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[Emma]

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[FallacyofUrist]

Huzzah.

[Spiderking50]

I hit a dead end after punching a kid and believing my mother is right.

[Emma]

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[Emma]

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[Emma]

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[Retropunch]

I do think the 'subtle fantasy' is a nice premise. If you want blunt feedback here it is:
My number one rule in interactive fiction is never to ask the player what someone else did (did your parents pack...). I know some games do manage to pull this off, but personally I feel that it completely breaks any immersion or feeling that you *are* that character.

Secondly, all these choices about picking what your teacher looks like and what you ate/movie you watched seem completely unnecessary and, bluntly, really, really bloody boring. They're not interesting choices and they do nothing to move the game on. While you may have some later ideas for how they'll interact, they're just not a good introduction.

Honestly, My advice would be to completely get rid of the whole 'what was your past like' bit and move straight to something more interesting. Move way past all the childhood stuff and put the player in an interesting situation. If you need realllllly want to do a character building thing, have it in 3-4 questions that make sense of how they might affect future outcomes (did you grow up wealthy or poor?) and then go to present day, with the player in a tricky situation.

Perhaps in that situation they'll come across something strange that'll tip them off to the possibility of magic/fantasy? Perhaps they'll accidentally get teleported across the world and need to find their way back, coming across lots of strange things along the way?
 

[Emma]

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[Retropunch]

I just think that the whole 'scene setting'/history thing is completely unnecessary. The player can either make up their own back story, or you can unveil it as the game play progresses. All the stuff about what movies you watched, what you ate, what your teacher looked like all just seem like random, stand alone bits that don't really mean anything to the overall story and certainly don't drag a player in.

Start in the story, and then backtrack if you need too. Have flashbacks or dreams (this works well in such interactive fiction as you can even distinguish between time frames with a different colour background and whatever) to do this and expand on each choice more to make it actually mean something.

If these elements really do come into play later, make it clear how it does. Start with something like

'The first time I thought about magic was when I was a child. This coloured the way I would look at magic for the rest of my life.
As the new teacher walked into the classroom my friend Tanya leant over "don't you think she looks like the creature from that movie? you know! the...ahh whats it called? '
A) do you mean ewok?
B) do you mean an elf?
C) I really don't know what you're talking about'

You choose B; It was true that you often saw something...alien about others. Something that seemed distant, something you couldn't put your finger on. Ms. Turnall certainly had these qualities, and it made you wonder if there would be others that had these traits even more strongly.'

Or whatever - show the player that their choice means something and fill them out a bit. But whatever you do, really keep this bit short. Unless you're a well known developer/writer, no one is going to want to sit through ages of character development when they don't know if the story is even going to be any good. Keep it short and too the point, with a proper story that grabs you right from the start.