Nice White Lady Authors Take a Hike: 'Vacations from Hell'

[deepad]

A while ago (far longer a while ago than it should be) I rashly committed to writing ‘about a book (or movie) that I really, really, really did not like' for the noble cause of a charity auction for ephemere. Some people were kind enough to bid for it, and crossedwires, who won, was generous enough to say I could write about whatever I felt inspired to.

The problem was though (beyond my being the most incurably lazy creature in shoe leather) that I didn't want to read or watch something that I knew I'd hate! Subjecting myself to shitty media is not pleasant! I have spent a great deal of time and energy figuring out how to protect myself from it and avoid it! And while I enjoy reading an eviscerating rant or three when people expend the energy to write them… it's a lot of work having to justify the sentiment ‘this is a terrible book wot is terrible'.

So after having contemplated my list of pending commitments with squirming guilt (con_or_bust winners, you have not been forgotten!) I decided that I needed to break down and ask for some help. Thus in the spirit of teamwork and This Oughtta Be A Drinking Game, I bring you the collective snark of noldo, delfinnium and marina, who were kind enough to suffer through my reread in group chat.

Together we bring to you: Vacations from Hell –YA Fantasy short stories by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, Sarah Mlynowski (Harper Teen, 2009)

I should warn you, if you do wish to read the book (which, you know, I sincerely suggest you DON’T) that these are meant to be suspenseful mysterious twist-in-the tale-type of stories which the ensuing summaries and commentaries thereof will completely and thoroughly spoil for you.
marina: OH GOD IS THIS YA
marina: ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE ME READ YA
marina: o____________________o
delfinnium: YES SHE IS.
marina: DEEPA I ALREADY HATE YOU
deepad: also. MARINA. you missed the part about how a part of the books proceeds go to a non-profit that helps poor teens with college applications. And then we have a bunch of white college-educated ladies writing about white teenagers on vacations (except for one teenager who is not white but OMG. I will save that horror for the last). I feel like this book is sort of ironic. Rich kids go to vacations and presumably will buy this book for the poor kids who don't go to college.

Cruisin' by Sarah Mlynowski

Summary: Two ‘young’ white girls go on a cruise, befriend a third girl who tells them about a vampire scare, they try to find an attractive white guy for one of the girls to have her first time with, turns out that the girls are vampires and they were talking about the girl’s first time killing, not shagging. They eat the boy and a bunch of other people, turn the 3rd girl, the end.

"Are you sure about the bikini?" I ask now, self-conscious. I don’t bother looking at myself in the mirror. I already know what I look like. Medium boobs, shoulder-length brown hair, not too big, not too small. Just call me Goldilocks. Average, average, average. My eyes are cool, though. I’ll admit that. They’re kind of green and brown and blue. Swirly.

delfinnium: This book is meant to help kids go to school or something and the first story is about a girl whose friend ... is insisting on her wearing a bikini, and apparently wants to get rid of her virginity.What is this, Judy Blume? Except Judy Blume did it better. Um. cruise. The cruise is ~cheap~ OKAY THEN ...... oh god why is she describing herself.
deepad: ok yes! so. This book says part of the proceeds go charity blah blah underprivileged youth going to college blah blah and then, bam, first story - teenage girls on a cruise worrying about whom to lose their virginity. I mean. Talk about your first world problems.
delfinnium: Yeah. I mean. well there IS a lot of pressure on teen girls on the status of virginity but honestly Judy Blume wrote it BETTER.

Liz, with her white string bikini, waist-length wavy red hair, and legs that are longer than my entire body. She’s the Little Mermaid come to life.

deepad: so basically, cute white girl is insecure in relation to other hot white girl, while on a cruise where the only fly in the ointment is potential vampire attacks. This is so so relatable.

"Like many things! Something bad! Gotten her drunk, robbed her, or thrown her over the boat railing. He could be a killer.

deepad Funny how YA pretends to be so Bold and Gritty and yet shies away from the Rape word, huh.
delfinnium: Yeeeeeah Edgy YA. I honestly don't know why Kristin is so worried when this dude basically was ready to rape her, considering she’s about to eat him.
deepad: ok so. let us summarise. two white girls loll around trying to find a suitably attractive white dude to drink the blood off. meanwhile they befriend another white girl and decide she's likeable enough to turn into a vampire. And its edgy because when he seems to be pressuring her into sex she turns around and kills him, like she has been planning to anyway. Am I supposed to feel sympathetic?
delfinnium: I'm not sure. I don't give a fuck about the boy. And I don't give a fuck about the girl either. I guess we're supposed to be all OMG they're VAMPIRES
deepad: Well, what I think the author is going for is gender reversal where the guy is such a slut because he's a player except... I actually don't like slut shaming for anyone? And also, in no way does sexual coercion justify murder and eating people.
delfinnium: I'm getting a River Valley sort of vibe from this where it's Totes okay for the hot girl to apparently sleep with anyone but they get all judgy over a guy who is doing the exact same thing.
deepad well, cause he's 'beneath them' and thus not worthy of being a boyfriend. Also for real, vampires who loll about in the sunlight in bikinis are fucking ridiculous.
delfinnium: Hey, at least they don't sparkle.
deepad Oh god. Twilight has set the bar so low. So so low.

I Don't Like Your Girlfriend by Claudia Gray

Summary: White girl and her mom are witches and go for a family vacation at the coven, where her white teenage rival produces a perfect boyfriend who is also perfect for the white protag. Turns out mean girl is manipulating the boy with spells to be the perfect tabula rasa gigolo, story ends with white girl being vindicated in her hatred and planning to take tennis and horseriding lessons.

• black bikini in case I am feeling brave
  
• purple one-piece in case I am being chicken

deepad: Seriously this whole bikini thing. like... vacations can be had without bikinis. Swimming can happen without bikinis! ::thinks of all the people hitting the waves in salwar-kameezes or chaddis, depending on gender::
delfinnium: We wish. Vacations can be had without the beach. My vacations involve sitting in the library.

Cecily glanced over her shoulder at the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen.
He had blond hair and blue eyes, so striking that she started thinking dorky things about golden sand and dark seas.

deepad: Can I just be racist here and say that I have yet to see a blond-haired blue-eyed white dude who I would put on my top ten list of comely gents.

Kathleen looked great. Super-great, actually. She wasn’t that much cuter than Cecily, who in moments of hard honesty would’ve called them both "average," but the Pruitts had a little more money to spend on clothes, makeup, and highlights for Kathleen’s hair.

delfinnium: What is with this book?! why is it in YA EVERY GIRL MUST DESCRIBE HERSELF AS AVERAGE when basically every adjective is basically I AM SUPERMODEL
marina: Of course. They are all embodiments of Bella Swan.
deepad: this is the Nice Girl syndrome. Nice Girls are average and have friends who are Hot
delfinnium: I have pale creamy skin! I have mousy brown hair. But oh wait must mention boobs.
marina: they are present but never big enough.
deepad: I have swirly tricolour eyes but I am average like goldilocks.I just wish they were eaten by bears like goldilocks. Wait, was goldilocks eaten by a bear? or did she marry the bears. Ok, I have read too much fanfic to remember my fairy tale versions. No seriously. WHAT HAPPENED TO GOLDILOCKS?!
marina: IDK the bears. THE BEARS HAPPEN.
delfinnium: The version I know is she literally ran away from the cottage and the bears shrugged WELP no more idiot brat eating our porridge the end
marina: but yeah that's basically goldilocks. also russian tv made a whole series that is like, the lives of the bears from goldilocks. it was pretty good fanfic.
deepad Bears are more interesting than teenage white girls stressing about bikinis.

(Mom might have understood if Cecily had told her about that stunt the year before, when Kathleen had loudly claimed on the beach that Cecily's tampon string was hanging from her swimsuit, which it so was not. But Cecily could never bring herself to speak of it.)

deepad: So that's kind of decent writing? In that it seems to be what realistic nasty teens might do? I mean, I never wore tampons and bikinis in my teenage years, but I assume from what I learned from watching, you know. Baywatch. That's how Americans might behave?
delfinnium: Yup. (i honestly get a very low opinion of how American teenagers behave because none of this happened to me. Are all American teenagers hooligans?)
noldo: oh this story. Wasn't racist really because no non-white people to racism at. Mostly just stupid bullshit about BOYS THO and WOMEN WHAT RIVALRY OVER BOY BECAUSE THAT IS HOW WOMEN ARE. but eh mostly was fine.
deepad: Right. I liked Cecily being nice to her little brother, though. Definitely the most well-written and down-to-earth story of the lot... which is not saying all that much.

The Law of Suspects by Maureen Johnson

Summary: Two half-French brought-up-in-America sisters go to France for a vacation and end up staying alone at their cousin’s house in Provence. Where they complain about being bored, and then the protagonist meets a murderer and there’s this other guy who tells this story about listening to a story about the guillotine which makes people forced to murder and the protag tries to prevent the guy and her sister from becoming murderers and in the end she ends up almost being a murderer herself. And ends up in a mental asylum.

deepad: There wasn't anything racially offensive in this one as far as I remember. But I was disappointed because normally I like Maureen Johnson’s non-romantic relationships, and this story was just Trying To Be Creepy without any characters I could care about.
noldo: 'Erique' is not a French name... Is it a French name? Google in French is unconvinced that it exists. I'm pretty sure she's using 'Erique' because she wants a French 'Eric'. There is a French 'Eric'! It's 'Eric'!
deepad: I am just feeling so bleh about this story. All this talk of food and whatnot. Like they are all in these free-food-being-handed-out vacation spots, never worrying about money for boarding and lodging, and I'm supposed to feel horror about the dumb supernatural shit they get into. I don't think I am doing it right. I am horrified by the wrong things. Like white american girls wearing bikinis wasting food.
noldo: Yeah. Mostly it is just dumb parodic French accents and stuff which is not actually 'racist', just 'tired and parochial'.
deepad: I think between the olive trees, the rustic cottages, the odd caretaker, and the girls who couldn’t be arsed to speak a word of their grandparents’ tongue, we have achieved every single cliche about Americans doing the Summer in France. She even managed to drag in the French Revolution.

The Mirror House by Cassandra Clare

Summary: White girl accompanies her mom and her step-dad on their honeymoon to Jamaica, along with hot, blonde step-brother whom she has been lusting over before the marriage cause Angst of pseudo-incest. One of their neighbours on the beach is a white lady who is revealed by inscrutable and helpless black serving staff to be a witch hanging around since slave plantation days stealing men’s souls. White lady attempts to steal step-brother’s soul; white girl bargains it back in exchange for soul of step-dad, who is a domestic abuser.

deepad: For reference, Cassie has a thing for incest. Her Mortal Instruments trilogy was based on a fakeout siblingcest. She previously wrote a harry potter fanfic also called Mortal Instruments that was Ron/Ginny actual incest, which was apparently supposed to be a metaphor or something. Also recently racebending featured her because she Stood Up for her one non-white character and insisted the movie cast him as non-white (said character is also part-demon).
noldo: Um. Having skimmed this story. This is set in Jamaica and non-white people get under 5%? 1%? of the dialogue. Dude. The only Jamaicans in this are servants. This is super promising and is really making me look forward to the rest of this.

As it is, I spend most of the time staring out the window and trying not to throw up. It isn’t easy, especially since we keep passing dead animals on the side of the road and sometimes piles of burning garbage that stink like hot plastic.

deepad: Ladies and gentlemen - the exotic reality of third world Jamaica. Where on the road from the airport and the tourist villa these people are staying at, there would totes be dead animals on the road.

I try to turn as the bowls are passed to me to smile at the villa staff, but no one will meet my eyes. The staff is a blur of dark faces and hands, the gleam of a coral-and-gold bracelet as a hand retracts the salad bowl I’m done eating from.
"Thanks," I say, but there is no response. Phillip is forking up curry like it’s going out of style. "What is this?" he says abruptly, spearing a chunk of meat on his fork and shoving it in his mouth.
The tallest of the cooks, a woman with a sharp-boned face and a white kerchief tied around her hair, says, "It is goat curry, sir."
Phillip spits the meat back onto his plate and grabs for a napkin, staring at the cook with accusing eyes. I look down at the table, trying not to laugh.

deepad: 'a blur of dark faces and hands'. You know, there is Libba Bray's kind of ‘Har Har Your Racism Is A Mile High’ writing, and then there's this sort. Also, I am SO SICK of Racism being a signifier of villainy. Bad white people don't appreciate exotic food. Good white people thank the blurry wait staff. They can write about vampires and demons, but the idea that a good nice heroic white person could be racist - it is inconceivable.
delfinnium: I am also, really, really stunned at the fact that you eat curry with a fork. Dear lord, has this person never eaten curry before? Also, is mutton/goat so exotic? Sheesh. Try crocodile. (it is delicious by the way)

I lie out on a lounger by the pool, the straps of my blue suit pushed down over my arms to avoid tan lines. My mom won’t let me buy a bikini.

deepad: jesus fuck this obsession with bikinis. It’s come up twice already in the other stories.
noldo: Healthy aspirations for your teenage girl audience.
delfinnium: When on vacation, wear a bikini. Every teenage girl needs one! Wait, no, only White Teen girls do.

Finally I put the book down and wander into the kitchen to get a Coke. The woman from last night, the tall cook who told Phillip he was eating goat, is standing by the sink washing up our dishes from breakfast. Today her headscarf is bright red, the color of a tropical bird.
She turns when she sees me. "What can I help you with, miss?" Her accent is as soft as flower petals.

deepad: Accent as soft as flower petals. Ok so Libba’s story had an accent as thick as bread. American accents = sour as moldy cheese?
noldo: "her headscarf is bright red, the color of a tropical bird." A tropical bird. Not any old ordinary mundane bird mind you. Birds are only red in the tropics, you understand.
deepad: Right because there are no red birds in the US like red breasted robins or cardinals.

"I just wanted a Coke." I get the feeling I shouldn’t be in here, that the kitchen is the domain of the staff, even if all I want is a can of soda. Sure enough, instead of directing me toward the fridge, she retrieves the bottle herself, pops it open, and pours it into a glass for me.
"Thanks." I take it, the cool glass feeling good against my fingers. "What’s your name?"
"My name?" She raises her dark eyebrows. They’re perfect arches, like she plucks them every day. "I am Damaris."
"Damaris and Damon," I say, and then wish I hadn’t; I sound like a moron. Maybe she doesn’t even know Damon well.

noldo: The nice brown staff, wot know their place! Kitchens are their domain!
deepad: See!! following class divides is good! Its creepy when rich people do their own work
noldo: She's surprised to be asked for her name! Because she’s good invisible brown staff!
deepad: Its ominous!

But Damaris’s lovely, blank face gives away nothing.

deepad: can I see you an Inscrutable Other and raise you an Exotic Other?
noldo: indade!

The beach arcs away to the south, lined with small, brightly painted houses in tropical colors: hot pink, acid green, frog-belly yellow.

deepad: Someday someone is going to write a thesis about which colours get called ‘tropical’ and where.
noldo: not racism, but just confusing: "a hot-pink house, the color of a rose blossom" … rose blossoms, typically hot pink? really?
deepad: so btw cassie clare has a thing with colours, and by thing I mean she uses them really intentionally, to evoke certain ideas while being absolutely descriptively wrong. So like, her books are peppered with silver eyelashes and violet veins and whatnot. Like she knows the triggers really well. (I have fond memories of reading a sporking of Cassie’s first book with an entertaining digression on how she described an attractive (white) boy’s eyes as antifreeze green.)

I’m surprised by the lack of activity. We can’t be the only people staying in this area, can we? Travel brochures are always advertising "deserted beaches" as if it’s something really desirable, but in reality it’s kind of creepy.

deepad: does she mean white people? because it sounds like there were a whole bunch of black people being 'the staff'. Also I will pointedly not mention the difference in reaction that white tourists at every Indian beach I’ve seen have to other white tourists (‘popular beach’) vs brown locals (‘crowded beach’).
noldo: I suspect she means white people by dint of meaning 'tourists' but that's not less gross.

It’s Evan. He isn’t wearing a shirt, just board shorts and flip-flops. His skin is as pale as mine is, but his wheat blond hair looks bright gold in the hot light. He has a few pale freckles splashed across his cheeks and nose, and I try to remember but can’t if those are new or if he’s always had them.[...]His eyes are glowing too, in the darkness. I remember the first time I ever saw Evan loping across the quad at school with his bag slung over his shoulder, his bright hair shining in the sunlight. He moved like someone with purpose, like there was a shimmering, invisible road only he could see and his feet were on it and he knew where he was going. I’d never seen him before—it turned out later he was new that year, having moved to town with his dad from Portland—and he didn’t look like any boy I’d ever liked. I went for the hipster boys: worn jeans and glasses and serious hair. Evan was clean and sporty and he shone like gold in the sunlight, and from that moment I wanted him like I had never wanted anyone before.

deepad: ah and we have achieved another blonde haired and blue eyed boy.
noldo: And he's shiny. Evan shone in the sunlight twice in one paragraph.
deepad: Yes bright but not tropical bright. because that's DIFFERENT. Gold. I forgot, thats another colour she uses a lot. like seriously, someone should do a search for gold, silver and violet in her books. I am willing to bet good money they show up more than other colours. Well, and red, for blood, because she also writes Angst.
deepad: Also the big tragic UST is coming from genetically unrelated teenagers who have just become step siblings. Somehow I am not moved by this.

There’s a woman coming out of the pink house. She pushes open the blue-painted iron gate and walks out onto the sand. Except she doesn’t just walk. She moves like a wave. Her hips roll, and her hair, which is long and white blond, ripples like foam on the sea. She’s wearing a sort of printed sarong. It’s split down one side, and you can see the whole of her perfectly tanned leg when she walks. She’s got on a white bikini top, and the way she fills it out makes me want to cross my arms over my chest to hide how flat I am.

deepad: so one more blonde beautiful person in jamaica, who has a "faint, indefinable accent".

I block them out, the way I always do when they fight, trying to concentrate on the sound of the sea instead. Everyone always says it sounds like the inside of a seashell, but I think it sounds like the beat of a heart, with its regular, pounding rhythm and the soft rush of water like the rush of blood through veins.

noldo: ...
noldo: what
noldo: this
noldo: what?
noldo: The sea doesn’t sound like the inside of a seashell, it sounds like a heartbeat. That isn’t … Half of the seashell sound is your goddamn heartbeat, honey.
deepad: She does this kind of stuff all the time!!! Like its poetic and mysterious and portentous and also full of crap because who the fuck says the sea sounds like the inside of a seashell?!
noldo: just. what

"That town we drove through on our way here?" Phillip tears a chunk of bread in half. "It looked like a dump, Carol." "Apparently there’s a market there every weekend, with people bringing items from all around. And you can take boat trips up the river, see crocodiles in the water…."

deepad: so we're supposed to think he's the bad racist, except violet was the one complaining about the dead animals and burning things
noldo: One sec. So. The drive she's complaining about with the dead animals and the bad roads is Kingston to Black River.
noldo: here are some photographs of the road from kingston to black river.
deepad: OH SNAP SON (plus bonus comely gents on bikes)
noldo: 'Washboard dirt road' my ASS. Like the first dirt road I'm seeing is once they're inside the hotel.

There was just no way that this boy, who I watched every day at school, whose every mannerism I’d memorized—the way he flicked his hair out of his eyes or fiddled with his watch when he was bored—was the offspring of Phillip. Boring, tight-lipped, sallow-faced Phillip couldn’t possibly have a son who looked like that.

deepad: ok. well, Evan is gold but bad guy Philip is sallow and yellow. And there is a longer point to be made about how Cassie fetishises physical beauty in different ways for her heroes and villains, but that would entail me having to reread her books, which. NO.

I wouldn’t have thought any boy who looked like he did had interests outside maybe sports and girls, just like I never would have thought he’d have any time at all for a skinny, unpopular girl who wore unmatching socks and boys’ T-shirts because she didn’t know what she was supposed to be wearing anyway.

deepad: It’s always so convenient for the teenage girls to dismiss themselves as ‘skinny’ and supposedly unattractive, no? Heaven forbid fat teenagers get persuaded of their desirability through the power of golden shiny male teenage lust.

Evan is sitting up as well, and I follow his gaze to see Mrs. Palmer, the lady from the pink house. [...] She is wearing a long pink dress today, almost the same color as her house, its halter neck leaving her brown shoulders bare. She has sunglasses on.

deepad: Brown but not like Native brown. (Remember in Enid Blyton when all the kids were ‘brown as berries’? Ah for the Days of Yore when white people could call themselves brown because there were no actual brown people around to set the standard.)

"Some water, miss?" It is Damaris, her face a carved mask in the moonlight. She holds out a glass to me, iced with drops along the side.

deepad: More Inscrutables, with bonus Tribal Mask connotations.

The sand burns my feet through the flip-flops, but I have nothing else to wear. I endure the pain until the sand turns cold again outside Mrs. Palmer’s house.

deepad: Ok this just made me LOL. the POOR KID. SHE HAS NO SHOES. SHE ENDURES THE PAIN
noldo: ahahaha
deepad: Also she's been prancing around all day being Ms Plucky Girl Detective in a bathing suit. This is why white people coming to beaches are such a nuisance.
noldo: One of the few amusing things my mom has ever said was that she couldn't deal with Goa because of all the white people sunburning themselves there, like sad sausages.

Back at the villa I head into the kitchen to wash my hands. I watch the pink threads of my blood mix with the water and swirl down the drain. When I turn away from the sink, I see Damon standing in the doorway watching me. He hands me a package of Band-Aids without a word.

deepad: Stoic, Silent Servant. Sigh.

It’s a living room, with plain, hard, modern furniture, nothing like the luxurious tropical furnishings at the villa.

deepad: modern vs. tropical, cause no way could the tropical be modern.
noldo: hah

Damon is there, in the shade, a white hat tipped back on his head. He is inspecting one of the sprinklers. It all seems so normal that I feel foolish when I walk up to him and say, "I need to talk to your sister."
He looks at me, his dark eyes fathomless. "My sister?"
"Damaris," I say. "Please."
After a moment he flips open his cell phone, dials, and speaks into it in such a hasty dialect that I can’t understand any of what he’s saying. After a moment he shuts the phone and turns to me with a curt nod. "She say wait for her under the flame tree."

deepad: What is a hasty dialect? And if she can't understand it how does she know its a dialect, and not a creole, or a totally different language? I mean really.
noldo: ugh ugh ugh aahhhhhhhhhhh no words for how much I hate people who misuse technical words like that
deepad: Also, ‘fathomless’ eyes. One would think Jamaicans were a dour, unrelentingly stoic set of people. Except, you know, have you heard their music?

She watches me while I talk, her face immobile, until I am done, and I say, "Who is she, Damaris? What is she?"
"You really want to know?" she asks.
"I do," I say. "Please tell me."
"She is a witch," says Damaris. "A very old one. Not all magic is bad, but her kind is. She owned a plantation once, or at least her husband did. They say he used to beat her. One day she rise up, kill him with her own hands. Then she start to kill the slaves, one by one. Just the men, you understand. She make them love her, and then she suck the life from them and leave them to die as husks, like empty seed-pods. She like the young and the pretty ones, but if she cannot take those, she will take any man. She lure them with a magic drink, and once they have a taste, they are hers. She take their souls and feed on them so she can stay young and beautiful. For hundreds of years she has done this. Sometimes she kill them quick, sometimes she wait, play with them for a while. Like she playing with your brother."

noldo: The only real lines Damaris gets, they're Very Ungrammatical so that you know it's brown lady talking.
deepad: UGH ok this is an attempt at the patois right UGH
(noldo: Yeah and it isn't even self-consistent.

"She cannot die," says Damaris. "Long ago they killed this woman and buried her in a grave with special markings to keep her from walking again. But even that will not hold her in the earth. Her magic is strong and deadly and she lives forever. Harm her and she will have her vengeance on you and your children after you. But you—you are a foreigner. You are leaving, going where she can’t hurt you. So I can tell you how to hurt her. She feeds on the souls she takes. Destroy those, and you will take her power long enough to get your stepbrother back."
"But where does she keep them?"
"I do not know where they are," Damaris says. "But you are a clever girl. Maybe you can figure it out."

deepad: DING DING DING BINGO. SO. Basically, WHAT THESE PEOPLE NEED IS A HONKY!!! With a side of Magical Inscrutable Negroes.

Her mouth opens, and then I see her eyes go to the key in my left hand. "Damaris," she says. "That woman is a meddler. She never knows when to stay out of other people’s business."
"I want you to leave my stepbrother alone," I tell her. "I want you to let Evan go."
Despite her anger her red lips curl into a smile. "Damaris must have told you it’s not that easy."
"If you don’t let him go, I’ll come back—I’ll smash the rest of these—I’ll tell everyone where you’re keeping the souls, and then everyone will know—[...]"I love him. Damaris said he could only be helped by someone who loves him—"
"But he doesn’t love you," she says. "That is how men are. They take the love you give them and they twist it until it becomes a stick to beat you with." She glances at the club in her hand; her look is vicious. "Tell me I have no right to even the score, Violet. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same in my place. Men are a curse on women’s lives and you know it."
In my mind I see Phillip and my mother at his feet, picking fruit off the ground with bleeding fingers. "I don’t know what I think about men," I say. "But Evan is only a boy. He isn’t good or evil or anything else yet. He shouldn’t be punished."
"He will grow up to be like the rest of them," says Mrs. Palmer, who murdered her husband in his own bed. In a distant sort of voice, she continues, "They all do. That is why I will not give him up."
I think of Anne Palmer’s husband, the man with the stick. "Damaris said you wouldn’t give Evan up for nothing," I say. "But he’s young and weak. What if I could find you something even better?"

deepad: Also bonus points for.. you can't help anyone else, but you can save your precious white dude. She... basically just bargained to save the white boy, and gave over her abuser stepfather because she thought it was fair for Mrs. Palmer’s argument about wife-beating (white) husbands.
Guess who she did NOT think about? The non-wifebeating SLAVES of the white plantation owners who are STILL IMPRISONED.
THOSE DUDES CAN JUST STAY TRAPPED CAUSE ANYWAY I BET THEY WERE BLACK AND INSCRUTABLE AND DIDN’T SHINE GOLDEN LIKE A WHITEBOY. Because... justice has been served?
noldo: yep! ka-tching
deepad: ok well, there you go. Colourful atmospheric story about white people in Jamaica, because as The Impossible showed us, no one can do Angst in exotic locales like white people can.

Nowhere Is Safe by Libba Bray

Summary: A biracial American boy and his friends go vacationing through Eastern Europe where they come across a devil-worshipping town. They think the old people in the town are going to sacrifice them to the devil but it turns out its the young people who want to kill them to ensure the prosperity of their village. The boy and some of his friends escape from the vengeance of ghosts of sacrifices past and go on to fight werewolves.

deepad: ok so you GUYS. This last story is by Libba "I just racefailed a million ways in my trilogy" Bray. You guys have seen my post about her Great and Terrible Beauty right? So basically my button is set to DEFCON FLAMETHROWER with her
delfinnium: oh
delfinnium: my
delfinnium: god
deepad: so what does she do in this story? SHE SETS OUT TO EARN HERSELF SOME COOKIES!!!! COOKIES FOR THE NICE WHITE LADY!!! WE BEGIN -

"My name's Poe, by the way. Poe Yamamoto. And that's Poe as in Edgar Allan. Yeah, 'cause what guy doesn't want to be saddled with that name?"

deepad: GETIT GUYS HE BIRACIAL GET IT GETIT
delfinnium: honestly which japanese father would name his son that. REALLY. NO. WHICH ACTUAL JAPANESE FATHER WOULD - *whimpers*
marina: WOW. poe yamamoto - vampire hunter

"Hey, let's go off the grid, check out some of these mysterious towns in Eastern Europe, hunt for vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the Slavic night."

deepad: you guys. Eastern Europe is right up there with Africa as one of those amorphous countries. It is totes a country.
marina: yep yep. it's where the exotics live. like real europe - only more mysterious
delfinnium: if you dont wanna set it in Africa or Asia set it in East Europe!
deepad: yes the slavs. But no muslims because those are all in the middle east. tribal black people in africa, brown moslem arabs in middle east, and vampires and kingdoms without heirs in eastern Europe.
marina: GOD DEEPA. I have half a bottle of vodka in my freezer, I'm pretty much afraid I'll resort to it after this
deepad: vodka? you must be a slav.
marina: I am of course. Though don't tell the slavs - they'd disagree
noldo: dude I am having a small moment of Amateur Linguist rage at Libba. dear god, if you're going to use the word 'Slavic' fifty thousand times why, why, why are you writing in Romanian? Why? That isn't even Slavic, what are you doing?!

You take a train through the kind of forest that's older than anything we have here, older than anything you can imagine.

deepad: ok so for the record this whole meme about the US having no history. I agree, but not about trees. I mean. there are some fucking old trees in the US. they have signs on them saying so. I feel bad for the US trees
marina: poor US trees. having their history erased
delfinnium: americans love thinking that they're such poor dears having no history they need to take some back from other countries
deepad: NO NO SHE'S MOCKING HER OWN NATION. COOKIE FOR LIBBA BRAY!!!

It was always hard to resist Izzie when she was being adventurous. We'd been best friends since seventh grade when she'd immigrated from Haiti and I'd arrived from the big city, and we'd held on to each other like buoys lost on a dark, uncertain sea.

deepad: GUIZE GUIZE SHE'S FROM HAITI ANOTHER COOKIE. WHY DO ALL THE NON-WHITE KIDS SIT TOGETHER AT THE CAFETERIA
marina: wow. truly, a brotherhood of nations is what libba's created there

an old lady with a smell like garlic and an accent dense as brown bread

deepad: WOW BUT LIBBA DIDN'T REFER TO SKIN WITH FOOD ANALOGIES. COOKIE!!!
marina: wow so necuratul. I don't speak every language spoken in eastern europe or anything but WOW is that wrong wrong wrong. in every way.
noldo: seriously, you couldn't name your fantasy evil town anything more interesting than 'the Devil' in Romanian really. Necuratul. Really.

Somehow Mrs. Smith didn’t seem like the name of an Eastern European fortune-teller who smelled of garlic and got on at Budapest. I guess our faces gave it away, because she gave us a little shrug. "It was easy to paint on my truck. Besides, everybody knows someone named Smith.

deepad: NO SHIT POE YAMAMOTO. Also I’m sorry, but how many Smiths are there even in Western Europe, much less Eastern Europe?

Mrs. Smith was staring at my face, and I automatically felt my armor coming on. Like it was the first day of seventh grade all over again: Yo, slant eyes. Gook. Sushi roll. Hey, you're Asian—can you help me with my math homework?

deepad: YOU GUIZE LIBBA KNOWS HOW RACISM HAPPENS. SHE KNOWS HOW ASIANS GET RACISMED! COOKIE!!!!!
delfinnium: SHE GOOGLED YO
marina: btw since there are a ton of mixed caucasian/asian people in eastern Europe I'm assuming unlike in the US his looks would cause less comments? or he'd suddenly have to deal with some very differently flavored racism, depending on whether they actually are in eastern europe?
delfinnium: it should. I mean his accent and the way he dresses should raise more comment than his looks.... and the rest of the people's names. John. Isabel. Okay then.

"You have one blue eye and one brown," she said. I folded my arms over my chest like I was daring her to get into it. "Yeah. Genetic fluke. My dad's Japanese. My mom's American."

delfinnium: one blue eye and one brown?
marina: WOW. WOW. I JUST. WOW.
noldo: seriously. please tell me this isn't how she imagines genetics works
delfinnium: yes biology works like that. he's totally not a chimera or something. magical Biracial one eye looking at sky one eye looking at earth
deepad: GUIZE YOU GUIZE. HE'S BIRACIAL. WITH ONE EYE FROM EACH SIDE. GETIT GETIT. ITS LIKE A METAPHOR
delfinnium: THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BIRACIAL. OHGOD GENETICS PLEASE GET IT
deepad Also, ::cough:: I think Ms. Bray means ‘Asian' and ‘White' since both his parents are US citizens but whatevs, a little authorial racism is ok after all her Hard Work earning cookies amirite?

"Dude," Baz whispered in my ear, his white-boy dreads tickling the side of my face.

deepad: DUDE LIBBA IS DOWN DAWG. SHE KNOWS TO CALL THEM WHITE BOY DREADS

She looked pretty all sleepy, the sunlight dappled across her ebony cheekbones.

deepad: just in case you forgot Izzie was from HAITI and BLACK.
delfinnium: they're in Nebulous Eastern Europe and want to see Evil Town and everyone keeps naming Random Other Cities from Not Eastern Europe

When she got to Isabel, she seemed to bristle. Isabel crossed her arms over her cut-up Ramones T. "Great," she muttered. "Racists. My favorite."

deepad: BECAUSE THE RACISTS ARE IN EASTERN EUROPE WHERE THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN A BLACK PERSON, THE SLAVS
marina: it's where they all go to congregate, it's true
delfinnium: dear lord, he calls them 'speaking some foreign language' and then wearing 'peasant style’ clothing. Dude. Libba has No Writing Ability
she should just set this damn story in her home town or something. At least there she wouldn't have to do TOO much research on How The Racism Happens

"What is the language anyway?" Baz asked, trying to come off as worldly. "Sounds a little Romanian? Hungarian?"
"It's Necuratuli. It's traditional to the village.

noldo But But. those are about as alike as fuck I don't know Hindi and Cantonese.
delfinnium: you could write it off as Baz just throwing words around. like dude only knew he was going to Eastern Europe and thus the languages there MUST be something like Romanian OR Hungarian! or. something god knows why I'm trying to justify this *cries*
deepad: I am getting flashbacks to every fantasy eastern European kingdom with its own language. btw Libba Bray totally wrote the gypsies as speaking ROMANIAN in her trilogy
marina: WOW. just FYI most of eastern europe - especially since they're apparently in central eastern europe - has been conquered and changed regimes so many times that 1 - a lot of places have changed names a billion times, 2 - individual language for a village? ARE YOU FOR REAL. A dialect maybe, an accent, certainly, but EASTERN EUROPE IS NOT THAT BIG and not that isolated and has been conquered a billion times all over. If a town is still alive past 2000 you can bet it speaks some kind of common tongue of the country it's in. You don't really get to be THAT ISOLATED.
You know this so reeks of US tourists who end up in under-industrialized little places in eastern europe with poverty and lack of technology and assume it's ~frozen in time~ or disconnected from the central government or whatever. WHEN THAT IS NOT THAT CASE.
delfinnium: see Marina, they have no CARS. how can they NOT be isolated!?

"But they believed it was necessary. And beliefs have power. That’s why superstitions are so hard to root out," Mariana said. She ran a finger around the ancient edges of the page. "They say that up until the English missionaries came in the late eighteen hundreds, the sacrifices were still going on."
"Whoa," John said.
"Sorry to scare you," Mariana said with a half-hearted laugh. She closed the book with a heavy thwump that sent dust motes spiraling. "Of course, the missionaries put a stop to it right away, destroyed the goat’s head, all the symbols, and the red robes—in fact, to this day, the color red is forbidden in this town. It’s supposed to be the devil’s color. The missionaries started making sure the children were educated and sent some of the boys away to school in England."

deepad: DUDE THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES TRAIPSING AROUND THE WORLD DESTROYING NATIVE PAGAN CULTURES. They finally got around to reaching devilandia in 1800. Which means they were pagan devil worshippers OBVIOUSLY. BECAUSE OF COURSE ISLAM NEVER WENT TO EASTERN EUROPE (remember - moslem=brown and arab) also there were no jews. or... anyone but pagan devil worshippers
marina: OH. MY. GOD. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE FUCK WERE ENGLISH PEOPLE DOING THERE SERIOUSLY. WHAT. Germans maybe? Italians? WHAT THE FUCK DID THE ENGLISH DO OVER THERE
delfinnium: because English Missionaries are everywhere. if someone speaks English in Eastern Europe it must be English Missionaries
marina: JESUS FUCK DO THEY REALIZE HOW MANY THINGS ENGLISH MISSIONARIES CONCERNED THEMSELVES WITH OTHER THAN NOBODY-CARES EASTERN EUROPE. I CAN’T. I ACTUALLY CANNOT I thought the limit would be that orson scott card book where we find out russia was christianized in the 10th century by english people BUT NO. NO APPARENTLY THERE'S MORE I JUST I CAN’T also I love that there were NO OTHER MISSIONARIES AROUND ever to convert these pagans the ENGLISH HAD TO SCHLEP ALL THE WAY FROM ENGLAND
deepad: no see see, LIBBA BRAY KNOWS ABOUT PROSELYTIZING MISSIONARIES WHO KILL LOCAL CULTURE. COOKIES PEOPLE!!!!! FOCUS ON THE COOKIES!!!!
noldo: ahaha oh my god this christianisation thing no honey Lithuania was the last to Christianise and that was in the late 1400s you know nicht whereof you speak but hey who needs facts
delfinnium: nope. facts not needed. In the great game of Who Christinaized Where, the answer is always The British Did it.
deepad: You can keep your facts to yourself missy. Don't you know this book will send poor kids to college!!!!

A dark-haired guy in a leather jacket kissed Mariana on both cheeks and introduced himself to us. His name was Vasul, and he had a scholarship to the London School of Economics. He was twenty, like Mariana, and looked like a Russian prince.

marina: Vasul is... possible, but odd sounding. Also the only google results for "vasul" are "vasul raja" so, clearly vasul is leftover research from her previous trilogy
noldo: Based on five minutes with Google I want to argue that 'Vasul' is--drumroll plz--'the ship' ... the ship! (The ‘vessel’?) I am naming my next fictional character 'the undertrousers'.
delfinnium: The... Ship? I think that's an awesome name. has...character. Very British.

"My grandmother still holds on to the old ways some." When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me about being in the internment camps during World War II. And when it was too much for her to talk about, she'd just end the conversation with, "Fear leads to foolishness." Then she'd teach me Japanese calligraphy, guiding my brush gracefully over the paper. Later we'd go to McDonald's. She loved their fries.

deepad: YOU GUYS SHE REMEMBERED THE JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS. COOKIE!!!!
marina: ALSO THEN WE WENT TO MCDONALDS BECAUSE AMERICA IS STILL AWESOME
deepad: Libba's cheeky like that. she shows three dimensional characters who have depth with their racism traumas
delfinnium: so many cookies

"Exactly," Baz slurred. His eyes were at half-mast. "Like last year, when I was dating Chloe? My parents got all bunged. And they're, like, total liberals and everything, but they were freaked that she wasn't Jewish. Like all of a sudden the menorah came out and my dad started asking if I wanted to go to temple Friday night." He grinned. "I told him Friday was a different religious occasion: Doctor Who. Hey, it's not my fault they don't have TiVo yet."
Mariana gave a thumbs-up. "TiVo!"
"TiVo." Vasul nodded.
Everybody clinked glasses, shouting "TiVo!" till the old-timers shushed us.

deepad: Look Look Jews can be bigoted too!!!! COOKIE!!! for diversity of bigotry!!! Also does Tivo exist outside of the US? Would ‘slavs' in ‘Eastern Europe’ have Tivo?
marina: well, today, yes, but it's not called tivo. Also outside of big cities... it depends on where you are in eastern europe but for the most part VERY MUCH NO.
delfinnium: I don't have Tivo? if they had idiot american kids coming in all the time they might well call it 'Tivo' >.<

"There are times when I think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to come back here. It’s peaceful. It’s safe. No STDs, processed foods, pollution." He paused. "No bombs."
Mariana put her hand on his arm. "Vasul survived the terrorism in London. He was at Russell Square. He saw what happened," Mariana explained.
"It could have been me on that bus," Vasul said softly. "Feels like the world’s going to hell sometimes. Like nowhere is safe anymore."

deepad: YOU GUIZE no STDS in villages. presumably because of their homespun handmade condoms out of organic antique sheepskin
delfinnium: .... no stds *burbles* I WOULD wonder about the inbreeding thing in Small Peaceful Villages.
marina: WOW. Also UM. I hate to tell them this but eastern europe has seen more wars than england in the last century like, BY FAR and there are suicide bombings and things and military campaigns that are ONGOING unlike in western europe.
delfinnium: no see Eastern Europe is Saaafe it isn't the middle east! it is all Idyllic Mountains and Green Rolling hills and Quaint little Houses with Evil Eyes painted everywhere
deepad: no no marina. wars happen in Africa and Middle East. Eastern Europe has vampires and kingdoms. get your geography straight
marina: of course. And castles. shit tons of castles
deepad: also please note mention of actual traumatic events like the bombing in Russell Square. This is important because it comes up later.

Mariana said something to Vasul in their language. "Anyway," she said with a sigh, "it’s a moot point. These people—our parents and grandparents, great-grandparents—they’re getting old now. When they die off, the village will die with them. All this culture will be lost. Especially if they’re relocated because of the power plant. I’ve seen it happen before. Diaspora."
"That’s sad," Isabel said softly, and I knew she was thinking about her own family forced out of Haiti and transplanted in American suburbs where they never quite got past the polite smiles of their white neighbors.

delfinnium: awww she knows the word diaspora. awww she knows about traumatic immigration! nevermind she'd basically built up that... the kids kind of hate it?
marina: wow. they were transplanted into the SUBURBS? Can I swap my immigration trauma for theirs?
deepad: GUIZE. COOKIES FOR ZOMG LOST CULTURES. COOKIES FOR TRAUMATIC IMMIGRATION. LIBBA BRAY - SHE'S SO WITH IT. SHE IS MOURNING FOR LOST CULTURE. Of course, there might be the small point that people aren't normally forced out of haiti and living in the suburbs is the american dream which means izzie's parents are doing well for themselves but libba understands their INNER PAIN BECAUSE OF RACISM
delfinnium: why would the Americans Pull Haitians out of there?
deepad: I don't think she meant the americans pulled them out. I think she meant they were forced out of haiti because.... reasons. war. starvation. poverty. one of those mysterious nebulous reasons non-white people have to leave their ancient cultures.
marina: Also can I just say a small dying town in eastern europe would SHIT THEMSELVES WITH JOY for a power plant. Like, tradition is nice and all but wow would it not be THAT big of a deal giving it up for, say, EMPLOYMENT
delfinnium: you know those kids who are going away to study and shit. Usually if they DO come back aren't they all THIS IS HOW WE SHALL REJUVENATE~ ~ ~ AND BUILD SHIT.
marina: yeah so many kids going away to study with the great schools and the money this town has instead of say, succumbing to poverty and alcoholism.
delfinnium: I'm not sure how those kids got the money TO send away to school .... no wait
delfinnium: satan.
delfinnium: satan gave them the money
marina: lololol
deepad: ahahahaha
marina: british missionaries
deepad: LOL
delfinnium: them british missionaries really hang around a lot
deepad: I think libba read a book once. about how horrible the british missionaries were in, you know, colonalisedlandia. so of course they'd hop over to eastern europe maybe. I mean, you never read about the german missionaries. or the dutch missionaries
marina: Can I just say you know what this reminds me of? I did a project once where a bunch of journalists from US/Canada came to israel for Gay Pride. it was a weekend in tel aviv with the parade and shit. So one of the US people went to a lesbian nightclub during the weekend and then we asked her how it was and she was all "It was really nice, but the music made me so sad" and we were like, why? And she was all "it was all music in English. I'm so sad whenever I see native cultures disappear and be replaced by western influences" and we were like "................" The native culture of music in lesbian night clubs in tel aviv? jesus fuck. the native culture is "MTV Europe".
delfinnium: she wanted to hear music in Israeli you know, Native Gay Culture. You mean you don't do..... hell I'm not sure what she expected you guys to do… sing love songs in Israeli
deepad: I WISH TO HEAR LESBIAN LOVE SONGS IN ISRAELI. Never mind that "israeli' is about as real a language as 'Indian'
marina: IKR. THIS IS LIKE THAT. oh no, this beautiful native culture will be gone!
delfinnium: the worst part is this 'beautiful native culture' scares the FUCK out of everyone living in that village

I felt a hand gripping my arm. It was the old woman who had let us in at the gate. Her expression was angry, and she unleashed a torrent of language, all guttural vowels and unfamiliar consonants that made me dizzy.
"I don’t understand!" I shouted over the rain.
"Devil," she said, using her only other English word.

deepad: ok can we get a hup hup for racist tolkein linguistics where everything sounds vaguely turkish and gutteral
delfinnium: She just basically thought foreign language = guttural! only civilised languages have possible vowels apparently.
noldo: honestly why are we talking about guttural vowels? may I conclude her characters are speaking a little known Khoisan language that desperately needs to be documented? for science!
noldo: and so there's this chick who speaks terrifyingly guttural foreign languages, right?... whereupon we hear her say "A bea." which is um. very Romanian. At which point I note: Honey, if Romanian is your idea of guttural I don't even know what to say to you, given if you got more Latinate than Romanian you'd actually be Cicero and I thought Westerners were all over that shit.
deepad: ok so they are talking Romanian.
noldo: bad, bad Romanian.
delfinnium: everyone evil speaks romanian
deepad: It's like libba's go to language considering she said the gypsies were talking it in GATB.
noldo: dude ten bucks says she's trying to code these people as 'gypsies' without actually saying that because it would be too racist
deepad: no no she did gypsies in her first book. This one's about eastern european pagal devil worshippers totally different from gypsies who roam the earth in camps and you know. are Shifty. Also kind of dark and never blonde.

John and Isabel continued an argument they’d started a few weeks back. I didn’t even think they cared about what they were saying anymore, but neither wanted to concede.
"I just think everybody in America should speak English. I mean, if I moved to France, I’d learn French, right?"
"No you wouldn’t," Isabel said, laughing. It was her you-are-beneath-me laugh. "You’d hire someone to speak French for you, John."
"You think I’d outsource my language?" he taunted.
"In a heartbeat."
"You know, Isabel, it’s not my fault I’m not poor," John teased, but there was something a little mean in it. "It’s like you want me to apologize for having money until it comes in handy. No offense, but you know you guys wouldn’t even be here right now without me."
Isabel pointed a finger. "There it is: the entitled attitude. One minute you’re all, ‘Oh, don’t blame me; I’m not elitist,’ and the next you’re like, ‘Don’t forget I have more money and therefore more say than you do!’" She was breathing hard.
"God! You just…twist around everything I say."
"No! I’m just saying what you really feel! Sometimes I think you’re only dating me so you can say you’ve dated a black girl."
John looked hurt. "Take that back."
"Why? It’s true, isn’t it?"
"Guys, could we give it a rest?" I said. A fog was rising. It made the landscape gray and indistinguishable, and I needed to get my bearings.
Isabel tried not to look wounded, but I knew her too well. "Stop enabling them, Poe. They’ll never let us into the club on their own. You just want to think they will."
"Hey," Baz held out his arms. "What am I, chopped liver? Like my people weren’t also enslaved and persecuted? Like we didn’t get slaughtered in places just like this one?"
"Prejudice isn’t the same thing as racism," Isabel argued.
"Yeah? Six million dead might disagree with you there, Iz."
"I’m not the bad guy, Iz," John said softly.

deepad: ok so hands up. how many interracial relationships have arguments like "you're dating me because I'm XYZ" in public. also you GUIZE. LIBBA BRAY HAD THE PREJUDICE ISN'T THE SAME THING AS RACISM ARGUMENT. SHE BROUGHT UP THE HOLOCAUST. IT'S LIKE SHE DID GRAD SCHOOL LEVEL OF RACISM STUDIES.
I feel like that whole conversation was a result of Libba Bray lurking on racefail discussions and Taking Notes, it comes off as so fake and tone-deaf.

I knew it had been a bad idea to come into the forest. My grandmother used to say you should listen to your instincts. The morning the men came to tear her family from their home in California, she'd woken up at four in the morning with the urge to run. Instead she'd tried to calm herself by arranging her dolls around a teacup, like everything was fine. "That is what we do," she said to me as we waited for the bus. "We try to kill the voice inside that says the truth, because the fear of the truth is greater than any other fear."

deepad: So she just compared the japanese internment with being afraid of ghostly kids. Also. Apparently if PoC were more brave and accepted what their inner voices were telling them, they could avoid RACISM
delfinnium: Libba Knows What's What with Japanese Internment. they should have just run!
deepad: COOKIES for problem solving!!!!
delfinnium: Yay!

"Actually, um, we’re not gonna be able to make the festival. We have to leave a day early if we want to see Prague before we head back to the states."
Vasul crossed his arms and smirked, and I felt like the biggest chickenshit in the world. "So…you’re telling me you took a fifteen-hour train ride from Munich followed by another fifteen miles of torture-by-wagon up the mountain just so you could come to the festival and tell all your friends back home about it, and now you’re not even going to stay to see it?"

noldo: Also where in Eastern Europe bloody are they? It is Romanian-speaking but also mysteriously near Moscow or Budapest or Prague. Those are FAR APART, LADY.
deepad: So where exactly is this place? You know, on a real google maps. they are 15 hours train and 15 hours cart ride from somewhere but also part of the EU ONE PRESUMES otherwise how did that kid get the money to go to London School of Economics?
delfinnium: Satan.

Vasul laughed, but when he saw how scared we all looked, his smile faltered and was replaced by a hurt expression. "You know, I’ve seen real evil. Bodies lying in the streets. Mangled steel. Bombs exploding." He shook his head like he was trying to clear our words from it. "But these people? They are old and harmless and on their way to being obsolete. They’re not doing anything except what they’ve always done: farm, make bread, have families. They cannot even stop a power plant from taking over their village. I thought better of you people."

deepad: Once again - real life events contrasted with a fictional narrative.
delfinnium: Real evil. Real evil u guise.
deepad Real evil as compared to the crazy superstitions these kids believe in. Except, oh wait, within the parameters of the story they are true. So where does that leave real evil then?
delfinnium: oookay then.
John: I have money!
everyone else: what the fuck are you doing?
me: ..... isn't that a reasonable response?!
there he goes. He's dead.
deepad: ok so got to the part where john dies because he's a rich selfish bastard and he was also Racist remember? she killed the Racist White Guy who was being classist!!! COOKIES

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Baz keened. He closed his eyes and started a prayer in Hebrew, even though I knew he hadn't been to temple since his bar mitzvah. This was the kind of fear that made you pretend there was a god to save you.

deepad: GHOSTS = TOTES REAL. Praying = STUPID. also yeah, racism and terrorism are like devil worship AMIRITE
delfinnium: TOTALLY

Mariana opened the ancient rites book and began to read in a tongue that demanded attention, a language that spoke to your bones, made your heart beat faster, whispered to all those places inside that hide our worst thoughts, our most terrible fears. It was a calling-up, a calling-out. A naming.

delfinnium: It's the tongue of SATAN
deepad: so.... a different language from necuratuli. how many langauges does till tiny village have? maybe those missionaries came armed with tolkein
delfinnium: A lot. They speak English too!
deepad: isn't it convenient how the "old-timers" speak english just to reveal themselves as hapless good guys?

In the distance I could hear the old-timers singing the old songs, skeletal melodies with nothing to disguise the despair. Dirges. My grandmother said that when her father had succumbed to the dysentery in the camp, her mother sang until her voice was ragged. Like that was the only thing left to her.

delfinnium: D:
deepad Does this woman have any sense of perspective at all?! Japanese internment camps vs. sacrifices to the Devil.

After a while Dovka got bored and started a conversation about remixes. Somebody chewed gum, offered the pack to the others. A girl slapped at a bug on her arm, flicked it off. It was all so ordinary. Just a to-do list that included murder. And I wondered what had happened, what flipped that switch in the human brain that allowed people to rationalize atrocities, whether it was racism or terrorism or genocide or drowning people you’d shared wine with, their pockets heavy with stones you picked up yourself and put there.

deepad: The Answer, according to Libba Bray, is - the Devil. The Devil made up racism.

Mrs. Smith had settled into the seat next to me. She opened her bag and took out a hunk of cheese, offering me some. I shook my head.
"Now you have seen," she said quietly. "Now you know."
"Yeah? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?"
"What do you think? Stop the fuckers."
I stared at her. "How do I do that?"
"You can’t fight evil all at once. That was just a small test. There are bigger ones to come, Poe Yamamoto."

delfinnium: ....
delfinnium: oh this was all Just A Test
delfinnium: A whole little Village gets destroyed and compared to japanese internment and the holocaust and bombing in cities. But it's just a ~test~
deepad: I am still trying to figure out the point of the bait and switch. ok so. The idea was the new generation was changing, blah blah, and the old generation was fearful. Except surprise, the new generation was Evil and Superstition which means the moral is.... old people will save your lives, young people who survive terrorist bomb attacks can turn out to still believe in the Devil? But the Devil is real, so a better cause to believe in is power plants that will kill your culture but not your kids? IDEK.
delfinnium: Seriously, I don't get the kids' logic jump from I LOVE BEING AT SCHOOL LOLZ and then suddenly MUST PRESERVE DEVIL

But if you are still watching this, I want to tell you one last thing: On the train ride back I had a dream. It was me and Baz and Isabel, and that fog had come up really quickly. I couldn’t see what was ahead, but I felt like it could see us. And then I saw John. His eyes were black pools. A jagged, half circle of a scar made an angry smile at his throat. And his teeth were sharp as the man-beast’s.
"There’s so much on the other side," he whispered to me. "Things you can’t imagine. There’s a lot of evil to bump asses with out there, Poe. You have no idea."
He wasn’t kidding.
I’m gonna try to keep this account running, update when I can, so you’ll know whatever I know. But right now, I gotta go. Baz and Isabel can’t hold that door forever and unless you know something about super-powerful werewolves and can text me right this second, then I’m gonna have to go deal.
Just be looking out, okay? Trust the lizard, my friends. Something’s going down. Something big. It’s already started.

delfinnium:.... oh now he's fighting werewolves. and no one cares shit about dead John. NO WORRIES. You'd think he'd save that youtube for actual werewolves instead of chatting about evil in Not Romania. I mean he just spent the entire story talking into a camera while his friends were holding off werewolves. seriously special.
deepad: SO BASICALLY RACISM = SUPERNATURAL HORROR. BE READY. AND TRUST YOUR LIZARD BRAIN BECAUSE TERRORISTS ARE OUT THERE.
delfinnium: OH YES. wait shouldn't it be supernatural horror > racism? you totes know how to LISTEN TO YOUR LIZARD BRAIN U KNOW. Nazi < werewolves!
noldo: I would pay someone to call Libba Bray nekulturny repeatedly. Bonus points if Russian speaker
deepad: what is nekulturny?
noldo: as far as I can say nekulturny is the Russian for uncultured or rather just 'crass'. it seems APPROPRIATE here
deepad: Libba Bray’s Racism Cookie Bake-athon, friends. Don’t forget to tip your (inscrutable, brown) servers.

In conclusion: Just donate directly to College Summit if you must. Because the writers of this anthology do not, for the most part, deserve any encouragement to go on producing this sort of awful, offensive drivel.

As a palete cleanser, here’s an organisation actually producing indigenous books for promoting literacy, if you’d like to support current and future non-white writers. And here is delfinnium flailing and squeeing about The Gameworld Trilogy, which are finally out in ebook format, and which I have been having tremendous fun talking about in chat.

crossedwires - Thank you for your support of the auction and apologies for the delay in posting this! delfinnium, marina and noldo thanks a tonne for doing this with me <3

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

HOLY SHIT OMGGGGGGG thanks for this post. I... cannot even. Like, my face cannot decide if it is smirking or gasping in horror or both at the same time.

[deepad]

Glad you enjoyed!

[dhara]

*dying of laughter*

I love y'all for reading & blogging this so the rest of us can get the LOLs without the pain. <3333333333333

(I am still having difficulty believing that these stories are not parodies. Just. WHO WRITES LIKE THIS? ON PURPOSE?)

[deepad]

My fellow chat buddies were invaluable in getting this post made. And no, these stories are sadly very representative of what is popular in Anglo YA SFF these days.

[altamira16]

I read the first three or four before my faith in humanity was lost. I thoroughly enjoyed your reviews of these works.

In hindsight, Anglo YA has always been like this though. I remember reading Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley Twins, and Sweet Valley High, and Baby-sitters Club. Nancy Drew had a friend Beth who was always wanting to lose five pounds. In Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley High, there was always another female nemesis who was fighting for the attention of the same boy it seemed. I think that one of the members of the baby-sitters club went to the beach with a family.

I think that the bikini obsession at that age does happen because the bodies of young girls are changing, and they have this image that flaunting sexuality is a sign of maturity, but it is hard to be confident with a body that is changing like that. The bikini is attached to womanhood and sexuality and all these things that are terrifying and not vampires.

There were less vampires when I was younger though. Are vampires as scary as bikinis?

[deepad]

From my understanding of current YA trends, vampires are as desirable and sexually charged as bikinis. The only difference is that they don't come in polka dots. Yet.

[akycha]

This post made me laugh so much. I stayed here and read it instead of doing things I ought to have been doing, like mixing bread dough and soaking beans and all sorts of things.

Thank you all SO MUCH for going there so we didn't have to. Perhaps that book can stand as a warning to other writers? Except that given your excerpts, I think thank I would rather spend an hour listening to a bunch of Heinlein-lovers drivel on while water dripped slowly on my head than read this.

A few things that made me scream:
noldo: 'Erique' is not a French name... Is it a French name?
OMG ERIQUE! Because putting "ique" on it makes it FRENCH!

deepad: Ladies and gentlemen - the exotic reality of third world Jamaica. Where on the road from the airport and the tourist villa these people are staying at, there would totes be dead animals on the road.
I live in Massachusetts, and on the biggest road from the airport to my house, there WOULD totes be dead animals on the road. Where do these writers live?

"But he doesn’t love you," she says. "That is how men are. They take the love you give them and they twist it until it becomes a stick to beat you with." She glances at the club in her hand; her look is vicious. "Tell me I have no right to even the score, Violet. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same in my place. Men are a curse on women’s lives and you know it."
MANHATING FEMINIST ALERT! Women are TOTALLY a danger (as in SOULSUCKING MURDERESSES) to men IF THEY DON'T LOVE THEM! Can NOT get over the thing where the only important souls are the white boy and the domestic abuser white man, too. (Shades of Stephen King.)


delfinnium: one blue eye and one brown?
marina: WOW. WOW. I JUST. WOW.
noldo: seriously. please tell me this isn't how she imagines genetics works
delfinnium: yes biology works like that. he's totally not a chimera or something. magical Biracial one eye looking at sky one eye looking at earth
deepad: GUIZE YOU GUIZE. HE'S BIRACIAL. WITH ONE EYE FROM EACH SIDE. GETIT GETIT. ITS LIKE A METAPHOR
delfinnium: THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BIRACIAL. OHGOD GENETICS PLEASE GET IT
I just put my head down on the table and cried for that writer's biology teacher, who in my imagination tried SO HARD.

deepad: I am getting flashbacks to every fantasy eastern European kingdom with its own language. btw Libba Bray totally wrote the gypsies as speaking ROMANIAN in her trilogy
Thank you for finding that out so I don't have to. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

marina: WOW. Also UM. I hate to tell them this but eastern europe has seen more wars than england in the last century like, BY FAR and there are suicide bombings and things and military campaigns that are ONGOING unlike in western europe.
delfinnium: no see Eastern Europe is Saaafe it isn't the middle east! it is all Idyllic Mountains and Green Rolling hills and Quaint little Houses with Evil Eyes painted everywhere
deepad: no no marina. wars happen in Africa and Middle East. Eastern Europe has vampires and kingdoms. get your geography straight
This was the point where I screamed out loud. How anyone could not know about the ethnic cleansings, the wars, the bombings, the orphanages, the recent trials for war crimes, the erasure of whole towns from the map, not to mention the ongoing violence against particular groups (Rom come to mind)... You don't even need to do research! You just need to follow some news!

[akycha]

I wasn't even done (Tolkien languages! Inscrutable dark-skinned people! Carved masks!) but this looks long enough, so in short:

Thank you. Thank all of you for reading that so we don't have to!

[deepad]

Oh, long comments are a relief considering how long the post ending up. I'm pretty sure most people's justified reaction is going to be TL;DR to it. :)

And yeah, apparently Eastern Europe on the News is a different continent than Ye Olde Eastern Europe of fantasy.

[sparkymonster]

No TL;DR to this post. I LOL-ed, read again, LOL-ed again.

Will comment more later.

Also love your questioning of a bikini being essential to vacation

[deepad]

<3

[liviapenn]

Two ‘young’ white girls go on a cruise, befriend a third girl who tells them about a vampire scare, they try to find an attractive white guy for one of the girls to have her first time with, turns out that the girls are vampires and they were talking about the girl’s first time killing, not shagging.

So... basically... the shocking plot twist from the teaser of the pilot of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?

[deepad]

Well, people have been ignoring the 'don't be racist' writing suggestion for years, so why not ignore the 'surprise they're vampires is a cliche' warning.

[liviapenn]

Yeah. It kind of makes you wonder what the editor of this anthology thinks her job *is*.

God, I didn't comment the first time around about Libba Bray's story, because what do you really say? But the the more I think about it, I really can't get over the idea that white/Japanese babies are somehow getting one eye color gene from each parent. Like, number one, how do you even come up with that as an idea, even if you have no idea how genetics works and have never met or seen an interracial person? White parents with different eye colors don't have babies with one eye of each color... why would Poe? I guess it's just a horribly mutated version of the "having babies is like mixing paint and therefore the baby will be a perfect blend of its' parents skin color" myth?

I mean obviously she is trying to be Deep and Metaphorical, like omg Poe has one foot in both worlds you guyz!!! but it's like... you realize you're implying there's something physically weird and "quirky" about multiracial people, and it would be old and played even in a story about like, a half-elf/half-human, and when it's about humans... just... no.

[deepad]

White parents with different eye colors don't have babies with one eye of each color... why would Poe?
A question for the ages, my friend.

[sparkymonster]

I am mixed race.

I also have a patch of skin on my shoulder which is lighter than the rest of my body. It suddenly appeared when I was two (literally overnight which freaked the fuck out of my parents). It's not vitiligo and is most noticeable in the summer (all the skin around the patch tans. The light colored patch doesn't change shade).

I can not begin to tell you how many people have asked if the light colored patch of skin is because my mother is white. So many many people.

I will also mention a pre-med student at my undergraduate university who seemed unable to understand that a black person & a white person can produce offspring.

THAT IS ALL FOR NOW

[deepad]

(Belatedly...) Yeah, the paint mixing school of interracial biology really needs to DIAF.

[starlady]

*hands you all beverages of your choice* Oh my god. DYING of laughter.

Also, who brings their kids on their honeymoon?

And also, in no way does sexual coercion justify murder and eating people.

DYING.

[thistleingrey]

I can see bringing kids on one's honeymoon (what if one doesn't have friends/family able to keep them a few days? what if you want to include them on a family vacation because you can't take two vacations that year?), but omg omg.

I wonder a bit whether "Erique" lost its -n- in editing, somehow. Enrique isn't a terrible name for Provence.

[deepad]

A missing N is the least of the things the editor of this book is responsible for screwing up.

[gehayi]

I suspect that "Erique" owes something to the Phantom of the Opera. I've seen a lot of stories where Erik's name is written as "Ericque." Because that's all FRENCHIFIED.

[thistleingrey]

Hee, and a reader familiar with Latin would read the -que clitic to mean "Eric and." Poor Eric, so lacking by himself.

[deepad]

I really feel like a "Back off, rape culture perpetrator" diatribe is best unaccompanied by cannibalism.

[glass_icarus]

DYING FOREVER OMG.

♥ ♥ ♥ &you;! and also your co-conspirators, hee.

[deepad]

My co-conspirators went above and beyond, indeed.

[mustela_nivalis]

"Liz, with her white string bikini, waist-length wavy red hair, and legs that are longer than my entire body. She’s the Little Mermaid come to life."

I assumed this just meant Liz was about 12 feet tall, which would probably be even more intimidating than the whole hot thing.

[deepad]

Well, vampires are meant to be intimidatingly hot, so.

[lilacsigil]

The last one was awesome! No STDs and no war in Eastern Europe, no sir! And I can only think that Poe's parents were big Edogawa Ranpo fans!

[deepad]

There was a lot to be said about that last story, I fear.

[gehayi]

I was thinking of him! I kept picturing Poe's father naming him "Ranpo" after his favorite author, so that "Poe" was just a nickname.

[troisroyaumes]

Man, isn't it depressing that Cassie Clare's story sounds about as equally racist in its treatment of non-white characters as G.K. Chesterton's stuff? -_-

I just purchased The Simoqin Prophecies; it sound amaaaaazing. XD

[deepad]

Haven't read Chesterton, but I would put Cassie Clare's stuff at the normal white author level of racist.

I am glad you got the books, I hope you enjoy them! I will be happy to chat with you about them, because I am very fond of the trilogy.

[kate_nepveu]

Wow. Just, wow.

But thanks for doing it!

*takes you off list of people to beg for CoB stuff this year*

[deepad]

I'm afraid I don't have the financial resources to buy stuff to put up for auction.

[kate_nepveu]

Nor time, I hear you. Not a problem!

[crossedwires]

Hee. This is GREAT. Thank you! (and your co-conspirators!) for reading and reviewing this book, so I know to stay far away from it. I think the only one of these authors I've read is one of Cassie Clare's book -- and my reaction to that is 'Why does Godfrey Gao have to be in that movie?'

[deepad]

I've enjoyed some of Maureen Johnson's YA novels quite a bit, but apart from that I would not rec the other writers' full length stuff either. I have also been side-eyeing the smugness with which everyone's benevolence in admitting to the hotness of Godfrey Gao has been playing out in Clare's fandom.
Thank you for your support of the auction!

[via_ostiense]

I agree, but not about trees. I mean. there are some fucking old trees in the US. they have signs on them saying so.

*howls with laughter*

[sethg-prime.livejournal.com]

Wouldn’t the first Christian missionaries in an Eastern European country have been Russian or Greek? Not to mention that in the second half of the 20th century, the local Communist Party would have had its own opinion regarding devil-worshipping peasants.