A long while ago I disemboweled this self-published piece of watery shit to cries of BULLYING!!! or something, and then I found my notes and remembered why I went after this author in the first place. Celebrate! Here’s part two and an explanation on why Melissa Goldberg is a racist little crybaby who’s not much better at being a progressive liberal than she is at writing. It must really suck to be so politically tone-deaf, unintelligent, self-centered and talentless at the same time.
Kayenmari resorted to shouting ugly demon curses at his opponent. “Casikareen vikane!”
HEY REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT IDIOTS AND CONLANGS? YEAH THAT.
Energy was radiating from him in waves, and with the newfound strength granted to him from the release of his demonic magic, he took Ishizano’s foot in both hands and thrust it from him, afterwards getting swiftly to his feet.
Ten bucks on him discovering he’s inherited amazing powers from his dad–it’s never the mom, because as we know Bob, women are useless ninnies good only for caring for sick children–and who am I kidding, I don’t think Melissa Goldberg can think in things other than cliches.
“Then strike me down.” Ishizano’s invitations were like taunts, mocking Kayenmari’s inability to act. Persuasive venom dripping in his voice, he added in his serpent’s silky tones
1) It’s not like a taunt, dude, it is a taunt. Why is the author so shit? Why?
2) “Persuasive venom”?
3) What is silky about snakes?
She brushed the dirt off her skirt, and she noticed that there was something different about her clothes. The material seemed worn somehow as though she’d been exposed to some sort of intense heat. Damn it. This was her good uniform. Her mom was going to kill her.
I’m just puzzled at this attention to pointless trivia when, once the time comes to flesh out the setting, Goldberg turns to bland, unspecific dribble–
She looked around in all directions, and spotting some buildings that looked as though they might form a small town, she began walking.
I mean, even by the standards of the talent-void, this is especially bad.
As she took in the thatched roofs and cobblestone streets, new worries sprang to mind. Worries such as would she be able to speak to the people, was she even still in America, what if they wouldn’t help her, or,
And here I thought Anglophones believed they can be understood anywhere as long as they scream loudly enough in English! Does the US not have cobblestones and thatched roof? Is Celina meant to be the type of teenager who’s never stepped outside her all-white suburban neighborhood, or is it the author?
Through the gap of the two buildings on either side of her, she could see things walking through the street. Some were lupine, avian, or ursine, and others insectile, reptilian, or piscine. All of them were upright like humans, but their features were bestial and frightening to behold.
Maybe Goldberg believes in minimalism? Except this isn’t minimalistic, it’s just shit.
The voice sounded friendly and not like it was coming from the mouth of some big scary monster.
I continue not to understand. Does the author hope this will ape the voice of a child, except Celina is sixteen, not ten? Evidence points to “Melissa Goldberg can’t fucking write.”
Her voice came out in a high-pitched whisper. “There are Demon Gods?”
“They used to be Angel Gods. Until they rebelled. Surely you’ve heard of Lucifer?”
Celina nodded. “Of course. He’s the devil.”
The demon chuckled. “Not exactly, but I can see why humans might’ve thought so. He’s the leader of our Demon Gods. Led them in a rebellion against The Almighty, lost, and were cast out of Heaven. The Almighty punished them by infecting each of them with their biggest sin, turning them into Demon Gods. Then they made Gehenna and created us demons as their people. Each province is ruled over by a different Demon God. This one, Kalu’Binai, is Lucifer’s.”
Presented without commentary.
It was like she was hearing the explanation of the world in a video game, manga, or fantasy book.
Celina, darling, you aren’t an anime character. Actually even the lampshading in Magic Knight Rayearth was less ham-fisted than this.
He reached out a hand to shake hers, and she was surprised that demons had similar customs to her own.
Convenient. By the way, this character has “navy hair” anime-style, a square jaw, and “His eyes were slightly upturned.” Ishizano of the vaguely-Japanese-sounding name has “narrow” eyes. So basically, Melissa Goldberg is writing characters with features that are implied to appear East Asian, but they shake hands. More on Goldberg’s racism later.
“Lower Class demons – the ones like in town there –are a bit more instinctual than the rest of us. They saw you, and they smelled immediately that you were a weaker creature so you became prey to them. Lower Class demons act more on their animal instincts whereas Middle Class, like me, or Upper Class are a bit more civilized.”
Remember that words like “middle class” and “lower class” and the rest have meanings? Now, well, read that passage. Incidentally the “middle/upper class” ones have magic. The “lower class” ones have bestial creatures and no magic. All the demons with speaking roles so far have been of the middle- and upper-class ones. WELL THEN.
“If so then…why are you helping me?”
[...]
“It’s a bit of a complicated answer. I was stopping by the shanty,” he noticed her confusion so he clarified, “the Lower Class village, and I saw you by chance, really. I followed you because I couldn’t believe that you were really a human, but then I could see clearly that you were. And…I don’t know.”
Basically, author fiat and plot device.
Celina sighed. Of course, nothing cool could possibly come out of this experience. She was just destined to be the weak female protagonist. Fantastic.
Presented without comment.
Now, some people have been wondering just why it is that I tore this book apart; what’s this claptrap if not self-published tripe that will never see the light of the day outside of whatever poor little fucks Goldberg will browbeat into buying a copy? Well, it’s because Melissa Goldberg is a racist tool.
About the ex-pat thing, there are definitely some people who are benevolently racist, but most of the people I hung around with genuinely loved Japan, loved the culture, loved the people, participated in cultural events with Japanese people (I participated in the local English club with a group of housewives, which was awesome), my friends went to a church run by Japanese people, we had Japanese friends, we could all speak Japanese near fluently, etc, etc etc. There was a couple in my town that kind of annoyed me in that they’d been there three years and hadn’t bothered to a learn the language at all. That kind of thing really bugs me. I mean, why live in a foreign country if you’re going to engage with it?
Basically, some ex-pats (many probably) are giant douches who just want to go somewhere “mystical” and “exciting” so they don’t have to be boring or whatever. But there are plenty of ex-pats who genuinely love, respect, and embrace the culture of the country they’re in and want to assimilate as much as possible and find a home there.
That’s a racist little shit who doesn’t want to consider the possibility that she is a racist little shit and improve herself–her final word on the subject was that she wasn’t having this conversation: this incidentally is sheer whitey privilege, the ability and inclination to walk away the moment one is losing face. She believes it’s possible to be “benevolently racist” and that by having Japanese friends and going to a Japanese church she and fellow bottom-feeding cockroaches cannot possibly be racist, when by all accounts she sounds like a full-time fetishizing orientalist who needs to shut her worthless white mouth. Elsewhere, in an attempt to deflect criticism of whites’ racism, she decided to bring up how the Japanese are racist!! to the Chinese. Being a clueless honky, she can’t see any conversation about race without defending her own ethnicity to the death, without derailing about how Other People Are Racist too. She’s not interested in punishing or removing racism; she’s interested only in saving her own face, because she feels that any criticisms leveled at the Aryan master is a personal affront against her.
I mean, certainly there are problems inherent in moving to another country and getting along there as a foreigner, and there are a lot of people who are horrible and belittling and terrible. But I felt that I – and the ex-pats I consider my friends – were all very respectful and felt mostly welcome in the country. Two of my friends just had their baby there. I certainly hope we’re not painting blanket statements like, “Ex-pats don’t deserve to be there and should go home” or “Fuck all ex-pats; we hate them”. I mean, there’s a lot to be gained from living in another country. It certainly opened up my eyes about a lot of things re: privilege and race relations and such.
And what’s there to be gained by the host country exactly, you narcissistic colonialist worm?
Melissa Goldberg’s biggest problem isn’t that she can’t write and should consider carpentry instead. Her biggest problem is that she’s a fauxgressive liberal dick who believes she’s an enlightened human being, a weeaboo dolt who insists her tedious fetishization equals love and respect. It’s disgusting.
But apart from that, it’s incredible how juvenile her magnum opus is. The set-up–a man showing up to snatch the protagonist to another world after implying she is special in some way–is copy-pasted from Juuni Kokki, complete with making the man in question a very pretty, yet intimidating boy. Not that Juuni Kokki is the height of originality to start with, but the similarities are quite something, even if no direct copypasta happened. It’s remarkable how very much better that anime is than this novel despite both predicating on the same tired starting point.
But then, the author of Juuni Kokki is probably not a blackhole where talent and skill go to die.
Andrea Harris
/ February 18, 2013The “special child gets wafted to another world where she can use her specialness” trope has been around for a while; it’s not so much that the premise is not original but that Miss Goldberg seems to have done nothing interesting with it. Also, demons that shake hands = “similar customs to her own” — wince. I mean how convenient. (Also, surprising that a weeaboo wouldn’t have the demons bow instead. Whatevs.)
Re cobblestones in America: I don’t know about Canada, Mexico, etc., but there are some areas in the very oldest sections of the earliest settled (by Europeans) towns still have a few cobblestone streets. But these are mostly carefully-preserved historical neighborhoods in large cities, or historical sites like Williamsburg. Certainly there aren’t any remote “villages” like that. Weird that her character would see a thatch-roofed, cobblestone-streeted town and even think for a minute she was still in the US. (By the way, walking on a cobblestone street hurts like hell and is nearly impossible, at least for a modern-day kid in sneakers. I know from experience. No one ever mentions their heroes having any such problems when they are plunked down in these faux medieval settings.)
mastadge
/ February 18, 2013Weird. Walking on cobblestone has never hurt my feet, and has only ever hurt elsewhere when I slipped on it in the winter and got some bruises on my hands.
elodieunderglass
/ February 20, 2013It’s the difference between proper “cobble” stones and setts or paving stones. Cobbles are a much older system – naturally shaped, smooth, rounded rocks grabbed from the world and jabbed upright into mortar, providing a very rough textured surface. They’re practical in that they provide grip, they don’t break or crack, and they can weather snow and ice without plowing – which used to make sense, but is now inconvenient as they are near-impossible to plow and clean. They are deadly slippery when wet, extremely noisy, cannot be comfortably driven on with cars, are difficult to walk on in flexible shoes, and due to the random nature of the jutting rocks are fatallyimpossible to bicycle on. Most European/colonized streets had old-timey cobbles, now destroyed and replaced because of these impracticalities.
“Setts” or “paving” stones are now mistakenly called cobblestones as people slowly forget the history of streets. They’re quarried and shaped to have flat tops, so even if there are deep grooves between the blocks, they can still be swept, plowed and walked on.
A medieval fantasy setting in Europe would feature true cobble stones set in packed-down dung and rotting vegetable matter, slippery with filth and treacherous to trot on. The only word that Goldberg knows for “an outdoor floor that is not dirt or parking lot” is “cobblestone.” She is picturing a paved and sanitized Disneyworld – partially the fault of fantasy media set in locations where they did not bother to dress the streets with cobbles – mostly the fault of her inability to picture a place that is not exactly like White Suburban America. The history of colonization, human movement and travel is irrevocably linked to roads. It’s no surprise the author here has never thought much of them.
This ends the most distressingly boring history-related derail in the history of this blog – sorry, ACM.
Andrea Harris
/ February 24, 2013I thought it was really fascinating! But I like historical “trivia” like that (which isn’t trivial at all, in fact it’s very important, just overlooked because it’s not flashy).
Anyway, the cobblestones I encountered and found were really hard and painful to walk on were the true cobblestones, basically round rocks pounded into the clay-dirt road. My feet still ache at the memory.
Andrea Harris
/ February 21, 2013It could be just me. I used to have weak ankles and in general am not the strongest of walkers.
codenameminali
/ February 18, 2013Ugh, seriously? That comment you highlighted smacks of self-centeredness, and as someone who spent two years in Japan herself and also shunned the expats who didn’t bother to interact with the culture/people, I’m cringing with secondhand embarrassment. (I also have to question her definition of cultural events if she’s bringing up English club as an example.)
In fact, she reminds me of these people on a DVD they sent to JETs before they came to Japan, who were fetishizing the culture to really, really uncomfortable extents.
Kanane (@spidey_j)
/ February 19, 2013Yeah, I only met only one ex-pat in Japan who wasn’t racist by my estimation (which is admittedly flawed) and she was a polyglot who soaked up languages like a sponge and had lived in half a dozen countries throughout her life. The rest of them were worthless, whiny white babies who would inevitably find at least one thing where they thought Japan ought to alter itself to fit their expectations (and really, once they found one, the list went on and on ad nauseum). The company we worked for did go bankrupt about six months after I left and a bunch of them ended up stranded there with no money (they never saved, lived paycheck to paycheck and the company stopped paying them a month or two before they went under – mind you, they stopped paying their Japanese staff a month or so before that, so any complaints the ex-pats had about the Japanese staff being treated with favoritism is kind of dead in the water) and I felt a tiny bit of schadenfreude about that.
Anna (@annathebot)
/ February 18, 2013dear other white idiots who have lived in east asia, if you didn’t get out of the experience that “Holy Hell I Just Experienced Super Ultra Privileged Mode” and instead have some strained bullshit to say about experiencing racism (LOL) you are a goddamned moron
gefnsdottir
/ February 19, 2013How can you be “benevolently racist”? Is this some sort of kinky thing I haven’t heard about?
onceaskrull
/ February 20, 2013I suspect (but don’t know for sure) that it’s a modification or adaptation to the concept of “benevolent sexism”, wherein an individual *thinks* he (or she, I suppose) holds a positive view of women, but it’s really just veiled justifications for male dominance/superiority.
So, for example, referencing items that are marked as “benevolent sexism” on a scale of ambivalent sexism by Glick and Fiske (which is hostile sexism + benevolent sexism), agreeing with the following items would be an indicator of sexist attitudes (of the benevolent variety):
1. Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores
2. Women, as compared to men, have a refined sense of culture and good taste
3. Women should be cherished and protected by men
The point is that these statements are all problematic, but they’re framed in a way where the person holding these views believes he holds positive views of women. Sexism isn’t just about the truly hostile statements and beliefs that some men hold toward women, it’s also the culturally-embedded notions that essentialize gender and reinforce/replicate existing power structures.
Which, I suppose, is what Goldberg was referencing here (though I really cannot say for sure, I haven’t read the article or anything else by/about Goldberg). The thing about using a concept like “benevolent racism”, just like “benevolent sexism”, is that taken out of context, the phrase sounds like an endorsement of racism/sexism, like there’s ever a “good” way to be a racist/sexist. If someone insists on using it (and I’m not really a fan of the phrase precisely because of how it sounds), then they should only do so if they’re willing to define and delimit it.
The onus is on the person using it to explain what he or she means. You can’t just use a phrase like “benevolent racism” and just assume that people aren’t going to raise eyebrows. Because there’s no other way to determine how that person MEANT to use it–for all I know, Goldberg really does think there’s such a thing as “good” racism. She certainly hasn’t fully interrogated her own racist views.
Jim Storrie
/ February 21, 2013ACM, I’ve just recently found your blog and enjoy your articles quite a lot. I’ve blown most of my workday browsing the archives. Please keep up the good work!