Chosen Ones (The Chosen Ones, #1)

by Veronica Roth

Trilby magazine,

I did a lot of research for every one of the "documents" in this book. For this one, I read a lot of celebrity profiles, particularly of white, straight celebrity women, since that is the niche that Sloane also occupies. One of the questions my editor had about this one was about what type of publication it was. "Is this some kind of edgy, gross website?" he asked, at one point (paraphrasing). I had to tell him that no, the profiles I read for research were all from mainstream, reputable, respected publications. Those publications might not run those same pieces today. I hope not. Writing this was also very personal. I have never been sexualized like this by a profile, but I have been discussed as if I am an object to be analyzed rather than someone to consult about her own experience and listen to. It was difficult to live in that headspace for this article, but I am proud of how accurate this voice is and how it introduces Sloane and her experience, so I feel it was worth it.

It’s the most interesting thing about her.

To me, this is the worst thing he says to her.

On 13 September 2019, the office of the Information and Privacy Coordinator received your 12 September 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information or records on Project Ringer.

For the government documents in the book, I read a lot of declassified government documents. You can find many of them on the CIA official website, as well as The Black Vault. I read from a lot of different kinds of documents, but the ones I found most useful were from Project MK Ultra (the U.S. government's experiments using LSD, primarily in the 60s and 70s) and Project Blue Book (UFOs!)

the unsightly tower in the middle of the Loop had been,

Trump Tower is the "unsightly tower" I am referring to. My grudge against this building precedes his presidency (though it has only intensified as a result)-- notably, Trump Tower does not exist in the Divergent universe, which was very much intentional. The reason for this is that Trump Tower is positioned directly between Chicago's two tallest and most iconic skyscrapers, the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building, and I find Trump Tower's combination of height and position in the skyline extremely arrogant.

Chillicothe

This is a town in central Illinois, a neighboring town to where my husband grew up (Peoria)

And she would tarnish too. Always famous but always fading, the way old movie stars were, carrying ghosts of their younger selves in their faces. It was a strange thing, to know with certainty that you had peaked.

After I wrote the rough draft of this book, I discovered a few lines that felt like accidental "thesis statements"-- moments in the draft that felt like they communicated, concisely, the reasons I was interested in writing the story, the themes I was interested in exploring. This is one of them. Anyone who has worked their entire life for a particular goal-- maybe it's going to college, or setting out on your own, or starting a family-- and then achieves that goal has to wrestle with the questions Sloane is wrestling with. Where do I go from here? What do I work toward? What do I even want, now? But for Sloane, those questions are obviously exaggerated, because she really HAS peaked. She saved the world. There's nothing she can do now that can possibly be bigger or more important than that. That's a tough thing to deal with at such a young age. And that's what made me so curious about this story-- what do the "chosen ones" of our favorite stories DO, after they save the world, destroy the ring, take down the Dark Lord, bring peace to the realm, whatever? Do they just wash the blood off their hands and then..go to the grocery store to get more toilet paper? How do they find meaning in ordinary domestic life?

“I’m tired of being special,” Albie said with a shaky laugh. “I’m tired of being celebrated for the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

This is another "thesis statement" moment. If you think about the "chosen ones" of film and literature, the burdens they have to carry (often at a very young age!) are HEAVY. Sloane and her friends are famous for killing a man, full stop. It doesn't matter that he deserved it; it's still a horrible thing to have to do. Can you imagine taking a life at the age of eighteen, and people throw parades for you because of it? Looking at it from Sloane and Albie's perspective, it seems almost grotesque. I love genre fiction because you can explore things through exaggeration, and find the emotional reality in an unreal situation. A "Dark One" figure destroying the world with magic is not realistic or grounded. But Sloane's feelings about killing him are.

“Now I’m gonna have to do it again and act like it’s the first time.”

I love and admire Esther. She has found a way to survive and even thrive in this post-Dark One world, and everyone just makes her feel bad about it all the time!

My money’s on Subject 4.

If I recall correctly, "Subject 4" is Matt.

Drake Hotel.

This is where my parents got married.

you get to the marshmallow-y good stuff in the middle.”

I'm so embarrassed every time I read this.

“What if,” she said, tilting her glass with a fingertip, “what separated us from them—what made us Chosen—was just that our parents said yes, and theirs said no?”

This comes from one of my observations about Chosen One stories, which is: who are all these adults just resigning themselves to a literal teenager being the savior of mankind/the world/whatever? WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? THEY are the most messed up ones in every story, in my humble opinion.

And maybe that was the entire problem with them—he didn’t see her; he saw who she could be with a few adjustments, and all she wanted was to stay busted and be left alone.

My whole theory of Sloane and Matt's relationship is: no one's REALLY the asshole here. Matt's biggest crime is seeing the best version of Sloane-- I can't fault him for that, it's the way he sees the world. But I can't fault Sloane for wanting someone to see the darkest parts of her and not flinch-- for wanting to be really known.

Under the authority granted in the memorandum dated 4 March 2008 from the director of Central Intelligence to ARIS on the subject AR/CO-2 Project Ringer, subproject 5, code name Deep Dive has been approved, and $763,000.00 of the overall Project Ringer funds have been allocated to cover the subproject’s expenses.

Most of the Project MK Ultra documents were destroyed before they could be released to the public. Those that survived had been incorrectly stored in a financial records building. This document, here, is a nod to that.

Sometimes Sloane wondered if the world had been worth saving.

Another "thesis statement" type of line

The Needle of Koschei.

Koschei the Deathless is a figure in Slavic folklore-- an immortal antagonist who hides his soul inside nested objects (a needle inside an egg inside a duck, or a rabbit, etc.) I wasn't aware of him before writing this book, but I discovered this folkloric figure while looking into folk tales that have specific objects attached to them.

cognitive-behavioral therapy

This is the type of therapy I do for my anxiety. I don't have PTSD, but I have done "exposures," like the one that Sloane documents here, for treatment of my anxiety. They have proven to be highly effective for the treatment of both PTSD and anxiety, and they were a source of inspiration for Divergent, too (in that they are used by the Dauntless in that book via advanced virtual reality-esque simulations to eradicate fear)

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave.

I wanted to put more of the poem here, but for legal reasons wasn't able to. I recommend that you look it up-- the title is Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and it's one of my favorite poems.

Sometimes she felt like Albie was the only person in the world who knew her. And it was because he wanted nothing from her, not sex, not love, not secrets. There was no currency between them.

Platonic friendships between men and women: they exist! Friendship is not a consolation prize; friendship is the shit.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”

A playlist for the book thus far: The Times They Are A-Changin' by Bob Dylan Vertigo by Khalid Burn the Witch by Radiohead Pity Party by Melanie Martinez Signs of Life by Arcade Fire

In other words, for something to be magic, it must be an impossible want.

For a brief period, my editor and I wanted to title this book "The Manifestation of Impossible Wants," because we both liked the phrase so much. It's not a great title for this book, though, so ultimately we went back to the much simpler and more memorable "Chosen Ones."

She put a finger up to her lips and blew a bubble. It tickled the underside of her fingertip, which meant she was upright—bubbles always moved up, toward the surface.

A survival tip for if you ever get trapped under ice, apparently. It can be disorienting and people swim away from the surface rather than toward it-- but bubbles always go UP.

The jagged skyline was mostly unfamiliar but with some touchstones Sloane recognized:

If a building was built before 1969, it exists on both Earth and Genetrix. If it was built after 1969, it usually does not exist on Genetrix, with some exceptions. One of the reasons is that modernist architecture and minimalism did not take hold in Genetrix the way they did on Earth, thanks to the proliferation of magic sparking an increased interested in legends of the past.

Tenebris

I don't know Latin, but apparently "tenebris" means "dark"

We are animals, after all. And don’t let your housecat fool you into thinking that animals are nothing more than fuzzy, whiskered creatures who wish us no ill. Nature is bloody, and as a whole, it favors strength over compassion.

This is one of my favorite documents in the book. Some trivia: the name "Marwa Daud" is a nod to my friend Somaiya Daud, also an author (with a doctorate). The phrase "Nature is bloody, and as a whole, it favors strength over compassion" comes from watching a lot of nature documentaries-- my husband and I are big fans of David Attenborough, especially the older series, pre-Planet Earth. I particularly recommend Life of Mammals and Life of Birds. I find that people who aren't actively invested in learning about nature forget how bloody it can be. I love the natural world and I feel we desperately need to do a better job of protecting it-- but everything is a fight for survival out there.

Cordus

Again, I don't speak Latin, so I had to do my best here-- but I think "cordus" means "second" or "after" (ish), which is a nod to "the second city," a nickname of Chicago (since it burned down once, the Chicago we have now is the "second" one)

“Yes, we have them. But I’m not sure what good they would do you.”

I wasn't sure how to integrate computers and the Internet into Genetrix. Earlier drafts had magic integrated into social media, but it didn't feel right. Ultimately, I was able to make an argument for the Internet being a presence on Genetrix, and an equally good argument against. I chose to exclude it. I wanted to imagine a world without social media, instead. It was nice.

You dealt with it the same way you dealt with the cold when you didn’t have the right jacket: you let the chill pass through you, digging deep into your bones, until you could no longer feel it.

This is something a native Midwesterner like Sloane would be well acquainted with, particularly after living in Chicago for a long time. I have a coat for subzero temperatures, a coat for 30-40 degrees, a coat for 50-60 degrees, and jackets for 60-70. For most of the year, it's anyone's guess which one will be the right one for the occasion-- weather changes every hour here. Chicago Spring/Fall Jacket Bingo.

MagiTech Mag, no. 240

Another one of my favorite documents-- for this one, I read reviews of iPhones and other smartphones as research to get the voice right.

She was in a long hall flanked by wide pillars and tiled with white marble. Geometric fixtures of blue glass hung in a line down the center of the hall.

Sloane is in the Old Main Post Office, a formerly abandoned building (it was, to my knowledge, abandoned and in a state of profound disrepair when I wrote this book, and has since been renovated and reopened). If you ever drive on I-290 west out of the city, you'll pass underneath a building that stretches across the expressway-- that is this building.

The Mammoth Treasury of Unrealist Poetry,

I am far more amused by this poem than I have any right to be.

Part Three

Playlist for part 2: Creature Comfort by Arcade Fire Walk On Water by Thirty Seconds to Mars Madder Red by Yeasayer Severed Crossed Fingers by St. Vincent Russian Soul by Skott

In other words, magic is a mirror. It reflects us back to ourselves, and we may not always like what we see.

Developing the magic system for this book took several drafts. I wanted it to hinge on something more technical than mystical, which is where the sound frequencies and oscilloscopes came in. But I didn't want magic to be quite that straightforward, because if it's just a matter of hitting the correct frequency, there's no explanation for why some people (like the Dark One) might be so much better at it than other people. That's where the DESIRE part came in. Sloane has PTSD and depression, and the latter makes it difficult for her to want anything. So for magical ability to hinge on desire felt like a good way to bring character and world-building together. She doesn't let herself want anything-- so she can barely do magic. But when she opens herself up to desire, she wants TOO MUCH, and her magic becomes destructive. This says a lot about her.

“I’m not your nurse,” Sloane said.

I have to admit this is one of my favorite tropes-- when one character patches up another character. Sexily.

You don’t pick the act and then force the desire. You know the desire—the exact shade of it—and then choose the act accordingly.”

I like that magical skill in this world hinges on your ability to know yourself, to know your desires, not just their general shape but their specific contours. It makes this technical magic, with its measurable frequencies and its channeling devices, into something personal and emotional, too.

They drove along Lake Michigan, and the water glittered in the sun.

Thank you for joining me with these annotations! I hope you loved the book. It came out at the beginning of the pandemic, and my hope, as a result, is that it transports people when they most need a break from reality. Be well. Final Playlist: Schism by Tool The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel (or Disturbed, for a good cover-- I listened to both) Conscious by Broods Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift Mountains by Sia, Diplo, Labrinth, LSD