In one of its small handful of the actually good Saturday Night Life moments that happen every few months or so, last weekend they made a trailer for the young adult dystopian The Group Hopper. You should totally watch it before you read today’s Insurgent post, to get you in the mood. Because it’s basically every young adult dystopia ever. You pretty much don’t even have to read this blog anymore. It’ll be way more efficient. [Ariel says: Fun fact, I was going to put this in my post, until Matt was 1 step ahead of me. Damn you, Mattthhhewwwww!!!"]

Chapter 5

Tris notices Marcus acting suspiciously (AKA just acting like Marcus, because the Divergent series has no comprehension of subtlety) [Ariel says: Marcus comes in two flavours, acting blatantly suspiciously or acting blatantly normal so we never have to do any guesswork ourselves], so she sneakily follows him to the Amity water-filtration building, because there’s a very convenient metaphor there.

Both of us watch the purification happen, and I wonder if he is thinking what I am: that it would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us out into the world clean. But some dirt is destined to linger.

Now that this confrontation scene has been set with an appropriately explained metaphor, Detective Tris demands some answers about the Big Secret we conveniently just learned about at the start of this book.

“I heard you the other day,” I blurt out. [...] “I heard you talking to Johanna about what motivated Jeanine’s attack on Abnegation.”
“Did Dauntless teach you that it’s all right to invade another person’s privacy, or did you teach yourself? [...] If you heard me talking to Johanna, then you know that I didn’t even tell her about this. So what makes you think that I would share the information with you?”
I don’t have an answer at first. But then it comes to me.

Oh my God, our blog’s main characters’ ineptitude… I get that Tris is sixteen and obviously not a master interrogator, but “reason why you should tell me your secret” is maybe the first thing she could have come up with an idea about before confronting someone about their secrets? Good thing she just knew what to say, though! Like always. Exposition like this is probably intended to convince the author that the main character is a capable badass, but really it just makes them seem incredibly unprepared.

“My father is dead. [...] I want to know if it was something he risked his life for.”
Marcus’s mouth twitches.
“Yes,” he says. “It was.”
My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.
“Well,” I say, almost choking, “Then what on earth was it? Was it something you were trying to protect? Or steal? Or what?”
“It was…”

OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, MAYBE MARCUS WILL TELL TRIS THE BIG SECRET DRIVING THIS SEQUEL 8% OF THE WAY INTO THE BOOK.

Marcus shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

DAMMIT. [Ariel says: WE WERE THISCLOSE!]

“You may have succeeded in shutting down the attack simulation, girl, but it was by luck alone, not skill.”

See? This is what I mean! Now the only character in this book who’s saying anything that makes any sense to me is Pure Incarnation of Evil #4.

Tris continues to not play her hand very well.

“Tobias is right about you,” I say. “You’re nothing but an arrogant, lying piece of garbage.”
“He said that, did he?” Marcus raises his eyebrows.
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t mention you enough to say anything like that.”

UGH. WHY. This isn’t even the first time this week we’ve had a female main character stand up to their male significant other’s abusive parent on their behalf, and it works just as badly here as it did in Entwined With You, because fighting someone’s battles for them is a very bad way to help victims of abuse. I get what scenes like this are trying to do: establish the character as supportive, unafraid to stand up for what they believe in, and – doggone it – as a strong female character, too! But scenes like this don’t do that, because this is not an action that supports said victim, it takes further agency away from them during a critical recovery stage. Characters like this aren’t supportive, they’re mistaken, and somehow I’m not getting the impression that that’s what Insurgent is going for.

[Ariel says: What I find most infuriating about these kinds of scenes is that they're written in such a way that if you don't support the characters for standing up for their loved one, you feel kind of bad. I mean, it could be argued that these characters need their loved one to stand up for them, to help give them strength. I have mixed feelings about both the Entwined in You story and this one. I could imagine being really appreciative if my boyfriend told off an abusive person from my past, but I could also imagine feeling frustrated that I wasn't there to stand up for myself and to be the one to say, "You're a sack of shit who fucked with my head." Tough call.] [Matthew adds: I just straight up hate these scenes. There's a significant difference between doing this for someone and doing this with someone. Nor is there ANY benefit to an abuser seeing that the person they abused still can't fight their own battles themselves. If a loved one really doesn't have that kind of strength, no one is doing them any favors by further suppressing their ability to find it within themselves.]

Marcus doesn’t answer me. He turns back to the water purifier. [...]
I leave the building, and it isn’t until I’m halfway across the field that I realize I didn’t win. Marcus did.

lol she just figured that out

Whatever the truth is, I’ll have to get it somewhere else, because I won’t be asking him again.

I like how this is simultaneously obvious (because it’s what’s driving Insurgent‘s plot and we’re, uh, on chapter five…) and illogical (because, well, can we assume that anyone else knows this information?).

That night, Tris has another nightmare about Will, and goes to Tobias’s room for comfort, although she doesn’t want to explain about the Will nightmares.

I can’t tell him that I’m having nightmares about Will, or I would have to explain why. What would he think of me, if he knew what I had done? How would he look at me?

It’s moments like this where I actually do rather like this series, because it does have these great moments of morally grey despair. But then it becomes a YA novel about teenagers making out.

His hand slips under the hem of the T-shirt, and I don’t stop him, though I know I should.

Look, I hated being a teenager too, but that doesn’t mean “haunted by a recent traumatic experience during a time of war” and “but I’m not ready to have sex!” make any kind of sense in the same scene.

I can’t be with him in that way if one of my reasons for wanting it is to distract myself from guilt. [...]
“Sorry,” I say.
He says almost sternly, “Don’t apologize.”

The person in me concerned about people developing healthy attitudes towards sex is pleased that this YA heroine figured this out, but the person in me just reading a damn book is still amazed that the books we’re reading on this blog are still finding new ways to make sex more uncomfortable.

Tobias comforts Tris, because, hey, the second Hunger Games book was about its YA heroine slowly becoming less and less of a character after her traumatic experiences in the first book too.

“I don’t mean to be such a mess,” I say, my voice cracking. “I just feel so…” I shake my head.
“It’s wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if your parents are in a better place – they aren’t here with you, and that’s wrong, Tris. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it’s okay is a liar.”

For today’s end-of-the-post question… it’s that time of year again…

BEGIN SPECULATING WILDLY.

Chapter 7

Tris recovers from the happy drugs that the Hufflepuff hippies gave her. [Ariel says: I would have preferred if she had to save the day under the influence of this serum.]

“Why couldn’t I fight the peace serum?” I say. “If my brain is weird enough to resist the simulation serum, why not this one?”

A person has a genetic predisposition to be incapable of making a personal choice that most other people do which coincidentally also grants her immunity to robot drugs that do one thing, but is surprised when it does not also give her immunity to plant drugs that do a different thing. The science of the Divergent series, everyone. [Ariel says: Yeah, this line stuck out to me too. I don't understand why Tris would assume that no serums work on her when it seemed oddly specific to simulations involving hallucinations/virtual reality or whatever it is. The peace serum is the only serum we've seen so far that actually seems like it could be real, so it makes sense the power of Tris' mind wouldn't be able to fight this one.]

Tobias comes up with a similarly sciencey answer.

“Maybe in order to fight off a serum, you have to want to.”

Say what you will about the dystopian, Buzzfeed quiz future of Divergent, but I bet these guys cured cancer like that.

Next, there’s a thrilling scene where Tris climbs an apple tree, sees a bunch of Erudite cars, tries to climb down it, and starts to fall but doesn’t. And I wonder why this book is 545 pages long.

It bends, but holds. I start to lift myself up, to put the other foot down, and the branch snaps.

I gasp as I fall back, seizing the tree trunk at the last second. [...]

I don’t allow myself to think; I just put one foot down, then the other, so fast that bark peels off the branches and drifts towards the ground.

We’re at the part where we’re waiting to get to the part where something happens. Why is there this much suspense and action already?

Tris dramatically runs back to the Amity camp and Abnegation refugees to tell them what she saw. Susan asks why they’re so concerned, because they totally already said Amity is a safe house, no takesies-backsies. Tris and co tell her that’s stupid, and then come up with their conversely not stupid plan.

“Wait,” I say. “I have an idea. [...] Disguises. The Erudite don’t know for sure that we’re still here. We can pretend to be Amity.”
“Those of you who aren’t dressed like the Amity should go to the dormitories, then,” Marcus says. “The rest of you, put your hair down; try to mimic their behavior.”

So. The plan is for the smaller group of people dispersed throughout a larger group of people to continue to do that. And for everyone who isn’t already doing that to… continue to not do that? [Ariel says: Not, you know, change their outfits? Also, I guess mimicking Amity is just pretending to be really stoned?]

Tris runs back to the dorm with the others who aren’t dressed up like the Amity in order to change clothes (a significant improvement on how this plan was originally worded, to be fair)[Ariel says: I'm glad they followed my advice above.], and comes across the hard drive that previously contained the Erudite’s simulation data, but not its program, and apparently now also surveillance footage. The one that Tris and Tobias have been protecting to… keep it safe from the wrong hands? Keep it as proof? Well, whatever, the book can’t figure it out either and decides it doesn’t matter anymore, because Tris anticlimactically destroys it.

I don’t want to just hand over the attack simulation again. But this hard drive also contains the surveillance footage from the attack. The record of our losses. Of my parents’ deaths. The only piece of them I have left. [...]
I bring the lamp down again, and again, and again, until the hard drive cracks and pieces of it spread across the floor

[Ariel says: This drives me nuts! If she was just going to destroy it this easily why the fuck did they even need to save it in the first place? They've been making such a big fucking deal about it like it's going to be really important to the plot, but no.] Tris leaves behind a now completely meaningless plot point to meet up with the disguised Tobias and Caleb.

[Tobias] wears a red collared shirt [...]
“It was the only thing that covered up the neck tattoo, okay?”

Because the neck tattoo is how the police are most likely to identify a man who physically attacked their leader after being classified as the most dangerous type of person in society.

Tris and co hide with the Amity group again when the Erudite arrive, escorted by Dauntless soldiers wearing blue armbands signifying their allegiance to Erudite, causing Tobias to imply they’re still under mind-control. I think. I have no idea what counts for logic in this book anymore. For some reason, Tris is concerned about her cunning ruse, and inspects the Abnegation pretending the be Amity.

It is amazing how pretending to be in a different faction changes everything

Yes, the Divergent Faction transfer would certainly never have observed this phenomenon before.

The Erudite talk to Susan, and she announces to everyone that they’re looking for Abnegation members, Dauntless members, and a former Erudite initiate, and that she’s told them that they moved on, because I guess we’re also not even gonna pretend that whole safe house thing was ever going to hold any narrative weight. The Erudite/Dauntless begin to search the compound, and it immediately goes to shit.

“Your hair is pretty short for an Amity,” she says. [...]
“It’s hot,” [Tobias] says.
The excuse might work if he knew how to deliver it, but he says it with a snap. [She] pulls back the collar of his shirt to see his tattoo.
And Tobias moves.
He grabs the woman’s wrist, yanking her forward so she loses her balance. She hits her head against the edge of the table and falls. Across the room, a gun goes off

And we didn’t even have to read two pages of Tris trying to climb a tree!

Four takes the Dauntless woman’s gun and holds her as a human shield to shoot down the Dauntless gunman at the other end of the table, because I guess the book just realized it was only doing the “mindless” part of “mindless violence.” Another Dauntless soldier aims a revolver at Tris, but she freezes up and Caleb takes Tris’s gun and shoots him in the leg, which is an interesting development, because apparently Caleb can move at super speed now. An Erudite woman takes a shot at Peter, but Tris pushes him out of the way. Yay. Peter is still in this book.

“Put the gun down,” says Tobias, pointing his revolver [...] “I have very good aim, and I’m betting that you don’t.”

During the standstill, Tobias announces to all the Abnegation that they’re going to run now, because I guess it was possible to have a worse plan than “stay where you are and pretend to not be you”. When they get to the cornfield, they split up, because I guess it was possible to have a still worse plan than that.

There are screams everywhere, to my left, to my right. Gunshots. The Abnegation are dying again, dying like they were when I pretended to be under the simulation. And all I’m doing is running.

When the main characters make it a safe distance away, Tobias yells at Tris for freezing up during the gunfight, because I guess we’re getting to the part of the Divergent series where the kickass strong female YA character begins losing all her agency.

“We were probably the only ones they were after,” [Tobias said,] “apart from Marcus, who is most likely dead.”

“Marcus, who is most likely dead” would be a kickass title for a story, incidentally.

I don’t know how I expected him to say it – with relief, maybe, because Marcus, his father and the menace of his life is finally gone. Or with pain and sadness [...] But he says it like it’s just a fact

Question of the Day: Are you remotely convinced that Marcus is dead?

Happy Actual Halloween! Since we read it on Mondays and Tuesday, we don’t have a Goosebumps for you on the holiday we read it in honor for. So here’s the scariest gif I have.

You have no idea how long I’ve been holding onto that for, waiting for the perfect moment. Turns out it’s really hard to find the perfect moment for a gif of a running giant pink dildo thing. [Ariel says: It's always the right moment for the gif. It's positively mesmerising.]

Chapter 9

Tris, Four, and co are in the factionless hobo camp, reunited with Edward [Ariel says: Beloved, cherished, apparently unrecognisable Edward] and filling him in on what’s up. Tris judges him, and then immediately tells him that judging people is bad.

“You ditched your family to become Dauntless?”
“You sound like the Candor,” I say irritably. “Mind keeping your judgments to yourself?”

We learn about the remaining factions’ initiation tests, and that Erudite’s is an intelligence test, and Abnegation doesn’t even have one. I can’t figure out which is more obvious. We also learn that most of the factionless are from Dauntless, for… reasons…

“You’ve got one of the worst initiations, and there’s that whole old-age thing.” [...]
“Once the Dauntless reach a certain level of physical deterioration,” he says, “they are asked to leave. In one way or another.”

Details like this I actually really like, because I was wondering why there weren’t any old people around in Dauntless. I like finding out it’s because the book has an actual reason for it, rather than that Dauntless is just the Hot Topic of post-apocalyptic Chicago. I mean, it still is, but now it’s a little more believable about it! Although this does mean that there’s still no explanation for where baby Dauntless come from aside from…

[Ariel says: Amazing as that is, they don't really specify how old. They could easily be in their 20s when they have a kid but asked to leave at like 40-50. I mean there were mentions of kids with parents after initiation, just not grandparents.]

The book then retcons Edward into having provoked Peter’s attack, because I guess the book really needed to have Edward deserve getting a butterknife in the eye. [Ariel says: I can't remember if Peter ever alluded to this in any way, shape or form. Because this felt like it was just made up on the spot so we'd be forced to reconsider Peter For Some Reason.]

Like vast majority of the fifth of Insurgent that we’ve read so far, the chapter is basically an infodump, so we also learn that:

• Half of Dauntless fled to Candor headquarters, but half remained with the Erudite.
• What’s left of Abnegation is with the factionless, which raises a question of how exactly they were all that different in the first place…

And then in the middle of the night, Tris wakes up and overhears an infodump conversation with Tobias and his mother, so we also learn that:

• Caleb was sort of right about the factionless population counts, but they weren’t all the factionless – just factionless Divergent.
• Also, there are factionless Divergent
• The factionless want to use the Divergent for their own simulation-resistant army to overthrow Erudite, because, seriously, all that Divergence is really useful for in this book is resisting mind-control drugs [Ariel says: NOT ALL MIND CONTROL DRUGS.]

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to learn these details, and it’s kind of hard to do it without just pouring it all out in conveniently expositional conversations. But it could be a little less obvious about it?

“I don’t understand. Why-“
“Why would the factionless have a high Divergent population? [...] Obviously those who can’t confine themselves to a particular way of thinking would be most likely to leave a faction or fail its initiation, right?”
“That’s not what I was going to ask,” he says. “I want to know why you care how many Divergent there are.”

“Sorry to interrupt you with the wrong information the reader didn’t know. Let me explain the correct other information the reader didn’t know.”

“We want to usurp Erudite,” she says. “Once we get rid of them, there’s not much stopping us from controlling the government ourselves.”
“That’s what you expect me to help you with. Overthrowing one corrupt government and instating some kind of factionless tyranny.”

Wait for it.

“We want to establish a new society. One without factions.”
My mouth goes dry. No factions? A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit? I can’t even fathom it.

Tris cannot fathom a world where no one knows who they are or where they fit, having apparently forgotten that the entire first book was about not knowing who she was or where she fit. [Ariel says: This also seems like a great time to realize that even the factionless formed a group and hung out together. You know, whispering things to each other and telling jokes. Factionless have friends too!”

Despite also having been previously established as 100% skeptical of the faction system, Four is skeptical of a world without a faction system too. Although he has better reasons, once his mom explains their plan and it’s exactly like The Hunger Games it’s exactly like the bad guys’ plan.

“I imagine it will involve a high level of destruction.”

So what’s the non-entirely-convincing arbitrary reason that they need Four’s help?

“We will need Dauntless’s help. They have the weapons and the combat experience. You could bridge the gap between us and them.”
“Do you think I’m important to the Dauntless?”

I mean, he was one of three Dauntless authority figures in the first book. And he’s the hottest. So by the rules of Young Adult Fiction…

“What I am suggesting,” she says, “is that you become important.”

SPOOKY HALLOWEEN QUESTION FOR HALLOWEEN! What’s your favorite scary movie? Or, if you hate scary movies, what’s your favorite candy? Or, if you hate candy too, because you’re some sort of monster, what’s your most hated candy in the whole world? Look, please just answer one of my spooky Halloween questions.

Yesterday in Insurgent, Tris and Four get captured. Again. [Ariel says: Just another wacky adventure for our heroes.]

Chapter 11

Arriving at the headquarters of the series’ other totally neglected faction (which amazingly makes Insurgent charity for itself), Tris and Four find themselves arrested despite expecting to meet the friendly half of their divided faction.

Every faction is supposed to have holding rooms for those who make trouble, but I’ve never been in one before.

…you were just in one. Like, five chapters ago. [Ariel says: Tris isn't taking Amity's happy pills seriously enough!]

Tris tries to think about what they could have done that would make Candor and the “good” half of Dauntless treat them like an enemy, and eventually realizes that maybe it’s because she shot Will during the simulation.

I shot Will. I shot a number of other Dauntless. They were under the simulation, but maybe Candor doesn’t know that or doesn’t think it’s a good enough reason.

Man, if only they had some recorded evidence on a hard drive or something that would help them get out of this jam. IF ONLY.

They’re taken to Candor leader Jack Kang, whom Tris also describes as handsome, like basically every other character in this book. What the hell kind of apocalypse happened in Divergent that humanity only has the attractive genes left?

“They told me you seemed confused about why you were arrested,” he says. His voice is deep, but strangely flat, like it could not create an echo even at the bottom of an empty cavern. “To me that means either you’re falsely accused or good at pretending.”

To me, this book either has a plot or just has characters constantly talking about the plot.

Jack explains that Four is accused of crimes against humanity and Tris is accused of being his accomplice, which is an accusation they can make because, incredibly unsurprisingly…

“We saw video footage of the attack. You were running the attack simulation,” says Jack.
“How could you have seen that footage? We took the data,” says Tobias.
“You took one copy of the data.”

Jack explains that the footage was sent to all the computers throughout the city, so “all we saw was” Four running the simulation and then kicking Tris’s ass until – in a genuinely but probably unintentionally amusing moment where the novel’s actual adults desperately try to live in this inexplicable young adult fiction world – they “stopped [and] had a rather abrupt lovers’ reconciliation”. So Jack wants to interrogate them under truth serum, because Divergent is all about really, really easy ways to solve its problems.

[Ariel says: My immediate thought was, yet again, why is this happening if it's not going to add anything to the plot? I know Matt made a really good point yesterday about how introducing a fact about a character after they die can be really significant to the plot, but this series gives me 0 confidence that plot points occur or "important" information is revealed in order to lead to something that is actually significant and meaningful. When a book reveals something supposedly shocking about a character or has a major misunderstanding where the main characters are arrested/thought to be evil...it should feel important! I never thought I'd say this, but at least Crossfire filler is more amusing than this.]

“One possible reason [you stole the hard drive] is because the simulation was over and you didn’t want us to get our hands on it.” [...]
“The simulation didn’t end,” I say. “We stopped it, you-“
Jack holds up his hand. “I am not interested in what you have to say right now. The truth will come out when you are both interrogated under the influence of truth serum.”

Why are we even doing this? What are the stakes here? We’re waiting for our reliable first-person narrator to be forced to say what we already know will help them.

So since this new circumstance itself isn’t an actual source of narrative tension (Pro Writing Tip: don’t do that), there are three things that this plot mechanism is actually doing.

1. Teasing that Tris’s big secret (that she’s… divergent) will come out under the truth serum. But it won’t (or won’t matter), because the Divergent series has not yet actually been about divergence. It’s about mind-control drugs.
2. Teasing that Tris’s other big secret (that she killed Will) will come out under the truth serum. So Tris and Four will clear their names of crimes against humanity (like we know they will), and the book will return to the exact same boring status quo it was at before, except now Christina will be totally mad at Tris. [Ariel says: That'll teach Christina not to steal credit for winning capture the flag ever again.]
3. Promising that even though we already know the truth will (quite literally) set them free, actually getting there will be a long, circuitous process that will meaninglessly and meanderingly inflate the tension for just a little bit longer for the sake of tension, because, hey, we have 500 pages of YA to get through.

Speaking of Christina and tension for the sake of tension:

Christina shoves her way past the others and throws her arms around me. [...] Christina will be there at the interrogation. She will hear what I did to Will. She will never forgive me.

Unless I fight the serum, swallow the truth – if I can.

Christina asks Tris if she heard that Will died in the attack, and Tris covers up for now by saying that she saw him get shot on the monitors. But Tobias notices this.

He knows I didn’t see Will in the monitors, and he didn’t know that Will was dead.

Because apparently Tobias remembers everything he saw Tris seeing while he was under the influence of the mind-control simulation that made him not see things correctly.

Christina, the last of Tris’s original band of friends [Ariel says: Hey, let's not forget about Peter, the beloved asshole who is your asshole, so you let him stick around], tells us that the rest of the B-string A-Team of Uriah, not Uriah, and also not Uriah are still alive and well. Really, if I wrote their names, would you remember who you are? I’m already waiting for someone to write a comment asking who Uriah is.

Christina brings them to the interrogation room, where subtle subversive symbolism happens.

Most of Candor and the remnants of Dauntless are already gathered. Some of them sit on the tiered benches [and] the rest are crowded around the Candor symbol. In the center of the symbol, between the unbalanced scales, are two empty chairs. [Ariel says: It's a really slow day at Candor. Candor is basically like the dystopian version of the Students Without Netflix.]

There, a man named Niles administers the truth serum to Tobias.

Question of the Day! If you could get any animal in the world as a pet, but you had to name it after a character from a book we’ve read on this blog, what would it be and what would you name it? And why?

It’s no secret that my favorite books are generally ones where nobody is happy and everything is depressing, so it’s actually pretty weird that Insurgent isn’t right up my alley by this point.

Chapter 13

“This point” being that Tris was just sort of forced to admit that she was sort of forced to kill Will. Which sort of undercuts the themes we’re trying to work with.

“He had a gun,” I say. “He was about to shoot me. He was under the simulation.” [...] the only words I can think of – I’m sorry – sound more like an insult than an apology. Sorry is what you are when you bump someone with your elbow, what you are when you interrupt someone. I am more than sorry.

It’s a little much, but Tris is going through a lot right now. Given the severity of the emotions, I can probably forgive some prose that’s less than-

“You killed him,” she says. Her words sound bigger than words usually do, like they expanded in her mouth before she spoke them.

Nevermind. I completely forgot what I was saying.

Depicted: a slightly goofier way to write that last sentence. Slightly.

Tris reunites with Uriah (the Dauntless-born Dauntless initiate that befriended Tris in the last book, unless you watched the movie, in which case he wasn’t important enough to be included). Uriah is much more understanding about Tris’s actions, reassuring her that she “did what you had to do” in order to “save us from being Erudite slaves”.

That only leaves us with Tobias’s reaction to Tris’s confession.

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” he says. Quietly. Quiet is dangerous, with Tobias.

Ah, the “dangerous” upset boyfriend trope. Good thing we always have male anger to fall back on as a barometer for happiness in a relationship in these books. People can’t just be upset with each other, but we have to reinforce that the woman has to be in danger to indicate she’s “in the wrong”. Yes, I have been reading a lot of feminist theory lately. Why?

[Ariel adds: I also can’t remember other times he’s been quiet before being dangerous specifically…Please remind me in the comments if you do.]

That night, Tris can’t sleep and wanders around, and symbolism happens.

I set my hands on the back of the chair. It’s plain: wooden, a little creaky. How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most important relationships, and damage another.

This is why people hate English majors. This right here. It’s a fucking chair. Trying a little hard to explain yourself, book. [Ariel says: The chair wasn’t instrumental at all! The chair had nothing to do with anything that happened in that room. It would be like if I was sitting on my couch when I found out that (god forbid) The Walking Dead was cancelled, and then I was like, “I have to burn my couch! It was instrumental in this horrific news.”] 

Except, amazingly, in this case it’s the other way around.

Tris dwells on her guilt over Will and “everyone else’s judgment as well as my own”, and Insurgent wants to make it really clear that you get what its message is on this particular page.

The Candor sing the praises of the truth, but they never tell you how much it costs.

To be fair, one of the major advantages of first-person narratives is hearing the main character’s insights and revelations as their story progresses, which often overlap with the work’s major themes. But I’m pretty sure that by this point – 29% of the way into Insurgent and with no sign of any direction whatsoever about where the narrative plans on going since the ending of the last book – the story is Tris’s insights and revelations. At a certain point, we don’t want to hear about the main character’s grand revelations about the themes of the book because she saw a chair or thought about the last book in the series; we want to read a goddamn book.

Speaking of the entire narrative consisting of Tris thinking about the narrative, Tris contemplates suicide. Maybe. I don’t really care. I don’t get what the stakes are. We’re still only 29% of the way into the book, so I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna jump despite her new revelation about revelations.

And then I think of Al.
I wonder how long Al stood at the ledge before he pitched himself over it, into the Dauntless Pit.
He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done – almost killing me was one of those things – and another list of all the good [...] and then decided that he was tired. Tired, no just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al. [...]
For the first time I feel like I understand Al. I am tired of being Tris. [...]
Another few inches [from the ledge] and my weight would pull me to the ground. [...]
But I can’t do it. My parents lost their lives out of love for me. Losing mine for no good reason would be a terrible way to repay them for that sacrifice

I’m torn. On the one hand, it’s a pretty raw scene and conveys how much shit is swimming through Tris’s mind by this point. On the other hand, barely any narrative has happened since the last “this point”. Everything that is happening is coming from a thing that came from a thing that came from a thing that came from an actual event. If I had to write a high-level summary of Insurgent thus far, I’d have nothing to say, aside from how we visited Hufflepuff, other Hufflepuff, and the Hufflepuff that’s so Hufflepuff it’s not even allowed in the same group as the other Hufflepuffs.

And then it feels like there’s something problematic about Tris assuming she understands Al’s suicide? [Ariel says: I didn’t read this so much as assuming she understands as projecting her own feelings onto the only person she thinks can understand her at this moment. I weirdly liked this scene. I think it would be really easy for it to feel overdramatic, but I can understand why in that moment she feels so alone and exhausted and tired of being herself that she would contemplate this. Like how many more times do I have to visit Hufflepuff! It’s the worst! But actually, if you write down everything that has happened to her in the past…however long it’s been…it’s pretty fucking shitty.] [Matthew adds: Yeah, I kinda wasn’t sure if it might read like this too, hence why I didn’t right a whole thing about this maybe problematic angle. It’s weird! It rubbed me the wrong way, but Tris’s feelings felt markedly genuine too.]

Anyway, hope you’re ready for a stark reminder that you’re (probably) not this book’s target audience, because it’s time for a teenage boyfriend/girlfriend fight! Albeit a fight about desperate actions taken during war, yet somehow still overshadowed by “these are teenagers”.

“You didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to.”
He scowls. “It’s pretty easy, Tris-”
“Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “It’s so easy. All I have to do is go up to you and say, ‘By the way, I shot Will, and now guilt is ripping me to shreds, but what’s for breakfast?’ Right? Right?”

FINALLY.

“I’m sorry.” [Four says.] “I shouldn’t pretend that I understand.”

Feel free to say this more often, Tobias. And every male love interest in every book we read. Don’t feel you have to limit yourselves when admitting you’re not experts of all things human condition. Good lord, am I sick of Tobias and his mansplaining.

Tobias says that he wishes Tris trusted him enough to tell him. She counters that he didn’t tell her that his mom was still alive. He claims that he was going to tell her eventually. Then… I don’t even know.

“I did tell you about Will!” I say. “That wasn’t truth serum; it was me. I said it because I chose to. [...] I could have lied [under the serum]; I could have kept it from you. But I didn’t because I thought you deserved to know the truth.”

If you’re currently thinking about how stupid it was that she suddenly and conveniently didn’t have to tell the truth under the truth serum but then chose to anyway because specialness of strength of character, don’t worry! It gets stupider.

“What a way to tell me!” he says, scowling. “In front of over a hundred people! How intimate!”

Okay, “sexy” and “intimate” aren’t the same thing, but neither are “intimate” and “hey, I need to tell you I was forced to shoot my friend in the face”

The fight ends inconclusively with neither of them sure what to say or do! Just like Insurgent.

Question of the Day: What’s a good scary movie that came out relatively recently? My friends from back in my hometown and I really liked The Conjuring and we’re hoping to find something kinda like that to watch when I meet up with them over Christmas. No, this question has nothing to do with Divergent; I’m basically just hoping at least one person reading this can do me a solid. [Ariel says: The Babadook is meant to be like that and very good. Allegedly has a good plot and is scary without relying on gore and such.] 

Surprise! In anticipation of the new Hunger Games movie coming out this week, we’re running EXTRA CONTENT on top of our regular schedule! This is possible because I already wrote these posts, like, three years ago, on my personal blog. We ran the first Hunger Games about a year and a half ago, and with the third movie coming out, this seems like a good time to revisit these old posts for the second book, as a sort of recap of what’s just happened before the next movie comes out.

Two things to keep in mind are that, 1) I wrote these posts before BBGT was a thing, so they’re kind of a rough precursor to the blog as we know it today (and also might be dated… I might not even agree with all my old opinions in the post below) and 2) Ariel and I disagree about the quality of the Hunger Games sequels. Ariel liked these books, but I utterly despised them. Although I thought the Catching Fire movie was a FAR superior adaptation, the book itself… well, you’ll see.

Happy Hunger Games!

- – -

Just really quickly before we start, I want to recap my thoughts from the end of The Hunger Games, or, more specifically, about the idea of there being sequels. First of all, I’m somewhat opposed to it. As I said at the end of my reading, an open-ending where Katniss has the rest of a life full of an Orwellian government that sees her as a threat and pretending to be in love with someone she isn’t in love with ahead of her seems considerably more effective and haunting to me. Yet I also concluded that the one thing that could legitimize the existence of sequels would have been, which I realized somewhat shamefully, the love triangle, because there’s a lot of potential to manipulate that in a way that really draws the reader into the hellish world of Panem. Now, will the sequel actually do it right? I dunno. I haven’t read this book. Let’s go do that right now.

This book! Find a copy and let’s read it together? OKAY.

Chapter One

So what happens after Katniss undermines an Orwellian dystopia at their own game? Everything is awkward. Both of Katniss’s boys have been hurt by her and don’t really want to talk to her and there is young adult fiction drama. Peeta’s boyishly sheltering what’s left of his broken heart. Gale still doesn’t have any lines. In a way, little has changed. Like, very awkwardly little. The aftermath sort of makes sense in a “calm before the storm” way, but for the most part, it’s not very convincing that anything’s really happening. It’s back to life as usual, but only sort of, and it doesn’t feel anywhere near as tense as it should be, since the socio-political tension following Katniss’s act of rebellion should be much, much bigger than this. Definitely off to a slow start.

Chapter Two

Okay, things got better pretty quickly. During my reading of the last book, I criticized the portrayal of President Snow because it completely lacked any small amount of characterization. He shows up at the end (hell, he might even have been named for the first time at the end, I’m not sure. That’s how far from memorable it was.) of The Hunger Games, seems cold, and is apparently a horrible villain. I guess.

NOPE. THAT’S ALL OVER.

This scene is maybe the best thing that’s happened in the series so far. Snow is a fantastically cold and manipulative villain and he totally works. Even better, his dynamic with Katniss is flawless. It is mesmerizing how these two characters work together. The two are legitimate threats to each other and their weighted conversation is simultaneously so calculated and so effortless that this battle of the minds is almost more engaging than any physical battle during the hunger games themselves. I already want more of this.

And just when you thought this chapter couldn’t get any better, GOOD GOD YOUNG ADULT FICTION DRAMA. Apparently Gale kissed Katniss and Katniss just kind of didn’t feel like telling the reader this until now? I’m still very worried that this series will go all Twilight on us at the tip of a hat, but for the time being, I’m perfectly content with how unbelievably hilarious it is that the stability of the entire fucking Orwellian dystopia revolves around Katniss’s love triangle.

Chapter Three

So apparently in this book there’s this new thing that the Hunger Games do sometimes when it’s convenient for the plot where every twenty-five years they call it a Quarter Quell instead and they add some extra horrible twist to it and it’s like the Super Hunger Games? Actually, wait, I’m just going to call it “Super Hunger Games” instead of “Quarter Quell” for the rest of my reading, because “Quarter Quell” is a really stupid name. Happy Super Hunger Games, guys!

Actually, I’m kind of genuinely amazed there hasn’t been a major video game adaptation of this franchise.

But seriously, I’m wary about this because it seems kind of stupid. Plus, if they up the ante like this in book two, what’s left for book three? President Snow can’t die unless Katniss finds and destroys his horcruxes?

On the plus side, one thing I really like about this chapter is that there are clear signs of emotional growth from Katniss since the first novel. Even though she was already a very strong character in the first one, it’s a reassuring sign for the narration to see that her experience in a twenty-four person fight to the death has changed her perspective on life, in addition to her perspective on boy drama.

sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.

Like I said, I really like this. It’s a good sign that we can expect better from Katniss the narrator this time around.

“…every year they’ll revisit the romance and broadcast the details of your private life, and you’ll never, ever be able to do anything but live happily ever after with that boy.”
The full impact of what he’s saying hits me.

Goddammit, Katniss, I just vouched for you.

Chapter Four

Of course I could do a lot worse than Peeta. That isn’t really the point, though, is it?

This right here is why I’m tentatively okay with things getting a little Twilight-y. Because it’s not doing it because AW MAN THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY BOYS WHO LIKE KATNISS, but rather to make a point about how unjust the society they live in is. Katniss isn’t free to have young adult fiction drama, and that is not cool. This goes back to my point about how the love triangle legitimizes the idea of sequels (potentially) because, in the first place, the story gave us a legitimate reason to hear about young adult fiction love triangles.

I’m guessing that this novel’s going to be more about getting to see the dystopia Katniss lives in and, also importantly, what she’s done to it. I’m good with this, because we’re not going to care about two novels of rebellion (the only reason for writing any sequels to any dystopian novel, for the most part) if we don’t get to see what they’re rebelling against. Fortunately, it seems to be going okay so far. It mostly works because Katniss can’t help but make huge problems for herself, like when she accidentally makes an entire district start rioting.

“…I always respected [Thresh] … For his refusal to play the Games on anyone’s terms but his own.”

Yeah, Katniss, like that’s not going to cause any problems.

Chapter Five

So we have a legit revolt and shit is crazy and Katniss and Haymitch fill Peeta in on what’s going on with the government and the revolts and the young adult fiction and he gets legit pissed off and shit is crazy. As predictable as Peeta’s character is, it’s nice to see him finally get angry even if we all knew it was coming.

“Was that really the only time you kissed Gale?”
I’m so startled I answer. “Yes.” With all that has happened today, has that question actually been preying on him?

KATNISS, THE BOY FUCKING LOVES YOU.

I’m the one who suggests the public marriage proposal. Peeta agrees to do it but then disappears to his room for a long time. Haymitch tells me to leave him alone.
“I thought he wanted it, anyway,” I say.
“Not like this,” Haymitch says. “He wanted it to be real.”

KATNISS.

KATNISS, FOCUS.

So things just got incredibly depressing, between the nightmares and the drugs to help Katniss sleep but only make the nightmares worse and Katniss and Peeta sleeping in each others’ arms to help keep the nightmares away, which probably only makes Peeta’s nightmares worse. Like, “Hey, so I pretended to be in love with you on national television but don’t actually and it’s kind of unfortunate that you’ve literally always been in love with me, so, um, yeah, want to sleep in my bed platonically?”

This man deserves a fucking medal. [Update: Not that I mean to go through this and point out every instance where I changed my mind, but I’m kind of less critical about this point now than I was then. This still isn’t totally fair for Peeta, romantically, but for all I know, maybe the trauma they shared largely overrides this. ]

Chapter Six

So Katniss decides, after failing to convince President Snow of something that he already told her he knew wasn’t true four chapters ago, that the most logical course of action to take now is to get all of her friends and family and run away from an all-powerful Orwellian government into the woods. Sure, Katniss, because all of your other plans have worked out so well so far. And then President Snow and Katniss play more of their mindgames.

Oh, the fun we two have together.

What’s weird is that they really do. Their dynamic is far and away the best thing in this book so far.

Actually, now that we’ve actually gotten to know who’s in charge of this horrible Orwellian dystopia government that makes children fight to the death every year, I’m kind of feeling like it’s about time for us to get some more information about how it works. Like how is President Snow the president? Was there a president before him? If so, how did Snow succeed him? How will somebody succeed Snow? What exactly does “president” mean? I’m assuming he wasn’t elected, but how did he get to be where he is now? These are also important questions, because we have an actual figurehead here in charge of everything, and it would be nice to know them before we start fighting it.

So then there’s a huge banquet thing thrown by President Snow for Katniss and Peeta for their engagement to rub salt in the wound and there’s such a wide variety of much food there that people drink stuff that makes them throw up so they can eat more and this is what it takes for Peeta to decide that maybe encouraging rebellion would be the right thing to do. Not that he was forced to participate in a twenty-four person fight to the death as a teenager, but the bulimia drinks. Uh, okay, Peeta. At least you got there.

Anyway, after this happens, Katniss meets the new Head Gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee.

Plutarch has run his thumb across the crystal face of the watch and for just a moment an image appears, glowing as if by candlelight. It’s another mockingjay. Exactly like the pin on my dress.

I’ll bet anything that Katniss has already inspired a rebellion and now her mockingjay pin has become a symbol of some sort of secret resistance. Even more exciting, this suggests that 1) it already exists and is doing things beyond Katniss’s power, and 2) the new person in charge of the Hunger Games is in it. Of course, Katniss doesn’t catch on because KATNISS NEVER CATCHES ON TO ANYTHING, so who knows when we’ll get to find out more.

“I had a dream, though,” I say, thinking back. “I was following a mockingjay through the woods.”

Okay, don’t beat us over the head with the symbolism now.

Effie gives a little wave to two Capitol attendants who have an inebriated Haymitch propped up between them.

I love this guy.

HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH HAYMITCH
H A Y M… ITCH…
Man, nobody’s going to get that joke.

Chapter Seven

So Katniss has a conversation with Madge (Remember her? Apparently we’re supposed to.) about mockingjays and OKAY. WE GET THAT MOCKINGJAYS ARE SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE. GOT IT.

More importantly, for all the fuss that Gale’s caused, this is the first time he actually has, you know, lines since the second chapter of the first book. Guys, this is a long time to not have any Gale. It’s annoying, but as much as I mock it, the series isn’t really pushing the young adult fiction love triangle as much as I’m constantly worried it’s going to, so it’s mostly annoying because he seems likeable and like he’s got a good grasp on what’s going on and, dare I say, is a bit more hit than miss so far as being charming goes, rather than it being annoying because we’re getting constant reminders that two boys love Katniss and Katniss doesn’t know how she feels about either of them.

His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you.”

Oh, goddammit.

I come up with what must be the worst possible response. “I know.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA okay, I can’t take this book seriously anymore.

It is a period of almost civil war, and things are kinda boring

Oh, and then Gale is immediately whipped within an inch of death by some new Peacekeeper, thus effectively taking the possibility of a supposed main character ever saying words out of the narrative again. Talk about playing hard to get.

Chapter Eight

Okay, nothing is happening in this book. I thought the narrative pacing in the last one was bad, but this is horrendous. Nobody has any idea what’s going on and they’re just biding their time until something does happen, and it is getting very boring. Like a character just nearly got beaten to death and the most interesting things that happen in this chapter are all young adult fiction and I hate everything.

“I didn’t even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta.
“We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though?

Oh my God, is Katniss jealous that one character who never has any lines is secretly in love with another character that never has any lines? Young adult fiction, motherfucker.

It’s the implication that there’s something going on between Gale and Madge.

What the fuck, seriously? It’s been like two paragraphs. This isn’t rushed at all.

I touch parts of him I have never had cause to touch before.

I know that’s not what they’re talking about but snerk.

Chapter Nine

I remind myself that it was not Clove but Thread who gave me this wound.

Okay, in addition to how slow and young adult fiction this novel’s been so far, I just remembered how stupid all the characters’ names are. But seriously, everything that’s wrong with Catching Fire so far can be summed up with one sentence:

I really can’t think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite.

Katniss has no idea what the fuck is going on, is unable to do anything, and as a result every single event in the narrative has had something to do with young adult fiction. Things keep being incredibly boring and nothing happens and everything feels incredibly directionless and honestly I don’t feel like the rest of the chapter’s even worth talking about because this is so boring.

This is why I was apprehensive about the idea of there being a sequel to The Hunger Games, instead of it standing on its own. Sure, the story continues, but it’s a boring story. This is the boring part of rebellion, and I’m not convinced this is better or, most importantly, more haunting than just leaving The Hunger Games as a standalone narrative with an open-ending would have been.

It feels pointless to even try to make predictions about the rest of the novel, because one third in, we have no idea what direction this novel’s going in. Hell, I don’t even know if any fucking Hunger Games are going to take place. That is how misguided this narrative is: I’ve read 163 pages of it and have no idea if a major part of it is going to revolve around children killing each other. That is not a good sign.

This week we’re doing special coverage and reading Catching Fire in anticipation of the new Hunger Games movie, which is not Catching Fire. Just don’t think about it too much. Pick a bookmark and read along!

Unless you pick the Team Gale bookmark, then are you even READING these books?

- – -

Chapter Ten

As we’ve learned by now, Suzanne Collins loves ending every Part with some huge, huge twist that is huge (huge!). At the end of Part One, Katniss meets someone wearing a Peace Keeper uniform holding out a cracker with a mockingjay printed on it. Now, so far we’ve had:

1. A billion conversations about how mockingjays have been, historically, symbols of rebellion and resistance
2. A character with a new high-profile government position (of sorts) sharing secret information with Katniss while discreetly showing her the mockingjay symbol on his watch
3. Another billion conversations about how mockingjays have been, historically, symbols of rebellion and resistance

So Katniss’s reaction to encountering a stranger who has laid down her own weapon to show Katniss something with this symbol on it is:

“That cracker in your hand. With the bird. What’s that about?” I ask.
“Don’t you know, Katniss?”

No, guys, it’s Katniss.

Now, the new characters story about rebellion and the government cracking down on District 8 is pretty interesting, although the bit with District 13 seems entirely unbelievable, but not for the reasons they’re meant to. Since it was brought up at all, obviously the rumors about District 13 operating and being the main front of resistance against the government are going to be true (it’s called Chekov’s Gun, people), but what I take issue with is how this is even feasible in this world. Like the government completely destroyed them, but some people survived and somehow they’ve been building themselves back and the government’s just kind of not given any thought to the possibility of this happening for 75 years? Um, sure. Sounds pretty convincing.

Chapter Eleven

By this point in The Hunger Games, we’ve already had kids get knifed to death by other kids, Katniss being chased by a raging inferno, and, my personal favorite, acid trip killer wasps. The most gripping action scene we’ve had this time around is Katniss jumping over a fence.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’d be super cheap for the narrative to revert back to more Hunger Games and do the same thing all over again, [Matthew, two years later: haha whoops] and this actually does fix some of the biggest problems I had with the dystopia at the beginning of the series, in that now it actually does feel like an Orwellian dystopia where nobody can do anything. The electric fences are on, there are people enforcing totalitarian law that are actually enforcing totalitarian law, people are actually oppressed right now as opposed to just kind of left alone to live in poverty. But the problem is that this is how things should have been from the beginning, and it feels very too little too late. It’s like they realized “oh, shit, we’re supposed to be really oppressive, aren’t we?” and decided to start doing so long after enough shit went down that it’s not going to matter for much longer anyway, because hopefully sometime soon this narrative will pick a direction and actually fucking go somewhere.

Chapter Twelve

Well, on the plus side, the narrative did finally pick a direction. But very much on the not plus side, it picked maybe the cheapest and most recursive direction it possibly could have. Katniss and Peeta are going back to the Hunger Games. Seriously? This feels unbelievably gimmicky, much like the entire premise of the Quell Super Hunger Games.

Now, I want to be clear about this. My problem isn’t that the narrative is going back to the Hunger Games. It’s pretty much the entire premise, and it’d be stupid to abandon it because it’s key to the series. Instead, my problem is Katniss (and Peeta) going back to the Hunger Games. This feels like a plot that doesn’t know how to move forward, and has to move backwards because it can’t think of anything else to do. It’s especially frustrating because going back to the Hunger Games could have worked. There are so many people Katniss is attached to (Gale, Prim, apparently Madge) that could have been sent to the Hunger Games this year and that would have been much more horrifying. And good. This is not.

Chapter Thirteen

Well, it picks up slightly with Katniss’s reaction to having to participate in yet another twenty-four person fight to the death, which is to go get shitfaced.

[Matthew, two years later: Would you believe that this was the best picture of beer pong on the internet in 2012? Seriously! I looked around a lot!]

Chapter Fourteen

For my part, I try to make some mental record of the other tributes, but like last year, only a few really stick in my head.

In other words “I am a terrible narrator, so here’s a list of the main characters.”

On the plus side, there’s some promise to this whole Super Hunger Games setup after all, because it’s not kids anymore, and that completely changes the entire dynamic and the type of horror, and I don’t think the government has caught on to the dangers of this yet.

Anyway, apparently we’re finally going into Haymitch’s backstory and learning about his Hunger Games, and guys I am so excited. I am also a bit terrified that Katniss and Peeta are all curled up on the couch to watch it, but whatevs, I’ve all but made popcorn in anticipation for this part of the book, so I can’t judge. Anyway, it’s time for the Hunger Games with a younger Haymitch!

No, I don’t stop making jokes like this.

Haymitch’s name is called last of all. … Hard to admit, but he was something of a looker.

Hell yeah, that’s my man Haymitch.

“Oh. Peeta, you don’t think he killed Maysilee [Katniss's mom's best friend who has a stupid name like everybody else], do you?” I burst out. I don’t know why, but I can’t stand the thought.

Seriously? You don’t know why the possibility of a trusted friend and mentor having murdered a close friend of your mother is a less than pleasing thought?

“With forty-eight players? I’d say the odds are against it,” says Peeta.

Actually, I’d be pretty willing to bet Katniss is going to be right, here. For once.

“So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred per cent more competitors than usual?” asks Casear.
Haymitch shrugs. “I don’t see that it makes much difference. They’ll still be one hundred per cent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same.”

SPOILER Haymitch was always awesome END SPOILER

Haymitch has his own troubles over in the woods, where the fluffy golden squirrels turn out to be carnivorous and attack in packs…

Okay, almost always awesome.

“All tight. There’s only five of us left. May as well say goodbye now, anyway,” she says. “I don’t want it to come down to you and me.

Yeah, the odds aren’t in his favor for this whole “not killing his friend” thing.

[Haymitch] arrives only in time to watch the last of a flock of candy-pink birds, equipped with long thin beaks, skewer her through the neck.

Okay, I’m going to insist that I was technically right, because Jesus Christ, they had split off for like ten seconds in the time it took for her to die.

He staggers through the beautiful woods, holding his intestines in…
the girl just stands there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket

Anybody else think this is insanely more violent than anything that happened in The Hunger Games? Presumably because Collins didn’t have to write any actual violence.

“…Haymitch found a way to turn [the force field] into a weapon.”
“…It’s almost as bad as us and the berries!”

No, it’s nowhere near as bad as you and the berries. The berries were symbolic defiance of the power of the Capitol when the entire nation was watching. Haymitch and the force field is a participant in the Hunger Games doing whatever it takes to gain an advantage over the other participants, which is the entire point of the cruel spectacle. It’s more in line with that kid in the first book who reactivated the mines.

Katniss, please stop being stupid.

Chapter Fifteen

The opening ceremonies are pretty interesting, once again. Much like in The Hunger Games, it’s interesting to explore the creation of public image of the sacrificial lamb, although arguably it’s just Katniss and Peeta who really fit that role this time around. Meeting the old champions is pretty interesting, because they all know each other and have been buddies for years, and strangely enough their reaction to the whole thing is to not give a shit about what they have to do. Whatever works, I suppose. I’m intrigued by the only ones the novel’s particularly bothered to characterize: Finnick and Johanna. Finnick strikes me as the new Cato, except, you know, not dead. Johanna’s just promiscuous and that makes me laugh, because it clashes so badly with everything else that’s going on, but Catching Fire‘s been so inconsistent I don’t think it matters anymore.

Chapter Sixteen

It’s kind of weird how the tone of the activity leading up to the Hunger Games actually seems even more disturbing this time around, now that they’re all adults and not children. I mean, obviously it’s way worse when it’s children and teenagers being forced into a deathmatch, but with the adults… they just do not feel like they belong here.

Obviously, it’s hard to top Katniss’s stunt for the judges from the last novel, but her symbolic hanging of the last Game Maker, killed for allowing Katniss’s stunt with the berries and generally ruining everything, is actually really good, and probably the closest it could possibly have gotten.

Chapter Seventeen

You know how I literally just said that this whole novel has hit the point where it’s basically just following the formula of the first one and trying to top the thrills and shocks and twists and doing an okay job but not really coming close, much less justifying its existence? Well, now we’re at the interviews, and they’re actually way better than they were the last time! I know, I’m quite surprised, and I am most pleased. Basically it’s what I predicted: the Capitol’s completely screwed itself over by bringing adults into the Games, and it’s starting to become apparent. The subtle, but open, resentment is delightful and everything is slowly turning to complete chaos. The adults know how to fuck with the Capitol in ways the usual teenage Tributes can’t hope to, and this is fantastic.

Oh and Katniss’s wedding dress turns into fire and burns away so she looks like a Mockingjay and that’s pretty cool but less interesting focus on the adults they were awesome

Chapter Eighteen

So far the interviews have been even better than they were in the last book, and the highlight of the interviews last time, Peeta, is about to come up and I cannot wait to see if he manages to top himself too. It’ll be really difficult, since last year he completely stole the show with his “I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED KATNISS” reveal, so it’ll be hard to see how he tops this. Maybe he’ll say something about Gale? Get all young adult fiction on the Capitol? Could the world handle the drama???

Peeta pauses for a long moment, as if deciding on something. He looks out at the spellbound audience, then at the floor, then finally up at Caesar. “Caesar, do you think all our friends here can keep a secret?”
…What can he mean? Keep a secret from who? Our whole world is watching.

That’s… that’s the point Katniss. Just… sigh, Katniss…

“We’re already married”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. EVEN BETTER. Go, Peeta! Go!

“Surely even a brief time is better than no time?”
“Maybe I’d think that, too, Caesar,” says Peeta bitterly, “if it weren’t for the baby.”

HOLY SHITTING FUCK, THIS IS AWESOME.

Caesar can’t rein in the crowd again, not even when the buzzer sounds … the place is in total chaos and I can’t hear a word.

Oh my God, this is exactly the everything falling apart I was talking about. Peeta is goddamned brilliant.

all twenty-four of us stand in one unbroken line in what must be the first public show of unity among the districts since the Dark Days.

This is actually incredible. I’m calling it right now, this is the best moment of Catching Fire. It certainly is up to this point, and I imagine nothing in Part Three’s going to top it. Although there’s certainly going to be a fair amount of fallout from this.

The Peacekeepers ignore me completely as they drag Cinna’s limp body from the room. All that’s left are the smears of blood on the floor.

Such as maybe killing off Cinna. That would be, like, chapter one of the fallout. And with that last glimpse of the real world, Katniss is sent to the Super Hunger Games and Part Two ends. The narrative pacing has been horrible, but the novel’s finally (and, I want to put as much emphasis on this word as I can, FINALLY) getting good. Finally. At long last, we have the sense of danger that the whole novel should have had. But whatever, we’re past it now, and it’s young adult fiction and the font size is large enough that each letter could fill up an M&M, so we can’t complain too much. It’s nowhere near as entertaining as The Hunger Games so far, but it’s fair.

Predictions About The Ending of a Book That Came Out Like Five Years Ago

So looking up Catching Fire on Wikipedia just now to check the release date to write that sentence, apparently this novel was “praised” for “the development of Katniss’s character”, to which I have to say “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Anyway, predictions!

1. Nobody we actually care about dies!

Once again, we’ve hit the part of the narrative where we left most of the main characters back home in District 12 and we’re following Katniss into an enclosed area for what will probably be the vast majority of the remainder of the novel, so Gale and Haymitch and co. are safe. And there’s another book left after this one, so Katniss and Peeta are safe. Except they both just entered a deathmatch arena, which means…

2. Somebody escapes

I have no idea how, of course, but there is literally no way Katniss or Peeta is going to die, and there is also literally no way they’re both going to get out of the arena playing by the rules, so at least one person’s going to manage to escape. My guess would be Peeta, because, let’s face it, he’s the smart one when he isn’t getting the shit beaten out of him.

And that’s pretty much it. There’s not much else that could happen. So, yeah, let’s find out next time! But to hold you over until then, here’s a special feature!

[Matthew, two years later: So apparently when I originally wrote the post, I felt it necessary to transcribe this Hunger Games-related dream I had at the time. Take it for what you will.]

1. It took place in some giant building that alternated between creepy, decrepit horror mansion and generic college academic building (arguably very similar settings).
2. Armed with a screwdriver, I killed someone trying to kill me, also with a screwdriver. After it was over, someone watching the skirmish, and I remember this happening very distinctly, said “That guy got screwed!”
3. Someone received Bruce Willis as a gift.
4. I went around a corner and was stabbed in the stomach and died, which, since it was first-person (obviously) and I was the main character, was actually kind of awesome in a postmodern way.
5. It kept going anyway, because dream logic
6. Someone armed with a golf club defeated someone armed with a sword. I am super disappointed that the guy from earlier didn’t show up at this point and say something like “Look out for the guy from District FORE!”
7. I died (again) by slipping over a banana peel and falling down a staircase, and, you know what, after my awesome postmodern first death, I’m not particularly cool with my second one being played for laughs.
8. After half of the participants were killed, the Hunger Games were called off on account of rain.
9. Those who survived were super pissed because now that they weren’t going to die, they had to study for final exams.

If they’re not visiting one of the post-apocalypse’s many Hufflepuffs, it’s a pretty safe bet that Tris is getting captured.

Chapter 15

Tris determines that whatever kind of gun she was hit with only knocked her down, and Insurgent goes all out and includes a literal smokescreen to cover up how slowly it’s moving.

Cylinder[s] are everywhere, filling the room with smoke that does not burn or sting. In fact, it only obscures my view for a few seconds before evaporating completely.

Tris asks a surprisingly astute question.

What was the point of that?

Tris observes that the others are lying unconscious, and plays along when the Dauntless traitors enter the scene, where a generic henchman also asks another good question about why this novel is supposed to make sense.

“Not sure why we can’t just shoot them all in the head,” one of them says. “If there’s no army, we win.”
“Now, Bob, we can’t just kill everyone,” (side note: generic henchman is so generic, his name is Bob) a cold voice says. [...] It belongs to Eric, leader of Dauntless. “No people means no one left to create prosperous conditions,”

Whoa, hold up Eric Rand. Brief explanation of capitalism aside, I’m still confused when someone’s going to explain what the fuck kind of post-apocalypse we’re living in where “prosperous conditions” are even a thing?

“If you saw the Faction System that holds the narrative, and the greater its effort, the heavier the narrative bore down upon its shoulders – What would you tell it?”
“To drugs!”

Speaking of drugs.

Whatever they gassed us with, it had to be simulation-inducing or I wouldn’t be the only one awake. IT doesn’t make any sense – it doesn’t follow the simulation rules I’m familiar with

Simulation rules?!

What simulation rules? The ones that the book has been making up as it goes along literally this whole time? In this book where the main point – Divergence – is simultaneously genetic and a personal choice? When were the simulation rules ever consistent enough for Tris to understand them?

When Eric and the others move on. Tris steals a blue-armband uniform from a dead Dauntless traitor. Uriah reveals that he’s awake and that he’s therefore… Divergent! Which is a surprise we knew since the end of the last book when there was a random unidentified Divergent for a page during the time where Uriah was the only other living minor character. So…

Tris and Uriah think about their plan (the book significantly spends time explaining to us that Tris has no idea what she “expect[s] to gain from submerging myself in an army of Dauntless traitors”, but then immediately has an idea anyway, because we have 500 pages to fill), and split up to go look for other Divergent.

Then Tris tells the narrator about nursery rhymes about the factions, because maybe you haven’t figured out what the different factions are 44% of the way into the Divergent series.

Tris somehow looks for hidden Divergent in the same gassed crowd of Candor that the Dauntless traitors – including Eric – are searching. I guess Divergent is also the ability to seamlessly blend into your surroundings when you’re very obviously not.

Fact: Dwight is therefore Divergent.

The Dauntless traitors find a few Divergent and drag them away to decide which ones to kill and which ones to keep as part of their weirdly macroeconomics-focused evil plan. Tris eventually finds a Candor girl pretending to be asleep and tells her to run away (somewhere) when the others aren’t looking (somehow). The girl gets away, but Eric discovers Tris. They fight, and Tris realizes that Eric isn’t trying to kill her, and must not be allowed to yet.

Eric still wins the fight though.

“I want one gun on her at all times,” says Eric. “Not just aimed at her. On her.” [...]
A Dauntless soldier shoves Uriah – whose lips are stained with blood – toward the short row of the Divergent. [...] If he’s here, he probably failed. Now they’ll find all the Divergent in the building, and most of us will die.
I should probably be afraid. But instead a hysterical laugh bubbles inside me, because I just remembered something:
Maybe I can’t hold a gun. But I have a knife in my back pocket.

Chapter 16

But before an exciting action scene can happen in this action novel, a biology lesson:

I focus on the mechanics of my breathing, imaging air filling every part of my lungs as I inhale, then remembering as I exhale how all my blood, oxygenated and unoxygenated, travels to and from the same heart.

I figured you guys hadn’t seen this gif in a while

Okay, real talk. I get that Tris is nervous right now and needs to focus on something else. That’s fine. And this is first-person writing, too, so it’s actually a good thing to include a detail like this. But maybe remember that this is Tris’s distraction from the story – not the reader’s? I should more anxious right now, not wondering if Magic School Bus is on Netflix.

Spoiler: IT IS.

But, lo, it gets worse. For now that we’ve brought up the heart…

SYMBOLISM

But I am thinking of the heart. Not of my heart anymore, but of Eric’s, and how empty his chest will sound when his heart is no longer beating.

Eric paces in front of the group, just out of Tris’s grasp, while he explains to the row of captured Dauntless that he has orders to take only two Divergent back to Erudite for testing, because a group of people obsessed with the scientific pursuit of knowledge apparently hate reasonable sample sizes.

He keeps walking and stops in front of the boy to my left.
“The brain finishes developing at age twenty-five,” says Eric. “Therefore your Divergence is not completely developed.”
He lifts his gun and fires.

It’s a good thing Eric finally got a decent evil villain moment.

I close my hand around the knife handle and squeeze. He leans closer.
“Just between you and me… I think you might have gotten three [results in the aptitude test]. Care to enlighten me?”
I lurch forward, pulling my hand out of my pocket. I close my eyes as I thrust the blade up and toward him. I don’t want to see his blood.
I feel the knife go in and then pull it out again. My entire body throbs to the rhythm of my heart. [...] I open my eyes as Eric slumps to the ground, and then – chaos.

The scene erupts into chaos as the Dauntless traitors grab for their guns, the other Dauntless suddenly show up with Tobias out of nowhere, and then we learn that Eric’s not really dead. Because then this narrative would be technically making progress.

Today is our last day of our Catching Fire reading, just in time for the Mockingjay, Part One movie. Now you’re all caught up, your memory is refreshed, and you can go get disappointed because Mockingjay was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. And I do this blog. Enjoy the movie!

- – -

Chapter Nineteen

OH MY GOD WE ALREADY KILLED OFF PEETA. Nah, he’ll be fine, I’m sure. He got knocked out by a force field, which actually probably means worse things for us than it does for Peeta, because it’s just gonna mean a couple more chapters of nothing but Katniss and her feelings about boys. Man, Peeta really takes a lot of shit every time he’s in the Hunger Games. Anybody else notice that? Collins can’t actually kill him off, but she’ll push him within an inch of death as often as she fucking can and he’ll spend most of the narrative hobbling along being adorable while Katniss takes care of him.

In terms of things that are actually interesting, however, there’s Finnick and the bangle and the “haha, we are the best of friends!” thing. I really don’t know what to make of Finnick so far, largely because I’ve been given very little to go off of aside from HE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE UNIVERSE, which does surprisingly little to help characterize him.

Fun fact, back when I originally wrote this post in 2012, this was the first time I ever used an animated gif on WordPress. This gif of Squidward twerking. Memories right here.

Chapter Twenty

You know how in The Hunger Games, the Hunger Games themselves were roughly 2/3 of the narrative? And how it got really slow every couple chapters, either to focus on the survival element (which was not a bad thing), or to focus on Katniss and Peeta and young adult fiction (which was)? Well, in Catching Fire, the Hunger Games are only about a 1/3 of the narrative, which is fine, but the problem is that it’s still following this “one page of action means twenty pages of young adult fiction” formula, and so the dull bits hurt the narrative to a greater degree.

Also, how come Katniss is the only one who ever seems to get gifts?

Chapter Twenty-One

Okay, I am a fan of the nerve gas. That shit was legitimately terrifying, and probably the high point so far in terms of the survival horror the series is supposedly known for but actually rather shies away from. The monkey attack afterwards is a bit underwhelming, but in all fairness, it’s a bit hard to immediately come up with something more sinister and frightening in quite the same way as nerve gas.

Although if your attempt to do so involves monkeys, you could probably try again.

The surprise District 6 sacrifice out of nowhere seems to confirm my “everybody is on Katniss’s side” theory, and it’ll be interesting to see where this goes, because, as I’ve said earlier, there’s no way these Hunger Games are actually going to go according to the Capitol’s plan.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Finnick’s reaction to Mag’s death finally made me realize what it is that struck me as somehow worse when they put adults in the Hunger Games: adults have different reasons to die. Adult characters have lived more, understand more, and will sacrifice more, which for the most part you won’t get from the children and young adult characters previously thrown into the Hunger Games. In this way, the Capitol has totally screwed itself over, and they’re probably starting to figure that out.

the combination of the scabs and the ointment looks hideous. I can’t help enjoying his distress.
“Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven’t looked pretty?” I say.
“It must be. The sensation’s completely new. How have you managed it all these years?” he asks.

Can I point out how awesome Finnick is? I really want to guy to actually be okay.

“No, wait,” says Finnick. “Let’s do it together. Put our faces right in front of his.”
Well, there’s so little opportunity for fun left in my life, I agree. … [Peeta's] eyelids flutter open and then he jumps like we’ve stabbed him. “Aa!”
Finnick and I fall back in the sand, laughing our heads of. Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta’s attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again.

This is simultaneously the funniest and most heartbreaking thing that’s happened so far in the novel. If this scene gets cut from the movie, the movie will be terrible – I am calling it right now.

So anyway, we soon run into Johanna and Wiress and Beetee, and I’m refraining from making any clever jokes about their stupid names because there’s totally something up with the “tick tock” thing and if I can’t figure it out before Katniss does, that will be incredibly embarrassing. My guess right now is that the threats in the arena are linked to time? So the nerve gas is coming back. And the monkeys, I guess, but the nerve gas is scarier.

What’s interesting is that Katniss has tons of allies now, so it’s obvious that something big is going on. The biggest threat isn’t the other tributes: it’s the arena, and, by extension, the gamemakers, the Capitol, President Snow, etc.

Slowly I rise up and survey the arena. The lightning there. In the next pie wedge over came the blood rain. … We would have been in the third section, right next to that when the fog appeared. And as soon as it was sucked away, the monkeys began to gather in the fourth.

WAIT I GOT IT. The arena is a clock!

My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she’s right. “Tick, tock. This is a clock.”

Okay, I figured it out like half a paragraph before Katniss did, whatever. I’m still going to consider this a win on my part.

This was really funny when I wrote this post back in 2012.

Chapter Twenty-Three

You know what just occurred to me? The Hunger Games books like to go into all kinds of gritty realism about the survival elements of the narrative, from dehydration to getting cold at night. So when does anybody go to the bathroom?

Basically not much happens in this chapter and it’s just Katniss trying to think about her plan for survival, which is rather complicated with how many people are trying really hard to be her friend. And then we have the cliffhanger. Jesus Christ, Suzanne Collins and her requisite “I will do whatever it takes to end this chapter with a twist” cliffhangers. Katniss runs off into the woods because she hears her little sister screaming. I’m going to call this right now: it is not actually her sister! Daring prediction, I know.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Her next wail rings out, clear as a bell, and there’s no mistaking the source. It’s coming from the mouth of a small, crested black bird perched on a branch about three metres over my head. And then I understand
It’s a jabberjay.

I’d just like to refer everybody to something I wrote back during the third chapter of the first book, if I may:

A bird that can memorize and repeat human noises ranging from whimpers to entire conversations. In a novel about teenagers who are forced to fight each other to the death in some big outdoor setting. Yeah, I’m sure that’s never going to pop up at an inopportune time and terrify the shit out of everyone.

Sure enough, it is absolutely terrifying. What I really like about this is that it’s not just Katniss who falls victim, but Finnick gets caught up in the psychological hell too, which really helps us understand a character who isn’t Katniss or is in love with Katniss, and this is really nice. Although we do get some of that too in this chapter, and sweet fancy Moses, Peeta’s selflessness is getting increasingly heartbreaking.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I join them for another delivery of bread. It’s identical to the one we received the night before. Twenty-four rolls from District 3.

GUYS. DO YOU THINK THIS IS A CODE?

I mean, I have no idea what it is, but this stands out so much. Aside from that, it’s a pretty uneventful chapter. It’s got some nice humor in it, but it’s very calm before the storm. Literally, as there’s a plan to use the lightning to electrocute the other tributes, which would basically just leave this huge team of allied tributes alone in the arena, which seems like not the greatest plan, but there’s only two chapters left so I can’t really be bothered to be too critical.

Chapter Twenty-Six

What the hell is going on?! I think everybody just died in this chapter, but I can’t be sure because people just sort of show up and fight and disappear and this is very confusing. I think the whole thing ended with Katniss shooting an arrow tied to wire at the force field tom complete the circuit to the “electrocute everybody standing on the goddamned beach” trap, while standing on the goddamned beach, and somehow she’s not dead. I think. This was very confusingly written. Fuck it. Last chapter. Let’s go.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Well, the chapter begins with everything exploding and that’s certainly exciting. And Katniss is picked up by a hovercraft, and I’m a bit confused by this because the only times anybody gets picked up by a hovercraft is when 1) they’re dead, or 2) they’ve won, and, well, neither of those things apply to Katniss, so something’s up.

When I swim back into semi-consciousness, I can feel I’m lying on a padded table. There’s the pinching sensation of tubes in my left arm. They are trying to keep me alive because, if I slide quietly, privately into death, it will be a victory. … Directly across from me I see Beetee with about ten different machines hooked up to him. Just let us die! I scream in my mind.

Okay, um, Beetee is there too? And also not dead? Well, there is literally only one reason why this is the case: revolution. Of course, Katniss takes some time to figure these things out and decides to kill everybody on the ship with a syringe full of sedative.

So Katniss is Solid Snake-ing her way through the hovercraft and overhears Plutarch and Haymitch consoling a distraught Finnick, and still doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.

[Haymitch] looks at my hand. “So it’s you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.”

Haymitch, I love you.

Haymitch sits directly in front of me. “Katniss, I’m going to explain what happened. I don’t want you to ask any questions until I’m through. Do you understand?”

Yay, now we’re finally going to know what’s been going on.

Plutarch Heavensbee has been, for several years, part of an undercover group aiming to overthrow the Capitol.

Well, derp.

“Where is Peeta?” I hiss at him.
“He was picked up by the Capitol along with Johanna and Enobaria,” says Haymitch.

Peeta gets the shit end of the stick. Who did not see this coming.

“I wanted to go back for him and Johanna, but I couldn’t move.”
I don’t answer. Finnick Odair’s good intentions mean less than nothing.
“It’s better for him than Johanna. They’ll figure out he doesn’t know anything pretty fast. And they won’t kill him if they think they can use him against you,” says Finnick.
“Like bait?” I say to the ceiling. “Like how they’ll use Annie for bait, Finnick?”

Jesus Haymitch Christ, Katniss.

Until one time, I open my eyes and find someone I cannot block out looking down at me. …
“Gale,” I whisper.

Oh my God, guys, Gale has lines!

“Katniss, there is no District Twelve.”

Ok, I am actually interested in reading the last book now. This is finally interesting, and, more importantly, the novel actually ends with any sort of promise for a sequel. But to talk about any of that, let’s switch over to what my thoughts are…

In Conclusion!

The Hunger Games did not end with any particular need for a sequel, and so the sequel Catching Fire was directionless and largely boring. Catching Fire, however, ends with a perfect chapter for setting up an exciting premise, so I am actually interested in reading Mockingjay. Overall, this was an unbelievably, painfully slow novel, but it definitely picked up towards the end, although it never got anywhere near as good as it was any any point during The Hunger Games. So this definitely suffers from being the middle of a forced trilogy, where it doesn’t have a real start, nor does it have a real end, and it is very difficult to do rising action, rising action, climax, denouement when the overall story is still just rising action. It definitely makes me excited for the third novel, but I still don’t see why this got to be its own book.

As of late I’ve picked up guided meditation, using an app called Headpace. It’s pretty solid and I like it a lot, although there was this pretty unintentionally hilarious tweet last weekend.

Haha, but not like in the book! Because Divergent hates #science.

Chapter 18

To summarize what’s going on in Insurgent (which is surprisingly difficult, because so little has happened), the Erudite and Dauntless traitors are slowly progressing their capitalist revolution, while Hufflepuff and Other Hufflepuff don’t do anything because they don’t get how this is relevant to them.

If you’re getting sick of all the Hufflepuff jokes I’ve been making, just imagine how sick I am of this book.

Case in point, this chapter is about Jack Kang, leader of Candor, establishing the official Candor position “let’s make peace with these people who have suddenly commited one genocide-like act after another, which is in no way relevant to us”. Also, Marcus is revealed to be Divergent, because why the fuck not.

“What seems to me to require more investigation [is] the Divergent. […] If you are one of the Divergent, please step forward so that we can hear from you. […] You, Marcus?” says Jack.
“Yes,” Marcus says. “I understand that you are [all] concerned. You had never heard of the Divergent a week ago, and now all that you know is that they are immune to something to which you are susceptible […]”
“It seems clear to me,” says Jack, “that we were attacked so that the Erudite could find the Divergent. Do you know why that is?”
“No, I do not,” syas Marcus. “Perhaps their intention was merely to identify us.”

Truthfully, finding that Marcus is Divergent is a good twist. Of course, it would be a better twist if this book series – which is called Divergent - had ever made it particularly clear what Divergence actually is. What if there were another twist that Marcus is lying? That he’s actually an Erudite spy? How would this actually look any different, technically? Hell, he could be Divergent and be an Erudite spy. The factions in this book are somehow simultaneously political, genetic, not-political, and a personal choice. A personal choice about your genetics that influence your politics. How does anyone think these books make any sense?

Tris argues with Marcus and Jack, pointing out that the Erudite intention is more on the “They’ve been killing us since before any of this happened” side, but Jack points out they don’t have any proof. Jack then points out that during yesterday’s invasion, “the Dauntless soldiers did not give any evidence of wanting to harm the majority of us”, which is enough for him to decide the best course of action is to pursue a peace treaty with the Erudite and Dauntless traitors.

“Their peaceful invasion suggest to me that it may be possible to negotiate a peace treaty […] So I will arrange a meeting with Jeanine Matthews […]”
“Their invasion wasn’t peaceful,” I say […] “Just because they didn’t shoot you all in the head doesn’t mean their intentions were somehow honorable?” […]
“While I am concerned for [Divergent’s] safety, I don’t think we can attack them just because they wanted to kill a fraction of our population.”

This would be the single worst speech given by a real political leader in the history of time.

Like this, but if Canada were also trying to kill that 47%

On top of being weirdly blase for a political leader about his people being systematically murdered because it’s just some of his people, Jack also dismisses Tris and Four’s explanation about the new long-term transmitters and permanent simulations. To be fair, Tris and Four have zero evidence for this, but given that his entire population has been injected with something, amusement is a weird way to react?

“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you,” I say. “Controlling you is.”
Jack’s lips curl with amusement. Amusement. “Oh? And how will they manage to do that? […] I can’t launch an attack based on a little girl’s speculations.”

Tris gets pissed off that Jack called her a little girl, and all the Dauntless get pissed off too, to which Jack’s response is “nyeh I’m not helping you nyeh”. More or less.

Chapter 19

Remember Zeke (Uriah’s older brother) and Tori, who were apparently Dauntless traitors? Turns out they were Dauntless spies. They show up at Candor base, Tori needing medical attention after they got found out. Zeke explains they wound up amongst traitors after the simulation, fortuitously allowing them to be spies, and we find out that Zeke has been getting Erudite defectors out safely (interesting!), while Tori has been doing something more secret. Which is cool, because it’s not like we know anything that’s going on in this book yet anyway. Unsurprisingly for a story about people who purposefully split themselves into arbitrary hyper-loyal cliques, most of Tris’s gang are skeptical that any of the Erudite defectors are genuine.

After this, Tris conveniently overhears Cara (Will’s older sister, an Erudite defector) consoling Christina about Tris shooting Will, which alternates between unfortunate, war is hell reason…

“That girl was probably scared out of her mind”

And surprisingly good advice for helping Christina deal…

“You don’t have to forgive her, but you should try to understand that what she did was not out of malice; it was out of panic.”

And, uh, cattiness?

“That way, you can look at her without wanting to punch her in her exceptionally long nose.”

War is hell?

Meanwhile, Four gets secret info about Jack’s upcoming peace meeting the next morning, which he discovers is with an Erudite representative, not Jeanine.

“If you were Erudite, what would you say at this meeting?”
They all look at me. Expectantly.
“What?” I say.
“You’re Divergent,” Zeke replies.
“So is Tobias.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have aptitude for Erudite.”

Tris is special even amongst the specials.

Marlene unintenionally summarizes everything that’s wrong with these books.

“But we don’t have special Divergent brains!”

Shauna unintentionally complains about how the book conflates political affiliation and genetic predisposition into a single focal point we’re supposed to take seriously.

“I know I belong in Dauntless because everything I did in that aptitude test told me so. I’m loyal to my faction for that reason – because there’s nowhere else I could possibly be. But [Tris]? And [Tobias]?” She shakes her head. “I have no idea who you’re loyal to.”

So you guys get that it was a Fight Club joke now, right?

Of course, Tris uses her special Divergent brain to conclude that Jack has nothing to negotiate with, except the Divergent and the rest of the Dauntless.

Question of the day! Ariel and I were playing a game last weekend called Loaded Questions, which is like a game that asks, uh, loaded questions, and you guess who wrote each response. One of the questions we got that I’d definitely like to gather more responses for was, “What is a word that sounds dirty, but isn’t?” We said voluptuous, homunculus, and cockamamie. What about you guys?

Today’s Insurgent chapter was fairly short, but don’t worry. My chapter for Beautiful Oblivion next week is like 4000 pages long.

Chapter 21

One of the more interesting parts of Divergent is Tris’s PTSD after the events of the first novel.

Don’t be an idiot. I can’t set out to do what I’m doing without a gun. It would be crazy. So I will have to solve this problem I’ve been having in the next five minutes. […] I used it to stop Eric from shooting Tobias in the head. It is not inherently evil. It is just a tool. I see a flicker of movement in the mirror, and before I can stop myself, I stare at my reflection. This is how I looked to him, I think. This is how I looked when I shot him.

Interestingly, the PTSD was one of the defining traits of the sequels for Divergent‘s most defining inspiration: The Hunger Games. This isn’t promising. While it had its moments, the concept was pretty badly bungled in the Hunger Games sequels, turning one of the decade’s best female characters into one with a frustrating lack of agency, eventually becoming Trinity Syndrome: The Trilogy. I don’t have a whole lot of hope for Divergent doing a better job, based on, you know, trends.

Trends…

Fourbias walks in on Tris and confronts her. She confronts him back. They have a lot of things to confront each other about. So it’s like every conversation they’ve had so far in the book.

“Zeke and Uriah told me you were going to eavesdrop on Jack,” he says. […] “Are you?”
“Why should I tell you? You don’t tell me about your plans.”
His straight eyebrows furrow. “What are you talking about?”

Tris is mad about Four beating up his dad for no apparent reason and not telling her why. Four is mad about Tris’s increasingly not-subtle death wish. Oh, to be young and in love.

“You’re throwing yourself into danger for no reason again,” he says. “Just like when you stormed up to fight the Erudite with only a… a pocket knife to protect yourself.”

Increasingly not-subtle.

I hear the words “doesn’t seem to value her own life” again and again.

I know I just used this gif like a week ago, but it’s not like these books bother coming up with new content either

Four insists on going with the others to spy on the meeting between Jack Kang and the representative of the Faction responsible for a string of genocide-esque mass murders that he wants to make peace with. Would you be surprised to know that nothing in Insurgent has ever gone the way a character thought it would? Because in the time it takes you to say, “Why is this character’s motivation like this? How is this even supposed to-“, Tris and her friends are hiding underneath a bridge and Jack finds that he has exactly zero leverage against the people who have already taken over the world.

“Max,” Jack says. [Max is a Dauntless leader] “Where’s Jeanine? I thought she would at least have the courtesy to show up herself.” […]
“I should inform you that this will not be a negotiation,” Max says. “In order to negotiate, you have to be on even footing, and you, Jack, are not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are the only disposable faction. Candor does not provide us with protection, sustenance, or technological innovation. Therefore you are expendable to us.”

Max demands that Jack return Eric, allow traitor Dauntless to search Candor HQ for Divergent, and provide the Erudite with names of everyone not injected with simulation serum. Tris notices that Max isn’t sounding like Max, because he says “testy” and “no self-respecting Dauntless man would say the word ‘testy'”, so Tris concludes that Jeanine is communicating to him through an earpiece from one specific glass building a quarter-mile away. Obviously.

Meanwhile, Jack grabs at Max’s throat, and then one of Tris’s friends shoots Max. For some reason. Look, if you’re reading Insurgent for things like “narrative pacing” or “tension”, well, um, maybe you could just read each chapter veeeeeery slowly.

It erupts into a shootout as Tris and Four run to the building where, inexplicably, Jeanine apparently actually is. Where Peter is.

Three figures run down the alley. One is blond. One is tall. And one is Peter. […]
“You traitor,” I say to Peter. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“Sounds like your friends need you,” Peter says with the flash of a smile— or bared teeth, I can’t tell.

He lifts his gun, and behind me, Tobias lifts his own […] Behind him, the blond woman— Jeanine, probably— and the tall Dauntless traitor turn the corner. Though I don’t have a weapon, and I don’t have a plan

It’s ok, Tris. Neither does this book.

“So you have a choice. You can let us go, and help them, or you can die trying to follow us.” […]
I almost scream. We both know what I’m going to do.
“I hope you die,” I say.

Which is as good of an excuse as any to link you to this.

Question of the day: What songs do you find yourself inappropriately singing to yourself in public?

Chapter 23

Having just decided on new Dauntless leadership in order to leave the faction that’s not even subtly about to betray them, the leader of that faction announces over the HQ intercom that they’re going to betray them.

Jack Kang’s voice speaks all around us.
“Attention all occupants of Candor headquarters. A few hours ago I met with a representative of Jeanine Matthews. He reminded me that we Candor are in a weak position, dependent on Erudite for our survival, and told me that if I intend to keep my faction free, I will have to meet a few demands.”

He relays the terms of the surrender, save for the part about the Dauntless, and Tris talks about the themes of the story.

Sometimes I feel like I am collecting the lessons each faction has to teach me, and storing them in my mind like a guidebook for moving through the world.

Yes, remember all those times that Tris learned what she could from each faction, didn’t criticize them, and most certainly didn’t completely write off the one pursuing intellectual advancement because science is totes grody? I remember all those times. Anyway, it’s time to execute Eric halfway through the book because I guess none of the factions’ lessons are about narrative pacing.

I have had to google this graph for this blog approximately eight bajillion times.

The popular YA book series about nonconformity and the dangers of mind control continues to tell the reader what every part of its story means.

Eric scans the crowd for a few seconds, and then his eyes settle on me. […]
“I’d like her to list [my crimes]. Stiffs don’t do that sort of thing. They just tie each other’s shoes and cut each other’s hair.”
Tobias’s expression does not change. I think I understand: Eric doesn’t really care about me. But he knows exactly where to hit Tobias. […]
“I have a request.” [Eric says.] “All I want is for Four to be the one who fires that bullet.”
“Why?” Tobias says.
“So you can live with the guilt,” Eric replies. […]
I think I understand. He wants to see people break [and] he believes that if Tobias has to kill him, he will see that before he dies.
Sick.

Ok, but, why? Why are we unpacking these themes now? Eric hasn’t played a real, thematic part in the narrative since the first book, so none of the themes accompanying him make sense now, halfway into Insurgent. We’ve read half a book of Tris and Four running away from people who want to kill them because… because, so it’s really weird to suddenly have to care about Tris’s rivalry with Four and how it represents the contrast between cruel Dauntless and brave Dauntless for three pages out of the blue before Eric is killed off and they go away again, forever. It’s sort of like how in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith how Christopher Lee’s character, Count Dooku, the villain of the previous movie, showed up for a five minute fight scene in the middle of the first act and was killed off. But at least that awkwardly shoehorned scene was done to develop the main character, Anakin. What happens here would basically be like if they brought back Count Dooku for five minutes and then made it all about Count Dooku.

Basically what I’m saying is, wow, the Star Wars prequels were written better than this.

Which is a stunning feat, when you think about it.

To be fair, it does also make Tris contemplate her own themes. Themes she’s been struggling with the whole time. So there’s… that.

I hear my father asking me, “What makes you think you have the right to shoot someone?” […] Maybe we are not the ones deciding if Eric lives or dies. Maybe he is the one who decided that, when he did all those terrible things.

Maybe Eric’s execution forces Four to confront stuff too, but it would have to make sense why his stuff makes sense as stuff first.

“[Are you] afraid the Dauntless are going to change their minds about you? Realize that even though you’ve only got four fears, you’re still a coward?” […]
“Eric,” he says, “be brave.”
He squeezes the trigger.

TWIST. It doesn’t actually say who died  until the next chapter, when we find out it was the narrative pacing.

Chapter 24

The Dauntless run around celebrating and then Jack King finally does something that makes sense: wonders why they killed off Eric just now. Albeit for very different reasons.

“What have you done?” he says. “I was just told that Eric is missing from his holding cell.”
“He was under our jurisdiction,” says Tori. “We gave him a trial and executed him. You should be thanking us.”
“Why…” Jack’s face turns red. […]
“Because you wanted him to be executed, too, right? Since he murdered one of your children?”

Jack Kang’s Worst Day Ever continues as the Dauntless also tell him that they’re leaving.

If we leave, he will be incapable of fulfilling two of the three demands Max had of him. The thought terrifies him, and it is all over his face.
“I can’t let you do that,” he says.
“You don’t let us do anything,” says Tobias.

Things suddenly get more… how do I put this… “America, Fuck Yeah!”?

“If you do this, we will side with Erudite, I promise you, and you will never find an ally in us again, you—”
“We don’t need you as an ally,” says Tori. “We’re Dauntless.”
Everyone shouts

Dauntless is basically the Team America of Divergent, but not ironic.

The Dauntless run out of Candor, yelling and screaming, all the way back to old Dauntless headquarters, presumably leaving Jack Kang behind to wonder how he’s able to take the political climate seriously.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Wait, how does this make sense?” (You might have been asking yourself this for a while.) “I thought they were driven out of Dauntless HQ by the Erudite, as well as the other half of Dauntless who joined the Erudite, and have been on the run. Wouldn’t this give them away fairly quickly?” Well, they’ve thought of that, and they have an answer!

Bud passes out paintball guns. Someone else passes out paintballs. Soon the hidden corners of Dauntless headquarters will be coated in multicolored paint, blocking the lenses of the surveillance cameras.

Because nothing says “inconspicuous” like “If we cover up all the cameras this place is being actively monitored with, then they won’t know that we’re here!”

Question of the day! Who’s your craziest family member you’re going to see over the holidays? Unless they read this blog, in which case who’s your second craziest?

Guess what, guys? Something actually interesting happens in this chapter! 2015 is crazy.

Chapter 26

Tris is woken up in the middle of the night by Christina, which Tris reminds us is never a good sign.

The last time Christina pulled me out of bed, it was to see Al’s body lifted out of the chasm. […] She jabs the DOOR CLOSE button, and then the button for the top floor.
“Simulation,” she says. “There’s a simulation. It’s not everyone, it’s just… just a few.”
“One of them said something about the Divergent,” she says.

“Something about the Divergent” also doubles as a pretty good summary of this entire series, because I still have no idea what’s actually so special about the Divergent.

They get to the room and they see three people – Marlene (one of Tris’s Dauntless-born friends she met through Uriah), Hector (the younger brother of Lynn, Uriah’s other Dauntless-born friend), and an 8-year-old girl Tris doesn’t recognize (not to be confused with the other characters we don’t recognize) – under Erudite mind-control on the ledge of the rooftop. Astute readers will note that this is actually pretty goddamned terrifying.

“I have a message for the Divergent.” [Marlene says.] “This is not a negotiation. It is a warning. […] Every two days until one of you delivers yourself to Erudite headquarters, this will happen again.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be Divergent if even an interesting premise is slowed to a halt with Tris thinking all over it, so she takes us very slowly – but very incompletely – through her thought process of who to save.

I look from Marlene to Hector. Hector, who was so afraid of what I am because his mother told him to be. Lynn is probably still at Shauna’s bedside, hoping Shauna can move her legs when she wakes up again. Lynn can’t lose Hector. […]
Marlene steps back, and I throw myself forward, but not at her. Not at Marlene, who once let Uriah shoot a muffin of her head on a dare. Who gathered a sack of clothing for me to wear. Who always, always greeted me with a smile. No, not at Marlene.
As Marlene and the other Dauntless girl step off the edge of the roof, I dive at Hector.

Man, this is obviously supposed to be dramatic. Let’s very slowly explain it, but not the half that explains what actually happens. We have to have a dramatic twist everybody who didn’t read the paragraph or two before it would never see coming. For added dramatic tension, let’s be sure to include paragraphs reminding the reader who any of these people are and why it would be sad if they died, because it’s not like the reader’s going to remember any of these characters who are emotionally about to die.

Somebody thought that, wrote a book about it, and then somebody else decided to spend millions of dollars making a movie of it.

Defy reality! Nothing means anything!

Tris saves Hector and Christina saves the nameless girl, leaving Marlene forced to fall to her death against her conscious will. Obviously this scene wouldn’t have worked if Tris didn’t spend a bunch of pages explaining why it’s sad.

Chapter 27

During the aftermath the next morning, they figure out that Erudite was able to execute their mind-control attack because they missed covering up some of the security cameras. You know, the ones that would have let the Erudite know that someone was there, so they shot them all with paintballs. Amazingly, that cunning plan was foiled some other way.

Also in the aftermath of having witnessed her first simulation, Christina has a revelation about Will’s death.

“You were right. They couldn’t hear you, couldn’t see you. Just like Will… […] I believe you now, and… I’m going to try to forgive you.”

I have something in common with Tris for the first time: neither of us give a fuck.

What did she think, before now? That I wanted to shoot Will, one of my best friends? She should have trusted me from the beginning […]
“How fortunate for me that you finally got proof that I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”

Tris tells Christina that she better hurry up on forgiving her, “because there isn’t much time-” and then breaks into tears, where they finally embrace and make up. Later that day, Lynn expresses sadness that Tris couldn’t save Marlene, but thanks her for saving her brother.

Tris comments on how quiet the other Dauntless are around her, because “as one of the Divergent, I have the power to let Jeanine kill one of them”. Maybe it would be better to phrase this as “I have the power to stop Jeanine from killing one of them”, since her agency is in the potential to make the villain stop doing villainy rather than giving her permission to do so. But, hey, I’m not a professional writer words person.

Tris chats with the other Divergent. Uriah is annoyed that Shauna (Lynn and Hector’s other sister) is avoiding the Divergent because “she doesn’t want to catch it”, because Lynn, Hector, and Shauna’s mother is Divergent-racist. So we now have to also remember that minor character and the one trait that defines them before they likely get killed off in a few more appearances.

Speaking of characters defined by a small number of traits, Four shows up. His relationship with Tris continues to be somehow be both boring and rude.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” I say.
“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not all right.”

And tries pretty miserably to be dramatic.

I don’t stare back – I refuse to stare back.
I stare back.

To its credit, this whole mind control suicide terror threat is hands down the best and most terrifying thing that’s happened in the Divergent series so far. The book even has one of its rare moments where it shows how scared its characters are instead of having Tris simply explain it.

Uriah scowls. “I think we should attack back.”
“Yeah,” I say hollowly,” Let’s provoke the woman who can force half of this compound to kill themselves. That sounds like a great idea.”

Okay, that’s still mostly just Tris simply explaining it, but the difference is that this is in dialogue with the others, rather than breaking it all down to the reader. Because this is a good point. This does sound like a hopeless situation. And I care about it because for once the book is allowing me to think about it.

Tobias gets the Divergent to agree to not do anything about it yet. Tris goes to Tobias’s apartment later and have a very Tris-Tobias conversation, which has depressingly come to mean 1) they fight, and 2) Tobias mansplains what’s best.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he says.
“An idiot?”
“You were lying. You said you wouldn’t go to Erudite, and you were lying, and going to Erudite would make you an idiot. So don’t.”

Rather than summarize the rest of their fight, I’m going to summarize every conversation these two had ever had in this book and will probably continue to have!

TRIS: I have an opinion that is different from yours!
FOUR: I am right because I am a man!
TRIS: Maybe it’s more complicated than that?
FOUR: No, it’s not! I’m a man!
(Pause)
FOUR: I love you.
(Optional: They make out)

Hahaha sigh… yeah, it’d be great if I could just say that was my summary of the rest of the book. That’d save me so much time.

Tris promises not to turn herself in to the Erudite for mysterious experiment-related purposes, but it’s a lie. We know this because it’s literally the only part of this book’s plot that was interesting enough to make it into the trailer for the movie.

Also because Tris tells us.

Question of the day: Did you get any books for the holidays? Did you give any books? Are they better than the books we’re reading for the blog?

I’ve recently finally gotten on board with this Spotify thing. However, I decided against their deal to get three months of premium service for $0.99 if you sign up before the new year, figuring that I still didn’t use it that much, and the occasional ads aren’t that annoying. Until I learned that the ads are sometimes for other music on Spotify, and nothing ruins your day faster than your ambient electronic music being interrupted by fucking John Mayer.

Also, this is a long one.

Insurgent Chapter 29

I’d like to preface this post with a casual reminder that a book isn’t “bad” because its characters make bad decisions. Conversely, you could probably argue that all literature is basically about people making bad decisions, because otherwise how do you get conflict? The reason why I’m kicking off the post with this is just to be clear that when I spend this entire post complaining that this book is bad because Tris makes bad decisions, I mean in a way that shows utter contempt for the notion of human thought.

We last left Tris having turned herself over to the bad guys so they would stop killing most of her friends, giving them the one, very obvious thing they needed to be able to kill all of her friends, because she felt guilty or something maybe. You might be thinking that it would sound like Tris’s meaninglessly bad decisions have already peaked. Hell, even I thought this, because when I read Ariel’s chapter yesterday, I actually thought that this week she had accidentally written my chapter of Tris Continues To Make Bad Decisions. But lo. The bad decisions have not ended.

And as the chapter kicks off, they’re not even GOOD bad decisions.

I forgot my watch.

Oh, but if it were just that Tris forgot a watch.

See, in competently written books, bad decisions create conflict, conflict creates tension, and tension creates a reason to keep reading. Whereas in Insurgent, Tris makes so many bad decisions, they have ceased to have meaning.

Tris reminds us her reason for doing all of this, and as far as reasons go, it is about as diametrically opposed to reason as these things get.

Soon I will honor my parents by dying as they died.

She will honor her parents, who sacrificed their lives so their daughter could live, by turning herself in to the people murdering her friends. Except actually thinking (although Tris never, ever thinks) about what this would actually accomplish would probably be…

Obviously the latter. Currently the book is completely resting upon the assumption that the reader will not think that, and sympathize with a character who thinks that this is a brave, selfless, noble sacrifice. That will get every single person she ever loved murdered. There are a lot of things working against each other in this book.

Then Jeanine visits Tris’s cell with her Dauntless-traitor lackeys, who include (of course) Peter, which is where the chapter’s only rational – albeit completely unintentional – line appears:

How does Peter find himself in such a prestigious position, as Jeanine Matthews’s bodyguard? Where is the logic in that?

Oh, if only this book’s editor realized just how appropriate that line was.

“I’d like to know what time it is,” I say.
“Would you,” she says. “That’s interesting.”

This is not interesting. This is really, really far removed from interesting. Here is a list of things that are more interesting than this:

• Spackle
• Spackle that has dried slightly
• Why there isn’t a question mark in Jeanine’s line of dialogue just now where she asks a question

I should have known she wouldn’t tell me. Every piece of information she receives factors into her strategy, and she won’t tell me what time it is unless she decides that providing the information is more useful than withholding it.

Look, try as hard as you goddamn like, Insurgent. You cannot make this interesting by writing a couple dozen words about why it’s interesting.

“I’m sure my Dauntless companions are disappointed,” she says, “that you have not tried to claw my eyes out yet.”
“That would be stupid.”

It gets worse.

“True. But in keeping with your ‘act first, think second’ behavioral trend.”

It gets worse.

“I’m sixteen.” I purse my lips. “I change.”

I don’t know what’s more boring: the lines of dialogue where the book is so on-the-nose about describing its characters it’s like it’s reading the book for me, or the ones where it’s completely off. How do you decide which is less unbearable? Do you flip a coin? Is that how this book got published?

Which is what I’m telling people now when they ask me what I thought about Divergent.

Jeanine progresses the closest thing this book has to a plot.

She steps back and gestures toward the doorway. The last thing I want to do is walk out of this room and toward an uncertain destination

As opposed to the time Tris walked out of Dauntless HQ in the middle of the night to give herself up to Erudite for uncertain purposes, which she consciously chose to do.

Jeanine takes Tris to a room with a large metal table, a heart monitor, and a camera. Jeanine explains – in case you missed it during the last over 800 pages – that Tris is a special snowflake even amongst the special snowflakes.

“From your results I have determined that you are one of the strongest Divergent, which I say not to compliment you but to explain my purpose. If I am to develop a simulation that cannot be thwarted by the Divergent mind, I must study the strongest Divergent mind in order to shore up all weaknesses in the technology.” […] She smiles a little. “And then, at the conclusion of my study, you will be executed.”

Ok, but why? I mean, I wasn’t expecting a reason. I’ve long resigned myself to the reality that we’re dealing with an Evil For The Sake Of Evil villain here, and that Jeanine’s character is closer to the “Spackle that has dried slightly” end of the spectrum, but it takes a seriously boring villain for a threat of execution to sound totally phoned in. I know she’s supposed to be a dry scientist lacking personality and that’s her “thing”, but the book isn’t even trying to make that engaging. EVEN THE BOOK KNOWS THIS:

Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice.

THAT’S A REAL SENTENCE IN THE BOOK. It’s admitting that it’s boring and that it doesn’t care. Guys, I’m going to say something with utmost sincerity: Jeanine is the dullest villain we’ve ever read on the blog. Not even fucking Kate Winslet can keep from looking super bored playing her.

To the point where Kate Winslet can’t even describe her character in promotional clips without being super sarcastic.

Tris gets put back in her cell, until Peter picks her up to take her to some testing, and – I shit you not – even Peter’s getting bored of this crap:

“What, no snide comments?” I look up at him with mock surprise. “No ‘You’re an idiot for coming here; your brain must be deficient as well as Divergent’?”
“That really goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

But he’s still not above the series’ melodrama:

“Did they fix up your bullet wound?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Now you’ll need to find a different weakness to exploit. Too bad I’m fresh out of them.”

Jeanine wants to scan Tris’s brain, and Tris asks for a contrived excuse for the reader to learn what’s going on if she can see the scans. After a short debate so boring I’m not going to bother summarizing it, Jeanine agrees.

Meanwhile, even Peter continues to think nothing in this book makes a hint of sense.

“I don’t know how you manage to always get what you want.”
“Yeah, because I wanted to get myself into a cell in Erudite headquarters. I wanted to be executed.” […]
“Didn’t you, though?” he says.

Tris’s super duper superbrain is scanned, and the book – which has spent hundreds of pages conflating genetic predisposition and personal choice – throws another inconsistent wrench in the works.

Jeanine taps her chin and stares for what feels like a long time.
Finally she says, “Someone instruct Ms. Prior as to what the prefrontal cortex does.” […]
“It’s responsible for organizing your thoughts and actions to attain your goals.”
“Correct,” Jeanine says. “Now someone tell me what they observe about Ms. Prior’s lateral prefrontal cortex.”
“It’s large, […] much larger than average,” […]
“In fact, it is one of the largest lateral prefrontal cortexes I’ve ever seen. Yet the orbitofrontal cortex is remarkably small. What do these two facts indicate?”
“The orbitofrontal cortex is the reward center of the brain. Those who exhibit reward-seeking behavior have a large orbitofrontal cortex,” someone says. “That means that Ms. Prior engages in very little reward-seeking behavior.”
“Not just that.” Jeanine smiles a little. […] “She is not reward motivated. Yet she is extremely good at directing her thoughts and actions toward her goals. This explains both her tendency toward harmful-but-selfless behavior and, perhaps, her ability to wriggle out of simulations.”

I’m just gonna go and…

Jeanine and the other Erudite decide that based on this, they could make a Divergent-proof simulation serum that “suppress[es] some, but not all, of the activity in the prefrontal cortex”. Obviously. I get that this is fake book science, but was their big breakthrough just now that in order to control someone’s mind, you have to inhibit the part of their brain that does thoughts and actions? But what do I know? Let’s leave the great minds who invented mind control to work on that, and yet discard the other half of what they just learned, as good scientists do.

But that’s nothing compared to Tris’s big scientific breakthrough.

I did not know that my entire personality, my entire being, could be discarded as the byproduct of my anatomy . What if I really am just someone with a large prefrontal cortex… and nothing more?

I’m just gonna go and…

Then Four/Tobias shows up, because why the fuck not.

One more time.

[He is] Held at either arm by a Dauntless traitor, a gun aimed at the back of his skull. […]
“Tobias,” I say, and it sounds like a gasp. […]
I came here so that no one else would die. I came here to protect as many people as I could. And I care more about Tobias’s safety than anyone else’s. So why am I here, if he’s here? What’s the point?

Bitch, because you came here, everybody will die. You have protected zero people. Hell, you’ve actually protected a negative number of people. Ya fucked up loooooong before Tobias got here.

Tobias takes being a typical BBGT-style, always-knows-best, shitstain boyfriend to an absurdly finite conclusion in much the same way that Lou Reed took heavy metal to an absurdly finite conclusion with Metal Machine Music.

“You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”

Because if a to-the-death vendetta doesn’t say true love, what does?

Tris angsts about Tobias surrendering himself too (although she has yet to realize that she has doomed everyone by turning herself in in the first place and angst over that, so fuck you, everyone who isn’t Tobias), crying that, “I think he came to die with me” (…he literally just said that?).

Meanwhile, Peter still thinks nothing Tris does makes sense.

“What will they do to him? The same thing they’re doing to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out?” I wipe my cheeks with the heels of my hands, frustrated. “Can you at least find out if he’s all right?”
He says, “Why would I do that ? Why would I do anything for you?”

Peter closes the door on Tris, in much the same way that Insurgent has closed the door on any kind of emotional resonance.

Seriously, what’s the point of any of this? Every characters’ motivation is either so nonexistent or nonsensical that nothing in this chapter has piqued my interest, and that’s quite a statement, because this chapter threw Tris sacrificing her life, Tris sacrificing her life for naught, the villains potentially finding a way to control everyone’s mind, and Tris and Four’s mortal peril at us. That shouldn’t feel like nothing, but given the irrational way we got here, it does.

Just like how I initially couldn’t wrap my head around the objectively nonsensical Faction System, I can’t wrap my head around the objectively nonsensical rationale behind why Tris gave herself up. Why did Tris come here? Why did Four also come here to seemingly die out of spite for love? Why is Jeanine supposed to be evil? Why has Tris not realized that the gave the villains the only thing they were missing? Why didn’t she realize that before she went to them? Why is Peter? I can’t even get more specific with that one. I literally don’t understand Peter, as a concept in this book.

This is where I have officially stopped caring about this book.

I’m not even laughing at how stupid it is anymore. I’m not even hate-reading it anymore. I’m not even sure “bored” is the right word anymore. As I read this, it just passes through me, like the ethereal nothingness it so resolutely strives to be. As I read this book – a book which somebody read and spent fucking $85 million making a movie of (if we can assume it matches the budget on the first one, let alone surpass) – highlighting wave after wave of Tris’s purposelessly bad decisions, meaningless twists, and inane reveals, I cannot even muster up so much as a “meh” at them. They barely even qualify as “bad” anymore; they just aren’t anything. The utter absurdity and constancy of Tris’s bad decisions and the nothingness of the characters they concern challenge the very notion of meaning itself, and I am forced to stare into this void and find that meaning doesn’t exist.

If art like Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” can ask, “How strange it is to be anything at all?”, and art like Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus can ask, “What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me?”, then art like Insurgent is art that asks to negate meaning and being. Reading Insurgent is not merely like realizing nothing matters, but like finding there is no “nothing” and there is no “matters” because nothing ever has, ever will, or can so much as be.

Question of the day: What’s your favorite soup?

Okay, I know the big plot twist we’re all in fits of giggles about on the blog right now is the recently-spoiled twist that Cami’s ex, TJ, is semi-secretly Trenton’s brother, Thomas, over in Beautiful Oblivion. But Insurgent throws quite a doozy at us today!

Ya hear that? Doozy. I’m not sure I spelled that correctly, but it’s just for Insurgent, so I don’t care.

[Ariel says: Matt and I were also giggling over the article he sent me showcasing the lack of real life or fictional chemistry between the actors who play Christian and Ana. In fact, the article argues it looks like the actors hate each other. It’s great.]

Insurgent Chapter 31

After her last torture/simulation/meaningless experience in an unending road to nowhere, Tris dreamed of her mother.

I wake wondering how I did not notice, every day I sat across from her at the breakfast table, that she was full to bursting with Dauntless energy.

Given that we had like four scenes ever with Tris’s mom before she was killed off , we’re just gonna have to take Tris’s word for it that this thing we never saw is a thing that she never noticed. [Ariel says: The scenes I do remember with her mother were when she cut Tris’ hair, which she didn’t do very Dauntlessly in my humble opinion. Unless you count holding scissors as a Very Dangerous Task].

Tris continues to openly question why Peter’s still in the book.

“Why are you constantly escorting me places?” I say. “Isn’t there a depraved activity you’re supposed to be taking part in? Kicking puppies or spying on girls while they change, or something?”
“I know what you did to Will, you know. Don’t pretend that you’re better than I am, because you and I, we’re exactly the same.” […]
“You’re wrong ,” I say. “We may both be bad, but there’s a huge difference between us— I’m not content with being this way.”
Peter snorts a little

I wonder if he snorted because that’s, like, the least relevant reason why their very different brands of how a very vague adjective applies to them. This is like saying an apple and a walrus may both be slowly decaying over time, but there’s a huge difference between them – a walrus has tusks. [Ariel says: Yeah, pretty sure Tris could have also pointed out that when Peter stabbed Edward in the eye, it was not because his life was in immediate danger.]

YEP. THAT IS THE ONLY THING.

Tris is led to a room where four Dauntless traitors, two Erudite scientists, and Jeanine are in a room with a bunch of machines Tris can’t identity. She worries briefly that Jeanine has changed her mind and has executed her, and puts up a brief, valiant struggle against her untimely death I could maybe care about if we weren’t only 65% of the way into the book.

But it turns out Tris isn’t here to be executed!

This isn’t it.

But to torture her in front of Four so that he gives up information about the factionless safe houses!

But, wait, doesn’t truth serum exist in these books? Shouldn’t they use that? Why, I bet there’d have to be a convenient and not especially believable reason why-

“Truth serum would be preferable, of course, but it would take days to coerce Jack Kang into handing some over, as it is jealously guarded by the Candor, and I’d rather not waste a few days.”

Oh phew! I was worried that it wouldn’t make sense why the world’s only remaining scientists made a drug and then gave literally all of it to a group of people who have 0% of the world’s military in comparison to their own 100% of the military.

Fine. So what are they gonna do instead?

“The simulations stimulate the amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear [and] induce a hallucination based on that fear” […]
“When I was developing the Dauntless simulations , years ago, we discovered that certain levels of potency overwhelmed the brain and made it too insensible with terror to invent new surroundings, which was when we diluted the solution so that the simulations would be more instructive. But I still remember how to make it.”

Um, yes. You just… don’t dilute it… If all you did was dilute the solution, then you just added water to it. It’s still the same chemical, just less concentrated. So you really should remember how to make it. Because you do.

I’m starting to think that the reason why the villains in the Divergent series are scientists are because Veronica Roth has a horrendous grasp of science.

SCIENCE ISN’T COOOOOL

Aw, man, this is looking desperate!

“What does she need to know?” I say, interrupting her.
“Information about the factionless safe houses,” he replies without looking at me.
My eyes widen. The factionless are the last hope any of us has

Which is interesting, because Tris has literally never trusted the factionless before this point in the narrative.

I’m gonna get some mileage out of this walrus.

Tris is injected with the exact same chemical, but without water, and she begins tripping balls.

“Tris,” says Tobias. I look away from the crows.
He stands by the door, where he was before I was injected, but now he has a knife. He holds it out from his body and turns it so the blade points in, at his stomach. Then he brings it toward himself, touching the tip of the blade to his stomach.
“What are you doing? Stop!”
He smiles a little and says, “I’m doing this for you.”
He pushes the knife in farther, slow, and blood stains the hem of his shirt.

Why does tripping-balls Tobias have the exact same motivation as real-life Tobias? [Ariel says: Because tripping-balls!Tris is unable to deny the fact that he’s the fucking worst.]

Tobias cries for them to stop the torture and agrees to mark the factionless safe houses on a map. They inject Tris with a sedative and she stops hallucinating, then starts getting sleepy.

“While you’re here . . .” Jeanine says once Tobias and his escorts are gone. She looks up and focuses her watery eyes on one of the Erudite. “Get him and bring him in here. It’s time.”

Man, sounds like an Marcus is gonna come back, huh?

I promised you full transparency with these procedures. So I feel it’s only fair that you know exactly who has been assisting me in my endeavors.” She smiles a little. “Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective.”

Yup. Marcus any second now.

She looks toward the doorway as the sedative sets in, making everything blur at the edges. I look over my shoulder, and through the haze of drugs I see him.
Caleb.

Ok. So when I first read this I totally thought it was going to be Marcus (because motherfucker’s, like, the character for totally expected unexpected twists), so this totally caught me off guard. But when I was telling my girlfriend about this chapter and told her that there was a plot twist and a character who was helping the Erudite against Tris, she immediately said, “It’s Caleb.” [Ariel says: I guess as soon as Jeanine says all that, we should immediately have known, but I read that moment so fast that I was genuinely surprised as well because I wouldn’t have expected Caleb to betray her.] I guess that I probably could have guessed that it would be Caleb, because 1) everyone else is dead and there are no other characters, and 2) it follows the tried-and-true “it’s always the least-likely person regardless of how much sense that makes” rule.

Okay, I bet that the overlapping audience of people reading this blog post about Insurgent who have also seen After The Thin Man is probably, like, me, but the fact that James Fucking Stewart was playing the plot twist murderer alone should give you an idea of what’s up. The Least Likely Person twist isn’t inherently a bad twist, but you really gotta stick the landing.

And that brings me back to Insurgent. On the one hand, the Caleb plot twist was the first sign of life in this book since I opened the front cover. It’s the only thing so far that’s gotten me to think that something interesting might happen here. But it’s largely interesting because of the big problem on the other side of the coin: it makes no fucking sense. And given how much trouble the Divergent series has historically had with making sense, I’m not really optimistic.

Anyway, what I’m really trying to say is 1) QUESTION OF THE DAY: What do you think of the Caleb plot twist?, and 2) You should go watch After The Thin Man.

And also The Thin Man, if you wanna be, like, sequential about it.

So I’m embarrassingly new to this whole “podcast” thing, but I just discovered they’re a thing and that I like them. So I’m gonna recommend that if anyone has a spare hour or so thus weekend, have a listen to the first episode of NPR’s new Invisibilia podcast. I really wanna talk with someone about it, because it was terrifying and inspiring and shoot if those two things aren’t right up my alley.

Insurgent Chapter 33

The chapter begins with Tris waking up to Caleb in her cell. And Peter, because Peter is always there doing nothing in the plot these days, so that’s just a given.

You may recall that we just got a big ol’ plot twist that Caleb is a traitor and helped the Erudite capture his sister, and I thought this was interesting, but was very skeptical that his treachery would make any kind of sense.

“Did you ever leave Erudite?” I say.
“It’s not that simple,” he starts. “I—”

Well, I still don’t have an answer for that, because the book plays the more questions than answers card.

“At what point did you betray our family? Before our parents died, or after?”
“I did what I had to do. You think you understand this, Beatrice , but you don’t. This whole situation… it’s much bigger than you think it is. […] This isn’t about Erudite; it’s about everyone. All the factions,” he says, “and the city. And what’s outside the fence.”

AWESOME. MORE QUESTIONS.

On the one hand, I like this, because the little untoward hints that something’s outside the fence frame literally the entire plot differently, like despite all the shit going on in here, there’s something else going on on a whole other level. On the other hand, I hate this, because all of our unknowns are now in this one single Caleb-as-traitor arc, so while it’s keeping every element of that interesting, it’s only interesting because it’s unknown, and once we find out so much as one of them is stupid and doesn’t support the weight of the mysteries-on-mysteries…

You know.

Unfortunately, Caleb’s mysteries immediately start making less and less sense.

“I have always been Erudite,” he says softly. “Even when I was supposed to be Abnegation.”

Wait, like, when he was growing up in Abnegation? Did he pop out of the womb an Erudite spy baby?

Caleb snorts a little. “Our father was Erudite, Beatrice. Jeanine told me— he was in her year at school.”
“He wasn’t Erudite,” I say after a few seconds. “He chose to leave them. […] Only you chose this… this evil.”
“Spoken like a true Dauntless,” says Caleb sharply. “It’s either one way or the other way. No nuances. The world doesn’t work like that, Beatrice. Evil depends on where you’re standing.”

Says the person who joined a group aligned with a specific personality trait that has embarked on a genocide against groups aligned with different specific personality traits.

Tris argues that mind control and giving up your sister to people who will kill her is evil, which I guess is too nuanced for sudden-evil-sociopath Caleb. Tris is then taken to Jeanine and the scientists, who reveal more Divergent-science.

“You have an abundance of a particular kind of neuron, called, quite simply, a mirror neuron. […]”
“Mirror neurons fire both when one performs an action and when one sees another person performing that action. They allow us to imitate behavior. […]”
“Someone with many, strong mirror neurons could have a flexible personality— capable of mimicking others as the situation calls for it rather than remaining constant. […] A flexible personality,” she says, “would probably have aptitude for more than one faction, don’t you agree, Ms. Prior?”

Man, fuck if I care. We’re going through quite a lot of trouble to explain that someone can be both selfless and adventurous. It really took all these far-future science tests (not to mention 800 pages of books…) to reach the conclusion that someone has multiple personality traits because they sometimes behave differently?

Every time someone makes a scientific breakthrough in Divergent, this is what it sounds like to me.

What’s funny is that Tris actually seems to give less of a fuck than I do.

“We’ll have a simulation serum to try out soon.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Whatever.”

The scene ends, and we move to a scene where Tobais is shaking Tris awake in the middle of the night, saying there’s no time to explain and they have to run! Which Tris immediately figures out is a simulation, because – and I’m not making this up – Tobias isn’t awesome enough.

[We] encounter two Dauntless guards […] Tobias fires twice in a matter of seconds, both hits, one in the head and one in the chest. The woman, who was hit in the chest, slumps against the wall but doesn’t die. […]
I know that if he can throw a knife so that it hits just the tip of my ear, he can fire accurately at the Dauntless soldiers who ambush us. […]
“We can’t get out of here,” I say. “Because this is a simulation.”

Tris announces, “You’ll have to do better than that, Jeanine”, pulls a knife out of her pocket that wasn’t there, and stabs herself in the leg out of the simulation. I like how since simulation rules have always been wonky, somehow that’s the least weird part of this scene.

When she wakes up, Jeanine screams in frustration and holds a gun to Tris’s face, demanding to know how she always knows it’s a simulation, because apparently she doesn’t know that Tobias is the awesomest.

“You think I’m going to tell you?” I say. “You think I believe that you would kill me without figuring out the answer to this question?” […]
“This is not about you . It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!”

Tris has the only appropriate response to that level of melodrama.

I punch her hard in the face.

Then Tris goes full-on psychotic power trip, which is genuinely kinda great.

“Pain can’t make me tell you. Truth serum can’t make me tell you. Simulations can’t make me tell you. I’m immune to all three. […] You have failed. You can’t control me!” […] I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. […] I broke her.
I broke her.

You know.

So you guys heard about the all-female Ghostbusters reboot? I’m like one of four people in the world who doesn’t like Ghostbusters, so that was pretty much the only thing that could have piqued my interest.

I look forward to reading zero comments about Divergent and a thousand comments about how I don’t like Ghostbusters.

Insurgent Chapter 36

But I’m still breathing.

Oh phew! Tris didn’t just die partway into the book! That would be weird!

Peter pushes my eyelids over my eyes. Does he know I’m not dead? Does Jeanine? Can she see me breathing?
“Take the body to the lab,” Jeanine says. “The autopsy is scheduled for this afternoon.”

So that would be a “no”, then.

Peter takes the still unconscious Tris to an unknown room, conveniently talking out loud to himself just in case we’re not sure he’s switched sides in his enemy’s HQ.

“For someone so small, you’re heavy, Stiff,” he mutters.
He knows I’m awake. He knows.

Suddenly, Tris overhears Four. Peter gives Four his gun because he’s a better shot, while he carries Tris in their run to safety.

Ok, so, let’s think about this for a second. This isn’t really a huge surprise, since Peter’s main role in the narrative thus far has been “just be there”, and while it’s possible that a book can make the mistake of introducing a constantly recurring character who literally does nothing, that’s more so the befuddling exception than the rule. I don’t think anyone’s particularly surprised that Peter turned out to be Tris and Four’s means of escape. So we’re going to skip ahead to covering his surprising motivations for helping them!

The surprise is that it doesn’t make much rational sense, which by Divergent-standards is like saying that the ocean is surprisingly splashy.

[H]e opens his mouth, hesitates, and finally says, “I can’t be in anyone’s debt. Okay? The idea that I owed you something made me sick. […] Indebted to a Stiff? It’s ridiculous.” […]
“You’re insane,” says Tobias. “That’s not the way the world works . . . with everyone keeping score.”
“It’s not?” Peter raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what world you live in, but in mine, people only do things for you for one of two reasons. The first is if they want something in return. And the second is if they feel like they owe you something.”
“Those aren’t the only reasons people do things for you,” I say.

Yeah, Tris! You tell this fool that-

“Sometimes they do them because they love you.”

Okay, maybe not you, Tris.

Honestly, though, I don’t even hate it. We’ve been so starved for anything interesting to happen in this story that I guess this is the bar now. It could be worse. Sure, the bar is so low that whatever the hell we just read actually qualifies as a morally grey, complicated character, but at least we’re spending some time with the only character who hates being in this book as much as I hate reading it.

[He] touches his lips to mine. I curl my fingers into his shirt.
“Unless you want me to throw up all over you guys, you might want to save it for later.”

Which is a good segue back into how boring these people are. First, we have Tris, telling the reader how to react to every single event that happens in a story about the evils of mass-conformity.

I was almost dead, but instead I am alive. Because of Peter.
Of all people.

And second, we have Four, who – if there’s anything nice to say about this book – at least tends to sound as annoying and stupid as a believable teenager.

“Got that gun?” Peter says to Tobias.
“No,” says Tobias, “I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left it upstairs.”

Apparently today’s criticism of a young adult dystopian novel can be written largely with Downton Abbey quotes, so there’s that.

Although for something genuinely nice to say, the book does have its moments where it subtly details Tris’s PTSD without falling into its usual tendency to be incredibly on the nose.

His face blank, he puts one arm around the corner, steadying it with the building wall, and fires twice. I shove my fingers in my ears and try not to pay attention to the gunshots and what they make me remember.

Not to say that it doesn’t get incredibly on-the-nose a few paragraphs later.

“Take the least logical route!” shouts Tobias.
“What?” Peter says.
“The least logical route,” Tobias says. “So they won’t find us!”

Like the bulk of Insurgent, Tris, Tobias, and Peter escape without anything to get particularly tense about. Unless you count continuity errors.

I look over my shoulder to see what Tobias shot at, and see two men on the ground behind Erudite headquarters. One isn’t moving, and the other is clutching his arm and running toward the door. They will send others after us.

Wait, isn’t this exactly how Tris figured out that she was in a simulation like three chapters ago? Because simulation-Tobias shot two people but didn’t hit one of them fatally, and Tris knew that IRL Tobias was too awesome to miss like that? Isn’t this exactly like that?

Tobias fires twice in a matter of seconds, both hits, one in the head and one in the chest. The woman, who was hit in the chest, slumps against the wall but doesn’t die. […]
I know that if he can throw a knife so that it hits just the tip of my ear, he can fire accurately at the Dauntless soldiers who ambush us. […]
“We can’t get out of here,” I say. “Because this is a simulation.”

How is this different?

They hide in a building and eventually get back to the Abnegation sector, because they’ve been literally everywhere else in post-apocalypse Chicago in this novel, so we can confirm there’s no plot to be had elsewhere. They get back and greet Christina and Uriah, whom I guess are the only other supporting characters left with nothing in particular to do. They then meet up with Tobias’s mom, Evelyn, and Tris acts inconsistently with her character.

She says something to him. He smiles at her when he pulls away. Mother and son, reconciled. I am not sure it’s wise.

Tris also notices that Marcus is still missing, because I guess it’s not an inopportune moment enough yet.

They go to Tobia’s childhood home, and Tris admires the strength it must take to return to a place where he suffered so much abuse. She also becomes overwhelmed with – to be succinct – all the shit.

“My family is all dead, or traitors; how can I…”
I am not making any sense.[…]
“I’ll be your family now,” he says.
“I love you,” I say.
I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then.

Awwww. I can’t wait to see how Tobias ruins this tender moment.

He frowns at me. “Say it again.”

That’s our Tobias! Even when Tris is saying that she loves him, she’s wrong until he tells her what to do.

Question of the day: So what do you think about this whole Peter plot twist? Not so much whether it was surprising (heh), but about the whole, say, shift from chaotic evil to lawful neutral? Yeah, we’re breaking out our motherfucking character alignments this week. Feel free to tell me I’m doing it wrong.

If you haven’t already voted, please take the time to answer our poll regarding whether we should jump right back into the Crossfire series or read a children’s book. One of these things is not like the other.

Insurgent Chapter 37

Now that Tris is back with her motley crew of Dauntless pals, it’s time for some witty banter:

“So, the thing we’re all not talking about,” he says. He gestures to me.

“You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.”

“Pansycake?” says Christina.

“Dauntless slang.” Lynn smirks. “Supposed to be a huge insult, only no one uses it anymore.”

“Because it’s so offensive,” says Uriah, nodding.

“No. Because it’s so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?”

“And a half,” he says.

I get that Dauntless isn’t supposed to be the brainy faction, but I believe in my heart of hearts that even they could have come up with something that doesn’t sound like they just took a regular insult and just added in their favourite food. Like we get it, Dauntless, you fucking love cake. [Matthew says: Furthermore, I refuse to believe that an insult with the word “cake” in it could ever have gained traction. It’s fucking cake. Cake is delicious. Cake is an instrument of love, not hatred.]

Tris is informed that Tobias is downstairs, making eggs for everyone in Marcus’ house, having a rip roaring good time with his factionless peeps.

I get the same sinking feeling in my stomach that I always get when I know I’ve been lied to, but I don’t know who it was that lied to me this time, or about what, exactly. But this is not what I was taught to expect of factionlessness. I was taught that it was worse than death.

For once, I am completely with Tris on this. I don’t know about you guys, but I always pictured the factionless in a world cloaked in grey, hobbling along begging for Abnegation muffins. But here they are just playing the banjo and some cards like good old Amity folk!

Then what may be the biggest twist in the entire series happens, so pay attention:

[Tobias] gets up and hands me a can of peas—but it isn’t full of peas; it’s full of scrambled eggs.

I really wasn’t expecting that at all. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that the toast is gluten free. [Matthew says: You know that actually probably would be a huge twist. The Abnegation probably view gluten allergies as selfish or something.]

Tobias explains that Evelyn kicked Marcus out of his house because it’s technically hers too and he’s had plenty of time there. This doesn’t actually make much sense to me since I imagine there are plenty of empty houses in the Abnegation sector, and Tris said earlier in this chapter that all the houses are the same. I don’t like Marcus or anything, but he’s going to die alone anyway, why not let him just have this one thing. This one very lame thing. [Matthew says: I’m actually maybe on the opposite side here. Marcus is such a doofy antagonist/antihero that I want to see his squabbling ex pulling MORE petty shit. Really put into perspective how I can’t take anyone seriously in this book.]

Meanwhile, Peter is chatting to Evelyn in the corner of the room, and she’s trying to recruit him to their team. Why is Peter this huge asset to everyone? Jeanine entrusted him with fucking everything and now Evelyn is like WE MUST HAVE THIS MAN. Who is this guy?

Edward shows up and obviously is pretty fucking pissed to see Peter on account of that time that Peter stabbed his eye with a butter knife:

“Edward slams his free hand into Peter’s throat, and presses the tines of the fork between his fingers, right against Peter’s Adam’s apple.

Peter stiffens, blood rushing into his face.

“Keep your mouth shut around me,” he says, his voice low, “or I will do this again, only next time, I’ll shove it right through your esophagus.”

“That’s enough,” Evelyn says. Edward drops the fork and releases Peter. Then he walks across the room and sits next to the person who called him “Eddie” a moment before.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Tobias says, “but Edward is a little unstable.”

“I’m getting that,” I say.”

Why is everyone acting like Edward is the unstable one? He is acting completely reasonably here considering their history. He didn’t even actually hurt Peter! Tris and Tobias be tripping. [Matthew says: I also don’t really get this. It’s like partway into the sequel, this series realized that the Factionless actually being super good allies was a really obvious twist, so it’s trying to re-twist them into a force of chaos not to be trusted.]

“That Drew guy, who helped Peter perform that butter-knife maneuver,” Tobias says. “Apparently when he got kicked out of Dauntless, he tried to join the same group of factionless Edward was a part of. Notice that you haven’t seen Drew anywhere.”

Again, still completely reasonable. If my friends suddenly embraced someone who had helped stab my eye out, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would do everything in my power to get rid of them. I applaud Edward and his perseverance.

Later, after a great deal of filler, [Matthew says: Those seven words could be our entire reading of Insurgent.] Tris wanders around Abnegation until she’s approached by Marcus who has lots of mysterious things to say. I know it’s meant to be tantalizing tidbits of information, but after reading Beautiful Oblivion, I’m in no mood for more of this shit.

For some reason, Tris tries to trick Marcus into thinking she already knows what his big secret is. To the surprise of no one, this fails immediately:

“What if you’re too late? What if I already know what it is?” Marcus looks up from his fingernails, and his dark eyes narrow. The look is far more poisonous than any Tobias could muster, though he has his father’s eyes. “You can’t possibly.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. Because I have seen what happens to people when they hear the truth. They look like they have forgotten what they were searching for, and are just wandering around trying to remember.” A chill makes its way up my spine and spreads down my arms, giving me goose bumps.”

That doesn’t sound chilling at all. That describes how I look every time I go to look in my fridge, don’t see anything I want, but then wander back ten minutes later because food. [Matthew says: This also seems like a total bullshit way to tell that Tris was lying, but she falls for it anyway. They weren’t kidding when they discovered that Tris’s Divergence is because she has a “flexible personality“, huh.]

Tris has another one of her sudden realizations that she always seems to conveniently have at times like these:

“I know that Jeanine decided to murder half a faction to steal it, so it must be incredibly important,” I say. I pause. I know something else, too, but I only just realized it.

Right before I attacked Jeanine, she said, “This is not about you! It’s not about me!”

Tris quickly realizes that Jeanine was trying to break up with her by cleverly using a twist on the old “it’s not you, it’s me” line.

But actually Tris somehow surmises in this very moment that the information has to do with what’s outside the fence. Marcus is like, “YES! But I can’t tell you what’s outside the fence because it’s hard to describe. Abnegation was going to tell everyone what was outside the fence, so Erudite attacked, so now I can’t tell you because it’s soooo hard to explain by myself.”

You think I’m joking, but I’m not.

“I did not come here for self-indulgent arguing. And no, I am not going to tell you, but not because I don’t want to. It’s because I have no idea how to describe it to you. You have to see it for yourself.”

[…]

“A week before the simulation attack, the Abnegation leaders decided it was time to reveal the information in the file to everyone. Everyone, in the entire city. The day we intended to reveal it was approximately seven days after the simulation attack. Obviously we were unable to do so.”

[…]

“We are not from here, Beatrice. We were all placed here, for a specific purpose. A while ago, the Abnegation were forced to enlist the help of Erudite in order to achieve that purpose, but eventually everything went awry because of Jeanine. Because she doesn’t want to do what we are supposed to do.”

[…]

“I have told you enough to convince you that I am not a liar. As for the rest, I truly find myself unequal to the task of explaining it to you.”

I have had people explain the final book of this series in a few sentences. Do not try to convince me that Marcus cannot fucking explain this at the moment. I can understand why Neo in The Matrix had to take the red pill and actually see what the world was really like in order to believe it. But this strikes me as Marcus just being incredibly lazy. Based on what people have told me about the ending, it really seems like he could explain it pretty fucking clearly. Hell, I can probably explain it and I haven’t read the damn thing yet.

Marcus tells Tris that he’s told her enough that she can trust him (really?), and that he needs her to prevent the factionless from destroying all of Erudite’s data because otherwise they can’t expose the information?

Suddenly I understand the problem. The factionless plan to destroy, not only the important figures in Erudite, but all the data they have. They will level everything.

I have never thought that plan was a good idea, but I knew that we could come back from it, because the Erudite still know the relevant information, even if they don’t have their data. But this is something even the most intelligent Erudite do not know; something that, if everything is destroyed, we cannot replicate.

It doesn’t make sense for Tris to understand this without knowing what is actually going on, but Marcus is able to convince her to help because her mother died trying to retrieve and protect this information.

“Your parents died for you, it’s true. But the reason your mother was in Abnegation headquarters the night you were almost executed was not to save you. She didn’t know you were there. She was trying to rescue the file from Jeanine. ”

I just don’t get it anymore, what data do we and don’t we want destroyed? Simulation data is bad and this mysterious data is also bad, but it needs to be protected so it can be revealed…? [Matthew says: I think the problem is that the book uses “data” as a catch-all for “information” but also “program” or “technology”. You know, like how the book uses “Faction” as a catch-all for…]

Last chance to vote in the poll! It determines what we’re reading starting, you know, Monday, so I kinda need to get on that soon.

BUT ALSO VERY IMPORTANTLY, please tell me that you’ve read this Gawker piece about the disastrous Fifty Shades press tour, and that you’ve seen this excruciatingly awkward video:

Insurgent Chapter 38

Tris thinks about her mother’s last words to her in light of Marcus’s reveal that she went into danger trying to save the file about The Secret. So once again…

I didn’t know what I would do, when I found you. Meaning: I didn’t know how to save both you and the file. But it was always my intention to save you.
I shake my head. Is that how she said it, or am I manipulating my own memory because of what Marcus told me? There is no way to know. All I can do is decide if I trust Marcus or not.

Sure, I get that Tris is probably rethinking a lot of things after Marcus’s new information, but so much of this book is Tris rethinking things that have already happened, we’ve gotten to the point where Insurgent literally slaps “Meaning:” in front of a sentence that’s supposed to tell the reader the new thing they should be thinking.

And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into “good” and “bad.”

Girl, dividing society into “good” and “bad” is literally this whole book.

Evelyn (Tobias/Four’s estranged mom and factionless leader, just in case you too are having trouble keeping track of this book’s kazillion characters who contribute half a thing to the story before dying) explains the plan for their big attack on Erudite. Reasoning that Erudite’s power isn’t its people, but its information, she explains the strategy for a nonspecific attack on the Erudite HQ, with one group attempting to breach their defense and work their way up through the building while other, smaller groups “proceed immediately to the higher levels of the building to dispense with certain key Erudite officials”. Guys, this just means that group 2 is doing the exact same thing group 1 is, but faster. And after group 1 does the hardest part. What’s group 2 doing while group 1 attempts to fight into the ground floor of the building? None of this makes sense. [Ariel says: I’m so relieved you had the same reaction to this section. I’m so insecure I just thought, “Wow, I’d make a horrible army general :(“]

Yeah, I played Final Fantasy Tactics when I was 12. I’m basically an expert at guerrilla warfare strategy.

Tori also explains that anyone who was shot with a simulation transmitter will have to stay behind, which people actually argue about, because that’s how dumb all the characters in this book are.

Eventually, someone shows signs of actual thinking.

“Yeah,” says Christina. “It’s just . . . Invading a faction’s headquarters and killing everyone, isn’t that what the Erudite just did to Abnegation?”

I’m getting a lot of usage out of this gif

“This is different. This is not an attack out of nowhere, unprovoked,” says Lynn, scowling at her.
“Yeah,” Christina says. “Yeah, I know.”
She looks at me. I don’t say anything. She has a point— it doesn’t feel right.

Well, then! Looks like it’s time for Tris to solve everything on her own with a cunning plan of her own and not only not asking others for help, but actively lying to them and working against them.

If I participate in the attack, I can’t go after the information Jeanine stole from Abnegation.
I have to choose one or the other. Tobias said that dealing with Erudite was more important than finding out the truth. And if he had not promised the factionless control over all of Erudite’s data, he might have been right. But he left me no choice. I have to help Marcus, if there is even a chance that he is telling the truth. I have to work against the people I love best.
And right now, I have to lie.

Yayyy Tris-decisions. My favorite. [Ariel says: I think it’s also worth reminiscing about the time that Tobias made a huge deal about having Tris come with him to help decide if they should agree to Evelyn’s terms and he immediately was like, “WE ACCEPT YOUR RIDICULOUS PROPOSAL!” Without even asking Tris.]

“I still can’t fire a gun.” I look up at him. “And after what happened in Erudite headquarters […] I don’t want to seem like a coward.” […]
He sighs, and touches his forehead to mine. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Stay here. Let yourself mend.” […]
He thinks I will be here, but I will be working against him

[Ariel says: Of course Tobias would be super willing to let Tris stay behind if he thinks she’s finally showing vulnerability. He just desperately needs her to be weak. Also, something about that last line made me think of Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls who always has to over-explain things and then often follows his speeches up with an evil laugh.

My reading of this scene: “He thinks I will be here, but I will not be here for I will be working against him. Working against him in a way that is not with him and that is in fact the opposite of what he wants. MWHAHAHAHAHA.”]

Aw, geez. I wonder if Tris can explain another reason why this is bad.

[I will be] working with the father he despises.

Oh, good. I forgot I read that six pages ago.

Chapter 39

Naturally, the first part of Tris’s super awesome lone wolf, fix-everything-by-myself plan is to ignore the only actual logical part of the Factionless/Dauntless plan and recruit Christina – who very much is susceptible to being taken over by a simulation – to be her confidant in her secret mission.

How the hell is there not a single “I have a cunning plan” Blackadder gif on the internet?

But first, they need to put on their makeup.

Seriously. There’s like two pages of Tris and Christina putting on makeup. What the hell kind of dystopian apocalypse is this?

They dress up in Amity clothing, hidden under their black Dauntless jackets, and meet up with Marcus to drive through the gates (hiding in plain sight past the traitor Dauntless) to Amity HQ, which I guess is their plan. Why am I only guessing it’s their plan? Nobody actually says that they’re going to Amity, or why they’re going to Amity, until – in true Tris fashion – Tris has to think of why she’s there literally as she’s explaining why she’s there to the Amity.

“Tell me, Marcus,” says Johanna. “Why have you come to visit?”
“I think Beatrice should handle that,” he says. “I am merely the transportation.” […]
“Um . . .” I say. Not my most brilliant opening. I wipe my palms on my skirt. “Things have gotten bad.”

Tris then explains about the Factionless/Dauntless plan to invade Erudite, and how this is bad because it will destroy essential information in Erudite possession. Johanna then asks the same question that the reader is thinking.

“I’m confused, Beatrice,” she says. “What exactly do you want us to do?”

Because REALLY.

Tris tells the Amity that she wanted them to know what was going on, and continues to do an awful job of doing anything.

“I also wanted to ask you if we can talk to the Erudite you’re keeping safe here,” I say. “I know they’re hidden, but I need access to them.”
“And what do you intend to do?” she says.
“Shoot them,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“That isn’t funny.”

Yes, because when you’re already having trouble explaining why what you’re doing makes any sense, the best thing to do is to use sarcasm.

REALLY.

That night Tris sees and then participates in an Amity religious ceremony, which is sort of interesting, but ultimately full of as much false profundity as the rest of the book, so you’re not missing much.

That morning, Johnana calls an emergency meeting, which Christina and Marcus attend, but Tris secretly observes hiding behind a tree. For some reason. [Ariel says: She’s clearly a tactical mastermind. She employs other techniques like hiding in a random bush when an enemy approaches or wearing a moustache as a Super Secret disguise.]

Johanna explains about the upcoming battle that “will be waged not against the Erudite-Dauntless army but against Erudite innocents and the knowledge they have worked so hard to acquire”, and asks the Amity to revote on their neutrality. Eventually, they reach a decision.

And speaking of false profundity.

“Obviously it was difficult to find agreement,” she says. “But the majority of you wish to uphold our policy of uninvolvement. […] My conscience forces me to go against this decision. Anyone else whose conscience drives them toward the city is welcome to come with me. […] I understand if this means I can’t be a part of Amity anymore.” […]
Johanna bows in the general direction of the crowd [and] walks toward the exit.

Ok. Wait. If only a majority chose to remain uninvolved, then that means there’s a decent percentage of Amity who feel exactly like Johanna, so why is Johanna the one who’s like “Well, I disagree, so I am banished from Amity now!” I mean, I get that she’s basically trying to lead a schism so any other dissenting Amity have the option to follow her, but it seems kind of weird that she’s making this public exit from a community that doesn’t entirely disagree with her? This would be like if Mitt Romney tried to lead an exodus to the Czech Republic after he lost the 2012 election.

Question of the day: SO HOW ABOUT THAT FIFTY SHADES INTERVIEW, HUH? What was your favorite moment where Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson were almost audibly counting down to when they could just go home?

Chapter 41

Tris’s plan to actively work against her friends’ plan to overthrow Erudite begins in earnest, as Tris and the others reach the city and hear gunfire. To be fair, Tris’s PTSD continues to be one of the few things in this book that is interesting to read:

For a moment I am disoriented, and all I can see are the leaders of Abnegation on their knees on the pavement and the slack-faced Dauntless with guns in hand; all I can see is my mother turning to embrace the bullets, and Will dropping to the ground. […] My mother told me to be brave. But if she had known that her death would make me so afraid, would she have sacrificed herself so willingly?

Except we’re still hanging out with Tris’s new gang of Erudite defectors, so guess which member of The Breakfast Club we’re spending the next couple chapters with?

“Insurgent,” [Fernando] says. “Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.”

But really, though, Divergent is basically Breakfast Club fanfiction, except if it were dystopian, and only a few people got to be a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

“Did she just call you ‘Stiff’?” Fernando says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I transferred into Dauntless from Abnegation.”
“Huh.” He frowns. “That’s quite a shift. That kind of leap in personality between generations is almost genetically impossible these days.”
“Sometimes personality has nothing to do with a person’s choice of faction,”

I don’t even know what question this book is trying to answer anymore.

“Your personality is determined by your genetics except when it’s not!” *”Don’t You Forget About Me” starts playing*

As they get closer to the action, Tris struggles to figure out how to arm herself, given her ongoing gun phobia, which is a major theme in this book. But not in the upcoming movie adaptation, apparently.

“We need to make a poster! What’s this movie about?” “idk mindless stunts?” “PERFECT.”

Christina tries to talk Tris into taking a gun by – basically – telling her that Will would tell her to quit being a fucking baby over it. Cara the Amity says that the stunner is just as good. Tris goes with Cara’s logic on this one somehow.

As they approach the Erudite headquarters (somehow completely avoiding the Dauntless+Factionless assault, so, uhh…), they run into a group of armed Candor, obviously under a simulation. Tris tests out whether they can get past them by walking in front of them.

No, really.

I step toward the Candor. Maybe they aren’t programmed to shoot. […] I take another step.
Bang. By instinct I drop to the ground, covering my head with my arms, and scramble backward, toward Fernando’s shoes.
He helps me to my feet. “How about let’s not do that?” he says.

Tris decides that the only other way into the building now is to go from the windows of the adjacent building into the the windows of Erudite headquarters. This is really what’s happening.

Chapter 42

Also, the the brain is still here.

“Oh! Sorry, Nando.” [Christina said.]
“Nando?” I say to him. “I thought the Erudite didn’t like nicknames?”
“When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname,” he says, “it is only logical to respond to it.”

Ugh, I can’t wait for Fernando to be the next completely disposable minor character to get killed off in Divergent‘s never-ending quest to be intense.

They find a ladder to scale between the two buildings (which is somehow completely not noticed by the firefight that’s supposedly surrounding them) and prop it up between the ledges of the two buildings.

“Time to break the glass,” I say.
Fernando takes the glass-breaking device from his pocket and offers it to me. “You probably have the best aim.”

Wait, you mean the device that was explicitly introduced as a way to break all the windows in an area as a distraction? Why would they use it-

It bounces onto the windowsill and rolls into the glass. An orange light flashes, and all at once the window— and the windows above, below, and next to it— shatters into hundreds of tiny pebbles that shower over the Candor below.

What was the point of that? There’s no one to distract now. Why throw this device at the wrong strategic moment, risking missing, before even climbing across the street to the window? What’s stopping them from climbing over and breaking the glass themselves? And I really can’t get over this – isn’t this supposed to be a distraction? Like, as a way to draw attention to something? Like where you’re going to be climbing?

At the same time , the Candor twist and fire up into the sky.

I hate all these fucking people.

Due to total bullshit, the Candor stop shooting after the one round. Sure, the book will tell you it’s because “they only sense movement”, but we totally know it’s because it was just convenient to not have their strategic fuck up not actually be a total fuck up.

As you can imagine, the last chapter ended with a contrived reason to include another mindless stunt in this book, so this chapter is a bland and trite action sequence. Seriously, if an action sequence is a painting, the action sequences in the Divergent series are paint-by-number.

There’s danger!

The ladder feels about as solid and stable as an aluminum can. It creaks and sags beneath my weight.

The danger gets worse!

The ladder shifts, moving closer to the edge of the window frame on the other side. […] I miss the edge of the rung.

The danger gets AS SUPER CLOSE TO BEING AS BAD AS IT COULD POSSIBLY BE!

The ladder jerks to the left [and] It is now supported by just a millimeter of concrete.

JUST A MILLIMETER? You don’t say!

Tris makes it to the other side and gets discovered by an Erudite woman, but – as Tris and the others are disguised as Erudite! – tricks her into thinking she’s an Erudite by acting like an asshole, because none of the five factions in this book are an affinity for subtlety.

Interestingly (mostly because I’ve been ragging on the Faction system a ton in this chapter), Tris actually has her first “fuck the faction system” moment:

“It’s just . . .” [Christina] pauses. “ You had aptitude for Erudite, didn’t you?”
“Does it matter?” I say too sharply. “The factions are destroyed, and it was all stupid to begin with.”

Christina, Marcus, and Cara all climb across the ladder. Fernando has some heavy-handed symbolism.

Halfway across the alley, I see something slip out of his pocket. It is his spectacles. [They] fall, hit the edge of the ladder, and topple to the pavement.

the Candor below twist and fire upward. Fernando yells, and collapses against the ladder. One bullet hit his leg. I didn’t see where the others went, but I know when I see blood drip between the rungs of the ladder that it was not a good place. […]
“Don’t be an idiot!” he says, his voice weak. “Leave me.”
It is the last thing he says.

As we lose another minor character, let us remember Fernando, and that time he tried to hit on Christina and also did the title drop.

Question of the day! So… who’s seeing Fifty Shades this weekend?