[links] Link salad will mend your robbing ways

[jaylake]

3 to 3: Orycon 2013 interview with Jay Lake - In which Camille Alexa interviews me.

The Church of the Brass Messiah - Hah!

Amazon to deliver by drone? Don't believe the hype - Jeff Bezos's 'plan' for drone deliveries is little more than a publicity stunt - timed for the biggest online shopping day of the year.

Compulsory Monogamy in The Hunger

Comments

[scarlettina]

Interesting article about The Hunger Games' relationship dynamics. On the one hand, it's an an interesting thought experiment. On the other hand, the fact that the article's author hasn't read the books (evidenced by her remark that she doesn't know how it ends) tends to provoke skepticism in me about the quality of her scholarship and her thought process, regardless of whether or not her point is an interesting one.

As for whether or not a polyamorous relationship would ever have made it to a book or film, I'm not so sure about that. At the end of Jim Hines' Libriomancer, one of the characters proposes a polyamorous relationship that all the characters seem willing to explore, and that seemed to make it into print just fine. I'm about to start the next book, Codex Born, to see how it turns out. (And let's not forget all that Heinlein stuff lo these many years ago.) If you mean to suggest that it would never have made it into a YA title--which is how The Hunger Games was published--maybe that's true. Relationship tension is something that all teenagers face, regardless of gender, though, and its portrayal in fiction is a helpful thing in coping with the drama of growing up. Whether or not we like it, we still live in a predominantly heterosexual, monogamous-favoring society, and so that which dominates is that which is portrayed most commonly. Still, representations of other relationships are out there.

I'd also posit that Katniss delays making a choice about her love for as long as she can--until she has no choice because fate more or less decides for her. A bigger point that's being missed here is that making her partner relationship a priority isn't a priority for her. She's too busy staying alive and taking care of all the people she cares about to take 5 minutes to agonize over which boy she likes more. That may be the most revolutionary thing about the whole series. (spoiler) In the end Katniss ends up with Peeta the way two PTSD-ravaged soldiers end up being roommates: because no one else will ever understand them.