Catching Fire, Chapter 5
Apr. 25th, 2011 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Catching Fire, the oppressive evil government finally did something oppressive and evil and shot a guy.
They're shoved back through the door by more peacekeepers, and they meet up with the team, who've been watching on television.
“What happened?” Effie hurries over. “We lost the feed just after Katniss's beautiful speech
See? There was nothing wrong with Katniss' speech or Effie would have mentioned it. The salute thing was already intended. Don't try to tell us that it's because she's such an awesome speaker, book.
They did hear the gunshot, though.
“Nothing happened, Effie. An old truck backfired,” says Peeta evenly.
This is really getting old. I know being a good actor is one of Peeta's talents, but he's exactly as good as Katniss at this, which is to say they're both perfect. There's no fumbling, no uncertainty. Katniss' inner monologue can be uncertain, but dialogue never is. It's not even clear why he's lying to her here, because Effie's an adult woman and doesn't need to be told everything's fine.
Immediately afterward there's another two shots and Katniss wonders who else was shot.
Haymitch takes charge and tells the kids to follow him.
As far as I know, Haymitch has only been here once, when he was on his Victory Tour decades ago. But he must have a remarkable memory or reliable instincts, because he leads us up through a maze of twisting staircases and increasingly narrow halls. At times he has to stop and force a door. By the protesting squeak of the hinges you can tell it's been a long time since it was opened. Eventually we climb a ladder to a trapdoor. When Haymitch pushes it aside, we find ourselves in the dome of the Justice Building. It's a huge place filled with broken furniture, piles of books and ledgers, and rusty weapons. The coat of dust blanketing everything is so thick it's clear it hasn't been disturbed for years. Light struggles to filter in through four grimy square windows set in the sides of the dome. Haymitch kicks the trapdoor shut and turns on us. “What happened?” he asks.
Yeah, pointing out plot holes is bad form book. I'd have been quite satisfied with Haymitch just aiming for the most decrepit areas and seeing how far he could get before they start chatting.
Of course, I'm not really clear on why they're worried about the capital overhearing, since the conversation is just going to involve two pieces: Snow is mad and we have to do something to make Snow not be mad. I'm thinking Snow is 100% behind that conversation.
Peeta raises a good point, that they really should have told him. I assumed last book that he was getting kept out of the loop because Haymitch figured he was more convincing sincere, but come to think of it, we're told from very early on that he's a great actor. So really, it makes no sense to think he won't be able to act now. Also, he points out that if he'd known, he wouldn't have given the money or anything (although I really still want an explanation for why all this stuff is considered so rebellious - this is really symptomatic of the general poor worldbuilding, it's never clear how things function).
he never sent me anything until you showed up,” says Peeta.
I haven't thought much about this. How it must have looked from Peeta's perspective when I appeared in the arena having received burn medicine and bread when he, who was at death's door, had gotten nothing. Like Haymitch was keeping me alive at his expense.
Yes you did, I read it just last book. Why so retconny, book.
Also, yes, no duh he was. Even assuming he hadn't decided that originally, there was no point in helping Peeta with his leg ruined, and before that he had plenty of supplies because he was with the trained kids.
remember, until they changed the rules, I could only hope to get one of you out of there alive,” he says. “I thought since he was determined to protect you, well, between the three of us, we might be able to bring you home.”
I wish this kind of thing was a focus, instead of an aside. As I keep mentioning, the point of the games isn't personal victory, it's being the last one standing. Any aid you give to one person is hurting someone else, and only one will actually leave. You can't play fair with resources in that case. It's the same reason there's no point in volunteering to replace Rue - Thresh had a decent chance of winning, why try to find a girl who has a fair chance too and would compete for that, when only one can ever make it back?
Here, it's all glossed over. Peeta wanted Katniss to make it, so he doesn't resent Haymitch (or at least, so it's said - he does seem to bring it up a lot). Certainly Peeta wasn't doing his best to win the games on his own. But this kind of thing should be going on all the time.
Here in 11, they suffer more acutely and feel more desperation. President Snow is right. A spark could be enough to set them ablaze.
Everything is happening too fast for me to process it. The warning, the shootings, the recognition that I may have set something of great consequence in motion.
I wish the book would commit.
I like the idea that Katniss just happens to be the catalyst for this, that rebellion was already brewing and they'd have grabbed onto the first person halfway suitable. But at the same time, the book wants to think it's all to her personal credit - and I'd have liked that well enough, and kept talking about that option throughout the last review set, but it just isn't what happened.
This is related to the issue of it being unclear what exactly was so rebellious about the things that are happening - we're just told they are in some unspecified way, just as Katniss gets an unclear amount of credit for how rebellious she was.
The prep team seems oblivious to the events of the day.
They're not oblivious, they were lied to and told there were no gunshots. You were standing right next to Peeta when he said that.
They're all excited about the dinner. In the districts they're important enough to attend, whereas back in the Capitol they almost never score invitations to prestigious parties. While they try to predict what dishes will be served
And back to the food fixation.
This is kind of interesting in that it suggests that Katniss' experiences with magical replicator plates of food aren't actually standard. On the other hand, there's no new information to replace it with, and last book had the people in charge of the games inexplicably fascinated by the banquet despite the fact they should have been able to eat roast pig whenever they wanted to. If the capital isn't as wealthy as it seems, we really need to be told that at some point, because their relative degree of luxury is important in contrast to the districts. If the people of the capital are living, say, a basic middle/upper middle class lifestyle off the district's sweat and blood, that's bad, but it's a different level of bad than if everyone's living like kings with more than they could ever want. It's the difference between callousness and evulz.
A perfectly valid thing to have them discussing instead, for the record, would be fashions. The point of fancy dinners is not food, it's outfits and decorations, and they in particular are part of the fashion team and should be even more interested than usual.
Effie looks down, though.
Surely, Haymitch hasn't told her about what happened in the square. I wouldn't be surprised if Cinna and Portia know, but there seems to be an unspoken agreement to leave Effie out of the bad-news loop.
Why? She's not an infant.
about an hour ago, I decided to look around the Justice Building. I'm something of an expert in architectural design, you know,” she says.
“Oh, yes, I've heard that,” says Portia before the pause gets too long.
<3<. <3< so much.
“So, I was just having a peek around because district ruins are going to be all the rage this year, when two Peacemakers showed up and ordered me back to our quarters. One of them actually poked me with her gun!” says Effie.
Wow, Effie's really holding the idiot ball this book.
And it's not like people usually treat her all that well - she's introduced getting hugged by drunk Haymitch and Katniss repeatedly says no one in the group likes her. Last book Effie had a pretty good line about smiling when she's irritated that had the nice implication she does this all the time. So really, her being so outraged by something like this is dumb.
Katniss figures it's because they disappeared earlier to chat about how much they wanted to do exactly what the government wants.
Effie looks so distressed that I spontaneously give her a hug. “That's awful, Effie. Maybe we shouldn't go to the dinner at all. At least until they've apologized.” I know she'll never agree to this, but she brightens considerably at the suggestion, at the validation of her complaint.
Again, not an infant. Also yes, everyone in the entire world appreciates people being sympathetic toward them and agreeing the thing they think is bad is bad, please stop acting like it's some personal failing of hers.
We descend the steps and are sucked into what becomes an indistinguishable round of dinners, ceremonies, and train rides. Each day it's the same. Wake up. Get dressed. Ride through cheering crowds. Listen to a speech in our honor. Give a thank-you speech in return, but only the one the Capitol gave us, never any personal additions now. Sometimes a brief tour: a glimpse of the sea in one district, towering forests in another, ugly factories, fields of wheat, stinking refineries. Dress in evening clothes. Attend dinner. Train.
Dammit, I wanted to see the other districts!
I mean, there's all the obvious stuff - what condition are the rest of them in compared to hers and 11? But also what do they look like? There's apparently no gene flow between areas and it seems in Katniss' district they're down to two phenotypes. Also, red hair seems abnormally common, with at least two redheaded girls among our character pool. Knowing population sizes and diversity would address the question of how inbred everyone's getting. The seventy-five years of the games shouldn't have been too much, but the government was obviously in place prior to that. Were people still moving between districts before then, or were they split up even before the rebellion? How long has the gene pool been split into a dozen little puddles?
And then there's the personal issue of how Katniss deals with other districts. What's it like seeing all the families of all the kids she didn't help? Do they hate her and does she hate them back?
(And what fields of wheat? We already saw the agricultural district, so who else is growing it? And how is the one "towering forest" different from all the forests we've seen before?)
you can feel something in the air, the rolling boil of a pot about to run over. Not everywhere. Some crowds have the weary-cattle feel that I know District 12 usually projects at the victors' ceremonies. But in others — particularly 8, 4, and 3 — there is genuine elation in the faces of the people at the sight of us, and under the elation, fury. When they chant my name, it is more of a cry for vengeance than a cheer. When the Peacekeepers move in to quiet an unruly crowd, it presses back instead of retreating. And I know that there's nothing I could ever do to change this. No show of love, however believable, will turn this tide. If my holding out those berries was an act of temporary insanity, then these people will embrace insanity, too.
Sounds like the government has better things to worry about than making Katniss act right, then.
I mean, they're an evil oppressive government, so they might still take out some frustration on her. But then, they're an evil oppressive government, why don't they just declare her a rebel sympathizer and put a bullet through her head on stage? The book seems to act like there's some social contract about kids who make it through the games being protected - in fact, that'd explain why they tried so hard to save Peeta's life when they could have just let him bleed out and returned with a single victor that way. But that's never stated and Katniss never references how she's protected. The childmurder games are about publicly murdering children to make a point, there's no reason that you'd get a rebellion by murdering an extra kid. Especially when the core of the rebellion appears to be that said kid forced you to let her and another kid live. Kill her and you're good.
Really, symbol of hope -> bullet to the head. You've solved your problem!
But whatever the case, Snow has no reason to waste his efforts telling Katniss to behave now.
She starts having constant nightmares and the only thing that can help her sleep is Peeta. Because I guess somehow snuggling in his arms exactly like during the traumatrauma games somehow doesn't remind her of them.
Nothing else happens, but our arrangement quickly becomes a subject of gossip on the train.
When Effie brings it up to me, I think, Good. Maybe it will get back to President Snow.
Katniss, he doesn't actually give any fucks about if you're really in love. He doesn't even really give a fuck about if other people think you're really in love. He just wants people to stop viewing you as their figurehead. At this point, I really don't think there's much difference between "I saved him because fuck the capital" and "I saved him because I loved him so fuck the capital".
The back-to-back appearances in 2 and 1 are their own special kind of awful. Cato and Clove, the tributes from District 2, might have both made it home if Peeta and I hadn't.
Well, probably not since that was a lie, but anyway. This is really disappointing. Their families, Katniss. What are their families like? These people raised their kids to die, but also to have a much better chance than normal of making it through the games.
And both of them were quite sadistic - Clove obviously so, but she said Cato agreed to giving her the kill as long as she made it particularly painful. Are these people who deserved to live? And yet, can you really decide who deserves to live? That's something to struggle with when thinking about guilt and culpability here.
I personally killed the girl, Glimmer, and the boy from District 1. As I try to avoid looking at his family, I learn that his name was Marvel. How did I never know that? I suppose that before the Games I didn't pay attention, and afterward I didn't want to know.
...okay, so at least she's admitting Glimmer's her kill. But again she's focusing all on the boy. It's honestly weird just how incredibly consistent the books are about this.
And if you're going to focus on the guy's family, look at them and wonder about how they raised a kid to stab a screaming twelve year old.
Really, Katniss says over and over that the trained kids as scum, but she doesn't seem to have the slightest issue with the people who decided to train the kids for the games.
They keep up the act even after that last district.
We don't need to convince anybody in the Capitol of our love but hold to the slim hope that we can still reach some of those we failed to convince in the districts. Whatever we do seems too little, too late.
Uh, I though we established that it isn't about you and your love story anyway, that the districts are just already pushed to the breaking point?
Apparently not, since Katniss' brilliant plan is a public marriage proposal.
Peeta agrees to do it but then disappears to his room for a long time. Haymitch tells me to leave him alone.
“I thought he wanted it, anyway,” I say.
“Not like this,” Haymitch says. “He wanted it to be real.”
I'm liking Peeta in this book. This is the clearest sign so far that Peeta actually accepts her feelings, he'd rather not be with her than have a fake marriage.
I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else.
What, that's your biggest issue? When you repeatedly said you didn't want to marry anyone?
So during their interview in the capital Peeta proposes and the president is there to congratulate them.
When he pulls back, his fingers digging into my arms, his face smiling into mine, I dare to raise my eyebrows. They ask what my lips can't. Did I do it? Was it enough? Was giving everything over to you, keeping up the game, promising to marry Peeta enough?
In answer, he gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
Well obviously.
Look, Katniss, I don't think you got it. It's not that he ships you guys. The districts are rebellious, he doesn't want them being rebellious. You can fuck Peeta on stage if you like, unless it somehow makes them stop thinking they can oppose the capital it's not going to matter. You're obsessing over the wrong thing.
What's kind of irritating here is there's this nice side issue. See, the two of them being distracted by each other and not really paying attention because they're so in love is actually rather self-centered and dumb-looking to everyone who isn't also sixteen. Show the districts that their heroine had no real ambitions, that when given Peeta and fame she's happy to be the capital's newest lapdog, and maybe that would make them stop seeing her as someone noble. Make that the act she's supposed to convince them of, and have the romance be the method rather than the end result.
And that's also a lot more tragic, if she's being screwed over by the fact she's too much of a decent person to act properly airheaded and oblivious when she's facing the families of kids she killed while standing in the midst of a beaten down town covered in a crude whitewash of decorations, unable to act properly carefree each night at the banquet she's eating after seeing all the hollow-cheeked people in the crowd.
But that would require Katniss not be happy to be their lapdog and not carefree at the sight of banquets amid famine in the first place.
They're shoved back through the door by more peacekeepers, and they meet up with the team, who've been watching on television.
“What happened?” Effie hurries over. “We lost the feed just after Katniss's beautiful speech
See? There was nothing wrong with Katniss' speech or Effie would have mentioned it. The salute thing was already intended. Don't try to tell us that it's because she's such an awesome speaker, book.
They did hear the gunshot, though.
“Nothing happened, Effie. An old truck backfired,” says Peeta evenly.
This is really getting old. I know being a good actor is one of Peeta's talents, but he's exactly as good as Katniss at this, which is to say they're both perfect. There's no fumbling, no uncertainty. Katniss' inner monologue can be uncertain, but dialogue never is. It's not even clear why he's lying to her here, because Effie's an adult woman and doesn't need to be told everything's fine.
Immediately afterward there's another two shots and Katniss wonders who else was shot.
Haymitch takes charge and tells the kids to follow him.
As far as I know, Haymitch has only been here once, when he was on his Victory Tour decades ago. But he must have a remarkable memory or reliable instincts, because he leads us up through a maze of twisting staircases and increasingly narrow halls. At times he has to stop and force a door. By the protesting squeak of the hinges you can tell it's been a long time since it was opened. Eventually we climb a ladder to a trapdoor. When Haymitch pushes it aside, we find ourselves in the dome of the Justice Building. It's a huge place filled with broken furniture, piles of books and ledgers, and rusty weapons. The coat of dust blanketing everything is so thick it's clear it hasn't been disturbed for years. Light struggles to filter in through four grimy square windows set in the sides of the dome. Haymitch kicks the trapdoor shut and turns on us. “What happened?” he asks.
Yeah, pointing out plot holes is bad form book. I'd have been quite satisfied with Haymitch just aiming for the most decrepit areas and seeing how far he could get before they start chatting.
Of course, I'm not really clear on why they're worried about the capital overhearing, since the conversation is just going to involve two pieces: Snow is mad and we have to do something to make Snow not be mad. I'm thinking Snow is 100% behind that conversation.
Peeta raises a good point, that they really should have told him. I assumed last book that he was getting kept out of the loop because Haymitch figured he was more convincing sincere, but come to think of it, we're told from very early on that he's a great actor. So really, it makes no sense to think he won't be able to act now. Also, he points out that if he'd known, he wouldn't have given the money or anything (although I really still want an explanation for why all this stuff is considered so rebellious - this is really symptomatic of the general poor worldbuilding, it's never clear how things function).
he never sent me anything until you showed up,” says Peeta.
I haven't thought much about this. How it must have looked from Peeta's perspective when I appeared in the arena having received burn medicine and bread when he, who was at death's door, had gotten nothing. Like Haymitch was keeping me alive at his expense.
Yes you did, I read it just last book. Why so retconny, book.
Also, yes, no duh he was. Even assuming he hadn't decided that originally, there was no point in helping Peeta with his leg ruined, and before that he had plenty of supplies because he was with the trained kids.
remember, until they changed the rules, I could only hope to get one of you out of there alive,” he says. “I thought since he was determined to protect you, well, between the three of us, we might be able to bring you home.”
I wish this kind of thing was a focus, instead of an aside. As I keep mentioning, the point of the games isn't personal victory, it's being the last one standing. Any aid you give to one person is hurting someone else, and only one will actually leave. You can't play fair with resources in that case. It's the same reason there's no point in volunteering to replace Rue - Thresh had a decent chance of winning, why try to find a girl who has a fair chance too and would compete for that, when only one can ever make it back?
Here, it's all glossed over. Peeta wanted Katniss to make it, so he doesn't resent Haymitch (or at least, so it's said - he does seem to bring it up a lot). Certainly Peeta wasn't doing his best to win the games on his own. But this kind of thing should be going on all the time.
Here in 11, they suffer more acutely and feel more desperation. President Snow is right. A spark could be enough to set them ablaze.
Everything is happening too fast for me to process it. The warning, the shootings, the recognition that I may have set something of great consequence in motion.
I wish the book would commit.
I like the idea that Katniss just happens to be the catalyst for this, that rebellion was already brewing and they'd have grabbed onto the first person halfway suitable. But at the same time, the book wants to think it's all to her personal credit - and I'd have liked that well enough, and kept talking about that option throughout the last review set, but it just isn't what happened.
This is related to the issue of it being unclear what exactly was so rebellious about the things that are happening - we're just told they are in some unspecified way, just as Katniss gets an unclear amount of credit for how rebellious she was.
The prep team seems oblivious to the events of the day.
They're not oblivious, they were lied to and told there were no gunshots. You were standing right next to Peeta when he said that.
They're all excited about the dinner. In the districts they're important enough to attend, whereas back in the Capitol they almost never score invitations to prestigious parties. While they try to predict what dishes will be served
And back to the food fixation.
This is kind of interesting in that it suggests that Katniss' experiences with magical replicator plates of food aren't actually standard. On the other hand, there's no new information to replace it with, and last book had the people in charge of the games inexplicably fascinated by the banquet despite the fact they should have been able to eat roast pig whenever they wanted to. If the capital isn't as wealthy as it seems, we really need to be told that at some point, because their relative degree of luxury is important in contrast to the districts. If the people of the capital are living, say, a basic middle/upper middle class lifestyle off the district's sweat and blood, that's bad, but it's a different level of bad than if everyone's living like kings with more than they could ever want. It's the difference between callousness and evulz.
A perfectly valid thing to have them discussing instead, for the record, would be fashions. The point of fancy dinners is not food, it's outfits and decorations, and they in particular are part of the fashion team and should be even more interested than usual.
Effie looks down, though.
Surely, Haymitch hasn't told her about what happened in the square. I wouldn't be surprised if Cinna and Portia know, but there seems to be an unspoken agreement to leave Effie out of the bad-news loop.
Why? She's not an infant.
about an hour ago, I decided to look around the Justice Building. I'm something of an expert in architectural design, you know,” she says.
“Oh, yes, I've heard that,” says Portia before the pause gets too long.
<3<. <3< so much.
“So, I was just having a peek around because district ruins are going to be all the rage this year, when two Peacemakers showed up and ordered me back to our quarters. One of them actually poked me with her gun!” says Effie.
Wow, Effie's really holding the idiot ball this book.
And it's not like people usually treat her all that well - she's introduced getting hugged by drunk Haymitch and Katniss repeatedly says no one in the group likes her. Last book Effie had a pretty good line about smiling when she's irritated that had the nice implication she does this all the time. So really, her being so outraged by something like this is dumb.
Katniss figures it's because they disappeared earlier to chat about how much they wanted to do exactly what the government wants.
Effie looks so distressed that I spontaneously give her a hug. “That's awful, Effie. Maybe we shouldn't go to the dinner at all. At least until they've apologized.” I know she'll never agree to this, but she brightens considerably at the suggestion, at the validation of her complaint.
Again, not an infant. Also yes, everyone in the entire world appreciates people being sympathetic toward them and agreeing the thing they think is bad is bad, please stop acting like it's some personal failing of hers.
We descend the steps and are sucked into what becomes an indistinguishable round of dinners, ceremonies, and train rides. Each day it's the same. Wake up. Get dressed. Ride through cheering crowds. Listen to a speech in our honor. Give a thank-you speech in return, but only the one the Capitol gave us, never any personal additions now. Sometimes a brief tour: a glimpse of the sea in one district, towering forests in another, ugly factories, fields of wheat, stinking refineries. Dress in evening clothes. Attend dinner. Train.
Dammit, I wanted to see the other districts!
I mean, there's all the obvious stuff - what condition are the rest of them in compared to hers and 11? But also what do they look like? There's apparently no gene flow between areas and it seems in Katniss' district they're down to two phenotypes. Also, red hair seems abnormally common, with at least two redheaded girls among our character pool. Knowing population sizes and diversity would address the question of how inbred everyone's getting. The seventy-five years of the games shouldn't have been too much, but the government was obviously in place prior to that. Were people still moving between districts before then, or were they split up even before the rebellion? How long has the gene pool been split into a dozen little puddles?
And then there's the personal issue of how Katniss deals with other districts. What's it like seeing all the families of all the kids she didn't help? Do they hate her and does she hate them back?
(And what fields of wheat? We already saw the agricultural district, so who else is growing it? And how is the one "towering forest" different from all the forests we've seen before?)
you can feel something in the air, the rolling boil of a pot about to run over. Not everywhere. Some crowds have the weary-cattle feel that I know District 12 usually projects at the victors' ceremonies. But in others — particularly 8, 4, and 3 — there is genuine elation in the faces of the people at the sight of us, and under the elation, fury. When they chant my name, it is more of a cry for vengeance than a cheer. When the Peacekeepers move in to quiet an unruly crowd, it presses back instead of retreating. And I know that there's nothing I could ever do to change this. No show of love, however believable, will turn this tide. If my holding out those berries was an act of temporary insanity, then these people will embrace insanity, too.
Sounds like the government has better things to worry about than making Katniss act right, then.
I mean, they're an evil oppressive government, so they might still take out some frustration on her. But then, they're an evil oppressive government, why don't they just declare her a rebel sympathizer and put a bullet through her head on stage? The book seems to act like there's some social contract about kids who make it through the games being protected - in fact, that'd explain why they tried so hard to save Peeta's life when they could have just let him bleed out and returned with a single victor that way. But that's never stated and Katniss never references how she's protected. The childmurder games are about publicly murdering children to make a point, there's no reason that you'd get a rebellion by murdering an extra kid. Especially when the core of the rebellion appears to be that said kid forced you to let her and another kid live. Kill her and you're good.
Really, symbol of hope -> bullet to the head. You've solved your problem!
But whatever the case, Snow has no reason to waste his efforts telling Katniss to behave now.
She starts having constant nightmares and the only thing that can help her sleep is Peeta. Because I guess somehow snuggling in his arms exactly like during the traumatrauma games somehow doesn't remind her of them.
Nothing else happens, but our arrangement quickly becomes a subject of gossip on the train.
When Effie brings it up to me, I think, Good. Maybe it will get back to President Snow.
Katniss, he doesn't actually give any fucks about if you're really in love. He doesn't even really give a fuck about if other people think you're really in love. He just wants people to stop viewing you as their figurehead. At this point, I really don't think there's much difference between "I saved him because fuck the capital" and "I saved him because I loved him so fuck the capital".
The back-to-back appearances in 2 and 1 are their own special kind of awful. Cato and Clove, the tributes from District 2, might have both made it home if Peeta and I hadn't.
Well, probably not since that was a lie, but anyway. This is really disappointing. Their families, Katniss. What are their families like? These people raised their kids to die, but also to have a much better chance than normal of making it through the games.
And both of them were quite sadistic - Clove obviously so, but she said Cato agreed to giving her the kill as long as she made it particularly painful. Are these people who deserved to live? And yet, can you really decide who deserves to live? That's something to struggle with when thinking about guilt and culpability here.
I personally killed the girl, Glimmer, and the boy from District 1. As I try to avoid looking at his family, I learn that his name was Marvel. How did I never know that? I suppose that before the Games I didn't pay attention, and afterward I didn't want to know.
...okay, so at least she's admitting Glimmer's her kill. But again she's focusing all on the boy. It's honestly weird just how incredibly consistent the books are about this.
And if you're going to focus on the guy's family, look at them and wonder about how they raised a kid to stab a screaming twelve year old.
Really, Katniss says over and over that the trained kids as scum, but she doesn't seem to have the slightest issue with the people who decided to train the kids for the games.
They keep up the act even after that last district.
We don't need to convince anybody in the Capitol of our love but hold to the slim hope that we can still reach some of those we failed to convince in the districts. Whatever we do seems too little, too late.
Uh, I though we established that it isn't about you and your love story anyway, that the districts are just already pushed to the breaking point?
Apparently not, since Katniss' brilliant plan is a public marriage proposal.
Peeta agrees to do it but then disappears to his room for a long time. Haymitch tells me to leave him alone.
“I thought he wanted it, anyway,” I say.
“Not like this,” Haymitch says. “He wanted it to be real.”
I'm liking Peeta in this book. This is the clearest sign so far that Peeta actually accepts her feelings, he'd rather not be with her than have a fake marriage.
I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else.
What, that's your biggest issue? When you repeatedly said you didn't want to marry anyone?
So during their interview in the capital Peeta proposes and the president is there to congratulate them.
When he pulls back, his fingers digging into my arms, his face smiling into mine, I dare to raise my eyebrows. They ask what my lips can't. Did I do it? Was it enough? Was giving everything over to you, keeping up the game, promising to marry Peeta enough?
In answer, he gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
Well obviously.
Look, Katniss, I don't think you got it. It's not that he ships you guys. The districts are rebellious, he doesn't want them being rebellious. You can fuck Peeta on stage if you like, unless it somehow makes them stop thinking they can oppose the capital it's not going to matter. You're obsessing over the wrong thing.
What's kind of irritating here is there's this nice side issue. See, the two of them being distracted by each other and not really paying attention because they're so in love is actually rather self-centered and dumb-looking to everyone who isn't also sixteen. Show the districts that their heroine had no real ambitions, that when given Peeta and fame she's happy to be the capital's newest lapdog, and maybe that would make them stop seeing her as someone noble. Make that the act she's supposed to convince them of, and have the romance be the method rather than the end result.
And that's also a lot more tragic, if she's being screwed over by the fact she's too much of a decent person to act properly airheaded and oblivious when she's facing the families of kids she killed while standing in the midst of a beaten down town covered in a crude whitewash of decorations, unable to act properly carefree each night at the banquet she's eating after seeing all the hollow-cheeked people in the crowd.
But that would require Katniss not be happy to be their lapdog and not carefree at the sight of banquets amid famine in the first place.
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Completely and utterly off-topic yet again
Date: 2011-04-27 12:45 am (UTC)Re: Completely and utterly off-topic yet again
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