Extras - Being Fiona - Obsolete Outlines - Spoilers! (Patreon)

So, now that the story is taking a different trajectory than my previous outline, I thought it might be fun to describe all the previous outlines for Being Fiona.

I also decided to include a rough outline for the story's current trajectory, which might not be the final outline, because the story is constantly evolving and changing as I write it.

Spoiler warning for most of these, because while these outlines are now obsolete, I might choose to recycle some parts of them.

Major Spoiler warning for the new Outline. Probably best to be careful in the comments discussing this part to avoid spoiling others.

Dreamband: Fiona - The Original Short Story Ending

Back before I decided to make Being Fiona a webcomic, it was Dreamband: Fiona, a spin-off of Dreamband: Character Creation, where two friends try out a game where the classes are locked to a specific species and gender.

The plot of this story was simply going to be Felix digging himself into an ever deeper hole by trying to hide that he wasn't a girl to Lisa as Lisa continuously made attempts to convince her 'friend' Fiona to sleep with Fiona's 'boyfriend' Craig. It would have escalated from a kiss, to pretending to have had sex, to drunk sex, to sober sex, and then loving sex. The story would have ended without any resolution to what Felix would do outside of VR.

Being Fiona - The Original Pitch

This was the story outline I originally sent to Femur over at TGComics for Being Fiona after I decided to make it a fully fledged comic. There are things that characters do in this outline that as I gave them depth, would later feel forced or out of character, so this plot evolved as I got to better know the characters:

Craig and Felix try out a new fully immersive VR game set in a fantasy world. However each of the character classes are gender locked, so if Felix wants to play as the class he wants to play, he will be forced to play as a girl, which, after complaining about it, he does.

At the end of the tutorial area, they have to join a group to fight the tutorial's boss, so they team up with a pair of girls. Not wanting to reveal that he's a guy playing as a girl, Felix introduces himself as "Fiona".

As they work their way through the quest Fiona bonds with one of the girls, all the while making up a false identity for herself, part of which is stating that "Fiona" is Craig's girlfriend. Eventually they beat the boss, Fiona is forced to hang out alone in a hot spring with Craig, and then Fiona and Craig part ways with the girls.

The next day, Felix and Craig are at college, and the second female love-interest is introduced: Jessica. Jessica is a life-streamer/influencer, streaming her life through her eyes for people to experience in VR. She also rents out her body for other people to control, letting them experience her life. Felix finds out about Jessica's double life when a classmate's girlfriend chews out Jessica over a failed romantic encounter Jessica had been hired for.

That night Felix and Craig are playing another online game, and Felix spots a character with the same username as the girl he had bonded with a day before (Lisa). After Craig logs off, Felix transforms/swaps his avatar for this game with a female avatar, and chats with Lisa.

A bunch of stuff happens, Fiona and Lisa hang out in the Fantasy game, Fiona and Craig have to pretend to have sex behind a closed door, etc. Then Lisa finds out that "Fiona" lives in the same city as her. Lisa wants to meet Fiona in person.

Long story short, Felix hires Jessica so that he can meet Lisa in the real world in Jessica's body, pretending to be Fiona.

More stuff happens and one day Lisa bumps into Jessica, and thinks that she is talking with Fiona. Lisa invites Jessica for a weekend at a friend's cottage, for a big party. For the hell of it, Jessica accepts, and then has to tell Felix what she just agreed to.

Felix has to spend a weekend riding along in Jessica's body, with Craig in tow as their pretend boyfriend, while hanging out with Lisa at the cottage.

More shenanigans happen, Craig falls in love with Jessica, Felix falls in love with Lisa, deepens his bond with Jessica, and things get complicated.

Eventually, Felix's male body is brought into the mix as Jessica starts controlling Felix's body while he is in control of hers (Jessica has a special implant for this, so Felix will need a reason to get the same implant as well [maybe some rich couple wants to rent a pair of young bodies, and Jess asks Felix if he wants to make some money by being the guy?]).

The story eventually reaches its climax when Jessica in Felix's body starts dating Lisa behind Felix's back, and then once the relationship is steady, reveals what she's done to Felix. Felix now has what he originally wanted: a relationship with Lisa, without Lisa knowing that Felix had been Fiona all along.

However Felix feels unfulfilled because he can't play as his old female game characters anymore without Lisa getting suspicious. And partway into the relationship, Felix screws it all up after he tries to sneak in a few hours of playing as original game character Seraphine, who Lisa still thinks was played by Jessica/Fiona.

Lisa finds out about Felix's lie, works out how far he had gone to maintain the lie, and breaks up with him.

Jessica had distanced herself after Felix started dating Lisa in order to avoid any complications, but consoles Felix after he reaches out to her. The story ends with Felix realizing that his relationship with Jessica had been far more real than his with Lisa, and so he and Jessica start dating, constantly swapping between each other's bodies as they had done in the past so naturally.

[Depending on how the story went, I had planned to create an alternative Fiona x Craig ending, and possibly even a Felix/Fiona x Sophie ending, but none of them fit as well as the gender-fluid Felix x Jess ending in this version of the story. Also, not to objectify Jess, but I didn't like how Felix was "rewarded" after how he mistreated Lisa].

Being Fiona - Before the Twist: Tricking Lisa

This was the same as above until Jess' introduction: Felix ends the first night hanging out with Lisa by accepting a friend request from Lisa, Jess' introduction happens the same way, but then Felix's second night hanging out with Lisa is completely different with Craig quitting after finding out Felix was going to hang out with Lisa again; Lisa shows Fiona Star League; Fiona breaks up with Craig; Lisa finds out Fiona lives in Seattle still happens, but now Jess offers to help as a friend instead of being a stranger that Felix hires.

Instead of Jess spending a morning practicing with Felix to be Fiona, they spend multiple days practicing and getting ready.

The meeting with Lisa goes the same way as my original pitch with the exception that Lisa invites Fiona and Craig to join her for a weekend in two weeks at a local Star League convention.

Jess convinces Craig to go along with the lie and 'practices' with Craig at being ex's on good terms. They go to the convention, Lisa hooks up with Craig, Fiona comes out as a lesbian to Lisa; and all is well in the world as Lisa thinks that Fiona has moved away, and starts throwing VR women at Fiona instead of men.

But then over the Christmas break Jess finds out that her Internship of being a star researcher's assistant at Linksoft has been revoked because she was an Adult Content Creating Sense Streamer. The original plan that Felix was offered the Internship in Jess' place and Jess twists Felix's arm into letter her borrow his body so that she could gain the experience of the job. My revised plan was for Jess meets with her academic advisor and a representative from Linksoft and pitch a bodyswap with Felix as a way to keep the internship but not show up at work as a former Adult Content Creator. The Star Researcher is intrigued by the potential data they could collect.

Riley pitches making a bodyswap documentary to fund Felix's purchase of an implant (but they need to hide this from Lisa); Felix gets an implant over the winter, and Jess becomes Felix/James at the start of the internship while Felix becomes Jess/Fiona.

James & Fiona have a bunch of adventures over the summer, but with their brains connected 24/7 their minds begin to bleed together. James befriends Lisa, but not wanting to reveal his true identity, refuses to date Lisa despite her efforts to take things further.

Fiona dates Riley, then Hugo, and then Craig.

Fiona and Craig have to break off their relationship when the body swap comes to an end.

Fiona and James come out of the body swap with their memories a mess, with both feeling that parts of their minds and memories are missing now that their minds aren't connected.

With the body-swap having been kept a secret from Lisa, Fiona now Felix again, discovers that his male self and Lisa are now on very friendly terms. Not realizing the lengths Jess had been taking to avoid a relationship with Lisa, Felix, not resisting like Jess was, stumbles into a relationship with Lisa, but feels very awkward about it because it feels like he fell into the middle of someone else's relationship. Felix sits Lisa down and tells her the truth. Felix and Lisa break-up, and Felix reconnects with Jess where they go back to swapping between each other's bodies, or one of his or Fiona's other romantic interests.

Being Fiona - The New Outline - Major Spoilers.

If you don't want any major spoilers, probably best to stop reading here.

(Felix borrowing Riley's body for one of Hugo's AR games)

Many of the events listed below are rough ideas, are subject to change, and I've left quite a lot of things out so that not everything is spoiled.

This new outline begins at the cafe, where Jess and Lisa become friends.

Jess adapts a vampire romance book to an interactive movie like Siren's Serenade and shows it to Lisa, and has Felix tag along in her head.

Jess gets worried about how much time she is spending online with Lisa, so she twists Felix's arm into exercising her body and walking Lucy while she plays online with Lisa, and also so that she can have Felix on call if Lisa asks any Fiona related questions.

Felix spends some time with Hugo, but since Jess is now busy, Hugo asks Rliey to let Felix borrow Riley's body for an hour or two.

Lisa invites Jess and Craig to a local Star League convention before the Christmas holidays, Jess asks Felix to join her in her head for one last outing.

Lisa and Craig hook up at the convention, and Lisa meets Felix in person when Craig brings Lisa back to their apartment. Lisa invites Felix to join them online to play games.

Felix creates a new Wizard Class Lost Desert Character but hates it. Jess and Lisa suggest that Felix try the Elementalist Class despite it being female, because it's a much more fun class to play.

Lisa and Craig play a lot of Star League over the break, possibly invite Felix and Jess to join them, Felix needs a new character.

Craig and Lisa break up because all they do when they are together is talk about Star League, they simply got bored of each other.

Jess and Lisa hang out all the time, while Felix barely sees either of them anymore.

Jess gets bad news about losing her summer internship, but negotiates keeping it if she takes part in a body-swap human trial the company is undertaking (for rich people, for instant traveling, etc.). Jess convinces Felix to be her partner in the experiment.

The winter term is otherwise non-eventful, Hugo possibly invites Felix on a trip, Felix gets his implant for the body swap, tests it out, and the story picks up again in the spring.

Felix and Jess participate in the body swap experiment and become Fiona and James. Lisa either figures out Felix had been Fiona here, or she figured it out much earlier. And because Felix no longer needs to hide being Fiona from Lisa, Felix and Jess can be quite open about Fiona and James being Felix and Jess.

Riley does her documentary about the body swap. Asks Fiona and James to perform various challenges and contests. Fiona and Riley start dating.

Fiona and James spend their days working at their summer jobs at Link-soft.

James starts dating various women, much to Lisa's annoyance.

James' Mom travels from Canada for a visit, Fiona visits her hometown as Fiona while James and his Mom tag along.

Sophie is in trouble, Lisa, James, and Fiona travel to Mississippi to help her out.

Hugo shows up, invites Fiona to an AR Larp game with Hugo's rich friends.

Riley and Fiona drift apart, Fiona spends more time with Hugo.

Various more summer adventures.

Fiona and Hugo drift apart, Fiona starts hanging out more with Craig.

The body-swap experiment potentially extends into the Fall Term, which would allow for a story line of Fiona and James going back to school wearing bodies that are not their own.

The body-swap experiment ends, in November, potentially a year after the story began... and... something... goes... wrong... I mean right?... I mean wrong... when... the... experiment... ends.

I'm going to leave that part vague, but I'm sure you can guess what goes wrong.