Hunger Games: The End

[osprey_archer]

I just finished Mockingjay and OH MY GOD, I'M SO UPSET RIGHT NOW. I put off reading the second half of the books for weeks because I knew I was going to be upset, and forewarned really ought to be forearmed, but I'm still so upset about everything.

Comments

[anna_wing]

Hello, just to let you know that I've just added you to my friends-list. I've been following your "How To Be A Better Dictator" series with great enjoyment, thank you very much for doing it!

I write Tolkien fanfiction, and post on Archive of Our Own, also as Anna_Wing.

[osprey_archer]

Nice to meet you! Glad you've been enjoying How to Be a Better Dictator.

[littlerhymes]

Oh. you made me sad about Finnick again. ;__;

[osprey_archer]

Come join me in the "being sad about Finnick" corner! HE DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE.

[evelyn_b]

I wish Finnick had lived. :( He was one of the better new characters. Maybe the best one. Probably the best.

I had NO IDEA Prim was going to die - I was expecting a high body count in the arena, but since the whole point was to protect Prim in the first place, it seemed especially cruel.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I bought that Katniss wasn't executed with no problems. They had to break the vengeance cycle somehow, after all. And while Katniss was popular everywhere, what was Coin outside of 13? No doubt there was some opposition, but on the whole I think it was good politics. Especially if Katniss can just go back to her potato mine or whatever it is and not spoil the propaganda image with speeches. The Society is free to disagree, but. . . I'm ok with it.

(Mostly because I like the ending).

To be honest, I found a lot of the last half a little too confusing to be emotionally destructive. Not Imperfectly Deconditioned Peeta, though. :( :( :( Or Prim getting killed just as she's getting a foothold on life.

[osprey_archer]

I wanted Finnick and Annie to live and be happy forever and ever. THEY DESERVED IT, DAMMIT.

I think what bothers me most is that Katniss had the opportunity to stop President Coin's plans for vengeance Hunger Game two pages earlier by voting "no," and instead she votes yes... and then shoots President Coin. I felt like it was milking maximum drama out of the situation (Katniss is voting pro-Hunger Games! OH NOES) without letting the natural consequences follow - even if they didn't execute her for assassination, I still think she'd end up locked up for years and years, not free to roam District 12 and marry Imperfectly Deconditioned Peeta.

So it seemed like trying to have one's cake and eat it too, I guess.

[evelyn_b]

Yeah, Katniss voting pro-Games was one of those things I just felt sort of confused by. There were a lot of them in this book! I think Mockingjay is a bit more of a mess than the other two. But I don't feel like I can fault it too much because I also loved the series a lot, A LOT, as a whole. Collins is having her cake and eating it, but maybe to a reasonable degree for a YA novel with a not-totally-bleak ending? I don't know, I'll allow it. But I agree, whatever happened with Coin and the cycle of vengeance could have been plotted and developed a lot better.

Finnick and Annie really deserved that happy ending they didn't get. So did Prim. So did Rue, for that matter.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the third book is a bit messier than the others; I think Katniss's pro-Games vote would have made more sense if it happened before her little chat with President Snow, for instance, when she still had some reason to believe that the rebels were morally purer than the old regime.

And then Snow plants the seed of doubt in her mind whether Coin was responsible for Prim's death - then it might make sense for Katniss to vote yes and then change her mind and shoot Coin.

But I did love the series a lot as a whole; I have my quibbles about book three but they're not the kind of quibbles that undermine the earlier books, if that makes sense? There are series where reading the less-good later books makes it hard to appreciate the earlier books, but this is not one of them.

[summercomfort]

oh god, I was so upset about the utter waste of life that was Finnick's death. He deserved so much more. :(

And I LOVED the whole "what's real/what's not" game -- even did a small thing where Bucky plays that game with Steve.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that surely at some point Annie must have tried to scratch Katniss's eyes out for the harebrained assassination plan that led to Finnick's death. If Katniss had just followed instructions for once in her life and not tried to kill President Snow on her own, Finnick might easily have survived the rebellion.

[summercomfort]

yeah, the whole "go after Snow" obsession of Katniss', I was just like WHY. And as if Annie is somehow comforted by the fact that she can has Finnick's babbu? And they'd *just* gotten married, and they really deserve to survive and find happiness. If they were main characters they would have. (But srsly, imagine the story if Finnick and Annie were the main couple)

[osprey_archer]

I imagine that would be the all trash, all the time version, given Finnick's history as a sex slave...

Not that i'm complaining. But I'm not sure it would have made it to the shelves as a YA novel.

[hyperion_swan]

but probably you can't end a book with a first-person narrator with "and then they put me into the guillotine and that was the end of it, and it was kind of a relief."

wow

orz

[osprey_archer]

Pretty sure Katniss would go for it at the end. She tries to starve herself to death and all that; a guillotine would be so much quicker.

[hyperion_swan]

._.

;_;