Into the Janeverse by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

 

When I entered the Student Transfer Discord I did read comments about how easy can be to make a scenario due to the low technological barrier, and with all my might, I decided to give it a go, starting to work on it.

Now, this scenario is composed of two finished routes, each one with a different feel, there were more routes planned but right now I am focusing on another scenario and this one probably will not be continued, at last not any time soon.

Yes, this name is also super stupid, I was planning on doing an anthology of different Jane background stories to show in each different route a way to develop Jane differently, each one ending up in a different Jane, henceforth the title Janeverse, but eh, I think it is just too silly and actually misleading, I actually had a massive twinning route, but there is just so much more interesting ideas in my to do list that I doubt I will ever end up doing that one, time is limited.

The first one I did was the Kiyoshi route, not in the scenario itself but it was also the first public story I have done ever, and it shows. My objective was simple, I wanted to make Kiyoshi likable. The truth is that I have always identified with Kiyoshi due to his nature, he is quirky, he misses obvious social clues, and he is seen as a joke by everybody else; my experience in school was pretty similar to his, I wanted to take the challenge, and show that Kiyoshi could really have humanity and not be just a joke character like he has been treated until this date.

Now, what do I think of it now? Is it recommendable? Did achieve its purpose?

Personally, I hate it, I really really hate it. It is just a subpar, average at best romance story that doesn't stand up with any other story in TF fiction, it is just one of them, nothing new, nothing impressive, just me trying to follow the book and do it right. While I think I showed traces of what it can be done to make Kiyoshi grow as a character and show that he can be a good couple if you are into quirky and nerdy guys (which I am), the story has very low stakes and its tone is too cheesy to the point it makes me want to puke, Jane is also pretty one-note being just "girly" and  "sentimental", something I dislike now. I also shoehorned some lines about mental illnesses like Kiyoshi having depression to explain his inability to take things seriously, instead of just attributing it to him being immature. I feel I went way too far from what Kiyoshi really is, I projected too much into him and I ruined it. Overall, this route makes me feel ashamed.

If you still want to see a slice-of-life and romance story with Jane as the protagonist and see a more human rendition of Kiyoshi, you are free to check it out, taking into account the wholesome tone and all the cheese you will have to bear.

The second route had a different result, it's based on a Yui clone, Yuuni. This character comes from Applemelon's scenario, the story got abandoned but in a draft Gary sent me I did read how Applemelon basically launched the clone into space killing her in the process because Jane (in a Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde fashion) didn't know how to unsummon her and wanted to get rid of her, that caused me a huge pity for her and awoke a lot of feelings in me that literally forced me to make this story, I just couldn't think in anything else, I had to write her story.

Basically, I was kinda obsessed with the idea (or well, I still am) of being the mother to someone like you, basically, of someone having an unconditional respect for you, of being able to do anything to anybody but intead choose them to treat them kindly; basically, I'm obsessed in the idea of kind, gentle omnipotence over a single someone.

But it is not just the Jane part of the story I like, it's the Yuuni part too, the Yui clone: We have somebody who has been made from nothing and doesn't have anywhere to go due to her origins, somebody who is not just a copy but a true being who lives and exists just like any other person and knows somebody that could erase her any moment, but doesn't. It's this sensation of pure and unconditional kindness of a merciful god that makes me feel safe too, and Yuuni after all this tremendous fear she is received with kindness and is accepted by Jane, total and complete acceptation set up to its extreme logical conclusion: a witch mother that is always with you. 

There is also the fact that Yuuni and Jane are also the same age so in the eyes of everybody they are seen as equal and even if Jane is more powerful than Yuuni, Yuuni is able to live by herself and doesn't really need to hear any advice or learn about life from Jane. I have always been afraid of taking responsibility for someone because I can't trust in my own decisions, so by extension Jane doesn't raise Yuuni or anything. Yuuni will still obey Jane if Jane wants to, but Jane gives that permission to Yuuna to be more than herself, to be more mature than her, or well, something like that, I don't know, I'm not a fucking psychologist and this is not even the main conflict the route has, yes, I'm sorry to admit but all this is just a bunch of emotional masturbation, yes, it makes me angry, but that's how things are!

In the end, after I showed all these cute scenes of Jane being powerful and Yuuni weak I ran out of conflict, I panicked and I sat one night to brainstorm. In the end, I found that Yuuni could get a new crisis doubting about her own free will due to her own nature as a clone, and it worked naturally well, it was also fun to twesk the relationship between Yuuni and Jane as much as I could, taking it up to its limits, overall while is a bit boring route I find this concept to be solid. I like it.

The route has a lot of issues, yes, first a lot of scenes were pretty repetitive, as Gary said: "Characters barely show any emotions, especially Jane, Yui and Yuuni, their speeches are very monotonous, they are always calm, they always say the right words and I don't see anything interesting in their characters. They are literally the same." In the end, I ended up making Yui the villain, making her regret creating Yuuni and threaten her with exorcising her, increasing her anger and creating a bigger outburst between Yuuni and Jane. The pacing isn't as great considering there is only one arc and is still cheesy, but since Natalie already reviewed it and she liked it, this route is done for me, I don't want to change anything else and mess up what I did right, I'm happy with how it is now, and I'm also thinking in bringing the concept back in future stories, but with better execution and set up.

Several people like it, which makes me happy, there are some strong emotions I was able to show and people connected with, so, if you like super wholesome cheesy stories, I can recommend this one with all things considered, it is not great, but I think it's at least good for that kind of niche audience I am aiming for, it has some ideas I still think are interesting and worth exploring. It is a cute route and some parts of it still give me the stomach butterflies.

What do I think the scenario overall? Eh, it's eh; at best, it's just a mixed bag, it is my first effort after all and I still got at a lot of help for it while making it, if you have already checked other wholesome GB scenarios and you are still hungry for them, like really hungry and desperate to the point that you would check anything no matter how low, you can still check this one if you can forgive all its flaws, although I would still recommend checking better ones first if you haven't already.

Additional Info:

-Kiyoshi Route

I took the project out in an impulse, I obviously had never done anything like writing before and I wanted to finish it as soon as possible fearing that my energy to do it would run out pretty quickly, that I would abandon the project because I usually lack the will to do anything due to my depression, I wanted to get me name in the community.

What did I do then? I took an already done, abandoned scenario: Yui Spellbook Continuation, made by his majesty Applemelon, and I started editing it to my taste so I could create my own story as fast as I could, running against the clock and my own abulia.

Since I didn't have the energy to read any instructions either I just took the code, watched the tutorial videos of, again, his majesty Applemelon, and I started editing the code little by little, in the first scenes I changed just some dialogues, then I changed some backgrounds and I played with animations, as I edited his already done scenario I learned more and more, I also made a lot of obvious questions in the Discord because I haven't read the guide and I wanted to finish fast, around the end I learned to make new scenes, use positions, and the basic things for finish a scenario.

The writing of this first route of mine took a lot of rewrites and editing, thankfully, two people came to me saying they wanted to contribute to the project and I happily accepted the. My first idea for the ending was to end up the story in the sex scene with Jane with Kiyoshi inspired by one of the endings of X-Change Alternative. I said it would be best if I could give something of fetishistic appeal to the audience after the whole drama thing, I was afraid people would hate it. Fortunately, Erin and Gary told me that ending up te route in a sexual note was bad, and they said I should end up with a more serious ending instead, which gave me hope t make more drama stories. I also proposed an ending where Jane and Kiyoshi would end up being taken away by a spaceship to end up being abducted by a spaceship to imply that all the content of the route wasn't serious at all, just a joke, again, because I was afraid, that ending also got rejected by my peers.

I asked a lot Erin, Gary, and Ayathegame about how I should end the story because I wasn't confident in my ideas, I was scared and I just wanted to make things right, after I ended up changing Applemelon's scenario and I added the ideas I had ready I found out I didn't know what I was going to write next, I had no idea in how to end the story, so the rest of the plot was made by making up questions to these three people and even more "Do you think this would work?" "No?" "Do you think this would?" "Can you recommend me anything?" "Maybe if I do this instead would be better?" I feel bad for them because of my lack to think by myself, but I was able to finish thanks to them. 

A lot of the early versions of the scenario have very cringeworthy ideas I was trying to fit in, like having Kiyoshi breakdown saying he was aware of how stupid he was and how he wanted to make things right, which was changed to Kiyoshi's breaking down because he made Jane angry which Gary and Aya said worked better. In another version, Kiyoshi saves Jane from Carrie and she forgives him for visiting him in the hospital, but I erased it because I found it cheap and it almost made me puke later. 

The dissociation was also an issue, because st some point Jane described John as s totally different person and IK12345 mentioned that this could be seen as if Jane was born by the spell instead and that she had killed John, a different being than her. Personally I wanted to keep it ambiguous so people could think I was focusing in an fetish ID story if they wanted, again, because I was scared, but at the end so followed her advise and I took a lot of the extreme dissociation of the story, although some people still find it confusing, which was a failure in my part. A failure caused by my own indecision and fear in what to write.

In one of the versions, I made John get abducted by aliens and make him female-minded to avoid any issues about having a non-cis John because I was scared with the complaints about changing the main character of the game. Luckysquid and Kawaiiswitcher said that adding aliens and then go to magic damaged the pacing of the scenario, so in the end, I removed all that and went for a simple non-cis John, it was not my favorite option, but it was something they were right about, my pacing was already irregular enough.

The first sex scene draft had descriptions about reaching extasis and uniting with the cosmos because since it was going to be the final scene, I wanted it to be dramatic, Erin said it was very cringing pointing out Kiyoshi would not become a total porno star in his first time (fair point, what was I thinking?) and thankfully helped me change it, I ended up copying some lines of the Murder route sex scene and I tried to add some of the mine making sure and triple checking with Erin that they weren't cringe (Does this work? Does this sound natural? Would this describe this well?), Erin also gave a couple of sentences which I added for the final product. Lesson learned. I will never do a sex scene, ever again, not until I can experience it myself.

After working practically all day every day I was able to finish the route in 20 days, I published it, and overall it got average reviews.

-Yuuni Route

I think I don't have too much to say about the process creation of this process, this time it took me around a month and after a lot of questions and game testing thanks to a friend of mine in discord, Keyboard, and proofreading by Kawaiswitcher, I was able to finish an acceptable version.

There were also some cringe ideas from my parts, like calling Yuuni "Yuitwo" at first, I changed it after Hizack and Ayathegame recommended me this other name, hoping nobody would remember the old name again. I even had some technical issues like when trying to loop a track in one of the dramatic parts of the route, I wasn't able to make it crossfade well, so I exported a big chunk of it at a pretty low bitrate and pasted it there, the song is a minimal piano piece with repetitive notes that lasts like 30 minutes and I left 10 minutes of it, which the first 4 have a very slow fade in to make the music grow up more and more. Ridiculous, I know, I just hope nobody has noticed yet, I hope not to do such a thing ever again. The whole code and assets are a mess, it makes me feel dirty looking at them.

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.

Maidenswap v5 by Choripankiller

 

Featured as the main route for v5, Maidenswap exploded in popularity everywhere and became one of the fans favorites in most cases, offering some missing background for Holly, John's sister, as well expanding the characters of Cassie and Elizabeth, Holly's friends.

While I think this scenario is a fantastic option for people who look for wish fulfillment and cheesy stories, it fails to add the depth it wants to achieve for people who are into TF interested in the psychological aspects of it, the relationships are artificial, and overall, it falls just as a beautiful lie.

Now, this review will contain spoilers past this segment since it will discuss things related to the plot, if you like to wish fulfillment and do not look for TF for the depth, I still recommend it, when I did read it I felt a lot of emotions because I enjoy the content of that kind as well in a certain measure.

The first thing that comes to mind is that there is no character development from the characters in almost all situations, while Holly accepts her identity and opens out to people, this happens too fast and the acceptance from her part works surprisingly easy. She even accepts the fact that John and Cassie might had been dating a year ago when she was rejected with a drink, there are no consequences for them, even when Holly was initially the focus o the route.

Elizabeth, one of the main characters, stays the same through the entire plot, probably because the devs wanted to give her more protagonism in Maidswap, but even then, she ends up things that might seem out of character for her, like erasing her friend's memories at the end, a decision she takes without consulting her. 

Aside from the ending Maid(en) from Scratch, where John and Cassie decide to start their relationship all over learning that they should get to know each other in a more normal way, the two main characters do not see any character growth through all the route, Cassie does not learn about her or about other people, and either end up breaking up with John for lack of trust or decides to forgive him. The worst one would be John, who ends up even doing some terrible things like mind controlling Elizabeth and hiding the remote from Cassie in one of the ends without consequences, again, not bad for wish fulfillment, but bad for a story of another kind, John does not feel remorse for his actions and lives with Cassie's stolen life.

One might argue that he grows in some of the bad endings like Where the Was Fire, Ashes Remain, but that's just because he is forced to learn when Cassie and Elizabeth destroy the remote and kick him out of the house.

Another big issue that this route suffers is how casual the characters are about the situations they go through, sure, Cassie cries, there is drama, frustration, and eventual acceptation, but a lot of stuff seems to be skipped over or relegated to happen offscreen. Once the long swap starts, John doesn't even try to contact his regular friends, telling Cassie to live his life for him, John does the same, and just after some years, they decide to live more "as themselves", even then, they don't seem to care about their old relationships anymore, everything in their previous lives got shifted aside. 

When John swaps back to his original body in one of the endings, he casually goes out with his friends and tells them the truth, who doubt at first and still talk to him normally, why? Because apparently replacing John with Cassie doesn't make really a difference. Even John says once "Well, there is no class at university today, what should I do?" Implying that he doesn't care about the career Cassie had chosen for him or that Cassie chose something John would study and had been studying as if she was him instead.

Another issue is that most characters have the same way of speech, or rather, their personalities are rather similar in most of the cases. With the main four friends, you can differentiate the personalities of each character: John, casually standard, Katrina is playful, she teases, Kiyoshi is forceful and annoying, and Kyoko is shy and reserved, she is the nerd girl of the group. With Maidenswap we have three Johns that are all casually standard to something, they do not have a recognizable voice between themselves, and that makes the characters not feel alive, all of them have very few defects, (aside from John in some endings, and controlled by the player), Cassie never does anything against John, and solves the misunderstanding with Holly in a single day and in the most assertive way, Cassie says she has done bitchy things, but the player never gets to see any of that, overall, it feels like the whole dynamic of their relationships was very artificial, a perfect story about perfect people.

One last thing I would mention is how I disagreed with the ending when John said that he and Cassie were not as compatible as they thought, I said, yes! You have hit the nail on the head! Their dynamic is flawed, and overall it really feels that they got close together only as a coping mechanism, I thought it was a perfect conclusion, it was difficult to accept, but it was something, they would teach them about how a swap can affect their thoughts, it would have made the trauma really mean something because they were living something they didn't really feel, they would have learned, they would have grown. Unfortunately, Chori decided to go for a more idealistic ending, saying that they both had lived great moments together, in the endings Cassie defends John, what does she say? He is gentle, loyal, a good man, just what any other girl would say of a generic anime protagonist, that he is basically "a good person". I found the couple to be quite dysfunctional and I didn't really get to dig completely their happy ending.

This is an issue that a lot of people will find themselves with, sometimes the conflict of a story will be ultimate, romance, but the issue is that John has other romance routes already in the game, he has Monitor, where he gets to know more Yui, a classmate, that makes a bit more sense, it is the usual school first love, he has Connie, that actually shows how a relationship-centered by the remote can end in tragedy, he has Katswap, and more, and it seems that a lot of the routes could end up in that, John should not hook up with all the girls in the game, and he clearly shouldn't have ended up with a person as Cassie, which has no real reason to be with John, she is a college student, a rich person that wants to be a fashion designer, John is a middle-class high school student passionate about videogames. If you wanted me to believe their relationship was genuine you should have used something stronger.

Overall, I do not think Maidenswap is bad and it has actually a lot to offer to ST and TF fans, but, failing its original purpose, it works mostly just as a wish-fulfillment story, relegated of logic at the very end.

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.