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Catching Fire, Chapter 12
Last time on fucking morons who can't tell that footage of a place still fucking on fire after seventy-five years is probably reused, Katniss injured herself and was put on bedrest.
I sit around stuffing myself with cheese buns and watching Peeta sketch. Haymitch stops by occasionally to bring me news from town, which is always bad. More people being punished or dropping from starvation.
And you still have plenty of money and could be feeding all those people, but hey, you only do that when the narrative needs a reason for you to be carrying food for plot reasons. Otherwise they can go fuck themselves.
Anyway, her prep team shows up.
Their biggest concern is my face, although I think my mother did a pretty remarkable job healing it. There's just a pale pink strip across my cheekbone. The whipping's not common knowledge, so I tell them I slipped on the ice and cut it.
Katniss heroically hiding the capital's abuses, again. Because forcing them to get a look at what happens in the district might upset the dears. And of course you wouldn't want to take advantage of the fact the government similarly wants it hidden and oppose the peacekeepers knowing that you can't be harmed without repercussions.
No, instead you should do all the worrying about making sure no one can see because you certainly wouldn't want to look ugly.
One of them makes a reference to not having shrimp because of bad weather.
My mind starts buzzing. No seafood. For weeks. From District 4. The barely concealed rage in the crowd during the Victory Tour.
Another thing to add to the list of
stuff we should have seen then instead of skipping over it.
Katniss realizes that she can figure out what districts rebelled by what supplies the capital can't get. So that's confirmed then, the people of the capital don't know about the rebellions. Who the fuck was the broadcast for then?
Seafood from District 4. Electronic gadgets from District 3. And, of course, fabrics from District 8. The thought of such widespread rebellion has me quivering with fear and excitement.
...three districts of twelve? I mean that's better than one, but I wouldn't really call it widespread yet. And the only one that'd particularly hurt is 3.
Cinna appears to give me a hug and check my makeup. His attention goes right to the scar on my cheek. Somehow I don't think he believes the slipping-on-the-ice story, but he doesn't question it. He simply adjusts the powder on my face, and what little you can see of the lash mark vanishes.
Oh good, we certainly wouldn't want anyone to see the capital's abuses. Truly I can see why everyone thinks Cinna (THE BESTEST MOST WONDERFULEST) is totally the best rebel fighting the capital at every turn.
Katniss has to model six wedding dresses. There's this whole voting thing where people keep voting on the designs at each step.
My mother manages to feed me bits of food and sips of tea while they work on me, but by the time the shoot is over, I'm starving and exhausted.
Uh really? I mean, assuming she's getting fed bites of even moderately filling food, which her family can certainly afford, she really shouldn't be starving at the end. And exhausted even less. I'm sure photo shoots are a real trial to people who've never gone days without a meal or done any physical labor, but Katniss really needs to stop being identical to an upper class American kid.
Incidentally, the dresses are ridiculous diamond and pearl covered exercises in excess that could feed the entire district. Also, five of them are presumably going to get scrapped outright.
Prim, who came home from school in time to see the last two dresses, chatters on about them with my mother. They both seem overly happy about the photo shoot.
Also, people are dropping while they work from starvation right now.
Katniss says she figures they figure that the dresses mean the capital isn't mad about interfering with the whipping. I still don't get why anyone thinks the capital gives a fuck about the whipping in the first place. They have better things to do with their time, okay?
Katniss needs someone to talk to. Since god forbid Katniss have a relationship with another woman, she can't possibly chat with her mom and heads over to Haymitch. She tells him what she knows and he says he's heard things too.
rumors of uprisings in Districts 7 and 11 as well.
Rumors from where? How are people communicating? This is actually kind of important. So far, there seems to be absolutely no movement between districts, which means no rumors. Do the peacekeepers know? Even if they do, it seems like peacekeepers getting drunk and saying stuff they shouldn't is something that'd happen before with Cray, not now. Besides that, it seems like you'd have to be in contact with the capital, because they're the only centralized place that would have the information necessary to generate rumors.
Also, how would dealing with an uprising in 11 work? It seems the rebels burn things and the capital's strategy is to nuke from orbit. Do you have any idea how long it takes to grow an orchard? It's not like repairing a factory. And any crops they burn will have to wait for the next growing season before there's more. You can't just turn production on and off like you can fabric.
Maybe if they're really on the ball they may have enormous amounts of various foods stockpiled so they can keep supplying the capital, but even at best you're not going to get any fresh food for quite some time.
“Do you still think it won't work here?” I ask.
“Not yet. Those other districts, they're much larger. Even if half the people cower in their homes, the rebels stand a chance. Here in Twelve, it's got to be all of us or nothing,” he says.
That makes no sense to me. None of the districts can beat the capital in a straight fight no matter how large. We know now that almost half of them have rebelled without any success, and given that the rebels don't seem to have any weaponry, it's clear why.
But that's insisting rebellion is done with all the tactical sense of, say, the British in colonial times. They seem to think you stand in front of the people with guns and throw rocks. The only time that works is when there's some sort of reason they can't just shoot you.
Katniss' district is actually in perhaps the best position to rebel, as should be obvious.
1) Katniss' district produces from a single narrow point, the mines.
2) The mines regularly have deadly explosions.
3) If the openings to the mines explode, no one can use them.
4) You can't force people to mine when there are no mines.
This is approaching the stupidity of saying the capital was unbeatable because the rebels were in the mountains and the capital was supplied by easily destroyed trains.
And why? Because apparently, heroism is for other people. The book is making excuse after excuse for why Katniss personally doesn't have to do anything hard or risky.
Katniss, being almost as stupid as Haymitch, agrees that they lack numerical strength, because god knows numerical strength is what you want when your opponents have guns.
Even going by the idiotic Roman motif the book keeps forcing down the reader's throat this is so fucking stupid, because the Romans were all about properly trained and equipped troops moving down everyone else.
Katniss then asks what'll happen to people who rebel.
Well, you've heard what they did in Eight. You've seen what they did here, and that was without provocation
Except by all appearances what's going on in 12 right now isn't a crackdown, it's just making things business as usual again.
Haymitch goes on to say he thinks they'll destroy another district if they have to. Really?
We still haven't had a full list of what everyone does, but we know 3 is all manufacturing and 4 is all seafood. At best, you might be able to roll something like 8's job of cloth manufacture into 3, since it's all industrialized, and even then you're going to have a lot of trouble, because their district isn't big enough for the new factories, doesn't have the factories ready and doesn't have the workers. If nothing else they'd have to treat whatever the replacement district is significantly better just to up the birthrate, unless they're willing to pull a few people in from all the districts and train them, which goes against letting people know about other districts and is still going to take a while. And you've got to do all this while rebuilding destroyed infrastructure everywhere and dealing with a decimated and injured population.
Of course, this gets back to the core problem, which is that the districts don't make any sense under the circumstances. Specialization is an efficiency thing, not a control thing.
(Not that they seem to be doing efficiency all that well - two percent of America's population manages the farms to produce all food, cloth and livestock, so the idea District 11 has a huge population makes no sense. If all districts and the capital had the same population, each is about 7.7% of the population. The average person in those districts is likely consuming far less than the average American, meaning you should need less of the population employed to feed them. And yet, we know that District 12 is significantly smaller than the average district, which in turn is significantly smaller than 11.
(This could actually be a subtle reference to the idea that the unspecified series of disasters have completely fucked up everything and they can't produce crops like before, except that we know the district produces the sort of high density crops that modern farming does, as it's the only one the author bothered detailing, and we know plants in general are thriving from Katniss' experiences with her local forest.)
Katniss then tries to use the mockingjay as proof that 13 is still around. Haymitch argues that this doesn't mean anything because it's probably just easier to reuse footage. While normally this would seem like a decent argument, in that case reused footage should be coming up all the time. Either they're dumb and have never noticed it before, or it's really suspicious.
Interesting characters who DID SOMETHING instead of FUCKING STANDING AROUND might at this point try to see if they can find evidence of other reused footage. But they're just going to talk and do nothing.
It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that the bird itself is suspicious, as the capital claims it turned the place into a toxic deathtrap and there's a bird flying happily about. Birds are kind of delicate. You'd think coal miners of all people would understand that.
Prim comes home from school bubbling over with excitement. The teachers announced there was mandatory programming tonight.
How does the mandatory programming thing even work? How could you tell if people are actually watching?
Anyway, Prim thinks it's of the dress pictures, and Katniss says they can't possibly be showing the pictures on television since the pictures were only taken yesterday. Yes if only there was some sort of way to transmit images from one location to another, possibly across far distances. If only.
Because Katniss is really fucking stupid, she's amazed to discover that yes, somehow technology has managed to get the pictures to the capital in time for her to watch pictures from the capital arrive nearly instantaneously on a viewing device in her home.
Also Katniss angsts a bit about what will Gale think. The idea he'll be disgusted that she's wearing diamonds and pearls while people starve does not come up, just that he'll probably be upset because the wedding involves her marrying Peeta and clearly that's what matters right now.
Having voted, and probably bet on the winner,
Why does betting keep coming up constantly in these books? Is it just some sort of anti-gambling thing and I'm supposed to take it as a sign they're immoral?
Also this doesn't even make much sense if you think about it. Betting is about what you think is most likely to win, while voting is which one you want to win. An awful lot of people must be in the situation where their favorite and the one with the best odds don't match up, and that's assuming the majority of people would want to bet on this despite it being such a dumb thing to bet on.
Thank god, the plot finally pokes its head out. The quell announcement is here. For some reason they announce it months in advance because...? No, no, plot, I didn't mean it! Please don't go! You may not make sense but at least you're doing something!
President Snow takes the stage. He's followed by a young boy dressed in a white suit, holding a simple wooden box.
That's probably a Lottery reference, just because a wooden box makes no sense in the context of the way the capital is set up. Which means I'm just being reminded of another, better story, always a bad move.
President Snow begins to speak, to remind us all of the Dark Days from which the Hunger Games were born. When the laws for the Games were laid out, they dictated that every twenty-five years the anniversary would be marked by a Quarter Quell. It would call for a glorified version of the Games to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts' rebellion.
…wow, book, I am impressed by just how far you've taken the game of passing the blame. It's now laid down by some people who are dead now. And we aren't even left with the fanwank justification that punishing rebellion is a cover for the capital being assholes. This clusterfuck of stupidity was all put in place deliberately.
Snow explains that in the first quell, people had to pick what kids to send. Somehow, this is more awful than doing it by lottery. I think the comment discussion about the benefits of trained kids and volunteering has covered this issue well enough.
“On the fiftieth anniversary,” the president continues, “as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes.”
TWO? What sort of dictatorship is this? Do you know how many people the Nazis killed for every soldier they lost? By the end of the war they were wiping entire damn villages off the map!
Even if the author is somehow completely ignorant of all history besides a book she read in fourth grade about the Romans, the supposed inspiration for this is the Iraqi War! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE'RE DOING OVER THERE, IT'S NOT HANDING OUT FLOWERS!
…
We learn that their mother knew one of the people who went that year but never mentioned her before because this was obviously made up for this book and the author has no real idea how the world works or what people's relationships are outside of Katniss.
The little boy in white steps forward, holding out the box as he opens the lid. We can see the tidy, upright rows of yellowed envelopes. Whoever devised the Quarter Quell system had prepared for centuries of Hunger Games.
Nothing about this makes any sense.
Without hesitation, he reads, “On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”
FUCKING FINALLY.
I don't really like this, actually - it means we're going in for more of how it's all about Katniss. Her being a mentor had a lot of promise, and would have given the uprising plans an added time limit. It'd have let us focus on how other people are suffering for once. Katniss is at her best when she's helping others so far, which makes a sort of sense - I certainly liked the character most when the series began and her attitude was that everyone in the world could go fuck themselves as long as her sister was safe. And really, if you're doing a book that's about an oppressive evil government, it should really have more focus on the people affected by it instead of just one character.
But at least Snow is finally taking reasonable action against Katniss, and hopefully this means things will pick up.
I sit around stuffing myself with cheese buns and watching Peeta sketch. Haymitch stops by occasionally to bring me news from town, which is always bad. More people being punished or dropping from starvation.
And you still have plenty of money and could be feeding all those people, but hey, you only do that when the narrative needs a reason for you to be carrying food for plot reasons. Otherwise they can go fuck themselves.
Anyway, her prep team shows up.
Their biggest concern is my face, although I think my mother did a pretty remarkable job healing it. There's just a pale pink strip across my cheekbone. The whipping's not common knowledge, so I tell them I slipped on the ice and cut it.
Katniss heroically hiding the capital's abuses, again. Because forcing them to get a look at what happens in the district might upset the dears. And of course you wouldn't want to take advantage of the fact the government similarly wants it hidden and oppose the peacekeepers knowing that you can't be harmed without repercussions.
No, instead you should do all the worrying about making sure no one can see because you certainly wouldn't want to look ugly.
One of them makes a reference to not having shrimp because of bad weather.
My mind starts buzzing. No seafood. For weeks. From District 4. The barely concealed rage in the crowd during the Victory Tour.
Another thing to add to the list of
stuff we should have seen then instead of skipping over it.
Katniss realizes that she can figure out what districts rebelled by what supplies the capital can't get. So that's confirmed then, the people of the capital don't know about the rebellions. Who the fuck was the broadcast for then?
Seafood from District 4. Electronic gadgets from District 3. And, of course, fabrics from District 8. The thought of such widespread rebellion has me quivering with fear and excitement.
...three districts of twelve? I mean that's better than one, but I wouldn't really call it widespread yet. And the only one that'd particularly hurt is 3.
Cinna appears to give me a hug and check my makeup. His attention goes right to the scar on my cheek. Somehow I don't think he believes the slipping-on-the-ice story, but he doesn't question it. He simply adjusts the powder on my face, and what little you can see of the lash mark vanishes.
Oh good, we certainly wouldn't want anyone to see the capital's abuses. Truly I can see why everyone thinks Cinna (THE BESTEST MOST WONDERFULEST) is totally the best rebel fighting the capital at every turn.
Katniss has to model six wedding dresses. There's this whole voting thing where people keep voting on the designs at each step.
My mother manages to feed me bits of food and sips of tea while they work on me, but by the time the shoot is over, I'm starving and exhausted.
Uh really? I mean, assuming she's getting fed bites of even moderately filling food, which her family can certainly afford, she really shouldn't be starving at the end. And exhausted even less. I'm sure photo shoots are a real trial to people who've never gone days without a meal or done any physical labor, but Katniss really needs to stop being identical to an upper class American kid.
Incidentally, the dresses are ridiculous diamond and pearl covered exercises in excess that could feed the entire district. Also, five of them are presumably going to get scrapped outright.
Prim, who came home from school in time to see the last two dresses, chatters on about them with my mother. They both seem overly happy about the photo shoot.
Also, people are dropping while they work from starvation right now.
Katniss says she figures they figure that the dresses mean the capital isn't mad about interfering with the whipping. I still don't get why anyone thinks the capital gives a fuck about the whipping in the first place. They have better things to do with their time, okay?
Katniss needs someone to talk to. Since god forbid Katniss have a relationship with another woman, she can't possibly chat with her mom and heads over to Haymitch. She tells him what she knows and he says he's heard things too.
rumors of uprisings in Districts 7 and 11 as well.
Rumors from where? How are people communicating? This is actually kind of important. So far, there seems to be absolutely no movement between districts, which means no rumors. Do the peacekeepers know? Even if they do, it seems like peacekeepers getting drunk and saying stuff they shouldn't is something that'd happen before with Cray, not now. Besides that, it seems like you'd have to be in contact with the capital, because they're the only centralized place that would have the information necessary to generate rumors.
Also, how would dealing with an uprising in 11 work? It seems the rebels burn things and the capital's strategy is to nuke from orbit. Do you have any idea how long it takes to grow an orchard? It's not like repairing a factory. And any crops they burn will have to wait for the next growing season before there's more. You can't just turn production on and off like you can fabric.
Maybe if they're really on the ball they may have enormous amounts of various foods stockpiled so they can keep supplying the capital, but even at best you're not going to get any fresh food for quite some time.
“Do you still think it won't work here?” I ask.
“Not yet. Those other districts, they're much larger. Even if half the people cower in their homes, the rebels stand a chance. Here in Twelve, it's got to be all of us or nothing,” he says.
That makes no sense to me. None of the districts can beat the capital in a straight fight no matter how large. We know now that almost half of them have rebelled without any success, and given that the rebels don't seem to have any weaponry, it's clear why.
But that's insisting rebellion is done with all the tactical sense of, say, the British in colonial times. They seem to think you stand in front of the people with guns and throw rocks. The only time that works is when there's some sort of reason they can't just shoot you.
Katniss' district is actually in perhaps the best position to rebel, as should be obvious.
1) Katniss' district produces from a single narrow point, the mines.
2) The mines regularly have deadly explosions.
3) If the openings to the mines explode, no one can use them.
4) You can't force people to mine when there are no mines.
This is approaching the stupidity of saying the capital was unbeatable because the rebels were in the mountains and the capital was supplied by easily destroyed trains.
And why? Because apparently, heroism is for other people. The book is making excuse after excuse for why Katniss personally doesn't have to do anything hard or risky.
Katniss, being almost as stupid as Haymitch, agrees that they lack numerical strength, because god knows numerical strength is what you want when your opponents have guns.
Even going by the idiotic Roman motif the book keeps forcing down the reader's throat this is so fucking stupid, because the Romans were all about properly trained and equipped troops moving down everyone else.
Katniss then asks what'll happen to people who rebel.
Well, you've heard what they did in Eight. You've seen what they did here, and that was without provocation
Except by all appearances what's going on in 12 right now isn't a crackdown, it's just making things business as usual again.
Haymitch goes on to say he thinks they'll destroy another district if they have to. Really?
We still haven't had a full list of what everyone does, but we know 3 is all manufacturing and 4 is all seafood. At best, you might be able to roll something like 8's job of cloth manufacture into 3, since it's all industrialized, and even then you're going to have a lot of trouble, because their district isn't big enough for the new factories, doesn't have the factories ready and doesn't have the workers. If nothing else they'd have to treat whatever the replacement district is significantly better just to up the birthrate, unless they're willing to pull a few people in from all the districts and train them, which goes against letting people know about other districts and is still going to take a while. And you've got to do all this while rebuilding destroyed infrastructure everywhere and dealing with a decimated and injured population.
Of course, this gets back to the core problem, which is that the districts don't make any sense under the circumstances. Specialization is an efficiency thing, not a control thing.
(Not that they seem to be doing efficiency all that well - two percent of America's population manages the farms to produce all food, cloth and livestock, so the idea District 11 has a huge population makes no sense. If all districts and the capital had the same population, each is about 7.7% of the population. The average person in those districts is likely consuming far less than the average American, meaning you should need less of the population employed to feed them. And yet, we know that District 12 is significantly smaller than the average district, which in turn is significantly smaller than 11.
(This could actually be a subtle reference to the idea that the unspecified series of disasters have completely fucked up everything and they can't produce crops like before, except that we know the district produces the sort of high density crops that modern farming does, as it's the only one the author bothered detailing, and we know plants in general are thriving from Katniss' experiences with her local forest.)
Katniss then tries to use the mockingjay as proof that 13 is still around. Haymitch argues that this doesn't mean anything because it's probably just easier to reuse footage. While normally this would seem like a decent argument, in that case reused footage should be coming up all the time. Either they're dumb and have never noticed it before, or it's really suspicious.
Interesting characters who DID SOMETHING instead of FUCKING STANDING AROUND might at this point try to see if they can find evidence of other reused footage. But they're just going to talk and do nothing.
It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that the bird itself is suspicious, as the capital claims it turned the place into a toxic deathtrap and there's a bird flying happily about. Birds are kind of delicate. You'd think coal miners of all people would understand that.
Prim comes home from school bubbling over with excitement. The teachers announced there was mandatory programming tonight.
How does the mandatory programming thing even work? How could you tell if people are actually watching?
Anyway, Prim thinks it's of the dress pictures, and Katniss says they can't possibly be showing the pictures on television since the pictures were only taken yesterday. Yes if only there was some sort of way to transmit images from one location to another, possibly across far distances. If only.
Because Katniss is really fucking stupid, she's amazed to discover that yes, somehow technology has managed to get the pictures to the capital in time for her to watch pictures from the capital arrive nearly instantaneously on a viewing device in her home.
Also Katniss angsts a bit about what will Gale think. The idea he'll be disgusted that she's wearing diamonds and pearls while people starve does not come up, just that he'll probably be upset because the wedding involves her marrying Peeta and clearly that's what matters right now.
Having voted, and probably bet on the winner,
Why does betting keep coming up constantly in these books? Is it just some sort of anti-gambling thing and I'm supposed to take it as a sign they're immoral?
Also this doesn't even make much sense if you think about it. Betting is about what you think is most likely to win, while voting is which one you want to win. An awful lot of people must be in the situation where their favorite and the one with the best odds don't match up, and that's assuming the majority of people would want to bet on this despite it being such a dumb thing to bet on.
Thank god, the plot finally pokes its head out. The quell announcement is here. For some reason they announce it months in advance because...? No, no, plot, I didn't mean it! Please don't go! You may not make sense but at least you're doing something!
President Snow takes the stage. He's followed by a young boy dressed in a white suit, holding a simple wooden box.
That's probably a Lottery reference, just because a wooden box makes no sense in the context of the way the capital is set up. Which means I'm just being reminded of another, better story, always a bad move.
President Snow begins to speak, to remind us all of the Dark Days from which the Hunger Games were born. When the laws for the Games were laid out, they dictated that every twenty-five years the anniversary would be marked by a Quarter Quell. It would call for a glorified version of the Games to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts' rebellion.
…wow, book, I am impressed by just how far you've taken the game of passing the blame. It's now laid down by some people who are dead now. And we aren't even left with the fanwank justification that punishing rebellion is a cover for the capital being assholes. This clusterfuck of stupidity was all put in place deliberately.
Snow explains that in the first quell, people had to pick what kids to send. Somehow, this is more awful than doing it by lottery. I think the comment discussion about the benefits of trained kids and volunteering has covered this issue well enough.
“On the fiftieth anniversary,” the president continues, “as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes.”
TWO? What sort of dictatorship is this? Do you know how many people the Nazis killed for every soldier they lost? By the end of the war they were wiping entire damn villages off the map!
Even if the author is somehow completely ignorant of all history besides a book she read in fourth grade about the Romans, the supposed inspiration for this is the Iraqi War! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE'RE DOING OVER THERE, IT'S NOT HANDING OUT FLOWERS!
…
We learn that their mother knew one of the people who went that year but never mentioned her before because this was obviously made up for this book and the author has no real idea how the world works or what people's relationships are outside of Katniss.
The little boy in white steps forward, holding out the box as he opens the lid. We can see the tidy, upright rows of yellowed envelopes. Whoever devised the Quarter Quell system had prepared for centuries of Hunger Games.
Nothing about this makes any sense.
Without hesitation, he reads, “On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”
FUCKING FINALLY.
I don't really like this, actually - it means we're going in for more of how it's all about Katniss. Her being a mentor had a lot of promise, and would have given the uprising plans an added time limit. It'd have let us focus on how other people are suffering for once. Katniss is at her best when she's helping others so far, which makes a sort of sense - I certainly liked the character most when the series began and her attitude was that everyone in the world could go fuck themselves as long as her sister was safe. And really, if you're doing a book that's about an oppressive evil government, it should really have more focus on the people affected by it instead of just one character.
But at least Snow is finally taking reasonable action against Katniss, and hopefully this means things will pick up.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-05-05 04:43 am (UTC)(link):/ Well, the amount of money and valuables Katniss has doesn't increase the amount of food in the district, unless they can buy from other districts, which... actually, I don't think it says if they can or not.
no subject
Also, the food must be ordered or places like the bakery would run into all sorts of trouble, so it should be possible to order more food per shipment if people could afford it.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-05-06 02:07 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-05-05 04:53 am (UTC)(link)I cannot fathom why Katniss not only accepts this but enjoys it too. She doesn't seem to resent or harbor any ill-feeling towards her prep team, or Cinna, at all.
no subject
no subject
But it doesn't really seem to be Snow reacting properly-- just more shitty, world-warping luck for Katniss. Of course this is the year that type of quell was mandated. I think you could argue that Snow pulled that one on purpose, but I don't think the narration is that deep, and once again you run into the issue of you are an evil government just kill her if you want her dead CHRIST.
I seriously, seriously hope we aren't forced to sit through another round of the childmurder games. Is the author not capable of coming up with another device by which to create excited and battle? Why do this kind of repetition to your reader?
Also, I don't understand the logic behind the Quell. "We kill your kids every year, but every [random interval of time] we're going to choose which kids we kill in a different way." What's the big deal? How is it any different?
This whole series perplexes the hell out of me.
no subject
And no, the author isn't. We're into the second third of the book and nothing interesting has happened, and it doesn't look like that's going to change. She can write Battle Royale stuff and that's about it.
Also, I don't understand the logic behind the Quell. "We kill your kids every year, but every [random interval of time] we're going to choose which kids we kill in a different way." What's the big deal? How is it any different?
Yeah, compared to the normal games we heard about last book none of it seems that bad.
Cinna:
While on the surface this is just Cinna being cool and smart and wonderful, it would be amazing if, gasp, he's actually the Capitol's spy because they aren't complete fuckwits and would send someone who's aware of what's going on to watch Katniss. Of course he doesn't believe that ice story, because he knows what really happened, and he's just trying to gain your trust so you can incriminate yourself! Since apparently the Capitol can't bother making something up if they must have a reason.
That would make a better story and actually justify her paranoia to a degree, but no.
By the way, I love your commentary. I hadn't read the books because I don't like reading first person, but this is great fun.
Re: Cinna:
Re: Cinna:
And then if the writer were really clever she could say she was inspired by the novel, because "Oranges and lemons" from the rhyme made her think of "cloves and cinnamon," so she named her mole character "Cinna"!
. . . I don't know what the heck I'm typing about anymore, but I would dearly love for a character Katniss likes to be evil, or for Effie to turn out to be a genius ninja spymaster.
no subject
It seems like the author was "inspired" only in that she turned on the news and thought, "That looks terrifying. War is bad." She doesn't even realize she had a chance to portray heroism and sacrifice for the greater good, because she was too busy writing "Pretty in Pink II: Childmurder Games!"
*huff* *huff*
. . . I just really think she squandered the Careers, okay? They could've been really awesome. *wistful*
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Also, this makes the people who accept tributes and would otherwise draft them... huh. No, actually, the political body of the military and the Capital compare rather nicely. Carry on.
I do agree that the Careers were squandered, but they aren't strictly "volunteers"; they're shaped for the killing games their whole lives, and thus they compare more closely to child soldiers or, for that matter, pit-bred fighting dogs. The focus should be on how fucking tragic it is that people are willing and/or feel they have to do that to their own kids, in order to give them a slim chance of survival should they be picked, and how it's just one more sign of the horribleness of the system. Even if you're going to make the parents of Careers out to be monsters - and you could make a case for that - the Careers themselves shouldn't be blamed. They're victims, and there's no doubt they have issues. Hand-sculpted sociopaths who will likely never know normal human relations or have respect for lives that aren't their own, or at least related to them... seriously, there's a LOT of dramatic story potential there.
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