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

[zelda-queen.livejournal.com]

Nope, your description of newspapers is pretty much what we get here in America as well. Once in awhile we get something nasty like that (actually, the burning-child thing reminds me of a thing where a guy put his baby in a microwave because it wouldn't stop crying. God, that was awful).

But yeah, either things weren't very good that day or Meyer's just exaggerating. Kind of ironic, given how she had her characters actively ignore all of the bad stuff in the Twilight series.

[shaolina.livejournal.com]

We just got a mother who killed her kids and everyone is horrified by that. But see that huge reaction? It's because that doesn't happen everyday.

But I facepalmed so hard when I read that since a newspaper is not all bad news. I would say around 20% is bad at best. You have economy section, politics, pop culture, movie reviews, cartoons, horoscope, the yellow pages, sports and so on and that's not bad. It was just Meyer trying to defend Wanderer because she is all for genocide and it's hard to make that look good. It annoys me further because Melanie just gives a weak response instead "Not all days are like that." Melanie, you used to be so good on calling her on her BS. >_<

[carmyn]

Meyer, you need to put your characters through a reality test: if they die rather quickly in the real world, you have a problem...

With the newspaper, the only time where we had a lot of bad things happened was when the gangs were all killing each other for about six months. Otherwise, the paper isn't too bad. Oh, and Pickton was pretty big too for a bit.

[shaolina.livejournal.com]

Wanderer is the bug version of Too dumb to live. While I read I kept thinking "If Melanie would shut up for an hour this story would already be over."

And I believe Meyer has never seen a newspaper. Yes, they have bad news and sometime horrible news, but most of them are average. Today's paper had 24 pages of kid activities. 24!! Truly the apocalypse is coming after that.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey it's Valkyrie, just had to comment.
"Angelic blonde child"? Listen, Meyer, I know your Sparklepires were just soooo beautiful and Renessmee was soooo beautiful but come on!
Really? Huh. I live in New Zealand and our newspaper has different sections like sports, politics, comics A.K.A funnies, dailys (horoscopes, movie times and such, deaths and weddings and births all put together on a couple a pages which is ironic to me.
"The headline screamed at me." I don't know why but that made me lol. Probably because I was imagining a harry potter-esque howler XD.
"The horror DETAILED there..." So if the horror is DETAILED... Why is it so worse on the other page? I honestly don't think a man burning his daughter alive is worse than finding pets slaughtered in a trash can.
And we don't have top to bottom news either. Alot gets shown on the channel three news, anyhow.
That's all from me, peace.

[shaolina.livejournal.com]

XD Dailys, huh? I would have called that the circle of life.

But what bothers me is the missed opportunity. She could have found both good and bad news and make Wanda realize that humans were capable of both great good and great evil and using this to see that yes even her own race is capable of the same. But no, the aliens are perfect even though they are doing racial cleansing and genocide.

[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!

[(Anonymous)]

Damn, sorry, I re-read what I wrote ere a while back and I DO think a man burning his daughter alive is worse than the pets being killed.
The other way round sounded really wrong.