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farlaMy mother’s hand strokes my cheek and I don’t push it away as I would in wakefulness, never wanting her to know how much I crave that gentle touch. How much I miss her even though I still don’t trust her.
This is some of the better characterization Katniss gets, which is not to say it's particularly good. We're pretty much back to her first chapter portrayal here, when she was your average prickly-yet-vulnerable main character.
Interestingly, the book doesn't seem to really draw a parallel with her mistrust of her mother and her mistrust of Peeta. Katniss is just not put together with any sense of one thing leading to another.
Anyway, she realizes she's not at home and it's not her mom.
Peeta feeds me bites of groosling and raisins and makes me drink plenty of water.
So roles have reversed. The thing is, she isn't severely sick, she's just lost blood. And I think it's actually the first time she's been injured, so her spleen hasn't dumped its red blood cell reservoir before now, and she's eating a high iron diet. (It'd be more high iron if she'd eat the damn liver, but.) So I'm not sure why she apparently needs to be hand fed here.
Also it's finally raining.
“I wonder what brought on this storm? I mean, who’s the target?” says Peeta.
“Cato and Thresh,” I say without thinking. “Foxface will be in her den somewhere, and Clove . . . she cut me an then . . .” My voice trails off.
Wow, "Foxface will be in her den". We're not even pretending she's a person any more.
I don't see why Cato and Thresh can't possibly have their own hiding places, or why it's impossible the girl might have been out watching them and caught in the downpour.
Hm. The girl. The current count of kids is three boys and two girls, and one's the main character. Both boys are major forces, while the girl's defining trait is sneakiness.
Also, you know what would actually have been cool? Clove not being dead yet. That would mean Cato was in a similar position of having an injured, probably dying person and needing to win the games fast. Personally, I'd find it a lot more noble on his part, since it's a lot easier to write someone with a head wound off as gone than someone still conscious and lucid.
Peeta says she's lucky Thresh didn't catch her, and Katniss explains that he did, and then tells him what's happened so far.
“He let you go because he didn’t want to owe you anything?” asks Peeta in disbelief.
Okay, so Peeta looks like kind of an asshole here. Just wait, it'll get worse.
Anyway, she says if he lived in the Seam like she did, he'd understand but she can't really explain, and Peeta bitches about how obviously he's just too stupid to get it, which, you know, is not what she said.
She says it's like with how she can't pay him back for the bread.
“The bread? What? From when we were kids?” he says. “I think we can let that go. I mean, you just brought me back from the dead.”
“But you didn’t know me.
This sounds deceptively sane. Again, just wait.
“Why did you, anyway?”
“Why? You know why,” Peeta says. I give my head a slight, painful shake. “Haymitch said you would take a lot of convincing.”
He did it because he was in love with her.
So that's actually why he has no idea about paying people back for what's owed - the one thing he did, he doesn't want her to return the favor, he wants her to be his girlfriend. And he did, from his viewpoint, know her.
So this thing she's holding it up for years as an act of true charity, and it turns out it never was.
Peeta then says he hopes Cato and Thresh kill each other. Katniss, now comparatively the nice person, is kind of bothered by this. I mean, she did just get through saying he saved her life and let her go.
“I think we would like Thresh. I think he’d be our friend back in District Twelve,” I say.
“Then let’s hope Cato kills him, so we don’t have to,” says Peeta grimly.
And if you think there's any chance of that not happening and them having to make an actual moral choice, hi new reader! You may want to start at the beginning.
I don’t want Cato to kill Thresh at all. I don’t want anyone else to die. But this is absolutely not the kind of thing that victors go around saying in the arena.
Okay, two things here.
One, this is an ambiguous statement. For a while she's been saying she can't do stuff because she has to act right to get sponsors. But they're in the endgame now, and they really do have the clear advantage - two on one. About the only thing she's really having trouble with is she's running out of arrows, and frankly I can only assume Haymitch is waiting for her to stop being a moron and realize she can make her own, as she did for years of her life. Or does she mean in a more superstitious way, that she has to act in a certain way or she won't win? This is kind of what I was getting into when I talked about an alternate version where she was more devoted to Prim and embracing the capital's version of her because she needed something to hold on to. But there's been no sign of that at all.
Two, "anyone else" includes Cato here. I mean, I'm kind of glad that it looks like Katniss has finally grown a real conscience, but I'm pretty sure the sentence is supposed to mean "I don't want another death, that of Thresh" and not "I don't want any deaths at all". Bad writing. And it further dehumanizes Cato - he's not "anyone".
Anyway, Katniss' eyes start to water at the thought, and Peeta asks if she's hurt.
I give him another answer, because it is equally true but can be taken as a brief moment of weakness instead of a terminal one. “I want to go home, Peeta,” I say plaintively, like a small child.
And now she's acting like a baby, ugh.
“You will. I promise,” he says, and bends over to give me a kiss.
“I want to go home now,” I say.
“Tell you what. You go back to sleep and dream of home. And you’ll be there for real before you know it,” he says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
Seriously, ugh.
Look, I don't mean to say your characters can never shown any weakness, but the whole female character suddenly dissolves like this thing, it's been done enough. Especially when Peeta is not actually able to protect her and we've seen no suggestion he's even good at keeping watch the way she, with years of experience hunting, is.
They eat the last of the food when she wakes up, and she says tomorrow they'll have to hunt. She asks where Thresh has been hiding out. Turns out in the direction she didn't go is this big field of grass that probably had some grain plants in it.
Apparently, no one wanted to track him into a sea of tall grass with no visibility, unknown terrain and possibly lurking animals.
I don’t say so but Peeta’s words remind me of the warnings they give us about not going beyond the fence in District 12. I can’t help, for a moment, comparing him with Gale, who would see that field as a potential source of food as well as a threat. Thresh certainly did.
Thresh probably already knew that terrain. Even if he didn't have wild areas like it, the agricultural district would have similar enough farm areas. We know that the plants and animals in the area are ones Rue was familiar with, so he likely knew what animals would live there and how to deal with them safely.
So you're thinking Gale would go into a completely unknown ecosystem with no visibility that had a six foot tall fellow murderer who was far more familiar with it than you hiding out waiting for any idiot to get close.
It’s not that Peeta’s soft exactly, and he’s proved he’s not a coward. But there are things you don’t question too much, I guess, when your home always smells like baking bread
No, Katniss. Not rushing out into unfamiliar territory is something that, if anything, you should know even better than him is a terrible idea.
She claims Gale questions everything.
What would Peeta think of the irreverent banter that passes between us as we break the law each day? Would it shock him? The things we say about Panem? Gale’s tirades against the Capitol?
What irreverent banter, anyway? You admitted you basically tune Gale out and only figured out the capital sucked when you watched a twelve year old die.
Peeta wonders what will get Haymitch to send them food, and Katniss catches herself before she explains the whole thing where kissing gets them stuff, because she knows if the viewers know they'll stop sending anything.
You know, that's not too much of an excuse for why she hasn't explained to Peeta. She could easily cover them with the blanket and whisper. If Peeta throws a fit that you only care about him and saved his life, he's a dick.
Somehow, believably, I’ve got to get things back on track. Something simple to start with. I reach out and take his hand.
“Well, he probably used up a lot of resources helping me knock you out,” I say mischievously.
“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.”
Peeta: helps out Katniss, gets his leg cut open, incapacitated for a week, nearly dies.
Katniss: Helps out Peeta, gets a minor cut on her head, manages a kill and for her other opponents to focus on each other for a while.
Clearly, she's the one in the wrong here.
“Or what?” I ask.
“Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”
“What’s the problem?” I say with a grin.
“The problem is we’re both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,” says Peeta.
“I did do the right thing,” I say.
“No! Just don’t, Katniss!” His grip tightens, hurting my hand, and there’s real anger in his voice.
I can really see why Meyer found this worthy of praise.
He says he doesn't want her to die for him.
She starts off thinking that this is a good chance to get more romance points, but then while she's stammering out that maybe she doesn't want him to die for her either...
while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home. And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.
“If what, Katniss?” he says softly.
So I think I figured out part of why I find the Draco/Hermione-head-kids-share-a-room thing less squicky. In a lot of the forced together setups, both characters are mutually unhappy, which does a lot to reduce the impression one character is taking advantage of the other.
If they were both playing along and starting to fall for each other, this wouldn't bother me nearly so much, especially if there was less focus on ~*~*~romantic kisses~*~*~ and more on actual friendship and caring about each other.
Katniss feels a bit uncomfortable given she's not even sure of her feelings, let alone so sure she wants the entire country to watch her admit them, so she lies that Haymitch said it's a topic she should avoid, knowing that Haymitch is probably raging at the idea.
“Then I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself,” he says, and moves in to me.
Another lovely thing is that in fanfic, you'd have a decent chance of it being labeled dubcon and the author acknowledging there are some issues here, even if the character was starting to fall for the other person. Here I really can't shake the feeling the author is just writing what she thinks is a normal romance.
This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another.
In conclusion, Katniss doesn't get to have opinions on who she likes. All Peeta has to do is pursue long enough and he wins her.
They curl up in the sleeping bag.
No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else’s arms have made me feel this safe.
I wonder how Katniss would feel knowing he totally wants to fuck her.
Because I really can't get that out of my head. This is why making it romance the entire time kind of taints everything. I mean, yes, we're in a world where rape apparently doesn't exist or anything, so I guess she's not in any actual danger, but she's still forced to share a sleeping bag with a boy where she thinks is he's playing along and he thinks she's just as in love as him.
The storm continues the next day. Since all they do during a storm is huddle and wait, and that's probably all anyone else does too, this is kind of a boring choice. Maybe the audience really, really wanted more teenage makeouts in the cave.
They're hungry, because Haymitch hasn't sent anything more. Katniss figures she has to do something to add to the romance or they'll starve.
Anyway, just a kiss isn’t enough anymore clearly because if it was we’d have gotten food last night. My instincts tell me Haymitch isn’t just looking for physical affection, he wants something more personal.
On the other hand, this is the capital that likes to see kids naked or in see through outfits, so I'm not really sure why she doesn't think taking her shirt off is what he actually wants.
God, so much could have been avoided if the capital was established as kind of prudish instead. It would really help the prostitution implications.
Katniss figures she sucks at talking about herself but Peeta's good at it, so she needs to get him going. She says he told he he'd been in love with her forever, but when did it really start.
I guess the first day of school. We were five.
Wat.
My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up,” Peeta says.
Wat.
“He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,’” Peeta says.
And now the book has succeeded in ruining his acts of generosity too, and made the whole "sure I'll watch out for your twelve year old sister" look really, really bad. Best case scenario is he's only been helping out the kids as a way of hitting on their mom by proxy, and not because he's decided to go for version 2.0
Also, wow do I feel bad for his wife. And suddenly the whole thing about the baker giving them absurdly good deals when he's alone but his wife not letting him when she's there makes more sense too.
Peeta asked why the woman had married a coal miner instead of his dad and it's because Katniss' dad had such an awesome singing voice. Anyway remember Katniss didn't like to sing? She is actually totally awesome at it but just stopped because of dead daddy. Another sue mark AND another notch on how awesome her dad is.
So, first day of school Peeta hears her sing.
And right when your song ended, I knew — just like your mother — I was a goner,” Peeta says.
So Peeta falls in love with her age five self without ever speaking to her or knowing anything about her.
Katniss realizes that is pretty much what happened on the first day of kindergarten, and if he was paying that much attention to her to remember, then he's probably been telling the truth.
It would explain another thing, too. Why Peeta took a beating to give me the bread on that awful hollow day.
I think that's supposed to make it more romantic instead of worse in every possible way.
“I remember everything about you,” says Peeta, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention.”
“I am now,” I say.
“Well, I don’t have much competition here,” he says.
I want to draw away, to close those shutters again, but I know I can’t. It’s as if I can hear Haymitch whispering in my ear, “Say it! Say it!”
I swallow hard and get the words out. “You don’t have much competition anywhere.” And this time, it’s me who leans in.
So. Incredibly. Creepy.
We interrupt our underage makeouts, thank god, because Haymitch has sent them food for that little display.
A silver parachute attached to a basket. I rip it open at once and inside there’s a feast — fresh rolls, goat cheese, apples, and best of all, a tureen of that incredible lamb stew on wild rice.
How wasteful.
I think this book just generally has a problem with rustic-style food porn. I mean, apples of all things. Those are not exactly loaded in calories. Given they're not lacking for water either, stew is pretty wasteful when he could send something dry, and so is cooked rice itself. I'm assuming there's some sort of cost connection to weight or whatever here, although god knows there's been no sign of any balance or sanity to the way the games are run.
Peeta is an idiot and doesn't think anything of the timing, he's just glad for food.
But whatever.
I can't wait to get to the next book if people who were okay with this complained about the romance in that one.
On that horrible note, let's continue to the twenty-third chapter. In the home stretch now!
Peeta warns her they should only eat a little so they don't throw up, because clearly Peeta's the one with the most experience going hungry.
No, really, why is Peeta in charge here?
Afterward, they start talking again.
“What was that you were saying just before the food arrived? Something about me . . . no competition . . . best thing that ever happened to you . . .”
“I don’t remember that last part,” I say, hoping it’s too dim in here for the cameras to pick up my blush.
See, this probably wouldn't be creepy normally, and yet, it is. And it's time for more sleeping bag cuddling.
“So, since we were five, you never even noticed any other girls?” I ask him.
“No, I noticed just about every girl, but none of them made a lasting impression but you,” he says.
This is actually very reasonable and kudos, book, for not going with the even more cliché option.
If we win, we’ll each get a house in the part of town reserved for Hunger Games’ victors. Long ago, when the Games began, the Capitol had built a dozen fine houses in each district. Of course, in ours only one is occupied. Most of the others have never been lived in at all.
Oh thank god it's something else to think about.
I'm pretty sure the math doesn't work out here. Sure, that's fine for Katniss' district with only two winners ever, and would probably work if winners were evenly distributed, but.
There are three districts that train kids. One of those three districts usually wins. Assuming that the wins are fairly distributed between them all, and that they always make sure their tribute is age eighteen to get the best chance, and that every four years none of them win (far lower than is likely, as Katniss' comments suggest it's extremely rare for a non-trained kid to win)...
Year1: One 18 year old.
Year 5: One 22 year old, one 18 year old.
Year 9: One 26 year old, one 22 year old, one 18 year old.
By the time you have twelve victors, the oldest is only 62, and that's assuming starting at age eighteen and that none of the trained districts do better than the rest. I suppose the capital could just keep building new houses, but if they were going to build new houses it'd have made more sense to build one house and then another one each time a tribute won, instead of building twelve houses in year one, when even if one district won every game it'd still take over a decade to fill the last one up. And on the same topic, if they were assuming that the kids would be distributed evenly, then that's 12 x 12 houses total - 144 years between the first games and the last house being filled. Assuming they picked twelve year olds, that would make the first person 152 years old by the time the last one was housed, or, assuming everyone lives to be a hundred and starts at twelve, about fifty empty houses there forever.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that this is nonsense. You can get across the whole ridiculous opulence thing fine with the idea their district has three standing houses - one was built initially, then when the first winner came back they built a second, then when Haymitch won they built the third, and then with the first winner dead there are two extremely fancy houses being perpetually maintained without occupants, and this kind of thing is normal across the various districts.
Oh! Unless you get something cool for filling up all the houses, like one person leaves for the capital. No idea if that would make social sense, but hey, at least they'd be getting some fresh blood in their gene pool.
A disturbing thought hits me. “But then, our only neighbor will be Haymitch!”
An interesting point you've inadvertently raised there.
Haymitch, despite being extremely wealthy, seems just as extremely isolated. In a world where children regularly starve to death and at the end of your working life you're kicked out onto the street to die, no women have decided to try to attach themselves to the only person who can reliably provide for them. No friends take advantage of his likely well heated and spacious house in the winter. He's just there, in an empty neighborhood. If he ever had neighbors, it was the other winner, his fellow child-murderer, who hasn't even been alive for a while.
“You and me and Haymitch. Very cozy. Picnics, birthdays, long winter nights around the fire retelling old Hunger Games’ tales.”
No, seriously, this is incredibly depressing. He's spent his entire adult life cut off from his community constantly reminded of the fact he murdered other children to live. And here's Peeta cheerfully talking about their future conversations, discussing that time they too murdered other children to live, because I'm sure the one thing Haymitch wants to is more reminders of that!
I know the audience will enjoy our having fun at Haymitch’s expense. He has been around so long, he’s practically an old friend to some of them. And after his head-dive off the stage at the reaping, everybody knows him.
It's always very fun to watch the ongoing breakdown of someone you forced to murder children. He's like a part of their family, really.
She goes on to say he's probably about to go give some interviews because she's been mentioning him. Oh thanks for that Katniss, I'm sure he loves the prospect.
He’s at something of a disadvantage because most mentors have a partner, another victor to help them whereas Haymitch has to be ready to go into action at any moment.
Jesus, so he's probably not even able to sleep. He's obviously watching them constantly because he needs to reward Katniss every time she does something romantic, but more, he's solely responsible for them and can't actually do anything but send them crumbs from the capital's table and this is the first time he's known any of the kids to even have a chance and what if while he's sleeping something happens and -
Haha, it's funny because this is probably taking years off his life?
Anyway, Katniss thinks about how Haymitch seems to only be trying to communicate with her.
Perhaps he thinks a bowl of broth would just be a bowl of broth to Peeta, whereas I’ll see the strings attached to it.
Much as I'd like to see another glimpse of competent Katniss, this isn't exactly fair. Peeta thinks the romance thing is natural. It's quite likely he was barely coached at all. Katniss, on the other hand, has been constantly told to play along or else the sponsors don't help. So Peeta is not going to think anything of romantic gesture = soup.
Suddenly, Katniss wonders how Haymitch won the games.
This is stupid. For starters, these are once a year events that are incredibly popular. We're even told people in the capital like to reenact particularly famous bits. So why wouldn't the games be reshown at other parts of the year? It's not like there's any suggestion there's any other programming on. Next, he's their district's only living winner, and he's only middle aged, so there'd be plenty of people alive who'd remember watching. It should be something that's known.
They both come to the same conclusion.
“He outsmarted the others,” says Peeta.
Uh. That doesn't actually follow. The fact adult Haymitch is part of the romance plan doesn't mean kid Haymitch was necessarily brilliant, and really, it's not like what he is doing is all that clever. At most, the romance plan was a shot in the dark. If Haymitch encouraged it, it was probably because he figured Peeta was doomed anyway and that maybe working together Katniss might have a chance.
She wonders if the reason Haymitch is helping them is that he thinks they're smart enough to win as well.
Maybe he wasn’t always a drunk. Maybe, in the beginning, he tried to help the tributes. But then it got unbearable. It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year.
On the one hand, yes, that's very understandable and thank you, book, for acknowledging that must be hellish. On the other, it doesn't excuse Haymitch's antagonistic behavior toward them. He doesn't act like someone drinking to dull the crushing knowledge that another two kids are going to die, but like someone who hates his job in the more normal sense.
I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job.
Oooh, that's something interesting. It sort of gets back to some of the other stuff I've been saying - the games are a situation where various victories tend to propel you into worse situations. If the trained kids do well together, they're doomed to have to kill each other instead. If Katniss successfully protected Rue, they'd have had to try to kill each other. If Cato doesn't kill Thresh, Katniss will need to. And now if you win the games, you have to take part for the rest of your life.
The idea is so repellent, I thrust it from my mind.
NO, BOOK.
I have put up with Katniss not thinking about things for a very long time. We are on Ch23 now. The book has another four chapters to go. It is time to stop not thinking about things.
That night, they learn Thresh is dead.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA just how CONVENIENT do you even have to BE to DO something like that...
So Katniss is all upset, because she and Thresh were fridging buddies.
I have to bury the real pain because who’s going to bet on a tribute who keeps sniveling over the deaths of her opponents. Rue was one thing. We were allies. She was so young. But no one will understand my sorrow at Thresh’s murder. The word pulls me up short. Murder! Thankfully, I didn’t say it aloud. That’s not going to win me any points in the arena.
Yep, wouldn't want to break your perfect streak of not challenging the capital in any way whatsoever.
She does manage to say
“It’s just . . . if we didn’t win . . . I wanted Thresh to. Because he let me go. And because of Rue.”
This is stupid, since the only two dangerous players left are Thresh and Cato, so if Cato lost they'd have to kill Thresh themselves.
A good book might have it be now that our smart little redhead girl starts showing everyone her stabs, but that would be an actual twist. Katniss already said the girl isn't aggressive, and Katniss is only wrong about love.
I wonder how Foxface is making out.”
“Oh, she’s fine,” I say peevishly. I’m still angry she thought of hiding in the Cornucopia and I didn’t.
So when Katniss says she's upset by murder, she means of people with names only. Foxes are just animals.
She burrows into the sleeping bag to hide her face so she doesn't have to worry about people seeing her get upset.
Under the hood, I silently say good-bye to Thresh and thank him for my life.
This is actually a nice flash of how stressful the knowledge you're potentially on camera at any moment is.
That said, there's nothing stopping her from doing something like this to explain to Peeta about the whole "I'm not actually sure if I like you but I'm acting like this because otherwise we'll both die" thing.
When she wakes up Peeta gives her a roll covered in cheese and apple.
“We make a goat cheese and apple tart at the bakery,” he says.
“Bet that’s expensive,” I say.
Uh, no.
Goat cheese is common enough Katniss regularly eats it and apples are relatively common - not only do people get them by crossing the fence, but Peeta's house has an apple tree just in the back of the house as well. On top of that, apples are among the only fruit that stores well. Things like blackberries and strawberries very quickly go bad and are only available in season, but apples can be stored all the way until the next fall.
The fact it's a tart suggests it likely involves sugar, but I refuse to believe that alone would increase the price so much when they regularly make normal cakes frosted with sugar icing. If anything, the point of using apple in the tart would be that the fruit makes it sweet in place of the normal amount of sugar.
“Too expensive for my family to eat. Unless it’s gone very stale. Of course, practically everything we eat is stale,” says Peeta
Bullshit.
You. Had. A. Pig.
To again bring up the food porn elements, Katniss talked about how awesome that bread was. The edge was burned but the rest was fine, and that was just out of the oven fresh. So why did your mom tell you to throw it to the pig instead? Why was her objection that people wouldn't pay full price for it because part of it was burned?
Also, I really don't get why no one seems to understand the concept of ordering. If the ingredients of a particular food are expensive, tell people to come in and ask for it to be made rather than making it and hoping someone wants it right then and can afford to pay.
Peeta has always had enough to eat. But there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted.
This is not how economics works.
Let me tell you about something called opportunity cost. It's basically looking at the difference in cost between things to you.
Now, they're bakers. Making bread costs X dollars. When it's fresh out of the oven, it's worth Y dollars, and when it goes stale the value turns to Y-n. Unless Y-n is less than X dollars, it's no more expensive to sell the stale bread and make more fresh bread to eat.
An exception here would be if there was limited space in the oven, so by cooking extra fresh bread to eat you end up with less fresh bread (worth Y) that day than you could have sold. But in that case there shouldn't be all that much stale bread in the first place.
There are many situations where Y-n will be less than the X dollars of cost. For example, I will completely believe that about America, where people routinely throw out far fresher food. But they live in a place where people regularly starve. Food is food. Grain cooked into an edible form will always be worth money. As I said back with the burned bread, the only way this makes sense is if people either have plenty of money or none at all, so there's no one in the middle zone to buy the bread, and there's no sign that's true.
One thing about us, since I bring our food home on a daily basis, most of it is so fresh you have to make sure it isn’t going to make a run for it.
Yeah, which is why I keep telling you you should have been trading that for something cheaper but with more volume. Like, say, stale bread.
Anyway, then it's night and the rain's stopped finally. There's this big full moon and Katniss spends a while wondering if it's real or a projection.
Uh, you've been outside for quite a while, haven't you noticed the moon during this time? She goes on to say it's been about three weeks since she left home and it was a full moon before that, so I'm not sure why this is even an issue of confusion. She really wants it to be real, though.
That would give me something to cling to in the surreal world of the arena where the authenticity of everything is to be doubted.
So basically it's a bit of nonsense because the author wanted to throw in some stuff that sounds dramatic. This would work better if she was pretty sure it hadn't been a full month and was hoping she just got the dating wrong.
Also, the arena is really not that surreal. The capital's interference is generally quite obvious.
She considers what her life will be like if she makes it home and isn't sure. She's always spent her time searching for food and can't imagine what else she'll do.
I guess this is okay, but it's startlingly self-aware, especially for someone who's spent this whole book not thinking about things. I'd expect someone in her position to have ridiculous fantasies, like "We'll spend all day cooking fancy meals and eating them and then lying around until we're hungry again."
Instead, she thinks that without that, she isn't sure who she is.
I think of Haymitch, with all his money. What did his life become? He lives alone, no wife or children, most of his waking hours drunk. I don’t want to end up like that.
I don't think he's drunk because he's so bored, Katniss.
Anyway, it's not like you don't live in a crapsack town full of starving people, I'm sure you can figure out something to do with your time.
She thinks at least she won't be alone because she'll have her family, but then that she'll end up alone when her mother dies of old age and Prim grows up.
I know I’ll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world.
Katniss, to start with, that's what contraceptives are for. Next, there's other stuff you can do that doesn't lead to kids. Finally, even if you marry you are completely able to not have sex. Your husband doesn't actually own you.
(And if you want kids, hey, not like there aren't plenty of orphans.)
Incidentally, this actually raises an interesting question. What's the birth rate/mortality rate in her district? Between this and the general starvation issue, this should cause a lot of people to try to avoid having kids, and probably some manner of infanticide among those who fail.
It's never explained, but I think there presumably should be some sort of cost benefit to kids. We know you can use them for grain, but it seems like one tesserae barely feeds one kid and you have to raise them to age twelve before they can start, and they're only eligible six years. The other option is the elderly, since it's been suggested the elderly are the other major group that starves and stated that you stop working at a certain point. The thing is, we've seen no sign of any family supporting an elder. It's all nuclear families.
She wonders what Peeta will be like when he gets back.
Who will he transform into if we make it home? This perplexing, good-natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly the whole of Panem believes him to be hopelessly in love with me, and I’ll admit it, there are moments when he makes me believe it myself? At least, we’ll be friends, I think. Nothing will change the fact that we’ve saved each other’s lives in here. And beyond that, he will always be the boy with the bread. Good friends.
Okay, the book is just fucking with me now. I've lost count of the number of times Katniss has realized Peeta's actually in love with her and then just dropped it again.
Anything beyond that though . . . and I feel Gale’s gray eyes watching me watching Peeta, all the way from District 12.
HE'S NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND, REMEMBER?
Anyway she goes to wake up Peeta and they make out for a bit.
They eat all the food left.
“Hey, Effie, watch this!” says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean with his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, “We miss you, Effie!”
Hate you book.
She tells him to keep quiet in case Cato hears.
“What do I care? I’ve got you to protect me now,” says Peeta, pulling me to him.
“Come on,” I say in exasperation, extricating myself from his grasp but not before he gets in another kiss.
So aside from the endless squick there's genre dissonance. They actually are in a lot of danger. Personally, I think they have the advantage, but that doesn't mean he won't take one of them out in the process.
My last seven arrows — of the twelve I sacrificed three in the explosion, two at the feast — rattle a bit too loosely in the quiver. I can’t afford to lose any more.
Why didn't you ever try making more?
So they get moving to find game, and Katniss discovers Peeta can't move quietly.
Ideally, I’d dump Peeta now with some simple root-gathering chore and go hunt, but then he’d be left with only a knife to defend himself against Cato’s spears and superior strength. So what I’d really like is to try and conceal him somewhere safe, then go hunt, and come back and collect him. But I have a feeling his ego isn’t going to go for that suggestion.
And we're back to gender. If you told a girl to sit quietly in the cave, you wouldn't be worrying about her poor widdle ego.
He keeps insisting she tell him how to find edible plants and that he'll be fine with a knife and injured leg against a guy with a sword.
I try another tactic. “What if you climbed up in a tree and acted as a lookout while I hunted?” I say, trying to make it sound like very important work.
“What if you show me what’s edible around here and go get us some meat?” he says, mimicking my tone. “Just don’t go far, in case you need help.”
So much understanding of why Meyer liked these books.
Because clearly, it makes so much sense that Peeta is the one in charge, Katniss goes along with this bullshit. She teaches him a whistle so they can stay in contact once they're out of view. She heads off, shoots some game, but then he doesn't respond to the whistle and she panics. She runs back, shouting his name, and he shows up. She's really upset and wants to know why he didn't whistle.
“I didn’t hear. The water’s too loud, I guess,” he says. He crosses and puts his hands on my shoulders. That’s when I feel that I’m trembling.
“I thought Cato killed you!” I almost shout.
“No, I’m fine.” Peeta wraps his arms around me, but I don’t respond. “Katniss?”
I push away, trying to sort out my feelings. “If two people agree on a signal, they stay in range. Because if one of them doesn’t answer, they’re in trouble, all right?”
“All right!” he says.
Yes, Peeta, tell us more about how the person who actually knows what she's talking about has no reason to be upset. Then Katniss points out last time this happened, Rue died.
Peeta apologizes and says he understands.
Haha, no he doesn't.
Because Katniss is clearly an unreasonable female and probably PMSing or something, she looks around for something to yell about and notices part of the cheese has been eaten, so she says he started eating without her.
“I don’t know what ate the cheese,” Peeta says slowly and distinctly, as if trying not to lose his temper, “but it wasn’t me. I’ve been down by the stream collecting berries. Would you care for some?”
Yes how dare she unreasonably assume that you ate the cheese that someone obviously ate. Focus more on how unfair she is, because that's clearly the real issue here.
Seriously, Peeta doesn't react with surprise or confusion or suspicion. There's no "let me see that" or wondering if it was a person or animal. It's look at noble Peeta, valiantly being nice to bitchy Katniss.
But Peeta has spoken, so she takes the berries and looks them over.
I’ve never seen this type before. No, I have. But not in the arena. These aren’t Rue’s berries, although they resemble them. Nor do they match any I learned about in training. I lean down and scoop up a few, rolling them between my fingers.
My father’s voice comes back to me. “Not these, Katniss. Never these. They’re nightlock. You’ll be dead before they reach your stomach.”
Could her mother be more irrelevant? I think not.
For the sake of my sanity I'm going to just assume that's an invented plant.
Let's talk about nightshade. It's not actually that bad. It's merely one of the most toxic berries, but like most plants, it really doesn't want you to eat it. If you bite into a nightshade berry, it's bitter. (It also tastes sweet, but like I said earlier, you spit out anything that tastes bitter because you're not a stupid toddler) It is quite possible to eat a handful and die, but it takes hours to work.
(Also, incidentally, it's not native to North America. Our local nightshade is black nightshade, edible, and bittersweet nightshade, only mildly toxic. Now, it's possible now that a given plant is an escaped garden plant and actually deadly nightshade, but I figure after this many unspecified disasters escaped garden plants are not really an issue.)
Then there's water hemlock. This is pretty nasty, the plant itself can kill livestock in fifteen minutes.
But you know what's really awesome? Cyanide. Plants love cyanide. If you're going to genetically engineer a death plant, don't fuck around with trying to fuse hemlock with nightshade. Just tell a given plant to pump berries full of cyanide. This will also fail the bitter test, but they'll be dead from just finding that out, so win!
Anyway, the red-headed girl is dead.
This is really one of the cleverer bits, and why I agree with commenters that seeing the game from her viewpoint would have been nice. Her strategy for the games was to work off the knowledge of the other kids, and she'd have told us a lot about how everyone was functioning. She could get through human laid traps and stalk human gatherers, so when Peeta found what he thought was good food, she thought the same.
I particularly like this sequence because I find one of the things a lot of stories fail to consider is certain patterns of human thought that are so normal we don't even think of them. Humans eat a wide variety of food, and we're extremely cautious at trying new things, but we're incredibly trusting of someone who says a food is edible. There are various other minor signs that we'll automatically notice, believe and use because they're of human origin. At our core, we're really supposed to work together. And it's be interesting to contrast that with the artificial situation the kids are in, where they're trying to kill each other. Indeed, a large part of the girl's problem seems to be that as the other kids died, she had fewer people to use.
But the book totally fucks it up. Peeta sees the girl being removed by hovercraft and assumes it means Cato's coming their way. The chapter ends with
“How could I have killed her?”
In answer, I hold out the berries.
See, this would have been a great line if it hadn't already explained things. Have Katniss look at the berries and get midway into the paragraph, trying to ID them when the cannon goes off. Or even better, have Katniss be about to pop one in her mouth because she's making the same mistake of trusting he's found the right berries. Then she sees the dead girl and that jogs her memory about the berries, but she doesn't say it to the reader. We end on the berry line here, and next chapter she explains the berries are deadly.
But after already explaining all that this chapter, the dramatic ending line thing here falls flat.
This is some of the better characterization Katniss gets, which is not to say it's particularly good. We're pretty much back to her first chapter portrayal here, when she was your average prickly-yet-vulnerable main character.
Interestingly, the book doesn't seem to really draw a parallel with her mistrust of her mother and her mistrust of Peeta. Katniss is just not put together with any sense of one thing leading to another.
Anyway, she realizes she's not at home and it's not her mom.
Peeta feeds me bites of groosling and raisins and makes me drink plenty of water.
So roles have reversed. The thing is, she isn't severely sick, she's just lost blood. And I think it's actually the first time she's been injured, so her spleen hasn't dumped its red blood cell reservoir before now, and she's eating a high iron diet. (It'd be more high iron if she'd eat the damn liver, but.) So I'm not sure why she apparently needs to be hand fed here.
Also it's finally raining.
“I wonder what brought on this storm? I mean, who’s the target?” says Peeta.
“Cato and Thresh,” I say without thinking. “Foxface will be in her den somewhere, and Clove . . . she cut me an then . . .” My voice trails off.
Wow, "Foxface will be in her den". We're not even pretending she's a person any more.
I don't see why Cato and Thresh can't possibly have their own hiding places, or why it's impossible the girl might have been out watching them and caught in the downpour.
Hm. The girl. The current count of kids is three boys and two girls, and one's the main character. Both boys are major forces, while the girl's defining trait is sneakiness.
Also, you know what would actually have been cool? Clove not being dead yet. That would mean Cato was in a similar position of having an injured, probably dying person and needing to win the games fast. Personally, I'd find it a lot more noble on his part, since it's a lot easier to write someone with a head wound off as gone than someone still conscious and lucid.
Peeta says she's lucky Thresh didn't catch her, and Katniss explains that he did, and then tells him what's happened so far.
“He let you go because he didn’t want to owe you anything?” asks Peeta in disbelief.
Okay, so Peeta looks like kind of an asshole here. Just wait, it'll get worse.
Anyway, she says if he lived in the Seam like she did, he'd understand but she can't really explain, and Peeta bitches about how obviously he's just too stupid to get it, which, you know, is not what she said.
She says it's like with how she can't pay him back for the bread.
“The bread? What? From when we were kids?” he says. “I think we can let that go. I mean, you just brought me back from the dead.”
“But you didn’t know me.
This sounds deceptively sane. Again, just wait.
“Why did you, anyway?”
“Why? You know why,” Peeta says. I give my head a slight, painful shake. “Haymitch said you would take a lot of convincing.”
He did it because he was in love with her.
So that's actually why he has no idea about paying people back for what's owed - the one thing he did, he doesn't want her to return the favor, he wants her to be his girlfriend. And he did, from his viewpoint, know her.
So this thing she's holding it up for years as an act of true charity, and it turns out it never was.
Peeta then says he hopes Cato and Thresh kill each other. Katniss, now comparatively the nice person, is kind of bothered by this. I mean, she did just get through saying he saved her life and let her go.
“I think we would like Thresh. I think he’d be our friend back in District Twelve,” I say.
“Then let’s hope Cato kills him, so we don’t have to,” says Peeta grimly.
And if you think there's any chance of that not happening and them having to make an actual moral choice, hi new reader! You may want to start at the beginning.
I don’t want Cato to kill Thresh at all. I don’t want anyone else to die. But this is absolutely not the kind of thing that victors go around saying in the arena.
Okay, two things here.
One, this is an ambiguous statement. For a while she's been saying she can't do stuff because she has to act right to get sponsors. But they're in the endgame now, and they really do have the clear advantage - two on one. About the only thing she's really having trouble with is she's running out of arrows, and frankly I can only assume Haymitch is waiting for her to stop being a moron and realize she can make her own, as she did for years of her life. Or does she mean in a more superstitious way, that she has to act in a certain way or she won't win? This is kind of what I was getting into when I talked about an alternate version where she was more devoted to Prim and embracing the capital's version of her because she needed something to hold on to. But there's been no sign of that at all.
Two, "anyone else" includes Cato here. I mean, I'm kind of glad that it looks like Katniss has finally grown a real conscience, but I'm pretty sure the sentence is supposed to mean "I don't want another death, that of Thresh" and not "I don't want any deaths at all". Bad writing. And it further dehumanizes Cato - he's not "anyone".
Anyway, Katniss' eyes start to water at the thought, and Peeta asks if she's hurt.
I give him another answer, because it is equally true but can be taken as a brief moment of weakness instead of a terminal one. “I want to go home, Peeta,” I say plaintively, like a small child.
And now she's acting like a baby, ugh.
“You will. I promise,” he says, and bends over to give me a kiss.
“I want to go home now,” I say.
“Tell you what. You go back to sleep and dream of home. And you’ll be there for real before you know it,” he says. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
Seriously, ugh.
Look, I don't mean to say your characters can never shown any weakness, but the whole female character suddenly dissolves like this thing, it's been done enough. Especially when Peeta is not actually able to protect her and we've seen no suggestion he's even good at keeping watch the way she, with years of experience hunting, is.
They eat the last of the food when she wakes up, and she says tomorrow they'll have to hunt. She asks where Thresh has been hiding out. Turns out in the direction she didn't go is this big field of grass that probably had some grain plants in it.
Apparently, no one wanted to track him into a sea of tall grass with no visibility, unknown terrain and possibly lurking animals.
I don’t say so but Peeta’s words remind me of the warnings they give us about not going beyond the fence in District 12. I can’t help, for a moment, comparing him with Gale, who would see that field as a potential source of food as well as a threat. Thresh certainly did.
Thresh probably already knew that terrain. Even if he didn't have wild areas like it, the agricultural district would have similar enough farm areas. We know that the plants and animals in the area are ones Rue was familiar with, so he likely knew what animals would live there and how to deal with them safely.
So you're thinking Gale would go into a completely unknown ecosystem with no visibility that had a six foot tall fellow murderer who was far more familiar with it than you hiding out waiting for any idiot to get close.
It’s not that Peeta’s soft exactly, and he’s proved he’s not a coward. But there are things you don’t question too much, I guess, when your home always smells like baking bread
No, Katniss. Not rushing out into unfamiliar territory is something that, if anything, you should know even better than him is a terrible idea.
She claims Gale questions everything.
What would Peeta think of the irreverent banter that passes between us as we break the law each day? Would it shock him? The things we say about Panem? Gale’s tirades against the Capitol?
What irreverent banter, anyway? You admitted you basically tune Gale out and only figured out the capital sucked when you watched a twelve year old die.
Peeta wonders what will get Haymitch to send them food, and Katniss catches herself before she explains the whole thing where kissing gets them stuff, because she knows if the viewers know they'll stop sending anything.
You know, that's not too much of an excuse for why she hasn't explained to Peeta. She could easily cover them with the blanket and whisper. If Peeta throws a fit that you only care about him and saved his life, he's a dick.
Somehow, believably, I’ve got to get things back on track. Something simple to start with. I reach out and take his hand.
“Well, he probably used up a lot of resources helping me knock you out,” I say mischievously.
“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.”
Peeta: helps out Katniss, gets his leg cut open, incapacitated for a week, nearly dies.
Katniss: Helps out Peeta, gets a minor cut on her head, manages a kill and for her other opponents to focus on each other for a while.
Clearly, she's the one in the wrong here.
“Or what?” I ask.
“Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”
“What’s the problem?” I say with a grin.
“The problem is we’re both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,” says Peeta.
“I did do the right thing,” I say.
“No! Just don’t, Katniss!” His grip tightens, hurting my hand, and there’s real anger in his voice.
I can really see why Meyer found this worthy of praise.
He says he doesn't want her to die for him.
She starts off thinking that this is a good chance to get more romance points, but then while she's stammering out that maybe she doesn't want him to die for her either...
while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home. And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.
“If what, Katniss?” he says softly.
So I think I figured out part of why I find the Draco/Hermione-head-kids-share-a-room thing less squicky. In a lot of the forced together setups, both characters are mutually unhappy, which does a lot to reduce the impression one character is taking advantage of the other.
If they were both playing along and starting to fall for each other, this wouldn't bother me nearly so much, especially if there was less focus on ~*~*~romantic kisses~*~*~ and more on actual friendship and caring about each other.
Katniss feels a bit uncomfortable given she's not even sure of her feelings, let alone so sure she wants the entire country to watch her admit them, so she lies that Haymitch said it's a topic she should avoid, knowing that Haymitch is probably raging at the idea.
“Then I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself,” he says, and moves in to me.
Another lovely thing is that in fanfic, you'd have a decent chance of it being labeled dubcon and the author acknowledging there are some issues here, even if the character was starting to fall for the other person. Here I really can't shake the feeling the author is just writing what she thinks is a normal romance.
This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another.
In conclusion, Katniss doesn't get to have opinions on who she likes. All Peeta has to do is pursue long enough and he wins her.
They curl up in the sleeping bag.
No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else’s arms have made me feel this safe.
I wonder how Katniss would feel knowing he totally wants to fuck her.
Because I really can't get that out of my head. This is why making it romance the entire time kind of taints everything. I mean, yes, we're in a world where rape apparently doesn't exist or anything, so I guess she's not in any actual danger, but she's still forced to share a sleeping bag with a boy where she thinks is he's playing along and he thinks she's just as in love as him.
The storm continues the next day. Since all they do during a storm is huddle and wait, and that's probably all anyone else does too, this is kind of a boring choice. Maybe the audience really, really wanted more teenage makeouts in the cave.
They're hungry, because Haymitch hasn't sent anything more. Katniss figures she has to do something to add to the romance or they'll starve.
Anyway, just a kiss isn’t enough anymore clearly because if it was we’d have gotten food last night. My instincts tell me Haymitch isn’t just looking for physical affection, he wants something more personal.
On the other hand, this is the capital that likes to see kids naked or in see through outfits, so I'm not really sure why she doesn't think taking her shirt off is what he actually wants.
God, so much could have been avoided if the capital was established as kind of prudish instead. It would really help the prostitution implications.
Katniss figures she sucks at talking about herself but Peeta's good at it, so she needs to get him going. She says he told he he'd been in love with her forever, but when did it really start.
I guess the first day of school. We were five.
Wat.
My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up,” Peeta says.
Wat.
“He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,’” Peeta says.
And now the book has succeeded in ruining his acts of generosity too, and made the whole "sure I'll watch out for your twelve year old sister" look really, really bad. Best case scenario is he's only been helping out the kids as a way of hitting on their mom by proxy, and not because he's decided to go for version 2.0
Also, wow do I feel bad for his wife. And suddenly the whole thing about the baker giving them absurdly good deals when he's alone but his wife not letting him when she's there makes more sense too.
Peeta asked why the woman had married a coal miner instead of his dad and it's because Katniss' dad had such an awesome singing voice. Anyway remember Katniss didn't like to sing? She is actually totally awesome at it but just stopped because of dead daddy. Another sue mark AND another notch on how awesome her dad is.
So, first day of school Peeta hears her sing.
And right when your song ended, I knew — just like your mother — I was a goner,” Peeta says.
So Peeta falls in love with her age five self without ever speaking to her or knowing anything about her.
Katniss realizes that is pretty much what happened on the first day of kindergarten, and if he was paying that much attention to her to remember, then he's probably been telling the truth.
It would explain another thing, too. Why Peeta took a beating to give me the bread on that awful hollow day.
I think that's supposed to make it more romantic instead of worse in every possible way.
“I remember everything about you,” says Peeta, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who wasn’t paying attention.”
“I am now,” I say.
“Well, I don’t have much competition here,” he says.
I want to draw away, to close those shutters again, but I know I can’t. It’s as if I can hear Haymitch whispering in my ear, “Say it! Say it!”
I swallow hard and get the words out. “You don’t have much competition anywhere.” And this time, it’s me who leans in.
So. Incredibly. Creepy.
We interrupt our underage makeouts, thank god, because Haymitch has sent them food for that little display.
A silver parachute attached to a basket. I rip it open at once and inside there’s a feast — fresh rolls, goat cheese, apples, and best of all, a tureen of that incredible lamb stew on wild rice.
How wasteful.
I think this book just generally has a problem with rustic-style food porn. I mean, apples of all things. Those are not exactly loaded in calories. Given they're not lacking for water either, stew is pretty wasteful when he could send something dry, and so is cooked rice itself. I'm assuming there's some sort of cost connection to weight or whatever here, although god knows there's been no sign of any balance or sanity to the way the games are run.
Peeta is an idiot and doesn't think anything of the timing, he's just glad for food.
But whatever.
I can't wait to get to the next book if people who were okay with this complained about the romance in that one.
On that horrible note, let's continue to the twenty-third chapter. In the home stretch now!
Peeta warns her they should only eat a little so they don't throw up, because clearly Peeta's the one with the most experience going hungry.
No, really, why is Peeta in charge here?
Afterward, they start talking again.
“What was that you were saying just before the food arrived? Something about me . . . no competition . . . best thing that ever happened to you . . .”
“I don’t remember that last part,” I say, hoping it’s too dim in here for the cameras to pick up my blush.
See, this probably wouldn't be creepy normally, and yet, it is. And it's time for more sleeping bag cuddling.
“So, since we were five, you never even noticed any other girls?” I ask him.
“No, I noticed just about every girl, but none of them made a lasting impression but you,” he says.
This is actually very reasonable and kudos, book, for not going with the even more cliché option.
If we win, we’ll each get a house in the part of town reserved for Hunger Games’ victors. Long ago, when the Games began, the Capitol had built a dozen fine houses in each district. Of course, in ours only one is occupied. Most of the others have never been lived in at all.
Oh thank god it's something else to think about.
I'm pretty sure the math doesn't work out here. Sure, that's fine for Katniss' district with only two winners ever, and would probably work if winners were evenly distributed, but.
There are three districts that train kids. One of those three districts usually wins. Assuming that the wins are fairly distributed between them all, and that they always make sure their tribute is age eighteen to get the best chance, and that every four years none of them win (far lower than is likely, as Katniss' comments suggest it's extremely rare for a non-trained kid to win)...
Year1: One 18 year old.
Year 5: One 22 year old, one 18 year old.
Year 9: One 26 year old, one 22 year old, one 18 year old.
By the time you have twelve victors, the oldest is only 62, and that's assuming starting at age eighteen and that none of the trained districts do better than the rest. I suppose the capital could just keep building new houses, but if they were going to build new houses it'd have made more sense to build one house and then another one each time a tribute won, instead of building twelve houses in year one, when even if one district won every game it'd still take over a decade to fill the last one up. And on the same topic, if they were assuming that the kids would be distributed evenly, then that's 12 x 12 houses total - 144 years between the first games and the last house being filled. Assuming they picked twelve year olds, that would make the first person 152 years old by the time the last one was housed, or, assuming everyone lives to be a hundred and starts at twelve, about fifty empty houses there forever.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that this is nonsense. You can get across the whole ridiculous opulence thing fine with the idea their district has three standing houses - one was built initially, then when the first winner came back they built a second, then when Haymitch won they built the third, and then with the first winner dead there are two extremely fancy houses being perpetually maintained without occupants, and this kind of thing is normal across the various districts.
Oh! Unless you get something cool for filling up all the houses, like one person leaves for the capital. No idea if that would make social sense, but hey, at least they'd be getting some fresh blood in their gene pool.
A disturbing thought hits me. “But then, our only neighbor will be Haymitch!”
An interesting point you've inadvertently raised there.
Haymitch, despite being extremely wealthy, seems just as extremely isolated. In a world where children regularly starve to death and at the end of your working life you're kicked out onto the street to die, no women have decided to try to attach themselves to the only person who can reliably provide for them. No friends take advantage of his likely well heated and spacious house in the winter. He's just there, in an empty neighborhood. If he ever had neighbors, it was the other winner, his fellow child-murderer, who hasn't even been alive for a while.
“You and me and Haymitch. Very cozy. Picnics, birthdays, long winter nights around the fire retelling old Hunger Games’ tales.”
No, seriously, this is incredibly depressing. He's spent his entire adult life cut off from his community constantly reminded of the fact he murdered other children to live. And here's Peeta cheerfully talking about their future conversations, discussing that time they too murdered other children to live, because I'm sure the one thing Haymitch wants to is more reminders of that!
I know the audience will enjoy our having fun at Haymitch’s expense. He has been around so long, he’s practically an old friend to some of them. And after his head-dive off the stage at the reaping, everybody knows him.
It's always very fun to watch the ongoing breakdown of someone you forced to murder children. He's like a part of their family, really.
She goes on to say he's probably about to go give some interviews because she's been mentioning him. Oh thanks for that Katniss, I'm sure he loves the prospect.
He’s at something of a disadvantage because most mentors have a partner, another victor to help them whereas Haymitch has to be ready to go into action at any moment.
Jesus, so he's probably not even able to sleep. He's obviously watching them constantly because he needs to reward Katniss every time she does something romantic, but more, he's solely responsible for them and can't actually do anything but send them crumbs from the capital's table and this is the first time he's known any of the kids to even have a chance and what if while he's sleeping something happens and -
Haha, it's funny because this is probably taking years off his life?
Anyway, Katniss thinks about how Haymitch seems to only be trying to communicate with her.
Perhaps he thinks a bowl of broth would just be a bowl of broth to Peeta, whereas I’ll see the strings attached to it.
Much as I'd like to see another glimpse of competent Katniss, this isn't exactly fair. Peeta thinks the romance thing is natural. It's quite likely he was barely coached at all. Katniss, on the other hand, has been constantly told to play along or else the sponsors don't help. So Peeta is not going to think anything of romantic gesture = soup.
Suddenly, Katniss wonders how Haymitch won the games.
This is stupid. For starters, these are once a year events that are incredibly popular. We're even told people in the capital like to reenact particularly famous bits. So why wouldn't the games be reshown at other parts of the year? It's not like there's any suggestion there's any other programming on. Next, he's their district's only living winner, and he's only middle aged, so there'd be plenty of people alive who'd remember watching. It should be something that's known.
They both come to the same conclusion.
“He outsmarted the others,” says Peeta.
Uh. That doesn't actually follow. The fact adult Haymitch is part of the romance plan doesn't mean kid Haymitch was necessarily brilliant, and really, it's not like what he is doing is all that clever. At most, the romance plan was a shot in the dark. If Haymitch encouraged it, it was probably because he figured Peeta was doomed anyway and that maybe working together Katniss might have a chance.
She wonders if the reason Haymitch is helping them is that he thinks they're smart enough to win as well.
Maybe he wasn’t always a drunk. Maybe, in the beginning, he tried to help the tributes. But then it got unbearable. It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year.
On the one hand, yes, that's very understandable and thank you, book, for acknowledging that must be hellish. On the other, it doesn't excuse Haymitch's antagonistic behavior toward them. He doesn't act like someone drinking to dull the crushing knowledge that another two kids are going to die, but like someone who hates his job in the more normal sense.
I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job.
Oooh, that's something interesting. It sort of gets back to some of the other stuff I've been saying - the games are a situation where various victories tend to propel you into worse situations. If the trained kids do well together, they're doomed to have to kill each other instead. If Katniss successfully protected Rue, they'd have had to try to kill each other. If Cato doesn't kill Thresh, Katniss will need to. And now if you win the games, you have to take part for the rest of your life.
The idea is so repellent, I thrust it from my mind.
NO, BOOK.
I have put up with Katniss not thinking about things for a very long time. We are on Ch23 now. The book has another four chapters to go. It is time to stop not thinking about things.
That night, they learn Thresh is dead.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA just how CONVENIENT do you even have to BE to DO something like that...
So Katniss is all upset, because she and Thresh were fridging buddies.
I have to bury the real pain because who’s going to bet on a tribute who keeps sniveling over the deaths of her opponents. Rue was one thing. We were allies. She was so young. But no one will understand my sorrow at Thresh’s murder. The word pulls me up short. Murder! Thankfully, I didn’t say it aloud. That’s not going to win me any points in the arena.
Yep, wouldn't want to break your perfect streak of not challenging the capital in any way whatsoever.
She does manage to say
“It’s just . . . if we didn’t win . . . I wanted Thresh to. Because he let me go. And because of Rue.”
This is stupid, since the only two dangerous players left are Thresh and Cato, so if Cato lost they'd have to kill Thresh themselves.
A good book might have it be now that our smart little redhead girl starts showing everyone her stabs, but that would be an actual twist. Katniss already said the girl isn't aggressive, and Katniss is only wrong about love.
I wonder how Foxface is making out.”
“Oh, she’s fine,” I say peevishly. I’m still angry she thought of hiding in the Cornucopia and I didn’t.
So when Katniss says she's upset by murder, she means of people with names only. Foxes are just animals.
She burrows into the sleeping bag to hide her face so she doesn't have to worry about people seeing her get upset.
Under the hood, I silently say good-bye to Thresh and thank him for my life.
This is actually a nice flash of how stressful the knowledge you're potentially on camera at any moment is.
That said, there's nothing stopping her from doing something like this to explain to Peeta about the whole "I'm not actually sure if I like you but I'm acting like this because otherwise we'll both die" thing.
When she wakes up Peeta gives her a roll covered in cheese and apple.
“We make a goat cheese and apple tart at the bakery,” he says.
“Bet that’s expensive,” I say.
Uh, no.
Goat cheese is common enough Katniss regularly eats it and apples are relatively common - not only do people get them by crossing the fence, but Peeta's house has an apple tree just in the back of the house as well. On top of that, apples are among the only fruit that stores well. Things like blackberries and strawberries very quickly go bad and are only available in season, but apples can be stored all the way until the next fall.
The fact it's a tart suggests it likely involves sugar, but I refuse to believe that alone would increase the price so much when they regularly make normal cakes frosted with sugar icing. If anything, the point of using apple in the tart would be that the fruit makes it sweet in place of the normal amount of sugar.
“Too expensive for my family to eat. Unless it’s gone very stale. Of course, practically everything we eat is stale,” says Peeta
Bullshit.
You. Had. A. Pig.
To again bring up the food porn elements, Katniss talked about how awesome that bread was. The edge was burned but the rest was fine, and that was just out of the oven fresh. So why did your mom tell you to throw it to the pig instead? Why was her objection that people wouldn't pay full price for it because part of it was burned?
Also, I really don't get why no one seems to understand the concept of ordering. If the ingredients of a particular food are expensive, tell people to come in and ask for it to be made rather than making it and hoping someone wants it right then and can afford to pay.
Peeta has always had enough to eat. But there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted.
This is not how economics works.
Let me tell you about something called opportunity cost. It's basically looking at the difference in cost between things to you.
Now, they're bakers. Making bread costs X dollars. When it's fresh out of the oven, it's worth Y dollars, and when it goes stale the value turns to Y-n. Unless Y-n is less than X dollars, it's no more expensive to sell the stale bread and make more fresh bread to eat.
An exception here would be if there was limited space in the oven, so by cooking extra fresh bread to eat you end up with less fresh bread (worth Y) that day than you could have sold. But in that case there shouldn't be all that much stale bread in the first place.
There are many situations where Y-n will be less than the X dollars of cost. For example, I will completely believe that about America, where people routinely throw out far fresher food. But they live in a place where people regularly starve. Food is food. Grain cooked into an edible form will always be worth money. As I said back with the burned bread, the only way this makes sense is if people either have plenty of money or none at all, so there's no one in the middle zone to buy the bread, and there's no sign that's true.
One thing about us, since I bring our food home on a daily basis, most of it is so fresh you have to make sure it isn’t going to make a run for it.
Yeah, which is why I keep telling you you should have been trading that for something cheaper but with more volume. Like, say, stale bread.
Anyway, then it's night and the rain's stopped finally. There's this big full moon and Katniss spends a while wondering if it's real or a projection.
Uh, you've been outside for quite a while, haven't you noticed the moon during this time? She goes on to say it's been about three weeks since she left home and it was a full moon before that, so I'm not sure why this is even an issue of confusion. She really wants it to be real, though.
That would give me something to cling to in the surreal world of the arena where the authenticity of everything is to be doubted.
So basically it's a bit of nonsense because the author wanted to throw in some stuff that sounds dramatic. This would work better if she was pretty sure it hadn't been a full month and was hoping she just got the dating wrong.
Also, the arena is really not that surreal. The capital's interference is generally quite obvious.
She considers what her life will be like if she makes it home and isn't sure. She's always spent her time searching for food and can't imagine what else she'll do.
I guess this is okay, but it's startlingly self-aware, especially for someone who's spent this whole book not thinking about things. I'd expect someone in her position to have ridiculous fantasies, like "We'll spend all day cooking fancy meals and eating them and then lying around until we're hungry again."
Instead, she thinks that without that, she isn't sure who she is.
I think of Haymitch, with all his money. What did his life become? He lives alone, no wife or children, most of his waking hours drunk. I don’t want to end up like that.
I don't think he's drunk because he's so bored, Katniss.
Anyway, it's not like you don't live in a crapsack town full of starving people, I'm sure you can figure out something to do with your time.
She thinks at least she won't be alone because she'll have her family, but then that she'll end up alone when her mother dies of old age and Prim grows up.
I know I’ll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world.
Katniss, to start with, that's what contraceptives are for. Next, there's other stuff you can do that doesn't lead to kids. Finally, even if you marry you are completely able to not have sex. Your husband doesn't actually own you.
(And if you want kids, hey, not like there aren't plenty of orphans.)
Incidentally, this actually raises an interesting question. What's the birth rate/mortality rate in her district? Between this and the general starvation issue, this should cause a lot of people to try to avoid having kids, and probably some manner of infanticide among those who fail.
It's never explained, but I think there presumably should be some sort of cost benefit to kids. We know you can use them for grain, but it seems like one tesserae barely feeds one kid and you have to raise them to age twelve before they can start, and they're only eligible six years. The other option is the elderly, since it's been suggested the elderly are the other major group that starves and stated that you stop working at a certain point. The thing is, we've seen no sign of any family supporting an elder. It's all nuclear families.
She wonders what Peeta will be like when he gets back.
Who will he transform into if we make it home? This perplexing, good-natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly the whole of Panem believes him to be hopelessly in love with me, and I’ll admit it, there are moments when he makes me believe it myself? At least, we’ll be friends, I think. Nothing will change the fact that we’ve saved each other’s lives in here. And beyond that, he will always be the boy with the bread. Good friends.
Okay, the book is just fucking with me now. I've lost count of the number of times Katniss has realized Peeta's actually in love with her and then just dropped it again.
Anything beyond that though . . . and I feel Gale’s gray eyes watching me watching Peeta, all the way from District 12.
HE'S NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND, REMEMBER?
Anyway she goes to wake up Peeta and they make out for a bit.
They eat all the food left.
“Hey, Effie, watch this!” says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean with his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, “We miss you, Effie!”
Hate you book.
She tells him to keep quiet in case Cato hears.
“What do I care? I’ve got you to protect me now,” says Peeta, pulling me to him.
“Come on,” I say in exasperation, extricating myself from his grasp but not before he gets in another kiss.
So aside from the endless squick there's genre dissonance. They actually are in a lot of danger. Personally, I think they have the advantage, but that doesn't mean he won't take one of them out in the process.
My last seven arrows — of the twelve I sacrificed three in the explosion, two at the feast — rattle a bit too loosely in the quiver. I can’t afford to lose any more.
Why didn't you ever try making more?
So they get moving to find game, and Katniss discovers Peeta can't move quietly.
Ideally, I’d dump Peeta now with some simple root-gathering chore and go hunt, but then he’d be left with only a knife to defend himself against Cato’s spears and superior strength. So what I’d really like is to try and conceal him somewhere safe, then go hunt, and come back and collect him. But I have a feeling his ego isn’t going to go for that suggestion.
And we're back to gender. If you told a girl to sit quietly in the cave, you wouldn't be worrying about her poor widdle ego.
He keeps insisting she tell him how to find edible plants and that he'll be fine with a knife and injured leg against a guy with a sword.
I try another tactic. “What if you climbed up in a tree and acted as a lookout while I hunted?” I say, trying to make it sound like very important work.
“What if you show me what’s edible around here and go get us some meat?” he says, mimicking my tone. “Just don’t go far, in case you need help.”
So much understanding of why Meyer liked these books.
Because clearly, it makes so much sense that Peeta is the one in charge, Katniss goes along with this bullshit. She teaches him a whistle so they can stay in contact once they're out of view. She heads off, shoots some game, but then he doesn't respond to the whistle and she panics. She runs back, shouting his name, and he shows up. She's really upset and wants to know why he didn't whistle.
“I didn’t hear. The water’s too loud, I guess,” he says. He crosses and puts his hands on my shoulders. That’s when I feel that I’m trembling.
“I thought Cato killed you!” I almost shout.
“No, I’m fine.” Peeta wraps his arms around me, but I don’t respond. “Katniss?”
I push away, trying to sort out my feelings. “If two people agree on a signal, they stay in range. Because if one of them doesn’t answer, they’re in trouble, all right?”
“All right!” he says.
Yes, Peeta, tell us more about how the person who actually knows what she's talking about has no reason to be upset. Then Katniss points out last time this happened, Rue died.
Peeta apologizes and says he understands.
Haha, no he doesn't.
Because Katniss is clearly an unreasonable female and probably PMSing or something, she looks around for something to yell about and notices part of the cheese has been eaten, so she says he started eating without her.
“I don’t know what ate the cheese,” Peeta says slowly and distinctly, as if trying not to lose his temper, “but it wasn’t me. I’ve been down by the stream collecting berries. Would you care for some?”
Yes how dare she unreasonably assume that you ate the cheese that someone obviously ate. Focus more on how unfair she is, because that's clearly the real issue here.
Seriously, Peeta doesn't react with surprise or confusion or suspicion. There's no "let me see that" or wondering if it was a person or animal. It's look at noble Peeta, valiantly being nice to bitchy Katniss.
But Peeta has spoken, so she takes the berries and looks them over.
I’ve never seen this type before. No, I have. But not in the arena. These aren’t Rue’s berries, although they resemble them. Nor do they match any I learned about in training. I lean down and scoop up a few, rolling them between my fingers.
My father’s voice comes back to me. “Not these, Katniss. Never these. They’re nightlock. You’ll be dead before they reach your stomach.”
Could her mother be more irrelevant? I think not.
For the sake of my sanity I'm going to just assume that's an invented plant.
Let's talk about nightshade. It's not actually that bad. It's merely one of the most toxic berries, but like most plants, it really doesn't want you to eat it. If you bite into a nightshade berry, it's bitter. (It also tastes sweet, but like I said earlier, you spit out anything that tastes bitter because you're not a stupid toddler) It is quite possible to eat a handful and die, but it takes hours to work.
(Also, incidentally, it's not native to North America. Our local nightshade is black nightshade, edible, and bittersweet nightshade, only mildly toxic. Now, it's possible now that a given plant is an escaped garden plant and actually deadly nightshade, but I figure after this many unspecified disasters escaped garden plants are not really an issue.)
Then there's water hemlock. This is pretty nasty, the plant itself can kill livestock in fifteen minutes.
But you know what's really awesome? Cyanide. Plants love cyanide. If you're going to genetically engineer a death plant, don't fuck around with trying to fuse hemlock with nightshade. Just tell a given plant to pump berries full of cyanide. This will also fail the bitter test, but they'll be dead from just finding that out, so win!
Anyway, the red-headed girl is dead.
This is really one of the cleverer bits, and why I agree with commenters that seeing the game from her viewpoint would have been nice. Her strategy for the games was to work off the knowledge of the other kids, and she'd have told us a lot about how everyone was functioning. She could get through human laid traps and stalk human gatherers, so when Peeta found what he thought was good food, she thought the same.
I particularly like this sequence because I find one of the things a lot of stories fail to consider is certain patterns of human thought that are so normal we don't even think of them. Humans eat a wide variety of food, and we're extremely cautious at trying new things, but we're incredibly trusting of someone who says a food is edible. There are various other minor signs that we'll automatically notice, believe and use because they're of human origin. At our core, we're really supposed to work together. And it's be interesting to contrast that with the artificial situation the kids are in, where they're trying to kill each other. Indeed, a large part of the girl's problem seems to be that as the other kids died, she had fewer people to use.
But the book totally fucks it up. Peeta sees the girl being removed by hovercraft and assumes it means Cato's coming their way. The chapter ends with
“How could I have killed her?”
In answer, I hold out the berries.
See, this would have been a great line if it hadn't already explained things. Have Katniss look at the berries and get midway into the paragraph, trying to ID them when the cannon goes off. Or even better, have Katniss be about to pop one in her mouth because she's making the same mistake of trusting he's found the right berries. Then she sees the dead girl and that jogs her memory about the berries, but she doesn't say it to the reader. We end on the berry line here, and next chapter she explains the berries are deadly.
But after already explaining all that this chapter, the dramatic ending line thing here falls flat.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Poor Foxface
Date: 2011-04-09 11:53 pm (UTC)She steals food and ideas from others to survive, and she spies on the other tributes for information. It's quite possible that she stalked Katniss aat some point, and really, the books would've done well coming from her point of view.
Heck! Why couldn't the book just be in third person?
Re: Poor Foxface
Date: 2011-04-10 12:54 am (UTC)Maybe we should have given her a name earlier on. :(
Re: Poor Foxface
Date: 2011-04-10 02:03 am (UTC)Re: Poor Foxface
Date: 2011-04-12 07:54 am (UTC)Re: Poor Foxface
Date: 2011-04-10 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-10 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 04:37 am (UTC)Haymitch
Date: 2012-02-16 01:27 am (UTC)Meh.
Date: 2011-12-08 12:07 am (UTC)What especially irked me was the part where you mentioned that Peeta's family shouldn't be eating stale bread if they had a pig. First of all, only one pig was mentioned. Sure, they could eat the pig. But first, they have to feed it and make it bigger. Okay, now the pig is big enough and they can eat it. What are they supposed to eat after it's gone?
Secondly, the whole stale bread-eating scenario makes sense BECAUSE of the holes in the story. There probably is a very wide margin between the rich and poor. Super poor people probably can't afford to even buy the stale bread (they make it in the market-part of town, implying that everything is more expensive than if it had been made in the Seam), so the people who do shop around there wouldn't buy it.
Also, you were contradicting yourself a bit in this part:
"Peeta is an idiot and doesn't think anything of the timing, he's just glad for food."
Then later you go on to say:
"'Perhaps he thinks a bowl of broth would just be a bowl of broth to Peeta, whereas I’ll see the strings attached to it.'
Much as I'd like to see another glimpse of competent Katniss, this isn't exactly fair. Peeta thinks the romance thing is natural. It's quite likely he was barely coached at all. Katniss, on the other hand, has been constantly told to play along or else the sponsors don't help. So Peeta is not going to think anything of romantic gesture = soup."
So you're basically saying that he's an idiot, then once again going against the book and saying he makes sense. Which brings me to say that you're really just trying to say something bad about every sentence, no matter the context.
Anyway, there is just so much info dump given out that it just feels pretentious.
I apologize if I seem offensive (which I probably do), but that isn't really my intention. I'm simply silently reviewing your reviews. You often make a good point.
Re: Meh.
Date: 2011-12-08 05:31 am (UTC)Feeding an animal food and then eating the animal is significantly less efficient than just eating that food in the first place. Pigs in particular take an enormous number of calories, about as much as if they were feeding another whole person. The only exception is when you're a farmer, in which case you feed the animal on surplus/damaged food during the summer that would otherwise just rot and then kill it in the fall.
Okay, now the pig is big enough and they can eat it. What are they supposed to eat after it's gone?
ALL THE FOOD THEY WERE GIVING IT. Peeta's mother tells him to feed it perfectly good, fresh bread that just happens to be burned on the outside so people won't pay quite as much for it. Animals do not produce more food than you give them. The only time keeping them is more efficient is if you're feeding them on food you can't eat yourself, like grass, or if they're foraging on their own.
As to Peeta and the broth - there's two different issues there. Would Peeta notice the broth showing up out of nowhere (yes, he should) and would he understand the exact meaning of the gesture (no, he couldn't because only Katniss knows she's faking the relationship to get sponsors).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 03:37 pm (UTC)I'd been enjoying this enough, but I aggree that over time this has become less about pointing out genuine plot holes or areas of poor research, & more about not liking the book & wanting to find something else to complain about. It's perfectly possible to recognise the flaws in something & enjoy or like it anyway, & not just in a "so-bad-it's-good" kind of way.
For the most part the read through has been interesting & somewhat amusing, but the picking on things for the sake of it is starting to ruin that for me. For example, we get this:
"The thing is, she isn't severely sick, she's just lost blood. And I think it's actually the first time she's been injured, so her spleen hasn't dumped its red blood cell reservoir before now"
HOW exactly is this the first time she's been injured? She's had her leg & hands burned, she's had the tracker stings, & she's had her ear so badly damaged that she now seems to be perminantly deaf in her left ear (which is not neccessarally the same thing as a burst or collapsed ear drum, since these often heal of their own accord, in some cases can be caused by colds, & don't cause the person to start bleeding so much around their ear that it requires a hood to start soaking it up).
So, Katniss has indeed been injured before, and has bleed before. Keep in mind that all of these situations would have included an adrenalin rush, which would have caused her to lose blood even faster as her heart starts beating heavier than usual. Given that she lost enough blood to pass out (fainting is caused by a lack of blood to the brain, through various causes), & that even after donating blood it is usual to feel weak & dizzy, & compounded with the excercise & stress of the situation, Katniss is going to be weaker than usual for a little while. Eating is actually recommended (Peeta is actually being smart here, although I'll agree that I find him passive-aggressive).
This comment about Katniss not being injured before really bugged me, since not only has she been injured multiple times before, but also because you've been down-playing the injuries even more than the book has. Sudden loss of hearing in one ear is a pretty nasty situation to be in, even without the fact that she's a hunter who is also getting hunted by kids being forced to kill her. Sudden loss of hearing takes time to get accustomed to & learn to accomodate effectively, & she is now much more vulnerable to being snuck up on: Having both ears in different places is what allows you to pinpoint the direction that a sound is coming from, based on the changes in the sound and the time it takes to reach each ear. Katniss isn't exaggerating all that much when she describes a wall of silence on one side-- living with someone whose hearing is going noticibly in one ear, you learn that if you want to ensure that they hear you, you've got to either speak louder, or you move closer to them or towards the side of their good ear. That's for somebody who still has some hearing in that ear, is losing it gradually so has more time to adjust, & does not rely upon their ears for survival (Katbiss' ears aren't going to tell her that there's something behind her unless she manages to catch glimpse of a shadow).
THG might not be the best book for handling injuries realistically, but it still treats them with more credit that you are, and certainly with more than you credit it for.
Complaining about the author's lack of research is one thing, but complaining for the sake of complaining is something else, as is making counter-claims without always putting all that much effort into your own research.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 03:37 pm (UTC)Hold on, so one of her major influences in her writing is her father (she attributes his attitude towards teaching his kids about the Vietnam War in which he fought to her decision to do a "serious" book, and his experiences with poverty and war towards her inclusion of these in the books), who was apparently "in the Air Force, a military specialist, a historian and a doctor of political science", and he hunted and foraged to feed his family and taught a little bit of this to his daughter. Now, we have Katniss, with her incredably gifted father, who...hunted and foraged to feed his family and taught a little bit of this to his daughter...
I wonder if maybe the impressive father is less to do with "see, aren't men great?" and more to do with her clearly drawing on her own father for inspiration?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 05:20 pm (UTC)The problem isn't that Katniss' dad is great. It's that her father is great and her mom is useless, and that men = awesome keeps going for character after character. And it certainly sounds like the author's mother was something other than a depressed lump who couldn't do anything if she was pointing out that feeding the kids foraged mushrooms was a bad idea, and yet that parent didn't show up in the book.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 05:16 pm (UTC)Red blood cells are hard for the body to replace but vital for it to work, which is why blood loss is such a serious problem and someone who's lost a lot of blood will be at death's door- unless, and this is why I'm counting injuries, it's a one-time injury and they have the extra reservoir of replacement blood cells to fall back on, as replacing the blood plasma isn't nearly as hard. She has, so she should be "just donated blood" weak and not "about to die please hand feed me" weak, which is what happens if you lose blood after that's exhausted. Bleeding from her ear is not major blood loss.
Given that she lost enough blood to pass out
Actually, it's more likely she passed out from stress and from being injured. Passing out from actual bloodloss is one of those things that, without really good medical care and/or a quick transfusion, means you're dead.
I've fainted from getting hurt a few times. It didn't mean I'd lost so much blood my brain shut off, it meant my nervous system flipped out over an injury. That's the real reason behind most times people pass out.
which is not neccessarally the same thing as a burst or collapsed ear drum, since these often heal of their own accord, in some cases can be caused by colds, & don't cause the person to start bleeding so much around their ear that it requires a hood to start soaking it up)
I assure you, burst ear drums bleed and badly. She used the cloth of the hood to soak it up, not that it soaked the whole of the hood through, so that isn't a ridiculous quantity of blood for a burst drum.
but also because you've been down-playing the injuries even more than the book has. Sudden loss of hearing in one ear is a pretty nasty situation to be in,
No, because it never matters and by this point in the book that's clear. The rest of the kids aren't stealthy, so it's only a slight disadvantage when it comes to hearing them, and Katniss will spend the rest of the book mentioning it without it actually coming into play.
If there were other Katniss-type hunters or if there were dangerous but stealthy wild animals she was trying to be on guard against, it would be a nasty situation, but the trained kids are remarkably obvious.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 09:46 pm (UTC)There's plenty of uncomfortable bullshit about the way Peeta's suddenly taking charge now, but to extend it back to the puppy-love crush is just kind of overshooting. Are you accusing a five-year-old of Nice Guy Syndrome and rapey intentions? Seriously? As for the bread incident, he had a crush on a girl and so he did something nice for her. That's not creepy. That's... well, actually that's pretty much normal. Now, if he expected sexual favors in return for it, THAT would be creepy. Or even if he expected a kiss - that would, at the very least, make him an asshole and erase any trace of altruism. See the difference, though?
I know I keep playing Devil's Advocate here on this subject, and there's a reason for it. While you've been very mild for the most part with the LJ brand of feminism here - you're not tossing out buzzwords every other paragraph, and you aren't completely blind to the uncomfortable behavior on the girl's part as well - you're still really reaching to find the rape factor here. Peeta's passive-aggressive, whiney, pathetic and often selfish, though I think Katniss still has him far surpassed in that last department, but he's not a rapist. Having a crush on someone you've never spoken to and doing her a favor doesn't make you a rapist. Hinting for a kiss when you're delirious and possibly about to die doesn't make you a rapist. It's stupid, and annoying to the girl who's just trying to save your life and doesn't have time for this bullshit, but there's no need to go further and turn it into a squicky sexual-predator implication.
Same with "totally wanting to fuck her" when they're cuddling together. Of COURSE he does. There's a big difference between "wanting to" and doing. Last I checked, wanting was not a crime. I know my boyfriend wanted sex long before I did, and fantasized about it while we were cuddling sometimes, but never did anything more than that until I was ready - never so much as a backrub without my leave. Again, something you're making out to be creepy really isn't, and it's not necessary to make that much of a stretch to make Peeta unlikeable. He already is, trust me. First he was whiny and pathetic, then he was a lovesick burden, and now he's becoming petulantly bossy (and she's rolling with it like the soft-cored essentially weak female protagonist she actually is), and none of these things are likeable. But comparing his behavior to rape? Barking up the wrong tree. If anything, admitting his feelings puts him at a disadvantage; she could totally use that against him, and in a way she is, but for the most part she seems to think she should just go along with it. I put that on her, not on him. She's supposed to be a strong female protagonist. She ought to be able to make her own decisions regardless of his whining, pleading, or sob stories.
Ugh, long-winded rant is long-winded. Sorry. I've agreed with pretty much all of your other points except this one - the one-sided treatment of dubious relationships is a pet peeve of mine. This star-crossed lovers business and the horrible contrivances meant to draw them together are a disservice to both characters, not just the girl. He's as much a victim of the bad writing as she is, and if she gets a pass on that, so should he.
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Date: 2012-03-25 05:06 pm (UTC)not necessarily "So you'll be my girlfriend," but because "I like you; here's something I wouldn't do for most people." Again, I'm really not seeing the creepy.
Because he does want something in return. He won't accept no and stop doing things for her, but if she doesn't reciprocate he makes her feel like a terrible person. Even if he didn't directly guilt her on the subject and did have the purest of intentions, it's really common to feel awkward about someone giving you endless gifts and want to try to return the favor. This only gets worse in the upcoming books, but even in this one, the romance turns out to only help Peeta in the end. He gets Katniss and to survive the games.
There's two reasons rape is an issue. The first is simply that even you if it won't happen, it's still something to worry about. Peeta isn't even her boyfriend, he's a boy who she's saddled with and honestly, not one she knows very well. If someone who wasn't your boyfriend had to sleep in your bed, and most of you knew about them was just that they really wanted to fuck you, would you be uncomfortable even if they didn't seem like a rapist? And Katniss actually has expressed concern about how much stronger than her he and the other boys are.
The second is that Peeta at this point thinks she's acting like this because she actually loves him and that anything she consents to is because she wants to do it. If Peeta suggests they have sex, she'll have to make an excuse and can't just say she doesn't want to do anything like that. She has ample excuses, like the cameras undoubtedly watching them, but it's still really creepy to be in that position when you're sleeping next to the person, particularly if they're pushy about it. Especially when there aren't any clear lines here - she can't make excuses to get out of kissing, for example. If Peeta suggests groping under a blanket and doesn't want to wait because they might die tomorrow, what is she supposed to do? Exactly how much does she need to allow to prevent anyone from guessing it's all an act? It's a nasty position to be in. And that's without considering that Katniss is really bad at this stuff, so even though it's possible to make excuses, she could freeze up.
Peeta doesn't try any of this, which is good, but we only know that because we can see what ends up happening. At the start, Katniss has no way to know what might happen.
(Incidentally, Peeta will accuse her in the third book of "using" him by sleeping in the same bed with him for a little bit in book two due to nightmares but not being in a relationship.)
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Date: 2012-03-25 05:57 pm (UTC)Shit, you have any idea how many friends have let me sleep in their bed so I wouldn't be alone? That's just... arrrgh. Okay, I've really been trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but. Asshole.
My real point was that he shouldn't be condemned for finding her sexy, and I still think that. But you're right, it would still be a creepy situation for anyone, sleeping with someone you don't know if you can trust not to grope you. Again, once you put it more into perspective, it makes sense.
(I'm afraid LiveJournal has deadened me. The most popular brand of feminism here, in my experience, tends to take a very extreme form of one-sided male-blaming that refuses to ever acknowledge that women even CAN be responsible for their sexual decisions, and expands the definition of rape to ridiculous horizons that largely downplay the seriousness of the subject - something, ironically, that many of them accuse others of doing. By now it's hard not to knee-jerk react to rants that seem to be going in that direction. I think, though, in this case, you've unfortunately hit the nail on the head. And that makes me sad.)
I do think Katniss is a jerk. Not for the reasons the book points out - she's just a horrible person in general. But that really doesn't change anything. In fact, if it does, it just makes Peeta more pathetic and annoying for persisting in a crush on a girl who clearly wants nothing to do with him and treats everyone around her like dirt, except the few people she inexplicably fawns over. Seriously, dude, if you're not a creepy asshole, you can do better. Way better. If you are, then LEAVE HER ALONE.
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Date: 2012-03-29 04:59 am (UTC)Yeah, the SJ has gotten somewhat extreme. It's particularly fun when it intersects with warnings wank and you have people demanding noncon labels because a character drank a glass of wine and impaired people can't consent!!! But they're well meaning, and it'll all burn itself out eventually and we can make shiny things out of the ashes.
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Date: 2012-03-29 10:23 pm (UTC)Anyway, it's really refreshing to read/hear someone else acknowledging that Peeta comes off rather creepy. Not entirely his fault, what with him not realising that Katniss is faking it. But at the same time, he should try backing the fuck off when it's clear she doesn't want to kiss him. As you pointed out, he could seriously stop patronising her as well. It gets on my nerves when people irl suggest that they're a bad couple because 'Katniss isn't good enough for Peeta'. I'm like 'there's a hundred reasons why they're a terrible couple, and THAT ISN'T IT!' For one thing, they aren't even a bloody couple, it's clear Katniss isn't interested in a romantic relationship, so he (and later Gale) should just back off and stop manipulating her into one. I rarely care so much about our self-absorbed, idiot sociopath, but their treatment of her irritates me. I actually spoke to a friend of mine who supports prostitution, so long as those involved are willing, and I showed him a few parts of this book and gave him a general explanation of Peeta and Katniss's situation. He thought it sounded appallingly like she's being forced into prostitution. Mostly the 'making out with Peeta for supplies/medicine/food' thing. After all, what happens when kissing isn't enough and you have to fuck him on national TV in order to get tablets to live, all the while, he's thinking it's becuase you love him. If the book was actually examining the horribleness of this kind of situation, it'd be one thing, but instead it's actually suggesting this is romantic! Ugh!
Considering that most of the time when I was reading these books, I was imagining to myself what was going on with the other teenagers, I got quite attached to the red-haired girl. Other that Katniss' determination to regard every girl in her peer group as a bitch, I don't know why the redhead was given so little attention (and not even a name!). Her method of survival interests me far more than Cato's, Clove's, etc, because she didn't have survival skills, but still had the intelligence to make her situation work. Seriously, shortly before she died, I was wishing that Katniss and Peeta could go off to fight Cato, they could all die somehow, and then the redhead can win because she's smart. And not because she's some shapeshifting fox-girl-thing.
I also seriously dislike the way Haymitch is handled. Like so many other things, WASTED POTENTIAL is an issue again. Obviously he's drinking himself into a stupor to block out all the horrible memories about killing children whilst a child, and then grooming kids for the murdergames. But for whatever reason, Haymitch's condition either gets played for laughs (which is in such bad taste, I don't even) or he's nonsensically jerkass in his behaviour. Considering Katniss herself isn't a well fleshed-out character, it's really bad that we only ever see her skewed views on other people and never get much insight into their motivations, history, or whatever.
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Date: 2012-04-12 04:54 pm (UTC)That's really most of the problems right there - the author has one way of looking at things, and the story she told often doesn't match up.
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Date: 2012-03-31 12:55 pm (UTC)And I lol'ed when I saw Nightlock. I can imagine Collins going "hmmm... I need some kind of poison, I know! Hemlock! Wait, that's not a plant... Let's call it Nightlock! Close enough! And kids love edgy shit with coolass names! Googling for poisons would be far too much trouble! Nightlock it is!"
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Date: 2015-02-01 03:29 am (UTC)I'm sure I missed a bunch more but I'm far too lazy to kill brain cells with this bullshit.
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Date: 2012-06-09 02:34 am (UTC)You. Had. A. Pig.
I love how the pig has become a kind of enraged running gag in your postings about this book.
Having finally gotten a hold of a copy of the book this summer, I'm incredibly frustrated. I wanted to like it. I wanted to enjoy it and be able to squee with my friends about the movie and stuff. But all I can do I get frustrated with Katniss, the Avox thing, the squicky "romance," Katniss demonizing the other CHILDREN in the arena with her, the idea that killing the Districts' kids each year will somehow keep them from rebelling again … argh!
Reading your postings helps. You make some excellent points. I'm going to link my friends to these for help in discussions.