The Hunger Games 30 Day Challenge
So I did this challenge. I wasn't going to put that much work into it, but apparently I needed to gush and vent because I ended up writing down ALL THE FEELINGS about this series.
Warning: contains spoilers. Many spoilers. Big spoilers. All of them.
THE HUNGER GAMES 30 DAY CHALLENGE:
Day 1: Your favorite character:
Well, that has to be Katniss, doesn’t it? I’m not going to stick with a three-book series all the way to the end if I don’t love the protagonist.
At first it seemed like Katniss was going to be a pretty straightforward hero. She was a good person, protective of her family, slightly edgy what with sneaking around to hunt, brave when the situation called for it, and all in all very relatable.
But as the series progressed she became so much more than that. She was conflicted, irrational, wrathful, cruel, stubborn, selfish, and naive. And somehow, all of those things meshed with what she had always been. She is a gorgeous picture of what war does to a person. She began as a hero, and ended as almost an anti-hero.
It was Katniss’s character arc, more than the love triangle or the arena gimmicks, that hooked me into the series.
Day 2: Your least favorite character:
This is a tricky question, because I find it hard to dislike characters. I can’t dislike even the unrepentant villains because they are generally fascinating and important to the plot, and I can’t dislike the useless side characters if they’re nice people. For me to hate a character, they have to be the perfect storm of repulsive personality and literary incompetence. And as far as I remember, there are no characters like that in The Hunger Games.
But I have to choose someone. Okay.
From a Doylist perspective, my least favorite characters were Katniss’s prep team. They were kind of annoying, they were completely static characters, and they served no irreplaceable function in the story.
From a Watsonian perspective, it’s a tie between Snow and Coin. Do I really need to explain why?
Day 3: A character you hate that everyone loves:
This is going to seem stupid, but hear me out. Annie and Finnick's son.
No, no, I don't have anything against the kid. And I'm aware that he was not, strictly speaking, a character at all (being a fetus precludes one from any meaningful participation in the plot). But I hate his existence, and here's why.
The fucking trope of the fucking martyr who leaves his fucking wife with fucking child. I hate it. It's like writers feel bad for killing this poor woman's husband, so they throw her a bone in the form of a pregnancy. And then we supposedly coo over the fact that she'll raise a little clone of her dead husband. It's blatant audience-manipulation, especially when it has no effect on the plot other than, "LOOK IT'S SO BEAUTIFULLY TRAGIC!"
So instead of getting any kind of meaningful glimpse into how Annie Cresta was dealing with the loss of the love of her life, we get, "But it's okay because BABY." And I hate that.
Day 4: A character you love that everyone hates:
Snow.
No wait! Don't judge me yet. It's not that I like him as a person; obviously he's unrepentantly evil. But I love the way he's written and what he does for the story. The motif of the roses masking the scent of blood on him was genius. Some of the most chilling moments of Mockingjay had to do with Snow sending Katniss roses.
He was also complex, which I always appreciate in a villain. The best part was that he wasn't complex in a way that tried to justify his actions; his complexity just had to do with different facets of his evilness. But I have to admire the way he threw one last Hail Mary to get Katniss to kill Coin. Coin would have met a nasty end one way or another, but man did Snow ever play Katniss like a fiddle. And he died laughing to boot.
So yeah. I like a good villain. And Snow was a damn good villain.
Day 5: Your favorite fight/battle scene:
Katniss using the tracker jackers to defeat the careers. I know there are more cinematic scenes, scenes with higher stakes, and scenes where Katniss was more badass. But for some reason this one just works for me.
For one thing, it's about physically weaker girls working together to overcome a more powerful enemy. Katniss's bravery coupled with Rue's ingenuity was a combination that was able to decimate the careers.
For another, it kind of epitomizes the Hunger Games themselves. In the Games, there's a lot of skill and training and planning involved, but sometimes a tracker jacker nest explodes and everyone's shit gets fucked up. It almost foreshadows the themes of the later books: that in wartime, sometimes the only way to win is to do the thing that no one will see coming because it's too idiotically self-destructive to even contemplate. Putting yourself at risk of a tracker jacker sting. Destroying the Nut in District 2. Killing President Coin in front of a crowd of witnesses.
That, and the hallucinations were super-creepy and awesome.
Day 6: A scene that made you laugh:
…Geez, there is not much to laugh about in these books, is there? It'd probably have to be Finnick's, "Do you find this… distracting?" coupled with Boggs's, "Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear."
There are probably funnier scenes, but this one holds a special place in my heart. That may be because, in the middle of Mockingjay (a book that was basically a novel-length pain party) here was a little exchange that genuinely made me laugh. It made me like the characters instead of just pitying them.
Day 7: A scene that made you cry:
So. Many. To. Choose. From.
I'm going to skip past the obvious ones and go for a scene that I didn't expect to get me to cry, but that did. Gale and Katniss's conversation in Mockingjay, when Gale says that he looked at Peeta and thought "something selfish."
Even though I didn't like it, I could tell right from the beginning of the series that Peeta and Katniss were endgame. I think Gale knew it too. Peeta is perfect - selfless, pure, noble, loyal, and incorruptible. So Gale wasn't just admitting that he had had selfish thoughts about Peeta's tragedy. He was recognizing that Peeta would not have had those thoughts if the tables were turned. He was admitting that Peeta was the better man.
I think this scene was the point at which Gale realized that he and Katniss would never be together the way he had always hoped. Peeta had become so much a part of Katniss that he would never not come between them. Even if he was insane forever. Even if he was dead.
And I cried for Gale. That kind of goodness comes easily to Peeta, but Gale has to work at it. It was never his destiny to be a hero, as much as he would have liked it to be. And it's lines like these, where he admits his faults, where you can see that he recognizes what he's doing to himself by siding with Coin and making those bombs. He's selling his soul for a victory.
In order to make a world where Katniss can live in peace, he's making himself into a man unworthy of her love.
Day 8: The character you are most like:
Easy. Prim.
We're both animal-lovers. We're both destined for a medical career. But on a deeper level, I'm more like Prim than any of the main characters because all of the main characters are so extraordinarily broken. They were all corrupted by the war in one way or another. Prim remained steadfast, and she died trying to do what was unquestionably right.
I've never been in combat, but I don't think I would have the courage to sacrifice my body and my peace of mind the way so many of the characters did. I would be a medic, trying to find something absolute in a world of ambiguity. Even when everything was falling apart and Katniss didn't know which way was up, Prim knew exactly what she was doing. There's someone hurt. She was going to fix them.
And like Prim, I'd probably get killed.
Day 9: Your favorite quote:
"If we burn, you burn with us."
That really sums it all up, doesn't it? I love that Katniss says this in a moment of anger. She voices her rage, and through it she speaks this truth that I don't think she even fully understands yet. In order for anyone to win this war, they will have to give up everything. Katniss is thinking of the fact that, for Snow to win, he will have to destroy his means of keeping the Capitol in the style of living to which it is accustomed.
But this applies to Katniss too. For Katniss to win, she will need to sacrifice everything she loves. Gale. Prim. Even her relationship with Peeta will never be quite the same as it once was.
Katniss burned Snow in the end, but she burned with him.
Day 10: Peeta or Gale:
Gale.
Peeta is a good person. He's probably a better person than Gale. But in my opinion, he is a less-interesting character by far. In an effort to make him steadfast, Suzanne Collins made him static instead. He is defined by his love for Katniss, and he never changes or matures in any appreciable way. Getting hijacked doesn't count, because that was something that was done to him instead of something that he did, and everything after that was just him getting back to base zero. He never gets past what he was in the beginning. He never needs to. Because he was always perfect.
Gale is not perfect. Gale is complicated and contradictory and broken in the same way that Katniss is, which is why I prefer to read about the two of them than about Peeta. Gale just has so much more going on (including motivations outside of loving Katniss, which is more than I can say for Peeta). Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he fails. Sometimes you agree with him and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you feel for him and sometimes you think he's an idiot. And that's how it should be. That's what makes a character worth reading about.
Day 11: Something you hate about the series:
Mwahahaha. Here's where I get to unload.
This might not be a popular opinion, but the thing I hate most about the series is the massive drop in quality of Mockingjay compared to the other books.
The Hunger Games was a really good book. It was a good story and it was well written. I had my issues with Catching Fire - it was still well written, but I think Suzanne Collins limited herself by sending Katniss back into the arena. Katniss should have taken on a more central role in the planning of the resistance at this stage instead of being kept in the dark. I feel like there were some missed opportunities for character development.
But then Mockingjay happened, and it was a fucking mess. While certain elements worked and the end result is a pretty strong trilogy, in my opinion Mockingjay was neither a good story nor a well-written one.
One of the main problems with this book was the pacing. The first two books were paced perfectly; everything happened right when it needed to and every action flowed into the next. Mockingjay jumped around like it didn't know where it was going, and then ended before it got the chance to wrap up its many storylines with any kind of grace.
But my biggest problems with this book come from its handling of the characters. Annie got almost no characterization after so much buildup. Finnick died so suddenly and so vaguely that I actually had to re-read that page to figure out what had happened. Peeta getting hijacked was a huge distraction that added very little to the plot besides making him a giant woobie. Not nearly enough time was spent on Gale's corruption, to the point that I didn't understand why Katniss was so mad at him half the time. Johanna, one of my very favorite characters, disappeared suddenly and was never heard from again.
But the worst was Katniss. I kept expecting Katniss's role in the war to grow with each book. In the first book she was a pawn. In the second she had become important to the resistance. In the third, she should have stepped up and begun driving events. But instead, she was so frustratingly passive. In fact, after the end of Catching Fire I could almost start to predict how major act breaks would go down:
1. Something big would happen.
2. Katniss would go comatose/catatonic/imprisoned for a while.
3. When Katniss rejoined the world, things would have happened without her and she would have to readjust.
This is so hair-pullingly counterintuitive that I can't even describe it. Why couldn't she be an active participant? Why couldn't she have showed her determination by returning under her own power after the propo in District 8? Why couldn't she have remained conscious to see the aftermath of the firefight in District 2? Why couldn't she have received less-severe burns from the bombing that killed Prim, so that she would have been aware enough to process her grief in a meaningful way? Why couldn't she have participated in her own defense for the killing of President Coin?
Throughout the book, I get the sense of things happening around Katniss, but she actually accomplishes very little. It was a hugely disappointing finale for a character that I love.
Lots of people say that this book made them sad. It made me angry.
Day 12: A character you wish hadn't died:
Snow.
When Katniss killed Coin, she made a choice. She had one arrow, and she had to choose whether to use it on the man who had orchestrated the suffering of millions or the woman who had ordered the death of her sister. Or if you're feeling more charitable toward Katniss, you could look at them as the man who had destroyed Panem's past and the woman poised to destroy its future.
The point is that it was a choice, and I think Katniss made the right one. But it kind of lost all its power when Snow was killed anyway. Katniss got to have it both ways, and suddenly her choice wasn't as meaningful.
What if Snow had used the confusion to activate his final backup plan and escape? Wouldn't that have gotten you right in the gut to know that Katniss had killed Coin at the expense of her only chance to kill Snow?
That would have meant something.
Day 13: A character you wish had died:
This might sound weird, considering the fact that I absolutely adore her, but Johanna Mason. It's not because I wish death on her - far from it. It's because death would have suited her character and the themes of the series perfectly.
Johanna was Katniss's story arc taken to its logical conclusion - she was the woman who had been fighting for so long that she had lost everyone and everything that she cared about. And it made her powerful. It made her unbreakable. It made her immune to the jabberjays and to blackmail. She didn't give a fuck anymore.
And maybe it would have been too on-the-nose to kill a woman like that. But that's the beauty of it. Because if she had died, she should have died along with Finnick, covering Katniss's escape.
Think about it. Instead of losing Leeg and whoever else (I honestly didn't care; who were the rest of the super-special squad who got barely any characterization?), we would have lost Johanna and Finnick in one fell swoop. It would have been emotionally devastating, because they are both characters who we actually know and love. And how thematically beautiful would it have been? The man who had everything to lose standing in friendship beside the woman who had nothing to lose. The two of them dying to save the Mockingjay.
It would have been a way better ending for Johanna than failing her final combat test and DROPPING OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH (not that I'm bitter).
Day 14: Your favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss):
From the 74th Hunger Games: Foxface. I love an enigma. She kept popping up in the coolest ways, but we never heard her speak or learned her real name. She played the Game completely differently from anyone else. While everyone else was making alliances and killing other tributes, she was just hiding out and being crafty. She might have won if not for a spot of bad luck, and she would have done it without having to make a single kill or shed a drop of blood. How cool is that?
From the Quarter Quell: Mags. I love that, while everyone else had big plans for the Quarter Quell, Mags just did not give a shit. She knew that she was going to die from the moment she volunteered for Annie. Her whole game revolved around trying to find a time and place to make her death mean something. And she did it. She saved her pupil and the Mockingjay while showing mind-boggling bravery in the face of agonizing death. What a badass.
Day 15: Your least favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss):
From the 74th Hunger Games: Glimmer. Really? You're a career tribute and you're carrying around a bow that you don't know how to use just because it's pretty? You dumbass.
From the Quarter Quell: Gloss. District 1 is easy to hate, aren't they? Gloss and Cashmere were smarmy in the interviews and ruthless in the arena. I don't really hate them, but I probably like them least. Gloss only edges out his sister as my least favorite because he killed Wiress, and I loved Wiress.
Day 16: A question you wish had been answered in the book:
What the flying fuck happened to Johanna? So this driven, bloodthirsty, passionate warrior gets sidelined by District 13. So what, did she just sit on her ass for the rest of the war? What gives?
Day 17: The worst death:
That's not even a contest. It's Rue, of course.
The thing is, Rue's death should not have been the saddest. She was Katniss's first introduction to losing someone you love in the pursuit of victory, but she was not the last and she was not the most important. Finnick's death should have affected me more that Rue's. Prim's definitely should have.
But they didn't, because while Suzanne Collins dropped the ball on Finnick's and Prim's deaths, she wrote Rue's perfectly. She made me feel the loss instead of just rushing past it to get to the next thing. She showed me Katniss's pain instead of making her practically catatonic for months afterwards.
Rue's death was the perfect mix of sacrifice, tragedy, and strength. The raw pain of it was well-felt, but tempered by Katniss's kindness and District 11's dearly-bought thanks to her. And that loaf of bread meant more to me than all the hurried, clumsy fallout at the end of Mockingjay.
Day 18: A song that reminds you of the series:
Be Yourself by Audioslave.
Maybe the music doesn't match the series very well, but I just love the lyrics. This song is all about the things life throws at you, the different circumstances people find themselves in, and the importance of maintaining one's integrity in the face of it all.
Someone gets excited in a chapel yard,
Catches a bouquet,
Another lays a dozen white roses on a grave.
That's Annie, isn't it? With a side of Snow's white roses. I love that image of Annie honoring Finnick while also giving a big "fuck you" to the man responsible for his death. Turning the roses that one represented cruelty into a memorial for a dark time now passed.
And this verse speaks straight to Peeta and Gale:
Someone finds salvation in everyone,
Another only pain…
Someone swears his true love until the end of time,
Another runs away.
Separate or united, healthy or insane.
And this beautiful, pained bridge is all Katniss:
Even when you've paid enough,
Been pulled apart or been held up,
Every single memory of the good or bad faces of luck.
Don't lose any sleep tonight,
I'm sure everything will end up alright.
You may win or lose,
But to be yourself is all that you can do.
Day 19: Your favorite pairing:
Finnick/Annie. Even though they didn't get much focus in the story, this was the relationship that felt the healthiest and most genuine to me. That one short description of them crashing into each other when they were reunited, almost falling over in their happiness and relief, was more loving to me than all of Katniss's romantic prospects combined. And Finnick's "she crept up on me" just melts my heart. Annie wasn't the obvious choice. She wasn't the one he expected. But somehow she became the one who he couldn't imagine his life without. That kind of slow realization is so much more meaningful than Peeta's blind devotion or even Gale's passionate admiration. It is calm and true. They love each other. It's as simple as that.
Day 20: Your least favorite pairing:
Peeta/Katniss. If you like this pairing, turn back now. I am going to rip it to shreds.
There is nothing romantic about this pairing. Nothing. Most of the scenes that shippers hold up as proof of their love actually make my skin crawl. Let's start with Peeta's big declaration of love before the first Games. WHAT THE HELL? Plenty of people fantasize about having a person love them from afar, but in reality it is a little creepy. Why didn't Peeta ever approach Katniss or strike up a friendship with her when they were kids? The answer, I think, is because he had already put her on a pedestal. To get to know her would be to jeopardize his fantasy of her.
Yes, the thing with the bread was very sweet. But Katniss had the right reaction to it: it was an inexplicably nice thing for someone to do, and she would always be grateful, but she didn't know Peeta and she didn't pretend to. Peeta had the wrong reaction: "I WILL LOVE HER FOREVER."
Now we get to the events of the trilogy. And let me tell you right now, if you're looking for evidence of meaningful love between these two characters, you'd better throw out the first book entirely. The Hunger Games was not a love story. At all. Throughout The Hunger Games, I was starkly aware of the same thing that Katniss was starkly aware of: that if she didn't act like she was in love with Peeta, they would both die. Of course there are some moments that suggest that she genuinely cares for him, but that's hardly strange considering the fact that he's her only ally. As for any romantic scenes, and especially the scene in the cave, they read to me more like emotional blackmail than a budding romance.
To Peeta's credit, he was unaware of the deception and he handled the revelation as gracefully as could possibly be expected. (Peeta being blameless will become a theme, by the way.)
Catching Fire did a better job of convincing me that Katniss might have feelings for Peeta. There were a few genuine moments between the two of them. But the other characters and even the narration framed their relationship in a very creepy way. It was almost as if it was implied that, since Peeta loved Katniss so much, Katniss owed him her love in return.
That is not how it works.
Peeta, as previously stated, put Katniss on a pedestal. He was nice to her. He did everything for her. Even Haymitch told Katniss, "You could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve him." But the notion that a man can "earn" a woman's love by loving her enough or doing enough nice things for her is a dangerous one. It removes the woman's autonomy. It was very nice that Peeta loved Katniss so much, but the real question becomes this: did Katniss love Peeta? And I can find no real compelling evidence that she did. (The story is told in first person. This evidence should not have been difficult to find.)
In light of that, Haymitch's observation starts to sound suspiciously like, "You're an ungrateful bitch." And I know there are a lot of women who have heard that one before.
So let's be clear. Peeta is a good person. Katniss owes him her life. She owes him her gratitude. But she does not owe him her love.
And then Peeta got hijacked. This was the stupidest plot device I can think of. Mockingjay was Collins's chance to show me how Katniss and Peeta had grown past the unfortunate implications of their relationship in the first two books. Peeta should have become disillusioned with Katniss on his own, realizing that the real person could not live up to the lofty expectations he had created while dreaming about her over the years. Katniss's love for him should have grown organically in the absence of any pressure. And they should have come back together, wiser and more able to handle an adult relationship.
Instead, the hijacking removed all impetus and blame from Peeta (remember that pattern?). His disillusionment with Katniss was something that was done to him, not a realization that he came to himself. It removed all meaning from it.
Now, aside from the romance arc, I might have bought the hijacking as a plot device if it had made Peeta into a serious threat. But it just made him into a woobie, and that adds nothing to anything.
And then there's the ending. I'm not even going to get into the implication that Peeta pressured Katniss into bearing children that she didn't want, because that's just too creepy to contemplate. Just read this passage:
What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."
There's one word in this passage that completely destroys any romance that it might have held. "So." It implies causation. Fact, so conclusion. Impetus, so action. I need him, so I tell him that I love him.
It is Gale's prediction come to life. Katniss chose the man who she couldn't survive without. She chose passionlessly, emotionlessly, heartlessly. She took what she needed and she told Peeta that she loved him because that's what he wanted to hear.
This pairing is full of sawdust and ashes and I despise it.
(Disclaimer: I read way too far into absolutely everything. I understand why fans of the series like Peeta. I think it's good that young girls fantasize about a man who loves them and treats them well. There are worse fantasies. But I also see a lot of untapped darkness and subconscious sexism in this pairing, and I can't bring myself to like it.)
Day 21: A pairing you don't get:
Gale/Madge. Madge is such a minor character, and while her relationship with Gale had the potential to be interesting it never really came up after the very beginning of the first book. I'm pretty sure Peeta/Katniss shippers just glommed onto this pairing as a way of pairing Gale off with someone. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've supported cracky ships for the sole purpose of pairing off a third wheel. I just don't care for this particular one).
Day 22: Your favorite book of the three:
The Hunger Games, hands down. This was the book that was paced to within an inch of its life, where everything was fresh and meaningful. The exposition, characterization, relationships, and gravitas was all right where it needed to be with nothing wasted. When a scene needed lingering, it lingered. And while I think the sequels were more thematically powerful, they didn't suck me in the way the first book did.
Day 23: Your favorite secondary character:
Cinna. My love for Cinna comes down to one line. "How despicable we must seem to you." Cinna gets it. He doesn't take his Capitol lifestyle for granted, and he empathizes with Katniss's disgust for its decadence. This makes me wonder what his backstory is. Most people who are raised in privilege can't see it unless it is pointed out to them in a big way. Did he figure things out on his own? Did something happen to him to make him understand the imbalance of power in Panem? Was he not originally from the Capitol?
The fact that these questions are never answered makes him a more interesting and enigmatic person, I think, but I still would have liked to see and learn more of him.
Day 24: Your least favorite secondary character:
Oh, I dunno. Effie Trinket? She was well-written in that she served her purpose, but that didn't stop her from getting on my nerves.
Day 25: Your dream cast:
Here's my problem - I'm not familiar with very many young actors. So I'm going to cheat by assuming that I can age actors down to fit the roles.
Hillary Swank as Katniss. I'm sure Jennifer Lawrence will do fine, but I don't think she looks quite fierce enough to be Katniss. Hillary Swank has that innocent openness about her, but she also gives off the impression that she can kick your ass.
David Boreanaz as Gale. Picture Angel from Season 1 of Buffy. Yeah. Plus, he broods so well.
Jensen Ackles as Finnick. Those green eyes. That lovely body. That charm. That swag. Oh yeah.
Helena Bonham Carter as Johanna. No one does unhinged-but-vulnerable like this woman.
I don't really have an opinion on the rest.
(ETA 1/20/13: After spending some time in fandom, I've realized that I'm uncomfortable with white actors playing characters from the Seam. Racism is a subtle but important theme of the books, and while Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch's race is never specified I do not think they are white.)
Day 26: Your favorite scene in The Hunger Games:
The Reaping. While I loved the first book, it originally struck me as simply-written and somewhat shallow. It was the Reaping that brought me around. Suzanne Collins did an excellent job of showing us Katniss's turmoil and bravery. And District 12's salute quite literally brought tears to my eyes. It was so simple and genuine, while also being chilling. It was said that the salute was normally only used at funerals. That's what made it so powerful: as far as anyone was concerned at that point, Katniss was already dead.
This was where shit got real.
Day 27: Your favorite scene in Catching Fire:
The uprising in District 11. I love this scene for the same reason I love the Reaping in the first book - apparently I'm a sucker for crowds expressing solidarity and courage in unison. But here, the salute meant even more than it had at the Reaping. The symbolism of it had grown from a respectful goodbye for a girl being sent to her death into a show of faith and rebellion. And the fact that it was set off by Rue's whistle is a perfect blending of emotional touchstones.
Day 28: Your favorite scene in Mockingjay:
The battle on the rooftop at District 8. This is self-indulgent of me, but I really liked this scene for the Gale/Katniss interaction. This was one of the few times when they were shown to be completely in sync, doing their badass thing. The logic of bows bringing down planes nonwithstanding, this was a very enjoyable, cathartic moment.
Day 29: Your favorite thing about the entire series:
The fact that it's a young adult series with a female protagonist that doesn't shy away from really dark themes like war, corruption, and revolution. Yeah, I have some quibbles about the romance side plots, but on the whole I appreciate what the series was trying to accomplish. And I can't even describe how happy it makes me that a series told from a girl's point of view is now seen as being for both girls and boys.
Day 30: A book/series that you would rec to fellow fans:
The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix.
Necromancers. Order/Chaos magic. Eldritch abominations in the shape of talking housepets. A female protagonist who actually wears practical armor.
I can't even… I don't even know how to… It's… Just read it. Do it. Go. Read.
Shhhh. Shh. Just read it.
Warning: contains spoilers. Many spoilers. Big spoilers. All of them.
THE HUNGER GAMES 30 DAY CHALLENGE:
Day 1: Your favorite character:
Well, that has to be Katniss, doesn’t it? I’m not going to stick with a three-book series all the way to the end if I don’t love the protagonist.
At first it seemed like Katniss was going to be a pretty straightforward hero. She was a good person, protective of her family, slightly edgy what with sneaking around to hunt, brave when the situation called for it, and all in all very relatable.
But as the series progressed she became so much more than that. She was conflicted, irrational, wrathful, cruel, stubborn, selfish, and naive. And somehow, all of those things meshed with what she had always been. She is a gorgeous picture of what war does to a person. She began as a hero, and ended as almost an anti-hero.
It was Katniss’s character arc, more than the love triangle or the arena gimmicks, that hooked me into the series.
Day 2: Your least favorite character:
This is a tricky question, because I find it hard to dislike characters. I can’t dislike even the unrepentant villains because they are generally fascinating and important to the plot, and I can’t dislike the useless side characters if they’re nice people. For me to hate a character, they have to be the perfect storm of repulsive personality and literary incompetence. And as far as I remember, there are no characters like that in The Hunger Games.
But I have to choose someone. Okay.
From a Doylist perspective, my least favorite characters were Katniss’s prep team. They were kind of annoying, they were completely static characters, and they served no irreplaceable function in the story.
From a Watsonian perspective, it’s a tie between Snow and Coin. Do I really need to explain why?
Day 3: A character you hate that everyone loves:
This is going to seem stupid, but hear me out. Annie and Finnick's son.
No, no, I don't have anything against the kid. And I'm aware that he was not, strictly speaking, a character at all (being a fetus precludes one from any meaningful participation in the plot). But I hate his existence, and here's why.
The fucking trope of the fucking martyr who leaves his fucking wife with fucking child. I hate it. It's like writers feel bad for killing this poor woman's husband, so they throw her a bone in the form of a pregnancy. And then we supposedly coo over the fact that she'll raise a little clone of her dead husband. It's blatant audience-manipulation, especially when it has no effect on the plot other than, "LOOK IT'S SO BEAUTIFULLY TRAGIC!"
So instead of getting any kind of meaningful glimpse into how Annie Cresta was dealing with the loss of the love of her life, we get, "But it's okay because BABY." And I hate that.
Day 4: A character you love that everyone hates:
Snow.
No wait! Don't judge me yet. It's not that I like him as a person; obviously he's unrepentantly evil. But I love the way he's written and what he does for the story. The motif of the roses masking the scent of blood on him was genius. Some of the most chilling moments of Mockingjay had to do with Snow sending Katniss roses.
He was also complex, which I always appreciate in a villain. The best part was that he wasn't complex in a way that tried to justify his actions; his complexity just had to do with different facets of his evilness. But I have to admire the way he threw one last Hail Mary to get Katniss to kill Coin. Coin would have met a nasty end one way or another, but man did Snow ever play Katniss like a fiddle. And he died laughing to boot.
So yeah. I like a good villain. And Snow was a damn good villain.
Day 5: Your favorite fight/battle scene:
Katniss using the tracker jackers to defeat the careers. I know there are more cinematic scenes, scenes with higher stakes, and scenes where Katniss was more badass. But for some reason this one just works for me.
For one thing, it's about physically weaker girls working together to overcome a more powerful enemy. Katniss's bravery coupled with Rue's ingenuity was a combination that was able to decimate the careers.
For another, it kind of epitomizes the Hunger Games themselves. In the Games, there's a lot of skill and training and planning involved, but sometimes a tracker jacker nest explodes and everyone's shit gets fucked up. It almost foreshadows the themes of the later books: that in wartime, sometimes the only way to win is to do the thing that no one will see coming because it's too idiotically self-destructive to even contemplate. Putting yourself at risk of a tracker jacker sting. Destroying the Nut in District 2. Killing President Coin in front of a crowd of witnesses.
That, and the hallucinations were super-creepy and awesome.
Day 6: A scene that made you laugh:
…Geez, there is not much to laugh about in these books, is there? It'd probably have to be Finnick's, "Do you find this… distracting?" coupled with Boggs's, "Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear."
There are probably funnier scenes, but this one holds a special place in my heart. That may be because, in the middle of Mockingjay (a book that was basically a novel-length pain party) here was a little exchange that genuinely made me laugh. It made me like the characters instead of just pitying them.
Day 7: A scene that made you cry:
So. Many. To. Choose. From.
I'm going to skip past the obvious ones and go for a scene that I didn't expect to get me to cry, but that did. Gale and Katniss's conversation in Mockingjay, when Gale says that he looked at Peeta and thought "something selfish."
Even though I didn't like it, I could tell right from the beginning of the series that Peeta and Katniss were endgame. I think Gale knew it too. Peeta is perfect - selfless, pure, noble, loyal, and incorruptible. So Gale wasn't just admitting that he had had selfish thoughts about Peeta's tragedy. He was recognizing that Peeta would not have had those thoughts if the tables were turned. He was admitting that Peeta was the better man.
I think this scene was the point at which Gale realized that he and Katniss would never be together the way he had always hoped. Peeta had become so much a part of Katniss that he would never not come between them. Even if he was insane forever. Even if he was dead.
And I cried for Gale. That kind of goodness comes easily to Peeta, but Gale has to work at it. It was never his destiny to be a hero, as much as he would have liked it to be. And it's lines like these, where he admits his faults, where you can see that he recognizes what he's doing to himself by siding with Coin and making those bombs. He's selling his soul for a victory.
In order to make a world where Katniss can live in peace, he's making himself into a man unworthy of her love.
Day 8: The character you are most like:
Easy. Prim.
We're both animal-lovers. We're both destined for a medical career. But on a deeper level, I'm more like Prim than any of the main characters because all of the main characters are so extraordinarily broken. They were all corrupted by the war in one way or another. Prim remained steadfast, and she died trying to do what was unquestionably right.
I've never been in combat, but I don't think I would have the courage to sacrifice my body and my peace of mind the way so many of the characters did. I would be a medic, trying to find something absolute in a world of ambiguity. Even when everything was falling apart and Katniss didn't know which way was up, Prim knew exactly what she was doing. There's someone hurt. She was going to fix them.
And like Prim, I'd probably get killed.
Day 9: Your favorite quote:
"If we burn, you burn with us."
That really sums it all up, doesn't it? I love that Katniss says this in a moment of anger. She voices her rage, and through it she speaks this truth that I don't think she even fully understands yet. In order for anyone to win this war, they will have to give up everything. Katniss is thinking of the fact that, for Snow to win, he will have to destroy his means of keeping the Capitol in the style of living to which it is accustomed.
But this applies to Katniss too. For Katniss to win, she will need to sacrifice everything she loves. Gale. Prim. Even her relationship with Peeta will never be quite the same as it once was.
Katniss burned Snow in the end, but she burned with him.
Day 10: Peeta or Gale:
Gale.
Peeta is a good person. He's probably a better person than Gale. But in my opinion, he is a less-interesting character by far. In an effort to make him steadfast, Suzanne Collins made him static instead. He is defined by his love for Katniss, and he never changes or matures in any appreciable way. Getting hijacked doesn't count, because that was something that was done to him instead of something that he did, and everything after that was just him getting back to base zero. He never gets past what he was in the beginning. He never needs to. Because he was always perfect.
Gale is not perfect. Gale is complicated and contradictory and broken in the same way that Katniss is, which is why I prefer to read about the two of them than about Peeta. Gale just has so much more going on (including motivations outside of loving Katniss, which is more than I can say for Peeta). Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he fails. Sometimes you agree with him and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you feel for him and sometimes you think he's an idiot. And that's how it should be. That's what makes a character worth reading about.
Day 11: Something you hate about the series:
Mwahahaha. Here's where I get to unload.
This might not be a popular opinion, but the thing I hate most about the series is the massive drop in quality of Mockingjay compared to the other books.
The Hunger Games was a really good book. It was a good story and it was well written. I had my issues with Catching Fire - it was still well written, but I think Suzanne Collins limited herself by sending Katniss back into the arena. Katniss should have taken on a more central role in the planning of the resistance at this stage instead of being kept in the dark. I feel like there were some missed opportunities for character development.
But then Mockingjay happened, and it was a fucking mess. While certain elements worked and the end result is a pretty strong trilogy, in my opinion Mockingjay was neither a good story nor a well-written one.
One of the main problems with this book was the pacing. The first two books were paced perfectly; everything happened right when it needed to and every action flowed into the next. Mockingjay jumped around like it didn't know where it was going, and then ended before it got the chance to wrap up its many storylines with any kind of grace.
But my biggest problems with this book come from its handling of the characters. Annie got almost no characterization after so much buildup. Finnick died so suddenly and so vaguely that I actually had to re-read that page to figure out what had happened. Peeta getting hijacked was a huge distraction that added very little to the plot besides making him a giant woobie. Not nearly enough time was spent on Gale's corruption, to the point that I didn't understand why Katniss was so mad at him half the time. Johanna, one of my very favorite characters, disappeared suddenly and was never heard from again.
But the worst was Katniss. I kept expecting Katniss's role in the war to grow with each book. In the first book she was a pawn. In the second she had become important to the resistance. In the third, she should have stepped up and begun driving events. But instead, she was so frustratingly passive. In fact, after the end of Catching Fire I could almost start to predict how major act breaks would go down:
1. Something big would happen.
2. Katniss would go comatose/catatonic/imprisoned for a while.
3. When Katniss rejoined the world, things would have happened without her and she would have to readjust.
This is so hair-pullingly counterintuitive that I can't even describe it. Why couldn't she be an active participant? Why couldn't she have showed her determination by returning under her own power after the propo in District 8? Why couldn't she have remained conscious to see the aftermath of the firefight in District 2? Why couldn't she have received less-severe burns from the bombing that killed Prim, so that she would have been aware enough to process her grief in a meaningful way? Why couldn't she have participated in her own defense for the killing of President Coin?
Throughout the book, I get the sense of things happening around Katniss, but she actually accomplishes very little. It was a hugely disappointing finale for a character that I love.
Lots of people say that this book made them sad. It made me angry.
Day 12: A character you wish hadn't died:
Snow.
When Katniss killed Coin, she made a choice. She had one arrow, and she had to choose whether to use it on the man who had orchestrated the suffering of millions or the woman who had ordered the death of her sister. Or if you're feeling more charitable toward Katniss, you could look at them as the man who had destroyed Panem's past and the woman poised to destroy its future.
The point is that it was a choice, and I think Katniss made the right one. But it kind of lost all its power when Snow was killed anyway. Katniss got to have it both ways, and suddenly her choice wasn't as meaningful.
What if Snow had used the confusion to activate his final backup plan and escape? Wouldn't that have gotten you right in the gut to know that Katniss had killed Coin at the expense of her only chance to kill Snow?
That would have meant something.
Day 13: A character you wish had died:
This might sound weird, considering the fact that I absolutely adore her, but Johanna Mason. It's not because I wish death on her - far from it. It's because death would have suited her character and the themes of the series perfectly.
Johanna was Katniss's story arc taken to its logical conclusion - she was the woman who had been fighting for so long that she had lost everyone and everything that she cared about. And it made her powerful. It made her unbreakable. It made her immune to the jabberjays and to blackmail. She didn't give a fuck anymore.
And maybe it would have been too on-the-nose to kill a woman like that. But that's the beauty of it. Because if she had died, she should have died along with Finnick, covering Katniss's escape.
Think about it. Instead of losing Leeg and whoever else (I honestly didn't care; who were the rest of the super-special squad who got barely any characterization?), we would have lost Johanna and Finnick in one fell swoop. It would have been emotionally devastating, because they are both characters who we actually know and love. And how thematically beautiful would it have been? The man who had everything to lose standing in friendship beside the woman who had nothing to lose. The two of them dying to save the Mockingjay.
It would have been a way better ending for Johanna than failing her final combat test and DROPPING OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH (not that I'm bitter).
Day 14: Your favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss):
From the 74th Hunger Games: Foxface. I love an enigma. She kept popping up in the coolest ways, but we never heard her speak or learned her real name. She played the Game completely differently from anyone else. While everyone else was making alliances and killing other tributes, she was just hiding out and being crafty. She might have won if not for a spot of bad luck, and she would have done it without having to make a single kill or shed a drop of blood. How cool is that?
From the Quarter Quell: Mags. I love that, while everyone else had big plans for the Quarter Quell, Mags just did not give a shit. She knew that she was going to die from the moment she volunteered for Annie. Her whole game revolved around trying to find a time and place to make her death mean something. And she did it. She saved her pupil and the Mockingjay while showing mind-boggling bravery in the face of agonizing death. What a badass.
Day 15: Your least favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss):
From the 74th Hunger Games: Glimmer. Really? You're a career tribute and you're carrying around a bow that you don't know how to use just because it's pretty? You dumbass.
From the Quarter Quell: Gloss. District 1 is easy to hate, aren't they? Gloss and Cashmere were smarmy in the interviews and ruthless in the arena. I don't really hate them, but I probably like them least. Gloss only edges out his sister as my least favorite because he killed Wiress, and I loved Wiress.
Day 16: A question you wish had been answered in the book:
What the flying fuck happened to Johanna? So this driven, bloodthirsty, passionate warrior gets sidelined by District 13. So what, did she just sit on her ass for the rest of the war? What gives?
Day 17: The worst death:
That's not even a contest. It's Rue, of course.
The thing is, Rue's death should not have been the saddest. She was Katniss's first introduction to losing someone you love in the pursuit of victory, but she was not the last and she was not the most important. Finnick's death should have affected me more that Rue's. Prim's definitely should have.
But they didn't, because while Suzanne Collins dropped the ball on Finnick's and Prim's deaths, she wrote Rue's perfectly. She made me feel the loss instead of just rushing past it to get to the next thing. She showed me Katniss's pain instead of making her practically catatonic for months afterwards.
Rue's death was the perfect mix of sacrifice, tragedy, and strength. The raw pain of it was well-felt, but tempered by Katniss's kindness and District 11's dearly-bought thanks to her. And that loaf of bread meant more to me than all the hurried, clumsy fallout at the end of Mockingjay.
Day 18: A song that reminds you of the series:
Be Yourself by Audioslave.
Maybe the music doesn't match the series very well, but I just love the lyrics. This song is all about the things life throws at you, the different circumstances people find themselves in, and the importance of maintaining one's integrity in the face of it all.
Someone gets excited in a chapel yard,
Catches a bouquet,
Another lays a dozen white roses on a grave.
That's Annie, isn't it? With a side of Snow's white roses. I love that image of Annie honoring Finnick while also giving a big "fuck you" to the man responsible for his death. Turning the roses that one represented cruelty into a memorial for a dark time now passed.
And this verse speaks straight to Peeta and Gale:
Someone finds salvation in everyone,
Another only pain…
Someone swears his true love until the end of time,
Another runs away.
Separate or united, healthy or insane.
And this beautiful, pained bridge is all Katniss:
Even when you've paid enough,
Been pulled apart or been held up,
Every single memory of the good or bad faces of luck.
Don't lose any sleep tonight,
I'm sure everything will end up alright.
You may win or lose,
But to be yourself is all that you can do.
Day 19: Your favorite pairing:
Finnick/Annie. Even though they didn't get much focus in the story, this was the relationship that felt the healthiest and most genuine to me. That one short description of them crashing into each other when they were reunited, almost falling over in their happiness and relief, was more loving to me than all of Katniss's romantic prospects combined. And Finnick's "she crept up on me" just melts my heart. Annie wasn't the obvious choice. She wasn't the one he expected. But somehow she became the one who he couldn't imagine his life without. That kind of slow realization is so much more meaningful than Peeta's blind devotion or even Gale's passionate admiration. It is calm and true. They love each other. It's as simple as that.
Day 20: Your least favorite pairing:
Peeta/Katniss. If you like this pairing, turn back now. I am going to rip it to shreds.
There is nothing romantic about this pairing. Nothing. Most of the scenes that shippers hold up as proof of their love actually make my skin crawl. Let's start with Peeta's big declaration of love before the first Games. WHAT THE HELL? Plenty of people fantasize about having a person love them from afar, but in reality it is a little creepy. Why didn't Peeta ever approach Katniss or strike up a friendship with her when they were kids? The answer, I think, is because he had already put her on a pedestal. To get to know her would be to jeopardize his fantasy of her.
Yes, the thing with the bread was very sweet. But Katniss had the right reaction to it: it was an inexplicably nice thing for someone to do, and she would always be grateful, but she didn't know Peeta and she didn't pretend to. Peeta had the wrong reaction: "I WILL LOVE HER FOREVER."
Now we get to the events of the trilogy. And let me tell you right now, if you're looking for evidence of meaningful love between these two characters, you'd better throw out the first book entirely. The Hunger Games was not a love story. At all. Throughout The Hunger Games, I was starkly aware of the same thing that Katniss was starkly aware of: that if she didn't act like she was in love with Peeta, they would both die. Of course there are some moments that suggest that she genuinely cares for him, but that's hardly strange considering the fact that he's her only ally. As for any romantic scenes, and especially the scene in the cave, they read to me more like emotional blackmail than a budding romance.
To Peeta's credit, he was unaware of the deception and he handled the revelation as gracefully as could possibly be expected. (Peeta being blameless will become a theme, by the way.)
Catching Fire did a better job of convincing me that Katniss might have feelings for Peeta. There were a few genuine moments between the two of them. But the other characters and even the narration framed their relationship in a very creepy way. It was almost as if it was implied that, since Peeta loved Katniss so much, Katniss owed him her love in return.
That is not how it works.
Peeta, as previously stated, put Katniss on a pedestal. He was nice to her. He did everything for her. Even Haymitch told Katniss, "You could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve him." But the notion that a man can "earn" a woman's love by loving her enough or doing enough nice things for her is a dangerous one. It removes the woman's autonomy. It was very nice that Peeta loved Katniss so much, but the real question becomes this: did Katniss love Peeta? And I can find no real compelling evidence that she did. (The story is told in first person. This evidence should not have been difficult to find.)
In light of that, Haymitch's observation starts to sound suspiciously like, "You're an ungrateful bitch." And I know there are a lot of women who have heard that one before.
So let's be clear. Peeta is a good person. Katniss owes him her life. She owes him her gratitude. But she does not owe him her love.
And then Peeta got hijacked. This was the stupidest plot device I can think of. Mockingjay was Collins's chance to show me how Katniss and Peeta had grown past the unfortunate implications of their relationship in the first two books. Peeta should have become disillusioned with Katniss on his own, realizing that the real person could not live up to the lofty expectations he had created while dreaming about her over the years. Katniss's love for him should have grown organically in the absence of any pressure. And they should have come back together, wiser and more able to handle an adult relationship.
Instead, the hijacking removed all impetus and blame from Peeta (remember that pattern?). His disillusionment with Katniss was something that was done to him, not a realization that he came to himself. It removed all meaning from it.
Now, aside from the romance arc, I might have bought the hijacking as a plot device if it had made Peeta into a serious threat. But it just made him into a woobie, and that adds nothing to anything.
And then there's the ending. I'm not even going to get into the implication that Peeta pressured Katniss into bearing children that she didn't want, because that's just too creepy to contemplate. Just read this passage:
What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."
There's one word in this passage that completely destroys any romance that it might have held. "So." It implies causation. Fact, so conclusion. Impetus, so action. I need him, so I tell him that I love him.
It is Gale's prediction come to life. Katniss chose the man who she couldn't survive without. She chose passionlessly, emotionlessly, heartlessly. She took what she needed and she told Peeta that she loved him because that's what he wanted to hear.
This pairing is full of sawdust and ashes and I despise it.
(Disclaimer: I read way too far into absolutely everything. I understand why fans of the series like Peeta. I think it's good that young girls fantasize about a man who loves them and treats them well. There are worse fantasies. But I also see a lot of untapped darkness and subconscious sexism in this pairing, and I can't bring myself to like it.)
Day 21: A pairing you don't get:
Gale/Madge. Madge is such a minor character, and while her relationship with Gale had the potential to be interesting it never really came up after the very beginning of the first book. I'm pretty sure Peeta/Katniss shippers just glommed onto this pairing as a way of pairing Gale off with someone. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've supported cracky ships for the sole purpose of pairing off a third wheel. I just don't care for this particular one).
Day 22: Your favorite book of the three:
The Hunger Games, hands down. This was the book that was paced to within an inch of its life, where everything was fresh and meaningful. The exposition, characterization, relationships, and gravitas was all right where it needed to be with nothing wasted. When a scene needed lingering, it lingered. And while I think the sequels were more thematically powerful, they didn't suck me in the way the first book did.
Day 23: Your favorite secondary character:
Cinna. My love for Cinna comes down to one line. "How despicable we must seem to you." Cinna gets it. He doesn't take his Capitol lifestyle for granted, and he empathizes with Katniss's disgust for its decadence. This makes me wonder what his backstory is. Most people who are raised in privilege can't see it unless it is pointed out to them in a big way. Did he figure things out on his own? Did something happen to him to make him understand the imbalance of power in Panem? Was he not originally from the Capitol?
The fact that these questions are never answered makes him a more interesting and enigmatic person, I think, but I still would have liked to see and learn more of him.
Day 24: Your least favorite secondary character:
Oh, I dunno. Effie Trinket? She was well-written in that she served her purpose, but that didn't stop her from getting on my nerves.
Day 25: Your dream cast:
Here's my problem - I'm not familiar with very many young actors. So I'm going to cheat by assuming that I can age actors down to fit the roles.
Hillary Swank as Katniss. I'm sure Jennifer Lawrence will do fine, but I don't think she looks quite fierce enough to be Katniss. Hillary Swank has that innocent openness about her, but she also gives off the impression that she can kick your ass.
David Boreanaz as Gale. Picture Angel from Season 1 of Buffy. Yeah. Plus, he broods so well.
Jensen Ackles as Finnick. Those green eyes. That lovely body. That charm. That swag. Oh yeah.
Helena Bonham Carter as Johanna. No one does unhinged-but-vulnerable like this woman.
I don't really have an opinion on the rest.
(ETA 1/20/13: After spending some time in fandom, I've realized that I'm uncomfortable with white actors playing characters from the Seam. Racism is a subtle but important theme of the books, and while Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch's race is never specified I do not think they are white.)
Day 26: Your favorite scene in The Hunger Games:
The Reaping. While I loved the first book, it originally struck me as simply-written and somewhat shallow. It was the Reaping that brought me around. Suzanne Collins did an excellent job of showing us Katniss's turmoil and bravery. And District 12's salute quite literally brought tears to my eyes. It was so simple and genuine, while also being chilling. It was said that the salute was normally only used at funerals. That's what made it so powerful: as far as anyone was concerned at that point, Katniss was already dead.
This was where shit got real.
Day 27: Your favorite scene in Catching Fire:
The uprising in District 11. I love this scene for the same reason I love the Reaping in the first book - apparently I'm a sucker for crowds expressing solidarity and courage in unison. But here, the salute meant even more than it had at the Reaping. The symbolism of it had grown from a respectful goodbye for a girl being sent to her death into a show of faith and rebellion. And the fact that it was set off by Rue's whistle is a perfect blending of emotional touchstones.
Day 28: Your favorite scene in Mockingjay:
The battle on the rooftop at District 8. This is self-indulgent of me, but I really liked this scene for the Gale/Katniss interaction. This was one of the few times when they were shown to be completely in sync, doing their badass thing. The logic of bows bringing down planes nonwithstanding, this was a very enjoyable, cathartic moment.
Day 29: Your favorite thing about the entire series:
The fact that it's a young adult series with a female protagonist that doesn't shy away from really dark themes like war, corruption, and revolution. Yeah, I have some quibbles about the romance side plots, but on the whole I appreciate what the series was trying to accomplish. And I can't even describe how happy it makes me that a series told from a girl's point of view is now seen as being for both girls and boys.
Day 30: A book/series that you would rec to fellow fans:
The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix.
Necromancers. Order/Chaos magic. Eldritch abominations in the shape of talking housepets. A female protagonist who actually wears practical armor.
I can't even… I don't even know how to… It's… Just read it. Do it. Go. Read.
Shhhh. Shh. Just read it.