New TF Story

[kaiyotea]

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

Not the longest update, but we finally get to see what The Body did to Shandra...

And what happens when you try to deprive The Flesh of food for too long. @_@
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I love the impossible quandary in which you have put Mary. Shandra points out the huge, gaping holes in Mary's plan. And she is correct. The idea of feeding vague, nebulous information to the CDC in the hope that they can identify a completely alien disease/organism and tell her how to eliminate it *via e-mail* is colossally stupid. Well, perhaps not stupid, but overly optimistic.

But, interestingly, it is the kind of plan that might be plausible in most transformation fiction. I am interested to see how that develops as you have already dispensed with one of the other common tropes of transformation fiction: that when strange/sexy transformations happen everyone either goes along with it or enjoys it. The situation with Shandra is drawing a distinct line in the sand. This is not Sexy Fun Time. Shandra's transformation was, like Katie's, not voluntary and in addition it is embarrassing and humiliating and she is not compliant.

It will never work but either Mary is desperately clinging to this idea as her only hope for preventing an apocalypse or she fully expects that it will not likely work but if she doesn't do *something* then she would be wracked with guilt.

We have seen that there are some parts of this whole thing that Mary likes and she a lot less creeped out now than before. More familiarity means less strange and less strange means less fear. Maybe some part of her doesn't *want* to stop The Flesh and its plan, and these e-mails are her way of "doing something" so she can say "Look at me. I'm making an effort" to avoid crushing guilt for compliance in all this. We don't know yet if Mary has realized that stopping The Flesh will mean her death as well. If she does realize this then maybe she is being halfhearted in her efforts because *she* is afraid of dying as well. If she hasn't yet then I look forward to the moment in the story when she does! Also looking forward to the ramifications of the death of the repairman. I mean she killed someone! Granted she wasn't in control of herself but still...

Though, Mary has a point or two on her side as well. She knows that if The Body ever feels seriously threatened then she will not be able to reason with it or control it, and limit its danger to others. And she has to keep it ignorant for as long as possible. If it ever realized how powerful it is relative to the rest of the planet's inhabitants it would surely enter ENDGAME MODE. And if that happens, say goodbye to every other living thing on the planet.

Have I mentioned how much I love this story yet? The intrinsic conflict is awesome. It's Alien vs Humans and there is no good solution. If the alien wins, then humans go away forever. If humans win then say goodbye to Mary. And Mary is our protagonist. We get her POV. We Identify with her and we want her to come out on top. But if she wins then we loose.