you don't always have to smack people in the face with how strong you are
I think we can now we officially call 2012 the year that I completely lost my shit over YA. Between Insurgent, Spell Bound, The Montmaray Journals and The Hunger Games I think I have lost all ability to care about things in the real world. I live for the dilemmas of fictional teenagers.
That graphic was originally going to be a fanmix cover but I’m really anally retentive with fanmixes. I spend my life judging mixes that don’t get the balance right between choosing tracks that make sense lyrically and making sure that everything fits together tonally! Austra’s ‘The Beast’ is a perfect song for Tris...
The morning that I was born again,
I was made into a beast.
Am I free now, am I at peace?
Is that the ground below me, or your feet?
PERFECT YES?!?! BUT if you pick tracks that fit that then the mix would be too delicate given that the books are fairly dark/violent... I guess I'll leave the fanmixes to the pros and just ramble about my feelings instead...
I surrender. You win. EXCELLENT SEQUEL IS EXCELLENT. All the qualms I had about ‘Divergent’ were dealt with in the most satisfying way. It wasn’t perfect - I enjoyed the first half more than the second and the 60million new settings were sometimes a little disorienting and I still don’t really get why the Erudite were so opposed to everyone finding out ~the truth~ (was it simply because it would fragment the society in which they’d made themselves essential?!) The big reveal at the end was pretty much what I’d expected (though I hadn’t predicted Tris’ mum’s involvement). BUT OTHERWISE PRETTY DAMN AWESOME.
I AM OBSESSED WITH THE FACT THAT THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT THE ERUDITE. ‘Divergent’ was about Tris navigating how to choose between/be both Dauntless and Abnegation and whilst those themes carry through this is about Tris becoming aware of her aptitude for the Erudite. IT WAS A WHOLE BOOK ABOUT THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. ABOUT HOW KNOWLEDGE IS VALUABLE, NECESSARY AND DANGEROUS. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UGH. OBSESSED. Because I’d be Erudite and lbr until halfway through the character I most related to was Caleb (FOREVER BITTER - WHY COULDN’T HE HAVE BEEN OUR REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE-BUT-NOT-POWER-HUNGRY NERD!?!?!?) and I was a bit bummed at the end of ‘Divergent’ that the Erudite had been so thoroughly demonised BUT NO WORRIES BECAUSE VERONICA ROTH REACHED INTO MY BRAIN AND GAVE ME EVERYTHING I DIDN’T REALISE I WANTED. Tris (and thus we) are forced to look beyond what she thought she knew about the Erudite and realise that knowledge is essential - all of the factions need it to function (Amity/Erudite relations fascinate me! At some point can we talk about how fucked up the whole antidepressants-in-the-bread situation is?!?) and that knowledge itself isn’t bad - the line about how knowledge doesn’t make judgements and that the Erudite help people adapt was great. And it becomes clear that the issue isn’t just the abuse of knowledge but the isolation of knowledge to a privileged group. I LIVE FOR LEFTIST STATEMENTS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION AND HOW EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE INFORMED ABOUT THE THINGS IN THEIR LIVES!
In Tris the Erudite manifests itself as a desire to make informed choices AND THIS IS WHERE I REALLY LOST MY SHIT BECAUSE HER TRAUMA NARRATIVE EXISTS TO ALLOW HER TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF THIS PART OF HER NATURE! THERE IS A TRAUMA NARRATIVE AND IT IS GLORIOUS AND IT SERVES A PURPOSE IN TERMS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! HOW DOES THIS BOOK EXIST?!?!? (Suzanne Collins please take note.) Every time Tris/gun issues were presented to me IN THE TEXT I made involuntary guttural noises. She can’t hold a gun at the start because it’s a sensorially enhanced reminder that she murdered her friend but it’s so much more than that. It’s about the fact that she shot him without thinking. It’s about the fact that her training made shooting to kill any threat an instinct. Her nature is divergent so to be so hardwired is strange and threatening to her. She is brave and she is willing to defend herself but she needs that to be her choice. and she needs it to be a considered decision rather than physical impulse. She needs to know that she’s not killing people needlessly to save herself. Dauntless training taught her to shoot to kill, her life in Abnegation nurtured the part of her that puts other people before herself - the only way to reconcile those sides of her is to deliberate - she is so stricken with guilt over Will because she COULD have shot to injure but she didn’t. Not letting him kill her isn’t her regret, it’s that she believe that she was driven by instinct and so didn’t fully consider her options. With a gun in hand she’s too quick to fire, a knife requires more deliberation.
And she literally gives herself over to Erudite because she knows how to be selfless and brave because she’s lived as both of those but she doesn’t appreciate the enormity of that act because she doesn’t know what death looks like, what it feels like. And then she is faced with death and she finally understands what it means and that bravery and sacrifice aren’t the same thing and then she immediately regrets her choice to give up on life so easily. Once again her nature betrayed her. Once she knows, her choice is different.
Every part of my body chants it in unison. Live, live, live. I thought that in order to give my life in exchange for Will’s, in exchange for my parents’, that I needed to die, but I was wrong; I need to live my life in the light of their deaths. I need to live.
WHY CAN’T ALL FEMALE PROTAGONISTS BE SO WONDERFULLY CONSTRUCTED?!?!? I LOVE HER SO MUCH!
Perhaps unsurprisingly all my Tris/Four feelings are very Tris-centric but they are so much more intense than I was expecting! Their issues are actual issues and their conflicts serve a purpose! "So I agree. But I do not change my mind." I AM DEAD. FAVOURITE LINE IN THE WHOLE BOOK. She loves him. She hates fighting with him. But there are huge choices to be made with very real consequences and she disagrees with him AND REFUSES TO SURRENDER HERSELF TO HIM. She thinks he’s wrong and tells him so. When he expects more from her than he himself is willing to give, she calls him on it. She lies to him when she needs to - she hates betraying him but won’t apologise for following her own mind. I cried at their fight at the end, not because it was sad BUT BECAUSE IT WAS SO GREAT. SHE WAS RIGHT. SHE WAS SO FUCKING RIGHT AND IT EMPOWERED HER RATHER THAN MAKING HER WEAK.
Also never over how much they touch. Make-out always please. She has such a healthy attitude to sex - she wants to be with him because it makes her feel good but she knows that it carries a weight. Physical intimacy is a huge part of their relationship - she wants to sleep with him for the right reasons and at the right time (aka. when guilt isn’t going to ruin it.) Every time they’re together they are touching but every time they’re together they’re having ‘big’ conversations which cockblock them! "I wish we were alone"/"I almost always wish that." IS AN EXCHANGE THAT EXISTS!
Also there is this:
I know that I am birdlike, made narrow and small as if for taking flight, built straight-waisted and fragile. But when he touches me like he can’t bear to take his hand away, I don’t wish I was any different.
Um. YES. We know how I feel about bodies and touching and senses and this whole book was a gift on that front. As part of her PTSD/grief narrative Tris wildly swings between being numb to being super aware of her body and sensory stimuli and her reaction to Four shooting Eric is incredible - she has to shut her eyes when it happens, and then she opens them and SEES the blood, then she HEARS the crowd but "Tobias sets his hand on my back. I know because I see him come up behind me and do it, not because I feel it. I don’t feel anything at all." And it takes screaming crowds to "pierce the haze" and she tries to focus on nothing but the rain on the pavement. YES. YES. YES.
This post is now on a 4th page so I’m going to stop but COME TALK TO ME- according to my Kindle I have +50 bookmarks/highlights and this is hardly any of them! GIVE ME ALL YOUR FEELS!
That graphic was originally going to be a fanmix cover but I’m really anally retentive with fanmixes. I spend my life judging mixes that don’t get the balance right between choosing tracks that make sense lyrically and making sure that everything fits together tonally! Austra’s ‘The Beast’ is a perfect song for Tris...
Click to viewThe morning that I was born again,
I was made into a beast.
Am I free now, am I at peace?
Is that the ground below me, or your feet?
PERFECT YES?!?! BUT if you pick tracks that fit that then the mix would be too delicate given that the books are fairly dark/violent... I guess I'll leave the fanmixes to the pros and just ramble about my feelings instead...
I surrender. You win. EXCELLENT SEQUEL IS EXCELLENT. All the qualms I had about ‘Divergent’ were dealt with in the most satisfying way. It wasn’t perfect - I enjoyed the first half more than the second and the 60million new settings were sometimes a little disorienting and I still don’t really get why the Erudite were so opposed to everyone finding out ~the truth~ (was it simply because it would fragment the society in which they’d made themselves essential?!) The big reveal at the end was pretty much what I’d expected (though I hadn’t predicted Tris’ mum’s involvement). BUT OTHERWISE PRETTY DAMN AWESOME.
I AM OBSESSED WITH THE FACT THAT THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT THE ERUDITE. ‘Divergent’ was about Tris navigating how to choose between/be both Dauntless and Abnegation and whilst those themes carry through this is about Tris becoming aware of her aptitude for the Erudite. IT WAS A WHOLE BOOK ABOUT THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. ABOUT HOW KNOWLEDGE IS VALUABLE, NECESSARY AND DANGEROUS. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UGH. OBSESSED. Because I’d be Erudite and lbr until halfway through the character I most related to was Caleb (FOREVER BITTER - WHY COULDN’T HE HAVE BEEN OUR REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE-BUT-NOT-POWER-HUNGRY NERD!?!?!?) and I was a bit bummed at the end of ‘Divergent’ that the Erudite had been so thoroughly demonised BUT NO WORRIES BECAUSE VERONICA ROTH REACHED INTO MY BRAIN AND GAVE ME EVERYTHING I DIDN’T REALISE I WANTED. Tris (and thus we) are forced to look beyond what she thought she knew about the Erudite and realise that knowledge is essential - all of the factions need it to function (Amity/Erudite relations fascinate me! At some point can we talk about how fucked up the whole antidepressants-in-the-bread situation is?!?) and that knowledge itself isn’t bad - the line about how knowledge doesn’t make judgements and that the Erudite help people adapt was great. And it becomes clear that the issue isn’t just the abuse of knowledge but the isolation of knowledge to a privileged group. I LIVE FOR LEFTIST STATEMENTS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION AND HOW EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE INFORMED ABOUT THE THINGS IN THEIR LIVES!
In Tris the Erudite manifests itself as a desire to make informed choices AND THIS IS WHERE I REALLY LOST MY SHIT BECAUSE HER TRAUMA NARRATIVE EXISTS TO ALLOW HER TO BECOME CONSCIOUS OF THIS PART OF HER NATURE! THERE IS A TRAUMA NARRATIVE AND IT IS GLORIOUS AND IT SERVES A PURPOSE IN TERMS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! HOW DOES THIS BOOK EXIST?!?!? (Suzanne Collins please take note.) Every time Tris/gun issues were presented to me IN THE TEXT I made involuntary guttural noises. She can’t hold a gun at the start because it’s a sensorially enhanced reminder that she murdered her friend but it’s so much more than that. It’s about the fact that she shot him without thinking. It’s about the fact that her training made shooting to kill any threat an instinct. Her nature is divergent so to be so hardwired is strange and threatening to her. She is brave and she is willing to defend herself but she needs that to be her choice. and she needs it to be a considered decision rather than physical impulse. She needs to know that she’s not killing people needlessly to save herself. Dauntless training taught her to shoot to kill, her life in Abnegation nurtured the part of her that puts other people before herself - the only way to reconcile those sides of her is to deliberate - she is so stricken with guilt over Will because she COULD have shot to injure but she didn’t. Not letting him kill her isn’t her regret, it’s that she believe that she was driven by instinct and so didn’t fully consider her options. With a gun in hand she’s too quick to fire, a knife requires more deliberation.
And she literally gives herself over to Erudite because she knows how to be selfless and brave because she’s lived as both of those but she doesn’t appreciate the enormity of that act because she doesn’t know what death looks like, what it feels like. And then she is faced with death and she finally understands what it means and that bravery and sacrifice aren’t the same thing and then she immediately regrets her choice to give up on life so easily. Once again her nature betrayed her. Once she knows, her choice is different.
Every part of my body chants it in unison. Live, live, live. I thought that in order to give my life in exchange for Will’s, in exchange for my parents’, that I needed to die, but I was wrong; I need to live my life in the light of their deaths. I need to live.
WHY CAN’T ALL FEMALE PROTAGONISTS BE SO WONDERFULLY CONSTRUCTED?!?!? I LOVE HER SO MUCH!
Perhaps unsurprisingly all my Tris/Four feelings are very Tris-centric but they are so much more intense than I was expecting! Their issues are actual issues and their conflicts serve a purpose! "So I agree. But I do not change my mind." I AM DEAD. FAVOURITE LINE IN THE WHOLE BOOK. She loves him. She hates fighting with him. But there are huge choices to be made with very real consequences and she disagrees with him AND REFUSES TO SURRENDER HERSELF TO HIM. She thinks he’s wrong and tells him so. When he expects more from her than he himself is willing to give, she calls him on it. She lies to him when she needs to - she hates betraying him but won’t apologise for following her own mind. I cried at their fight at the end, not because it was sad BUT BECAUSE IT WAS SO GREAT. SHE WAS RIGHT. SHE WAS SO FUCKING RIGHT AND IT EMPOWERED HER RATHER THAN MAKING HER WEAK.
Also never over how much they touch. Make-out always please. She has such a healthy attitude to sex - she wants to be with him because it makes her feel good but she knows that it carries a weight. Physical intimacy is a huge part of their relationship - she wants to sleep with him for the right reasons and at the right time (aka. when guilt isn’t going to ruin it.) Every time they’re together they are touching but every time they’re together they’re having ‘big’ conversations which cockblock them! "I wish we were alone"/"I almost always wish that." IS AN EXCHANGE THAT EXISTS!
Also there is this:
I know that I am birdlike, made narrow and small as if for taking flight, built straight-waisted and fragile. But when he touches me like he can’t bear to take his hand away, I don’t wish I was any different.
Um. YES. We know how I feel about bodies and touching and senses and this whole book was a gift on that front. As part of her PTSD/grief narrative Tris wildly swings between being numb to being super aware of her body and sensory stimuli and her reaction to Four shooting Eric is incredible - she has to shut her eyes when it happens, and then she opens them and SEES the blood, then she HEARS the crowd but "Tobias sets his hand on my back. I know because I see him come up behind me and do it, not because I feel it. I don’t feel anything at all." And it takes screaming crowds to "pierce the haze" and she tries to focus on nothing but the rain on the pavement. YES. YES. YES.
This post is now on a 4th page so I’m going to stop but COME TALK TO ME- according to my Kindle I have +50 bookmarks/highlights and this is hardly any of them! GIVE ME ALL YOUR FEELS!