It makes no sense. My bird baked into bread. Unlike the stylish renderings I saw in the Capitol, this is definitely not a fashion statement. “What is it? What does that mean?” I ask harshly, still prepared to kill.

The woman is now unarmed and has failed to be a threat for several seconds and is holding out an offering. 

But, fuck that, Katniss still wants to kill her and is just waiting for an excuse.

Honestly, I want to know how Katniss even knows it’s a mockingjay when it’s stamped into bread like that.  You can’t exactly get sharp, detailed images doing that.  It could just be a vaguely bird-shaped blob.  And if it’s not, I want to know how that.

Katniss then proceeds to stay ready to murder unarmed people as a new person shows up and limps into view.  Because she wants me to hate her in so many different ways.

Her teeth are crooked and there’s a strawberry birthmark over one of her chocolate brown eyes. This is no Peacekeeper. No citizen of the Capitol, either.

Because Peacekeeprs can’t have crooked teeth and birthmarks?  Why not?

Or maybe it’s the brown eyes.  That must be it.  Peacekeepers are only pulled from the non-brown-eyed population.

Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else in this book.

I bite my lip. My instinct tells me they’re telling the truth.

By the way, long conversation later, and she’s still pointing an arrow at them.  Though after her ‘instincts’ tell her they’re on the up and up, she does finally lower it.  I guess she can’t rely on such imprecise things as “observation” and “Hey, they’ve both been completely non-threatening since half a second after I arrived.”

“Making tea?” I ask.

 “We’re not sure, really. I remember seeing someone do this with pine needles on the Hunger Games a few years back. At least, I think it was pine needles,” says Twill with a frown.

I remember District 8, an ugly urban place stinking of industrial fumes, the people housed in run-down tenements. Barely a blade of grass in sight. No opportunity, ever, to learn the ways of nature. It’s a miracle these two have made it this far.

Stuff like this.  Uhg.  Remember in the first book when she whined incessantly about how being from District 12 put her at such a disadvantage in the games?  Good thing she wasn’t from 8; she might have just laid down and cried.  Lord knows she wouldn’t have been intelligent and observant enough to remember past games and learn from it like these two have had to do. 

Nope, Katniss is all about the instincts, you see.

People are starving all over the district and we still have more than enough. So I’ve been spreading things around a little.

But only “a little.”  And only to the people she actually likes.  Because direct charity is evil, I guess. 

No wonder the people in the district were giving her the stink eye.  She’s stuffing herself full and living the good, non-freezing life and keeping all her riches to herself in a time where they literally cannot do anything to improve their situation. 

That’s the thing that bugs me about all this.  If you don’t believe in an equal share of wealth, okay.  If you believe that handouts won’t improve the economy, eh, go join the debate and good luck to ya.  But when you plop down in a situation so wholly removed from our own as this, you can’t keep the same attitudes.  The situation has changed, so the proper response has changed with it.

But the author hasn’t actually respected or concerned herself with the setting she created before now, so I guess we shouldn’t expect her to start.

At least Katniss shares with Bonnie and Twill.

Bonnie holds the bun as if she can’t quite believe it’s real and then sinks her teeth into it again and again, unable to stop. “It’s better if you chew it.” She nods, trying to slow down, but I know how hard it is when you’re that hollow.

So…supposedly Katniss has been this amount of hungry since we met her, at the start of the books and in the games.  But we never saw this kind of behavior from her before, just calm and rational consumption of food.

Yet, clearly the author knows this is a thing, that this is how people react to being starving and then having food.  So what happened?  Did she just forget?  Is Katniss…what, better at being starving that someone else?  Because it’s not really showing the horror of starvation to say that you can overcome this kind of reaction with a little bit of willpower. 

The day Peeta and I came through and made our Victory Tour appearance was actually a rehearsal of sorts. People in the crowd positioned themselves according to their teams, next to the buildings they would target when the rebellion broke out.

Gee, wouldn’t that have been nice to actually see?

There was hope that this had not been an act of madness, that in some way, if they could get the word out to other districts, an actual overthrow of the government in the Capitol might be possible.

District 8 had a pretty good take-over plan, actually.  They had a strategy, they organized, they practiced, they got control of key locations.  This was where they failed, though.  You don’t stage a takeover like this and then tell people about it.  You tell people about it first.  You want to be able to have wide-spread rebellion at once.

But then the ax fell. Peacekeepers began to arrive by the thousands.

And this is why.  If more than one district rebelled at once, then the Capitol wouldn’t have been able to focus all their energies and resources in one place.  They would have been spread thinner trying to keep people contained.

I mean, obviously these people aren’t masterminds, just civilians trying to instigate…but they thought out all the rest of it well enough, why didn’t they think out this part?

“Someone must have told the Capitol that the idea for the uprising had started there,” Twill tells me faintly.

And so they bomb the whole factory.

Why?  Factories don’t come from nowhere, and also, THEY’RE THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT.  If they want to shoot everyone that works there THEY CAN DO THAT, THAT’S WHAT BEING THE EVIL DESPOT GOVERNMENT MEANS.  The Capitol doesn’t have to hide like this, especially when they’ve reached this level of ruling.  You only need to make things look like an accident if you still derive your power from the compliance of the people.  Once you’re doing everything by force; there’s no reason to cover up your actions.

By doing it this way, they have 1) missed two people, and very probably more and 2) lost all of that equipment and infrastructure, which will impact production and have to be rebuilt.

“You know how they always show the Justice Building?” Twill continues. I nod. I’ve seen it a thousand times. “If you look very carefully, you’ll see it. Up in the far right-hand corner.”

 “See what?” I ask.

Twill holds out her cracker with the bird again. “A mockingjay. Just a glimpse of it as it flies by. The same one every time.”

So, apparently this will come as a surprise to the book, but ruins don’t actually stay the same for 75 years.  They collapse further, they weather, they get overgrown by weeds, etc.  If the Capitol really is using the same few seconds of footage, that means they’re showing the same scene through summer, winter, fall, and spring, with no variance, no different time of day even, AND THE ONLY THING THAT TIPPED YOU OFF WAS A FUCKING BIRD?

District Thirteen’s principal industry was nuclear development.”

“They were graphite miners,” I say. But then I hesitate, because that’s information I got from the Capitol.

“They had a few small mines, yes. But not enough to justify a population of that size.

Mines take more personnel than nuclear power plants.  Or…whatever they were doing, since I think 6 actually has the ‘nuclear power’ job.  So…yeah, nuclear weapon development takes even less people.

Why did they have nukes?  Why were they developing them?  Who did they plan to use them against?  To all appearances, there are no other humans on the planet, or at least no one interested in Panem and all their stupidity. 

Actually, I’m really confused.  “Nuclear development.”  WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

“Why haven’t they helped us?” I say angrily. “If it’s true, why do they leave us to live like this? With the hunger and the killings and the Games?” And suddenly I hate this imaginary underground city of District 13 and those who sit by, watching us die. They’re no better than the Capitol.

First, you have no idea what their situation is or if they’re capable of fighting back.  ‘Bombed into rubble’ means they would have had to do a lot of recover and rebuilding, and it’s only been 75 years.

Second, ‘nuclear’ can me so many things.  If they have weaponized nuclear material, that does not mean they have a way to deliver said material.  They could just be sitting on a bunch of warheads that don’t have any rockets to attach it to.  Also, having nuclear capabilities does not mean they have conventional weapons, so basically, Katniss here is upset that they haven’t nuked the Capitol into a steaming mess of radioactivity.

Third, so you hate people who sit by and watch others die?

YOU MEAN, SORT OF LIKE FUCKING BRATS WHO KEEP A WHOLE PANTRY OF FOOD DURING A FAMINE?

“It means we’re on your side.” That’s what Bonnie said. I have people on my side? What side? Am I unwittingly the face of the hoped-for rebellion? Has the mockingjay on my pin become a symbol of resistance? If so, my side’s not doing too well.  

Oh, god, her self-centeredness is spreading!  Just look at that!  Her side!

Even if she is the ‘spark’ and face of the rebellion, it’s not her side.  It’s the rebellion’s side.  It’s everyone’s side.  After all, District 8 didn’t rise up for her, they did it because their own lots in life and shitty enough to demand change.  But this isn’t just Katniss believing that she’s the center of the universe again, now other people are doing it as well!