Catching Fire, Chapter 14
May. 10th, 2011 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Catching Fire, Katniss is worthless so she's going to die for Peeta.
This time I don't have even the slightest hope of return. Before my first Games, I promised Prim I would do everything I could to win, and now I've sworn to myself to do all I can to keep Peeta alive.
Huh, that raises a point. With her dead, her family's kind of fucked. The money lasts only as long as a winner lives, and it doesn't look like they've been saving it. (And don't say "well, noble Peeta will feed them!" because his odds of survival suck and it's more likely Katniss dies protecting him only for him to die soon after because without her he's got no real skills.) Without her, they also have no way to escape the district, as Peeta doesn't know any more about hunting than they do. But female relationships are nothing before her obligation to the guy who's creepy and manipulative!
I'd actually figured out what I wanted my last words to my loved ones to be. How best to close and lock the doors and leave them sad but safely behind. And now the Capitol has stolen that as well.
Huh, maybe that's why the author made sure it wouldn't happen - ran into problems writing a conversation where Katniss explains to her sister that of course she loves Prim, but not enough to bother coming back home to her.
Have I mentioned how much better of a character Katniss was back when she cared about and was motivated by her little sister? So much better.
Peeta tries to console her by saying they can write letters, but Katniss won't let her emo go that easily, dammit.
I sit on the bed, knowing I will never write those letters. They will be like the speech I tried to write to honor Rue and Thresh in District 11. Things seemed clear in my head and even when I talked before the crowd, but the words never came out of the pen right.
I honestly feel almost bad for mocking her over the emo, because hey, denied her last chance to see her family! But the book just turns it into a dissertation on Katniss' sue flaw instead of that she doesn't get to see them. Protip: the ability to compose a perfect speech instantly that moves everyone to a massive act of defiance is more sueish than than the ability to just put words down on the fucking paper. This is not a flaw. This is an anti-flaw.
It's my dying wish. Keep Peeta alive. And as unlikely as it seems that I can achieve it in the face of the Capitol's anger, it's important that I be at the top of my game. This won't happen if I'm mourning for everyone I love back home. Let them go, I tell myself.
FEMINISM: Your only purpose is your boyfriend.
By the time Effie knocks on my door to call me to dinner, I'm empty. But the lightness isn't entirely unwelcome.
See, when Twilight does this shit, everyone notices. I guess as long as you're not literally printing blank pages you get a pass.
Having successfully hollowed herself out of anything resembling her own thoughts and feelings, she's ready to support Peeta.
A cold soup of pureed vegetables. Fish cakes with creamy lime paste. Those little birds filled with orange sauce, with wild rice and watercress. Chocolate custard dotted with cherries.
Look, I don't want to talk about plot. Let's talk about food! So, it's spring (I think), but there are cherries? The growing season for those is summer. Unfortunately, it doesn't say for sure if they're preserved cherries, which would tell us if there are probably greenhouses set up to produce certain things out of season. But if preserved, this indicates the capital's probably got extensive stores of most everything, since they haven't run out by the end of the year and moreover, are willing to waste it on people like Katniss and Peeta, who wouldn't notice the lack. Since the fashion team's complaints earlier suggest the capital people aren't accustomed to shortage, the government probably doesn't want to run out of any particular good. That, in turn, implies either that the District 11 rebellion was pretty minor or they have such huge stores of food they can supply everything for years just out of their existing warehouses, even if they have to burn the place to the ground and replant every orchard. It might also explain that repeated lamb-and-dried-plum stew bit - maybe there's very little fresh fruit in the capital because it can't be supplied year round, so they only provide preserved foods to prevent people asking for fresh out of season and getting mad when it's not available. After all, unlike the US now, it doesn't seem like they can get around growing seasons by flying stuff in from different countries.
Which brings me to the next point - hey, chocolate! That's a zone 11 plant that pretty much needs to be in the rain forest to grow. Even assuming massive global warming you're not going to have it in the US easily. Yet they seem to have plenty of chocolate around (so much even someone like Katniss knows what chocolate tastes like, and it isn't even a big deal) even though that should be incredibly hard to grow. Did we annex Mexico? Are other countries still around and being traded with, and if so, how are they completely unaware of them? I mean, how many countries actually hide the fact the rest of the world exists successfully from their citizens? Is this some sort of meta-commentary on how the US views itself as the center of the universe, or meta-meta-commentary in that the author did this without realizing just how connected to the rest of the world we are?
Of course, considering they can genetically engineer things, they could probably make a more cold-hardy plant. But that just leads to new problems, namely that they don't seem to have made designer food plants at all. All the plants Katniss sees are recognizable. The only weird one is the nightlock, which was a trap.
However, there's another thing. If we assume that the capital has vast storehouses to supply goods like cherries without worrying about running out if they burn the orchards down this year, then what's up with the shrimp? Why isn't there a similar store of meats, like frozen shrimp? Maybe they really, really like fresh shrimp, but then the same should apply to fruit and yet it mostly seems to be preserved.
Finally, those birds. Little to me suggests we're talking songbird or something, which would imply that they're being caught wild, but it doesn't seem like anyone hunts, which is a weird missing chunk to the country's economy. Farmed animals are far more efficient, so the decadence of hunting wild animals seems perfectly in character, and yet, no evidence of it happening.
Anyway, it's Effie again! She says she's thinking all of them should get some item to coordinate with Katniss' pin.
Evidently, Effie doesn't know that my mockingjay pin is now a symbol used by the rebels. At least in District 8. In the Capitol, the mockingjay is still a fun reminder of an especially exciting Hunger Games.
Well, let's consider this. If she knew that, what would she do differently? For starters, in terms of wooing sponsors and such, what it is in the capital is all that matters. Next, the capital perception it's not a rebel symbol but a symbol of a fun Hunger Games they enjoyed is the safest interpretation, and the one they should be playing into, just like playing into the idea Katniss did the berry thing out of love and not defiance was the best option. Pretending utter ignorance of any connection with the rebellion is probably the safest option here - not only is it in general better to be the idiot who did something by accident than the traitor who did it on purpose, but in specific, Katniss and the rest aren't supposed to know there are any rebels or what symbols the rebels they don't know about are using. Suddenly avoiding it would be an admission of guilt and worse, knowledge.
In sum, if she does know this is still the best idea, STFU book.
Real rebels don't put a secret symbol on something as durable as jewelry. They put it on a wafer of bread that can be eaten in a second if necessary.
That's a really stupid explanation. Real rebels put it on a piece of paper that can also be eaten in a second if necessary, because real rebels aren't a bunch of wusses who demand their secret symbol be easy to chew in the event they have to destroy it.
In the history of the Games, there have been seventy-five victors. Fifty-nine are still alive.
Interesting. So my estimate was right on the nose.
Some are so old or wasted by illness, drugs, or drink that I can't place them. As one would expect, the pools of Career tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 are the largest. But every district has managed to scrape up at least one female and one male victor.
Going on the assumption this was done by Snow, I'll allow for this as he could easily have checked before announcing. But it would really have been easy to avoid - he could have put in a clause about how any district that couldn't provide both genders would have to do a lottery for the other person.
Also, the bit about victors not all being in great health? Those should be overrepresented in the non-career districts, being from kids who had no training and, judging by Haymitch and District 12, no support system afterward. So the ones with the fewest winners are those most likely to have sickly drug addicts. I'd also expect them to be more likely to have an older tribute, given the career thing probably took a while to develop so they'd have most of the younger winners.
For my part, I try to make some mental record of the other tributes, but like last year, only a few really stick in my head
Lampshade hanging just makes it worse. Far better to say she noticed all of them and forgot them later than something this transparent. So, let's see who's going to matter this book.
There's the classically beautiful brother and sister from District 1 who were victors in consecutive years when I was little.
Given only one can make it, I find it hard to believe siblings would decide they wanted to both be in. This seems really forced, just there because the author thought a matched pair was a cool image.
Brutus, a volunteer from District 2, who must be at least forty and apparently can't wait to get back in the arena.
Fucking names.
Finnick, the handsome bronze-haired guy from District 4 who was crowned ten years ago at the age of fourteen
What is with red hair in this book? Seriously, does being a redhead give you immunity to a series of nonspecific disasters? Red hair is extremely rare, yet of our very limited cast, we have two girls with red hair and now someone with bronze.
Anyway, so he's twenty-four then. Huh. You know, the career districts likely have less of an advantage this year (going against people who proved themselves able to win and all), and we know that the winners receive an extremely generous amount of money each year until they die. A month's worth is enough to "easily" provide for a large family for a year. So, I'd say they can probably each provide for about a hundred people, and do that for decades until they finally die. And that seems to be without those people working, so it probably would stretch further if it's just making sure they're getting enough extra to have an okay life. The total amount they bring in will, over their lifetime, almost certainly dwarf the parcels given out for the one year of victory. It certainly does if you factor in the odds of failing and getting nothing. So why let someone young go and risk losing all those years of payout in return for maybe one year of parcels?
A hysterical young woman with flowing brown hair is also called from 4, but she's quickly replaced by a volunteer, an eighty-year-old woman who needs a cane to walk to the stage.
And yet, this is the first sign of any coordination within any of the districts, and it seems like that was an individual decision, not something where they got together and the woman said she'd volunteer for anyone.
Then there's Johanna Mason, the only living female victor from 7, who won a few years back by pretending she was a weakling.
I just feel like mentioning that the book has periodically mentioned the strategy of pretending to be weak and then killing whoever's left, and it's always been linked to a girl.
The woman from 8 who Effie calls Cecelia, who looks about thirty, has to detach herself from the three kids who run up to cling to her.
Seriously, why no coordination? Did they not have anyone else to go? The book just specified there being no other victors in 7, so by implication there are here.
Chaff, a man from 11 who I know to be one of Haymitch's particular friends, is also in.
Sucks to be Haymitch, I guess.
I'm called. Then Haymitch. And Peeta volunteers. One of the announcers actually gets teary because it seems the odds will never be in our favor, we star-crossed lovers of District 12.
Book, I know you're really into this hamfisted message about the media, but it there was nothing to do with odds there. As you just said, Peeta volunteered.
Katniss is stressed and doesn't want to go to sleep because she's scared of nightmares.
But I can hardly ask Peeta to come sleep with me.
Um...yeah, you can. It's not even mean because we know Peeta has horrible nightmares too and sleeps better with you. This book has the most fucked up view of relationships.
Naturally, she has a nightmare and goes off to find out Peeta's still up.
Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.
And why should I? I have said good-bye to Gale. I'll never see him again, that's for certain. Nothing I do now can hurt him. He won't see it or he'll think I am acting for the cameras.
The most fucked up.
Look, I think it's fine if Katniss wants to hug Peeta, she's not Gale's property. But either it's okay or it's not, it can't be okay because he just doesn't know about it.
The guy who brings the milk acts a little weird.
“I think he feels bad for us,” says Peeta.
“Right,” I say, pouring the milk.
“I mean it. I don't think the people in the Capitol are going to be all that happy about our going back in,” says Peeta. “Or the other victors. They get attached to their champions.”
ARG. Is it really impossible that there might be some people in the capital who just naturally feel bad about the whole childmurder aspect? Especially because if we go with the idea the capital gets attached to victors, that means he and Katniss, who haven't even been around a full year yet, wouldn't be getting special treatment because the capital hasn't had time to get to know them. All they know is the love story aspect, and really, if that was enough to make the capital unhappy they'd be unhappy if the two had died near the end of the games, because the narrative really hasn't progressed much beyond that, and yet, we know that the gamemakers still threw plenty at them, only balking at the idea of not having any champion.
“So, you're watching all the tapes again?”
“Not really. Just sort of skipping around to see people's different fighting techniques,” says Peeta.
There's been a lot of this talk about studying the other victors. This is really stupid. The main issue, by all appearances, has been the arenas. The victors are comparatively straightforward - they know a bunch of weapons. What they should be paying attention to is arena survival - what sort of traps there are and how those might be avoided and used. Three of Katniss' four kills involved the arena, and at least one of Peeta's did.
We know of other deaths. The first is the death of the girl the first night - they found her because she made a fire, because the arena was cold. Making sure you have some way to keep warm should be a priority. The second was Rue, which was straightforward, followed by the District 1 kid, ditto. The fourth was Clove, moral, when the gamemakers do something that'll ensure everyone is together, use that fact. The fifth was Thresh. He survived because he stayed in the grassy field, and then dies during the extended rain - I would expect flooding played a part, and lack of shelter.
That's without getting into all the stuff Katniss ran into that didn't quite kill her. One can make the assumption that most traps aren't going to be certainly lethal because seeing someone escape the trap is more exciting, so figuring out which way the gamemakers want you to go is a good idea, so you can get out with as little damage as possible. And probably also looking at the flora would give an idea of the kinds of plants that might be there, especially the designer ones there to kill you, which likely repeat a lot.
And remember, this all changes with the flow of ratings. The best idea would be to watch as many games from start to finish as possible - they've had months to prepare, they could have gotten a good way through the years by now. Watch the whole thing - the way people form alliances, when and how the gamemakers intervene to make things more interesting, how things usually go.
This isn't an orderly little tournament. The majority of the fights are going to come down to luck and in Katniss' case, if she can shoot the other person before they get a chance to use any of those fighting techniques. Many of them will kill each other and more will die to the arena itself. People will do things like set traps rather than get into a straight fight. The most I can say about learning everyone's technique is it's not going to make them do worse at the games, but it's among the last things to worry about.
Anyway, it turns out there's one video they haven't watched, Haymitch's. Peeta says he didn't because they were all working together, which is missing the point spectacularly given it's a video of the special quarterly games.
“Is the person who won in twenty-five in here?” I ask.
“I don't think so. Whoever it was must be dead by now, and Effie only sent me victors we might have to face.”
Katniss has figured this out, but done it way too late. This is really forced and once again shows the seams in the narrative. The author just does not want to spend any time on something that isn't going to come up, which is why you can tell what's coming from a mile off.
Irrelevant plot is something to avoid. Ideally, everything should build on previous plot points and contribute to the ending. Detail, however, is not the same. Yes, Cheknov's gun and all, but this book wouldn't even have a mantle for it, it'd just be floating in midair waiting to be grabbed.
He puts in the tape and I curl up next to him on the couch with my milk, which is really delicious with the honey and spices, and lose myself in the Fiftieth Hunger Games.
It's amazing that this book will write that without a trace of irony.
We go to the reapings.
She calls out the name of a girl who's from the Seam, you can tell by the look of her, and then I hear the name “Maysilee Donner.”
I find this interesting. Katniss, technically, is from the Seam as well, but she's related to the middle class townpeople. Indeed, her only surviving parent is one and her sister has the same blonde/blueeyed colors, and she made a point last book about how she had proper manners because her mother taught her them, unlike Seam kids. Our other main character is Peeta, and her one female friend is Madge. Gale is the only Seam character in the set, and the book has been far more concerned with the town than the Seam for a while. Here, again, the Seam is just there as angsty windowdressing, much like the kids last book who were said to be the tributes before them.
I catch a glimpse of my mother at my age, and no one has exaggerated her beauty.
It's really depressing how this is one of the few characteristics she gets.
Anyway, we learn Haymitch is snarky and smart and that year's games are really complex.
It's the most breathtaking place imaginable. The golden Cornucopia sits in the middle of a green meadow with patches of gorgeous flowers. The sky is azure blue with puffy white clouds. Bright songbirds flutter overhead. By the way some of the tributes are sniffing, it must smell fantastic. An aerial shot shows that the meadow stretches for miles. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seems to be a woods, in the other, a snowcapped mountain.
it becomes clear that almost everything in this pretty place—the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly—is deadly poisonous.
the fluffy golden squirrels turn out to be carnivorous and attack in packs, and the butterfly stings bring agony if not death.
So I would take this as a sign that the quarter games are even more about the arena than usual, and as I just got done explaining, the arena is a big factor already. Of course, we can't test my theory because the idiots didn't bother asking for the tape of the 25th games.
Maysilee Donner turns out to be pretty resourceful herself, for a girl who leaves the Cornucopia with only a small backpack. Inside she finds a bowl, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. Making use of the readily available poisons, she soon turns the blowgun into a deadly weapon by dipping the darts in lethal substances and directing them into her opponents' flesh.
This is a pretty clever idea! She seems cool. And yet, she's just there to die and give Haymitch bonus wangsty points, isn't she? Naturally, they join up.
Anyway, turns out Haymitch is trying to walk out of the arena. My first response is that this is a good move, followed by remembering he's got a tracking device in him and there's no word he's bothered cutting it out. So Haymitch is really pretty dumb here.
But in the hypothetical world where he did that first, this is a great idea. One of the things I was thinking Katniss should have done.
He spends a while trying to get through the hedges that block his way. Finally, they do.
When they finally do make it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers' packs, they find themselves on flat, dry earth that leads to a cliff. Far below, you can see jagged rocks.
She leaves but he stays. He knocks a pebble off by accident and discovers there's a force field that throws stuff back at you. Then Maysilee gets fridged and he sits with her as she dies blah blah. Soon it's down to Haymitch and one surviving girl.
Haymitch makes a beeline for his cliff and has just reached the edge when she throws the ax. He collapses on the ground and it flies into the abyss. Now weaponless as well, the girl just stands there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She's thinking perhaps that she can outlast Haymitch, who's starting to convulse on the ground. But what she doesn't know, and what he does, is that the ax will return. And when it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head.
Okay, legitimately kind of clever, but not really a huge deal. No different than doing this with a nest of wasps or any other trap.
Naturally our main characters will have none of this sanity.
Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon.”
“Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” I say. “You know they didn't expect that to happen. It wasn't meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out.
Okay, metaphorically, what he did was basically mess with the set a little and give people a glimpse of the unpainted backing. The only thing it actually did was ruin the theme their pretty arena had going for it. He still happily played the childmurder games. He still was trapped by the force field. All he did was make the ending of the game unaesthetic.
God damn it book, stop making shit up about these things being SO INCREDIBLY REBELLIOUS. Do you know what would have been actually rebellious? If Haymitch found out about the damn force field by actually jumping off.
This time I don't have even the slightest hope of return. Before my first Games, I promised Prim I would do everything I could to win, and now I've sworn to myself to do all I can to keep Peeta alive.
Huh, that raises a point. With her dead, her family's kind of fucked. The money lasts only as long as a winner lives, and it doesn't look like they've been saving it. (And don't say "well, noble Peeta will feed them!" because his odds of survival suck and it's more likely Katniss dies protecting him only for him to die soon after because without her he's got no real skills.) Without her, they also have no way to escape the district, as Peeta doesn't know any more about hunting than they do. But female relationships are nothing before her obligation to the guy who's creepy and manipulative!
I'd actually figured out what I wanted my last words to my loved ones to be. How best to close and lock the doors and leave them sad but safely behind. And now the Capitol has stolen that as well.
Huh, maybe that's why the author made sure it wouldn't happen - ran into problems writing a conversation where Katniss explains to her sister that of course she loves Prim, but not enough to bother coming back home to her.
Have I mentioned how much better of a character Katniss was back when she cared about and was motivated by her little sister? So much better.
Peeta tries to console her by saying they can write letters, but Katniss won't let her emo go that easily, dammit.
I sit on the bed, knowing I will never write those letters. They will be like the speech I tried to write to honor Rue and Thresh in District 11. Things seemed clear in my head and even when I talked before the crowd, but the words never came out of the pen right.
I honestly feel almost bad for mocking her over the emo, because hey, denied her last chance to see her family! But the book just turns it into a dissertation on Katniss' sue flaw instead of that she doesn't get to see them. Protip: the ability to compose a perfect speech instantly that moves everyone to a massive act of defiance is more sueish than than the ability to just put words down on the fucking paper. This is not a flaw. This is an anti-flaw.
It's my dying wish. Keep Peeta alive. And as unlikely as it seems that I can achieve it in the face of the Capitol's anger, it's important that I be at the top of my game. This won't happen if I'm mourning for everyone I love back home. Let them go, I tell myself.
FEMINISM: Your only purpose is your boyfriend.
By the time Effie knocks on my door to call me to dinner, I'm empty. But the lightness isn't entirely unwelcome.
See, when Twilight does this shit, everyone notices. I guess as long as you're not literally printing blank pages you get a pass.
Having successfully hollowed herself out of anything resembling her own thoughts and feelings, she's ready to support Peeta.
A cold soup of pureed vegetables. Fish cakes with creamy lime paste. Those little birds filled with orange sauce, with wild rice and watercress. Chocolate custard dotted with cherries.
Look, I don't want to talk about plot. Let's talk about food! So, it's spring (I think), but there are cherries? The growing season for those is summer. Unfortunately, it doesn't say for sure if they're preserved cherries, which would tell us if there are probably greenhouses set up to produce certain things out of season. But if preserved, this indicates the capital's probably got extensive stores of most everything, since they haven't run out by the end of the year and moreover, are willing to waste it on people like Katniss and Peeta, who wouldn't notice the lack. Since the fashion team's complaints earlier suggest the capital people aren't accustomed to shortage, the government probably doesn't want to run out of any particular good. That, in turn, implies either that the District 11 rebellion was pretty minor or they have such huge stores of food they can supply everything for years just out of their existing warehouses, even if they have to burn the place to the ground and replant every orchard. It might also explain that repeated lamb-and-dried-plum stew bit - maybe there's very little fresh fruit in the capital because it can't be supplied year round, so they only provide preserved foods to prevent people asking for fresh out of season and getting mad when it's not available. After all, unlike the US now, it doesn't seem like they can get around growing seasons by flying stuff in from different countries.
Which brings me to the next point - hey, chocolate! That's a zone 11 plant that pretty much needs to be in the rain forest to grow. Even assuming massive global warming you're not going to have it in the US easily. Yet they seem to have plenty of chocolate around (so much even someone like Katniss knows what chocolate tastes like, and it isn't even a big deal) even though that should be incredibly hard to grow. Did we annex Mexico? Are other countries still around and being traded with, and if so, how are they completely unaware of them? I mean, how many countries actually hide the fact the rest of the world exists successfully from their citizens? Is this some sort of meta-commentary on how the US views itself as the center of the universe, or meta-meta-commentary in that the author did this without realizing just how connected to the rest of the world we are?
Of course, considering they can genetically engineer things, they could probably make a more cold-hardy plant. But that just leads to new problems, namely that they don't seem to have made designer food plants at all. All the plants Katniss sees are recognizable. The only weird one is the nightlock, which was a trap.
However, there's another thing. If we assume that the capital has vast storehouses to supply goods like cherries without worrying about running out if they burn the orchards down this year, then what's up with the shrimp? Why isn't there a similar store of meats, like frozen shrimp? Maybe they really, really like fresh shrimp, but then the same should apply to fruit and yet it mostly seems to be preserved.
Finally, those birds. Little to me suggests we're talking songbird or something, which would imply that they're being caught wild, but it doesn't seem like anyone hunts, which is a weird missing chunk to the country's economy. Farmed animals are far more efficient, so the decadence of hunting wild animals seems perfectly in character, and yet, no evidence of it happening.
Anyway, it's Effie again! She says she's thinking all of them should get some item to coordinate with Katniss' pin.
Evidently, Effie doesn't know that my mockingjay pin is now a symbol used by the rebels. At least in District 8. In the Capitol, the mockingjay is still a fun reminder of an especially exciting Hunger Games.
Well, let's consider this. If she knew that, what would she do differently? For starters, in terms of wooing sponsors and such, what it is in the capital is all that matters. Next, the capital perception it's not a rebel symbol but a symbol of a fun Hunger Games they enjoyed is the safest interpretation, and the one they should be playing into, just like playing into the idea Katniss did the berry thing out of love and not defiance was the best option. Pretending utter ignorance of any connection with the rebellion is probably the safest option here - not only is it in general better to be the idiot who did something by accident than the traitor who did it on purpose, but in specific, Katniss and the rest aren't supposed to know there are any rebels or what symbols the rebels they don't know about are using. Suddenly avoiding it would be an admission of guilt and worse, knowledge.
In sum, if she does know this is still the best idea, STFU book.
Real rebels don't put a secret symbol on something as durable as jewelry. They put it on a wafer of bread that can be eaten in a second if necessary.
That's a really stupid explanation. Real rebels put it on a piece of paper that can also be eaten in a second if necessary, because real rebels aren't a bunch of wusses who demand their secret symbol be easy to chew in the event they have to destroy it.
In the history of the Games, there have been seventy-five victors. Fifty-nine are still alive.
Interesting. So my estimate was right on the nose.
Some are so old or wasted by illness, drugs, or drink that I can't place them. As one would expect, the pools of Career tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 are the largest. But every district has managed to scrape up at least one female and one male victor.
Going on the assumption this was done by Snow, I'll allow for this as he could easily have checked before announcing. But it would really have been easy to avoid - he could have put in a clause about how any district that couldn't provide both genders would have to do a lottery for the other person.
Also, the bit about victors not all being in great health? Those should be overrepresented in the non-career districts, being from kids who had no training and, judging by Haymitch and District 12, no support system afterward. So the ones with the fewest winners are those most likely to have sickly drug addicts. I'd also expect them to be more likely to have an older tribute, given the career thing probably took a while to develop so they'd have most of the younger winners.
For my part, I try to make some mental record of the other tributes, but like last year, only a few really stick in my head
Lampshade hanging just makes it worse. Far better to say she noticed all of them and forgot them later than something this transparent. So, let's see who's going to matter this book.
There's the classically beautiful brother and sister from District 1 who were victors in consecutive years when I was little.
Given only one can make it, I find it hard to believe siblings would decide they wanted to both be in. This seems really forced, just there because the author thought a matched pair was a cool image.
Brutus, a volunteer from District 2, who must be at least forty and apparently can't wait to get back in the arena.
Fucking names.
Finnick, the handsome bronze-haired guy from District 4 who was crowned ten years ago at the age of fourteen
What is with red hair in this book? Seriously, does being a redhead give you immunity to a series of nonspecific disasters? Red hair is extremely rare, yet of our very limited cast, we have two girls with red hair and now someone with bronze.
Anyway, so he's twenty-four then. Huh. You know, the career districts likely have less of an advantage this year (going against people who proved themselves able to win and all), and we know that the winners receive an extremely generous amount of money each year until they die. A month's worth is enough to "easily" provide for a large family for a year. So, I'd say they can probably each provide for about a hundred people, and do that for decades until they finally die. And that seems to be without those people working, so it probably would stretch further if it's just making sure they're getting enough extra to have an okay life. The total amount they bring in will, over their lifetime, almost certainly dwarf the parcels given out for the one year of victory. It certainly does if you factor in the odds of failing and getting nothing. So why let someone young go and risk losing all those years of payout in return for maybe one year of parcels?
A hysterical young woman with flowing brown hair is also called from 4, but she's quickly replaced by a volunteer, an eighty-year-old woman who needs a cane to walk to the stage.
And yet, this is the first sign of any coordination within any of the districts, and it seems like that was an individual decision, not something where they got together and the woman said she'd volunteer for anyone.
Then there's Johanna Mason, the only living female victor from 7, who won a few years back by pretending she was a weakling.
I just feel like mentioning that the book has periodically mentioned the strategy of pretending to be weak and then killing whoever's left, and it's always been linked to a girl.
The woman from 8 who Effie calls Cecelia, who looks about thirty, has to detach herself from the three kids who run up to cling to her.
Seriously, why no coordination? Did they not have anyone else to go? The book just specified there being no other victors in 7, so by implication there are here.
Chaff, a man from 11 who I know to be one of Haymitch's particular friends, is also in.
Sucks to be Haymitch, I guess.
I'm called. Then Haymitch. And Peeta volunteers. One of the announcers actually gets teary because it seems the odds will never be in our favor, we star-crossed lovers of District 12.
Book, I know you're really into this hamfisted message about the media, but it there was nothing to do with odds there. As you just said, Peeta volunteered.
Katniss is stressed and doesn't want to go to sleep because she's scared of nightmares.
But I can hardly ask Peeta to come sleep with me.
Um...yeah, you can. It's not even mean because we know Peeta has horrible nightmares too and sleeps better with you. This book has the most fucked up view of relationships.
Naturally, she has a nightmare and goes off to find out Peeta's still up.
Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.
And why should I? I have said good-bye to Gale. I'll never see him again, that's for certain. Nothing I do now can hurt him. He won't see it or he'll think I am acting for the cameras.
The most fucked up.
Look, I think it's fine if Katniss wants to hug Peeta, she's not Gale's property. But either it's okay or it's not, it can't be okay because he just doesn't know about it.
The guy who brings the milk acts a little weird.
“I think he feels bad for us,” says Peeta.
“Right,” I say, pouring the milk.
“I mean it. I don't think the people in the Capitol are going to be all that happy about our going back in,” says Peeta. “Or the other victors. They get attached to their champions.”
ARG. Is it really impossible that there might be some people in the capital who just naturally feel bad about the whole childmurder aspect? Especially because if we go with the idea the capital gets attached to victors, that means he and Katniss, who haven't even been around a full year yet, wouldn't be getting special treatment because the capital hasn't had time to get to know them. All they know is the love story aspect, and really, if that was enough to make the capital unhappy they'd be unhappy if the two had died near the end of the games, because the narrative really hasn't progressed much beyond that, and yet, we know that the gamemakers still threw plenty at them, only balking at the idea of not having any champion.
“So, you're watching all the tapes again?”
“Not really. Just sort of skipping around to see people's different fighting techniques,” says Peeta.
There's been a lot of this talk about studying the other victors. This is really stupid. The main issue, by all appearances, has been the arenas. The victors are comparatively straightforward - they know a bunch of weapons. What they should be paying attention to is arena survival - what sort of traps there are and how those might be avoided and used. Three of Katniss' four kills involved the arena, and at least one of Peeta's did.
We know of other deaths. The first is the death of the girl the first night - they found her because she made a fire, because the arena was cold. Making sure you have some way to keep warm should be a priority. The second was Rue, which was straightforward, followed by the District 1 kid, ditto. The fourth was Clove, moral, when the gamemakers do something that'll ensure everyone is together, use that fact. The fifth was Thresh. He survived because he stayed in the grassy field, and then dies during the extended rain - I would expect flooding played a part, and lack of shelter.
That's without getting into all the stuff Katniss ran into that didn't quite kill her. One can make the assumption that most traps aren't going to be certainly lethal because seeing someone escape the trap is more exciting, so figuring out which way the gamemakers want you to go is a good idea, so you can get out with as little damage as possible. And probably also looking at the flora would give an idea of the kinds of plants that might be there, especially the designer ones there to kill you, which likely repeat a lot.
And remember, this all changes with the flow of ratings. The best idea would be to watch as many games from start to finish as possible - they've had months to prepare, they could have gotten a good way through the years by now. Watch the whole thing - the way people form alliances, when and how the gamemakers intervene to make things more interesting, how things usually go.
This isn't an orderly little tournament. The majority of the fights are going to come down to luck and in Katniss' case, if she can shoot the other person before they get a chance to use any of those fighting techniques. Many of them will kill each other and more will die to the arena itself. People will do things like set traps rather than get into a straight fight. The most I can say about learning everyone's technique is it's not going to make them do worse at the games, but it's among the last things to worry about.
Anyway, it turns out there's one video they haven't watched, Haymitch's. Peeta says he didn't because they were all working together, which is missing the point spectacularly given it's a video of the special quarterly games.
“Is the person who won in twenty-five in here?” I ask.
“I don't think so. Whoever it was must be dead by now, and Effie only sent me victors we might have to face.”
Katniss has figured this out, but done it way too late. This is really forced and once again shows the seams in the narrative. The author just does not want to spend any time on something that isn't going to come up, which is why you can tell what's coming from a mile off.
Irrelevant plot is something to avoid. Ideally, everything should build on previous plot points and contribute to the ending. Detail, however, is not the same. Yes, Cheknov's gun and all, but this book wouldn't even have a mantle for it, it'd just be floating in midair waiting to be grabbed.
He puts in the tape and I curl up next to him on the couch with my milk, which is really delicious with the honey and spices, and lose myself in the Fiftieth Hunger Games.
It's amazing that this book will write that without a trace of irony.
We go to the reapings.
She calls out the name of a girl who's from the Seam, you can tell by the look of her, and then I hear the name “Maysilee Donner.”
I find this interesting. Katniss, technically, is from the Seam as well, but she's related to the middle class townpeople. Indeed, her only surviving parent is one and her sister has the same blonde/blueeyed colors, and she made a point last book about how she had proper manners because her mother taught her them, unlike Seam kids. Our other main character is Peeta, and her one female friend is Madge. Gale is the only Seam character in the set, and the book has been far more concerned with the town than the Seam for a while. Here, again, the Seam is just there as angsty windowdressing, much like the kids last book who were said to be the tributes before them.
I catch a glimpse of my mother at my age, and no one has exaggerated her beauty.
It's really depressing how this is one of the few characteristics she gets.
Anyway, we learn Haymitch is snarky and smart and that year's games are really complex.
It's the most breathtaking place imaginable. The golden Cornucopia sits in the middle of a green meadow with patches of gorgeous flowers. The sky is azure blue with puffy white clouds. Bright songbirds flutter overhead. By the way some of the tributes are sniffing, it must smell fantastic. An aerial shot shows that the meadow stretches for miles. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seems to be a woods, in the other, a snowcapped mountain.
it becomes clear that almost everything in this pretty place—the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly—is deadly poisonous.
the fluffy golden squirrels turn out to be carnivorous and attack in packs, and the butterfly stings bring agony if not death.
So I would take this as a sign that the quarter games are even more about the arena than usual, and as I just got done explaining, the arena is a big factor already. Of course, we can't test my theory because the idiots didn't bother asking for the tape of the 25th games.
Maysilee Donner turns out to be pretty resourceful herself, for a girl who leaves the Cornucopia with only a small backpack. Inside she finds a bowl, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. Making use of the readily available poisons, she soon turns the blowgun into a deadly weapon by dipping the darts in lethal substances and directing them into her opponents' flesh.
This is a pretty clever idea! She seems cool. And yet, she's just there to die and give Haymitch bonus wangsty points, isn't she? Naturally, they join up.
Anyway, turns out Haymitch is trying to walk out of the arena. My first response is that this is a good move, followed by remembering he's got a tracking device in him and there's no word he's bothered cutting it out. So Haymitch is really pretty dumb here.
But in the hypothetical world where he did that first, this is a great idea. One of the things I was thinking Katniss should have done.
He spends a while trying to get through the hedges that block his way. Finally, they do.
When they finally do make it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers' packs, they find themselves on flat, dry earth that leads to a cliff. Far below, you can see jagged rocks.
She leaves but he stays. He knocks a pebble off by accident and discovers there's a force field that throws stuff back at you. Then Maysilee gets fridged and he sits with her as she dies blah blah. Soon it's down to Haymitch and one surviving girl.
Haymitch makes a beeline for his cliff and has just reached the edge when she throws the ax. He collapses on the ground and it flies into the abyss. Now weaponless as well, the girl just stands there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She's thinking perhaps that she can outlast Haymitch, who's starting to convulse on the ground. But what she doesn't know, and what he does, is that the ax will return. And when it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head.
Okay, legitimately kind of clever, but not really a huge deal. No different than doing this with a nest of wasps or any other trap.
Naturally our main characters will have none of this sanity.
Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon.”
“Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” I say. “You know they didn't expect that to happen. It wasn't meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out.
Okay, metaphorically, what he did was basically mess with the set a little and give people a glimpse of the unpainted backing. The only thing it actually did was ruin the theme their pretty arena had going for it. He still happily played the childmurder games. He still was trapped by the force field. All he did was make the ending of the game unaesthetic.
God damn it book, stop making shit up about these things being SO INCREDIBLY REBELLIOUS. Do you know what would have been actually rebellious? If Haymitch found out about the damn force field by actually jumping off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 05:26 am (UTC)Katniss. Katniss, look at yourself. YOU ARE THE DISEASE.
Do you know what would have been actually rebellious? If Haymitch found out about the damn force field by actually jumping off.
...oh.
It's really depressing how such simple changes could have made the story so much better.
Also, look, it's another "hysterical" woman!
Also also, look, it's Johanna! I guess she isn't a career kid, then. I sort of assumed because she's continually described as "cruel." Anyway, hi there, Johanna, I've been waiting for you! Please do that thing where you are mean to the protagonist and the author doesn't think it's justified but it so totally is!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 05:49 am (UTC)The more I look at it, the more I think there's some sort of YA list of stuff you're not allowed to have in stories, like those ones romance publishers have. The fields are there to prevent suicides, but no one ever considers or attempts suicide. And this is hardly only weird blip the story has.
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Date: 2011-08-03 08:07 am (UTC)And there's the problem that - like any other genera - YA's big. It includes a broad swath of things and pop-culture seems to pick the WORST OF THE WORST to glom onto and make popular.
Which then inspires more authors to write like that, in the hopes that they will too be popular. Nasty cycle.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 03:59 pm (UTC)Anyway, yay! Johanna! Your snarky humor will provide sanity! Oh, how I loved her character. She's so awesome! Sarcastic, mean, and totally badass!!!
Ugh, but serioously, why can't teens read books that don't have romance? Step up from Twilight at least.
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Date: 2011-05-10 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 08:44 pm (UTC)I mean, to go with Avatar for a minute - Aang/Katara works for a romantic subplot. They're easily compatible and they only have a little tension that can be dealt with in the time alloted to a subplot. Katara/Zuko could have been shoehorned in, but it would have been shit. They're the more interesting pairing because they aren't so easily compatible and have a lot of things to work out, but there's no way to do that properly when it's not the focus of the story. And that's a relatively reasonable ship. There's lots of things that can work in shipping fic or a romance story, but are going to be terrible if it's the B or C plot of something else.
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Date: 2012-02-06 11:40 am (UTC)This seems to happen even when what X, Y, and Z all had in common (assuming they were actually decent in the first place anyway) was decent writing, well-rounded characters, and an original plot that made sense over all.
A reasonably written romantic subplot could potentially add to a story--perhaps it provides some form of character development (Alice, an illegitimate heir who has become the centre of a rebellion, has reasonable trust issues, but learns to move beyond these through her friendship with rebel leader Belinda and fledgling romance with the squire Caleb, with each relationship providing its own challengers. These lessons will better prepare her for her role in overthrowing her half-brother Frederick, which is currently everybody's main priority). In another instance, it might provide an extra dimension to a character or display a side to them that the reader might not expect (Caleb is known to be arrogant and insensitive towards political prisoners, such as the nobles Dale and Eleanor, but is shown to go out of his way to make Alice happy).
Unfortunately many YA stories these days instead focus on the romance because the authors seems to feel that it has to be there for some reason, even when it makes no sense at all in context. Even worse, these authors frequently focus on the romance to the detriment of the story (Princess Alice falls crazy in love with awesomely talented Caleb, but they can't settle down yet because her frenemy Belinda says they need to get rid of the new prince who is hell-bent on ethnically cleansing the countryside*. Meanwhile, Dale and Eleanor totally deserve everything because they are wrong to think that Freddie should remain ruler because their culture has the entrenched system of ruler-worship.) (*This is purely for the evulz, not any more complicated reason such as "Frederick honestly believes that this is the right thing to do, has been raised to see the ethnicity in question as inferior criminals, and believes that a group of them was behind the assassination of his father. No, none of these things is a justification for genocide, but at least he's not being evil for the sake of being evil).
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Date: 2012-02-06 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-06 11:52 am (UTC)My apologies for going off topic, I got somewhat caught up in the planning.
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Date: 2012-02-07 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 09:29 pm (UTC)Oh, and Maurice and his Educated Rodents by the same author mainly focused on the cat, so not much romance there, either.
Also try the Pagan series by Catherine Jinks and most of Diana Wynne Jones' books. Vivian vande Velde tends to dance on the side of romance that is not quite romance--for example, in one, the protagonist sort of falls in love with a vampire and he cares about her. Or he might have just been using her. It's been awhile since I've read her books, but Never Trust a Dead Man (not the vampire one), at least, focuses on friendship.
Gah, I hate typing in bed.
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Date: 2012-04-29 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 04:55 pm (UTC)/worried about own fanfic
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Date: 2011-05-10 07:16 pm (UTC)Having him have redeeming features would also help - part of the doormat thing is going through great lengths for the guy just because. In Peeta's case she already went above and beyond to save him several times while he only helped her out once, yet none of that counts because apparently her life is just worth so little.
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Date: 2011-05-10 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 09:54 pm (UTC);_;
／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
Date: 2011-05-11 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-11 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 11:34 pm (UTC)Are they reading the same book
It's destroying me
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 11:58 pm (UTC)Barring her Peeta related insanity she is pretty good about survival, mostly because she's sociopathic and kills people easily. But it's cheating to make that a real character trait because the book never actually pushes her to see how far she'd go. The right thing to do and the easiest thing to do are always the same.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-11 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-11 05:50 am (UTC)Anyway, it seems to me that Katniss is a strong character in that she's got a clear personality driven by clear motivations and temperment. She seems like the believable product of her experiences and natural personality, and so far she hasn't done anything that seemed OOC based on what I know of her to serve the plot or whatever. I can't think of any major decisions she's made that weren't her own. Maybe it was unfair, but I did wind up feeling like Katniss was being compared to some ideal where she would always fall short because no character can be everything. You have to pick the limits of the character and the story you're writing (seriously--the themes and ideas of the story are going to inform the characters) and stick to it. It's not that I don't think it's sometimes a good idea to look at trends or limitations that are given to girl characters as a group, but that's different than judging one character.
http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/199194.html#cutid1
I'm only following Farla's recap/commentary and haven't read it myself.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-11 06:18 am (UTC)I can't think of any major decisions she's made that weren't her own.
I'm not even quite sure this means. That we see her making decisions instead of getting moved by plot? Because that would apply to any major character. That she's made her decisions freely? She's a terribly reactive character and her prime motivation, since the second half of the first book, has been that she has to save Peeta or else she's a bad person, and even still she might be a bad person for kissing him when she's not sure of her feelings. She's repeatedly said she has no choice about things - no choice about finding Peeta because her district would hate her if she didn't, no choice about kissing him because they wouldn't have help if she didn't, no choice about playing along for the cameras afterward because they were in danger if she didn't. Then this book she's introduced as unable to make any decisions about her relationships, then forced to act in love again, then forced to sacrifice herself for Peeta because he's better than she is.
People wouldn't complain about her "character growth" if her growth wasn't going from relatively sane and caring about her sister to being completely devoted to a guy. I can't believe this is the first time that person's seen people complain about a decent female character with that kind of character arc because it's pretty common, and there's problems with everything that involves a woman giving up some personal goal in favor of furthering a guy's.
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Date: 2012-03-29 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-12 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-12 08:40 pm (UTC)Little to me suggests we're talking songbird or something, which would imply that they're being caught wild, but it doesn't seem like anyone hunts, which is a weird missing chunk to the country's economy. Farmed animals are far more efficient, so the decadence of hunting wild animals seems perfectly in character, and yet, no evidence of it happening.
I actually figured they were some type of quail, which can be farm-raised (though also hunted as wild game). If people in the capital DO hunt, or have wild game hunted for them, it would explain why poaching isn't allowed.
Y'know, if the worldbuilding made any sense and was consistent.
Also it would make so much more sense if the districts coordinated together to have the oldest victors volunteer to replace anyone who was called, not to mention be a real sign of rebellion. Who wants to watch a bunch of elderly people kill each other? The capital wouldn't get much sport from it.