So yesterday, we had a bit of a mishap, and chapter 34 actually went up instead of this one! Matt and I considered taking the post down when Matt had the incredible realisation that it didn’t fucking matter. So we decided to save ourselves the hassle and post it out of order. Because you missed absolutely nothing by having read it this way. And now you know!

Allegiant Chapter 33: Tobias

Tobias returns to the dorms, and Peter returns to being a character in this book just in time to be the obnoxious pot calling the kettle black:

“Look who it is,” Peter says as I walk into the dormitory. “The traitor.”

Peter, just because it’s been a couple weeks since you last betrayed someone, you don’t suddenly get to be the traitor police, okay?

If you’re all wondering what Peter has been up to this whole time, he’s apparently just been circling places he’s been on a map. As you can imagine, he’s been all of two places. HEY HE’S CIRCLING REALLY CAREFULLY, IT’S TAKEN AWHILE.

“If you think you’re standing on some kind of moral high ground, you’re wrong,” I say to Peter. “Why all the maps?”
“I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it, the size of the world,” he says. “Some of the Bureau people have been helping me learn more about it. Planets and stars and bodies of water, things like that.”

I stand corrected. He’s been drawing circles and trying to understand…outer space? And water? I don’t understand this, did they not teach anything about space or “bodies of water” in the Chicago experiment? [Matthew says: Honestly, I have to be the dissenting opinion here. I actually thought this was an interesting character moment for Peter – maybe because the hugeness of space is one of those things that seriously freaks me out. Although Ariel does make a really good point about the implications of this… so the Chicago experiment can science up mind control microcomputers, but remains befuddled by basic astronomy?]

Peter, suddenly over the fact that Tobias is a traitor decides to have an existential crisis in his general direction:

“So? So everything I’ve ever worried about or said or done, how can it possibly matter?” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t.”
“Of course it does,” I say. “All that land is filled with people, every one of them different, and the things they do to each other matter.”

“I just found out oceans exist, how can you possibly expect me to believe anything matters!”

Peter and Tobias, well on their way to becoming best friends because Tobias has exhausted all of his other options, [Matthew says: Much like this book.] exchange hilarious barbs about murdering people in their sleep and stabbing people’s eyeballs (LOL remember the time Peter did that to Edward? Good tiiiiimes!)

Peter laughs too, and I realize that I am exchanging jokes and conversation with the initiate who stabbed Edward in the eye and tried to kill my girlfriend—if she’s still that. But then, he’s also the Dauntless who helped us end the attack simulation and saved Tris from a horrible death. I am not sure which actions should weigh more heavily on my mind. Maybe I should forget them all, let him begin again.

That’s cool, but I would still refrain from making jokes about someone getting their eye stabbed out. Still too soon.

Peter graciously invites Tobias to be part of his and Caleb’s intimate circle of hated folk. It consists of Caleb and Peter, so it’s not really a circle so much as it is two losers standing in a very short line.

Tobias isn’t happy with this reminder that he’s just another person that almost got Tris killed and who is no longer in her good graces. Peter bangs on about how everyone just hates whoever Tris hates, because this is apparently Mean Girls but with “science experiments”, and Tobias agrees.

To me, Tris has always seemed magnetic in a way I could not describe, and that she was not aware of. I have never feared or hated her for it, the way Peter does, but then, I have always been in a position of strength myself, not threatened by her. Now that I have lost that position, I can feel the tug toward resentment, as strong and sure as a hand around my arm.

I’m not buying this, since when has Tris been super magnetic? I thought it’s been made pretty clear that she’s quite a polarising figure, and even the people that she considers friends have been pretty up and down with their feelings about her.

Cara shows up to tell Tobias it’s time to come along with her to join yet another group of people. This always works out so well, so I’m pumped. She assures us that this group is totally better than Nita’s group! So I obviously believe her wholeheartedly and definitely, completely haven’t forgotten who she is.

At the super secret meeting of the New and Improved Group of Rebels, Tris brainstorms ideas for how they’re going to show the world the truth. You sure guessed it, she thinks maybe they should use a truth serum on everybody! Serums solve everything!

BUT WAIT. Tobias points out that the genetically pure AKA the people in charge are resistant to serums, that’s like their one claim to fame.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Matthew says, pinching the string around his neck and then twisting it. “We don’t see that many Divergent resisting truth serum. Just Tris, in recent memory. The capacity for serum resistance seems to be higher in some people than others—take yourself, for example, Tobias.” Matthew shrugs.

Of course, how could I possibly forget that the rules are constantly changing in this series in order to accommodate whatever is going on in a given scene. [Matthew says: I fully expect this book to end with David leaping from his wheelchair, laughing, “You fools! Little did you know the truth serum actually grants superpowers to people who have temporarily lost the use of their legs!”, before he murders everyone with his lightning breath.]

Everyone is given very important jobs – Cara and Caleb are going to study the serums to see if Tris’s awesome plan of awesome might work while Christina and Tobias go undercover to get closer to Reggie…for some reason. He might know more about Nita and co’s original plan or something.

The chapter ends with Tris and Tobias arguing and crying. I have to say, I’m on Tris’ side. Tobias always claims to respect her and then always just dismisses her idea, but he just turns it around and says Tris is punishing him for not agreeing with her. No, jackass, she’s saying you need to stop dismissing her and saying things like, “Oh you just don’t trust her because she’s pretty.” Fuck you, Tobias.