for those times when wiki just ain't enough.

[kaigou]

Someone give me a cookie, because I made it through 50 of the 190-something pages in His Beautiful Samurai by Sedonia Guillone (publisher: Torquere Press). Yes, this is ebook, yes, this is gay romance, and to be honest, the reason for snagging it was because of the basic setup: American comes to Japan to assist Japanese cops (and one cop in particular) with a serial murderer.

Now, granted, I'm pretty much in the "psychics are a lot of bunk" category, but I'll suspend my disbelief for the sake of solid characters and quick-moving plot, and attempt to squash my preference for having the American be, oh, a profiler instead. (I'll ignore that an American profiler would possibly be useless for a Japanese serial murderer, given how much of the profiling skill has its basis in cultural mores, but hey.)

Anyway, the American -- the former Gulf War I vet named John *cough* Holmes -- is called out of mini-retirement to help with the case. One of the two detectives, Toshiro Genjin, is struggling with his family's insistence that he marry versus his own attraction/preference for men. Together, they solve the case (of course). At least, I think they solved it. I'm not sure. I was too busy laughing hysterically at the author's absolute incompetence when it came to research.

Then again, maybe it's just me. Given the reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, it's possible 90% of the western reading population would sigh along with those reviews, saying, "it's obvious she really researched this!" Well, okay, she gets points for knowing the Japanese words for the various titles in the police department. And, uhm, knowing not knowing that tampopo means butterfly dandelion [thanks, Hayashi!], but she lost her last shred of credibility when I was forced to read aurigato, which I have never seen as anything but arigato, and that was it for me.

Although I think I deserve a goddamn cookie for all the totally non-researched parts up to that misspelling. Who cares if the basic plotline ain't your cup of tea, do feel free to read along and laugh with me about the cultural inaccuracies, the moronic blindness to the realities of some basic Japanese details! Oh, do let me count the ways...

1. Do not, for the love of pete, start your story with a prologue in which one (or more) characters die at the end. Just take my word for it: it's the most vulnerable part of the story, the point where I am mostly likely to walk away, and you're attempting heavy-duty emotional tug on two characters I wouldn't know from Adam, and you kill them at the end, and I'm supposed to... what? Feel bad? Give a damn? You just wasted your freebie ten pages and now you expect me to meet more characters -- the ones I'll be spending the actual novel with? Survey says: BZZZT.
   
   
2. Italicize, or do not italicize. There is no try.
   

   The weapon, as with the other victims, a samurai's wakizashi. His stomach churned, as it never failed to do when he found the Ronin Killer's victims.
   
   [...]
   
   His cell phone rang. Toshi pulled off a glove and retrieved the phone from his pocket. "Genjin."
   
   "Keibu Genjin. Finding anything this time?"
   
   Toshi recognized the Superintendent's gravelly voice. Absently, Toshi registered that if he didn't quit smoking, he'd one day sound like the keishi.

   
   I get that italics indicate foreign words, to let us know that if we don't know them, it's okay. Except... 'samurai' is pretty much a standing loan-word by now, thanks to the cross-cultural infusion, same as 'kimono,' 'futon,' and 'ronin'. I mean, Hollywood's naming movies with 'ronin' and 'samurai'. I think the days of italics are past for those... so why italicize those, and not 'keibu' and 'keishi'? Bad editor, no frickin' donut.
   
   
3. Come on, kids, point out the number of cultural errors in a single paragraph!
   

   [Toshi's police partner] for the last four years had become a good friend, more like the father and well-meaning older brother he'd never had in his own family. His own father still seemed to believe he was a shogun, apparently forgetting that the samurai in their family had been centuries earlier. Apparently, some people agreed with him, including Natsuka, who, in spite of his equal rank of keibu, deferred to Toshi in their partnership.

   1. Fathers are not meant to be 'good friends'; they are the head of the family. You go to your mother for support, and your father for guidance.
      
      
   2. In and out of school, Toshi would've had some kind of sempai, filling the role of quasi-older brother. (Also, the lack of 'older brother' indicates Toshi must be first-born son; more on that in a bit.)
      
      
   3. I'm not sure "up to about 1870s" really counts as "centuries" earlier.
      
      ETA: And even at that, the samurai class was only partially dissolved with the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate; the new Meiji government created the kazoku, a class of Japanese aristocracy lifted straight from the British peerage system. An influential samurai family, thus, would have kept its position/importance even after the abolishment of rights like blade ownership/carrying.
      
      That aristocratic system was in turn abolished in '48, when Japan signed the treaty/surrender. Despite that, the majority of the formerly kazoku/samurai families retain high status. So, in fact, it could've been within Toshiro's father's lifetime (assuming he's mid-60s or so) that his family had once been "princes of the realm" and in one afternoon became simple commoners, at least on paper.
      
      
   4. Shogun? Hello? That's like saying your father believes he's the president of the United States (with the implication being that he assumes the powers/rights of that position). Unless Toshiro's father is a delusional megalomaniac, I'd think daimyo (lord/head of a samurai clan) would be more apt, which is akin to saying your father has assumed the role of the unofficial City Mayor. ("Man, he acts like he owns this city.")
      
      
   5. The chances of an older, established and experienced police officer deferring to a younger police officer are pretty much nil. Now, the chances of the older and experienced partner freely becoming Toshi's sempai -- well, I'd say that's pretty damn high. Deferring, no.
      
      
   6. If Toshi comes from an influential/renowned family, it's even more likely (as CP pointd out to me) that Toshi would get less respect, not more: got to prove yourself to us, kid, show us you're not some groomed-for-Harvard pansy-ass daddy's boy. Another point against deferring, though this one's less cultural and more just the way humans work/are.
      
      
   7. The last thing an influential/renowned family wants is a first-born son to become a police officer. In Japan, becoming a cop is like going from welfare-rank to menial-but-secure construction laborer: only a step up if you've got nothing. Being the first-born son of an influential, name-recognizable (enough to have coworkers deferring, unh-hunh) would be sort of like if John Kennedy had decided he wanted to be a plumber.
      
      We don't even get all that hung up on filial piety in the West, and yet a Family With a Name would let the kid go until the mid-twenties and then jerk him back into the fold: look, kid, you had your fun, now it's time to get with the family program. In the east, where filial piety is so much more (if subtly) important, I doubt the few years of plumbing/menial/cop time would be allowed in the first place.
      
      This is one place my own research pretty much bit me in the ass, reading up on what it's like to be a police officer in Japan. It's sort of like the way many Irish became officers in Boston/NYC, a role in the society that had a legitimacy, a standing they hadn't been able to achieve before (and one that most folks didn't want to do, as well, so it was open for those who would). The concept of cop-families, too, is relatively rare; the cop's goal is to step up from his parent's low-class status, and hope his children can achieve middle-class status, even higher than he managed. The cop whose children become cops as well, is a cop... who's failed in a very distinct way.
      
      
   8. Lastly and most importantly: Toshiro Genjin. You want me to believe he's from a samurai family, pick Minamoto, Fujiwara (or perhaps Matsudaira or Nabeshima if you wanted to flex your research muscles and use a name less automatically familiar to Western audiences); it's similar to how I'd tell a Japanese author to pick Kennedy or Rockefeller if they wanted "big powerful family" connotation for the character's name. Do not pick a name that means 'primitive person'. I really, honestly, truly doubt that a samurai clan would accept, let alone pick, a name most often translated as 'barbarian'. I just don't see it happening.
      
      ETA: Yes, I did take a few minutes to look it up, and no, I could find no mention of it as a family prestigious enough to have an imperial-granted mon. I do wonder, however, if the author meant to use Genji instead (no 'n'), which is an alternate, archaic name for the Minamoto clan. Hikaru no Genji's father (as in, the Tale of Genji Hikaru no Genji), gave him the name Minamoto.
   
   
4. Via Amazon, I found a review from Obsidian Bookshelf, which described this story as part of the "LHF" (Ladylike Homoerotic Fiction) sub-genre. Their post defining the term categorizes LHF as kissing cousin to the "old Harlequin romances that emphasize chaste romantic emotions. LHF does contain sex scenes, [but] veiled in coy euphemisms... [The story's overall tone is] over-wrought and feminine like a schoolgirl crush."
   
   I suppose if you can't stand conflict in your stories, then #1, don't read any story I recommend highly, and #2, you'd think this description of LHF sounds just awesome:
   

   LHF lovers fall instantly in love and they love each other so much that real life never intrudes in the form of personality conflicts, power struggles, jealousy, temptation, or doubt. (This is what we're complaining about at Obsidian Bookshelf when we say that two lovers in a story are "too compatible.")

   
   I think it's also an element of being prim (and I mean that in the classic, archaic, nose-in-the-air, disapproving sense) about the physical, especially the crude or blunt. Everything has to be soft around the edges, like the literary version of that guy who always slathered the camera lens with vaseline when taking shots for Playboy:
   

   A few seconds [of the television clip of the two police officers] sufficed for John to see that the younger man was slim and handsome. John's heart sped up slightly. The detective's ebony hair framed an angular face in feathery wisps, curling over his collar.

   
   I'm not sure most former military guys I've known in my life (as an officer's child, at that, so I've known plenty) would even know the phrase "feathery wisps", let alone use the word "ebony." We're currently on page 13, and I'm getting a sinking feeling here... at least now I know to call it "thirty percent chance of ladylike, with gushing words of love likely for later tonight."
   
   
5. Not cultural, but... I don't know how to put it. Just... read:
   

   There was a time when he would have immediately booked a flight to Tokyo and turned up at the police station, offering his services to catch the killer. Hell, that Japanese detective was good-looking enough to almost pull him from his rest cure.

   
   WTF is a "rest cure"? The author uses it over, and over, and over -- both in John *cough* Holmes' POV, and again in the Japanese detective's. I've never heard the expression before in my life. I'm presuming it's meant as "recovery time" or "retreat", but I'd expect a military person to call it "R&R", or maybe just "vacation". But after the sixth or seventh instance of "rest cure" I was just about ready to spit. It's an annoying phrase, really. Rest cure. WTF is a rest cure?
   
   
6. Oh, look, more inaccuracies! Count them along with me, kiddos! When Toshi hears the Japanese police chief is calling in an American psychic...
   

   Toshi [wondered if it was a message, that he] was not cutting it as an Inspector and had only made it onto the force because he came from a wealthy Edokku family who could trace their roots to the Edo shogunate, the last of the samurai shogun.

   1. Why italicize 'shogunate' and not 'edokku'?
      
      
   2. If he came from a wealthy family... oh, wait, I went over that already.
      
      
   3. Technically the samurai didn't end with the shogunate... eh, see the note for 3-C.
      
      
   4. In all, the author must've mentioned Toshiro coming from samurai family at least nine times in the first chapter alone. Samurai, samurai, samurai. I mean, hell, someone needs to point out to this woman that 'descended from samurai family' is about analoguous to 'came over on the Mayflower' -- that is, for some folks it's extremely important and the rest of the planet could bloody well give a rat's ass.
      
      
   5. Did you miss that? Yes? Okay...
      
      Dear Ms. Author: SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT THE SAMURAI. Believe me, I got it the first six times. ENOUGH ALREADY. No love, me.
   
   
7. Following on the tails of that pathetic attempt at reminding us (again) that Toshi comes from Important Family, we get this:
   

   They both knew that Toshi had spent his time in the koban boxes on the streets and studied for his exams just like everyone else on the force, but for some reason his privileged background caused the keishi to have a hard-on for him.

   
   I'd bash my head against the desk, but I did that enough when I read this last night, I think. My bruises are gonna have bruises if I don't hold back, so instead, I'll make you suffer for it. More counting, come on, you can do it!
   
   
   1. If I were to translate (and badly) the concept of koban, then I might say beat cop, but only if I took the entire concept out of context and removed all cultural value. A koban is what 99.9% of Japanese cops appear to aspire to; it's not a beat cop in the "pound the pavement and wave to the shopkeeper" sense, but a "belong to, and be of, the community". It is not at all the same, in principle or practice, as being a simple 'beat cop' in the US.
      
      
   2. Saying "studied for his exams" -- and no detail more personally relevant than that -- makes me suspect the author's research was limited to reading the entry at Wiki. If I were to only research via Wiki, I might get the impression this sums it up:
      

      Entrance to the force is determined by examinations administered by each prefecture. Examinees are divided into two groups: upper-secondary-school graduates and university graduates. Recruits underwent rigorous training—one year for upper-secondary school graduates and six months for university graduates—at the residential police academy attached to the prefectural headquarters. On completion of basic training, most police officers are assigned to local police boxes. Promotion is achieved by examination and requires further course work.

      
      Which is part of the story, but only in the most glossy of ways, if you actually go to the National Police Agency's website and download their PDFs, so courteously translated into English.
      
      Yes, you take an exam to get in, but as a college grad, it's 8 months of academy, 3 months of field work training, and 4 more months of academy -- plus classes in judo, and you must achieve a black belt in kendo as part of graduation requirements. The first year of school, dormitory residence is required even for married officers; single officers remain in the dormitory through their first 6 months of duty. It's just like boarding school, curfews at 11pm and permission required to stay out later; if the area is especially high-cost (like, oh, TOKYO, duh), many officers continue to live in the dorms after the 6 months is up.
      
      The curriculum isn't just police procedure, either, but also Confucianism, bushido, psychology, the importance of 'moral' values -- and 90 hours of gun training (even though the vast majority of Japanese officers will never be issued a gun, and they leave them behind in their desks! when they go home for the night).
      
      Education doesn't stop there; after you start duty, you could be randomly selected for more training of a month to a full year. Move to sergeant, and it's 3 more months of training; assistant inspectors get 2 months' training, and new inspectors (like our little Toshi here) must get 6 months training at the Tokyo police college. Sure, "take the tests and do time in a koban" sums up the experience for the average prefectural base-level cop, but it's hardly displaying anything relevant to the character.
      
      
   3. The value of research details, after all, isn't that you can show me you researched, but that you can show me what -- among the details you learned -- is important to the character himself. If Toshi says, "I got my black belt in judo and kendo, and I've won the Inter-Prefecture Annual Judo Competition two years in a row and you still don't respect me" ... this says something about his priorities and self-identity that's a far cry from "I was top of my class in the inspector training school, and I've passed every promotion-exam the first time."
      
      What the author gave me is as bland and useless as an American cop-character saying, "I graduated from the police academy and met my quota of traffic tickets." Yes, because that does such a great job of telling me how the character sees and values himself, in terms of his chosen line of work.
   
   
8. And right on the tails of that laugh-track moment, we get to the police chief's request of Toshi, just before John *cough* Holmes is due to arrive.
   

   "I would like it if you would let him stay with you. If you're needed on emergency, we can't lose time fetching him at a hotel. Nor do we want to attract the unnecessary attention and cost." He sighed. "Besides, you speak English."
   
   Toshi bowed. "Of course." A houseguest was no matter to him. He had a spare bedroom.

   
   He has a what? Unless this 'spare bedroom' is about two feet by three feet and usually known as 'the closet', or it's four feet by five feet and most often called 'the bathroom', I remain boggled at just what the author might've been smoking. I mean, there are entire series on Japanese urban architecture showing how families of five live (somewhat) comfortably in apartments no greater than about 500 square feet. Tokyo, especially, makes downtown Manhattan look frickin' spacious, when it comes to the amount of space you get -- not to mention what you could afford. Spare bedroom? Who the hell in Tokyo has spare anything in terms of room?
   
   (I won't even go into the notion of a Japanese citizen, regardless of status or lack thereof, being asked/expected to host an American as part of work-duty. Unless, of course, the police chief wants to humiliate Toshi, but me seeing that implication is probably more because I've done serious time poring over the average setup of work-place dynamics -- and less because I think the author really intended that undercurrent.)
   
   
9. Say it with me, people: if you adopt the Ladylike subgenre, then do NOT attempt to write MILITARY characters. It doesn't jive. (Even the military women I know would laugh themselves silly at this POV moment.)
   

   As he approached them his heart rate increased rapidly. The younger detective, a head taller than his companion, was even more striking in person. Up close, John could see details about him that the camera hadn't shown. The dark golden hue of his skin, the soft fullness of his lips. The angular jaw and chin lent him an aristocratic air, even though his cleanshaven jaw was dark with stubble. The wispy frame of coal black hair looked sinfully luxurious and John hoped the man would never cut it, at least not while John was around him.

   
   Unh-hunh. Right. Someone who was military for long enough that he warranted honorable discharge due to PTSD, is probably someone who'll look at the hair length and the first reaction will be "that's hardly regulation" -- and then maybe, possibly, think: "but it looks okay like that." There is absolutely nothing about this John "twelve inches, baby!" "no relation to Sherlock" Holmes that says "former military." None. Nada. Zilch. Zip.
   
   Oh, and the hair, my god, the hair: what is it with emphasizing the poor Japanese cop's "wispy" hair? Maybe someone should introduce him to Hair Club. Get him some Ambervision. Something. Maybe even get him into a different story.
   
   
10. Toshi's reflection on the psychic is, "John Holmes was short for a gaijin." I understand that this is a term most westerners know -- although some may miss the connotation that we know it the same way we know the expression "running dogs" -- because it's an insult, really. It'd be like if, oh, someone from backwoods Georgia came to visit and my POV said, "Joe Smith was pretty smart for white trash." Sure, I could joke and call my father's family 'cracker', just as I may joke about being 'gaijin' with my Japanese friends -- but my willingness to preempt a negative term for my own purposes does not make the term, itself, any less negative in its cultural context.
    
    
11. And Toshi does go on -- don't forget the earlier over-emphasis on the not-really-Rockefeller-wealthy family bit. This part just screamed -- first, stereotype -- and fast after that, a big fat WTF.
    

    [John *cough* Holmes] reminded Toshi very much of his first lover, back when he'd attended college in San Francisco. Those four years had been his parents' attempt to let him sow his oats before returning to his respectable samurai roots and living by the code of bushido in its modern form of national consciousness.

    
    
    1. Again with the italics. Cut it out with the stupid author tricks.
       
       
    2. Who the fuck has a POV that contains a phrase like "modern form of national consciousness"? Seems just as accurate, and more human, to say "and then return to Japan to fulfill his duties as the first-born son."
       
       
    3. School... not Standford, not UCLA... but UC at Berkeley. Right. The one that's associated with the hippies and hotbedding liberals and all that jazz? The last bloody place on this planet (okay, short of Reed or Oberlin) that I'd think the first-born son -- of an allegedly prestigious family -- would be allowed to attend. Berkeley. Riiiight.
       
       A father who believes himself some kind of bloomin' shogun -- whoops, I meant shogun -- is hardly going to send his first-born off to a university pretty much known best for its disinterest in the status quo. Sorry, honey, but your character has "went to and graduated from Tokyo University" written all over him, and attempting to convince me his parents would willingly ship him to UC-Berkeley makes me wonder why, in the very next paragraph, I get a whole lotta emo'ing about how now he has to marry to make his family happy.
    
    Right.
    
    Okay. I'll hang in there, that's what I said to myself -- it was late, I was bored, I couldn't sleep, what the hell. Maybe it'll get better.
    
    
12. I will, for your sake (and because I don't want to relive the pain) skip over the scene where John *cough* Holmes (man, I can't even think of the character name with a straight face) investigates the most recent murder scene to, uhm, get psychic vibrations. (That's what the author calls them: vibrations, feel free to hum along when we get to the chorus.)
    
    
13. I will also attempt to refrain from mentioning -- oh, wait, no point, I can't -- a person who's fought in a war, any war, enough to suffer PTSD (and you don't get that sitting in an office, well, most of the time) -- is not then going to damn near swoon upon reliving a murder scene.
    
    This is, potentially (and at least implied), a character who may have possibly committed such an act, himself, or had the capacity -- the military doesn't make a point of putting pacifists on the front lines (or they're not really pacifists any more, by the time they get there, though I grant they may be such by the time they get home).
    
    Ah, since you shrieked so prettily, here's a taste... After having his vision (whereupon he's consumed/overwhelmed with omg the horror of the scene blah blah blah and the kind wispy Japanese cop catches him -- including reassurance of "I've got you, you won't fall" or some such).
    

    John felt safe. Somehow, the other man's touch reassured him that the constriction of his breath would pass. He sagged against the detective.

    
    This is a character who ostensibly went through BOOT CAMP. People who go through boot camp do not SAG. (I will let pass without comment the awkward mouthful of "constriction of his breath" because it's just... well... no comment. Egads, I paid for this crap?)
    
    
14. We're only on page 36! I made it to chapter, uhm, five, I think. (Skimming fast, I'll admit, by this point.) And that's when we get this:
    

    Toshi looked at John. "Toshiro," he said gently, "My name is Toshiro."
    
    John's eyebrows rose. "Like the actor ... from those great samurai flicks?"

    
    (No, the cheap and mediocre samurai flicks, moron.)
    

    Toshi nodded. "That's the one. Toshiro Mifune. I was named for him. ..."

    
    
    1. So the author's research consisted of Wiki, and, uhm, saturday-afternoon Bravo? From what I gather, Toshi's in his late twenties or so; that puts him in the generation that would still have relatively formal and traditional names. He's more likely to be named Shuichi (for "first-born son", I think?), or possibly named after his uncle or grandfather or whatnot, than for an actor.
       
       It's not just that in Japan, actors were (and a little, still are) seen similarily to their Western counterparts: financially unlikely candidates for supporting a family. It's also that Toshiro Mifune himself was not a Buddhist -- one major strike in the eyes of a traditionalist family (including Mifune's wife's family). Oh, and: Mifune was Manchurian. Not. Japanese. That's about fifteen strikes right there.
       
       
    2. And, I should note, Mifune's most common type of role is hardly what a genteel supposedly-samurai family would want to condone/encourage in a first-born son: Mifune's roles were often a coarse, unpolite, unpolitic, inverse of the samurai-gentleman stereotype. If the family were truly obsessed with samurai, I'd expect the name Shintaro, after the actor who played Zatoichi, the blind samurai-beggar who's like a sightless, Tonto-less Japanese version of the Lone Ranger. (Ironically Shintaro Katsu has also written, directed, and starred in several blockbuster Japanese police procedural films.)
       
       
    3. Naming your children after an actor isn't -- from what I gathered when trying to figure out 'appropriate' character names -- isn't done in Japan anymore than it's done in the US, really. Honestly, if you met someone named "Michael," who said, "yeah, I was named after Michael Jackson," what would your first reaction be? A cookie to anyone who could manage some reaction other than startled laughter and a "you've got to be kidding!"
       
       
    4. If the author had wanted to impress me, she could've instead had Toshiro say he wasn't named after Mifune, but after Toshiro Mayuzumi -- a Japanese composer who studied in Paris after WWII, but eventually moved away from Western music to re-embrace, and re-imagine, traditional Japanese melodies and instruments.
       
       Or maybe Toshiro Kageyama, a professional Go player whose career began in '48 when he won the All-Amateur Honinbo, reaching as high as 7-dan in 1977.
       
       Or maybe even Toshiro Kandagawa (yes, of Iron Chef fame), a chef best known for his disdain for fusion, and preference for strictly-traditional Japanese cuisine -- now that would mesh with the ultra-traditionalist "wanna-be-a-shogun" family.
    
    But, sadly, I see no such research going on. In fact, it's worse -- I could handle no research. But seeing such sloppy research makes it ten times harder to read with any remaining credibility to the author: because all I can think is, you made a start, but you bloody well did nothing more, and you seemed to think that was enough. You want me to read 197 more pages of this half-assedery?
    
    I think not... but like I said before, I was bored. (And now you get to suffer for it. Hah.)
    
    
15. I still can't figure this one out, about Toshi's place: The apartment displayed wealth with an understated sense of taste, yet also the inability to feel at home in the place. Theres' nothing sadder than an apartment without the ability to feel at home in itself. Poor thing.
    
    
16. Now, remember: DETECTIVE. And here we get:
    

    Large picture windows ran the length of the living room, through which John could see the Tokyo night skyline. Down below, moonlight shimmered on the tranquil water of the Sumida River.

    
    I said before that being first-born of an influential family and wanting to become a cop is like the Rockefeller first-born becoming a plumber, right? Now, imagine the plumber having a high-rise penthouse in Manhattan. While working as a plumber.
    
    Riiiiight.
    
    
17. Until we get to the apartment's grand tour...
    

    "This room on the right is mine," Toshi pointed, and then indicated the room to the left. "Each has its own bathroom."

    
    Uh.
    
    *dies of laughter*
    
    Scratch that on the plumber's high-rise penthouse -- make that, "a plumber whose penthouse is three fours plus roof-top gardens, with a view of the Statue of Liberty".
    
    Dear Ms. Clueless Non-Researching Author, may I have some of what you're smoking, please? Because if you don't how obvious your total lack of research is, at least you should get that a family who wants their first-born son (in a culture still strongly emphasizing family/filial duty) to tow the line is only going to pay for an apartment like that if the son is, in fact, towing the line. Being a cop is not really "upholding the family" in Japan anymore than it would be, honestly, in the US, either: do you see any Kennedy children filling time as government drone social workers, police officers, or firemen? They're Kennedys, and they have a role to fill as a member of the family. One who casts his own lot elsewhere would most certainly not get what's essentially a multi-multi-million dollar apartment in downtown Tokyo.
    
    Unless, of course, you were to tell me it's paid for out of a trust fund. And in that case, I draw a completely different conclusion about Toshiro: that he's short-sighted (or romantic, or something not-so-pragmatic) as to believe that trust funds never run out, so spending seventy-eight times what he makes in a single year -- just for a big window and a spare bedroom -- is just peachy-keen by him.
    
    Did I mention that "each bedroom has its own bath" part? Or do you need a few more minutes to stop laughing?

I could go on, right up to about page fifty or so, where the two characters suddenly (after John *cough* Holmes has a vision and curls up in the shower in shock, in the fetal position, and Toshiro must naturally rescue him, and then they profess undying love -- I'm not kidding, yes, I gagged too) hop into bed, and for me it was skim, skim, skim, bored, bored, it's not even very good porn, it's definitely not John *cough* Holmes worthy... and then I got to "aurigato" and called it quits. Last final fucking straw on the goddamned camel, baby.

Me, to CP, over dinner: And that was the point I decided I'd had enough.
CP: I'd had enough at the spare bedroom.

Comments

[haya5h1.livejournal.com]

So THIS is what happens when a Fake fanfic writer goes mainstream!XD

um, and tampopo means dandelion so I think she loses points there.^^; (It's also a fascinating movie about food, in particular the quest for the ultimate ramen, which I highly recommend.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

and tampopo means dandelion so I think she loses points there

*revives long enough to die laughing all over again*

...and to think, even the reviews that scorch the author for generally bad characterization, lack o' plot, and general ladylike-wussiness are still complimentary about "she's obviously researched" and "the inter-cultural element is the best part".

Uhm, no, people, it's NOT. There is no good part.

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

The guy's best friend back in the States wasn't called Ron Jeremy, was he?

Seriously, you've got to get these details right - Wikipedia is not research, unless you feel you are writing for your 12 best friends, none of whom know any more than you do. I picked up Bill Bryson's The History of Everything a few years ago, and while it was fun reading, when I got to the part of the science that I actually *teach* in my day job, I noticed that it was full of serious errors. Which made me wonder how much of the rest of it was off-track. Even little details can throw a reader out of a story.

I'd have stopped at the italics, I'm pretty sure...

[tiercel]

*hurk*

Oh, man. Forget the research, I wouldn't have been able to last past the purple prose. "The soft fullness of his lips" makes me want to commit seppuku. Excuse me, seppuku.

[askerian]

*cries* *CRIES*

IT HUUUURTS.

Oh my god, how can anyone be so clueless. XDD;;; Her "research" didn't go any farther than "whee! I have a plot! About psychic cops... AND LOVE THAT TRANSCENDS BORDERS! ...Asian people are pretty" and "okay, I've got ten minutes to skim Wiki before I start writing. Whee cops in love~"

Thank you for hurting yourself so we won't have to. u.u

What's up with your own story, by the way? *misses Tetsu and Spark* .__.

[annotated_em]

*laughing helplessly* You're so much braver than I am.

[maldoror-gw.livejournal.com]

The urple. It burns. The urple characterisation of 'soldier boy' (*cough*porn star) hurts like an acid bath. I'd never have gotten as far as the cultural inconsistencies, though if I had, the spare bedroom would have had the same effect as a crowbar to the back of the head.


I have to agree with a previous comment, this IS a Fake fanfic writer who decided to venture out into the big bad world. And will hopefully get eaten. Is there ANY kind of pre-publishing filters in these eBooks, like an editor or a publisher or somebody who can say, yes, thanks kid, don't write us we'll write you?

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

Oy.

Well, I can tell you what a 'rest cure' was but it just makes it all the more mind-boggling. It was a 19th century treatment for mental disorders, usually hysteria, primarily used for women in which the patient was essentially isolated from all stimuli and the only people they saw during that time was the nurse who took care of them and the doctor.

I've also seen it used in books set around the late 1800s/early 1900s where someone (quite often a character seen as 'decicate') would go to a hot springs or seaside for a rest cure, but in that context it was more of a holiday 'for my health.'

Neither of which should be applicable unless John *cough* Holmes was a vaporish, delicate little flower.

[okaasan59.livejournal.com]

Now my seemingly endless hours of research for a fic set in the Pacific during WWII no longer seem quite so over the top. I realize that there's a lot I don't know and will never know about the subject but I at least don't want to get anything glaringly wrong.

[tharain.livejournal.com]

This gives me extreme pause about the one I'd been thinking of researching (I figured about five years of heavy research before I could even START to write).

[sans-pertinence.livejournal.com]

Oh christ, that's bad even for bad romance. Torquere Press has a few good stories on it, but on the whole I wouldn't rec the reading choices there for someone like yourself.

As for this one, I'm seeing a bastardized version of Black Rain thrown together with Fake. Yes. I think I just scared myself.

*ded of the awful*

[tharain.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. GOD.

First...just OH MY GOD.

SO many things to say. I don't know where to start. So I really won't.

BRILLIANT dissection. Loved the post.

Actually one phrase taht made ME nuts was this:

but for some reason his privileged background caused the keishi to have a hard-on for him.

I may be wrong, but that is SUCH an American English slang phrase that I gaped at it. WTF? In the Japanese character's POV?

Gah.

Well. I'm going to have to do MORE research for my Set In Cornwall in 1905 story, although I have to say, I have a better clue about that culture than this person has about Japanese.

OH. And if I my BITCH a moment, the whole Ladylike Homsexual Fiction thing makes me absolutely NUTS. I know it's written for women by women. But guys, even the biggest queens on the planet (and living here, I know some of 'em) wouldn't think in the phrase "full softness of his lips". I am a mouth guy; it's one of the first thigns I notice. MY first thought in that case would be "Beautiful mouth; I'd like to kiss him."

And wispy hair? Gack.

The whole overly feminized thing makes me NUTS. Because even when a guy is effeminate, he isn't that kind of gushy gushy faint away feminie kind of thing. And an ex military man? NOT A CHANCE (even if many of them ARE bottoms).

GACK.

"Aurigato"? can we get a restraining order keeping her away from a keyboard?

[elanivalae.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't pay to read that, but I'd sure as hell pay to read your ripping it apart, perhaps along with some English-speaking Japanese as an MST-type thing. xD

Re: "Aurigato"? can we get a restraining order keeping her away from a keyboard?

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, KL, thank you very much for your email (and your wicked good post). First, it's an enormous thrill to receive proof that somebody out there is actually reading my reviews at the Obsidian Bookshelf.

Second, when I followed the link you sent and read your full post, I about fell out of my chair laughing. Your in-depth critique reminded me of the very funny movie reviews over at the agonybooth.com but with a lot more factual back-up. I'm in awe of how much information you had to impart.

I've also got to admit that you caught me: I know nothing about Japanese culture, and was trying to find something positive with which I could end my review of His Beautiful Samurai: something along the lines of … um, good research? The thought did cross my mind that someone more knowledgeable than I might call me on that. I should have listened to my own better instincts as a reviewer.

Thank you also for understanding what I meant by Ladylike Homoerotic Fiction. (You may have helped me coin a phrase!) I'm a big fan of homoerotic fiction in general, but not of the Ladylike type. Yet I'm fascinated by what a huge fan-base LHF has. If there's such a demand, I guess there might as well be a supply. I try to be tolerant of it because I want the homoerotic fiction genre in general to thrive, but I also try to warn the non-fans of LHF about certain books that lean too far in that direction! Thanks again. Val at http://obsidianbookshelf.blogspot.com and http://www.obsidianbookshelf.com.

Re: "Aurigato"? can we get a restraining order keeping her away from a keyboard?

[(Anonymous)]

I get it. You hated the book. There were many inaccuracies. First of all, I did a shitload of research and not just wikipedia. Second it was only my second m/m and first mystery ever written. Three years later I would pull the book and rework it to be more correct but I'm not in a position to do that. Third, if you've never tried writing a mystery novel, try it and see how hard it is and then maybe you'll cut a writer a bit more slack. You sound like a raving anal-retentive lunatic!

[tanuki02.livejournal.com]

This is a most outstanding work of effluence. It is truly an inspiration to every fourteen-year-old girl who ever posted to FanFiction.Net.
I shall now go soak my head in holy water.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Excellent evisceration!

I had seen so many good reviews of this book that I had been tempted to buy it, but I don't think I will now.

I admit that there's no way that I would got many (any?) of the cultural errors, (apart from maybe the Penthouse and the overcrowding) and that's the problem with a society that is so different from mine (English) that I would have to take on trust the author's knowledge. It's scary that the author's knowledge seemed to consist of imdb and Wiki.

[ravensilver]

Of course you've managed to catch my interest and do precisely what the anon author probably wished you hadn't: make me read this review. For some reason I don't even remember this one... Though I should, because it's *very* memorable.

Thinking back on my last visit to Japan, and the little guest room that I had, for Y 3300 per day, where I had to leave the *bathroom door open* whenever I needed to use the toilet, because otherwise I wouldn't have fit, I just can't see penthouse-type, full picture window, *two bedrooms and two baths* apartments on a regular inspector's salary happening!

I loved all the other badly researched stuff you've picked out along the way - and cringed along with most of them... ^___^;

So. Where I *might* have given this a shot *before* you pointed out the negative comment to me, now I certainly won't.

Had fun reading your review, though. ^__^

[kaigou]

I had lots of fun writing it!

I had to, to make up for the frustration over knowing I couldn't even return it, being an ebook. Might as well find something to laugh about, then. Okay, and a little bit of making everyone else suffer along with me, after my own 50 pages of suffering.

[dejla]

Well, if I ever should decide to write a samurai romance of any kind, I would sure as hell hit you up for research suggestions first.

But I already know that I know very little about Japanese culture, except what I have picked up through histories and a series of mystery novels translated from Japanese (and I fear I've forgotten the author).

And stupid question no. 1: Were there such things as female samurai warriors?

[kaigou]

And stupid question no. 1: Were there such things as female samurai warriors?

I don't think that's a stupid question at all! ...but it's out of my area of research. I can ask in a separate post, if you'd like, since I know there are several folks on my dwircle/flist who have studied Japanese history more than just as a gloss. The one author I know who's done major amounts of research into Japanese traditions (especially military) would be Slobbit. I gave her a head's up, so feel free to head that way and ask her. She's pretty amazingly well-versed in a lot of curious trivia about Japanese culture and so on.

A review of the review.

[(Anonymous)]

I found this review very educational, but also super obnoxious. The story is ridiculous enough on its own that stopping every other paragraph to point and laugh seems superfluous and indulgent. Cutting out things like "Survey says: BZZZT" and "*dies of laughter*", which are really unfortunately unfunny and kind of immature additions to an otherwise amusing write-up, would go a long ways to making this sound even more credible.

Also, "This is a character who ostensibly went through BOOT CAMP. People who go through boot camp do not SAG." I'm pretty sure boot camp is not a magical ticket into making you a hardass, seeing as I have several friends who went through it and continue to act like normal people, sagging and all. The overall point, which is that the character in question shouldn't be such a wuss, stands, but it remains a very weak point.

I realize you probably just wrote this for fun and not necessarily public consumption first and foremost, but tighter writing is always a good thing.

[kaigou]

It's snark. It doesn't need to be tight. That's part of the joy of snark.