by Meredith
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
There were a few reasons which factored into my decision to read Veronica Roth’s Divergent series. Most of them have to do with the Hunger Games, starting with:
1) This still from the Divergent trailer when I went to see Catching Fire:
That is some Hot Young Adult Necking. The books are basically more of this. And I’m super happy with that. Because the main character, Tris, and her boyfriend Four (yes, Four) generally play it safe. (Look – I’m not gonna go after-school special on you about teenagers having sex, but this way, the reader doesn’t have to worry that Tris is gonna get some dystopian future STD or lose her dystopian future baby when she jumps out of a train, which she does A LOT. And, duh, this is Young Adult fiction. It’s not going to get too graphic.) Sorry, I’m distracted by all the softcore dystopian future necking… and those tattoos. Just look at those tattoos.
2) The Hunger Games is like crack to me. After I saw Catching Fire, I could not resist the overwhelming temptation to read the Hunger Games series over and over again. I thought I was too good for teen fiction. But I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Once I read the Hunger Games, I had to reread the series not once but twice more. I watched the Hunger Games three times over Thanksgiving weekend. I shilled out more money to the movie theater gods to see Catching Fire again.
And still my hunger (aha see what I did there) grew. I had to get out of Suzanne Collins’ sexy head and I had to live my life again. Like a heroin addict in a methadone clinic, I found Divergent among similar purchases to the Hunger Games series on Amazon.
3) A New York Times article told me that adults love to read young adult fiction. Everybody does it; it’s just that nobody talks about it (until the movie comes out).
Like a blissfully ignorant Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions, I believed Sarah Michelle Gellar because the New York Times wouldn’t mislead me, a core member of its white bread socioeconomic demographic product audience? Right? So I started practicing having sex with Ryan Philippe (Divergent) even though all I wanted was my tall, dark, and handsome cello teacher (Hunger Games). Note: I can’t even attempt to qualify what kissing SMG would be like. Heaven?
Thus, I knew that I had no choice but to replace one dystopian future teen fiction series featuring a strong female main character with another dystopian future teen fiction series featuring a strong female main character.
Conclusion? Divergent is like the Hunger Games meets The Giver (the movie comes out in August – hey-ey Jeff Bridges!)…if, when, the Hunger Games met The Giver they had instant chemistry, and then had a foursome with their friends Harry Potter and Fight Club. Because the first rule about Divergent is don’t talk about being Divergent. And 50 points to Gryffindor because that’s the house that Tris chooses. No one used protection and, nine months, later Divergent was born. They all raise Divergent together as if she was their own, but everyone knows she came straight from the Hunger Games baby-maker.
Seriously. At one point Tris ends up getting choked by her brainwashed boyfriend. No joke. For people reading this who don’t know that this is a key heartbreaking moment in the last Hunger Games book – why are you reading this and even considering reading Divergent rather than the Hunger Games?! Go. Home. Just like all mediocre children of great parents, Divergent is disappointing. This Chelsea is no Hillary Clinton.
Tris was raised in Hufflepuff (aka Abnegation), which is why she has a huge self-sacrifice streak throughout the whole series. This is why she sucks as a strong female main character. Katniss Everdeen is an amazing character because she’s not worried about living up to her parents’ expectations or putting everyone else before her. She has to be selfish to survive the Games, except, of course, to save Peeta. And even then she questions her motives.
In the last book, Katniss endangers the lives of BOTH of her love interests in a blatant don’tgiveaFUCK moment to go on a self-assigned assassination mission of President Snow, when it is clear her allies have got that shit on lockdown. But that bitch had unfinished business.
Tris, however, is willing to sacrifice her life for a family member who was about to let her die 300 hundred pages earlier. Her sense of self preservation is so twisted, you almost have to ask if she was ever a victim of domestic violence. Except that was her boyfriend’s childhood.
Four (sexy, sexy Four) admires the fact that both her parents really loved her so she can’t be THAT messed up. And she isn’t. Not by our societal standards. IRL women willingly sacrifice themselves and their careers for their families. It carries over into fiction and is already a tired stereotype. (Exhibit A; Exhibit B.)
The Hunger Games was addictive for me and everyone else because it is genuinely refreshing to have a real female action hero. Tris is not an action hero. She is very much a normal modern girl, without all the body image issues, who knows how to shoot a gun. Haha just kidding – she has body image issues too, which, ahem, Katniss does not have. She’s struggling to find where she fits in an ever-changing dystopian future society.
Even more frustrating, Tris needs rescuing from life or death situations. First by her mother and later by her enemy. Her enemy. FUCK. THIS. SHIT. How often does Katniss need to be rescued? Zero times. (She does get rescued once, but it was clearly not an immediate life or death situation.)
All three Divergent books are addictive. But you’ll go to bed wondering why you just spent the past five hours reading about a female version of the nameless Fight Club protagonist becoming Harry Potter while a psychedelic Sorting Hat marks enemies of the state. Somehow, in some way, you’ve read it all before.
But then you keep reading, because you want to know why NO ONE is curious about the world outside of what-used-to-be-Chicago. You would think that Ravenclaw (aka Erudite) would be all for investigating this question, but in their quest for knowledge, apparently the outside world isn’t a high priority.
And this keeps happening:
Also, there are no more Hunger Games books. That is why I finished this series. I didn’t have any more Hunger Games books to read. What else was I supposed to do?
Luckily, the ending of Divergent is much more satisfying than the ending of that elusive minx, The Giver. Seriously – what the hell, Lois Lowry?! How did everyone end up in that climate-controlled suburgatory?! The outside world is about sledding towards people singing?! Are they singing so that T. Swift can have a reason for being in the movie version? And she cuts her acting chops on Jeff Bridges’ memory- containing back? Divergent answers all of these questions.
LadyParts 
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