The host, chapter 11

[shaolina]

In which Wanderer travels the desert and finds a deserted house.

 

 

Hello everyone! In this installment of The host I want to discuss something called chickification.This is when you take a "bad ass girl" and turn her into a wimp throughout the series or have said girl never live up to her informed abilities. The host is a special case since we see both of these occurrences.

Melanie as we met her back at the start of this novel is dead and buried. In her place we now have a girl who can’t figure out anything without her man spelling it out for her, exposes the place where the last humans may be to an alien who doesn’t even think of her as a friend and places her boyfriend before her little brother in everything. (Do we really even know anything about Jamie?)  But I’m not going to discuss her in this, I’m going to bring wanderer instead.

Do you guys remember the prologue? How brave Wanderer is? How kind and  awesome she is? She’s one of a kind! Trust me, I remember since the book doesn’t shut up about it… not even Wanderer. 

“Perfect,” I moaned, sinking down into a crouch, though I was still afraid of the black ground beneath me. “Killed by wild dogs. Who would have thought it would end so… so trivially? How anticlimactic. The claw beast on the Mists Planet, sure. At least there’d be some dignity in being taken down by that. ”

Really? Am I supposed to believe you’ve done something badass considering that in this scene you were complaining about everything and so far you’ve been a two face wimp. (sigh) 

But you know what, let’s take a quizz! 

1. You are on a strange land on a car without a station in sight but you have an expert with you. You:

a) Waste gasoline by taking whatever path you like even though you have somebody who knows better with you.

b) Listen what the expert has to say.

 

2.  You have a limited supply of water and you are now walking in the desert. You:

 

a) Gulp it down without thinking about the future.

b) Drink it moderately keeping in mind what you have to walk.

 

3. Your expert keeps trying to give you advise on how to survive. You?

 

a) Shush her

b) Listen to what she has to say.

 

If you chose b, congrats you have a brain. If you chose a, Hi Wanderer! I swear that this girl is so stupid that Melanie literally asks how did her race took over their planet since they are retards and Wanderer says superior numbers without even arguing against the stupidity comment. Well, that and the fact that nobody expected the bug inquisition. Silly me always thought it would be zombies.

(All that dart to the head practice for nothing)

Also have you noticed how Melanie’s competence level depends on how far away she is from her boyfriend. One could even argue that she’s being “the man” of this relationship and is behaving like Meyer’s leading men would while Wanderer is being the type of useless leading lady that Meyer adores. Well, let’s face it, if Meyer wrote them as useless dumb bitches that can’t do anything without a man at the same time we would get nowhere.

 

Anyway we eventually reach an abandoned house with clean water in bleach bottles to make up for the ones the idiot drank and gathered the last twinkies on earth.

(You bitch, those were my spongy, yellow, delicious bastards)

We also find a pre invasion newspaper and you know Meyer wrote the worst day in humanity ever.

“Man Burns Three-Year-Old Daughter to Death,” the headline screamed at me, accompanied by a picture of an angelic blond child. This wasn’t the front page. The horror detailed here was not so hideous as to rate priority coverage. Beneath this was the face of a man wanted for the murders of his wife and two children two years before the print date; the story was about a possible sighting of the man in Mexico. Two people killed and three injured in a drunk-driving accident. A fraud and murder investigation into the alleged suicide of a prominent local banker. A suppressed confession setting an admitted child molester free. House pets found slaughtered in a trash bin.”

Seriously I don’t know if it’s an American thing but my newspapers isn’t filled with top to bottom of horrible news.  Yes, we report bad things, but we have the funnies, the horoscope, half the thing being about pop culture and politics, and a huge chunk is for sports. Those types of news we get once every six months (and this is me being a pessimist) and just one of them. But no, we are horrible rotten people and Wanda grows faint at the horrors that we impose on her and “can you blame her for thinking they could do better.” because nothing justifies mass genocide like thinking the world would be a better place without the race you are exterminating. Geez, doesn’t that sound like the ideals of heroes?

( So stupid even the undead are in pain)

And so our chapter end with them going back to the desert to find the other humans.

 

(Chapter 12)

 

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Now this is really starting to look like colonialist/imperialist apologia. That whole nonsensical scene about how humans are just *so* violent and depraved, so aliens have every right to forcibly take over their minds and enslave them? That could have been Hernando Cortez talking about the Aztecs or the Puritans talking about the Native Americans. "Oh, these savages are so violent and cruel! They slaughter and dismember people on a daily basis! So, to prove that we're superior, we'll...slaughter and dismember them on a daily basis."

The Aztecs *were* bloodthirsty. Human sacrifice was an integral part of their religion. But that still didn't give Cortez and his men the right to slaughter them, steal their gold from them, destroy their city, and try to wipe out every last remnant of their culture, including their texts and language.

Likewise, humans may be horrible a lot of the time, but that still doesn't give smug, silver alien centipedes like Wanda the right to take over their bodies and enslave them.

[shaolina.livejournal.com]

If I said it once I've said it a thousand times: this book would work so much better as a colonialism/imperialism book if done right. But Meyer doesn't know what's she's doing and I doubt she realizes the whole vibe she's giving. I bet that to her this is just the relationship of hardass with a heart of gold Melanie befriending the perfect aliens.

Not that the fangirls are any better. Back when I was at chapter four I had a discussion with some fans of the book and I heard comments on how they loved the book because the aliens were so nice and good. I pretty much told them how wrong they were on that statement and received comments like "Wow, you really like thinking too much."

And it's like the Spaniards in America. The tainos and other Native Americans just don't know any better. So we'll destroy their culture and way of life and force them to adapt into ours and all in the name of God. All we ask is that they work for our benefit. Sweet deal, right? (I'm not bashing religion, just saying it how it was)

But this really should have been a colonialism book. Notice how the aliens infiltrate first the educated masses and move there to other positions of power knowing that once they dominate them the rest would be easy. That is such an colonialist move!