Catching Fire, Second Intermission
May. 18th, 2011 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaThis book is worse.
It's fixed up some of the errors of last book - we have more of a cast and there's not such a sharp divide between good men and evil women. But the longer this goes on the more I feel the author can't really handle a cast - the book's viewpoint is permanently centered on Katniss, and what works when it's about a lone wolf character looks steadily worse the more other people get brought in. In retrospect, the dive in quality when she joins up with Peeta is really part of a broader issue.
Prim, who's supposedly Katniss' whole life, is barely present. Her mother is a flat background character completely devoid of any personality who just acts like generic middle class woman (fucking tea and cookies to Snow?) followed by generic srs healer. The less said about the romances the better.
The first third of the book has been filler, as I argued last intermission. This third has been rehashing the plot of the first half of the last book.
There's similar issues with the book being so terribly inconsistent. Last book, when everything was being introduced for the first time this was less of an issue, but this book is trying to build off last book and it's just a mess.
It's hard to say how things should be rewritten. Similar to the above point, the longer the book goes on the more unwieldy the current plot becomes and the less it's possible to fix by just fixing the present issues.
Katniss being a mentor would have been good. If the author flat out can't write that, and I can definitely believe that by this point, Katniss working together with other tributes would have been a nice secondary option, and Katniss directly engaging the people of the capital as well. The people of the capital need to stop being treated as dumb animals - it's especially hypocritical of the book given that the whole premise of the childmurder games relies on the idea that to the capital, it's the district people who aren't human.
There needs to be a plan beyond Katniss playing murder games. And no, saving Peeta instead of herself doesn't constitute a plan, it's just a shift in focus. A plan would be something like making an agreement with others not to play. These aren't scared children who don't know each other and the capital has broken the one promise it made to them. Getting them to work together should be quite possible, especially when at least half of them are from districts that are rebelling. And those that aren't are likely those that, like Katniss', didn't know it was possible. Now that they've met up with the rest of the group, they should know and want to get the message back.
This will never happen because it'll get in the way of Katniss being justified to murder people. Which is another thing, the book needs to stop justifying Katniss murdering people. The narrative should not explain why whatever you were going to do anyway just happens to be the best possible thing to do and a sign Katniss is the best person ever. When Katniss does the easy thing, it's a flaw (and it's okay to have flaws so long as you don't insist it's pronounced virtue) and when she does the right thing it's hard, and she isn't always sure which is which.
We know a lot of them are decent people - that there are a number of elderly means that they probably decided this in advance to protect someone else, and that many of them are abusing drugs means they didn't like being victors. It really shouldn't be that hard to do.
One possibility is to try to run out the clock as a group. We know the capital has plenty of deathtraps in arenas. They band together, refuse to play, and try to fight off whatever monsters attack them and live as long as possible in the hopes that when the rebellion happens, they'll be rescued. (Initially, there would be some vicious, showy dangers. Things get progressively more grim - things that don't seem to be pandering to the crowd but just there to kill them. Eventually, the attacks stop, but they're still in the arena. As food and water run out they wonder what it means - was the capital overthrown, but no one even knows where they are? Is the capital still in charge but too busy fighting the war to bother with them any longer, so they've been left to die? Or is this another part of the game, the capital has won and when the second to last person dies a hovercraft will appear for the victor? To aid in this, the normal cues of the arena need to either stop early or be completely automated - either they stop with the canonfire and collecting bodies as soon as the tributes refuse to fight, or those continue but there are no announcements or other signs of human presence behind them, and attempts to test the system, like remaining near a body, provoke no response. Because this is all very depressing, before they actually do die they're rescued by the successful rebellion. There is no third book in this scenario.)
I like this option because it lets what Katniss is going through have real personal stakes while still being clearly a minor part of the main event. The biggest plot failing so far is the insistence on making the rebellion into Katniss' personal vehicle of special, to the point it's called "her side" and everything she does is some huge strike against the capital. The second biggest failing is that Katniss always plays the childmurder games just like she's supposed to. Changing the focus to fighting the games and trying to live and save as many other tributes as possible, without making it part of saving the whole world, would fix this.
I said in the last chapter that I liked the idea of the arena being the ocean itself. That isn't too compatible with this, although it is possible to merge the ideas somewhat. The ocean arena requires a different setup, one where the rebels have made a lot more progress and it's feasible that they could launch a strike and beat back the capital within days and then rescue everyone in time. In that case, the games are a sort of society-wide fiddling-while-Rome-burns thing, which you must admit is in-theme.
But otherwise, a more normal arena. Maybe something more like Haymitch's manufactured set of an arena, some fancy stage with lots of things to kill them and no way out. The island also works, but maybe ring it with acid instead of water so they can't fish or make a boat. Although they know the acid must end somewhere, the capital can't possibly have turned all the water in the ocean into acid, they can't actually travel across it in the first place so that knowledge does them no good.
Anyway.
The tributes are in communication with either each other or at the least, the capital. They're ideal for coordinating a rebellion. Before the games, as much groundwork for that was laid as possible.
The first sign of this is who ends up picked. I suggested it'd make sense to send the old and sick. Have Katniss expect this, then comment on how it isn't happening. Instead it's mostly the fittest tributes. Some are still messed up, but only when they're the only victor their district has to offer. Because, for once, the games actually can be won, instead of being about dying last. Each healthy person has better odds of making it to the end, because more than one person has a chance of coming back this time.
The bit with the tributes meeting has less stupid messing with Katniss. If it has to happen for some reason it happens only when the cameras are staring right at them, and Katniss notices how they keep switching between stupid smiley and SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS until she correlates with the cameras on her own. They don't have time to be creepy or tease her. They're going off to die and they want to go down fighting, and for that they need to work together with as many people as possible, including her.
As nice as the plan with the interviews was, the whole concept is stupid. The subplot of the capital being ~so in love~ with the tributes is gone, because it's dumb. Everything about the game setup makes it clear they don't have any trouble killing people they know about, as the whole interview system itself shows. If anything, a better quell idea would have been giving the capital a chance to vote which of their favorite victors should compete again. They love their victors like a wolf loves a lamb. Or, perhaps, as a reader loves a character.
There are a couple of options:
One is seriousness. They ignore the capital audience because they know there's no point trying to court favor now - once they rebel there will be no gifts sent. They use the time to say their goodbyes to their families and perhaps leave personal messages that are only of interest for the people they're intended for.
Another is code. Their interviews are full of nonsensical answers because they're working off a code of some sort. Each of them has a particular thing they're supposed to say to mean YES, DO IT NOW, THE OTHERS ARE WITH US. If they had decent communication beforehand the code should be standardized so each district can understand what the other victors are saying - in that case, they each babble as much other information as possible about the capital and rumors they've heard. If they didn't, then each victor set has their own code and communicates the basics to their home district.
The third is to say fuck it and riot. As practical as the other two options are, I'm fond of this one. The tributes seem pretty cut off from actual information, so they may not be able to do much spying. And that's fine, they don't have to be a particularly important part of the rebellion. So they tell the capital what they think of their games. The districts will be uprising already, so the threat of going after loved ones is moot. And there's nothing that can be done to them, because they've already been chosen as sacrifices. I want polemics. I want rage. I want them to make it clear that the capital can either listen to their tirades on exactly what fucking assholes they are and how they can't wait for everyone in the audience to get what's coming to them or watch nothing, because there won't be any gushing about how wonderful the place is and how privileged the tributes are to be there this year.
It's fixed up some of the errors of last book - we have more of a cast and there's not such a sharp divide between good men and evil women. But the longer this goes on the more I feel the author can't really handle a cast - the book's viewpoint is permanently centered on Katniss, and what works when it's about a lone wolf character looks steadily worse the more other people get brought in. In retrospect, the dive in quality when she joins up with Peeta is really part of a broader issue.
Prim, who's supposedly Katniss' whole life, is barely present. Her mother is a flat background character completely devoid of any personality who just acts like generic middle class woman (fucking tea and cookies to Snow?) followed by generic srs healer. The less said about the romances the better.
The first third of the book has been filler, as I argued last intermission. This third has been rehashing the plot of the first half of the last book.
There's similar issues with the book being so terribly inconsistent. Last book, when everything was being introduced for the first time this was less of an issue, but this book is trying to build off last book and it's just a mess.
It's hard to say how things should be rewritten. Similar to the above point, the longer the book goes on the more unwieldy the current plot becomes and the less it's possible to fix by just fixing the present issues.
Katniss being a mentor would have been good. If the author flat out can't write that, and I can definitely believe that by this point, Katniss working together with other tributes would have been a nice secondary option, and Katniss directly engaging the people of the capital as well. The people of the capital need to stop being treated as dumb animals - it's especially hypocritical of the book given that the whole premise of the childmurder games relies on the idea that to the capital, it's the district people who aren't human.
There needs to be a plan beyond Katniss playing murder games. And no, saving Peeta instead of herself doesn't constitute a plan, it's just a shift in focus. A plan would be something like making an agreement with others not to play. These aren't scared children who don't know each other and the capital has broken the one promise it made to them. Getting them to work together should be quite possible, especially when at least half of them are from districts that are rebelling. And those that aren't are likely those that, like Katniss', didn't know it was possible. Now that they've met up with the rest of the group, they should know and want to get the message back.
This will never happen because it'll get in the way of Katniss being justified to murder people. Which is another thing, the book needs to stop justifying Katniss murdering people. The narrative should not explain why whatever you were going to do anyway just happens to be the best possible thing to do and a sign Katniss is the best person ever. When Katniss does the easy thing, it's a flaw (and it's okay to have flaws so long as you don't insist it's pronounced virtue) and when she does the right thing it's hard, and she isn't always sure which is which.
We know a lot of them are decent people - that there are a number of elderly means that they probably decided this in advance to protect someone else, and that many of them are abusing drugs means they didn't like being victors. It really shouldn't be that hard to do.
One possibility is to try to run out the clock as a group. We know the capital has plenty of deathtraps in arenas. They band together, refuse to play, and try to fight off whatever monsters attack them and live as long as possible in the hopes that when the rebellion happens, they'll be rescued. (Initially, there would be some vicious, showy dangers. Things get progressively more grim - things that don't seem to be pandering to the crowd but just there to kill them. Eventually, the attacks stop, but they're still in the arena. As food and water run out they wonder what it means - was the capital overthrown, but no one even knows where they are? Is the capital still in charge but too busy fighting the war to bother with them any longer, so they've been left to die? Or is this another part of the game, the capital has won and when the second to last person dies a hovercraft will appear for the victor? To aid in this, the normal cues of the arena need to either stop early or be completely automated - either they stop with the canonfire and collecting bodies as soon as the tributes refuse to fight, or those continue but there are no announcements or other signs of human presence behind them, and attempts to test the system, like remaining near a body, provoke no response. Because this is all very depressing, before they actually do die they're rescued by the successful rebellion. There is no third book in this scenario.)
I like this option because it lets what Katniss is going through have real personal stakes while still being clearly a minor part of the main event. The biggest plot failing so far is the insistence on making the rebellion into Katniss' personal vehicle of special, to the point it's called "her side" and everything she does is some huge strike against the capital. The second biggest failing is that Katniss always plays the childmurder games just like she's supposed to. Changing the focus to fighting the games and trying to live and save as many other tributes as possible, without making it part of saving the whole world, would fix this.
I said in the last chapter that I liked the idea of the arena being the ocean itself. That isn't too compatible with this, although it is possible to merge the ideas somewhat. The ocean arena requires a different setup, one where the rebels have made a lot more progress and it's feasible that they could launch a strike and beat back the capital within days and then rescue everyone in time. In that case, the games are a sort of society-wide fiddling-while-Rome-burns thing, which you must admit is in-theme.
But otherwise, a more normal arena. Maybe something more like Haymitch's manufactured set of an arena, some fancy stage with lots of things to kill them and no way out. The island also works, but maybe ring it with acid instead of water so they can't fish or make a boat. Although they know the acid must end somewhere, the capital can't possibly have turned all the water in the ocean into acid, they can't actually travel across it in the first place so that knowledge does them no good.
Anyway.
The tributes are in communication with either each other or at the least, the capital. They're ideal for coordinating a rebellion. Before the games, as much groundwork for that was laid as possible.
The first sign of this is who ends up picked. I suggested it'd make sense to send the old and sick. Have Katniss expect this, then comment on how it isn't happening. Instead it's mostly the fittest tributes. Some are still messed up, but only when they're the only victor their district has to offer. Because, for once, the games actually can be won, instead of being about dying last. Each healthy person has better odds of making it to the end, because more than one person has a chance of coming back this time.
The bit with the tributes meeting has less stupid messing with Katniss. If it has to happen for some reason it happens only when the cameras are staring right at them, and Katniss notices how they keep switching between stupid smiley and SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS until she correlates with the cameras on her own. They don't have time to be creepy or tease her. They're going off to die and they want to go down fighting, and for that they need to work together with as many people as possible, including her.
As nice as the plan with the interviews was, the whole concept is stupid. The subplot of the capital being ~so in love~ with the tributes is gone, because it's dumb. Everything about the game setup makes it clear they don't have any trouble killing people they know about, as the whole interview system itself shows. If anything, a better quell idea would have been giving the capital a chance to vote which of their favorite victors should compete again. They love their victors like a wolf loves a lamb. Or, perhaps, as a reader loves a character.
There are a couple of options:
One is seriousness. They ignore the capital audience because they know there's no point trying to court favor now - once they rebel there will be no gifts sent. They use the time to say their goodbyes to their families and perhaps leave personal messages that are only of interest for the people they're intended for.
Another is code. Their interviews are full of nonsensical answers because they're working off a code of some sort. Each of them has a particular thing they're supposed to say to mean YES, DO IT NOW, THE OTHERS ARE WITH US. If they had decent communication beforehand the code should be standardized so each district can understand what the other victors are saying - in that case, they each babble as much other information as possible about the capital and rumors they've heard. If they didn't, then each victor set has their own code and communicates the basics to their home district.
The third is to say fuck it and riot. As practical as the other two options are, I'm fond of this one. The tributes seem pretty cut off from actual information, so they may not be able to do much spying. And that's fine, they don't have to be a particularly important part of the rebellion. So they tell the capital what they think of their games. The districts will be uprising already, so the threat of going after loved ones is moot. And there's nothing that can be done to them, because they've already been chosen as sacrifices. I want polemics. I want rage. I want them to make it clear that the capital can either listen to their tirades on exactly what fucking assholes they are and how they can't wait for everyone in the audience to get what's coming to them or watch nothing, because there won't be any gushing about how wonderful the place is and how privileged the tributes are to be there this year.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 08:55 pm (UTC)Pst
Date: 2011-05-23 04:46 am (UTC)By telling you this, maybe I can put enough pressure on myself to actually do it.
Re: Pst
Date: 2011-05-23 04:50 am (UTC)This book cries out for antagonistic fanfic fixing!
(I hope you managed the other thing, though!)
Re: Pst
Date: 2017-12-11 01:32 am (UTC)Re: Pst
Date: 2017-12-15 10:17 pm (UTC)