Insurgent, Day 3

Last summer, in one of my Hunger Games reviews (Catching Fire, Day 1, to be exact) in which I explained my dislike of love triangles, I said this, among other things:


"I utterly fail to see the point of giving a character more than one potential love interest. In my opinion, it only creates frustration and, ultimately, some degree of disappointment. I mean, really, what does such a conflict of interest accomplish in storytelling? Is it supposed to make stories more realistic? Contribute to character development? Make readers throw-the-book-across-the-room angry?... I just don't get it."


I was reminded of that quote today while finishing up another book, one featuring a love triangle. In the end, the male in the case married a sweet, childish, honestly kind of boring girl, and left behind the book's main character (also known as the girl I wanted him to end up with) with this result - "Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the day and half the night she fell continually into fits of shrieking, but cried in the midst of them to her mother, 'Don't be afraid. I shall live. I mean to live.'"


I was deeply upset, because I liked her, and because she'd had a miserable life that he could've made bright again, and because dang nabbit the other girl was boring and he just kind of randomly decided he loved her like six sevenths of the way through the book!


But at the same time, he couldn't very well ignore that other girl, who was a rather pathetic character as well, and who would've been quietly devastated (as in, she wouldn't have shrieked and cried and been temporarily bedridden, but she would've been sad) had the fellow made a different choice.


See, this is why I hate love triangles.


This is why I'm glad Divergent doesn't have one.


But today, doing my allotted reading of Insurgent, I think I finally figured out a possible explanation for their existence, at least in the context of modern teen romance fiction like The Hunger Games.


As my friend Ilandere has repeatedly pointed out in the comments throughout this process, this genre of book is pandering to a highly specific demographic. Namely, average teenage girls. And what do most people believe to be the primary occupant of the forefront of an average teenage girl's psyche?


Boys.


Yes, boys. While some teenage females (like me, for example) think that teenage males are strange, unnatural creatures that rarely succeed in escaping the bonds of confusing behavior and attempted coolness and bursting forth into interestingness and, even more rarely, attractiveness, generally girls seem to think that boys and their oft-inconsistent attentions are somehow necessary to happiness. The idea of a boy their age or, even more alluring, older than they are professing to love them and fretting about them and telling them to be careful is unspeakably tantalizing. And the idea of two boys fretting and competing for their affections...... well, that's just downright heavenly.


And thus, apparently both Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth decided that they couldn't write plain stories about terrifying clashes of will, staggering moral quandaries, impossible decisions, and the disaster and destruction wrought whenever one person attempts to gain absolute control over his or her fellow men. 'Cause, you know, that kind of stuff's boring on its own.


Nor, evidently, could either one be content to fashion a simple, straightforward, heartwarming and/or heart wrenching love story against the dark backdrop of a bloody conflict, in which, say, the couple in question have known each other for years, and perhaps are brought into a more close bond and codependence by the war, during which learn to trust each other completely and often turn to each other to rediscover their vulnerability and humanity as conditions grow more brutal around them, until all they have left anchoring them to the world and to themselves is each other. 'Cause, you know, that would also be boring.   


Instead, Katniss must decide between Peeta and Gale.


And Tris and Four won't. Stop. Arguing!


Okay, I'll admit that I've had no personal experience with dating or romance or the like. But I feel, in my inexperienced and naïve heart, that if you're either getting into a shouting match with your boyfriend or worrying that you're going to get into a shouting match with your boyfriend every time you see your boyfriend, you might want to, oh, I don't know, find a different boyfriend!


Additionally, if you and your boyfriend move past your stage of intense argumentativeness and right back into your original stage of kissing and touching and thinking things like, "golly gee, I sure hope our author isn't going to kill you off later for dramatic effect", it doesn't automatically mean things are going to be all sunshine and rainbows between you from now on. For one thing, if, like Tris and Four, you don't actually make any effort to apologize or solve the underlying problems that led to the argumentative stage in the first place, those underlying problems are still going to be there. And really, speaking again in complete ignorance of these matters, I feel like the fact that the underlying problems existed in the first place seems to suggest some kind of incompatibility which it might be a good idea to address before you start brazenly risking your lives for each other and depending on each other in stressful situations.


Now, I freely acknowledge that in an environment of extreme uncertainty and danger there might not exactly be time to sit down and have long conversations analyzing, mending, and deepening a romantic relationship. But one could very easily apply that same logic to argue that it might be kind of a stupid idea to begin a romantic relationship in the first place!


Yeesh.


The thing is, I'm still rather enjoying this series. The action is ramping up. The plot twists are not entirely predictable. The villain(s) is/are fascinating. But I'm getting a bit tired of nearly every thought process and decision passing through Tris's head and onto the page involving Four. She and Four argue because he unfairly thinks she's being too reckless, so Tris decides to forgo opportunities in the name of caution. She becomes worried that Four might do something unbelievably stupid and dangerous, and so she completely dismisses that earlier decision to be more careful and does the stupid and dangerous thing so he doesn't have to. She gets injected with a serum designed to make a person suffer the most primal and all-consuming fear imaginable, and what does she see? Well, Four dying, of course.


Despite the fact that he's an emotionally volatile and often unsympathetic freak of nature who can't decide whether he's clingy or unfeeling and fluctuates between demanding exorbitant feats of endurance from Tris and telling her to hide away where it's safe. Whom she argues with. A lot.


Argh.


And thus we arrive at the most awkward part of any given blogpost, where I've completely run out of things to say but don't know how to effectively conclude. So...... I suppose I'll be writing more tomorrow. By which time I'll have finished Insurgent.


Yippee. And stuff.


~Pearl Clayton