Hunger Games, Second Interlude
Apr. 7th, 2011 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaYou know, I'm not one to demand total uncertainty. The fact the protagonist lives is never really in doubt here, and there's no need to jump through hoops in a doomed attempt to make it suspenseful. But at this point, there's nothing at all left to wonder about.
Peeta will live, and everyone else will die. (And Peeta will obviously live, because for all this book likes to pretend it's dark and edgy, it isn't. Almost all deaths have been off camera, and only Rue's has actually mattered.) A better written story could still get some mileage out of how we get there, but this isn't that kind of story. It's extremely unlikely Katniss will be in the position of killing anyone innocent, since the book has thus far contrived to avoid that - the trained kids kill everyone, and then she kills the trained kids. No moral dilemmas or depth here. The lack of research and generally slapdash plotting mean there's little suspense about the actual events.
And worse, the book then personally tells you there will be no suspense by repeatedly making things happen to remove an issue.
Convenient plotting is one of my various pet peeves in writing. For example, I was reading a mediocre book that had this one side character I loved. See, he was a member of the evil religion but he was actually a really great guy. He sincerely thought that if people didn't convert to the evil religion then they were preventing world peace, and more, despite that went above and beyond to try to mass convert them instead of just killing the last holdouts, because he really wanted everyone to live in the happy paradise, even the assholes who wouldn't believe in it. When he's forced to confront things outside his religion's teachings, he acts with sympathy and grace. At the very end of the book, this character, who wears ceremonial armor as religious gear, realizes he was wrong and acts to oppose his superiors. He is stabbed, but the fact the armor is ceremonial doesn't mean it isn't made of functional steel, and yes, he is just that awesome that he's been walking around in heavy plate the entire time.
So, right after that, he takes it off for no reason and gets stabbed again a few pages later, this time successfully. Incidentally, right after this everyone learns healing powers. Anyway, he gets a great funeral. Because it'd be too messy to actually deal with a thinking person whose views aren't exactly like yours, it's much better when you can slot him into a nice box and never have to deal with him again.
The book consistently fails at its premise. At every step it acts to minimize the actual events. The focus is not on the childmurder games and the inherent horror of the concept, it's that Katniss, the main character, happens to be in a dangerous situation. The book would be no different if the games were voluntary or if they were something else entirely.
You know, it's interesting that the books were partly inspired by the Iraq war when the book uses a similar linguistic trick as the whole "insurgents" business. The kids are referred to as enemies or opponents or even competitors. Her main opponents are just called Careers and she constantly emphasizes how big and adult they are. Rue is just there to motivate her to do what she was already planning to do, which is act in her own best interest. The one other person she pays attention to is talked about like she's nothing more than an unusually bright animal. The book consistently fails to treat any of the side characters as if they have their own thoughts and feelings.
And Katniss is a horrible, horrible person. It's entirely possible to write someone who has reason for this, and the book fails to do this.
I think the core of the issue is the direction you think in. I think the author would be honestly baffled by most of my criticism. She's not saying killing people is right. That's why she made sure the people Katniss would have to kill are also evil. She's not saying being okay with killing is right, that's why she said Katniss didn't see her various kills as killing until the last one, where she's trying to save someone. She's not saying being a woman makes you evil, those women are evil.
It's only when you oppose the narrative itself and ask why those decisions were made you get objections. To me, the narrative isn't simply "those kids are evil" as a neutral point. They were made evil by the narrative to justify their deaths. This has a lot of overlap with real life, which is why I feel it's important to bring up. When people describe what happens, it's very easy to create a narrative and that narrative may not have anything to do with reality, but a lot to do with how we want things to be. Here's a perkier written though still ultimately depressing bit on this.
So, this intermission, a rewritten outline of the book. Let's see how much I remember.
Katniss is actually hungry, for a start.
The goat, like the TV, is given to all families. There are commons for everyone to graze their goats on. You get ONE GOAT. You may kill or sell the kids but you can't keep them to grazing age, which is why the land isn't overgrazed. If it dies, you bring the body in and you get a replacement goat. Stealing someone's goat and eating it is considered a huge crime, which discourages it for the most part. This means that goat milk is not particularly valuable and explains why Katniss and her family are drinking it - something necessary for Katniss to be in good enough condition to survive the games.
Trade at the black market is badly exploitative. She has to pay a portion of her catch to the peacekeepers directly in return for not being prosecuted for hunting. This also explains how Katniss can be both hungry and eating valuable meat, the fact there's a single market allows price-setting so she can't get their real value. She does some direct trade with individuals, but most people can't afford meat regularly and can't afford the valuable meat at all. She doesn't know how to tan leather herself, so the pelts have to be sold and she's paid little for them. Think your usual RPG economy - they're paying far less than they're asking for. Only you have to eat.
By creating a system were goods aren't properly fungible, Katniss can have a decent, if lean, diet, because she often doesn't get much value by selling. It also explains why she can't seem to build up a store of food against going hungry - she can't convert perishable goods (her hunting) into nonperishable goods (processed grain) without a lot of loss. (And she doesn't know how to preserve meat on her own - she knows about the idea of smoking meat, but her occasional efforts just ruined the meat because she used pine or green wood, and she gave up. Their primary fuel source is coal, which you can't use to cook food directly - and everyone knows this in the same way you know not to put metal in a microwave.) She still field-dresses her kills, but in this case it's so she can take the extras for herself.
Gale doesn't exist because I don't see a point to him, but there are plenty of other hunters, who are generally adults. Hunters regularly steal kills from each other, so to set traps she has to go pretty deep into the forest. The closer areas are also just generally lean pickings, because they're far more heavily trafficked. Katniss' area has little sense of community, which is why Katniss herself has none - the adults are either ignoring her or fucking her over in some way.
Her parents are both dead. There's no orphanage. Both of them taught her basic hunting and gathering before they died, and Katniss pours over the book of plants her mother had to learn what she can, but knowing a plant's use is very different from knowing anything about disease and diagnosis. There is no local apothecary - you either buy the capital's medicine or you make your own.
There are no pigs - there are no big distinctions between the classes, just people who more often have food and people who more often don't. Peeta's told to feed the bread to the goat.
Peeta and Katniss actually interact. Katniss can't preserve meat properly, so when she gets a surplus of something that she leaves a dead animal and runs off or goes in, asks for some cheap bread, leaves a dead animal and runs off. During the winter, when Katniss' hunting can't really sustain them, Peeta "happens" to have burned/stale/ugly bread he doesn't want more often.(The majority of the town isn't functioning on a seasonal economy, so they don't have bad lean periods in the winter like she does.) This makes Katniss more determined to pay him back somehow and bring extra meat next spring.
Without Katniss, Prim's odds of survival are little better than if she'd taken part in the games herself, so Katniss is determined to win. (The baker family does say they'll look after her, but Katniss figures it's an empty promise. Also, kids can take out only one tesserae per family member (to prevent the loophole abuse I mentioned) and you can't say someone's an adopted parent or sibling, so Prim has no value to them.)
Katniss knows a bit of knife fighting because life really, really sucks in her district. Her primary weapon is a sling.
The pin is just a gift, and it's not gold because seriously, fuck gold. It's so impractical. The being-nice-to-the-tribute thing is not because Katniss is so special, people generally try to not be dicks to the kids who are going off to die.
Oh, and the games have nothing to do with any rebellion. They are about an exciting opportunity. Even the fact there was a rebellion is something no one talks about in public. Because really, you don't remind people at every turn that violent uprising is possible.
-
Katniss' attitude is she doesn't want to fight Peeta and won't if he doesn't attack her, but that she's going to win. That she won't go after him stated directly to him because communication is a glorious thing. The possibility of Peeta making it into the final stages of the game is nonexistent so she does her best to not think about it.
Haymitch does his best to sober up to help them, as he does every year for every set of tributes because he's not a dick, but he really can't function without some amount of alcohol in his system. (And this is not an exception because District 12 sucks, the non-trained winners are pretty uniformly messed up and even the trained kids only do so well.) He manages to stay lucid enough to do the minimum things that only their mentor can do. Effie has to do almost everything, and between that and Haymitch's usual behavior she really, really hates her assignment. The fact their tributes always die horribly just adds to the stress. The kids are unsympathetic to either adult, since it's not like they want to be here either. Peeta is more upset by Haymitch's unreliability, while Katniss already assumes everyone who isn't her or Prim is a useless asshole, so she takes it more in stride, but is also less willing to listen to advice.
Because I am vindictive, the kids think Effie's stuck up for being so bothered by Haymitch, only to get hugged shortly after with a bunch of sobbing about how they're great kids and realize that random hugs by drunk strangers aren't fun.
People don't bet on the games, but they do give gifts to kids that impress them. Because they're the fucking capital, they've got money to burn. The kids are advised to focus on the flashy weapons, because they're fucked either way and maybe if they can look good for the cameras when the games start they'll get some help. Katniss, though, figures no one will care because no one ever cares about District 12, and she's going in as a hunter. She focuses on things like edible/toxic plants, since she only knows those in her own area. Peeta tags along because fuck it, he's doomed either way, and he agrees with her assessment that their tributes always die anyway, so there's nothing lost by trying something new.
(Katniss has no such opinion on fashion, which is why she's so willing to go along with everything she's told there. There is less of CINNA THE MOST BESTEST AND WONDERFUL PERSON and more focus on how worried she is about people not liking her enough.)
The trained kids work in pairs, everyone else alone. Katniss does notice Rue, but it's because she's paying attention. Rue sticks to the stations with no one at them because she's a twelve year old kid and she's scared of everyone. Katniss thinks about calling Rue over to their station but it is the childmurder games and she doesn't want to get attached, and besides the girl wouldn't trust her anyway.
Katniss either brings or requests a sling as her weapon on the third day, assuming she tries to get a high score at all. I would actually suggest she never does anything to demonstrate how awesome the sling is and the judges let her have one thinking it's basically an inferior version of throwing knives, which are the only ranged weapon allowed because ranged weapons are just so much better that they'd dominate the games. They aren't giving the kids guns so there's obviously some attempt at keeping things balanced.
-
The kids are given little food and plenty of weapons. Sponsor gifts are largely food, and you also get bonuses for a kill. The cornucopia is mostly trap supplies, sleeping bags/blankets/clothes, weapons and and medicine.
Cool as kids thrown into this with no idea how to function is, everyone's been raised on the this, so they hold up relatively well. The trained kids form a pack to collect a bunch of early rewards, then split into duos by district once there are fewer trained kids. They work together until there's only one or two people left, then split up to find them, with the understanding that after that they start hunting each other. In sum, they have established rules. (They will, however, kill their partner if the partner is crippled, to get the reward bonus) Between this and weapons training, they completely outclass normal kids.
There aren't rabbits everywhere. If Katniss wants food, she's got to kill wild dogs, bears, and venomous snakes. That's how Katniss' sling is useful. Years of hunting and jury-rigging with scraps mean she knows how to do stuff like heat blood in a plastic bottle without it melting, so she has less of a problem with dehydration. And there are more pools of water around.
Although she claims to be willing to take part in the games, she initially avoids everyone instead, with no rants about wanting to kill them. She explains this as wanting to get her bearing and hoping the trained kids will get injured and hungry in the meantime. She runs across other untrained kids a couple times and they either mutually back away or throw a knife in her general direction and run.
She does throw the BEES at the kids, but she doesn't premeditate to make sure they're as active as possible beforehand and she's hoping it'll just drive the kids away and weaken them. Actually seeing them die upsets her.
Katniss joins up with Rue because Rue is a scared hungry little kid following her around. (Rue does it because she's just that hungry, not because she knows Katniss is an awesome person.) Their "alliance" is Katniss promising not to hurt her, Rue has nothing much to bring to the table. She starts seriously wondering if she's willing to kill Rue to save Prim.
Incidentally, Katniss is eating fine. Everything wants to kill her, but at least it's abundant, and most of it can't climb trees. Katniss' particular flavor of food issues is trouble rationing, because food can spoil and you still have to eat it. Back home this was counterbalanced by saving food for Prim, without that, she tries to carry food in her belly rather than backpack. This means she has limited food on hand if she has to hole up somewhere, but she's not losing weight constantly.
The mines are there, but they aren't a special thing. It's risky to do but every few years a kid manages it without getting blown up. Before it, Rue teaches her songs - if Katniss can't meet up, Rue will sing that she's okay so she'll know, and if something goes wrong she'll sing that. Katniss' damaged hearing comes back, she hears the alarm song and finds Rue. (Also, instead of standing there like an idiot, Katniss flattens to the ground before the explosion.)
I'm thinking Rue gets hit by some trap and Katniss finds her. They don't know who set it or if the person's even still alive by that point, as whoever it is doesn't return to the site.
Rue dies a little while after the announcement and a lot of denial on Katniss' part, leading Katniss to seek out Peeta. She's pretty conflicted on this - she failed to save Rue so she wants to save someone, but she resents that he's alive and Rue's dead. She's extra angry at the capital because she's sure they could have fixed Rue even though she couldn't. The two tributes thing seems like mocking to her because it comes right after Rue's injury. Katniss has been mostly ignoring the romance angle and while Peeta still helps her out, she's run into enough other kids who don't want to fight by that point that this is attributable to normal friendship and not necessarily love.
I like the idea that respecting bodies is a shared cultural trait, so Katniss' first act of rebellion is to stay with Rue's body because the body is supposed to stay with family/kin and her refusal to let them mess with it amounts to calling them defilers. She gets tasered for her trouble when an hour or two in they realize she's seriously not moving. It's when she gets back up that she says Peeta's name and goes to find him.
(It's not that expensive to send things, but the districts aren't allowed to send anything to their own tribute for obvious reasons. So District 11 still sends her the bread.)
Peeta will live, and everyone else will die. (And Peeta will obviously live, because for all this book likes to pretend it's dark and edgy, it isn't. Almost all deaths have been off camera, and only Rue's has actually mattered.) A better written story could still get some mileage out of how we get there, but this isn't that kind of story. It's extremely unlikely Katniss will be in the position of killing anyone innocent, since the book has thus far contrived to avoid that - the trained kids kill everyone, and then she kills the trained kids. No moral dilemmas or depth here. The lack of research and generally slapdash plotting mean there's little suspense about the actual events.
And worse, the book then personally tells you there will be no suspense by repeatedly making things happen to remove an issue.
Convenient plotting is one of my various pet peeves in writing. For example, I was reading a mediocre book that had this one side character I loved. See, he was a member of the evil religion but he was actually a really great guy. He sincerely thought that if people didn't convert to the evil religion then they were preventing world peace, and more, despite that went above and beyond to try to mass convert them instead of just killing the last holdouts, because he really wanted everyone to live in the happy paradise, even the assholes who wouldn't believe in it. When he's forced to confront things outside his religion's teachings, he acts with sympathy and grace. At the very end of the book, this character, who wears ceremonial armor as religious gear, realizes he was wrong and acts to oppose his superiors. He is stabbed, but the fact the armor is ceremonial doesn't mean it isn't made of functional steel, and yes, he is just that awesome that he's been walking around in heavy plate the entire time.
So, right after that, he takes it off for no reason and gets stabbed again a few pages later, this time successfully. Incidentally, right after this everyone learns healing powers. Anyway, he gets a great funeral. Because it'd be too messy to actually deal with a thinking person whose views aren't exactly like yours, it's much better when you can slot him into a nice box and never have to deal with him again.
The book consistently fails at its premise. At every step it acts to minimize the actual events. The focus is not on the childmurder games and the inherent horror of the concept, it's that Katniss, the main character, happens to be in a dangerous situation. The book would be no different if the games were voluntary or if they were something else entirely.
You know, it's interesting that the books were partly inspired by the Iraq war when the book uses a similar linguistic trick as the whole "insurgents" business. The kids are referred to as enemies or opponents or even competitors. Her main opponents are just called Careers and she constantly emphasizes how big and adult they are. Rue is just there to motivate her to do what she was already planning to do, which is act in her own best interest. The one other person she pays attention to is talked about like she's nothing more than an unusually bright animal. The book consistently fails to treat any of the side characters as if they have their own thoughts and feelings.
And Katniss is a horrible, horrible person. It's entirely possible to write someone who has reason for this, and the book fails to do this.
I think the core of the issue is the direction you think in. I think the author would be honestly baffled by most of my criticism. She's not saying killing people is right. That's why she made sure the people Katniss would have to kill are also evil. She's not saying being okay with killing is right, that's why she said Katniss didn't see her various kills as killing until the last one, where she's trying to save someone. She's not saying being a woman makes you evil, those women are evil.
It's only when you oppose the narrative itself and ask why those decisions were made you get objections. To me, the narrative isn't simply "those kids are evil" as a neutral point. They were made evil by the narrative to justify their deaths. This has a lot of overlap with real life, which is why I feel it's important to bring up. When people describe what happens, it's very easy to create a narrative and that narrative may not have anything to do with reality, but a lot to do with how we want things to be. Here's a perkier written though still ultimately depressing bit on this.
So, this intermission, a rewritten outline of the book. Let's see how much I remember.
Katniss is actually hungry, for a start.
The goat, like the TV, is given to all families. There are commons for everyone to graze their goats on. You get ONE GOAT. You may kill or sell the kids but you can't keep them to grazing age, which is why the land isn't overgrazed. If it dies, you bring the body in and you get a replacement goat. Stealing someone's goat and eating it is considered a huge crime, which discourages it for the most part. This means that goat milk is not particularly valuable and explains why Katniss and her family are drinking it - something necessary for Katniss to be in good enough condition to survive the games.
Trade at the black market is badly exploitative. She has to pay a portion of her catch to the peacekeepers directly in return for not being prosecuted for hunting. This also explains how Katniss can be both hungry and eating valuable meat, the fact there's a single market allows price-setting so she can't get their real value. She does some direct trade with individuals, but most people can't afford meat regularly and can't afford the valuable meat at all. She doesn't know how to tan leather herself, so the pelts have to be sold and she's paid little for them. Think your usual RPG economy - they're paying far less than they're asking for. Only you have to eat.
By creating a system were goods aren't properly fungible, Katniss can have a decent, if lean, diet, because she often doesn't get much value by selling. It also explains why she can't seem to build up a store of food against going hungry - she can't convert perishable goods (her hunting) into nonperishable goods (processed grain) without a lot of loss. (And she doesn't know how to preserve meat on her own - she knows about the idea of smoking meat, but her occasional efforts just ruined the meat because she used pine or green wood, and she gave up. Their primary fuel source is coal, which you can't use to cook food directly - and everyone knows this in the same way you know not to put metal in a microwave.) She still field-dresses her kills, but in this case it's so she can take the extras for herself.
Gale doesn't exist because I don't see a point to him, but there are plenty of other hunters, who are generally adults. Hunters regularly steal kills from each other, so to set traps she has to go pretty deep into the forest. The closer areas are also just generally lean pickings, because they're far more heavily trafficked. Katniss' area has little sense of community, which is why Katniss herself has none - the adults are either ignoring her or fucking her over in some way.
Her parents are both dead. There's no orphanage. Both of them taught her basic hunting and gathering before they died, and Katniss pours over the book of plants her mother had to learn what she can, but knowing a plant's use is very different from knowing anything about disease and diagnosis. There is no local apothecary - you either buy the capital's medicine or you make your own.
There are no pigs - there are no big distinctions between the classes, just people who more often have food and people who more often don't. Peeta's told to feed the bread to the goat.
Peeta and Katniss actually interact. Katniss can't preserve meat properly, so when she gets a surplus of something that she leaves a dead animal and runs off or goes in, asks for some cheap bread, leaves a dead animal and runs off. During the winter, when Katniss' hunting can't really sustain them, Peeta "happens" to have burned/stale/ugly bread he doesn't want more often.(The majority of the town isn't functioning on a seasonal economy, so they don't have bad lean periods in the winter like she does.) This makes Katniss more determined to pay him back somehow and bring extra meat next spring.
Without Katniss, Prim's odds of survival are little better than if she'd taken part in the games herself, so Katniss is determined to win. (The baker family does say they'll look after her, but Katniss figures it's an empty promise. Also, kids can take out only one tesserae per family member (to prevent the loophole abuse I mentioned) and you can't say someone's an adopted parent or sibling, so Prim has no value to them.)
Katniss knows a bit of knife fighting because life really, really sucks in her district. Her primary weapon is a sling.
The pin is just a gift, and it's not gold because seriously, fuck gold. It's so impractical. The being-nice-to-the-tribute thing is not because Katniss is so special, people generally try to not be dicks to the kids who are going off to die.
Oh, and the games have nothing to do with any rebellion. They are about an exciting opportunity. Even the fact there was a rebellion is something no one talks about in public. Because really, you don't remind people at every turn that violent uprising is possible.
-
Katniss' attitude is she doesn't want to fight Peeta and won't if he doesn't attack her, but that she's going to win. That she won't go after him stated directly to him because communication is a glorious thing. The possibility of Peeta making it into the final stages of the game is nonexistent so she does her best to not think about it.
Haymitch does his best to sober up to help them, as he does every year for every set of tributes because he's not a dick, but he really can't function without some amount of alcohol in his system. (And this is not an exception because District 12 sucks, the non-trained winners are pretty uniformly messed up and even the trained kids only do so well.) He manages to stay lucid enough to do the minimum things that only their mentor can do. Effie has to do almost everything, and between that and Haymitch's usual behavior she really, really hates her assignment. The fact their tributes always die horribly just adds to the stress. The kids are unsympathetic to either adult, since it's not like they want to be here either. Peeta is more upset by Haymitch's unreliability, while Katniss already assumes everyone who isn't her or Prim is a useless asshole, so she takes it more in stride, but is also less willing to listen to advice.
Because I am vindictive, the kids think Effie's stuck up for being so bothered by Haymitch, only to get hugged shortly after with a bunch of sobbing about how they're great kids and realize that random hugs by drunk strangers aren't fun.
People don't bet on the games, but they do give gifts to kids that impress them. Because they're the fucking capital, they've got money to burn. The kids are advised to focus on the flashy weapons, because they're fucked either way and maybe if they can look good for the cameras when the games start they'll get some help. Katniss, though, figures no one will care because no one ever cares about District 12, and she's going in as a hunter. She focuses on things like edible/toxic plants, since she only knows those in her own area. Peeta tags along because fuck it, he's doomed either way, and he agrees with her assessment that their tributes always die anyway, so there's nothing lost by trying something new.
(Katniss has no such opinion on fashion, which is why she's so willing to go along with everything she's told there. There is less of CINNA THE MOST BESTEST AND WONDERFUL PERSON and more focus on how worried she is about people not liking her enough.)
The trained kids work in pairs, everyone else alone. Katniss does notice Rue, but it's because she's paying attention. Rue sticks to the stations with no one at them because she's a twelve year old kid and she's scared of everyone. Katniss thinks about calling Rue over to their station but it is the childmurder games and she doesn't want to get attached, and besides the girl wouldn't trust her anyway.
Katniss either brings or requests a sling as her weapon on the third day, assuming she tries to get a high score at all. I would actually suggest she never does anything to demonstrate how awesome the sling is and the judges let her have one thinking it's basically an inferior version of throwing knives, which are the only ranged weapon allowed because ranged weapons are just so much better that they'd dominate the games. They aren't giving the kids guns so there's obviously some attempt at keeping things balanced.
-
The kids are given little food and plenty of weapons. Sponsor gifts are largely food, and you also get bonuses for a kill. The cornucopia is mostly trap supplies, sleeping bags/blankets/clothes, weapons and and medicine.
Cool as kids thrown into this with no idea how to function is, everyone's been raised on the this, so they hold up relatively well. The trained kids form a pack to collect a bunch of early rewards, then split into duos by district once there are fewer trained kids. They work together until there's only one or two people left, then split up to find them, with the understanding that after that they start hunting each other. In sum, they have established rules. (They will, however, kill their partner if the partner is crippled, to get the reward bonus) Between this and weapons training, they completely outclass normal kids.
There aren't rabbits everywhere. If Katniss wants food, she's got to kill wild dogs, bears, and venomous snakes. That's how Katniss' sling is useful. Years of hunting and jury-rigging with scraps mean she knows how to do stuff like heat blood in a plastic bottle without it melting, so she has less of a problem with dehydration. And there are more pools of water around.
Although she claims to be willing to take part in the games, she initially avoids everyone instead, with no rants about wanting to kill them. She explains this as wanting to get her bearing and hoping the trained kids will get injured and hungry in the meantime. She runs across other untrained kids a couple times and they either mutually back away or throw a knife in her general direction and run.
She does throw the BEES at the kids, but she doesn't premeditate to make sure they're as active as possible beforehand and she's hoping it'll just drive the kids away and weaken them. Actually seeing them die upsets her.
Katniss joins up with Rue because Rue is a scared hungry little kid following her around. (Rue does it because she's just that hungry, not because she knows Katniss is an awesome person.) Their "alliance" is Katniss promising not to hurt her, Rue has nothing much to bring to the table. She starts seriously wondering if she's willing to kill Rue to save Prim.
Incidentally, Katniss is eating fine. Everything wants to kill her, but at least it's abundant, and most of it can't climb trees. Katniss' particular flavor of food issues is trouble rationing, because food can spoil and you still have to eat it. Back home this was counterbalanced by saving food for Prim, without that, she tries to carry food in her belly rather than backpack. This means she has limited food on hand if she has to hole up somewhere, but she's not losing weight constantly.
The mines are there, but they aren't a special thing. It's risky to do but every few years a kid manages it without getting blown up. Before it, Rue teaches her songs - if Katniss can't meet up, Rue will sing that she's okay so she'll know, and if something goes wrong she'll sing that. Katniss' damaged hearing comes back, she hears the alarm song and finds Rue. (Also, instead of standing there like an idiot, Katniss flattens to the ground before the explosion.)
I'm thinking Rue gets hit by some trap and Katniss finds her. They don't know who set it or if the person's even still alive by that point, as whoever it is doesn't return to the site.
Rue dies a little while after the announcement and a lot of denial on Katniss' part, leading Katniss to seek out Peeta. She's pretty conflicted on this - she failed to save Rue so she wants to save someone, but she resents that he's alive and Rue's dead. She's extra angry at the capital because she's sure they could have fixed Rue even though she couldn't. The two tributes thing seems like mocking to her because it comes right after Rue's injury. Katniss has been mostly ignoring the romance angle and while Peeta still helps her out, she's run into enough other kids who don't want to fight by that point that this is attributable to normal friendship and not necessarily love.
I like the idea that respecting bodies is a shared cultural trait, so Katniss' first act of rebellion is to stay with Rue's body because the body is supposed to stay with family/kin and her refusal to let them mess with it amounts to calling them defilers. She gets tasered for her trouble when an hour or two in they realize she's seriously not moving. It's when she gets back up that she says Peeta's name and goes to find him.
(It's not that expensive to send things, but the districts aren't allowed to send anything to their own tribute for obvious reasons. So District 11 still sends her the bread.)
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Date: 2011-04-07 10:04 pm (UTC)are you familiar with ftm!Dave at all? If so, what are your opinions on him/that whole theory?
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Date: 2011-04-07 11:28 pm (UTC)Yes, I've been following the meme fics. I wasn't aware it warranted being called a theory, though, more an AU interpretation. My opinions are that it's interesting and makes for a nice balance to Dave's visible behavior, but I find the popularity a bit curious - I've seen little interest in either girl being MTF, and, considering the kids are thirteen, that the most popular interpretation is of a character that's already been passing as a different gender rather than one of the kids realizing that's what they want.
What do you think of it, questioner?
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Date: 2011-04-08 01:32 am (UTC)So anyway. I'm hesitant. I guess it couldn't hurt to read the comic anyway, but I feel like if I'm getting into it for a trans character that isn't even confirmed trans I'll just end up being brutally disappointed. And the small amount of fic/art I've browsed through thrills me but also gives me reservations at the same time, since some of it does seem to be based around "omg tough guy dave is actually a sweet little girl dawwww" which is totally not what I want to see at all. I guess I came here because you are involved in the fandom and seem to have a pretty rational perspective on it. Do you think Hussie would ever actually incorporate the idea intelligently into the storyline, or is that wishful thinking?
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2011-04-08 07:39 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-08 04:24 pm (UTC)Of course, as with all published books this went through an editor, so perhaps blame should be laid at their feet.
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Date: 2011-06-27 03:17 am (UTC)Hi, short-time lurker, first time caller--actually, I was sent here from TVTropes for your sporking of this work, which I only just read this week myself. I'm a little dismayed that I missed so much of what's lurking beneath the surface, but then I'm not a particularly active reader; I swallow the story whole and then analyze it, and I can end up missing a lot of individual flavors along the way.
But, long story short, I too like your outline better. With some suspension of disbelief (and no chicken-peck analyzing, which--no offense intended--you admitted wasn't exactly the right way to approach the book), it carries you along, but once you stop to think, you find all the holes. Yours fills them. It's better. =)
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Date: 2012-01-15 11:23 am (UTC)PS: Just asking, are you talking about Elantris here? I absolutely loved the BA priest and, although that book wasn't great, I liked it way better than THG.
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Date: 2012-01-17 08:40 pm (UTC)I did end up doing all three books, but for the final set I moved over to http://dragon-quill.blogspot.com/
And yes, Elantrris. I'm hoping to eventually get a chance to go through that similarly.
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Date: 2011-06-08 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-08 03:09 am (UTC)??
Date: 2011-10-17 02:25 am (UTC)Also, kids can take out only one tesserae per family member (to prevent the loophole abuse I mentioned) **they ALREADY can only take out one per family member- that's why gale has so many more entries than katniss- more family members.
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Date: 2011-10-17 04:05 am (UTC)No, because I never said anyone is born knowing that bit about coal. The comparison is to a completely unintuitive piece of "common knowledge" that we have. Katniss would know that trying to smoke food with coal smoke is a bad idea without having to try it in the same way most kids don't learn not to put cans in a microwave with trial and error.
they ALREADY can only take out one per family member- that's why gale has so many more entries than katniss- more family members.
I must have missed that! Can you point out where it says you're limited to one per person? Because that really did bug me.
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-04-19 12:17 am (UTC) - Expandno subject
Date: 2012-03-02 01:33 am (UTC)Brandon Sanderson is my absolute favorite author, but that's mostly because of his other works. The Mistborn Trilogy and the Stormlight Archive are the best, though Warbreaker's not shabby either. Elantris is the one I like least though. I've read it through twice, which is low for me when it comes to Brandon's books - the others I've read three or four times apiece. It just never struck me. Like you mentioned above, Hrathen is the best character. Sarene and Raoden just fall flat for me, especially their romance. I felt nothing between them really. Oh well.
Have you read any of Brandon's other works? I'm curious as to what your view on them would be!
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Date: 2012-04-05 07:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-03-31 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-25 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:51 am (UTC)It'd help if there was a period before her hearing came back when she was worried about exactly this issue, though.
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Date: 2012-04-05 07:29 am (UTC)Everyone around me has basically been talking about/trying to sell me on the books/movies nonstop, and my contrary response is to dig in my heels and refuse to read them. Reading the excerpts you post kind of helps me feel, uh, like I'm not missing out on some HUGE GREAT WORK OF ART by not reading them.
Man, I keep thinking of ways I could rewrite this to be better. But you've done it much more awesomely here. The only thing I would have changed is for Rue to live for a while after being stabbed in the stomach, but eventually be in so much pain that Katniss mercy-kills her herself.
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Date: 2012-04-12 03:11 pm (UTC)If we go that way, we'd need the rest of the books be about Katniss working through what she did to Rue.
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Date: 2012-05-31 05:00 am (UTC)I've been reading and loving your deconstruction for a few weeks now, and it makes me feel a little inadequate as both a reader and writer/editor. I'm simply stunned at how much I missed. At the same time, that's why I've enjoyed this so much (aside from the sheer pleasure of ripping something apart, that is). The few people I've mentioned this to think I'm crazy for even reading this, but I kind of feel like I'm learning from it. I've just started reading Catching Fire and am catching myself reading a little more slowly and scoffing every couple pages. Maybe that's a sign that reading this is helping? =o
Anyhow, I'll be honest - it's probably the deadpan way you delivered your rewrite, but it sounds slightly less exciting. (Also, I was kind of hoping you'd make Rue into a killing machine, but that's me.) That said, it does sound loads better, and I'd love to see how it would be written.
Also, I understand you've done the other two books as well by this point? Could you link to them on one of your main Hunger Games LJ posts if you haven't already? I saw you link to it in the comments of another entry, and I want to start on your Catching Fire review immediately after this (without doing a Google search!!!!).
Anyhow, time to keep reading. Thanks for this. :)
~Psychic
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Date: 2012-06-02 04:45 am (UTC)A lot of noticing is just going slow and expecting it to be there.
Anyhow, I'll be honest - it's probably the deadpan way you delivered your rewrite, but it sounds slightly less exciting.
Well, that's reasonable, it's more something focused on the structure the story gets placed on than the story.
(Also, I was kind of hoping you'd make Rue into a killing machine, but that's me.)
Sometimes a good idea conflicts with others. MurderRue is kind of a scenestealer.
All the books (or links to) can be found on "the hunger games series" tag.
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Date: 2014-09-08 08:30 pm (UTC)All your commentary is exactly on point and hilarious. It's been such a pleasure to read through it all. Thank you for taking the time and effort and putting it out there in the world!