Last time, Tris’ angst and suicidal tendencies seem to be getting endorsed. This chapter, we finally get someone directly saying the angst is bullshit. Lynn the minor character I don’t remember is here to say Tris needs to stop avoiding their group.

“Christina.” Lynn snorts. “She’s a lovesick puppy. People die. That’s what happens in war. She’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Yeah, people die, but it’s not always your good friend who kills them.”
“Whatever.” Lynn sighs impatiently. “Come on.”

While I’m glad – incredibly, incredibly glad – to finally have someone telling Tris this, it’s from a pretty suspect source narratively – the Dauntless kids always cheerlead anything Dauntlessy Tris does, but they don’t have any characterization other than that, and then there’s the fact Dauntless itself has some major problems. She doesn’t even sound convincing here, since she’s presented as not caring about the death at all.

To put it in tumblr terms, it’s like they’re the friend telling Tris that it’s okay she wore a kimono because it isn’t oppressing Japan, and also they’re a white supremacist.

Of course, with how screwy the book’s gotten I’m now wondering if Dauntless’ intended problems were supposed to begin and end at “Eric was a secret Erudite”. Maybe the ridiculous split in two thing was meant to be telling us that all the bad people in Dauntless left and now there’s just the core of good Dauntless.

We did just find out Dauntless also kicks out their old and sick to starve in the streets, but we also just found out that the author thinks the people starving in the streets are the real problem.

In conclusion, the two major characters have a big problem with what Tris has done, and the minor characters who always love whatever Tris does don’t. That doesn’t have much weight.

And what follows is full of negative little notes.

I get up and follow her down a series of hallways. She moves at a brisk pace, and it’s difficult to keep up with her.
“Where’s your scary boyfriend?” she says.
My lips pucker like I just tasted something sour. “He’s not scary.”
“Sure he’s not.” She smirks.

So we see that, aside from Lynn’s support of Tris’ actions, they don’t get along at all – she’s not paying attention to how fast Tris is walking, she’s negative about Tobias (why would the people into bravery constantly harp about how scary someone is?) and won’t listen to anything to the contrary, and smirking.

We’re trying to forget those Dauntless-Erudite bastard children. Pull together again.”

Tris finds the term hilarious. I find it weird.

Obviously, “bastard children” has the connotation of being a mistaken cross. And I suppose the out of union aspect fits in the fact you’re supposed to be one or the other. But the issue with the Dauntless-Erudite appears to be not a lack of claim about the child’s parentage but too much of one. In their world you’re supposed to have one faction, not two. If a lot of the ones who left were in fact former Erudite, there’s also the violation of faction before blood, though why former Erudite would take being turned into mindless servants better than anyone else is beyond me.

And really, this society must have some way to talk about people who are supposed to be one faction but turn out to have loyalties to another, because the faction before blood rhetoric shows it’s a big issue to them, and the way the factions work is that you can’t be both Dauntless and Erudite (even Erudite’s plan didn’t involve that, it involved Erudite taking over Dauntless). So why would you even want half the credit for them? Why let the bastards have your name? They’re the secret traitor wannabe Erudite.

She brings Tris to the Dauntless section, showing us that Dauntless is trying to keep their faction identify and just somehow didn’t see anything Candor did in that interrogation as a threat to that.

Lynn orders her little brother out of his bunk for Tris. That’s two siblings we’ve now seen that have a significant age gap!

“You’re Divergent,” he says. “My mom said to stay away from you because you might be dangerous.

YOU’RE DAUNTLESS

God, I should’ve been ready for this with the way the author writes them talking about Tobias being scary as if she only has so much effort to pay attention to how factions work and she’s allotted it to the main characters, but jesus fucking christ you’re Dauntless, your mom doesn’t care about your safety enough to ask for fucking railings.

Next up, let’s consider what divergents mean.

For Candor? Divergents are terrifying. If any of them have surveillance and heard Tris say she chose to tell the truth but could lie if she wanted to, they’ve all shit their pants by now. Divergents mean they can’t know what’s really true. (I mean, it’s not actually that big of a deal because the serum still makes it really obvious when the person is trying to fight it, but when you have a truth serum and it still can’t verify every word, that’s going to be a shock. Plus they might fear some sort of super divergent who could lie flawlessly)

For Dauntless? They mean some kids score better on one test than others. From the sounds of it, it doesn’t even impact the final test with the fear landscape, so they could adjust by having the kids do standard fear sims first so it’s weighted least in the final evaluation. Even the social aspect doesn’t matter because it seems like Dauntless only keep redoing the fear landscape and not the non-lucid simulations. Finally, Dauntless is otherwise pretty hands-on, and we just established they have no issue chucking you off a train if you can’t handle faction life. Divergents aren’t a threat, because you can’t be a secret coward.

We then learn that Lynn doesn’t mean loldivergent who cares in this sense.

“The Divergent. People with special brainpowers? Come on.” She shrugs. “I know you believe in it, but I don’t.”
“So how do you explain me being awake during simulations?” I say. “Or resisting one entirely?”
“I think the leaders choose people at random and change the simulations for them.”
“Why would they do that?”
She waves her hand in my face. “Distraction. You’re so busy worrying about the Divergent—like my mom—that you forget to worry about what the leaders are doing. It’s just a different kind of mind control.”

That’s a quality theory there except for the part where Candor would have to be in on it and playing along, because Lynn should’ve just seen the two of them fighting the serum.

I have been so focused on what happened to Abnegation that I almost forgot what happened to Dauntless. Hundreds of Dauntless woke to discover the black mark of murder on them, and they didn’t even choose it for themselves.

The morality of this book continues to baffle. It’s worse to be unwittingly used to commit murder than to be knowingly forced into it?

We discover now that Lynn also has an older sister who’s Tobias’ age. First confirmed family of three kids! I wonder if Dauntless are the exception at this. Come to think of it, maybe they still have sibling pairs, it’s just it’s rare for both kids to make it to adulthood. “My baby has a fever and I’m scared it might be serious so-” “WHOA BACK UP FEAR IS THE ENEMY YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING IF THAT’S YOUR MOTIVATION NOW LET YOUR BABY DIE ALREADY!”

“I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. “It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?”
Lynn goes silent, like she recognizes that as a spark of brilliance but can’t bring herself to admit it.

“I can tell by your silence that you know I am right.”

“Some of us are going to the Hancock building tonight,” says Uriah.

So…now they know what it’s called? Why don’t they seem to know the names of anything else?

Anyway, this time it’s to try to spy on the Erudite with their ever-lit windows. You know, you could also do that during the day. Any time, really.

It’s all probably futile because I bet telescopes are something only smart people use. They’re just planning on squinting real hard.

Tris observes that She used to walk with a lift in her step, like she was skipping. Now her steps are smoother—more elegant, maybe, but lacking the childish joy I associate with her. I wonder what she did when she was under the simulation. An interesting thought that, for some reason, is followed next line with Lynn being sour because what’s also changed is that Marlene’s been hanging out with Uriah all the time. So we’ve now connected the personality changes from horrible trauma and being used as a mindless tool with maturing and falling in love, because why wouldn’t that seem like a great idea?

Tris says that she realizes Lynn is really pretty especially since she had her head shaved but it’s been starting to grow back.

I am envious of her for a moment, and then I think she must hate it, and that’s why she shaved her head.

Tris is really pulling her weight as a first person narrator. So many great observations!

They chat a bit, then Tobias comes by and she relays the squint at Erudite plan and naturally he declines due to the height. Hm, I guess you could see that as foreshadowing that he isn’t really Dauntless but just someone jumping ship, since a true Dauntless would push to always confront their fear. But then again he’s constantly doing the fear landscape thing, which is exactly that.

He’s being friendly but things are still bad between them.

He touches my arm, holding me back for just a moment. I tense up—he hasn’t touched me since before our fight—and he releases me.
“I’ll see you later,” he mutters. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” I say, frowning.
“I didn’t mean that,” he says. “I meant don’t let anyone else do anything stupid. They’ll listen to you.”
He leans toward me like he’s going to kiss me, then seems to think better of it and leans back, biting his lip. It’s a small act, but it still feels like rejection. I avoid his eyes and run after Lynn.

I guess this is the sort of reason why overall, I like these books. The further away we get from the main character, the less sense anyone makes, so we’ve got half of Dauntless joining the people who want to turn them into zombies, but the characterization of the people we’re around most is solid. Even the stuff with Caleb and the rest of them wanting him to shut up was just annoying in the sense I wanted to know, not in the sense I couldn’t see people acting exactly like that. (Even Tobias-I-want-to-be-everything, because I can absolutely see someone supposedly valuing intelligence and wanting to be intelligent without seeing what knowing unrelated information had to do with it.)

Some of the Dauntless have started to mark the walls with colored squares. Candor headquarters is like a maze to them, and they want to learn to navigate it.

Worldbuildingwise, it’s nonsense al the way down. We’re getting a lot about Candor HQ but none of it adds up.

1) It’s gigantic. Implication: Candor is huge.
2) It was originally a store but the sign’s mostly fallen off. Implication: Candor apparently does the bare minimum to repurpose buildings.
3) It’s got a lot of floors. Implication: ????? Candor is huge but doesn’t like walking.
4) It’s really hard to navigate and lacking any signs or labels. Implication: Candor hates clear labeling and either value people getting lost or value people having to spend a long time to memorize floorplans.

There’s no real echo with Candor’s values here. Candor is supposed to be all about transparency, so it’s weird they’d need such a big building to house their faction leadership, and from last book and also basic sense it doesn’t make sense for them to have everyone live in the same building normally. They seem to be doing the usual nuclear family thing otherwise, complete with private kitchens and family dog. You’d also expect them to absolutely love labels. There should be lists of everything on each floor and arrows pointing in what direction they can be found. I’d also expect all the rooms to be clearly numbered.

I mean, compare to what we now know about Amity. They’re a commune, and not that well run of one (rotting apples, weekend-only deliveries) that’s really into scientific improvements to boost efficiency instead (hydroponics) though they are concerned about human wastefulness and presumably the environment as a whole (limited shower time, no actually hot water). Even there it had issues, like with everything being plain wood because apparently the artist subset of the faction don’t have much of anything to do with the outside the fence people. But you could point to any given bit and it’d reflect some aspect of them being dirty hippies.

A maze actually sounds like it’d be right up Erudite’s alley. Something only people who are great at memorization can navigate? Perfect. The only potential problem would be getting someone who had a high overall IQ but shitty navigational skills who suddenly got in charge, and I’m sure they can take care of that by having the first step of the IQ test being to find the location. Every minute you’re late is -1 point.

Tris finally asks why Dauntless has abandoned their HQ.

Dauntless headquarters has the most surveillance cameras of any area in the city,” Lynn says. “We knew the Erudite could probably access all the footage, and that it would take forever to find all the cameras, so we thought it was best to just leave.”

Wait what.

Firstly, if they have surveillance, they’d have surveillance of all the shit happening last book. Secondly, why the fuck would they be monitoring themselves constantly, especially when they very much do not have any sign of watching-the-watchmen concern? Thirdly, you don’t even fucking know where the cameras are?

Wait.

You don’t even fucking know where the cameras are, and you left the thing that lets people DEFINITELY access all footage active and completely unsupervised. Because you were concerned Erudite MIGHT be able to see you hanging out at your HQ, you gave up all ability to see them anywhere in the city, while still being totally observable because there’s still cameras in the other areas.

(And that’s before considering that Erudite may have set up additional hidden cameras, in which case Dauntless HQ would be safest. They weren’t expecting Dauntless to be a concern once they zombified the faction, plus if it’s already blanketed in cameras they wouldn’t need to add more.)

“Smart.”
“We have our moments.”

No, “smart” would be realizing the cameras can be seen through the computer room in Dauntless HQ, and therefore you’d know where the cameras were by what each monitor was broadcasting. “Really smart” would be setting off an EMP, since let’s face it, all your gadgets are compromised anyway with Erudite around. You absolutely have one because you have all sorts of fancy bullshit, and if you didn’t, they’re not really that hard to rig up given the engineering knowledge you guys have already shown, and I say this even taking into account that you’re too stupid to figure out to try an EMP in the first place.

Bonus: there may be files on the computer the Erudite hadn’t bothered duplicating because they weren’t expecting to lose access to Dauntless HQ themselves. We know they were using the Dauntless computers during the takeover rather than their own and the whole hard disk data bit requires the simulation to only be there. Frying it would keep it out of their hands. If you’re concerned about keeping the files, meanwhile, you need to go in to turn it off and then cut every wire attached to it, then stick it in lead and set off the EMP for the rest, because Erudite can probably access it through whatever network it’s on to destroy it themselves and if not, they can send people over to do it physically because you idiots left your entire base with your massive surveillance system and computer totally unoccupied. For all you know there’s a crew currently there just using the monitors themselves.

(I think there must be some monitoring thing in Candor since somehow they knew about the surveillance camera video inside the computer room, but Erudites with the main computer room access could easily hack the cameras to loop.)

Tris continues to observe Lynn is super pretty and wearing clothes to hide it, so she asks why Lynn shaved her head.

“Initiation,” she says. “I love Dauntless, but Dauntless guys don’t see Dauntless girls as a threat during initiation. I got sick of it. So I figured, if I don’t look so much like a girl, maybe they won’t look at me that way.”

While I am pretty sexismed out, I can’t really fault the book for bringing it up. It’s an important subject.

“I think you could have used being underestimated to your advantage.”
“Yeah, and what? Acted all faint every time something scary came around?” Lynn rolls her eyes. “Do you think I have zero dignity or something?”
“I think a mistake the Dauntless make is refusing to be cunning,” I say. “You don’t always have to smack people in the face with how strong you are.”

Instead, I’ll save my fault-finding for Tris’ reaction, which completely ignores that sexism can come up in situations other than two people coming into direct conflict. If other people assume she just can’t handle things, she’ll be passed over or kicked out. If she presents herself as a failure, she might not even get help she needs – imagine if Tobias had looked at Tris trying to fight and, instead of giving pointers on how to manage it, assumed that well, she was just a crybaby who’d fail no matter what?

Even the situation Tris was in doesn’t have a direct parallel – she was acting weak in response to someone whose goal was to make her act weak. In most situations, giving in just marks you as a good target.

Also, I don’t know where the fuck the bit about “mistake the Dauntless make” given a) she only spent about half a day as an actual Dauntless given the zombifying happened right after initiation and b) all the time prior to that everyone supported cleverness for Dauntless. The most you can say is that the Dauntless don’t trend toward the spy mindset of degrading yourself so you can succeed at the actual goal, and for halfway normal, non-robot humans, not wanting to be seen as pathetic usually is an actual goal.

Lynn, mysteriously, isn’t thrilled with this bullshit, particularly saying Dauntless should be focused on being smart because we all hate the fucking Erudite, and also because Tris does the same goddamn thing.

I slip out of the elevator before I say something I’ll regret. Lynn is quick to forgive, but quick to ignite, like most Dauntless. Like me, except for the “quick to forgive” part.

I don’t believe we’ve ever seen a Dauntless who’s quick to ignite. Closest is Tobias’ sudden bursts of rage, and he takes his rages seriously. Having actually seen this would’ve really helped fit with the idea the no-conflict thing in Amity would be an actual challenge.

We meet Lynn’s sister, who is not thrilled with Tris because obviously the Dauntless would be a fearful and superstitious lot. The other woman is the instructor whose fear landscape was used during initiation.

“Really? I thought the transfers would go through Four’s landscape,” says Uriah.
“Like he would let anyone do that,” she says, snorting.

I wish we’d get a clearer map of what the Dauntless think bravery is. They clearly understand it’s something Tobias doesn’t like the idea of, which is pretty close to fears, but they respect that and seem to generally respect keeping fears a secret. Even the public changing aspect of the initiates’ dorms doesn’t seem to actually be enforced, since unlike the movies, there’s a perfectly regular bathroom to hide away in if you need to. They seem to grasp there’s a difference between relevant fears (fear of heights) and less relevant (fear of being embarrassed by people knowing your fear of heights).

Tris is all aww, he really loves me to let me see it, and at this perfect point they’re attacked by the other Dauntless.

guns with narrow, blue beams of light streaming from above their barrels.

What’s even the point of taking over the actually trained faction if you’re also taping laser sights on the guns?

There’s a bit of chaos.

One of the blue beams is fixed on my chest.

While I’m dubious of how easy it’d be to notice a laser on you given how light works and given you should be looking elsewhere at the moment, accepting it just leads to the other plot hole of that just makes it stupid the Dauntless are using guns that alert your target.

Anyway, she gets shot. That’s a pretty solid cliffhanger.