Reading comprehension sure is a thing

[farla]

Oh my god, I barely made it through the first post before getting fed up with inane pseudopedantry — like in order to be upset at Katniss hiding a bow beneath a berry bush, they assume that all berries are edible, which they're not. Or being unable to comprehend clauses like, "but carefully, carefully." For every moderately reasonable point, they go off on five idiotic tangents due to either their inability to correctly parse a sentence or their presumption that they understand the economics and ecology of dystopic Appalachia. Add to that some crazy Von Mieses bullshit about how the kids are morons to eat a strawberry (which do actually grow wild in much of America, including the Virginia Strawberry that is native to Appalachia) instead of selling it… Ugh. That's exactly the sort of shit that needs to be quarantined in LiveJournal so that no one outside of bitter fanficcers ever reads it.

I wonder what it is that makes about saying how wrong I am without daring to tell me I'm wrong so appealing? BEARS ATTACK PEOPLE guy was pretty into that too.

Comments

[wintersheir]

I still haven't been able to get through the Hunger Games past the part where she shoots the roast pig and runs off crying. Just. Can't do it. Too stupid. My sisters looooooooove the book though, especially the one who loved Twilight because "Edward is so hot".

My theory (your theory? am I cribbing off your posts here?) is that Katniss is poor enough of a character and the book exciting enough that the reader can sort of paste themselves into her place and imagine themselves being intensely heroic and desired (re: Peeta-Gale) while ignoring everything she actually does. Thus why people ascribe to Katniss qualities she doesn't actually have, but rather the ones they're imagining in themselves in the same situation.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I don't think I said that, so you get the credit!

And yeah, that sounds right. It's very good for imagining "what would you do if..." and actually a lot of ways Katniss fails as a character just further enables it. None of us have ever been sent off for childmurder games, but we can easily identify with being ignored by people when we're actually super awesome. So you shoot the pig and not the people.

Out of curiosity, did your sisters like Bella? Because I've heard the same theory floated about Twilight, but unlike Katniss, every Twilight fan I ever encountered directly said that Bella sucked but that the rest of the book was awesome, so they evidently weren't interested in Bella as the vehicle for self-insertion.

[wintersheir]

Hmm, I can't remember them saying much about Bella. I can kind of see it being the same thing for Twilight, but Bella never gets to be the hero like Katniss does. Actually it probably says something positive about the people who don't like Bella-- Bella is annoying and inertial enough that it's actually harder to paste yourself in there (although certainly some people manage it), and while people want the attention and protection of Edward, they don't want to be Bella, Bella is lame. But Katniss is (imagined to be) a fierce, maternal, survive-at-all-costs warrior, so her bad behavior can be ignored? glossed over? whatever thought process is allowing everyone to get past that pig scene.