December Talking Meme post #3(a): my main fandom, AKA Georgia Mason. (Er, the Newsflesh trilogy)
snailbones asked me to talk about what my main fandom is, and how I got into it. I'm unrepentantly excited about this. *g*
[NOTE: I'm doing my best to keep this unspoilery, because being spoiled for this series would SUCK. People who've read the books, if you comment (please do!), please keep it spoiler-free too?]
I've also made a separate post for general content notes for the series, including a couple of characterization spoilers. It doesn't have any plot spoilers, but I still advise not looking at it unless you're considering reading the books and have concerns, not just curiosity. ^^; It's here on DW and here on LJ.
The Facts Were These
To start with, I should say I don't change primary fandoms very often. (Understatement. My last main fandom, the Fruits Basket manga, held that place from roughly 2003-2012.) For about a year and a half now, my main fandom has been the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant (a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire). The individual novel titles are Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, and I wrote a general info/rec post for them last year (which is here on Dreamwidth and here on LJ). I'm going to try not to duplicate too much of that content here, so if anyone wants an overview or an example of how the series' prose reads, please click through the above links!
This is my first time in a book fandom, and it's a small fandom (heartbreakingly small, to me), so it's not so much that I "got into it" as that I fell in love and have since spent the last year and a half shamelessly trying to get just about everyone I know, online or in meatspace, to read the series. I think at this point I'm up to getting twenty or twenty-five people to read the books, and so far virtually all of them have enjoyed it. Some have loved it, and have been and still frequently are willing to talk to me about it--and that's awesome and deeply appreciated, because BOOKS OF MY HEART. But I still know hardly anyone who's outright fannish about it, and I press on. (I'm not entirely kidding when I say I'm putting my evangelical upbringing to use.)
How did I fall in love? It's actually hard to say, because I read both Feed and Deadline when they first came out, and I really enjoyed them...and life went on as usual. And then when I was reading Blackout last year, I had a fannish paradigm shift and have been deeply, overwhelmingly in love with the books ever since. (I immediately reread the whole trilogy from the beginning, and yep, it was true for the whole series. So. Much. Love.)
This is the premise: Feed is set about twenty-six years after a pair of engineered viruses got out into the wild, latched onto each other, and through their powers combined, infected every single mammal on the planet with a mutated virus that'll turn them into zombies sooner or later (with certain restrictions, etc., which I'm not getting into here. Let's just say that the virus is terrifyingly well thought out. If you want to read about how Seanan created it, read this article).
So...there are zombies, but they're just a fact of life for the series' characters, most of whom were born after this all happened. The story is about a brother-sister pair of journalists whose news team gets selected to follow a senator's presidential campaign, and how thoroughly it all goes to hell.
At this point, what I always tell people is that a lot of the books' fans also love zombie stories and/or other things that are in the cocktail of the premise, but me? Not so much. I'm not into zombies. Or politics. Or conspiracies. Or thrillers. Or virology. So if you're not into any or some of those either, you may like or love this series anyway.
That's It For Facts. Let's Talk Feelings!
Here are the two things I am into that explain my love, especially since they're two of the things I love most dearly in fiction.
1) If you look at most of my favorite female characters, you'll see I have a Type: girls and women who have deep emotional damage, who have trouble connecting with people from behind that damage, but who got up, brushed themselves off, and got on with their lives because there's shit that needs doing. They're all people who, when they really let someone in, love with the ferocity of a firestorm and will do their best to fuck you up if you interfere with or hurt the people on the receiving end of that love.
Reader, meet Georgia Mason. Georgia and her adoptive brother, Shaun, who's some number of weeks younger than her, were both orphaned during the initial zombie Rising. They were adopted simultaneously when extremely young, and essentially raised as twins by parents who went through such a severe trauma in the Rising that they no longer had anything resembling an appropriate state of mind to raise children. As a result, while Georgia and Shaun's intellectual and material needs were met, they were emotionally neglected to the point where Georgia, ever practical, can reasonably estimate what percentage of the physical affection she's ever had from her mother was entirely for show. (Eighty-two percent. My beloved girl is precise.)
Georgia is brilliant and fierce and dedicated and snarky. She's obsessed with the truth, making her a meticulous journalist. She's not good at friendship, or interpersonal relationships in general, but her staff respect her immensely and the few friends she's managed to acquire love her dearly. She's all of twenty-three years old, and unlike her brother, it's pretty clear that she's someone who was never really young.
I talked about this in my original rec post, so I won't go into it here, but she's also disabled, and I really appreciate the way the books deal with that.
(One of my many fears about the prospective movie[s]--the books have been optioned--is that execs and/or test audiences will decide Georgia isn't likable enough and demand changes. If they make her accessible and friendly, they might as well build another character from scratch, because Georgia has little time or inclination to try to make people like her.)
2) What I said above, about how Georgia loves? That's where her brother comes in. The second thing Newsflesh provides that really gets me in fiction is intense, all-consuming love and the inevitable codependence that comes with it. Georgia and Shaun are each other's entire world, and that world fundamentally only has room for the two of them. They grew up knowing that they could only ever rely on or trust each other, and it shows. Not that they don't love other people--the books make it clear that they do, although they're awkward about it in their own ways--but it doesn't come naturally or easily for either of them, and can never come close to their connection to each other.
I love that they're so relentlessly fierce about each other, and that it doesn't keep them from calling each other names or bickering, or keep Georgia from giving Shaun a literal smack upside the head now and then. I love the ways they talk about each other, especially how Shaun will say things about Georgia that she'd never say about herself, and vice versa, because they know each other so well but approach the world so differently. I love that Shaun is more emotional and heart-driven while Georgia's all black-and-white logic and focus, and that Shaun--Shaun, with his innumerable weapons and his delight in controlled mayhem and his irresponsible air--is also the more nurturing one.
Besides those two ways to my heart, the series has a lot of other things in it that I really enjoy. Seanan does excellent world-building (in all of her series, not just Newsflesh), and she's got a gift for tucking in details that you wouldn't necessarily think of. As a result, I love the entire 'verse.
I love Shaun dearly, just not in the way I love Georgia. It took me longer to bond with him, but I did, and very thoroughly. I feel protective of him in a way I don't of her, and whenever the books give us insight into his emotions as well as his behavior, we find an intense guy who feels things deeply. I love that his public persona is so carefully crafted and effective, and that it's completely genuine, because he loves and excels at his job, but it's also something that deflects attention from the rest of him.
And I love most of the supporting characters, even though of them, my favorites are hardly present in the first book. There's Becks, who's a glorious badass who can handle just about any job you throw at her, and do it well and with style. And there's Mahir, Georgia's best friend who's also her right-hand man once she and Shaun set up their own news site, who lives in the UK and is very, very long-suffering; has a lovely dry wit; and is incredibly smart and loyal. And there are so many other wonderful characters. Oh, I love them. *^^*
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/482400.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
[NOTE: I'm doing my best to keep this unspoilery, because being spoiled for this series would SUCK. People who've read the books, if you comment (please do!), please keep it spoiler-free too?]
I've also made a separate post for general content notes for the series, including a couple of characterization spoilers. It doesn't have any plot spoilers, but I still advise not looking at it unless you're considering reading the books and have concerns, not just curiosity. ^^; It's here on DW and here on LJ.
The Facts Were These
To start with, I should say I don't change primary fandoms very often. (Understatement. My last main fandom, the Fruits Basket manga, held that place from roughly 2003-2012.) For about a year and a half now, my main fandom has been the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant (a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire). The individual novel titles are Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, and I wrote a general info/rec post for them last year (which is here on Dreamwidth and here on LJ). I'm going to try not to duplicate too much of that content here, so if anyone wants an overview or an example of how the series' prose reads, please click through the above links!
This is my first time in a book fandom, and it's a small fandom (heartbreakingly small, to me), so it's not so much that I "got into it" as that I fell in love and have since spent the last year and a half shamelessly trying to get just about everyone I know, online or in meatspace, to read the series. I think at this point I'm up to getting twenty or twenty-five people to read the books, and so far virtually all of them have enjoyed it. Some have loved it, and have been and still frequently are willing to talk to me about it--and that's awesome and deeply appreciated, because BOOKS OF MY HEART. But I still know hardly anyone who's outright fannish about it, and I press on. (I'm not entirely kidding when I say I'm putting my evangelical upbringing to use.)
How did I fall in love? It's actually hard to say, because I read both Feed and Deadline when they first came out, and I really enjoyed them...and life went on as usual. And then when I was reading Blackout last year, I had a fannish paradigm shift and have been deeply, overwhelmingly in love with the books ever since. (I immediately reread the whole trilogy from the beginning, and yep, it was true for the whole series. So. Much. Love.)
This is the premise: Feed is set about twenty-six years after a pair of engineered viruses got out into the wild, latched onto each other, and through their powers combined, infected every single mammal on the planet with a mutated virus that'll turn them into zombies sooner or later (with certain restrictions, etc., which I'm not getting into here. Let's just say that the virus is terrifyingly well thought out. If you want to read about how Seanan created it, read this article).
So...there are zombies, but they're just a fact of life for the series' characters, most of whom were born after this all happened. The story is about a brother-sister pair of journalists whose news team gets selected to follow a senator's presidential campaign, and how thoroughly it all goes to hell.
At this point, what I always tell people is that a lot of the books' fans also love zombie stories and/or other things that are in the cocktail of the premise, but me? Not so much. I'm not into zombies. Or politics. Or conspiracies. Or thrillers. Or virology. So if you're not into any or some of those either, you may like or love this series anyway.
That's It For Facts. Let's Talk Feelings!
Here are the two things I am into that explain my love, especially since they're two of the things I love most dearly in fiction.
1) If you look at most of my favorite female characters, you'll see I have a Type: girls and women who have deep emotional damage, who have trouble connecting with people from behind that damage, but who got up, brushed themselves off, and got on with their lives because there's shit that needs doing. They're all people who, when they really let someone in, love with the ferocity of a firestorm and will do their best to fuck you up if you interfere with or hurt the people on the receiving end of that love.
Reader, meet Georgia Mason. Georgia and her adoptive brother, Shaun, who's some number of weeks younger than her, were both orphaned during the initial zombie Rising. They were adopted simultaneously when extremely young, and essentially raised as twins by parents who went through such a severe trauma in the Rising that they no longer had anything resembling an appropriate state of mind to raise children. As a result, while Georgia and Shaun's intellectual and material needs were met, they were emotionally neglected to the point where Georgia, ever practical, can reasonably estimate what percentage of the physical affection she's ever had from her mother was entirely for show. (Eighty-two percent. My beloved girl is precise.)
Georgia is brilliant and fierce and dedicated and snarky. She's obsessed with the truth, making her a meticulous journalist. She's not good at friendship, or interpersonal relationships in general, but her staff respect her immensely and the few friends she's managed to acquire love her dearly. She's all of twenty-three years old, and unlike her brother, it's pretty clear that she's someone who was never really young.
I talked about this in my original rec post, so I won't go into it here, but she's also disabled, and I really appreciate the way the books deal with that.
(One of my many fears about the prospective movie[s]--the books have been optioned--is that execs and/or test audiences will decide Georgia isn't likable enough and demand changes. If they make her accessible and friendly, they might as well build another character from scratch, because Georgia has little time or inclination to try to make people like her.)
2) What I said above, about how Georgia loves? That's where her brother comes in. The second thing Newsflesh provides that really gets me in fiction is intense, all-consuming love and the inevitable codependence that comes with it. Georgia and Shaun are each other's entire world, and that world fundamentally only has room for the two of them. They grew up knowing that they could only ever rely on or trust each other, and it shows. Not that they don't love other people--the books make it clear that they do, although they're awkward about it in their own ways--but it doesn't come naturally or easily for either of them, and can never come close to their connection to each other.
I love that they're so relentlessly fierce about each other, and that it doesn't keep them from calling each other names or bickering, or keep Georgia from giving Shaun a literal smack upside the head now and then. I love the ways they talk about each other, especially how Shaun will say things about Georgia that she'd never say about herself, and vice versa, because they know each other so well but approach the world so differently. I love that Shaun is more emotional and heart-driven while Georgia's all black-and-white logic and focus, and that Shaun--Shaun, with his innumerable weapons and his delight in controlled mayhem and his irresponsible air--is also the more nurturing one.
Besides those two ways to my heart, the series has a lot of other things in it that I really enjoy. Seanan does excellent world-building (in all of her series, not just Newsflesh), and she's got a gift for tucking in details that you wouldn't necessarily think of. As a result, I love the entire 'verse.
I love Shaun dearly, just not in the way I love Georgia. It took me longer to bond with him, but I did, and very thoroughly. I feel protective of him in a way I don't of her, and whenever the books give us insight into his emotions as well as his behavior, we find an intense guy who feels things deeply. I love that his public persona is so carefully crafted and effective, and that it's completely genuine, because he loves and excels at his job, but it's also something that deflects attention from the rest of him.
And I love most of the supporting characters, even though of them, my favorites are hardly present in the first book. There's Becks, who's a glorious badass who can handle just about any job you throw at her, and do it well and with style. And there's Mahir, Georgia's best friend who's also her right-hand man once she and Shaun set up their own news site, who lives in the UK and is very, very long-suffering; has a lovely dry wit; and is incredibly smart and loyal. And there are so many other wonderful characters. Oh, I love them. *^^*
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/482400.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: