Boggs appears and gets a firm lock on my arm, but I’m not planning on running now.

How convenient that the world never actually gets in the way of Katniss’s whims.

Boggs quickly examines my face, then scoops me up and jogs for the runway.

Okay.  But.  The only injuries Katniss sustained were from the bombing, which Boggs was in as well.  Hell, he even laid on top of her to protect her from more danger.  All that fighting she just did?  Wasn’t really fighting anyway.  She just stood still and then fired at inanimate objects without once having to see or even think about the fact that those planes were full of people.  So why is she passing out now, but Boggs is in such fine form that he can actually carry her at a jog?

“No one even told us you were going until you were gone,” she says.

I feel a pang of guilt. When your family’s had to send you off twice to the Hunger Games, this isn’t the kind of detail you should overlook.

Why yes, book, that is a very good point.  That isn’t something that should be overlooked.  Especially since Katniss went on last book about how she’s trying to be closer to her mother and all that.  So why was it left out here?

…oh, I see, you’re just going to mention your own plot hole and then move on with nary a second thought?  And here I thought you were setting up tension, but really this is just the awkward scene-glue to transition us into something new, not an actual issue.

“I’m sorry. They weren’t expecting the attack. I was just supposed to be visiting the patients,”

Actually, no one mentioned patients at all before you arrived, and…did we have any clear idea of what she was expecting to do?  Or even a muddled one?  They just sort of…went.

They impressed me in 8, following me onto the roof during the bombing, making Plutarch back off so they could get the footage they wanted. They more than do their work, they take pride in it. Like Cinna.

But those prep team fellas, psh, they’re just stupid children, right?

“I have to stop calling you ‘the insects,’ ” […] The comparison doesn’t seem to bother them.

Katniss never suffers any consequences from her unlikable actions.  She refers to people as animals, when she refers to them at all, but the only time it’s ever brought up is to point out that, no, it’s okay, they don’t mind after all.  She hides in closets for a month, but then she still gets her every demand before she goes through the ~*~oh so terrible~*~ or deal of putting on a costume.  She disobeys orders and goes to shoot arrows at planes, and not only does this work, but everyone praises her for it.

Yes, Katniss is a disagreeable teenager who is rude, self-centered, and acts without thinking and that’s part of her character.  And yes, people really are like that sometimes and it’s okay to write them.  But it NEVER has a negative impact on her!  She does all this, and the only outcome is to either shrug it off or heap more praise on her!

Pollux is an Avox. They have cut out his tongue and he will never speak again. And I no longer have to wonder what made him risk everything to help bring down the Capitol.

…yeah you do.  I mean, something made him turn traitor before they cut his tongue out, or else they wouldn’t have done that.

At first, my screen is black. Then a tiny spark flickers in the center. It blossoms, spreads, silently eating up the blackness until the entire frame is ablaze with a fire so real and intense, I imagine I feel the heat emanating from it.

And then we get the book describing a commercial of the chapter we just read.

The book is literally taking a moment out to carry on about how its own chapter is so awesome that it needs to be gloried and marveled at.

It’s just so fucking self-congratulatory and I can’t stand it.  Maybe if it was making a point.  Maybe if the scene in District 8 had been gritty and harsh and confusing and messy and had no clear outcome and it was all just a muddled mess, then coming back and showing a “clean” version with a linear, patriotic story that glosses over the atrocities, that would be a point to make.  That would be a good reason to have this.  But this?  No.  That last chapter already was too clean and linear, so replaying it now with fancy graphics is just the book going “oh, god, wasn’t that so awesome?”  \~/

Now comes a truly fantastic montage of the battle.

Fantastic.

FANTASTIC.

IT’S FOOTAGE OF BOMBS DROPPING ON A HOSPITAL AND ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS HOW FANTASTIC IT LOOKS?  You couldn’t even go for awe-inspiring?  At least that would imply something other than a feeling of being impressed by all the death and carnage.  Sociopath.

There’s a moment of silent relish, then applause followed by demands to see it again. Coin indulgently hits the REPLAY button

“Can we see the dead and dying hospital victims and their desperate would-be rescuers crying again?  Please?  Please?”

And who is supposed to be the group obsessed with “entertaining” death again?

I clap, too, until I realize I’m the on-camera talent and maybe it’s obnoxious that I’m applauding for myself

The notion that it’s obnoxious to revel in the ‘fantastic’ cinematic glory of a battle that actually killed hundreds of people, though, that thought doesn’t even cross her mind.

Coin seems to have reached the end of her tolerance for self-congratulation.

Thank you, Alma.  You should join Paylor and Johanna in the spin-off series.

“But the general consensus was that we weren’t going to get anything worth using if we locked her in a bunker somewhere every time a gun went off.”

I just… I just can’t even… They’re trying to pass her off as a war hero without letting her go into battle, and the only time anyone even bats an eye at this is talking about how she can’t perform when it’s fake.  No morality issues, no frustration from Katniss or even anyone else at not actually doing something, nothing, no.  If Katniss were a good actor, presumably, they’d be doing all of this on a sound stage and no one would even begin to think that there was anything wrong with that.

“Well, let’s be just a little more judicious with her exposure. Especially now that the Capitol knows what she can do,”

…what can she do?

No, really, tell me.  What is it that she can do that the capitol just learned about?  Shoot arrows?  Everyone already knew that.  Did she expose the flaw in their “fly to within 300 feet before dropping bombs” errors?  Because there were already machine gun nests on the roof shoot at planes.  (The maximum range against a point target for an M249 is 600-800 feet, twice the range of Katniss’s bow.)  And it’s not like she rallied any troops or inspired anyone to fight in that little curb-stomp of a battle.  So what did she DO?

I make a note to myself not to end up alone in a room with him, because he’s clearly having vengeful thoughts over that stupid earpiece.

And no matter how valid those thoughts are, or how important it is to follow orders, or any of that, this is the most we’ll get from it.  Haymich is upset, but he doesn’t do anything, and therefore it’s as if the book is asking us to see the issue as “stupid” as well.  We’re invited to see Haymich as unreasonable and Katniss as right, because she got to shoot arrows and look cool and nothing else bad happened as a result.

Know why she should have followed orders here?  At least in a competent book that understands how unit movement works?  Because she’s not acting alone.  Because there were people whose movements depended on hers.  There was an aircraft headed to the warehouse she abandoned, and then they had to scramble to either shift locations or turn tail again, so that was a risk that ended up being useless.  There was her team, which got thrown into disarray because they’re supposed to stick with her and instead they got all confused when she started acting up.  There was the defenders, who (reasonably) should have had a plan of action already, and she jumped into the middle of all that like she’s the only fighter around and screwed with their battle order.  In any reasonable combat situation, Katniss should have thrown everyone into a complete clusterfuck, and the only reason that didn’t happen is because the book seems to write combat as if it’s an “every man for himself” operation.

And the book doesn’t realize that.  The book doesn’t realize that there are reasons why Katniss can’t be Super Special Snowflake that go beyond just “everyone is a poopyhead,” so it doesn’t bother to display any consequences from her actions.

“We have some terrific footage of Katniss at the hospital in Eight. There should be another propo in that with the theme ‘Because you know who they are and what they do.’ We’ll focus on Katniss interacting with the patients, particularly the children, the bombing of the hospital, and the wreckage. Messalla’s cutting that together. We’re also thinking about a Mockingjay piece. Highlight some of Katniss’s best moments intercut with scenes of rebel uprisings and war footage. We call that one ‘Fire is catching.’ And then Fulvia came up with a really brilliant idea [to do memorial features on the dead tributes.”

Notice how all of these ideas have to do with either Katniss or other Hunger Games players.  This whole thing is still being framed as if it’s Katniss’s struggle, her fight, and everyone else happens to be joining it.  There’s still an undue focus on the games, as if they’re a central part of this conflict instead of an inciting incident.  They’re the central focus of the books, okay, but then they’re the central focus of the world, too, and that’s not okay.  There’s no room in this narrative for people to be fighting for their own reasons, for their own oppression, without it being dependent on Katniss’s struggle.  There’s no room for the mother with two kids to be featured in a propo about how she had to teach her 10 year-old to take her 6 year-old to hide in a bunker so she could pick up a gun and join the fight.  There’s no room for the old man who can’t fight, but damn he sure can talk, and he organized everyone to start rebelling and he heads up the support crews and teaches young kids to run around to all the positions handing out water and he keeps up morale and all that.  Nope, no room for them to have propos.  There’s no room in here for Katniss to be part of a larger narrative.  Instead, everyone else is part of her narrative.  In the same way, the games aren’t part of a larger system of oppression, they’re framed as being the main event, the thing that everything else hangs from.

“That is brilliant, Fulvia,” I say sincerely. “It’s the perfect way to remind people why they’re fighting.”

Because they’re fighting for those dead tributes, not their own lives, which were already full of starvation and draconian punishments and soul-crushing hard labor.  Psh, what was that compared to Katniss?

What’s interesting is that Plutarch seems to have no need to share in the credit. All he wants is for the Airtime Assault to work. I remember that Plutarch is a Head Gamemaker, not a member of the crew. Not a piece in the Games. Therefore, his worth is not defined by a single element, but by the overall success of the production. If we win the war, that’s when Plutarch will take his bow. And expect his reward.

Hey, remember that subplot where Katniss doesn’t understand how people work?  It turns off and on, depending on whether or not the book wants to Say Something Significant.

On the other hand, she does continue to fail to realize that people could want to win a war for the sake of winning that war, not for the adulation.

[description of nightmares] Things I will never be able to erase from my memory.

Until you’re awake.  And then you’ll be just fine.

I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth mentioning again.  Nightmares are easy.  Nightmares are, like, Level One trauma.  Everyone has nightmares, and the only difference trauma makes is whether your nightmares are about fiery plane crashes or going to school without pants on.  There needs to be continued trauma after she wakes up.  That’s what makes extreme nightmares so hard to deal with, the fact that they mess with your head while you’re awake and scare you before you go to sleep, not the details of the specific images floating through your brain.

In this book, however, she wakes up and is just fine and dandy and carries on as normal.  Even when Finnick brings her dinner so they can “watch the new propo” together as if it’s the latest episode of Dr. Who.

At least Finnick doesn’t applaud or act all happy when it’s done.

Oh, did that bother you?  Funny, you didn’t give any indication before, when you were joining in the applause.  Or before, when you sat down to watch it like it’s a god damn television show.

ACTIONS, BOOK, I WANT TO SEE THIS SORT OF THING IN HER ACTIONS, IF ALL SHE DOES IS TOSS OFF A WEAKASS LINE HERE AND THERE, IT’S NOT GOING TO FEEL GENUINE.

Peeta’s physical transformation shocks me. The healthy, clear-eyed boy I saw a few days ago has lost at least fifteen pounds and developed a nervous tremor in his hands.

This has been five days.  You can’t lose that much weight in five days unless it is being mechanically sucked out of you.

And it really begs the question: why?  What is the capitol’s aim here?  If they’re going to keep putting him on television, don’t do things that make him look so shitty.  If you’re going to torture him because you for some reason think that’ll do any good, don’t put him on TV.  This right here seems like its only design is to fuck with Katniss, which fits, since pretty much nothing happens anywhere in this world without it being directed at Katniss.

But underneath the paint that cannot cover the bags under his eyes

You’ve gone on at length about the magical medical science of the capitol that can keep Ceasar looking the same for 40 years, so why can’t they cover up those bags?

Or at least photoshop them?  I mean, if we’re going to go off on the fake-is-bad shit, why has this book not mentioned photoshop?  (It even already has the wordsmash name that these books love.)

They could have taped that interview a day or two after I blew up the arena, then done whatever they wanted to do to him ever since.

Fair point and would make his weight loss more reasonable.

But then why didn’t they air it back then?  Why wait?  The longer you wait with canned footage, the more your chance that something will change and make it unusable.  And there was nothing going on to prompt them to air it at that time, so why?  What would be the point?

I swear, cocktail napkins.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.  This book was written as a series of scenes, and then it was glued together with plot hole patch.  Before, he needed to be healthy, now, he needs to be sick, because that’s what drives the drama in those scenes.  There’s no attempt to make it overarching; they’re just self-contained scenes written on cocktail napkins and then stitched together.

I doubt she even really knows what’s going on in the war.

Well, she has out and out said that she has no idea what’s going on in the war.

Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you’re working with? Do you really know what’s going on?

You know, Peeta has a point.  And it’s a point that really bugs me about this book.

Katniss…isn’t doing anything.  For all she goes on about being the mockingjay and having power and such, she doesn’t do anything.  Everyone around her is designing her look and directing her actions and putting her in places and telling her where to go and so on and such forth.  They’re even deciding that she should be behind a camera instead of actually out fighting people, and she rolls along with all of it.  Because she doesn’t know what’s going on.  She’s not in control of the direction of her life, and she lets that happen.  It’s not that they’re taking advantage of her, it’s that they’re saying “hey, come do this” and she does it without even looking around first.  She’s not even attempting to find out what the situation is and see if there’s anything she’d rather be doing.  She doesn’t care.  She has no motivation and no drive beyond just going along with the propaganda plan, and any time she does do something on her own (like shooting at planes) it’s 1) spur of the moment, so she’s still reacting more than she’s acting and 2) ultimately pointless.  (I mean, the roofs were covered in machine gun stations that could shoot farther and faster than her arrows, so if planes were going to come down due to rebel firepower, the guns should have done just as well.  Presumably, they were just conserving ammo and letting Katniss shoot first.)

This is not a book about Katniss doing stuff, this is a book about Katniss being a pawn in other people’s plans and she’s okay with that.

\~/  Not technically on the drinking game list, but whatever.