A Game of "Transformation" - Trapped in Paradise: Day 2-4

Story by Leena Recently, I wrote about a number of roleplaying games that allow you to roleplay as a mutant. Well, today I am showing you the result of one of these games. Transformation by Absurdist Productions is a horror journaling game about, well, undergoing a transformation and the strain that puts on you and the people around you. I decided to play a full round and show you the results here. To give you an idea about the mechanics, every day I will be drawing a card which tells me how I transform, another card that will tell me the events that happen to me, and a third card that tells me how they resolve. I can alter these results by destroying “mementos” or straining (underlining) or breaking (striking through) emotional bonds. I’ll be listing them at the end of every chapter. Let’s dive in shall we? Day 2 My ears are killing me. Everything sounds so much louder, brighter, more vibrant. It’s like the world around me is echoing. I find that when I let my mind wander I kind of make these small clicking noises and I can instinctively feel the world around me when I hear them echo back. I spent most of the day in bed just fooling around until Jenine came in to check on me. She nearly instantly grabbed a mirror and showed me my now larger, pointed, furry ears. Am I mutating? Is that what this is? I suppose there are worse places to mutate than an island getaway off the coast of Port Solei… though I could go without the storm. Every strike of thunder makes me jump. Jenine has been working over time to make sure I’m not scared. Honestly I think she is working a little too hard. I know that mutations can be scary but I’m just too tired to care right now. Maybe there’s an upside to this sickness. Really I’m just glad she is here, and now that I can tell where she is in the house by sound alone, well, it’s reassuring. In fact, these new ears are more useful than you’d think. Any time Jenine needed to find something, I already knew where it was just by clicking a few times. It’s odd. Sound bounces off even different colors of paint in different ways. It’s like I have a second pair of eyes, but they are my ears. I spent most of the day trying to see how far my echolocation would go. I could “see” fairly far outside the house, right down to the beach, although the pouring rain and crashing waves muddied things much further. Jenine seems happy that I am exploring these changes. I guess she would, being that she already went through her own. Being mutants together is just one other thing to bond over. She confessed that she always kinda wished I was a mutant, because dating other mutants is just easier. I think if she told me this a week ago I’d be upset that she didn’t like me for who I am but now that feels just so small. If I’m gonna be a mutant I’m happy I get to be one with her. Mementos - Phone, Ukulele Bonds - Growing Crush with Jenine, Future Date Ideas, Shared Mutant Life Day 3 I woke up in a haze. I was in the store room. I had ripped apart different cans and containers of food like a wild animal, fitful in my sleep. What was happening to me? Is this what mutation is like? My body has changed and continues to change throughout the day. My legs and arms were now unnaturally long. I’d make a killing as a mutant model if I wasn’t looking like some sort of lanky cryptid. It’s easier to walk on all fours, limbs splayed out to my sides. Heck even when I walk upright my arms almost touch the ground. I’m scared, but it’s not the same sort of scared that I normally feel. It’s a weird instinctual type of fear. Like there are tigers in the bushes all ready to pounce me. I want to run away deep, deep into the forest, or maybe into the ocean, to swim away from civilization and never come back. Jenine has no idea what’s going on. Mutations aren’t normally like this, and if they are you usually need to get a mutant expert to look over you and treat you. But there is no expert here. There is no one. Just me. Jenine. And the storm. …and this animal inside me that grows hungrier by the day. Mementos - Phone, Ukulele Bonds - Growing Crush with Jenine, Future Date Ideas, Shared Mutant Life Day 4 It’s getting harder to write in this journal with these lanky claw-like fingers. I found myself waking up in a strange place again this morning. I was clung to the ceiling crawling around like a lizard or insect. It felt like I was hunting something. I’ve grown a very long tail at this point. It lashes out at things whenever I feel threatened. I’m trying to control it, to the best of my ability. In better times it feels almost prehensile. But I’m so jittery and scared that I feel like I’m working on pure instinct. It’s like I’m on ten coffees and twenty redbulls at every portion of the day. Jenine has been doing her best to talk me through this, keep me doing calming exercises, breathing exercises. Nothing seems to work. She insists I stay mostly in bed but I don’t want to. My body wants to be up. Running around. Thunder clapped and I ran at Jenine like a panicked animal. I was thrashing and scrambling, and I think I nicked her with my claws. But she didn’t care. She just held me. Held me tight, and said things were going to be OK… And then she kissed me. It was like something out of a horror novel, or a cheesy romance novel, or both. Two mutants, two people that at first glance may be called monsters, embracing, kissing, as the storm raged around them. But the kiss let me calm down. Looking into her eyes lets me calm down. “Storms don’t last forever,” she said. Yeah… yeah… we will make it through this. Mementos - Phone, Ukulele Bonds - Growing Crush with Jenine, Future Date Ideas, Shared Mutant Life, First Mutant Kiss