real, or not real?
So! I read Mockingjay!
Different feel to it, with us at a slight remove from the reality-television angle of the Game structure (even if, as Finnick and Katniss lampshade, we're not really out of the games, per se). I liked it, of course; I like expanding the scope of the world, and I liked how the meta-commentary turned from reality television to politics, media, and war games, which is a different kind of reality television. (I do wonder, if Panem is really so compartmentalized that the Districts hardly ever interacted outside of the Games, is it even true that all of the human population lives in Panem? Or does the rest of the world kind of politely ignore the hick with the big guns?)
Katniss has hilarious Man Pain - century-long nuclear war? MY FAULT! ALL ABOUT ME! GUILT! WOE! MEEEEEE! - but she's a teenager thrust into the center of all of this, of course she overestimates her own agency. Her contempt for the Capitol rebels kind of grates, too - dude, they're giving something up to be there, they're the best rebels of all - but again, it does make sense for her most excellent characterization. Part of that's how she just NEVER LEARNS when people are playing her. I mean, I can't blame her, because everyone is always playing her, and you just can't deal with that all the time. But awww, man, manipulated right into the line of fire for the sake of The Method, that shit is COLD.
Everyone gets time to shine! Plutarch is most excellent in this book, and I really loved how all the pieces finally fall into place for the victors just in time for us to be as thrown about their new roles as they are. Haymitch isn't quite a whole new character, but he has a lot more weight and poignancy now that we have a little more backstory on him. FINNICK AND ANNIE ARE MY SWEET PRINCE AND PRINCESS AND JOHANNA IS MY FIERCE BITCH QUEEN. I loved Johanna's hard, angry sense of - not quite humor, but absurdity and resentment.
The issue of celebrity is handled in a really interesting way. Katniss and Finnick are as valuable to the resistance as they are because of the Capitol's propaganda machine, but their impulse is to want to keep that status and still be "really" involved in the way the other soldiers are. This comes into sharp relief in contrast with the grim reality of life in the USSR District 13. Could they have taken on the Capitol and survived independently without such strict control? Probably not. But it's still incredibly harsh. The Capitol made everyone fear the war games as teenagers, but only a few of them had to face it in the way all of District 13's teenagers are expected to do. And - are they better off because they at least get some sense of belonging and feeling of empowerment out of it, or is it even more soul-destroying that they never get a chance to be anything else? Probably both.
I should've seen Prim's death coming since the first book, but I didn't. I could, however, see Coin's manipulations from a mile away, and it made me LOVE HER. (I was kind of hoping Plutarch was going to be the such a chessmaster to have been playing the hell out of everyone in the hopes that he could take over in the resulting chaos.)
Real or not real? I was surprised and quite pleased with the way the it handles The Crazy. The whole illusive nature of their lives would make anyone a little crazy, even without playoffs for the Greatest Game thrown in there. Of course most of the Victors would be messed up. Obviously. Clearly including the rebels, but also Peeta. Oh, dear Peeta, to warn them about the attack knowing what was about to happen to him. It's not Othered or hidden away, and some of them get better, and some of them don't. Some of them find a decent support network, and some of them turn to drugs.
It was a shocking and excellent writing choice to see the rebels, including Katniss, decide on having the Games again for the same reasons (to brutally demonstrate power and keep old resentments alive) and with the same justifications as the Capitol did (with the lie that picking at the old wounds will keep deaths down). The details about life after the Games for the Victors makes perfect sense, however difficult it is. Because these people are survivors. If the Capitol didn't keep grinding them down afterward, and making them rel-live the source of their trauma forever, they would have been much quicker to end up at the place of resistance the Quarter Quell eventually brought them to anyway. And Katniss, even in her willingness to perpetuate the cycle out of grief, breaks it anyway, and maybe things will improve. Maybe they won't. But sometimes during power struggles, sometimes while everyone's looking the other way, revolutions happen.
I wasn't particularly bothered one way or the other about the epilogue, which surprises me a little. I probably should have been - I really liked that Katniss hadn't wanted kids, and I don't like the "meet the right guy and he'll change your mind" narrative about them. But I don't feel as pissed as I should about it. Maybe because Katniss was really clear that she didn't want kids because she didn't want them to go through what she had gone through, and since the Capitol fell, she knows they wouldn't have to.
Different feel to it, with us at a slight remove from the reality-television angle of the Game structure (even if, as Finnick and Katniss lampshade, we're not really out of the games, per se). I liked it, of course; I like expanding the scope of the world, and I liked how the meta-commentary turned from reality television to politics, media, and war games, which is a different kind of reality television. (I do wonder, if Panem is really so compartmentalized that the Districts hardly ever interacted outside of the Games, is it even true that all of the human population lives in Panem? Or does the rest of the world kind of politely ignore the hick with the big guns?)
Katniss has hilarious Man Pain - century-long nuclear war? MY FAULT! ALL ABOUT ME! GUILT! WOE! MEEEEEE! - but she's a teenager thrust into the center of all of this, of course she overestimates her own agency. Her contempt for the Capitol rebels kind of grates, too - dude, they're giving something up to be there, they're the best rebels of all - but again, it does make sense for her most excellent characterization. Part of that's how she just NEVER LEARNS when people are playing her. I mean, I can't blame her, because everyone is always playing her, and you just can't deal with that all the time. But awww, man, manipulated right into the line of fire for the sake of The Method, that shit is COLD.
Everyone gets time to shine! Plutarch is most excellent in this book, and I really loved how all the pieces finally fall into place for the victors just in time for us to be as thrown about their new roles as they are. Haymitch isn't quite a whole new character, but he has a lot more weight and poignancy now that we have a little more backstory on him. FINNICK AND ANNIE ARE MY SWEET PRINCE AND PRINCESS AND JOHANNA IS MY FIERCE BITCH QUEEN. I loved Johanna's hard, angry sense of - not quite humor, but absurdity and resentment.
The issue of celebrity is handled in a really interesting way. Katniss and Finnick are as valuable to the resistance as they are because of the Capitol's propaganda machine, but their impulse is to want to keep that status and still be "really" involved in the way the other soldiers are. This comes into sharp relief in contrast with the grim reality of life in the USSR District 13. Could they have taken on the Capitol and survived independently without such strict control? Probably not. But it's still incredibly harsh. The Capitol made everyone fear the war games as teenagers, but only a few of them had to face it in the way all of District 13's teenagers are expected to do. And - are they better off because they at least get some sense of belonging and feeling of empowerment out of it, or is it even more soul-destroying that they never get a chance to be anything else? Probably both.
I should've seen Prim's death coming since the first book, but I didn't. I could, however, see Coin's manipulations from a mile away, and it made me LOVE HER. (I was kind of hoping Plutarch was going to be the such a chessmaster to have been playing the hell out of everyone in the hopes that he could take over in the resulting chaos.)
Real or not real? I was surprised and quite pleased with the way the it handles The Crazy. The whole illusive nature of their lives would make anyone a little crazy, even without playoffs for the Greatest Game thrown in there. Of course most of the Victors would be messed up. Obviously. Clearly including the rebels, but also Peeta. Oh, dear Peeta, to warn them about the attack knowing what was about to happen to him. It's not Othered or hidden away, and some of them get better, and some of them don't. Some of them find a decent support network, and some of them turn to drugs.
It was a shocking and excellent writing choice to see the rebels, including Katniss, decide on having the Games again for the same reasons (to brutally demonstrate power and keep old resentments alive) and with the same justifications as the Capitol did (with the lie that picking at the old wounds will keep deaths down). The details about life after the Games for the Victors makes perfect sense, however difficult it is. Because these people are survivors. If the Capitol didn't keep grinding them down afterward, and making them rel-live the source of their trauma forever, they would have been much quicker to end up at the place of resistance the Quarter Quell eventually brought them to anyway. And Katniss, even in her willingness to perpetuate the cycle out of grief, breaks it anyway, and maybe things will improve. Maybe they won't. But sometimes during power struggles, sometimes while everyone's looking the other way, revolutions happen.
I wasn't particularly bothered one way or the other about the epilogue, which surprises me a little. I probably should have been - I really liked that Katniss hadn't wanted kids, and I don't like the "meet the right guy and he'll change your mind" narrative about them. But I don't feel as pissed as I should about it. Maybe because Katniss was really clear that she didn't want kids because she didn't want them to go through what she had gone through, and since the Capitol fell, she knows they wouldn't have to.