I’d actually figured out what I wanted my last words to my loved ones to be. How best to close and lock the doors and leave them sad but safely behind. And now the Capitol has stolen that as well.

 “We’ll write letters, Katniss,” says Peeta  […]

 Things seemed clear in my head and even when I talked before the crowd, but the words never came out of the pen right.

Katniss will always find something to complain about.  If she has to give a speech OH NO, BUT SHE CAN’T TALK TO PEOPLE!  If she’s figured out how to talk to people?  OH, NO, EVEN THOUGH SHE HAS THE EXACT WORDS SHE WANTS TO SAY, SHE CAN’T WRITE THEM DOWN!  Because reasons, okay?

I get it, sort of.  Writing is different from speaking, and you can ramble a lot more in person and self-doubt a lot more with a pen.  But Katniss doesn’t even try.  She’s going to whine about everything, absolutely every little thing, and she’s been doing it so long that I don’t even care.  I especially don’t care when she doesn’t even bother to send an ‘imperfect’ letter home.  She sends nothing.  It can’t be the pretty little speech she had in her head, so fuck you little sister, you’re never going to get any last words from Katniss.

Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.

Well…I guess technically it’s better than last book, when she didn’t think of her family for no good reason at all.

But it’s still pretty sad that she can just do a visualization trick and *ta-da* no more cares about the family you’ll never see again.

Authors.  All authors, not just this one.  WE LIKE EMOTIONAL CHARACTERS.

WE READ TO FEEL EMOTIONS.

WHAT EVEN IS THIS I JUST CAN’T ENOUGH ALREADY!

No, it’s more than a mission. It’s my dying wish. Keep Peeta alive. […]  By the time Effie knocks on my door to call me to dinner, I’m empty

Congratulations, you have completely emptied yourself of any independent thoughts, concerns, or emotions so that you can better serve your man.

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

Evidently, Effie doesn’t know that my mockingjay pin is now a symbol used by the rebels. At least in District 8. In the Capitol, the mockingjay is still a fun reminder of an especially exciting Hunger Games.

Apparently this author doesn’t understand how symbols work. i.e., if the frivolous society is going to use it as a symbol of frivolity, then why the fuck would the anti-frivolity people take it up, too?

Also, how do you know Effie isn’t aware of the rebel thing?  Maybe she does; what would it change?  It’s still a popular symbol in the Capitol, so not wearing would be rather suspicious, since you’re not supposed to know about District 8.

For my part, I try to make some mental record of the other tributes, but like last year, only a few really stick in my head.

AKA: let’s see who’s actually going to be important this year.

Then there’s Johanna Mason, the only living female victor from 7, who won a few years back by pretending she was a weakling.

We heard about this last book.  Remember, when Katniss thought that the same tactic would be really strange for a big, strong boy to use?  Apparently it’s only a viable tactic when used by a naturally conniving, manipulative girl.

Feminism!

But I can hardly ask Peeta to come sleep with me. We’ve barely touched since that night Gale was whipped.

Yes, but you never had or particularly wanted a relationship with Gale, and also you’re about to die and never see him again. 

I really don’t get this whole toxic subplot.  Peeta is willing to sleep platonically with her, and Katniss is allowed to ask for comfort.  But instead of all that, we just get the repeated insinuation that comfort = sex and that Katniss is a whore if she wants that from more than one boy.

Beside him on the couch is the box Effie sent of tapes of the old Hunger Games.

Tapes?

…VHS tapes?

You can make instahumawolves and magic burn cream, but video recording went backwards?

I recognize the episode in which Brutus became victor.

*sigh*

I understand that the author was, supposedly, trying to mock the reality TV bit, but Katniss has never thought of the games as a TV show.  Never.  In fact, she seems unaccustomed to the idea of TV as actual entertainment, and there’s no mention of there being sitcoms or other serial shows.  It’s all about mandatory programming and news.

Would you look at recorded footage from CNN and call it an ‘episode’?

And why should I? I have said good-bye to Gale. I’ll never see him again, that’s for certain. Nothing I do now can hurt him

So, Katniss starts to ask the right question, saying why shouldn’t she get to have comfort that she needs from whomever she damn pleases, but then she turns it back around on Gale.  As if it’s all about him, and nothing about her.  The only way she can get her needs met is if she hides it from the boy that she for some reason thinks needs to know about this.  It’s not about her, it’s all about him.

This book is feminist, and don’t you forget it!

“I mean it. I don’t think the people in the Capitol are going to be all that happy about our going back in,” says Peeta. “Or the other victors. They get attached to their champions.”

They also go to elaborate lengths to make sure that the Capitol knows all about the regular tributes, but for some reason that doesn’t get the same reaction. 

Check your brains at the door.

Also, this line was kicked off when Peeta noticed that one of the servants on the train was acting pity-ing towards them as he handed over their midnight snack.  So…the servants are part of “people in the Capitol”?  Despite the claims that the Capitol is full of lazy layabouts who never get up before noon and live such decadent lives?

I really don’t understand what the Capitol population is supposed to be like.  And it could be that Katniss is just unreliable and most of the Capitol is fairly average, more like our own middle class, but all she sees/cares about are the upper socialites.  But in that case…well, nothing is done with it.  This shit continues throughout.  And it’s a pretty poor turn to have an unreliable narrator about this one thing, oh and also, that never gets played with.

I mean, there’s lots you do there.  You could have them be our own version of middle class, and show that, and have her call it decadent compared to her own life.  Though that doesn’t quite fit with the “Games start at 10 am because the entire population likes to sleep in.”  Or she could discover that the population is kind of pressured into living like this, but really, they’re all just proles living off handouts and at the mercy of the state, and they have assigned menial jobs and their parties are just kept running as a distraction from their depression/to amuse the elites.  There’s lots that could happen, but nothing does, which means cries of “unreliable narrator!” will be met with “yeah, so?”

“Not really. Just sort of skipping around to see people’s different fighting techniques,” says Peeta.

This makes no sense.  Most people aren’t trained and don’t have a particular style.  The biggest dangers in the arena are from the arena itself, while the kids are more of a “bash them on the head and hope” sort of danger.  Their “fighting style” is going to be to flail around and try to hit really hard, because that’s how young, untrained children fight.

What they should be looking for are what kinds of tricks and traps the gamemakers would use to pull them together, like the fail-fire that happened last time, or keep an eye out for any poisonous berries and insects (hint hint) show up most often, or if there’s a pattern at all.

“It’s the only Quell we have. We might pick up something valuable about how they work,” I say.

If there’s something special about Quell games beyond how they pick the tributes, then why didn’t they ask for the 25^th year tapes?

But I feel weird. It seems like some major invasion of Haymitch’s privacy. I don’t know why it should, since the whole thing was public. But it does.

I would have liked this line of thinking better if it had been applied to your whole ‘sit in a cave and make out’ days. 

He puts in the tape and I curl up next to him on the couch with my milk, which is really delicious with the honey and spices, and lose myself in the Fiftieth Hunger Games.

So…Katniss has unironically turned into a Capitol citizen.  Basically.

She calls out the name of a girl who’s from the Seam, you can tell by the look of her, and then I hear the name “Maysilee Donner.”

“Oh!” I say. “She was my mother’s friend.”

So, once again, anyone from the poorest part of the district (the Seam) goes unnamed and unimportant, but the town people all get named.

Oh, no, wait, I got that wrong.  The Seam girls are non-people.  The Seam boys turn into Haymich and Gale and Dear Beloved Daddy Saint.

This book is feminist, and don’t you forget it!

Of my mockingjay pin and how it means something completely different now that I know that its former owner was Madge’s aunt, Maysilee Donner, a tribute who was murdered in the arena.

It means…???  Yeah, nothing.  It means nothing.  You still don’t care.

Seriously, why are Maysilee and Madge related?  There’s no point to this connection besides randomness.  There’s been conspiracy theories abounding about how the Donner family is part of some sort of huge rebellion-starting conspiracy and that’s why Madge gave her the pin, but in the end, they’re all based on pipe dreams and spider threads, not any actual canon.  There’s no point to this here, because it never amounts to anything.  They’re related.  And then…nothing.

Others begin to die off and it becomes clear that almost everything in this pretty place — the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly — is deadly poisonous. Only the rainwater and the food provided at the Cornucopia are safe to consume.

See?  Clearly you should be more concerned with the arena.

Uhg, there is so much summarizing through this.  It’s an entire first book worth of material (better material, since the main character is intentionally doing shit) and it’s being dumped on us all at once, like a giant tease.  “What all the details?  Nope!  He fought off carnivorous squirrels with ‘a weapon’ and we won’t tell you how.”

Just like Peeta and me, they do better together.

…no, Katniss, you were better off on your own.  Peeta got 100% of the benefit from that arrangement.

But a minute later, as he sits to rest, the pebble shoots back up beside him. Haymitch stares at it, puzzled, and then his face takes on a strange intensity. He lobs a rock the size of his fist over the cliff and waits. When it flies back out and right into his hand, he starts laughing.

Aw, look at you, Haymich.  Being all curious and figuring stuff out.  Good job!  And good thing you’re not a girl, or you’d have to do all this by ‘instinct.’

Apparently logic originates from the penis.

Who knew?

“Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” I say. “You know they didn’t expect that to happen. It wasn’t meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out.

Hey, remember John?  That District 3 kid that used the mines as weapon even though that was never their intended use?  Remember him?

No, of course you don’t, because you didn’t even give him a name, I had to make one up for him.

Well, he sure as hell did a lot more than Haymich did, but you go right on ahead ignoring him as if that doesn’t matter.

Check your brains at the door, people, because there ain’t no point in trying to figure out what’s important and what isn’t.