ONE OF THE factionless started a fire so we could heat up our food. Those who want to eat sit in a circle around the large metal bowl that contains the fire, first heating the cans, then passing out spoons and forks, then passing cans around so everyone can have a bite of everything. I try not to think about how many diseases could spread this way as I dip my spoon into a can of soup.

While that’s a valid concern, I’m also wondering why there’s a bowl for the fire. And how you’re holding scalding hot cans. And how you can find something big enough to contain a cook fire, but you can’t manage plates. You can jerry-rig just about anything into a plate.

I’m guessing this line is just in here for the sake of more poverty porn, because there is no reason for this when they live in the middle of a city. They should be able to scavenge up some usable stuff. It won’t be pretty, probably won’t be clean either, but dirt is better than shared germs.

Edward and another factionless named Therese come by to chat. Therese says she used to be Erudite, but had to leave.

She shrugs and takes a can of beans from Edward, plunging her spoon into it. “I didn’t get a high enough score on my initiation intelligence test. So they said, ‘Spend your entire life cleaning up the research labs, or leave.’ And I left.”

…really? They gave you the choice between labor but with guaranteed home and food, vs labor but you live in the city dump, and you chose the dump? …it’s really hard to feel sorry for this lady.

They sit around and talk about how the factionless are mostly Dauntless, partly because their initiation is so hard and partly because old Dauntless are straight-up asked to leave. Because the Dauntless don’t actually value bravery, they value physical prowess, and no one has been brave enough to stand up and point out the difference. How bad a faction do you have to be to misunderstand your own core value?

I remember the first time I realized I had never seen an elderly Dauntless. And when I realized my father was too old to climb the paths of the Pit. Now I understand more about that than I’d like to.

Wait, so you saw all that, but you still had to have it literally spelled out for you that the elder Dauntless are kicked out?

I have major doubts about Tris’s Divergent-ness. She’s not shown any clear propensity towards Erudite or Abnegation like the book claims. If anything, she’s the one character in the book that actually fits into a narrow pigeon hole.

“Do you know much about how things are right now?” Tobias asks Edward. “Did all the Dauntless side with Erudite?

The question no one asks: “why did any Dauntless side with Erudite?” It’s like they just assume that it makes so much sense for the Dauntless to pair up with the people who brain controlled them that they never question it, they only question if everyone did it.

They find out that half the Dauntless sided with Erudite and are at their compound and the other half are at the Candor compound. Also not asked: “why did no one go home?”

I eat spoonful after spoonful until my stomach is full.

They can eat until stuffed – an unexpected guest can eat until stuffed – but no one has plates. It’s not that I can’t see this happening, it’s just that it takes a specific set of circumstances which have not yet been presented. Plates, at least improvised plates, are rather easier to obtain than copious cans of food, unless you’ve done something like raid a food depo and then run off to hide in a bare building. Poverty is not a one-size-fits-all deal; you can’t just pick and chose from whatever tropes sound most pathetic and patch them all together. It still has to make logistical sense.

Tobias and Tris snuggle to sleep, and again there’s a nice little moment there and Tris shows her grieving chops. Later Tris wakes up to overhear Tobias and Evelyn talking. Tobias wants information, and he starts with demanding to know what all the charts and numbers in her office were about. Evelyn says that Abnegation was testing everyone among the factionless for Divergence, but she doesn’t know why, so Evelyn kept track of the numbers in case Erudite comes for them next: she wants to know how many people are immune to hallucination simulations. She also wants to make sure Erudite does not know this.

Although, apparently we’ve totally forgotten that Erudite’s stated aim in the last book was to wipe out the factionless for being useless. Even if that was never their aim and it was all a lie, it’s what Tobias understood to be true, so he should at least bring that up and ask about it.

For that matter, why didn’t Erudite go to the factionless in the last book? If all they want is manpower, they could have used the greater numbers that the factionless provide (assuming they don’t know about the large number of immune people living there). The only reason to go to Dauntless instead is because they keep the weapons at their house, but they seem to have spies all over the place and theft is easy enough. You take guns away from the Dauntless and all they can do is fall out of trains. (Well, the other reason is that you didn’t plan ahead and had to change reasons at the last minute.)

Evelyn doesn’t know why they were being tested but suggests that they ask Marcus. She also says Marcus thought Tobias was Divergent, and so Evelyn thought he would treat Tobias better, on account of him being ‘valuable.’ Obviously this was not the case, but she didn’t know that at the time.

Tobias doesn’t want to hear excuses, and of course he doesn’t. He’s been through shit, and it’s an emotional moment, of course he’s not going to listen to her. That shit takes time to process. But Tris can hear it. And nothing from her previous assumptions and outlook gets revised or softened or even commented on.

Evelyn says the factionless want to take over Erudite, after which they can pretty easily get themselves in charge.

“That’s what you expect me to help you with. Overthrowing one corrupt government and instating some kind of factionless tyranny.” He snorts. “Not a chance.”

“We don’t want to be tyrants,” she says. “We want to establish a new society. One without factions.”

My mouth goes dry. No factions? A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit? I can’t even fathom it. I imagine only chaos and isolation.

On the one hand, this is pretty stupid. On the other hand, I like this stupid. It makes no sense to us, but to people raised in that sort of a system and who benefited from that system, it would seem pretty outrageous. People who are in power in an unequal system will see that system as being right and natural, because from their perspective everything is working. So, yeah, this is a fine mindset for Tris and Tobias to be in. Not very subtle since it’s so wildly illogical from an outside point of view, but the basic premise is fairly sound.

Unless, of course, we’re supposed to agree with Tris and Tobias on the ‘tyranny’ part, in which case fuck all that noise. Not only is there no reason to think the factionless will be tyrants (like, literally, none, nothing has happened and the factionless have been nothing but accommodating so far), but also they completely fail to even begin to consider the position these people are in. It’s not like it would be very hard to go “woah, woah, woah, I know you guys have it shitty, but maybe we should try to fix things before we go and upend literally everything our society is built on.” That addresses the fact that the factionless live in a dump while still letting them cling to their ingrained mindset. But to just ignore how broken things have been? Again, fuck all that noise.

“In order to do this, we will need Dauntless’s help. They have the weapons and the combat experience.

Um, you’re half right. They have the weapons, but exactly how much combat has anyone been in so far? Oh, right, none, these bastards walk a fence all day long and get in brawls for fun. In fact, they seem the exact opposite of combat ready since they don’t follow directions very well and their entire core value is based around doing unsafe stunts.

Besides which, who the fuck are you going to be fighting? Are you expecting the lab technicians to put up a professional defense?

Combat =/= general active lifestyle + brawling.

Evelyn wants Tobias to convince the remaining Dauntless to join her. Shouldn’t be that hard. They followed Erudite after those people brainwashed them; you could probably just offer them all cookies and get the job done.