Prim makes a sound — such a lost, irretrievable sound — that I can’t even imagine what they have done to evoke it.

So far, Katniss has heard nothing except screaming and whatever this unidentified noise here is.  Point is, there doesn’t seem to be much actual voice involved.  I don’t understand how Katniss can tell the difference between one person’s “lost” sound and another’s when she can’t even tell what the sound is.

I mean, I’ve heard a fair number of screams that I didn’t want to, and none of them were particularly identifiable.  The only time I’ve ever known who’s screaming without looking, it was when that person was the only person in the house/backyard/behind me.

There is nothing about the [jabberjay] that suggests it’s a mutt.

You mean, except for the fact that it looks exactly nothing like any other species of bird that was indigenous to the country?

The piercing shriek cuts me off. It’s another voice, not Prim’s, maybe a young woman’s.

I just…screams and shrieks aren’t really voices.  Horses scream.  Rabbits scream.  Pigs scream.  It’s just a high-pitched noise of panic.  It’s really hard to even tell the species of a scream, much less the gender.  (Although people will usually assume it’s another human, because not many people realize that a wide variety of animals make very human-like screams.)  I’ve heard linebackers scream the most high-pitched noise you’ve ever heard just from getting blood drawn. 

What I do finally hear is another bird starting up somewhere off to my left. And this time, the voice is Gale’s.

Finnick catches my arm before I can run.

So, basically, we’re back to melodrama.

Katniss knows that these screams aren’t real, and yet she’s trying to go running after them anyway.  The problem here is that being surrounded by screams is very stressful.  It’s horrible even without chasing them down mindlessly every time they pop up.  So the extra bit of not-thinking on top of all that is just that: extra.  Thrown in to really hammer the point home when it’s not needed, so it ends up just making Katniss look ridiculous.

Less is more when it comes to angst.  If something is truly horrifying, we don’t need that point out to us.  We’ll be horrified because of the actual thing, not because you told us to.

and like the night in the fog, I flee what I can’t fight.

Yes, and?  Are you trying to make a point there?  Because, really, what else would you do?

Although there will be nothing Haymitch can send in a parachute that will help either Finnick or me recover from the wounds the birds have inflicted.

Again…melodrama.  There’s no need to go on about wounds, because even though it’s perfectly easy to recover from “oh, so that was a fake scream, okay,” sitting through it is still awful.  The human body will naturally react to screams by releasing adrenaline and other stress hormones, and when there’s nothing to fight, that can induce all sorts of anxiety and panic.  There don’t have to be soul-shattering wounds for an hour of screaming to be hard to deal with.

The wall is so transparent, Finnick and I run smack into it and bounce back onto the jungle floor.

Why do we have a non-killer wall here, but a killer wall around the outside?  What is the point of having all these different kinds of forcefields? 

An invisible barrier blocks the area in front of us. It’s not a force field. You can touch the hard, smooth surface all you like.

So it’s a…forcefield.

Yeah, come on, that’s a catch-all sci fi term for “weird ass wall made of science that’s invisible.”  If you’re going to apply a more narrow definition to it, then you need to actually define it.

I know it’s stopped when I feel Peeta’s hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle.

But Bella gets skewered when she doesn’t realize that she went inside a house. 

Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently. It takes a long time before I begin to relax the iron grip on my body. And when I do, the trembling begins.

You know what the worst thing about this is?

She’ll go this catatonic over recorded screams, but when someone dies right in front of her she just shrugs it off.

I know he’s trying to help me, so I make myself think. “At the final eight?” I repeat. “They interview your family and friends back home.”

“That’s right,” says Peeta. “They interview your family and friends. And can they do that if they’ve killed them all?”

No, but they could prerecord the interviews and then do whatever the hell they want to your family members without anyone knowing.

“Of course Peeta’s right. The whole country adores Katniss’s little sister. If they really killed her like this, they’d probably have an uprising on their hands,” says Johanna flatly. “Don’t want that, do they?” She throws back her head and shouts, “Whole country in rebellion? Wouldn’t want anything like that!”

Guh, Johanna’s even better at goading on the rebellion than Katniss is. 

Katniss is all like “Oh, yeah, shiny necklace, that’ll help.”

Johanna GETS SHIT DONE.  Well, as much as she can.

❤

My mouth drops open in shock. No one, ever, says anything like this in the Games. Absolutely, they’ve cut away from Johanna, are editing her out.

1) Why does no one say stuff like this?  It can’t be because they’re afraid of their families back home dying, because if that were a regular thing, Katniss would know about it.  And what about orphans or people who hate their families or people who just let slip because they’re pissed off and not thinking about consequences?

2) If you’re so certain that this stuff is being edited out, then how can you be certain that no one’s said it before?  Maybe people (other than you) say this stuff all the time and it just doesn’t make it on air?

“Yeah. Annie’s the one who went mad when her district partner got beheaded. Ran off by herself and hid. But an earthquake broke a dam and most of the arena got flooded. She won because she was the best swimmer,” says Peeta

That makes no sense at all.  People do not “go crazy” from trauma.  Look up the symptoms for PTSD.  I guarantee you that “a case of the Hollywood crazies” is not on the list.  And I have to base this off what I’ve read in the third book, because “hid from people trying to kill her after her partner got beheaded” is not a sign of insanity.

“Did she get better after?” I ask. “I mean, her mind?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember ever seeing her at the Games again. But she didn’t look too stable during the reaping this year,” says Peeta.

Peeta, you’re a dick.

See, Peeta doesn’t know what we know about Annie, so all he has to go on is what he saw in the game footage and what he saw in the reaping.  Neither of which are exactly normal situations.  Besides that, freaking out at being told you’re going back into the death arena is quite a sane reaction.  Hell, even Katniss went and cried in a basement.  But Peeta has used these two sole data points and come to the conclusion that she’s “mad.”

On top of that, let’s look at our victors.  On the guy’s side, we’ve got Beetee, Finnick, Haymich, and Peeta, all with major roles and no insanity.  At best, Haymich is a drunk.  Of the other males, Chaff and an unnamed man are also drunks, but only the morphling addict is shown to be non compos mentis in any way, and even then it’s still just substance abuse instead of insanity.

On the female side, we’ve got Wiress, the female morphling, and now Annie as all being some form of non compos mentis, and all the other ‘sane’ ones are supposed to be unlikeable.  Even Katniss, since she goes on about being ‘unworthy.’  (And, fuck it, I don’t like her.)

So apparently, if you possess a vagina, you can’t tough it out through trauma and come out the other side a good person still.  Only guys can do that.

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

A cannon blast brings us all together on the beach. A hovercraft appears in what we estimate to be the six-to-seven-o’clock zone. We watch as the claw dips down five different times to retrieve the pieces of one body, torn apart. It’s impossible to tell who it was. Whatever happens at six o’clock, I never want to know.

Jabberjays started at 4 o’clock.  This other thing started at 6.  The group is currently sitting in the 5 o’clock wedge.  Absolutely diddly squat happened to them for the whole hour.

Worst.  Deathtrap.  Ever.

And if there’s any positive to the jabberjay attack, it’s that it let us know where we are on the clock face again.

See?  No need to carry on about “losing your advantage.”  So stop making excuses for your lying.

We wait until the giant wave has flooded out of the ten-to-eleven-o’clock section, wait for the water to recede, and then go to that beach to make camp. Theoretically, we should have a full twelve hours of safety from the jungle.

This deathtrap suuuuuuuucks.

I don’t know how Johanna’s still on her feet. She’s only had about an hour of sleep since the Games started.

It’s because she’s made of awesomesauce, whereas you just want to kill people and mope.

If you die, and I live, there’s no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You’re my whole life,” he says. “I would never be happy again.”

That is really, really creepy.

See, at first it sounds romantic, right?  You’re the light of my world and all that.

But look at that.  She’s not the most important thing, she’s the only important thing.

Do you know what happens when your entire happiness rests on one person?  Then your happiness rests entirely on one person.  If you have a fight, there’s nothing else in your life to distract you or make you feel better.  If that person is busy, then you’re shit out of luck.  If you have a bad day, then there’s only one person in the world you can take that burden to. 

That’s the kind of situation that leads to all sorts of clinging, guilt, and potential for emotional manipulation and abuse.  That’s the kind of statement that says “You have to take care of me now, because my mental and emotional wellbeing is dependent on you.  That’s one step away from “if you ever leave me I’ll hurt myself.”

“It’s different for you. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard. But there are other people who’d make your life worth living.”

Didn’t Peeta have two living parents and a parcel of siblings?  That he routinely went into town to visit and eat dinner with?

Huh.  I guess he decided they don’t matter.

I’m sorry, but I can’t get behind a Love Interest that says “family, what family?  I care not for them.  Only romantic connections are of any importance.”

Peeta’s intention is clear. That Gale really is my family, or will be one day, if I live. That I’ll marry him.

…what, so if Katniss didn’t have a backup love interest, would Peeta assume that they’d both ‘have nothing to live for’?

This book is feminist.

It’s true his family doesn’t need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me.

Yeah, it’s not like Katniss could also recover and move on from this guy that she only met a year ago.  No, she’s far more invested in him THAN HIS FUCKING PARENTS.

What?

And I’m really not happy with the idea that a woman is “damaged beyond repair” if she doesn’t have her man in her life anymore.  Apparently widows in this world are—

Huh.  The only two widows we see are Cynthia and Hazel, and yeah, they’re just used as sympathy props who never get remarried.

So.  Fucking.  Creepy.

I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. […] But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more.

And you fail to put a name to that thing because…?

What, do you just think “arousal” is a dirty word?  Girls can get aroused.  It’s a thing that happens.

But way to go, book.  You had a chance to make a positive mention of female sexuality and went with the old “something” standby instead.  I guess females don’t get aroused, they just get magic.