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.
All posts tagged authors:g
Ken Grimwood’s REPLAY – misogyny and the American Dream
Jeff Winston was 43 and trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job, waiting for that time when he could be truly happy, when he died.
And when he woke and he was 18 again, with all his memories of the next 25 years intact. He could live his life again, avoiding the mistakes, making money from his knowledge of the future, seeking happiness.
Until he dies at 43 and wakes up back in college again…
This book was published in 1987, and yea, there shalt be many cries of “BUT ‘TWAS A PRODUCT OF ITS TIME” since 1987 was–like–the fucking Middle Ages, man. It’s steeped to the eyeballs in what I’ll charitably call the American Dream, a heaping shitload of sexism that makes Philip K Dick look vaguely evolved, and an easy rival to both Jonathan Lethem and Jim Butcher when it comes to unrelenting misogyny. For fuck’s sake, the story begins with Our Hero–middle-class white dude experiencing a midlife crisis–being nagged by his disillusioned wife. Then he dies.
Unfortunately, that’s not the last we see of Jeff Winston.
Posted by acrackedmoon on August 7, 2012
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/ken-grimwoods-replay-misogyny-and-the-american-dream/
self-publishing lulz – HYBRID CHILD by Melissa Goldberg pt 1
Sixteen-year-old Celina was stressed out by the pressures of her life as a junior in high school. But that monotonous life of homework, SAT prep, and classes was all she wanted after she was kidnapped by a Demon King and dragged into a whole new world. Separated from her captor during the transportation process, Celina is left alone and helpless in a foreign and dangerous land. With newly formed allies, she sets out to discover why she’s been brought there and to solve the mystery of what makes her so sought after. She soon discovers that a power she wasn’t aware of has been within her, and not only is a Demon God interested in it, but so is an Angel God. And Celina, a mere human, is caught in a battle between the denizens of Heaven and Hell.
You know shit is awesome when the author has admitted that she’s submitted this word-vomit to “20-30 agencies,” none of whom wanted to look at it. Now there’s room for self-publishing–I’ve reviewed Sarah Diemer–when you’ve got an unconventional narrative or your protagonist is a minority and thus considered “unmarketable,” but given that The Hybrid Child is vacuous cliche-ridden pap about a straight white middle-class US teenager, it’s probably safe to say that agents refused to look at it for reasons other than bigotry or fear of experimental literary techniques. In short, Melissa Goldberg might have considered reevaluating her manuscript and her options, which shouldn’t have included “self-publish it and hope people will buy it for $2 a pop,” because that’s not going to happen. On account of it being shit and having a hilarious cover art. Maybe $0.3? Except you can read much, much better fiction that’s–you know–free, so what’s the incentive to fork over any amount of money at all to read this tripe? It is mainly this astonishment at her lack of good sense that made me decide to review this crud. Plus, I’m pretty sure this is the most publicity this book will ever get, so frankly I deserve compensation.
And what the hell are “Angel Gods” and “Demon Gods”?
Posted by acrackedmoon on July 15, 2012
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/self-publishing-lulz-hybrid-child-by-melissa-goldberg-pt-1/
“I’m one of the good ones” – oppression and myopia in fantasy
In the streets of Waterdeep, conspiracies run like water through the gutters, bubbling beneath the seeming calm of the city’s life. As a band of young, foppish lords discovers there is a dark side to the city they all love, a sinister mage and his son seek to create perverted creatures to further their twisted ends.
And across it all sprawls the great city itself: brawling, drinking, laughing, living life to the fullest.
Even in the face of death.
Many writers you read as a teen you liked, and then when you rediscover them years after a dreadful certainty dawns: this is shit. The Suck Fairy hasn’t come around for a visit, it was always there and you were just too ignorant to realize. The difference is that with Ed Greenwood you recognize the inherent shittiness even when you’re a teen. I think pretty much the only way to read anything he’s touched and think it’s awesome is if you have no capability to recognize good writing or if you are his close friends in which case it’s impolite to outright tell him, “Dude, you can’t fucking write!”
Beyond that, however, this book attempts to touch on class struggle and then promptly discards that idea in favor of upholding the status quo and oppressive oligarchy. It carries out, uncritically, many tropes that makes SFF so regressive, so this won’t be so much a review of this individual book as an overview of certain genre trends, of which this book is extremely illustrative: to wit, certain gendered things and an inability among many fantasy writers to recognize that oppression is an institution, not isolated acts committed by individuals.
Posted by acrackedmoon on July 3, 2012
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/im-one-of-the-good-ones-oppression-and-myopia-in-fantasy/
Ursula le Guin’s THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD
Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.
The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author’s signature world of the Ekumen, “my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows,” as Le Guin describes it — a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as “remarkable . . . a standout.” The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness.
The Birthday of the World is a collection of (mostly) Ekumen stories, the great majority of which dealing with gender and culture. “Coming of Age in Karhide” takes place on the same planet as Left Hand, among the people who are androgynes most of the time and who turn male or female during their mating cycle, leading to a brief period of high libido. This is the weakest story, I feel, of them all. It’s a coming-of-age (well duh) story, but it lacks context, so to speak, and may not be very meaningful to people who have never read Left Hand. It doesn’t begin and end; it starts and then stops. There’s not much of a story here, or much of a character, merely an idea sketch: what it’d be like for a young Gethenian to come into kemmer for the first time and awaken to its sexuality. Notably, unlike in Left Hand where all Gethenians are referred to by male pronouns as the default, here they are referred to by both “she” and “he” with a slant toward female; the protagonist refers to his/her parent as a mother.
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Posted by acrackedmoon on January 1, 2012
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/ursula-le-guins-the-birthday-of-the-world/
beating the Gaiman dead horse, presenting–SANDMAN!
Previously: Gaiman is repetitious and not very good at writing women. Highlights: henpecking, emasculating ice queens and the brown woman who despite being one of the scariest most badass fighters of the hidden magical world fails to kill a monster so that the protagonist, white man, must carry out the task and save the day.
And now! Trigger warnings for all kinds of things because we’re talking about women written by Neil Gaiman.
The thing with Sandman is: Morpheus is just about the only truly unique protagonist in Gaiman’s long line of incredibly identical wonders who reproduce not by keyboard creativity but by mitosis or possibly a clone factory. This means that Morpheus, of necessity, is my favorite Gaiman protagonist. This isn’t just saying that because he’s the only one who doesn’t piss me off by being bland and absolutely unengaging either. I genuinely like the guy (and the comic in which he features)! For a certain definition of “like” anyway.
Unfortunately he’s possibly the single most problematic protagonist Gaiman’s ever written.
Quiz time. Who:
1) treats women like shit
2) mostly gets away with treating women like shit
3) is still supposed to be liked by readers anyway?
Why, it’s our boy Morpheus! Who’s a good boy then? Yes you aren’t! Yes you aren’t.
(more…)
Posted by acrackedmoon on November 15, 2011
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/beating-gaiman-dead-horse-presenting-sandman/
Star Wars: where feminism goes to die
Today I was linked to a review of Fate of the Jedi: Ascension at Fangirlblog.
My interest, as you may have noticed, in Star Wars™ tie-in fiction is at best remote, at worst dripping with contempt because I’ve yet to come across a Star Wars™ novel that is written with a reading level above grade five. I’ve always understood, though, that it does better than WH40K in representation of women, if not of color (especially not color), as long as the woman in question is straight and white and fits the popular media definition of beauty. But hey, it’s a teensy bit better than women in Conan books… probably? Perhaps with relationships less awful than that seen in Twilight… surely?
Hahahaha. Wrong. So, so wrong.
The relevant part in the review is this:
This scene validates that domestic violence against a young woman is okay as long as the young man loves her.
[...]
Ben breaks into Vestara’s locked bedroom and demands that she show him her private files on her computer. He’s not doing this just to be a jerk, of course; he was at first worried about Vestara, then as the scene progresses worried that she might still be betraying the Skywalkers. He tries to seize the computer from her, then grabs her wrists. Defending herself from his intrusive verbal and physical demands, Vestara Force-shoves him away. In return, Ben uses the Force to slap her across the face – the ultimate iconic “put a woman in her place” action by a man. Their confrontation degenerates further. Ben prevails by using the Force to bind Vestara in her bedsheets – no crass symbolism of male sexual domination there – and then proceeds to read her private files despite her sobbing and begging him not to. When he does, he realizes that he has in fact intruded into her deepest personal emotions, the equivalent of reading a teenaged girl’s diary. He apologizes and consoles her by spooning with her on the bed. The scene ends with Vestara proclaiming to Ben that she wants to become a Jedi, and their first kiss.
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Posted by acrackedmoon on August 11, 2011
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/star-wars-where-feminism-goes-to-die/
Neil Gaiman: sorry unbro, it’s not me, it’s you
Ah, Neil Gaiman.
I started off with Sandman, like many others, and from there followed the trail to his works of prose. At first, I liked them well enough: my first was American Gods and, even though I thought the protagonist was a boring personality-void empty-brained bore, everything else in the book was kind of interesting.
Then I read Neverwhere, Stardust and Anansi Boys and a pattern emerged. It’s like having read one paranormal romance, or Forgotten Realms, or Star Wars too many. After a certain point it’s no longer fun and you ram up against the realization that they are all the same fucking story.
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Posted by acrackedmoon on July 9, 2011
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/neil-gaiman-sorry-unbro-its-not-me-its-you/
the name’s Greenwood. Ed Greenwood, neckbeard extraordinaire
Rise, and be not afraid.Widespread and many-tentacled is the evil that threatens Faerûn. Before its heart can be found, all of the Seven Sisters will play a part, and all too much blood will be spilled . . . drow blood.Seven linked novellas tell seven stories of seven sisters by the creator of the Forgotten Realms world!
If the blurb confuses you, don’t worry, it confused the shit out of me too. Let’s face it, “many-tentacled” is just… not a great description for anything except hentai tentacle monsters or octopi; I can accept that the evil in question may possess tentacles, even many tentacles, but “many-tentacled” is just one of those hypthenated adjectives that doesn’t flow, you know?
But in a way it describe the book perfectly–nonsensical, badly written, and full of awkward hyphenated adjectives. Also badly constructed sentences. “Be not afraid”? Be very, very afraid.
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Posted by acrackedmoon on May 14, 2011
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/the-names-greenwood-ed-greenwood-neckbeard-extraordinaire/
