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Hey everyone! Here is the first episode of a new podcast I am doing with my brother, Dan.

What if your world, and everything you were brought up to believe, turned out to be a lie - except your feelings for the cute boy or girl you just met? Each episode, Dan and Paul take an in-depth look at a world portrayed in a Young Adult dystopian movie or book. How did they colour code uniforms in The Giver when everyone sees in black and white? In Divergent, what faction do sketch comedians belong to? These questions and more will discussed on Fight the Future!

Look for new episodes every other Monday!


In this episode:
The city of Chicago has fallen into ruin, with the survivors split up into 5 factions based on their personality. Why? Who knows? Peace probably. This week, Dan and Paul look at the world of the blockbuster movie, Divergent!

Before Paul & Dan mentioned that they were brothers, I thought that 'Dan' was just Paul putting his voice through a filter.

I really liked this podcast. It's different and funny. 10/10

Off topic: One thing that I find funny about distopian stories is that they disregard the existence of the entire world. I mean, what happened to international relations? Has the country been closed off to all immigration?

Wait where is the podcdast? there aren't any links.

uberfail wrote:Wait where is the podcdast? there aren't any links.

There is a link to the podcast (as well as other recent podcasts) in the sidebar of the main site. Or you can follow this link:
http://loadingreadyrun.com/lrrcasts/vie ... vergent/AU

From that Stinger I assume the girl who did the topic titles was someone Dan knows.

The first analysis of this series I heard likened the class system to High School cliques (like the Dauntless are the jocks for example). Though I think your analysis is better because major choosing has more of the life long decision thing going for it.

It's also probably influenced by the social divisions in The Republic and other dystopia/flawed utopia fiction influenced by it.

As someone who's read and enjoyed the books, I'm thrilled that you took the time to actually do some research on the overall story instead of just jumping straight to "lol it's for people who want to feel like special snowflakes because they don't fit into established cliques." A lot of important subtle plot hints were lost in the movie(s), particularly how you're meant to get the feeling that being divergent isn't as rare as it's made out to be, how a significant portion of the factionless are there BECAUSE they're divergent and couldn't fake it in their faction, and the overarching plot is less about "being different" and more about "what the hell even is wrong with humanity?"

On the topic of technology levels in the different factions:
Amity is basically the Amish, they have no need for such things.
Abnegation, being focused on selflessness, likely see it as inappropriate and selfish to use technology when there are others (like the factionless) who must do without.
Candor appears to have a reasonable level of tech about equal to current-day, we just don't see much of them since none of the main characters are from there. There's not really anything interesting about people who are just brutally honest. (Never mind that my favorite character was from there, but his arc was treated so miserably in the movie he might as well not even have existed.)
Dauntless probably figures it would just make things too easy, and they're all about challenge. A good amount of them also seem to be meatheads who wouldn't know how to repair it if something broke, and wouldn't want to be seen asking those nerds over in Erudite for help.

Anyhow! Loved the podcast, eagerly await future ones!

Like the Magnum podcast, I found this surprisingly interesting. I do wonder how long it will take for each episode to devolve into "it's only like this because the story wouldn't work otherwise, and because the writing has the subtlety of a sledgehammer", but I'm more than happy to keep listening.

Grickles wrote:Before Paul & Dan mentioned that they were brothers, I thought that 'Dan' was just Paul putting his voice through a filter.

How do we know it isn't? Paul could be trapped in his own dystopian future where his special power is being able to communicate with his genetic clones (hidden away a strange underground science lab called "Italy") through a vocoder-style device.

If he turns up to the moonbase with a crossbow and a generic grey outfit, then it's time to start asking some serious questions!

I had trouble telling Paul and Dan's voices apart when they were streaming Mario, and at least then I could see them talking.

If main character didn't test for the factions representing peace and honesty, that obviously makes her a violent liar.

Boxing research has mixed results over whether bareknuckle or gloved is safer. Without gloves, boxers throw fewer punches to the head because they're more likely to injure their own hands. So gloves reduce superficial injuries but may actually increase brain injuries.

I am not Paul's clone from the future, nor am I his filtered voice! Unless the words of this very message have been filtered to sound like it's coming from me... Who am I?!??!

The intertitles are by someone I know, my Italian friend Chiara Cont, and I we should start crediting her fine announcing work in future episodes!

Thanks for all the comments folks, and glad you liked it! Keep 'em coming, and feel free to send suggestions for how we might make future episodes better. Most of all share it with your friends who are into this sort of thing! You know who they are!

I really like the idea of this podcast and also glad that you present the world as charitably as you do given how crackpot most of them sound. I must say, though, the filters on the topic change voice are a bit over the top for me. It's a little hard to parse out what she's saying. Maybe just toning it down slightly will fix it, cause she otherwise sounds the part of the seemingly friendly but probably going to kill you dystopian computer voice.

Love it! Where Magnum Rewatch is a more high energy podcast (mostly due to Kathleen), this is more low energy. Gives a nice bit of diversity between the podcast.

I also like how you really got into the theme of the film (choosing a Major and such). I respect the movie a lot more now. Will probably never watch it, but I like that it was going for a clear message and theme.

Finally, saw the image for the podcast on the main page. It is perfect

I'm glad others posted this before me, but when Dan first spoke I really thought it was Paul. Since I've never seen any videos with Paul I'm going to assume Paul has a Tyler Durden thing going on.

The books for me were ok; I read them because my wife did, and except for the third one I could get through them without ranting too much. The movies were, well, they were just one more generic dystopic teenage movie where katniss everdeen must fight with the Candor as they run through a maze.

I think based on all the information I know about this I would either want to be in Amity, because if I'm going to live in a dystopic future with no possible change (as far as I would know) I wouldn't mind being constantly drugged into being happy. Erudite seems like a good choice too since they seem to have the most comfortable lifestyle while being able to play with cool technology. I couldn't live in a society where you had to be completely honest all the time; a little societal nicety helps people not kill each other I think.

What maintains the society? The teenage desire to belong, of course. This is a young adult novel, after all. It's like the social experiment you use to teach elementary school kids about racism, where you treat the brown-eyed ones better than the blue-eyed ones one day, and the other way around the next day. Everyone, especially before the age of 18, really wants to belong.

Also it makes sense that there are no old Dauntless, because they're so violent.

I did not like the books. Haven't seen the movies. Don't really want to.

But I did like this podcast. Good job Paul and Dan. I really like the idea of this podcast. Not so much to review the movie, but to explore the world in the movie.

I was enjoying the world building reading the books then suddenly the plot started accelerating and doing silly things which made no sense.