Flipping Through TFTV
By ThatGuy

As both a college student and a mage in training, Raen thought he had a good idea about how to have a good time. He was a hip, modern wizard after all. Even though things that could alter and change people in strange ways seemed to be everywhere these days, he always prided himself on being able to use his powers – if not for good (far from it) – at least to kill an evening in a way no one else could.

And yet, with all his amazing power his girlfriend Xara never seemed to be impressed.

It’s true that all one had to do was go down the block to their local magic themed mall to find some touristy scroll of a paltry spell or hit a clinic to be molded into another form, but it was nothing compared to what Raen was capable of.  Where magic failed mad science tended to pick up the slack these days, but that was nothing compared to the old ways in his opinion. And yes, his mastery of transformation magic was much less unique nowadays what with companies ruining the intrigue of it by advertising transformations of all shapes and sizes, but he had the personal, slightly callous and vaguely cruel touch that only an old fashioned irresponsible mage could bring to the table! Not that Xara ever seemed to notice.

But hey, he loved her. For once he’d found someone he liked just the way she was, who he would never want to change into anything. So when she said she wanted to stay in and have a tv night with all their friends, he said yes. Who said anything about grand plans to turn their landlord into a monster truck and going on a joyride, just the two of them, anyway?

Very few of his own friends decided to come, knowing him far too well to think it was safe. Most of them immediately pegged it as a trap, even - which ironically was what gave him the idea to have fun with it in the first place: he would never zap his sweetie, but her friends on the other hand…

She was a little disappointed when she realized her friends actually weren’t running late after all but were just helping to “set up” in a way they never expected, but she wasn’t surprised. She gave him Raen cold shoulder for a few minutes, but on the plus side the loveseat was just about done changing and the popcorn had just finished popping. What few friends he had that were stupid enough to actually come went into their new entertainment center (Raen didn’t actually have a television), so they were all set.

When she sat next to him he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. And he saw that she couldn’t either, even if she was frustrated. “I suppose I should’ve known you would pull something like this.” She groaned. “At least I got my quiet night in. Come on, we can watch one of the TF channels.”

“There’s a channel for that sort of thing?” Maybe this would be interesting after all.

“Duh!” She was the only person who could mock him without fear of terrible magical vengeance. “With all the crazy transformations people go through at random every day, of course the media jumped on it. You need to watch more television.”

She pointed their new remote at their new television, pausing to glare at him for its suspiciously hourglass shape. “If you promise to change everyone back after, I’ll even explain all the different shows.”

Raen winced. As much as he hated reversing his magic before he’d had his fun… “Fine. You got me.” He groaned. “Show me what they’ve got.”

“Alright, let’s see… hey! Look’s what’s on, it’s:”

The Enchanted Dating Experience

Xara caught this one a few times before: it was a mix between a dating show and one of those obstacle course gameshows, with a transformation twist. Like your usual dating show, there were bachelors and bachelorettes, but the show always started with only a handful of ladies and over a dozen bachelors vying for their hand. There were the usual personality question and answer rounds, but between those there were frantic games and challenges to really hype up the audience.

Nothing special on its own, but the twist was each bachelor wore a special amulet that would activate if they screwed up big in one of the games. If that happened, instead of being disqualified they would be changed into a new bachelorette. The amulet would even help them adapt mentality, enough that they would be just as happy to pick one of the bachelors at the end of the game as any of the other normal ladies. The host would sometimes not even tell the contestants which of the bachelorettes were their former rivals, and the magic was so thorough that it was often impossible to tell.

Since the game was out for light humor, they rarely had contestants who would play to win or who were really interested in the concept. Mostly, they found foolish college students looking for love and overconfident gladiator-types who thought they couldn’t lose, which always had the audience leering in wait to see who would lose.

Another twist was, contestants on this show weren’t competing for the affections of the bachelorettes, per se, they were competing for dates – the biggest winners got big flashy dates at expensive restaurants and luxurious weekend getaways. Bachelorettes had to compete too: for first pick of whichever bachelor they wanted to go out with, if they chose to pick one instead of opting out. Couples that had higher combined points at the end got better experiences, so bachelorettes had to pick between bachelors they liked personally and the ones who had performed the best.

The game wasn’t really geared towards long-term relationships, though it got its fair share of those. It was more about setting up dates for entertainment’s sake.

In the second season, the highest scoring bachelor also had the option to go into the lightning round as apposed to trying to put the charm on the panel of regular bachelorettes. In that round, the staff would pick an acquaintance or life-line of that bachelor and change them into a special guest bachelorette, then put them together with two other former contestants who were willing to return. The contestant would have to pick which one they thought was their transformed friend. If they were right they were given the grand prize date and the formula flipped, with the bachelor deciding whether to change back their special bachelorette, take the opportunity to go on a date with her, or share their grand prize with one of the others (though if they did the special bachelorette would be change back by default).

The transformations were always set to change back after two weeks, if the transformee didn’t receive an official date or bowed out of the game. If they did go on a licensed Extreme Dating Game Date, they would change back after 24 hours unless requesting an extension. On the other hand, if they lost the lightning round the transformation was permanent until they went on a date, so those who lost that round typically came back to the show until they finally scored a date with a later contestant.

There were loads of different spinoffs of this show. Of course, there was a gender flipped one – with bachelorettes competing for bachelors and changing into bachelors themselves if they screwed up. There’s the celebrity version, where each game had a handful of celebrity guests who may not have been bachelorettes before they appeared on the show. The one playing now was the celebrity version, with a mix of normal women, changed contestants and a few slightly overwhelmed stars.

Raen thought it was an interesting idea. He’d had fun pulling similar games on his classmates when he was younger. So he filed that away as a maybe, and asked her to change the channel.

They ended up on Life on The Farm.

This one was a predictable idea. Take a bunch of smarmy teenagers from the big city and make them spend a month on a ranch. Naturally, the twist was that instead of being farmhands, they would be spending that time as livestock. They had all the typical character types: the preppy snob, the smug punk, the loner, etc… the idea was to put a twist on the whole “reality show” idea by using some kind of mind reading spell to project the stars’ thoughts as they went through the toughest jobs on the farm firsthand.

But the show suffered from its own premise. Whoever it was that was in charge of the transformations had done their job too well. The group didn’t just change into farm animals physically, their minds became that of the animals they turned into as well. The spell couldn’t be reversed before the duration was up, so suddenly their reality show became an agricultural documentary about the lives of simple livestock. This bored the heck out of their target audience and infuriated the network, especially after the show ended and some of the actors sued.

Xara was surprised that the show was still in reruns. They lingered on the channel to watch the aforementioned snob chew some cud as a donkey before moving on to…

Maiden of Measure, which Xara apparently watched all the time.

It was a thriller series starring a woman who escaped a sinister fashion conglomerate that was turning people into clothing. She managed to break out halfway through being turned into a dress, but while she got away unscathed physically she had no memory of who she really was.

Xara hit Raen on the head for rolling his eyes at the amnesia plot.

The plot followed the heroine as she tracked down others who were changed by the conglomerate, faced villains and terrorists who planned to control the world using the conglomerate’s technology, and warning the populace before the leaders of the free world ended up being sold in a mall somewhere. The series was fairly tense, and by the end of the first season the heroine’s closet was full of the tragic fates of supporting characters and easily targeted friends.

And of course, with the big twist at the end of the last season it turned out that instead of being a woman who was nearly turned into a dress, the heroine was a dress who was turned into a woman for nefarious purposes. It ended with the “best friend who wasn’t a spy” character being turned into a shoe, and the heroine abandoning her anti-conglomerate organization to find herself.

The season premiere opened with the heroine having somehow become a dress again, about to be bought by a hapless shopper, but Raen didn’t like thrillers so he convinced Xara to turn to…

Everyday Magic, where a reporter was interviewing the owners of a quaint up and coming restaurant that turned its staff, and sometimes its customers, into delectable desserts. Neither of them were interested, though, so they turned again to…

The Spellbinder, an educational show that taught non-magically inclined folks simple spells. The host was demonstrating his latest charm by turning his assistant into a cream pie and back. Xara looked interested, but Raen figured he could teach her better than some hack on tv -

Some Kind Of Contest. A buxom woman was in the middle of receiving a prize for “successfully absorbing all of the other contestants.” Under the contour of her stretched out blouse, something shuddered. They had missed all the action, however, and they quickly found themselves watching…

The News, where a reporter was doing a story on site at the pound about an outbreak of a new virus that was turning people into dogs. It doubled as a fluff piece about pet adoption rates, but it was just plain boring either way.

Xara lifted the remote to change again, but Raen stopped her. “If we keep flipping around like this, we’ll never get around to watching anything. Let’s just pick something.”

Xara sighed. “Fine. I still say we should’ve watched Maiden of Measure, but… hey! Here’s a premiere of a new show, maybe this will be alright.”

Weird Weres, some kind of horror drama about the lives of a group cursed to become strange and unconventional were-creatures. In this first episode of the series the focus character – who had recently become a weremouse – discovered that her friend was a werecat. This predictably drove a wedge between them, especially when the main character started being stalked by a vicious cat during the full moon. The heroine accused her friend of trying to eat her while changed, and tried to cut off all ties to her while the werecat tried to prove she would never do such a thing.

While it gave him a neat idea for a prank, Raen couldn’t really follow it. For one, it was obvious that the friend wasn’t the evil werecat, and that it was the mysterious loner who kept cameoing in the background. Plus, the commercials for the series prominently featured the werecat’s actress and the loner’s actress among the other cast members, but there was no sign of the weremouse. This didn’t bode well for her being the actual heroine of the series. Raen spent the next fifteen minutes just waiting for them to eat each other already, before asking Xara to use the guide and see what was coming on after this. Maybe that would be better…

The next program was Double Reality: The Series.

Apparently this was the series of a comedy movie, which Raen didn’t see either. It followed the misadventures of Zhu-Ying, a prodigy and technological wiz who built a device that could see into other dimensions. Typically, this went horribly wrong when his device pulled Zhu into a universe where he didn’t exist, somehow creating a whole new universe where he was born a girl. The movie involved Zhu-Ying trying to figure out how to get back before everyone in his home universe forgot he existed, while trying to stave off the memories and thoughts of his alternate self Xiu-Ya which were slowly replacing his own. In the end he figured a way back only to discover that he had accidentally fused the two universes together, which made him randomly change back into Xiu-Ya at the worst possible times.

The series picked up from that and ran with the whole “dimensions” thing by having a new dimension cross over into Zhu-Ying’s every episode, changing someone into someone or something else which he then had to fix. At the same time, he had to deal with becoming Xiu-Ya at the worst possible moments, though the only real gag there was that as Xiu-Ya she had an overexaggerated crush on the hapless sidekick while Zhu-Ying’s love interest was the sidekick’s sister.

Raen thought it was more cliché than funny, so he went back on his own idea and grabbed the remote to find another channel. They flashed to I Changed: The Stories of the Transformed, which was one of those “dramatic reenactment” shows about people who were changed into objects or animals and somehow managed to get themselves changed back. The more traumatic, the better.

This week’s episode was about a fellow who had been changed into a figurine by his ex-girlfriend for over half a year. She apparently had quite a collection: ex-boyfriends, the new girlfriends of ex-boyfriends, the ex-girlfriends of her current boyfriend, the new boyfriends of her current boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends, and the friends who thought she was going overboard (and that was just to start). Most of them were too freaked out to comment, but the guy on the screen was milking it for all it was worth. He went on and on about being unable to move, dealing with the onset of mindlessness, his daring escape that was only made possible by the witch carelessly leaving her wand touching him after a long day, his upcoming movie deal about his story…

This was even more boring than the show about the farm animals, so Xara suggested they watch a movie instead.

The only movie playing was True Form, a horror movie about a group of sorority girls who were cursed someone they wronged and who were turning one by one into their “true forms” when touched by the witch – which in this case were pieces of makeup. It ended with the final sorority girl escaping her captor but being forced to wear her former friends until they were used up, constantly looking over her shoulder for the inevitable moment when the witch would return and change her into eyeliner. It was very cheesy, and was followed by its just as cheesy sequels True Form: The Last Pose (which involved mannequins and a mad department store owner) and True Form: The Perfect Ensemble (which flipped focus to a fraternity and involved furniture).

At this point, Raen faked getting sick, shut off the tv and begged Xara to go out after all. To his surprise, she actually agreed.

“Alright,” she sighed. “There really wasn’t anything good on. Maybe a little fresh air will do us good.”

“So… dinner?”

“And maybe a little dancing, provided you don’t turn anyone I know into dancing shoes.” She smirked.

Raen whooped and snapped his fingers. Instantly, the two of them were dressed in their best clothes. Raen made for the door, stopping short when he realized that Xara wasn’t following him: she was standing in the middle of the living room, arms crossed and looking disappointed again.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She said.

“I am?”

Xara gestured to their new entertainment center. “Hello? Didn’t you promise you would change them all back?”

Raen grinned. “Yes. At the end of the night. But our night’s just starting, hon.” This made Xara roll her eyes, but she accepted his answer and followed Raen outside. She knew he would at least follow his word later, and if he didn’t… well, she did learn a few tricks from the Spellbinder show. Nothing like what he could do, but perhaps enough to give him a little taste of his own medicine?

Oblivious to her thoughts, Raen shut the door behind them. “Besides,” he said as they walked down the block, hand in hand. “Maybe when we get back there’ll be something on worth watching...”