Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Shana Mlawski and Matthew Wrather overthink Divergent — the novel by Veronica Roth and its film adaptation.
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Your Panel
- Peter Fenzel: @fenzelian
- Mark Lee: @goestotwelve
- Shana Mlawski: @shanamlawski
- Matthew Wrather: @mwrather
Buy the Book (Shana’s)
Hammer of Witches
Further Reading
- “Addams Groove” Lyrics by M C Hammer
- The Greatest Furniture in Fiction [Think Tank] on Overthinking It
- “common hats” on Google Image Search
- Game of Thrones Double Dactyls on Overthinking It
Missed title opportunity: “Dystopian Aptitude Test”.
I thought Shana was going to usurp my “Well, actually,” but then she went elsewhere. You may actually know this, but Chicago is not called “The Windy City” because it is unusually windy. It is not, in fact, notably windy in the least. I have heard tell that the nickname comes from the blowhard politicians within that city’s notoriously corrupt political scene. That may also be apocryphal, but I know the wind thing is apocryphal. Oddly enough, Boston is actually one of the windiest cities in the USA, so Pete you can just stay home.
I only made it part of the way through the first episode of Game of Thrones, because I thought it was GARBAGE, but whenever I hear the title it reminds me of Guided By Voices’ “Game of Pricks,” and that’s always good.
Lastly, Pete there is an entire Game of Thrones concept rap album. Common is on it, and also Wale, so you have to deal with that. I also think Big Boi may be on it, which is pretty cool. I wish DOOM was on there, and that would make sense. But I don’t think DOOM is on there because he is too busy being in England apparently and dragging his feet on Madvilliany 2.
Wait. *I* wrote about the Simpsons couch for that Think Tank. My memory. So good.
Where is the pic of Shana on the iron throne? I need to see her take on Cersei.
I put it on the Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShanaMlawski/status/448246632488783872/photo/1
Did anybody take a photo on the Iron Throne tippin’ their shades like they just saw a bikini-clad babe at the beach? That, to me, is what somebody should do with this opportunity. Even better would be a dog wearing shades sitting on the Iron Throne. I shall stop here, because otherwise I’m going to go down a rabbit hole of nonsensical Iron Throne photo ops, most of which will involve shades.
A pic with shades would have been sweet. As far as I know, no one had the forethought to bring them along. Next year!
The future’s so bright…
Was I the only one who looked at the names of the factions and wondered why abnegation wasn’t called “benign” or something? Five groups, rigidly separated, and first initials are A, A, C, D, and E. Why? Don’t they know I have OCD?
Still doesn’t fix the part-of-speech problem.
You’re not wrong. I actually saw the movie, which gave such short shrift to every faction (in the style of harry potter) other than the antagonists and protagonists that I never got around to thinking about the parts of speech because I literally couldn’t remember the name of the agricultural sect. Best girl and I listened to the first half of the episode on the way to work this morning and agreed that it was an annoyance, though.
My background is in academic psychology, and when I first heard of Divergent I figured someone had taken the Five Factor Model of Personality and turned it into a novel. The Big Five don’t map directly onto the factions, but the book seems inspired by that work.
Yeah. If you take the connotations of the words at face value, (like “openness”, which could well mean “candor” on its own) instead of the more involved technical definitions, you could almost make it work. But then you’d be guilty of the Wikipedia Fallacy, which is when you think you are actually smarter for having skimmed an entry.
I found that Wikipedia was an excellent way to pretend I knew something about “Divergent” before listening to the podcast.
How would that work? The best I can come up with is
Abnegation = Conscientiousness
Candor = Extraversion
Amity = Agreeableness
Dauntless = Openness to New Experiences
Erudite = Neuroticism
The last one speaks to me.
I’ve just started working on a YA dystopian book based on the 16PF. It’s already 400 pages just explaining the various factors and their interrelation.
Matt, I’m ready to join you in the Pedantic Faction – “We are technically correct – the best kind of correct!”
With a motto like that, I can only assume the Pedantic Faction would subsist primarily on Manwiches.
On that subject, and in relation to Matt’s elliptical circle comment, in a similar vein during the height of True Detective fervor I had to take to Twitter to point out that all circles are flat.
This tweet from Monday seems apropos:
It’s at times like this when I want to implement an OTI comment moderation system so I can +1 that.
how is this episode not called “If all my hipster friends jumped off a bridge, I would jump off a bridge three years later just like everyone else.”?
I really don’t think you should have an overthinker on the show if they haven’t read or watched the primary topic of conversation. Or at least have them be silent for that portion of the episode. It’s really tedious listening to the people who have done the homework answer basic informational questions for the people who couldn’t be bothered. In particular, Fenzel took what seemed like at least eight minutes to expound on a rambling hypothesis that ended in a question so convoluted it couldn’t even be answered, and all that I learned is that he had no clue what he was talking about. (Besideswhich he begged about twelve questions that each might have been interesting topics for overthinking.)
We won’t be changing our practices. Sorry to lose you as a listener.
Holy shit, dude. It really hadn’t come remotely close to that, but if that’s the way you feel about it I guess I will stop listening. I mean fuck me very much for making a suggestion. Boy, I’m such an asshole, amirite? I’ll just tune in next time I have to do a 4th grade book report and I forgot to do the reading, since that’s about the depth of “overthinking” you guys are able to get into when you’re busy giving an inadequate plot summary for the benefit of half the panelists. You guys actually managed to subject Divergent to a level scrutiny about three steps lower than it deserves, which is such a low fucking bar that you really ought to be ashamed of yourselves. So, congratulations on that I guess.
Congratulations! I’m not sure what we’re celebrating, but congratulations!
I can see your point. I’ve found myself staring bug-eye at my screen as my mind screamed the correct answer, or let a slight bit of my attention slide to the work I should actually be doing when I found something a little obvious or less novel.
However, I’d like to say that as someone who either regularly hasn’t seen, read, or even given the wikipedia article a cursory glance before listening to the dulcet tones of the OTI staffers, I find it useful on occasion (we in Australia get things late regularly). It’s also hard for a whole panel to have all read the same book, or seen the same movie every week without it being a job. They have a 5 year streak for a reason I guess?
The interlocutor is also a useful role to play on occasion, as there’s often basic ideas worth exploring that surface from a simple informational question. Obviously you don’t really want simple questions occupying the entire running time, but having someone who isn’t familiar with the work to ask questions is invaluable. Sometimes the questions won’t go anywhere, but more often then not the neophyte will ask an interesting question because it wouldn’t occur to someone familiar with the piece, or an interesting tangent will emerge in the process of the explanation.
Finally, I’d be more inclined to be amazed than annoyed that anything lucid / intelligent that comes out of someones mouth who is thinking on the fly on-air without a massive amount of dead air or ums and ahhs. Not to mention deciphering some of the stream-of-consciousness style questions.
It might be interesting to have some experts-only discussions as open threads / round-tables but that’s probably not workable for a few friends doing a free podcast week-to-week. To the Forums!
My first comment in forever has to go this way:
http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr299/bayside4528/mds/tumblr_llvcz7Hwyc1qzb9vso1_400.jpg