(I cannot) touch her, make her conscious [Or, the eternal WIP where things go very, very differently near the ending of Feed] (15393 words) by umadoshi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Newsflesh Series - Mira Grant
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Georgia Mason/Shaun Mason
Characters: Georgia Mason, Shaun Mason, Mahir Gowda
Additional Tags: POV First Person, Adopted Sibling Incest, Canon Divergence, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, incomplete but not a WIP, as finished as it's getting
Summary:

In which Shaun learns something significant late in Feed that he canonically doesn't find out until Deadline, and everything goes very (very, very) differently.

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I started writing this canon-divergence AU a looong time ago, and I've likewise known for a long time now that I was never going to finish it--partly because Newsflesh hasn't been my primary fandom for several years, and partly because of how much plotting it was going to take to do it to my satisfaction. This parts ways with the series canon toward the end of Feed, and thus everything that happens to the main characters in Deadline and Blackout would never have happened, but all the political machinations and truths about the virus were still things that would have to be played out and...yeah.

But the emotional arc of this story, most of which I did get written down, is some of my favorite writing I ever did in this fandom; I kinda think that if I'd ever managed to assemble an intact story, it would be among the things I'd be proudest of.

I've decided to post it anyway, because what else would there be to do with it? So this is the heart of it--a bit fractured and strung like beads along a thread of story, but all there. Please ignore any minor wobbliness in the timeline/internal continuity, 'kay? And towards the end, I've left in a few plottier bits to give some idea of where this would have gone as an intact story.

This should make sense if you've only read Feed, but it does include one of the series' largest spoilers and hint at another one (both revealed in Deadline in canon).

And the standard notes: this is unbetaed, and the title comes from Linda Gregg's poem "There She Is".

Over the last...several months?...wildpear introduced Pumpkin and (to different extents) a couple of other teenagers to Fruits Basket. Pumpkin got the double anime experience, starting with the 2001 anime and then going on to the 2019 anime, and while they were still working their way through the latter, they also restarted it to show it to two different people, including M, Pumpkin's agemate among our local friends' kids. Throughout, wildpear texted me intermittent reaction updates, which was a delight.

Now that they're all finished (on the anime front), wildpear brought Pumpkin and M over for an intergenerational fandom yard hangout last week! (Of the 2001 anime, M has only seen the very ending, in a sort of "must know what the horror actually is". For anyone who doesn't know, the original anime is mostly really charming and has a lot going for it, with most of its weaknesses being pretty understandable given when it was made and where the manga was at that point, but its ending is a straight-up travesty and an abomination.)

Jumping ahead a bit: you may notice the absence of the manga in the above, which has now been resolved! I initially had been like, "Well, I have a lending set, and its day has come!", but by the time the visit actually happened and I'd unearthed said set (a combination of the five 2-in-1 hardcover volumes Tokyopop managed to release, and the rest of the series in the standard Tokyopop edition), I'd talked sense into myself and decided to make it a gift instead. I'm not actually sure the lending set had ever gone out of the house (other than wildpear, the only person who'd ever read my hard copy was my sister, and that predated the lending set, IIRC), and I didn't honestly need four sets* in the house, even if one of them is in Japanese. So that box has gone off into the world, and while I warned everyone that manga spines aren't as sturdy as anyone would like, they don't have to worry about keeping the books pristine for me.

Anyway! Seeing the three of them was lovely. ( cut! )

Reading: scruloose and I finished listening to Artificial Condition and have started Rogue Protocol (but only barely--we've listened to however much of chapter 1 we could get in over supper on Friday before scruloose had to be doing something else).

We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida) was a very quick read and hard for me to pin down. It's a story in the vein of "~mysterious~ place provides X [often wishes granted or strange/deadly creatures, as in xxxHOLiC or Pet Shop of Horrors], but the actual cats being prescribed mostly appear to be just ("just") cats. I think this is the first in a series. Alas, I find the prose of the translation awfully flat, and can only hope I would've found the book more engaging in different hands.

I also read The City in Glass, which was my first time reading Nghi Vo. Gorgeous prose, a neat concept, and a great read overall.

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Watching: We're six episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died (which is, I suppose unsurprisingly given the premise, touching on a significant existential question from Newsflesh [and from plenty of other places]). It continues to be very good. ^_^

I think we also saw an ep. of Silo sometime last week.

And on Friday I started watching Glass Heart on my own. As so often turns out to be the way, choosing it from my horrifying to-watch list was mostly random. Sometimes the choice is made simply because something is short (ten episodes, in this case) and I've seen several friends talking about it very recently. I'm six episodes in now.

I knew going in that Machida Keita is in it (who I knew only from Cherry Magic). I did not know in advance that Satoh Takeru is one of the leads, and then couldn't place him until I caved and looked up the cast. (He played Kenshin in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies [of which I've still only seen the first], and was impossibly good in the role. I keep meaning to rewatch the first and watch the others, despite my feelings about the franchise overall being irrevocably poisoned now by the horrible revelations about the creator. I still need to offload my set of the manga. >.<)

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Weathering: The drought continues. Parts of the province are on fire, although the uncomfortably-close-to-me wildfire is under control, last I heard.

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Planning: We don't have tickets yet, because there aren't yet showtimes for it, but the plan is to see Dongji Rescue late in the week. *fidgets*