I can see his lips moving in reply, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the crowd in the Capitol that they’re playing live over the speakers.

So, apparently this is playing well with the capitol audience. 

Here’s a major part of why I take issue with her whole “oooo, I defied the capitol” bull that gets harped on later.  She didn’t defy shit.  Yeah, they said only one victor.  After they’d said both could live.  And they only said both of them could live because the audience wanted both of them to live.  And now the audience is eating it up with a spoon.  Everything that has happened has played right into their desire for good television.  Because that’s all these games are, good television.  Everything is done for the benefit of some nebulous, unseen pool of wealthy betters.  No especial efforts are made to use these games as a tool against the districts.  It’s like the “punish and oppress” shit talking about at the start of the book is just an unintended side effect. 

The capitol audience wanted them both to live.  They wanted both kids to live so bad that the rules got changed for them.  Now both kids are alive.  Katniss hasn’t defied shit.  She’s played right into what her puppetmasters wanted.  At best, she called out the gamemakers – and just the gamemakers, not the whole system – for going back on their word.  That’s it.

nothing is preventing the blood from draining out of Peeta’s leg.

This leg has supposedly been bleeding all night.  True, he had a tourniquet on before, but it’s been off for a while and they didn’t get it on him until he’d already lost a lot of blood.  He should have bleed out by now.

for a moment I forget we’re out of the Games and I see the doctors as just one more threat, one more pack of mutts designed to kill him.

This would play a lot better if you’d displayed anywhere near the same overreaction during the fucking games.  She was calm and rational in there, not prone to flinging herself at Peeta and tearing into threats with her bare hands.  Besides, there’s a clear delay between Peeta being taken from her and her lunging for him.  They’ve got time to put him on a surgical table and hook him up to tubes and wires and then she freaks out and lunges.  Apparently she was fine with being separated from him, but medical equipment is just as scary as wolf/human hybrids?

My mouth waters at the smell, but I place it carefully on the floor, not trusting anything so clean and pretty.

Really, where is this coming from?  It’s not like capitol-produced goods were a threat in the games.  Maybe if manufactured things were left out as a lure into booby traps, or if fake, fire-ball-spewing trees were visually different from real trees, or just anything to indicate that “from the capitol” was bad.  But that’s not the case, and Katniss was perfectly fine with enjoying pretty things before the games.

But, I guess consistency hasn’t really been this book’s strong point so far, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

How often I’ve seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don’t they leave? Why do they stay to watch?

And now I know. It’s because you have no choice.

Uh, bullshit, plenty of people run off and hide when their loved ones are being attended to.  Being in love doesn’t magically negate a phobia of seeing wounds or the feeling of being helpless in the face of someone’s injury.  And yeah, some people remain steadfast by the side of injured people, but it’s just the flow of things in this passage.  It’s the way that personal connection to an injured person is meant to imply that one “needs” to stay with them, and if you’re one of those people who runs off to the hospital waiting room, then you didn’t “really” love the injured person enough.

I startle when I catch someone staring at me from only a few inches away and then realize it’s my own face reflecting back in the glass. Wild eyes, hollow cheeks, my hair in a tangled mat. Rabid. Feral. Mad. 

So, at this point Katniss is no longer screaming her head off and is just calmly standing there and watching Peeta get operated on.  Apparently all you need to look “rabid” and “feral” is some dirt and a slightly messed up hairdo.

I start hurling myself against the glass, shrieking and I think I just catch a glimpse of pink hair—it must be Effie, it has to be Effie coming to my rescue—when the needle jabs me from behind.

No one thought to do this the first time she went lunge-y?

wall slides open and in steps the redheaded Avox girl carrying a tray.

Because it’s always her.  She has to be there to assure Katniss that Katniss has never done a bad thing or ever had anything to feel guilty over and everyone in the world just loves Katniss.

I’m going to name her Aria and pretend that the niceness is all and act that she has to perpetrate because her actions are constantly being reported to the Person In Charge of Traitors, but she’s secretly part of a plot to show the capitol why it’s so stupid to keep traitors as your servants. 

And Peeta has made it. Of course, he did. With all their expensive equipment here. Still, I hadn’t been sure until now.

You know, if it was so important for only one of them to live, would it really have been that hard to just let Peeta bleed out and tell the audience that it was unavoidable, a tragic circumstance that no one could have helped?  I mean, they clearly had to put work into keeping him alive, and they could have just as easily been a little less dedicated.

Katniss may have held out that handful of berries, but the two of them survived because the audience wanted it.  Her act didn’t single-handedly save him.  Her act didn’t even defiantly save him; it was clearly in line with what her masters wanted anyway.

A bowl of clear broth, a small serving of applesauce, and a glass of water. This is it? I think grouchily. Shouldn’t my homecoming dinner be a little more spectacular?

You’ve never been starving. 

And, really?  She’s not upset over the quantity, but over the lack of grandiose and fanfare?  Be more of a brat, Katniss.

My stomach seems to have shrunk to the size of a chestnut, and I have to wonder how long I’ve been out because I had no trouble eating a fairly sizable breakfast that last morning in the arena.

It’s fun when plotholes point themselves out, isn’t it?

I want to get out of this bed. To see Peeta and Cinna, to find out more about what’s been going on. And why shouldn’t I? I feel fine. But as I start to work my way out of the band, I feel a cold liquid seeping into my vein from one of the tubes and almost immediately lose consciousness.

Why isn’t there anyone on hand to explain shit to her so that they don’t have to keep pumping her up with knockout drugs?

I start to sit up but am arrested by the sight of my hands. The skin’s perfection, smooth and glowing. Not only are the scars from the arena gone, but those accumulated over years of hunting have vanished without a trace.

And yet there will be not a trace of body horror associated with this.  Katniss mostly just goes on about how everything about her is flawless and perfect now.  There’s no mention at all about how they altered her body without her consent, about how they’ve changed her and robbed her of something defining. 

I like my scars.  They’re part of who I am.  They’re a testament to my history.  They’re a sign than I’ve had an active childhood and an active adulthood and, in a few cases, that I’ve done some stupid shit that taught me life lessons.  But fine, not everyone is actually attached that way to scars.  Let’s go at this another way.  Katniss’s scars are a testament to what her life has been like.  They’re a visual sign of her hunting, which is directly in opposition to the capitol’s laws.  They mark her as separate from a town full of people who don’t have to do physical labor in order to survive.  And the capitol has covered that up and made her look like one of the privileged people.  They’ve hidden her past and turned her into a living doll that the capitol citizens can pretend is just like them.

Hell, let’s even go at it from within the book’s own “morals.”  It’s fake.  It’s using science to change her body into fitting a preconceived notion of “beautiful.”  That’s been bashed so far in this book, and while I don’t find it reprehensible on its own, it’s certainly not something you do to someone without their knowing.  But, once again, even if it’s evil for other people to “fake” prettiness, as soon as it gets applied to Katinss, everything is okay.

Lying at the foot of the bed is an outfit that makes me flinch. It’s what all of us tributes wore in the arena. I stare at it as if it had teeth

Ooo, here we go, something that’s exactly like an element from the arena, something that she can legitimately flip out about, or at least feel nervous about.  How does she react?

I’m dressed in less than a minute

God damnit, Katniss, you suck at having emotions.

This isn’t even a “flawed character” or “oh, but she’s stoic/in shock” thing.  She just straight up sucks at having emotions.  She’s a fucking robot.  She’s a flat, incomplete character.

He must be all right or the Avox girl wouldn’t have said so.

Because as we all know, convicted traitors are incapable of lying. 

Aria silently laughs at your naiveté. 

Maybe a victor should show more restraint, more superiority, especially when she knows this will be on tape, but I don’t care.

…Katniss, you don’t even have the excuse of “needing” sponsors anymore.  You just straight-up want to dance for your masters, don’t you?

“He’s fine. Only they want to do your reunion live on air at the ceremony,” says Haymitch.

“Oh. That’s all,” I say. The awful moment of thinking Peeta’s dead again passes. “I guess I’d want to see that myself.”

They’re forcefully keeping you apart from someone you want to see because they selfishly want to splash your personal life all over the cameras for the entertainment of others.  But who cares, because you’re totally on board with having your personal life be controlled by the whims of the audience.

And when we ride up to the twelfth floor, the faces of all the tributes who will never return flash across my mind and there’s a heavy, tight place in my chest. When the elevator doors open, Venia, Flavius, and Octavia engulf me, talking so quickly and ecstatically I can’t make out their words.

Katniss has a brief moment of actually thinking about what’s happened, and then the text does its best to make sure that not only does she forget about that, but that we do as well.

I’m not fooled, book.  I will never forget that you callously dismissed the deaths of 22 children.  You didn’t even care enough to name most of them. 

It’s more in the way one might be glad to see an affectionate trio of pets

Animal count: 11

I mean, I’m sure I was worse when I came out of the arena, but I can easily count my ribs.

And…you couldn’t before?  I’m not saying you’re fat if you can’t count your ribs, but you aren’t exactly about to starve to death, either.

It’s funny, because even though they’re rattling on about the Games, it’s all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred.

I know the book wants us to see them as shallow for this, but I can’t.

Quick, tell me what you were doing when you heard who won American Idol.  Do you remember?

Quick, tell me what you were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001.  Do you remember?

You remember the second but not the first, don’t you?  Because when big, huge, important things happen, we remember what we were doing.  It’s evolution at work.  When something dangerous happens, we pay more attention to our surroundings and take note of what’s going on.  It’s how we learn and avoid future dangers.  People who recognize that momma bears attack when you get close to their young will learn to avoid bear cubs and avoid getting attacked.  People who focus on absolutely nothing except the bear attack will stumble into danger again and get eaten and not pass on their idiot genes. 

The fact that these three remember their surroundings in that way indicates that they were actually highly emotionally affected by what they were watching.  Or else that the author is a hack who doesn’t understand how people work.

Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.

Pot, kettle, you two should meet.

I immediately notice the padding over my breasts, adding curves that hunger has stolen from my body.

You had curves before the games?  When did that happen, somewhere in between starving and fucking starving?

But the Gamemakers wanted to alter you surgically. Haymitch had a huge fight with them over it. This was the compromise.”

Plastic surgery is bad.  Unless it’s used to get rid of scars.  …apparently.

Without heels, you can see my true stature. I look, very simply, like a girl. A young one. Fourteen at the most.

Whaaaaa…?  It’s like she has to pay for being a badass by repeatedly assuring people that, no, really, she’s just a harmless little girl, nothing to get upset about.  Like, people might get scared at this abomination of nature, this girl that can do boy things, so we have to put her in infantilizing dresses.  She has to pay for being a tomboy and scaring the audience out of their carefully held, preconceived gender roles.  Oh, not the capitol audience.  The book’s audience.

Because this book is feminist, and don’t you forget it.

“I thought Peeta would like this better,” he answers carefully. […]And beneath his benign reply, I sense a warning. Of something he can’t even mention in front of his own team.

Okay, I get that he can’t out and say what’s really going on, but it’s still oh so very telling that he assumes “Peeta likes it” is an acceptable cover story.  It means this is a world where people just accept that what the man wants matters more.

“Listen up. You’re in trouble. Word is the Capitol’s furious about you showing them up in the arena. The one thing they can’t stand is being laughed at and they’re the joke of Panem,” says Haymitch.

Uh, they only reason they were allowed to live at all is because the capitol wanted them to.  But…now the capitol is mad that they got exactly what they wanted?

Look, when the whole fucking down is called “the capitol,” you can’t use that word to refer to the ruling government, specifically. 

And also, it makes no sense.  The capitol-town people love that they both won.  They think it’s awesome.  The districts are poor as shit and can’t fight back because oppression and shit.  On top of that, 22 kids still died.  Peeta getting to live does not cross out 22 kids who had to die.  If anyone’s going to remember that, it’s going to be the people who knew those 22 kids who died.  So who the fuck is “laughing” at the government right now?  How are they the joke of anything?  If people are laughing at anything, it’ll be that “nope, we were just kidding” line they pulled at the end, and they did that to themselves.

I get that the government can still hate her for gaming the system, but Haymich should frame it better.  Especially since the next book will treat this comment as gospel truth.

“Your only defense can be you were so madly in love you weren’t responsible for your actions.”

How…is that a defense? 

The idea behind this revolution bullshit is that she “defied” the capitol by “forcing” them to do exactly what they wanted to do anyway.  Okay, fine, I’ll sink into the book’s own illogic.  She forced them to let Peeta live.  Supposedly this works by showing that the capitol is flawed and their system has cracks in it that can be manipulated, it shows that they aren’t all-powerful and that doing something defiant is possible.  Okay, fine, but how does that change if she’s “madly in love”?  Does the book assume that people will ignore the whole “system has cracks that can be exploited” message, just so long as the heroine was acting selfishly?

I mean, maybe they could swing it as a legal defense, if she was being brought up on any sort of criminal charges for anything.  Maybe.  On the other hand, this is the evil oppressive government we’re talking about.  They could just say “we don’t like you” and shoot her. 

I’ve never been in such a dangerous place in my life.

Oh, shut up.  You’d whine about the sky being too blue on a cloudless day, wouldn’t you?  I’m fairly certain that climbing to the top of a cornucopia while being chased by human/wolf mutants was more dangerous.  Yeah, this is no fun right here, but stop insisting that every single thing ever is now the worst possible thing that could ever happen.

It’s so much worse than being hunted in the arena. There, I could only die. End of story. But out here Prim, my mother, Gale, the people of District 12, everyone I care about back home could be punished if I can’t pull off the girl-drivencrazy-by-love scenario Haymitch has suggested.

Katniss.  Listen very carefully.  You live in an evil, oppressive society run by a government that doesn’t give a shit.  Those people were never safe.  If they weren’t killed for your arrow-through-the-pig stunt, I think it’s safe to say that no one gives a flying fuck about them.

But the Hunger Games are their weapon and you are not supposed to be able to defeat it.

22 kids died horrific deaths on national television.  You didn’t defeat jack squat.

So now the Capitol will act as if they’ve been in control the whole time. As if they orchestrated the whole event, right down to the double suicide.

They did.  Or did you miss the part halfway through the games where they announced a rule change and drove you two together again?