Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: geeky
  • Music: Taylor Swift, "Long Live."

BLACKOUT open thread!

To celebrate the release of Blackout, here. Have an open thread to discuss the book.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.)

You can also start a book discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun!
Tags: blackout, mira grant, zombies
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  • 357 comments

Question to those that have read it!

loki_dip

May 23 2012, 17:07:35 UTC 5 years ago

This might turn out to be me worrying over nothing, but it is something I need to know before reading Blackout.

Incest is just something I can't read, it makes my skin crawl. I know George and Shaun aren't biologically related but they were raised as siblings so it amounts to the same thing in my mind.

In Deadline I managed to happily overlook things that were apparently obvious to others, but someone told me that they'd heard (I know, it's all very third hand, I'm sorry) that things would be more explicit in Blackout.

So, could someone who's read the book please tell me if this is the case? I'm not looking for spoilers, just some idea if I'm actually going to be able to read this.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

jenk

May 23 2012, 17:22:59 UTC 5 years ago Edited:  May 23 2012, 17:23:22 UTC

It is made very, very clear that they love each other and are each the center of the other's world.

The only explicit thing shown is kissing.

Hope this helps.

Deleted comment

seanan_mcguire

May 23 2012, 18:08:02 UTC 5 years ago

There's nothing at all explicit.

And how raised as siblings they were is really dependent on how you view the Masons. I honestly see them as more like Ron and Hermione than Ron and Ginny: they were the only students at a boarding school for the damned. If that helps.

effervescent

May 24 2012, 03:15:08 UTC 5 years ago

Tangential to this, but I thought the insights you gave through Shaun's eyes in to what their childhood was like really helped form the base of it all. In Feed you set up the fact that most people are social-contact shy, and then you have S&G realising as teenagers (or younger) that their parents don't really care, and they only have each other, and they'd already be close, because of the way that they're raised... It was really well done.

The kiss made me grin stupidly *g* It was just... gah. *fails at being coherent*

hasufin

May 29 2012, 15:58:57 UTC 5 years ago

I will admit that I'm surprised they aren't subject to the WesterMarck Effect. However, you indicated that they remember the orphanages, so how old were they when the Masons adopted them?

seanan_mcguire

June 3 2012, 19:15:11 UTC 5 years ago

They were between the ages of nine months and two years, and would have been within the Westermarck Effect range, had they received any actual familial comfort from anyone but each other. As it stands, their codependency and the fierce "it's us or no one" nature of their bond meant that they managed to overcome the psychosexual imprinting, for good or for ill, and went to the opposite extreme.

hasufin

June 3 2012, 20:28:32 UTC 5 years ago

Makes sense, but why did the Masons keep going back to the orphanage where she was adopted? When you mentioned that, I assumed it was a paperwork thing, but was that just about public appearances?

seanan_mcguire

June 3 2012, 20:31:47 UTC 5 years ago

Public appearances. "Look how awesome we are, we saved a kid from this awful scene."

thedragonweaver

July 1 2012, 03:51:21 UTC 4 years ago

You know, I've read so much science fiction in the course of my life that I don't take it at all amiss if my fictional characters with no genetic bar are attracted, despite their raising. Don't know how I'd feel about it in real life, but I found out recently that most of the world finds it somewhat odd that the US is so weirded out by the idea of first cousins marrying. So culture may play a role in that, too, and I've never had a real-life analogue to compare to.