Family Swap Day 2 Done
Nobody14 on 9/30/2020 10:17:06 AM
Episode last modified by Nobody14 on 9/30/2020 10:17:06 AM
1201 hits, 40 views, 1 upvotes.
Return to Parent Episode
Jump to child episodes
Jump to comments
I want to thank you and The Guest for building upon the premise I had established 12 years ago and taking it in directions I could never have foreseen. I’d love to see continuations of all four of The Guest’s branches, but if I have to choose only one, it would be “ Tiffany and All The Female Students are Unchanged” which shows something we’ve never seen before: the families (and Jon) swapped but not the girls.
I've been thinking up ideas and twists for another day based on the options. I can see some possibilities with families changing to match the daughters they are getting, like with Jon becoming Black from Aisha joining the family. There are some fun options I can think of for the older cast changing in some unexpected ways, and possible combinations
For me, I just love looking for the new twist. So, I wrote a few twists to open up options. I figured, I had Tuesday happened again, which means only students were affected...so all kids turned into adults skipped the day. I had Tiffany becomes the girlfriend, because it's the only way to explain them being together with her top off, I had Jon ends up there alone...and the everyone but the girls change...which probably has the most wild options. So, Jon is now Aisha's sister....does that mean she lives at his house with her family or vice versa?
I'm looking at it as Aisha is now a Madison, but the family will change to fit her being there. I'm thinking this means Julie and other adults will look and be different, and any guys will too. There's also the possibility of families having more or less kids. What I'm interested in too is that any family in the town is liable to have the girls added or subtracted from their families. I've got some ideas bouncing around, and will try to have a chapter up later that I hope sets up some fun options.
My assumption was that if Jon is black, he’s (whatever Aisha’s current surname is) now, and Julie and Mikey are Aisha’s mother and brother, while Aisha’s original family now has some other last name and is the same race as their new daughter (who is likely to be white). BTW, back in my original episode in 2012, I mentioned Jon’s father, but everyone ever since, myself included, forgot about him. Could he make an appearance as Aisha’s new father? It seems that Aisha Johnson lucked out and was swapped into another black family (albeit fatter than the Johnsons) on Wednesday. (Odds are she was white on Tuesday with a different first name like Alicia.) Pre-wish black Aisha Johnson > Tuesday: white Alicia X > Wednesday: black Aisha Y > Thursday: Black Aisha Y with Jon’s family as black Ys X might equal Brewer, and if so, Aisha on Wednesday might have carried over her weight as a white girl into her new identity as a black girl. Julie’s weight already happens to nicely match that of her new daughter Aisha. Mikey could be chubby now. I’m assuming Jon didn’t gain much if any weight as he would have noticed even without a mirror. (Did Tiffany have one in the office because she was so vain?)
You also have to ask..if you swap families with someone..how do their roles change? Example... Susan Madison's family swaps with Linda McMillan's. Susan has a mother, maybe Father, and two siblings. Linda has no siblings. Is Susan Madison suddenly an only child and her parents are Richard and whoever replaced her as Mom? Do the extra kids swap with the help? What if the family you swap for yours has kids of different ages? What if Jon is suddenly the younger sibling...etc etc etc.
Just expressing my preferences here ... my big hangup is universe-internal consistency. I've seen stories/episodes with the transformation equivalent of a time travel paradox. A character is left untransformed even though their whole world has changed and their parents don't exist anymore or never got together in the new history. So that character shouldn't be able to exist. (There are stories, of course, in which such characters are fish-out-of-water heroes, remnants of a continuity that no longer exists, but the rules as established in this branch are that the altered universe is internally wholly consistent except for Jon's memories. [No one else was with Jon when he made the family swap wish, so no one's else's memories remain intact.]) Hence my logic - if (1) Aisha is still black and (2) Jon is now her brother, her new family - Jon's family - has to be biologically related to her. The stone has lopped off all the lower branches of her nuclear family tree except for her and has grafted on the Madisons who are now (whatever Aisha's last name is). Julie is the new daughter of Aisha's maternal grandparents and whoever Jon's father was is now the new son of Aisha's paternal grandparents. Meanwhile Aisha's parents and siblings (if any) are now grafted onto some other family tree, most likely white due to the town's demographics. *Susan Madison's family swaps with Linda McMillan's. Susan has a mother, maybe Father, and two siblings. Linda has no siblings. Is Susan Madison suddenly an only child and her parents are Richard and whoever replaced her as Mom?* Yes, that's what I was thinking (which doesn't have to be the only way things work): Richard-Mrs. McMillan-(daughter slot) are one unit and (Jon's father)-Julie-Jon-(daughter slot)-Mikey are another. The daughters change slots, and the rest of the units alter to fit the daughters. So Richard McMillan morphs into Susan Madison's father Richard Madison, and (first name) McMillan morphs into Susan Madison's mother (first name) Madison. But ... *Do the extra kids swap with the help?* That would be fun. The number and type of slots in Linda's family remaining fixed and the Madisons being forced to fit. The parents would remain parents, and one daughter slot would be fixed, but one could have fun with the rest: Mr. Madison > Mr. McMillan (genetic changes) Julie Madison > Julie McMillan (genetic changes: e.g., red hair to blonde, less prone to fat) Linda McMillan > Linda McMillan (no genetic changes) Jon Madison > the McMillan housekeeper Jon (genetic changes; new last name); the stone regarded the housekeeper as being "like part of the family" Mikey Madison > Mikey Orr (genetic changes; replacing Fred Orr, Sarah/Linda's cousin since there were no spaces left in the immediate family) Conversely: Richard McMillan > Richard Madison (genetic changes) (first name) McMillan > (first name) Madison (genetic changes) Susan Madison > Susan Madison (no genetic changes) McMillan housekeeper > (first name) Madison (genetic changes) Fred Orr > Fred Madison (genetic changes now Susan's brother instead of her cousin) *What if the family you swap for yours has kids of different ages? What if Jon is suddenly the younger sibling...etc etc etc.* That would be the age-constant model (Jon being forced to fit into a preexisting younger sibling slot in another family) which also works for me. Jon and Aisha seem to have been the same age before. Are they fraternal twins now? Or Jon could be Aisha's younger brother. I like how The Guest didn't make Aisha specify whether he was older or younger: "my brother." *The key point is that the girls in the school are remaining the same for the most part.* I agree that is key. Something has to remain basically the same, for Jon's sanity as well as the reader's sake. The fun will be seeing how families adapt to fit their new daughters. If, for instance, Linda McMillan is now Julie's daughter, Julie could be a lot like the old Susan McMillan, both physically and mentally. Maybe with a shorter haircut. We've already seen a glimpse of how Jon has adapted to fit his new sister Aisha. On the other hand it would be interesting if the new families in turn influence the girls in some nongenetic way. Maybe Julie McMillan is kinder than Susan McMillan or whoever Linda McMillan's mother was, and Linda is less nasty. *require a ton of reference to know who has been what if we warp people around too much* Maybe the temptation to introduce more characters should be kept in check (as much as I'd love to see them) and the focus should be on a small core: Jon's new black family and his familes from before and after the swap (Linda McMillan and Susan Madison).
Spelling out my assumptions about the Thursday wish: the girls keep their genetics and names, but their new families are altered to be the biological relatives of the girls and have new last names. Note that “genetics” doesn’t necessary equal being physically unaltered, as the girls could have nongenetic traits altered because they grew up in different families. And their personalities and life histories could be different too. One possibility that just occurred to me is that some of the girls may end up being adopted daughters of new families. In that case the parents and other children wouldn’t be altered physically or in name, but the girls might have new last names, though their genetics would stay the same. That does raise the question of who their biological parents are in the new reality. Example: On Wednesday X is the biological daughter of A and B. On Thursday X becomes the adopted daughter of C and D, but is still the biological daughter of A and B (who gave her up for adoption at birth). A and B in turn become the adoptive parents of Y, the biological daughter of E and F, and so on.
(continued from above) *Nothing says the stone can't work on a case by case basis either* I was thinking that there could be six different interpretations of Jon's words for the first six days, and then on the last day, any of those interpretations could apply on a case by case basis to various "girls" (however defined) on campus, making poor Jon unable to predict how to cope with his fluid reality. But a case by case interpretation of the Thursday transformation works for me too. Back in 2009, The Guest wrote, *One could also theorize that the families themselves would change and the girls would remain exactly as they were.* and for 11 years I was assuming a scenario like the novel *The Great Mom Swap* in which the girls are temporarily adopted by different families who aren't genetically changed. But Jon turning black to match Aisha has made me see other possibilities in familial transformation. Again, thanks to you both for exploring what could be done with my idea! I'm half-hesitant to add any more episodes to this thread because it's so much fun to sit back and read whatever you come up with!
I'm thinking of going with a mix of your ideas while staying within the same theme. The key point is that the girls in the school are remaining the same for the most part. It may get too confusing for future parts, or require a ton of reference to know who has been what if we warp people around too much. I've got some ideas for family combinations, and changes that will influence the girls going into new families, and the people already in those families. Nothing says the stone can't work on a case by case basis either