Maybe I/Someone should consolidate competing alternative theories in a single academic tome or something? Although I'm not sure how many people would care.

Something very different happened today and I was able to write a good chunk of this during my shift at work. Hooray for productivity?

@Zelo "episode two" (all lowercase) is the very first branch added to YAWYW and shows up first if you sort by oldest (which iirc is the default).

I figured if I'm writing for fun now, I may as well turn off my brain and just post the stupidest idea I've had in a long time here, because why the hell not.

More of what I can spit out on a bored Thursday: just buildup for now.

I really need to get in the habit of writing just whenever I'm bored, so, this came to mind. I have almost nothing planned from here.

It's actually tremendously impressive to me how you can make an utterly mundane slice of life story and this ultra bizarre concepts like egg laying work so seamlessly well together so often.

I knew it!

I have a feeling I might know what's going on here...
But on the other hand, the physical evidence I'd expect seems absent so far, so maybe not...
Dang it, looks like I have no choice but to keep reading!

I don't know there's been this recent sitewide uptick in romance between Karyn and Jon (well, replacement-Jon here) but I am 100,000% here for it!

The wholesomeness of the human arc here in contrast with the depravity of the demon arc here is actually absolutely wonderful. Fingers crossed that somehow they meet someday!

Dude you're on FIRE lately. Keep up the good work!

Dude
Whatever you do
DO NOT DROP THIS STORY I NEED MORE

Karyn's home life seems particularly interesting to me here. Clever, clever, using both Bethany and Alyssa for it!

It's always a good day when I see this branch continued :)

Here's a knock-on effect for you: imagine how Athena DeVries, the super occult goth and occasionally an actual witch, is going to react when she finds out her best friend's entire family is actually genies in disguise...

So much worldbuilding. I applaud it, my man!

It's back at last!

Sometimes I wish I could upvote an episode more than once... Just the usual stamp of approval doesn't always cut it, like here.

Interesting Premise! I'm curious to see how this goes.

Working out exactly how the stone handles time travel was going to be part of the fun/central conflict of the branch from here, I imagined, so I can't really say what exactly would happen from here.

However, it's basically established by the root episode that the stone can in fact change the past, if only to make things so that a wish "had always been that way." That's a sort-of time travel aspect that's always been there, sending magic itself backwards in time to make changes, and Zelda recognized that right away here. So of COURSE the first thing she does with this knowledge is try to abuse it, right?

She's supposed to be Zelda Whitefield. This is an old episode back from when I was vaguely aware Zelda existed but I didn't actually know her last name yet.

Dude... I am drooling. Soooo good!

Sometimes, man, ya just gotta roll with the glorious stupidity.

You get notified for comments on your own writing, but not comments on other's writing. I just have a habit of keeping an eye on the "Recent Comments" page to see new comments/replies as they're posted.

The Return of the King

Another interesting concept. If I weren't busy with other projects of my own I might adopt this branch to develop.

Believe me, man, I know; most of the elbow grease that went into that episode was devoted to keeping it feeling grounded and connected to the real world instead of the obvious supernatural shenanigans that would have to accompany an origin story for the Stone. I actually did a shitton of Research on Incan history and culture specifically because of that; I figured the best way to keep things tied to the believable was to have the events of the episode more or less mirror what actually historically happened in the closing years of the Incan Empire's downfall. Actually, I'm honestly super happy with how that particular episode turned out, NGL. The problem was that I couldn't really find the inspiration to follow it up, y'know? I was going to write out the shenanigans Jon's grandpa got up to in the days immediately following the stone's discovery, but anything I came up just kinda felt like the same old same old for FB, and on top of that I was working under the restriction that everything had to turn out more less the way Jon remembered it in the end. FB kinda gets you in this trap where all you think about are individual episodes and not the whole story arc, y'know? With obviously myopic results. Makes it doubly hard to write these Past-Story things since you kinda have to have it all planned out before you even begin writing.

But whatever. Here's the episode I was talking about in question, if you're interested.
https://fictionbranches.net/fb/story/3486539

The closest I've come was utterly wacky one-off describing the place of the stone in Incan civilization but that's it, I think.

I've always wanted to do something with the past before the root myself. The thing I've found is that it's kinda really hard to do. Requires a lot of forethought and nonlinear thinking and stuff.

This is a very interesting premise to me. It's the sort of thing that somehow seems to come from waaaay out of left field, without seeming all that unnatural. It's got me thinking, at least.

Aaaahhhh I getchu, I getchu. I thought you had just missed the whole Angel thing at first, but yeah, you're kinda right, it's a bit unsatisfying here. I think it's a case of TF happening because TF content is sorta just expected to be there, on this site, not really because it itself adds much to the narrative. The interesting part of the whole setup was always going to be her relationship with Zair, not the particulars of her anatomy, anyway. In fact, that's kinda the point: what she's asked for and what she's getting is this Angel form, but that's not what she wants. What she really wants is a better relationship with Zair, and an opportunity to be a better parent to her than what she has been. Becoming a guardian angel opens some opportunities there, but it doesn't necessarily accomplish that, right away; that's something she's going to have to do herself, via character growth and all that good stuff. And honestly you actually seem to have a pretty good grasp of what the root of the conflict there would be, in that sometimes being a Good Parent paradoxically means stepping back and letting your kids learn things the hard way. Wanting a good relationship with your kids isn't a bad or a destructive thing at all per se (and it honestly does kinda disturb me a little bit that you're faulting her so much for wanting that), but boundaries do need to be there, and there's only so much Helen can realistically do for Zair, all by herself. Helen right now thinks her biggest shortcoming is that she couldn't have been there enough for Zair because she's a poor single mom, and Zarala doesn't really have a father figure or anything that could pick up the slack. Of course, that's not it, not entirely anyway.

But yeah, like I said, there hasn't really been the text space to get this all out there yet. That's for our wonderful remaining story to get across, yeah? We just have to write it first :)

And now, the big one. Re: Helen and Lucifer.

I'm pretty darn sure there's misreadings going on here, ngl, but that's kinda on me since there really hasn't been the text space to flesh out the relationship between Helen and Zair like I'm imagining it yet. The biggest one seems to me to be this idea I'm getting from your stuff that Helen's sorta been an awful mother to Zair, in a way. Like, Zarala seems to be recalling all sorts of little mistreatments between the two, Helen was the "bad one" in her and Lucifer's relationship, Zarala just wants to get away from the nightmare that was living with mom, etc. In my head, that's not it all. In my head, Helen is actually a great mother to Zair. And in my head, the subversion is that that's kinda the problem.

Like, one non-obvious character trait I sorta had in mind for Helen is that her opinion of demons in general really isn't that much higher than Terry's was. She's obviously quite religious, so there was already a bias against them coming from there, but then after she got her fingers burnt so badly in her relationship with Lucifer it's pretty much a maxim of hers that your average demon is no good. That's part of why it's so important to her that Zair be raised "right": she could end up being like (shudder) her father if she isn't! My inclusion of Zair nearly having a panic attack in revelation the fact that she was nearly having a panic was partially meant to hint at that: at years of Helen trying very hard to teach Zarala basically not to be a demon, not to show the wings, not to use the fire, not to do most of the things demons do. But of course that's hopeless; Zair IS a demon, and just wants to live her own demon life her own demon way, with the current magic school being a nice escape for her to do that, right? The problem with that, of course, is that her mother genuinely loves her, and is probably the only one who ever has; Zair's having to give that up to go off on her little adventure, and whether she acknowledges it or not, that's gonna sting, a lot.

Lucifer, in my version of things, is not really an intriguing character because he really doesn't need to be; this isn't a story about him, after all, it's about Zarala, Terry, and Martin. Maybe he might make for an interesting side plot at some point, but tbh I'd think it more prudent to limit our attention to only the core cast and the greatest influences in their lives, which in Zarala's case is 100% Helen. Lucifer is important insofar as he adds context to the lives of Helen and Zair, but that's about it, I'd say. (Plus i can already feel the insidious tentacles of power creep as is, and throwing a literal god into the character stew almost certainly isn't gonna help with that, i think).

Oh, and uh... one more misreading. I dunno how the frick one can read about a woman, in a church, in a prayer, asking to become an angel, and think "Aha! Cartoon Cat TF!" but I guess that happened. C'mon man, the angel-mother/demon-daughter contrast is basically the low-hanging fruit here.

Alright, prepare for a ton of "Re:"s.

First of all, Re:all the compliments; thank you. I try :)

Re:Mara; I'ma be honest, I really wasn't sure how to handle Mara going into this. I was already having trouble getting into his headspace as a character, and on top of that, the situation he was left off in the last episode was kinda a tricky one to handle as an author, since, let's face it, this is not the sort of challenge he should be capable of overcoming at this point in his magic training, and I kinda had to really reach for a creative solution to that problem. That being said, though, some amount of Mara acting out-of-character here was done deliberately and intentionally: it's because The Promise is subtly but powerfully shifting her character from here on out, at least in the story I imagine from here. I thought from some of the earlier episodes that a character had to make The Promise as part of the binding ritual, and of course such an oath would be closely and consequentially linked to their character from then on, but tbh I didn't wanna have to figure out what Tahera and Zarala's Promises would be right away, so I just made it the necessary step to get the Spirit Portal open, into which Terry and Zair could jump no Promise necessary. I figured Mara's Promise would naturally serve to exaggerate her already existing character traits, the most obvious of which is her lowkey obsession with learning magic even at great risk to herself. So, now, she's forced by The Promise to accept things like the Spirit's challenges even if she doesn't really want to. You can see how well that's going to turn out for her, I imagine (hint: it won't). Plus it makes a magic-lover like her even more of a foil to magic-resenters like Terry and kinda also Zair.

Re:Uni; would you be surprised if I told you I decided to include Uni in this precisely because I wanted to see her mysterious side explored more? I feel like up to now she hasn't really had any good excuse to interact meaningfully with the main cast, which means any investigation into her character and/or her past can't really have taken off. So, when I thought to myself "hm, the main characters probably aren't strong enough to handle this fight by themselves, who should I bring in as the needed extra muscle?" my almost immediate afterthought was "I know! I could use that automaton that hasn't gotten nearly enough attention yet! Surely defense of the students in case of emergency must be part of her programming, and she's inherently limited in capabilities by the keywinding, so it's not like she'll steal the show or anything!" I actually even had a sort-of TF trigger in mind at first, something to do with her running down and getting trapped in the spirit world while the rest of the students evacuated, so they could work their magic. I even had a sketch in mind for Tahera's substitute companion in this case: a 4-armed, blue-skinned genie of the ring named Parvati, with inspiration shamelessly taken from Hindu iconography. That... would have complicated an already complex situation considerably, though, so I just straight cut it out (Pun intended). I know the whole swashbuckler thing doesn't really fit in too well with her character on balance, but hey, I figure we only really need it for this scene: all the juicy bits happen in the aftermath, anyway.

Re: the yet-unnamed-fairy: Of course the little one's gotta have the Napoleon Complex :) and hey, a high-risk-high-reward type fighter with capabilities way out of proportion to their physical size almost always makes things more fun.

Author's Commentary: This branch was inspired by a conversation on FB's Discord, discussing the lack of background or characterization for Karyn. I do have a few TFs planned ahead, but expect a lot of character building and not a lot of the usual smut.

I think the big problem is that as things are now, one can't really delete an episode without seriously affecting all episodes further down the branch, and as all episodes need an author account, you can't delete an account without also messing with all the episodes authored by the account, and thereby all the episodes afterward. IDK if there's a TOS somewhere that spells this all out, but hey, that's the spirit of the law anyway.

God, I love seeing more of this story... Keep up the good work!

When you're writing a new episode or editing an old one, there's a button which says "show formatting help" which explains some things such as strikethroughs and the line breaks. I recommend giving that a read first of all. But to actually answer your question, just put a line of at least 5 hyphens after a blank line, like so:

-----

becomes:

@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.

Alright... Thanks for all that, actually, with that it now seems like we have a pretty solid plan moving forward. The second phase slice-of-life might be tough or present some unexpected difficulties, but I'm sure we can roll with it. Do you wanna do the honors of writing that sister episode or should I?

(cont.)
If you ask me, the obvious and probably sexiest direction to go with this sort of masochistic fantasy is to give David the stone and rework him into being the central antagonist of the branch. We already have a masochistic, submissive wife, so why not a sadistic, dominant husband? It's already established that he has a handful of wish-induced boundary issues with Sue, particularly in regards to her tits, ass, and height, so it seems natural to take that and go even further with him as a character that way. If he has the stone, he absolutely could trap Jon hopelessly into Sue's life, forever, and pile effect after wish-induced effect onto his wife even after she's lost all masochistic interest in taking that fantasy any further. Sue, in effect, might become his unwilling sexual plaything through and through, depending on how far we want David's conscience to allow him to go. I dunno about you, but that's a thought that definitely gets my blood pumping. If you're comfortable writing villains this path is pretty solidly my first choice of direction for the branch, I'll say.

My solid second choice of direction for the stone in the branch is a lot more off-the-wall: have it end up in the hands of Jon the Nephew, the clone of Jon's original self (maybe by way of Karyn, whom I note was not included in the wish to have no recollection of the stone). This is probably the most narratively intriguing possible future for the branch in that it gives Jon an outsider's perspective on his own changes, and via the bodyswap trick I mentioned above a partial way out for Sue and partial way in for Jon the Nephew. It would certainly be the most philosophically interesting and could lead naturally to the most introspection Jon's going to have in any of the futures if that's what we're wanting... oooor we could just make it a case of a horny teenage boy having a crush on his hot but oddly relatable aunt in town. Or both. Or we start the madness all over again with a different-yet-same TF masochistic at the helm. I don't know what exactly the details here would even be, but honestly that's what makes it all the more fun to contemplate, says I.

And I guess there's some fun to be had if the stone ends up in someone else's hands, like one of Sue's daughters (Amber or Lucy) or Sue's sister/Jon's mother Linda, or someone else even farther afield, but, meh... I can't really think of a way to handle that which wouldn't be like starting a whole new branch from scratch. The possibility is there if you see something fun there, though. Ofc we could have the stone trading hands around even more, but the only use case I can think for this at present would be if we wanted some consensual TF shenanigans between David and Sue.

That's about it in terms of possible destinations for the stone. And the thing is, that's kinda just one detail that determines how the story's going to play out, with each possibility needing some forethought and advance planning if the story's going to go as well as it can. It isn't a problem yet, and it won't be until the 20 minute safety valve kicks in, when the stone really needs to be away from a lucid Sue imo. But the thing is, like it or not, we do have an arc in progress, which we do want to steer to its best natural conclusion from here, even if Jon really doesn't. You get me, man? Plans can (and probably should) change as things go on, but that doesn't mean we just shouldn't have one, right?

I don't think we actually disagree all that much on the basic literary theory here, at least not enough that an argument about the place of plot in erotica or the agency of the protagonist is going to yield much productive fruit in regards to the story here. That said, it does seem pretty clear that we certainly do have a direction we want this story to be going, at least in the short term (Heck, that's kinda the point of the whole transformation masochism thing here, I think, in that we need to keep up a clear, terrible-in-a-sexy-way end state for all this stuff we're doing to Jon). NGL, I actually have quite a few uncertainties and reservations about writing through what said end state actually is in all its gory detail. In the abstract, as it is now, it's great, mostly defined by a vague feeling of impending regrets, lowkey sexual abuse, and that sweet TG angst, buuuut when that sort of thing becomes concrete and we actually have to have Sue living it I'm not convinced its actually gonna be quite like that. Part of me even thinks it might be worth it to call it quits and cry "FIN" before we actually get to that point in the story specifically so we can keep it all as nebulous and uncomplicated fantasy material, left up to the reader's (and author's) imagination. But let's assume we don't do that. What, concretely, happens then? If ya ask me, the biggest concrete detail acting as a switch case for all the possible branches from here is what happens to the stone, so let's start with that, hypothesize what happens if it goes where.

The most obvious thing to happen with the stone is that John/Sue just holds onto it through everything and uses it as they see fit. Honestly, man, I don't think you're seeing why this case presents such a huuuuuge problem with the fantasy for me. Think: Once Jon loses his masochistic fantasies once and for all, and is feeling all this regret and remorse over all the everything he did and thinking lucidly about how to solve Sue's current problems, he's still going to have the stone. And bluntly, man, if you have a problem that you can't think of a way to solve with the stone, it's almost always going to be because you weren't thinking hard enough rather than because the stone can't do it. As long as he has the stone and can effectively use it, there's always going to be some way out of Jon's present predicaments: he could switch minds with Sue's nephew, the copy of his original self. He could time travel and prevent the wishes from being made in the first place. He could replace David with another more husband more suitable to Sue's tastes, and give David a wife more suitable to his. He could force Sue into an exercise regimen that he magically guarantees will eventually give Sue the lithe, slender body she wants. He could do just so many things with just a little outside-the-box creative thinking, as long as he still has the stone and can use it effectively. And for us the authors, who really want him to be hopelessly stuck in Sue's body and life with no way out, that's a big problem. If we insist that he still keeps the stone anyway, then at some point before he loses his masochistic fetish we basically have to make sure he'll no longer be able to use it effectively, somehow. The other branch introduced the "Josephine" alter ego for specifically that purpose, and I figured having Sue behave poorly in the face of temptation was a step in the right direction in this one; maybe we even have a "David Interprets" branch where her husband gets power over the wishes, idk. Just something to make it less of a get-out-of-jail-free card for Sue.

The second most obvious thing to do is to just get rid of the stone. Have it stolen by magpies or unwisely wished away by a horny Jon or smashed with a sledgehammer or however we want to write it out. This is definitely the way to make sure Jon is 100% inescapably trapped as Sue forever, but honestly I kinda don't like this idea because as soon as it happens, this narrative is going to hard right turn out of TF Highway and into Slice-of-Life avenue. You're absolutely right in that more-or-less plotless Slices of Life are not a bad thing in and of themselves, but if you ask me to do it right you really need exceptionally interesting settings or circumstances to carry the writing, and right now Sue is kiiinda just your average everyday housewife in your average everyday small town, albeit curvier and prettier than most housewives (no matter how much she may deny it). It doesn't even really make for much sexytime unless Amber and Lucy are away or asleep, and David or Sue happen to be in the mood, at least if we wanted this to be a healthy sort of relationship where boundaries are respected and so forth. But what if... it wasn't?

PS. Honestly, I figure keeping Jon always somewhat horny is more convenient at an authorial level at least for now; if he goes lucid, he'll probably start acting rationally, and if he starts acting rationally, it means masochistic sexy fun times'll be over unless we've already worked in another means to force the situation. Said "means" could be David, I think, which is what I figured I'd work in here. We'd need something like that if this goes on past the 20 minute mark when David gets home anyway, unless we really shift the focus and tone of this thing once that happens. (BTW, was figuring at first that once the 20 minute thing kicks in Jon'd probably be more lucid and less horny as a rule, since obviously-terrible ideas wouldn't be tickling him so much.)

At least, such is how things are in my own estimation. There's probably some other way of handling things that I'm not clever enough to see atm, and I get the feeling you have something in mind already; I'm curious to see what that'd be. Happy Writing, man!

Sure. It's not like I'm all that committed to any one direction or vision for this thing anyway; I'm kinda playing it by ear, thinking "Oh this effect sounds cool!" And piling it on. But yeah, whatever I had in mind is kinda way less important to me than having a good, cooperative collaborator, so, sure, I'll see what I can make out of any other sister episodes.

Because I like toying with people.

And in all seriousness, absolutely, go on right ahead.

...You might not like what I had in mind for Karyn, then, heh. See I kinda figured I might accentuate the whole "she's from a stupidly inhospitable desert world where survival is never a given and its totally okay to pin dangerous fate-of-the-world quests on some random 17-year-old's shoulders" vibe that I figured I was getting from her arc, and making her into a warrior princess in a way that sorta necessitates being "mean" to her, but now I'm kinda wondering...
Oh well. We can always repost an edited branch anyway.

Hey Chompy, do you have a Discord account, and if so, what's your username? I'm thinking of reviving this here branch, but it occurs to me I probably shouldn't move forward without at least some idea of where you and nothingsp were going with it, so then, maybe we could get in touch and chat about it?

@Christine L.
Wouldn't most of those issues be solved just by having a bigger version of the star map, or even just creative use of the existing one? Simply look at the spherical bite it's taken out of the milky way and measure it's curvature, then you can work out where the center of the sphere is (and thus the location of the World-Destroying aliens), and the radius of the sphere (and thus how long ago the aliens destroyed the universe, once you divide by the speed of light) to within some nice margin of error. Of course that doesn't solve the issue of actually getting back there and fixing it, which the stone may or may not actually be capable of; but anyway the point is the star map they already have can already solve a lot of problems if they decide on time travel.

Holy fuck, man.
Sarah's story, man, it just gets me. This branch is phenomenal!

Just discovered this branch. Holy shit, man, you're doing good work! Keep it up!

This one is really freakin' good. Nice work!

Should note I know absolutely nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I'm down for background gags

I don't mind at all, thanks!

I'm very intrigued by this branch. I'll try and revive it with some of my own ideas.

Or are we just wanting to write out the events of Day 3 in the other branch with the understanding that exactly the same thing happened here, and you're wanting Biff to relay the info from that branch?

(Btw, for readers that have no idea what we're talking about, read the Reassignment branch instead of Diplomacy branch after the second gurney dream)

Hang on, what day do we think it is? Biff's family and Jon were kidnapped on night 2 and I figured Jon would be returned on night 3, so we'd have to detail what Biff was doing in the meantime on day 3, in between Jon's kidnap and return, most significantly a possible confused Meetup between Biff and Karyn. If we want Biff and Jon to interact on Day 3, I think it'd make most sense on the other branch, right? There it's not set that Jon had to leave for a full day.