Catching Fire, Chapter 19
May. 19th, 2011 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaLast time on Catching Fire, Cinna was horribly beaten, possibly to death, by the evil government! And now Katniss is in the middle of the ocean as the Hunger Games start! Oh plot, finally you've returned to us!
Anyway, Katniss is quietly flipping out but manages to get control of herself. She's not going to give up.
My refusal to play the Games on the Capitol's terms is to be my last act of rebellion. So I grit my teeth and will myself to be a player.
...Katniss I don't think you quite grasp the concept here.
All right, there's the Cornucopia, the shining gold metal horn, about forty yards away. At first, it appears to be sitting on a circular island. But on closer examination, I see the thin strips of land radiating from the circle like the spokes on a wheel. I think there are ten to twelve, and they seem equidistant from one another. Between the spokes, all is water. Water and a pair of tributes.
Huh. Well, more interesting than last time. I think this was somewhat established by learning about Haymitch. Still, it doesn't feel right. Compare this to last book, where the games were all about desolation and emptiness. Katniss' first game begins in a mostly empty pine forest where even water is hard to find, and her talk of other games seems similar - she and Gale worry about being dropped somewhere without even wood, implying empty arenas are common, and her descriptions of other games are the one where there was no fuel or shelter and the one where they had to beat each other to death with maces - implying there was nothing much else in the arena for anyone to use.
Anyway, Katniss checks and yup, it's saltwater. Interestingly, there's no mention of smell, which is what I associate with the ocean. It wouldn't mean the same thing to her, but it's pretty noticable.
When the gong sounds, I don't even hesitate before I dive to my left.
This raises a question - she's floating on water, how do the mines work? Maybe there are none and they just figure the tributes are trained not to test anything.
It's a longer distance than I'm used to, and navigating the waves takes a little more skill than swimming across my quiet lake at home, but my body seems oddly light and I cut through the water effortlessly
Yeeeeahno.
She says the cornucopia is forty yards away. But she's not swimming there. There are strips of land and the tributes are hanging out between the spokes. It's not said how close they are, but it can't be that far, there just isn't room.
If that distance is longer than she's used to, that's not a lake, that's a pond. If the distance is longer than she's used to, she's barely had any experience swimming, and never anywhere with the slightest current. Dealing with waves doesn't take "a little more skill". It's a completely different thing.
What she does is she gets into the water and then tries to stick her head up to breathe and gets hit by a wave and starts sputtering and panicking because that's what you do when you get a wave to the face as you try to breathe. Meanwhile the current is pushing her around and the salt is in her eyes and she can't even see and so she can't see the waves around her and tell when the water is about to hit her again and she ends up with another lungful of wave and she's bobbing up and down with the water too and there's motion everywhere so it's hard to even remember which way is up and - it's bad.
Unless they're in a saltwater lake, there's no way she can just power her way through this with no real trouble.
I'm thinking like a Career now, and the first thing I want is to get my hands on a weapon.
...yes. Yes you are. What really bothers me is I doubt a little thing like this will get in the way of continuing your little hatefest on the poor people.
Here it gets confusing. She runs straight for the cornucopia. She grabs a bow. Then she hears someone behind her and spins.
Finnick, glistening and gorgeous, stands a few yards away, with a trident poised to attack. A net dangles from his other hand.
...and where did he get the trident? Behind her is the water. So he came out of the water, then went back in, and Katniss, staring in front the entire time, sees no one this whole time.
“You can swim, too,” he says. “Where did you learn that in District Twelve?”
“We have a big bathtub,” I answer.
WHY IS SHE LYING?
Okay, fine, she didn't want to admit that she was poaching last game, she was hoping to go back alive and not get in trouble. But she's intending to die here, and she's hoping the rebellion will overthrow the government anyway. What on earth prevents her from saying "there's a lake outside the fence"?
Katniss says that the arena seems set up to favor District 4. Well, actually, Duke Devlin seems the most popular, so that could make sense. He's probably the best winner.
Then Finnick suddenly grins. “Lucky thing we're allies. Right?”
Sensing a trap, I'm about to let my arrow fly, hoping it finds his heart
I think part of why Katniss comes off as so sociopathic is how emotionally flat she is. She isn't terrified out of her mind that he's going to kill her and not thinking straight and too scared to take the risk that he's lying. She just thinks it's a trap so she's going to kill him.
Luckily for our pretty, pretty hero, Katniss is distracted by bling. Haymitch's bling. Duke Devlin has Haymitch's bangle.
I briefly consider that Finnick could have stolen it to trick me, but somehow I know this isn't the case. Haymitch gave it to him. As a signal to me. An order, really. To trust Finnick.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just tell her to trust the guy? It's not like he had no chance to talk before they left. He said the whole thing about remembering who the real enemy is, surely he could have thrown in a "btw Finnick isn't your enemy please don't shoot him" then?
But anyway, yay! The tributes have decided to work
“Duck!” Finnick commands in such a powerful voice, so different from his usual seductive purr, that I do. His trident goes whizzing over my head and there's a sickening sound of impact as it finds its target. The man from District 5, the drunk who threw up on the sword-fighting floor, sinks to his knees as Finnick frees the trident from his chest. “Don't trust One and Two,” Finnick says.
Dammit, book.
So. The poor drunk guy just gets killed out of hand. Note there's no mention of the guy being armed. And really, the fact he's a drunk kind of suggests he's not an asshole. He dealt with killing other kids by becoming an alcoholic. The book seems to connect goodness with prettiness, and treat it as some clever subversion when that occasionally isn't true.
Next, hey look, the two other districts that train kids! And they're evil. They're fucking awesome, book, shut up.
There seems to be a weird class element here. District 4 also trains their kids, but that's getting steadily downplayed - Duke Devlin has no trained skills, and his district is fishing, while the horribly reviled District 1 does luxury goods and District 2 does something unknown.
The fact they make luxury goods doesn't mean they're class traitors or whatever the hell is the idea here. Everyone's a slave of the capital. And it's not even like they chose to do that, since the districts have set roles.
They raid the cornucopia for items. There's only weapons in it this time, no supplies. The EVIL are reaching land now.
I shoot an arrow at Enobaria, who's gotten in too close for comfort, but she's expecting it and dives back into the water before it can find its mark. Gloss isn't quite as swift, and I sink an arrow into his calf as he plunges into the waves.
Please note - they haven't even gotten out of the water yet. She is shooting at them while they swim to the stripes of land. What's sad is shooting at people because Duke Devlin said they're untrustworthy actually a step up - if he wasn't there, she'd be shooting at them because she's got a bow and that's what Katniss does when she has a bow.
“Do something about that, would you?” he says. I see Brutus barreling toward us. His belt is undone and he has it stretched between his hands as a kind of shield.
I am cautiously fond of the theory Duke Devlin is just playing her like a harp. Come to think of it, how hard would it be to get a copy of Haymitch's bracelet?
Anyway, Duke Devlin offers to get her beloved millstone because he's the better swimmer.
“Better not exert yourself. Not in your condition,” he says, and reaches down and pats my abdomen.
Ooooooookay. So I'm okay with Katniss lying as part of getting the capital to riot, but doing it to her fellow tributes is going a bit too far.
Oh, right. I'm supposed to be pregnant, I think. While I'm trying to think what that means and how I should act—maybe throw up or something
For fuck's sake.
Katniss lives in a world where everyone seems to have a half dozen kids - and trust me, when you have a half dozen kids, you've been pregnant a lot more times than that. She is not an insulated American kid. She should be quite familiar with what pregnancy means.
And, of course, not the slightest bit of guilt about the lie. Sociopath.
Sure enough, Gloss, Cashmere, Enobaria, and Brutus have gathered, their pack formed already, picking over the weapons.
Which is different than what Katniss did because...she not only formed her pack but also attacked already?
There isn't even any evidence they're forming a pack so much as arming themselves so they're not defenseless against the psycho with arrows. Duke Devlin attacked first, and then Katniss attacked thrice. The only aggressive move anyone's made so far is one of them trying to charge the place with weapons to get some himself, after she and Duke Devlin were already using the weapons against the other tributes.
“Well, I can't leave Mags behind,” says Finnick. “She's one of the few people who actually likes me.”
This is actually cute.
With one hand he reaches into the water and scoops out Mags like she weighs no more than a puppy.
Let's not go overboard here book, you don't have a good track record with comparing people and animals.
almost ask Finnick to wait, to get Beetee and Wiress and take them with us, but Beetee's three spokes over and I can't even see Wiress. For all I know, Finnick would kill them as quickly as he did the tribute from 5, so instead I suggest we move on.
I...can't quite parse this, but it seems pretty awful. Why can't she just say they're her allies? Is she saying he'd kill them no matter what? Why is she allying with someone she thinks will act like this? If nothing else, why isn't she worrying he'll attack her as soon as things change if she thinks he'll attack them?
Where the sand ends, woods begin to rise sharply. No, not really woods. At least not the kind I know. Jungle. The foreign, almost obsolete word comes to mind. Something I heard from another Hunger Games or learned from my father.
Uh.
Two things. She does go to school and they seem to get taught more than just coal digging. I'd expect there to still be picture books of jungles. And if things are really that different that a sixteen year old barely knows what a jungle is, then this is more failwriting, because it's brought up that it's different, except it actually isn't, she just happens to know anyway.
They stop to rest and Katniss decides to climb a tree and get a look at the battlefield.
Around the Cornucopia, the ground appears to be bleeding; the water has purple stains. Bodies lie on the ground and float in the sea, but at this distance, with everyone dressed exactly the same, I can't tell who lives or dies. All I can tell is that some of the tiny blue figures still battle. Well, what did I think? That the victors' chain of locked hands last night would result in some sort of universal truce in the arena? No, I never believed that. But I guess I had hoped people might show some ... what? Restraint? Reluctance, at least. Before they jumped right into massacre mode.
YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE
So Katniss then decides she should kill Duke Devlin. This at least makes sense - as I've said, it's the stronger tributes who are the biggest risk, and alliances of equals is a bad move.
Now, when we have this tentative trust, may be my only chance to kill him. I could easily shoot him in the back as we walk. It's despicable, of course, but will it be any more despicable if I wait?
And going to have to give her this one. If you accept the capital's terms of only one leaving alive, then yes, shooting him in the back isn't actually that awful. All alliances have an implied temporary nature to them, which means calling it betrayal seems misleading. It's despicable to kill either way, holding to honor doesn't really change the core event here.
Duke Devlin, though, was probably expecting her to have a change of heart as soon as she had a moment to think, because he's casually hanging out with his trident.
“What's going on down there, Katniss? Have they all joined hands? Taken a vow of nonviolence? Tossed the weapons in the sea in defiance of the Capitol?” Finnick asks.
This whole sequence would have worked so much better if she and Duke Devlin got there first and then left without engaging any other tributes. As it is, they attacked first, so it's rich for him to be moralizing about everyone else's failing to live up to their better natures.
“Because whatever happened in the past is in the past. And no one in this arena was a victor by chance.” He eyes Peeta for a moment. “Except maybe Peeta.”
Yup, Peeta is all kinds of fucked.
Finnick knows then what Haymitch and I know. About Peeta. Being truly, deep-down better than the rest of us.
Wait what.
Katniss I don't think that was what he meant.
Finnick took out that tribute from 5 without blinking an eye. And how long did I take to turn deadly? I shot to kill when I targeted Enobaria and Gloss and Brutus. Peeta would at least have attempted negotiations first. Seen if some wider alliance was possible.
I just.
Do I have to quote again.
Here, in fact, is an issue. Even ignoring the bullshit above, I suspect the book in general thinks that what Peeta did, killing for her, and what Katniss plans to do, are more moral.
I suppose this gets into issues of morality.
I score pretty low on the whole tribal thing. I think that to kill a stranger to save someone you know is understandable, but it's not actually right. And to do that takes more premeditation than to kill in self-defense.
You can argue that it's more noble to do something for someone else's sake, and I suppose it is. But the thing about killing for yourself is it's easier to justify. You get backed against a wall, you act in self-defense. But with Peeta, "protecting" Katniss involved killing completely uninvolved people just so he might be in the right place later to help her.
At least Katniss didn't do that.
Or hasn't yet.
The people in this arena weren't crowned for their compassion.
They were scared kids. Half of them are killing themselves with various drugs.
The thing is, these aren't practiced killers. They haven't been playing for years. They did this once, and they've had to live with it for the rest of their lives and watch it happen over and over again.
Personally, I'd expect a hell of a lot with survivor's guilt. And they're not kids any longer, they're adults. I don't think it'd be hard to get them to come to an agreement. All of them? Perhaps not. But then, you don't need all of them at first. You need some, and the more agree, the more are willing to take the risk, especially when they're friends.
Anyway, Katniss is getting ready to kill Duke Devlin and Duke Devlin is getting ready to kill her, and Peeta steps between them because he wants them to delay the stabbings until a little later. It's probably meant to validate the whole Peeta-is-Jesus thing, but fuck no, delaying the stabbings is one of those things that's a benefit to his own survival. It's practical, not noble. And he's quite good at playing people, so you'll forgive my being less than impressed by his deep-down betterness.
“Let's keep moving. We need water,” he says.
So far there's been no sign of a freshwater stream or pond, and the saltwater's undrinkable. Again, I think of the last Games, where I nearly died of dehydration.
So the book is not only rehashing the main plot, and not only replaying it in terms of detail, it's pointing out it's doing so.
My eyes catch on a funny, rippling square hanging like a warped pane of glass in the air. At first I think it's the glare from the sun or the heat shimmering up off the ground. But it's fixed in space, not shifting when I move.
Today on how not to do foreshadowing.
This would have worked with the first book. By plotwise, the further into the story you get, the more evident it is when you're introducing something just for the sake of a later event, and it doesn't read smoothly.
This kind of thing should feel like part of the world, and when the character uses it, it'll come off as them figuring something out. But when you introduce a new detail all of a sudden, and then that exact detail is used by a character, it just comes off as forced.
You need to at least throw in some justification. Disguise the details, bury them in something else. Or explain why it hasn't come up before - for example, say it's a new model (strong, more efficient - maybe the new version is silent when the old had an annoying sound - and perhaps that's part of why there was none in the training center when Katniss shot that arrow) and the warp there is a new flaw.
Anyway, before Katniss can say anything, her millstone blunders into it.
I press my ear against his chest, to the spot where I always rest my head, where I know I will hear the strong and steady beat of his heart.
Instead, I find silence.
YES!
Look, I'm not bloodthirsty exactly. This is where suspension of disbelief is an issue. The further I get from the story, the more what I want gets meta. I'm not engaged, I don't see them as people, I just see the underpinnings of the story. In this case? I just want Peeta's presence to stop. I don't bear him personal ill-will, it's just when he's in the story, it's worse than when he's not. If he's dead, we can stop spending time with him and hearing about how he's better than everyone else.
I tend to mark the point at which there's any character I want to die so we stop spending time with them as my personal benchmark for when a story slips into bad. I don't have to love everyone equally, but no one should be a chore to deal with.
I know there's a school of thought that goes with the idea of appealing to as many people as possible, and trying to balance the hate so that everyone hates something but not quite enough that they'll actually drop the story, but I really don't agree. I generally drop things once I realize that's happening, because there's so much out there and I can spend my time on something where I love all of it, instead of something that I love except for when it annoys me.
This may have something to do with why I find a lot of television show fans incomprehensible, since it seems a lot of people are fans of part of the show but hate other parts with an equal passion. Which, I suppose, wraps us back to the fact the author is more of a scriptwriter than a novelist, though I doubt there's a direct connection. It's merely that in a book, you can skim, while in the average show (and in a let's read like this) you're stuck going through the bits you hate.
Anyway, Katniss is quietly flipping out but manages to get control of herself. She's not going to give up.
My refusal to play the Games on the Capitol's terms is to be my last act of rebellion. So I grit my teeth and will myself to be a player.
...Katniss I don't think you quite grasp the concept here.
All right, there's the Cornucopia, the shining gold metal horn, about forty yards away. At first, it appears to be sitting on a circular island. But on closer examination, I see the thin strips of land radiating from the circle like the spokes on a wheel. I think there are ten to twelve, and they seem equidistant from one another. Between the spokes, all is water. Water and a pair of tributes.
Huh. Well, more interesting than last time. I think this was somewhat established by learning about Haymitch. Still, it doesn't feel right. Compare this to last book, where the games were all about desolation and emptiness. Katniss' first game begins in a mostly empty pine forest where even water is hard to find, and her talk of other games seems similar - she and Gale worry about being dropped somewhere without even wood, implying empty arenas are common, and her descriptions of other games are the one where there was no fuel or shelter and the one where they had to beat each other to death with maces - implying there was nothing much else in the arena for anyone to use.
Anyway, Katniss checks and yup, it's saltwater. Interestingly, there's no mention of smell, which is what I associate with the ocean. It wouldn't mean the same thing to her, but it's pretty noticable.
When the gong sounds, I don't even hesitate before I dive to my left.
This raises a question - she's floating on water, how do the mines work? Maybe there are none and they just figure the tributes are trained not to test anything.
It's a longer distance than I'm used to, and navigating the waves takes a little more skill than swimming across my quiet lake at home, but my body seems oddly light and I cut through the water effortlessly
Yeeeeahno.
She says the cornucopia is forty yards away. But she's not swimming there. There are strips of land and the tributes are hanging out between the spokes. It's not said how close they are, but it can't be that far, there just isn't room.
If that distance is longer than she's used to, that's not a lake, that's a pond. If the distance is longer than she's used to, she's barely had any experience swimming, and never anywhere with the slightest current. Dealing with waves doesn't take "a little more skill". It's a completely different thing.
What she does is she gets into the water and then tries to stick her head up to breathe and gets hit by a wave and starts sputtering and panicking because that's what you do when you get a wave to the face as you try to breathe. Meanwhile the current is pushing her around and the salt is in her eyes and she can't even see and so she can't see the waves around her and tell when the water is about to hit her again and she ends up with another lungful of wave and she's bobbing up and down with the water too and there's motion everywhere so it's hard to even remember which way is up and - it's bad.
Unless they're in a saltwater lake, there's no way she can just power her way through this with no real trouble.
I'm thinking like a Career now, and the first thing I want is to get my hands on a weapon.
...yes. Yes you are. What really bothers me is I doubt a little thing like this will get in the way of continuing your little hatefest on the poor people.
Here it gets confusing. She runs straight for the cornucopia. She grabs a bow. Then she hears someone behind her and spins.
Finnick, glistening and gorgeous, stands a few yards away, with a trident poised to attack. A net dangles from his other hand.
...and where did he get the trident? Behind her is the water. So he came out of the water, then went back in, and Katniss, staring in front the entire time, sees no one this whole time.
“You can swim, too,” he says. “Where did you learn that in District Twelve?”
“We have a big bathtub,” I answer.
WHY IS SHE LYING?
Okay, fine, she didn't want to admit that she was poaching last game, she was hoping to go back alive and not get in trouble. But she's intending to die here, and she's hoping the rebellion will overthrow the government anyway. What on earth prevents her from saying "there's a lake outside the fence"?
Katniss says that the arena seems set up to favor District 4. Well, actually, Duke Devlin seems the most popular, so that could make sense. He's probably the best winner.
Then Finnick suddenly grins. “Lucky thing we're allies. Right?”
Sensing a trap, I'm about to let my arrow fly, hoping it finds his heart
I think part of why Katniss comes off as so sociopathic is how emotionally flat she is. She isn't terrified out of her mind that he's going to kill her and not thinking straight and too scared to take the risk that he's lying. She just thinks it's a trap so she's going to kill him.
Luckily for our pretty, pretty hero, Katniss is distracted by bling. Haymitch's bling. Duke Devlin has Haymitch's bangle.
I briefly consider that Finnick could have stolen it to trick me, but somehow I know this isn't the case. Haymitch gave it to him. As a signal to me. An order, really. To trust Finnick.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just tell her to trust the guy? It's not like he had no chance to talk before they left. He said the whole thing about remembering who the real enemy is, surely he could have thrown in a "btw Finnick isn't your enemy please don't shoot him" then?
But anyway, yay! The tributes have decided to work
“Duck!” Finnick commands in such a powerful voice, so different from his usual seductive purr, that I do. His trident goes whizzing over my head and there's a sickening sound of impact as it finds its target. The man from District 5, the drunk who threw up on the sword-fighting floor, sinks to his knees as Finnick frees the trident from his chest. “Don't trust One and Two,” Finnick says.
Dammit, book.
So. The poor drunk guy just gets killed out of hand. Note there's no mention of the guy being armed. And really, the fact he's a drunk kind of suggests he's not an asshole. He dealt with killing other kids by becoming an alcoholic. The book seems to connect goodness with prettiness, and treat it as some clever subversion when that occasionally isn't true.
Next, hey look, the two other districts that train kids! And they're evil. They're fucking awesome, book, shut up.
There seems to be a weird class element here. District 4 also trains their kids, but that's getting steadily downplayed - Duke Devlin has no trained skills, and his district is fishing, while the horribly reviled District 1 does luxury goods and District 2 does something unknown.
The fact they make luxury goods doesn't mean they're class traitors or whatever the hell is the idea here. Everyone's a slave of the capital. And it's not even like they chose to do that, since the districts have set roles.
They raid the cornucopia for items. There's only weapons in it this time, no supplies. The EVIL are reaching land now.
I shoot an arrow at Enobaria, who's gotten in too close for comfort, but she's expecting it and dives back into the water before it can find its mark. Gloss isn't quite as swift, and I sink an arrow into his calf as he plunges into the waves.
Please note - they haven't even gotten out of the water yet. She is shooting at them while they swim to the stripes of land. What's sad is shooting at people because Duke Devlin said they're untrustworthy actually a step up - if he wasn't there, she'd be shooting at them because she's got a bow and that's what Katniss does when she has a bow.
“Do something about that, would you?” he says. I see Brutus barreling toward us. His belt is undone and he has it stretched between his hands as a kind of shield.
I am cautiously fond of the theory Duke Devlin is just playing her like a harp. Come to think of it, how hard would it be to get a copy of Haymitch's bracelet?
Anyway, Duke Devlin offers to get her beloved millstone because he's the better swimmer.
“Better not exert yourself. Not in your condition,” he says, and reaches down and pats my abdomen.
Ooooooookay. So I'm okay with Katniss lying as part of getting the capital to riot, but doing it to her fellow tributes is going a bit too far.
Oh, right. I'm supposed to be pregnant, I think. While I'm trying to think what that means and how I should act—maybe throw up or something
For fuck's sake.
Katniss lives in a world where everyone seems to have a half dozen kids - and trust me, when you have a half dozen kids, you've been pregnant a lot more times than that. She is not an insulated American kid. She should be quite familiar with what pregnancy means.
And, of course, not the slightest bit of guilt about the lie. Sociopath.
Sure enough, Gloss, Cashmere, Enobaria, and Brutus have gathered, their pack formed already, picking over the weapons.
Which is different than what Katniss did because...she not only formed her pack but also attacked already?
There isn't even any evidence they're forming a pack so much as arming themselves so they're not defenseless against the psycho with arrows. Duke Devlin attacked first, and then Katniss attacked thrice. The only aggressive move anyone's made so far is one of them trying to charge the place with weapons to get some himself, after she and Duke Devlin were already using the weapons against the other tributes.
“Well, I can't leave Mags behind,” says Finnick. “She's one of the few people who actually likes me.”
This is actually cute.
With one hand he reaches into the water and scoops out Mags like she weighs no more than a puppy.
Let's not go overboard here book, you don't have a good track record with comparing people and animals.
almost ask Finnick to wait, to get Beetee and Wiress and take them with us, but Beetee's three spokes over and I can't even see Wiress. For all I know, Finnick would kill them as quickly as he did the tribute from 5, so instead I suggest we move on.
I...can't quite parse this, but it seems pretty awful. Why can't she just say they're her allies? Is she saying he'd kill them no matter what? Why is she allying with someone she thinks will act like this? If nothing else, why isn't she worrying he'll attack her as soon as things change if she thinks he'll attack them?
Where the sand ends, woods begin to rise sharply. No, not really woods. At least not the kind I know. Jungle. The foreign, almost obsolete word comes to mind. Something I heard from another Hunger Games or learned from my father.
Uh.
Two things. She does go to school and they seem to get taught more than just coal digging. I'd expect there to still be picture books of jungles. And if things are really that different that a sixteen year old barely knows what a jungle is, then this is more failwriting, because it's brought up that it's different, except it actually isn't, she just happens to know anyway.
They stop to rest and Katniss decides to climb a tree and get a look at the battlefield.
Around the Cornucopia, the ground appears to be bleeding; the water has purple stains. Bodies lie on the ground and float in the sea, but at this distance, with everyone dressed exactly the same, I can't tell who lives or dies. All I can tell is that some of the tiny blue figures still battle. Well, what did I think? That the victors' chain of locked hands last night would result in some sort of universal truce in the arena? No, I never believed that. But I guess I had hoped people might show some ... what? Restraint? Reluctance, at least. Before they jumped right into massacre mode.
YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE
So Katniss then decides she should kill Duke Devlin. This at least makes sense - as I've said, it's the stronger tributes who are the biggest risk, and alliances of equals is a bad move.
Now, when we have this tentative trust, may be my only chance to kill him. I could easily shoot him in the back as we walk. It's despicable, of course, but will it be any more despicable if I wait?
And going to have to give her this one. If you accept the capital's terms of only one leaving alive, then yes, shooting him in the back isn't actually that awful. All alliances have an implied temporary nature to them, which means calling it betrayal seems misleading. It's despicable to kill either way, holding to honor doesn't really change the core event here.
Duke Devlin, though, was probably expecting her to have a change of heart as soon as she had a moment to think, because he's casually hanging out with his trident.
“What's going on down there, Katniss? Have they all joined hands? Taken a vow of nonviolence? Tossed the weapons in the sea in defiance of the Capitol?” Finnick asks.
This whole sequence would have worked so much better if she and Duke Devlin got there first and then left without engaging any other tributes. As it is, they attacked first, so it's rich for him to be moralizing about everyone else's failing to live up to their better natures.
“Because whatever happened in the past is in the past. And no one in this arena was a victor by chance.” He eyes Peeta for a moment. “Except maybe Peeta.”
Yup, Peeta is all kinds of fucked.
Finnick knows then what Haymitch and I know. About Peeta. Being truly, deep-down better than the rest of us.
Wait what.
Katniss I don't think that was what he meant.
Finnick took out that tribute from 5 without blinking an eye. And how long did I take to turn deadly? I shot to kill when I targeted Enobaria and Gloss and Brutus. Peeta would at least have attempted negotiations first. Seen if some wider alliance was possible.
I just.
Do I have to quote again.
Here, in fact, is an issue. Even ignoring the bullshit above, I suspect the book in general thinks that what Peeta did, killing for her, and what Katniss plans to do, are more moral.
I suppose this gets into issues of morality.
I score pretty low on the whole tribal thing. I think that to kill a stranger to save someone you know is understandable, but it's not actually right. And to do that takes more premeditation than to kill in self-defense.
You can argue that it's more noble to do something for someone else's sake, and I suppose it is. But the thing about killing for yourself is it's easier to justify. You get backed against a wall, you act in self-defense. But with Peeta, "protecting" Katniss involved killing completely uninvolved people just so he might be in the right place later to help her.
At least Katniss didn't do that.
Or hasn't yet.
The people in this arena weren't crowned for their compassion.
They were scared kids. Half of them are killing themselves with various drugs.
The thing is, these aren't practiced killers. They haven't been playing for years. They did this once, and they've had to live with it for the rest of their lives and watch it happen over and over again.
Personally, I'd expect a hell of a lot with survivor's guilt. And they're not kids any longer, they're adults. I don't think it'd be hard to get them to come to an agreement. All of them? Perhaps not. But then, you don't need all of them at first. You need some, and the more agree, the more are willing to take the risk, especially when they're friends.
Anyway, Katniss is getting ready to kill Duke Devlin and Duke Devlin is getting ready to kill her, and Peeta steps between them because he wants them to delay the stabbings until a little later. It's probably meant to validate the whole Peeta-is-Jesus thing, but fuck no, delaying the stabbings is one of those things that's a benefit to his own survival. It's practical, not noble. And he's quite good at playing people, so you'll forgive my being less than impressed by his deep-down betterness.
“Let's keep moving. We need water,” he says.
So far there's been no sign of a freshwater stream or pond, and the saltwater's undrinkable. Again, I think of the last Games, where I nearly died of dehydration.
So the book is not only rehashing the main plot, and not only replaying it in terms of detail, it's pointing out it's doing so.
My eyes catch on a funny, rippling square hanging like a warped pane of glass in the air. At first I think it's the glare from the sun or the heat shimmering up off the ground. But it's fixed in space, not shifting when I move.
Today on how not to do foreshadowing.
This would have worked with the first book. By plotwise, the further into the story you get, the more evident it is when you're introducing something just for the sake of a later event, and it doesn't read smoothly.
This kind of thing should feel like part of the world, and when the character uses it, it'll come off as them figuring something out. But when you introduce a new detail all of a sudden, and then that exact detail is used by a character, it just comes off as forced.
You need to at least throw in some justification. Disguise the details, bury them in something else. Or explain why it hasn't come up before - for example, say it's a new model (strong, more efficient - maybe the new version is silent when the old had an annoying sound - and perhaps that's part of why there was none in the training center when Katniss shot that arrow) and the warp there is a new flaw.
Anyway, before Katniss can say anything, her millstone blunders into it.
I press my ear against his chest, to the spot where I always rest my head, where I know I will hear the strong and steady beat of his heart.
Instead, I find silence.
YES!
Look, I'm not bloodthirsty exactly. This is where suspension of disbelief is an issue. The further I get from the story, the more what I want gets meta. I'm not engaged, I don't see them as people, I just see the underpinnings of the story. In this case? I just want Peeta's presence to stop. I don't bear him personal ill-will, it's just when he's in the story, it's worse than when he's not. If he's dead, we can stop spending time with him and hearing about how he's better than everyone else.
I tend to mark the point at which there's any character I want to die so we stop spending time with them as my personal benchmark for when a story slips into bad. I don't have to love everyone equally, but no one should be a chore to deal with.
I know there's a school of thought that goes with the idea of appealing to as many people as possible, and trying to balance the hate so that everyone hates something but not quite enough that they'll actually drop the story, but I really don't agree. I generally drop things once I realize that's happening, because there's so much out there and I can spend my time on something where I love all of it, instead of something that I love except for when it annoys me.
This may have something to do with why I find a lot of television show fans incomprehensible, since it seems a lot of people are fans of part of the show but hate other parts with an equal passion. Which, I suppose, wraps us back to the fact the author is more of a scriptwriter than a novelist, though I doubt there's a direct connection. It's merely that in a book, you can skim, while in the average show (and in a let's read like this) you're stuck going through the bits you hate.
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Date: 2012-05-02 04:21 pm (UTC)