I’ve never really seen Boggs angry before. Not when I’ve disobeyed his orders or puked on him, not even when Gale broke his nose. But he’s angry when he returns from his phone call with the president.

Pointing out your protagonist-centered morality doesn’t make it magically better.

Soldier Jackson, his second in command

Everyone in this ‘militaristic’ society has the exact same rank.  “Soldier.”  At first it didn’t phase me because it was just random people being called by the title and for all we knew they were all privates.  But Jackson is second in command to Boggs, who is the president’s second in command, and to get that position she really should have a rank that differentiates her from the first-rank peons.

There’s a reason for the ranking system.  In a situation where people are giving and taking orders, and where following said orders in a timely fashion is the difference between life and death, then knowing who to listen to is actually very important.  Rank is a sign of confidence and authority.  When one person says “stand there and guard that corner,” you don’t want to give people room to think “why should I listen to you if we’re both at the same level?”  A peer telling you to pull guard is your peer; a superior is someone who is a go-between with a higher echelon and has the experience and training to be promoted and has the confidence of the brass and has probably more information than you and thus a good reason to tell you to stand guard over that corner.

“Sometime in the near future, this war will be resolved. A new leader will be chosen, […] you’ll throw support to someone. Would it be President Coin? Or someone else?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it,” I say.

“If your immediate answer isn’t Coin, then you’re a threat.

The book tries to make it sound like this is just Coin being a selfish dictator preserving her own power, and that very well could be, but the book has lost my faith by this point.  It’s done too much wrong, so I’ve become unwilling to take what it tells me at face-value.  It’s ignored so much logic and common sense in favor of clear “bad guys” and “Katniss guys” that I can’t help but say “fuck you, book” and fill in the blanks.

Because Katniss isn’t just undecided.  She’s shown a clear and immediate dislike for Coin based on evidence of absolutely nothing.  She’s shown that she’s willing to undermine Coin for shits and giggles.  She’s also shown she’s very easily influenced and really loves the spotlight.  So she’s not going to go into this new election unbiased.  If she doesn’t already have someone to vote for, then she’ll be swayed by the person who waves the shiniest toy in front of her face, and the whole country will follow her.

Damn straight she’s a threat.

Any other day, you could say that’s still not worth killing over, but the first leader after a major revolutionary war is a big fucking deal.  They’re going to guide the new country into setting down the practices and doctrines that will dictate everything that follows.  The level of able-to-fuck-things-over that this mystery person has is exponentially greater than what the second president will have, because there won’t be any checks or balances in place yet.  You could still argue that Coin shouldn’t resort to murder, I’m sure there’s other methods she could take, but the woman clearly has a lot on her plate at the moment and is going for the most expedient solution.  At best she’s overburdened, not evil.

I’m planning for you to have a long life. […] Because you’ve earned it,”

What with how you heroically stood in front of a camera and made speeches and all.  Yup.

“What time is my watch?” I ask Jackson.

She squints at me in doubt, or maybe she’s just trying to get my face in focus. “I didn’t put you in the rotation.”       

“Why not?” I ask.

Um, because you are the one and only thing that makes him go nuts and also the one person he’s trying to kill?  Literally the only reason he needs a guard is to keep him from killing you, why would you think that you’re going to get any alone time with him?

I speak up so the whole squad can hear me clearly. “I wouldn’t be shooting Peeta. He’s gone. Johanna’s right. It’d be just like shooting another of the Capitol’s mutts.”

Peeta doesn’t love her anymore, so he’s literally not a person.  That’s the moral of this book.  Agree with Katniss or else you’re a mongrel dog.

So Gale has not missed my preparations. I hope they haven’t been so obvious to the others.

Preparations?  What preparations?  Have you gathered any supplies?  Shown a sudden interest in learning about capitol architecture? Been talking to people to get information?  Suddenly tried to brush-up on your map-reading skills in case you have to paper-map it all the way?  Made a bid for the holo-map?  Anything?

Nope.

Gale’s just a mindreader, I guess.

“Of course not. I just want [Peeta] to leave me alone,” I say.

Oh, is that why you insisted on being part of his guard?

“Look, Coin may have sent him there hoping he’d kill you, but Peeta doesn’t know that. He doesn’t understand what’s happened to him. So you can’t blame him —”

“I don’t!” I say.

“You do! You’re punishing him over and over for things that are out of his control.

Katniss, for all I’m going on about how horrible it is that she doesn’t see him as human anymore, does still have valid reason to be upset here.  I mean, Peeta did keep trying to kill her.  She’s within her rights to be upset about that and retreat and protect herself.

But no, not according to this book.  According to this book, she should put herself out there and forgive him and try and make nice with him…for his sake.  Forgiving him wouldn’t be so bad a moral, but then Haymich keeps talking and saying about how she should “save” him and stick by him, and that pushes this into very uncomfortable territory.  Because it’s traditionally considered the woman’s job to be the reconciliator in a relationship.  She’s supposed to be the peacemaker, the gracious one, the one to give in and make nice.  When there’s trouble in a relationship, the woman is the one to blame, because clearly she should have been the one to put aside her own feelings and needs and reach out to fix things, regardless of what that means for her.

This view is, thankfully, changing (or at least it is in the circles I travel), but shit like this book seems to be trying to push us back a few decades.  

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

(I mean, jeeze, what has Katniss honestly done besides…not hang out with a guy who calls her subhuman?  She’s not mean to him.  She’s not anything to him.  She’s just avoiding him for the sake of her own personal wellbeing.  Well, usually she’s ignoring him, the guard thing is still weird.)

Some sleep under the open sky, close to the heater in the center of our camp, while others retreat to their tents.

You have a heater…outside…just…it’s…why?  

Why?

\~/

Realizing with shame that my fixation with assassinating Snow has allowed me to ignore a much more difficult problem. Trying to rescue Peeta from the shadowy world the hijacking has stranded him in.

Shame.

Shame.

Katniss has now been shamed for not helping a guy who professional doctors couldn’t fully cure, and she feels that it’s on her shoulders to ‘fix’ him, even though SHE IS HIS TRIGGER, SHE IS LITERALLY THE LAST PERSON HE SHOULD BE AROUND, HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?

The book somehow manages to fuck itself no matter which way it’s going.  First with the protagonist-centered morality which says that Peeta isn’t a person unless he’s in love with her, second with the pressure on Katniss to be self-sacrificing for the sake of a man’s feelings.  There’s no middle ground in any of this.  It just hops from one extreme to the next all willy-nilly.

And it’s not like this situation lacks dramatic potential.  Calling him subhuman to protect her own feelings would work, it’s just when everyone goes along with it that it’s creepy.  And the desire to help people you love when they’re sick, feeling responsible even though you’re not a medical professional, trying to help in any small way, the struggle to keep providing support and understanding when it feels like doing that doesn’t make a difference, the internalized shame over wanting to give up, the debate about when it becomes too much and you have to bail-out or else you’ll be hurting yourself, all of those are real things that could be explored here.  But nope, none of that, let’s just yell at Katniss and make her feel bad for not fixing Peeta with the Power of Love or whatever.

Finnick’s voice rises from a bundle in the shadows. “Then you should ask, Peeta. That’s what Annie does.”

First: why the fuck is Annie confused?

Second: oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, are you telling me that her husband literally controls her perception of reality?  Here, have a nightmare – “Um, I’m not sure if I’m ready for-”  “You are.  Trust me.”

At a few minutes before four, Peeta turns to me again. “Your favorite color … it’s green?”

“That’s right.” Then I think of something to add. “And yours is orange.”

“Orange?” He seems unconvinced.

The entire reason Peeta is confused is because his memories were deliberately messed with.  Why would the capitol mess with his memories of her favorite color?  With memories of his own favorite color?

Is that even a memory?

But more words tumble out. “You’re a painter. You’re a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.”

Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.

This bit I do legitimately like a lot.  Not only is it quiet and simple, it also actually shows that Katniss pays attention to Peeta and his preferences and details, she cares enough to take note of these things and remember them.  It’s practically the most affection she’s shown for anyone in the books so far.

When we get back to camp, Peeta’s sitting in a circle with the soldiers from 13, who are armed but talking openly with him. Jackson has devised a game called “Real or Not Real” to help Peeta. He mentions something he thinks happened, and they tell him if it’s true or imagined, usually followed by a brief explanation.

How many things can these strangers possibly know that he might ask?

“Most of the people from Twelve were killed in the fire.”

“Real. Less than nine hundred of you made it to Thirteen alive.”

“The fire was my fault.”

“Not real.

He spent HOW LONG with a “team” of shrinks devising a plan for his recovery?  And no one thought to cover this?

The color of my dress in 7. My preference for cheese buns. The name of our math teacher when we were little. Reconstructing his memory of me is excruciating.

WHY WERE THESE MEMORIES CHANGED?

And “because it makes for a cute scene” isn’t an acceptable answer.

Coin and Plutarch are unhappy with the quality of footage they’re getting from the Star Squad. Very dull. Very uninspiring. The obvious response is that they never let us do anything but playact with our guns. However, this is not about defending ourselves, it’s about coming up with a usable product.

I know why this is.

See, the book doesn’t want to let go of it’s obvious hardon for propaganda and filming (\~/), but at the same time, it can’t help but insist that Katniss get the best of everything, which means she has to go to the super-awesome-skills squad.  She has to be considered one of the best of the best, because that’s what the book cares about.  So instead of sucking it up and either dropping the camera (which is literally doing nothing for the plot at this point) or just putting her in a squad of actors, it jams the two things together.

This book is shoving logic where the sun don’t shine all for the sake of giving Katniss more praise.

One unleashes a spray of gunfire. The other nets the invader and traps them for either interrogation or execution, depending on the captors’ preference.

Okay.  But.  These are random landmines.  This only makes sense if someone is watching and controlling the pods all the time, otherwise there’s no telling who will set off the machine gun and who will set off the net.  If you’re willing to kill people at random, just make everything bullets.

Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads.

Hey, look, she got a name!  So it seems that names weren’t kept a secret, Katniss just never bothered to learn it.

They’d been our servants in the Training Center, so they arrested them, too.

You don’t need to arrest your own slave.  That’s sort of a step up, isn’t it?  From slave to prisoner?

he couldn’t speak, he just made these horrible animal sounds.

Screaming doesn’t involve your tongue, so that should sound the same.

The willingness of this book to compare everything to animals really disturbs me.  Any time someone is damaged in any way, they’re compared to animals.  Can’t speak?  Animal.  Mentally impaired?  Animal.  

They didn’t want information, you know? They wanted me to see it.”

Why?  Really, why?  Were they softening him up for something else?  What do they get out of doing this besides two fewer slaves whose jobs are now going undone?  What is the point of this?  Why would anyone bother?  What benefit do they get out of randomly killing two unrelated people just for the sake of piling more pathos on Peeta?  It’s not like he even needed it, what with all the other useless torture he was going through.

And don’t tell me it’s just because the capitol was evil.  People can be evil and still have reasons for why they do things.  “Because evil” is lazy, shitty writing.