Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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2011: The Year of the Rabbit.

If 2010 was the Year of the Ghost in my weird personal cosmology, 2011 is going to be the Year of the Rabbit. One rabbit in specific: Velveteen, former member of the Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, reluctant superhero, and too long a stranger around these parts.

I can't commit to a story a month for the whole year, but I can commit to a story every other month. So here you go: I will be writing and posting a minimum of six Velveteen stories during 2011. Not sure who she is? Check out the series landing page for background and archived stories. I'll be bringing the website up to speed on her adventures, and then a new adventure can finally begin.

Coming in January, "Velveteen vs. the Secret Identity."

Heroes unite!
Tags: publishing news, short fiction, velveteen vs.
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  • 65 comments
Disney exists, but it's nowhere near as big. Real-life superheroes sort of detract from that flavor of escapism (then again, without Disney, there'd be no Princess).

I don't think Vel's seen the movie.
Clearly "Mary Poppins" got made, too. At least, I personally know now prior art which would explain the Nanny.

That's a tough part of making any Alternate Reality fiction, isn't it? If your superheroes/magic/etc. isn't a secret that is completely hidden from the world, then it would change a whole lot of the mundane world, and pretty soon a whole lot of that world doesn't make sense. If you're the sort who studies history and notices how these things all affect each other, of course.
Actually, the Nanny could have been based on the book Mary Poppins. But there probably was a movie--based on my reading of Velveteen vs the Flashback Sequence, the public-visible "zero hour" didn't happen that long ago; probably around the same time as the 1964 movie (more or less; could be as early as the '40s). Recent enough that Supermodel was appropriately called Supermodel, and there was enough of a spin doctoring setup to rebuild the Super Patriots after the early, tragic events happened.
I was not aware there was a book! Guess I should have looked it up.

I get the impression, perhaps false, that many of the superheroes existed well before Super Patriots showed up, but they weren't as public. The "zero hour", seems to be more about publicity than existence. I also note that Super Patriots seems to be leaning heavily on the rather insular nature of American culture; to my knowledge Seanan hasn't really mentioned one way or another about non-US heroes, but surely they exist. One might speculate that Super Patriots tends to try to avoid mention of these, and keep the notion of heroes who exist or have existed independent of Super Patriots, away from the public awareness.
There are quite a lot of non-US heroes, most of whom are controlled by corporations owned partially or totally by the parent company of The Super Patriots, Inc.

Very few superhumans stay free for long.
It's hard, but rewarding.