Catching Fire, Chapter 6
Apr. 27th, 2011 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast chapter, to the surprise of no one sane, Katniss was told she didn't do a good enough job at pacifying the districts by kissing her notboyfriend on stage.
The main thing I feel is a sense of relief. That I can give up this game. That the question of whether I can succeed in this venture has been answered, even if that answer is a resounding no. That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I am free to act as desperately as I wish.
That is indeed a problem with evil oppressive governments. At a certain point people figure they're doomed no matter what, so hey, why not get some dynamite first? The anarchists had a good point. And this is both a realistic reaction on her part and a promising one - time for Katniss to finally start being active!
Katniss, though, goes on to start planning how she's going to run off with her family into the woods, which, no. By the time the guy tells you you've failed, they've already shot everyone else, for exactly this reason.
Meanwhile the president is outwardly playing along and offering to throw them a wedding at the capital.
“Oh, before we set a date, we better clear it with Katniss's mother,” says the president. The audience gives a big laugh and the president puts his arm around me. “Maybe if the whole country puts its mind to it, we can get you married before you're thirty.”
“You'll probably have to pass a new law,” I say with a giggle.
“If that's what it takes,” says the president with conspiratorial good humor.
I think there's a real disjoint between what I want from this book and what it wants. It wants to tell me about how the character is awesome and throw in a bit of banter. I want to read about actual sixteen year olds in over their heads, which means stuff like not being absolutely perfect actors every single second.
Anyway, time for the party. Just so we're clear, "the" party means the twelfth party so far, as there's been one every district.
The party, held in the banquet room of President Snow's mansion, has no equal. The forty-foot ceiling has been transformed into the night sky, and the stars look exactly as they do at home. I suppose they look the same from the Capitol, but who would know? There's always too much light from the city to see the stars here. About halfway between the floor and the ceiling, musicians float on what look like fluffy white clouds, but I can't see what holds them aloft. Traditional dining tables have been replaced by innumerable stuffed sofas and chairs, some surrounding fireplaces, others beside fragrant flower gardens or ponds filled with exotic fish, so that people can eat and drink and do whatever they please in the utmost comfort. There's a large tiled area in the center of the room that serves as everything from a dance floor, to a stage for the performers who come and go, to another spot to mingle with the flamboyantly dressed guests.
Wow, that's...well, actually pretty bland. Where are the orgies? Where are the trained monkeys? At least put up something interesting on the ceiling instead of a simple blank and white pattern. They're an evil government, maybe have something evil going on as entertainment? How about a looping display of the games with closeups on the gore, at least. Have people making idle conversation over children screaming.
But the real star of the evening is the food. Tables laden with delicacies line the walls. Everything you can think of, and things you have never dreamed of, lie in wait. Whole roasted cows and pigs and goats still turning on spits. Huge platters of fowl stuffed with savory fruits and nuts. Ocean creatures drizzled in sauces or begging to be dipped in spicy concoctions. Countless cheeses, breads, vegetables, sweets, waterfalls of wine, and streams of spirits that flicker with flames.
I really don't know where the author got the idea the pinnacle of fancy food is whole spitted animals. In medieval times you had cooks sewing swan skins back onto cooked birds (which may not have been swans), stuffing animals into other animals into other animals into other animals, cooking the same animal three different ways at different parts, pureeing, jellying, gilding... And then there's your cliché larks' tongues. And they didn't even have refrigerators back then.
And that's not getting into all sorts of weird shit people still eat. They're evil, right?
http://www.cracked.com/article_16951_the-6-most-sadistic-dishes-from-around-world.html
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-7-bizzare-habits-eating-food-while-animal-still-alive
Where is the dolphin ikizukuri? Where are the baby kittens? EVIL PEOPLE EAT KITTENS.
And then there's just the bizarre constructions people make - see basically half the food-related cable shows. There should be a twenty foot high cake. Instead the most decadent thing is apparently that they got one of those cheap fountain things and filled it with wine. Not even chocolate, just regular wine. (And that's assuming waterfalls is literal and not just Katniss meaning "a whole bunch of".)
But still. The very fact they're having banquets while people starve is messed up. This kind of shit is what gets you the French Revolution. Just imagine the whiplash of going from a district full of starving little kids to this massive room of food and how horrible...
“I want to taste everything in the room,” I tell Peeta.
God damn it Katniss.
You know what the most frustrating thing here is? There are so many ways to handle this. Katniss could not eat because she can't stand it. Katniss could display some sort of spine and conscience and find a single simple dish, eat a normal serving, and then leave the rest untouched as a gesture of disapproval. Katniss could, on the other hand, rationalize that nothing she does matters now, since the food will never go near all the people starving either way, so she eats a large meal anyway. And Katniss could be anxious and not want to attract attention to herself, so she keeps food on her plate and eats along with everyone else.
Or Katniss could be tempted, because that's what every impressive thing the capital has is, a temptation, something you can have too if you just play along and forget that everything in the room is covered in blood and tears. It wouldn't make her bad to be tempted, but it makes the book bad to never acknowledge it.
(I really don't see much temptation in these stories. There have been a couple times I thought that was what was going on with the heroine's breathless description of how okay, the nobility sucked but omg pretty dresses *u* and then it came to nothing.)
Anyway, she says everyone's wearing the mockingjay symbol.
I can only imagine how nuts that makes President Snow.
Why is he making a big deal of it in the first place? The fact a bunch of privileged assholes are using a revolutionary symbol isn't helping any revolution get off the ground. This is all so circular - the reason it's rebellious is he doesn't like it because it's rebellious, and part of why it's rebellious is he can't control the thing he had no reason to control until he decided he wanted to control it.
In order to have room to eat everything, she only has a bite of each. She tries some delicious bird stuffed with orange sauce.
I make Peeta eat the remainder because I want to keep tasting things, and the idea of throwing away food, as I see so many people doing so casually, is abhorrent to me.
Oh, but stuffing yourself sick is fine. As is throwing away the leftovers afterward, which you just know they're going to do.
In terms of waste, there's really little difference between throwing it away and eating so much you end up weighting five hundred pounds. (Also NO IT ISN'T ABHORRENT TO YOU. The cookies out the window, field-dressing game to discard half the animal, not shooting wild dogs because you couldn't get a good deal for them...)
Katniss is filling up so the prep team wanders by and advise they drink something so they can throw up and then eat again.
Then Peeta speaks in a strained voice.
“You go along, thinking you can deal with it, thinking maybe they're not so bad, and then you—” He cuts himself off.
All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of the children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what the parents can't give. More food. Now that we're rich, she'll send some home with them. But often in the old days, there was nothing to give and the child was past saving, anyway. And here in the Capitol they're vomiting for the pleasure of filling their bellies again and again. Not from some illness of body or mind, not from spoiled food. It's what everyone does at a party. Expected. Part of the fun.
Shut up.
I don't know where the hell people get the idea that somehow throwing up puts this over the edge. Do you have any idea the amount of time and effort wasted already? Those fancy ponds with their fancy fish, the various meat animals, all sorts of weird delicacies - all of that is wasteful. And you know what else is? Your stupid fashion line. The animal fibers are from places where they're raising animals for fancy cloth, the plant fibers from where they aren't growing food, and your fucking ermine coat, where do you think that's from? And that dress last book made of forty pounds of gemstones is made of stones people mined out of the earth just like your district mines coal, and likely people died getting them just like your father died. For a dress you wore once.
This is an American book. Picture some of the stupid shit we do in America. Now picture all those people saying it's okay, because at least they don't throw up food. Because doing that would just be wrong.
(Bear in mind Katniss already knows people in the capital go to doctors to get the fat taken off afterward, so that too is apparently forgivable.)
But any suggestion that maybe we're more like the capital than the districts would get in the way of our little oppression fantasy here.
You know, if the author didn't want to deal with this, there are other options. You can have decadence without it going hand in hand with deprivation. But the author chose to make a big deal of starvation instead, and how the districts are oppressed and miserable.
Katniss, without a trace of irony, goes on to talk about Gale's family.
Vick was home sick with a bad cough. Being part of Gale's family, the kid has to eat better than ninety percent of the rest of District 12. But he still spent about fifteen minutes talking about how they'd opened a can of corn syrup from Parcel Day and each had a spoonful on bread and were going to maybe have more later in the week. How Hazelle had said he could have a bit in a cup of tea to soothe his cough, but he wouldn't feel right unless the others had some, too.
Vick sounds like someone who wouldn't be cheerfully gobbling down food at a banquet. Why isn't the story about Vick? I like him better.
Also, it's a lovely return to our friend worldbuilding fail. That's a nice change.
So last time I was talking about food a lot. As I said then, if they have corn that should be their staple food. Corn syrup is cheap stuff. You feed it to your population for the calories. That's why it's in all our food now.
In fact, generally, what's up with sugar? We're originally told it's rare, but then that there's some incredibly sweet sleeping syrup that's really cheap, and generally, sweet medicines are because it's medicine mixed with sugar. And that can't be their only easy access to sweetness, because it takes Peeta a little while to work out that she's mixed it with the berries (berries are generally not extremely sweet) so he must have eaten sweetened food in numerous other contexts to fall for it.
Anyway, Peeta mutters that he wonders if they did the right thing by trying to pacify the districts. Because ordering the murder of kids on television or passively killing people by starvation is one thing, and certainly shooting an old man in the head for whistling is fine, but but throwing up? They've gone too far.
Then someone comes over to dance.
Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker.
Another Roman name and another guy in charge. Lovely.
I don't want to dance with Plutarch Heavensbee. I don't want to feel his hands, one resting against mine, one on my hip. I'm not used to being touched, except by Peeta or my family, and I rank Gamemakers somewhere below maggots in terms of creatures I want in contact with my skin.
Katniss has finally discovered a sense of personal space. A rather arbitrary and retconny one, since she's been fine getting stripped naked and plucked by the fashion team, having people put clothes on her, and having Snow putting an arm around her, but hey, I'll take it. It's been getting creepy how she goes along with everything.
As they dance, he mentions avoiding punch bowls. See, last book when she startled the gamemakers one fell into the punch bowl.
“Oh, you're one who—” I laugh, remembering him splashing back into the punch bowl.
“Yes. And you'll be pleased to know I've never recovered,” says Plutarch.
I want to point out that twenty-two dead tributes will never recover from the Games he helped create, either. But I only say, “Good. So, you're the Head Gamemaker this year? That must be a big honor.”
This is a really good exchange. It'd be nice if Katniss wasn't quite so perky, with the laughing and all, but generally this is how most conversations should have gone, with Katniss saying pleasantries while thinking how much she hates them, and without her pleasantries involving any major acting skill beyond not spitting in their face.
He mentions he has a special meeting about the games.
“I'll have to be going soon.” He turns the watch so I can see the face. “It starts at midnight.”
“That seems late for—” I say, but then something distracts me. Plutarch has run his thumb across the crystal face of the watch and for just a moment an image appears, glowing as if lit by candlelight. It's another mockingjay. Exactly like the pin on my dress. Only this one disappears. He snaps the watch closed.
“That's very pretty,” I say.
“Oh, it's more than pretty. It's one of a kind,” he says. “If anyone asks about me, say I've gone home to bed. The meetings are supposed to be kept secret. But I thought it'd be safe to tell you.”
Well. That's pretty clever. I hope he's not expecting anything out of Katniss, though - she's oblivious as he heads off.
I'm thinking about Plutarch showing off his pretty, one-of-a-kind watch to me. There was something strange about it. Almost clandestine. But why? Maybe he thinks someone else will steal his idea of putting a disappearing mockingjay on a watch face. Yes, he probably paid a fortune for it and now he can't show it to anyone because he's afraid someone will make a cheap, knockoff version. Only in the Capitol.
Our heroine.
This is also why I don't believe any of the defenses of the book that it's supposed to be this way or there's unreliable narration. Just look at this. Gee, do you think maybe there's something more to it than just that????????
And no, it's not bad writing - one of the more serviceable passages, really. It's actually pretty good in raising the issue without really requiring Katniss hold the idiot ball, and it's entirely possible for a reader to skim over it if they're not paying attention. But it is a pretty clear example that what you see is what you get, and that anything beyond that is fanwank.
“Effie said we have to be on the train at one. I wonder what time it is,” he says, glancing around.
“Almost midnight,” I reply. I pluck a chocolate flower from a cake with my fingers and nibble on it, so beyond worrying about manners.
“Time to say thank you and farewell!” trills Effie at my elbow. It's one of those moments when I just love her compulsive punctuality.
Effie! <3 <3 <3
While my original love for Effie was simply because the book was being so unfair to her, she actually is a character type I'm fond of, and one books usually treat badly. I tend to like characters who are competent and focused on something, such as a job, and a lot of books really hate people who like jobs. In a lot of aristocratic casts, one or more of the main characters will have some support character whose job is to handle schedule and act as a diplomatic knowledge dispenser. The main character is generally a dick to this character on the basis that this isn't important, they just don't wanna, and/or it's weird to know/care about it. This dickery tends to be particularly stark given the support character has no power over them but will catch all the blame for anything they do.
Then they turn out to be evil or something, and the book treats it like an OMG how could you betray me we were friends thing despite the fact they were a complete dick and I'm hoping the adviser guy manages their coup because if the prince wanted to be king so damn bad he should have acted like one. All hail our new glorious scholar-ruler, who won't fuck off to hunt instead of talking to foreign heads of state about trade relationships.
So then Katniss wakes up and she had a nice dream about following mockingjay Rue somewhere, and Peeta says he could tell she was okay because of how well she was sleeping, and Katniss asks why she can't tell if he's having a nightmare and he says his nightmares are just about losing her so he's okay as soon as he wakes up to see her.
I still feel awful, as if I've been using him in some terrible way. Have I? I don't know. I only know that for the first time, I feel immoral about him being here in my bed.
Okay, so I really am okay with Peeta now, even in continuity with last book's events. But I still want the subplot to die in a fire because it's still generating stuff like this.
Katniss saved his life several times over and has made a decent attempt to be his friend. She has yet to show any resentment toward him over how she's forced to act toward him or their upcoming marriage. She isn't using him by not loving him back. She isn't obligated to love someone for what he does for her.
Anyway, then they're back in town for the final celebration.
Now, a couple times now the book's listed Madge, the mayor's kid, when talking about people Katniss knows. I've been ignoring this because we saw last book they barely knew each other, but that's finally been explained.
I like Mayor Undersee's house, especially now that his daughter, Madge, and I are friends. We always were, in a way. It became official when she came to say good-bye to me before I left for the Games. When she gave me the mockingjay pin for luck. After I got home, we started spending time together. It turns out Madge has plenty of empty hours to fill, too. It was a little awkward at first because we didn't know what to do. Other girls our age, I've heard them talking about boys, or other girls, or clothes. Madge and I aren't gossipy and clothes bore me to tears. But after a few false starts, I realized she was dying to go into the woods, so I've taken her a couple of times and showed her how to shoot. She's trying to teach me the piano, but mostly I like to listen to her play.
Slight retconny feel to this - there's no "always were, in a way" to it, this is obviously a change and should have been explained the first time it came up - but nice. Katniss is sorely lacking in friends and the book can always use more decent female characters, and it's great to finally see another girl get involved in poaching. Katniss learning piano is nice too, because it makes her more rounded as a character instead of being all about her honorary male pursuits.
(Less pleased that the book couldn't manage to give two girls a relationship that didn't involve a jab at how every other girl is a dumb gossipy airhead. It's especially hypocritical when half this book so far has been about boys and another fourth has been clothes.)
Her parents seem nice but I don't think she sees a whole lot of them. Her father has District 12 to run and her mother gets fierce headaches that force her to stay in bed for days.
The book's been doing well enough that her mother being out of commission isn't much of an issue, but still, only men get the important tasks, rather than her mother being busy helping run the district. And you know, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing - her mom could be busy helping with mayor things except when laid up by headaches, and between the two has little time left for Madge.
And once again, there's no sense of responsibility. If he's a nice guy, why doesn't he do anything about the abused orphan kids, or the starvation in general? Is the reason District 12 is better than 11 because he's holding off the worst of the capital, or just that the capital doesn't care? What exactly does running the district involve? Why doesn't anyone else ask these questions - Katniss could tell us a lot here by saying something about how people often blame him for a particular thing when he has no power to fix it, like, for example, the starvation, or by saying they don't blame him because he's improved things a lot from how it used to be and they know he's doing the best he can.
Katniss suggests one day they should take Madge's mother to the capital to get her headaches fixed and Madge says that they can only go there with an invitation.
Really, how is the evil oppressive government staying in power? Last book had one reasonable bit about pitting the have-nots against the have-a-littles, and that's been it. What do the mayor and the peacekeepers get for their loyalty to encourage them to side with the capital and against the district people? Because hording magic science is going to make people a lot more sympathetic to rebels and their promise of magic science for all.
Anyway, Katniss goes to say hi to the mayor, but he's not in his study. The TV's on, though.
I'm leaving the room when a beeping noise catches my attention. I turn back to see the screen of the television go black. Then the words “UPDATE ON DISTRICT 8” start flashing. Instinctively I know this is not for my eyes but something intended only for the mayor.
First, uh, how does she instinctively know that? Is it written in scary font? Now, clearly they don't want people knowing about other districts, so she can surely use her brain to figure out based on her life experiences to date that something labeled about District 8 is something she shouldn't see. But I'm not sure how she can be doing so instinctively.
Second, wow, that is one hell of a shitty, shitty way to contact people. If he's not sitting in front of the thing constantly he'll miss any message.
Third, why are they telling him? Katniss says he's a nice guy and the fact they won't cure his wife (or remove his kid's name from the reaping, come to think of it) suggests they really haven't done much to make him loyal. Why would you want the leaders of the other districts to know what's going on outside? I mean, for example, what if there was a rebellion in one, and they were sending in troops to control it, meaning that if your district rebelled at the same time they wouldn't have people left to send?
Hypothetically, I mean, because surely whatever this is about, it would be far more innocuous, but still.
An announcer I've never seen before appears. It's a woman with graying hair and a hoarse, authoritative voice. She warns that conditions are worsening and a Level 3 alert has been called. Additional forces are being sent into District 8, and all textile production has ceased.
...
And who's this announcer? (And why does she have graying hair of all things?) Who is she speaking to? Is this sent to the capital and the mayors get the capital feed, or is this a government only broadcast? But why would they need to be told about this when it's not their job? I mean, so more forces are being sent, what does District 12's mayor have to do with that?
And hey, there's the reason districting is dumb. Any rebellion in any district completely shuts down that commodity. A major part of keeping strikes under control is making sure you have multiple sources, so that if one group stops producing to try to force you to deal with them, you can keep going on what you're getting in other places while they starve. Indeed, the very point of even organizing into groups is because if a single worker stops they're easily replaced. That's why companies hate unions so much, because they'll organize so that they shut everything down. Districting was basically like preemptively unionizing everything, only worse because at least with unions they normally aren't the entire population and with luck you can use the lack of sympathy by others to help break the strike.
Really, the more I learn the more unfair Snow is for blaming Katniss. This kind of thing takes an incredible amount of criminal mismanagement. How has the government even lasted this long?
And yes, obviously it's supposed to be unfair, but there's a difference between blaming someone for what they did unintentionally and for what was inevitable no matter what. Snow has given every sign of being intended as intelligent, yet this is incredibly stupid.
They cut away from the woman to the main square in District 8. I recognize it because I was there only last week. There are still banners with my face waving from the rooftops. Below them, there's a mob scene. The square's packed with screaming people, their faces hidden with rags and homemade masks, throwing bricks. Buildings burn. Peacekeepers shoot into the crowd, killing at random.
WHO IS THIS BROADCAST TO? This kind of thing is shot like a news show here would be, but a major part of the capital's excuse is that they're supposedly ignorant, so why would they be in the loop here? Plus, wouldn't they have an announcer made up in proper capital style? And there's certainly no reason to broadcast a riot to anyone else, because you don't want any encouragement or for them to pick up tips from it.
(Why bricks and not Molotov cocktails, book? They're organized enough for masks and you say buildings are on fire. Bricks are not a major source of fires. Maybe they used them up on the buildings already, but they're very good against people too.)
Our dramatic ending line today is Katniss realizing this must be what an uprising is. It's actually a weaker line, so I don't know why it didn't end on the paragraph I quoted.
The main thing I feel is a sense of relief. That I can give up this game. That the question of whether I can succeed in this venture has been answered, even if that answer is a resounding no. That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I am free to act as desperately as I wish.
That is indeed a problem with evil oppressive governments. At a certain point people figure they're doomed no matter what, so hey, why not get some dynamite first? The anarchists had a good point. And this is both a realistic reaction on her part and a promising one - time for Katniss to finally start being active!
Katniss, though, goes on to start planning how she's going to run off with her family into the woods, which, no. By the time the guy tells you you've failed, they've already shot everyone else, for exactly this reason.
Meanwhile the president is outwardly playing along and offering to throw them a wedding at the capital.
“Oh, before we set a date, we better clear it with Katniss's mother,” says the president. The audience gives a big laugh and the president puts his arm around me. “Maybe if the whole country puts its mind to it, we can get you married before you're thirty.”
“You'll probably have to pass a new law,” I say with a giggle.
“If that's what it takes,” says the president with conspiratorial good humor.
I think there's a real disjoint between what I want from this book and what it wants. It wants to tell me about how the character is awesome and throw in a bit of banter. I want to read about actual sixteen year olds in over their heads, which means stuff like not being absolutely perfect actors every single second.
Anyway, time for the party. Just so we're clear, "the" party means the twelfth party so far, as there's been one every district.
The party, held in the banquet room of President Snow's mansion, has no equal. The forty-foot ceiling has been transformed into the night sky, and the stars look exactly as they do at home. I suppose they look the same from the Capitol, but who would know? There's always too much light from the city to see the stars here. About halfway between the floor and the ceiling, musicians float on what look like fluffy white clouds, but I can't see what holds them aloft. Traditional dining tables have been replaced by innumerable stuffed sofas and chairs, some surrounding fireplaces, others beside fragrant flower gardens or ponds filled with exotic fish, so that people can eat and drink and do whatever they please in the utmost comfort. There's a large tiled area in the center of the room that serves as everything from a dance floor, to a stage for the performers who come and go, to another spot to mingle with the flamboyantly dressed guests.
Wow, that's...well, actually pretty bland. Where are the orgies? Where are the trained monkeys? At least put up something interesting on the ceiling instead of a simple blank and white pattern. They're an evil government, maybe have something evil going on as entertainment? How about a looping display of the games with closeups on the gore, at least. Have people making idle conversation over children screaming.
But the real star of the evening is the food. Tables laden with delicacies line the walls. Everything you can think of, and things you have never dreamed of, lie in wait. Whole roasted cows and pigs and goats still turning on spits. Huge platters of fowl stuffed with savory fruits and nuts. Ocean creatures drizzled in sauces or begging to be dipped in spicy concoctions. Countless cheeses, breads, vegetables, sweets, waterfalls of wine, and streams of spirits that flicker with flames.
I really don't know where the author got the idea the pinnacle of fancy food is whole spitted animals. In medieval times you had cooks sewing swan skins back onto cooked birds (which may not have been swans), stuffing animals into other animals into other animals into other animals, cooking the same animal three different ways at different parts, pureeing, jellying, gilding... And then there's your cliché larks' tongues. And they didn't even have refrigerators back then.
And that's not getting into all sorts of weird shit people still eat. They're evil, right?
http://www.cracked.com/article_16951_the-6-most-sadistic-dishes-from-around-world.html
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-7-bizzare-habits-eating-food-while-animal-still-alive
Where is the dolphin ikizukuri? Where are the baby kittens? EVIL PEOPLE EAT KITTENS.
And then there's just the bizarre constructions people make - see basically half the food-related cable shows. There should be a twenty foot high cake. Instead the most decadent thing is apparently that they got one of those cheap fountain things and filled it with wine. Not even chocolate, just regular wine. (And that's assuming waterfalls is literal and not just Katniss meaning "a whole bunch of".)
But still. The very fact they're having banquets while people starve is messed up. This kind of shit is what gets you the French Revolution. Just imagine the whiplash of going from a district full of starving little kids to this massive room of food and how horrible...
“I want to taste everything in the room,” I tell Peeta.
God damn it Katniss.
You know what the most frustrating thing here is? There are so many ways to handle this. Katniss could not eat because she can't stand it. Katniss could display some sort of spine and conscience and find a single simple dish, eat a normal serving, and then leave the rest untouched as a gesture of disapproval. Katniss could, on the other hand, rationalize that nothing she does matters now, since the food will never go near all the people starving either way, so she eats a large meal anyway. And Katniss could be anxious and not want to attract attention to herself, so she keeps food on her plate and eats along with everyone else.
Or Katniss could be tempted, because that's what every impressive thing the capital has is, a temptation, something you can have too if you just play along and forget that everything in the room is covered in blood and tears. It wouldn't make her bad to be tempted, but it makes the book bad to never acknowledge it.
(I really don't see much temptation in these stories. There have been a couple times I thought that was what was going on with the heroine's breathless description of how okay, the nobility sucked but omg pretty dresses *u* and then it came to nothing.)
Anyway, she says everyone's wearing the mockingjay symbol.
I can only imagine how nuts that makes President Snow.
Why is he making a big deal of it in the first place? The fact a bunch of privileged assholes are using a revolutionary symbol isn't helping any revolution get off the ground. This is all so circular - the reason it's rebellious is he doesn't like it because it's rebellious, and part of why it's rebellious is he can't control the thing he had no reason to control until he decided he wanted to control it.
In order to have room to eat everything, she only has a bite of each. She tries some delicious bird stuffed with orange sauce.
I make Peeta eat the remainder because I want to keep tasting things, and the idea of throwing away food, as I see so many people doing so casually, is abhorrent to me.
Oh, but stuffing yourself sick is fine. As is throwing away the leftovers afterward, which you just know they're going to do.
In terms of waste, there's really little difference between throwing it away and eating so much you end up weighting five hundred pounds. (Also NO IT ISN'T ABHORRENT TO YOU. The cookies out the window, field-dressing game to discard half the animal, not shooting wild dogs because you couldn't get a good deal for them...)
Katniss is filling up so the prep team wanders by and advise they drink something so they can throw up and then eat again.
Then Peeta speaks in a strained voice.
“You go along, thinking you can deal with it, thinking maybe they're not so bad, and then you—” He cuts himself off.
All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of the children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what the parents can't give. More food. Now that we're rich, she'll send some home with them. But often in the old days, there was nothing to give and the child was past saving, anyway. And here in the Capitol they're vomiting for the pleasure of filling their bellies again and again. Not from some illness of body or mind, not from spoiled food. It's what everyone does at a party. Expected. Part of the fun.
Shut up.
I don't know where the hell people get the idea that somehow throwing up puts this over the edge. Do you have any idea the amount of time and effort wasted already? Those fancy ponds with their fancy fish, the various meat animals, all sorts of weird delicacies - all of that is wasteful. And you know what else is? Your stupid fashion line. The animal fibers are from places where they're raising animals for fancy cloth, the plant fibers from where they aren't growing food, and your fucking ermine coat, where do you think that's from? And that dress last book made of forty pounds of gemstones is made of stones people mined out of the earth just like your district mines coal, and likely people died getting them just like your father died. For a dress you wore once.
This is an American book. Picture some of the stupid shit we do in America. Now picture all those people saying it's okay, because at least they don't throw up food. Because doing that would just be wrong.
(Bear in mind Katniss already knows people in the capital go to doctors to get the fat taken off afterward, so that too is apparently forgivable.)
But any suggestion that maybe we're more like the capital than the districts would get in the way of our little oppression fantasy here.
You know, if the author didn't want to deal with this, there are other options. You can have decadence without it going hand in hand with deprivation. But the author chose to make a big deal of starvation instead, and how the districts are oppressed and miserable.
Katniss, without a trace of irony, goes on to talk about Gale's family.
Vick was home sick with a bad cough. Being part of Gale's family, the kid has to eat better than ninety percent of the rest of District 12. But he still spent about fifteen minutes talking about how they'd opened a can of corn syrup from Parcel Day and each had a spoonful on bread and were going to maybe have more later in the week. How Hazelle had said he could have a bit in a cup of tea to soothe his cough, but he wouldn't feel right unless the others had some, too.
Vick sounds like someone who wouldn't be cheerfully gobbling down food at a banquet. Why isn't the story about Vick? I like him better.
Also, it's a lovely return to our friend worldbuilding fail. That's a nice change.
So last time I was talking about food a lot. As I said then, if they have corn that should be their staple food. Corn syrup is cheap stuff. You feed it to your population for the calories. That's why it's in all our food now.
In fact, generally, what's up with sugar? We're originally told it's rare, but then that there's some incredibly sweet sleeping syrup that's really cheap, and generally, sweet medicines are because it's medicine mixed with sugar. And that can't be their only easy access to sweetness, because it takes Peeta a little while to work out that she's mixed it with the berries (berries are generally not extremely sweet) so he must have eaten sweetened food in numerous other contexts to fall for it.
Anyway, Peeta mutters that he wonders if they did the right thing by trying to pacify the districts. Because ordering the murder of kids on television or passively killing people by starvation is one thing, and certainly shooting an old man in the head for whistling is fine, but but throwing up? They've gone too far.
Then someone comes over to dance.
Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker.
Another Roman name and another guy in charge. Lovely.
I don't want to dance with Plutarch Heavensbee. I don't want to feel his hands, one resting against mine, one on my hip. I'm not used to being touched, except by Peeta or my family, and I rank Gamemakers somewhere below maggots in terms of creatures I want in contact with my skin.
Katniss has finally discovered a sense of personal space. A rather arbitrary and retconny one, since she's been fine getting stripped naked and plucked by the fashion team, having people put clothes on her, and having Snow putting an arm around her, but hey, I'll take it. It's been getting creepy how she goes along with everything.
As they dance, he mentions avoiding punch bowls. See, last book when she startled the gamemakers one fell into the punch bowl.
“Oh, you're one who—” I laugh, remembering him splashing back into the punch bowl.
“Yes. And you'll be pleased to know I've never recovered,” says Plutarch.
I want to point out that twenty-two dead tributes will never recover from the Games he helped create, either. But I only say, “Good. So, you're the Head Gamemaker this year? That must be a big honor.”
This is a really good exchange. It'd be nice if Katniss wasn't quite so perky, with the laughing and all, but generally this is how most conversations should have gone, with Katniss saying pleasantries while thinking how much she hates them, and without her pleasantries involving any major acting skill beyond not spitting in their face.
He mentions he has a special meeting about the games.
“I'll have to be going soon.” He turns the watch so I can see the face. “It starts at midnight.”
“That seems late for—” I say, but then something distracts me. Plutarch has run his thumb across the crystal face of the watch and for just a moment an image appears, glowing as if lit by candlelight. It's another mockingjay. Exactly like the pin on my dress. Only this one disappears. He snaps the watch closed.
“That's very pretty,” I say.
“Oh, it's more than pretty. It's one of a kind,” he says. “If anyone asks about me, say I've gone home to bed. The meetings are supposed to be kept secret. But I thought it'd be safe to tell you.”
Well. That's pretty clever. I hope he's not expecting anything out of Katniss, though - she's oblivious as he heads off.
I'm thinking about Plutarch showing off his pretty, one-of-a-kind watch to me. There was something strange about it. Almost clandestine. But why? Maybe he thinks someone else will steal his idea of putting a disappearing mockingjay on a watch face. Yes, he probably paid a fortune for it and now he can't show it to anyone because he's afraid someone will make a cheap, knockoff version. Only in the Capitol.
Our heroine.
This is also why I don't believe any of the defenses of the book that it's supposed to be this way or there's unreliable narration. Just look at this. Gee, do you think maybe there's something more to it than just that????????
And no, it's not bad writing - one of the more serviceable passages, really. It's actually pretty good in raising the issue without really requiring Katniss hold the idiot ball, and it's entirely possible for a reader to skim over it if they're not paying attention. But it is a pretty clear example that what you see is what you get, and that anything beyond that is fanwank.
“Effie said we have to be on the train at one. I wonder what time it is,” he says, glancing around.
“Almost midnight,” I reply. I pluck a chocolate flower from a cake with my fingers and nibble on it, so beyond worrying about manners.
“Time to say thank you and farewell!” trills Effie at my elbow. It's one of those moments when I just love her compulsive punctuality.
Effie! <3 <3 <3
While my original love for Effie was simply because the book was being so unfair to her, she actually is a character type I'm fond of, and one books usually treat badly. I tend to like characters who are competent and focused on something, such as a job, and a lot of books really hate people who like jobs. In a lot of aristocratic casts, one or more of the main characters will have some support character whose job is to handle schedule and act as a diplomatic knowledge dispenser. The main character is generally a dick to this character on the basis that this isn't important, they just don't wanna, and/or it's weird to know/care about it. This dickery tends to be particularly stark given the support character has no power over them but will catch all the blame for anything they do.
Then they turn out to be evil or something, and the book treats it like an OMG how could you betray me we were friends thing despite the fact they were a complete dick and I'm hoping the adviser guy manages their coup because if the prince wanted to be king so damn bad he should have acted like one. All hail our new glorious scholar-ruler, who won't fuck off to hunt instead of talking to foreign heads of state about trade relationships.
So then Katniss wakes up and she had a nice dream about following mockingjay Rue somewhere, and Peeta says he could tell she was okay because of how well she was sleeping, and Katniss asks why she can't tell if he's having a nightmare and he says his nightmares are just about losing her so he's okay as soon as he wakes up to see her.
I still feel awful, as if I've been using him in some terrible way. Have I? I don't know. I only know that for the first time, I feel immoral about him being here in my bed.
Okay, so I really am okay with Peeta now, even in continuity with last book's events. But I still want the subplot to die in a fire because it's still generating stuff like this.
Katniss saved his life several times over and has made a decent attempt to be his friend. She has yet to show any resentment toward him over how she's forced to act toward him or their upcoming marriage. She isn't using him by not loving him back. She isn't obligated to love someone for what he does for her.
Anyway, then they're back in town for the final celebration.
Now, a couple times now the book's listed Madge, the mayor's kid, when talking about people Katniss knows. I've been ignoring this because we saw last book they barely knew each other, but that's finally been explained.
I like Mayor Undersee's house, especially now that his daughter, Madge, and I are friends. We always were, in a way. It became official when she came to say good-bye to me before I left for the Games. When she gave me the mockingjay pin for luck. After I got home, we started spending time together. It turns out Madge has plenty of empty hours to fill, too. It was a little awkward at first because we didn't know what to do. Other girls our age, I've heard them talking about boys, or other girls, or clothes. Madge and I aren't gossipy and clothes bore me to tears. But after a few false starts, I realized she was dying to go into the woods, so I've taken her a couple of times and showed her how to shoot. She's trying to teach me the piano, but mostly I like to listen to her play.
Slight retconny feel to this - there's no "always were, in a way" to it, this is obviously a change and should have been explained the first time it came up - but nice. Katniss is sorely lacking in friends and the book can always use more decent female characters, and it's great to finally see another girl get involved in poaching. Katniss learning piano is nice too, because it makes her more rounded as a character instead of being all about her honorary male pursuits.
(Less pleased that the book couldn't manage to give two girls a relationship that didn't involve a jab at how every other girl is a dumb gossipy airhead. It's especially hypocritical when half this book so far has been about boys and another fourth has been clothes.)
Her parents seem nice but I don't think she sees a whole lot of them. Her father has District 12 to run and her mother gets fierce headaches that force her to stay in bed for days.
The book's been doing well enough that her mother being out of commission isn't much of an issue, but still, only men get the important tasks, rather than her mother being busy helping run the district. And you know, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing - her mom could be busy helping with mayor things except when laid up by headaches, and between the two has little time left for Madge.
And once again, there's no sense of responsibility. If he's a nice guy, why doesn't he do anything about the abused orphan kids, or the starvation in general? Is the reason District 12 is better than 11 because he's holding off the worst of the capital, or just that the capital doesn't care? What exactly does running the district involve? Why doesn't anyone else ask these questions - Katniss could tell us a lot here by saying something about how people often blame him for a particular thing when he has no power to fix it, like, for example, the starvation, or by saying they don't blame him because he's improved things a lot from how it used to be and they know he's doing the best he can.
Katniss suggests one day they should take Madge's mother to the capital to get her headaches fixed and Madge says that they can only go there with an invitation.
Really, how is the evil oppressive government staying in power? Last book had one reasonable bit about pitting the have-nots against the have-a-littles, and that's been it. What do the mayor and the peacekeepers get for their loyalty to encourage them to side with the capital and against the district people? Because hording magic science is going to make people a lot more sympathetic to rebels and their promise of magic science for all.
Anyway, Katniss goes to say hi to the mayor, but he's not in his study. The TV's on, though.
I'm leaving the room when a beeping noise catches my attention. I turn back to see the screen of the television go black. Then the words “UPDATE ON DISTRICT 8” start flashing. Instinctively I know this is not for my eyes but something intended only for the mayor.
First, uh, how does she instinctively know that? Is it written in scary font? Now, clearly they don't want people knowing about other districts, so she can surely use her brain to figure out based on her life experiences to date that something labeled about District 8 is something she shouldn't see. But I'm not sure how she can be doing so instinctively.
Second, wow, that is one hell of a shitty, shitty way to contact people. If he's not sitting in front of the thing constantly he'll miss any message.
Third, why are they telling him? Katniss says he's a nice guy and the fact they won't cure his wife (or remove his kid's name from the reaping, come to think of it) suggests they really haven't done much to make him loyal. Why would you want the leaders of the other districts to know what's going on outside? I mean, for example, what if there was a rebellion in one, and they were sending in troops to control it, meaning that if your district rebelled at the same time they wouldn't have people left to send?
Hypothetically, I mean, because surely whatever this is about, it would be far more innocuous, but still.
An announcer I've never seen before appears. It's a woman with graying hair and a hoarse, authoritative voice. She warns that conditions are worsening and a Level 3 alert has been called. Additional forces are being sent into District 8, and all textile production has ceased.
...
And who's this announcer? (And why does she have graying hair of all things?) Who is she speaking to? Is this sent to the capital and the mayors get the capital feed, or is this a government only broadcast? But why would they need to be told about this when it's not their job? I mean, so more forces are being sent, what does District 12's mayor have to do with that?
And hey, there's the reason districting is dumb. Any rebellion in any district completely shuts down that commodity. A major part of keeping strikes under control is making sure you have multiple sources, so that if one group stops producing to try to force you to deal with them, you can keep going on what you're getting in other places while they starve. Indeed, the very point of even organizing into groups is because if a single worker stops they're easily replaced. That's why companies hate unions so much, because they'll organize so that they shut everything down. Districting was basically like preemptively unionizing everything, only worse because at least with unions they normally aren't the entire population and with luck you can use the lack of sympathy by others to help break the strike.
Really, the more I learn the more unfair Snow is for blaming Katniss. This kind of thing takes an incredible amount of criminal mismanagement. How has the government even lasted this long?
And yes, obviously it's supposed to be unfair, but there's a difference between blaming someone for what they did unintentionally and for what was inevitable no matter what. Snow has given every sign of being intended as intelligent, yet this is incredibly stupid.
They cut away from the woman to the main square in District 8. I recognize it because I was there only last week. There are still banners with my face waving from the rooftops. Below them, there's a mob scene. The square's packed with screaming people, their faces hidden with rags and homemade masks, throwing bricks. Buildings burn. Peacekeepers shoot into the crowd, killing at random.
WHO IS THIS BROADCAST TO? This kind of thing is shot like a news show here would be, but a major part of the capital's excuse is that they're supposedly ignorant, so why would they be in the loop here? Plus, wouldn't they have an announcer made up in proper capital style? And there's certainly no reason to broadcast a riot to anyone else, because you don't want any encouragement or for them to pick up tips from it.
(Why bricks and not Molotov cocktails, book? They're organized enough for masks and you say buildings are on fire. Bricks are not a major source of fires. Maybe they used them up on the buildings already, but they're very good against people too.)
Our dramatic ending line today is Katniss realizing this must be what an uprising is. It's actually a weaker line, so I don't know why it didn't end on the paragraph I quoted.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 03:24 am (UTC)And sure! Hope you enjoy reading.
Spelling Issue
Date: 2011-06-02 03:45 am (UTC)Re: Spelling Issue
Date: 2011-06-02 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-10 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-10 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 05:30 am (UTC)It occurs to me that when I first heard the series' premise, I had misinterpreted the purpose of the games as being a sadistic rationing system to decide which district deserves the most food, and so every player was forced to compete (and I thought it was with deadly athletic competitions, not the incredibly boring 'kill all' fest) with the standard of living for their entire district riding on them. This whole plot about governments that are evil just because (and having a president instead of a dictator, just to hammer in that democracy sucks) is a lot less interesting to me...
no subject
Date: 2012-02-27 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-13 12:08 am (UTC)(Considering how unpleasant an experience throwing up is - pretty much a perfect way to RUIN a good meal and certainly taint any flavors consumed afterwards - it really should be common sense that it was never in fact standard practice. There's nothing fun about it, as any bulimic will tell you.)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 07:05 am (UTC)But the mayor's daughter goes off to do this? WHY? She doesn't need the food. This is not a fun thing that might get you picked up by the cops and released into your parents' custody, this supposedly carried the death penalty. WTF times a bazillion?
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-01 04:30 pm (UTC)