Casual Costumes: Workout Edition #3- Tris Prior

Since last week's CC Workout was about Katniss, I figured this week's would be about another badass dystopian female. Tris Prior fits that description perfectly. She came from the calmest of the factions (Abnegation), to join the toughest (Dauntless), only to realize that she was in fact Divergent- causing her all kinds of trouble and reasons to fight. Get your Tris on with this great look from Target!

Tris Prior Workout by krystellemt 

**The Target link is an affiliate link. If you purchase something from Target after clicking my link, I will make a tiny commission off of your purchase. Nothing extra is charged to you, and you're helping support this blog. Thank so much!**

Recently

March was so busy! So this is a recap of what my month was like.

Read:

I spent some time reading Divergent(review here) and Insurgent (review soon). I also read Camp Boyfriend by J.K. Rock, and I have something I think is exciting related to that book coming up soon.Other than that, its just been magazines and comic books :)

Watched: Spongebob Squarepants, Strawberry Shortcake and Pokemon. I let my kids pick most of the shows in March lol. 

Listened To: 

Bastille- Pompeii

That was for the kids, since that song was used in the Mr. Peabody and Sherman trailer, every time they heard it on the radio, we had to listen. And we listened a lot, since four of the five local radio stations I listen to played that song quite a bit lol. 

I spent a lot of the last of March listening to Skylar Astin's Mr. Roboto/Counting Stars Glee performance on my IPod. Love him.

Happenings:  The children and I all celebrated our birthdays, mostly happily. The kids had great birthdays and great parties. My birthday was meh, and the night of my birthday dinner, my mother in law decided to tell me all kinds of horrible things about myself. I still haven't forgiven her, I won't. She has said a lot of evil stuff in the past, and I'm just tired of it. But anyway, besides all our birthdays and parties, I also volunteered to work a consignment sale. It wasn't all selfless. I was selling stuff at the sale, and the owner of the sale gives you a higher percentage back on your sales if you work the event. My sister and niece also came to visit for a week. They live out of state now, and my niece was on her Spring Break. It was really nice to see them, and my whole family even took a day trip to the beach as part of their visit, which was nice (its always nice to get out of town, and I haven't been able to do that lately. My husband has, for airsoft games and other airsoft related stuff, but I don't go with him to those things.). March was also filled with crappy allergies, a lot of doctor appointments, and the flu. Oh! And the IGGPPC birthday, that resulted in lots of Happy Mail! One day soon, I am seriously going to do a massive mail post. I have so much stuff to share with you guys :) I also completed one of my Renaissance Project goals, which was to have four blog giveaways. The Stickers! Giveaway made number five, so while I technically hit that milestone with the House GlaDOS Giveaway, I didn't realize it until giveaway #5 (because I am spacey like that). Busy, busy month indeed.

Poppin' Off- Divergent (The Movie)

Source.

Oh, Divergent. I wanted to like this movie so much. I really did. But I really didn't. 

*There are big time spoilers in the post. So if you don't want to know, I suggest not reading this right now.*

In anticipation of the movie, I read the first two books in the trilogy (lagging on that last book, it kinda sucks). I really think that I did myself a disservice by reading it before I saw the movie. The movie left out a lot of pivotal moments from the book, and threw Jeanine Matthews into parts that she didn't even belong. But let me back it up.

Visually, the movie got Chicago very much how the book described it, minus the Dauntless Pit (it was dark and had water in the chasm in the book, in the movie it was light and lacked the water). Regarding the faction dress code, they didn't stick to it exactly, and I didn't really like that either (that's how each faction was identified to others in the book). The plot, I felt, didn't stick to the book very much. There was a lot that was changed, and I wonder how that will affect the other movies. For instance, they did not introduce the character of Edward. Edward becomes very important in the second and third book, because he is a big part of the Factionless movement. He is also the boy that Peter stabs in the eye with a butter knife to get the number one spot. But they don't show that scene in the movie. They don't identify that Peter is one of the boys that tried to rape and kill Tris. You get to see Al in that scene, and you get to see that he killed himself later, but you don't get to see any of the back story with Al. You don't get to see how much he likes Tris, how terribly he was doing in training- all the reasons that those negative actions meant so much. They tried to make Peter rude in a funny way, and that wasn't him in the book at all. You don't get to see any of the Dauntless born initiates, so there's no Uriah (another fairly important character later on). And in Tris' final fear landscape, they felt the need to have it like Four was trying to rape her, when in the book, she was afraid of being close to him. And like I said before, they put Jeanine Matthews in a lot of scenes that she wasn't in in the book. The scene that was most ruined by her presence was the control room. That fight was supposed to be just between Tris and Four, not them and a ton of Erudite. In a way, they used the character of Jeanine as a narrator, filling in information that you need to know and wouldn't know if you hadn't read the book. I think if they wanted to do that though, they could've just stayed truer to the book and the information would've come out organically, but whatever. There were a lot of differences in the way the family conducted themselves too, and some scenes were changed where you lose very important hints about their background.

Casting-wise, I liked most of the people they chose. Shailene Woodley made a really good Tris. Ashley Judd made the perfect mom. If they had done the mother's back story the right way, it would've been even better. I thought Peter and Caleb were miscast though. I think Miles Teller would've made the better Caleb, and Ansel Elgort would've made the better Peter. I felt that Shailene and Ansel had no chemistry whatsoever as brother and sister, so it will be interesting to see if they make better lovers in this summer's The Fault in Our Stars (they are Hazel and Augustus after all). I also thought Christina was a little miscast. When I read the book, I pictured Naya Rivera in that role, not Zoe Kravitz. Its not that she did a bad job, I just pictured someone different. Jai Courtney did Eric very well, although he did look a little like Macklemore. 

The movie wasn't horrible, even though I'm venting a lot. It was still suspenseful, even without all the ultra violence that was in the book. And there's a part where Theo James takes his shirt off, that's visually pleasing (so much so that a group of girls in the front of the theater clapped and cheered when he did it). Overall, I would give the movie 3/5 stars. I'm hoping that the directors of the movie will realize that they pulled a Hunger Games and correct in time for the second movie. 

Have you seen the movie? What did you think of it?

Krystelle's Book Club- Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent

Last year I did a lot of book purchasing, but not a lot of book reading. One of the things I bought was the Divergent series. I'd heard it was set to be the next Hunger Games, and I like that style of story, but I kept putting off starting the series. So fast forward to  the week before the movie was set to come out. I finally sat down and read it. And wow. I'm glad I did. 

The book follows sixteen year old Beatrice Prior, an Abnegation girl who doesn't feel right in her faction's skin. The world as she knows it, is split into five factions that are based on character traits. The Candor are all about the truth, they were black and white only, and say everything that comes to mind. They are the lawyers and judges. The Erudite are the smart ones. Always on the quest for knowledge, they research constantly. They were blue and are the teachers and scientists. The Dauntless are the wild, fearless ones. They jump off trains daily as a way to get around. They wear all black and are the protectors of the city. The Amity are the hippies of the group. Always happy, never negative. They are the farmers and where red and yellow. The Abnegation are basically the Amish. They are selfless, never having much, in favor of giving it to the factionless. They are the public servants, volunteers and the government. They only wear gray and aren't even allowed to look in the mirror except every once in a while, for only a few seconds. When the children hit age sixteen, they are forced to take an aptitude test, which determines which faction they are supposed to belong to. Its faction before blood, and you aren't always guaranteed your family's faction.

Beatrice and her brother Caleb both take the test (and no, they are not twins), and Beatrice's tests results come back inconclusive. The Dauntless lady named Tori that administers her test tells her that she's Divergent, and that she has to keep it to herself or that she could end up dead. Tori doesn't elaborate much more than that, and Beatrice is left to wonder what that means. At the Choosing Ceremony the next day, Beatrice is forced to make the decision of which faction she wants on her own, and she chooses Dauntless. Her brother chose Erudite, much to Beatrice's shock. Caleb was the perfect Abnegation boy.

After the Choosing Ceremony, they go back to their new potential factions, and that's when things get crazy for Tris (she decided that Beatrice didn't fit the Dauntless scene). I can't really go into too much more without a ton of spoilers, and I already plan on dumping a ton of those tomorrow when I review the movie. But the book is very good. There really isn't a slow moment in it, and you get to see what lengths some people will go to to get what they want. It does get very violent in the training compound, and *I think these may constitute spoilers* I will say that if things like suicide, child abuse and rape are triggers for you, please be warned that those issues are in this book. 

Overall, it was a strong book and a great way to start the trilogy. I do wonder why the author thought some of the things she wrote about were appropriate for a YA audience though. While not written in an explicit, adult way, some of the stuff I don't think is suitable for younger readers. They couldn't even put it in the movie in order to keep their PG-13 rating so they could reach that target audience.