Comics Collection Melissa N. Collection [2024-06-18] [Melissa N.]

[rebirth095]

Yeah that muddies things. I've already talked myself out of my own theory.

FFS, we're just going around in circles, lol. I've got it: plot twist, the Mrs. Samaras they're talking about isn't Elena. So all of what we're saying is moot. Double plot twist, Joel is actually near sighted, but he's currently wearing contacts. He just didn't wear them back then. Or maybe he did. Whatever helps out a theory more

Oh right! I completely forgot that it was Joel pushing Elena to drink more. The fact that Joel is evil (or at least duplicitous) puts that in a whole new light. No idea what that means though. I wonder if Joel knows about Andrew's past and whatever conflict that Andrew and Marina had a few months ago.

This being a feminization story, it kinda sounds like Seferi intends to feminize Joel next... but I suspect that this is intentional misdirection from Melissa.

So on the one hand, yes please more feminization! On the other hand... we might have finally just gotten a "villain" after the exposition dump torpedo'd 90% of the possible ones. So having him be taken out before we really learn his motivations would be annoying.

Actually, I just realized: Does MelissaN not have any stories with multiple characters getting feminized? Nothing wrong with that, but it's kinda surprising given how many short and long stories, that's not come up.

 

[Thalantyr]

Actually, I just realized: Does MelissaN not have any stories with multiple characters getting feminized? Nothing wrong with that, but it's kinda surprising given how many short and long stories, that's not come up.

Tug of War also feminizes the father right at the very end, but that's the only example I can think of. To the best of my recollection all of Melissa's other stories just have a single transformee.

 

[Stevedore100]

FFS, we're just going around in circles, lol. I've got it: plot twist, the Mrs. Samaras they're talking about isn't Elena. So all of what we're saying is moot. Double plot twist, Joel is actually near sighted, but he's currently wearing contacts. He just didn't wear them back then. Or maybe he did. Whatever helps out a theory more



So on the one hand, yes please more feminization! On the other hand... we might have finally just gotten a "villain" after the exposition dump torpedo'd 90% of the possible ones. So having him be taken out before we really learn his motivations would be annoying.

Actually, I just realized: Does MelissaN not have any stories with multiple characters getting feminized? Nothing wrong with that, but it's kinda surprising given how many short and long stories, that's not come up.

Hard to say what the plans for Joel are. Seferi intends to only "hurt" him, not kill. Do they plan on implicating bald guy? They know Marina saw his gun. Makes Joel heroic by scaring off bald guy and taking a hit?

Joel does look like a feminization candidate physically, just not sure how this fits in with making them be trustworthy to Elena. I'm leaning to some other change for Joel. Hookup with daughter #2?

 

[LadyBoyJay]

Hard to say what the plans for Joel are. Seferi intends to only "hurt" him, not kill. Do they plan on implicating bald guy? They know Marina saw his gun. Makes Joel heroic by scaring off bald guy and taking a hit?

The exact same handgun was used in both scenes. Hard to tell if that was done intentionally or if it was just a lazy reuse of the same Daz asset.

 

[Stevedore100]

M

The exact same handgun was used in both scenes. Hard to tell if that was done intentionally or if it was just a lazy reuse of the same Daz asset.
View attachment 3359916 View attachment 3359917

Melissa gets credit for adhering to Chekhov's gun.

 

[Stevedore100]

One other odd thing - Seferi gets mad at Joel for talking to Elena about Toska and Gjoka at the dinner party, say he messed up. But that's pretty much the same thing Seferi told Elena in the hospital just a few days prior - both showed her the same photo of Gjoka. So I'm not clear on why Seferi is pissed at Joel. Was it just to because Seferi wanted to keep his connection to Joel hidden?

 

[LadyBoyJay]

The theories associated with Andrew having a dissociative identity disorder (DID), do appear to be the story plot that Melissa is going with... or at least the plot that she wants us to believe she is going with. I'm still in denial and clinging to my Aphrodite theory. I just don't want to believe that Andrew/Elena is really mentally and physically disabled (from the surgeries in chapter 18). Hard for me to keep fantasizing about being in the shoes of Andrew/Elena or even fantasize about romancing him/her under these circumstances.

I don't have a problem with using a mental illness as a plot line. I really enjoyed an old RAGS game called

You must be registered to see the links

that did a serious job of exploring DID and making it the main plot of the well told mysterious story. I also really enjoyed a Ren'Py game called

You must be registered to see the links

that kind of explored DID along with some other things blended in to it. The

You must be registered to see the links

HTML games explored DID via corruption and I absolutely loved those stories. The poorly reviewed yet iconic transgender movie -

You must be registered to see the links

, arguably explored DID in a humorous and non-serious way.

My problem is that if this is the direction that Melissa wanted to go, it should have been the focus of the story. Aphrodite's Mirror should have been told like the stories mentioned above and the name should have been something less misleading. Imagine all of the fun scenes that we could have witnessed but didn't get to. The story

You must be registered to see the links

by Dynamoob is not about DID... yet... but it has had a mysterious

You must be registered to see the links

appear randomly throughout the story, and it kind of hints towards being a glimpse of what the character will look like after being fully transformed. This has been a very well liked part of the story.



Now imagine if instead of Joanna for the restroom scene, we had “future” Elena be the mysterious stranger who had "drugged" Andrew. Imagine how much better of a payoff it would have been to have seen Andrew blaming all of his early troubles on this mysterious woman, only to later wake up looking exactly like her and slowly come to realize that “it's been me all along”. Imagine the fun, sexy scenes that Andrew could have had with Elena.



Maybe these recent updates are really what Melissa planned back in 2019, but it just doesn't feel like it. This feels improvised. It's like Melissa looked at the mixed feedback that she was getting along with the theories that were being discussed, and decided to improvise something that attempts to be appeasing and unpredictable.

 

[Thalantyr]

So I'm not clear on why Seferi is pissed at Joel. Was it just to because Seferi wanted to keep his connection to Joel hidden?

Yes. It's explained in the last two pages of chapter 21:

Andrew has now become suspicious of Joel and Seferi because he's had to trust them so much but they're clearly hiding something, in particular the fact that they're working together.

Now imagine if instead of Joanna for the restroom scene, we had “future” Elena be the mysterious stranger who had drugged Andrew. Imagine how much better of a payoff it would have been to have seen Andrew blaming all of his early troubles on this mysterious woman, only to later wake up looking exactly like her and slowly come to realize that “it's been me all along”. Imagine the fun, sexy scenes that Andrew could have had with Elena.

 

[LadyBoyJay]

View attachment 3360535

Yes, this could have been transgender version of Fight Club. That would have been a popular choice.

 

[rebirth095]

Maybe these recent updates are really what Melissa planned back in 2019, but it just doesn't feel like it. This feels improvised. It's like Melissa looked at the mixed feedback that she was getting along with the theories that were being discussed, and decided to improvise something that attempts to be appeasing and unpredictable.

It's always gonna be hard to know the "real" intent. I personally have always assumed that Melissa hasn't ever changed the major plot/mechanisms, but just because of the fact that it's such a long runner, there are dialogue choices and careless mistakes from earlier on that led people down incorrect theories, or are just contradictory to the reveals that do occur.

Maybe the discord is different, as I've not read it, but if the theories there have been anything like the theories here, it feels like to me that rather than satisfy theories, Melissa has increasingly been less and less subtle trying to flat out tell us the plot (to torpedo the theories). I mean, I can't really think of any other reason to have flash backs within a flashback within a dream sequence other than to spell out "this is what literally happened", followed by an entire part dedicated to a recap monologue.

I agree the storytelling has gotten more unnatural, and I've been attributing to the writing being much more in your face and trying to say "this is what's happened, this is what the plot actually is".

My problem is that if this is the direction that Melissa wanted to go, it should have been the focus of the story. Aphrodite's Mirror should have been told like the stories mentioned above and the name should have been something less misleading.

Completely agreed, and this is also why I think the story hasn't really been changed ever since conception: Aphrodite didn't appear until page 955. It's not like Melissa was writing with hidden or subtle Aphrodite elements, and changed direction due to theories being more about conspiracies. For the majority of the runtime, Aphrodite has been a non factor, and the "person in the mirror" theme has basically be unused. Heck, the closest thing to that is when the panels went back and forth between Andrew and Elena. Which was a hot before/after sequence, but was basically only out of universe, not something thematic in universe.

Considering that in that huge info dump, Elena doesn't once mention the Aphrodite dream sequence, I can't help but speculate that it's because this is one part of the plot that Melissa is still trying to keep as a "twist". So the Aphrodite's Mirror title, is going to end up as the punchline, with Andrew now being the mirror of Aphrodite (as opposed to being thematically seeded throughout the story).

Yes, this could have been transgender version of Fight Club. That would have been a popular choice.

Hell yeah, I would have been on board with that. Much more character driven and crank up the paranoia a bit more. Have the story be clearly from Andrew's point of view so that it wouldn't be as confusing whether there's any unreliable narrator at play. Because there's not really anything in the way the story is presented that makes it clear if we're ever seeing things "as they really are", vs from a specific character's point of view.

Or... I'd have loved a TG Face/Off. It'd take some work to still be a slower progression, but I think there could be potential there.

 

[LadyBoyJay]

Maybe the discord is different, as I've not read it, but if the theories there have been anything like the theories here, it feels like to me that rather than satisfy theories, Melissa has increasingly been less and less subtle trying to flat out tell us the plot (to torpedo the theories). I mean, I can't really think of any other reason to have flash backs within a flashback within a dream sequence other than to spell out "this is what literally happened", followed by an entire part dedicated to a recap monologue.

I'm on the Discord server. I think most of us are, we just hide under different user names because we are all sneaky.

I found these posts below to be really interesting.


Only a month ago, Melissa was comparing herself to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was very proud of how she had successfully kept everything so secretive.

Why the sudden change of direction? For years, Melissa has loved to tease us and sometimes taunt us about our theories. Why stop now? Why start spelling things out and debunking theories? Plus, this isn't how Doyle revealed secrets. This sudden change in behavior makes it hard for me to trust this recent information (not that I would want to anyways ).

 

[Thalantyr]

Maybe the discord is different, as I've not read it, but if the theories there have been anything like the theories here, it feels like to me that rather than satisfy theories, Melissa has increasingly been less and less subtle trying to flat out tell us the plot (to torpedo the theories). I mean, I can't really think of any other reason to have flash backs within a flashback within a dream sequence other than to spell out "this is what literally happened", followed by an entire part dedicated to a recap monologue.

Melissa doesn't really have any incentive to disprove any theories unless people are making assumptions about the story that they don't like and start complaining about it. The main complaints I've seen on Patreon and discord have been:

1) The story is too dark. This was around the time Andrew first woke up post-surgery with no memories, it seemed like he was being mind-controlled, maybe about to be raped, Nikos and the daughters were seeming pretty evil, Marina was looking evil and had gotten a new husband, etc. Basically people were feeling really sorry for Andrew, and Melissa kept having to reassure people that the story isn't going to have a dark ending, there's more going on than people realize, etc. etc. I'm not sure if this had any direct impact on the direction the story took. I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
2) The story keeps piling on more and more questions without answering any. Melissa would constantly assure people that "answers are coming soon". I suspect this may have caused her to hasten the arrival of the flashbacks in chapter 21 or extend them. Or both.

Or... I'd have loved a TG Face/Off. It'd take some work to still be a slower progression, but I think there could be potential there.

This is obviously just my own preference and I know others differ, but I've never been able to get on board with the fact that body swap (which is what I assume TG Face/Off would be) and possession are part of the feminization fetish. I don't fully understand why, but it just doesn't do it for me. Maybe because there's no transformation. Same goes for all the manga where the MC suddenly wakes up as a girl. Sometimes they don't even show the male form beforehand. Bleh. Heads Up may be an exception. I like the slow progression of his face/hair.

 

[rebirth095]

I'm on the Discord server. I think most of us are, we just hide under different user names because we are all sneaky.

I found these posts below to be really interesting.
View attachment 3360884
View attachment 3360885
Only a month ago, Melissa was comparing herself to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was very proud of how she had successfully kept everything so secretive.

Why the sudden change of direction? For years, Melissa has loved to tease us and sometimes taunt us about our theories. Why stop now? Why start spelling things out and debunking theories? Plus, this isn't how Doyle revealed secrets. This sudden change in behavior makes it hard for me to trust this recent information (not that I would want to anyways ).

Wow, that's absolutely wild to me that she posted that this year. Like, that's already well into the whole flashback within a flashback within the dream sequence.

That said (and honestly this is something that I do feel can be a problem with some of the Holmes stories...), Doyle can get away with having info hidden from the audience because Holmes is supposed to be smarter than the audience. He's picking up on clues that we didn't. A more modern example would be the show, Monk. Often, the clue is was on the screen, but the camera isn't focusing or paying attention because it's providing that neutral point of view. Our brilliant detective though fills in the gap for us because they spotted that loose thread that we didn't.

It doesn't sit right to me to embrace this as a methodology of writing mystery in general. That's what I've found a problem with people that embrace the "mystery box" mentality of writing: Disclosing information to the reader when it's appropriate should be a question about proper pacing not because it would be inconvenient if the reader knew about it.

Maybe Melissa means about how once Holmes makes a deduction, there's that large info dump. Because if that what she's drawn some inspiration from, I could see how this is kinda playing out as the whole "mystery, reveal, info dump of stuff you weren't originally privy to"... Which... I think that's kind of a misunderstanding of why that "works" in a detective story, and doesn't translate universally to writing or mystery stories in general.

This is obviously just my own preference and I know others differ, but I've never been able to get on board with the fact that body swap (which is what I assume TG Face/Off would be) and possession are part of the feminization fetish. I don't fully understand why, but it just doesn't do it for me. Maybe because there's no transformation. Same goes for all the manga where the MC suddenly wakes up as a girl. Sometimes they don't even show the male form beforehand. Bleh. Heads Up may be an exception. I like the slow progression of his face/hair.

I think it's a Venn diagram, where body swap/possession and forced feminization are both in the larger TG genre, and then they are their own genres that can overlap. For example, I think it's perfectly possible to do a feminization body swap story where the the feminization is focused purely on the mental and behavioral side (or really, a feminization story with any fast gender swap transformation). But YMMV. I will say, there are times when I'm in a "gender bending" mood, vs a "feminization" mood. Also, when it comes to characters based on IPs, I think part of the appeal of possession stories is the self-insert fantasy of it. Like, I'll read a Mercy from Overwatch bodyswap/possession comic by TSFsingularity, and it's not just the idea of someone body swapping that works for me, but that it's specifically the fantasy of possessing Mercy's body that does it for me. But I also have a costume/clothes fetish, so seeing the intricate designs for specific characters and fantasizing about wearing them is also a part of it for me personally.

That said, when I was suggesting TG Face/Off, I wasn't thinking body swap/possession. Like the movie, I was thinking it'd be surgical like the movie. But more incremental. Like, you've got a skinny agent that gets the face/hair of the female criminal, and at first is just using prosthetics in encounters, but then has to go deeper undercover and gets more work done. Rather than like the movie where it's a one-and-done, you can change it so that when the villain breaks loose, it's a perverse thing to steal the protag's identity, and that's when the final "swapping" surgery is done. And then, you've got the thriller part of the protagonist trying to get their identity back.

 

[Thalantyr]

That said, when I was suggesting TG Face/Off, I wasn't thinking body swap/possession. Like the movie, I was thinking it'd be surgical like the movie. But more incremental. Like, you've got a skinny agent that gets the face/hair of the female criminal, and at first is just using prosthetics in encounters, but then has to go deeper undercover and gets more work done. Rather than like the movie where it's a one-and-done, you can change it so that when the villain breaks loose, it's a perverse thing to steal the protag's identity, and that's when the final "swapping" surgery is done. And then, you've got the thriller part of the protagonist trying to get their identity back.

Aha. My mistaken assumption then. In Face/Off, they literally surgically remove Castor's face and attach it to Archer. And then when Castor wakes up unexpectedly with a missing face he forces them to give him Archer's face, which I guess had been set aside to be restored later after the mission (yes, this is the most realistic movie ever). So to do the equivalent as TG it'd have to be a full body transplant (or I suppose a brain transplant).

 

[rebirth095]

Aha. My mistaken assumption then. In Face/Off, they literally surgically remove Castor's face and attach it to Archer. And then when Castor wakes up unexpectedly with a missing face he forces them to give him Archer's face, which I guess had been set aside to be restored later after the mission (yes, this is the most realistic movie ever). So to do the equivalent as TG it'd have to be a full body transplant (or I suppose a brain transplant).

So here's my drunken pitch I came up with while having desert (following what appears to be technologically possible in Face/Off of really fast healing surgery, and apparently no problems at all modifying bone structure to change appearances):

Our male detective is after a female criminal and they're able to apprehend her. Before the bail hearing, they put her under and the male detective gets her face, as he already has a petite body type. The criminal is released on bail and the detective impersonates the criminal to get details on their next crime.

Due to needing to attend a mob bosses party, our protagonist gets further femmed. Surgery to widen the hips, breasts, etc. This can also be more incremental. Maybe before the party, or after the party, there's other meetings that needed to take place, or having to meet the criminal's lover.

But over time, the only real tell left is his dick. But at this point, the criminal gets freed. She manages to capture the detective and as an act of humiliation, she has their genitals swapped. The detective is sent to prison, and has to figure out how to escape, and hopefully get his dick back.

Then we can have the heroic sacrifice where the criminal has connected the deadman switch to his penis, and as a final act of bravery and selflessness, our protagonist has to sacrifice his manhood to save the city or something.

 

[LadyBoyJay]

So here's my drunken pitch I came up with while having desert (following what appears to be technologically possible in Face/Off of really fast healing surgery, and apparently no problems at all modifying bone structure to change appearances):

Our male detective is after a female criminal and they're able to apprehend her. Before the bail hearing, they put her under and the male detective gets her face, as he already has a petite body type. The criminal is released on bail and the detective impersonates the criminal to get details on their next crime.

Due to needing to attend a mob bosses party, our protagonist gets further femmed. Surgery to widen the hips, breasts, etc. This can also be more incremental. Maybe before the party, or after the party, there's other meetings that needed to take place, or having to meet the criminal's lover.

But over time, the only real tell left is his dick. But at this point, the criminal gets freed. She manages to capture the detective and as an act of humiliation, she has their genitals swapped. The detective is sent to prison, and has to figure out how to escape, and hopefully get his dick back.

Then we can have the heroic sacrifice where the criminal has connected the deadman switch to his penis, and as a final act of bravery and selflessness, our protagonist has to sacrifice his manhood to save the city or something.

I like it! Now turn it into a comic or game!

 

[Thalantyr]

So here's my drunken pitch I came up with while having desert (following what appears to be technologically possible in Face/Off of really fast healing surgery, and apparently no problems at all modifying bone structure to change appearances):

Our male detective is after a female criminal and they're able to apprehend her. Before the bail hearing, they put her under and the male detective gets her face, as he already has a petite body type. The criminal is released on bail and the detective impersonates the criminal to get details on their next crime.

Due to needing to attend a mob bosses party, our protagonist gets further femmed. Surgery to widen the hips, breasts, etc. This can also be more incremental. Maybe before the party, or after the party, there's other meetings that needed to take place, or having to meet the criminal's lover.

But over time, the only real tell left is his dick. But at this point, the criminal gets freed. She manages to capture the detective and as an act of humiliation, she has their genitals swapped. The detective is sent to prison, and has to figure out how to escape, and hopefully get his dick back.

Then we can have the heroic sacrifice where the criminal has connected the deadman switch to his penis, and as a final act of bravery and selflessness, our protagonist has to sacrifice his manhood to save the city or something.

DICK/OFF
Someone's about to get dicked
Cumming Summer 2024​

 

[MyraTSF]

So here's my drunken pitch I came up with while having desert (following what appears to be technologically possible in Face/Off of really fast healing surgery, and apparently no problems at all modifying bone structure to change appearances):

Our male detective is after a female criminal and they're able to apprehend her. Before the bail hearing, they put her under and the male detective gets her face, as he already has a petite body type. The criminal is released on bail and the detective impersonates the criminal to get details on their next crime.

Due to needing to attend a mob bosses party, our protagonist gets further femmed. Surgery to widen the hips, breasts, etc. This can also be more incremental. Maybe before the party, or after the party, there's other meetings that needed to take place, or having to meet the criminal's lover.

But over time, the only real tell left is his dick. But at this point, the criminal gets freed. She manages to capture the detective and as an act of humiliation, she has their genitals swapped. The detective is sent to prison, and has to figure out how to escape, and hopefully get his dick back.

Then we can have the heroic sacrifice where the criminal has connected the deadman switch to his penis, and as a final act of bravery and selflessness, our protagonist has to sacrifice his manhood to save the city or something.

Surely no one here will just grab this idea and turn it into a story in the near future.

 

[MyraTSF]

So here's my drunken pitch I came up with while having desert (following what appears to be technologically possible in Face/Off of really fast healing surgery, and apparently no problems at all modifying bone structure to change appearances):

Our male detective is after a female criminal and they're able to apprehend her. Before the bail hearing, they put her under and the male detective gets her face, as he already has a petite body type. The criminal is released on bail and the detective impersonates the criminal to get details on their next crime.

Due to needing to attend a mob bosses party, our protagonist gets further femmed. Surgery to widen the hips, breasts, etc. This can also be more incremental. Maybe before the party, or after the party, there's other meetings that needed to take place, or having to meet the criminal's lover.

But over time, the only real tell left is his dick. But at this point, the criminal gets freed. She manages to capture the detective and as an act of humiliation, she has their genitals swapped. The detective is sent to prison, and has to figure out how to escape, and hopefully get his dick back.

Then we can have the heroic sacrifice where the criminal has connected the deadman switch to his penis, and as a final act of bravery and selflessness, our protagonist has to sacrifice his manhood to save the city or something.

Because I'm brain-damaged and AP/Milfs are my bread and butter. Do you think age progression could work well in this story?

 

[LadyBoyJay]

Because I'm brain-damaged and AP/Milfs are my bread and butter. Do you think age progression could work well in this story?

I think it could!

Badass milfs rule!