This was a really, really great story. Wouldn't mind a continuation, you are a great writer!

Thank you. I was kind of nervous putting this up because I do not really do that much writing like this. I have got a few shorter pieces that I attached to some of my other works, but nothing of this length and scope.

As for a continuation, there will probably be something of some sort at some point. I have been building up a cast of characters at this school and have been drawing little pictures of their lives so there will definitely be more Kaj and Felix in the future. I'm not sure if I'm going to write a big long direct continuation of Felix's story like this just yet just because it took so much time to write something of this magnitude, but I do have ideas of where I want to take his and the other character's stories overall.

That was awesome! Really fun story and I liked how you went into the details behind his change, it definitely wasn't what I was expecting but very nicely done. Surely Felix isn't going to agree to try to reverse the spell just because Kaj has lost his game collection? ;)

Regarding your comment below, yes lengthy stories tend to put people off just because it's hard to find the time to read them, but I look forward to whatever you come up with!

I really wanted to try and go beyond a rather standard TF which is why I came up with the whole trial part. I also do not normally enjoy a lot of reality shift TFs because they often come combined with identify deaths of the characters involved and so I wanted to kind of subvert that. Plus, I think the story of someone tossed into a new life that they have to fake their way through and figure out a new existence just seems kind of fun.

As for Felix reversing the spell just for Kaj's game collection. That would probably be the stupidest reason to do so, but Kaj is a bit of a selfish bastard and I'm sure he'd be pushing for that reason. I do have ideas and a plan for how I want to take their stories (along with all of the other characters I've built for this setting) and there will be plenty of reasons for Felix to try reverse the spell or not.

As for the length, it is probably too long, but I just had a lot of story I wanted to tell. In retrospect, I should have probably split it up and posted it in chapters or something to make it a bit more manageable. Although, I personally prefer having just one big long document.

You succeeded, that was an enjoyable read. I agree with you on the identity death thing, it's basically just killing the person, the way you've done it is a lot more fun as you say. I smiled at the, 'You have a boyfriend', part as well, as if Felix wasn't going to find it difficult enough to adjust! Though at least such relationships seemed to be viewed fairly casually in this setting.

That makes sense, so far apart from the less of his original family this seems like an unalloyed boon for him. Well that and his games collection! He'd better not get slack and ensures he keeps up with his physical training or he'll lose that trim physique fairly quickly, does he actually enjoy fitness and exercise now?

It was a quick read but definitely more people will pick a story up if it's in shorter segments, that's just the internet for you.

Yeah, I thought that moment was pretty funny. I'm still deciding how I want to take that particular plot point because Felix is now essentially a different person to who the lion had been dating. Also, I am not sure where I gave the impression that the relationships were more casual, because that was not my intention. Just more that nudity in general is. This primarily being a product of me designing Kaj without pants initially so I had to build the world around that design choice. Plus it is kind of funny.

Yeah, it is mostly a boon for him personally. I'll probably touch on this more the next time I come back to Felix (after I finish the current little comic I'm working on), but there are some major socio-political ramifications that also occurred with the spell that I have been mulling over in my head.

Also for the fitness and exercise, I feel like he does enjoy it more now. It helps that he is actually strong and good at it. Another thing that did not make it into the story was that his actual courses and major changed to studying to be more of a spell-blade. So he actually is taking classes that require him to perform physical activity.

Yes that would definitely be a major change in your personal identity. And that raises a question I intended to ask, so where has the person the lion was dating now gone, was he overwritten by the new Felix, but that would be identity-death which you said you don't like.

And OK, I figured Kaj's reaction was so casual and the fact that Felix has a picture of them kissing meant it wasn't as publicly taboo as it has been in our own world for a long time.

Interesting, thanks!

I haven't actually thought about that lion in particular (might be a fun thing to explore and a good launching point for this topic), but overall I don't like identity death because it's not actually treated with the gravity that it deserves. As you correctly pointed out it basically is killing people. Too many times do I see identity death in TF stories that is seen as a positive thing and it always weirds me out. There was a good reason that the spell was considered forbidden because Felix did completely alter large parts of the world and many individuals. So while he might have been given a personal upgrade, I think there are many philosophical, moral, and ethical considerations that I'd want to explore and the effect of them on his conscious as to if he would try and reverse the spell or not. That probably will be far away in his story and in general I want to keep things lighter, but I think at some point those heavier topics will have to be addressed.

I agree entirely, I've had debates with people on the subject and it comes down to advocates of it saying that it doesn't really kill people when it quite clearly does.

And I see, wow I figured they'd found themselves in an alternate reality or something not that they'd remade and reshaped their own world, yeah that's basically monumentally selfish even though I don't blame him for not wanting to go back.

One more thing and then I'll stop badgering you, well foxing you, you mentioned problems with transformation magic, what are the difficulties with that? If someone wanted to do a less drastic version of what Felix did and knowingly change from Human to Enfield without the personality stuff would it be possible?

Fox me all you like. I love talking about my own settings and the worlds I make and just yak on about them forever (or at least until it comes to something I do not want to spoil).

I actually had not considered the possibility of it being an alternate reality. It makes a ton of sense and actually that would seemingly be a potential investigative avenue that Felix would take as he tries to figure this out. Kind of wish I kept the reality of what was going on under wraps because in the end I still think I would have gone with this more horrifying option as to what he did because I want it to be such a moral quagmire in the future.

So I imagine magic that provides permanent physical changes like that is probably available, but restricted and somewhat difficult to pull off (especially for a permanent spell). Because this is a modern day setting I figure such magics would have the possibility of aiding and abetting criminals at worst and at best it would still run havoc on things like government id databases on the like. So most modern developed nations would add restrictions like background checks and government approval to get the spells done. On the other hand going to less developed nations with looser rules would probably be possible.

The difficulty of the spells would probably depend on the length of time it is supposed to last and differences between the source and target species both in physical form and innate magical abilities (though the second one more so). Some species are more magically attuned than others meaning the innate magical potential grows and the percentage of magic users grows with it till you hit 100%. A lot of times very high levels of innate magical attunement also comes with further specialized abilities. This means that transformations to and from these species is very difficult to pull off (and failure with these spells can lead to very serious side effects or even death as the body is left in a partially transformed state where the physical body cannot function).

So going from human->enfield would be relatively easy in comparison to most transformation spells since both humans and enfields have no innate magical attunement. Felix having access to magic in either form is a rarity* for his kind. On the other hand, going from human->kitsune would be fraught with difficulty as kitsune are insanely magical creatures in this setting.

Beyond physical transformations, spells that do any mental changes are pretty much heavily restricted to the medical fields (I can imagine some spells being used for psychiatric help or almost like magical anesthesia) or more often outright banned and forbidden. Of course this also means that information on what those spells are is also heavily restricted. So being in a position where you need to hastily pick one makes it quite difficult to know what is the right one to pick and might be prone to errors. :3 I also imagine that being able to raise one's intelligence is extra difficult because I magic requires a lot of intelligence and study at the high end. So using magic to essentially increase your capabilities with magic feels like cheating the system.

Now I will take note that there are some species that are just natural shapeshifters and so they kind of break a lot of the rules about physical transformations above. They can only change themselves, it is always temporary, and they are not actually changing the core of what they are. So if they physically transform into a species that has some odd unique magical ability they will not actually be able to use it.** I imagine the laws governing such innate physical self transformation magic vary between nations and who is in power. For example, the kitsune are one of these species that are natural shapeshifters and since Kaj's family are very powerful in their home nation, restrictions on such transformations are very lax. In other places where such being are far more rare, less so.


*Since I am mostly setting my stories at a college specifically for magical studies, pretty much every character will be a mage of some sort but once someone goes off campus the amount of people who can cast spells decreases dramatically.

**I guess this would also in theory be something that could be done if someone just wanted to physically look like a different species that is difficult to turn into. Probably is not done very often though.

Thank you, very interesting, you've certainly considered these things! And given our conversation in stream if a Human did somehow manage to successfully transform into a Kitsune they might unexpectedly find themselves as basically an ordinary fox, and as smart as one...oh dear...depending of course how the spell interprets their age, literally or relatively ;)

I will have to consider that if it does ever come up. If the spell changes them relatively by age then there probably would be no issues. But if it was literally then it opens up all sorts of problems. Like if they just become a rather smart, but still non-sapient, fox then what happens to all of their human memoires? Would they get muddled up because of the time they spent as a fox? When they gain their second tail do all of their memories come flooding back to them despite having the body of essentially a toddler? The logistics of it are kind of horrifying when you actually start to think about it.

And this is why though magic sounds neat it would open up all sorts of problems! And that is something that isn't really covered in most TF fiction, including my own, if you were transformed into a fox then your mind would be utilising a foxes brain and as clever as they are they're still an animal, how much of you would still be you, and especially if you ended up spending years as one? Memories of course would be a problem as well as the fact that you would go from the ability to process complicated maths to have trouble figuring out even the simplest sums as well as all the other aspects of intelligence.

There's a reason I've inherently made doing something like this super difficult in setting... just so I do not really have to worry about it. Really the only character who probably would have enough magic (although lack of control) to pull it off would be Kaj... again... Maybe I'll revisit the idea of a human->kitsune transformation in the future within this setting when I contemplate the logistics of it more.

Overall though as someone who loves fantasy and magic the general concept of the logistics of having magic in a setting is something I have thought about a lot. Really I have three approaches that I use in different settings depending on the goals.

1. Magic is pretty loose, but it is more about creating interesting plots for characters to interact with. This is kind of how I am treating it in this particular setting. I want to keep it light and not really be tied down by town of rules of magic. I have a few minor rules to explain why characters can not just magic away their problems, but overall it is about the characters themselves with magic being a fun aspect to add chaos and flavor to the setting and situations.

2. Magic is powerful, but mystical and almost out of reach. I feel like this is how Lord of the Rings treats its magic. It exists, but it is rare and beyond mortal comprehension and really is not something you want to get involved with very often.

3. Magic exists and you actually try and plan out the rules to a T. I actually have used this approach the most even though the setting I have worked on it with is not one that I post a lot of stuff from (mainly due to me being a perfectionist with it and so instead just have massive quantities of world building notes
and sketches scattered around). There is some, mainly a lot of older stuff on my DA and my sona being an original species from that setting. I have solved a lot of the issues that magic causes by just straight up heavily limiting magic. A few key rules being: magic cannot break the conservation of mass and magic is inherently corruptive and exposure to excess magic will cause living things to lose their minds and eventually mutate into horrific nightmare beasts (while evil mages will inflict this fate on others everyone else agrees that it is such a horrific fate that it is not to be used in warfare despite the advantage that it would give). This solves loads of problems. Like people cannot use magic to help their crops grow because the plants would absorb the mana and then when you ate them you would start suffering from too much magic in your body. So crop yields stay at normal levels. Healing magics similarly run into this issue because they will often cause more damage than they heal.* Magic essentially becomes a power source to create different forces and often gets used in place of traditional power sources leading to kind of a steampunk (magicpunk?) vibe to the technology. At high concentrations and levels though it does kind of dip back into the second type of setting so it kind of straddles the line sometimes, but for the fundamental logistical problems and the question of if magic can improve lives so much why does the setting still live in a feudal medieval low tech world? I worked a lot of time to fix that.

*There are actually magical technics to get around these limitations but the knowledge of them is guarded by the spirits** who basically have had religions build around them and trade tribute for access to these spells. Still, the difficulty of the injury or disease requires more magical skill so stuff like cancer cannot even be healed by the spirits.

**Ok, so there is this one tribe of kankir*** who have developed a symbiotic relationship with the spirits living in the particular area that they are in and have actually learned these secrets, but most of the world has no idea they can do this because they live in an isolated area high up in the mountains which is the equivalent of the world's himalayas.

***Kankir are a small furry kind of based on mustelids which is what I use as my sona.

That all makes sense, thanks for the explanation! I did wonder what species that was in your avatar, very neat!

Simply incredible; I do have to wonder though how the spell changed the reality of the gaming industry... Perhaps better left unsaid.

Looking forward to more sometime.

Thanks for fav and really spending the time to read this. I definitely wrote something that was probably too long to not scare people away, but really I didn't want to write just a normal TF story (which I kind of just did for this weeks TP once I get that posted). Also, hopefully that makes the follow up stories make more sense. I do want to get around to writing stuff beyond this event, but at the same time it is rather world shatteringly important to the story so covering it from different character's perspectives is important.

Its rare I come back and reread things multiple times and rarer that they grow on me. There are some things I really about this. You do really good job grasping interesting student dynamics and relationships at a magical university. That is often the wondrous and fun element missing from the genre. I also like the world glimpses we get through this story both modern and mixed with its archaisms. I flat out loved the trial part. Not only does it cement Kaj's and Felix's growing relationship through this ideal it shows a underlying mythic layer that's just fun in equivalent exchange of desires ontop of the already foobared TF.

I am always a bit cautious of mass reality warping powers as it leads to plot holes and BS, but it seems you are thinking in them. Deeper you go, usually the more silly , but the more safe the world gets, albeit there are both lazy ways and strong ways around it. In my Crown of Awes work many casters do have the potential to do this, but in that regard any action has a reaction and there are active agents that would spell nightmarish bedlam for any caster foolish enough to do it.

Who knows, Little Tanunki Adventures might be rather fun.

I do have some small critique if you would like it.

I'm glad you like that this much. I remember really wanting to focus on a lot of those elements of the characters and the setting when writing this. I did not want it to just be another transformation story and I spent a bunch of time going back and trying to make sure there was enough setup and payoff of certain elements. That is also why I kind of conceptualized the idea of the whole trial sequence to make it more interesting than a lot of transformation stories I come across.

And I'm also usually pretty warry of reality warping stuff for the concerns you've brought up and many of the other one's I've voiced in my other comments. When I wrote this I did not have a huge overall plan for the story from here, though I knew there was a lot of things I'd have to tread carefully about. I have a way better plan now, but I still worry. I will say though, this is also why I attached conditions like the spell having to be powered by the total lunar eclipse and then having the effects being a bit not exactly what you asked for. So it can't just be stuff like the main characters constantly warping reality all the time to solve problems.

And Felix did happen to find Little Tanuki Adventures quite fun. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52897214

And please critique away. There are quite a few things that I am not super happy with this story and elements I feel did not come out correctly. I am in the middle of a full rewrite of all of my short stories in this universe to actually have them more fleshed out and placed in a chronological fashion. It became hard to not repeat exposition when I kept just writing stories that took place before the previous ones I wrote. This will also let me better show the events that drove Felix to making this decision rather than just telling. I also feel like his whole, I want to be a hero thing which heavily influenced his form was not well developed in this. Also, the fact that he wanted to become strong, but did not want to have his form changed did not really make sense.

So there's a lot I want to clean up. Plus, as I've been writing more of the events leading up to this, there have been some minor changes to his character. Especially with some of his relationships which will become more important as the story progresses after this point.

But anyways, I do want to hear any criticism you might have because I definitely want to incorporate such things in the next version.

Bloody 'ell, took me a while to get through this one (says the man who writes like a madman per chapter) [Hey, brain shut up] It was so worth it; thank you for changing this so I could view it as well.

Glad you liked it. This really is the story that kind of ended up making the whole Ækerin stuff a thing and eventually lead me into starting to rewrite the whole mess. I want to show all of the things that built Felix up to making this decision rather than just telling the audience.

And no problem on the rating thing. FA's rules are kind of weird on that. Like I know what to do for nudity and lewder works, but for violence it's all kind of vague and there's nothing too bad in this other than blood. My other series, A Cheetah's Tale, has the same issue where I've marked everything as adult, but most of it is just violence (it's a lot grislier than this stuff) and some sex jokes, but nothing explicit*. I kind of wish FA had a bit more nuance with the ratings, but overall I'm writing Ækerin specifically for people about your age since a lot of it is going to cover the trials of a college experience... just with a bunch of magic and adventure added in.

*Well, there's an insert picture in chapter 1 showing the transformation that shows some non-sexual nudity, but nothing beyond that.

Brilliant approach.

They are for sure, I too have been cautious about what to rate certain writings or art pieces due to the vagueness. I don't mind grisliness, I do understand the other issues.

Yes, I tend to have a lot more violence rather than nudity or sex and it always makes me wonder what it should be rated as. I tend to err being on the safe side, but really I think I might be a little too cautious. The stuff in Ækerin really isn’t that gorey at all. The Cheetah’s Tale stuff does get a bit more, so I feel more comfortable keeping where it is. Like you might have heard me reference the finger eating during the streams, which is something that happens in the first chapter (yes, it’s gross on purpose).

I have, would I be making you look at me sideways if I were to say that it intrigued me about the story?

Not really. It's such a weird gross idea that it could make people curious.

I'm getting caught up, maybe! I see there's a next button lol.

Pretty fun story and I now at least feel I understand the situation better. I mean I had an idea already but certain things are making more sense.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Yeah, there's a bunch that I wrote overtime of varying length/quality/chronology. I didn't write them at all in order, and so the whole thing is a mess.

Very interestingly detailed reality shift. Does this come with more subtle mental changes? For example do Filex have interest in men before and now does he? Does he get some new memories of certain things or he really has none? How he would work out living in a new reality is fascinating, looking forward to you works.

Thanks so much for spending the time to read this. It really is a rather long story, so I appreciate anytime anyone actually does so. I am planning to hopefully revise this at some point. I've been trying to write up a whole bunch of story to help give context to this one and remove a lot of the passages I was just telling exposition. That's come with some changes in my head to help it fit into an overall narrative, but the major strokes will stay the same.

Now to answer you questions. Yes, the spell has some subtle mental changes. He didn't escape all of them, but his memories are mostly intact. For his new memories, there's little concrete for him to put together his life's narrative, but it's given him a lot of skills. For example, he actually knows how to use that sword of his as if it's second nature to him. As for his sexuality, it did have a mental effect switching him from straight to bi. Alternate, Felix was just gay, so now he ended up in the middle.

Anyways, I'm glad you'll want to see more. I've got a bunch of little snippets written of various pieces of the overall story in my gallery, mostly of stuff taking place before this story that I wrote to try and fill in the gaps and a few things that show the events of that night from the perspective of different characters. I'm actually working on the first big story piece that takes place after Felix transforms. That'll hopefully be ready in a week or two.