So today, I went looking to see if the author had anything out there on the web explaining her caste system.  This was the best she could come up with.  Just look at those Twos.  This author doesn’t seem to get how ‘celebrity’ works.  You have to be at the top of some other profession and awesome at it (or just really good at networking/marketing) to become a celeb, it’s not a profession of its own.  Except in a few special cases, of course.  *coughcoughPariscough*  Now, I guess it’s possible to have all of your celebs be Paris Hilton, to just look at a group of people and say “You’re famous now.  Do something interesting.”  But…well, you’d have some really fucking stupid famous people.  Not everyone born into being a Two is going to be capable of filling your entertainment needs.  They’re just not.  So you’re going to have some really, really shitty entertainment with only a few bright spots, and even those aren’t going to be very good because, frankly, they don’t have to be very good to be better than the rest.

And film directors are cast below actors?  Since when?  Directors are gods on set; they get to decide if the cut with you making a good face or the cut with you making a ‘derp’ face makes it into the final film.  And also a million other little details that can make or break a movie.  I know most people focus on actors, but no, it’s the directors who call the shots.  Why would you put them below the actors and take away a good chunk of their authority?

Sevens are gardeners, but in an earlier chapter, Lucy was worried about being assigned as a gardener if she doesn’t make it as a maid.  Continuity fail.

Eights are ‘unwell’ and ‘addicts’?  Oh, yeah, there’s nothing fishy about that at all, is there?  Given the utter lack of explanation about Eights, it’s hard to tell if this is a catch-all class of people who fall out of the other groups, or if it’s like those groups and you’re born into/stuck as an Eight.  I mean, a little confirmation that it’s the former would be nice.  Otherwise we’re left with the idea that addiction is hereditary and there’s no way, just none at all, that you can avoid being one if your parents are one.  (Perversely, in this kind of set up, children of Eights would become addicts, simply because there’s nothing else for them.  But policy makers would look around and say “see?  Told you so.”)  Even if we take it to mean that you have to be put into the Eight caste…um, that’s pretty fucking bleak.  Are there no programs to help addicts become clean?  Seriously, fuck you, book.  Addicts are not wastes of human life.  They can and do beat their addictions and return to being productive members of society.  Hell, a good number of them are productive while being addicts.  Addiction does not define a person as if there’s nothing else in the universe they are or ever will be capable of.

You know what, same goes for mental illness.  No, really, the mentally disabled can work.  It depends on what their disability is, but some can do really fine, high-functioning jobs, and some are more limited, but they can work.  Physically disabled?  Same thing.  When my mom sold her business a few years ago, she sold it to a blind guy who has taken that place and made it better than ever.  It is really, really sick and disgusting that this book/author seems to think that the disabled are useless.  She probably thinks that all aid for them is in the form of straight-up handouts instead of job assistance/placement or helping them learn to live independently or anything like that.

And runaways?  Runaways get their own caste?  Why, because it’s just impossible for them to go back home again?

But the worst thing about this all is that IT TELLS ME FUCKING NOTHING except a little more about the author’s prejudices and stupidity.  It doesn’t tell me what privileges certain castes do or don’t have, and it doesn’t tell me about the laws governing movement between castes or why the different numbers suck more, whether there’s a wage cap or if the society just collectively decided to treat them like shit.  This author basically didn’t think any further than ‘different jobs for different castes’ and then put jobs she thinks are stupid at the bottom, without giving any thought to sense or logic.  (Like, did you know that a good personal assistant/secretary can make well over $60K/year?  A senior paralegal can make over $80K?)

Well, on to the actual chapter.  America tries to convince Maxon that Celeste is a terrible person who ruined Kriss’s dress on purpose.  Maxon, in what I think is frankly a bit of OOC, tells her that it can’t be so, because Celeste acted so sad afterward, and also she’s always nice to Maxon.  This just seems off, since Maxon likes America so much that he actually dismissed one girl for talking bad about her.  He starts a food program based on her word.  But as soon as it’s dramatically convenient, suddenly Maxon doesn’t want to listen to her and thinks she’s just going on about girl problems instead of real problems.

America does bring up the red dress that Celeste ruined, but only after Maxon is so annoyed that the just walks away from the conversation.  See, this is why you’re supposed to bring up problems right when they happen. 

No, really, this is actually a big problem that a lot of people have in real life.  They keep things a secret because they think it’s just a minor problem and nothing will get done.  Well, that might be so, but bring it up anyway.  Most people who do bad things don’t do one major bad thing, they simply have a pattern of small bad behaviors.  It’s important to have some proof of that pattern, and you can only do that if you bring things up as they happen.  I once worked with a guy that everyone else wanted to get fired, because he was lazy and racist and never showered.  We weren’t allowed to fire him, because we didn’t have a paper trail documenting his history of bad behavior.  As far as the guys in the office knew, he was a model employee.  So at the point where we were all ready to strangle him, we had to start from square one and build up a paper trail on this guy.  That could have been avoided if we’d just spoken up about things as they happened.  Same case here for America.  If she’d pointed out Celeste’s nastiness every time it happened, it would be a lot easier to say “look, see, there’s a pattern here.”  As it stands, with her bringing everything up at once, it just sounds like she’s grasping for things to accuse Celeste with.

Before Maxon leaves in a huff, he just can’t help tossing off the “I’m the prince and you have to respect me” line.  I hate, hate, hate this line.  Now, frankly, I think that he’s right, but only partially.  Leaders need to be respected.  You can argue that royalty is a bunk ruling system, and that’s a valid argument, but it’s beside the current point.  If you assume that ‘king’ is a practical system, then that king, everyone in a position of power actually, needs to be respected.  People do not follow the orders of their peers.  They just don’t.  They might follow a request, but only if they agree with it, and a ruler is going to do some things that not everyone agrees with.  (And that’s not always wrong.  Most good things that politicians do start off with some strong opposition.)  Having a culture of respect for superiors ensures that people will still do what they need to, even when they don’t want to.  It’s perfectly valid for Maxon to say “respect my authority” here.

It is NOT a good idea to have this demand for respect by applied willy-nilly.  He can’t have America be a peer and put up with her yelling at him one day, then pull rank on her the next day.  I’ve had superiors do this to me, and it drives me up a wall.  It’s even worse when someone thinks it’s okay to make jokes and be buddy-buddy with you, but as soon as you make a joke, well then that’s just disrespectful, and damnit, private, I am not your friend and you will treat me like the boss I am.  No.  No, it doesn’t work that way.  The relationship between two people can’t be that unequal.  It is not right to have one person be informal while the other person has to be formal. 

In this case, Maxon has treated America as a peer.  He’s been perfectly alright with all manner of her behavior as long as it amuses him, but as soon as he doesn’t like what she says, suddenly he’s all “STFU, I’m the prince.”  What this says to me is that Maxon does not someone who has a backbone and can tell him hard truths, he just wants a yesman who’s a little more energetic than usual. 

Then America gets all in a huff and cries because Maxon didn’t believe her when she all of a sudden said that Celeste has been doing bad things all along.  Uhg, it’s so annoying to rant for several paragraphs about Maxon being an ass and then suddenly be on his side again because America is being stupid.

I guess Maxon was just a typical guy, and Celeste was a beautiful girl, and in the end that would be what won out. For all his talk about wanting a soul mate, maybe all he wanted was a bedmate.

No.  No.  No.  Fuck you.  Just because a guy agrees with a beautiful girl does not mean it’s because the girl is beautiful.  Assuming this just feeds into the assumption we hear from males a lot that beautiful girls are airheads good only for physical trysts.  That guys assume this is not a good thing, but that girls buy into the idea is not any better.  In fact, it just adds to the culture and makes it worse.  America, in this case, is not even allowing room for anything except sexuality in this relationship.  She doesn’t think that Celeste is presenting herself as a nice girl to the prince, or that maybe he wants someone who doesn’t just fling accusations around without any precedent.  No, America is placing all of Celeste’s value on her looks, then assuming that of course everyone else would do the same, because of course there’s nothing else of value about her.

After that little fight, America goes back up to her room to sulk and finds Aspen guarding her door.  She gets more feels, and they are confusing feels.  Aspen acts all creepy and stares at her as she goes into her room.  And that’s not just me; he creeps out America, too.

America goes to bed and tosses and turns because she just has so many feels.  Then AT TWO IN THE FUCKING MORNING Aspen sneaks into her room.  He’s not supposed to be in her room, and also IT’S TWO IN THE FUCKING MORNING.  America didn’t mention being particularly noisy, so unless Aspen has bat ears, he shouldn’t have been able to just hear the fact that she was awake.  Which, in turn, makes it seem like he was intending to just walk in on her while she’s sleeping, which is even more creepy than the creepy stares out in the hall.

America demands to know what he’s doing in her room, but he ignores everything she says and asks if she’s in love with the prince.  Because apparently the only thing he cares about is America’s men-related feelings, and nothing else.

He ripped back my blankets in a move both graceful and violent. I should have protested, but I didn’t.

Because fuck feminism, that’s why.

So then Aspen forced a make-out on her.  Sure, she likes it, but at the same time she tells him to stop because FUCKING AROUND WITH SOMEONE ELSE IS CURRENTLY A DEATH PENALTY.  Seriously, if you could get someone killed by kissing them, I’d say that’s a situation in which you really, really need to ask permission first.  Aspen says he doesn’t care if he gets killed because he feels like he’d die without kissing her, but noticeably absent are any fucks on his part for whether or not America is willing to risk the same.

Because just fuck everything good and decent and kind in the world, that’s why.

“I hate you, you know?” I said.

“I know, Mer. I know.”

And then they continue to make out anyway.  Hey, remember when the kissing used to be the only halfway well done thing in this book?  I miss that time…

Aspen says he was assigned to the palace because he tested highest in his training class.  I mean, there’s a FUCKING WAR ON, multiple of them possibly, but yeah, let’s put all our best trainees on some out of the way assignment.  Also, they might have given him super-soldier-serum, he’s not sure and doesn’t question it at all.  Just says that he got ‘shots’ and then grew really fast.  Seems this serum also removes one’s self-preservation.  Might seem like a good idea in a super-soldier, but actually, not really.

He has to go outside again so he doesn’t get caught, and when alone, America thinks that Maxon ‘deserves’ this.  What is ‘this’?  Look, either she’s not with Maxon, and therefore she’s free to do whatever she wants.  She’s not exclusive, so she doesn’t have to restrict herself to one guy until she makes an ‘exclusive’ deal with one or the other of them.  In that case, why would anyone ‘deserve’ the situation?  It’s just a normal run of things that okay, and why would you think anyone ‘deserves’ normalcy?  If that’s not the case and we assume that America has to be exclusive to Maxon because…reasons, then she’s cheating on him.  Look, I don’t like the logic that goes into that argument, but if we accept it, then no one ‘deserves’ to be cheated on.

No, really, no one ‘deserves’ to be cheated on.  If your partner is an ass, or is a cheater in turn, or whatever you think is so bad, then leave them.  Either they are bad enough to end the relationship, or they aren’t, and you need to not be an ass yourself.  Don’t cheat.  Thinking that someone ‘deserves’ to be hurt just because you’re hurting is nothing more than petty revenge thinking that never solves anything.  Fix the situation or get the fuck out of dodge; don’t just add more hurt onto the pile.

America then compounds her stupidity by saying that since Celeste is going to bend the rules, that makes it okay for her to do the same.  Because America doesn’t actually have to be a good person, she just has to be better than this one other chick, so that justifies setting the bar lower?  I don’t know.  Fuck it, at this point, I don’t even care, because I already hate her.