It’s Friday, guys.  (No, in the book.  I know it’s really Thursday.)  And on Fridays, there’s some super special news broadcast that everyone doesn’t have to watch, but everyone has to watch it.  Or…something.

Even Eights—the homeless, the wandering—would find a store or a church where they could see the Report.

YOU HAVE A CASTE FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE?!?!?!  HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN WORK?  Tell me, is it illegal for a homeless man to find work?  Do you have measures in place to ensure that the homeless stay homeless?  Can someone move into that caste?  Are there Fours and Fives that lose their jobs or can’t pay their bills and they become Eights?  And then are stuck there?  Or does a homeless Four stay a Four?  Or do homeless people have jobs, they just aren’t allowed to get homes?  Why am I asking any of this?  HAVING A ‘HOMELESS CASTE’ MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL.  That is not how castes work!

So America’s whole family sits down to watch the news on their television.  Because their money is tight as a wire and they sometimes worry about food, but they have their own television.  Unless these things are being handed out for free so that people can watch the news, this makes no sense.  This makes negative sense.

The family talks about the Selection and then gush over how America is so pretty, really, just so pretty, she just can’t see it.  Because we’re still running right along with the whole “good girls can’t know how pretty they really are.  But they do still have to be pretty.”

This trope started from a good place.  It really did.  Plenty of young ladies are down on their appearance, thanks to our fucked up media.  It’s not a bad thing to encourage them to see themselves as beautiful.  But we’ve got too far in the other direction, and that’s mostly because no one bothered to make these characters actually of average appearance.  They’re perfect and just plug their ears and go “lalalalala” when anyone says so. 

Girls, taking pride in your looks is not evil.  It doesn’t make you one of “those girls.”  Confidence is not only sexy, it’s healthy.  Whether you do it on purpose or not, constantly devaluing your own looks is not good for your sanity.

Also, it seems everyone has gotten the news about how it’s not really a lottery, because the family is running right along talking about competition.  Not one word about how the government apparently lied, or speculating on why they would tell everyone it’s a lotto when it’s not. 

On top of that, this has been going on for generations.  Has no one before now noticed that it’s odd everyone has to fill out an application and take pictures?  Has it been a lotto in the past and this time it’s different?  We’ll never know, because this book is written like shit!  Really, it completely fails to keep in mind any sense of a world larger than America.  This is her first Selection, so this is the first Selection, and no one makes any comment on Selections past.

It was the one channel you didn’t have to pay to have, so even the Eights could get it if they had a TV.

Why would Eights have a TV?  And where would they plug them in?  And are you telling me that you have channels that you do pay for? (‘Even’ the Eights get it, implying people other than Eights watch more channels all the time.)  ARE YOU PAYING FOR TV CHANNELS YOU DON’T NEED WHILE BEING IFFY ON FOOD?!?!  This family doesn’t have money problems. I’m convinced of this.  They are a family that has plenty of money and spends it on everything else before turning to their bills and saying “oops, we ran out.”

This Friday evening report consists of the royal family and all the kinds advisors sitting in front of a camera and reading announcements, because that’s really the best use of the king’s time.  I guess they didn’t make a caste for news anchors or press agents.  I mean, I guess it’s good to see your leaders on a regular basis, but…reading the evening news?  Seriously?

America and Magda talk about the current queen, who used to be a Four.

A Four. She’d spent her formative years working in a factory or a shop, or maybe on a farm.

What am I even looking at?  Fives are all artists, but Fours can be factory workers or shopkeepers or farmers?  What?  Also, when Aspen was introduced, Sixes were separated from Sevens by saying they were trained for ‘indoor’ work.  So what outdoor work are Sevens doing if not farming?  And working in a factory…might work.  It depends on their level of technology, which seems about on par with our current level.  In that case, we’re not talking about Industrial Revolution bobbin spinners, but rather skilled workers keeping track of large machinery.  Sometimes.  Other times, yeah, it’s really mindless, unskilled work.  Depends on the factory.  So Fours are supposedly better off than Fives.  Are the factory workers that bundle cardboard boxes paid the same wage as the factory workers who assemble computer motherboards?  Are people in different castes paid different according to their jobs?  Are there Fours who get paid more for chopping up recycled rubber than a Six who does the bookkeeping? 

WHY IS THIS WORLD SO FUCKED UP?

‘Shopkeeper’ is the only part of that that makes sense.    The further up you go in a caste system, the more administrative things should get.  At the bottom, you have the laborers who produce raw goods.  They give those goods to the artisans, one caste above them, who make usable products.  Artisans give those to one caste up, the shopkeepers, who sell them.  Shopkeepers are administered by the gentry, who are administered by the nobility, who are (sometimes) kept in line by the religious leaders.  There’s an order to it, a system.  There’s a logical flow of goods and power, all of it moving in an upward direction.  Castes are not assigned out willy-nilly according to whatever the fuck one gal thinks sounds cool.

Also, the prince looks hot, just not as hot as Aspen.

But he sat way too rigidly in his chair. He looked so uptight. His clean hair was too perfect, his tailored suit too crisp. He seemed more like a painting than a person. I almost felt bad for the girl who ended up with him. That would probably be the most boring life imaginable.

He’s a prince on national television.  What do you expect?  Jeans?  Bad posture?  Making faces at the camera?  He’s not a stick in the mud just because he’s behaving in front of cameras.  I mean, he could still be that way (I’m sure he will, because haha, subtlety and skill, what’s that?) but his behavior on television should not be taken as evidence of that.  All it means is that he’s not PR-stupid.

Were her friends jealous of her when she was chosen? If I had any really close friends, would they be jealous of me?

…Do you not know if you have close friends?

The country is at war, and apparently some place called New Asia got attacked recently.

Okay, I’ve let the name thing go so far.  America?  Aspen?  Maxon?  They’re stupid and don’t appear to have any cultural context, but I’m not so big on names, and what else can you say besides “uhg”?

New Asia cannot be let go, though.  Does this author have any idea how big ‘Asia’ is?  How culturally and ecologically diverse it is?  I know we have places like “New York” around today, named for ‘old’ places, but there’s a reason.  Usually, the people who name the new place want to recreate the old place.  Culturally recreate it, at least.  So who named ‘New Asia’?  There is no part of Asia that doesn’t have a problem with some other part of Asia.  It is not a homogenous land.  The Koreans don’t identify with the Japanese, the Chinese are vastly different from the Indians, Pakistan is not the same as Mongolia.  So who the fuck named ‘New Asia’?  It certainly wasn’t anyone from that continent, because they wouldn’t name their new home after all those other people who they don’t identify with.  (Which is different from ‘people they don’t like,’ although that’s a factor, too.)

This is the name given by an idiot who doesn’t realize that Asia is not some giant land of look-alikes.  this is the name given by a middle-class American brat author who thinks everyone east of the Pacific is basically all alike.  I’ll say it: this is a racist name. 

but we are confident that with the fresh draft next month will come lifted morale, not to mention a swelling of fresh forces.”

This is the first mention we’ve had of a war, and the first hint we’ve had of a war.  Yet, there’s a draft. 

Dude, the homeland is being attacked.  This isn’t the Iraq War, where everything happened in a place most people can’t find on a map.  With that war, the everyday person wasn’t affected, because it took a relatively small portion of our resources.  (I’m not saying it wasn’t massively expensive, I’m just saying that we didn’t have to give up our nylons for it.  It took up a smaller percentage of our abilities than previous wars.)  If a war is so costly that you have to draft people to fight it, that’s a resources-heavy war.  There should be shortages.  America should be keeping a victory garden in the backyard and whining about how there’s metal shortages because everything’s being diverted into bullets and all the parties she’s performing at are fundraisers for war bonds.  Or, how about having artists temporarily recast into working factories and making tanks?

If there is a war on the homeland, the population should not be this isolated from it!  This is some very basic, common sense shit.

I hated war.

Yeah?  Tell me how much it’s affected your life.  Oh, none at all.

Unfortunately, we were a young country that had to protect itself against everyone. It wasn’t likely this land would survive another invasion.

…you’re being invaded.  Right now, you’re being invaded.  The king just said he had to put in a new draft.  That means you are currently in a war.  So does that mean you’re resigned to not being a country anymore, since you won’t survive this invasion?

And if you’re so young and poor a country, have there been diplomatic attempts to stave off war?  It seems diplomacy would be a high priority.  Which makes choosing your queen according to bullshit reasons instead of ability even stupider. 

And why is America not more scared about this?  Seriously, they are in a war that has a good chance of ending the country’s existence and they just get updates about it once a week, which is the only time anyone ever thinks about the war?

I’m pretty much positive that this author thinks the Iraq War is how every war goes, at least on the home front side of it.  Which is pretty much the height of self-centered, narrow-minded, brat-filled idiocy.  Good lord, just cracking open any high school history textbook should be enough to teach you otherwise.

…This author majored in History.  Excuse me while I go mourn for humanity.

Alright, moving on.  We breeze through all the rest of the ‘announcements’ like they’re just so simple, and then immediately spend more words talking about the Selection than we did on the war and the rebels combined.  Okay, I know the Selection is the title event and obviously going to be the focus, but if that’s the case, why include such a huge important war?  If you’re going to ignore that huge important war, don’t make it so huge and important.

I have received the first count of submitted applications, and I am pleased to say that thousands of the beautiful women in Illéa have already placed their names in the lottery for the Selection!

Application or lottery.  Pick one, fucking book.  I mean, supposedly it’s an application process masquerading as a lottery, but in that case, why can’t the official in charge of it keep that straight?

Of course, we will be having lots of programming dedicated to meeting the young women of the Selection, not to mention specials on their lives at the palace.

But only weekly, vague updates on the war which might end your country.  But yeah, go ahead, focus on parties and dresses.  I hope you guys do get invaded and eaten by other countries.  You’re clearly not qualified or able to run a government.

There’s some dude named Gavril who’s the master of ceremonies/celebrity interviewer/announcer combination.  Did they just run out of people and that’s why all these different jobs have to be combined?  Here’s a thought, go pick up some of those homeless Eights and put them to work so that Gavril only has to do one position.

Maybe you can get some of them to be reporters, too.

Apparently Gavril is some huge celebrity personality, because Magda and May are fangasming over him showing up on TV.  God, everyone in this book has some fucked-to-hell-and-back priorities. 

I’ll just be over here in the corner, humming a little ditty about your country’s imminent demise.

There’s a war on, but Gavril is going to interview Maxon about the Selection. 

From here on out, pretend I’ve prefaced all my sentences with “There’s a war on, but…”

“Thank you, Gavril. The pleasure is all mine.” Maxon’s voice was as poised as the rest of him. He radiated waves of formality. I wrinkled my nose at the idea of just being in the same room with him.

Why?  Because he’s formal while being interviewed on national television?  What’s so terrible about that?  The reason this fails is that America never gives us any good reason to dislike the guy.  She doesn’t say that because he acts so formal in public, she assumes he would be just as lifeless in private.  If she did, that would make her an idiot, but at least it would be something.  Instead, we’re left with the assumption that everyone should agree with her that good manners are…bad?

Even if he is a stick in the mud, at worst, he’d be slightly dull.  Not exactly a horrible fate.

“Have you asked dear old dad for any advice on how he managed to get ahold of such a beautiful wife when it was his turn?”

Um…the girl signed up, came to his palace, and got chosen?  Really, he didn’t have to court her, he just had to pluck her out of a lineup.

king and queen, and the camera panned over to show them looking at each other, smiling and holding hands. It seemed genuine, but how would we know any better?

So you question that, but you don’t question Maxon’s posture?

Let’s talk about unreliable narrators for a moment.  This right here is a big sign that we don’t have an unreliable narrator.  She has no reason to assume that one public act is true while another isn’t.  The only difference is that Maxon really is a stick in the mud, and the King and Queen really do have issues, so America magically knows these things.  The only thing she’s allowed to be wrong about is her looks, and in that case, everyone and their dog trip over themselves to assure her it’s just not true. 

Now, it’s possible to have a character who assumes the worst of everyone, so any good act is assumed to be fake and any bad act is assumed to reinforce her own prejudice, but we just don’t get that tone from the books.  It’s all very neutral, even when it shouldn’t be.

The prince says he hasn’t given much thought to the Selection because, you know, fucking war!  That takes up all his time and cognitive powers.

Mom and May laughed. I suppose it was kind of funny.

…You’re a moron.  What part of “I’m focusing on fighting a war for my country’s very survival and don’t have time for anything else because it’s a war for our very survival” is supposed to be funny?

Blah, blah, and then the news ends. 

Why are royals giving out interviews on the evening news?  Why is every single, solitary, little thing in this book stupid?  How hard is it to realize that royals are not the same as celebrities?

Maxon was so stiff and quiet. It was hard to imagine anyone happy with such a wimp.

Wimp?  Was he supposed to get in a fist-fight with Gavril?  Is there something about working closely with the military and focusing on winning a war for survival that makes one especially wimpy?  Seriously, WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM?

And why is America so anti-Maxon?  He seems like a perfectly respectable young man.  He’s uncomfortable talking about bullshit instead of national safety.  That’s not something that should make America go on for several more paragraphs about how she never wants to meet this guy.

Later that night, Aspen sneaks into her bedroom. 

“Shhh, don’t say a word. If anyone hears, there’ll be hell to pay. Just let me look at you.”

And so I obeyed.

Excuse me while I go mourn for humanity again.

So, teenaged makeouts. 

If what we did went any further, and there was ever any evidence of it, we’d both be thrown in jail.

Why?  You’re allowed to marry, so why are you not allowed to sex?  Is this a proscription against premarital sex, or against cross-caste sex without there being paperwork first?

Also, god damnit, you can have non-penetrative sex.  If getting pregnant really is a crime worthy of jail time, then you should know all about oral sex.  Your peers should have told you, because people will always find ways to have sex.  We as a species have been getting creative about sex since sex first began.  A law like this won’t stop sex, it’ll just lead to an upswing in other kinds of sex.

Then Aspen leaves and thank god that chapter is over.