Remember, last chapter Minho suggested that Thomas be made leader of the runners for coming up with one trick and no evidence that he’s good at leading or that his actions weren’t a fluke.

Gally finally broke the spell, standing up. “That’s ridiculous!” He faced Newt and pointed back at Minho, who had taken his seat again. “He should be kicked off the Council for saying something so stupid.”

Thomas, of course, thinks that Gally is just so mean for saying that.

The book makes a token effort at having Thomas not be a total Stu by having some no-name characters agree with Gally, even though they get exactly zero speaking lines or chances to make valid arguments.

Minho, on the other hand, gets several pages worth of talking about how Thomas is the bee’s knees, so if the book was trying to ‘show both sides’ here, it utterly failed.  This is such biased author wankage that it’s almost embarrassing to watch.  It’s only made worse by the fact that Minho’s entire argument boils down to “shut up, the maze is scary and you don’t understand, okay?”

Then it devolves into a pissing match between Gally and Minho, which is fairly accurate for teenage boys, but I get the feeling the book wants it to be tense and deep.

After being thoroughly humiliated by the entire room, hit, and told to shut up and stop having opinions, Gally leaves the room.  But not before making ominous proclamations about how change is coming and claiming he’s going to kill Thomas.

“Whatever you came here for—I swear on my life I’m gonna stop it. Kill you if I have to.”

Okay, if we ignore the fact that everyone is ignoring the girl…I’m on Gally’s side here.

Look at it from his perspective.  He goes through some very painful and life-altering illness which is enough to fuck up anybody according to the book.  Shortly after, one of his hallucinations shows up in the flesh.  This new kid keeps to himself and acts superior, makes no attempts to be part of the group, and any time he does get involved it’s only to cause trouble.  People start taking his side even though he’s done nothing to deserve it, and when you live in a world that has monster slugs, mind-control is not out of the realm of possibility.  You’re already scared of this kid because your first memories of him came from a time you were in extreme pain, which is understandable even if it’s not logical.  More weird shit starts happening.  Someone dies because of this weird kid that never does anything and yet has supporters.  Then he breaks the rules and runs into the maze.  The next morning, he’s alive and everyone praises him, but from all accounts he just got lucky.  There’s no proof, besides Minho’s word, and for all he knows Thomas did the same trick to him that he did to Chcuk, Newt, and Alby.  Now Thomas has even more support, again, for very little reason.  He’s going to be put in a position of power, for very little reason.  You try to speak out against him, and other people literally punch you for it.

From Gally’s side, it’s entirely natural to believe that Thomas is manipulating people into putting him in charge of stuff.  Add to that the fact that he can’t speak out against Thomas, and it looks like he’s setting up to be a fucking despot.  Add to that the fact that no one seems remotely interested in talking to Gally about what he knows/has seen, and I bet Gally feels like he’s the only sane person in a group that’s quickly being taken over by a fucking cult leader.

I’d threaten to kill the fucker, too.

This is the kind of shit that happens when an author is more interested in praising his characters than being reasonable.  It literally makes the main character look like a manipulative and suspicious little shit.

Gally’s crazy, he told himself. He’s completely insane. But the thought only increased his worries. Insane people could really be capable of anything.

What’s scary is that you view anyone who doesn’t agree with you as being “insane” and invite impressionable young readers to do the same.

What’s REALLY scary is that you’re perpetuating the idea that “crazy” people are to be feared and avoided.

Then they spend a few pages going on some more about how he’s “mentally whacked” and the longer it goes the angrier I get.

Gally may be wrong (and I’m still not convinced of that), but he’s not insane.  At best, he’s misinformed.  He’s operating in completely rational ways off the information that he has, and just because his information may be wrong or incomplete, THAT DOES NOT MAKE HIM INSANE.  Especially since the only thing anyone has done to try and change his mind is punch him and kick him and yell at him.

One guy does point out that Gally has been stung before and thus has memories and maybe he actually knows some stuff.  Another kid verbally slaps him down by saying “didn’t you see him just get angry?  Angry = crazy and crazy people literally know nothing and spew lies and cannot give true information ever and therefore we should completely and utterly discount everything they say always because GOD DAMN FUCK SHIT BALLS CUNT ASS THIS BOOK IS THE WORST PIECE OF HATEFUL, PUSS-SPEWING PILE OF URINE YOU PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME TO READ AND I WANT IT TO DIE.”

I’m calling it officially worse than House of Night, because at least HoN was immature and blatant enough that most people could see it, and if they couldn’t see it they’d grow up and eventually see it.  This?  This is the kind of stuff that’s just barely subtle enough to slip past the radar for most people and that means fewer readers will challenge these ideas and they’ll just absorb them instead. 

Thomas finally speaks up.

“I don’t know why Gally hates me. I don’t care. He seems psychotic to me.

And that is a perfect summary of everything that is wrong with you.  Because 1) Gally has outright stated why he doesn’t like you, so the only way you could have missed it is to refuse to acknowledge criticisms and 2) you don’t care enough about another’s opinion to seriously think about and consider the fact that you might be wrong.  Instead of taking a good look at yourself and your actions, instead of even making the attempt to consider another person’s view, you just label them as “crazy” and use that as a justification to belittle and ignore them.

And he’s the fucking hero.

“We can’t vote without all the members here,” Winston insisted. “Unless they’re really sick, like Alby.”

“For the love, Winston,” Newt replied. “I’d say Gally’s a wee bit ill today, too, so we continue without him.

Yeah, because that’ll so convince Gally that you’re not all out to get him.

What a great lesson to be teaching to impressionable youths.  “Just exclude everyone who doesn’t agree with you.  Compromise and cooperation are for Bronies, and as we all know, you don’t want to be like them.”

Eventually they decide to put Thomas in “jail” for one day but then make him a runner right after that.  So…wow, why bother punishing him at all?

Then Chuck shows up and says Alby wants to talk to Thomas.  Newt and Thomas get up there, but Alby kicks Newt out of the room after saying some ominous things.

“Out!” Alby sat up as he yelled, his voice cracking with the strain of it. He scooted himself back to lean against the headboard again. “Get out!”

Newt’s face sank in obvious hurt—Thomas was surprised to see no anger there.

Apparently Thomas thinks anger is and should be the go-to reaction for everything.

Because only manly feelings are allowed.

Alby says that he saw Thomas in his memories and he knows where they all came from.  Great!  So, where did you all come from, Alby?  Yes, yes, something horrible…okay…but we need details, Alby, not–

Or you could suddenly try to choke yourself, that works too.

Newt comes in and they get Alby to stop trying to choke himself.  Alby says he didn’t mean to do it, it was like someone else was controlling him.  He tells them to take care of the girl before he stops talking and goes to sleep/sulk.

There it was again—the girl. Somehow things always led back to the girl.

Literally nothing has led back to that girl.  Randomly mentioning her a lot does not count as ‘leading back to’ the girl.

So, clearly we can tell from this what whatever is outside the maze is bad news.  Or at least it was for these boys.  Ben was also going on about how getting out of the maze was a bad idea and they shouldn’t do it.  But giving more than vague details is a no-no and the kids are somehow being puppeted into not doing it.

Well…that’s something we can work with! Although it does beg the question, do all “changed” kids have this knowledge?  Have they tried to tell it before?  Surely this can’t be the first time someone has tried to talk about their new memories.  Or is it?  Given how skull-fucking-stupid this book is, I wouldn’t be surprised.