Poll - Deeper into narrative choices

Ok so at this point, I'm fairly confident that it's highly unlikely for the results of last week's polls to change drastically.

• Alex created the serum.
• The serum is DNA-based (animal?)
• The story would involve exploring the notion of a Rival, and the enhanced girls would contemplate ways to change their lives (for better or worse), on top of dealing a little with side-effects.
• FMG has a spectacular peak growth and gradually shrinks back to an enhanced toned/fit form that's not too crazy, not too eye-catching in public.
• The serum has some side-effects, which include : glowing eyes & veins, uneven growth / random growth spurts, bodily fluids gaining the ability to cause FMG and addiction. I think it would also be fair to include a couple options like the Hulk-style emotion-based growth (which could mesh with the notion of random growth) and some bonus like healing, better sight / hearing. Since the serum would be DNA-based, I would probably try to squeeze in some very subtle physical changes, but we'll see how things play out...

Implications:

If Alex is the serum's creator, this implies a bunch of things:
• Alex becomes directly responsible for any side-effects the serum might have, whereas before, the fault could've been pinned on his friend Johan.
• The story beats involving Johan and the fitness magazine featuring Olivia Oak no longer make no sense.
• How did Alex actually got his hands on the reagents used to create his serum? What are they, really?

Solutions:

The first implication isn't much of an issue, it will just mean a bunch of rewriting.

Olivia Oak can be retconned into a different role. For example, she could become the Rival...

Maybe Johan could still play a role, as a friend who would help Alex create his serum by providing some rare things.

Now, the special combo of Alex being the serum's creator + the DNA-based serum feels a bit like a weird match to me. If the serum was plant-based, I could see him having a rare plant that he uses in his apartment, but DNA-based... I can hardly picture Alex having something like, I dunno, a rhino/ox/buffalo or other strong animal in his place to gather DNA from. I would imagine he would need someone to give him the special ingredients he needs. I would like to imagine that Alex works with someone else.
Eitherway, I think it makes no sense to say that Alex works alone and (unless you guys can convince me otherwise in the comments), I would be unwilling to go that way.

So here are this week's poll options, including a whole bunch of composite options:

PART 1 - ALEX:

• Alex works with another chemist, who also has access to classified materials (to be determined). That chemist could turn out to be a nerdy girl who could have her own FMG scene at some point (wink wink nudge nudge)!

• Alex created the serum all by himself, BUT he did make some shady deals to get some classified materials (again, to be determined). Maybe some inspiration to be taken from how Doc Brown gets plutonium in Back to the Future 1 from the Libyans... but you could replace the Libyans by an angry sexy woman, eeeeh? Maybe it's the Rival!

PART 2 - THE RIVAL'S OBJECTIVE:

• The Rival is a guy who wants to sell the serum like a drug to a lot of girls down-on-their-luck to build a shady underground harem of muscle-girls addicted to what only he can provide them (as far as they know).

• The Rival is a feminist/anarchist girl fed-up with the whole patriarchy idea and who wants to change the world and turn it into a world rules by powerful women.

PART 3 - THE RIVAL'S METHODS:

• The Rival broke into Alex's apartment / lab and stole some samples of Alex's serum and formula, in order to reproduce it.

• The Rival is also a genius scientist who independently came-up with their own serum formula, which may or may not have its own properties (maybe it's permanent, with different side-effects?)

PART 4 - CHANGE OF LIFE:

• Path of Fame - The girls enhanced by Alex would want to improve their lives, to become famous and rich.

• Path of Selflessness - The girls enhanced by Alex would look to use their enhancements to help others.

• Path of Abuse - The girls enhanced by Alex would start viewing him as nothing more than a serum-distributor.

But please, if you have more ideas, do share them below in the comments!