"December" meme post #15: Blackout (Newsflesh trilogy, book 3)
thatyourefuse asked me to talk about Blackout (the third Newsflesh book), in part because in November we had a conversation where I was telling her how desperately I love it. (Unavoidably, there's some repetition in here of things I've written in other Newsflesh meta posts, but I'm deliberately not looking back at older posts to see exactly how much of this ground I've covered before. None of those posts are recent, and I don't want to get bogged down in making absolutely sure I don't use similar wording this time out.)
I've actually kept major plot spoilers for Blackout out of this post, because
thatyourefuse hasn't actually read Blackout (but has read Feed and Deadline and a lot of spoilers for Blackout), and I can talk about the things that make this my favorite book of the trilogy without touching on most of the major events in it because it's mostly character and/or thematic stuff. This whole post is massively spoilery in every way for both Feed and Deadline, though.
(As I've often explained, I love all three books, and people would be forgiven for assuming Feed is my favorite, but I love each of the three for very different reasons--which makes sense, since each book is very different from the other two.)
As some of you know, I read each Newsflesh book in the year it was released, and while I really enjoyed both Feed and Deadline, Blackout is the book that pushed me into my intense fannish love for the series.
Let me preface this whole post by saying that I dearly love Georgia Mason in Feed. She's marvelous, and I'm not kidding when friends reading the books for the first time get to her death and I tell them that I'm still brokenhearted over it. Her death was horrible, and her clone's existence doesn't invalidate that, or change one iota of the suffering Shaun went through as a result; it doesn't change the fact that Georgia Mason died and is still dead.
(And sometimes I think about how utterly nightmarish the idea of her clone, and how things play out between her clone and Shaun, would have been for Georgia had she known. I think she would have understood, too? But imagine being so utterly driven by truth, such a thoroughly black-and-white thinker, and somehow becoming aware that the person you love most in the world is capable--or is badly traumatized enough to become capable--of knowingly accepting a flawed copy as "you". Even if both of them will always know that she's not you, and never forget your death and what brought her into existence. Because she also is you, really and truly.
Imagine that.)
But that disclaimer aside, clone!Georgia (who lays claim to the Georgia Mason name for the rest of this post, except where I have to distinguish, because that's who she is) is how I fell so thoroughly in love with the character. As a reader, I find the difference between her narration and original!Georgia's narration in Feed very stark, but it's not because her way of thinking has changed. It's because (IMO) in Feed she wasn't thinking about herself or her emotions. Both of those things came up, of course, but in service to what she was thinking about, which was the Ryman campaign itself and the backstory she filled in as we went.
In Blackout, she has to think about herself, about her feelings and her identity, constantly. She's scrutinizing herself desperately to pick apart who she is--she believes she's Georgia Mason, but she knows she's not. She tries on new things periodically: can she lie now? Does the fact that she can force herself to do it (in extenuating circumstances Georgia Mason never faced) mean she's not who she believes she is, who she knows she's not? She tells herself she's not betraying her values; she's betraying a dead woman's values. But is that even true? In Feed she tells Rick flat-out that Shaun is the only thing that matters more to her than the truth, and while yes, she wants to survive, her main reason for lying, for wanting to live this life she knows/believes is a lie, is to keep Shaun from being hurt.--once we reach the point where she knows she's not the only clone and that she's not the one meant to go out into the world, she also knows roughly what's being planned for Shaun.
She doesn't make plans for what she'll do if she escapes and finds Shaun and he doesn't accept her as Georgia. (Because in her bones, she can't imagine it? Because she knows that she'd simply commit suicide, exactly as she always planned to do when she lost him?) But she thinks about that as a possibility, and it's not until he does clearly, explicitly accept her that she says, yes, okay, I'm Georgia Mason. I'll be her. I'll be who I am. (There are so many turns of phrase in how she describes/thinks of herself that I love, and that break my heart. "I'm not anyone else, and that means that I'm her." Oh, my heart.)
(There's a bit of an easy grumble there, the idea that our lead is letting a man define her, but fundamentally I'd say that's not exactly what's going on. In a very real way she can't be Georgia without him, any more than he could be fully himself without her. They're too thoroughly and literally a part of each other's identities.)
Georgia in Blackout is fragile in a way Georgia wasn't in Feed, and there are subtle differences in how she reacts, especially to the people in her life. There's the temptation to hug Dr. Kimberley that she ruthlessly quashes because Georgia Mason wouldn't want/do that. Her internal narrative frames this as because she's a clone, because she's missing that ineffable three percent. It's a weakness and an imperfection.
Except. (And this I have definitely said before, because it's one of the central things in her identity crisis that makes me love her so intensely, and one of the things I keep coming back to in writing fic [unfinished fic, mostly, since I've finished hardly anything set after the series].) Except that in Blackout, she goes through so much that the original Georgia never did. She remembers her own death, for starters. She's kept confined in the CDC for a long time, with no unfiltered access to the outside world. She's in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. She's blatantly manipulated. (Think of Dr. Thomas telling her Shaun was dead. Sadistic scumbag.) She's treated as a lab rat and deprived utterly of any real bodily autonomy; there's the mentioned-in-passing fact that the first--and only--time she tried to refuse to submit to physical tests, she was gassed unconscious and tested anyway. Dr. Thomas tries to infantilize her, treating her like a willful child or a pet. She's constantly monitored.
(I loathe Dr. Thomas like you would not believe.)
In short, she's subjected to confinement and mostly-mental/emotional torture for an unspecified but prolonged period, and she's alone for the first time since the Masons adopted her and Shaun, and she's terrified for him. And no matter how factually she narrates most of this, of course it fucks her up. Of course she's not the person she was before Shaun shot Georgia in Feed, or even the person who first opened her eyes in the CDC. And yet only a couple of days, at most, after her escape, she judges herself ruthlessly for having the impulse to hug a woman who was one of the only friendly faces she'd seen in all that time in the CDC, who she'd since believed was probably dead.
So that combination--the hints of fragility in all her inner strength, and finally getting to really see her emotions and her self in a way we didn't in Feed--is what left me helplessly in love with her and these books.
In a tangentially similar way, I didn't start shipping her and Shaun until Blackout. I don't actually remember how much I picked up on before he slept with Becks in Deadline, but once he did, I was sure about the scope of his relationship with Georgia. And it didn't bother me or anything, but again, while Feed did make it clear how deeply they loved each other, she wasn't really thinking all that much about her relationships. [See also: how much I adore her friendship with Becks, which is...never touched on in Feed and comes to us entirely through Becks talking about her after her death, and through Becks' blog. On the Doylist side, I imagine it's likely Seanan chose to write it as a stronger friendship as she went, but on the Watsonian side I file it right alongside the never-specifically-mentioned sexual relationship with Shaun under "Georgia didn't talk about her relationships much".] [See also: how the things Shaun says about Georgia's relationships with their parents and with Buffy are much more telling than anything Georgia herself ever says.]
But then Blackout brought them back together, after all that separation and grieving and their mutual constant awareness of each other's absence, with Shaun knowing he'd never be with her again except in his own delusions and Georgia unsure she'd ever find him...and I was just gone. And for all that, yes, my little shipper heart really wishes we'd gotten more in the way of makeouts or something in Blackout, I do also appreciate that they pretty much establish that aspect of the relationship beyond question and otherwise it doesn't really come up. The connection between them has a sexual undercurrent, but not actually all that much more clearly than in Feed, other than when it's being highlighted; it's just that now they're together and we know for sure it's there. And much as I would like it, I appreciate that there doesn't need to be blatant on-"screen" sexual behavior and/or longing, because that connection is still electric and desperate, two shattered people back beside the only person they've ever loved and trusted fully, the only person they've ever entrusted themselves to.
I love every single bit of it: the two on-screen kisses we do get; the way she falls into his arms in the back of the van and sleeps soundly there, because she's battered and exhausted and lost but she's finally, finally home; their constant awareness of each other's presence and moods, and the simultaneous attempts to process the other's needs, which are no longer what they expect or know to look for. I love Georgia seeing how much Shaun has changed--not the trauma and brokenness, but the fact that without her he's had to use his intelligence and become a leader. The ghost of her in his head told him to step up or step down, and he stepped up.
I assume she found out not long after the series ends about all the things they don't have time to talk about, the obvious things being a) what happened between him and Becks and b) the fact that he was physically abusive with their staff for a while. I imagine she copes with the first in complex ways and is angry about the second. But right now she's seeing him at his best, in that respect, and it's fascinating to compare to how we saw him through her in Feed.
(As people who read my fic know, I write smut for them a lot. The non-sexual aspects of their relationship--or not-specifically-sexual, since it's not like you can just chop that part away wholesale--are so intense and intimate that I really enjoy writing how that would translate into the sexual side of things. Just...look at them. In all other respects they need and understand each other so thoroughly, and trust each other so much and look out for each other's needs, and they've loved each other so thoroughly for their entire lives, and are so physically comfortable together...and all of that would be present when they're being sexual. So. Fic!)
So those are the big reasons why this is my favorite book in the trilogy, but there are also tons of other elements and specific moments that contribute too.
Feed and Deadline have the truly devastating things in this series--Georgia's death, Shaun's discovery that she would probably have recovered if he hadn't shot her--but Blackout has more of the offhand moments that break my heart, still, whenever I think about them. There are a few when Shaun and Becks are visiting Stacy and Michael, and I'll get into that below.
The main moment that just ravages my heart, besides the stuff to do with their parents, is something that goes through Shaun's head when they're all on the plane to D.C., as Blackout approaches its climax. Georgia is asleep, and Shaun looks at her, at the softness in her face and how she's curled up in her seat--he looks at the woman who, in essentially all but the literal physical sense, is his not-quite-twin sister, who is his lover and his partner in everything, who he's loved with all his heart for all his life, and been loved by in return--and he thinks, "George was never that vulnerable, not even for me." With everything they are and have been to each other, he still looks away, feeling like he's intruding or taking something from her that he shouldn't. And I can't bear it.
And now, their parents.
Blackout is what makes me outright hate Michael and Stacy, even as it makes me feel even worse for them. They did try with the kids, much as none of the four of them really feel like they did. The in-series evidence for this may be scant, beyond the fact that Seanan has said that they tried, but to my mind there's one strong piece: the fact that Shaun's middle name is Phillip. No matter how messed up people are as parents, they're not going to adopt kids with the conscious intention of raising them with severe emotional neglect and then give the boy their beloved dead son's name as a middle name. So they tried, and they failed; I genuinely appreciate their admission of how badly they failed when they're talking to Shaun (and again in Stacy's blog post later).
But I look at how profoundly fucked up Georgia and Shaun are, and I hate their parents so much. So much of what Shaun thinks and says about them is devastating to me: his comment to Becks that their parents' failure to love them, and the fact that their parents never would love them, is why he and Georgia had to love each other so much. How he tells Becks that Georgia was always the one who wanted their parents to be better than they were, the one who kept struggling to earn their love; how when he and Becks first see Michael, the way Shaun thinks of him is as "the man I watched George beat herself to death trying to become".
I think about Georgia as a little girl, as a teenager, as a young woman, battering herself against that unbreakable wall over and over again, wanting her parents to love her, wanting her father to be proud of her. I think about how fierce and brilliant she would have always been, and how all she wanted was the most natural thing in the world, the thing the world damn well should owe children, and how part of her was never, ever able to let go of that need. (I think about how so little of that shows in Feed, in the way she talks about Shaun being more able to deal with and accept their parents--which lines up perfectly with what he says. "I got over Santa Claus," she says in Feed. "Shaun got over our parents.")
I hate both Stacy and Michael for that, but I think ultimately I hate Michael more. I know my mental image of his relationship with Georgia isn't laid out explicitly in the books, so I won't delve into it much here (that's more what fic is for, anyway), but oh, I hate him. To me the way the kids talk about Michael's relationship with her is one of him wanting her to love and adore him, basking in her idol worship. My feeling is that he nurtured her love and gave her back as little as possible, carefully if not consciously. I never get that sense of subtle manipulation between him and Shaun, or between Stacy and either of the kids.
Of course, there's blatant manipulation from Stacy, but while that's infuriating, I find it less horrific--except when her blatant manipulation horrifies me beyond belief. The fact that I probably hate Michael more is pretty damn impressive given the other single thing that hurts most to think about, which is the way Stacy talks about Georgia to Shaun in that scene when he and Becks visit. I was pretty sure before that that Shaun and Georgia's parents knew they were sexually involved, but that whole scene is why I came out of the books almost entirely positive--as close to certain of it as I could be without asking Seanan, which I was eventually able to do, and she confirmed it. (And what she said [it's my second question at that link--highlight for the question and answer] managed to be EVEN WORSE than what I'd been thinking.)
Here's the specific quote from Stacy, emphasis mine: "Is [Becks] sweet on you? So many of the pretty girls have been. Not that you ever paid them any attention. Not that your sainted sister, may she rest in peace, ever let you. Do you think things would have gone differently if she hadn’t been so selfish?"
I'm not sure if I'm more appalled by Stacy talking that way in an effort to screw with and wound her only living child by mocking and baiting him about the most loving relationship in his life, or by the fact that she talks that way about her own deceased daughter. It's so awful, and so upsetting on every level; it genuinely makes me queasy thinking about it. Just...fuck you too, you horrible woman. ;_; (And then she has the gall to be enraged when Shaun uses Phillip against her in turn. I'm not at all sure I can see him doing that if she hadn't weaponized his most beloved person first, because Shaun isn't a HORRIBLE EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING. [And even if he had started it, he and Becks are desperate in a way the Masons aren't.])
Naturally, all of that also means that the chapters with Shaun and Becks and the elder Masons are some of my favorites in the whole series, because they're beautifully done and bring the family's fucked-up dysfunction into painful clarity. And those awful things are...not balanced by, but contrasted with Shaun's realization, when he finally convinces their parents to help, that Stacy and Michael hadn't quite been able to not love him and Georgia, any more than he and Georgia had been able to not love them. (And he includes himself in that in a way he didn't earlier.)
And now, some elements of the book I have intense feelings about but can probably write about more succinctly!
--First I want to mention Rick, although my intense feelings in his case are decidedly mixed (everything else after this is much more straightforward love). I was really fond of Rick in Feed, although I didn't bond strongly with him. And here, after he's been AWOL for all of Deadline, we find out what he's been doing with his sham!vice-presidency: financing and using a secret cloning project in an effort to bring Georgia back. Presumably he's the one who made the argument that Georgia extrapolates early on: the reason they cloned her is because she's the only person in the world who's ever been able to control Shaun Mason (who must, she reasons, be alive if he needs controlling). Except of course Rick's real reason for risking so much to bring her back is that he has such faith in her that he thinks having her back in play would be a major advantage. And he's not wrong! He took a huge, expensive gamble, and his blog posts make it pretty clear that he essentially thinks he sold his soul in the process. He had his dead friend/boss "brought back" over and over, never perfectly, and he was, as he says, responsible for "her" dying over and over--"her", because for all that none of the previous clones were remotely successful mental copies, they're like our new Georgia in that they never have a chance to be anyone else. They all think they're Georgia Mason, and they all die, and Rick has to live with that.
And you know, maybe I could even be okay with that...except that in order to cope with what he's doing, he also dehumanizes her. I get that he kind of has to dehumanize her to handle his choices, even as he's counting on her, because she keeps dying, and how do you live with that? But the results, even though they're mostly subtle, are telling when he finally does have to interact with clone!Georgia. He has trouble meeting her eyes. He forgets that she's there, living and thinking and damn well Being Georgia Mason, just like he wanted. She's not quite the friend he lost, and he can't quite wrap his head around her being a person, rather than an artificially-created body with some implanted brain waves. (Maybe he would be able to, given time. But much as I respect that the man made some terrible choices for the best reasons, I don't think she owes him that time. She exists because of him, and I think he owes her for that, not the other way around.)
[And now, less ambivalent things!]
--Much as I love how original!Georgia's retinal KA was handled as a disability, I love that clone!Georgia's lack of it--her "normal" eyes--is in many ways treated as a new disability in its own right. Her reservoir condition was part of her identity, and it's gone; she has to learn from the ground up how to compensate for that. Her face gives things away that it never used to; her literal relationship with light and darkness has changed. And above all, the way she deals with the fact that now she can cry--and does, and hates it, despite how crying used to be such a symbol of how her condition separated her from "normal" people. When Dr. Thomas makes her believe that Shaun's dead, she's grief-stricken, but still taken aback by the realization that she's crying. And afterwards, when she's cried herself sick, there's that moment when she touches her face and tries to figure out if the way her eyes feel is normal post-crying aftermath or if there's something seriously wrong.
--I love the entire supporting cast. I don't dare start trying to write about them in this post, because it's already going to be so long, but I love them so much, especially Becks and Maggie and Mahir and Dr. Kimberley and Dr. Abbey...
--I adore Shaun and Becks' relationship in this book so much. I love that they've essentially gotten past their ill-considered sexual hookup and are genuinely friends (even if Becks' blog posts do suggest that she's still in love with him, for all that she tells him she only thinks of him as a friend now--oh, Becks!). They work so well together, and respect the hell out of each other. Becks is the one to whom Shaun reveals the full extent of his psychosis, who he trusts to respect his decisions and autonomy. Becks is the one who best knows when to follow his orders and when to challenge him. And when they get Georgia back, once they've all at least intellectually accepted her, and Shaun maybe-unconsciously starts trying to slip back into being the guy he used to be, the guy who'd never had to step up, Becks tears a strip off him without an instant's hesitation because of her faith in him, because she knows how much more he's capable of than he ever wanted to admit.
--And I love how Shaun's psychosis is handled. There's the moment late in the game when things are going all to hell, and he finds himself wishing for just a heartbeat that the voice in his head would tell him what to do. There's his acceptance and lucidity about his mental illness: how he plans to leave, how he knows he's slipping; his utter horror at his first thought when [character] is badly injured being "Thank God it wasn't George", and his understanding that if nothing else, that disqualifies him from leading their team anymore. And I even love how head!George, who I loved so much in Deadline, turns on him slowly, how the mental fracturing that protected him and kept him alive starts fighting to protect itself once he realizes his hallucinations are no longer the closest he'll ever get to being with Georgia again. His psychosis is "safe"; it's what let him function, and the part of his brain generating it scrambles to keep him from leaving that dubious comfort zone for the unknown reality he's faced with.
--There are so many wonderful moments with Georgia and Shaun. I love the incongruity of when they come back to Dr. Abbey's lab and Shaun winds up attacking Dr. Shoji, fully intent on strangling him on the spot but drawn out of it by Georgia's reaction to Dr. Abbey's giant dog--and then, the moment he knows she's okay, he goes right back to the critical business of fucking up anyone who'd ever consider hurting his sister. I love how Shaun reacts to Georgia's terror of white rooms, how he has no idea what to do to help but tries so hard anyway. I love his delight when she punches him, and the questions he asks her to verify her identity (the birthday present!), and their effortless-yet-excruciatingly changed awareness of each other's physical presence.
I think that covers most of the specific things that make Blackout my favorite Newsflesh book, other than "everything". Oh, book. Oh, Georgia.
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