YMMV / Little Brother

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Marcus a genuinely heroic freedom fighter? Or is he just a Spoiled Brat that's butthurt over safety measures inconveniencing him?
• Designated Hero: Marcus. The book opens with him using his hacking skills to play hooky, including filling a Jerk Jock's phone with spam out of fear that he would tattle on him. He blatantly ignores his family and friends' warnings to stop picking fights with the government even though they have every right to. He often causes his own problems. He would have gotten out of his interrogation sooner if he complied with the Big Bad's orders to hand her his phone, despite knowing there was nothing on it that would have gotten him sent to prison. He then causes the DHS to up security after causing a security glitch just to make a point to his father.
• Designated Villain: While Carrie is clearly an amoral bitch, the rest of the DHS could be considered this, as they are simply just doing their jobs to protect the country.
• Don't Shoot the Message: While the overall message of the story isn't a bad one, the Anviliciousness of it is what turns some people off.
• Informed Wrongness: Marcus's father for supporting the DHS. If your son disappeared in the midst of a terrorist attack for a few days, you'd support their extreme methods too.
• Jerkass Woobie: As much of an asshole Marcus can be, it's doubtful that anybody would want to go through what he did either.
• Narm:
  • Any time Marcus refers to Carrie as "the Severe Haircut Woman." It's understandable that the book was told from his perspective and he didn't learn her name until the end of the book, but could he have chosen something less silly to describe her?
  • A lot of Marcus's dialogue could be considered this, but one line that took the cake was when he said "I had a boner that could cut glass" during a sex scene that was meant to be a romantic moment.
• The Scrappy: While we're supposed to hate the Severe Haircut Woman because she's the Big Bad of the story, she is really hated for being a one-dimensional Strawman who only does her evil deeds For the Evulz.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • As Marcus's father points out, in spite of what Carrie does, the DHS is only trying to do what they can to protect the country, even if it's a bit extreme.
  • The DHS keeping their eyes on Marcus. Early in the book, he did very little to prove he wasn't suspicious. He used his hacking skills to cut school, and as his principal implied, has used hacking to get his way more than once. Not helping matters was his refusal to give Carrie his phone. Not because he had anything incriminating on it, but because of the principle of privacy.
• Tear Jerker: Several.
  • Marcus getting Zeb's note and confessing to his mom what happened to him on Treasure Island.
  • Seeing the condition of Darryl's dad while he believes his son is dead.
  • When the reality of what Marcus is doing confronts him. Most palpable towards the end when he gets thousands of emails from Xnetters who want to help after Barbara's story gets out.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The terrorist attack at the beginning of the book was really just an inciting incident. It would have been interesting to see Marcus try to prove the DHS wrong by finding the terrorists in his own way.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Marcus at times. One particular example was when he argued with his father about why the DHS are bad when he spent days worrying about him after he disappeared.
• Viewers Are Morons: Marcus will often go into long tangents explaining computer terminology and underground geek culture in the narration. It's kind of ironic that a book about computer hacking needs to explain things that can be answered with a quick Google search.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Justified, Marcus is a 17-year old after all.

---