If you’re a regular reader of BBGT, you probably have noticed how many quotes from books like Fifty Shades of Grey or Bared to You could easily be mistaken for a horror novel if taken out of context. So why not play a game where we take quotes completely out of context and guess whether or not it belongs to the horror or romance genre!
Or
ROUND 1
1) “Whoa. Monster cock.”
2) “We have to be friends. I won’t take no for an answer.”
3) “Why aren’t you eating me?”
4) “I recreated your room based on the photo I took of you sleeping.”
5) “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy!”
Post your answers below, and I’ll reveal all next week!
Last week, Tris passed Dauntless initiation and then used a handy list to reveal evil plots that are evil:
One: Colored serum contains transmitters.
Two: Transmitters connect the mind to a simulation program.
Three: Erudite developed the serum.
Four: Eric and Max are working with the Erudite.
[...]
But I do know how Erudite will get us to fight.
Chapter 33
Tris tries to get Four alone so she can tell him she has an important list she wants to show him, but things are crazy today after initiation. Before she can get to him, the evil plan has already been put into motion.
I wake to squeaking mattresses and shuffling feet. It’s too dark for me to see clearly, but as my eyes adjust, I see that Christina is tying her shoelaces. I open my mouth to ask her what she’s doing, but then I notice that across from me, Will is putting on a shirt. Everyone is awake, but everyone is silent.
“Christina,” I hiss. She doesn’t look at me, so I grab her shoulder and shake it. “Christina!”
She just keeps tying her shoelaces.
Tris quickly realizes that all the other initiates are basically just sleepwalkers at this point.
All the initiates fall into a line when they finish dressing.
I’m glad to know that a priority for the People Behind this Evil Plan is to ensure that everyone is appropriately dressed before carrying out whatever their sinister biddings are. Kudos to whoever the simulation programmer was on this one, there wasn’t a stone unturned here. They even remembered to tie their shoes! I think Christina even managed to put some eyeliner on probably.
Tris tries her hardest to blend in and do things like walk in unison with everyone else.
I pick up a gun and a holster and a belt, copying Will, who is directly in front of me. I try to match his movements, but I can’t predict what he’s going to do, so I end up fumbling more than I’d like to. I grit my teeth. I just have to trust that no one is watching me.
This really surprises me given I’m sure Tris has surely aroused suspicion what with all her deleted footage and amazing fear landscape skills. I would think if there was even a whiff of divergence on someone they’d keep an eye on them when their big plan is finally being put in action. [Matthew says: Not to spoil anything, but when this does get officially revealed to the antagonist tomorrow, they're basically like, "Uh, yes. We knew."]
I can’t wage war against Abnegation, against my family. I would rather die. My fear landscape proved that. My list of options narrows, and I see the path I must take. I will pretend long enough to get to the Abnegation sector of the city. I will save my family. And whatever happens after that doesn’t matter. A blanket of calm settles over me.
I didn’t realize that her fear landscape symbolized waging war on all of Abnegation. It’s pretty amazing that Tris had that kind of foresight! It must be because she’s divergent as fuck. Oh, in case you were wondering, her being divergent as fuck might also be the reason she’s not currently being mind controlled. BUH WUHHHH!?!?
I focus on matching my rhythm to his as I reach the top of the stairs, passing another Dauntless leader. Now I know who the Dauntless leaders are, because they are the only people who are awake.
Well, not the only people. I must be awake because I am Divergent.
I really want to know if anyone reading this book was like, “Omg I wasn’t sure why Tris was still aware of her surroundings! I thought it was maybe because of something she ate earlier, but it’s the whole being Divergent thing after all!”
[Matthew says: And with that, it’s time for the long-awaited “Matthew has been dying to explain why this ending is total bullshit that contradicts the entire premise of the book”! (Not a regular feature.) So you’ve probably noticed that I kept dropping hints (or even explicit criticisms) that the plot twist/climax directly contradicts the Faction system, which, as you might have gathered, is sort of the whole book. HERE IS WHY. The entire point of the Faction system is that people CHOOSE their faction. That people CHOOSE to fall under one of these types, regardless of what their test results say. CHOICE. It’s even right there on the cover:
It’s right there.
So if your Faction is a personal choice based on how you feel within your heart of hearts or whatever, then how come suddenly it’s a hard, scientifically-defined quality of a person? We’ve brought in mind-control drugs that don’t work on people who are Divergent and don’t fit into one of the Factions, and I don’t know if you know this, but chemicals tend to react independently of anyone’s personal feelings about them. There’s no way faction can be both a choice and a scientific phenomenon – these two things are mutually exclusive. Except that’s exactly the climax we’ve been given.
To be fair, there’s sort of a counterargument that, hey, maybe the drugs work on the weak-minded or something. People choose to buy into an optional philosophy and commit to it so hard that that is what the drug is interacting with. Maybe there’s no conformity enzymes or whatever in Divergent people for the drug to interact with. But these are so many ifs propping up this suspension bridge of disbelief that it’s too flimsy to take seriously. I don’t think a story could contradict its main premise more thoroughly if Romeo and Juliet broke up because shit was just getting too crazy.]
Tris manages to find Four and realizes that he also is not being mind controlled.
My entire body is alive with energy. I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. He is awake. I was right.
I actually really liked that they were in this together and made a team. One thing I will say is that their love story makes more sense than a lot of the ones we read here. They come from such a similar past and they share the whole Divergent thing, and right now they’re a team.
The Dauntless are taken to the Abnegation compound (or whatever it’s called) and start shooting everyone. It’s actually really horrible. [Matthew says: It's a good thing I had that other joke/criticism in my back pocket this whole time, because OOF. This chapter is rough.] Tris and Four try to blend in while figuring out how to save some Abnegations. But Eric shows up.
“They really can’t see us? Or hear us?” a female voice asks.
“Oh, they can see and hear. They just aren’t processing what they see and hear the same way,” says Eric. “They receive commands from our computers in the transmitters we injected them with…” At this, he presses his fingers to the injection site to show the woman where it is. Stay still, I tell myself. Still, still, still. “…and carry them out seamlessly.”
Buy one of our mind-controlled humans today for the low price of $99.99! Come on down to Eric’s Used People store now!
Eric shifts a step to the side and leans close to Tobias’s face, grinning.
“Now, this is a happy sight,” he says. “The legendary Four. No one’s going to remember that I came in second now, are they? No one’s going to ask me, ‘What was it like to train with the guy who has only four fears?’”
Was that really a question that people were keen to ask? Given most of these fears would never come up in training, it doesn’t seem like it would be particularly different than training with anyone else. It’s not like he has super strength or can shoot lasers from his eyes. Then people might have questions.
He draws his gun and points it at Tobias’s right temple. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my skull. He can’t shoot; he wouldn’t. Eric tilts his head. “Think anyone would notice if he accidentally got shot?”
The other woman is like, “Sure, why not?” Tris puts a stop to this by putting her gun to Eric’s head.
“You won’t shoot me,” Eric replies.
“Interesting theory,” I say. But I can’t murder him; I can’t. I grit my teeth and shift my arm down, firing at Eric’s foot. He screams and grabs his foot with both hands.
Why the fuck can’t Tris murder Eric? It seems like she’s only unable to do this so he’ll still be a character later on because Roth was too lazy to write another villain. [Matthew says: Honestly, at least she's saving the villain with some character rather than the villain who is the antimatter of character.]
Tris and Four run! And are immediately apprehended.
“Divergent rebels,” Eric says, standing on one foot. His face is a sickly white. “Surrender your weapons.”
THAT IS WHY YOU ALWAYS MURDER THE BAD GUY WHEN YOU CAN, TRIS!
Question: What were some of the most frustrating times the good guy had a chance to kill the bad guy and didn’t take it because Stupid Reason?
Previously, people who can be described with multiple adjectives were captured by people who are only one adjective, because their many adjectives were ruining their plan to kill off more people who are only one different adjective. [Ariel says: I hate to be a downer, but technically Tris and Four can be narrowed down to one adjective too: Divergent.]
Chapter 34
Tris and Fourbias (note: not canon) [Ariel says: But it has just officially become BBGT canon, which is even better. Just like Beautiful Cannibals.] are taken to Janine, who is the evil villain by virtue of… because…
“Divergent rebels!”
Really? How are they rebelling? What are they rebelling against? Not being controlled by mind-control drugs? That’s hardly their fault, really. So the conflict is that people who chose to be one way are using people who chose to be a different way to kill people who chose to be a third way, and the “rebels” with the most agency here are the ones who happened to be born a certain way?
Not that this wouldn’t be a good metaphor for the arbitrariness of human conflict if the protagonists didn’t baselessly label everyone they met too.
[Janine] probably wears the glasses out of vanity rather than necessity, because she thinks they make her look smarter. [Ariel says: My note in the book simply reads, "Janine was just angry that there wasn't a hipster faction she could belong to.]
Except I hate all of these characters. It’s hard to find perfect gifs sometimes.
“You,” she says, pointing at me. “I expected. All the trouble with your aptitude test results made me suspicious from the beginning.”
Everybody follow Captain Obvious aboard the S.S. No Shit!
Amazingly enough, Janine is surprised to see that Four is Divergent, because his “test results, initiation simulations,” and “everything” had “checked out”. Gee, Janine, those do sound like pretty stringent ways to check for subjective traits. [Ariel says: I imagine the faction system is essentially the equivalent of our current education system. Every so often someone comes out and is like, "I have the solution. Why don't we put MORE standardised tests out there. This time, though, let's ask kids if they'd choose a knife or cheese! The results to these kinds of rigorous testing are concrete and indisputable.]
Janine explains her evil plan, because that’s what evil villains do and there is literally nothing more to her character than this.
“It perplexed me that the Divergent were immune to the [mind-control] serum that I developed”
OH, REALLY? YOU DON’T SAY?
“Luckily, I have another batch to test.”
Why fucking not.
Janine explains her evil plan to kill off the “self-righteous” Abnegation “who reject wealth and advancement” in order to create a new government “in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity”. With magic, I guess. Luckily for my head-to-head-banged-on-the-table ratio for this chapter, Tris also thinks about this evil plan for more than four seconds.
“At whose expense?” I ask [...] “All that wealth… doesn’t come from nowhere.”
“Currently, the factionless are a drain on our resources,” Jeanine replies.
Um, the factionless are your working class. If you get rid of them, you have no laborers. Is this antagonist for real? I can’t take a villain seriously if their evil plan has zero grasp on basic economics. [Ariel says: The only resources we've ever seen them consume are the home-made muffins baked by Abnegation, so I guess Janine is just really fucking angry that she hasn't gotten any.]
Four/Tobias and Janine exchange quips over the nature of good and evil. Tris just sort of stands there. Which would be alright if the characters weren’t quite so literally good and evil, so we get dry…
“If you could control your temper [...] you would not be in this situation to begin with, Tobias.”
“I’m in this situation because you put me here,” he snaps, “The second you orchestrated an attack against innocent people.”
Stilted…
“I would expect Marcus’s son to understand that not all those people are innocent.” [...]
“At least his evil didn’t involve the widespread manipulation [and] systematic murder of every political leader we have.”
…Basically:
Divergent suddenly realizes that the book is 81% over and they haven’t had a single sentence establishing the main antagonist’s character yet, so it shrugs and makes the best of it:
She is more machine than maniac. She sees problems and forms solutions based on the data she collects.
“This character is like a machine” is author for “I totally forgot to do this ‘character’ thing”.
Janine prepares the MacGuffin 2.0 to use on Four, but for Tris…
“You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting.”
Four suddenly attacks and strangles Jeanine, because the most effective way to get out of this situation is definitely a very slow way to kill someone. He’s pulled off of her by Dauntless guards (Tris explains that she doesn’t know if they’re mind-controlled or just evil, which would be fair if it weren’t far too late for me to care) and then successfully drugged. [Ariel says: Or they're option 3 which is that they're insanely jealous of Fourbias just like Eric.]
“The advantage to this version of the simulation,” [Janine says,] “is that he can act independently, and is therefore far more effective than a mindless soldier.”
Fuck this. Divergent is just pulling together random words together that sound sort of like explanations.
Anyway, we’ve pretty thoroughly established that Janine’s character is arbitrary evil villain who is evil, so because she literally just said that this scene would end with Tris being killed, her next move is to…
SHE LETS TRIS LIVE.
“And take her to room B13.”
Even though she 1) literally just said she was going to kill Tris now, like right now, 2) has no reason to keep Tris alive, 3) has a lot of good reasons to kill Tris now, because she’s apparently dangerous and this is the middle of Janine’s important evil plan that Tris would definitely try to stop if she happened to not be captured suddenly, and 4) SHE LITERALLY JUST SAID SHE WAS GOING TO KILL TRIS. WHY WOULD YOU NOT DO THAT NOW.
So we can all expect this scene in the next two weeks.
Question: Come up with Janine’s evil character traits! Because Divergent didn’t.
Back at work, Eva feels so different but no one else knows her life has changed! This sentiment alone isn’t laughable, it’s of course how Day chooses to express it.
Who knew how much saying a few words and slipping on a ring of metal could change a person’s perception of themselves?
I wasn’t just Eva, the New York newbie trying to make it on her own in the big city with her best friend. I was a mogul’s wife. I had a whole new set of responsibilities and expectations. Just thinking about it intimidated me.
“My life used to be like one shitty sitcom, but now it’s like a shitty drama!” It’s also just pretty pathetic how Eva now defines herself by who her husband is and nothing about herself, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected more.
Eva’s day is going great until she gets an angry phone call from Cary who is furious that he hasn’t been featured in this book much at all. [Matthew says: I think becoming the character who has so thoroughly stopped being important to the plot that he's become the guy who Googles things is the new never finding out what happened to Jose.]
“Mark Garrity’s office,” I answered. “Eva Tramell—”
“—needs an ass-kicking,” Cary finished. “I can’t remember the last time I was this mad at you.”
I frowned, my stomach tightening. “Cary, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not going to talk about important shit on the phone, Eva, unlike some people I know. I’ll meet you for lunch. And just so you’re aware, I turned down a go-see this afternoon to set you straight, because that’s what friends do,” he said angrily. “They make time in their schedule to talk about things that matter. They don’t leave cutesy voice-mail messages and think that handles it!”
Cary is referring to the voicemail Eva left him before going away with Gideon where she asked if Cary would move in with them. That was a pretty shitty thing of Eva to do, especially since she hasn’t let Cary be in the plot at all lately.
He made a rough sound. “You fucking piss me off, Eva.”
“Yeah, well, I’m good at pissing people off, if you haven’t noticed, but I hate when I do it to you.” I sighed. “It’s going to drive me nuts, Cary, until we can work it out. I need us solid, you know that.”
“You haven’t acted like it matters lately,” he said gruffly. “I’m an afterthought and that fucking hurts.”
I feel like “afterthought” is a nice way of putting it. I think I could count on one hand the number of times Cary has been in a chapter of Entwined with You?
Now it’s time for Day to emphasise what a ripoff of Fifty Shades this is by having Gideon and Eva send nearly identical notes to the ones Ana and Christian sent each other after getting married.
MY GORGEOUS, SEXY WIFE,
I NEVER STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU.
YOURS,
X
Dark and Dangerous,
I’m madly in love with you.
Your ball and chain,
Mrs. X
Oh my god, how annoying is the “X” signature? Also why does Eva have to sign hers with “Mrs.” but Gideon’s is just “X”? Oh right, because her whole sense of self is now tied to being his wife. Gotcha.
Before going to lunch with Cary, Eva makes plans with Corinne’s husband for that evening. I hope he just says sassy things about everyone and calls it a night. [Matthew says: Fucking why? Between this guy and Brett, why does Eva keep penciling in the most socially awkward dinner dates on her calendar?]
At lunch, Cary reveals that he’s known what was going on all along. Well, not the Gideon-murdered-Nathan part, but the other stuff.
“If you think,” he began, “that being sober and working steadily broke my bullshit meter, now you know better. I knew you were nailing Cross again from the moment you started back up.”
Biting into my taco, I shot him a skeptical look.
“Eva honey, don’t you think that if there were another man in New York who could bang it out all night like Cross, I would’ve found him by now?”
I coughed and nearly spit out my food.
“No one’s lucky enough to find two guys like that in a row,” he drawled. “Not even you. You should’ve had a dry spell or at least a couple of really bad lays first.”
Maybe I underestimated Detective Cary too quickly. He doesn’t need to be good at Googling things! Not when he has deductive reasoning skills like these. Given Eva was sneaking over to Gideon’s place, it seems pretty impressive that Cary knew they were “banging it out all night” rather than just having average adult sleepovers.
Eva starts trying to convince Cary to come live with her and Gideon, when he drops a bomb of his own.
His shoulders sagged. “Tatiana’s pregnant.”
“What?” I felt the blood drain from my face. The little restaurant was hopping, and the shouting of orders behind the counter and the clatter of trays and utensils made it hard to hear, but I’d caught the two words that fell out of Cary’s mouth as if he’d shouted them at me. “Are you kidding?”
“I wish.” He pulled his hand away and scooped back the bangs that draped over one eye. “Not that I don’t want a kid. That part’s cool. But … fuck. Not now, you know? And not with her.”
Yeah, Tatiana has always sounded horrible whenever she shows up, so this is kind of a bummer. Cary helpfully explains that he uses birth control, but it doesn’t always work. Thanks, Cary! [Matthew says: Ah, the "birth control with a <1% failure rate just happened to not work for the sake of progressing the plot" trope! Happy nightmare fuel, readers!]
Cary frets that Trey is going to end things with him, [Matthew says: Wait, they haven't already?] and Eva tells him she’ll be there to help him through.
Eva meets up with Giroux, and they have the most pointless exchange ever. He seems to want to understand what Corinne sees in Gideon, but then he’s more interested by the fact that Gideon and Eva are engaged (that’s what they’re telling people.)
He smiled and for the first time, it was genuine. “Perhaps I will get my wife back after all.”
“I think you could, if you tried.” I sat up, deciding it was time to leave. “You know what your wife told me once? She said you’re indifferent. Instead of waiting for her to come back, you should just take her back. I think that’s what she wants.”
What I’ve learned from the Crossfire series is that’s what every woman wants. Seriously, though, that’s all that happens during this talk, and I’m not even sure why it happened because nothing is revealed or resolved and it doesn’t seem like it’s setting anything important up. [Matthew says: I don't even know who this character is. PRO WRITING TIP: When you have to resort to introducing new conflicts just so you have something to resolve in that same scene, your book has been going on too long.]
Eva meets up with Gideon in his office and they have lots of sex because she’s worried about Cary having a baby. I would think the prospect of an oopsie-baby would be enough to put you off having sex for the night, but to each his own. Oh god, do you think this series is going to have Eva get pregnant earlier than planned like in Fifty Shades?
Last week we finally finished three straight weeks of Lady Davers calling Pamela a whore – which I really can’t emphasize enough is entirely too long – and have now moved on to the Master… pouting.
“Pamela,” said he, and made me tremble, “How dare you approach me [...] when you see me thus disturbed? Never, for the future, come near me, when I am in these tumults, unless I sent for you.”
[Ariel says: I love how if the situation were reversed, the Master would immediately be like, "My dearest, Pamela, you must be on your period."]
Pamela asks, reasonably, what did she do?
“You have too meanly,” said he, “for my wife, stooped to this furious sister of mine”
Oh, ok. The Master is just all about subverting Georgian-era English society, so long as an actual woman isn’t acting with autonomy.
After a few pages of the Master and his sister arguing, Pamela suggests a solution to the problem, that I’m just gonna let speak for its Gender Studies 101-self.
“May I, sir,” said I, “beg all your anger on myself?”
Lady Davers sees that the situation is hopeless and decides to leave, and wishes Pamela luck, which amazingly prompts even more anger from the Master somehow. Now he’s mad that Lady Davers is suddenly being nice to Pamela. Seriously.
“Your sex is the devil! How strangely can you discompose, calm, and turn, as you please, us poor weathercocks of men!”
Yes. The women in these books are the irrational ones with volatile emotions that change at the drop of a hat. The women. Poor men.
The Master, Lady Davers, and Lady Davers’ nephew (who is still here on account of being so important to the story?) all take the chariot and depart somewhere, leaving us in our favorite position: for Pamela to muse on the goings-on of the story. This time its the Layla subplot of Fifty Shades of Grey. [Ariel says: Also, the Corinne subplot over in Entwined in You Land where cunts are always greedy and music video premiers are a thing even though presumably YouTube exists in this world.]
Foolish thing that I am, this poor Miss Sally Godfrey runs into my head! [...] I want to know more about her [but] I dare not ask him about the poor lady. Yet I wonder what became of her! Whether she be living? And whether any thing came of it?
Amazingly, Pamela treats the “the love of my life had a former lover” subplot basically the exact same way Ana does in Fifty Shades, by largely ignoring it and hoping her man will just happen to bring it up of his own accord, out of nowhere. [Ariel says: Actually, this sounds more like the Evil Cougar storyline, because Layla was an ex-submissive who went crazy. But Evil Cougar was actually someone who Christian loved at one point.]
The others return and it turns out the Master took his sister and her nephew around to all of his other upper-class friends, to hear them all praise Pamela. [Ariel says: Can you imagine how awkward this situation would be now? Like if your mom was kind of iffy about your significant other, so you took her around to all of your friend's houses so they could tell her how cool he or she is. Okay, fine, fair enough, you did that. But then you go and tell your SO that you've done this, and that's supposed to be fine and dandy? Weird.] Naturally, Lady Davers is now 100% on Team Pamela, because conflict-resolution works most believably when it happens really quickly and off-screen [Ariel says: And through the power of...friendship and peer review?]. Lady Davers and her nephew apologize to Pamela for their behavior, so now we have to come up with another thing to drive the plot through the remaining 14% of the book. Maybe you can guess how the rest of this scene, at least, plays out.
Yup, it’s the mansplaining one. Get ready for a lot of mansplaining.
“Now, Pamela,” [he said], “I hope I shan’t be a very tyrannical husband to you”
This would be like the Grinch saying he hopes he isn’t putting a damper on everyone’s Christmas.
“In all companies she must have shown that she had, whether I deserved it altogether or not, a high regard and opinion of me”
And
“I should expect, therefore, that she should draw a kind veil over my faults”
And my favorite one:
“I am not perfect myself [but] I will not allow that my imperfections shall excuse those of my wife, or make her think that I ought to bear faults in her”
Once again, it becomes super obvious that a dude wrote this book.
I thanked him for these kind rules.
To be fair, the Master does have an actual decent human reason for being upset at that whole “be angry with me instead of Lady Davers” thing:
“I cannot bear that you should wish, on any occasion whatever, to have me angry with you”
Aw, that was actually kind of swe-
“As if I must soon end my anger, if placed there”
…never mind.
This isn’t the only similarity between the Master and the characters in Clueless.
Intriguingly, the Master almost makes actual good point again when talking about how the upper classes are so messed up.
“We people of fortune, or such as are born to large expectations, of both sexes are generally educated wrong. [...] We are usually so headstrong, so violent in our wills, that we very little bear control”
But don’t worry, it gets worse.
“The yawning husband and the vaporish wife are truly insupportable to one another [...] “Some gentleman can come into a compromise, and, after a few struggles, sit down tolerably contented. But, had I married a princess, I could not have done so.”
And then even worse.
“Had I married the first lady in the land, I would not have treated her better than I will my Pamela.”
Wait, there’s a lower bar than “sneak into her bedroom by disguising yourself as someone else and then try to rape her”?
This newest “this is how man are, so behave accordingly, ladies” rant goes on for a really long time, so Pamela helpfully rewrites the whole thing as a numbered list in case you missed anything. [Ariel says: What is up with the BBGT books and lists lately?]
1. That I must not, when he is in a great wrath with any body, break in upon him without his leave [...]
2. That I must think his displeasure the heaviest thing that can befall me. To be sure I shall.
Even weirder, there are a few moments where Pamela comments on these rules and actually gets sort of feminist on his bullshit?
22. That there are fewer instances of men’s than women’s loving better after marriage. But why so? I wish he had given some reasons for this!
Although things are still generally less “important literary milestone in the development of the modern novel” and more “terrifying male power fantasy that people still have to read in college for some reason”.
6. That I must bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong. This is a little hard, as the case may be! I wonder whether poor Miss Sally Godfrey be living or dead!
This list goes on for forty-eight goddamned rules, which I can’t imagine having been tolerable even back then,
48. That a husband who expects all of this is to be incapable of returning insult for obligation [...]
Well, my dear parents, I think this last rule crowns the rest, and makes them all very tolerable
I guess that when the prologue said that this book was to educate the sexes, it meant on how to have a terrible, abusive relationship.
Question: Speaking of overrated sexist literature, Ariel and I have been thinking about what book to read next. We’re pretty sure we’re going to read Beautiful Oblivion next, the Beautiful Disaster spinoff about Travis’s brother that I can’t imagine anybody wanted. But that got me thinking, which minor character in a BBGT book would you most want to see get a spinoff? [Ariel butts in: KARA!! EVERYONE SAY KARA!!!!]
I know there were probably a lot of sleepless nights out there wondering if your guesses from last week were correct – well, most of them were! Man, a lot of you either have much better Googling skills than Cary or you have crazy good memories about these books!
1) “Whoa. Monster cock.” ~ Feast (horror)
2) “We have to be friends. I won’t take no for an answer.” ~ Beautiful/Walking Disaster (horror romance)
3) “Why aren’t you eating me?” ~ Fido (horror)
4) “I recreated your room based on the photo I took of you sleeping.” ~ Crossfire series but omg shouldn’t it be horror?? HOW SCARY!!!
5) “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy!” ~ A Nightmare on Elm Street (horror). I like how everyone was like, “This could be romance, but I don’t recognise the name Nancy.” Jeez you guys, it could have been from a romantic novel about a woman named Nancy from a book we didn’t write about here! But it wasn’t, so well done.
Before I give you this week’s challenge, I’ll clarify that “romantic” quotes I take are not only from books we’ve done on this blog. They make a romantic situation from a television show or movie even =0.
Round 2
Last week I have 5 quotes, but this week I’ll leave you with only two as they’re a little longer this time around. Okay, the part of the reason you get less this week is because I’m worried I’m going to run out of quotes if I use them all too quickly.
1) “Well, he will cheat on you again – that’s a promise. And when he does, don’t come crying to me, because… I’ve had it with you. You’re so fucking weak!”
2) “I’d like to get you a little fourth-floor-walk-up somewhere, with no windows, no doors and lock you up for a week.”
Good luck! Also feel free to post some challenges of your own in the comments, I’d love to guess too!
Previously, Tris met the evil villain who revealed her rather lacklustre plan to mind control everyone…for some reason. I mean, she claims she wants to kill everyone from Abnegation so she can be in charge of the government, but if your ultimate plan is to keep everyone within their same factions/control their mind couldn’t she have just mind-controlled Abnegation into giving up the government? In fact, why didn’t she just play into the faction roles and say, “Hey, Abnegations, it would be sooo super selfless of you if you gave up your positions. Thanks!” [Matthew says: Also, there are factions, so clearly mind-control is already working here on some level.]
Chapter 35
I wake in the dark, wedged in a hard corner. The floor beneath me is smooth and cold. I touch my throbbing head and liquid slips across my fingertips. Red—blood. When I bring my hand back down, my elbow hits a wall. Where am I?
Tris is, literally, in one of her worst nightmares – a glass tank where she’s going to drown. Did Jeanine plan specifically for Tris to be captured?[Matthew says: Good thing they didn't go with the "scared of intimacy" fear.] Did she have a similar situation planned for every Divergent person who fell into her lap? I can only imagine how furious Jeanine’s henchmen were if this was a last minute event that had to be put together in half an hour. “Quickly, guys, she’s going to wake up soon. Find me a glass tank that I can slowly drown her in!”
Tris manages to crack the glass a bit, and she also notices there’s a camera facing her.
The video camera means they’re watching me—no, studying me, as only the Erudite would. To see if my reaction in reality matches my reaction in the simulation. To prove that I’m a coward.
I think any villain with the right technology would be monitoring this situation. [Matthew says: To make sure she doesn't escape, since that's obviously what's going to happen once you delay killing someone.] But this really does make me wonder if Jeanine planned for this ahead of time.
Out of nowhere, this book becomes religious.
I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.
What? Where is any of this even coming from? It would be equally as weird if Tris had told us that she was originally born into the Ghostbusters faction, and she was glad she didn’t kill Eric because then she wouldn’t have just had to ghost bust him anyway. [Matthew says: I wasn't totally surprised by this, since Abnegation has been deemed the God-fearing faction about a zillion times, because this book has all the subtlety of a studded dildo with flashing lights.]
Suddenly, Tris’ mom to the rescue.
She pulls my arm across her shoulders and hauls me to my feet. She is dressed like my mother and she looks like my mother, but she is holding a gun, and the determined look in her eyes is unfamiliar to me. I stumble beside her over broken glass and through water and out an open doorway. Dauntless guards lie dead next to the door.
This is, of course, after she smashes the rest of the glass. Go Mrs. Tris’ mom! You badass, you.
Tris reminds us of The Big Revelation that happened as soon as Tris’ mom revealed she liked the chocolate cake Dauntless serve.
“Mom,” I say, my voice strained. “You were Dauntless.”
Tris’ mom affirms this and said it’s come in handy today. She also tells Tris that the rest of her family is alive and hiding together (including Tris’ brother Caleb).
“How did you know to find me?” I say.
“I’ve been watching the trains since the attacks started,” she replies, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I didn’t know what I would do when I found you. But it was always my intention to save you.”
That doesn’t answer the question at all, but boy is it a good thing she was watching those trains.
Then something interesting happens, Tris’ mom explains how she wound up in Abnegation and reveals that she’s Divergent too.
“I know about them because I am one,” she says as she shoves a bullet in place. “I was only safe because my mother was a Dauntless leader. On Choosing Day, she told me to leave my faction and find a safer one. I chose Abnegation.” She puts an extra bullet in her pocket and stands up straighter. “But I wanted you to make the choice on your own.”
…It seems like maybe she should have warned Tris and helped her out a little more than she did if her mother had given her guidance in the past. [Matthew says: But choices, Ariel! Like choosing to be susceptible to mind-control drugs!]
“Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way.” She touches my uninjured shoulder and smiles. “But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.”
This just stinks of so much bullshit to me. Matt’s mentioned this before, but if you can choose at some point to switch factions and then suddenly be conditioned in another way to think… then it’s not the same as being raised from birth to think a certain way and never knowing anything else. In fact, all of these people go to school together and learn together, they’re not even raised completely apart. Then if they do switch factions, we’re not talking brutal brainwashing here, not even in Dauntless. I can believe you could consciously behave a certain way all the time, but I can’t believe you wouldn’t be thinking in different ways. In fact, we’ve seen so many characters who don’t think in one pattern, and they’re not even complicated characters!
I think Tris could just as easily be controlled because she was willing to go along with her factions, she was never intent on doing anything crazy to provoke change, she just wanted to blend in. [Matthew says: You could even argue she's more easily controlled, because she kept willing herself into wanting to fit in. You could argue that Tris succumbing to peer pressure even though she recognizes it as such says more about control than the others who just blindly went along with it all. You could, but for some reason this book is about drugs now.] The only reason she’s dangerous now is to someone who is dangerous to all the faction leaders! Jeanine seems to be a threat to everyone, she’s the one who’s trying to enact change in a terrifying way, not Tris or anyone else we know is Divergent! Is Jeanine Divergent? Does it even really matter?
I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.
I am Divergent.
-_- Orly? Had no clue. I’ve suspected this whole time, but never really felt I could say this definitively.
Dauntless start chasing Tris and her mom. This is an ideal time for Tris to awkwardly articulate feelings about her mother:
She grabs my hands and looks me in the eyes. I watch her long eyelashes move as she blinks. I wish I had something of hers in my small, plain face. But at least I have something of hers in my brain.
NOW IS NOT THE TIME, TRIS! “At least I have something of hers in my brain”, words every mother would be honoured to hear their daughter say.
In order to let Tris escape, Tris’ mom throws herself in front of the Dauntless and winds up getting shot. I don’t feel all that sad, I mostly feel cheated that this was the only scene with Tris’ mom that we got, and I’m not sure why she had to die immediately.
Please tell me if you thought Jeanine had planned on recreating Tris’s simulation or threw it together last minute? I need to know whether she would have make a really sick, last-minute party planner or not.
Tris’s mom showed up to save Tris after previously being in a grand total of like seventeen pages of the entire book and was immediately killed off, which would be sort of like if they killed off John C. Reilly’s comic relief minor character in Guardians of the Galaxy and playing it like the big sad moment.
As opposed to when it DID kill off the similarly barely-in-the-movie character on the right and DID play it off like a big sad moment. Yeah, I didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy. COME AT ME, INTERNET.
Okay, I fully admit I’m being too critical. It was a sad moment, despite certain narrative shortcomings. So here’s Tris being a legitimate badass motherfucker:
The bullet hits the brick wall to my right, and pieces of brick spray everywhere. I throw myself around the corner and click a bullet into the chamber of my gun. They killed my mother.
Not even a sarcastic “young adult fiction, motherfucker” from me. This writing merits a full “yippee ki yay, motherfucker”!
And that’s it for Tris’s moment of badass revenge, because that’s when things immediately get even more depressing.
The man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with a crease between his eyebrows.
Will. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still Will. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up.
In an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber, and I fire. My eyes squeezed shut. Can’t breathe.
The bullet hit him in the head. I know because that’s where I aimed it. [...]
I press my forehead to the wall and scream. After a few seconds I clamp m hand over my mouth to muffle the sound and scream again
Divergent just killed off Tris’s mom and forced Tris to kill a brainwashed Will within four pages. Divergent don’t fuck around. You know, unless there are simulated metaphors to waffle around with. [Ariel says: This makes me so fucking angry. Tris can't kill Eric who is about to kill Four without a second thought, and he isn't mind controlled. Yet, Will, her friend, who is not in control of his actions, she kills because she just reacts so quickly to the situation? This is so fucking stupid, I can't handle it. Not stupid that she reacted in a kill-or-be-killed shitty situation, I just think the Eric situation was also this dire, and I'm still pissed she didn't kill him. Fuck your storytelling right now, Veronica Roth. Fuck it hard and fuck it fast.]
The book skips ahead to Tris finding the Abnegation hiding place without any trouble, lest it kill off any more characters in the next four pages. There, Tris finds her brother, her father, and Marcus. And some other potential bullet fodder, probably. [Ariel says: It's a good time to point out they're all wearing red shirts.] Tris represses her emotions at the sight of Marcus, now knowing the truth about what he did to Four. Caleb gives an arbitrary explanation for why the MacGuffin is the MacGuffin.
“I researched the simulation serum and found out that Jeanine was working to develop long-range transmitters for the serum so its signal could stretch further, which led me to information about Erudite and Dauntless”
“I don’t have a good explanation for how I’ve been studying this stuff for like a month and somehow understood cutting edge mind-control science, though.”
Caleb reveals that once he learned the truth about the dangers of intellectualism the Erudite, he dropped out of their initiation and joined the Glenn Beck camp Abnegation survivors. Somehow. It’s not particularly clear, but there’s an opportunity for character development here, so details like “how is this guy even here right now” aren’t important.
“I’m factionless now.”
“No, you aren’t,” my father says sternly. “You’re with us.”
Suddenly everyone remembers, hey, Tris got shot not that long ago, and her father grabs the first aid kit and removes the bullet. Tris asks how he even knows how to take out a bullet, because not only does Divergent get surprisingly badass during the climax, apparently it’s going to criticize itself for me too. You win this round, book.
Eventually someone asks why Tris’s mom isn’t there, because for some reason this wasn’t everyone’s first question.
I don’t want to deliver this news. I don’t want to have this news to begin with.
“She’s gone,” I say. “She saved me.”
Caleb closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
My father looks momentarily stricken and then recovers himself, averting his glistening eyes and nodding.
“That is good,” he says, sounding strained. “A good death.” [...] [Ariel says: We were there, it really wasn't.]
Eric called Al’s suicide brave, and he was wrong. My mother’s death was brave.
Having mourned Tris’s mom like she lived, with as small a word count as possible, they’re now free to move on to the problem of how everyone is currently being murdered. Tris explains about the mind control drugs, and that it just happens to not work on her.
Smooth.
“Mind control? So they don’t know that they’re killing everyone right now?” my father asks me, his eyes wide.
Fleshing out characters stops in three… two…
“That’s… awful.” Marcus shakes his head. His sympathetic tone sounds manufactured to me. “Waking up and realizing what you’ve done…”
Why is everybody in this book either a beautiful ray of sunshine or a terrible monster? I would still believe that Marcus isn’t a great person if he were allowed to be genuinely horrified at this genuinely horrifying thing. [Ariel says: It seems like he's about to follow this up with, "Waking up and realizing what you've done...I on the other hand am completely in control of my evil actions, so I wouldn't know anything about that."]
Tris suddenly figures out that the whole thing is being orchestrated from Dauntless headquarters by piecing together hints from things Janine said, rather than from, I don’t know, how that’s kind of where the entire plan has been carried out so far. Tris comes up with a plan to stop the attack while others plan to go ahead to Amity. [Ariel says: I can't imagine there's any sort of pain that some Amity banjo-styling couldn't cure. I bet Tris' dad gets there, and he starts asking if anyone wants to jam. Such a dad move.]
I guess I am what I’ve always been. Not Dauntless, not Abnegation, not factionless. Divergent.
REALLY? I HAD NO IDEA UNTIL NOW, 85% OF THE WAY INTO A BOOK WHERE YOU HAVE AND RESOLVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS AS A WAY TO TRANSITION BETWEEN SCENES. [Ariel says: She just had this same revelation last chapter! We fucking get it!!]
This week’s very Divergent-themed question: What’s your favorite kind of cake?
Last week, Cary had a storyline. Gaspshocks aside, it’s just another accidental pregnancy plot that’s meant to be made more interesting because of Cary’s bisexuality and the fact that he’s also dating a really nice guy named Trey! And the girl he knocked up, Tatiana, is a huge bitch! Whatever will happen in this situation that I am totally and completely invested in! [Matthew says: Have any of these people actually been in Entwined With You yet? Seriously, though.][Ariel says: Trey showed up once or twice to be nice and likeable. A strong foil for Tatiana.]
Chapter 21
Gideon and Eva are minding their own business in Eva’s apartment, just eating some good old ‘za when Cary shows up with Tatiana. [Matthew says: I SPOKE TOO SOON! Obviously the reader will still care about a sudden subplot involving a character who hasn't been in the entire book so long as she shows up afterwards!] We quickly find just how much of a snobby bitch Tatiana really is:
I reached across Gideon for a packet of Parmesan cheese and whispered, “Baby mama.”
He winced. “She’s trouble. Poor guy.”
That was my thought exactly as the tall blonde walked in and wrinkled her nose rudely at our pizza. Then she caught sight of Gideon and flashed a come-hither smile.
Oh you think you’re better than pizza, Tatiana? Well, I’ve got news for you. Gideon and Eva are, like, so rich and cool and young and trendy, and they’re eating pizza, so whatever. It’s totally awesome. [Matthew says: Just when I thought the characters in this book couldn't possibly seem less realistic, suddenly one of them doesn't like pizza.]
Shoutout to the everlasting trope of having every woman in the world blatantly eye-fuck the sexy male protagonist whether or not he’s with his girlfriend or she’s with her boyfriend. Whom she is going to have a baby with.
“Hey, Cary,” Gideon greeted my best friend before tossing his arm over my shoulder and burying his face in my neck.
I think this is meant to be Gideon’s way of showing his undying loyalty to Eva, but it just seems like a very odd way to greet someone. [Matthew says: When I say hi to someone, I always immediately nuzzle someone I'm not saying hi to.]
Eva and Gideon invite Cary and Tatiana to hang out and have some pizza, but of course Tatiana acts like a whiny bitch the whole time.
Cary snagged a slice, while Tatiana complained about him jostling her. I was bummed that she couldn’t be more comfortable hanging out. If she was going to have Cary’s baby, she was going to be in my life, and I hated the thought of that relationship being awkward.
In the end, they didn’t stay in the living room long. She insisted that the handheld camera shots in the movie made her queasy, [Matthew says: Tatiana's one redeeming quality.] and Cary took her back to his room. A short while later, I thought I heard her laughing, making me think her biggest problem was the need to keep Cary all to herself. I could understand that insecurity. I was intimately familiar with it myself.
Tatiana, of course, only get worse the next morning, and things continue to sour between her and Eva.
I’d just finished putting on some pearl earrings and was stepping into the hallway when Tatiana appeared heading from the direction of the kitchen with two water bottles in her hands.
She was buck naked.
My temper almost boiled over, but I kept my tone calm. The pregnancy certainly didn’t show, but knowing about it was reason enough to skip the shouting match. “Excuse me. You need to have clothes on if you’re going to walk around my apartment.”
“It’s not just your apartment,” she shot back, tossing her tawny mane over her shoulder as she moved to pass me.
That’s a terrible argument! Although this does make me understand why Cary’s with her a bit better. Remember that orgy he had in the living room way back when? He couldn’t have used this very same argument to justify it. The only thing going in Cary’s defence is that it’s his apartment, not his boyfriend’s apartment which is the case in Tatiana’s situation.
“You don’t want to play games with me, Tatiana.”
“Or what?”
“You’ll lose.”
She stared at me for a long minute. “He’ll pick me.”
“If it came to that, he’d resent you and you’d lose anyway.” I dropped my arm. “Think about that.”
What is up with this girl? I get that she wants Cary to be all hers or whatever, but what warped logic would make her think trying to entice Gideon and alienate Eva is going to achieve this?
Anyway, at work later, Megumi isn’t at her desk, and this is clearly going to be Important in the future, because there’s weird attention paid to the fact that everyone is assuming she’s out sick but no one’s actually heard from her. [Matthew says: This must be what happened during the entire first book, then.] Eva tries to call her a few times throughout the day, but never hears back. COULD IT BE THE RUSSIAN MOB??
Now that we have this new mystery to ruminate over, it’s time to remind us of another mystery. What better way to remind us then to have Detective Graves return in all her cheesy glory.
“Eva.” She gave me a curt nod. “Great tan.”
“Thanks.”
“Cross take you away for the weekend?”
Not exactly a casual question. My back went up. “I had some time off.”
Her thin mouth quirked on one side. “Still cautious. Good. What does your dad think of Cross?”
“I believe my dad trusts my judgment.”
Graves nodded. “I’d keep thinking about Nathan Barker’s bracelet if I were you. But then, loose ends make me twitchy.”
For the record, Graves knows that Eva’s dad is also a cop, so her question isn’t completely random. But the Grizzled, Tough-but-Fair shtick is getting really old. This goes nowhere, and basically Graves just tells Eva that the case has gone cold. [Matthew says: Just like the plot.]
Blah blah, later Gideon and Eva take a bath because for some reason there has to be a bath or shower scene every other chapter. Gideon gets a phone call from his mother that Corinne is in the hospital. I’m just going to go ahead and say it, I would so much rather the burgeoning Megumi mystery be given more attention than another Corrine scene. She is not actually ever going to be a threat to Gideon/Eva, so it’s utterly pointless to keep bringing her up. It’s this book’s terrible version of the boy crying wolf over and over with no payoff. [Matthew says: I'd say it's a red herring, but this book is like a goddamn herring farm.]
I went to Jean-François.
I greeted him softly. “I’m very sorry.”
He looked at me with dead eyes, his face seeming to have aged a decade since we’d met at the wine bar the day before. “What are you doing here?”
“Mrs. Vidal called Gideon.”
“Of course she did.” He looked over to the seating area. “One would think he was her husband and not I.”
I followed his gaze. Gideon was crouched in front of Corinne’s parents, holding her mother’s hand. A sick feeling of dread spread through me, making me cold.
“She would rather be dead than live without him,” he said tonelessly.
I looked back at him. Suddenly, I understood. “You told her, didn’t you? About our engagement.”
“And look how well she took the news.”
Why is Gideon’s mother even involved in this? Why is Gideon even getting sucked into this. I am so angry! [Matthew says: Why is the BOOK getting sucked into this? For a steamy erotic novel, like 95% of the story is Eva dealing with other people's problems.][Ariel says: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if half of the next book centered around Eva trying to set up her favourite single Starbuck's barista with the lonely pizza delivery guy she's been best friends with this entire time even though you don't remember him at all.]
Gideon and Jean-François get into a brawl after Jean-François receives some news in private from a doctor. Eva only hears something about a baby being mentioned, which makes for the second storyline in this book revolving around a pregnancy. When will the madness end! Let’s go back to the Russian Mob and Megumi and even the drama of Gideon’s childhood over this nonsense. [Matthew says: Let's just go for the hat trick and find out that Megumi is pregnant with the Russian mob's baby.]
If you had to write in another baby-related plot to this series, what would it be? The more insane the better.
Are you sick of hearing about shit like Gamergate or Bendgate? Well, I have a new article up over at Abstract Magazine about Gategate, so now you don’t have to care anymore! It’s called “Gaters Gonna Gate“, which is probably the best headline I’ll ever write in my life, if that sweetens the deal for you. [Ariel says: I'm still allowed to sarcastically refer to things as insert-topic-gate, though, right? Cause now that you mention it, it's definitely baby-gate over at Entwined in You.]
Days 64-67
Previously in Pamela, the Master gave Pamela a list of rules for how she has to act in a relationship with him and we had to read it a bunch of times. So it was basically the contract in Fifty Shades of Grey. [Ariel says: Does this mean it will be discussed at length only to never actually be used or mentioned ever again?]
“If your ladyship knew all, you would pity me, for never poor creature was so hard put to it. But I ought to forget it all now, and be thankful.” [...]
“Tell me truly,” said [Lady Davers], “Did you not love him all the time?”
“I had always, madam,” answered I, “a great reverence for my master, and thought all his good actions doubly good and for his naughty ones, though I abhorred his attempts upon me, yet I could not hate him [...] but I did not know that it was love”
So it’s basically the “I thought things weren’t gonna work out, but then they did! Suddenly! No reason. Roll with it.” part of Fifty Shades. I’m not saying that Fifty Shades is a ripoff of Pamela, but it amazing how many parallels there are in shitty underdeveloped romances almost three centuries apart.
Anyway, Pamela and the Master have fallen in love, gotten married, and had their controversial marriage accepted by society. AKA, literally everything that has ever been a conflict in this book. So… why are there another fifty pages left?
Get ready for fifty pages of denouement, bitches!
That’s right, folks! We’re gonna LEARN a thing today!
The denouement – for all of you people reading this blog to actually learn about literature or Pamela, for some reason – is the part of the narrative after the conflict has been resolved, and you’re sort of just “winding down”. [Ariel says: I don't know why we have to wind down this long.] Ideally, you want this to be long enough to give everything closure and make everything feel settled. We see books mess this up kind of a lot on this blog. Fifty Shades of Grey either had a single page or two additional novels of denouement, depending on how you look at it. Pamela has, again, another fifty pages.
First, Pamela has to summarize the entire story to Lady Davers, because it’s been about thirty pages since she summarized the entire novel. You probably know I’m being serious by now, but seriouslythe entire story:
“He sent me above a day’s journey towards my father’s, and then sent a man and horse, post-haste, to fetch me back again”
Yeah, remember how that cliffhanger where Part One ended with the Master finally giving up got resolved two pages into Part 2? And remember how that was exactly like like how book one of Fifty Shades ended and then book two resolved it in a chapter? Good times.
“Should you care I should [read your letters]?” [Lady Davers asked.] “It must be a rare and uncommon story.”
You would think.
Second (or first, if you don’t count “constantly retelling the plot” as wrapping up the loose ends of the plot), Pamela and the Master have to go back to where it all started and reassure all those characters who were last involved with the plot when Pamela was being kidnapped by a sexual predator that, “Nah, it’s cool now. We got married!”
So hopefully you’re not sick of people being happy for Pamela. And telling her how awesome it is that she got such a great reward for preserving her virginity. And saying, “wow, it’s a good thing the Master kidnapped you and kept trying to rape you, because it all worked out in the end!” Because those things are basically the remaining fifty pages of this book.
“There is such a noble simplicity in thy story,” [said Lady Davers]. “[That does] justify my brother’s conduct, and, at the same time, redound to your own everlasting honor, as well as to the credit of our sex.”
Seriously.
“Let my whole life show the joy I take in your deserved good fortune,” [Mrs. Jervis said]. “I beg pardon for my wrong step I made in [contacting] Lady Davers [about your kidnapping]“
“All is over now, Mrs. Jervis,” [said the Master]. “I shall not remember you ever disobliged me.”
Super seriously.
I blessed God for my past escapes, and present happiness.
Actually, there’s a lot of Pamela thanking God for being so lucky as to be a victim of Stockholm syndrome.
I threw myself at his feet. “Permit me, dear sir, thus to bless God, and thank you, for all his mercies and your goodness.”
And then the rest of the chapter is Pamela saying “Hey, I’m not dead happily married!” to every servant. And giving them money, because Pamela is basically charity porn. Every servant. So hopefully you remember every minor character from 400 pages earlier in the novel.
“Arthur [the gardener],” said my master, “I have brought you a mistress that is a great gardener. She’ll show you a new way to plant beans.”
Just in case you were curious how incredibly padded this book is, there’s finally a resolution to that “Arthur the gardener isn’t completely satisfied with the quality of his beans” subplot. PHEW.
WHEN WILL THIS BOOK BE OVER?
Also, a casual reminder that one of the few actual loose threads is whether the Master’s ex-fling is still alive, because the patriarchy is fucking terrifying.
I had once a good mind to have asked [Lady Davers] about Miss Sally Godfrey [...] I wonder, though, whether she be living or dead.
So it’s basically the part of Fifty Shades where Ana wonders who Layla is and whether she’s… okay, seriously, does E.L. James have a copy of Pamela?
Question: So what new tv shows are people watching, since a bunch of those have been premiering lately? I watched Blackish and thought it has some potential. I have Gotham on my roommate’s DVR but haven’t bothered yet. [Ariel says: I heard mixed things about Gotham but I still might give it a go. I highly recommend watching Garfunkle and Oats! I also started watching Scandal which is pretty dumb, but also really fun to watch.] And I have a wide range of Thoughts about Doctor Who, obviously.
As we near the end of the first Divergent, Tris, her father, brother and Marcus all head towards Dauntless headquarters to foil Jeanine’s plans rather than doing the reasonable thing and heading to Amity for safety and banjo playing.
Also I made this important discovery.
1) Kate Winslet was in this? WTF. [Matthew says: It was probably the best-paid afternoon of filming of her life.]
2) Unless I’m crazy, this scene didn’t happen in this book. [Matthew says: As do a great many of them.] Maybe it happens in a future one and they smushed it into the first movie? I’m going to assume that the movie just somehow managed to make Tris declaring her Divergence even more annoying and stupid. It makes me laugh every time I watch the gif!
3) I am really proud we haven’t relied heavily on the movie for gifs. But I really wish I could find an Amity playing the banjo gif. Like that would have made my day. Instead I just kept finding the above gif or ones of Four and Tris staring at each other or kissing.
Here is an Amity gif I did find:
“Amity, the banjo players.”
BUT WHERE ARE THE BANJOS I ASK!
Chapter 37
Tris and the gang have to do some good old fashion train jumping. So this is what all the train jumping has been leading to! I’m so amazed by how that came together so perfectly.
Marcus makes snide comments about Tris choosing the wrong faction, but she defends her choices. I wish he’d been like, “Oh, I don’t think you made the wrong choice because of how Dauntless leaders are working with Erudite, I just can’t stand this whole train jumping business.” [Matthew says: Actually, though, Marcus doesn't have a single line of dialogue that isn't a snide, "Oh, HO! I bet you didn't think of this way that I'm better than you!". His antagonist qualities are so perfunctory and irritating, he's like a weird hybrid of comic book B-plot villain and annoying talking animal sidekick.]
Divergent basically just copy pastes the chapter where Tris first jumps from the train to the roof, then jumps into Dauntless headquarters. Thus saving me precious precious space explaining all of this jumping nonsense.
Caleb and my father stand at the edge of the roof, their hands around Marcus’s arms. He didn’t make it, but he hasn’t fallen yet.
Somewhere inside me, a vicious voice chants: fall, fall, fall.
But he doesn’t. My father and Caleb haul him onto the roof.
Best Tris moment we’ve had in awhile. How great would it have been if Marcus had just fallen to his death and spared us the inevitable confrontation scene between him and Four.
As Tris starts to scout the Dauntless compound, she runs into a beloved friend:
It’s Peter. [...]
“How are you awake?” I demand.
He lifts his head, and I click the bullet into its chamber, raising an eyebrow at him.
“The Dauntless leaders…they evaluated my records and removed me from the simulation,” he says.
“Because they figured out that you already have murderous tendencies and wouldn’t mind killing a few hundred people while conscious,” I say. “Makes sense.”
“I’m not…murderous!”
Tris is skeptical despite Peter’s very sincere and convincing protests. [Matthew says: Once again, Divergent makes me miss the "The world isn't split into good guys and Death Eaters" theme of Harry Potter, because the world here is literally split into Erudite and Banjo Farmers.]
Peter refuses to tell Tris where the computers are that are controlling the simulation, so she shoots his arm. [Matthew says: Sometimes Tris shoots people she doesn't want to kill in the arm, but sometimes she shoots people she doesn't want to kill in the head! She's... Divergent!] Unfortunately, he still won’t tell her where the computers are unless she promises to get him out alive. I can see this going two ways, and I’m not sure how I feel about either. Here is my second list for this post because lists.
Peter stays a total asshole and tries to sabotage the gang’s every move. Optional: he becomes the piece of shit son Marcus always deserved.
Peter redeems himself and becomes a character that fangirls everywhere swoon over. [Matthew says: Man, he doesn't even have to redeem himself for this. Do you know how big a fangirl audience there is for Cato? The character who only existed in The Hunger Games so that somehow in a book where children are forced to fight to the death, there are evil kids who exist to root against? Basically what I'm saying is that fangirls can be idiots. But this is Bad Books, Good Times, so you all probably know about that.]
I guess it’s possible there’s a third option where he fades quietly away into the shadows of the book or falls off a roof, but I doubt we’ll be so lucky.
Tris’ rag tag gang of misfits shows up.
“Was it really necessary to shoot him?” [Tris's father says.]
I don’t answer.
“Sometimes pain is for the greater good,” says Marcus calmly.
Oh, Marcus, you big goof! [Matthew says: Haha, Tris's dad. "Don't shoot people!" "Daaaaad, you're embarrassing me!"]
“Let’s go,” I say. “Get up, Peter.”
“You want him to walk?” Caleb demands. “Are you insane?”
“Did I shoot him in the leg?” I say. “No. He walks. Where do we go, Peter?”
Damn it, Tris, I love it when you’re at your sassiest! Is sassy a trait exclusive to being Divergent or Dauntless? Where does sass fit into things in the faction system?
Tris has to get past some guards. Luckily one happens to be Divergent and lets her past. Whew. That was a really tense two whole pages.
Despite being Divergent, this guard is otherwise useless as fuck.
The guard ducks into the fear landscape room, and he’s gone.
Can Marcus and Peter fuck off that easily and quickly please? Divergent Guard #1 is setting a fantastic example here. [Matthew says: Also, that's the last we see of Divergent Guard #1 for the rest of the book. Either that was a totally useless deus ex machina, or we're going to find out later it was Uriah, AKA literally the only other good guy that's left.]
Sorry to gloss over this, but Tris’s dad also dies in a blaze of glory as a bunch of guards ambush them after they take the elevator up to the floor where the computers are. [Matthew says: But in our defense, the book glossed over killing off a shitton of main characters too.] Like the vast majority of children or YA books, now the main character is an orphan which will serve to…you know…build a tragic past and serve as character development without having to do any real work to develop the protagonist’s character whilst saving the trouble of having parents in the book to do annoying things like getting between teenage romance.
Tris finally makes her way to where the computers are and…
One of the screens has a line of code on it instead of an image. It breezes past faster than I can read. It is the simulation, the code already compiled, a complicated list of commands that anticipate and address a thousand different outcomes.
In front of the screen is a chair and a desk. Sitting in the chair is a Dauntless soldier.
“Tobias,” I say.
BUM BUM BUMMMMM!!!!!!
Have you been expecting Mr and Mrs. Tris’ Parents to die almost immediately after being reintroduced to the plot? Or were you expecting them to never be seen again? Or are you like, “Tris had parents????” because the start of this book was soooo long ago.
After everybody died, Tris has met up with Tobias in the computer room, who is the only person actually in the room guarding the technology carrying out the villains’ evil plans for some reason. Not that this makes things easier. Just stupider. [Ariel says: I bet all the guards were programmed to jump ship at soon as there was even a whiff of the Power of Love coming to save the day.]
He looks confused. He raises his gun.
“Drop your weapon,” he says.
“Tobias,” I say, “you’re in a simulation.”
“Drop your weapon,” he repeats. “Or I’ll fire.”
Jeanine said he didn’t know me. Jeanine also said that the simulation made Tobias’s friends into enemies. He will shoot me if he has to.
I set my gun down at my feet.
“Drop your weapon!” Shouts Tobias.
“I did,” I say. A little voice in my head sings that he cant hear me
Hahaha fuck.
Tris manages to disarm Tobias, and then get the gun in the ensuing grapple. Somehow. But that’s not the most suspension of disbelief-challenging thing that happens this chapter. Hell, Tris’s dad could burst into the room, guns blazing, shouting, “Surprise! I’m not really dead!”, and that would have been more believable than how this scene actually plays out.
So the obvious problem is that even if Tris gets the gun, it’s not like she can shoot him. I mean, he’s not her friend Will or anything.
I don’t know what I’ll do with [the gun]. I can’t shoot him, I can’t shoot him, I can’t. He is in there somewhere.”
Man, this is just like that time Tris was in this exact same situation with a boy she wasn’t making out with Will! Except she shot him and he died.
Maybe it’s easier to find a way out of this when it’s not your super hot unicorn love interest.
[Ariel says: The way I read that scene, was that Tris was so distraught and thrown face to face with Will pointing a gun at her that she shot without thinking. I'm not saying I don't think Roth did it for ~drama~ but I think that was meant to be why it happened.] [Matthew adds: Okay, not being a hypercritical comic for a moment, I can see it this way. But it's not like she's in LESS mortal peril NOW. It feels entirely too convenient that with two such similar scenes, one was played for tragedy and the other was played for THE POWER OF LOVE. Ultimately that bugs me more.]
“Tobias, please.” I am begging. I am pathetic. Tears make my face hot. “Please see me.”
So things are looking pretty desperate, and the novel has zero previously established ways for getting out of a situation like this. So, naturally, it’s deus ex machina time!
I have done this before – in my fear landscape, with the gun in my hand, a voice shouting at me to fire at the people I love. I volunteered to die instead, that time, but I can’t imagine how that would help me right now.
Not just you, Tris.
I just know, I know what is the right thing to do is.
PRO WRITING TIP: If the only way to explain a new concept is for the protagonist to suddenly, inexplicably just know it right as it becomes important, go ahead. Just explicitly say that they know it, otherwise the reader won’t buy it. So, once again, it’s time for…
I do this so often, it was only a matter of time before I made an official GIF for it.
“But how did you find us?” Hermione asked Ron.
“I just knew you two were here in these nondescript woods!” Ron answered.
“Nothing led you here, or gave you that feeling?” Harry asked.
“Nope. I just knew!”
“Goodness! How on earth did you figure that out?”
“I just knew, my dear Watson.”
ROMEO: A grave? O, no! a lanthorn, slaughter’d youth,
For here lies Juliet, and yet, methinks,
She is not really dead. This, I just know.
“I just knew this conveniently metaphorical answer. What’s calculus?”
My father says – used to say – that there is power in self-sacrifice.
I turn the gun in my hands and press it into Tobias’s palm.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, the novel solves the problem of a brainwashed Four trying to shoot Tris by having Tris put a gun in Four’s hands while he is being brainwashed. Just… just so we’re clear about this. This is the logic that the climax is following.
He pushes the barrel into my forehead. [...] I reach out and rest my hand on his chest so I can feel his heartbeat. At least his heartbeat is still him.
The bullet clicks into the chamber.
Oh my God, you guys. Maybe Tris will die.
Question of the Day: So is anyone using Ello? Does anyone care?
Megumi hasn’t been showing up to work, and Eva can’t get in touch with her. Not having Megumi in these chapters has been like a day without sunshine.
Corinne tried to kill herself, and for some reason Gideon’s mother called him and asked him to come to the hospital. I still have no idea why she is involved in this at all.
Corrine’s husband attacked Gideon after finding out Corinne was pregnant and lost the baby. I need to come clean and admit that I thought this was revealed last chapter, but Eva actually only finds Corinne miscarried later this chapter. If you give a fuck about the fact that I made this error, feel free to voice your concerns in the comments.
Gideon sends Eva home, and Eva is pissed. I don’t blame her.
The only way the end of chapter 21 could have been more like a soap opera is if Corinne’s twin sister showed up and was also in love with Gideon.
Chapter 22
At work the next day, Megumi still isn’t showing up. When will the madness stop! [Matthew says: If the rest of the series is anything to go by, after an entire book of no Megumi, when she will suddenly show up as though she had been there the whole time.] Eva also hasn’t heard from Gideon since the night before.
And I was angry and hurt about it. The one thing I wasn’t was scared. Gideon was right about marriage fostering a settled feeling. I had a grip on him he’d have to work to break. He couldn’t just disappear or ignore me forever. No matter what, he would have to deal with me at some point. The only question was: When?
Yes, that’s why all people get married, isn’t it? It’s that settled feeling that comes with knowing someone is going to have to get in touch with you because they’re legally bound to you now. It’s not like people who are married ever just up and leave with no explanation. Marriage sure is a panacea for ghosting!
Gideon shows up late that night and tells Eva he’s been in California. Instead of immediately offering an explanation like anyone else would have done, he’s like, “Shhhhhh I’ll explain later.” Um, no, explain now. [Matthew says: Pffft, Ariel, if we've learned anything from these books, that's not what TRUE LOVE is about! Explaining your actions! Honestly!]
But Gideon protests he hasn’t slept in two days, so he crashes quickly. Eva goes through his phone, and what she finds comforts her when actually it should probably alarm her.
The last thing I expected to find were so many pictures of me in his photo album. There were dozens: some of us together taken by paparazzi, others that he’d taken with his phone when I was unaware. Candid shots that afforded me the opportunity to see myself through his eyes.
I stopped worrying. He loved me. Adored me. No man could take the pictures he did of me otherwise, with messy hair and no makeup, doing nothing more interesting than reading something or standing in front of an open refrigerator contemplating what I wanted. Pictures of me sleeping and eating and frowning in concentration … Boring, commonplace things.
Aren’t those exactly the kinds of photographs Nathan was taking of Eva that they found in his apartment? Photos that the cops saw, and immediately were like, “This man is going to kill Eva at some point. If only someone would just murder this guy and basically save the world!”
When has Gideon even been snapping these photos of Eva standing in front of the fridge? Whenever they’re together they’re either in the bath or taking a shower or having sex somewhere else.
Eva sees some phone calls between him and Evil Reporter Deanna, but the protective shield of marriage calms any lingering worries Eva has about all the things.
~Nondescript nightmare and tears.
~Nondescript sex and greedy cunts.
The next morning, Gideon tells Eva they need to talk. He asks if she ever made a sex tape with Brett, which Eva denies. [Matthew says: Not only is sex the only thing ever driving the narrative and motivating the characters in this book, sex that didn't even happen is the only thing that rushes in to fill the void when there isn't any actual sex.]
He held my gaze. “When I came back from the hospital the other night, Deanna caught up with me in the lobby. After the situation with Corinne, I knew brushing her off was the wrong approach.”
“I told you that.”
“I know. You were right. So I took her to the bar up the street, bought her a glass of wine, and apologized.”
“You took her out for wine,” I repeated. [Ariel says: Because that's so much more compelling than the whole sex tape thing, I guess.]
“No, I took her out to tell her I’m sorry for how I treated her. I bought her the wine so we had a reason to be sitting in the damn bar,” he said irritably. “I figured you’d prefer a public place over bringing her up to the apartment, which would have been more convenient and private.”
He was right, and I appreciated his thinking of how I’d react and making accommodations for it. But I was still annoyed that Deanna had snagged a pseudo date with him.
People get wine together at a bar all the time and it’s not a date. Not even a “pseudo date” if there’s clearly no intent there! Deanna snagged a conversation with him, boo freaking hoo, Eva.
Deanna accepts Gideon’s apology, and tells him that Three-Inches Nickleback Creed Six-Ninths old videographer had set up secret video cameras and caught them having sex on tape, and he planned to auction the tape off now that ‘Golden’ is such a smash hit! Topping the charts! TRL WITH CARSON DAILY PROBZ. [Matthew says: I am no expert, but I feel like this is the opposite of legal.]
So who here hasn’t taken secret photos of Eva? She sure is a magnet for this shit. How many more people need to die before everyone just puts their damn cameras away when Eva’s around?
Blah blah Gideon used lots of power to legally stop the video from being released on the market. But what about the interwebs, you are likely asking in alarm. With the Youtube and the Perez Hilton!
He shook his head, the ends of his inky hair brushing over his shoulders. “I’ve got an IT team dedicated to nothing but looking twenty-four-seven for that file on the Internet, [Matthew says: This sounds like the worst job in the world.] but Yimara won’t make any money giving the footage away. It’s only worth something as an exclusive. [Matthew says: I don't think anyone in this book understands how the internet works. Aside from search engine optimization.] He’s not going to fuck that up before he exhausts all other options—including selling it to me.”
I just checked my watch, and it seems like this may have broken the record for most quickly introduced and solved problem of all time. This didn’t even warrant a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter. There have been cliffhangers centered around what Eva is going to order for lunch (it’s carbs, always carbs), but not whether or not Gideon was able to stop the sex tape from going viral?
This is the point where they discuss what happened with Corinne, and Gideon explains that she had a miscarriage. Again, if you feel that you’ll never be able to trust my summaries of shitty books ever again, I completely understand.
Later, Eva and Gideon discuss the Gala they’re meant to be going to that night.
“Gideon, if that footage of me and Brett gets out, you don’t want your name linked to mine.”
His body went stiff, and then he turned me around to face him. “Say that again.”
“You heard me. The Cross name has been through enough, don’t you think?” [Matthew says: ...has it? I'm struggling to think of any Cross family controversy that has actually gone public in this series.]
“Angel, I’m as close as I’ve ever been to taking you across my knee. Luckily for you, I don’t play rough when I’m mad.”
It’s totally cool and fine if you enjoy spanking in the bedroom, but it really freaks me out when Gideon or Christian threaten to spank Eva/Ana in reaction to something in their daily life. I feel like not even The Master from Pamela has done this (has he, Matt?). [Matthew says: No, but weirdly his sister and female servants have struck her. I have absolutely no idea what to make of that.]
At work, Eva still can’t get in touch with Megumi who continues to be absent from work but somehow more involved in the plot than she ever was when she actually was there.
“Who does Megumi call to say she’s sick?”
“She reports to Daphne for everything. Why?”
“I’m just worried. She hasn’t called me back. I’m wondering if I pissed her off somehow.” I shifted on my feet. “I hate not knowing or being able to help.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, Daphne said she sounds horrible.”
Daphne is fucking in on this, it’s a conspiracy! She’s also part of the Russian Mob! And Nathan’s long lost sister! And Also working for Dr. Terrance what’s-his-face! Fuck you, Daphne, you horrible, back-stabbing bitch.
Before the Gala that night, Eva tells her mother she and Gideon are going together and that he’s asked her father if he could propose to her. Eva’s mother is immediately like, “I didn’t even know you guys were back together, but this is incredible news. Let me start planning your wedding immediately.”
My question to all of you is, what do you think happened to Megumi?
Good news: This is our second last week with Pamela! Bad news: After basically nothing happening for the past few weeks in Pamela, the plot suddenly has a completely new thing happening. It is much worse. [Ariel says: Based on the title of this post, it's just the end of Fifty Shades 4Ever or whatever the last book was called.]
Day 68
Pamela explicitly states that she’s spending most of her time thanking God for how the book turned out, implicitly saying that there’s literally nothing going on in this book anymore.
I have been taken up pretty much, I hope, as I ought to be, in thankfulness, prayer, and meditation, in my newly-presented closet. And I hope God will be pleased to give a blessing to me.
Maybe God could have given her a bigger room than a closet.
When [we] came near the summer-house, I took the opportunity to slip from him, and just whipped up the steps of this once-frightful place, and kneeled down, and said, I bless thee, O God! For my escapes and for thy mercies!
No, seriously, this has been the whole book for kind of a while now: Pamela constantly going, “I fell in love with the man with kidnapped me and tried to rape me! Thanks, God!”
OR SO WE THOUGHT.
But first, Pamela teases us by saying admitting that there’s nothing more to talk about and signs off the world’s longest letter…
Day 69
…and then immediately resumes it because she has more to say. That was totally necessary, book. A great many books throughout time have had a “The End!” 92% of the way into the book, and then said, “Just kidding!” and kept going. [Ariel said: This is how I feel after every chapter of Entwined with You every chapter feels like the end and then it's like OR MAYBE MEGUMI IS MISSING!?!?!?]
Of course, it would be entirely too out-of-character for Pamela to just, you know, start with the new thing that made it necessary to write more, and instead writes another scene that conveys no new information.
[The Master] brought with him some of his old acquaintance, to dine with me. “Are you [upset], Pamela?” said he. I remembered my lessons, and said, “No, sure, sir. I cannot be angry at anything you are pleased to do.”
BREAKING NEWS: The Master is still a controlling dick. And to think the story almost stopped before we could learn this.
This scene that un-ended the story to tell us nothing new continues to tell us nothing new, like:
The Master’s upper-class friends are pleased with his marriage, even though it’s to the working-class Pamela. Surprise!
They also all think Pamela is the bomb. Surprise!
They also think Pamela is a great model of a woman who knows her place. Surprise!
Mr. Arthur was pleased to observe [the] ease and freedom with which I behaved myself, and [served] them, and said he would bring his [wife] to be a witness and learner [of] my manners.
A man wrote this book where female characters exist to learn how to better serve the men in their lives. Surprise!
Day 70
Okay, so why is this book still going, really?
The Master takes her to a women’s boarding school, and Pamella immediately observes that he’s giving one of the young girls there much more attention than the others. Also, that they’re at a women’s boarding school in the first place, which isn’t exactly subtle.
My master came in, and I had no mistrust in the world, [...] but [he] looked more wishfully on Miss Goodwin than on any of the others. But I thought nothing just then. Had she been called Miss Godfrey, I [would have].
The deductive powers of Detective Pamela, folks.
“Do you know this gentleman, my pretty dear.” [I said to Miss Goodwin.]
“Yes, madam,” said she. “It is my own dear uncle.”
I clasped her in my arms. “O, why did you not tell me, sir,” said I, “that you had a niece amongst these little ladies?”
Pamela thinks about this for three seconds.
“How can this be? You have no sister nor brother, but Lady Davers.” [...]
He smiled, and then I said, “O, my dearest sir, tell me now the truth. Does not this pretty miss stand in a nearer relation to you, than as a niece? I know she does! I know she does!” And I embraced him as I stood.
Well, it’s a good thing Pamela stayed in character by beating around the bush and writing tons of extraneous details we already knew, because she definitely doesn’t stay in character when she learns that her husband secretly has a child. Surprise! [Ariel says: Oh shit! This isn't Fifty Shades at all. And probably not Entwined with You either! It would somehow be more of a scandal if this happened in those books. Can you imagine how many holy craps would have come out of Ana's mouth if she found out Christian had a child with someone else?]
Seriously, though, we’ve had 500 pages of Pamela being the most judgmental and sex-adverse person in the world (which, to be fair, isn’t that strange for 18th century English society), but suddenly when her husband has an illegitimate child he never told her about, she’s super thrilled about it? And if this isn’t strange and out-of-character enough, the Master then goes into the story of the woman whose life he ruined by impregnating her and refusing to marry her, and Pamela is… really cool with it?
“Why, sir,” replied I, “I cannot help being grieved for the poor mother of this sweet babe, [but] I have [this] cause of joy [that] I have had the grace to escape the like unhappiness with this poor gentlewoman.”
“Man, it’s a good thing you knocked up that other unfortunate woman and not me!” -Pamela, literally saying this literally right now
Pamela continues to be unbelievably thrilled that her husband has had a child with another woman and never told her about it.
“This discovery has given me an opportunity to show [my] affection for you, sir, in the love I will always express to this dear child.”
Pamela stops gushing about how awesome her husband’s secret bastard child is long enough for the Master to tell the story of the woman whose life he completely ruined, so Pamela can also gush over that.
“My sister,” [he explained], “knew the whole secret from the beginning, [and] kept it from the knowledge of my father [and] mother. [...] This lady was of a good family, [but her mother] encouraged [our] privacies, [even] when she had reason to apprehend [that they were] not so creditable to the lady. [Instead,] she was far from forbidding [these] private meetings [and even used them to try to] frighten [me] into a marriage with the lady.”
The Master goes on to explain how men literally threatened him at swordpoint to marry her and he still got out of it somehow, and then when the child was born, the shame forced her to leave the country forever and flee to Jamaica, which would seem to be a weird thing to brag to your wife about.
“I do assure you, Pamela,” added he, “I am far from making a boast of, or taking a pride in, this affair”
Which is why he’s being all honest and upfront about it. After Pamela married him.
The Master explains that he heard that she happily married in Jamaica, and the Master has set aside enough money for the child where she can still be a proper lady anyway, so that this terrible last-minute subplot isn’t that bad, really! And the whole thing was hardly his fault:
“I believe, if I would have married her, which yet I had not in my head, she would not have [stayed].”
And yet I notice he didn’t actually ask her.
“[I was] spoiled, you know, my dear, by my mother.”
Fuck it! Let’s blame the mom too! Everybody’s at fault for this woman getting knocked up and sent off to a different country but the guy who did it! Even Pamela gets his pain!
“Sir,” said I. “Your generous mind must have been long affected with this melancholy case”
Pamela: Spends the entire novel enraged at a guy who wants to take her “virtue”, then marries him and empathizes with how hard taking some other woman’s “virtue” must have been for him.
Question: So, uh, now that this has happened, how the fuck do you think this book ends?
OMG WILL TOBIAS SHOOT TRIS THUS ENDING THEIR LOVE STORY AND THIS SERIES?!?!
Chapter 39
The shot doesn’t come. He stares at me with the same ferocity but doesn’t move. Why doesn’t he shoot me? His heart pounds against my palm, and my own heart lifts. He is Divergent. He can fight this simulation. Any simulation.
That is a really weirdly specific gene to have been gifted with. “Well, I wasn’t born with a high IQ or anything, but what I can tell you is that I could certainly break free of literally any simulation no matter how strong the serum!”
No better time than now for a teenage makeout sesh.
Something like a sob and a sigh and a moan escapes him, and he kisses me again.
What is it with these books and the strange noises they try to describe? Everyone is always letting out these complex noises that always seem to be a combination of sounds that are probably at odds with one another. Please try sobbing/moaning/sighing at the same time. The sigh just doesn’t work! [Matthew says: I tried it just now and it came out like a walrus noise? And then I remembered I'm in Grand Central Station.]
“How did you do it?” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I just heard your voice.”
I’m not buying this moment. Right now the sound I’m making is something like barfing, laughing, whinnying, and singing opera to express just how little I believe in this moment.
Tobias, who somehow is an expert in computer programming, which I highly doubt is taught MORE in dystopian America than in today’s America. Is Insurgent just going to be about Four starting his own startup company that creates an App that’s basically Tinder but exclusive to each faction? I don’t even know what that would be called. This is why I’ll never be able to start my own company! [Matthew says: Instead of swiping left or right, you choose cheese or a knife! Nobody ever knows what they're actually deciding.]
On one of the security cameras, Tris sees that Dauntless guards are surrounding her crew, but Four is able to stop the simulation in the knick of time, whew.
But maybe I spoke too soon!
“I have to get the data,” he says, “or they’ll just start the simulation again.”
What the ever loving fuck does that even mean? My day job is all about working with data, and this is complete nonsense. I hope Four is going to quickly access Google Analytics to find some serious patterns in the data! Otherwise, we’ll have to start from the top. [Matthew says: Does this book seriously not know the difference between a program and data? Because that is exactly what is happening?]
Really, it sounds like Four is downloading the evil code [Matthew says: data], and he does this in under a page, so it was clearly not very fucking difficult to do at all, which is even more unbelievable.
Tris reunites with her brother.
“Caleb runs to me when I walk through the doors, and I fall against him. He holds me tightly.
“Dad?” he says.
I just shake my head.
“Well,” he says, almost choking on the word, “he would have wanted it that way.”
He would have wanted it what way?
This line would have made sense if Tris had explained that her father died protecting her, but in this case it just sounds like he wanted to die.
The book ends fairly quietly. Four is reluctantly reunited with his father, who continues to continues to be described in the laziest way possible.
“Stay away,” I hiss.
“Beatrice, what are you doing?” asks Caleb.
“Tris,” Tobias says.
Marcus gives me a scandalized look that seems false to me—his eyes are too wide and his mouth is too open. If I could find a way to smack that look off his face, I would.
At this rate, Marcus could tell us his favourite flavour of ice-cream is chocolate, and Tris would be like, “I couldn’t believe a word he said about the ice-cream. His eye twitched just slightly as he told me.”
They start heading to Amity to find protection for the time being, and on the way Four tells Tris he loves her. The passionately make-out with Caleb sitting across from them, probably feeling deeply uncomfortable.
Are you guys excited for Insurgent? We’re starting it tomorrow, so I hope you are!
We just finished reading Divergent, which means we’re reading the books in this series that people actually don’t like! Get excited for book two: Insurgent, the name of which I couldn’t remember and just referred to it as Bivergent.
Insurgent starts off right where Divergent ended, on a train with Tris, Tobias, and only the first novel’s finest secondary antagonists – Marcus, Peter, and Caleb. Separated from friends recovering from the mind control in situations unknown and forced to seek refuge with two cartoon manifestations of evil and her brother who’s still sort of a jerk, it is truly a dire situation for Tris.
I wake with his name in my mouth.
Will.
Before I open my eyes, I watch him crumple to the pavement again. Dead.
My doing.
No, seriously, I like how this novel’s actually starting in an interesting, “shit hit the fan” place with Tris tortured by her surroundings and her own recent actions. We’re off to a way more promising start than the “we last left our heroes where my hand got kinda tired of writing” sequels of Fifty Shades or House of Night. Don’t worry; I’ll start being critical in like two seconds.
Tris and Tobias traveling on a train – which for some reason Erudite hasn’t shut down – to the Amity camp – where for some reason Erudite isn’t trying to intercept them – which is located outside the gated-off city – because for some reason, oh, fuck everything.
We [approach] the fence, several yards away from the worn path that the Amity trucks travel to deliver food to the city, and the gate that lets them out – the gate that is currently shut, locking us in.
Ah, so I see we’re going to be a little less subtle about this “locked in or locked out” theme even though we haven’t actually learned about anything untoward yet about the overarching reason why there’s…
“I worked in the Dauntless control room, monitoring the security system. We only change the codes twice a year,” Tobias says. [...] “I wanted to make sure I could get out.”
The way he talks about getting out – it’s like he thinks we’re trapped.
…Or a lot less subtle. About something we haven’t begun to-
I never thought about it that way before
TRIS, CUT IT OUT.
They reach the Amity camp where they plan to seek refuge from people who descriminate against people based on broad stereotypes.
I would be shocked by the lack of security if we were not at Amity headquarters. They often straddle the line between trust and stupidity.
You know, the ones who are not the protagonists.
They meet the Amity representative Johanna Reyes, who is notable because she has a scar. It’s mentioned quite a lot, so get ready for the backstory of Johanna Reyes’ scar eventually, maybe? She allows them all to stay the night, but the decision of whether they can stay there afterwards will be decided by the community in the morning. Because they are a peaceful faction, they request that they hand over all their weapons, but Tobias subtly makes Tris keep her concealed handgun. Marcus begins to introduce the group, but Tobias cuts him off and introduces himself as Four, because these summaries are really awesome to write when everybody calls a main character something different.
What, like “Four” is less stupid?
Chapter 2
During her sleep, Tris continues to be haunted about being forced to kill the brainwashed Will and conveniently not the brainwashed Tobias.
For a moment I see Will standing before me, both our guns between us – his hand, I could have shot his hand, why didn’t I, why?
I’m really glad we’re acknowledging this in this book, because it kind of made the last book come off as really shitty. It’s a little late, but, eh, I’ll chalk it up to character development:
I shove the gun beneath [the mattress]. Once it is out of sight and no longer pressed to my skin, my head feels clearer.
I’ll let the book have this one. That, uh, its main character was forced to murder her friend. You’re welcome, book?
On [the hard drive I put under the pillow] is the simulation data that controlled the Dauntless, and the record of what the Erudite did.
Ok, even if we ignore how unbelievable it is that people apparently don’t back up important programs on multiple hard drives or, like, the cloud or whatever, I am befuddled how this is the only record of what the Erudite did. I guess it’s the only proof, but Tris specifically says “record”. Many times.
It contains the only record of my parents’ deaths
Aside from… you know… their dead bodies…
Insurgent does the old “we can’t be melodramatic if we’re self-aware” trick:
“The Amity are meeting in a half hour.” [Tobias] quirks his eyebrows and adds, with a touch of melodrama, “To decide our fate.“
There’s a nice moment between Tris and Tobias where Tobias tries to ask Tris how she’s doing with her parents’ deaths, and neither of them can say anything, but just realize that both of them have lost parents. Then there’s a weird moment between Tris and Susan, the Abnegation girl who was in Divergent for three pages, where Susan helps her brush her hair. That’s not the weird part.
“It’s a shame this happened when it did,” Susan says. “Our leaders were about to do something wonderful.”
“Really? What?”
“I don’t know.” Susan blushes. “I just knew that something was happening. I didn’t mean to be curious”
Well, this obviously wouldn’t have been mentioned if we weren’t going to eventually learn about it, so does anyone have any guesses? Because I’m seriously struggling to even come up with sarcastic guesses for what would be “something wonderful” by Abnegation standards. Maybe they were going to loosen up the ban on muffins.
And before the book gets kinda dumb again, there’s a really nice/sad moment where Tris just mourns her mother’s memory.
I keep staring [at the mirror], but I don’t see myself. I can still feel her fingers brushing the back of my neck, so much like my mother’s fingers, the last morning I spent with her. My eyes wet with tears, I rock back and forth on the stool, trying to push the memory from my mind.
Tris gives herself a short haircut or something to change things up. Caleb gets older brothery, asking Tobias if he isn’t too old to be with his sister. And then it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: learning more about Amity!
Basically
We begin our thrilling discovery of the Amity by learning that they recognize no official leader, and make all their decisions by talking until they come to a near-unanimous decision.
Every Amity in the room turns to the person next to him or her and starts talking.
“How do they get anything done?” I say, as the minutes of chatter wear on.
“They don’t care about efficiency,” Tobias says.
Amity eventually comes to decision, which is also really dumb.
“We feel that the only way to preserve our relationships with both [Abnegation and Erudite] is to remain impartial and uninvolved,” she continues.
Oh, wow, there are so many problems with this, the most glaringly obvious one being that you kind of can’t be impartial when one fifth of your civilization systematically murders another fifth? You can’t be neutral on a moving train that murdered 20% of everyone you know.
They then announce that Amity headquarters will function as a safe house for members of all factions, so long as they abide by their rules of nonviolence and zero conflict. And that is the solution they found.
Basically
Tris and Tobias realize they won’t be staying there long. Thank God.
Question of the Day! Which was your favorite Harry Potter novel? Because reading all this Divergent, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about YA that’s actually good.
Allegedly Captivated by You is coming out November 18th, which is soooo soon you guys! Thank goodness, because SPOILER ALERT this book ends without us finding out where Megumi is! Can you imagine how distraught the world must be without this information? [Matthew says: I honestly had no idea there was still new information to be obtained about the world of Crossfire.]
I’m not even going to bother reminding you what was going on, because the answer is nothing.
Chapter 23
I leaned back into him, admiring our joint reflection. We took great pictures together.
Which made me think of other pictures …
“Promise me,” I said, “that you’ll never watch the video.”
This entire series is just this – one big word association. There’s never a natural flow to conversations. Instead, every scene goes something like this: “Tigers…Tiger Woods…Golf…Golf balls…balls…penis…GIDEON!” Except insert whatever drama of the moment is currently going on in the book. I mean, when is the last time someone has referred to a movie as a picture? Terrible association, Eva, terrible. I have much higher hopes for the flow of Captivated by You. [Matthew says: You do?]
Inside Eva’s brain:
Marshmallows -> Hot chocolate -> Oops burnt my tongue -> Cunnilingus -> Quickie with Gideon -> Gideon works at Cross Industries -> Megumi isn’t at work today, oh yeah, guess she’s missing -> I miss Gideon -> Sex with Gideon in the shower -> Water -> OH MY GOD MEGUMI DROWNED SOMEWHERE!
So I just singlehandedly solved the big mystery of Megumi using the skills I’ve developed reading this series.
In the meantime, nothing is really going on with Gideon and Eva [Matthew says: And yet this book ceaselessly continues.] except she makes Gideon super swear he won’t watch the sex tape of her and Brett.
The gala is full of boring introductions and conversations with minor minor minor characters as you’d expect. Cary dances with a sexy red-headed woman and then goes off to bang her in the middle of dinner, which doesn’t sit right with Eva. She gets up to chase him down then Magdalene shows up.
Magdalene at one point seemed like competition for Gideon’s heart, but then was just being used by his brother to piss Gideon off, and then she started being nice to Eva. They have a conversation about absolutely nothing. I can’t even.
Unfortunately(?), Eva loses track of Cary. [Matthew says: Man, at the rate characters have been disappearing, this series might be tolerable 2/3 of the way through the next book.] Double unfortunately, Gideon’s mother shows up to basically tell Eva how much she hates her.
She grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me over to a dark corner. Then she caught my hand and looked at my gorgeous Asscher diamond. “That’s my ring.”
I tugged free. “It was your ring. It’s mine now. Your son gave it to me around the time he asked me to marry him.”
She looked at me with those blue eyes that were so like her son’s. So like Ireland’s. She was a beautiful woman, glamorous and elegant. As much a head-turner as my mother, really, but she had Gideon’s iciness.
“I won’t let you take him away from me,” she bit out between brilliantly white teeth.
“You’ve got it all wrong.” I crossed my arms. “I want to get you two together, so we can put everything out in the open.”
“You’re filling his head with lies.”
“Oh my God. Seriously? [Matthew says: Wow, this is the first time Eva and I have ever had the same reaction to someone!] The next time he tells you what happened—and I’ll make sure he does—you’re going to believe him. And you’re going to apologize, and find some fucking way to make it easier for him to bear. Because I want him healed and healthy and whole.”
But it only gets worse.
I started walking away but stopped. “What I think is really interesting is that after I confronted you last time, you didn’t ask Gideon about what happened. ‘Hey, son, your crazy girlfriend told me this crazy story.’ I can’t figure out why you didn’t ask him. I don’t suppose you’d want to explain?”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you would.”
I suspect we’re supposed to be awed by Eva, protecting her man and confronting everyone in his life who wronged him. This just doesn’t sit right with me, though. I feel like Gideon should at least be here for all of this. It’s just so inappropriate given she’s only met his mother a couple times. [Matthew says: This doesn't sit right with me either. It feels like Eva taking charge of Gideon's recovery rather than supporting him. This is his battle to fight, when he's ready for it. You don't do an abuse victim any favors by taking more agency away from them.]
Eva, who suddenly appears to be on the world’s most boring journey, is so close to getting back to Gideon when she sees Deanna sitting in her seat! Damn it. [Matthew says: It's like The Odyssey, if Odysseus kept getting stuck on islands where strangers would have angry conversations with him about sex.]
Whatever Gideon thought, it was obvious to me that her interest in him was as hot as ever. And while he offered no encouragement aside from listening to whatever she was saying, just the fact that he was giving her attention was watering that weed.
“She must be great in bed. He fucks her a lot.”
What the ever loving fuck? Who said that! Who comes up behind a person and says that?
It was Cary’s redhead, who had the flushed, bright-eyed look of a woman who’d just had a very nice orgasm. Still, she was older than I’d first thought from a distance.
“You should watch out for him,” she said, looking at Gideon. “He uses women. I’ve seen it happen. More than it should.”
“I can handle myself.”
“They all say that.” Her sympathetic smile rubbed me the wrong way. “I know of two women who’ve experienced severe depression over him. Certainly, they won’t be the last.” [Matthew says: Casual reminder that depression is a chronic illness, not a phase. Now back to the trendy erotic novels that keep getting this wrong!]
“You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” I snapped.
She walked away with an irritatingly serene smile, reaching up to pat her hair as she skirted tables on the way to her own.
It wasn’t until she was halfway across the room that I placed her face.
OH MA GERD it’s Dr. Terrance Lucas’ wife Anne Lucas who Gideon had an affair with in order to get revenge on Dr. Lucas.
Why are all of these people always in the same fucking place? It’s worse than every high school show that somehow puts all of its students in the same classes and lunch periods even though that is a thing that almost never happens unless there are only like 30 people in your school. [Matthew says: Even better/worse, doesn't this take place in Manhattan? How is everyone always in the same place? In MANHATTAN?]
Eva freaks out to Gideon about this, and he says he didn’t notice her being there.
Gideon’s face turned hard. He turned his attention to the room, sweeping it from one side to the other, with a slow searching glance. “I don’t see her. Or anyone like you described.”
Eva…Anne Lucas has been dead for five years! So the rest of the series is now also a ghost story.
“Isn’t Anne a therapist?”
“Psychiatrist.”
A sense of foreboding made me restless. “Can we go now?”
Why is her being a psychiatrist giving her this feeling of foreboding unless I’m right about the ghost story thing? There’s no other explanation. [Matthew says: Psychiatrist -> studying the mind -> Jedi mind tricks -> Jedi come back as ghosts -> psychiatrists come back as ghosts. CROSSFIRED.]
The gang returns home, and Cary confesses he didn’t actually sleep with anyone (BECAUSE SHE WAS A GHOST):
“Yeah, well.” He pulled back, looking sheepish. “I still rubbed her off, since I’d taken it that far, but my dick stayed tucked in my pants.”
I’ll pretend I didn’t read that.
Eva reminds Cary that they’re headed to San Diego tomorrow, and Gideon shows up to be like, “Hey, about that, we need to talk more!” But they make out and the book ends abruptly.
GUYS. GUYS. WE’RE DONE WITH PAMELA TODAY. PIT-A-PAT GOES MY HEART AND SHIT. [Ariel says: Any word on when the next Pamela is coming out, guys? Too soon? I thought so.]
Days 71-76
Also, casual reminder that it’s only been 71 days since we were at “Help! I’ve been kidnapped by a psychopath!” It’s funny because one of the most common reasons defending why Pamela is in the canon is because of its contributions to realism in the novel, and it’s the exact same shit Fifty Shades, Crossfire, the Disasters, and presumably the majority of post-Fifty Shades erotica get criticized as unrealistic for.
Astute readers may have noticed that the plot completely wrapped up a few weeks ago, save for last week’s eleventh hour “oh, shit, nothing’s happened in a while” surprise. So now that we’re in the final stretches of the novel, what does this book have to offer us?
Think I’m kidding? Everything that’s happening now has happened so many times before, even Pamela is half-assing it now:
We were yesterday favored with the company of almost all the neighboring gentleman and their ladies [who] met to congratulate out happiness. Nothing could be more obliging, more free and affectionate, than the ladies. Nothing more polite than the gentlemen. All was performed with decency and order. [Ariel says: I love how this is the exact opposite of the gala at the end of Entwined with You.]
Pamela and the Master go to church and everybody loves Pamela. Wait, you’ve heard that before? A lot? Well, what if I told you that it was despite her lower class! Oh, you’ve heard that before too?
“By all that’s good, you have charmed the whole congregation! Not a soul but is full of your praises!”
I don’t even want to know how many times I used this gif while covering this gif
Well, what if I mentioned that afterwards Pamela donated money to- WAIT! COME BACK! I SWEAR THERE’S MORE!
Yes. The only spark of life that is left in this plot is literally the Master talking about death.
“My line is almost extinct,” [The Master said.] “The chief part of my maternal estate, in case I die without issue, will go to another line. [And] I shall not care my Pamela should be at the mercy of [whoever my fortune goes to]. I have, therefore, as human life is uncertain, made such a disposition of my affairs as will make you absolutely independent and happy [and] secure.”
If you think you’ve seen novels get desperate to stretch out their page count before, Pamela is dying to- oh my God, I can’t; Pamela, just give up already.
Pamela has another twist for the most morbid denouement ever, when the Master asks Pamela to promise him one thing if he dies.
“Only resolve not to marry one person [...] This person is Mr. Williams.”
Surprise! The Master still won’t let this book’s Jacob go! Even though Pamela has spent literally hundreds of pages trying to tell him that she never had any romantic feelings towards Mr. Williams. With its dying breath, Pamela is still trying to make the Mr. Williams subplot a thing.
Is it even worth wondering what Pamela makes of all of this?
He said, “I will not hear my dear creature say anything!”
Right. She’s a woman. She’s not allowed to say anything unless a man tells her what she can say when he’s, like, moved by nature or something.
“Don’t you with pleasure [...] take in the delightful fragrance of [these] banks of flowers? [...] You are a poetess, my dear, and I will give you a few lines that I made myself on such an occasion.”
Not even Pamela lets herself write any of her own insights in her letters. You know, the letters where the Master fell in love with her insightful personality. [Ariel says: That's what happens in all of these books. The women just kind of lose what little personalities they had to begin with. Gideon and Christian claim to fall in love with Ana and Eva because they stand up to them and challenge them, but then as soon as they're together it's like, "Okay, lol, now you have to come work for me at my company, and please don't ever question me anymore. Thanks!" As soon as Eva marries Gideon she's like, "I'm a mogul's wife now! It's all so different!"]
This world is not a place for the immortal mind to be confined to [...] But I shall not get out of my depth; my shallow mind cannot comprehend, as it ought, these weighty subjects.
Which would almost sound impressively Camus-like if this book didn’t already beat you over the head with the patriarchy.
So Pamela and the Master wait a few days for Pamela’s parents to show up. And Pamela stops writing her letters a few days before they show up. And then the book ends. Seriously. A dozen pages about running in and out of a house trying not to be scared of a bull, zero pages about the thing she’s waited the entire book for.
Here end, at present, the letters of Pamela to her father and mother.
Seriously, she just stops. The woman who would write that she stopped writing for a few seconds, but has just started again, just stops writing, independent of any actual stopping point. I haven’t wasted this much time waiting for a story to not tell a story since LOST.
But then it gets worse.
The reader will here indulge us in a few brief observations, which naturally result from the story and characters, and which will serve [...] to the minds of YOUTH of BOTH SEXES.
Yep! Just in case it was being too subtle, Pamela is going to explain itself to us.
What is the antiquated social construct we should learn?
First, then, in the character of the GENTLEMAN, [the Master], may be seen that of a fashionable libertine, who allowed himself in the free indulgence of his passions, especially to the fair sex, [supported] by an affluent fortune, [eventually] sees his errors, and reforms [...] An edifying lesson may be drawn from [this].
Unless, of course, you’re a woman.
The poor deluded female, who, like the once unhappy MISS GODFREY, has given up her honor and yielded to the allurements of her designing lover, may learn from her story, to stop at the first fault
Seriously. Lesson about learning from your mistakes not applicable to you if you’re a woman. Then you’re just an idiot.
In the character of LADY DAVERS, let the proud and the high-born see the deformity of unreasonable passion, and how weak and ridiculous such persons must appear
Unless you’re a man, in which case that “affluent fortune” won’t prevent you from “see[ing] his errors”. YAY LESSONS FOR BOTH SEXES.
Sigh… okay, so what’s the book going to tell us we should learn from Pamela herself?
Let the desponding heart be comforted by the happy issue which the troubles and trials of PAMELA met with
“Comforting” is not towards the top of the list of words I would use to describe Pamela. Speaking of describing Pamela, what are the desirable traits of Pamela that every woman should strive for?
From the low opinion she everywhere shows of herself, [...] Her meekness, in every circumstance where her virtue was not concerned [...] make her character worthy of the imitation of her sex. And the editor of these sheets [hopes] it inspires a laudable emulation in the minds of any worthy persons.
I realize that literally no one was expecting this to not be horrendously sexist, but this 500 page book literally ended by breaking the fourth wall to tell its readers that “worthy” women should have a “low opinion” of themselves and exhibit “meekness”, with the one exception of preserving their virginity so they stay worthy. If someone writes this sort of thing today, it doesn’t end up on English literature college course syllabi, it ends up on Men’s Rights Activism blogs.
Sexism aside, ending a novel by explicitly announcing that everyone should try to be like its main character because they’re so great is sort of a massively egotistical and delusional dick move? Like, on a scale from 1 to 10, this clocks in at a “hahahaha, wow“. I mean, can you imagine if other books were- hang on, I just made a gif for this…
The downtrodden but pure of heart, who, like the young HARRY, may be comforted by the emulable example of the importance of friendship and tolerance and also just happening to be special, which the author hopes inspires the reader to also strive to be.
In the character of HOLDEN, we see an example of the alienated and lonely teenager, from whom such individuals may learn how fucking annoying they are.
The poor, average, and indistinct female, like the character of ANASTASIA STEELE, may see how special and beautiful she truly is, once an attractive and rich enough man wants to bang her. An edifying lesson may be drawn from this.
But let’s go back to what I was talking about a little earlier, about why the fuck are we still reading Pamela? Admittedly, it’s important to not just ignore literature that contains problematic opinions from the past, tempting though it may be. Censoring the past isn’t a good way to go about learning from it, which applies to everything from sexism in Shakespeare to racism in Tom and Jerry cartoons. This applies to contemporary works too. It’s okay to read (and even like) books, movies, music, video games, and any other art or media with problematic elements, so long as you acknowledge the problematic elements.
But is that really the best reason to read a book?
It’s not like there’s a shortage of media with bad representations of women, so why is it necessary to defend its worst offenders? Pamela isn’t just the product of an antiquated and offensive context. It is the antiquated and offensive context. It is a work very purposefully written to convey ideas which are now outdated and offensive, and it contains literally nothing that is not those ideas. It would be like reading a Return of Kings article to study the form of the essay. Plenty of works exist and will exist that over the course of time become sexist or racist or homophobic or some other kind of offensive we haven’t even thought of yet, and that doesn’t automatically negate their merit, but it doesn’t automatically mean they have any either.
And it isn’t like Pamela is even good. It’s a repetitive, overwritten book with underdeveloped characters and unrealistic plotting. What little story it tells is driven solely by everybody inexplicably unconditionally loving the main character (so generic that today it’s a trope of YA fiction), which has to be retold again and again, as if to convey a narrative not by character development but by blunt repetition. And the repetition. Fuck me sideways, the repetition. This book is so repetitive that I read under 100 pages of its 500 page length, and wrote an entire final paper about the whole book based on that fraction of it. And – and I really can’t stress this enough – it is misogynist as fuck, because it is literally a man writing 500 pages about how women are supposed to behave, and has literally never been anything more.
And they even knew it at the time. Henry Fielding, a contemporary of Samuel Richardson, anonymously wrote Shamela, a parody of Pamela that makes the same criticisms I am making on this blog today. It takes Pamela‘s iconic (and not very believable) scenes, like when the Master snuck into Pamela’s bed to rape her and she passed out and then immediately went into her closet to somehow write an account of all of that, and exaggerates and subverts it by having her write it in bed as it is happening:
I hear him just coming in at the Door. You see I write in the present Tense, as Parson Williams says. Well, he is in Bed between us, we both shamming a Sleep, he steals his Hand into my Bosom, which I, as if in my Sleep, press close to me with mine, and then pretend to awake.
Not only does his parody mock the epistolary (or letter-writing) form as unbelievable – one of the things that Pamela is ironically still studied for is how its epistolary form contributed to the rise of realism in literature – but it gives its female character a kind of astonishing amount of sexual agency for, you know, 1741. It’s a bit much to really go into here (I recently read a rather nice piece that goes into it more, if you’re interested), but even back then people not only knew that Pamela had a dubious claim on its moral high ground, but it’s just boring.
So hopefully the lack of SparkNotes for Pamela means that the inevitable desperate college student’s Google searches lead them to this blog, not just because I like getting the ad revenue, but because if there’s anything I hope our coverage of Pamela accomplishes, it’s that more people question why Pamela and books like it are in the canon. I don’t necessarily want fewer people to read this book, but I do want more people to read it because they want to – to understand the problems with such sexism and its social construction – and not because they have to.
Amity decides they don’t want to be caught in the middle of this feud between Abnegation and Erudite. Amity is like that really shitty person that claims to not want to get in the middle of a friend’s fight when it’s pretty clear who is in the right and who is in the wrong. You know, Amity, it’s okay to choose sides when one person is literally murdering the others in the street. Lesson: If your friend threatens to murder your other friend (or goes through with it), it’s actually fine to choose sides, people.
[Matthew says: In the book's defense, as you'll see, Four does get very critical of Amity for the same reasons we are, so it's not like the book isn't aware of how stupid they're being. Okay, fairness over! Let's go back to banging our heads against the table over how dumb Amity is.]
Chapter 3
Nighttime, Tris’ room in the Amity kibbutz. Tris feels sad because there is a lot to feel sad about. Luckily, it’s time for a distraction!
I see a flicker of movement in my periphery, and look out the window that faces the apple orchard. Johanna Reyes and Marcus Eaton walk side by side, pausing at the herb garden to pluck mint leaves from their stems. I am out of my room before I can evaluate why I want to follow them.
I think we can all agree Tris just wanted to go pick some mint leaves with them. Also, I am genuinely shocked Tris didn’t add something about the way Marcus as plucking mint leaves maliciously or with forced sincerity.
Tris goes into Super Secret Stealth mode [Matthew says: We could make a Bad Books Good Times drinking game out of every time we've seen a main character go into Super Secret Stealth Mode] and sneaks around a greenhouse to eavesdrop on Johanna and Marcus and bide her time before she too can pluck all the mint leaves her Divergent heart desires.
Johanna kindly confronts Marcus about the fact that he knows why Erudite chose now to attack Abnegation. Seriously, it’s the friendliest confrontation ever. I don’t know if anyone will remember Making Fiendsbut she is basically the happy little girl from Making Fiends (Charlotte)and Marcus is the cranky little girl who is always up to no good (Vendetta – Yeah with that name she could have been part of Aphrodite’s crew in House of Night). Charlotte is always killing Vendetta with kindness and totally oblivious to her bitchiness. I still love that web series so much. It’s so old-school, I can’t even figure out how to embed it from there. Go watch it.
Anywho, Marcus is very cryptic (but still no word of him being fake) [Matthew says: Or basic.]:
“There is a reason you don’t know all the things I know. A long time ago, the Abnegation were entrusted with some sensitive information,” says Marcus. “Jeanine attacked us to steal it. And if I am not careful, she will destroy it, so that is all I can tell you.”
It’s hope this big piece of information is just Abnegation’s recipe to their amazing muffins. How dare they just give those away to the Factionless when we can’t even figure out how to bake such delicious delicacies without Pinterest!
Marcus says he can’t trust anyone anymore because it’s gotten his friends killed (aw. Marcus, you big softie.)
“In order to have peace, we must first have trust,” says Johanna. “So I hope you change your mind. Remember that I have always been your friend, Marcus, even when you did not have many to speak of.”
She leans in and kisses his cheek, then walks to the end of the orchard.
This is Charlotte
[Matthew says: And thus ends the... most romantic confrontation ever? I have no idea what's going on with the tone in this book.]
Tris goes to find Four and Caleb, and they’re having a grand old time together in Four’s room. Four is regaling Caleb with his ability to hurl a knife into a hunk of cheese. Shoutout to the knife vs cheese dilemma? #ThrowbackThursday.
Caleb quickly excuses himself to, I kid you not, go read a book on “water-filtration systems” which I would also choose over watching Tris and Four making out. [Matthew says: If only we had the foresight to call ourselves "Bad Water-Filtration System Books, Good Times". This could all have been avoided.]
Tobias is convinced Marcus was exaggerating to Johanna to make himself seem really important. Tris isn’t convinced because he seemed sincere this time, and she made such a big point those other times to tell us how insincere he was being, so he is defo telling the truth.
Four thinks they should just find out after they resolve everything that’s going on, which is a really stupid plan, but Tris is like, “He’s hot, so I’ll go with it.”
Chapter 4
The next day, Caleb does his best impression of Hermione Granger and starts reminding everyone about the infamous book Faction History, which I hope Veronica Roth never writes to flesh out the Divergent world.
Caleb also starts asking Tris questions about her simulation results and going on about how odd it is that she could have been put in three factions. I bet that’s one of those mysteries the book will just never solve. [Matthew says: There are a lot of gems of batshit book logic in this scene. We have Caleb's explanation that "It's really difficult for a person to get two results - the program doesn't allow it", which contradicts itself, as well as, you know, everything. And we also get my old favorite, "What does this mean about your brain chemistry? Or anatomy?" because the main premise of this book IS SOMEHOW SIMULTANEOUSLY A CHOICE AND YOUR ACTUAL, LITERAL ANATOMY. Tris responds to this last one by laughing and saying "I don't know", which is great, because that's exactly how the novel answers this question too.]
They discuss this for awhile, and Caleb is fascinated, but we don’t learn anything new. After this, Four shows off really pissed off about something, but won’t say what. Marcus shows up, and says that Abnegation has decided it’s too selfish of them to stay at Amity, so they want Tris and Four to escort them…back to Abnegation headquarters?
“The other Abnegation and myself have discussed it and decided that we should not stay here. We believe that, given the inevitability of further conflict in our city, it would be selfish of us to stay here while what remains of our faction is inside that fence. We would like to request that you escort us.”
See? Pretty vague. [Matthew says: I don't think their plan is to go back to Abnegation headquarters, since the rest of the Abnegation fled to seek refuge with other Hufflepuff, Candor, because we're really trying to give the two Hufflepuffs something to do in this book.] Anyway, the chapter ends with Tris and Four agreeing and Tris deciding this is how she’s going to get information from Marcus.
What do you think this super secret information is?
In one of its small handful of the actually good Saturday Night Life moments that happen every few months or so, last weekend they made a trailer for the young adult dystopian The Group Hopper. You should totally watch it before you read today’s Insurgent post, to get you in the mood. Because it’s basically every young adult dystopia ever. You pretty much don’t even have to read this blog anymore. It’ll be way more efficient. [Ariel says: Fun fact, I was going to put this in my post, until Matt was 1 step ahead of me. Damn you, Mattthhhewwwww!!!"]
Chapter 5
Tris notices Marcus acting suspiciously (AKA just acting like Marcus, because the Divergent series has no comprehension of subtlety) [Ariel says: Marcus comes in two flavours, acting blatantly suspiciously or acting blatantly normal so we never have to do any guesswork ourselves], so she sneakily follows him to the Amity water-filtration building, because there’s a very convenient metaphor there.
Both of us watch the purification happen, and I wonder if he is thinking what I am: that it would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us out into the world clean. But some dirt is destined to linger.
Now that this confrontation scene has been set with an appropriately explained metaphor, Detective Tris demands some answers about the Big Secret we conveniently just learned about at the start of this book.
“I heard you the other day,” I blurt out. [...] “I heard you talking to Johanna about what motivated Jeanine’s attack on Abnegation.”
“Did Dauntless teach you that it’s all right to invade another person’s privacy, or did you teach yourself? [...] If you heard me talking to Johanna, then you know that I didn’t even tell her about this. So what makes you think that I would share the information with you?”
I don’t have an answer at first. But then it comes to me.
Oh my God, our blog’s main characters’ ineptitude… I get that Tris is sixteen and obviously not a master interrogator, but “reason why you should tell me your secret” is maybe the first thing she could have come up with an idea about before confronting someone about their secrets? Good thing she just knew what to say, though! Like always. Exposition like this is probably intended to convince the author that the main character is a capable badass, but really it just makes them seem incredibly unprepared.
“My father is dead. [...] I want to know if it was something he risked his life for.”
Marcus’s mouth twitches.
“Yes,” he says. “It was.”
My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.
“Well,” I say, almost choking, “Then what on earth was it? Was it something you were trying to protect? Or steal? Or what?”
“It was…”
OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, MAYBE MARCUS WILL TELL TRIS THE BIG SECRET DRIVING THIS SEQUEL 8% OF THE WAY INTO THE BOOK.
Marcus shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
DAMMIT. [Ariel says: WE WERE THISCLOSE!]
“You may have succeeded in shutting down the attack simulation, girl, but it was by luck alone, not skill.”
See? This is what I mean! Now the only character in this book who’s saying anything that makes any sense to me is Pure Incarnation of Evil #4.
Tris continues to not play her hand very well.
“Tobias is right about you,” I say. “You’re nothing but an arrogant, lying piece of garbage.”
“He said that, did he?” Marcus raises his eyebrows.
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t mention you enough to say anything like that.”
UGH. WHY. This isn’t even the first time this week we’ve had a female main character stand up to their male significant other’s abusive parent on their behalf, and it works just as badly here as it did in Entwined With You, because fighting someone’s battles for them is a very bad way to help victims of abuse. I get what scenes like this are trying to do: establish the character as supportive, unafraid to stand up for what they believe in, and – doggone it – as a strong female character, too! But scenes like this don’t do that, because this is not an action that supports said victim, it takes further agency away from them during a critical recovery stage. Characters like this aren’t supportive, they’re mistaken, and somehow I’m not getting the impression that that’s what Insurgent is going for.
[Ariel says: What I find most infuriating about these kinds of scenes is that they're written in such a way that if you don't support the characters for standing up for their loved one, you feel kind of bad. I mean, it could be argued that these characters need their loved one to stand up for them, to help give them strength. I have mixed feelings about both the Entwined in You story and this one. I could imagine being really appreciative if my boyfriend told off an abusive person from my past, but I could also imagine feeling frustrated that I wasn't there to stand up for myself and to be the one to say, "You're a sack of shit who fucked with my head." Tough call.] [Matthew adds: I just straight up hate these scenes. There's a significant difference between doing this for someone and doing this with someone. Nor is there ANY benefit to an abuser seeing that the person they abused still can't fight their own battles themselves. If a loved one really doesn't have that kind of strength, no one is doing them any favors by further suppressing their ability to find it within themselves.]
Marcus doesn’t answer me. He turns back to the water purifier. [...]
I leave the building, and it isn’t until I’m halfway across the field that I realize I didn’t win. Marcus did.
lol she just figured that out
Whatever the truth is, I’ll have to get it somewhere else, because I won’t be asking him again.
I like how this is simultaneously obvious (because it’s what’s driving Insurgent‘s plot and we’re, uh, on chapter five…) and illogical (because, well, can we assume that anyone else knows this information?).
That night, Tris has another nightmare about Will, and goes to Tobias’s room for comfort, although she doesn’t want to explain about the Will nightmares.
I can’t tell him that I’m having nightmares about Will, or I would have to explain why. What would he think of me, if he knew what I had done? How would he look at me?
It’s moments like this where I actually do rather like this series, because it does have these great moments of morally grey despair. But then it becomes a YA novel about teenagers making out.
His hand slips under the hem of the T-shirt, and I don’t stop him, though I know I should.
Look, I hated being a teenager too, but that doesn’t mean “haunted by a recent traumatic experience during a time of war” and “but I’m not ready to have sex!” make any kind of sense in the same scene.
I can’t be with him in that way if one of my reasons for wanting it is to distract myself from guilt. [...]
“Sorry,” I say.
He says almost sternly, “Don’t apologize.”
The person in me concerned about people developing healthy attitudes towards sex is pleased that this YA heroine figured this out, but the person in me just reading a damn book is still amazed that the books we’re reading on this blog are still finding new ways to make sex more uncomfortable.
Tobias comforts Tris, because, hey, the second Hunger Games book was about its YA heroine slowly becoming less and less of a character after her traumatic experiences in the first book too.
“I don’t mean to be such a mess,” I say, my voice cracking. “I just feel so…” I shake my head.
“It’s wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if your parents are in a better place – they aren’t here with you, and that’s wrong, Tris. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it’s okay is a liar.”
For today’s end-of-the-post question… it’s that time of year again…
Or 
