At dinner, America is emo about how everyone around her hates her.  She says it was easy to be brave while watching the news, because Marlee was there to be her own personal fanclub.  Frankly, I’m not the least bit impressed by a main character who is stable when they have a cheering squad and then folds like a flan under slight pressure.  It actually makes her come off as incredibly dependent and flimsy when she can’t take a bit of animosity without it being just so hard, you guys, like OMG.

Granted, living under the strain of having people around you hate you is hard.  Even just thinking that the people around you hate you can be damaging to your psyche.  I’m just having trouble buying it when she hasn’t made a single move to improve her situation.  She doesn’t talk to the other girls, she doesn’t make a positive effort to make friends (seriously, so far she’s just let friends come to her), she hasn’t explained her situation, she hasn’t made one single solitary attempt at interpersonal relationships.

Look, this happens in real life.  Girls will feel put-upon and scared and subconsciously sabotage their own chances at forming healthy relationships and improving their situations.  But that doesn’t make it a good narrative choice.  In fact, because this happens in real life, it’s a bad choice.  Girls need to see positive examples of how to act.  Shit like this reinforces the idea that if they sit off in a corner and sulk, it’s because everyone else really does hate them, and therefore they shouldn’t even try to do anything about it.

I looked up from my plate once to see Kriss Ambers twirling her fork menacingly.

I have absolutely no idea how the flatware became menacing.  I’m actually trying it with my fork right now.  It just looks like a twirling fork.  Now, I can glare at someone while twirling my fork, but the actual twirl remains a pretty neutral gesture.

America wonders why everyone hates her, since popularity isn’t actually a factor in this Selection.  And…hey, yeah, that’s a good point.  It’s not.  So why do they all hate her?  Once again, the book points out the holes in its own narrative, and then continues blithely on.

So while America is sitting around feeling threatened by forks, she looks over to see Marlee being friendly.

How did she manage to do that? Hadn’t that same clip declared her one of the immediate favorites? How did she get people to talk to her?

My guess is she actually smiled, introduced herself, and asked a few small-talk questions, instead of sit and sulk quietly. 

Look, I know talking to strangers is scary.  But it’s not particularly difficult.  You open your mouth and make sounds come out.  Like anything else, you’ll be bad at it at first, but here’s the awesome thing: the more you do it, the better you get at it.  Here’s another awesome thing: you can suck at it and still make conversations.  People are naturally inclined to be social, so if you put the first move out, others will pick up on it.  Even if you make a bad first move, a lot of people will still pick up on it.  It’ll be awkward and probably not last very long, but hey, it’ll be practice, and eventually you’ll get better at it.

Dessert was an assortment of fruits in vanilla ice cream. It was like I’d never eaten before. If this was food, what had I been putting in my mouth up to this point?

I don’t know.  Maybe you should tell us.  Seriously, we know she eats fruit at home, so why doesn’t she compare the two and say that…I don’t know, the palace fruit is exceptionally flavorful and tender, or maybe that it’s exotic fruits instead of just apples and oranges.  Maybe the palace is serving her starfruits and kiwis.  We’ll never know, because this book is horrid.

After dinner it’s time for bed, and America contemplates putting on the clothes she brought from home, “just to feel like myself for a moment.”  Eh?  In an earlier chapter she was whining about how her clothes were really dull and not bright enough to suit her, and here she has all the bright, fancy clothes she wants, but now that’s wrong, too?

America is just going to find a reason to complain no matter what, isn’t she?  Just like this book can find a reason to insult a woman’s looks, no matter what they are.

Before they split off for their rooms, Marlee pulls America off to the side and explains to her that all girls are bitches.  No, I’m serious.

“Well, I get tutored with a bunch of other Fours back home, all girls, and they each have their ways of getting under other people’s skin. See, it’s all about knowing the person, figuring out what will bug them the most. Lots of girls give me backhanded compliments, or little remarks, things like that. I know I come across as bubbly, but I’m shy underneath that, and they think they can wear me down with words.”

She says that every girl has a way to make every other girl feel insignificant, and that’s what every girl at this Selection is doing.  She characterizes it as being entirely an attack-based action.  She leaves no room for girls who are just scared and expressing that fear by sulking, snapping, and glaring.  She leaves no room for a girl who doesn’t want to undercut everyone around her just for the lols.  She’s very clearly saying here that women are in constant competition with each other, and that’s just the default setting, but it’s okay because that’s just the way things are.

With every passing chapter, I’m more and more convinced that this book just flat-out hates women.

Back in her room, the maids are back, and every single time the narration calls them ‘they.’  The maids are not given any identity or personality, they’re just a lump of three maids acting like one.  They…they’re basically the blonde triplets from Beauty and Beast.  They all move as one, they all say exactly the same thing, have the same opinions, and basically should be one person, except one person isn’t a big enough fan club for Gaston/America.  (The maids, by the way, are named Lucy, Anne, and Mary, but America hasn’t bothered to tell them apart, so I can’t tell them apart either.  The triplets are named Claudia, Laura, and Paula.)

Once again, America wishes the triplets would leave, but she doesn’t bother to actually say anything to that effect, because maids aren’t real people and just can’t handle requests in an intelligent manner.  They also have to be constantly reassured like little puppies that get put in the backyard and made sad faces at the back door.

I think I’ll hold onto my pet theory, that these girls are desperate to keep their jobs because one false move means being booted.  I know I’m supposed to read them as just fawning over America because she’s that awesome (and because that’s just what maids do, don’tchaknow), but I actually find it far less rage-inducing to think they’re just undertrained and grasping at straws and terrified at misstepping.  It makes their slavish attempts to please her a lot more logical, as well as their hesitance to leave her alone.  Someone higher up could see them return to their rooms early and assume they’re ignoring their duties.  Of course, on the flip side, it makes America even more of a brat for not realizing that ‘fawning’ is not the act of confidently-employed person.  Still, that’s a drop in the bucket of her already-existing bratiness.

Anne seemed to be on top of things, Mary was easygoing, and Lucy I guessed was just shy.

Ah, finally, something to work with.

“One of us is supposed to stay here while you sleep. In case you need something.” Lucy looked nervous, like she was afraid of whatever decision I would make. She seemed to have little tremors now and then, which I guessed was her shyness coming to the surface.

‘Tremors’ is not a sign of ‘shy.’  If your body is physically, uncontrollably shaking to a visible degree, that’s something to be worried about.  If I saw someone with intermittent, persistent tremors, someone who also looked ‘nervous’ and ‘afraid,’ my first assumption would be “holy shit, that person’s under an insane amount of stress and fear.” 

…my pet theory is gaining canon evidence.  I wonder if the book realizes this.

America finally gets rid of them by way of a direct command, then starts to unpack her things.

I surveyed the dresses as I did so. There were only a few. Enough to get me through a week or so.

If you have enough dresses to wear a new one every day of the week, that’s not a ‘few.’  Well, it’s not a ‘few’ if you are poor.  America should be looking at these incredibly expensive, fancy dresses and thinking “wow, I have one for every day of the week!” not “oh, there’s only seven here.  How plebian.” 

She’s seamlessly progressed from being a middle class brat to a rich-girl brat.

The few books I’d brought found their way to the helpful shelf near the doors that opened to my balcony.

Balcony.  They’re not allowed out on the grounds for security reasons, but she has a balcony.  How is a country run by people this stupid even still going?  The wars and rebels should have eaten them by now.

She looks out at the grounds and sees that there’s a massive forest behind the gardens.  …if this is set in future Los Angeles, then that’s actually pretty impossible.  Los Angeles is jam-packed with concrete.  Seriously, from the beach to the mountains, it’s concrete.  There’s parks and shit, but not ‘as far as the eye can see’ parks.  (Griffith Park might count, but that’s on a mountain.  It doesn’t stretch out into the horizon, it just goes until the top of the mountain, and then you can’t see the rest because it’s on the other side.)  Even if this is a future city where there’s not millions upon millions of people there, concrete doesn’t just get up and move.  It has to be taken out by people.  It could get broken up by plants after enough time, but I doubt there’d be a dense forest.  Maybe a really sparse forest, but most likely just an expanse of ruins with random trees dotted around.

Also, rebels.  Rebels love forests, because they can hide there easier than armies can find them.  If there’s no fence between the forest and the palace grounds, well, then no wonder they occasionally get through.  It’s probably only ‘occasionally’ because they just like to fuck with you and are holding back the all-out, take-shit-over attack until a more strategic time.

Finally America goes to bed and emos about Aspen.  She wonders if he still loves her, and I want to break shit.  I mean, the only good thing about their breakup was that it was done honestly, and Aspen never claimed that he didn’t still love her.  So there’s no reason for her to think that’s why they split, or wonder if he’s still in love with her.

Blah, blah, blah, she sits in bed and just angsts all over the place about everything that happened through the day.  Homesickness and fear and such.  Yeah, things do have a tendency to go haywire as soon as you have a quiet moment to think, but I’d buy this a lot better if the book hadn’t completely ignored most of these points until now.  America hasn’t thought about her family for one second, until right when the author needs her to feel sad and cry-y.

She runs through the palace because she wants to go out to the forest for no good reason.  She hasn’t shown any inclination toward nature before now, but the author just really wants her to go the forest, so that’s where she’s headed.  No one stops her until she gets to the outside doors, at which point a guard tells her to go back to her room.  She claims she can’t breathe because she just needs outside that bad.  Then she actually gets woozy and faints.

Uh, no.  That’s an incredibly strong reaction to throw at us all of a sudden like that.  Without some history of panic attacks, claustrophobia, or other hyperventilation-inducing condition, I’m just not buying it.  It’s too dramatically convenient without enough justification.  That, and it smacks of ‘getting the vapors,’ that toxic little idea that women just can’t handle stress and so they default to fainting any time they’re under pressure.

His staff fell to the ground.

…the guard has a staff?  You mean, like this?

There’s a reason I had to link to a CG picture.  It’s because real guards don’t carry staffs.  That’s stupid.  A staff is largely ceremonial; it’s not a good weapon.  A good weapon is a gun, because then you don’t have to wait for the enemy to get within 6 feet of you before you can do something about it. 

Suddenly, a wild Maxon appears!  He orders the guard to let her outside, even though the whole reason for not letting her outside was because of security.  I mean, it makes no sense according to logic, but that was their reasoning.  So apparently Maxon doesn’t care if the Selection girls get shot by rebels.  Awesome quality to have in a love interest.

I let myself feel the warm air on my skin, the grass beneath my toes. Somehow even things in nature seemed to be bred into something extravagant here.

Such as…? 

And, seriously, why the sudden love of nature?  It would make far more sense if she just numbly wandered around the palace looking for a music room.  She could be just as barred from random wanderings as she is from outside, and it would at least be a thing we know she feels comforted by.

America collapses in a dramatic heap next to a bench, because we just want to hammer in that classic image of a weak, scared, fainting woman in distress.

Maxon follows her to ask if she’s alright, and she snips at him.

“What have I done to offend you? Did I not just give you the very thing you asked for?” He was genuinely confused by my response. I suppose he expected us to adore him and thank our lucky stars for his existence.

He doesn’t expect you to worship him, he just wants to know why you’re offended.  There’s a huge difference between the two concepts.  I guess America doesn’t understand the concept of liking someone without being their fanclub.  After all, her only friend is Aspen, who she worships, and all the other girls either worship her in their own way or hate her guts.

God, that’s really sad.  Whatever happened to the concept of moderation in relationships, that they don’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing?

Maxon sticks around and acts all confused, but not terribly bothered by the fact that she keeps yelling at him.  Considering she hasn’t acted like she wants him to leave (and considering she did just semi-faint a minute ago), I’ll allow it.

Apparently the fact that he calls her ‘my dear’ is a big deal.  Eh, it’s just a term of mild affection.  I know people who use it on everyone, even strangers.  It’s not a standard address, but it does fit with his general posh speech patterns so far.

“That is an unfair statement. You are all dear to me. It is simply a matter of discovering who shall be the dearest.”

Uhg, no, that was not the right argument, because now America is right.  If it’s just a term of polite affection, just a way to say “hey, I don’t hate you and seem like a right nice person,” then that’s fine.  Still change it, because she asked you to, but it would only be rude going forward.  Claiming that he actually does care for these girls before even meeting them, however, is dead wrong.

“It’s ridiculous!” I yelled, regaining some of my courage.

“What is?”

“This contest! The whole thing! Haven’t you ever loved anyone at all? Is this how you want to pick a wife? Are you really so shallow?”

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BOOK?  STOP TALKING ABOUT LOVE!  This isn’t about love!  This is a convention that has been in place for generations!  It wouldn’t matter if Maxon was in love or not!  He could be in love right fucking now and would still being doing the Selection to pick a wife!  ALL PRINCES PICK WIVES THIS WAY, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW YOUR CULTURE DOES SHIT.

If you want to argue that the Selection is wrong because it should be loved based, that would be one thing.  If the Selection were optional and just a rare thing that only happened when princes chose to hold one, that would be one thing.  But America shouldn’t even be thinking like this if a Selection is the standard queen-choosing process!

Maxon, instead of pointing out that she’s a fucking idiot because he doesn’t get a choice in the matter, just says that he doesn’t get to meet a lot of women because he’s always holed up in the palace.  I am going to go ahead and assume that this means: 1) only men are involved in running the government, 2) said men never bring their wives/daughters/sisters/escorts to the palace, 3) his mother doesn’t keep a female staff (such as ladies-in-waiting), 4) there’s no parties for all the nobility.  Because, seriously, it shouldn’t be that hard for Maxon to meet women.

Also, fuck off, this whole line of conversation is stupid and only works if the Selection is voluntary on both ends.  It wasn’t presented as being voluntary for the prince.

“Yes. Sort of. Well, it’s a long story. And now … I’m here. And I’m not fighting. My plan is to enjoy the food until you kick me out.”

Yes, finally.  Now if only she would say as much to the other girls.  I mean, a lot of them wouldn’t believe her, but at least she’d be making an effort.

Maxon thinks that’s just the funniest thing ever, because the poor boy is kept separate from humor as well as women.

They chat for a little while longer, then Maxon leaves her alone in the garden, because security?  what’s that?