Catching Fire, Chapter 13
May. 5th, 2011 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Catching Fire, we find out this year's childmurder games are going to involve Katniss, again.
Katniss panics and runs off. She then has a quick blackout period, which, like every other kind of Hollywood amnesia trope, is cheap and lazy. She wakes back up in one of the other victor houses for some reason.
She stuffs her mouth with her shirt and screams for a while, which is more realistic. Then she emos about how sure, she was expecting all sorts of horrible things, like being tortured to death, but not this particular one, and that makes it worse. Uh, no, pretty sure being tortured to death is worse. She can't even claim the pacifist excuse that killing others is horrible, because Katniss is totally fine with killing other kids.
In the distance, someone is calling my name. But at the moment, I excuse myself from thinking about even those I love most. I think only of me.
This would work a lot better if Katniss wasn't thinking about herself constantly. Also, if there was ever any real textual evidence that "those I love the most" included people other than Peeta and Gale, who she instead puts ahead of everything. Neither are really sympathetic traits and she keeps jumping between the two without spending much time in the nicer middle ground.
there's no precedent for it. Victors are out of the reaping for life. That's the deal if you win.
I really don't get what the big deal is. This seems like yet another example of whatever actually happens getting treated as the worst possible thing. The deal if you win is that you get a life of luxury and ease. Katniss is already watched like a hawk, has the life of a puppet, her district is getting starved before her eyes, and she's expecting that she and everyone she knows are going to get tortured and killed.
If the books hadn't been so over the top up to this point, I would completely understand Katniss' behavior right now, because the childmurder games are terribly traumatic and the thought of going back there must be awful. But after everything we've seen so far, it's hard to really buy this as a shock.
She figures the president set this up on purpose. Does it even matter?
victors are our strongest. They're the ones who survived the arena and slipped the noose of poverty that strangles the rest of us. They, or should I say we, are the very embodiment of hope where there is no hope.
God damn it book. Remember what you were saying before?
the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me
The districts may like their own victors, but they apparently hate everyone else's. And I'm not totally sure they even like their own much, with Katniss' repeated worry about how if she let Peeta die she'd be shunned and despised if she went home. There are surely plenty of winners who killed or at least let their district partner die along the way.
And then, of course, there's the fact that winners do live lives of luxury, which would make everyone else jealous, and some must deal with it like Haymitch. There's nothing people hate more than someone who has everything they want and yet spends their time in a drugged stupor.
To say nothing of how they are, unwilling or not, the capital's lapdogs taking part in the same oppression. The victors are the ones who played the game like they were supposed to. They played along with what the capital wanted from them, told the people there how wonderful and lovely they were, and then killed for the capital, and then go back every year to flirt with the crowds and tell people there that the capital is awesome. They aren't hope.
So plenty of people will see it as what the victors deserve, and most of the rest will probably see the loss of two victors as worth it in return for killing another twenty victors of those fucking other districts.
Anyway, Katniss thinks that at least she only just won, so she won't know the other victors, just Peeta and Haymitch.
And then that there's no way she could kill them.
...and didn't she already work out how that worked? Just threaten suicide again. Seriously, it's the moral option. If the rest of the victors are friends, try to get them all in on it. Refuse to play the game.
one of them will be in the arena with me, and that's a fact. They may have even decided between them who it will be. Whoever is picked first, the other will have the option of volunteering to take his place. I already know what will happen. Peeta will ask Haymitch to let him go into the arena with me no matter what. For my sake. To protect me.
Of course, the other way around would let Haymitch volunteer. So obviously that won't happen because it wouldn't be rehashing last book's plot!
Katniss makes her way out. Apparently she punched through a window to get in.
Must be why my hand seems to be bleeding.
Yeah you would be hurt a bit worse than that if you actually punched through a window.
She goes to see Haymitch, who says that he figures she wants him to go instead. But no, Katniss can't possibly want him to die either.
Look, the guy is in his forties, since the game he was in was twenty-five years ago and he must have been at least fifteen. He's spent most if not all of those twenty-five years drunk. He's not going to live much longer. Peeta is sixteen and seems to be coping so far. If Katniss dies, he might end up like Haymitch, but even then, maybe not.
So yeah, Haymitch is the one that should go. He's miserable and dying. It's awful, but this really isn't a situation where you can claim both options are equally terrible, and I don't like it when people think that allowing something to happen somehow absolves them of any responsibility.
Because we are not in a book where people make hard choices, Katniss instead says she wants a drink.
I run my sleeve across the top and take a couple gulps before I come up choking.
...I really doubt someone would get that much down their throat before choking. One mouthful at best.
inside me, the liquor feels like fire and I like it.
The cliches will never end with this book.
“You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,” Haymitch says.
There's really nothing to say.
If this was a fanfic, this would be the ragequit point, but I'm kind of stuck seeing this one to the end.
Katniss decides that what they're going to do is try to save Peeta this time, because last time everyone saved her. This is kind of rational, except for the part where she saved Peeta repeatedly, and also where she didn't ask to be saved at the cost of Peeta in the first place and it's really skeevy to say she's obligated to pay them back for things she never asked for.
Besides, Peeta will probably suicide or something. Katniss may not understand any of her own emotions, but she seems to bounce back easily from everything, and we're at least told she has a decent relationship with her family, which is still better than Peeta. Plus, she can always marry Gale, who's more of a dick than Peeta but at least he has other goals in life.
Of course, Katniss also makes the more reasonable point that the capital is going to kill her either way, while Peeta still has a chance. That should really have been the original argument.
She leaves to go back and talk to her family.
Gale pulls me into his arms. “I was wrong. We should have gone when you said,” he whispers.
A moment of interaction I don't hate! It's not really good that Gale is willing to give up plans to rebel and save everyone for Katniss, but as flaws go, it's certainly a positive one.
liquor keeps sloshing out of my bottle
What? People are starving, stop wasting that.
I hear the glass bottle shatter on the floor.
Arg! Do you have any idea how many calories are in alcohol?
When I wake up, I barely get to the toilet before the white liquor makes its reappearance.
Not unlike the capital throwing up their food. Seriously do you not get that alcohol has calories? It's food and it's made from other food and people are starving.
Katniss spends time in bed hungover and crying. It's a nice show of weakness that doesn't seem forced or relying on her being broken when it comes to emotions.
When she comes down later, she looks at Prim and thinks about how much older her sister seems.
She's grown quite a bit, too; we're practically the same height now
...Her sister is twelve. She should be just starting her growth spurt. Unless Katniss is a midget, her sister shouldn't be as tall as her.
Peeta comes down and tosses a cardboard box of empty liquor bottles on the table with finality. “There, it's done,” he says.
It's taking all of Haymitch's resources to focus his eyes on the bottles, so I speak up. “What's done?”
“I've poured all the liquor down the drain,” says Peeta.
You fucking asshole.
There's about a hundred calories in a shot of 80 proof alcohol. Haymitch's alcohol should be at least that strong and probably stronger. We don't know how big the bottle is, but they're usually sold in 750 mL bottles, which is fifteen shots, or larger. So, each bottle Peeta dumped had at least 1500 calories. At you may recall from my discussion of Katniss' weight loss last book, that's a pretty respectable amount of calories when people are FUCKING STARVING. While trying to live off the stuff is a bad idea, watering it down and having people drink that would be a good idea considering people are currently at the point they're dropping while they work.
This is something you do when you don't live somewhere people are dying for lack of food and can afford to waste resources. In context, it's unforgivably wasteful and cruel.
“He'll just buy more,” I say.
“No, he won't,” says Peeta. “I tracked down Ripper this morning and told her I'd turn her in the second she sold to either of you. I paid her off, too, just for good measure, but I don't think she's eager to be back in the Peacekeepers' custody.”
Well. That'll show me for thinking there was some sort of limit to how horrible the main characters could be.
We can't afford any drunkards on this team. Especially not you, Katniss,” says Peeta to me.
I don't even want Peeta to die. The point where the hatred to catharsis ratio was worth that was a while back. There is nothing that can be done to make up for how much I hate reading this.
I turn to Haymitch. “Don't worry, I'll get you more liquor.”
“Then I'll turn you both in. Let you sober up in the stocks,” says Peeta.
…So.
I'm just going to avoid what's actually going on for a bit on research. The stocks are not a quaint funny little thing they used to do. They're banned for being cruel and unusual punishment, and there's a reason. In extreme weather, such as summer or winter, they can even be fatal, especially if someone is already in bad shape. For example, drunk or hungover.
. We're going to put on weight and get strong. We're going to start acting like Careers. And one of us is going to be victor again whether you two like it or not!”
And we've now confirmed that there is absolutely no morality in this book. If other people wear nice clothes, they're shallow fake bitches. If Katniss does, it's just what she naturally deserves. If other kids train for the games, they're hated and killed in horrible ways. If the main characters do it, it's right.
Adjusting for age, I realize some of our opponents may be elderly, which is both sad and reassuring.
Actually, adjusting for age this flatly doesn't work.
Assume the victors are victors at age 15. Victors should be skewed toward the oldest ages, so this is already quite generous. This is the seventy-fifth Hunger Games, so the first victor would be 90. We know that Katniss' districts first winner is already dead and that early deaths from substance abuse should be common. So let's say no one older than sixty years ago is around, again, quite generous. With one tribute a year divided by twelve districts, that gives us five per district.
But, of course, they aren't divided evenly. The majority of the winners should be clustered around the three career districts. Until recently, Katniss' district had only one living winner. If Peeta had come back alone, there wouldn't even be a female victor. Even if men and women win roughly as often (and while the book is avoiding this issue, looking between the lines makes it clear they don't - Katniss references a female winner winning by pretending to be weak, which suggests both her victory was unusual and that writing off the female competitors is commonplace. In Katniss' games, only Clove and the red-haired girl survived to the end. Clove was easily killed by Thresh (in retrospect, why didn't she stab him or throw a knife into his throat?) and the red-haired girl wasn't a combatant at all.) there's still the problem that the distribution wouldn't be even, so it's quite easy for a district to only have winners of one gender - even more so for non-career ones, where whatever the kids normally do will affect their odds of winning and there do seem to be employment differences.
In short, it's possible that all the districts have enough victors to send someone of both genders, but just as possible they wouldn't. A point in favor of this being a decision by Snow, because it'd look quite dumb if he pulled out a card that they couldn't do. Of course, it's not like this book is otherwise written tightly enough that it'd be careful to avoid a plothole there.
Anyway, despite this, Haymitch doesn't improve much.
you'd think a guy who sleeps every night with a knife might actually be able to hit the side of a house with one
It doesn't occur to Katniss, or, I think, the book, that the fact Haymitch does this may mean he doesn't want to be in good shape. If I tried to stab people when I woke up, I wouldn't want to be particularly good at it.
Peeta and I excel under the new regimen, though. It gives me something to do. It gives us all something to do besides accept defeat. My mother puts us on a special diet to gain weight.
Also, people are starving, dying in the mines and being whipped. Oh, if only there was anything that might occupy Katniss' time! Can't think of anything, back to focusing on your own problems.
Gale sort of puts his feelings aside to help out, then ruins it by asking what things would've been like if Katniss had come back alone. Katniss, naturally, is still stuck in her endless loop of can't marry because babies and just avoids the question, completely fine that Gale's saying life would be better if she'd murdered Peeta.
I'm afraid, anyway, that any kind of emotional scene with Gale might cause him to do something drastic. Like start that uprising in the mines.
Yes god forbid anyone actually do something.
I do plan on saying one or two things to him after the reaping, when we're allowed an hour for good-byes. To let Gale know how essential he's been to me all these years. How much better my life has been for knowing him. For loving him, even if it's only in the limited way that I can manage.
But I never get the chance.
We're getting more unnecessary emo? Thanks book, that's really necessary. You know, you pile this on long enough and I just don't give a fuck. We passed that point a while ago. Stop it.
Effie, shining in a wig of metallic gold, lacks her usual verve. She has to claw around the girls' reaping ball for quite a while to snag the one piece of paper that everyone already knows has my name on it.
This is stupid.
We are immediately marched into the Justice Building to find Head Peacekeeper Thread waiting for us. “New procedure,” he says with a smile. We're ushered out the back door, into a car, and taken to the train station. There are no cameras on the platform, no crowd to send us on our way. Haymitch and Effie appear, escorted by guards. Peacekeepers hurry us all onto the train and slam the door. The wheels begin to turn.
And I'm left staring out the window, watching District 12 disappear, with all my good-byes still hanging on my lips.
But this is stupider. If Katniss was let talk with her family, we'd get a long explanation about how that just made things worse and she wished she could leave without saying goodbye. The president is not spending all his time trying to read your mind and figure out the exact worst thing to do! There's no point at all to this, it's just a cheap attempt to have yet another thing happen to Katniss that's SO UNFAIR.
I hate this book so much.
Katniss panics and runs off. She then has a quick blackout period, which, like every other kind of Hollywood amnesia trope, is cheap and lazy. She wakes back up in one of the other victor houses for some reason.
She stuffs her mouth with her shirt and screams for a while, which is more realistic. Then she emos about how sure, she was expecting all sorts of horrible things, like being tortured to death, but not this particular one, and that makes it worse. Uh, no, pretty sure being tortured to death is worse. She can't even claim the pacifist excuse that killing others is horrible, because Katniss is totally fine with killing other kids.
In the distance, someone is calling my name. But at the moment, I excuse myself from thinking about even those I love most. I think only of me.
This would work a lot better if Katniss wasn't thinking about herself constantly. Also, if there was ever any real textual evidence that "those I love the most" included people other than Peeta and Gale, who she instead puts ahead of everything. Neither are really sympathetic traits and she keeps jumping between the two without spending much time in the nicer middle ground.
there's no precedent for it. Victors are out of the reaping for life. That's the deal if you win.
I really don't get what the big deal is. This seems like yet another example of whatever actually happens getting treated as the worst possible thing. The deal if you win is that you get a life of luxury and ease. Katniss is already watched like a hawk, has the life of a puppet, her district is getting starved before her eyes, and she's expecting that she and everyone she knows are going to get tortured and killed.
If the books hadn't been so over the top up to this point, I would completely understand Katniss' behavior right now, because the childmurder games are terribly traumatic and the thought of going back there must be awful. But after everything we've seen so far, it's hard to really buy this as a shock.
She figures the president set this up on purpose. Does it even matter?
victors are our strongest. They're the ones who survived the arena and slipped the noose of poverty that strangles the rest of us. They, or should I say we, are the very embodiment of hope where there is no hope.
God damn it book. Remember what you were saying before?
the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me
The districts may like their own victors, but they apparently hate everyone else's. And I'm not totally sure they even like their own much, with Katniss' repeated worry about how if she let Peeta die she'd be shunned and despised if she went home. There are surely plenty of winners who killed or at least let their district partner die along the way.
And then, of course, there's the fact that winners do live lives of luxury, which would make everyone else jealous, and some must deal with it like Haymitch. There's nothing people hate more than someone who has everything they want and yet spends their time in a drugged stupor.
To say nothing of how they are, unwilling or not, the capital's lapdogs taking part in the same oppression. The victors are the ones who played the game like they were supposed to. They played along with what the capital wanted from them, told the people there how wonderful and lovely they were, and then killed for the capital, and then go back every year to flirt with the crowds and tell people there that the capital is awesome. They aren't hope.
So plenty of people will see it as what the victors deserve, and most of the rest will probably see the loss of two victors as worth it in return for killing another twenty victors of those fucking other districts.
Anyway, Katniss thinks that at least she only just won, so she won't know the other victors, just Peeta and Haymitch.
And then that there's no way she could kill them.
...and didn't she already work out how that worked? Just threaten suicide again. Seriously, it's the moral option. If the rest of the victors are friends, try to get them all in on it. Refuse to play the game.
one of them will be in the arena with me, and that's a fact. They may have even decided between them who it will be. Whoever is picked first, the other will have the option of volunteering to take his place. I already know what will happen. Peeta will ask Haymitch to let him go into the arena with me no matter what. For my sake. To protect me.
Of course, the other way around would let Haymitch volunteer. So obviously that won't happen because it wouldn't be rehashing last book's plot!
Katniss makes her way out. Apparently she punched through a window to get in.
Must be why my hand seems to be bleeding.
Yeah you would be hurt a bit worse than that if you actually punched through a window.
She goes to see Haymitch, who says that he figures she wants him to go instead. But no, Katniss can't possibly want him to die either.
Look, the guy is in his forties, since the game he was in was twenty-five years ago and he must have been at least fifteen. He's spent most if not all of those twenty-five years drunk. He's not going to live much longer. Peeta is sixteen and seems to be coping so far. If Katniss dies, he might end up like Haymitch, but even then, maybe not.
So yeah, Haymitch is the one that should go. He's miserable and dying. It's awful, but this really isn't a situation where you can claim both options are equally terrible, and I don't like it when people think that allowing something to happen somehow absolves them of any responsibility.
Because we are not in a book where people make hard choices, Katniss instead says she wants a drink.
I run my sleeve across the top and take a couple gulps before I come up choking.
...I really doubt someone would get that much down their throat before choking. One mouthful at best.
inside me, the liquor feels like fire and I like it.
The cliches will never end with this book.
“You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,” Haymitch says.
There's really nothing to say.
If this was a fanfic, this would be the ragequit point, but I'm kind of stuck seeing this one to the end.
Katniss decides that what they're going to do is try to save Peeta this time, because last time everyone saved her. This is kind of rational, except for the part where she saved Peeta repeatedly, and also where she didn't ask to be saved at the cost of Peeta in the first place and it's really skeevy to say she's obligated to pay them back for things she never asked for.
Besides, Peeta will probably suicide or something. Katniss may not understand any of her own emotions, but she seems to bounce back easily from everything, and we're at least told she has a decent relationship with her family, which is still better than Peeta. Plus, she can always marry Gale, who's more of a dick than Peeta but at least he has other goals in life.
Of course, Katniss also makes the more reasonable point that the capital is going to kill her either way, while Peeta still has a chance. That should really have been the original argument.
She leaves to go back and talk to her family.
Gale pulls me into his arms. “I was wrong. We should have gone when you said,” he whispers.
A moment of interaction I don't hate! It's not really good that Gale is willing to give up plans to rebel and save everyone for Katniss, but as flaws go, it's certainly a positive one.
liquor keeps sloshing out of my bottle
What? People are starving, stop wasting that.
I hear the glass bottle shatter on the floor.
Arg! Do you have any idea how many calories are in alcohol?
When I wake up, I barely get to the toilet before the white liquor makes its reappearance.
Not unlike the capital throwing up their food. Seriously do you not get that alcohol has calories? It's food and it's made from other food and people are starving.
Katniss spends time in bed hungover and crying. It's a nice show of weakness that doesn't seem forced or relying on her being broken when it comes to emotions.
When she comes down later, she looks at Prim and thinks about how much older her sister seems.
She's grown quite a bit, too; we're practically the same height now
...Her sister is twelve. She should be just starting her growth spurt. Unless Katniss is a midget, her sister shouldn't be as tall as her.
Peeta comes down and tosses a cardboard box of empty liquor bottles on the table with finality. “There, it's done,” he says.
It's taking all of Haymitch's resources to focus his eyes on the bottles, so I speak up. “What's done?”
“I've poured all the liquor down the drain,” says Peeta.
You fucking asshole.
There's about a hundred calories in a shot of 80 proof alcohol. Haymitch's alcohol should be at least that strong and probably stronger. We don't know how big the bottle is, but they're usually sold in 750 mL bottles, which is fifteen shots, or larger. So, each bottle Peeta dumped had at least 1500 calories. At you may recall from my discussion of Katniss' weight loss last book, that's a pretty respectable amount of calories when people are FUCKING STARVING. While trying to live off the stuff is a bad idea, watering it down and having people drink that would be a good idea considering people are currently at the point they're dropping while they work.
This is something you do when you don't live somewhere people are dying for lack of food and can afford to waste resources. In context, it's unforgivably wasteful and cruel.
“He'll just buy more,” I say.
“No, he won't,” says Peeta. “I tracked down Ripper this morning and told her I'd turn her in the second she sold to either of you. I paid her off, too, just for good measure, but I don't think she's eager to be back in the Peacekeepers' custody.”
Well. That'll show me for thinking there was some sort of limit to how horrible the main characters could be.
We can't afford any drunkards on this team. Especially not you, Katniss,” says Peeta to me.
I don't even want Peeta to die. The point where the hatred to catharsis ratio was worth that was a while back. There is nothing that can be done to make up for how much I hate reading this.
I turn to Haymitch. “Don't worry, I'll get you more liquor.”
“Then I'll turn you both in. Let you sober up in the stocks,” says Peeta.
…So.
I'm just going to avoid what's actually going on for a bit on research. The stocks are not a quaint funny little thing they used to do. They're banned for being cruel and unusual punishment, and there's a reason. In extreme weather, such as summer or winter, they can even be fatal, especially if someone is already in bad shape. For example, drunk or hungover.
. We're going to put on weight and get strong. We're going to start acting like Careers. And one of us is going to be victor again whether you two like it or not!”
And we've now confirmed that there is absolutely no morality in this book. If other people wear nice clothes, they're shallow fake bitches. If Katniss does, it's just what she naturally deserves. If other kids train for the games, they're hated and killed in horrible ways. If the main characters do it, it's right.
Adjusting for age, I realize some of our opponents may be elderly, which is both sad and reassuring.
Actually, adjusting for age this flatly doesn't work.
Assume the victors are victors at age 15. Victors should be skewed toward the oldest ages, so this is already quite generous. This is the seventy-fifth Hunger Games, so the first victor would be 90. We know that Katniss' districts first winner is already dead and that early deaths from substance abuse should be common. So let's say no one older than sixty years ago is around, again, quite generous. With one tribute a year divided by twelve districts, that gives us five per district.
But, of course, they aren't divided evenly. The majority of the winners should be clustered around the three career districts. Until recently, Katniss' district had only one living winner. If Peeta had come back alone, there wouldn't even be a female victor. Even if men and women win roughly as often (and while the book is avoiding this issue, looking between the lines makes it clear they don't - Katniss references a female winner winning by pretending to be weak, which suggests both her victory was unusual and that writing off the female competitors is commonplace. In Katniss' games, only Clove and the red-haired girl survived to the end. Clove was easily killed by Thresh (in retrospect, why didn't she stab him or throw a knife into his throat?) and the red-haired girl wasn't a combatant at all.) there's still the problem that the distribution wouldn't be even, so it's quite easy for a district to only have winners of one gender - even more so for non-career ones, where whatever the kids normally do will affect their odds of winning and there do seem to be employment differences.
In short, it's possible that all the districts have enough victors to send someone of both genders, but just as possible they wouldn't. A point in favor of this being a decision by Snow, because it'd look quite dumb if he pulled out a card that they couldn't do. Of course, it's not like this book is otherwise written tightly enough that it'd be careful to avoid a plothole there.
Anyway, despite this, Haymitch doesn't improve much.
you'd think a guy who sleeps every night with a knife might actually be able to hit the side of a house with one
It doesn't occur to Katniss, or, I think, the book, that the fact Haymitch does this may mean he doesn't want to be in good shape. If I tried to stab people when I woke up, I wouldn't want to be particularly good at it.
Peeta and I excel under the new regimen, though. It gives me something to do. It gives us all something to do besides accept defeat. My mother puts us on a special diet to gain weight.
Also, people are starving, dying in the mines and being whipped. Oh, if only there was anything that might occupy Katniss' time! Can't think of anything, back to focusing on your own problems.
Gale sort of puts his feelings aside to help out, then ruins it by asking what things would've been like if Katniss had come back alone. Katniss, naturally, is still stuck in her endless loop of can't marry because babies and just avoids the question, completely fine that Gale's saying life would be better if she'd murdered Peeta.
I'm afraid, anyway, that any kind of emotional scene with Gale might cause him to do something drastic. Like start that uprising in the mines.
Yes god forbid anyone actually do something.
I do plan on saying one or two things to him after the reaping, when we're allowed an hour for good-byes. To let Gale know how essential he's been to me all these years. How much better my life has been for knowing him. For loving him, even if it's only in the limited way that I can manage.
But I never get the chance.
We're getting more unnecessary emo? Thanks book, that's really necessary. You know, you pile this on long enough and I just don't give a fuck. We passed that point a while ago. Stop it.
Effie, shining in a wig of metallic gold, lacks her usual verve. She has to claw around the girls' reaping ball for quite a while to snag the one piece of paper that everyone already knows has my name on it.
This is stupid.
We are immediately marched into the Justice Building to find Head Peacekeeper Thread waiting for us. “New procedure,” he says with a smile. We're ushered out the back door, into a car, and taken to the train station. There are no cameras on the platform, no crowd to send us on our way. Haymitch and Effie appear, escorted by guards. Peacekeepers hurry us all onto the train and slam the door. The wheels begin to turn.
And I'm left staring out the window, watching District 12 disappear, with all my good-byes still hanging on my lips.
But this is stupider. If Katniss was let talk with her family, we'd get a long explanation about how that just made things worse and she wished she could leave without saying goodbye. The president is not spending all his time trying to read your mind and figure out the exact worst thing to do! There's no point at all to this, it's just a cheap attempt to have yet another thing happen to Katniss that's SO UNFAIR.
I hate this book so much.
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Date: 2013-05-06 03:01 pm (UTC)