What if a Soul fell [romantically] in love with its Host?

[[deleted user]]

As in, the Soul becomes romantically enamored of the personality of the body it resides in.

[Apparently, there aren't any male Souls and only 1 in 10,000 Souls are female (according to Wanda), so gender isn't going to play into account quite so much. On second thought, since Souls reproduce Asexually, wouldn't there be no sexes, so that gender would be based entirely off of mental identity?]

Your dirty fantasies philosophical thoughts about this?

[[deleted user]]

If no one has written a book about a love between two souls sharing a body, I'll be the first...

[Vivid Light ~ ♥♥]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kate]

That's how I originally imagined the book would be like. Prereading thoughts I mean. Guess it's going to be awkward.

[Naiya]

Whenever these discussions come up ("What if Wanda was in X's body, would she have fallen in love with Y?" or "What if Wanda had fallen in love with X?") I always come back to the fact that Wanda is an alien. In a way, the question is a bit like, "If you were possessing a dog, what if you fell in love with it?"

But okay, even assuming that a Soul could get over the whole species barrier, the attraction would be incredibly unhealthy and dysfunctional on a lot of levels. It's a kind of captor-captive attraction in which one person has all the power (literally) and the other is a helpless victim, utterly reliant on the captor's good will. Even Melanie, a strong character who put up a strong fight, was worn down and broken by the end of the book. Wanda had all the power, including the power to read Melanie's mind and control her body while keeping Melanie in helpless isolation inside her own brain.

The problem that Melanie and Wanda ran into was that, despite the fact that they had some mutual respect growing between then, Wanda giving autonomy to Melanie meant she would lose hers. Melanie living her life and having her own interests meant Wanda would have to give up her own life, and vice versa. There is no room for a healthy kind of love in that set up, in my opinion.


On the question of gender, I don't feel it was much of an issue - the Souls take on the personality and emotions of their hosts. When Wanda was one of the spiders, she was super-intelligent, super-logical, and utterly cold. It didn't matter that she was female or not - it didn't sound like there was any interest in romance there because the host had no such warm, fluffy emotions.

Wanda being female is convenient for the reader, but in terms of alien species, I doubt the fact that Wanda can reproduce makes her more similar to the human female than the human male. The differences would already be so vast that whether Wanda can explode into millions of little Souls or not doesn't seem like it ought to be on the radar as a reflection something she has in common with half the human population. There was no indication that having this potential makes her different, personality-wise, from others of her species.

[Avani]

I smell a spin-off book...

[Avani]

Naiya wrote: "Whenever these discussions come up ("What if Wanda was in X's body, would she have fallen in love with Y?" or "What if Wanda had fallen in love with X?") I always come back to the fact that Wanda i..."

Don't forget that Wanda, to an extent, fell in love with Ian, so it's not quite like falling in love with a dog...

[Naiya]

Avani wrote: "Naiya wrote: "Whenever these discussions come up ("What if Wanda was in X's body, would she have fallen in love with Y?" or "What if Wanda had fallen in love with X?") I always come back to the fac..."

She didn't fall romantically in love with him until he pressed the issue, at which point the host body reacted. She liked him well enough - but as much as any of the other humans who were nice enough, including the Uncle.

A lot of things that Wanda did were directly affected by her being in a host's body that had more sensory input than she was used to.

If I was in a body of a dog, and influenced very strongly by the dog's mind and instincts, maybe I'd hook up with another dog. But that's neither here nor there.

[C.D.]

I think it's a really interesting premise--soul falling in love with its own host. In some ways the issues would be similar because I would imagine the soul would want to give the host back their body, but then what? Does the soul inhabit someone else so they can be together? Like Wanda, wouldn't the soul develop some sort of parasitic guilt?

BTW, I really think soul should be capitalized when used to describe a species. Same with host. It'd make the whole thing flow a little easier.

[Emmy;)]

i guess it could hapen , but i just want to say ACWARD!!!!

[Somi]

Naiya wrote: If I was in a body of a dog, and influenced very strongly by the dog's mind and instincts, maybe I'd hook up with another dog. But that's neither here nor there. "

LOL!!!
You just made my morning Naiya :)

[Gilmara]

Totally possible.

[Brandi]

That would be a very interesting read.

[Carla]

Would it really be that much different than Wanda being friends with Mel? She and Mel care about eachother...

[Dorcas]

Anthony wrote: "stupid question and it makes readers think about stuff the would be way to complicated to think about"

I think the criteria for a good question is it being complicated and making people think. So...smart question :)

[Dorcas]

Oh man that idea is crazy to think about but I can't say I didn't when Wanda started saying she loved Melanie. Haha there really should be a spin off with that. Maybe Wanda somehow ends up in Ians body! ;)

[Gabby]

Funny that a troll started this, yet it is a plausible question.

[[deleted user]]

Gabby wrote: "Funny that a troll started this, yet it is a plausible question."

Not everything I say is to be obnoxious.

I genuinely like challenging the way others think.