mme_hardy | Thank Heaven, it's not just me!

I read the first volume of Divergent --I won't be reading the second, the first was very silly -- and my visceral reaction to the premise was just echoed in Vanity Fair.

Right off the bat, something is wrong with Divergent, the new teen action film based on the popular Y.A. book series. The people of the story, who live in a dystopian future Chicago, have split themselves up into five rigidly maintained factions, each with its own roles and philosophies: Abnegation (the selfless administrators), Dauntless (the protectors), Candor (the truth-tellers), Erudite (the intellectuals), and Amity (the placid farmers). Why are three of those names nouns and two adjectives? Couldn’t the smart faction be called Erudition, and the warrior group be called something like, I dunno, Bravery? It doesn’t make sense!

What he said. Threw me clean out of the book for five minutes or so while I tried to come up with a consistent set of names. Apparently parallelism was beaten into me with a rod of adamantium.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

recessional

On the other hand, when I was actually in the target demographic I'd've eaten Divergent-verse up with a SPOON and really not given a damn about things like that.

nestra

I enjoyed the first one well enough. The second started to get bogged down in exposition, and the third one was crap. Serious structural flaws.

movingfinger

"Abnegation" lasts until the first graft/embezzlement scandal.

ankaret

I didn't like the random, weird body policing - seriously, the main villain has done awful things to two-fifths of the city and the narrative stops to make the point that she has a sedentary physique and doesn't moisturise her knees often enough? - and I thought the pacing was off. I did like the long training montage section in the middle, which I would have LOVED when I was fourteen, and probably found intensely helpful in surviving to grow up, and I'll give the author a shot if she starts another series.

nineveh_uk

Why would anyone want to moisturise their knees? The whole point of knees is that one pays them zero attention, and when they do flake you can pick them.

Or that might just be me. My knees are admittedly covered with the legacy of childhood grazes.

caulkhead

Moisturising your knees is a Thing now? Yeah, think I'll file it under Too Much Trouble.

muccamukk

Haven't read it, but will probably seen the movie at some point.

I don't have a problem with the lack of uniformity, because English, but I'm now wondering if anyone's done fic as to WHY there's three nouns and two adjectives? Is it symbolic? Did the terms grow up out of different places or at different times? We may have a random language, but it's usually random for a reason, even if it's a silly one.

sara

I want to know why they imagine these are socio-economically functional groups in any way...except that I really don't want to know that at all because the answer will probably make me make unreasonable noises.