Forced by AmneLeGrand3

 

A short scenario by Harem's author that includes the usual shenanigans in Stream of Consciousness Power Trip scenarios like complete lack of human logic, empathy, and usage of power regardless of any morality or ethics, but does not bring anything new to the table and ends up too soon without leaving too much to enjoy to any kind of possible demographic it might have.

Guys that mentally slaves his crush, a guy that possesses his mother and sees her naked body, it offers several ideas, but well, it ends them up all soon too, just like any other.

A few things to mention about this scenario is how it tries to create its own magic lore, setting up the action on Spain, and present magic "rocks" with different kinds of power, but all backgrounds are taken from real-life pictures and applied a posterized effect that doesn't look actually good (cartooning real-life pictures is usually a complicated process, after all), people told me that there was also a version with real-life photos of people, but I didn't see it anywhere and it probably isn't available either.

People who want a bit more of the whole madness of this kind of scenarios might check it out since it also has a few unintentionally memorable and pretty crazy lines, but people who want the scenario for its sexual appeal might end up dissatisfied since everything ends up so quickly, just like so many other recent scenarios. People who new to this kind of scenario with the ironic appeal should rather check Harem or other scenarios that have a lot more content instead.

Absorb by drago625

 

Okay, when we will learn people? When will we learn? This scenario is 61 lines of code long, that's like 2 or 3 minutes of content at best.

This scenario was promoted as a test only, but as you can see, it was abandoned, and even so included in the scenario list for the frustration of all ST players, it's not even a successful test! It does have one error in-game and it is not even exported correctly! You have to add a ZIP extension to the blank file you get and create a story folder for the template rpy file, because it doesn't even have a structure.

God knows I have been patient, I have tried to be as fair and unbiased as possible with all scenarios, all of them, but even I have limits on my patience, and the more scenarios I find stuff like this WHERE THE AUTHOR DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER IN CONTINUING AFTER WRITING FOR 10 FUCKING MINUTES I get, really, really pissed off. One empty scenario? That was passable, two? that is bad, but this many? I just can't keep going with this project, because you know most people don't even give a single FUCK about this! I don't even care if your scenario is bad, just give me something! Some effort! Even Harem is better than this, it can appeal to some people, it is at least something! Something!

What does happen in the story? Well, the author says John's parents died and he has been struggling to keep up working and going to school, he even saved a girl once because he doesn't feel like living anymore, and then the author tells us to have fun with the story. Yikes.

One scene happens and after John accidentally absorbs a girl in the park he goes home and morphs into her. Yes, he doesn't think about how he totally murdered someone in the street despite being presented of being of good of heart, and the scenario just ends there in a bittersweet placeholder.

While I find the concept of absorption pretty interesting (absorption vore is one of my favorite fetishes) this scenario just doesn't have anything going for it, don't even bother.

Inheritance by drago625

 

Just another short, abandoned scenario with around 10 minutes of content only. Paul discovers that he can body swap with people if he thinks about them hard enough. There are several routes open where he swaps with a princess of another nation, his friend's wife, his friend, and a pregnant neighbor.

Things happen pretty fast and characters accept things quickly, in the friends' wife's route the wife tells her if they could swap back since she always wished to be someone else, but Paul disagrees. 

"Oh did you just swap with me, oh well at least you are my husband's friend oh okay oh yeah I was having sex with him so you are overwhelmed for having your first time as a woman yeah sure don't tell my husband by now he is your husband whatever."

As I said before, logic is a bit loose in most scenarios, or sometimes, very loose, but as I said before even if I find it dumb the truth is that some people just want to go to the point of the swaps, be fast since the fetish has also a sexual appeal, there are people who will like this approach "directly to the point", just a quick realization without too much drama or trauma, so I don't feel there is a point in criticizing it, just mention it to let people choose what they are going to do with it.

Most routes end up in a placeholder right away, the neighbor route was going to continue in Paul giving birth in that other body which I found interesting, but it ends up just right after. Since there are very few ideas to showcase here and the content is very short, I can also say that you can skip this one as well, there is nothing else I can comment on here because simply isn't there anything to comment on.

It has one interesting idea, it finishes soon, things happen too quickly, characters accept things too fast, that's it, what you see is what you get.

Cross the Line by simmitar004

 

Cross the Line reads like a project of a teenager who wanted to make his own story inside the game, all characters had their names changed to very specific ones, the story is on the line of stream of consciousness and overall the writing is almost on par with Harem, just without any of the lewd parts.

The story presents Claus, now named Derek, and his three friends, Eric and John (all have different names here but I forgot them), who find one day an unconscious girl by a trash can, after Claus checks her fever (somehow, we don't know), the girl wakes up and tells them that they are the ones who can fight against "it" and all of them faint right in the spot.

After being taken care of by the paramedics to the school's nursery (for some reason) each one of the guys discovers that all have gotten new "super powers", John can use astral projection and possess people, Eric can shapeshift and Claus can body swap, and the player is given to follow each one of them in three different routes.

Most events are rather silly and almost oniric, Michelle gets mad when she sees Claus in the garden, saying all guys are the same and that they like stalk girls, Claus accidentally uses his powers, and Michelle, now in Claus' body decides to take "revenge" against guys with her new "powerful body".

The plot seems was going to take an adventure and mystery-focused direction with the three guys trying to investigate a ghost in an old building after John had spotted them in one of his astral trips, and the scenario pretty much ends there.

Harem fans might like this but at a difference from that scenario in all its bizarreness, this one is pretty short and doesn't have too many memorable lines so it doesn't offer too much ironic appeal, either way, it is just a failed piece writing that ends too soon. Inoffensive, quick, bad, nothing else. You can skip it without any remorse.

Witches & Warlocks by dukejones

 

Just like Potions, Witches & Warlocks shows potential to take the Student Transfer universe to another gaming format but due to its abandoned state and incomplete ideas, it remains skippable and unessential to the very end. It's true, projects like this can become pretty big and even ambitious, but they end up being left off due to the amount of energy they need to be spent to make the complete pieces. Maybe with a bigger public instead of just a niche community, the creators would decide to continue instead more often.

It starts as a retelling of the canon game, with a few different characters and reorganized roles, afterwards, it shows the player a map they can go through in an RPG or life simulation kind of style, in which the player can get stuck with repetitive day sequences (an issue Potions also has) or ending up in a placeholder.

There are some interesting ideas as well some arbitrary ones that do not seem to serve any purpose since there are no routes to go through, just a few things John can do but, due to the slice of life simulator style it uses, do not seem to get anywhere or develop any kind of plot whatsoever.

The interesting ideas are the spells, that, even when not TF focused, would give a lot of options to work within a magic-related game.

A few of the other ideas are changing John's mom, Sandra, for an original character, Miranda, who acts just like Sandra, maybe the author wanted to use this sprite's CGs but so far nothing is done with the change.

Carrie is changed for Patty, a stalker that this time helps John with her own knowledge of magic as a witch, and that helps him introduce him with some spells.

Jane, instead of being John's GB self, is presented as his tsundere sister who hates him even more than Holly and shows a conflict between the siblings caused by the departure of their own father.

The writing does the job and it does not come as a stream of consciousness-like some scenarios in the past have, the new characters have a defined personality, but most canon characters just repeat their main game lines or repeat the lines of others, making this a guessing game to see what has changed and what hasn't for the most part.

Another thing to say is that this scenario is very low in its TF dose, it has some mind control but afterward nothing else really happens, John astral projects, but it does not go further than that. I can say that some people can check it out if they want to see a slightly different setup of the game with a few different characters and roles as a proof of concept with a different type of gameplay, it has a nice slice of life feeling to it, but should not expect anything at all if they are looking for a complete or fleshed out story.

Playing time: Around 1 hour or so, if you do not get stuck in the loop.

Escape the Manor by Nargaflaga

 

Novels like Student Transfer and Press Switch offer a wide range of options in stories focused on a related thematic, TF, it is natural that some scenarios and spin-offs get born in offering their own anthology of stories and routes based on more specific topics or ideas. For example, as I said before, I wanted first Into the Janeverse to be an anthology of MTF transformations. For this scenario, Escape the Manor, we have an anthology of transformations based on Identity Death.

Now, I have said that I like long stories to even if they become linear most of the time due to how they are fleshed out, I have reviewed some linear scenarios in the past, but I haven't mentioned a scenario like this, that has a completely opposite approach.

Everything starts with a group of people who have to find refugee in a Manor when they get stranded in the middle of nowhere during a downpour; after that, the characters will realize that something inside there is going on and they will have to choose to try and escape or fight what it is within. In Escape the Manor we have a lot of choices, and by a lot I mean a lot, counting 43 endings (54 including placeholders) which offer a variety of events all across the presented story.

What kind of endings do we get? Oh boy, where do we start, since most endings show different characters and monster girl tropes all coming from High Fantasy standards. We have Bee Girls, Dark Elfs, Succubuses, Slime, Maid Servants, Immortal Wish Benders, Posession Demons, Mirror Demons, Weight Gain Fat Girls, Centaurs, Gyarus, Bimbos, Spider Girls, Isekai Girls, and so forth...

According to Narg, the ultimate goal was to provide a wide range of TF options with a large number of ways to achieve Identity Death, so, all these endings and routes, despite being so varied and different, are connected all together by this one theme, in particular, mind control and identity death, giving a somewhat consistent topic inside the scenario.

What is most discussed about this scenario however is the execution of these transformations, which might not be likable for some. While in Cold as Ice we have slow drama and introspection ending in two main events revolved about the death of an ego, most mind control and identity deaths in Escape the Manor happen quite fast actually. The implications of losing your identity and forget who you were or who other people were are not touched here, the drama there is involved and the implications of the transformations are limited to being mentioned that they happen. 

Since we are talking about content explicitly focused on a fetish, it is to be assumed that a lot of people might enjoy this due to its sexual appeal. In that way, Escape the Manor works, it showcases an Identity Death happening, if you can get sexual appeal of hearing the Identity Death alone, this scenario will work for you since this is what it does best, the characters get their memory erased in a lot of different kinds of beings, and it has variety even for everyone.

If what you are looking for is the mental and social implications about Ego Death, Escape the Manor is not really the scenario for you, all due to its fast pace and approach. Most "deaths" go in a similar way, somebody applies some magic, and the characters forget what they were doing, after the other person who is mind-controlling them tells them who they are now, they adopt a new identity rather quickly losing any hesitation and personality they could have had. Sometimes characters might struggle, sometimes characters might be aware they aren't who they used to be, but in the end, most of them end up engulfed by their own mind control.

Now, while Narg says this was not intentional, the truth is that Escape the Manor as a final product is something that has to be enjoyed right quickly or rather instinctively, without analyzing it too much. As I have said before, this scenario stands for its sexual appeal rather than anything else, if you think about it the more you need, or if you judge the scenario in a more serious way than what it should, it simply falls apart in its own logic: From the unremarkable personality of the protagonists, the lack of having a different cadence for each character, through the way the casually take everything that is happening, the vague magic that is used as a plot device only, the characters that sometimes morph to different bodies while being mind-controlled and sometimes not, to the villains that have such enormous power to use telepathy and mind control in anybody in the mansion at any time but don't do it just for the sake of the plot. 

With TF, there are people who enjoy the content for its mental, psychological implications, and there are people who enjoy it for the sexual appeal. It is something that I like about TF since it offers content and ideas for several kinds of audiences, Escape the Manor might be enjoyed more by the latter group in this case.

Yes, this scenario has a very characteristic stream of consciousness method, and just like in scenarios like Harem or John Sudden Lifechange, its appeal results polarizing. My recommendation is that if you like Mind Control and Identity Death you can check them out taking into account the quick and to-the-point approach it uses, it doesn't offer any further deconstruction upon identity itself but it gives a wide catalog of ideas with diversity and range.

In Praise of Being by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

 

There are so many things I would like to say about my scenario but well I don't want to sound self-centered, even then, I said I would like to review as many scenarios as possible, people have been rechecking the old v2 scenarios posted here and some new ones have gotten certain spotlight, so I thought it was fair to me to give me certain space to post about In Praise of Being as well so it can be included to the database with the proper tags, it is just another scenario along with the others at the very end.

And yes, the title is kinda stupid, after I went through so many titles I picked up a seemingly decent reference to an album, I just pick names that reference music due to some sort of reason I can't explain, I know that most people won't get the reference and has nothing to do with the scenario itself, but I like references, what can I say? First I went through Gynephilliany which was some sort of satirical title but even if it sounded cool in my head it was a very bad choice in retrospective, Apple said that picking a title that couldn't be pronounced like Gynephilliany could bring a lot of meme potential and I agreed, memes rule the world, so I picked another album reference name saying Metamorphogenesis, long, silly, and unique (kind of), people complained and I tried to settle for a normal name instead, the original album title is "In Praise of Learning", an album by Henry Cow, I changed Learning to "Being" becuase it sounded fitting, "In Praise of Being" means "How great is being yourself" or "Thank you for being yourself", you know, I'm not sure really because the title comes from a reference. I, to be honest, don't know why I have this mania of referencing random stuff and now I just feel it sounds silly every time somebody says it, but eh, people will laugh at me if I change it one more time so let's just call it a day.

I decided to make In Praise of Being because of a huge, insatiable need I have been experiencing the last few years with TG fiction, something that has been eating me inside for so long, and it is the fact that in MtF stories the characters always reject their transformation! And it bothers me so much, so much! To be granted the thing I want the most and not accept it! In every single story, it has been like that! It is just corroding my soul, and I can't stand it any longer.

Now, when I proposed the idea of having a character that accepts her transition right away people have told me that there it would make no sense since if the character accepts their transformation instantly it would be the same as having a female character from the start, there would be no character growth or psychological battle, which I consider not true, some trans people themselves have told me this and that has surprised me and worried me.

Now, if I am talking about immediate self-acceptance I am talking about accepting that the morph, the sex change, is a good thing while allowing the character to explore all the psychological issues that come even when the morph is presented to you magically: the impostor syndrome, the guilt, trauma, association with the previous identity that you believed it was you and the dissociation with your own face which is something that nobody has ever talked about that much while talking about a sex change.

True, with body swap dissociation is present, people do not see the bodies they are in as themselves since they belong to someone else. People say that they start recognizing themselves with the hormones, but in my case, I still do not see it and not because I do not like it but because I have spent all my life dissociated of a face and the concept is just really alien to me, I just feel like a blob of the brain and it bothers me how people do not seem to notice that. People say that dissociation with an MTF story is going to work a lot less than in a body swap story since that body that changed is still yours, other people find it weird that Andrea even while wanting to be a girl she doesn't accept herself as one, at the moment. That the protagonist considers the girl in the mirror a different person sounds like a huge stretch on paper but it does happen in real life and makes a lot of sense for people like me, think about it, from my perspective the idea of associate yourself with a face is really artificial. Depicting dissociation properly so people can understand me is my biggest challenge with this project and the one I am afraid can fail more than any other.

As I have said, changing your identity is a very slow, sticky, and ugly process, even if you want to change, it is going to take a while, accepting a change is not going to erase all the trauma you had and those preconceived perceptions that you have of yourself, it is not going to be an immediate happy ending and it is going to take so time.

Some people suggest adding transgender characters in the ST universe but without allowing them to transition with magic or a remote, which I find a bit cruel, or actually, really cruel! In a universe where other people can change sexes a lot more easily, that should not really happen. Some might say that they want to show the whole experience of being trans and not just create a happy wish-fulfillment thing without the dark aspects of it. I disagree with saying that Student Transfer and TF, in general, are based on the concept of sudden identity and body changes, and a story with a sudden body change in the perspective of a trans character, we are experiencing mental changes all through our lives but TF fiction is focused on depicting those things faster.

Anyhow, I had the introspection thing ready, but people told me that seeing Andrea talk to herself all the time could become pretty boring, I had some romance planned at first but simple hesitation based on introspection is lame, I kinda panicked thinking that people would not find enough conflict in the story so I added three more conflicts aside from the whole introspection theme, which is now going to develop along with these arcs; I do not want to say which they are now because I do not want to spoil it yet, but well you can see now that one is... well, trying to make your friends believe you are actually you? Well, I accept it, that is just anagnorisis fan service for me, I am just fascinated by the idea of identity reveals and change so much to the point I can't explain, it produces me a sense of euphoria: still, consider the whole identity reveal an interesting thing to show in a story and trying to imagine how people in the real world would actually take such a change caused magic is interesting to experience, at the moment I have three characters assimilating Andrea is Andrew at three different speeds, Genny, Miranda, and Benjamin, fast, medium and slow, in this way I can experience their assimilation in various ways and keep the whole acceptance of such an incredible thing like a magic change present in most of the story.

The main reason why IPOB is a comedy is that with my first scenario I realized I simply can't bear a story of drama alone, as I added more and more conflict, things became too dire, and looking back I simply can't play that scenario again, read it, or work on it, it has just too many sad parts and since I feel already sad most of the time I look for stuff that makes me laugh, I just want to laugh, really, please make me laugh. I have never done Comedy before and even then this is my second public project ever so I am not really confident on my jokes, I feel that they are either too predictable or sometimes I feel they could get too weird like with the brain room gag, but well, I am always getting feedback from Gary and others and as long they can ease up the tension and present the whole stuff in a more cheerful way I think they are good enough, I also can't think of myself really that seriously so the comedy is essential from either side you look at it. I am always doing my best to make things funny, but I know that it will take me some time to get actually consistent and even more until I can actually develop my own distinctive sense of humor in writing.

I think adding comedy and making Andrea is such a quirky character made the scenario way too niche, even more when the scenario is already too niche since it is immediate self-acceptance and is something that doesn't happen often in GB. IPOB is going to end up with a really small demographic to satisfy, but well, what can I say? I have been accepting that fact slowly. While writing you might find yourself in thinking about how much you should give up on your own preferences to satisfy other people rather than just you, it is all about balance. I suppose this time I focused a bit more on what I liked rather than thinking in what other people would like because there are just too many MTF stories without immediate self-acceptance and I want to have at least one example that satisfies me completely, I want to do my version, this story is for me and ultimately to make ME happy, so that's why finding comments about people who like my story makes me so excited, that lets me know that I am not so alone. 

Now, people say that the whole dissociation and mental conflicts are too strong for a comedy, but I believe that a comedy can be done this way, I really believe so. One of my tricks is most of the times make jokes that do not necessarily have to do with the story itself, unrelated stuff that could be presented in a normal way but it's written in a more absurd way instead; the comedy centered in the story is focused on Andrea's social awkwardness, as well as her dad's, something I think I can do safely since social awkwardness comedy has been done before and is understandable and relatable, right now I am just afraid of overdoing it.

Unlike with the first scenario I did where I just wrote the story as it came out to my mind I decided to plan all the story from the beginning here, and so I did, what I need is to figure out the order of everything and keep good pacing because honestly even when I have all plot points planned I still haven't connected the dots, I try, but I feel I don't want to spoil the story for myself more than that, I just get nervous, anxious, I try to organize the sequences for when I am going to start to write for an update and I say then I'm going to take care of the rest later.

Now, in summary, what I am trying to offer here with this scenario is like a pact between wish fulfillment and psychological growth and conflict stories and scenarios in general, the character is not going to simply accept the change or being mind-controlled or being forced to the change, it is going to be a good change from the start. 

I would call this my trojan horse for TF fiction, I know how most of the audience of TF looks either lewds or a psychological conflict, and overall I had accepted that most of the times I just wanted wish fulfillment, so this is my wish-fulfillment story about that perfection MTF transformation filled with a bunch of mind conflicts and doubt to give to the people that like the conflict, for each one their own. I have a lot to say about my own experience anyway so I can add as much mental conflict as I want, Gary said he didn't care if it was a wish-fulfillment story anyway since the conflict is interesting, people in the thread have pointed out a lot of the things I wanted to mention, so I find myself happy by now with the results in my purpose of satisfying the main TF demographic. I won't really recommend it per se, since it some sort of "experiment", but if you play it I would really like to know your reactions, I really want to know what you think. I can't make up the idea of what you might think about what Andrea is going through to the point it becomes to me a shameful necessity to ask what you really think, I just get so weirded out by own myself and I want to know how right I am to feel that way.

I can't really recommend it to any lewd TF fans since it is not what I have planned for this story, I wrote like one single sex scene for the first scenario I did and it was still pretty fucking hard, it turned out to pretty cringe as Erin (one of the people that used to help me) said so in the first drafts, Erin gave me a few lines and added some comedic ones too, it lasts like 2 minutes, and trust me I can't give you more than that, not while I haven't done it. :p

I think I ended up adding too many ideas for me to handle but that was mostly because I was afraid of not having enough conflict, still, I'm happy with what I have been learning not just about writing but also about myself while making this scenario, so even if it takes me effort to write it is my ambition to continue it because as I said before, I feel relatively happy with the results. While I have a big task now to continue with this scenario I really want to see it finished, and even if it will take me the time I want to continue with it no matter how much it costs me, I hope that my strength lasts me long enough, that my attention span doesn't fail me, and that the story doesn't fall apart in the next updates.

Help Me Be Happy by JeffCharFlame

Curiously enough, it seems there have been more transgender-focused narratives in Student Transfer over the years, and Help Me Be Happy is one of them, does it succeed? Well, yes and no.

Using ST characters and backgrounds (since this was done in the era where no custom assets could be added), the scenario presents us a set of all brand new original characters: Jeff and his friends James, Tessa, and Jadon, as well his family and classmates.

We get a lot of information and exposition with every character and then, the remote is introduced to us by Tessa, who found it on her home's door. The characters believe her right away and a swap between Tessa and Jeff is done for the day.

What follows next is a casual story of friends that want to have fun with the remote swapping and switching their sexes. In one of the routes, Jeff tells Tessa that he wants to stay as her, following a placeholder.

In the longest route, Jeff confesses wanting to stay as a girl, which his (her) friends accept right away, Jeff switches as a girl but at the mall, he decides to switch back for a moment as a man. At that moment, he meets a girl and takes her to his room to talk more with her.

Based on what I can see, and one of the sentences Jeff says as a guy "Would you rather be in love with a girl or stay as a girl?" Since he knows that switching back and forth will just damage the remote, unfortunately, the scenario ends there and has been abandoned. What we see now is just characters doing things, with no actual plot whatsoever.

What the scenario has to offer at the moment has very low stakes, the characters act way too casually and calmly, always supporting and agreeing with each other, even when Jeff and Tess were a couple before, they still hang out as friends, and even James who knows this does not seem to care, even when swapping bodies between each other.

Jeff, or Jess, mentioned that the characters were being too nice to her, which is when she realized she had given them a mental command without realizing when she was about to sleep, the characters get out of their apparent trance but still act relatively the same way towards Jeff, with no drama and a lot of comprehension. 

Is it a recommendable trans story? Well, even when the character of Jeff/Jess is acceptable as a trans portrayal, very little of the social worries about being transgender are given to the audience to identify with, her parents are gone for the weekend, so they don't have anything to worry about, aside from some indecision from Jeff, we don't see too much about the mental issues he goes through, and the story doesn't do anything with the transgender element aside from the initial confession from Jeff. Even then, I think it makes for a cute and wholesome time.

If you want some slice of life story without too much conflict, I would say you can give this a shot, but even then you have to take into account that has no more than around 1 hour of content and it doesn't seem is going to get an update ever again.

Stone to the Head by GarySavage

 

Fan cover made by me

Stone to the Head offers a retelling of the now non-canon Murder route with an original character to change the dynamic John has with the main villain of the route, Jack.

While a lot of people consider that this scenario wasn't successful in delivering what was aiming for, the individual ideas it has are worth mention and even worth playing if you are interested in the topic itself, I will mention some thoughts about my own interpretation of the story just as well.

Now, at the beginning of the scenario, Erica is introduced as a seemingly violent girl that John meets, he shows her the remote and she asks her to let her stay in his body for a while so she can go out with John's friends that going to the Karaoke soon since she doesn't have any friends and wants to go through the experience, John accepts and after the experience turns successful, they use a command including intuitive memory recollection to help act like each other, and they both go to the other person's home.

At this point of the story, the player is given the option to play an "experimental" route which has become infamous overall. While being in Erica's home, John is filled with weird thoughts since he's in Erica's brain and he has memories that are affecting him, Gary explains that due to the memory copy, they both suffer from Mind Contamination. If he doesn't find some pills Erica uses to calm himself down, his personality changes, and experiences a psychotic break. The next morning he kills Erica in his old body and mind controls Katrina so she tells the police she was the murderer.

While the idea in itself isn't necessarily bad for fans of Mind Contamination and Personality Change, the whole route feels incredibly rushed, getting reduced to not just a route in itself but just a bad ending, John's personality is totally changed by the next morning into some sort of calculating and calmed down psychopath, the reason he killed his old body isn't quite clear either. The quote the scenario is closed with "The one that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." doesn't explain too much its reasoning and makes the scenario feel superficial and edgy.

If John is able to find the pill, a longer route starts, later Erica mentions seeing a photo of her uncle Jack with John's sister, Holly. Since John is still asking himself why his sister doesn't talk to him, they both team up and try to investigate what happened between the two of them, going one night to the school and check the school files about the teacher and unveil the truth.

The scenario is unfinished and according to Gary, abandoned. What is left of the route offers a mix of suspense that hasn't been seen a lot in other ST scenarios, while John and Erica are investigating the truth, John sees her hit Michelle violently in the head so they can recover the remote and he's warned by several people about Erica's nature, who is rumored to have murdered one of her classmates, Patrick, in her previous school, so John has to try and do the right choice about if she is dangerous or not before it is too late.

What the scenario has to offer in the state is in, is an enjoyable mix of creepy atmosphere and a story with decent enough mystery showing the dark side of what the remote can cause, even with good intentions. The overall theme would be "Using the remote in the mentally ill, brings misfortune".

Some people claim it shows a harmful depiction of mentally ill people since Erica is implied to be a dangerous psychopath in the experimental ending, it's a fair criticism, although personally, I feel the remote was the catalyst for all the events that follow, not just Erica. Since the ending is pretty vague, it goes for the interpretation of the reader. According to Gary, the purpose of the route was to raise the stakes and increase the tension, but the result could have been handled a lot better.

Another point worth mention is that Jack is also given a more human side, he is a good uncle for Erica and he, according to her, is always there to help, even when being despicable towards John and his family. A lot of the time villains are done in one note, without giving them any redeemable qualities on their own so the audience can hate them more easily, but the truth is that we are humans, and humans are not composed of black and white personalities, and there will always be ambiguity. Giving good traits to bad characters like Jack and giving bad traits to characters like Erica make the characters feel alive, not like perfect people but like actual human beings with defects but also qualities.

The other part worth mentioning of this scenario is the one that didn't make it into the final release, the part of the story Gary planned but abandoned afterward, and is mainly that Erica wasn't really Patrick's murderer, her friend, Becky, had a crush on him and tried to get him to join their group. At first, Erica was just annoyed by him but then she started to be left out with Becky spending way more time with Patrick than before. Patrick was always cheerful but since he had severe depression, Erica felt that he's not sincere and that annoyed her even more, when Patrick killed himself, Erica was tagged as the main suspect.

What I do think is that Erica had the task of teaching the player to not judge everybody by appearances and make people understand that even the mentally ill shouldn't be completely left out. According to Gary, Erica is violent and has schizotypal tendencies, but at the very end, she has empathy. One of the bad endings even happens when John decides to wipe her memory out after getting scared. John confronts Jack afterward, and since he has a remote just as well, he uses it and makes John kill himself. 

Even then, since Gary abandoned the scenario, nothing of this appears at the end. The tension added to make the character doubt her at first played out against her, and this also adds up to the rushed-out experimental ending that ends up being too vague and that could have been handled a lot better, leaving people with a lot less favorable impressions of Erica. She has gained the status of psycho, while the intention was to show the total opposite. Not that I can really blame them though, the scenario is unfinished, and the death of the author exists.

Twisted Minds by Bladecutter

 

Twisted Minds is another 20-minute scenario that opens several paths for TF stories but that ends too soon before any of them can really develop.

In summary, Riley (named now Michael) gets a smartphone-like device from a being proclaiming to be an alien (Circe) laughing at him once he leaves due to his own ingenuity. After trying it once that night, Michael takes it with him to school and while trying to enter the chooses several paths to the class covered with bullies.

In the main entrance, there is Sarah (Sayaka), in the fields, there is Tony (Eric), in the garden, there is Valerie (Tori), depending on the actions of the user Michael can get to where his friend Kate (Katrina) is and show her the device. Choosing the wrong option will make each one of the bullies take control over the device, all of them go crazy in their own routes.

Since the Kate route starts with a placeholder, the only thing this scenario has to offer are the small routes where the bullies make Riley suffer in different ways. I would recommend it for fans of masochism, but please also take into account that the scenario has a bit of loose logic (even when not to the point of Harem) and some people will dislike the name changes as well.

Golden Lining by GarySavage

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Despite her lack of content in the main game, Jane, the gender-bent version of John has gained a certain popularity in the Student Transfer community ad the predetermined choice for MTF storylines thanks to John's protagonism in the game and the inclusion of Jane's Tina Koya uniform sprite since v4, which makes her a great choice to use without using side characters or additional sprites that might not fit in the main game.

Golden Lining chooses Jane as the protagonist but changes the sprite for a similar-looking girl to add the possibility of use CGs from her source game since the original Jane's CGs are forbidden for use in scenarios to avoid spoilers. Another advantage of Jane is the number of similar sprites to her coming from the same artist working in the same GIGA visual novel series, allowing the writer to pick another "Jane" in this case without making the choice look too out of place.

Story-wise, Golden Lining shows an alternate timeline where John does not get his heirloom's spellbook but is instead gender-bent due to the side effect of the magic energy contained on a doll after accidentally getting seen as a witch hunter by Lin, a paranoic Witch of the Chinese tradition.

John wakes up as a woman the next day and escapes out of nervousness, he meets Lin, but she doesn't know to revert John back, but since John has now the magic power of the Chinese tradition thanks to the energy absorbed by the doll, she promises him to teach her magic, the issue? Lin's magic is not as powerful as Blackwell's magic, and even then, it requires practice.

As the case is with Spitting Image, this set up is pretty great by the fact that avoids a lot of the escalation issues presented in the main game like characters not using certain spells or commands when they can to out of pure principle or simply because they do not think about doing so, John's magic is not anymore godlike and omnipotent, but something that needs to be worked on and that will not give John everything that he wants, allowing the reader to enjoy the story without recurring too much to the suspension of disbelief.

Golden Lining is in summary a 2-hour introduction of a story yet to be made, but even then doesn't suffer from any slow pacing issues, all this time is used to introduce the new characters like Lin and her friend Edward, as well as the place they come from, the Chinese restaurant Red Lotus, John's doll incident happens actually quite fast and afterward the scenario focuses in his arrival home and transformation in the morning, a great scene that shows going from confusion, to shock, and panic allowing the reader to feel and experience all those emotions in almost real-time; a perfect example of how to do a TF sequence and a character's reaction to an abrupt change and contrasts with a lot of rushed out sequences in TF material.

In general, Golden Lining is part of the new generation of scenarios that provide amazing and more natural pacing to the story compared to previous rushed v3 content, all scenes are given their own space, their own dialogue, and we get to meet and understand all the characters.

There are some scenes that Gary said are set up for future plot points, everything that happens in the scenario happens for a specific reason, there are no scenes wasted in the whole 2 hours; even then, readers might get confused since a lot of the reasons things happen are not answered in the state the scenario is now.

Besides all the ideas Golden Lining brings to the table story-wise, it also introduces a lot of graphic elements to make the visual format less stale, starting from Jane's CGs, there are also a lot of edited backgrounds, animations, phone menus, transitions, and visual clues to show character's feelings more properly.

Golden Lining is currently on hiatus and therefore not because of its quality, but because it finishes too soon (in terms of the general plot) it might not deserve a spot yet as a Student Transfer Classic but is still recommended as it is to anybody who enjoys MTF content, it is hoped the project gets continued one day.

The Heaven We Were Promised by PhaseJumps (Lotus)

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Those who normally enjoy MTF TG due to wish-fulfillment reasons will find in this scenario a nice experience that talks about the most delicate and ladylike aspects of a female transformation.

The premise of this scenario follows John becoming one of his classmates and getting stuck for physical reasons that will not allow him to say use the transformation spell back. John will end up looking for help for one of his friends, Setsuna, and spend a girly moment in the night while they both try to discuss an option to turn this back to normal.

The scenario counts also with a protagonist that goes deep in introspection of all his actions, and even when for some this will be considered off-character it adds a lot of personality to the story since these introspective thoughts deal with the meaning of TF and TG in general for people who like it for its psychological reasons.

As a bonus, the spellbook is described as a science fiction artifact rather than a magical plot device, explaining its mechanisms and functioning as if it was a device with very advanced technology rather than just a fantasy item, people who like science fiction more might enjoy more this take on the book and it shows how fantasy and science fiction are differentiated in the amount of explaining the author wants to give the audience about their own world.

Even when the scenario has a lot of good points, it ends very soon leaving the audience merely in the prologue of the story and leaving a lot of questions to answer. One of the most critical faults of the scenario is how according to the author John is written as an egg in the scenario, his feelings towards femininity in itself are not explored until the spell has been used; this along with the tags Slow Mental TF of the scenario, might make the audience believe that John is going towards mental changes and identity death caused by the spell he has used.

The scenario has been abandoned, but or has enough little moments to be recommend alone if you like MTF stories, wholesome TF stories, and wish fulfilment.