Catching Fire, Intermission
May. 1st, 2011 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaWell. I think this book may well be better than last book, but it's less enjoyable, if that makes sense. Partly it's because last book was so disappointing, so I come into this hating the characters and expecting the worst of everything. Partly it's that continuity is a mess, and the longer the story goes on the more obvious that gets. Also, as I was saying to last book, the more mistakes I see, the less I'm willing to go along with the newest thing the book says, which led to a rapid death spiral of finding more and more errors.
It may also be that since this is the second book, the slow pace is more annoying. Last book had more than enough time for a slow build. This book is repeating that same format (again, the way it's sticking to a strict formula is doing it no favors) which means similarly nothing much is going on in the first third. (The romance makes this pretty hard to miss. Hamster wheel romances are not fun to read.)
We have more of a cast this time around! I approve both the presence of more women and the general fleshing out of the community. But, like the premise of the childmurder games and moral dilemmas last time, it's a promise that doesn't look like it'll be kept. There's still little evidence of how the district actually functions, and if anything the slight added depth just highlights how false everything is.
What did the peacekeepers do under Cray? Why were people afraid to go to the black market when the peacekeepers weren't prosecuting anyone for it? What portion of the community is made of peacekeepers, and are they recruited from the district or other districts?
How do families work? The only references to anyone doing something for the sake of helping the rest of their family are the women who sleep with Cray and kids signing up for grain. Otherwise, it seems people are left to their own devices - the guy taking care of the goats and woman selling liquor apparently are both without any support. And the peacekeepers seem to have disappeared without a ripple.
And relatedly, what the hell is going on with sex? Are people using birth control or not? Why do they have huge families they can't support, or are things set up so you need to have a large family to survive old age? Why is there apparently no prostitution outside of Cray?
And then there's the other districts. We're told that districts like Katniss hate the ones that train kids, so what do they think of districts that don't? What do the different districts look like, how are they similar and how are they different?
Right now, the district section is completely pointless. It should have been cut out. I mean, let's recap: before the victory tour we learn Snow is pissed off and wants them to do something to make him not be pissed off. They fail and by the end he's pissed off. They also learn about the risk of uprisings and that the other districts are desperate, but we find that out from the later bit about District 8, and Katniss does nothing in the intervening time that would require she know earlier. Basically, nothing changes during that period except Katniss angsts about marrying Peeta, which gets undone again once Gale gets whipped.
The main reason I want the district section is because I see this kind of story as being about people, plural. But in the world of the book everything revolves around Katniss, and they're just props - so why have them at all if nothing's done with them? The whole thing's filler.
Anyway, rewrite time:
Instead of Katniss being emo despite being basically fine, Katniss is insisting she's fine because she won! She's the victor! The games are over! despite the fact she's a mess. Because she's not dead like everyone else, so she doesn't have any right to be upset. Stuff that reminds her of what happened, like new clothes, gets her really upset, but she doesn't really know why or feel she should be when everyone else is going around in rags. Because I want her to actually DO SOMETHING she tends to give away the clothes to people she runs into.
(Is there really anyone who prefers protagonists to whine about minor things over trying to be strong about major things? Because they sure show up a lot in fiction.)
Prim, who's been barely around so far, is barely around because Katniss is avoiding her. She's had a panic attack or breakdown around Prim and doesn't want to do that again. Prim, being a person and not a symbolic representation of innocence, doesn't understand why Katniss is so depressed because they're rich now. Katniss also avoids people in general because she's sure they hate her for what she did during the games.
Gale isn't a creepy self-centered asshole. Besides, he's busy hating the government. Like Katniss, he has other things to worry about. If there's got to be romance, it's Katniss feeling that she might be in love with him and not sure how to broach it, especially since the fallout from Peeta was pretty bad and they never speak. Gale may have also said things in the past about how the Hunger Games winners are a bunch of psychopaths and she figures he's just tolerating her presence because he's a great guy.
Incidentally, no one in District 12 believes she's in love with Peeta, although some people did think she'd fallen in love during the games. No cousin bullshit.
(Gale still refuses to take Katniss' money, and the fact she's giving it to his mother is another source of tension.)
Katniss is still going to the black market because she knows a lot of the people there and people have to interact with her if she buys stuff. She also gives away coins to kids because charity is good. But she's really withdrawn and doesn't talk much with anyone. A bunch of scenes with her sitting in the corner while people talk, which also helps flesh out other characters and make the world revolve a bit less around her. Other people don't quite know how to treat her either.
President Snow's ultimatum has far less explanation. He tells her that she'd better be convincingly stupidly in love with Peeta or else. It's only when Katniss sees the other districts that she realizes what's really going on. (Either she doesn't tell anyone initially or she tells Peeta as well as Haymitch.) Between this and what she learns from Effie and the fashion crew, they figure out she and Peeta are should act like privileged airheads who don't care about anything but each other to discourage people from using them as a symbol of rebellion, but they can't really pull it off, and they also recognize within a few stops that it's not about them any longer - even if they convinced everyone they supported the capital, all that matters is that Katniss showed them it's possible to challenge the capital without being instantly struck down.
I like the idea of Katniss setting everything off by accident, just not the way the book tries to eat its cake and have it too. So, no attempt to make it about Katniss here. She recognizes it, everyone around her recognizes it, President Snow recognizes it. This has the benefit of having it actually mean something when Katniss decides to rebel, instead of some bullshit about how she's always unconsciously been doing that. The connection she draws between the berries and the rebellion is a lot more literal - she realizes that what she did, risking her life to save someone else, is the same as what a rebellion will be. She originally thinks of the rebellion only in terms of who would be hurt, and realizes they already are, and that sometimes people are willing to put their lives on the line when it's right.
More time in the other districts - maybe spread out what happened in District 11, so that there she only hears gunshots, and it's at a later district she actually sees someone shot and realizes what's going on. A lot of comparisons between districts, but also a lot of Katniss realizing that underneath the surface differences everyone is hungry and desperate, something she never noticed on the television. In her district, everyone just assumes the other districts are better off, and she realizes that's not true and wonders if they think the same of her district. The way the people react to her is varied as well. More, the way they react to Peeta isn't necessarily the same - some of the families of kids he killed with the trained kids resent him.
I want her to be really guilty when she sees the family of the one girl who started the fire, in part because no one else blames her at all, since she didn't do anything. And to talk about the districts that train kids more - to really twist the knife, they're all nice to Katniss and don't resent her for being the victor, when she's spent her life hating them. In one of them she or Peeta gets triggered by something and everyone gives them space, and it's explained that yeah, a lot of their winners have this problem, District 12 just doesn't know because they've had so few kids come back. The majority of the crowd are small and underfed, much like her district.
More time is also spent on how things work in Katniss' district, to contrast with how it'll go once Cray disappears. (Cray's disappearance happens before Katniss gets back, because they start cracking down as soon as it's obvious she failed.) And part of how things work is how people interact with each other, instead of all interactions being through Katniss. There's grudges and alliances and resentments. I'm thinking the peacekeepers are disliked because they're seen as getting an easy ride, with good pay for no real work, combined with the fact they do have a lot of power even if it's rarely used, because that makes people uneasy.
(If there's not room for both, then the entire victory tour subplot gets cut out. It's already pretty shaky plotwise, since they're not supposed to be in contact with other districts, so it's no real loss.)
Since the book is retconning things, so will I - last book's speeches about how everyone else are sheeple never happened. People break a lot of rules, it's just crossing the fence is rarer because of dangerous animals. The crackdown by the new peacekeeper creates waves of dissent, as usually happens. And the disappearance of the original peacekeepers upsets people a lot as well - their families are among the higher class who would normally have been more sympathetic to the capital, and they also have friends who worry. Plus, the fact that the peacekeepers are taken sends the message no one is safe and the capital might take anyone at any time.
Katniss plans to run. She changes her mind when Gale is injured for the simple reason that he obviously can't in his condition, and by then it's too late - the fence is fixed and patrolled. Stuck in the town, she sees that things have gotten so much worse (she assumed Gale's punishment was because of her originally) that she realizes rebellion (which she felt would lead to too much suffering before) is the best option left to them.
Step one of the rebellion is simply fucking organizing. Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch are all hundreds of times richer than the average person. They pool their money and start buying food and medicine. (I'm going to say Katniss was already giving out some food for people, so it's just a matter of doing it more consistently.) They set up a network to find out who still has supplies and keep the black market running. Their enormous houses are all heated for free by the capital, so they start housing the old and sick who might otherwise freeze. Find jobs for people who aren't employed in the mines. Maybe set up that daycare I was talking about so everyone who can get work at the mines does, because they're going to need every scrap of money they can squeeze out of the capital before the rebellion. People who can't work there do all the other things that are needed.
I'd kind of like to see them doing something with all those other empty houses. Like, the lights run all day long even though there's no one there, because the capital does shit like that, and they're heated, so they start carting dirt in and plant seeds. Maybe medicinal plants, since they probably didn't store up enough in the fall to deal with all the current injuries. If it's not possible to get people into the houses, work on diverting the electricity to somewhere you can use it. Turn the neglect and wastefulness of the capital around and be resourceful.
Depends on what the pharmacy's stores are like. Speaking of which, the next step is getting the town stores in on this. They're obviously ordering supplies from the capital, so get them to switch to necessities only, as much as can be afforded. Maybe shut the butcher down entirely and go vegetarian. Try to get as big a stockpile of supplies as possible. Encourage people to share what supplies they have.
Work out an alarm system so you always know where the peacekeepers are at a given time. While you're doing it, stalk them. Where do they eat, when are they alone? You may need to poison them in the initial stages, and definitely want to get their guns in the first rush. In the meantime, get sick kids to cough on the food they're buying and other things like that, because every peacekeeper sick at home is one less to catch you.
In sum, show people that the community can function without - indeed, in spite of - the capital, and that the capital can't stop them. And that you're trustworthy to lead the rebellion because you're helping people. (Katniss gets pretty far in this direction without realizing that's even what she's doing - it takes her a while to realize that she isn't blamed and doesn't need to atone to everyone.)
Ideally, you want the mayor on your side, mostly because he's got access to news about the other districts and may be able to give you advance warning about things the capital's planning. Failing that, find a way to get a TV that can receive the same signals so you're not completely in the dark. (If it's cable, put in a splitter.) Someone is in charge of installing and repairing TVs. Find them.
Your long term plan should involve arming people. There should be other people around who know how to make bows if Katniss' dad knew. If not, she and the carpenters should get to work figuring that out. Then train people to shoot with them. By all appearances the peacekeepers aren't particularly well armored, and even if the bows aren't useful against them, you need hunters for when you're trying to get food after the rebellion's started and food supplies are cut off. Along the same lines, get people to make copies of the plant book Katniss' mom has and start distributing it for people to study.
Figure out how to get the fence down - unless the rebellion is coordinated with the rest of the districts, there's really no chance of actually winning within the district. But blowing up half the district and then running off with the other half will hurt, especially because no one else is set up to mine coal and if they try to bring new people in to take over the coal mines people will realize what's happened. And once you've done it, other districts might follow suit.
Because the fact is, a government can't control a population when everyone hates them. They don't need a majority, but there is a tipping point where there simply aren't enough loyal people to keep order. District 12 doesn't need to make their own army to fight the capital, they just need to stop producing and defend themselves as best they can when the capital tries to force them.
Basically, working together, instead of every individual person focusing on how hard their personal life is. Compassion and organization. Other people mattering even when they're not a main character.
It may also be that since this is the second book, the slow pace is more annoying. Last book had more than enough time for a slow build. This book is repeating that same format (again, the way it's sticking to a strict formula is doing it no favors) which means similarly nothing much is going on in the first third. (The romance makes this pretty hard to miss. Hamster wheel romances are not fun to read.)
We have more of a cast this time around! I approve both the presence of more women and the general fleshing out of the community. But, like the premise of the childmurder games and moral dilemmas last time, it's a promise that doesn't look like it'll be kept. There's still little evidence of how the district actually functions, and if anything the slight added depth just highlights how false everything is.
What did the peacekeepers do under Cray? Why were people afraid to go to the black market when the peacekeepers weren't prosecuting anyone for it? What portion of the community is made of peacekeepers, and are they recruited from the district or other districts?
How do families work? The only references to anyone doing something for the sake of helping the rest of their family are the women who sleep with Cray and kids signing up for grain. Otherwise, it seems people are left to their own devices - the guy taking care of the goats and woman selling liquor apparently are both without any support. And the peacekeepers seem to have disappeared without a ripple.
And relatedly, what the hell is going on with sex? Are people using birth control or not? Why do they have huge families they can't support, or are things set up so you need to have a large family to survive old age? Why is there apparently no prostitution outside of Cray?
And then there's the other districts. We're told that districts like Katniss hate the ones that train kids, so what do they think of districts that don't? What do the different districts look like, how are they similar and how are they different?
Right now, the district section is completely pointless. It should have been cut out. I mean, let's recap: before the victory tour we learn Snow is pissed off and wants them to do something to make him not be pissed off. They fail and by the end he's pissed off. They also learn about the risk of uprisings and that the other districts are desperate, but we find that out from the later bit about District 8, and Katniss does nothing in the intervening time that would require she know earlier. Basically, nothing changes during that period except Katniss angsts about marrying Peeta, which gets undone again once Gale gets whipped.
The main reason I want the district section is because I see this kind of story as being about people, plural. But in the world of the book everything revolves around Katniss, and they're just props - so why have them at all if nothing's done with them? The whole thing's filler.
Anyway, rewrite time:
Instead of Katniss being emo despite being basically fine, Katniss is insisting she's fine because she won! She's the victor! The games are over! despite the fact she's a mess. Because she's not dead like everyone else, so she doesn't have any right to be upset. Stuff that reminds her of what happened, like new clothes, gets her really upset, but she doesn't really know why or feel she should be when everyone else is going around in rags. Because I want her to actually DO SOMETHING she tends to give away the clothes to people she runs into.
(Is there really anyone who prefers protagonists to whine about minor things over trying to be strong about major things? Because they sure show up a lot in fiction.)
Prim, who's been barely around so far, is barely around because Katniss is avoiding her. She's had a panic attack or breakdown around Prim and doesn't want to do that again. Prim, being a person and not a symbolic representation of innocence, doesn't understand why Katniss is so depressed because they're rich now. Katniss also avoids people in general because she's sure they hate her for what she did during the games.
Gale isn't a creepy self-centered asshole. Besides, he's busy hating the government. Like Katniss, he has other things to worry about. If there's got to be romance, it's Katniss feeling that she might be in love with him and not sure how to broach it, especially since the fallout from Peeta was pretty bad and they never speak. Gale may have also said things in the past about how the Hunger Games winners are a bunch of psychopaths and she figures he's just tolerating her presence because he's a great guy.
Incidentally, no one in District 12 believes she's in love with Peeta, although some people did think she'd fallen in love during the games. No cousin bullshit.
(Gale still refuses to take Katniss' money, and the fact she's giving it to his mother is another source of tension.)
Katniss is still going to the black market because she knows a lot of the people there and people have to interact with her if she buys stuff. She also gives away coins to kids because charity is good. But she's really withdrawn and doesn't talk much with anyone. A bunch of scenes with her sitting in the corner while people talk, which also helps flesh out other characters and make the world revolve a bit less around her. Other people don't quite know how to treat her either.
President Snow's ultimatum has far less explanation. He tells her that she'd better be convincingly stupidly in love with Peeta or else. It's only when Katniss sees the other districts that she realizes what's really going on. (Either she doesn't tell anyone initially or she tells Peeta as well as Haymitch.) Between this and what she learns from Effie and the fashion crew, they figure out she and Peeta are should act like privileged airheads who don't care about anything but each other to discourage people from using them as a symbol of rebellion, but they can't really pull it off, and they also recognize within a few stops that it's not about them any longer - even if they convinced everyone they supported the capital, all that matters is that Katniss showed them it's possible to challenge the capital without being instantly struck down.
I like the idea of Katniss setting everything off by accident, just not the way the book tries to eat its cake and have it too. So, no attempt to make it about Katniss here. She recognizes it, everyone around her recognizes it, President Snow recognizes it. This has the benefit of having it actually mean something when Katniss decides to rebel, instead of some bullshit about how she's always unconsciously been doing that. The connection she draws between the berries and the rebellion is a lot more literal - she realizes that what she did, risking her life to save someone else, is the same as what a rebellion will be. She originally thinks of the rebellion only in terms of who would be hurt, and realizes they already are, and that sometimes people are willing to put their lives on the line when it's right.
More time in the other districts - maybe spread out what happened in District 11, so that there she only hears gunshots, and it's at a later district she actually sees someone shot and realizes what's going on. A lot of comparisons between districts, but also a lot of Katniss realizing that underneath the surface differences everyone is hungry and desperate, something she never noticed on the television. In her district, everyone just assumes the other districts are better off, and she realizes that's not true and wonders if they think the same of her district. The way the people react to her is varied as well. More, the way they react to Peeta isn't necessarily the same - some of the families of kids he killed with the trained kids resent him.
I want her to be really guilty when she sees the family of the one girl who started the fire, in part because no one else blames her at all, since she didn't do anything. And to talk about the districts that train kids more - to really twist the knife, they're all nice to Katniss and don't resent her for being the victor, when she's spent her life hating them. In one of them she or Peeta gets triggered by something and everyone gives them space, and it's explained that yeah, a lot of their winners have this problem, District 12 just doesn't know because they've had so few kids come back. The majority of the crowd are small and underfed, much like her district.
More time is also spent on how things work in Katniss' district, to contrast with how it'll go once Cray disappears. (Cray's disappearance happens before Katniss gets back, because they start cracking down as soon as it's obvious she failed.) And part of how things work is how people interact with each other, instead of all interactions being through Katniss. There's grudges and alliances and resentments. I'm thinking the peacekeepers are disliked because they're seen as getting an easy ride, with good pay for no real work, combined with the fact they do have a lot of power even if it's rarely used, because that makes people uneasy.
(If there's not room for both, then the entire victory tour subplot gets cut out. It's already pretty shaky plotwise, since they're not supposed to be in contact with other districts, so it's no real loss.)
Since the book is retconning things, so will I - last book's speeches about how everyone else are sheeple never happened. People break a lot of rules, it's just crossing the fence is rarer because of dangerous animals. The crackdown by the new peacekeeper creates waves of dissent, as usually happens. And the disappearance of the original peacekeepers upsets people a lot as well - their families are among the higher class who would normally have been more sympathetic to the capital, and they also have friends who worry. Plus, the fact that the peacekeepers are taken sends the message no one is safe and the capital might take anyone at any time.
Katniss plans to run. She changes her mind when Gale is injured for the simple reason that he obviously can't in his condition, and by then it's too late - the fence is fixed and patrolled. Stuck in the town, she sees that things have gotten so much worse (she assumed Gale's punishment was because of her originally) that she realizes rebellion (which she felt would lead to too much suffering before) is the best option left to them.
Step one of the rebellion is simply fucking organizing. Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch are all hundreds of times richer than the average person. They pool their money and start buying food and medicine. (I'm going to say Katniss was already giving out some food for people, so it's just a matter of doing it more consistently.) They set up a network to find out who still has supplies and keep the black market running. Their enormous houses are all heated for free by the capital, so they start housing the old and sick who might otherwise freeze. Find jobs for people who aren't employed in the mines. Maybe set up that daycare I was talking about so everyone who can get work at the mines does, because they're going to need every scrap of money they can squeeze out of the capital before the rebellion. People who can't work there do all the other things that are needed.
I'd kind of like to see them doing something with all those other empty houses. Like, the lights run all day long even though there's no one there, because the capital does shit like that, and they're heated, so they start carting dirt in and plant seeds. Maybe medicinal plants, since they probably didn't store up enough in the fall to deal with all the current injuries. If it's not possible to get people into the houses, work on diverting the electricity to somewhere you can use it. Turn the neglect and wastefulness of the capital around and be resourceful.
Depends on what the pharmacy's stores are like. Speaking of which, the next step is getting the town stores in on this. They're obviously ordering supplies from the capital, so get them to switch to necessities only, as much as can be afforded. Maybe shut the butcher down entirely and go vegetarian. Try to get as big a stockpile of supplies as possible. Encourage people to share what supplies they have.
Work out an alarm system so you always know where the peacekeepers are at a given time. While you're doing it, stalk them. Where do they eat, when are they alone? You may need to poison them in the initial stages, and definitely want to get their guns in the first rush. In the meantime, get sick kids to cough on the food they're buying and other things like that, because every peacekeeper sick at home is one less to catch you.
In sum, show people that the community can function without - indeed, in spite of - the capital, and that the capital can't stop them. And that you're trustworthy to lead the rebellion because you're helping people. (Katniss gets pretty far in this direction without realizing that's even what she's doing - it takes her a while to realize that she isn't blamed and doesn't need to atone to everyone.)
Ideally, you want the mayor on your side, mostly because he's got access to news about the other districts and may be able to give you advance warning about things the capital's planning. Failing that, find a way to get a TV that can receive the same signals so you're not completely in the dark. (If it's cable, put in a splitter.) Someone is in charge of installing and repairing TVs. Find them.
Your long term plan should involve arming people. There should be other people around who know how to make bows if Katniss' dad knew. If not, she and the carpenters should get to work figuring that out. Then train people to shoot with them. By all appearances the peacekeepers aren't particularly well armored, and even if the bows aren't useful against them, you need hunters for when you're trying to get food after the rebellion's started and food supplies are cut off. Along the same lines, get people to make copies of the plant book Katniss' mom has and start distributing it for people to study.
Figure out how to get the fence down - unless the rebellion is coordinated with the rest of the districts, there's really no chance of actually winning within the district. But blowing up half the district and then running off with the other half will hurt, especially because no one else is set up to mine coal and if they try to bring new people in to take over the coal mines people will realize what's happened. And once you've done it, other districts might follow suit.
Because the fact is, a government can't control a population when everyone hates them. They don't need a majority, but there is a tipping point where there simply aren't enough loyal people to keep order. District 12 doesn't need to make their own army to fight the capital, they just need to stop producing and defend themselves as best they can when the capital tries to force them.
Basically, working together, instead of every individual person focusing on how hard their personal life is. Compassion and organization. Other people mattering even when they're not a main character.
