Step off before the minute is up, and land mines blow your legs off.

They have force fields around the roof to prevent suicides, but land mines right here?  Come on.  It could be that the mines are fairly weak and non-fatal, so if you step off then your punishment will be to lie there legless while people stab you.  Then again, if they’re strong enough to blow legs off and you do a face-plant off your circle, I bet they’d be strong enough to blow your head off.

And you can’t tell me no one has tried this before.  Ignore for a moment that idiocy last chapter about “not being a game piece.”  The vast majority of suicides aren’t done by people defiantly making a stand against some oppressor, they’re done by scared people who want a quick way out of a painful and horrifying future.  These kids have all had several days now to think about just exactly how painful and horrifying their futures are about to get.  You can’t tell me that in 74 years, not one person has thought to dive off early?

It’s all so pointless, too.  The tributes were sent up in tubes from some underground something or other.  Why can’t the tubes just extend up into the arena, be made of clear plastic, and then drop after a minute?  They still get the time to look around, but there’s no chance of someone suiciding.

For instance, only a few steps from my feet lays a threefoot square of plastic. Certainly it could be of some use in a downpour. But there in the mouth, I can see a tent pack that would protect from almost any sort of weather.

I’d go with the poncho.  Once you’re in a tent, it’s hard to react to anything that happens outside, because tents are big and annoying and hard to set up.  Ponchos, on the other hand, are simple and versatile.  You can use them for more than one thing; they aren’t taking up space but only serving one tent-related purpose.  On top of that, people have been surviving in all kinds of weather long before someone invented magitech tents.  The main concern is keeping waterproof, because nature provides the materials you need to keep warm.  And, by the way, “waterproof” means a lot more than just being protect from a “downpour.”  You’re more likely to get sick or lose food to dew or damp ground than you are to a rainstorm.

If I had the guts to go in and fight for it against the other twenty-three tributes.

Stop saying that!  You are not fighting 23 other kids!  Most of them are scared shitless and probably going to either run or ignore you in their quest to also get cool supplies.

That the Career Tributes who survive the bloodbath will divide up most of these life-sustaining spoils.

Why?  The careers are each other’s biggest threats.  Why would they willingly share with each other when sharing just means their strongest opponents have a chance to kill them?

The point at which it made sense for the careers to act as a group is now past.  It worked while they were eating lunch, but it doesn’t work now.  They should be killing each other first, not last, as the book suggests.  Why?  Because right now they are each as strong as they are going to be in these games.  They are all uninjured, well-fed, and well-rested.  Each tribute’s physical condition will deteriorate from here on out even if they get the supplies, because they are going to be under a vastly increased amount of stress, and also sleeping outside.  Their chances of getting sick or injured go up.  Only right now are they guaranteed to be at their peak physical performance.  If they are going to kill their top competitors, it has to be right now.  Otherwise, they’re basically playing Russian Roulette with their health and chances.

I can sprint faster than any of the girls in our school although a couple can beat me in distance races.

You live in a district of starving children.  Being faster than them does mean you’ll be faster than the athletes.

But this forty-yard length, this is what I am built for.

Riiiiiight, because “naturally” short people are so well known for their sprinting abilities.

By the time I’ve scrambled up the packs and grabbed the weapons, others will have reached the horn,

They’ll have reached the horn.  As in, just at that moment.  As in, not yet armed.  At that point, Katniss will have what she wants and will be able to keep running.  Especially since she doesn’t mention seeing any other long-range weapons.  If Katniss has what she wants by the time the other kids reach the pile’o’ weapons, then she’s safe.  She can run, because they can’t pick up a sword and also catch up to her in order to stab her.

You know, assuming she can run faster than them in the first place.

and one or two I might be able to pick off, but say there’s a dozen,

Or instead of running her first instinct could be to just murder the fuck out of everyone.

This would be a lot less creepy if she weren’t so cold and calculating.  She’s not freaking out here, she’s calmly trying to reason out how many people she can shoot and if it’s worth it to try.  Add this to the fact that she’s never thought about the morality of shooting her fellow innocent victims, never once angested about having to take a life, never considered any possible other non-murdering option, and she comes off as just straight-up sociopathic.  Once again, I’m not upset that she’s considering this.  I’m upset that she’s considering this as her first option and doesn’t seem at all upset about it.

Still, I won’t be the only target. I’m betting many of the other tributes would pass up a smaller girl, even one who scored an eleven in training, to take out their more fierce adversaries.

But the careers are all going to join up and be buddies, because…reasons.

Haymitch has never seen me run. Maybe if he had he’d tell me to go for it.

Maybe this is also why he should have mentioned this “run right away” plan at some point before the last minute, so they could discuss all the possible outcomes.  In fact, why didn’t they?  What, exactly, were they planning in their “sessions” over the past few days if not this?

Oh my god, is this minute over yet?

I can tell [Peeta]’s looking at me and I think he might be shaking his head. But the sun’s in my eyes, and while I’m puzzling over it the gong rings out.

This is our heroine, everyone.  Someone who can’t tell if a guy is shaking his head or not, and gets distracted by that.  She’s in a muderdeath game about to make a run for the item she thinks will make or break her survival chances, but she cares so much about whether or not he’s shaking his head that she misses her chance.

Katniss, why do you even care?  Why were you even looking over at him instead of your bow?

Because those extra couple of seconds I’ve lost by not being ready

Reaction times are measured in fractions of a second.  You are really, really slow.

I know it could possibly be a figure of speech and not a literal couple of seconds, but I’m past the point where I’m willing to cut this girl any slack.

I’m so angry with Peeta for distracting me that I sprint in twenty yards to retrieve a bright orange backpack

1) Bright orange is not the best option for hiding with.

2) Stop being such a middle class brat.  You are supposed to be the product of a lifetime of deprivation, someone who’s a consummate survivor.  Consummate survivors do not take rash actions purely out of spite.  You should know how to live without orange backpacks and their contents, and you should be survival-minded enough not to take a risk just because someone pissed you off.

A boy, I think from District 9, reaches the pack at the same time I do and for a brief time we grapple for it and then he coughs, splattering my face with blood. I stagger back, repulsed by the warm, sticky spray.

The book could have done a lot right here.  This is Katniss’s first actual confrontation with someone outside her own head, and all she does is play tug of war with the pack, not try to punch him in the throat.  Then the boy dies, while spraying blood in her face.  Katniss could have had a moment (later, of course) to think about this death she just witnessed and about the fact that her instincts turn out to be non-violent after all.  She could react to this death profoundly and have it color her decisions in the future.  Instead, this boy is never mentioned or thought of again.

Because as it turns out, Katniss really doesn’t care about the deaths of others, unless people she actually likes are involved.  That wasn’t just an accidental comment in her head; that’s a real thing.  If you aren’t named Peeta, Rue, or Prim, Katniss doesn’t give a flying shit if you live or die.

Yes, the girl from District 2, ten yards away, running toward me, one hand clutching a half-dozen knives.

Apparently no one in this world realizes what ranged weapons are, or the fact that you don’t have to run toward someone to throw a knife at them.  Heck, she just killed one kid from that distance, why does she think she needs to get closer?

All the general fear I’ve been feeling condenses into at immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds.

The author forgot to write in the general fear, because she was so busy writing in the calm murder plans.

Somehow I know the girl will not pursue me.

I really, really fucking hate that “somehow.”  It’s shorthand for “I don’t really have a reason to think this, but I also don’t want to waste time worrying about the alternative or figuring out a sure answer.  So the author magically gave me the information I need.”

About a dozen or so tributes are hacking away at one another at the horn. Several lie dead already on the ground.

This is a really bad pacing problem on the part of the gamemakers.  (And, consequently, the book.)  If the point of the games is to watch kids murder each other, then keep them all in that one spot and make them murder each other.  If the point is to watch them all play cat and mouse, then don’t kick things off with a bloodbath.  The only way this makes sense is if they want to cut down the time it takes for the games to end.  Like, if they set this system up way back when, then afterwards realized it takes several months to kill everyone.  So they decided to take out half the competition early and cut out a bit of the hide and seek, but still leave a moderately long game.  I guess that could be possible, but it’s also a really clumsy fix.  Just changing the arena or the distribution of the supplies could have achieved the same thing, all without making the pace of things wildly inconsistent. 

And in the book’s case, it’s just a cheap and quick method for getting rid of unneeded players.  Only a handful of these 24 kids are actual characters, so she needed some way to get rid of the chaff without actually writing about people who aren’t Katniss.

I also free the knife—it’s a fine one with a long sharp blade, serrated near the handle, which will make it handy for sawing through things

THAT’S NOT A THROWING KNIFE.  You can probably throw (and hit something) it if you practice enough and are also really, really fucking lucky.  That District 2 girl just picked it up for the first time and tossed it.  Not gonna happen.  Just…no.  No.  No. 

Book, do you even know what a throwing knife is?

I can go a long time. I know that from my days in the woods. But I will need water. That was Haymitch’s second instruction

So, he instructed her to do something she already knew she needed to do.  He’s just being so useful, isn’t he?

I keep a sharp eye out for any sign of it. No luck.

So, you don’t find water by just wandering around and looking for water.  You walk downhill.  You look for game trails and plants that love water.  You go to areas where water is likely to be.  Water isn’t exactly unpredictable stuff. 

At one point, I hear a noise and pull my knife, thinking I may have to defend myself, but I’ve only startled a rabbit.

And all those rules above?  Only apply to running water and ground water.  In fact, there’s water everywhere.  It’s in everything.  That rabbit right there?  70% (ish) water.  The plants all around her?  Water.  You don’t have to drink water to avoid dehydration, you just need to get water in you somehow.  If you get it through your food, that’s good enough.  Really.  I promise.  Catch the rabbit, eat it, and boom!  You’ve got water.

Unless you do what Katniss does later and skin it, drain out all the blood, and cook it over a fire.  That kind of fucks up the water ratio.  But someone smart about it can totally just “drink” the rabbit.

The ground slopes down. I don’t particularly like this. Valleys make me feel trapped. I want to be high

This author should not have written a whole chapter about finding water and then proceeded to do no research about how to find water.

I’m probably on-screen right now. Not consistently but off and on. There are so many deaths to show the first day that a tribute trekking through the woods isn’t much to look at.

Because this is some huge event that the decadent capitol makes a big deal out of, but they’ve only got one channel for the games?  There’s like 8 ESPN’s right now and at least four channels dedicated to cooking, but no one in the capitol has figured out you can make multiple channels be all about the games and dedicate one to each tribute?

One of the heaviest days of betting is the opening, when the initial casualties come in.

This actually makes sense.  (Well, more sense.)  People will hold of betting until they can actually see the tributes in action, rather than having to rely on a number that could mean anything.  Although it makes her drama over the training score seem even more useless than before.  Really, the more we find out about this, the more it seems she was just whining because she wasn’t getting her due amount of praise.

It’s late afternoon when I begin to hear the cannons. Each shot represents a dead tribute.

I don’t understand why they tell the other tributes at all.  It would be much creepier to never know who’s alive or how many players are still out there.  All this means is that the tributes have more information and can hide and wait more.  Someone who has no idea what’s left will be more proactive, because they can’t count on just outlasting everyone.

This orange will practically glow in the dark. I make a mental note to camouflage it first thing tomorrow.

It’ll give her away in the dark, but she’s going to wait until after dark to cover it up?

For a few days, I’ll be able to function with unpleasant symptoms of dehydration, but after that I’ll deteriorate into helplessness and be dead in a week, tops.

LOLNOPE.  Three days.  Come on, everyone knows this.  Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.  Now, granted, accuracy was spared in favor of alliteration, but that’s really pretty close.  Katniss will not last a week without water, especially if she refuses to eat until she’s had any.  The symptoms of dehydration, by the way, set in on the first day.  They are not “unpleasant” except by the most sarcastic reading of the definition.  They include weakness, dizziness, messed up heart rates, confusion, and fainting.  The main one we want to focus on is confusion.  The brain stops working really, really fast without water.  She’s in a muderdeath game.  Confusion is not a mild, irritating consequence, it’s standing in the middle of a clearing and not reacting to signs of danger because she can’t process them quickly enough.  It’s that “I walked into this room and now can’t remember what I was doing so I’ll just stand here dumbly for a few seconds” feeling, but with an armed burglar in the room.

The lake. … What if that’s the only water source in the arena? That way they’ll guarantee drawing us in to fight.

That would have been smart, a hell of a lot smarter than setting half the place on fire.  But after Katniss thinks this thought, it’s not brought up again, because it’s not true.  And Katniss…somehow magically knows this and keeps walking in the opposite direction.

And then, even if I reach it, it’s sure to be heavily guarded by some of the Career Tributes.

Is it a lake or a pond?  Because there’s only six of them.

I’m about to panic when I remember the rabbit I startled earlier today. It has to drink, too.

But the rabbit couldn’t be drinking from the lake because…reasons?

The layer of pine needles that muffles my footsteps also makes tracking animals harder when I need their trails to find water.

???

Does this author know how tracking works?  Sure, pine needles aren’t as awesome as mud, but Katniss should be experienced at this.  Game trails are not that hard to find for those who know what to look for.

And I’m still heading downhill, deeper and deeper into a valley that seems endless.

WATER RUNS DOWN HILL, WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS?

Instead, I take my knife and go to work on a pine tree, cutting away the outer bark and scraping off a large handful of the softer inner bark.

The layer of bark she’s eating is the layer of bark that CARRIES WATER TO THE LEAVES.  WATER.  IT’S ALL THE FUCK AROUND YOU, YOU IDIOT MIDDLE CLASS BRAT.  Also, pine bark has about 500 calories to a pound.  Rabbit has 800 and is easier to chew.  (Pine bark is actually better/easier if you fry it first.)

There could be any number of animals stalking me at this moment.

No, there couldn’t.  Very few animals will stalk a human, and they tend to be apex predators.  As we covered before, apex predators don’t share territories with other human-eating apex predators.  That’s part of the reason we call them “apex” predators. 

Those who fought it out at the Cornucopia will have food, an abundance of water from the lake, torches or flashlights, and weapons they’re itching to use.

This author also doesn’t realize how light pollution works.  Or, you know, space.  If Katniss could walk for a whole day in one random direction and not reach a fence, then this place is huge.  They can’t just wander around at random and find people, they need to track.  To track, they need light.  (Except in this universe, where they actually do find someone by random, but that’s just another convenient plot hole.)

A willow, not terribly tall but set in a clump of other willows

Willows love water.  They are actually a sign that there’s a lot of water around.  And here we have a whole clump of them.  Katniss should get down on the ground and start digging, because the water table is probably pretty high right here.  If she digs a hole, it’ll fill in with groundwater that seeps out of the dirt, and then she can fill up her water bottle and drink to her heart’s content. 

Instead Katniss climbs the tree.  Because she’s not actually a survivalist, she’s a middle class brat.

I climb up, sticking to the stronger branches close to the trunk, and find a sturdy fork for my bed.

So, some fun facts.  I like camping.  I like the kind of camping where I have to put everything I need in a backpack and then hike out several miles to get to the campsite.  I’m also in the army, where I occasionally have to do that kind of camping whether I like it or not, but with other people who snore.  Because I carry everything, I don’t take a tent.  Tents are heavy and take up space that could be devoted to food or clean socks.  Sometimes, if I’m not going far or if I know the weather is going to be particularly wet, I take a small, lightweight hammock.  I don’t like the hammock, especially during cold nights like the one Katniss is facing.  Why?  Because when you are up in the air, surrounded by air, you get cold very, very fast.  On the ground, you can hang on to some residual heat and stay out of the worst of the wind.  You can burrow under the mast and save up some heat that way.  Sleeping in the air just means all of your body heat gets whisked away, and then you get hypothermia.  Hypothermia, like dehydration, comes with this nasty side effect of not being able to think or process information properly, and then you die.  And hypothermia sets in even faster than dehydration.

Really, would it have killed this author to look into any amount of bushcraft before writing this section?

I’m actually viewing another screen, an enormous one that’s transported by of one of their disappearing hovercraft.

Once again, why are they bothering to tell the tributes this stuff?  And also, why are they flying in a giant screen?  That seems like a logistical nightmare, getting something that big airborne.  The movie handled it much better, with the screen being replaced by the roof of the arena.  If the book arena has a roof, then I guess winds aren’t a problem for the flying aircraft, but it’s still an extra moving part they didn’t need, because the roof is right there.

usually all the Careers make it through the first day.

Why?  Why are they not killed first?  This makes no sense.

Bloodbaths are not weighted toward the skilled.  This would make sense if it was stated that the careers all scramble, but not if they all stay around.  When you have a mass of people all hacking at each other, then most of the kills come down to dumb luck and distraction, not mono-a-mono skill.  Either the careers scattered and lived, or they stayed and died/killed each other.  It makes no sense to do it the way this book has done it.

Both tributes from 6 and 7. The boy from 8. Both from 9.

It’s amazing how little the book cares for all these DEAD CHILDREN.  They don’t even get names; they’re just numbers.  They’re never recognized as innocent victims except in the broadest sense, they’re never treated like people, all because Katniss doesn’t give a fuck about anyone she doesn’t personally know.

This is what I tell myself to explain the conflicting emotions that arise when I think of Peeta.

The shipping “hints” are pretty painful in this book.  If it had been handled with any amount of grace before hand, I would actually give this a pass, because she has plenty of things to be conflicted over.  She just never bothers with any actual conflict.  She thinks momentarily about how her feelings are all squishy, then doesn’t move beyond that.  And it’s all moot anyway, because later all the reasons she lists here are eclipsed by a force-fed romance.

They are valid reasons to be conflicted and have issues over, issues that don’t go away just because of squishy kissy times, but they all go away because…reasons.

Foxface.

Ah, Foxface.  Fuck you book, I’m not calling her that.  I’m going to arbitrarily name her Nell.  BECAUSE SHE’S A PERSON, NOT AN ANIMAL.  This character is introduced by Katniss thinking she looks animalistic, and she’s given no other traits.  Katniss has plenty of chances to learn her actual name, but calls her by this animal name instead, further stripping her of humanity.  And the book only gets worse on the human/animal scale later.

So, because I fucking hate that, she’s going to be Nell from now on.

Five Career Tributes. Foxface. Thresh and Rue. […] That makes ten of us. The other three I’ll figure out tomorrow.

This is what we call “bad writing.”  These are the only ten that have been given any kind of characteristics or personality or identification.  They also turn out to be the only ten characters that matter for anything.  The author knew the rest were just so much chaff, so she didn’t bother to spend any time on them, making this important/not-important divide blatantly clear.

A fire just at nightfall would have been one thing. Those who battled at the Cornucopia, with their superior strength and surplus of supplies, they couldn’t possibly have been near enough to spot the flames then. But now, when they’ve probably been combing the woods for hours looking for victims.

How do you know this?  Why couldn’t they all be settled next to their supplies and napping?  And, hey, weren’t you bitching a few hours ago about how you couldn’t go to the lake because they were all there?  Either they’re guarding the lake or they’re hunting you.  If you’re going to obsess about both options, could you at least throw in a note of confusion?

Also, shut up, Katniss.  She’s cold.  Earlier in the chapter, you were preening about how awesome you were for thinking to grab your backpack that oh-so-conveniently had a sleeping bag in it.  The juxtaposition of that thought and this passage here gives the disturbing implication that this girl was just too stupid to do the same thing, and therefore she deserves what she gets.  That’s sick.  1) Maybe she did get a backpack and all it had in it was full water bottles and matches.  2) If she ran without getting anything, that’s NOT HER FAULT.

I judge it to be several hundred yards to my right.

[…]

And here I am a stone’s throw from the biggest idiot in the Games. Strapped in a tree. Not daring to flee since my general location has just been broadcast to any killer who cares.

Katniss, you are not illuminated by this chick.  She’s not camped out under your tree.  Your position is not threatened in any way by this.  No one is going to find this firestarter and then afterwards start looking up in trees that are several hundred yards away.

Also, earlier in this chapter you pointed out that the careers would have FLASHLIGHTS AND TORCHES.  If this fire is a signal in the dark that someone is there, then FLASHLIGHTS AND TORCHES are a signal that someone is coming.  Keep a weather eye out and you’ll be fine.

I mean, I know it’s cold out here and not everybody has a sleeping bag. But then you grit your teeth and stick it out until dawn!

HYPOTHERMIA, YOU IDIOT.  HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS IS A THING?  HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT IT CAN DO?  HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT IT CAN’T BE DEFEATED WITH GRITTED TEETH?  YOU CAMP OUT IN THE WOODS IN WINTER AT HOME, HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?

Also, further blaming of the victim, implying that she deserves to die for not being as smart and tough as Katniss.

I lay smoldering in my bag for the next couple of hours really thinking that if I can get out of this tree, I won’t have the least problem taking out my new neighbor. My instinct has been to flee, not fight. But obviously this person’s a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.

Bullshit.  Your instinct is not to flee.  Half a second before that you admitted that you spent several hours plotting out a murder.  If you can get out of a tree and sneak up in this girl without the ‘least problem,’ then you can get out of the tree and run in the other direction.  If your instinct is to flee, that would have been your first thought, not your…fuck, you didn’t even think it at all.

And she’s not a hazard to you!  She isn’t anywhere near you!  She isn’t giving any indication that you are there!  If anything, she’s distracting the other hazards from you.

I’m beginning to think we—meaning the person whose death I’m now devising and me—we might actually have gone unnoticed.

Please stop pointing out your own sociopathy.

Yes, it’s reasonable and realistic that Katniss could idly think about killing someone because she’s under a lot of stress and this person annoys her.  It’s not reasonable for her to think about this in favor of thinking about running away, and it’s not reasonable for her to never have a second thought, ever, about this girl, even after she actually does fucking die.  Katniss has no emotional reaction to this event, ever, except for mild irritation and murder plans.  She never stops to consider her own thoughts.  If she wasn’t serious about killing this girl, then she never has a moment of guilt that she was wishing death on a fellow human being and right after that human being died.  She doesn’t care about this unnamed girl, because this girl isn’t even a person to Katniss.

I know it’s a girl now, I can tell by the pleading, the agonized scream that follows.

Not only does she not have a reaction to the death, but she doesn’t have a reaction to what is, apparently, a very traumatic and painful and gruesome death.  This is the second death she’s been in close contact with, and she can’t drum up so much as a dram of empathy or a moment of consideration for these people.

Sometimes, I wish that it was possible to go through something like that and feel nothing.  But I wish that in the same way people wish for world peace.  In this world, in this reality, I would not want to meet the kind of person who can hear an innocent child’s death cries and feel nothing.

Katniss notes that the girl is, in fact, a girl and then moves on as if her death is just a set prop that no one gives a fuck about.

Because Katniss doesn’t give a fuck about it.

She doesn’t think about it.  She doesn’t react to it.  She’s a soulless shell of a character with no moral compass and an instinct to murder innocent people at the drop of a hat.

I hate her.  God, I hate her so much.  I’ve got to move on before I just write “I hate her” a hundred times over.

I’m not really surprised. Often alliances are formed in the early stages of the Games. The strong band together to hunt down the weak then, when the tension becomes too great, begin to turn on one another.

Why do the strong need to band together to hunt the weak?  That makes not the least bit of sense.  The people who “need” to make alliances are the people who are too weak to accomplish anything alone.  The strong don’t need that.  All they’re doing right now is ensuring that they are close by to other people who could easily stab them in their sleep.  Seriously, right now all it would take is for one of them to just gut the rest in the middle of the night, then go on with the rest of the hunt.

Of course, they couldn’t even get a clean kill on a girl sleeping next to a fire, so maybe they’re not so much “strong” as they are “arbitrarily declared the Mean Girls of this…”  FUCKING HELL, THIS ISN’T THE MURDER DEATH GAMES, THIS IS HIGH SCHOOL.

I hear the pack heading toward me. They do not know I’m here. How could they?

WHAT?  ARE YOU SERIOUS?  YOU WERE PLANNING OUT THE MURDER OF THAT POOR GIRL BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS GIVING AWAY YOUR POSITION, AND NOW YOU’RE ADMITTING THAT THERE’S NO WAY HER KILLERS COULD KNOW YOUR POSITION?

YOU ARE A MONSTER, KATNISS, AND I HATE YOU.

Oh, yeah, and Peeta’s there and they have flashlights and blah blah more idiocy whatever, I’m too full of hatred to continue.