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farlaLast time on the Hunger Games, Katniss decided to change things up and turn them into the Hunger Games, and I complain of titling fail.
Katniss says Rue clearly trusts her, because the kid passes out as soon as she crawls into the sleeping bag. Or she could just be exhausted, as we're five days into the childmurder games and she's been huddling in a tree with no more protection than her clothing each night.
Nor do I have any misgivings about her, as I take no particular precautions. If she’d wanted me dead, all she would have had to do was disappear from that tree without pointing out the tracker jacker nest.
Katniss is very, very bad at this.
By pointing out the nest, Rue got two of the most dangerous kids killed and temporarily crippled another three. One of those kids who died had a bow and arrow, the only weapon that's a serious threat to her since she's jumping around in trees to avoid people. Now is a perfectly good time to kill Katniss, especially since she's shown she's good with bows as well. See, you should always focus on taking out the greatest threats first. Rue had no chance against the inexplicable pack of trained kids, but she might be able to kill Katniss.
Actually, probably not by a knife in the back. Katniss trusts Rue about plants. Find something full of cyanide and say it'll help if she chews it. The bitterness means it's medicine!
Anyway, because the book really hates the idea of us thinking Katniss is actually at a disadvantage...
Traditionally, the Career tributes’ strategy is to get hold of all the food early on and work from there. The years when they have not protected it well — one year a pack of hideous reptiles destroyed it, another a Gamemakers’ flood washed it away — those are usually the years that tributes from other districts have won.
So, remember what I said last time? If this is really a big deal, the kids should be trained to get food of their own. If nothing else, as Gale said to Katniss, it's all hunting. That girl who never misses with her throwing knives shouldn't have too much trouble getting rabbit and turkeylike-thing-we're-calling-groosling.
The trained kids are built up as this huge force, yet they only win if everything goes a particular way. It's not simply that they did worse those years, they usually all lose. And Katniss says it's because they've never gone hungry.
What sort of training did these kids get that didn't include how to survive in a harsh environment?
(Plus...if things are that predictable without otherwise, why don't the people in charge regularly do something to destroy the stores, instead of just twice?)
But Katniss is too tired to plan further.
and the warmth of Rue at my side, her head cradled on my shoulder, have given me a sense of security. I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I’ve been in the arena.
Yeah it sure would've been nice to actually see her being lonely, instead of just saying she sure was before but isn't now.
She finds out what Rue knows about the camp. They've been leaving a District 3 kid as a guard for some reason. District 3 is also not a career district, but Katniss has no indignant rant for this.
Rue and Katniss bond some more.
And I come to know Rue, the oldest of six kids, fiercely protective of her siblings, who gives her rations to the younger ones, who forages in the meadows in a district where the Peacekeepers are far less obliging than ours. Rue, who when you ask her what she loves most in the world, replies, of all things, “Music.”
Gee I wonder where this is going.
But there is a point to her liking music. Rue can sing to mockingjays and get them to repeat her songs. When it's time to quit she sings a particular song so everyone in the orchard will hear. She also loves Katniss' pin - which Katniss, once again, had completely forgotten about.
Katniss offers her the pin and earns another good person point for it.
The book will have none of my grudging like and promptly ruins this.
“Oh, no,” says Rue, closing my fingers back over the pin. “I like to see it on you.
Never ever do this, people. Do not have the other character say that the main character is just so special and important they must have all the things. Rue goes on to say that her having the pin is why she knew she could trust Katniss, which...what? I was theorizing it was because they were the only friendly-acting tributes and so the least scary, but instead Rue just knew Katniss was nice, even though it was a pin she keeps forgetting everywhere.
We get a bit more of the plan. Rue is going to run off and light campfires, presumably to attract the other kids, and they'll meet up later. She says she'll sing to the mockingjays if she can't get back, so Katniss will know she's okay. It doesn't occur to her to have a second song for OH FUCK SOMETHING'S WRONG BLEEDING OUT HERE KATNISS which, when it comes to communication, is probably more useful.
“Are there many mockingjays here?” I ask.
“Haven’t you seen them? They’ve got nests everywhere,” she says. I have to admit I haven’t noticed.
Katniss: Worst. Hunter. Ever.
They split up and Katniss finally starts thinking about what's going on.
I turn and head back to the stream, feeling somehow worried. About Rue being killed, about Rue not being killed and the two of us being left for last, about leaving Rue alone, about leaving Prim alone back home. No, Prim has my mother and Gale and a baker who has promised she won’t go hungry. Rue has only me.
Good, Katniss. We're nearing two thirds into the book, and it really shouldn't have taken you this long, but you're finally addressing important points. The bit about what succeeding means - the two of you being the last left alive - is particularly awful to contemplate.
So...what should you do?
Once I reach the stream, I have only to follow it downhill to
Or I guess we could just drop the entire line of thought and get back to your plan to kill people.
She decides to spend some time wondering in circles about Peeta instead.
I struggle again to remember that moment over Glimmer’s body, when he burst through the trees. But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.
While the bar is admittedly low, I will say the romance in this is certainly less squicky than Twilight.
Hunger Games: At Least It's Not Fucking Twilight.
So yeah, she eventually gets to somewhere where she can spy on the kids.
There are four tributes. The boy from District 1, Cato and the girl from District 2, and a scrawny, ashen-skinned boy who must be from District 3. He made almost no impression on me at all during our time in the Capitol. I can remember almost nothing about him, not his costume, not his training score, not his interview.
Okay, this kind of works. I've been complaining about the way the narrative seems to know who to care about, so having someone be important without getting highlighted in advance is nice.
Weirdly, though, instead of taking the time to start paying attention to him Katniss keeps talking about how blah he is, and the weird way the text and metatext overlap gets obvious again.
Even now, as he sits there fiddling with some kind of plastic box, he’s easily ignored in the presence of his large and domineering companions.
Um, that might be a death box, you should probably pay attention. I mean, they have magic science at the capital, you know.
But she has no idea why the kids left him alive. They're also all injured.
Even from here, I can see the large swollen lumps on their bodies. They must not have had the sense to remove the stingers, or if they did, not known about the leaves that healed them.
Okay, first off? Removing the stingers is normal behavior. I don't know why the book keeps telling us to be impressed Katniss figured out that pulling the thing stuck in you out was a good idea. All first aid stuff I know of usually makes a big deal of when not to pull something out, because it's the first thing people will do otherwise. Next, again, trained kids, why weren't they trained to handle this? The games normally go on for a while.
Katniss is similarly confused by the way they've arranged the supplies. Most of it's in a big pile, but some is scattered around, and it's all covered by netting.
My guess is the pyramid is booby-trapped in some manner. I think of concealed pits, descending nets, a thread that when broken sends a poisonous dart into your heart. Really, the possibilities are endless.
If they could rig that stuff up, they could catch rabbits fine and they wouldn't be totally dependent on the food in the first place.
So then they see one of Rue's fires and decide to set out. They argue about if they should take guard-kid.
“He’s coming. We need him in the woods, and his job’s done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies,” says Cato.
None of this makes sense.
The whole point of the trained kids being scary is that they totally outclass the regular ones, so why would they need him? Plus, he's going to be the first to turn on them because he knows he has no chance otherwise.
Next, if his job's done, then he's not useful, now is he? And this is the childmurder games.
...So I'd like to talk about how much I love Battle Royale some more. I didn't realize until reading this just how very much better it was.
See, in Battle Royale, the kids can do whatever they please during their childmurder games. While, once again, I appreciate the lack of rape and the fact the torture seems inadvertent and off camera and I feel like I'm tempting fate every time I mention this, it made a lot more sense. You can see how some teenage boys would form groups to go on rape and murder sprees to do all they can in the time they have left, knowing that odds are none of them will make it to the finish so they might as well enjoy what they can. And how other kids would work together with the intent of at least not being the victims of psychopaths. And some psychopaths would still work together with their friends for protection so the other psychopaths don't get them. This delays the flashpoint when a group would start to think that, since only one can survive, they should kill first. It helped that there was a much larger starting population (fifty, if I remember) and that they didn't lose half their members in a staged bloodbath on the first day. (There were also generally a lot more varied reactions, my favorite being the bunch of girls who all hid together since they were doomed anyway, so why not, closely followed by the kid who decided to blow up the people in charge.)
Most of this wouldn't work with the book's setup, but that means she needed to do something else to explain how the kids are working together.
One option is a point system. Getting rewards (for your district or yourself) per death would be a good motivator, as also make the whole "career" thing make sense. Training up two kids every year for something you have, at best, a one in six change of winning, is going to be pretty hard. But if the rewards for killing the rest of the kids are relatively big, then it makes a lot more sense. There could also be bonuses for surviving each day, or a ranking system where if you die, say, tenth, your district gets more than if you were the first to die. (Or all survivors get a bonus with each death.) There could also be daily awards based on who the viewers like best, which would then explain how Katniss thinks being stoic and/or witty is somehow improving her chances of survival.
All these things would encourage kids to take part even if they had no chance of actually winning, because it stops being such an all or nothing affair. It would also discourage suicides.
Anyway. The other kids leave and then the fox-faced girl appears, or Foxface as Katniss calls her. I'm going to stick with my epithet, thanks.
The fox-faced girl hops around on a weird path, grabs some food and then retraces her steps. Katniss is impressed.
I was right about the girl, too. How wily is she to have discovered this path into the food and to be able to replicate it so neatly?
It's actually a bit weird - Katniss uses a lot of animal words with the girl. She creeps, she scampers, she squeals. And she doesn't talk about her the way you would someone using human reasoning.
Here's how she discovered the path to the food, Katniss: she watched. She's probably been hiding here or nearby for days. She probably stole some stuff the first night when the trained kids were moving in a pack, but since the wasps she's been waiting because the District 3 boy has been left on guard. Then, when they set up the trap, she remembered the trigger points and figured out the best way through.
She isn't "wily" and didn't "discover". She's "smart" and "figured it out".
Anyway, Katniss realizes what the trap is with a bit more thought. It's the mines from earlier. See, District 3 is the factories that make everything from TVs to explosives.
The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 3 must have managed to reactivate them. I’ve never seen anyone in the Games do that. I bet it came as a shock even to the Gamemakers.
Book. Stop with the exceptions. It's okay to have a character actually know what she's talking about.
More - the mines are a standard affair. If District 3 is good with gadgets, this plan should have occurred to them a good while ago. They'd have taught kids to do it. So that's a plot hole. But even if it wasn't, piling coincidence on coincidence is just not a good idea. If stuff keeps happening that's never happened before, well, eh. So what? It'll just get resolved by something else that's never happened before, which in turn gets fixed by something else that's never happened before...
Also, from the sounds of it, the mines are disabled remotely, so it'd have been easy to turn them back on remotely if they didn't like this plan.
(Incidentally, I think there's an editing incongruity here. It's not clear if the kids can turn the mines on and off. The girl's behavior makes most sense if they can, because her hopping implies she's not sure how wide the safe areas are, and it seems unlikely the trained kids would be willing to travel such a dangerous route, but if there's a clear path to walk she should be strolling through. The box the kid is fiddling with might do it. But it's not clear where the remote piece would come from, and there's a big difference between digging up mines and flipping a switch so they're armed again and assembling something from scratch to hack it.)
The mines are extremely sensitive and extremely powerful.
One year, a girl dropped her token, a small wooden ball, while she was at her plate, and they literally had to scrape bits of her off the ground.
That's...actually not very scary. Before, Katniss was just saying it'd blow your legs off, which is ambiguous. But if it paints you across the landscape, that's about as instant a death as you can hope for. Assuming there's some sort of punishment for obviously suicidal behavior, "accidentally dropping a token" should be a common thing.
Katniss tries to figure out how to set off the mines. She figures that getting a chain reaction going will be tough because they're probably spaced to avoid that. But there's a bag of apples.
The first arrow tears through the side of the bag near the top, leaving a split in the burlap. The second widens it to a gaping hole. I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap of burlap and ripping it from the bag.
You know, I don't know much about archery, so I'm not sure exactly how possible this is. But it doesn't feel particularly plausible, and given no research has been done for anything else I'm going to assume she's just making stuff up here as well.
There's a tip buried in there. If you do a good job of researching things, if you do need to stretch things at a particular point readers will be more likely to give you it. The more obvious breaks in reality, the less slack you get.
But her super arrow skills cause the apples to fall. The resulting explosion blows her backward, and we end the chapter.
Next chapter picks up with her knocked on her back. You know, people don't really get how explosions work sometimes. See, the blast that is blowing apart a building doesn't magically not blow you apart just because it's made of air. It also tends to be extremely hot, so it'll burn your skin.
I manage to shield my face with my arms as shattered bits of matter, some of it burning, rain down around me.
Furthermore, stuff isn't raining down on you, it's being propelled by the same blast that hit you, ie, hitting at the same time. Some will rain down afterward because some got shot up and not sideways, but that only happens after the shrapnel is shoved through your face.
But Katniss does get hurt. Her ears are damaged. She's deaf and her sense of balance is gone.
Boy, it's sure convenient she just got her wasp stings fixed in time for this newest issue. And we can probably assume nothing new will happen until her hearing comes back, so we know her hearing must come back so the next thing can happen.
One ear is actually bleeding, which means she probably blew out the eardrum. She won't be able to heal that on her own, but eh, the capital has magic science and Katniss' has clearly picked survival and life over being a decent person, so she'll win.
Anyway, she can still crawl okay, so she crawls off back to her hiding place.
While she's doing this, a few more mines go off. These single mines are still enough to knock her over while crawling, so the force of the first blast should have blown her face off. In fact, if a single mine can do this, wouldn't a single tribute stepping off their plate and triggering the mines result in everyone dying, as nearby kids got knocked over, triggering more mines, which then knock over kids near them...
I’m reminded of those last few kernels that burst when Prim and I pop corn over the fire at home.
Wait, they still have corn? Why is she eating the unknown tesserae grain, corn is the best staple crop in America. They should be eating cornmeal if there's still corn. I was willing to grant the lack of sugar on the assumption that maple trees may have bought it, but you can make corn into sugar too.
I mean, I guess it's possible there was so much change in climate and destruction of the land that it's no longer possible to grown corn except in small areas, so it can't be a staple good. But then why would it be shipped anywhere but the capital, and even if it was, why would Katniss have blown the food budget on it after all the STARVING STARVING STARVING stuff?
there’s Cato, barreling onto the plain, soon followed by his companions. His rage is so extreme it might be comical — so people really do tear out their hair and beat the ground with their fists
It's funny because Katniss has just done something that means he has a good chance of dying! And this upsets him!
But it's aimed at her and Katniss is kind of helpless, so she's mostly just scared.
I’m glad my hiding place makes it impossible for the cameras to get a close shot of me because I’m biting my nails like there’s no tomorrow.
This is random, but it's actually kind of bugging me that Katniss keeps talking about chewing her nails when she's nervous. I mean, it is a thing people do, but if you're really panicking, a better distraction is biting your thumb itself, because it hurts when you do that.
Cato has finished the first phase of his tantrum and takes out his anger on the smoking remains by kicking open various containers. The other tributes are poking around in the mess, looking for anything to salvage, but there’s nothing.
...there are containers left to kick open, but there's nothing at all to salvage inside?
Anyway, Cato decides to blame the District 3 kid for setting the mines so they'd atomize the food if they went off, so he kills him. Of course, the kid is also no longer useful to them in any way and it's the childmurder games, so I'm not sure why the book has to explain this as just because he's mad.
I can see the muscles ripple in Cato’s arms as he sharply jerks the boy’s head to the side.
It’s that quick. The death of the boy from District 3.
You know, I think part of my problem is that the author keeps making a big deal about sudden death, where as I'm more focused on the horrible pain thing. Snapping the kid's neck is a quick death, much like stepping on the mines. Compared to the screaming girl on the first night, it's not that bad at all.
I'd like to complain about Katniss' total lack of fuck-giving here, since she obviously didn't think that what she did would make them kill the boy and usually people react badly when their actions inadvertently get people killed, but she's been talking constantly about how she wants to shoot people dead herself so it's not really surprising.
They assume whoever did this died in the explosion, so they don't go anywhere and wait for night instead.
They show the boy from District 3. They show the boy from District 10, who must have died this morning. Then the seal reappears. So, now they know. The bomber survived.
...so, no one else is playing the childmurder games but the career kids? Even assuming that the untrained kids can't take on any of the trained kids, are none of them attacking each other? Because that's actually pretty interesting. Katniss has shown no such scruples, but Rue helped her and it seems everyone else is going on the principle of live and let live.
It's not completely altruistic, of course. The more kids around, the more likely the trained kids will stalk them rather than you. But it's still a huge step up from Katniss, who wants to kill someone for being cold.
You're probably sick of Battle Royale, but honestly, lots of manga do this better. By jumping between characters we would get to see how things are going for others. By implication, things aren't going exactly the same for them as they are for Katniss, and it's more than simply that they're not doing anything interesting. Even in manga that sticks to a single viewpoint, they're far more aware of what the other characters are doing - they'd run into other people, and they'd see others meeting up. In sum, what the other people are doing would matter, while here it's really just that the author doesn't give a fuck. Like with the forest ecosystem making no sense and only existing for Katniss to interact with, the kids are scenery. The non-trained kids are just there as a morbid counter to show how serious things are.
I can see Cato and the girl from District 2 put on their night-vision glasses. The boy from District 1 ignites a tree branch for a torch, illuminating the grim determination on all their faces.
Seconds later, the two with night vision goggles double over screaming as their eyes are seared by the light. Seriously it doesn't work like that.
Also, I thought they had flashlights.
Also torches don't work like that. Yo can't just light a branch and call it a day.
Then all three of them head off to hunt, even though the torch means anyone will see them coming a mile off and nullifies the advantage the goggles give them.
Fearing the smell of meat will draw unwanted predators — fresh blood is bad enough — I make a good meal out of the greens and roots and berries Rue and I gathered today.
Um, seriously? The meat will draw predators so it's better to keep it in your bag and continue carrying it around? Also, berries and greens aren't particularly filling, and most roots need to be cooked to give most of their energy. It's not going to be a good meal.
So there's eight kids left, only three of which are the trained kids.
Although from what Cato said, Peeta’s on his way out. Not that Cato is the final word on anything. Didn’t he just lose his entire stash of supplies?
Book, I know I can't expect subtlety, but can I at least get the illusion of suspense? Please?
Since roosting overnight in a tree isn’t sensible anyway, I scoop out a hollow under the bushes and cover myself with leaves and pine needles. I’m still freezing.
God damn you are whiny Katniss. Burying yourself in leaves is a perfectly valid way of keeping warm. More, I refuse to believe it's just too cold for this to work, because you survived two days lying in a pile of leaves that you hadn't even covered yourself properly with, and probably did it with a fever. If it was that cold, you'd have died.
I begin to have more sympathy for the girl from District 8 that lit the fire that first night.
Considering she was horribly killed, it's about fucking time you felt some sympathy.
When Katniss wakes up, she hears noise and realizes her ear is working again.
The fox-faced girl has come to see what's up. I'm a bit confused why she didn't check out the explosion yesterday, since there was a good while until night, but whatever.
She’s smarter than the Careers, actually finding a few useful items in the ashes. A metal pot. A knife blade.
What sort of trained kid doesn't know a pot is useful?
That's like, survival 101. You cook everything in a pot so nothing runs off into the fire. The only disadvantage, and it's a minor one, is that it's harder to do what Katniss is doing and carry around the cooked food afterward, and that can be fixed by recooking anything you didn't eat over the fire, as most of the runoff will already be in the broth.
And considering the main use of knives is throwing them, the blade should be obviously useful to the kids.
I’m perplexed by her amusement until I realize that with the Careers’ stores eliminated, she might actually stand a chance. Just like the rest of us.
Hm, maybe.
On the other hand, it seems like she was doing pretty well for herself the way things are. The loss of weapons is surely no loss to her, but the food is. Assuming the food wasn't blown up, the trained kids would keep picking off the rest of the untrained kids for a bit, then eventually turn on each other. I expect the District 3 kid would be the first to go, or possibly they'd turn on each other first because they think he's no harm and then he'd try to kill the survivor. Whatever happens, they certainly won't be guarding the food. She just has to wait it out. If she times it right, she can make off with the final store of food so they'll end up hungry first.
I guess it depends on how stealthy the girl is. Someone like Rue could pull it off, but she may not have as much faith in her ability to keep avoiding the trained kids. Still, her defining feature is cleverness, so I'd expect her to be good at it.
Basically, I don't buy it. She had a really good thing here. She knows the way through the mines and there's no other guard now. The loss of supplies would need to be catastrophic to the trained kids to make it worth it, and there's still the other five kids to consider.
It crosses my mind to reveal myself and enlist her as a second ally against that pack. But I rule it out. There’s something about that sly grin that makes me sure that befriending Foxface would ultimately get me a knife in the back.
Oh fuck you Katniss.
See what I mean about not talking about her like she's a person. She just doesn't look trustworthy. Also, it's all her fault that Katniss won't trust her.
There is definitely reason to be worried about allying. "That pack" is now only three kids, and Katniss has said that the advantage shifts to the untrained kids like the rest of them with the food gone, so their common enemy is no longer such a threat. They lack a strong motive to ally.
And, of course, the kids can never ally longterm because only one can win, and they're down to eight, so two third of the kids are already dead. Remember, Katniss was saying earlier that her alliance with Rue can never be more than temporary, and also that Rue is no threat to her, so on some level she was thinking about killing Rue when it came down to it. So this girl has good reason to stab Katniss in the back, because very soon, Katniss is going to decide to shoot her in the back.
But instead Katniss talks about this girl as if she's just psychotic. There's also a return of the reliable narrator issue, namely, there's no suggestion this is Katniss' paranoia speaking. Katniss has good reason to be nervous, and it would also be quite understandable for her to say the girl might not be dangerous but that she doesn't want to take the chance. Instead, kids who happen to resemble foxes are foxes, and can't be trusted.
With that in mind, this might be an excellent time to shoot her.
See? I really don't think it's fair to talk about how the other girl might attack you when your impulse is to kill her.
Luckily for the girl, she hears something and runs off before Katniss can kill her. Katniss isn't sure what it is but figures if she's running it's probably a good idea to leave as well. I actually like this a lot, since like trying burn ointment on her wounds or eating the food Rue gathered, it's very human behavior. We naturally work best in groups and we're extremely trusting of cues from other humans.
She heads back to the stream to meet up with Rue, eating more of whatever the fuck the groosling is. Yeah, that's really bugging me. If everything had altered names it'd be one thing, but so far everything else kept their names, even more obscure alternate terms like katniss.
I shoot two fish, easy pickings in this slow-moving stream, and go ahead and eat one raw even though I’ve just had the groosling.
How fucking hard is it to do basic research?
I would find eating raw fish completely reasonable if she hadn't made a huge deal about not eating raw rabbit, especially since the raw rabbit was when she was dying of dehydration. But if she's worried about rabbit fever she should be worried about all the stuff carried in wild fish.
Also I'm not sure what she means by even though she's just had something. This is really basic predator behavior - you eat as much as you can when food is abundant. If the fish are easy pickings and she's fine about eating them, she should eat as much as possible now. Instead, she saves the second fish for Rue and doesn't shoot any more.
I can’t adjust to deafness in the ear. It makes me feel off-balanced and defenseless to my left. Blind even. My head keeps turning to the injured side, as my right ear tries to compensate for the wall of nothingness where yesterday there was a constant flow of information.
Uh. People who are deaf in one ear compensate well enough. Her hearing is definitely going to be impaired, but wall of nothingness is rather over the top here.
She reaches the meeting point but there's no Rue. Katniss starts rationalizing it as okay.
She’s probably just being cautious about making her way back. I wish she’d hurry, because I don’t want to hang around here too long. I want to spend the afternoon traveling to higher ground, hunting as we go. But there’s nothing really for me to do but wait.
She can jump around between trees and none of the other kids have a bow. She shouldn't have trouble making her way back. This is legit panic time, but I guess Katniss holding the idiot ball here is supposed to heighten suspense, or maybe make it more shocking when we realize something's wrong.
Katniss decides to eat the second fish, since it won't last long anyway. It's fine, since
it should be easy enough to spear a few more for Rue.
Katniss does not take this to its logical conclusion and catch more to eat herself.
Despite the groosling and the fish, my stomach’s growling
THERE ARE FISH RIGHT THERE GO EAT MORE OF THEM
She decides to give in and eat more, because she's lost a lot of weight so far, so she eats some nuts. Fish! Right there! Full of delicious fish-oily goodness! If you want to stop losing weight you need to eat extra food. If you can get enough fish maybe you can even start gaining some again.
Katniss' ongoing refusal to eat her stored food might be a sign of food hording, which is a common psychological affect of starvation. Unfortunately for that theory, she doesn't distinguish between storied food and perishable food. Now, it'd be possible for her to be treating known food sources as a cache of food that'll spoil if she removes it, except that Katniss has shown absolutely no sign of remembering locations so far. This stream is the third source of water she's found and the first she's made much effort to return to. No mention has been made of remembering where berry bushes or roots are. So that excuse doesn't fly. And besides, it's not at all how she was acting back in the first chapter, where she collected as much as she could. So now she's dipping into her stored food rather than eating more fish in defiance of both sense and psychology.
She's also not drinking much water, for even less reason. She is right next to the stream. She should be drinking her water and refilling it to try to rehydrate. Rationing water makes some sense when she's traveling around, but it makes anti-sense right now.
But Katniss ignores my logic in favor of nuts. She finishes off her food and stays in the tree.
But it’s a hollow day, and even with all that I start daydreaming about food.
Katniss, like any sane person literally a couple feet away from easily available food, stays put and emos about it instead. Truly, a stunning portrayal of psychological depth.
Hours pass and Katniss realizes Rue isn't showing up. She scatters some mint leaves in case Rue appears while she's gone, since Rue knows Katniss gathered some but there are none close by, then goes to check the third fire Rue was supposed to set.
I know something has gone amiss. The wood has been neatly arranged, expertly interspersed with tinder, but it has never been lit. Rue set up the fire but never made it back here. Somewhere between the second column of smoke I spied before I blew up the supplies and this point, she ran into trouble.
Katniss, do you have no concept of moderation? Either you're totally chill about something that's really worrying, or you're losing it over something with a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Isn't it possible that she heard the explosion and figured the third fire wasn't needed? The fact she's not back is the damning part, not that she didn't light an unnecessary fire.
She starts panicking about what if she didn't hear the cannon shot because her ears were too messed up.
No, I refuse to believe it. There could be a hundred other explanations. She could have lost her way. Run into a pack of predators or another tribute, like Thresh, and had to hide. Whatever happened, I’m almost certain she’s stuck out there, somewhere between the second fire and the unlit one at my feet. Something is keeping her up a tree.
But she can jump between trees. It's like the second thing she did here. You even remarked on how it was probably where her high score came from.
Anyway, Katniss figures that she can find whatever's keeping Rue by heading toward the other fire. This makes sense. As she starts traveling, she hears Rue's everything-is-fine song from some mockingjays (hey, remember when Katniss was having hearing problems? Because the book doesn't. Guess we're ready for the next injury.) and grins, because the birds don't carry a song long so she must be nearby.
So, obviously, that's when Rue starts screaming.
And now I’m running, knowing this may be a trap, knowing the three Careers may be poised to attack me, but I can’t help myself.
Katniss is actually being a decent person here. She starts shouting in the hopes they'll abandon Rue in favor of heading toward her.
When I break into the clearing, she’s on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.
Well. So much for Rue.
This confuses me. I guess we're supposed to forget about Rue's squirrel skills and so she must have been traveling on the ground. But even then, was she only just now caught, or has she been trapped for some time but too scared to make a sound? Because a net is not really the kind of trap you can leave people in for long periods when a lot of them are carrying knives. I think maybe the idea is she was caught and singing to the birds in the hope Katniss would come toward her, but she's singing her "stay where you are, I'm fine, I'll meet up in a little while" song, but it makes no sense that she'd just happen to have some other issue keeping her away and then only now stumble into a trap right when Katniss is nearby.
It's also terribly convenient. Leaving Rue alive until near the end raises real issues, because only one can actually leave. More, once the remaining trained kids realize Rue and she are working together, the odds of Rue getting a similarly painful death as the one they'll give Katniss increase, plus if they avoid fights and try to keep playing as long as possible so they don't have to kill each other, the gamemakers will start sending terrible things at them, so then there's the issue of mercy killing. And if Katniss manages to kill almost everyone else, should she kill herself for Rue? And what about Rue's district and family? Rue's the first of six kids in a district people are hungry enough to steal food despite regular whippings for the crime, while Prim has several people who've all promised to keep her from starving.
But Rue is feminine and therefore her role in this drama is quite firmly the sainted victim.
As an aside, let's consider the concept of fridging. Fridging is generally broken into two parts - the casual maiming or killing of female characters compared to males, and the use of it as a motivating force for the main character, who's usually male. The term originally comes to us from comics, from a superhero coming home to find his girlfriend dismembered and stuffed into his fridge. The fact women are usually the motivator and men the motivated are two separate issues. Making it one girl motivated by another girl's death improves the situation by allowing women into the role of hero, but doesn't address that the role of designated victim is still female as well. And all women in this book are either victims, evil, or Katniss, so it doesn't get a good-writing exception here.
TLDR of course Rue's a young girl and of course she's killed to upset the main character. Victimhood is a feminine trait and Rue was coded very, very feminine.
Katniss says Rue clearly trusts her, because the kid passes out as soon as she crawls into the sleeping bag. Or she could just be exhausted, as we're five days into the childmurder games and she's been huddling in a tree with no more protection than her clothing each night.
Nor do I have any misgivings about her, as I take no particular precautions. If she’d wanted me dead, all she would have had to do was disappear from that tree without pointing out the tracker jacker nest.
Katniss is very, very bad at this.
By pointing out the nest, Rue got two of the most dangerous kids killed and temporarily crippled another three. One of those kids who died had a bow and arrow, the only weapon that's a serious threat to her since she's jumping around in trees to avoid people. Now is a perfectly good time to kill Katniss, especially since she's shown she's good with bows as well. See, you should always focus on taking out the greatest threats first. Rue had no chance against the inexplicable pack of trained kids, but she might be able to kill Katniss.
Actually, probably not by a knife in the back. Katniss trusts Rue about plants. Find something full of cyanide and say it'll help if she chews it. The bitterness means it's medicine!
Anyway, because the book really hates the idea of us thinking Katniss is actually at a disadvantage...
Traditionally, the Career tributes’ strategy is to get hold of all the food early on and work from there. The years when they have not protected it well — one year a pack of hideous reptiles destroyed it, another a Gamemakers’ flood washed it away — those are usually the years that tributes from other districts have won.
So, remember what I said last time? If this is really a big deal, the kids should be trained to get food of their own. If nothing else, as Gale said to Katniss, it's all hunting. That girl who never misses with her throwing knives shouldn't have too much trouble getting rabbit and turkeylike-thing-we're-calling-groosling.
The trained kids are built up as this huge force, yet they only win if everything goes a particular way. It's not simply that they did worse those years, they usually all lose. And Katniss says it's because they've never gone hungry.
What sort of training did these kids get that didn't include how to survive in a harsh environment?
(Plus...if things are that predictable without otherwise, why don't the people in charge regularly do something to destroy the stores, instead of just twice?)
But Katniss is too tired to plan further.
and the warmth of Rue at my side, her head cradled on my shoulder, have given me a sense of security. I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I’ve been in the arena.
Yeah it sure would've been nice to actually see her being lonely, instead of just saying she sure was before but isn't now.
She finds out what Rue knows about the camp. They've been leaving a District 3 kid as a guard for some reason. District 3 is also not a career district, but Katniss has no indignant rant for this.
Rue and Katniss bond some more.
And I come to know Rue, the oldest of six kids, fiercely protective of her siblings, who gives her rations to the younger ones, who forages in the meadows in a district where the Peacekeepers are far less obliging than ours. Rue, who when you ask her what she loves most in the world, replies, of all things, “Music.”
Gee I wonder where this is going.
But there is a point to her liking music. Rue can sing to mockingjays and get them to repeat her songs. When it's time to quit she sings a particular song so everyone in the orchard will hear. She also loves Katniss' pin - which Katniss, once again, had completely forgotten about.
Katniss offers her the pin and earns another good person point for it.
The book will have none of my grudging like and promptly ruins this.
“Oh, no,” says Rue, closing my fingers back over the pin. “I like to see it on you.
Never ever do this, people. Do not have the other character say that the main character is just so special and important they must have all the things. Rue goes on to say that her having the pin is why she knew she could trust Katniss, which...what? I was theorizing it was because they were the only friendly-acting tributes and so the least scary, but instead Rue just knew Katniss was nice, even though it was a pin she keeps forgetting everywhere.
We get a bit more of the plan. Rue is going to run off and light campfires, presumably to attract the other kids, and they'll meet up later. She says she'll sing to the mockingjays if she can't get back, so Katniss will know she's okay. It doesn't occur to her to have a second song for OH FUCK SOMETHING'S WRONG BLEEDING OUT HERE KATNISS which, when it comes to communication, is probably more useful.
“Are there many mockingjays here?” I ask.
“Haven’t you seen them? They’ve got nests everywhere,” she says. I have to admit I haven’t noticed.
Katniss: Worst. Hunter. Ever.
They split up and Katniss finally starts thinking about what's going on.
I turn and head back to the stream, feeling somehow worried. About Rue being killed, about Rue not being killed and the two of us being left for last, about leaving Rue alone, about leaving Prim alone back home. No, Prim has my mother and Gale and a baker who has promised she won’t go hungry. Rue has only me.
Good, Katniss. We're nearing two thirds into the book, and it really shouldn't have taken you this long, but you're finally addressing important points. The bit about what succeeding means - the two of you being the last left alive - is particularly awful to contemplate.
So...what should you do?
Once I reach the stream, I have only to follow it downhill to
Or I guess we could just drop the entire line of thought and get back to your plan to kill people.
She decides to spend some time wondering in circles about Peeta instead.
I struggle again to remember that moment over Glimmer’s body, when he burst through the trees. But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.
While the bar is admittedly low, I will say the romance in this is certainly less squicky than Twilight.
Hunger Games: At Least It's Not Fucking Twilight.
So yeah, she eventually gets to somewhere where she can spy on the kids.
There are four tributes. The boy from District 1, Cato and the girl from District 2, and a scrawny, ashen-skinned boy who must be from District 3. He made almost no impression on me at all during our time in the Capitol. I can remember almost nothing about him, not his costume, not his training score, not his interview.
Okay, this kind of works. I've been complaining about the way the narrative seems to know who to care about, so having someone be important without getting highlighted in advance is nice.
Weirdly, though, instead of taking the time to start paying attention to him Katniss keeps talking about how blah he is, and the weird way the text and metatext overlap gets obvious again.
Even now, as he sits there fiddling with some kind of plastic box, he’s easily ignored in the presence of his large and domineering companions.
Um, that might be a death box, you should probably pay attention. I mean, they have magic science at the capital, you know.
But she has no idea why the kids left him alive. They're also all injured.
Even from here, I can see the large swollen lumps on their bodies. They must not have had the sense to remove the stingers, or if they did, not known about the leaves that healed them.
Okay, first off? Removing the stingers is normal behavior. I don't know why the book keeps telling us to be impressed Katniss figured out that pulling the thing stuck in you out was a good idea. All first aid stuff I know of usually makes a big deal of when not to pull something out, because it's the first thing people will do otherwise. Next, again, trained kids, why weren't they trained to handle this? The games normally go on for a while.
Katniss is similarly confused by the way they've arranged the supplies. Most of it's in a big pile, but some is scattered around, and it's all covered by netting.
My guess is the pyramid is booby-trapped in some manner. I think of concealed pits, descending nets, a thread that when broken sends a poisonous dart into your heart. Really, the possibilities are endless.
If they could rig that stuff up, they could catch rabbits fine and they wouldn't be totally dependent on the food in the first place.
So then they see one of Rue's fires and decide to set out. They argue about if they should take guard-kid.
“He’s coming. We need him in the woods, and his job’s done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies,” says Cato.
None of this makes sense.
The whole point of the trained kids being scary is that they totally outclass the regular ones, so why would they need him? Plus, he's going to be the first to turn on them because he knows he has no chance otherwise.
Next, if his job's done, then he's not useful, now is he? And this is the childmurder games.
...So I'd like to talk about how much I love Battle Royale some more. I didn't realize until reading this just how very much better it was.
See, in Battle Royale, the kids can do whatever they please during their childmurder games. While, once again, I appreciate the lack of rape and the fact the torture seems inadvertent and off camera and I feel like I'm tempting fate every time I mention this, it made a lot more sense. You can see how some teenage boys would form groups to go on rape and murder sprees to do all they can in the time they have left, knowing that odds are none of them will make it to the finish so they might as well enjoy what they can. And how other kids would work together with the intent of at least not being the victims of psychopaths. And some psychopaths would still work together with their friends for protection so the other psychopaths don't get them. This delays the flashpoint when a group would start to think that, since only one can survive, they should kill first. It helped that there was a much larger starting population (fifty, if I remember) and that they didn't lose half their members in a staged bloodbath on the first day. (There were also generally a lot more varied reactions, my favorite being the bunch of girls who all hid together since they were doomed anyway, so why not, closely followed by the kid who decided to blow up the people in charge.)
Most of this wouldn't work with the book's setup, but that means she needed to do something else to explain how the kids are working together.
One option is a point system. Getting rewards (for your district or yourself) per death would be a good motivator, as also make the whole "career" thing make sense. Training up two kids every year for something you have, at best, a one in six change of winning, is going to be pretty hard. But if the rewards for killing the rest of the kids are relatively big, then it makes a lot more sense. There could also be bonuses for surviving each day, or a ranking system where if you die, say, tenth, your district gets more than if you were the first to die. (Or all survivors get a bonus with each death.) There could also be daily awards based on who the viewers like best, which would then explain how Katniss thinks being stoic and/or witty is somehow improving her chances of survival.
All these things would encourage kids to take part even if they had no chance of actually winning, because it stops being such an all or nothing affair. It would also discourage suicides.
Anyway. The other kids leave and then the fox-faced girl appears, or Foxface as Katniss calls her. I'm going to stick with my epithet, thanks.
The fox-faced girl hops around on a weird path, grabs some food and then retraces her steps. Katniss is impressed.
I was right about the girl, too. How wily is she to have discovered this path into the food and to be able to replicate it so neatly?
It's actually a bit weird - Katniss uses a lot of animal words with the girl. She creeps, she scampers, she squeals. And she doesn't talk about her the way you would someone using human reasoning.
Here's how she discovered the path to the food, Katniss: she watched. She's probably been hiding here or nearby for days. She probably stole some stuff the first night when the trained kids were moving in a pack, but since the wasps she's been waiting because the District 3 boy has been left on guard. Then, when they set up the trap, she remembered the trigger points and figured out the best way through.
She isn't "wily" and didn't "discover". She's "smart" and "figured it out".
Anyway, Katniss realizes what the trap is with a bit more thought. It's the mines from earlier. See, District 3 is the factories that make everything from TVs to explosives.
The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 3 must have managed to reactivate them. I’ve never seen anyone in the Games do that. I bet it came as a shock even to the Gamemakers.
Book. Stop with the exceptions. It's okay to have a character actually know what she's talking about.
More - the mines are a standard affair. If District 3 is good with gadgets, this plan should have occurred to them a good while ago. They'd have taught kids to do it. So that's a plot hole. But even if it wasn't, piling coincidence on coincidence is just not a good idea. If stuff keeps happening that's never happened before, well, eh. So what? It'll just get resolved by something else that's never happened before, which in turn gets fixed by something else that's never happened before...
Also, from the sounds of it, the mines are disabled remotely, so it'd have been easy to turn them back on remotely if they didn't like this plan.
(Incidentally, I think there's an editing incongruity here. It's not clear if the kids can turn the mines on and off. The girl's behavior makes most sense if they can, because her hopping implies she's not sure how wide the safe areas are, and it seems unlikely the trained kids would be willing to travel such a dangerous route, but if there's a clear path to walk she should be strolling through. The box the kid is fiddling with might do it. But it's not clear where the remote piece would come from, and there's a big difference between digging up mines and flipping a switch so they're armed again and assembling something from scratch to hack it.)
The mines are extremely sensitive and extremely powerful.
One year, a girl dropped her token, a small wooden ball, while she was at her plate, and they literally had to scrape bits of her off the ground.
That's...actually not very scary. Before, Katniss was just saying it'd blow your legs off, which is ambiguous. But if it paints you across the landscape, that's about as instant a death as you can hope for. Assuming there's some sort of punishment for obviously suicidal behavior, "accidentally dropping a token" should be a common thing.
Katniss tries to figure out how to set off the mines. She figures that getting a chain reaction going will be tough because they're probably spaced to avoid that. But there's a bag of apples.
The first arrow tears through the side of the bag near the top, leaving a split in the burlap. The second widens it to a gaping hole. I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap of burlap and ripping it from the bag.
You know, I don't know much about archery, so I'm not sure exactly how possible this is. But it doesn't feel particularly plausible, and given no research has been done for anything else I'm going to assume she's just making stuff up here as well.
There's a tip buried in there. If you do a good job of researching things, if you do need to stretch things at a particular point readers will be more likely to give you it. The more obvious breaks in reality, the less slack you get.
But her super arrow skills cause the apples to fall. The resulting explosion blows her backward, and we end the chapter.
Next chapter picks up with her knocked on her back. You know, people don't really get how explosions work sometimes. See, the blast that is blowing apart a building doesn't magically not blow you apart just because it's made of air. It also tends to be extremely hot, so it'll burn your skin.
I manage to shield my face with my arms as shattered bits of matter, some of it burning, rain down around me.
Furthermore, stuff isn't raining down on you, it's being propelled by the same blast that hit you, ie, hitting at the same time. Some will rain down afterward because some got shot up and not sideways, but that only happens after the shrapnel is shoved through your face.
But Katniss does get hurt. Her ears are damaged. She's deaf and her sense of balance is gone.
Boy, it's sure convenient she just got her wasp stings fixed in time for this newest issue. And we can probably assume nothing new will happen until her hearing comes back, so we know her hearing must come back so the next thing can happen.
One ear is actually bleeding, which means she probably blew out the eardrum. She won't be able to heal that on her own, but eh, the capital has magic science and Katniss' has clearly picked survival and life over being a decent person, so she'll win.
Anyway, she can still crawl okay, so she crawls off back to her hiding place.
While she's doing this, a few more mines go off. These single mines are still enough to knock her over while crawling, so the force of the first blast should have blown her face off. In fact, if a single mine can do this, wouldn't a single tribute stepping off their plate and triggering the mines result in everyone dying, as nearby kids got knocked over, triggering more mines, which then knock over kids near them...
I’m reminded of those last few kernels that burst when Prim and I pop corn over the fire at home.
Wait, they still have corn? Why is she eating the unknown tesserae grain, corn is the best staple crop in America. They should be eating cornmeal if there's still corn. I was willing to grant the lack of sugar on the assumption that maple trees may have bought it, but you can make corn into sugar too.
I mean, I guess it's possible there was so much change in climate and destruction of the land that it's no longer possible to grown corn except in small areas, so it can't be a staple good. But then why would it be shipped anywhere but the capital, and even if it was, why would Katniss have blown the food budget on it after all the STARVING STARVING STARVING stuff?
there’s Cato, barreling onto the plain, soon followed by his companions. His rage is so extreme it might be comical — so people really do tear out their hair and beat the ground with their fists
It's funny because Katniss has just done something that means he has a good chance of dying! And this upsets him!
But it's aimed at her and Katniss is kind of helpless, so she's mostly just scared.
I’m glad my hiding place makes it impossible for the cameras to get a close shot of me because I’m biting my nails like there’s no tomorrow.
This is random, but it's actually kind of bugging me that Katniss keeps talking about chewing her nails when she's nervous. I mean, it is a thing people do, but if you're really panicking, a better distraction is biting your thumb itself, because it hurts when you do that.
Cato has finished the first phase of his tantrum and takes out his anger on the smoking remains by kicking open various containers. The other tributes are poking around in the mess, looking for anything to salvage, but there’s nothing.
...there are containers left to kick open, but there's nothing at all to salvage inside?
Anyway, Cato decides to blame the District 3 kid for setting the mines so they'd atomize the food if they went off, so he kills him. Of course, the kid is also no longer useful to them in any way and it's the childmurder games, so I'm not sure why the book has to explain this as just because he's mad.
I can see the muscles ripple in Cato’s arms as he sharply jerks the boy’s head to the side.
It’s that quick. The death of the boy from District 3.
You know, I think part of my problem is that the author keeps making a big deal about sudden death, where as I'm more focused on the horrible pain thing. Snapping the kid's neck is a quick death, much like stepping on the mines. Compared to the screaming girl on the first night, it's not that bad at all.
I'd like to complain about Katniss' total lack of fuck-giving here, since she obviously didn't think that what she did would make them kill the boy and usually people react badly when their actions inadvertently get people killed, but she's been talking constantly about how she wants to shoot people dead herself so it's not really surprising.
They assume whoever did this died in the explosion, so they don't go anywhere and wait for night instead.
They show the boy from District 3. They show the boy from District 10, who must have died this morning. Then the seal reappears. So, now they know. The bomber survived.
...so, no one else is playing the childmurder games but the career kids? Even assuming that the untrained kids can't take on any of the trained kids, are none of them attacking each other? Because that's actually pretty interesting. Katniss has shown no such scruples, but Rue helped her and it seems everyone else is going on the principle of live and let live.
It's not completely altruistic, of course. The more kids around, the more likely the trained kids will stalk them rather than you. But it's still a huge step up from Katniss, who wants to kill someone for being cold.
You're probably sick of Battle Royale, but honestly, lots of manga do this better. By jumping between characters we would get to see how things are going for others. By implication, things aren't going exactly the same for them as they are for Katniss, and it's more than simply that they're not doing anything interesting. Even in manga that sticks to a single viewpoint, they're far more aware of what the other characters are doing - they'd run into other people, and they'd see others meeting up. In sum, what the other people are doing would matter, while here it's really just that the author doesn't give a fuck. Like with the forest ecosystem making no sense and only existing for Katniss to interact with, the kids are scenery. The non-trained kids are just there as a morbid counter to show how serious things are.
I can see Cato and the girl from District 2 put on their night-vision glasses. The boy from District 1 ignites a tree branch for a torch, illuminating the grim determination on all their faces.
Seconds later, the two with night vision goggles double over screaming as their eyes are seared by the light. Seriously it doesn't work like that.
Also, I thought they had flashlights.
Also torches don't work like that. Yo can't just light a branch and call it a day.
Then all three of them head off to hunt, even though the torch means anyone will see them coming a mile off and nullifies the advantage the goggles give them.
Fearing the smell of meat will draw unwanted predators — fresh blood is bad enough — I make a good meal out of the greens and roots and berries Rue and I gathered today.
Um, seriously? The meat will draw predators so it's better to keep it in your bag and continue carrying it around? Also, berries and greens aren't particularly filling, and most roots need to be cooked to give most of their energy. It's not going to be a good meal.
So there's eight kids left, only three of which are the trained kids.
Although from what Cato said, Peeta’s on his way out. Not that Cato is the final word on anything. Didn’t he just lose his entire stash of supplies?
Book, I know I can't expect subtlety, but can I at least get the illusion of suspense? Please?
Since roosting overnight in a tree isn’t sensible anyway, I scoop out a hollow under the bushes and cover myself with leaves and pine needles. I’m still freezing.
God damn you are whiny Katniss. Burying yourself in leaves is a perfectly valid way of keeping warm. More, I refuse to believe it's just too cold for this to work, because you survived two days lying in a pile of leaves that you hadn't even covered yourself properly with, and probably did it with a fever. If it was that cold, you'd have died.
I begin to have more sympathy for the girl from District 8 that lit the fire that first night.
Considering she was horribly killed, it's about fucking time you felt some sympathy.
When Katniss wakes up, she hears noise and realizes her ear is working again.
The fox-faced girl has come to see what's up. I'm a bit confused why she didn't check out the explosion yesterday, since there was a good while until night, but whatever.
She’s smarter than the Careers, actually finding a few useful items in the ashes. A metal pot. A knife blade.
What sort of trained kid doesn't know a pot is useful?
That's like, survival 101. You cook everything in a pot so nothing runs off into the fire. The only disadvantage, and it's a minor one, is that it's harder to do what Katniss is doing and carry around the cooked food afterward, and that can be fixed by recooking anything you didn't eat over the fire, as most of the runoff will already be in the broth.
And considering the main use of knives is throwing them, the blade should be obviously useful to the kids.
I’m perplexed by her amusement until I realize that with the Careers’ stores eliminated, she might actually stand a chance. Just like the rest of us.
Hm, maybe.
On the other hand, it seems like she was doing pretty well for herself the way things are. The loss of weapons is surely no loss to her, but the food is. Assuming the food wasn't blown up, the trained kids would keep picking off the rest of the untrained kids for a bit, then eventually turn on each other. I expect the District 3 kid would be the first to go, or possibly they'd turn on each other first because they think he's no harm and then he'd try to kill the survivor. Whatever happens, they certainly won't be guarding the food. She just has to wait it out. If she times it right, she can make off with the final store of food so they'll end up hungry first.
I guess it depends on how stealthy the girl is. Someone like Rue could pull it off, but she may not have as much faith in her ability to keep avoiding the trained kids. Still, her defining feature is cleverness, so I'd expect her to be good at it.
Basically, I don't buy it. She had a really good thing here. She knows the way through the mines and there's no other guard now. The loss of supplies would need to be catastrophic to the trained kids to make it worth it, and there's still the other five kids to consider.
It crosses my mind to reveal myself and enlist her as a second ally against that pack. But I rule it out. There’s something about that sly grin that makes me sure that befriending Foxface would ultimately get me a knife in the back.
Oh fuck you Katniss.
See what I mean about not talking about her like she's a person. She just doesn't look trustworthy. Also, it's all her fault that Katniss won't trust her.
There is definitely reason to be worried about allying. "That pack" is now only three kids, and Katniss has said that the advantage shifts to the untrained kids like the rest of them with the food gone, so their common enemy is no longer such a threat. They lack a strong motive to ally.
And, of course, the kids can never ally longterm because only one can win, and they're down to eight, so two third of the kids are already dead. Remember, Katniss was saying earlier that her alliance with Rue can never be more than temporary, and also that Rue is no threat to her, so on some level she was thinking about killing Rue when it came down to it. So this girl has good reason to stab Katniss in the back, because very soon, Katniss is going to decide to shoot her in the back.
But instead Katniss talks about this girl as if she's just psychotic. There's also a return of the reliable narrator issue, namely, there's no suggestion this is Katniss' paranoia speaking. Katniss has good reason to be nervous, and it would also be quite understandable for her to say the girl might not be dangerous but that she doesn't want to take the chance. Instead, kids who happen to resemble foxes are foxes, and can't be trusted.
With that in mind, this might be an excellent time to shoot her.
See? I really don't think it's fair to talk about how the other girl might attack you when your impulse is to kill her.
Luckily for the girl, she hears something and runs off before Katniss can kill her. Katniss isn't sure what it is but figures if she's running it's probably a good idea to leave as well. I actually like this a lot, since like trying burn ointment on her wounds or eating the food Rue gathered, it's very human behavior. We naturally work best in groups and we're extremely trusting of cues from other humans.
She heads back to the stream to meet up with Rue, eating more of whatever the fuck the groosling is. Yeah, that's really bugging me. If everything had altered names it'd be one thing, but so far everything else kept their names, even more obscure alternate terms like katniss.
I shoot two fish, easy pickings in this slow-moving stream, and go ahead and eat one raw even though I’ve just had the groosling.
How fucking hard is it to do basic research?
I would find eating raw fish completely reasonable if she hadn't made a huge deal about not eating raw rabbit, especially since the raw rabbit was when she was dying of dehydration. But if she's worried about rabbit fever she should be worried about all the stuff carried in wild fish.
Also I'm not sure what she means by even though she's just had something. This is really basic predator behavior - you eat as much as you can when food is abundant. If the fish are easy pickings and she's fine about eating them, she should eat as much as possible now. Instead, she saves the second fish for Rue and doesn't shoot any more.
I can’t adjust to deafness in the ear. It makes me feel off-balanced and defenseless to my left. Blind even. My head keeps turning to the injured side, as my right ear tries to compensate for the wall of nothingness where yesterday there was a constant flow of information.
Uh. People who are deaf in one ear compensate well enough. Her hearing is definitely going to be impaired, but wall of nothingness is rather over the top here.
She reaches the meeting point but there's no Rue. Katniss starts rationalizing it as okay.
She’s probably just being cautious about making her way back. I wish she’d hurry, because I don’t want to hang around here too long. I want to spend the afternoon traveling to higher ground, hunting as we go. But there’s nothing really for me to do but wait.
She can jump around between trees and none of the other kids have a bow. She shouldn't have trouble making her way back. This is legit panic time, but I guess Katniss holding the idiot ball here is supposed to heighten suspense, or maybe make it more shocking when we realize something's wrong.
Katniss decides to eat the second fish, since it won't last long anyway. It's fine, since
it should be easy enough to spear a few more for Rue.
Katniss does not take this to its logical conclusion and catch more to eat herself.
Despite the groosling and the fish, my stomach’s growling
THERE ARE FISH RIGHT THERE GO EAT MORE OF THEM
She decides to give in and eat more, because she's lost a lot of weight so far, so she eats some nuts. Fish! Right there! Full of delicious fish-oily goodness! If you want to stop losing weight you need to eat extra food. If you can get enough fish maybe you can even start gaining some again.
Katniss' ongoing refusal to eat her stored food might be a sign of food hording, which is a common psychological affect of starvation. Unfortunately for that theory, she doesn't distinguish between storied food and perishable food. Now, it'd be possible for her to be treating known food sources as a cache of food that'll spoil if she removes it, except that Katniss has shown absolutely no sign of remembering locations so far. This stream is the third source of water she's found and the first she's made much effort to return to. No mention has been made of remembering where berry bushes or roots are. So that excuse doesn't fly. And besides, it's not at all how she was acting back in the first chapter, where she collected as much as she could. So now she's dipping into her stored food rather than eating more fish in defiance of both sense and psychology.
She's also not drinking much water, for even less reason. She is right next to the stream. She should be drinking her water and refilling it to try to rehydrate. Rationing water makes some sense when she's traveling around, but it makes anti-sense right now.
But Katniss ignores my logic in favor of nuts. She finishes off her food and stays in the tree.
But it’s a hollow day, and even with all that I start daydreaming about food.
Katniss, like any sane person literally a couple feet away from easily available food, stays put and emos about it instead. Truly, a stunning portrayal of psychological depth.
Hours pass and Katniss realizes Rue isn't showing up. She scatters some mint leaves in case Rue appears while she's gone, since Rue knows Katniss gathered some but there are none close by, then goes to check the third fire Rue was supposed to set.
I know something has gone amiss. The wood has been neatly arranged, expertly interspersed with tinder, but it has never been lit. Rue set up the fire but never made it back here. Somewhere between the second column of smoke I spied before I blew up the supplies and this point, she ran into trouble.
Katniss, do you have no concept of moderation? Either you're totally chill about something that's really worrying, or you're losing it over something with a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Isn't it possible that she heard the explosion and figured the third fire wasn't needed? The fact she's not back is the damning part, not that she didn't light an unnecessary fire.
She starts panicking about what if she didn't hear the cannon shot because her ears were too messed up.
No, I refuse to believe it. There could be a hundred other explanations. She could have lost her way. Run into a pack of predators or another tribute, like Thresh, and had to hide. Whatever happened, I’m almost certain she’s stuck out there, somewhere between the second fire and the unlit one at my feet. Something is keeping her up a tree.
But she can jump between trees. It's like the second thing she did here. You even remarked on how it was probably where her high score came from.
Anyway, Katniss figures that she can find whatever's keeping Rue by heading toward the other fire. This makes sense. As she starts traveling, she hears Rue's everything-is-fine song from some mockingjays (hey, remember when Katniss was having hearing problems? Because the book doesn't. Guess we're ready for the next injury.) and grins, because the birds don't carry a song long so she must be nearby.
So, obviously, that's when Rue starts screaming.
And now I’m running, knowing this may be a trap, knowing the three Careers may be poised to attack me, but I can’t help myself.
Katniss is actually being a decent person here. She starts shouting in the hopes they'll abandon Rue in favor of heading toward her.
When I break into the clearing, she’s on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body.
Well. So much for Rue.
This confuses me. I guess we're supposed to forget about Rue's squirrel skills and so she must have been traveling on the ground. But even then, was she only just now caught, or has she been trapped for some time but too scared to make a sound? Because a net is not really the kind of trap you can leave people in for long periods when a lot of them are carrying knives. I think maybe the idea is she was caught and singing to the birds in the hope Katniss would come toward her, but she's singing her "stay where you are, I'm fine, I'll meet up in a little while" song, but it makes no sense that she'd just happen to have some other issue keeping her away and then only now stumble into a trap right when Katniss is nearby.
It's also terribly convenient. Leaving Rue alive until near the end raises real issues, because only one can actually leave. More, once the remaining trained kids realize Rue and she are working together, the odds of Rue getting a similarly painful death as the one they'll give Katniss increase, plus if they avoid fights and try to keep playing as long as possible so they don't have to kill each other, the gamemakers will start sending terrible things at them, so then there's the issue of mercy killing. And if Katniss manages to kill almost everyone else, should she kill herself for Rue? And what about Rue's district and family? Rue's the first of six kids in a district people are hungry enough to steal food despite regular whippings for the crime, while Prim has several people who've all promised to keep her from starving.
But Rue is feminine and therefore her role in this drama is quite firmly the sainted victim.
As an aside, let's consider the concept of fridging. Fridging is generally broken into two parts - the casual maiming or killing of female characters compared to males, and the use of it as a motivating force for the main character, who's usually male. The term originally comes to us from comics, from a superhero coming home to find his girlfriend dismembered and stuffed into his fridge. The fact women are usually the motivator and men the motivated are two separate issues. Making it one girl motivated by another girl's death improves the situation by allowing women into the role of hero, but doesn't address that the role of designated victim is still female as well. And all women in this book are either victims, evil, or Katniss, so it doesn't get a good-writing exception here.
TLDR of course Rue's a young girl and of course she's killed to upset the main character. Victimhood is a feminine trait and Rue was coded very, very feminine.
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Date: 2011-04-06 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 12:06 am (UTC)On the other hand, if the mines can't be turned on and off at will, she could wait for the kids to enter along the safe path, then shoot the ground nearby and blow them up without losing the food. That would probably be more practical.
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Date: 2011-04-07 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 03:12 am (UTC)And then you get fun things like her catching herself half-wishing for Rue to die so she won't have to go through with it, and then proving that she's actually a good person by pushing all of that aside and running to help her when she's actually in danger, and then hating herself when she does die because isn't this what you wanted, Katniss?
But then I guess that would only actually work if she hadn't been acting near sociopathic for the first half of the novel, so.
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Date: 2011-04-07 12:12 am (UTC)And Katniss certainly can't be bad. Suggesting Rue doesn't deserve to die would imply there's something intrinsically immoral about the childmurder games rather than that Good People, like Katniss, shouldn't have to take part. It might raise other questions, bad questions, like who else doesn't deserve to die. It might suggest Katniss' ongoing intention to win is not particularly good.
and then hating herself when she does die because isn't this what you wanted, Katniss?
There's actually a lot of room for this with Peeta, too. She goes into the game with the hope someone else will kill him so she doesn't have to. But instead we ignore that in favor of rarg hate.
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Date: 2011-04-06 03:59 am (UTC)Come on, I remember more logical stuff from the Scholastic "survivor" books I used to buy from my elementary school.
Also the blatant sex-coding in this book is really painful. Really, really painful.
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Date: 2011-04-07 12:15 am (UTC)Also the blatant sex-coding in this book is really painful. Really, really painful.
I'm honestly surprised, I was expecting it to just be an imbalance that would lead to me complaining about calling a book feminist when it was just more equal than usual, not...whatever this is.
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Date: 2011-04-06 01:15 pm (UTC)Wait, stingers? Wasps doesn't leave stingers, thats bees.
That is what is so freaking scary about wasps, one wasp can sting you as often as it likes, while a bee will die once it stung, because the stinger stays in the skin and the bee ends up pulling out its own innards.
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Date: 2011-04-07 12:19 am (UTC)I don't know why she didn't just use bees. They function exactly like bees.
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Date: 2012-02-23 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-23 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-08 07:20 pm (UTC)If you booby trap your stash, it only works if everyone around can see the mines. I might have missed something but I suspect this isn't the case since the foxed-face girl seemed like she was walking on egg shells. So if the mines are visible, you're betting that no one is stupid/desperate/arrogant enough to try and sneak by them anyway.
If the mines aren't visible then it's a trap for anyone who thinks the stash is easy pickings. Which should mean that the careers wanted someone to get blown up. And if that was the case, why put your most valuable stuff out for bait? *head tilty*
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Date: 2011-04-08 07:46 pm (UTC)The mines were invisible, which is why Katniss had to see the way the other girl avoided stepping in the wrong place to realize it was trapped. And she also guessed that the mines were arranged so that a single intruder would get blown up without harming anything else.
So, they should have wanted to leave it unguarded in the hopes one of the stealthier kids will come to steal from them and get killed, yet that isn't a factor in their decision on bringing the District 3 kid with them.
YOU HAVE EXPLOSIVES!!!! USE THEM!
Date: 2011-08-09 11:55 am (UTC)Re: YOU HAVE EXPLOSIVES!!!! USE THEM!
Date: 2011-08-09 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-29 11:40 am (UTC)For that matter, the kid from 3 should have been very nervous about moving the mines; AP mines usually don't, but larger mines tend to have multiple fuze wells in their body including one on the bottom where you can put an anti-lifting fuze. I doubt he'd be willing to spend time probing the mine with a knife to make sure he could lift it without blowing himself up. You can also have things like mercury tilt switches to detonate the mine if it's handled after being armed.
This is why demining is scary, you rarely know what kind of mine it is, what condition it's in, or if it's been modified.
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Date: 2011-12-11 08:00 am (UTC)That is some remarkably poor pacing.
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Date: 2011-12-29 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 12:14 am (UTC)every supporting female character's death is inherently sexist if the protagonist feels bad about it; any reference whatever to a character's beauty is troubling somehow
No, but when every supporting character death just there to motivate your character is female, it becomes sexist. When your references to a character's beauty then reinforce all the bad fridging tropes, it becomes badly sexist.
If there was no sexism, there'd be a fifty-fifty chance that a supporting character death of this type was male, right? Yet it's almost universally a thing that happens to female ones. People will often say that it just happened to be a female character and could have been a male one, but obviously that can't be true for most of the situations or else we'd see it just happening to be a male character.
More, it carries a lot of baggage, because female characters are also usually used as victims and motivation, they're considered weak, and the perfect victim tends to be the young pure virgin, so the selection is sexist beyond just gender. It's all tied up in a lot of other nasty ideas. So my point is also that even if you're in a situation where you don't care about the gender and would pick with a coin flip, you still shouldn't make it a girl because that's a story that's been told and told and told.
A story is not sexist for having a character die. When one type of character always dies, though, it's obviously not that it just happened to be that way by chance.
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Date: 2011-12-30 02:55 am (UTC)Also, seriously, male characters never die mainly to motivate the protagonist? I can think of three or four examples in Harry Potter alone. (Wavering on Harry's dad.) Hell, in Death Note, not exactly a bastion of gender equality, the sexist idiot douche whose death separated the wheat from the chaff and gave the wheat a good kick in the ass is a much clearer example of fridging than the woman who ended up too competent for the story to survive, whom everyone seems to claim was fridged. (And if you're going to say that a character's strength is undermined because the character dies in that series... it doesn't leave a lot of characters.)
(Actually, the beauty thing was more about Glimmer and Effie and Cinna. Between the three of them, they pretty much run the gamut of things to say about beauty, and you thought every one of those things had unfortunate implications.)
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Date: 2011-12-30 03:29 am (UTC)It's not true to the childmurder aspect at all, because her killer was a child too. But instead, she's treated as an innocent blameless victim and he's evil and gives Katniss an excuse to kill him without looking bad, even though Rue likely would have killed him given the chance. The horror of the games isn't just that a kid dies, it's that the kids are killing each other, and even killing in defense of someone is just killing another victim who's another scared kid.
And it's more than just that she dies, it's how her death is treated. It's used as Katniss' motivation. And not even something as pure as "so then I decided to do something about it for Rue", it just gets rolled into her general anger about how Katniss is treated. By the next book Rue isn't even a real person, she's a dream mockingjay. How much more obvious can it be that she's there as a symbolic victim and not her own person?
Three or four examples in a seven book series full of doorstoppers and overstuffed with characters to start with? And I'd like to hear your actual examples, because key here is that the purpose of the death is for the protagonist's own motivation and they're not treated as their own person. There is no wavering about Harry's dad - he's not at all a motivation and we learn a lot about him outside the role of victim. About the only one that comes to mind as fitting at all is Dobby, who's a nonhuman and was mostly killed off the boost the death count. Rue is there solely so Katniss can be sad - hell, it's there in her name.
It's actually interesting that you went to a manga for a counterexample, and one that kills off people left and right no less (also, given how most of the characters are highly motivated already and/or assholes, there's a lot less room for fridging), because manga actually does far better at even casts than Western stuff in the first place - which is not to say they are better, but there's a very different set of issues. If you stick to Western stuff there are a lot fewer exceptions.
(As I tried to explain, fridging has a couple related meanings and I'm using it in its more specific original meaning. Some people will also use it to refer to the general tendency of female characters to be killed off or disregarded, which is what the site Women in Refrigerators was about as a whole. When I heard fridging complaints about Death Note it was used in the general sense that female characters were getting sidelined and killed off in favor of male ones, but I was never in the fandom well enough to be familiar with the intricacies of any arguments.)
Actually, the beauty thing was more about Glimmer and Effie and Cinna. Between the three of them, they pretty much run the gamut of things to say about beauty, and you thought every one of those things had unfortunate implications.
Why yes, the thing where there are three attractive characters and the only one who's good is the man had some issues.
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Date: 2011-12-30 03:51 am (UTC)I guess the other two characters (the ones who die at the ends of the fourth and fifth books) don't count, if you're going by characterization outside victimhood, but then, neither does the character you spoiled, or for that matter, any character in a story where the heroes act like human beings.
Actually, re: the beauty, you wrote that "Glimmer is pretty. Slut-shame!" (okay, yeah) and "Katniss comments on how disfigured Glimmer is in death. I won't even tell you what unfortunate implication this is supposed to be, but it should be readily apparent" and "Effie/the makeover crew augment their beauty artificially, which is put in a poor light. Anti-makeup fascists!" and "Cinna augments his beauty more like people use makeup in real American society, so on the strength of this one example, Beauty Equals Goodness." The Bestest Most Wonderfulest &c. aspects of Cinna were never mentioned when it came to this part.
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Date: 2011-12-30 04:44 am (UTC)or for that matter, any character in a story where the heroes act like human beings.
Well, yes. Fridging is a type of bad writing. There's a vast number of ways to acceptably kill off characters, it's just people often ignore them and most often do so with female characters.
And yes, I said a lot about beauty, but the summation is pretty girls who aren't Katniss = evil. You listed three characters that cover a variety of thins on beauty but there are no good pretty women, because only the guy gets the good beauty.
Also, this stuff isn't unfortunate implications. That refers to something that's a possibly inadvertent thing, and I am hardly so nice to this book.
See, something that comes up a lot with beauty is fake beauty vs real beauty. Something else that comes up a lot is the idea that (bad) women aren't "really" beautiful, and that a good way to shame them is to somehow expose their true self, like destroying their makeup. This often manifests in violent ways, including being assaulted so that the swelling and bleeding ruin their appearance.
Moreover,I must have been on the right track there with Glimmer, because what do we get next book? Her reduced to a slavering wolf monster, as if the thing that happened to share eye colors with her is the real her. Why doesn't Katniss have nightmares about wolf-Rue or Peeta turned wolf, or the other kids she killed? Why doesn't she have nightmares about the actual girl?
The series as a whole shows that you can look at one of these early things and say it's indicative of sexism. It's not that any one thing proves it, it's that any one of these particular things tends to go hand-in-hand with a lot of others, many of which happen.
Effie/the makeover crew augment their beauty artificially, which is put in a poor light. Anti-makeup fascists!
I don't wear makeup. The problem is not that makeup is awesome, it's saying a person is bad because of their appearance. And Cinna wears makeup but he looks attractive while doing so because he's a good person, and when Katniss and Peeta wear makeup that's good and they look awesome instead of dumb. It's nonsense. People who the book says are good are "really" pretty, and it's fine to use makeup to bring that out. People who the book dislikes are "fake" pretty and the fact they're using makeup proves it.
This also tends to be a sexist trope because women are far more likely to be judged for not looking perfect, while it's exceedingly rare for male characters. It almost never shows up outside of the secret toupee thing, and even then, a bald woman is shamed far more for wearing a wig.
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Date: 2012-01-04 04:50 pm (UTC)And do you use the (incredably loose) Tokyopop translation of the manga, or have you managed to track down a more loyal translation?
I'd be interested to know where to get a hold of either :)
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Date: 2012-01-04 05:01 pm (UTC)Personally, I think that Rue's death was less a case of being stuffed in the fridge than you say, simply because plot-wise it actually made more sense: She entered the games to protect her sister, and bonded with Rue because she reminded her of her sister. This is a case where Rue's death and the motivation it therefore provides wouldn't make quite as much sense as it would were it a male character--the motivation comes from a female death, yes, but it makes sense that way. I'll admit that it could have been better handled, but working things to provide the greatest amount of Pathos is generally considered a good thing, even if occationally it doesn't make much sense (a classic example: Oedipus and Jocasta are married long enough to have 4 children together before either of them considers telling the other about their respective prophesies).
I think a few more sympathetic male deaths in the first book could have been a good move: as far as I can remember, 3 males die 'on screen', as it were, with the last one being probably the most sympathetic, curiously enough. Another dies 'off screen' but is considered with somewhat more weight than, say, the girl at the fire.
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Date: 2012-01-04 05:39 pm (UTC)This is a case where Rue's death and the motivation it therefore provides wouldn't make quite as much sense as it would were it a male character
Only because the beloved little victimized sibling is similarly locked in as having to be a female role. And both of them end up fridged.
I think a few more sympathetic male deaths in the first book could have been a good move
It's not about if they're sympathetic or not. In fact, one of the things I found very annoying was that the boy who kills Rue gets a lot of sympathy and is treated as Katniss' only kill and only one she feels conflict about when she murders two other girls in a far more gruesome fashion. The girls' deaths in this exist as extensions of Katniss' story, while the boys get treated as people in their own right.
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Date: 2012-01-05 04:09 am (UTC)The little sibling is a sister who is implied to either already be or have the potential to be a talented healer. Why is her gender an issue? Would there be any comment were it a brother?
Can it not be possible for a female author to write a female sibling without it being sexist? I'll admit Prim could be better written, but then so can a number of the supporting characters, male and female alike. Either way, the important thing seems to be that Katniss has a sibling who she apparently loves enough to risk dying for and to kill for. Generally speaking, you have 2 possible choices for the sibling's gender. In addition, same sex siblings do tend to be closer to each other than different sex siblings, especially when they're younger, so that could also be a factor potentially.
Yes, I agree that Katniss ought to have reacted more appropriately to the girls' deaths she caused. My personal view is that shows a problem with Katniss' characterisation which could have been better worked on.
You've also ignored an important detail between Rue and Peeta: Rue (incedentally a female character) is capable and full of potential. She is smart enough to figure out that she is more likely to survive by playing to her strengths: tree climbing and jumping, gathering food (which she seems to be a lot better at than Katniss), devising the bird song signal (more would have been a good idea, true, but unfortunately it seems the author didn't think that one through). She has been able to survive based on her own merits despite being a 12 year old kid. Credit where credit is due: She's a pretty talented little kid. She's a talented female character who is stuck with all the weaknesses of a 12 yeear old kid.
Peeta (the male character) is a lot more useless without Katniss. He can conceal himself, he can pick up heavy stuff... but when it comes to defence and survival, he's The Load. Utterly useles. If anything, he shows off how amazing Katniss is with her survival and huunting skills. Yes, he is a lot more socially and emotionally mature than Katniss, apparently (not that that's hard), and he has the traditional feminine skills at baking and decorating. But it balances out. He is utterly useless in the games once they've really gotten underway, but he's better socially. Katniss is apparently the opposite. I'm not sure how then the book serves to tell us how much better he is than Katniss, when it seems to emphasise the opposite in the framework of the games themselves after the preamble.
And what about it is more about Peeta and less about Katniss? Katniss is taking care of Peeta for HER benefit (such as everything else), because doing so gets her food, it will make her less reviled when she returns to District 12, and it gives her the emotional support she needs without her really returning any of it.
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Date: 2012-01-05 04:39 am (UTC)As I discuss elsewhere, healing is already a very gendered talent. Also, again, she gets fridged too. You're defending Rue as it just happening to work out that way, but we're two for two here.
Why is her gender an issue? Would there be any comment were it a brother?
Because it's always a damn sister. If it was a brother who was crying over injured animals and who she thought of as weak and helpless and in need of her protection, I'd have commented that hey, it's something different than every story ever.
Can it not be possible for a female author to write a female sibling without it being sexist?
This book didn't do that. The problem is not simply that it's a sister. It's that it's a sister that hits every delicate little girl trope on the way down to the fridge she ends up shoved into.
Yes, I agree that Katniss ought to have reacted more appropriately to the girls' deaths she caused. My personal view is that shows a problem with Katniss' characterisation which could have been better worked on.
But she mourns the boy fine. My point is not simply that she ignores the girls. It's that there are deaths of both genders and only the girls are treated like this.
Rue should be capable but is treated by the narrative as if she isn't, and Peeta isn't capable but is treated like he is. The fact Rue objectively should be seen as skilled and Peeta is a millstone around Katniss' neck just makes the fact the narrative ignores this worse, because it further suggests things are getting warped because of the characters' genders.
and he has the traditional feminine skills at baking and decorating
I hear this defense often, and no, not really. "A baker" is generally a male and males having cooking occupations is hardly groundbreaking. He doesn't have highly masculine skills but that's not the same thing as a female skillset like, for example, Prim.
And what about it is more about Peeta and less about Katniss? Katniss is taking care of Peeta for HER benefit (such as everything else), because doing so gets her food, it will make her less reviled when she returns to District 12, and it gives her the emotional support she needs without her really returning any of it.
I also hear this around, and this particular bit I outright hate. Forcing someone into a relationship with you is not giving emotional support. Katniss spends much of the book stressed out and paranoid because of all the "support" he gives her, and then she's trapped with him while he's injured because she feels obligated to help. She doesn't need the food and is only getting it to help him in the first place, and she has to do more than merely take care of him to get it - she has to make out with him every time he suggests it to keep the fiction of the relationship going and the food he needs to survive. And it's not that it'll make her less reviled - she wouldn't be reviled at all normally but she's afraid that because of the rule change not helping him will lead to horrible repercussions for her.
In return, Katniss gets the fact he loves her. Not even selflessly loves, because any time she doesn't reciprocate in the series he throws a tantrum or tries to coerce her back.
And yet the book agrees with you that it's Katniss being self-serving the whole time, and it agrees with you that Katniss, who starts off when she sacrifices herself for her little sister and is selfless again and again at many points throughout the series, always acts in her own benefit, which is why the book is terrible and sexist. You would never see a male character getting yanked around like this.
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Date: 2012-01-04 05:33 pm (UTC)As to where to find the novel, I just googled to find a pdf. Otherwise I would guess you could find it on Amazon.
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Date: 2012-03-22 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 01:29 am (UTC)Vasquez Always Dies refers to the fact women above a certain competency threshold are disapproved of, so they're not allowed to be the heroine. Fridging refers to killing off a character solely to motivate another one and making what happened to that character all about the other character. A more competent character dying and a weaker one surviving is not, in itself, bad, it's a good way to heighten tension, it's only when it's a persistent pattern that the Vasquez types never get a good ending that it becomes a problem - especially when it starts getting presented as the Vasquez sacrificing herself because the other women has more intrinsic value by nature of not being one, or the fact the Vasquez is still doomed when there aren't other women about.
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Date: 2012-06-06 07:34 am (UTC)Now that I have actually found the time to read these books, I heartily second that. I said similar things as I started to read. And kept reading. And starting facepalming.
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Date: 2013-01-29 11:34 am (UTC)Eh, the current generation of NVGs won't do that because they shut out light over a certain level and have gating to prevent the massive light blooms that earlier versions had (where a bright light would fill your whole field of view). In future-land, you've probably have got this to the point that it only enhanced the areas of your field of view that were actually dark to begin with, though I doubt it would ever get to the point you could fit the power supply, processor and various lenses and polarising layers inside something that could be confused for a pair of sunglasses.
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