Hunger Games: The End
Mar. 28th, 2017 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI 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.
I knew going into the books that Prim was going to die, so that didn't upset me as much as it might have (honestly I was relieved it was over so quickly; I was 100% imagining Snow getting his hands on her and executing her slowly on national television or something like that), but then Finnick died and I hadn't realized I was all that attached to him but GODDAMNIT, HE AND ANNIE JUST GOT MARRIED, IT'S SO UNFAIR, who even sends someone that mentally unstable into a combat zone. I MEAN REALLY.
At least with Peeta, there was some excuse, what with the whole "hoping he'll kill Katniss" thing. Finnick, though! Why should he be there in the first place?
Poor hijacked Peeta is hitting me in my Bucky Barnes place, as is super-traumatized Katniss, who also is so unstable she ought never to be sent into a combat zone, I mean really. What were you thinking, President Coin?
President Coin may also need some How to Be a Better Dictator lessons. She ought to pay particular attention to the one about portraying Katniss as tragically, beautifully insane, because that's close enough to actually true (or at least Katniss is very unstable; there's nothing particularly beautiful about the tragedy), and would have undermined Katniss's position as rebel figurehead more effectively than sending her into battle and hoping she'll conveniently get killed, but in the meantime giving her more time to be defiant and heroic and win people's hearts.
Although I realize "Katniss spends the climax of the book pacing District 13 tearing her hair out" would have presented a real difficulty to Collins, so of course she didn't go with it.
...I also am not quite sure I buy the fact that Katniss wasn't executed for killing President Coin, 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."
I knew going into the books that Prim was going to die, so that didn't upset me as much as it might have (honestly I was relieved it was over so quickly; I was 100% imagining Snow getting his hands on her and executing her slowly on national television or something like that), but then Finnick died and I hadn't realized I was all that attached to him but GODDAMNIT, HE AND ANNIE JUST GOT MARRIED, IT'S SO UNFAIR, who even sends someone that mentally unstable into a combat zone. I MEAN REALLY.
At least with Peeta, there was some excuse, what with the whole "hoping he'll kill Katniss" thing. Finnick, though! Why should he be there in the first place?
Poor hijacked Peeta is hitting me in my Bucky Barnes place, as is super-traumatized Katniss, who also is so unstable she ought never to be sent into a combat zone, I mean really. What were you thinking, President Coin?
President Coin may also need some How to Be a Better Dictator lessons. She ought to pay particular attention to the one about portraying Katniss as tragically, beautifully insane, because that's close enough to actually true (or at least Katniss is very unstable; there's nothing particularly beautiful about the tragedy), and would have undermined Katniss's position as rebel figurehead more effectively than sending her into battle and hoping she'll conveniently get killed, but in the meantime giving her more time to be defiant and heroic and win people's hearts.
Although I realize "Katniss spends the climax of the book pacing District 13 tearing her hair out" would have presented a real difficulty to Collins, so of course she didn't go with it.
...I also am not quite sure I buy the fact that Katniss wasn't executed for killing President Coin, 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."
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Date: 2017-03-29 03:09 am (UTC)I write Tolkien fanfiction, and post on Archive of Our Own, also as Anna_Wing.
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Date: 2017-03-29 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-29 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-29 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-29 02:14 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-03-29 08:17 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-03-29 10:00 pm (UTC)Finnick and Annie really deserved that happy ending they didn't get. So did Prim. So did Rue, for that matter.
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Date: 2017-03-30 12:33 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-01 09:57 pm (UTC)It's been quite a while since I read it, but I seem to remember the idea was that Katniss knew if she voted "no" Coin would just outmaneuver her one way or another, and the only thing really to do is to permanently put Coin out of power. So she votes "yes" to get Coin's trust (and Haymitch follows her lead because he's figured out the same thing and he trusts her more than Coin) with the intention of killing her all along. So, the conversation with Snow and then the very proposal of a final Hunger Games is what Katniss needs to make her choice, and the vote was always a fake.
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Date: 2017-04-02 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-30 04:22 am (UTC)And I LOVED the whole "what's real/what's not" game -- even did a small thing where Bucky plays that game with Steve.
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Date: 2017-03-30 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-31 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-31 12:46 pm (UTC)Not that i'm complaining. But I'm not sure it would have made it to the shelves as a YA novel.
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Date: 2017-03-31 02:26 pm (UTC)(But that's like, my fav angst!)
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Date: 2017-03-30 05:41 am (UTC)wow
orz
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Date: 2017-03-30 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-01 05:05 am (UTC);_;