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The UnNerve podcast discusses the dystopian novel Nerve by Jan Ryan. It explores themes of technological control, corporate control, and dehumanization. The main character Vee participates in an online dare game called Nerve, where players complete increasingly difficult dares for prizes. The author's message highlights the lack of privacy caused by social media and society's disregard for privacy. Vee's actions are motivated by materialistic desires until the final conflict where she breaks free from Nerve's control. Conflict arises when Vee's parents ground her, adding pressure to her dares. The podcast also mentions the final act where Vee defies the game and breaks the glass window, symbolizing her breaking free from Nerve's control. The podcast concludes by recommending the book and mentioning the movie adaptation, which differs significantly from the book. Hello, everyone. My name is Samuel Rodriguez. This is the UnNerve podcast. We are going to be discussing the dystopia novel Nerve by Jan Ryan. A dystopia is described as a futuristic imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral or totalitarian control. Dystopias through an exaggerated worst case scenario, negative criticism about a current trend, societal norm or political system. Nerve by Jan Ryan combines technological control, corporate control and dehumanization. Technological control through the app that Nerve forces players to download. Corporate control through Nerve's various connections and dehumanization through the way that Nerve treats its players. The background of the author, Jan Ryan has lived worldwide, raised in a family with 11 brothers and sisters. She spent her early childhood in Hawaii and the rest of her growing up years trying to get back there with stops in South Korea, Michigan and Germany along the way. Ryan tried many different things, including war game simulation and youth development research. She ultimately decided to focus on stories instead of statistics. These days, Ryan still loves Hawaii, but has found a home in the Pacific Northwest. The setting of Nerve takes place around 2012 in Seattle, Washington. The two main characters are Vee and Ian. Vee is the main character and serves as the main perspective through which the story's events unfold. And Ian serves as the charismatic sidekick who pushes Vee outside of her comfort zone. They're both high school seniors who joined an online dare game called Nerve. They're both pale skinned with dark hair and eyes. Ian is described as having very sharp facial bones, while Vee says that she has eyes that look almost too big for her face. The premise behind Nerve is that players complete dares of increasing difficulty in exchange for prizes of equally increasing value. The game's escalation resembles a man versus internal conflict as the main character grapples with whether or not she can go through with the dares that she's been assigned. Spending her entire life as a wallflower, Vee finally musters up the courage to participate in her first Nerve dare. After that, when she's finally gotten a taste of what it's like, she decides to go through with a second one. And eventually it snowballs into the final conflict, where she's made it to the grand finale and is competing with eight other people for the grand prizes. The author's main message alludes to the inherent lack of privacy caused by the influx of social media, as seen when Vee's details are discovered by Nerve and they use it to draw her into more dares. Jane and Ryan also nudges modern society's disregard for privacy. Going as far as to demonstrate just how easily individuals will give it up in exchange for material goods. This is further seen when Vee gives up control of her phone so that she may continue participating in the dares by installing the app that Nerve tells her to. Getting around to the questions now. The character that I like the best is Vee. Not because she's a perfect protagonist, but because every other main character is annoyingly flawed or doesn't have enough presence in the story. Vee is written to be a caricature of the average teenager, someone who sees shiny rewards and is blinded by them, but it misses the comedic mark and comes off as painfully selfish, which may be the point behind your character, but it comes off as fairly polarizing when the story is meant to be young adult fiction. She constantly disobeys her parents, teases her friends, and harasses individuals, all for the sake of materialistic goods. The author uses vibrant descriptive language to allow the reader to picture the character's situations and empathize with them further. This imagery gives the readers more of an idea of what the character is experiencing and just how dangerous the situations might be. Especially as the game continues and the dares get ever more dangerous, the descriptive words that Jan Ryan uses help the reader relate to the character and truly feel the emotions. The mood of Nerve is very serious. Most aspects of the story are played straight with few places for comedic relief. The high of comedy comes from V's dry remarks on her current situation. These may range from how insane the dares are, how dangerous the dares are, or maybe how insane she is for even participating in the first place. When it comes to V's actions, I think they're all wrong until the final conflict. She finally grows a spine and does what she thinks is the correct action, which is breaking the glass wall. After that moment, V's just tagging along with Ian, following Nerve's dares because of the price of the promise. Her entire motivation for being there, in the games themselves, is fueled by selfish materialistic desires, until in the final conflict where she breaks the glass, and thus the restraints that Nerve has on her. One of the events that created conflict in the novel was V's grounding. This conflict was caused when her parents discover her in a garage, passed out with the car running, assuming that she'd attempted suicide. This punishment creates a constant time limit that V had to abide by, which added pressure to her earlier dares. All the conflicts afterwards arose as a direct result of V ditching her friends for Nerve's dares, and her direct participation in the game. Okay, so I just finished editing the final, and I'm two minutes short, so I'm just going to try and yap about the book for, uh, for time. And basically just what I want to do is just talk about stuff that I liked, stuff that I didn't like, if I have time. Um, but right now, the one thing that I can definitely say, just kind of off the top of my head, right, real quick, is that I really enjoyed the, the final, final act, the final conflict, when V finally like smartens up, finally decides to do what she wants and defy the game. Like everyone was there, everyone was competing for their prizes. It was all or nothing. And she did what she thought was right, which was violate the integrity of the dares and, uh, break the, break the glass window that the viewers were watching from, and not only is it just doing what she believes is right, which is a noble cause, but it's, it can also be seen as a metaphor for her breaking from the control of Nerve. The whole story, she's the whole, basically like three quarters of the story, she's been under the control of Nerve because they keep dangling prize after prize in front of her. But then finally she gets like, she gets smart and she's able to come out from underneath their thumb and do what she truly believes is the right course of action. And I thought that was really good. I didn't like how, I didn't like Michael's presence in the story. He basically just served as the motivation for V joining the games, but it was like, he didn't think much of her and she knew that. And so she joined to spite him or to be like, ha, I'm not as, you know, I'm not as frail as he thought I was. And it just, it feels like there could have been better motivation for her joining the games. Like, I can't say exactly what it is right now, just cause I'm tired and this has been taking forever, but it, it leaves some, some change to be desired is all I can really say about it. But I really did enjoy the book and this has not been like a great revision of the novel, but if you are willing to read something a little bit longer, pretty average length, I would recommend the book. But if you don't have the patience for that, then watch the movie cause it's also a movie, but Jan Ryden didn't have any influence in that movie. So it is very different, very, very different. Okay. Uh, I am out of time now, so I'm going to go. Thank you very much. Bye.