Am I really that cold and calculating? Gale didn’t say, “Katniss will pick whoever it will break her heart to give up,” or even “whoever she can’t live without.”

Well, let’s be fair here.  If it would break her heart to lose either of them, then a different consideration is needed, and that second option is just a synonym for what he actually said. 

There’s not the least indication that love, or desire, or even compatibility will sway me. I’ll just conduct an unfeeling assessment of what my potential mates can offer me.

Okay, but there’s also no indication that you lack these things.  At least, not in his statement.  Again, if she loves both boys, then she has to use some other criteria for choosing.

Also, why does Katniss think this is a bad thing?  She’s supposed to be a “consummate survivor,” and consummate survivors know that you can’t make stupid, emotional decisions if you want to survive.  If anything she should just be like “yup, doesn’t everyone?” There is nothing in Gale’s statement that is actually a bad thing, but oh no, let’s dump on Katniss for not being as good as the boys.  Let’s dump on Katniss for being emotionally broken.

That, basically, is what all the relationship angst in these novels boil down to: Katniss fucked up somehow.  Even though we have Peeta tricking her into making out and Gale forcing kisses on her and both of them treating her like children and neither of them backing the fuck off, they never get criticized.  They both get praised.  And all the responsibility for everything wrong gets foisted off on Katniss, because relationships are always the girl’s responsibility and if something is wrong then it must be her fault.

At the moment, the choice would be simple. I can survive just fine without either of them.

Damn straight.

some enterprising rebel commander came up with the idea of confiscating people’s abandoned automobiles and sending them unmanned down the streets. The cars don’t trigger every pod, but they certainly get the majority.

It’s like the book didn’t think of these things until just now, so it’s assumed that no one else would think of these things earlier, either.  When, in fact, we’re talking about shit that should have come up on Day One.  Day Zero, even. \~/

Refugees from the now occupied blocks are streaming toward the Capitol’s center.

Still no word on where any earlier refugees went.

Like Peeta. Who, no matter how you spin it, can be seen on tape tossing Mitchell into that net pod. I can imagine what Coin’s war tribunal will do with that.

“What about this guy here, who was mentally tortured for weeks by the enemy?”

“…uh, send him to a shrink?  Come on, everyone knows he wasn’t in his right mind.  Let’s get on to the actual criminals.”

Jeeze, it’s not like Peeta’s condition is a secret.

On the other hand, Katniss’s only experience with “justice” is either Thread being whip-happy or Cray bending the rules just because he wanted to.  This is a case where I would be willing to let Katniss have her misconceptions, if only I could know that the book intended for it to be a misconception.  And given this book’s track record, and the fact that everyone else seems to agree with her when she goes on her “Coin did this to me personally” tirades, I just can’t trust that.

Those who live in the choice apartments of the inner city have not flung open their doors to house the displaced. On the contrary, most of them bolted their locks, drew their shutters, and pretended to be out.

And for some reason this mass of refugees didn’t throw bricks through their windows .   Also, I just find that really hard to believe.  Perhaps because I have more faith in humanity than this book, which is perhaps because oh yeah I’ve seen people reacting to disasters and they show actual fucking compassion. 

Seriously, we’re not actually as uncaring as everyone seems to want to believe.  The changes in technology and media mean we’re exposed to a lot more disasters, and we’re inclined to being disaffected by distant disasters, which for some reason everyone interprets as being horrible.  But when a town gets hit by a tornado and 500 families are displaced, the community still takes them in and helps.  We, as a species, are still willing to help when directly confronted with people in need, and yet everyone is like “oh, you don’t care about people you can’t see, I guess that’s the exact same reaction you’d have no matter the circumstance, gosh I’m just so fucking clever.  I’ve just made the same observation as pretty much everyone ever in the ever of everness, and all of them have been wrong.”  Seriously, ever since Adam and Eve had kids, people have been bemoaning about the downward trend of the new generation, and guess what?  Humanity still hasn’t imploded.  We keep making progress in spite of our parents and grandparents freaking out.  (What usually happens is that circumstances change, and older generations go THIS MUST MEAN SOMETHING BAD, hence getting worried by thinking that access to more new stories means there’s actually more murder going on, instead of just that we’re hearing it more, etc, etc.) 

Well, got off track a bit there, didn’t I?  This chapter is too long for me to keep doing that.  At least most of it the action unobjectionable.

Peacekeepers are going door to door, breaking into places if they have to, to assign houseguests.

Well, at least that’s going on.

“They’re shooting from the roof above us,” I tell Gale. I watch a few more rounds, see the white uniforms dropping into the snowy streets. “Trying to take out the Peacekeepers, but they’re not exactly crack shots.

They’re trying to take out peacekeepers…who aren’t doing anything.

They’re getting behind enemy lines and giving away positions and killing civilians to take out an enemy that is already preoccupied and not engaged in combat.  That is a lot of risk for exactly zero tactical gain. \~/

There’s a story that in WWII, Russian soldiers were instructed to shoot to wound, not to kill, if they could.  If you wound an enemy, you take out three people: the wounded guy and the two buddies that have to carry him back to the medics.  On the other hand, a dead soldier is just one person out of the fight.

The same theory applies to people preoccupied with refugees.

“No,” I say forcefully. “We’ve got to get to Snow.”

You know, we never really get a good excuse for why this is.  It’s all just her personal revenge plot, but…did she ever think she wouldn’t be allowed to kill Snow in the end?  She doesn’t seem to be worried that he’s going to escape, or die in the fighting, so what gives?  She just is insisting that she has to go kill him and she has to do it this way because…reasons?

we encounter a wounded Peacekeeper propped against a strip of brick wall. He asks us for help. Gale knees him in the side of the head and takes his gun.

Wow.  What an utterly emotionless description of attacking a wounded man.

The rebels are here, all right. Pouring onto the avenue, taking cover in doorways, behind vehicles, guns blazing, hoarse voices shouting commands as they prepare to meet an army of Peacekeepers marching toward us. Caught in the cross fire are the refugees, unarmed, disoriented, many wounded.

Seriously, does no one on the rebel side prepare for this sort of thing?  Is there no attempt to get the refugees out?  I could see if it’s “acceptable collateral damage” in this case, because they do still need to take the–

Wait.  Or do they?

What is in this “City Center” that they actually need?  The capitol has no long range weapons left.  There is no military power here except the police force that’s stuck here.  What is the imperative?  What is stopping them from just setting up a perimeter and shouting over loudspeakers “Hey, any refugees that want to come on over, we promise not to shoot you”? There…doesn’t seem to be an actual reason for why they need to go in there right now.  Except that, apparently, the book wants to make some message about how war is bad.

Yeah, war is bad.  Yeah, it sucks when civilians die.  But this isn’t that.  This is…stupid.

The part of war that makes it hell is not having other options.  It’s doing everything as best you could and even that ended up with casualties, because your only options were ‘dead people’ and ‘more dead people.’  When, instead, you’re just doing stupid shit, you’re not saying that war is bad, you’re just saying that you did war badly.

And then there’s several pages of various pods going off, which is just more of the same.  “Yup, flinging gore at us isn’t impressive when all you’re saying is that you don’t understand tactics.”  “Still not understanding why there’s such a variety of pods.”  “OMG, did you learn your tricks from Michael Bay, because this is just flash and bodies, you’re not actually doing anything.” 

I mean, it is an intense chapter.  There’s lots of action to keep your attention, which makes for a very quick read and some visceral reactions.  But…yeah, that’s all it is.  Not bad in and of itself, but not anything else, either.

It’s about four feet high and extends in a large rectangle in front of the mansion. […]This is for Snow’s protection. The children form his human shield.

“Hey, what’s with all those kids there in a contained space?”  “I dunno, just go around them.”  “Okay.”  \~/

Unless they’re right in front of the door and blocking it?  Even then, mansions generally have more than one door.  And windows.

They’re medics. Rebel medics. I’d know the uniforms anywhere.

…apparently in this world medics get to places before the soldiers do.  Who knew?  \~/