Something I didn't bring up in the video is the economy. Every faction fulfills its own very specific role in society, which means they would have to trade among themselves for goods and services. But there's never any mention of money or a barter system that was set up. Based on that, we can assume that they just share everything among themselves, giving food and medicine to whoever needs it. This is reinforced by Amity looking like an anarchy-communist utopia where no one accumulates wealth and the land is owned collectively. But then why are the factionless treated like regular homeless people? Poverty, or at least income inequality, only makes sense in a capitalist or feudal system. It seems like the factionless should be receiving their share of food and shelter, not just whatever Abnegation gives as charity.
An excellent series both for its satire and its worldbuilding. 500 years after the collapse of civilisation society has reformed around a cargo cult worshiping modern consumerism and bureaucracy. The protagonist sells "detergents" boxes believed to contain spirits that will protect the holders clothing from wear.
@@zarrg5611 The best twist was when those cultists that create and feast on those "pods" and were the biggest reason for the collapse of civilization 500 years ago.
I think I have a vague memory of erudite being evil? but that doesn't explain what happened to the people who moved there, no way did anybody move from amity or dauntless or whatever and just go "yeah okay we're evil now"
Also, and I haven't read it so maybe they address this, but why would they kill divergents? Wouldn't someone with multiple interests and skills be incredibly useful to a society where most people are only capable of/interested in doing one thing?
@@briannakaldor-mair9958 the point is these books make no sense. There were so many times I had to put the book down and reflect on how nonsensical it was. I couldn’t read past the first book
The real problem is that Erudites aren't being literally dragged back into the city for trying to cross the fence to get plant samples or some shit idk
It’s a disgrace to world building. She took a modern city, and repurposed it for her needs That’s how you get gems of lines like, “We met at the Hub, which was once known as the Hancock building.”
Kaylen ah yes. Now that I know it was once known as the hancock building, I can instantly and totally imagine how this place looks, it’s function, and it’s purpose relative to the story. 10/10 wonderful literary masterpiece.
Just a fun fact: when I read the books in my language, they had changed the name to Quart, which sounded pretty nice to me, and I never really thought about the name being weird When I went to the movie and the translators had kept the direct translation of Four, it just felt ugly and sad
The Romans used to have names that just described the month or what order the child(ren) were born. Octavius for “eight”, Nonus for “ninth”, etc. It just sounds nice if you don’t know Latin. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a guy called “Four”.
how the fuck is saying that controversial? everyone knows calling some dude 4 is retarded. I know im ruining some """"""joke"""""" in a youtube comment but even then i fucking hate the controversial yet so brave meme. Its a bad reddit meme that sucks ass
i am ashamed to say I went through a phase with the movies that lasted about 2 months and wasted all the money I had collected in 6 months to buy all 3 movies. hell is waiting for me and i refuse to burn the dvds cause i want my money back but guess what. no one wants to buy them. wonder why..
NGL, I broke a wheel on my desk chair and I'm an incredibly cheap person. I grabbed Insurgent and Allegiant from the bottom of my shelf and used them to prop up my chair for the next 6 months.
“if you’re born factionless, do you still go to the ceremony to choose a new faction?” congrats, you just came up with a way more interesting protagonist than tris
With the name "Divergent" they really had a chance to make neurodivergent characters and they straight up didn't take it. I suppose that's probably for the best though, since let's be honest, the representation would been bad...
@@loganduncan8789 Well, he made some good points too: Who makes all the other things everyone needs, like clothes, edifices, and furniture? Why gobernment remained idle when people started murder one another? What's the point of facction selection if it is predisposed by the genetics? What does make the person? genetics? or family? The author should thought about those things and how to make facts and acts from everyone fit right. But it's ok, it isn't so bad, some good histories like Starwars and GoT haven't been all well worldbuilded neither.
@@loganduncan8789 Well, that answer is valid. But we had to build it by ourselves, so... It still doesn't look like the author cared about the worldbuilding. From my personal perspective, the first two books (I just watched the movies) even though haven't a deep worldbuilding are great because of the history, nothing like the jewells from Asimov and Arthur Conan Doyle, but at least entertaining, even exciting. But the third one... that's just merch for the fans with a cheap plot for filling.
"History has shown that the only thing that keeps people from boning each other, is geography" That's genius. I cannot explain how much I enjoy that quote.
I feel like Tris wasn't divergent because she had more than one personality trait, she was divergent because she had none. One of the reasons this seemed like bad hunger games fanfiction was that the main character was basically Katniss but without a personality.
That is saying a lot, because Katniss’s personality was also very hard to find. The Hunger Games is one of my favorite books (I wasn’t too big a fan of the sequels), but Katniss was kind of a blank slate as well. Tris was like reading a story about a brick.
Worst part about Allergy is when the POV switched, I couldn’t tell. I legit had to read a sentence explicitly stating that Tobias was looking at Tris to realise she wasn’t narrating anymore lmao
The asoiaf book series for example does these POV switches much better by not having a first person perspective. In third person it is always obviously stated which character is referred to.
@@roseglowreal YES me too!! Their narratives sounded exactly the same, there was NO difference that told me who's POV it was. The way Tobias spoke was exactly the same as Tris' and gave no clues to his personality, and sounded nothing like how he was described by Tris.
"Where is all the menial labor, the sewer-cleaners, trash collectors, et cetera?" WHY THE HELL DIDN'T VERONICA ROTH FILL IN THAT OBVIOUS PLOT HOLE WITH THE FACTIONLESS?!
omg stop divergent IS the reason i made it (semi) big on wattpad 😭😂it's also the reason why my book fandom instagram account with shitty edits became decently popular 😭
@@claphamomnibus512 Well I mean, the US government just fenced them off right and continued living, (ive never read it and Im half asleep while reading this), so the US Army would probably be patrolling the outside right?
Erudite hunts down Divergents, tris and her group hide, erudite inserts a mind serum into everyone that only divergents can resist and they make people commit suicide under the serum. This won't stop until a divergent comes forward, tris obviously does, erudite tries to kill her, Peter saves her, Calebs a tratior, they release a message from people beyond the fence
Actually the factionless do have the low-level jobs in the book, Tris mentions it when she rides the bus that the bus driver is factionless and...I can’t believe I know this
I’ve read the first two books recently for an English class, and I don’t remember that. In the second book, the Factionless are described as just sort of hanging around and not doing anything other than gathering weapons. Seemed like they all were just supposed to be homeless
@@wii1199 For the same reason it’s frowned upon to be a garbage collector, staff at a fast food restaurant, and countless other jobs in today’s world. The jobs themselves are viewed poorly for a variety of reasons and, by extension, so are the people working them.
My thoughts on the subject are as follows: -The first book is good -The second book is trash -The third book is a steaming pile of dog poop -The first movie is meh -The second movie is a flaming garbage pile -The third movie so bad I wanted to gouge my eyes out after watching it
I lost my final bit of faith in the series when Veronica Roth accidentally changed the name of Tori’s brother from Georgie to Jonathan between books. Not easy to stay invested in a book when you’ve clearly paid more attention to the characters than the author lol
one time I read a pretty niche book where one of the most important characters' names changed its spelling halfway through the book... I also can't believe nobody noticed, but I'm pretty sure the book didn't even go through an editor. It was a pretty whacky and far-fetched book and was a crazy read
Something that always pissed me off about Divergent was the big twist near the end. Not for the usual reasons, though. I genuinely believe that the twist involving the government trying to create genetically engineered humans could have been super cool, if it was done in the exact opposite way from how the series DID do it. So the main character (calling her MC because I don't remember anyone's name and don't care enough to look it up) in my version would still be a Divergent, and people would still be trying to kill her over it. There would still be all the factions, and their personalities would still be dominated by one trait. My version actually leans pretty heavily into that. In this case, there was never a failed attempt to engineer the perfect human. Key word: failed. In fact, the attempt to do so is still ongoing in the form of Chicago. The goal of the experiment is not to create genetically pure individuals, it is instead to breed humans for specific jobs and purposes, using a combination of their engineered instincts and social conditioning through segregation to create basically the perfect drones. Workers and fighters who will not only do their jobs perfectly, but will remain content in doing so indefinitely. The reason why Divergents are hunted and killed, in this case, is because they are the least conforming members of the city to the aims of the American government by the sheer happenstance of their birth. TL:DR - Divergent would be better if the twist was flipped on its head so that the government was actually trying to breed humans with one personality trait as perfect worker drones.
when i finished the divergent series and trying to understand the ending i came to the same conclusion as you did. it would makes so much more sense to do it like you proposed instead of what actually happened.
IKR!!! My english teacher is absolutly obsessed with this book and I hate everything about it. The writing, the worldbuilding, the LAME AND OVERTOLD STORY, THE WEAK AND UNINTERESTING CHARAKTERS, I HATE IT ALL
Those girls are very vain, and only laugh at quirky comedy,which(this is my opinion) isn’t the funniest. Glad I never met anyone like that. Also like another person, they are just like anyone else, just more annoying. I stay far away from them and continue on with my life. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.
Hunger Games: a critique of war and what it can do to a person and what one might do because of it, income inequality and the dehumanizing that factors into societies that struggle with it, us vs. them mentalities, and so much more. Divergent: what if people? had multiple aspects? to their personality.?..? sUbVeRsIve mAsTerPIeCe
What really bothers me are the names of the factions: Amity, Abnegation, Candor are nouns while Dauntless, Erudite and Divergent are adjectives. WHYYYYYYYY
they were chosen as if the factions each picked there own names without regard for the other factions, in the same way that the faction manifestos are written in very different formats :)
@@hi-xb7okbut why are they all fancy descriptive single words for their personality traits then? By your theory some of the groups would probably have a different format: named after a founder, or with multiple words e.g. “The Good Guys.” Or a brand new nonsense word. If the author wanted to portray the groups as significantly different and completely separated they could have at least committed to it
I think what Veronica Roth wanted when creating the factions was to make the sort of impact the Harry Potter houses did. I mean, members of the four houses have some traits in common, rarely interact with people from other houses, and are always proud of the house they belong in. To me, Veronica wanted fans to go around with shirts and beanies saying “Proud Erudite” or some shit like that. The only resemblance I see to the districts from the Hunger Games is giving each of the factions a purpose in society, but it just screams more “bootleg Hogwarts Houses” to me.
That’s just it. Rowling’s Houses made sense & she actually bothered to add nuance to the world around them. Roth just wanted to repeat the success of Harry Potter & The Hunger Games.
At least the traits were more of stereotypes and there was flexibility. Plus each had multiple traits associated with them not just one so there is no need for a person belonging to say Hufflepuff to only be loyal but also hard-working and kind.
@@ProfessionalNamielleLewder69 I was thinking more by the fact that each villager has a specific role that they're born into based on the color of their clothes. There's even a factionless, the Nitwit, they wear green. 😂😂
That's not true. They talked about lots of characters changing their name in Dauntless. For example a girl named Ashley changed it to Ash. Which is the same as Beatrice changing to Tris.
@@tsoiban4406 Only Tris was completely "divergent", but others were on a scale of divergent. Some lacked certain emotions so they weren't 100%, he was still divergent just not completely like Tris.
I always thought it was weird that the Dauntless explicitly has a set of jobs that is essentially just office work. It’s literally just a desk job where they upkeep the fence and surveillance. So you admit it? There are people in Dauntless who are smarter than they are violent? Wouldn’t that make them Erudite-prone?
Creativeguy1 Martinez I have read the Hunger Games before and now that I’m reading the Divergent series, it’s pretty blatant. I’d go so far as to call it a Hunger Games fan fiction, but with Hogwart’s houses. I can’t really describe it as much else
I'm not gonna lie. The soldier, gov. off., lawyers.. are very useless in a society. They are mostly needs and a very small percentage. For example, village elders used to be accountants, book keepers, traders, translators, and generally everything that you don't want to spare man on, compressed to one. Wtf would you even do with a population of lawyers? Beside arguing, they don't even have anyone to protect. Farmers and scientists are dope, but only in a small %. Scientist need a lot. They need time, materials, and very complicated machinery, precision toolkits. Such as a measurer for making the gear changer on a car. They are needed, but they are not cheap. But I can understand that and farmer. It's funny how there are no craftsman, or working class.
not useless, but like, there should be one faction doing all of the intellectually demanding jobs like being a lawyer, scientist, doctor, overnor and whatever, and there should instead be some kind of factory goods producing faction and a builder faction or something. As for the Dauntless faction, a military is needed only if there are other societies to fight against, which doesn´t seem like the case here. And while police officers are neccesary, more than maybe 1/1000 of the population would mostly be wasteful. 1/5 of the population being poice officers is utterly riddiculous. Especially when they are trained to be machos and not to actually combat crime and do investigations. They would be the ones comitting all the crimes because they have nothing else to do and have to prove how tough and dauntles they are. Even if a military is needed, it would be better to have only a fraction of those people being actual military and have more people producing military materiel instead, like tanks weapons, and logistic systems. 1000 men with modern equipment, tanks and airsupport with a working logistics is going to beat 200 000 men with home made swords and armor every day, regardless of how macho they are. Overall the only faction that makes sense at all is the farmers, because they perform the only job that actually requires a large amount of people to operate enough farming operations to feed everyone without access to modern irrigation and tractors.
Okay.. so like.. guilds in medieval ages? Because that's what we speak about. 1,) Aristocrat/Elite to oversee land, public matters, trade, and big investments / army leaders. 2,) Traders Guild. People who barter between shops, districts, shires, nations, and waterlines. 3,) Craftsmans Guild. People who produce the toolset needed for humanity. From things like a clay bottle, till iron tools, gears, beams, and others. 4,) Builders Guild. People who oversee/do the craft of homes, castles/defenses, roads, and produce the required materials for the subject. 5, Farmers and Orchards Guild. People who work the land, home-craft, farmsteads, fields owner, animal keepers, bee-keepers, foresters, fishers, hunters, and brewers, country product makers. (sausage, wine, honey) 6,) Et Universitas. Bookmans, accounters, printers, teachers, researchers, writers, and the alike. Classes of: 1,) Low-Class, low earners. People how earn their due in single task and of opportunities. Labourers, fortune seekers, short-time employed. 2,) Landless Middle Earners. People of Manufactoria, apprentices, squires, small-time traders, field workers, keepers, servants, cooks, and the alike. 3,) Landed Middle Earners. Small field owners, house-holds, beekeepers, small time animal keepers and the alike. 4,) High Earners. There are the craftsmans and most of the shop owners. There are those with bigger lands, and fruit-lands. The wine makers, and the builders. The ship-man, and the heavy labourers. The backbone our civilisation. 5,) Trusted Keepers. These people are granted much higher worths. They are given authority if it's trusted on them. The tax of the city, is trusted on them. They can learn and oversee every profession to understand the city and their authority. The city presents them with luxuries, free of charge in limits. They are not judges, but oversees. Kind of like that how I would imagine a basic settings. As you can see, there are no guards here. Because that would be complicated. (more people, teached craftsman, schools, chapel, hierarchy of military, production lines, politics, etc.)
I´m not sure what you mean by guilds here, I thought a guild was a sort of like a company rather than a caste, but if you widen the definition, yeah. I was thinking more about the bronze age caste system, but the difference is that you cannot change caste, you are born in it, but in Divergent you are selected into a faction rather than born in it. If we are attempting to improve the realism of the governmnet however, this might be a bit too far off the actual story, as it introduces an overarching hierarchi, which is realistic but completely changes the feeling of the setting.
A better version of the story would be Tris as factionless born. Her character engages with a variety of factions when she goes to get the charity stuff given to the factionless. Factions aren't really seen coming together often or crossing paths (from what i recall), so her engaging with a variety of people builds her into a divergent (not DNA because that whole idea is a shitshow) This works because she's seen how the government treats people, so she can have a real grudge, and it helps round out her character. This would at least be a more interesting story instead of a pretty girl in a decent house suddenly choosing dauntless and revolting. Katniss was poor and that's why she revolted. It would make the stories more similar, but at least it wouldn't have that many plot holes and be half decent to watch
Does she ever change or develop as a character? I think it's worth considering that she doesn't ever seem to. No one does really, the one character who was even remotely interesting was the one eye'd kid who just dies the moment he's reintroduced.
She doesn't want to revolt until her parents get killed and she personally becomes aware of a plot to kill 16% of the population because the villain is comically evil
I'm surprised you never bring up the fact that being detergent is apparently extremely rare, yet give it a few pages and 50% of people are. Because that totally makes sense.
It’s seen as rare by the general population but near the end of the book it is revealed that a lot of the detergents are coming from Abnegaytion and that detergents are just really good at hiding their detergent
IIRC, the factionless *_do_* serve as the laborers. I think it was brought up in either the beginning of the first book, or Allegiant, where they talk about the bus driver being a factionless. **EDIT** Yes, the factionless are the laborers, on page 25 of Divergent, 2nd paragraph! I don't think the movie showed it though, and that part's very forgettable.
“The city of Chicago with a wall built around it and it’s citizens think it’s the rest of humanity” ...So Attack on Titan mixed with Hunger Games and Harry Potter?
If you consider yourself skilled in plot making and worldbuilding then writing should be the least of your worries. A fantastically written story with a nonsensical plot and lousy worldbuilding is still trash.
IMGvillaSRC Nonsensical plots, hmm, that reminds me of the Pitch meetings: ua-cam.com/play/PL--PgETgAz5FGoatB9KQzbnpv0bgZqU2l.html (Except nr. 100, that is self referential, see some of the others before.)
@@luisgerardobujandalopez4994 It was like she lost everything that made her great in the previous two books. I'm glad she got it back when she killed Coin
The author wrote divergent in a couple of weeks over her winter college break and made something that people enjoyed (and made her rich). I don't enjoy the books but I have nothing but respect for the author.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS????? It's taken me ages to write about 5 choppy, rough chapters which are in need of drastic changes. I gotta respect her, but I find it laughable that she only took that long.
@@palanthas7063 Yeah it took her 50 days to write Divergent according to the Author. Doing that at 22 years old is impressive honestly. I'm sure she's writing much better stuff these days. At least I hope so lol.
They lost me when they kept going on and on about how dangerous Divergents were, but never established WHY. "Divergents must be eliminated." "Ok. Why?" "Because they are a threat." "How?" "Because they are divergent." Oh, and how about the sudden introduction of "divergent detectors" in the second movie. Initially, they have to put each person through a convoluted testing process to determine what faction they are the best fit for. But in the second movie, which takes place immediately after the first, they suddenly have Walmart price scanners that they can use to perfectly identify what faction any person is within seconds.
Well in the books, Janine is the one who wants the Divergent eliminated. This is because she knows that once there's a high enough divergent population, the experiment they're in will end and the factions will be dissolved. Janine doesn't want the factions destroyed because she's managed to rise to the top of the power hierarchy and wants to keep the city the way it is. So she kills the divergent to prevent their being too many. And I haven't seen the films, but the 'Divergent detectors' never existed in the books.
@@funkyfranx That already makes way more sense than the movies. The movies pretty much had zero explanation or motive for any of the plot. And yeah, in the second movie they had a handheld scanner that immediately identified someone's faction, or whether that person was a divergent.
arent it self explanatory in the ending that janine wants to eliminate divergent because they would destroy the factioning system and by destroying the faction system means she doesnt get to be the supreme leader
I think the only clear parts I remember about this series was tris climbing a ferris wheel and her death. Man I skipped a day of school to finish the last book and just sobbed the whole day. Good times.
The "selfess ones who run the government"... "the people who value honesty above all else, and so run the Justice system"... Sooooo, this book is a satire, right?
When I first read Allegiant I really didn’t like it or get it but the second time I read it, I didn’t actually mind it. I don’t think it is as good as The Hunger Games but unlike what people say, I don’t think it was trying to be a copy of it, just another YA dystopia sci-fi thing. But you are right, they kept on having the same fights over and over and it was just a bit exhausting.
I always found their relationship annoying because it felt like they got into an argument every 5 minutes, it just didn’t feel like a healthy relationship
Also, It'd be pretty good setup for bad case of kill-everybodyitis. Because history of race teaches us, those damages would smooth out reeaaaaally quickly.
well there is such a thing as an objectively damaged gene; Cystic fibrosis, huntingtons disease or Down's syndrome are all caused by genes put together in the wrong way. Cancer is also an example of genes getting fucked up from one generation to the next. Whatever the thing wrong with the people in these books are, I guess you'd classify it as a mental impairment, although a very light one since they still function at a pretty high level.
@@lgbtqiarights A pretty shit plot device at that. A better way of introducing "gene damage" would be to create a scenario where something causes the genes to mutate and distort incrementally through each reproductive cycle where the gene essentially breaks down more and more as it passes down. This kind of shit is not hard to come up with so i don't know what the fuck the author if these books was thinking honestly.
Yeah, I think the most confusing thing that kept me from understanding their little Hogwarts system is that there were three groups that all functioned under the same basic umbrella: one is lawyers and judges, one is military police and one "runs the government." Me: What... is the government if it is not lawyers, judges and police? XD One branch of government is strictly judges, another is a congress of people whose younger careers are usually lawyers and soldiers, and the executive branch runs the military and the president is usually a lawyer or a soldier. The Queen of freakin' England is a veteran. Book: Oh, the people who run the government are too spineless to also be veterans. Their only concern is spending hard earned resources on helping the poor. Me: ... Is this book taking shots at the Left or something? Jimmy Carter was a WW2 naval veteran and Clinton and Obama were lawyers. Kennedy, Johnson? Both vets. And Roosevelt was our president throughout WW2... Who separates both law and military from "the government" in their worldbuilding? Is the government the one making all the cloths, manufacturing for everyone else? XD
I know! If they're honest, wouldn't it be way better if they were journalists? Just because the Erudite knows stuff doesn't mean they can't lie! And look, they do lie... Whoever came up with that is kicking themself now
It’s also weird because everyone can choose their faction. Like imagine if the justice system wasn’t even by democracy or best choice but just by whoever decides to step up to the job
This series just generally left a bad taste in my mouth. When I was in college, I remember meeting a friend of a friend, and our conversation turning to a discussion on books. She recommended reading the Divergent series, and I told her I had, and mentioned I didn't find them very enjoyable. And suddenly, she chooses the Divergent, of all things in the world, to be an elitist literature prick about. She casually throws the comment in about how I probably only read romance novels, and perhaps something this deep wasn't my cup of tea. Nothing like being condescended to by a lit major who thinks Divergent peaked the dystopian genre.
Wow, if I found someone who read the book I liked and told me they didn't like it, I would probably be embarrassed and asked them on what lacking on my favourite books. Afterwards, I'll probably read the said books several times and never talked about it to that person ever again. It's just so shameful to be condescending just because you like something others don't.
Oof I had a friend who was and still is obsessed with divergent Like, that’s legit the only book that person would read- We grew apart because she was too much of an asshole, ignoring me one day and then pretending nothing happened another I watched this video because I wanted to spite their taste in books lol-
@@yaboikungpowfuckfinger7697 I mean, 1984 is actually pretty basic and over rated. Don't get me wrong, it's good, unlike stories like this, but if you take the book itself it's really not that impressive or groundbreaking apart from the fact it popularised the genre. Take it's world building for example, it's pretty basic, it works for what it's supposed to be (disinformation) but there's definitely better out there like Brave New World (which came out a decade and a half before and is imo better in almost every way) To me, 1984 is the quintessential Dystopia and is the entry point into the genre, but as such, most of what it does isn't that impressive when comparing it to the rest of the genre outside of it's legacy, even if it's good, there's better.
When I first read the first book, I liked it because I didn't give much thought to it, but I do remember that in the back of the book, there was a short test to decide what faction you'd be apart of, and I got Divergent and I had a passing thought about how in the world it would be possible to get any other answer than Divergent because there was no way people would only have that one trait.
The fact that you're consciously afraid of that is one step toward making your book _really_ good! Write what you love, and trust your gut with the worldbuilding stuff--and by that I mean you should research whatever you feel like you need to, and you can stop when you feel like you've done enough. I'm definitely not an expert, but that's my two cents :)
also if I remember correctly from reading, when Tris is in training for Dauntless she tries things like chocolate cake and coffee for the first time. How would Chicago be importing cocoa and coffee and even obtaining sugar?
Wait but since tris was born into abnegation, aka the selfless faction, it would make since that she didn't indulge in sweets. I remember cristina joking abt how abnegation folks don't eat cuz they donate food to the poor or something like that. Also some ppl inside Chicago were aware of the outside world, like tris' mother who was sent as an experiment to Chicago, so they imported goods secretly I guess?
greenhouse? not the easiest thing to build from scratch but it's just glass and a heating element and the ability to open some windows could easily salvage the majority of materials from in city
@@prcervi How advanced is the technology in this series? Problem is chocolate is awfully difficult to make. There's a reason that it was a food only reserved for royalty and it took so long to catch on in Europe. I suppose if they had grindstones driven by water it'd be possible to make it efficiently, but cacao pods must also be fermented and then rapidly dried, all of which makes it really costly to produce. Unless they have contact with the outside world it seems unlikely for them to have any chocolate at all due to the inefficiency.
Sugar beets grow in the U.S. Coco -- no. Only in lowland tropical climates with high humidity, so at best, it was traded for far, far away, or was grown in an extremely expensive greenhouse. Not that the farming system and the economy makes much sense, anyway. "Advanced technology" only covers so much author BS.
The series reads like a first draft, and that first draft is on wattpad, and it's in the fanfiction section. I was in class when I read the "murder gene" line in the third book, I laughed so damn hard I was kicked out of class.
This makes me think of the first time I read the Maze Runner trilogy: the book just went “yeah solar flare brought a zombie virus to earth” and I said “no it didn’t”
The first maze runner book was awesome to me as a teenager. The rest of the trilogy and the prequel disappointed me so much. The intrigue and mystery of the situation was always interesting to me and would've been much better if it was never explained and left to the reader to come to their own conclusion. The next two gave such an underwhelming and stupid answer and turned into a cliche zombie apocalypse.
Yeah the first book was so good in my opinion it didn’t need a sequel let alone a trilogy the story and plot of the other two books were so damn stupid and don’t get me started on the prequels except for the one where they go over the project of the maze because that was actually interesting.
I was sure when I read the first book that the ultimate twist would be that everyone tests divergent, and it's something designed to make people cling intently to their chosen faction.
I believe in the books it turns out most people in the society are genetically damaged so their personalities are limited and 'divergent' people are just undamaged people. Which is really silly imo.:)
Honestly when I first watched the movie I just applied Harry Potter logic to Divergent and ignores everythig that didn't make sence about the sorrting. I regret everything.
"Tris is only special, because she's a normal person" Sounds like kind of an anti-twist to me, since the plot is clearly built around this idea. Which seems to be quite common in teen novels.
The jumping on and off trains as mean of transport does not make sense, along with the Dauntless quarters being just effing unsafe. There is even a line in one of the books about how they never bothered to use sanitizer when sticking the stupid needles with serums into themselves (because blood poisoning is SO DAUNTLESS). Military is dangerous, but no military ever would put their soldiers into needless risk for lolz. If just for the fact it would be ineffective training new and new recruits to have them die if they slip jumping off a train. Also, why are the empty trains randomly running around?
Yeah, why are those trains just used for some stupid training exercise instead of, oh I don't know, something useful like public transportation, *their original purpose?*
@@thegoodmudkip3652 I figured that the public didn't need the transportation because their jobs are where they live pretty much? I only watched the movies. So really, idk.
Technically the factionless doesn’t fit at all with any category, divergent fits into any of them. So factionless doesn’t have any and divergent has all
OMG. Everyone compares this to the Hinger games. And I love the hunger games but it is dystopian books. They all have sort of the same feel. But Divergent is awesome and people just get mad when one of the best characters dies.
@@BarginsGalore no, they're very different, im not a Harry Potter fan, but the sorting hat choose based on your attributes and qualities, your thoughts, your desires, what you are trying to achieve, not just one shit personality trait, the hat even said "difficult... very difficult" when he was choosing Harry's house, meaning that he have attributes of different houses, it makes a lot more sense than divergent
If you’re divergent you’re supposed to have a complex personality with multiple character traits. SO TELL ME WHY TRIS IS LIKE EVERY OTHER QUIRKY MAIN CHARACTER
because having multiple character traits doesn't make you interesting. it just makes you less of a stock character. like this is a world where most people are ONLY peaceful or ONLY honest. they literally do not have a personality beyond that. they are like npcs.
I actually read the first two Divergent books back in 7th grade (I'm 16 now), and I liked them at the time. I think the main problem is I didn't realize there was so much better stuff out there than the new age "dystopian" novels marketed so heavily to teens. I thought it was either those, a couple fantasy options, classic literature, or bust. Smaller authors need to get more exposure at school libraries. But even when I was 13 I realized Allegiant as well as the movies were awful lmao
I think the length of time between when the first two books and the third book came out also matters. I remember reading the first two books in middle school and enjoying them; they weren't remarkable or amazing, but they were good for YA fiction. But Allegiant made me mad. It was so terrible that after certain parts of the book I considered abandoning the darn thing altogether. I think that either A. I was different enough of a person between 7th grade and 9th grade that I could see flaws in the writing that were already there, or B. Veronica Roth was so desperate for the money a full trilogy would provide that she wrote anything and everything, no matter how terrible it was. (This was what I thought at the time while reading the book for the first time.) Honestly, I liked where the Divergent series ended in the second book. It left enough mystery to keep you wondering, yet wrapped everything up decently enough that it didn't feel like a waste of time. Then the third book came along and it was so mind-numbingly dumb that now the whole series is ruined for me. I haven't even seen the movies, that's how mad Allegiant made me XD
@@Sours56 I agree with your point about time between releases, by the time Allegiant came out I had forgotten almost everything that happened in Insurgent, and I just found Allegiant to be a boring mess, it didn't interest me enough to motivate me to read Insurgent again. I only finished reading Allegiant to get closure.
@@emilionavarrete5169 Same, I read Allegiant to see how everything ended. For me one of the biggest problems was that the characters went from acting like mature adults to acting like middle schoolers. I vividly remember one portion of the book told from Tobias' perspective where he said "I will not have my emotions played with. I am not a child" or something to that effect and I had to close the book for a bit to process how terrible that line was. There was also the fact that Tris went from "I just want to live in peace and fit in and have my family and friends be happy and safe" in the first two books to "Oh we just finished throwing over one bad regime but here's another government minding their own business! Time to fight them and take control of their stuff! I'm going to see them as evil right away even though I don't know who they are yet!" The whole thing was a mess. When 9th grader me can read a YA novel with characters older than I was at the time and feel more mature than them, it's bad writing.
one of my favorite dystopian city tropes is literally just being in the ruins of Chicago. like, it’s already underfunded, filled with corrupt politicians, patrolled by a militaristic police force. it’s about as close as a dystopian city can get
I read the first book as a teen and thought it was a fun read. The second book was meh and I hardly remembered anything of it. And I couldnt even get a quarter of the way through the third book. The switching perspectives were so confusing because that author can literally only write in one voice. And it was so distracting I completely lost track of the plot and just had to give up out of boredom lmao
As much as I can look back at this series and cringe, it was also a turning point in how I behaved around others. I was shy and stuck only to books in middle school, when I read the series but wanted to be more like Tris. To be brave. And I did! I became more outgoing, I became courageous and outspoken. Were these well written and well constructed? No. But it was core in my development as a person, so it’ll always have a special place in my heart. Just because a piece of art isn’t... good, you can still appreciate it. That’s what it’s for, to take in and enjoy.
To me there is nothing wrong with liking a piece of art that is objectively bad. However, I believe that it is vitally important as a consumer of art that we recognize high quality and draw attention to low quality art. To use your example of finding inspiration in a character, it did not have to be this specific character in this specific story to inspire you. It could have been a better written character in a better written story to have the same effect, or even a worse character in a worse story. The point is that we as consumers need to separate our enjoyment as a measure of quality of media and focus on the details in the pursuit of better art for better enjoyment.
I actually had that experience with a character from a fantasy series. I realized how similar I am to that character and saw her develop from being rather shy to becoming more outspoken. So I thought to myself, hey, why dont you just try to act a little more differently around people and try to dare a little more and it really worked. All around the characters’ strenght development was more about talking rather than fighting so it was easier to connect to her while Tris felt kinda out of my league concerning the bravery part, but its great how it worked for you!
Hunger games was good because like other dystopias that came before it, it was social commentary. The only thing I can think of that divergent is social commentary for is middle school cliques. One of the things that annoys me the most about divergent is how it made a lot of people think that the dystopia genre was just for YA romance instead of social commentary
@@icecreamhero2375 At least in the first book (imo the other two were money-grubbing trash), there was definitely a commentary on the commercialization of human suffering for the entertainment of the rich.
@@icecreamhero2375 It's a lot less absurd than something like 1984, and no one complains about that not applying to real life. To name a few examples: - It highly accurately portrays PTSD in both Katniss and Peeta - It displays the use of propaganda and how ridiculous and inaccurate it is, even when on the side of the good guys - It concludes that President Coin, a "benevolent" authoritarian leader, is effectively burdened by the same problems as Snow - The obvious point @Briana Kaldor-Mair made about the commodification of human life and the disconnect in rich societies from the resource-producing Districts - Just, a whole lot of implications about implicit bias and racism And that's just to name some things. It's an extremely well-done book, and the fact that the movies chose to primarily focus on the love triangle will forever annoy me.
There actually is a line in the first book that mentions how the factionless do "the hard labor nobody else wants to do" so I think you're meant to infer that the factionless are the low-skilled laborers and things. Not that I blame you for missing this, it's literally one line
Sounds as bad as the Modern Lit. unit we did on The Fault in Our Stars. I considered post-birth abortion of myself and the teacher that thought this was great literature several times.
Why did you study it? What were the actual learning objectives? Were you looking at the themes or the characters or the structure? Or was it just a 'class will study a book for one half term' syllabus entry and the teacher randomly picked Divergent to appeal to the young folk.
I read these somewhere between the age of 12-14. When I read about the factions, I just instantly assumed “oh it’s like the houses in Harry Potter” which would probably make more sense as you know, instead of it being their whole personality it was their main trait. Then the series went on to DNA. Pretty sure if they had damaged DNA, the whole race would just die...
Watched a few episodes of Umbrella academy, dropped it got bored. I especially dislike Ellie/Elliot Page. Can someone tell me why some think it's good?
I never really understood how someone being “divergent” was such a terrible thing. How is it so rare for people to fit into more than one kind of faction? Are these people not human?
Jeanine wants the divergents dead because if there’s too many of them, the Chicago experiment and the faction system will be dissolved, stripping her of her power.
its dumb as shit, nobody has one personality trait, even if a certain one is more dominant. it’s not psychologically possible to only exhibit one adjective while NOT simultaneously showcasing another or using different mannerisms. especially since shit like kindness,selflessness, honesty ect usually correspond. same with bravery often so and being smart. it’s a really really crappy way of world building that can’t even happy in any universe god it’s awful.
What bothers me the most is the factionless are a clear jab at blue collar workers, most of the factions are based of college and school cliques and stereotypes yet in the book it is mention that factionsless were “garbage men and construction workers” when I read a book I don’t want to feel like I’m a lesser person just because I didn’t go to college lol because that’s clearly what Veronica Ruth is mocking
Isn't it obvious why the outcast faction only has adults? Because theyre unimportant therefore no need to make them youthful and sexualize their characters for YA. lol
I'm assuming you haven't read the books or watched the movies (good on you actually lol) but the factionless are important in later books, and, as the video pointed out, they are sexualized quite a bit in the movies, or at the very least, made young and fuckable.
This series lost me when it established genetic damage as the cause of the societal collapse and the factioning. That struck me as *so* deus-ex-machina. Roth had a great opportunity to use the factions as a metaphor for algorithms, employers, the justice system and the mental health system trying to force us into cookie-cutter personality types. But no, she had to take the lazy way out and make it all about your genes.
PaninaroAurora (I know this comment is old, sorry. Lol) When he was describing the overall concept of the series, especially the factionless, I thought it sounded like something that would really OBVIOUSLY go in that direction. I wouldn’t even call it “bad worldbuilding” so much as “worldbuilding for the wrong reason” or “wasted opportunity.” Modern society DOES expect kids to start fitting into really rigid roles (with things like standardized testing and punishing kids for relatively harmless behaviors that stem from mental illnesses or autism) and punish people who are simply not as capable of the specific kind of work that’s expected from them, and it would be pretty cool for YA dystopian fiction to teach teens that there’s nothing inherently wrong with you if you don’t quite fit the mold and that the amount you produce for a system that doesn’t care about you doesn’t determine your worth. Some other comments have mentioned that it’s implied the “menial labor” is assigned to the factionless and they’re given less as a result, which if true is kind of a mirror of reality that could be used for that commentary.
Well, the mental health system can describe people by type, and that's not something you can argue against. You really think serial killers don't share personality traits? Yea, they do. And that's how we can classify them. Anybody who says "PEOPLE DON'T FIT INTO CATEGORIES" is stupid, and doesn't understand the function of psychology.
Thing that annoyed me: Amity is situated outside of the walls right? Then how the hell did they 1.) never think about going further beyond their grounds, investigate the area, ... 2.) After the message was spread, why couldn't amity just run? The other factions were held back at the walls, but amity is outside, no one can stop them so why ain't they running?
Wasserrübenvergilbungsvirus that actually is worst. Think about it. They tested in to the faction. They chose to be in that faction and now choose to drug themselves to stay in the faction because..... there is no logic here. Hold on what am I saying of course there isn’t.
when the darkness is bigger than the light They all eat bread with serum in it that makes them passive, which wouldn’t foster that type of rebellion. Also, plenty of Amity have tried it, and have their memories erased when they do.
I love that there are people like this. I’ve been trying my hand at writing, and knowing there may be someone who rakes over my creation with such a fine-toothed comb is surprisingly heartening. It makes me want to be a better writer.
I agree with you. The act of writing is because we want people to read it. Otherwise we'd just fantasize with the idea and not tell anyone else. Seeing someone willing to put so much thought into something you created is one of the things that drives my own writing.
Something I didn't bring up in the video is the economy. Every faction fulfills its own very specific role in society, which means they would have to trade among themselves for goods and services. But there's never any mention of money or a barter system that was set up. Based on that, we can assume that they just share everything among themselves, giving food and medicine to whoever needs it. This is reinforced by Amity looking like an anarchy-communist utopia where no one accumulates wealth and the land is owned collectively.
But then why are the factionless treated like regular homeless people? Poverty, or at least income inequality, only makes sense in a capitalist or feudal system. It seems like the factionless should be receiving their share of food and shelter, not just whatever Abnegation gives as charity.
do "carve the mark" its made by the same person
Same problem as Panem
Maybe they have no rights at voting, lawmaking, or fewer rights at judging
Just try reading the sequels to maze runner. It is true garbage.
MazeRunner: why arent we building some ladder stuff?
When I first read Divergent I was convinced that the secret would be that *everyone* is divergent and keeping it secret from everyone else.
That sounds so cool
That sounds better actually
That would be hilarious
Bruv your a better author than the author herself
Yes I also thought this... it seemed so obvious, everyone has a strong point, but they arent one trait personified... rip
Wait, no merchants, no manufacturing, no leisure, no artists, nothing of actual humanity
William Tecumseh Sherman shhhh
Doesn't Amity also include fun & arts?
@Imaru Lewis well it's called a dystopia for a reason right?
@@imperialguardsman135 Word.
Imperial Guardsman nice response
I'll never forget Detergent, Insurance, and Allergic.
An excellent series both for its satire and its worldbuilding. 500 years after the collapse of civilisation society has reformed around a cargo cult worshiping modern consumerism and bureaucracy. The protagonist sells "detergents" boxes believed to contain spirits that will protect the holders clothing from wear.
Zarrg omg I’m dead
Zarrg then the fire nation attacked
lmfao
@@zarrg5611 The best twist was when those cultists that create and feast on those "pods" and were the biggest reason for the collapse of civilization 500 years ago.
Its like if society was completely based on those online personality tests
You see! It does have social commentary...
YES LMTO THATS HILARIOUSLY ACCURATE
Oh lord it's so accurate
@@pinkajou656 LMTO? laugh my tits off?
@@thanatonyxmoura what power ranger* are you
There are many holes in the story. If erudite are hungry for knowledge, they should want to cross the walls since the break of dawn
I think I have a vague memory of erudite being evil? but that doesn't explain what happened to the people who moved there, no way did anybody move from amity or dauntless or whatever and just go "yeah okay we're evil now"
Also, and I haven't read it so maybe they address this, but why would they kill divergents? Wouldn't someone with multiple interests and skills be incredibly useful to a society where most people are only capable of/interested in doing one thing?
@@toothfairy10133 Also oh goody, reinforcing that old trope of 'Experts/smart people = evil.'
@@briannakaldor-mair9958 the point is these books make no sense. There were so many times I had to put the book down and reflect on how nonsensical it was. I couldn’t read past the first book
The real problem is that Erudites aren't being literally dragged back into the city for trying to cross the fence to get plant samples or some shit idk
. . .There was world building?
An attempt at it anyways.....
Your profile picture makes the comment so much better.
House of card placing...
It’s a disgrace to world building. She took a modern city, and repurposed it for her needs
That’s how you get gems of lines like, “We met at the Hub, which was once known as the Hancock building.”
Kaylen ah yes. Now that I know it was once known as the hancock building, I can instantly and totally imagine how this place looks, it’s function, and it’s purpose relative to the story. 10/10 wonderful literary masterpiece.
"I'm calling him Tobias because four sounds stupid" Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave.
Just a fun fact: when I read the books in my language, they had changed the name to Quart, which sounded pretty nice to me, and I never really thought about the name being weird
When I went to the movie and the translators had kept the direct translation of Four, it just felt ugly and sad
The Romans used to have names that just described the month or what order the child(ren) were born. Octavius for “eight”, Nonus for “ninth”, etc. It just sounds nice if you don’t know Latin.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a guy called “Four”.
@@hyperion3145
Americans used to have names based on virtues. Prudence, Faith, Charity... Things like Bravery or Justice for boys.
@@Carabas72
That's very much still around nowadays, especially in the states. Still not as nice as "Octavian" for your eighth child
how the fuck is saying that controversial? everyone knows calling some dude 4 is retarded. I know im ruining some """"""joke"""""" in a youtube comment but even then i fucking hate the controversial yet so brave meme. Its a bad reddit meme that sucks ass
The main factions are basically: the hippies, the edgelords, the lawyers, the missionaries, and the google employees.
Lmao
Omg lol
I read “good employees” lmao
ah yes the pillars of society
that's basically real life
Basically Chicago takes online personality quizs too seriously
Bruh
Mbti gone wrong .
The city of chicago but buzzfeed quizzes decide if you become a janitor or a politician
That’s the actual premise
More like sorting hat quiz tbh, the factions basically represent HP houses
I once read a comment saying Divergent is the Hunger Games with Hogwarts houses and I've never seen something more true
It is
Insert Name Here oh god it’s Lorenz Hellman Gloucester
@@weesa9568 my name is Lorenz Hellman Gloucester
Selin-Aleyna Ravenclaw except it makes less sense.
@@Ant-vu2tx obviously
The way I thought this was peak literature when I was 12 😭
i am ashamed to say I went through a phase with the movies that lasted about 2 months and wasted all the money I had collected in 6 months to buy all 3 movies. hell is waiting for me and i refuse to burn the dvds cause i want my money back but guess what. no one wants to buy them. wonder why..
Better love story than Twilight
LMAO ME TOO I remember really not liking most of the second and third books though
I was 13 and knew this was hot garbage. My ex friends in junior high just called me fake and a hater 💀 I wonder what they think of it now lmao
at least you're not alone in ur embarrassment i loved it too lmao
NGL, I broke a wheel on my desk chair and I'm an incredibly cheap person. I grabbed Insurgent and Allegiant from the bottom of my shelf and used them to prop up my chair for the next 6 months.
Now, unlike the story, they have a purpose
Finally gave them a proper use then,eh?
@@jamieferne9317 dang, burn
pirate that shit if you're incredibly cheap
You used (last tense) the books to prop up your chair for the next 6 months (future).
Are you Veronica Roth?
Every chapter in allegiant has:
1. At least one character die
2. Tris and four kissing
3. Nothing exciting happening
All I remember from Allegiant was Four being surprised by a deer.
jesus christ was it really every chapter???
@@epekka i remember stopping my reading to count and confirm multiple times, you're welcome.
I have to force myself to read that book for an English class. Wish me luck as I suffer through it
Aripup :D bruh I read the books a few months ago and remember nothing. When did that happen?
“if you’re born factionless, do you still go to the ceremony to choose a new faction?”
congrats, you just came up with a way more interesting protagonist than tris
Omg you're right
I would like to write a fanfic like that
Gavin Rose Do it
Jaden Shelton *starts writing one*
Gavin Rose If you do it so please give us the link so we can read it
The main character is special just because she's a normal human being.
Bruh
exactly that is so dum and is a real let down
With the name "Divergent" they really had a chance to make neurodivergent characters and they straight up didn't take it. I suppose that's probably for the best though, since let's be honest, the representation would been bad...
@@loganduncan8789 Yhea, I think it's fair to say that part wasn't so out of hand. This time James makes it sound worst than what it actually is.
@@loganduncan8789 Well, he made some good points too: Who makes all the other things everyone needs, like clothes, edifices, and furniture? Why gobernment remained idle when people started murder one another? What's the point of facction selection if it is predisposed by the genetics? What does make the person? genetics? or family?
The author should thought about those things and how to make facts and acts from everyone fit right. But it's ok, it isn't so bad, some good histories like Starwars and GoT haven't been all well worldbuilded neither.
@@loganduncan8789 Well, that answer is valid. But we had to build it by ourselves, so... It still doesn't look like the author cared about the worldbuilding. From my personal perspective, the first two books (I just watched the movies) even though haven't a deep worldbuilding are great because of the history, nothing like the jewells from Asimov and Arthur Conan Doyle, but at least entertaining, even exciting. But the third one... that's just merch for the fans with a cheap plot for filling.
She's the main character because she's the first person to have multiple personality traits 😭
no. she's the main character because she doesn't have ANY personality traits. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 she's a dollar store katniss.
@@coagulatedsalts4711 maybe if you actually read the book, you’d be able to actually see that she DOES have personality traits.
Not the first, but sure.
@@coagulatedsalts4711 shes bella swan on crack
@@averyjohnson7728PFFFFT
"History has shown that the only thing that keeps people from boning each other, is geography"
That's genius. I cannot explain how much I enjoy that quote.
And now that geography is out of the way (because planes) you know what's up lmao
@@s.a.8548 But planes are expensive
Lazergurka - Smerlin Price is just a number in the way of the unstoppable power of the boner.
I live for this comment thread
@@lazergurka-smerlin6561 they were taken out of the equation
I feel like Tris wasn't divergent because she had more than one personality trait, she was divergent because she had none. One of the reasons this seemed like bad hunger games fanfiction was that the main character was basically Katniss but without a personality.
this makes way too much sense
Yeah she was kinda a blank slate
That is saying a lot, because Katniss’s personality was also very hard to find. The Hunger Games is one of my favorite books (I wasn’t too big a fan of the sequels), but Katniss was kind of a blank slate as well. Tris was like reading a story about a brick.
@@anayaweick7964 not gonna lie that's true katniss was a slightly less blank slate
@@anayaweick7964 I do agree, but thanks to the interesting story and great world building, I just don't really care.
> only humans left
> Chicago
this is going to go well
>Metra Fails to exist and everyone has to walk
>LMAO.jpg
Tell me about it. I live in Chicago.
living off the link be like
Considering that I live there, that's pretty accurate
I'm not even American and I can see how this seems promising
Worst part about Allergy is when the POV switched, I couldn’t tell. I legit had to read a sentence explicitly stating that Tobias was looking at Tris to realise she wasn’t narrating anymore lmao
i know right! i had to turn pages back at the start of the chapter multiple times to find out which POV is it lol
The asoiaf book series for example does these POV switches much better by not having a first person perspective. In third person it is always obviously stated which character is referred to.
"Allergy" lol
Thank fuck I thought I was the only one
@@roseglowreal YES me too!! Their narratives sounded exactly the same, there was NO difference that told me who's POV it was. The way Tobias spoke was exactly the same as Tris' and gave no clues to his personality, and sounded nothing like how he was described by Tris.
"Where is all the menial labor, the sewer-cleaners, trash collectors, et cetera?"
WHY THE HELL DIDN'T VERONICA ROTH FILL IN THAT OBVIOUS PLOT HOLE WITH THE FACTIONLESS?!
It's mentioned somewhere in the book that the factionless do those roles
Claire Warner Once. And then never again.
@@KnakuanaRka if they mentioned it once, why would they bring it up again?
yeah. only mentioned once in the first 5-10 chapters as of what i remembered.
kinda shitty i know
Tris mentions passively early in the first book that that only gross homeless people do that totally lame blue-collar shit.
Divergent is the reason 13 year old me thought I could make it big on Wattpad and I didn't so I'm mad
omg stop divergent IS the reason i made it (semi) big on wattpad 😭😂it's also the reason why my book fandom instagram account with shitty edits became decently popular 😭
@@anaelez4625 What's your username?
I felt that
Just write 1d smut on Wattpad that should make u famous enough
This comment reminds me of how I’m procrastinating on writing my own stories and publishing them on Wattpad because I’m scared😭
"History has shown that the only thing that keeps groups of people from boning each other is geography."
My new favorite channel.
When you realize that the Divergent series is the actually the result of a drunk one-night stand between Hunger Games and Attack on Titan.
I see it as hunger games had a child with the sorting hat from Harry Potter
Sorry but hunger games and divergent are very different except the theme
true lol- nice armin pfp
@@christiancolon8748 plus the dangerous environment beyond the walls from Attack on titans
@@claphamomnibus512 Well I mean, the US government just fenced them off right and continued living, (ive never read it and Im half asleep while reading this), so the US Army would probably be patrolling the outside right?
My main question during the ceremony in the first movie: did they clean the knife?
Imogen Howard dunno about the movies but the books gave a new knife to each person
Pool closed due to aids.
@@konradfletcher6311 and stingrays
@@konradfletcher6311 due to corona, more like it...
I wouldn’t want to swim if the pool water was beer either
Plz laugh
I don’t remember a single thing about the second book.
For real 😂
Lol me neither
Erudite hunts down Divergents, tris and her group hide, erudite inserts a mind serum into everyone that only divergents can resist and they make people commit suicide under the serum. This won't stop until a divergent comes forward, tris obviously does, erudite tries to kill her, Peter saves her, Calebs a tratior, they release a message from people beyond the fence
@@yellownailpolish4203 lol by that point i had completely lost interest in caleb he was so bad
Same I only remember what happened in the first one and fOuR whining about tris dying in the third one
Actually the factionless do have the low-level jobs in the book, Tris mentions it when she rides the bus that the bus driver is factionless and...I can’t believe I know this
I’ve read the first two books recently for an English class, and I don’t remember that. In the second book, the Factionless are described as just sort of hanging around and not doing anything other than gathering weapons. Seemed like they all were just supposed to be homeless
So if the factionless does these jobs, then why is bad they are factionless? Someone has to do these job...
@@wii1199 poor pay/lifestyle and bad living conditions?
@@wii1199 For the same reason it’s frowned upon to be a garbage collector, staff at a fast food restaurant, and countless other jobs in today’s world. The jobs themselves are viewed poorly for a variety of reasons and, by extension, so are the people working them.
I love this comment hahahaha
My thoughts on the subject are as follows:
-The first book is good
-The second book is trash
-The third book is a steaming pile of dog poop
-The first movie is meh
-The second movie is a flaming garbage pile
-The third movie so bad I wanted to gouge my eyes out after watching it
Agreed
There's a third movie? I always thought they stopped after 2.
@@roisinnigcrainn7722 Unfortunately, yes.
Third movie doesn't even follow the plot of the book, AND it somehow makes less sense than the book
first book had potential. but honestly the author should have stopped while they were ahead.
bro im on acid and this is the funniest shit ever. Struggling to type. Send typer divergents to assist
TYPER DIVERGENTS I-
Send the
w h a t
Speaking of the funniest shit ever
What did you think that sentence meant while you were on acid?
In a lot of ways, Divergent is so bad it’s hilarious to make fun of. I’m waiting for people to remember these shit books exist again
I can’t wait for the next book
laundry detergent
plot twist: the world is a giant washing machine
@@ahhyesstoinks4058 it wasnt about genes, it was actually about jeans
@@literallyglados Got dammit that's hilarious
@@literallyglados holy fuck this is gold
You mean?: Four
I lost my final bit of faith in the series when Veronica Roth accidentally changed the name of Tori’s brother from Georgie to Jonathan between books. Not easy to stay invested in a book when you’ve clearly paid more attention to the characters than the author lol
@@FlowersOfAmity put the gun down
How did that get past literally ANY editor? Like _HOW?_
one time I read a pretty niche book where one of the most important characters' names changed its spelling halfway through the book... I also can't believe nobody noticed, but I'm pretty sure the book didn't even go through an editor. It was a pretty whacky and far-fetched book and was a crazy read
It's been 5 years since I read the books, so I don't remember much. But, holy shit, is that actually true?
WAIT WHATT LMFAOOO
Something that always pissed me off about Divergent was the big twist near the end. Not for the usual reasons, though. I genuinely believe that the twist involving the government trying to create genetically engineered humans could have been super cool, if it was done in the exact opposite way from how the series DID do it.
So the main character (calling her MC because I don't remember anyone's name and don't care enough to look it up) in my version would still be a Divergent, and people would still be trying to kill her over it. There would still be all the factions, and their personalities would still be dominated by one trait. My version actually leans pretty heavily into that. In this case, there was never a failed attempt to engineer the perfect human. Key word: failed. In fact, the attempt to do so is still ongoing in the form of Chicago. The goal of the experiment is not to create genetically pure individuals, it is instead to breed humans for specific jobs and purposes, using a combination of their engineered instincts and social conditioning through segregation to create basically the perfect drones. Workers and fighters who will not only do their jobs perfectly, but will remain content in doing so indefinitely. The reason why Divergents are hunted and killed, in this case, is because they are the least conforming members of the city to the aims of the American government by the sheer happenstance of their birth.
TL:DR - Divergent would be better if the twist was flipped on its head so that the government was actually trying to breed humans with one personality trait as perfect worker drones.
This is brilliant!
So Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
@@GayLubeOil never heard of it, but it sounds cool! Maybe I should give it a read
@@donutholebandit6212 it's certainly a classic. You should definitely read it. The ending is wild though.
when i finished the divergent series and trying to understand the ending i came to the same conclusion as you did. it would makes so much more sense to do it like you proposed instead of what actually happened.
Oh my God, what's wrong with teachers? The amount of "I'm being forced to read this in my class" comments is frightening.
IKR!!! My english teacher is absolutly obsessed with this book and I hate everything about it. The writing, the worldbuilding, the LAME AND OVERTOLD STORY, THE WEAK AND UNINTERESTING CHARAKTERS, I HATE IT ALL
Binnie Skywalker write a very detailed and well thought out essay on how much this book sucks and give it to them
I had to read this in class in middle school
Save us please
I would only recommend Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. I can’t think of anything else
they're hopefully teaching kids how not to write a book
This trilogy is basically a self insert story for all the "I'm not like other girls" girls
thats every YA ever though
With the extra irony that what makes them special is being normal
And they are just like any other girl
I'm not like the other girls.
Because I am a dude
Those girls are very vain, and only laugh at quirky comedy,which(this is my opinion) isn’t the funniest. Glad I never met anyone like that. Also like another person, they are just like anyone else, just more annoying. I stay far away from them and continue on with my life. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.
Hunger Games: a critique of war and what it can do to a person and what one might do because of it, income inequality and the dehumanizing that factors into societies that struggle with it, us vs. them mentalities, and so much more.
Divergent: what if people? had multiple aspects? to their personality.?..? sUbVeRsIve mAsTerPIeCe
JDJDJDJSKSKS
Hunger games books aren't a masterpiece either
@@giornogiostar3214 at least it makes sense.
Tú Nguyễn Lại Quốc ok let’s be fair here, lots of the Hunger Games world building doesn’t make sense either
@@laurenlizzbeth oops, gotta rephrase it, at least it tried to be plausible
What really bothers me are the names of the factions:
Amity, Abnegation, Candor are nouns while Dauntless, Erudite and Divergent are adjectives.
WHYYYYYYYY
they were chosen as if the factions each picked there own names without regard for the other factions, in the same way that the faction manifestos are written in very different formats :)
Because the author is an idiot.
@@hi-xb7okbut why are they all fancy descriptive single words for their personality traits then? By your theory some of the groups would probably have a different format: named after a founder, or with multiple words e.g. “The Good Guys.” Or a brand new nonsense word. If the author wanted to portray the groups as significantly different and completely separated they could have at least committed to it
@@maddieb.4282It’s not a theory, it’s what the author said when someone asked her this exact question.
Cause the author doesn't know how to write.
I think what Veronica Roth wanted when creating the factions was to make the sort of impact the Harry Potter houses did. I mean, members of the four houses have some traits in common, rarely interact with people from other houses, and are always proud of the house they belong in. To me, Veronica wanted fans to go around with shirts and beanies saying “Proud Erudite” or some shit like that. The only resemblance I see to the districts from the Hunger Games is giving each of the factions a purpose in society, but it just screams more “bootleg Hogwarts Houses” to me.
That’s just it. Rowling’s Houses made sense & she actually bothered to add nuance to the world around them. Roth just wanted to repeat the success of Harry Potter & The Hunger Games.
This is so sad, alexa play the sound of failure by the flaming lips
At least the traits were more of stereotypes and there was flexibility. Plus each had multiple traits associated with them not just one so there is no need for a person belonging to say Hufflepuff to only be loyal but also hard-working and kind.
Yeah, houses are actually a normal part of British boarding school.
Lol don't compare the two. Harry Potter is a masterpiece.
It's like the city is one big Minecraft village full of Villagers.
Good Lord, you're right! 😂😂
From how bland they are or how stupid they are?
May as well be both.
Bro I want like some creepers to blow it all up
Honestly a village run by a single player would be waaaaaay more of a dystopian authoritarian city.
@@ProfessionalNamielleLewder69 I was thinking more by the fact that each villager has a specific role that they're born into based on the color of their clothes. There's even a factionless, the Nitwit, they wear green. 😂😂
I hate how Tris and Four are basically the only ones who changed their names
That's not true. They talked about lots of characters changing their name in Dauntless. For example a girl named Ashley changed it to Ash. Which is the same as Beatrice changing to Tris.
I think that as they both were the only divergent, that can be the reason
They were the only ones from abnegation though
@@anujachandel3251 But in Allegiant it says Tobias is not actually a divergent
@@tsoiban4406 Only Tris was completely "divergent", but others were on a scale of divergent. Some lacked certain emotions so they weren't 100%, he was still divergent just not completely like Tris.
I always thought it was weird that the Dauntless explicitly has a set of jobs that is essentially just office work. It’s literally just a desk job where they upkeep the fence and surveillance.
So you admit it? There are people in Dauntless who are smarter than they are violent? Wouldn’t that make them Erudite-prone?
I guess you've never been in the military... neither have I, but a lot of it is desk work.
@@TheRisky9
Yeah, except that the whole point of making a faction called “Dauntless” is that they don’t do desk work.
No they just make the human gorillas sit at a desk all day and hope work gets done.
I think this is why they've collectively managed to achieve jackshit after all those years
We have The Hunger Games at home
Hunger Games at home:
meredyth with a y The Capitol already blew it up before you got home...
omfg yes
I read divergent a long time ago and I never realized it was cashing in on Hunger Games
Creativeguy1 Martinez I have read the Hunger Games before and now that I’m reading the Divergent series, it’s pretty blatant. I’d go so far as to call it a Hunger Games fan fiction, but with Hogwart’s houses. I can’t really describe it as much else
@@aaronlandry3934 omg XD
ngl, 14 year old me thought these dystopian novels were peak literature and tried writing my own for Wattpad
You have a Wattpad account? What books did you write? I would love to read them.🙂
This is wholesome
@@ChonkedCat Thank you! You wanna check out mine. We can follow each other?!😊
@@ChonkedCat so sorry I thought your book was called so wholesome!🤣🤣
@@AdamAufderheide You thought so too right!
Society wouldnt work if everyone was either a farmer, a soldier, a government official, a lawyer, or a scientist.
Lucas bentley Maybe the writer, Veronica Roth, thinks the five factions as "school clubs"? I
I'm not gonna lie. The soldier, gov. off., lawyers.. are very useless in a society. They are mostly needs and a very small percentage. For example, village elders used to be accountants, book keepers, traders, translators, and generally everything that you don't want to spare man on, compressed to one. Wtf would you even do with a population of lawyers? Beside arguing, they don't even have anyone to protect.
Farmers and scientists are dope, but only in a small %. Scientist need a lot. They need time, materials, and very complicated machinery, precision toolkits. Such as a measurer for making the gear changer on a car.
They are needed, but they are not cheap. But I can understand that and farmer.
It's funny how there are no craftsman, or working class.
not useless, but like, there should be one faction doing all of the intellectually demanding jobs like being a lawyer, scientist, doctor, overnor and whatever, and there should instead be some kind of factory goods producing faction and a builder faction or something.
As for the Dauntless faction, a military is needed only if there are other societies to fight against, which doesn´t seem like the case here. And while police officers are neccesary, more than maybe 1/1000 of the population would mostly be wasteful. 1/5 of the population being poice officers is utterly riddiculous. Especially when they are trained to be machos and not to actually combat crime and do investigations. They would be the ones comitting all the crimes because they have nothing else to do and have to prove how tough and dauntles they are.
Even if a military is needed, it would be better to have only a fraction of those people being actual military and have more people producing military materiel instead, like tanks weapons, and logistic systems. 1000 men with modern equipment, tanks and airsupport with a working logistics is going to beat 200 000 men with home made swords and armor every day, regardless of how macho they are.
Overall the only faction that makes sense at all is the farmers, because they perform the only job that actually requires a large amount of people to operate enough farming operations to feed everyone without access to modern irrigation and tractors.
Okay.. so like.. guilds in medieval ages? Because that's what we speak about.
1,) Aristocrat/Elite to oversee land, public matters, trade, and big investments / army leaders.
2,) Traders Guild. People who barter between shops, districts, shires, nations, and waterlines.
3,) Craftsmans Guild. People who produce the toolset needed for humanity. From things like a clay bottle, till iron tools, gears, beams, and others.
4,) Builders Guild. People who oversee/do the craft of homes, castles/defenses, roads, and produce the required materials for the subject.
5, Farmers and Orchards Guild. People who work the land, home-craft, farmsteads, fields owner, animal keepers, bee-keepers, foresters, fishers, hunters, and brewers, country product makers. (sausage, wine, honey)
6,) Et Universitas. Bookmans, accounters, printers, teachers, researchers, writers, and the alike.
Classes of:
1,) Low-Class, low earners. People how earn their due in single task and of opportunities. Labourers, fortune seekers, short-time employed.
2,) Landless Middle Earners. People of Manufactoria, apprentices, squires, small-time traders, field workers, keepers, servants, cooks, and the alike.
3,) Landed Middle Earners. Small field owners, house-holds, beekeepers, small time animal keepers and the alike.
4,) High Earners. There are the craftsmans and most of the shop owners. There are those with bigger lands, and fruit-lands. The wine makers, and the builders. The ship-man, and the heavy labourers.
The backbone our civilisation.
5,) Trusted Keepers. These people are granted much higher worths. They are given authority if it's trusted on them. The tax of the city, is trusted on them. They can learn and oversee every profession to understand the city and their authority. The city presents them with luxuries, free of charge in limits. They are not judges, but oversees.
Kind of like that how I would imagine a basic settings.
As you can see, there are no guards here. Because that would be complicated. (more people, teached craftsman, schools, chapel, hierarchy of military, production lines, politics, etc.)
I´m not sure what you mean by guilds here, I thought a guild was a sort of like a company rather than a caste, but if you widen the definition, yeah.
I was thinking more about the bronze age caste system, but the difference is that you cannot change caste, you are born in it, but in Divergent you are selected into a faction rather than born in it.
If we are attempting to improve the realism of the governmnet however, this might be a bit too far off the actual story, as it introduces an overarching hierarchi, which is realistic but completely changes the feeling of the setting.
divergent bravely imagines a grim and dystopian world where society is dictated by the elements of harmony from my little pony
this is my favorite explanation of divergent's premise i've seen so far
this is too accurate haha
just watch my little pony instead it's worth it
As opposed to actual my little pony, which is a grim and dystopian world where society is dictated by cutie marks.
A better version of the story would be Tris as factionless born. Her character engages with a variety of factions when she goes to get the charity stuff given to the factionless. Factions aren't really seen coming together often or crossing paths (from what i recall), so her engaging with a variety of people builds her into a divergent (not DNA because that whole idea is a shitshow) This works because she's seen how the government treats people, so she can have a real grudge, and it helps round out her character. This would at least be a more interesting story instead of a pretty girl in a decent house suddenly choosing dauntless and revolting. Katniss was poor and that's why she revolted. It would make the stories more similar, but at least it wouldn't have that many plot holes and be half decent to watch
Write a book
True, but we wouldn't have the initiation progress
Does she ever change or develop as a character? I think it's worth considering that she doesn't ever seem to. No one does really, the one character who was even remotely interesting was the one eye'd kid who just dies the moment he's reintroduced.
She doesn't want to revolt until her parents get killed and she personally becomes aware of a plot to kill 16% of the population because the villain is comically evil
IIxIxIv what was her goal again btw? I don’t think I ever figured out what it was and she dies in the second book
I'm surprised you never bring up the fact that being detergent is apparently extremely rare, yet give it a few pages and 50% of people are. Because that totally makes sense.
I don't remember the Divergent books mentioning people becoming detergent. Must be extremely rare indeed.
C'mon, even [insert Character that had no relevance] was
It’s seen as rare by the general population but near the end of the book it is revealed that a lot of the detergents are coming from Abnegaytion and that detergents are just really good at hiding their detergent
I think the trick might be that being discovered as a divergent is extremely rare. Most divergent people are able to hide who they are.
"Detergent" ?
Video title: "the world building of divergent makes me vomit"
James: *doesn't vomit*
Me: "well that's impossible it doesn't make any sense"
*Yes*
I hate being lied to
His very soul threw up
Akira Kurusu if it makes you feel better I almost vomited watching this
Akira Kurusu ayyy a persona fan
IIRC, the factionless *_do_* serve as the laborers. I think it was brought up in either the beginning of the first book, or Allegiant, where they talk about the bus driver being a factionless.
**EDIT** Yes, the factionless are the laborers, on page 25 of Divergent, 2nd paragraph! I don't think the movie showed it though, and that part's very forgettable.
You'd think we'd see them, like, cleaning the factions etc though.
“The city of Chicago with a wall built around it and it’s citizens think it’s the rest of humanity”
...So Attack on Titan mixed with Hunger Games and Harry Potter?
nev luvsroses all such good series, yet divergent is pure garbage
I was gonna ask why Harry Potter, then realised that though I was being stupid, the books were even more ridiculous
Yea but worse
Why did they not go outside the walls
Yes, if you took the worst aspects of all those and mashed them together into a nonsensical pile.
I laugh at this, but I'm secretly afraid that my writing isn't much better.
Mood
I feel this....
But you have the decency to wait until you consider yourself more skilled.
If you consider yourself skilled in plot making and worldbuilding then writing should be the least of your worries.
A fantastically written story with a nonsensical plot and lousy worldbuilding is still trash.
IMGvillaSRC
Nonsensical plots, hmm, that reminds me of the
Pitch meetings:
ua-cam.com/play/PL--PgETgAz5FGoatB9KQzbnpv0bgZqU2l.html
(Except nr. 100, that is self referential, see some of the others before.)
Tris is Katniss without all the parts that make her an imperfect person and a compelling character with complex motivations and people to protect.
Yes.
I just realized their names literally rhyme
@@_stupidbro oh wow now I can't unsee that
Katniss in mockingjay was insufferable tho
@@luisgerardobujandalopez4994 It was like she lost everything that made her great in the previous two books. I'm glad she got it back when she killed Coin
The author wrote divergent in a couple of weeks over her winter college break and made something that people enjoyed (and made her rich). I don't enjoy the books but I have nothing but respect for the author.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS????? It's taken me ages to write about 5 choppy, rough chapters which are in need of drastic changes. I gotta respect her, but I find it laughable that she only took that long.
Makes sense
@@palanthas7063 Yeah it took her 50 days to write Divergent according to the Author. Doing that at 22 years old is impressive honestly. I'm sure she's writing much better stuff these days. At least I hope so lol.
@@starmorpheus could be exaggerated or leaving things out
Makes sense. TBF, there are people who make bank by making scat porn. Both involve people who only produce shit.
They lost me when they kept going on and on about how dangerous Divergents were, but never established WHY.
"Divergents must be eliminated."
"Ok. Why?"
"Because they are a threat."
"How?"
"Because they are divergent."
Oh, and how about the sudden introduction of "divergent detectors" in the second movie. Initially, they have to put each person through a convoluted testing process to determine what faction they are the best fit for. But in the second movie, which takes place immediately after the first, they suddenly have Walmart price scanners that they can use to perfectly identify what faction any person is within seconds.
Well in the books, Janine is the one who wants the Divergent eliminated. This is because she knows that once there's a high enough divergent population, the experiment they're in will end and the factions will be dissolved. Janine doesn't want the factions destroyed because she's managed to rise to the top of the power hierarchy and wants to keep the city the way it is. So she kills the divergent to prevent their being too many.
And I haven't seen the films, but the 'Divergent detectors' never existed in the books.
@@funkyfranx That already makes way more sense than the movies. The movies pretty much had zero explanation or motive for any of the plot.
And yeah, in the second movie they had a handheld scanner that immediately identified someone's faction, or whether that person was a divergent.
arent it self explanatory in the ending that janine wants to eliminate divergent because they would destroy the factioning system and by destroying the faction system means she doesnt get to be the supreme leader
@@funkyfranx But couldn't her just force the divergent into any faction or let them choose?
Seems pretty obvious that she is lying billy
The fact that I read every book when I was younger and literally remember jack shit really goes to show how bland these books were.
Same the only book I didn't read was four
I only remember the subplot with Amar & George being forbidden gay lovers- that says a lot about me and the books :/
@@burns.666 I don't even remember that. I remember Jack shit about those books
@@burns.666 I don’t even remember those characters whatsoever lmao.
I think the only clear parts I remember about this series was tris climbing a ferris wheel and her death. Man I skipped a day of school to finish the last book and just sobbed the whole day. Good times.
The "selfess ones who run the government"... "the people who value honesty above all else, and so run the Justice system"...
Sooooo, this book is a satire, right?
i know right lol
You are the type of person to defend screen rant or no bull shit if you liked a single video of theirs.
@@goosle Or it could've been a joke
@@goosle Still, though, why aren't the people who value justice running the government?
@@kyoza5069 it's called money, bribes, and pedophilia. In other words, I'm just a guy on the internet who doesnt bother voteing
almost every single chapter in Allegiant ends with Tris and Tobias fighting then making out. just saying
When I first read Allegiant I really didn’t like it or get it but the second time I read it, I didn’t actually mind it. I don’t think it is as good as The Hunger Games but unlike what people say, I don’t think it was trying to be a copy of it, just another YA dystopia sci-fi thing. But you are right, they kept on having the same fights over and over and it was just a bit exhausting.
Theirs is an inspirational love.
I can barely tell if this is a joke or not
I always found their relationship annoying because it felt like they got into an argument every 5 minutes, it just didn’t feel like a healthy relationship
@@ntfoperative9432 i can't imagine it's easy to have a healthy relationship in a dystopian world
What the hell does "genetically damaged" even mean? It seems like a eugenics oxymoron.
bh5496 it means plot device
Also, It'd be pretty good setup for bad case of kill-everybodyitis. Because history of race teaches us, those damages would smooth out reeaaaaally quickly.
well there is such a thing as an objectively damaged gene; Cystic fibrosis, huntingtons disease or Down's syndrome are all caused by genes put together in the wrong way. Cancer is also an example of genes getting fucked up from one generation to the next. Whatever the thing wrong with the people in these books are, I guess you'd classify it as a mental impairment, although a very light one since they still function at a pretty high level.
How is it an oxymoron? Gene damage is a real thing. Cancer is caused by gene damage and radiation exposure causes gene damage. It's not absurd.
@@lgbtqiarights A pretty shit plot device at that. A better way of introducing "gene damage" would be to create a scenario where something causes the genes to mutate and distort incrementally through each reproductive cycle where the gene essentially breaks down more and more as it passes down. This kind of shit is not hard to come up with so i don't know what the fuck the author if these books was thinking honestly.
It seems odd to have a whole section of society devoted to the justice system.
Yeah, I think the most confusing thing that kept me from understanding their little Hogwarts system is that there were three groups that all functioned under the same basic umbrella: one is lawyers and judges, one is military police and one "runs the government."
Me: What... is the government if it is not lawyers, judges and police? XD One branch of government is strictly judges, another is a congress of people whose younger careers are usually lawyers and soldiers, and the executive branch runs the military and the president is usually a lawyer or a soldier. The Queen of freakin' England is a veteran.
Book: Oh, the people who run the government are too spineless to also be veterans. Their only concern is spending hard earned resources on helping the poor.
Me: ... Is this book taking shots at the Left or something? Jimmy Carter was a WW2 naval veteran and Clinton and Obama were lawyers. Kennedy, Johnson? Both vets. And Roosevelt was our president throughout WW2... Who separates both law and military from "the government" in their worldbuilding? Is the government the one making all the cloths, manufacturing for everyone else? XD
@@Cityweaver I'd think real divisions would be:
National: Government, Justice (Judges and prosecutors), Energy, Security.
Academic: Science, technology, healthcare, education, defence lawyers.
Mercantile (Services): Retail, Media, Waste Disposal, Plumbing, Electricians, etc
Creators (Production): Factory workers, builders, crafters.
Gatherers: Farming, Recycling, resource gathering.
But I guess Divergent is more about basic preferences rather than economic groups.
Imagine the current system can actually still work in Chicago of Divergent.
I know! If they're honest, wouldn't it be way better if they were journalists? Just because the Erudite knows stuff doesn't mean they can't lie! And look, they do lie... Whoever came up with that is kicking themself now
It’s also weird because everyone can choose their faction.
Like imagine if the justice system wasn’t even by democracy or best choice but just by whoever decides to step up to the job
This series just generally left a bad taste in my mouth. When I was in college, I remember meeting a friend of a friend, and our conversation turning to a discussion on books. She recommended reading the Divergent series, and I told her I had, and mentioned I didn't find them very enjoyable. And suddenly, she chooses the Divergent, of all things in the world, to be an elitist literature prick about. She casually throws the comment in about how I probably only read romance novels, and perhaps something this deep wasn't my cup of tea. Nothing like being condescended to by a lit major who thinks Divergent peaked the dystopian genre.
Wow, if I found someone who read the book I liked and told me they didn't like it, I would probably be embarrassed and asked them on what lacking on my favourite books. Afterwards, I'll probably read the said books several times and never talked about it to that person ever again. It's just so shameful to be condescending just because you like something others don't.
a *lit major* oml
Let me guess, they think 1984 is “basic and overrated”
Oof
I had a friend who was and still is obsessed with divergent
Like, that’s legit the only book that person would read-
We grew apart because she was too much of an asshole, ignoring me one day and then pretending nothing happened another
I watched this video because I wanted to spite their taste in books lol-
@@yaboikungpowfuckfinger7697 I mean, 1984 is actually pretty basic and over rated.
Don't get me wrong, it's good, unlike stories like this, but if you take the book itself it's really not that impressive or groundbreaking apart from the fact it popularised the genre. Take it's world building for example, it's pretty basic, it works for what it's supposed to be (disinformation) but there's definitely better out there like Brave New World (which came out a decade and a half before and is imo better in almost every way)
To me, 1984 is the quintessential Dystopia and is the entry point into the genre, but as such, most of what it does isn't that impressive when comparing it to the rest of the genre outside of it's legacy, even if it's good, there's better.
When I first read the first book, I liked it because I didn't give much thought to it, but I do remember that in the back of the book, there was a short test to decide what faction you'd be apart of, and I got Divergent and I had a passing thought about how in the world it would be possible to get any other answer than Divergent because there was no way people would only have that one trait.
unless you're genetically engineered to solve one of these basic human vices: dishonesty, cowardice, selfishness, wrath, or ignorance
My worst fear is that one day, someone will make a video like this about my book.
The fact that you're consciously afraid of that is one step toward making your book _really_ good!
Write what you love, and trust your gut with the worldbuilding stuff--and by that I mean you should research whatever you feel like you need to, and you can stop when you feel like you've done enough.
I'm definitely not an expert, but that's my two cents :)
Same here
Be like Fallout writers and not Divergent writer
heed this mans advice then lmaooo
@@fica1137 Fallout 76 writers!?
also if I remember correctly from reading, when Tris is in training for Dauntless she tries things like chocolate cake and coffee for the first time. How would Chicago be importing cocoa and coffee and even obtaining sugar?
Wait but since tris was born into abnegation, aka the selfless faction, it would make since that she didn't indulge in sweets. I remember cristina joking abt how abnegation folks don't eat cuz they donate food to the poor or something like that. Also some ppl inside Chicago were aware of the outside world, like tris' mother who was sent as an experiment to Chicago, so they imported goods secretly I guess?
EnaZ _ maybe just amity grows it, new farming advances are mentioned
greenhouse? not the easiest thing to build from scratch but it's just glass and a heating element and the ability to open some windows
could easily salvage the majority of materials from in city
@@prcervi How advanced is the technology in this series? Problem is chocolate is awfully difficult to make. There's a reason that it was a food only reserved for royalty and it took so long to catch on in Europe. I suppose if they had grindstones driven by water it'd be possible to make it efficiently, but cacao pods must also be fermented and then rapidly dried, all of which makes it really costly to produce. Unless they have contact with the outside world it seems unlikely for them to have any chocolate at all due to the inefficiency.
Sugar beets grow in the U.S. Coco -- no. Only in lowland tropical climates with high humidity, so at best, it was traded for far, far away, or was grown in an extremely expensive greenhouse. Not that the farming system and the economy makes much sense, anyway. "Advanced technology" only covers so much author BS.
The series reads like a first draft, and that first draft is on wattpad, and it's in the fanfiction section.
I was in class when I read the "murder gene" line in the third book, I laughed so damn hard I was kicked out of class.
Demiclea it's spelled cliche
@@spookeylordzey8432 frick off damn
Flora A I'm just trying to help
Yeah Allegiant was a MESS. My friend who already read the series before me told me not to read it and I really regret not listening to her lol
Don't disrespect Wattpad like this
i love how having more than one personality trait makes you dangerous LIKE WHAT
Janine just spread that idea because if there was enough divergent the experiment would end and she wouldn't have power so she killed divergent
This makes me think of the first time I read the Maze Runner trilogy: the book just went “yeah solar flare brought a zombie virus to earth” and I said “no it didn’t”
The first maze runner book was awesome to me as a teenager. The rest of the trilogy and the prequel disappointed me so much. The intrigue and mystery of the situation was always interesting to me and would've been much better if it was never explained and left to the reader to come to their own conclusion. The next two gave such an underwhelming and stupid answer and turned into a cliche zombie apocalypse.
Yeah the first book was so good in my opinion it didn’t need a sequel let alone a trilogy the story and plot of the other two books were so damn stupid and don’t get me started on the prequels except for the one where they go over the project of the maze because that was actually interesting.
Harvey The Broad I think the prequels were fine. Even if you ultimately knew the ending, the stories they told were interesting in their own rights.
Except the flare virus was a biological weapon released for population control.
I thought it was like the solar flare led to mutations which created the virus
I was sure when I read the first book that the ultimate twist would be that everyone tests divergent, and it's something designed to make people cling intently to their chosen faction.
TheHopperUK I think that’s the underlying message of the books. But then again, I’ve only read Detergent and haven’t watched the movies
I believe in the books it turns out most people in the society are genetically damaged so their personalities are limited and 'divergent' people are just undamaged people. Which is really silly imo.:)
TheHopperUK really? I didn’t see that in the first book. Was it in Insurgent?
I think it's in Allegiant but full disclosure, I only read the first one too:)
Jane Walker Basically that’s what the people running the simulation tells them (Tris, Four, etc.) but they don’t buy it
This is literally post-apocalyptic Hogwarts or something.
Except that hogwarts makes more sense than this.
@@grapeabbas7043 and Hogwarts is fucking magic
Honestly when I first watched the movie I just applied Harry Potter logic to Divergent and ignores everythig that didn't make sence about the sorrting. I regret everything.
y e s
Ok, hear me out: Cyberpunk Hogwarts.
"Tris is only special, because she's a normal person"
Sounds like kind of an anti-twist to me, since the plot is clearly built around this idea. Which seems to be quite common in teen novels.
The jumping on and off trains as mean of transport does not make sense, along with the Dauntless quarters being just effing unsafe. There is even a line in one of the books about how they never bothered to use sanitizer when sticking the stupid needles with serums into themselves (because blood poisoning is SO DAUNTLESS).
Military is dangerous, but no military ever would put their soldiers into needless risk for lolz. If just for the fact it would be ineffective training new and new recruits to have them die if they slip jumping off a train.
Also, why are the empty trains randomly running around?
"Cough cough" Spartan children
Yeah, why are those trains just used for some stupid training exercise instead of, oh I don't know, something useful like public transportation, *their original purpose?*
@@thegoodmudkip3652 I figured that the public didn't need the transportation because their jobs are where they live pretty much? I only watched the movies. So really, idk.
THE TRAIN PART BOTHERED ME FOREVER WHATS THEIR FUCKEN PURPOSE
@@thegoodmudkip3652 also who drives the train? And why they waste the energy on it
I just realized this, but wouldn't a divergent be sorted under factionless? Like they don't fit into any faction, so that would make them factionless.
This literally just occurred to me too
Technically the factionless doesn’t fit at all with any category, divergent fits into any of them. So factionless doesn’t have any and divergent has all
Actually it is said in the book that the majority of divergents are in factionless because of what you said.
yup divergents if not killed did live as factionless
Technically factionless is belonging to no faction, while divergent is meeting the requirements for EVERY faction
we interrupt this rip off of the hunger games to bring you: the sorting hat from harry potter during the choosing ceremony 💀
OMG. Everyone compares this to the Hinger games. And I love the hunger games but it is dystopian books. They all have sort of the same feel. But Divergent is awesome and people just get mad when one of the best characters dies.
They’re completely nothing like each other
@@celtictarotreadings333 expect for when they sort you into groups that don’t have any real differences with a method that doesn’t make sense
Hey! We have the same name. You’re the 4th person I’ve found on UA-cam named Bryn.
@@BarginsGalore no, they're very different, im not a Harry Potter fan, but the sorting hat choose based on your attributes and qualities, your thoughts, your desires, what you are trying to achieve, not just one shit personality trait, the hat even said "difficult... very difficult" when he was choosing Harry's house, meaning that he have attributes of different houses, it makes a lot more sense than divergent
If you’re divergent you’re supposed to have a complex personality with multiple character traits.
SO TELL ME WHY TRIS IS LIKE EVERY OTHER QUIRKY MAIN CHARACTER
because having multiple character traits doesn't make you interesting. it just makes you less of a stock character. like this is a world where most people are ONLY peaceful or ONLY honest. they literally do not have a personality beyond that. they are like npcs.
@@ishathakor Let's just be thankful the average Dauntless doesn't yell "Stop! You've broken the law!" every time they see someone.
"The only thing that keeps groups of people from boning eachother is geography"
Lol
It's funny because it's true.
Cockblocked by mountains
Nothing can cockblock humanity if given enough time.
Mountains, lakes, ravines, the fucking Pacific ocean, you name it we cross it
I'm telling I keep telling people I'm in a geography class and they switch off
Lmao
Fun fact: Veronica Roth didn't realize it was a dystopia when she started writing it. The faction system sounded great to her.
Wat
Thats true?
Please give us a source
@Abserd O lmao sexist tho
Is this a joke or for real?
I actually read the first two Divergent books back in 7th grade (I'm 16 now), and I liked them at the time. I think the main problem is I didn't realize there was so much better stuff out there than the new age "dystopian" novels marketed so heavily to teens. I thought it was either those, a couple fantasy options, classic literature, or bust. Smaller authors need to get more exposure at school libraries.
But even when I was 13 I realized Allegiant as well as the movies were awful lmao
Same for everything
I think the length of time between when the first two books and the third book came out also matters. I remember reading the first two books in middle school and enjoying them; they weren't remarkable or amazing, but they were good for YA fiction. But Allegiant made me mad. It was so terrible that after certain parts of the book I considered abandoning the darn thing altogether.
I think that either
A. I was different enough of a person between 7th grade and 9th grade that I could see flaws in the writing that were already there, or
B. Veronica Roth was so desperate for the money a full trilogy would provide that she wrote anything and everything, no matter how terrible it was. (This was what I thought at the time while reading the book for the first time.)
Honestly, I liked where the Divergent series ended in the second book. It left enough mystery to keep you wondering, yet wrapped everything up decently enough that it didn't feel like a waste of time. Then the third book came along and it was so mind-numbingly dumb that now the whole series is ruined for me. I haven't even seen the movies, that's how mad Allegiant made me XD
@@Sours56 I agree with your point about time between releases, by the time Allegiant came out I had forgotten almost everything that happened in Insurgent, and I just found Allegiant to be a boring mess, it didn't interest me enough to motivate me to read Insurgent again. I only finished reading Allegiant to get closure.
@@emilionavarrete5169 Same, I read Allegiant to see how everything ended. For me one of the biggest problems was that the characters went from acting like mature adults to acting like middle schoolers. I vividly remember one portion of the book told from Tobias' perspective where he said "I will not have my emotions played with. I am not a child" or something to that effect and I had to close the book for a bit to process how terrible that line was. There was also the fact that Tris went from "I just want to live in peace and fit in and have my family and friends be happy and safe" in the first two books to "Oh we just finished throwing over one bad regime but here's another government minding their own business! Time to fight them and take control of their stuff! I'm going to see them as evil right away even though I don't know who they are yet!"
The whole thing was a mess. When 9th grader me can read a YA novel with characters older than I was at the time and feel more mature than them, it's bad writing.
@@Sours56 Absolutely on point.
one of my favorite dystopian city tropes is literally just being in the ruins of Chicago. like, it’s already underfunded, filled with corrupt politicians, patrolled by a militaristic police force. it’s about as close as a dystopian city can get
So basically the entirety of America?
the way i read this whole series in 2014 and yet remember almost none of it now, the lack of impact
Same
I'm 14 now and read the first two last year and didn't remember the characters' name until I saw this video.
Lol same
i forgot almost everything about the book like a week after i finished it, it’s such a forgettable series
I read the first book as a teen and thought it was a fun read. The second book was meh and I hardly remembered anything of it. And I couldnt even get a quarter of the way through the third book. The switching perspectives were so confusing because that author can literally only write in one voice. And it was so distracting I completely lost track of the plot and just had to give up out of boredom lmao
As much as I can look back at this series and cringe, it was also a turning point in how I behaved around others. I was shy and stuck only to books in middle school, when I read the series but wanted to be more like Tris. To be brave. And I did! I became more outgoing, I became courageous and outspoken. Were these well written and well constructed? No. But it was core in my development as a person, so it’ll always have a special place in my heart. Just because a piece of art isn’t... good, you can still appreciate it. That’s what it’s for, to take in and enjoy.
Very well said! I tip my hat to you.
Niv 'Mohnd I never thought a comment would make me physically shudder. I tip MY hat to you.
Well at least you improved from acting like a fictional character, when I do that people look at me weird lmao
To me there is nothing wrong with liking a piece of art that is objectively bad. However, I believe that it is vitally important as a consumer of art that we recognize high quality and draw attention to low quality art. To use your example of finding inspiration in a character, it did not have to be this specific character in this specific story to inspire you. It could have been a better written character in a better written story to have the same effect, or even a worse character in a worse story. The point is that we as consumers need to separate our enjoyment as a measure of quality of media and focus on the details in the pursuit of better art for better enjoyment.
I actually had that experience with a character from a fantasy series. I realized how similar I am to that character and saw her develop from being rather shy to becoming more outspoken. So I thought to myself, hey, why dont you just try to act a little more differently around people and try to dare a little more and it really worked.
All around the characters’ strenght development was more about talking rather than fighting so it was easier to connect to her while Tris felt kinda out of my league concerning the bravery part, but its great how it worked for you!
Hunger games was good because like other dystopias that came before it, it was social commentary. The only thing I can think of that divergent is social commentary for is middle school cliques. One of the things that annoys me the most about divergent is how it made a lot of people think that the dystopia genre was just for YA romance instead of social commentary
I don't get how hunger games is social commentary. Its too fantastical and absurd.
@@icecreamhero2375 At least in the first book (imo the other two were money-grubbing trash), there was definitely a commentary on the commercialization of human suffering for the entertainment of the rich.
@@briannakaldor-mair9958 I really didn't see it.
@@briannakaldor-mair9958 ua-cam.com/video/u_Gkf6EvAh0/v-deo.html
@@icecreamhero2375 It's a lot less absurd than something like 1984, and no one complains about that not applying to real life. To name a few examples:
- It highly accurately portrays PTSD in both Katniss and Peeta
- It displays the use of propaganda and how ridiculous and inaccurate it is, even when on the side of the good guys
- It concludes that President Coin, a "benevolent" authoritarian leader, is effectively burdened by the same problems as Snow
- The obvious point @Briana Kaldor-Mair made about the commodification of human life and the disconnect in rich societies from the resource-producing Districts
- Just, a whole lot of implications about implicit bias and racism
And that's just to name some things. It's an extremely well-done book, and the fact that the movies chose to primarily focus on the love triangle will forever annoy me.
There actually is a line in the first book that mentions how the factionless do "the hard labor nobody else wants to do" so I think you're meant to infer that the factionless are the low-skilled laborers and things. Not that I blame you for missing this, it's literally one line
We live in a society
rise up gamers......sloank yuor gang weed
I doubt that
Criminals are just a portion of the population and commit 100% of crimes so that makes some sense
damn, it really do be like that sometimes 😫👊💯💯
Me: I like this series
James: No you don't
Me: yeah I don't
Literally
Yep
I liked the first book, but now I understand why the rest of it was so forgettable. I forgot the male protag's name until I went through the comments
I liked it when I first read it. I got bored af after that
I liked the first one but the more I read the other books the more I got so confused. I also hated the ending
We had to study the movie in school as if it were some kind of masterpiece.
I'm not joking, it was stupid, everyone hated it.
Sounds as bad as the Modern Lit. unit we did on The Fault in Our Stars. I considered post-birth abortion of myself and the teacher that thought this was great literature several times.
Same here, but with "to all the boys i've loved before". It was the first time that I saw it and I hated inmediatly.
Why did you study it? What were the actual learning objectives? Were you looking at the themes or the characters or the structure? Or was it just a 'class will study a book for one half term' syllabus entry and the teacher randomly picked Divergent to appeal to the young folk.
that sound like torture
my class did the same thing except i was the only one who hated it xD
I read these somewhere between the age of 12-14. When I read about the factions, I just instantly assumed “oh it’s like the houses in Harry Potter” which would probably make more sense as you know, instead of it being their whole personality it was their main trait.
Then the series went on to DNA. Pretty sure if they had damaged DNA, the whole race would just die...
Meh DNA damage doesn’t mean death your DNA is damaged slightly every time a cell divides that’s why you decline as you get older
Genetic engineering is a real thing!!
Was expecting typical writing critiques but homeboy really went in on all the sciences, hot damn
He always does lol
Basic understanding of some simple concepts isn’t exactly going in. Especially as far as diet goes. He’s way off.
Also when they revealed that one of the characters was lesbian (? lgbt) minutes before she died 🙄🙄 wow thanks
Ikr I was kinda angry
You’re welcome
Lol really?
*J.K Rowling wants to know your location*
Wait. There was a lesbian? I literally remember nothing from these books😭😂
"Because 4 sounds stupid."
Umbrella Academy: Lies. Lies I say.
i feel like even mentioning The Umbrella Academy while talking about a series this bad should be illegal.
You can get away with a lot when your story is actually good
who's 4 again? i forgot
@@duckman5494 Klaus!
Watched a few episodes of Umbrella academy, dropped it got bored. I especially dislike Ellie/Elliot Page. Can someone tell me why some think it's good?
The worldbuilding behind this series sounds like one of those things where the more you think about it, the more insane and nonsensical it becomes.
Buildings, pillars, fences: exist
Dauntless: C L I M B
They use fricking Odm gear to get over the wall I swear lmao
@@Thatdistantmirage lmaooo i love the attack on titan reference 😝🙌
I never really understood how someone being “divergent” was such a terrible thing. How is it so rare for people to fit into more than one kind of faction? Are these people not human?
I guess it comes to percentage, your faction probably is your main trait and divergents have equal percentage of traits or something similar
Jeanine wants the divergents dead because if there’s too many of them, the Chicago experiment and the faction system will be dissolved, stripping her of her power.
@@EmyN they are the avatar 😂
its dumb as shit, nobody has one personality trait, even if a certain one is more dominant. it’s not psychologically possible to only exhibit one adjective while NOT simultaneously showcasing another or using different mannerisms.
especially since shit like kindness,selflessness, honesty ect usually correspond. same with bravery often so and being smart. it’s a really really crappy way of world building that can’t even happy in any universe god it’s awful.
@@kiseee1774 Not to mention what is dominant may change from day to day as well, especially if some of the differentiating traits are neck to neck
“that’s imPOSsiBLe, THat doesN’T MAKE aNy sEnSE”
Haley Wagner ahahaahhaha
*No*
This is outrageous! It's unfair!
Haley Wagner Those were basically my words throughout Allegiant.
What bothers me the most is the factionless are a clear jab at blue collar workers, most of the factions are based of college and school cliques and stereotypes yet in the book it is mention that factionsless were “garbage men and construction workers” when I read a book I don’t want to feel like I’m a lesser person just because I didn’t go to college lol because that’s clearly what Veronica Ruth is mocking
ah yes the factions of cancer, irrigation, vanity, want-less and araldite
Ballard, Indiana , Virginia ,Avenue and wrenched
Yes, in the books Detergent, Insurance, and Allergy
Isn't it obvious why the outcast faction only has adults? Because theyre unimportant therefore no need to make them youthful and sexualize their characters for YA.
lol
Except like he said in Insurgent, when they were important for 2 seconds and they were made into hot supermodels
They become important and with children later, but I see what you mean
P
that's actually true thooo
I'm assuming you haven't read the books or watched the movies (good on you actually lol) but the factionless are important in later books, and, as the video pointed out, they are sexualized quite a bit in the movies, or at the very least, made young and fuckable.
This series lost me when it established genetic damage as the cause of the societal collapse and the factioning. That struck me as *so* deus-ex-machina.
Roth had a great opportunity to use the factions as a metaphor for algorithms, employers, the justice system and the mental health system trying to force us into cookie-cutter personality types. But no, she had to take the lazy way out and make it all about your genes.
Or political tribalism (perhaps algorithms being one cause?) Would've been soooooo relevant and really insightful if done well!
Eugenics bruh
PaninaroAurora (I know this comment is old, sorry. Lol) When he was describing the overall concept of the series, especially the factionless, I thought it sounded like something that would really OBVIOUSLY go in that direction. I wouldn’t even call it “bad worldbuilding” so much as “worldbuilding for the wrong reason” or “wasted opportunity.” Modern society DOES expect kids to start fitting into really rigid roles (with things like standardized testing and punishing kids for relatively harmless behaviors that stem from mental illnesses or autism) and punish people who are simply not as capable of the specific kind of work that’s expected from them, and it would be pretty cool for YA dystopian fiction to teach teens that there’s nothing inherently wrong with you if you don’t quite fit the mold and that the amount you produce for a system that doesn’t care about you doesn’t determine your worth. Some other comments have mentioned that it’s implied the “menial labor” is assigned to the factionless and they’re given less as a result, which if true is kind of a mirror of reality that could be used for that commentary.
Well, the mental health system can describe people by type, and that's not something you can argue against. You really think serial killers don't share personality traits? Yea, they do. And that's how we can classify them. Anybody who says "PEOPLE DON'T FIT INTO CATEGORIES" is stupid, and doesn't understand the function of psychology.
The series lost me halfway through the second book. After Divergent (Which is ok) the books get really boring and uninteresting.
Everyone in Dauntless seems like one of those “I’ll have you know I was top of my class at Navy seals!” people.
Thing that annoyed me: Amity is situated outside of the walls right? Then how the hell did they 1.) never think about going further beyond their grounds, investigate the area, ... 2.) After the message was spread, why couldn't amity just run? The other factions were held back at the walls, but amity is outside, no one can stop them so why ain't they running?
The Amity drug themselves to kill any thoughts of violence or conflict (at least in the books), so maybe their drugs kill curiousity too.
Wasserrübenvergilbungsvirus they have drugs?? Holy shit I’ve only read the first book. Is this explained in Insurgent and Allegiance?
Wasserrübenvergilbungsvirus that actually is worst. Think about it. They tested in to the faction. They chose to be in that faction and now choose to drug themselves to stay in the faction because..... there is no logic here. Hold on what am I saying of course there isn’t.
when the darkness is bigger than the light They all eat bread with serum in it that makes them passive, which wouldn’t foster that type of rebellion. Also, plenty of Amity have tried it, and have their memories erased when they do.
Bc drug bread 🥖
I love that there are people like this. I’ve been trying my hand at writing, and knowing there may be someone who rakes over my creation with such a fine-toothed comb is surprisingly heartening. It makes me want to be a better writer.
I agree with you. The act of writing is because we want people to read it. Otherwise we'd just fantasize with the idea and not tell anyone else. Seeing someone willing to put so much thought into something you created is one of the things that drives my own writing.
Ikr
Kawaīneko Abrahams same lol
Why is it always the bad books that have the coolest covers?
The authors waste their (because of that) creative potential/time on the covers?
Those covers may be flashy and fancy but you can see there is Nothing beneath
Because they spend all their money on the cover duhh
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, amirite?
I’d recommend the Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman. It’s a great series that has amazing cover art