Please read this.
I've been seeing some criticism of my portrayal of George lately and I wanted to maybe explain a few things and set the record straight.
Has George become fairly social lately? Yes.
Is she not as bitchy as she was when she first got to camp? No, she's not.
Does she do things like talk about guys, go to parties, and go to the onsen? Yes. But no more and no less than a lot of others.
Has she grown and matured in the six months since arriving at camp?
Yes.
Perhaps I hadn't been completely clear with where in canon I'd taken George or what I was trying to accomplish with her. That is my fault, and I apologize for it.
My George is taken shortly after Season One, episode 5. As a result, she's newly dead, she's just lost Betty (the closest thing to a friend she had among the Reapers), and she's feeling very much lost and alone and like she has no place to be.
But George has the potential to grow past that, which I referred to in my app as "However, death changes George because she starts caring more for her family, she gets a job at Happy Time (a temp agency with some extremely bizarre coworkers), and she starts connecting with people, rather than pushing them away."
That sentence, in a nutshell, explains what her camp experience is supposed to be about.
I've had George comment repeatedly about how she's shocked that so few campers piss her off. That is completely and totally accurate. In fact, the only people George genuinely dislikes are Kimimaro, Fllay, Alex occasionally, Cartman, Soi Fong, and Sasuke.
With the exceptions of Fllay and Cartman, all of these people have the potential to do serious harm to George if they wanted to do it. Her only means of self-defense are the fact that she heals quickly and she can take souls. While it's canonically possible to take the soul of a living person and put it back in, it would have serious consequences for George at camp since it would probably be considered close to attempted murder.
So what have I had her do? Stick close to the people she likes and who she knows likes her. That seems fairly reasonable to me for a girl who has been used to avoiding effort and things she doesn't like.
Part of this has involved being at parties and drinking.
Some people have criticized this as being OOC. But I ask them, have you ever seen the second season? If so, how long ago did you watch it last?
Since getting into CFUD, I have watched "Dead Like Me" from start to finish five times. I watch about an episode a day, I discuss what George is doing at camp with family members who both know the canon and have no reason to candy-coat their opinions since they know I'll love them no matter what, and I periodically go back through the comm looking for important threads and rereading them.
Please be assured that I take George's characterization very seriously and the last thing I want to do is disrespect her.
But. Second season. Growth and progression. Where was I?
In the very first episode of the second season, George spends a lot of time thinking about guys, relationships, sex, and her chances of forming a permanent bond with anyone, thanks to what she is. In this episode, she's clearly presented as a young woman who likes kissing, likes being considered beautiful, likes getting male attention, gets jealous easily, and is perfectly capable of scheming and acting like a poor widdle damsel in distress if it gets her closer to a guy she likes. At the end of the episode, she's turned down a chance to go on a date with the guy in question and she gets depressed, then lashes out at another character because of it.
Later on, she falls for a young millionaire playboy, starts acting rather giddy and girlish, goes to the guy's father's funeral to pursue him, spends a lot of time trying to flirt with him and kissing him, and she ultimately loses her virginity to him. When it turns out that his feelings for her weren't as strong as hers for him were, she gets depressed, she complains a lot, she lashes out at people, and she even gets arrested for vandalizing the window of a bridal shop and mauling a male mannequin.
Obviously, this is a girl who's capable of doing some really stupid stuff because of guys.
But that's not all she winds up being capable of. She's given a position of great authority at work even though she winds up dropping the ball despite the fact that she's an eighteen year old who hasn't even finished one semester of college. She finds herself capable of adapting to situations ranging from a posh country club to a rock star's party to a honkytonk bar. She finds out that she capable of acting selfishly, but she can also be selfless if the situation demands it.
As for the drinking, she specifically mentions that one of the good things about being a Reaper is the fact that she "can drink all the tequila I want and not get hungover." Other episodes in the first and second seasons have her drinking at bars.
Yet other episodes have her going to meet new people and greeting them with a smile, enjoying the fact that she can be seen as a young, sexy babe, and treating an earnest young man like garbage but not realizing the implications of her actions until it's too late.
Most importantly (to my mind, anyway)? George becomes someone who is capable of defending those she cares about without hesitation or fear. When she catches a coworker robbing her boss, she chases him down, tackles him, and threatens to break his ribs. When she's afraid that a pet Reaper is gunning for her boss's cat, she grills him until she finds out that he's really after someone else. When one of her fellow Reapers is threatened by a malevolent Graveling, she kills it. And when she's assigned to Reap a serial killer, she seems to enjoy it.
It seems to me that the very point of the series is that here's this average, bitchy, blah girl who'd certainly have led an average, bitchy, blah life, but she finds herself in a situation where she's required to become so much more.
And she rises to the occasion, surprising herself and those around her in the process.
THAT is what George's camp experience is meant to be. THAT is what I've been building toward the past six months.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm hoping this will answer any questions people may have raised.
If not, and you want to discuss them politely, please either IM or PM me. I'm generally signed onto both AIM and IRC while playing.