Boggs when he comes to check on me. To look me over and tell me he’s seen a lot worse injuries among the soldiers when they teach choke holds in training.

THEN YOU ARE DOING CHOKE HOLDS WRONG.

NO, REALLY, YOU SHOULD NOT INJUR PEOPLE THIS BAD WHEN DOING A CHOKE HOLD.

The purpose of a choke hold is not to crush someone’s windpipe.  It’s not to cut off the airway.  It’s to cut off the blood going to the brain.  This will not cause as much damage as messing with the windpipe, but that’s not why it’s done.  It’s done because it’s a hell of a lot faster to render someone unconscious that way.  A proper choke hold will put someone out in a matter of seconds.  Cutting off someone’s air will take several minutes, and in all that time they will be fighting back against you.

Also, you shouldn’t be injuring people in training.  Injuries happen enough just through accidents, and you should be trying to minimize that, because every person injured in training is someone who can’t be sent into combat to get injured there.

You know what else is a resource to be conserved, oh ultra-conservative D13?  MANPOWER.

No, not deranged, I remind myself. Hijacked. That’s the word I heard pass between Plutarch and Haymitch as I was wheeled past them in the hallway. Hijacked. I don’t know what it means.

If you don’t know what it means, and if you just randomly heard it, then why are you using it like you’re so certain that it applies to Peeta?

My mother, who’s been assisting in a complicated surgery, has still not been informed of Peeta’s assault.

The book continues to make certain that Katniss’s mother has absolutely no impact on her daughter or the story in any way whatsoever.  She’s consistently shunted to the side and forgotten about, belittled and dismissed.

Well, at least she’s getting to do doctor stuff now, instead of being passed ignored for no reason at all.  I mean, it makes no sense that she’d be in surgery when she has no training, even if she’s just a nurse or assistant, but I’ll take empowering nonsense over disempowering nonsense any day.

“No. If you force me to leave, I’ll go directly to surgery and tell my mother everything that’s happened. And I warn you, she doesn’t think much of a Gamemaker calling the shots on Katniss’s life. Especially when you’ve taken such poor care of her.”

And how many fucks has anyone had to give in this book about Cynthia?  By my count, only Prim and the readers actually care.  Certainly the woman has had no influence or involvement so far, so you can’t pull this line out now like it means anything.

The weird part is that it works, and they let Prim stay, instead of sending her packing with a derisive laugh.  Why?  Why should they care now when they can’t even care enough to tell Cynthia when Katniss is about to go into combat?

Hallucinations. Nightmarish visions of losing those I love. Because the venom targets the part of the brain that houses fear.

…actually, fear and hallucinations are not the same thing.  If the “venom” is targeting fear part of the brain, that’s not the same thing as inducing visions of whatever the subject is afraid of.  That sounds more like you’d just suddenly become deathly afraid of whatever’s around you, no matter how innocuous.  “OH MY GOD, A TREE, RUN AWAY!  ANOTHER TREE!  THEY’RE ALL AROUND US.”

The amygdala has long been considered the “fear center” of the brain and is also responsible for a lot of other emotional reactions, but hallucinations have no specific source, because “hallucination” is too broad a category, but most seem to be related to sensory functions.  i.e., a visual hallucination is caused by something going wrong with the parts of your brain that control vision.  And, of course, hallucinations are not the same thing as delusions or dreams.  And all of that may not even be covered by “visions,” which is incredibly vague, especially since the “science” in this book reads more like fantasy to begin with.

Now, we do know it is possible to fry the brain with frightening hallucinations and sensory distortion, because there are a good number of drugs that do just that, both prescription and recreational.  But no one goes on about those drugs “targeting” your “fear center;” they fuck up a lot of parts of the brain.

In fact, it sounds like the book just wants them to be LSD wasps.  Why not just do that?

Did you also suffer mental confusion in the aftermath?” asks Beetee. “A sense of being unable to judge what was true and what was false?

I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that Katniss couldn’t tell the difference between ants crawling out of her eyeballs and reality.  Even after she was sober.  If she couldn’t tell from her intact eyeballs that ants didn’t burst forth from them, the LSD wasps caused permanent brain damage, which frankly would explain a lot.

Point is, for this to work, permanent brain damage really is your only option, because the hallucinations are radical enough that they should be easy to distinguish by a rational mind.  I could understand if the hallucinations were more subtle, like a voice talking to you from out of sight, or if it was a delusion or a sense of paranoia, but everyone should know that Peeta isn’t a tree and the carpet didn’t turn into snakes.

I…actually kind of like the description of “hijacking,” at least in isolation.  I don’t know enough about memories to tell if that’s something reasonable.  I know memories can be fucked with through verbal manipulation, though that’s usually on a more subtle note.  Anyway, taking Beetee’s explanation by itself rather works for me, especially if you take out hallucinations and just stick to straight mind-numbing fear.

Shouldn’t be too hard.  Katniss is already scary as shit anyway.  “Did I follow this murderous girl though the arena because I wanted to, or because I was too scare to say no?  I remember that episode with fear, so it must be the second option.”

“Well, you’re going to try, aren’t you?” Prim persists. “You’re not just going to lock him up in some padded room and leave him to suffer?”

Throughout this whole scene, Prim keeps being the one to make the relevant points and raise the relevant questions, while Katniss just mopes a lot and hides her face in her hands.  It…feels like Prim is fulfilling the same role that Ana’s “inner whatevers” did in FSOG.  The main character isn’t allowed to do stuff that’s proactive, so let’s split what should be one character into many so that it’s the side ones that do all the work.  Prim, in this scene, is Katniss’s agency.

We’re putting together a team of mental health and military professionals to come up with a counterattack.

Because it’s not like there’s a WAR GOING ON AND THOSE DOCTORS AND PROFESSIONALS MIGHT BE USEFUL SOMEWHERE ELSE. \~/

GOD, BOOK, I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH, STOP SHOWERING HELP ON THE MAIN FUCKING CHARACTERS AS IF THEY’RE THE ONLY IMPORANT PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, YOU MADE THIS WAR, FUCKING PAY ATTENTION TO IT, GOD DAMN I HATE YOU.

It’s not like Peeta’s even all that important.  Put him on the back burner until the war is over; he’ll keep.

The effort to fight back tears makes my throat throb until I’m gasping again. Eventually, they have no choice but to sedate me.

You know, I do like the suggestion to add “Katniss gets drugged for daring to feel emotions” to the drinking game, but there’s just something so ironic about drugging our rage because she’s being drugged.  Here, let’s compromise and all have a glass of water whenever this comes up. |-|

Or maybe some nice hot tea.  c\~/

It’s the “no choice” in that line that I think makes it extra sinister.

A team of specialists works long hours designing a strategy for his recovery. […] But on the third night, after I’ve been medicated and the lights turned down low for bedtime

So D13 hates waste and even crumpling half a sheet of paper is a sin, but they’ll sedate this girl three nights in a row, wasting valuable medication that could be used on actual injured people, and they’ll also give her a hospital bed this whole time?  And sic a whole team of specialists on Peeta, who is basically useless even after/if he gets better? \~/

Perhaps this is due to her “neck injuries,” the nature of which we still know nothing about, since the start of this chapter merely listed everything that wasn’t wrong with her.  So, laundry list of things that are fine = three day stay in a hospital?  She really should have nothing more than bruises and a bit of soreness.

I can’t say Gale’s absences have inconvenienced me.

Man, you can just feel the affection dripping off the page, can’t you?

Booby-trapping an area that provides something essential to survival. A water or food supply. Frightening prey so that a large number flee into a greater destruction. Endangering offspring in order to draw in the actual desired target, the parent. Luring the victim into what appears to be a safe haven — where death awaits it. At some point, Gale and Beetee left the wilderness behind and focused on more human impulses. Like compassion. A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then a second, more powerful bomb kills them as well.

Wait, you mean they haven’t been doing stuff like this all along?

Book, you do realize that we’ve been poisoning the enemy’s water and food basically forever, right?  And “luring victims into a trap” is…fucking luring people into a trap, we have a word for it, we call it an ambush!  If we have a fucking word for it, then I think it’s safe to say it’s already been discovered!  It’s not a hard concept!  Also, that last example is called “daisy-chaining” and it’s been going on for a while.  In fact, “daisy-chaining” is only the most recent thing it’s been called.  We have to consistently change our tactics in Iraq because the insurgents know how we react to one IED and then they plan their attack around that.  And that’s not a unique thing.  This shit is in Art of War, so safe to say that it’s been around for long enough that more people than Gale should have figured it out.

Book, you have just described the very, very basics of warfare tactics and then attempted to pass them off as revolutionary.  \~/

“That seems to be crossing some kind of line,” I say. “So anything goes?” They both stare at me — Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility. “I guess there isn’t a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being.”

The fuck am I even looking at?

Look, the point at which it’s considered okay to kill someone is the point at which it’s considered okay to kill someone.  If you’re going to argue ethics, go there.  Because it’s not really any worse to kill someone in an ambush than it is to kill someone in any other method.  They’re still dead, and it’s not like any of these methods are designed to drag out the pain and suffering.

The last one, maybe.  Specifically targeting medical and aid personnel is considered a war crime, but largely because those people are noncombatants.  On the other hand, this book doesn’t even say that, it just says “people who rush in to help,” which in a combat situation is going to be whoever is closest at hand.  i.e., the other soldiers.  i.e., people with guns who are trying to kill you.  i.e., acceptable targets.

Arguing against these tactics is basically saying “it’s bad to kill people” in which case why weren’t you upset at all the other war-ness going on?  I really can’t tell what, specifically, it is about these tactics that she finds so distasteful.  “It’s bad to trick people” maybe? You can shoot people in the face but not the back?  Because that’s…not as awesome as you seem to think, book.

“Sure there is. Beetee and I have been following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta,”

D13 = capitol \~/

Delly’s a bit thinner than I remember, but she was one of the few kids in District 12 with a couple of pounds to spare.

Considering the average kid in D12 had a daily chance of starving to death, “a few pounds to spare” should mean being at a healthy weight.  Which means that she shouldn’t have lost it, because D13 feeds everyone according to their needs and no one is starving.

By the way restrictive food intake does not equate weight loss, calories in/calories out is a complete crock of shit, and weight has less to do with your health than you think.  Also this.  People’s weight has far more to do with hormones and genetics than it does with diet and exercise, so if Delly was a plump girl on her oppression diet, then she should still be a plump girl on her let’s-feed-everyone-nicely diet.

(I rather regret this paragraph, because looking back I realize I was just soapboxing and trying to show off.  The book has enough problems without my trying to go off on pet issues that only barely belong.  I don’t want to hide my own mistakes, so it’s still here, but…yeah, given the chance, I wouldn’t have published this.)

Also, compare this description to the first book, when Delly was mentioned:

a pasty-faced, lumpy girl with yellowish hair.

But now she’s useful to Katniss and saying nice things about Katniss, so she has “long yellow hair” and “a few pounds to spare.”

“But everyone’s really nice here in Thirteen, don’t you think?”

Delly means it. She genuinely likes people. All people, not just a select few she’s spent years making up her mind about.

Yes, because Delly is a reasonable fucking human being, not whatever brand of alien Katniss happens to be.  And I can’t tell if the book is trying to look down on her for that or trying to make a joke.

Or both.  This book’s sense of everything is messed up, so it’s hard to tell.

“Katniss was always so amazing, I never dreamed she would notice me,” says Delly. “The way she could hunt and go in the Hob and everything. Everyone admired her so.”

…I am side-eyeing you so hard, book.

Between the derisive comments about her “annoying” cheerfulness and trust and this, it feels like the book is trying to treat Delly like some sort of simple child, but at the same time it’s happy to use that self-same feature to continually sing Katniss’s praises.

Stop giving Katniss cheerleaders, book.  You can’t claim that she’s a flawed anti-hero and then have characters specifically stated to have almost no contact with Katniss fucking genuflecting at her feet.

Prim was wrong. Peeta is irretrievable.

Throughout the entire Peeta/Delly interaction, Peeta was perfectly reasonable and lucid.  He spoke calmly to Delly and recalled childhood memories with no problems.  The only thing that’s affected is his relationship to Katniss.

But that was all Katniss gave a flying fuck about, so to her, Peeta’s not even a person anymore.  He can’t throw himself at her feet and give her every little thing she asks for and carry on about how great she is, so he doesn’t count and she’s going to give up on him, because he’s “irretrievable.”

After less than a week and only one attempt.

“I can’t stay here anymore,” I say numbly. “If you want me to be the Mockingjay, you’ll have to send me away.”

First she demanded that they run a costly mission that cost people their lives to get him back, now she’s demanding the exact opposite, and of course everyone is going to give it to her, because  no one is ever going to hold Katniss responsible, they’re going to just keep giving her whatever she wants and then drug her if she gets upset about it.

They’ll give Peeta a whole team of psychologists, but they can’t spare just a single one for this girl?

Sydney would be so disappointed in you.