Catching Fire Bonus, Part 1
Jun. 30th, 2011 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaIn which Farla takes a break from insulting a published author in order to make insult a published literary critic.
Back in the misty depths of three months ago, I mentioned in my Hunger Games conclusion that I'd skimmed looked over some of the internets (but not many) to see what other people were saying. While I was generally disdainful, one piece cried out for to be torn apart. Unfortunately, it hinged on Catching Fire, so I had to get through that book first.
And here we are.
Before we get to the hilarious piece that originally caught my eye, I headed back to the start of his posts, which the Dante pontificating was building off.
Who is the Mockingjay? The Hidden Key to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy
Our tone is set immediately when he explains he picked up the book because someone mentioned they might have " intentional alchemical artistry". You see, he says he "ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss".
He thinks avoiding Twilight is a loss. Also, this is because he found Twilight had that alchemical artistry. I do not have a lit degree, I am not even sure what that is, but it involves the word "artistry" in connection to Twilight, so I will go out on a limb here already and say we are deep in bullshit territory.
But anyway. He goes on to say that the topic is his belief about "the surprise revelation of the finale and a key to opening up the meaning of the series." In other words, he's going to use his lit crit powers to predict where the book is going. That actually sounds strangely reasonable. I mean, that's pretty much what you do with an English degree, right? Clearly he's qualified to read a book properly.
He goes into it with a rather meta focus - since Haymitch manipulates Katniss, Haymitch is the author. This is just flatly stated, as if it's the official answer.
I object to this idea. I can't say entirely how we should be viewing this, but Haymitch's manipulations aren't particularly complex, so this would mean virtually anyone manipulating the main character in a story is the author. And if that is the intent ere...well, that doesn't make it good writing. Quite the opposite, it strikes me as pretentious and navel-gazing. Authors really like writing about authors writing, and I'd say it's one of those things that needs to be kept in check, right next to the color changing gemstone eyes.
But luckily he has proof for the doubters:
1) he communicates with her by the things he sends: "i.e., he is the author and she is simultaneously character in and reader-interpreter of the story he is writing". (...yeah, that's not a ridiculously broad standard at all.)
This overlooks that he does his best at direct communication, sends things just to help her, and only sends things to get her to play a part for one portion of the games. First book, he refuses to send water because it's close, then he sends her burn ointment, then someone else sends her bread. At no point there is Haymitch trying to move her on a particular path, he's just trying to communicate or help, and in fact classing it like this is removing all Katniss' agency. The only point he's writing a story is the romance, and Katniss is his coauthor there - or, for a better metaphor, she's the author and he's the beta reader. She's choosing to try to save Peeta, and he's giving feedback about if he thinks it's working. After all, Katniss is quite capable of getting food and surviving on her own, her actions toward Peeta are for supplies for him.
In book two, Haymitch is involved to an unknown degree in the plan, but Katniss isn't involved. He sends bread once to tell Katniss to stop being such a sociopath, and he sends the spile so they don't all die. That's not shoving her around to write a story using her. The other bread is communication with Finnick. Katniss isn't in on it and never works it out.
2) Haymitch's own games...wait, "He survived as a tribute because he played the game like a Game Maker or playwright"? Not in the slightest. He survived because instead of playing he tried to get off the stage, and he metaphorically happened to find a trap door built into the stage along the way. Very arguably, slightly like a Gamemaker (one word. Haven't been capitalizing it myself because fuck these books, author doesn't know what she's doing mechanically, but this is a guy who supposedly respects the books and he can't even get the name right? And while Gamemaker may not be great, it's not the grammatical abomination that Game Maker is.) in that he knew it was manmade and tried to find the limits, but where the hell does playwright come in? He doesn't attempt to win by using narrative tropes, and neither does he try to use the way the games work normally to win. He tries to bust out and uses what stopped him from escaping to secure his last kill.
3)"in the hovercraft scenes of the Catching Fire last chapter, Haymitch says (and Katniss repeats) the line that seems to peg him as the rebellion’s ‘Mockingjay’ story author: “this is why no one lets you make the plans.” He then proceeds to tell her the story she has been living in (page 385) as if he were the one who had made the plans."
Because not trusting the hothead to make plans and knowing what the plan was means he and he alone was the architect? In fact, it's stated that the Head Gamemaker guy was on their side for some time, so I thought it was pretty strongly implied he was involved in the actual planning part. I'd expect Beetee to also be a major part of it, since you can't plan an escape if you don't know how you can escape.
But hey. I'm not the one who has the English degree, right? Maybe my interpretation of all this is just totally off base. Let's go to the next two lines.
"Katniss’ response to this demonstration? She attacks Haymitch with her fingernails in her agony and confusion on learning that “I am the mockingjay” (page 386). "
Okay so let's see that again.
Haymitch explains, and
“We had to save you because you're the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives.”
The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay.
The one that survived despite the Capitol's plans. The symbol of the rebellion.
It's what I suspected in the woods when I found Bonnie and Twill escaping. Though I never really understood the magnitude. But then, I wasn't meant to understand. I think of Haymitch's sneering at my plans to flee District 12, start my own uprising, even the very notion that District 13 could exist. Subterfuges and deceptions. And if he could do that, behind his mask of sarcasm and drunkenness, so convincingly and for so long, what else has he lied about? I know what else.
“Peeta,” I whisper, my heart sinking.
“The others kept Peeta alive because if he died, we knew there'd be no keeping you in an alliance,” says Haymitch. “And we couldn't risk leaving you unprotected.” His words are matter-of-fact, his expression unchanged, but he can't hide the tinge of gray that colors his face.
“Where is Peeta?” I hiss at him.
He tells her and then it's lungy face clawy time, ending with Katniss saying and I know it's all Haymitch can do not to rip me apart, but I'm the mockingjay. I'm the mockingjay and it's too hard keeping me alive as it is..
So no. That's not at all what happens in the books. Katniss isn't raging because she was used and doesn't do it when she hears she's the mockingjay. She's raging because they left Peeta, she's not confused at all, and her mockingjay line in the paragraph is not the reason for her attack, it's the reason she can do so with impunity.
He has published eight books and he's failing entry level reading comprehension. What the fuck.
He says that the next book is called Mockingjay, and that the obvious place to go would be Katniss taking charge of the narrative. "Right now, though, I don’t think so."
Well, he seems hellbent on stripping Katniss of every ounce of control and intention she does get in the narrative, so sure, I can see why he'd assume that.
He goes on to clarify he doesn't think Haymitch is the mastermind (bear in mind it's only by his bizarre reasoning that Haymitch is being set up as the sole supermastermind in the first place.) or Katniss the mockingjay.
...I will be nice for a moment and say maybe he means the mockingjay of the title, because Katniss is definitely the girl giving the title by the revolutionaries. She wears the pin, the people who carry the symbol say they're on "her side", she ends up dressed as one before the games. No such distinction exists in the article, it's just stated she's not the "real mockingjay". The real one is the one authoring the narrative who, he says, is a character that hasn't even been named. Despite the fact the mockingjay is a symbol and the whole point of a symbol is to be visible.
I should say here that his other books were about interpreting the Harry Potter series. I think that may have broke the guy. See, Harry Potter, especially by the second half, was turning into a clusterfuck. With an audience that large, all talking to each other obsessively and combing through the books for hints, normal foreshadowing seemed to fall by the wayside. A number of major plot points were either hidden as throwaway description or not brought up at all. But the horacrux being random item number #545 in a room is not good or clever writing. It's rather like how you can guess the murderer in some of the more badly written mysteries by finding whoever the author tries to ignore the hardest.
Why would the "author of the narrative" be the mockingjay when the mockingjay symbolism has been brought up over and over, with typical YA level subtlety, and "authoring the narrative" was never part of it? The mockingjay is the spanner in the works, the thing that wasn't expected in the official narrative. Or, come to think about it, the jabberjay. The jabberjay is created by the capital, only to be turned against them. It's intended to die for this, but instead it survives. The mockingjay isn't the thing that turned on the capital but the descendent of something that did. I suppose one could say Katniss is the mockingjay and the games themselves are the jabberjay here - the games are turned against the capital, and she's what survives.
Now, I haven't read Mockingjay either. Perhaps his brilliant literary mind has figured something out here, though I doubt it (as I keep saying - they're not subtle). Thing is? What he's advocating for here is bad writing. It's not misdirection, it's pulling something out of thin air and telling people they're dumb for not seeing it. There is absolutely no reason to suggest this if he a) knows anything about writing and b) is expecting book three to be well-written.
His idea for the mockingjay is Madge's mom.
"I think that the rebellion’s mockingjay symbolism and counter-narrative starring Katniss and Haymitch are stories written by Mrs. Undersee for these reasons:
1. the origin of the Mockingjay pin;
2. the privileged station and situation of Mrs. Undersee;
3. the meaning of the name ‘Madge Undersee;’
4. the necessity of a narrative misdirection ‘wow’ in the series finale; and
5. the centrality of the series message that we are players in a drama whose author(s) we do not know."
Ooooooooh 8oy.
He proceeds to outline a conspiracy theory. He says the fact Madge shows up "urgently" and begs Katniss to wear the pin means it's big deal. The scene is odd, he says, and then shows the scene, where Madge's behavior is perfectly in line with the fact Katniss has only a short time for visitors and is going off to her death.
"Katniss doesn’t understand the power or meaning of this pin’s symbolism until well intoCatching Fire but it is clear from Madge’s urgency and insistence in how she gives the token to Katniss that Madge believes or has been instructed that it is critical to Katniss’s success and survival that she wear it."
To prove this, he adds that the pin makes Rue trust Katniss, because that was totally foreseeable and planned, and that then the pin becomes the symbol of the spark she ignites for completely unrelated reasons, which somehow means she needed it.
Why the fuck Madge was wearing the damn thing in the first place if this is true goes unexplored.
"Using the Red Hen model of literary speculation, namely, that implausibly unlikely events coming to pass are the marks of design" is indescribably stupid, because we all saw where that led them.
So, a fresh sheet of tin freshly crumpled over his head, we continue. See, victors' kids end up in the arena too often for it to be chance, therefore EVERY SINGLE PERSON CHOSEN FOR EVERY SINGLE GAME is on purpose.
"For starters, Prim’s and Peeta’s names being chosen at the District 12 Reaping was too much of a dream match to have been arbitrary or random. Effie, I’m guessing, was told which names to pull or all the names in the bowl were the same. Given the love Peeta has for Katniss and Katniss’ singular qualifications for surviving, even thriving in the arena, skills she alone has among all District 12 women, their selection and the consequent counter-story of the star-crossed lovers was almost certainly written well in advance of their Hunger Games."
We can't stop here. This is batshit country.
(There's no explanation for why they couldn't pick Gale, by the way. I take it he's a shipper.)
"A key piece in this seditious narrative is the mockingjay token because it is the symbol of the counter-story the Capitol couldn’t anticipate or control. She has to be wearing it for the story to work as written. "
Aside from the general WTF at the idea the pin itself is the most important bit... Remember how I kept snarking about how Katniss forgot the damn pin over and over and over again? She only has it by utter chance at the end of the book.
Next he explains that it's completely implausible Haymitch could have known the way through the District 11 building he takes them through to find a safe place to chat unless he knows the way. "How then does he move with such surety, speed, and confidence through the maze of rooms and seemingly sealed doors? It’s not plausible unless he’s been there sometime, even many times, in the intervening years."
What apparently is more plausible is the idea that doors jammed from not being used in years have been regularly opened, that rooms covered in years worth of dust to show they were untouched were tramped through constantly, and, of course, that Haymitch regularly visits a hideout he picks precisely because no one has been there so no one would bother bugging it.
And even more plausible is that it wasn't Haymitch, but Madge's mother, the Real Mockingjay, who did it, and apparently told him the exact directions just in case one day he had an angry tribute who was the boyfriend of a government insurrection's lynchpin wanting to be brought in on the plan right when they happened to be in that exact building.
"We learn from Madge that even the Mayor’s wife, her mother, cannot travel to the Capitol for medical treatment and medicines without special permission. Obviously, though, Mrs. Undersee does get this kind of allowance. She “spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world” (Fire, page 196)."
I swear first graders have better reading comprehension. First fucking graders!
Aside from the fact Madge says outright that no, her mom does not get to go to the capital, it's right there in the line he's quoting! If capital, then headaches fixed. Someone lying in bed in agony is not someone getting treated by capital doctors.
But wait, there's proof!
"She has enough pain killers on hand consequent to her medicinal trips to the Capitol that she is able to send a box to Katniss’ house"
Yes, that's totally what the scene meant. The only way to get morphine is by getting it personally handed to you by your capital doctor in the capital, and she gave it because she just had so incredibly much on hand, not as any sort of personal sacrifice on her part.
So, having proven that, we continue merrily down the rabbit hole of madness. She also must go to the other districts as her husband's escort - not that we know if mayors ever leave their district and we know they don't take their families with them or else the mom wouldn't need special permission to go. She's quite busy for someone incapacitated by pain, I must say.
"I would bet she knows the major political players in every district as the First Lady of District 12 and has relative freedom in the Capitol to meet important people there."
The wife of the mayor of the crappiest district in the entire country is totally a respected position, and would be allowed to run rampant
He lists off more nonsense, about how Cinna could never have returned the pin for normal reasons. "Someone has initiated him into the mockingjay conspiracy. If not Mrs. Undersee, who?" because apparently just figuring she wouldn't want to lose her token from home isn't good enough. And how he "bets" she bonded with Plutarch over how her sister died in the games and how she's of his "caste" somehow, because mayor's wife from the most impoverished district is exactly like a capital-living reality TV show designer of murdergames, and what better bonding subject than how his job murdered her sister?
"In brief, the ability to craft a rebellion counter-narrative within the Hunger Games spectacles requires a story teller with the ability to travel or otherwise communicate with the other districts, especially the Capitol. Mrs. Undersee is the only character we know with these privileges. Her illness, given that she has a full, spare box of precious pain killers may just be a front to facilitate her travel and invisibility."
Only if you assume only one person did it, that it can't be a person within the capital, that Katniss' honestly not that well choreographed games were some brilliant narrative controlled every inch of the way (might have been a better idea to try with a girl who was also love already, guys, and maybe have both kids be at least okay fighters to minimize the chance one would get offed early), and that a box with six vials of painkiller is full and a "spare" one.
At this point it digresses into name meanings. You can pretty much read anything into anything there, but again, it doesn't matter. If he's right and the names have a meaning that deeply buried, it's back to shitty writing and Meaningful Names. If he's wrong then it's a dumb thing to base an argument around.
Finally we get to the true Potter roots, the idea that the book has to have an ending no one sees coming.
I'm sick of how shitty this and the book it's doing apologism for are, so let's digress.
You know what's a good book? The Song of Ice and Fire series. One of the things I was really impressed by is how all the pieces are there and yet I didn't put any of it together. The prejudices of the characters can be blatant, but the way they color every action, that's done with subtlety. A good example is with Sandor Clegane. He's a terrifying, brutish character. One of his first interactions is to menace a thirteen year old girl, one of his first actions is to kill a little boy. He is hideous, with one side of his face horribly scarred from a burn. He makes no attempt at kindness, in everything he does he's abrupt and frightening, with the constant threat of violence or murder.
And yet none of the good things he does are unfounded, and not, truly, surprising. On my first, breakneck readthrough, the character existed as a sort of Schrodinger’s dog, existing in quantum murder flux until events actually happened. He seemed to always be standing on the brink, able to help or harm. Indeed, he's crucial to the one cliffhanger ending that actually made me stop in horror and check to see if the viewpoint character had another chapter later on or was gone for good. This doesn't mean he's OOC - he is quite consistent in his character the whole time. You know how he'll act, you just don't know how he'll choose.
On the second, less frantic time I went through the book, I was even more impressed. The literary quantum dog was not actually quantum - especially, to my shame, the cliffhanger chapter. By that point in the story more than enough is known about the character to know he isn't a monster. It's just everyone talks about him that way, even him. And when you look at his backstory it makes complete sense - as we learn early enough on, his older brother seared half his face off over a trivial thing when he was a little kid and everyone since has taken one look and known that he's evil. He has the social skills befitting a half wild dog, and that combined with his face and his relatives leads to how frightening he is to other characters.
(SoIaF is also a good counter to the idea there must be a twist, though - while I desperately want to read the rest of the series, I have no specific desire to get to the ending. I'd rather he writes a dozen more books and dies before the ending than finishes in two books. I'm pretty sure I already worked out the major mysteries. I'm just not sure who the third head of the dragon will be or how the stuff is actually going to come to pass. Oh, and whether or not dragon'sglass is actually something dragons can/will manufacture more of, or if the dragons will just straight up kill everything on their own.)
...back to this.
So having proven that the book is saying that Haymitch is the authorial mastermind, it's not him because that would be obvious, and therefore it's the Real Mockingjay. "Simply put, it’s not misdirection if it turns out to be who you thought it was going to be." He hasn't actually explained why it must be misdirection, of course.
"I’m betting instead on the twin sister of the girl who saved Haymitch’s life in the Quarter Quell and whose life he couldn’t save (he found the metanarrative boundary and the secret that defeated both his opponent and the Capitol but not in time to save Maysilee from the deadly, animated lawn flamingos)."
What.
He found it in time, he only headed to her after because he heard her screaming. If she hadn't, they wouldn't have met up again or if they did, it'd have been to kill each other. And he sure as fuck didn't defeat the Capital doing so. (Also, no idea where he got the idea they were "animated lawn flamingos".)
We go on to the idea that Haymitch fucked her and Madge is their daughter. This is technically possible but there's just absolutely no evidence. Haymitch seems about as drunk and depressed as you'd expect from someone who cut himself off from everyone. (If you want good secret daughter stuff, my money's with Prim. The fact the Seam people aren't regularly throwing yellow-haired kids means they'd have to be homozygous, yet he's got a black haired daughter who looks exactly like him and then a yellow haired daughter who looks exactly like her mom and the rest of the blonde townies. Meanwhile, the baker's holding a torch for her and we know it's an unhappy marriage with a particularly unhappy wife. It's easy to explain why he doesn't do more to help them - Katniss' mom did love her father, and the guilt could make her break it off completely after she heard.)
He does admit this is just slightly far fetched, but such a flash of sanity is quickly smothered as we barrel onwards to the conclusion, which is that the point of the entire series is about how we're all players in a drama, because...well, apparently it's so obvious there's really no need to explain, beyond because Po Mo, that's why, and then there's a ramble about fighting off the insidious power of the mainstream media.
Finally we get to the damn theory.
First, he says the fact they're twins means either one of them might have gone. There was a split second I found this interesting followed by realizing that whoever's name wasn't called could have volunteered anyway, so there's no point in that kind of thing.
"Either survivor, of course, would hate the Games. She would know, too, how a sister would respond if a weaker sister were chosen at the Reaping."
That's right, every other girl who was chosen had no older sister, ever. We know volunteering almost never happens outside the Career districts, when it's done for unrelated reasons. That's a bit hard to make work though, when every single family we see in canon has multiple kids. Katniss' two child household is, I think, the smallest one we see.
"Haymitch’s strategy of attacking the story boundaries"
That is an amazingly weird interpretation of him attacking the literal arena boundaries.
"I suggest for your consideration through Madge and other contacts, especially Haymitch, Mrs. Donner-Undersee knew about Katniss’ archery abilities and Peeta’s affection for her. The idea of a love-story inside the arena was natural to her because of her sister’s relationship with Haymitch, if not her own. Again, the idea of Katniss heroically taking Prim’s place was if anything more obvious than a love story to the twin sister left behind at the Reaping to wish she had been chosen or volunteered."
Everyone knew about Katniss' archery abilities and it's implied plenty of people knew about Peeta's crush. If the relationship is a mirror of theirs, why didn't theirs involve romance in the first place? And that idea to volunteer? Was Katniss', fuck you all. They didn't make her do it and no one should have been certain she would.
There is explanation for how they knew Rue would trust the mockingjay token - District 11's were also chosen to incite rebellion (evidence for, none) and they told her to trust the kid with it. Instead of just saying to trust the District 12 girl. Their plan nearly derailed right from the start when Katniss accidentally left the pin on the train.
"Through her husband’s office and communications, Donner-Undersee was tapped into everything happening in Panem that the Capitol shared with District leaders."
I hate to say this, but why the hell can't it just be the mayor doing all this?
Then...then it starts going on about how we're all twins and postmodern relativistic relationships with the media and inner children.
"This child, nourished by the androgynous and asexual men of her life — ‘Gale,’ the Wind, nature, and Spirit with ‘Peeta,’ the bread of communion"
They do a hell of a lot of kissing for asexuals. They're also repeatedly described as huge and muscled.
And then we end as crazily over the top as we began: "Like her character Maysilee Donner-Undersee, Suzanne Collins is writing this counter-narrative to the regime’s televised culture of death in Hunger Games. And she is calling us to write a similar counter-narrative in our lives by nourishing our inner Katniss in resistance to the anti-culture’s story tellers in whose Cave we live, chained mentally to the shadows they cast on the walls."
But what will we do about the mental chains to pretentious as fuck language?
Seriously, this guy has been published. More than once.
And we're done...with part one.
But we have barely begun to plumb the depths of this madness.
Back in the misty depths of three months ago, I mentioned in my Hunger Games conclusion that I'd skimmed looked over some of the internets (but not many) to see what other people were saying. While I was generally disdainful, one piece cried out for to be torn apart. Unfortunately, it hinged on Catching Fire, so I had to get through that book first.
And here we are.
Before we get to the hilarious piece that originally caught my eye, I headed back to the start of his posts, which the Dante pontificating was building off.
Who is the Mockingjay? The Hidden Key to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy
Our tone is set immediately when he explains he picked up the book because someone mentioned they might have " intentional alchemical artistry". You see, he says he "ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss".
He thinks avoiding Twilight is a loss. Also, this is because he found Twilight had that alchemical artistry. I do not have a lit degree, I am not even sure what that is, but it involves the word "artistry" in connection to Twilight, so I will go out on a limb here already and say we are deep in bullshit territory.
But anyway. He goes on to say that the topic is his belief about "the surprise revelation of the finale and a key to opening up the meaning of the series." In other words, he's going to use his lit crit powers to predict where the book is going. That actually sounds strangely reasonable. I mean, that's pretty much what you do with an English degree, right? Clearly he's qualified to read a book properly.
He goes into it with a rather meta focus - since Haymitch manipulates Katniss, Haymitch is the author. This is just flatly stated, as if it's the official answer.
I object to this idea. I can't say entirely how we should be viewing this, but Haymitch's manipulations aren't particularly complex, so this would mean virtually anyone manipulating the main character in a story is the author. And if that is the intent ere...well, that doesn't make it good writing. Quite the opposite, it strikes me as pretentious and navel-gazing. Authors really like writing about authors writing, and I'd say it's one of those things that needs to be kept in check, right next to the color changing gemstone eyes.
But luckily he has proof for the doubters:
1) he communicates with her by the things he sends: "i.e., he is the author and she is simultaneously character in and reader-interpreter of the story he is writing". (...yeah, that's not a ridiculously broad standard at all.)
This overlooks that he does his best at direct communication, sends things just to help her, and only sends things to get her to play a part for one portion of the games. First book, he refuses to send water because it's close, then he sends her burn ointment, then someone else sends her bread. At no point there is Haymitch trying to move her on a particular path, he's just trying to communicate or help, and in fact classing it like this is removing all Katniss' agency. The only point he's writing a story is the romance, and Katniss is his coauthor there - or, for a better metaphor, she's the author and he's the beta reader. She's choosing to try to save Peeta, and he's giving feedback about if he thinks it's working. After all, Katniss is quite capable of getting food and surviving on her own, her actions toward Peeta are for supplies for him.
In book two, Haymitch is involved to an unknown degree in the plan, but Katniss isn't involved. He sends bread once to tell Katniss to stop being such a sociopath, and he sends the spile so they don't all die. That's not shoving her around to write a story using her. The other bread is communication with Finnick. Katniss isn't in on it and never works it out.
2) Haymitch's own games...wait, "He survived as a tribute because he played the game like a Game Maker or playwright"? Not in the slightest. He survived because instead of playing he tried to get off the stage, and he metaphorically happened to find a trap door built into the stage along the way. Very arguably, slightly like a Gamemaker (one word. Haven't been capitalizing it myself because fuck these books, author doesn't know what she's doing mechanically, but this is a guy who supposedly respects the books and he can't even get the name right? And while Gamemaker may not be great, it's not the grammatical abomination that Game Maker is.) in that he knew it was manmade and tried to find the limits, but where the hell does playwright come in? He doesn't attempt to win by using narrative tropes, and neither does he try to use the way the games work normally to win. He tries to bust out and uses what stopped him from escaping to secure his last kill.
3)"in the hovercraft scenes of the Catching Fire last chapter, Haymitch says (and Katniss repeats) the line that seems to peg him as the rebellion’s ‘Mockingjay’ story author: “this is why no one lets you make the plans.” He then proceeds to tell her the story she has been living in (page 385) as if he were the one who had made the plans."
Because not trusting the hothead to make plans and knowing what the plan was means he and he alone was the architect? In fact, it's stated that the Head Gamemaker guy was on their side for some time, so I thought it was pretty strongly implied he was involved in the actual planning part. I'd expect Beetee to also be a major part of it, since you can't plan an escape if you don't know how you can escape.
But hey. I'm not the one who has the English degree, right? Maybe my interpretation of all this is just totally off base. Let's go to the next two lines.
"Katniss’ response to this demonstration? She attacks Haymitch with her fingernails in her agony and confusion on learning that “I am the mockingjay” (page 386). "
Okay so let's see that again.
Haymitch explains, and
“We had to save you because you're the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives.”
The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay.
The one that survived despite the Capitol's plans. The symbol of the rebellion.
It's what I suspected in the woods when I found Bonnie and Twill escaping. Though I never really understood the magnitude. But then, I wasn't meant to understand. I think of Haymitch's sneering at my plans to flee District 12, start my own uprising, even the very notion that District 13 could exist. Subterfuges and deceptions. And if he could do that, behind his mask of sarcasm and drunkenness, so convincingly and for so long, what else has he lied about? I know what else.
“Peeta,” I whisper, my heart sinking.
“The others kept Peeta alive because if he died, we knew there'd be no keeping you in an alliance,” says Haymitch. “And we couldn't risk leaving you unprotected.” His words are matter-of-fact, his expression unchanged, but he can't hide the tinge of gray that colors his face.
“Where is Peeta?” I hiss at him.
He tells her and then it's lungy face clawy time, ending with Katniss saying and I know it's all Haymitch can do not to rip me apart, but I'm the mockingjay. I'm the mockingjay and it's too hard keeping me alive as it is..
So no. That's not at all what happens in the books. Katniss isn't raging because she was used and doesn't do it when she hears she's the mockingjay. She's raging because they left Peeta, she's not confused at all, and her mockingjay line in the paragraph is not the reason for her attack, it's the reason she can do so with impunity.
He has published eight books and he's failing entry level reading comprehension. What the fuck.
He says that the next book is called Mockingjay, and that the obvious place to go would be Katniss taking charge of the narrative. "Right now, though, I don’t think so."
Well, he seems hellbent on stripping Katniss of every ounce of control and intention she does get in the narrative, so sure, I can see why he'd assume that.
He goes on to clarify he doesn't think Haymitch is the mastermind (bear in mind it's only by his bizarre reasoning that Haymitch is being set up as the sole supermastermind in the first place.) or Katniss the mockingjay.
...I will be nice for a moment and say maybe he means the mockingjay of the title, because Katniss is definitely the girl giving the title by the revolutionaries. She wears the pin, the people who carry the symbol say they're on "her side", she ends up dressed as one before the games. No such distinction exists in the article, it's just stated she's not the "real mockingjay". The real one is the one authoring the narrative who, he says, is a character that hasn't even been named. Despite the fact the mockingjay is a symbol and the whole point of a symbol is to be visible.
I should say here that his other books were about interpreting the Harry Potter series. I think that may have broke the guy. See, Harry Potter, especially by the second half, was turning into a clusterfuck. With an audience that large, all talking to each other obsessively and combing through the books for hints, normal foreshadowing seemed to fall by the wayside. A number of major plot points were either hidden as throwaway description or not brought up at all. But the horacrux being random item number #545 in a room is not good or clever writing. It's rather like how you can guess the murderer in some of the more badly written mysteries by finding whoever the author tries to ignore the hardest.
Why would the "author of the narrative" be the mockingjay when the mockingjay symbolism has been brought up over and over, with typical YA level subtlety, and "authoring the narrative" was never part of it? The mockingjay is the spanner in the works, the thing that wasn't expected in the official narrative. Or, come to think about it, the jabberjay. The jabberjay is created by the capital, only to be turned against them. It's intended to die for this, but instead it survives. The mockingjay isn't the thing that turned on the capital but the descendent of something that did. I suppose one could say Katniss is the mockingjay and the games themselves are the jabberjay here - the games are turned against the capital, and she's what survives.
Now, I haven't read Mockingjay either. Perhaps his brilliant literary mind has figured something out here, though I doubt it (as I keep saying - they're not subtle). Thing is? What he's advocating for here is bad writing. It's not misdirection, it's pulling something out of thin air and telling people they're dumb for not seeing it. There is absolutely no reason to suggest this if he a) knows anything about writing and b) is expecting book three to be well-written.
His idea for the mockingjay is Madge's mom.
"I think that the rebellion’s mockingjay symbolism and counter-narrative starring Katniss and Haymitch are stories written by Mrs. Undersee for these reasons:
1. the origin of the Mockingjay pin;
2. the privileged station and situation of Mrs. Undersee;
3. the meaning of the name ‘Madge Undersee;’
4. the necessity of a narrative misdirection ‘wow’ in the series finale; and
5. the centrality of the series message that we are players in a drama whose author(s) we do not know."
Ooooooooh 8oy.
He proceeds to outline a conspiracy theory. He says the fact Madge shows up "urgently" and begs Katniss to wear the pin means it's big deal. The scene is odd, he says, and then shows the scene, where Madge's behavior is perfectly in line with the fact Katniss has only a short time for visitors and is going off to her death.
"Katniss doesn’t understand the power or meaning of this pin’s symbolism until well intoCatching Fire but it is clear from Madge’s urgency and insistence in how she gives the token to Katniss that Madge believes or has been instructed that it is critical to Katniss’s success and survival that she wear it."
To prove this, he adds that the pin makes Rue trust Katniss, because that was totally foreseeable and planned, and that then the pin becomes the symbol of the spark she ignites for completely unrelated reasons, which somehow means she needed it.
Why the fuck Madge was wearing the damn thing in the first place if this is true goes unexplored.
"Using the Red Hen model of literary speculation, namely, that implausibly unlikely events coming to pass are the marks of design" is indescribably stupid, because we all saw where that led them.
So, a fresh sheet of tin freshly crumpled over his head, we continue. See, victors' kids end up in the arena too often for it to be chance, therefore EVERY SINGLE PERSON CHOSEN FOR EVERY SINGLE GAME is on purpose.
"For starters, Prim’s and Peeta’s names being chosen at the District 12 Reaping was too much of a dream match to have been arbitrary or random. Effie, I’m guessing, was told which names to pull or all the names in the bowl were the same. Given the love Peeta has for Katniss and Katniss’ singular qualifications for surviving, even thriving in the arena, skills she alone has among all District 12 women, their selection and the consequent counter-story of the star-crossed lovers was almost certainly written well in advance of their Hunger Games."
We can't stop here. This is batshit country.
(There's no explanation for why they couldn't pick Gale, by the way. I take it he's a shipper.)
"A key piece in this seditious narrative is the mockingjay token because it is the symbol of the counter-story the Capitol couldn’t anticipate or control. She has to be wearing it for the story to work as written. "
Aside from the general WTF at the idea the pin itself is the most important bit... Remember how I kept snarking about how Katniss forgot the damn pin over and over and over again? She only has it by utter chance at the end of the book.
Next he explains that it's completely implausible Haymitch could have known the way through the District 11 building he takes them through to find a safe place to chat unless he knows the way. "How then does he move with such surety, speed, and confidence through the maze of rooms and seemingly sealed doors? It’s not plausible unless he’s been there sometime, even many times, in the intervening years."
What apparently is more plausible is the idea that doors jammed from not being used in years have been regularly opened, that rooms covered in years worth of dust to show they were untouched were tramped through constantly, and, of course, that Haymitch regularly visits a hideout he picks precisely because no one has been there so no one would bother bugging it.
And even more plausible is that it wasn't Haymitch, but Madge's mother, the Real Mockingjay, who did it, and apparently told him the exact directions just in case one day he had an angry tribute who was the boyfriend of a government insurrection's lynchpin wanting to be brought in on the plan right when they happened to be in that exact building.
"We learn from Madge that even the Mayor’s wife, her mother, cannot travel to the Capitol for medical treatment and medicines without special permission. Obviously, though, Mrs. Undersee does get this kind of allowance. She “spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world” (Fire, page 196)."
I swear first graders have better reading comprehension. First fucking graders!
Aside from the fact Madge says outright that no, her mom does not get to go to the capital, it's right there in the line he's quoting! If capital, then headaches fixed. Someone lying in bed in agony is not someone getting treated by capital doctors.
But wait, there's proof!
"She has enough pain killers on hand consequent to her medicinal trips to the Capitol that she is able to send a box to Katniss’ house"
Yes, that's totally what the scene meant. The only way to get morphine is by getting it personally handed to you by your capital doctor in the capital, and she gave it because she just had so incredibly much on hand, not as any sort of personal sacrifice on her part.
So, having proven that, we continue merrily down the rabbit hole of madness. She also must go to the other districts as her husband's escort - not that we know if mayors ever leave their district and we know they don't take their families with them or else the mom wouldn't need special permission to go. She's quite busy for someone incapacitated by pain, I must say.
"I would bet she knows the major political players in every district as the First Lady of District 12 and has relative freedom in the Capitol to meet important people there."
The wife of the mayor of the crappiest district in the entire country is totally a respected position, and would be allowed to run rampant
He lists off more nonsense, about how Cinna could never have returned the pin for normal reasons. "Someone has initiated him into the mockingjay conspiracy. If not Mrs. Undersee, who?" because apparently just figuring she wouldn't want to lose her token from home isn't good enough. And how he "bets" she bonded with Plutarch over how her sister died in the games and how she's of his "caste" somehow, because mayor's wife from the most impoverished district is exactly like a capital-living reality TV show designer of murdergames, and what better bonding subject than how his job murdered her sister?
"In brief, the ability to craft a rebellion counter-narrative within the Hunger Games spectacles requires a story teller with the ability to travel or otherwise communicate with the other districts, especially the Capitol. Mrs. Undersee is the only character we know with these privileges. Her illness, given that she has a full, spare box of precious pain killers may just be a front to facilitate her travel and invisibility."
Only if you assume only one person did it, that it can't be a person within the capital, that Katniss' honestly not that well choreographed games were some brilliant narrative controlled every inch of the way (might have been a better idea to try with a girl who was also love already, guys, and maybe have both kids be at least okay fighters to minimize the chance one would get offed early), and that a box with six vials of painkiller is full and a "spare" one.
At this point it digresses into name meanings. You can pretty much read anything into anything there, but again, it doesn't matter. If he's right and the names have a meaning that deeply buried, it's back to shitty writing and Meaningful Names. If he's wrong then it's a dumb thing to base an argument around.
Finally we get to the true Potter roots, the idea that the book has to have an ending no one sees coming.
I'm sick of how shitty this and the book it's doing apologism for are, so let's digress.
You know what's a good book? The Song of Ice and Fire series. One of the things I was really impressed by is how all the pieces are there and yet I didn't put any of it together. The prejudices of the characters can be blatant, but the way they color every action, that's done with subtlety. A good example is with Sandor Clegane. He's a terrifying, brutish character. One of his first interactions is to menace a thirteen year old girl, one of his first actions is to kill a little boy. He is hideous, with one side of his face horribly scarred from a burn. He makes no attempt at kindness, in everything he does he's abrupt and frightening, with the constant threat of violence or murder.
And yet none of the good things he does are unfounded, and not, truly, surprising. On my first, breakneck readthrough, the character existed as a sort of Schrodinger’s dog, existing in quantum murder flux until events actually happened. He seemed to always be standing on the brink, able to help or harm. Indeed, he's crucial to the one cliffhanger ending that actually made me stop in horror and check to see if the viewpoint character had another chapter later on or was gone for good. This doesn't mean he's OOC - he is quite consistent in his character the whole time. You know how he'll act, you just don't know how he'll choose.
On the second, less frantic time I went through the book, I was even more impressed. The literary quantum dog was not actually quantum - especially, to my shame, the cliffhanger chapter. By that point in the story more than enough is known about the character to know he isn't a monster. It's just everyone talks about him that way, even him. And when you look at his backstory it makes complete sense - as we learn early enough on, his older brother seared half his face off over a trivial thing when he was a little kid and everyone since has taken one look and known that he's evil. He has the social skills befitting a half wild dog, and that combined with his face and his relatives leads to how frightening he is to other characters.
(SoIaF is also a good counter to the idea there must be a twist, though - while I desperately want to read the rest of the series, I have no specific desire to get to the ending. I'd rather he writes a dozen more books and dies before the ending than finishes in two books. I'm pretty sure I already worked out the major mysteries. I'm just not sure who the third head of the dragon will be or how the stuff is actually going to come to pass. Oh, and whether or not dragon'sglass is actually something dragons can/will manufacture more of, or if the dragons will just straight up kill everything on their own.)
...back to this.
So having proven that the book is saying that Haymitch is the authorial mastermind, it's not him because that would be obvious, and therefore it's the Real Mockingjay. "Simply put, it’s not misdirection if it turns out to be who you thought it was going to be." He hasn't actually explained why it must be misdirection, of course.
"I’m betting instead on the twin sister of the girl who saved Haymitch’s life in the Quarter Quell and whose life he couldn’t save (he found the metanarrative boundary and the secret that defeated both his opponent and the Capitol but not in time to save Maysilee from the deadly, animated lawn flamingos)."
What.
He found it in time, he only headed to her after because he heard her screaming. If she hadn't, they wouldn't have met up again or if they did, it'd have been to kill each other. And he sure as fuck didn't defeat the Capital doing so. (Also, no idea where he got the idea they were "animated lawn flamingos".)
We go on to the idea that Haymitch fucked her and Madge is their daughter. This is technically possible but there's just absolutely no evidence. Haymitch seems about as drunk and depressed as you'd expect from someone who cut himself off from everyone. (If you want good secret daughter stuff, my money's with Prim. The fact the Seam people aren't regularly throwing yellow-haired kids means they'd have to be homozygous, yet he's got a black haired daughter who looks exactly like him and then a yellow haired daughter who looks exactly like her mom and the rest of the blonde townies. Meanwhile, the baker's holding a torch for her and we know it's an unhappy marriage with a particularly unhappy wife. It's easy to explain why he doesn't do more to help them - Katniss' mom did love her father, and the guilt could make her break it off completely after she heard.)
He does admit this is just slightly far fetched, but such a flash of sanity is quickly smothered as we barrel onwards to the conclusion, which is that the point of the entire series is about how we're all players in a drama, because...well, apparently it's so obvious there's really no need to explain, beyond because Po Mo, that's why, and then there's a ramble about fighting off the insidious power of the mainstream media.
Finally we get to the damn theory.
First, he says the fact they're twins means either one of them might have gone. There was a split second I found this interesting followed by realizing that whoever's name wasn't called could have volunteered anyway, so there's no point in that kind of thing.
"Either survivor, of course, would hate the Games. She would know, too, how a sister would respond if a weaker sister were chosen at the Reaping."
That's right, every other girl who was chosen had no older sister, ever. We know volunteering almost never happens outside the Career districts, when it's done for unrelated reasons. That's a bit hard to make work though, when every single family we see in canon has multiple kids. Katniss' two child household is, I think, the smallest one we see.
"Haymitch’s strategy of attacking the story boundaries"
That is an amazingly weird interpretation of him attacking the literal arena boundaries.
"I suggest for your consideration through Madge and other contacts, especially Haymitch, Mrs. Donner-Undersee knew about Katniss’ archery abilities and Peeta’s affection for her. The idea of a love-story inside the arena was natural to her because of her sister’s relationship with Haymitch, if not her own. Again, the idea of Katniss heroically taking Prim’s place was if anything more obvious than a love story to the twin sister left behind at the Reaping to wish she had been chosen or volunteered."
Everyone knew about Katniss' archery abilities and it's implied plenty of people knew about Peeta's crush. If the relationship is a mirror of theirs, why didn't theirs involve romance in the first place? And that idea to volunteer? Was Katniss', fuck you all. They didn't make her do it and no one should have been certain she would.
There is explanation for how they knew Rue would trust the mockingjay token - District 11's were also chosen to incite rebellion (evidence for, none) and they told her to trust the kid with it. Instead of just saying to trust the District 12 girl. Their plan nearly derailed right from the start when Katniss accidentally left the pin on the train.
"Through her husband’s office and communications, Donner-Undersee was tapped into everything happening in Panem that the Capitol shared with District leaders."
I hate to say this, but why the hell can't it just be the mayor doing all this?
Then...then it starts going on about how we're all twins and postmodern relativistic relationships with the media and inner children.
"This child, nourished by the androgynous and asexual men of her life — ‘Gale,’ the Wind, nature, and Spirit with ‘Peeta,’ the bread of communion"
They do a hell of a lot of kissing for asexuals. They're also repeatedly described as huge and muscled.
And then we end as crazily over the top as we began: "Like her character Maysilee Donner-Undersee, Suzanne Collins is writing this counter-narrative to the regime’s televised culture of death in Hunger Games. And she is calling us to write a similar counter-narrative in our lives by nourishing our inner Katniss in resistance to the anti-culture’s story tellers in whose Cave we live, chained mentally to the shadows they cast on the walls."
But what will we do about the mental chains to pretentious as fuck language?
Seriously, this guy has been published. More than once.
And we're done...with part one.
But we have barely begun to plumb the depths of this madness.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 07:57 am (UTC)Except I am afraid that Hogwarts Professor appears to be serious. What scares me even more is that no-one calls him out on his bullshit in the comments.
A bit off topic, but what bothered me most about the last few Harry Potter books that JK Rowling, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, kept making the point that racism and bigotry are very bad things. Yet JK goes out of the way to avoid the obvious conclusion that Voldemort and his followers are only a symptom of the real problem.
I'm sure JK Rowling wrote the series with good intentions but let me summarise how I see the Harry Potter universe. Two societies, for the most part completely separate from each other because one society decides that it for the others societies own good. Also, maybe it's just me or do most of the "good" wizards and witches in the series have a fairly condescending attitude non magical folk? What's even scarier is just how ignorant most of the wizarding community is of Muggle culture. And why the hell does Hogwarts employ a teacher known to be the Wizarding equivalent of a former Nazi (and who seems to enjoy tormenting students) and have him be in charge of racial purity house. The fact that such a state of affairs produces such incredibly bigoted individuals like lord Voldemort and his followers isn't really that surprising.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 05:57 pm (UTC)What's worse, a lot of the magic — especially the communications, Jesus Christ — doesn't actually measure up to the muggle world's now sufficiently advanced technology.
Now look at how inbred the pure-blood families are. Now look at how relevant being pure-blooded still is.
What I'm getting at is their whole messed society is pretty much doomed if they don't integrate.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 01:33 am (UTC)I was kicking around a fic idea once about the real reason Petunia hated wizards so much was because she'd met them.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 12:51 am (UTC)and their history professor is not only notoriously awful but is never going to be replaced because not even death could get rid of him. That bugged me even when I was a kid.
Considering history seems to have covered multiple goblin rebellions, a species that's still an underclass, one wonders if that's intentional. Even Hermione seems completely unaware of most wizard history. She didn't even know about house elves.
If it's cultural blinders, I'd say it's the culture of everyone for himself. Wizards don't care about overall society or advancing the lives of others. They just want to have the biggest wand personally. The whole place is a bunch of vicious near anarchy where all that matters is personal alliances and individual power.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-06 07:00 am (UTC)I often wondered if Dumbledore realized this and that was why he acted as he did -- not because he had any particular love or respect for non-magical folk, but because he was literally the only wizard in the world to understand that the world was changing and if his people did not adapt to it they would die.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-12 02:19 pm (UTC)It's one of the things that drives people into Slytherin apologism, you can view some muggle hate as coming out of the pureblood's realization that muggles outnumber them and their silly little machines are actually better at killing than anything wizards have. The good guys don't even give us that much credit.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 12:45 am (UTC)Really, all of Harry Potter is about layers of supremacy. Harry Potter is a wizardborn Chosen One. His muggleborn friend marries his pureblood other friend, and it's only the pureblood's family that's treated as fellow humans. They're in the Good People House and their enemies are in the Evil People House, some of whom are literally described as subhuman (part troll). Then there are the Kind Of Okay Houses where sometimes they'll follow the Good People House and be Good. And then there are the dumb apes called muggles, who you can mindwipe at will.
I mean, these are people who had to make up a separate word for the class of wizardborn non-magic-users to cover "muggles with human rights".
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 02:48 am (UTC)The intended message of the books has never matched up well with what they actually say.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 08:20 am (UTC)he says he "ignored a similar question about Twilight for more than two years, much to my loss".
/stops
/quits
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 10:20 am (UTC)... ... ...Huh?
._.
At least he's not searching Twilight for inner meaning - or wait. Is he.
.___.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 01:37 am (UTC)People are just being misogynists cuz she's a woman and they don't like the empowering feminist narrative of a girl in love with a guy who'll cut her brakes out of love.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 12:48 pm (UTC)At least overanalysis of works that are already finished can be happily maintained as quirky headcanon for the rest of your life without anyone ever proving you wrong. This borders on delusions of grandeur - did he really have such confidence in his literary analysis-fu that it didn't occur to him he'd almost definitely turn out embarrassingly wrong about everything?
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 01:50 am (UTC)This guy, in contrast, isn't just taking a longshot speculation as fact. He's not even doing the gumwrapper thing of thinking he can figure out something exactly when there's just no enough info even if you do guess right. His theories hinge on multiple points that aren't even true - in comparison, he's theorizing about the gum wrappers based on the idea the hospital staff slipped them to Harry, and that the brand is Bertie's Every Flavor Beans.
As to confidence he's right...no matter what you're expecting, you won't believe just how much of a dipshit the guy actually is when you find out the answer.
eh
Date: 2011-07-01 06:02 pm (UTC)1. Maysilee's sister went into the arena instead of Maysilee, who was actually chosen
2. whichever Donner sister was left (Maysilee or Maysilee twin, whichever) had some kind of relationship with Haymitch - romantic or not, even a friendly one or not because I doubt they ignored each other for 25 years
3. Haymitch is awesome and plays a big role in the rebellion, but not as significant as Plutarch's ;D
Re: eh
Date: 2011-07-02 01:55 am (UTC)Re: eh
Date: 2011-07-02 02:48 am (UTC)chap
Date: 2011-07-03 09:02 am (UTC)Pretty good review of this dude's dementia, Farla. Quite enjoyable. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-04 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-02 06:48 pm (UTC)/Why the fuck Madge was wearing the damn thing in the first place if this is true goes unexplored./
Why the totalitarian regime are craftspeople even in the position to create rebellious mockingjay pins and sell them to the mayor's family?!