You guys, I just read the chapters I missed out on during the move last week. It was a good time for me not to be able to comment on Matt’s post because Jesus nothing happened in those two chapters! Wanderer saves the day and cuddles with Jared AND Ian (and Jamie sits in her lap for some reason) and is really happy. YAWN.
Chapter 47: Employed
I hope the chapter’s title is in reference to Wanderer’s undercover identity as an employee at a Mexican restaurant. I JUST WANT MORE OF THAT! GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, MEYER!
We open we Kyle complaining that raids are too boring now that Melerer goes on them and basically just solves all their problems by blending in with the enemy. Oh, I’m sorry, they inconvenienced you with their convenience, fucker.
Matthew says: Not just that they’re “boring”. That risking the lives of everyone they know isn’t “fun”:
“This is too easy. It’s not really even fun anymore,” Kyle complained.
As usual, Wanderer regales us with the minor details of every single kind of item she gets on raids.
Apparently, things are so easy on these raids that the guys can check into motels along with Melerer, and none of the souls they encounter take a good enough look to realize something is amiss. As long as everyone just acts just regular people, it is very easy to blend in because remember, the souls don’t really do anything other than act normal.
Matthew says: I think it’s worth going through the fake names that Wanderer is using on their raids, because some of them are pretty good. Yes, of course, by “good” I mean “stupid and hilarious”.
I used generic names from unremarkable planets. Sometimes we were Bats: Word Keeper, Sings the Egg Song, and Sky Roost. Sometimes we were See Weeds (See? Even Wanderer thinks the See Weeds are fucking boring): Twisting Eyes, Sees to the Surface, and Second Sunrise.
Dear My Future Children: This is why one of you is named “Sings the Egg Song”, and I’m not sorry.
During this particular stay at a motel, Wanderer tells us about what television is like now that the souls have taken over! This is actually something I’ve been joking about and genuinely interested in. Do actor!souls keep acting on the same shows, do writer!souls create the stories their hosts would have created?
On the television screen, two souls were speaking their lines clearly, their bodies held with perfect posture. It wasn’t hard to pick up what was happening in the story because there wasn’t a lot of variety in the scripts souls wrote. In this one, two souls were reconnecting after a long separation. The male’s stint with the See Weeds had come between them, but he’d chosen to be human because he guessed his partner from the Mists Planet would be drawn to these warm-blooded hosts. And, miracle of miracles, he’d found her here.
They all had happy endings.
Christ, even their television is as boring and useless as they are! Well, okay, that story in particular doesn’t sound so far off from a lot of the crap we watch, but still. I bet they cancelled Dexter before finishing the final season! That seems like the sort of show that would really scare the shit out of them.
Matthew says: On the other side of this, I bet the series finale of LOST would have been unchanged.
Apparently, even The Brady Bunch was deemed too violent for the Souls, so you can just imagine what happened to Law and Order: SVU or any other show ever.
“The Brady Bunch?”
I laughed. I’d seen that show in San Diego, and Melanie knew it from her childhood . “It condoned aggression . I remember one where a little male child punched a bully, and that was portrayed as being the right thing to do. There was blood.”
The souls cannot condone bopping of any kind.
I bet Meyer is like so smug that she found a way to make the souls dislike The Brady Bunch. Big achievement! I wonder if they banned The Magic Schoolbus because Arnold doesn’t like to go on Ms. Frizzel’s field trips and that one girl is always whining about how they did things at her old school. The souls would never approve of comparing your old life to your new one because you aren’t experiencing your current life to its fullest if you’re dwelling on the past. ‘Cause that’s all these fuckers care about. Experiencing.
Ian shook his head in disbelief but returned to the show with the former See Weed. He laughed at the wrong parts, the parts that were supposed to be touching.
Aw, that’s what we do here at BBGT! This is the first time I feel connected to Ian.
Outside, Wanderer watches a young family playing in a park. The child is one and apparently human, though his parents are souls. I am so confused, and when Ian asks how this is possible, Wanderer doesn’t really answer the question except to explain that they probably would never be forced to have the child taken over by a soul. She also explains that when a soul takes over a child’s body it becomes a mini adult. Creepy! But also. HOW THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE A HUMAN BABY??!?!?!
Wait. I guess their human bodies would just give birth to a human kid…without a parasite in its brain. So wait. If I could come up with this simple explanation in five seconds, why couldn’t Wanderer just explain that to Ian?
Matthew says: Also it makes no goddamn sense because it goes against every aspect of Soul-philosophy we’ve come to understand so far. They don’t put souls in adult hosts because the host is too resistant. So, uh, what do they do when this human baby grows up? Take him out back and shoot him? SUPER CHEERY GLIMMER OF HOPE, MEYER.
The chapter ends with the gang headed back to the cave, when suddenly they get pulled over by a cop? A soul!cop? Probably.
Chapter 48: Detained.
Hm. I’m not sure what this title could be referring to? Do you think it’s got something to do with getting pulled over by the cops?
Well, it’s definitely Seekers pulling them over, not soul!cops. Apparently because there’s no use for actually police anymore only Seekers use the sirens for shit.
Jared freaks out and says it’s time to take their pills and die. He apologizes to Mel and Wanderer separately. But Wanderer convinces him to give her one try at talking to the Seekers.
The Seeker just says she was driving too fast and warns her to keep going because there might be humans in the area and someone disappeared here recently. OMG I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE.
So again, the problem is resolved really simply. In fact, the Seeker even gives Wanderer this thing called Awake which keeps you…awake. I wish when cops pulled me over they would kindly offer me shit like this instead of giving me warnings and for not having my headlights on in such a brightly lit area that it looks like day time anyway. It’s not like I wouldn’t have noticed they were off in like five seconds when I was off the road with the INSANELY BRIGHT LIGHTS.
Matthew says: Also, I fucking loved how Stephenie Meyer tried to explain her “human medicine is bad because it doesn’t always work whereas soul medicine is good because it just heals because it just magically fixes you back to normal” nonsense for a fucking stimulant designed to make your body behave not normally:
“You should not use this often,” the Seeker went on, searching the other pocket now. “It’s not harmful, of course, or the Healers wouldn’t have us give it out. But if you use it frequently, it will alter your sleep cycles”
It alters your sleep cycles. As in, you want to sleep and wake up at a different time. So the side effect (although it’s not a side effect because soul medicine just works) of this drug isn’t even as bad as jet lag. So… what this is really saying is that Souls have invented a way to stop people from ever having to sleep, and they don’t fucking use it. I get that the souls are all about “experiencing” or some bullshit, but come on, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to never have to sleep even with those restrictions! Just think about all the research they could do! Or all the art they could create! Hell, they would actually have the time to do everything in Grand Theft Auto V!
Which was also the plot of an episode of American Dad. Seth MacFarlane did a better job with this material than Stephenie Meyer. That has to sting.
Jared jumps to the conclusions that the Seekers are on alert because while Melerer’s been away on the raid, Doc and Jeb have started kidnapping souls to practice trying to remove them. I’m not convinced of this yet. I bet Meyer is gonna throw some clever twist at us, right guys?
When they get back, Jamie runs towards them crying. Turns out Minor Character Wes was killed by a Seeker. I guess that’s sort of a twist by this book’s standards?
Matthew says: I finished the chapter and immediately thought, “Who’s Wes?”
