Sotr Critical - Blog Posts

I keep rereading this paragraph, and it keeps hurting my brain. So, who is supposed to be homophobic in this society, Suzanne?

We are definitely meant to read it as "peacekeepers will harass you, but the D12 citizens are fine with you being gay."

Why, though?

Peacekeepers come from Capitol (or D2 that aspires to be as similar to the Capitol as possible), and we know from MJ that in order to shock the Capitol citizens you need to engage in something really scandalous, like incest.

(Meanwhile, Finnick's "clients" (i.e., rapists) are never specified to be exclusively women. Even Katniss, who is somewhat prudish, is bothered by the quick turnover of his "partners", not their genders.)

Do the peacekeepers go through an insensitivity training of some sorts? Does President Snow personally come to the training centres and explain what kind of bigots they need to be? How are those peacekeepers supposed to act if they later return to the Capitol?

I'm pretty sure Collins just aimed for the "police & authoritative state are homophobic" narrative, but it makes no sense if the Capitol itself is a sex-positive environment. Like, ussr (which is usually a template for the secular YA dystopias) outlawed homosexuality, but they used the "male homosexuality is a sickness, female homosexuality doesn't exist" explanation. Is that something Capitol tells the districts?

Homophobia might have developed under the guise of "replenishing the population after the war", which would make a lot of sense in a post-war Panem, but despite the excessive talks about propaganda and posters we see nothimg about "needing more people" or "having more kids" (as kids would later potentially become tributes). Also, that would surely affect the districts more than the Capitol.

"Fired from jobs" is even weirder. I would understand if D12 was a small and traditional community that persecuted queer people, especially if queerness was something associated with the Capitol and its decadence. But no, we are apparently meant to think that the D12 folk are not homophobic at all, even though there is a pretty clear social divide between the merchants and the Seam miners. Also, who is supposed to do the said firing? Peacekeepers function like an army, so they answer to their higher-ups in the Capitol. I can believe that D12's coal mines are also under the total control of the Capitol, but who is going to fire the window-maker (especially since D12 is very small, so it's unlikely they have more window-makers)? The sellers from the black market? The "goat man"? Are the merchants not in control of the employees in their stores? What about the family-owned businesses, like the Mellarks or the Donners?

"Arrested" finishes me. So, say, you get arrested for being queer. Then what? Are you going to be executed? That was never mentioned as a motivation to shoot / whip / detain someone, even though in CF we see a lot of peacekeepers' crackdowns on D12. Are you going to stay in jail? That's gonna cost Capitol a lot of money. Does D12 even have a jail (Lenore Dove was kept on a "peacekeepers' base" in SOTR)? Are you going to continue working in the mines, but without salary, if we are continuing the ussr metaphor?

More importantly, are gay teenagers more likely to be reaped?

Make it make sense///

Yes, it's a book for kids. But if my kid is old enough to read about war, rebelion, and teenagers killing each other with melee weapons, they are totally old enough to read about gay people.

Haymitch and character assassination bc I have ~thoughts~

Specifically, the thought I kept having while reading SOTR was "Suzanne, don't take my tragic fuckboys away from me!"

Like, I don't care about the shipping, I don't give a flying fuck about Maysilee hating the pin, I honestly just wanted to read more about the character I truly enjoyed in the original trilogy. The problem seems to be that Suzanne didn't understand why people liked Haymitch.

In THG, he was a rude and condescending alcoholic who had already become completely disillusioned with pretty much everything in his life. We knew he was cynical ("you're never gonna leave this train"), incredibly smart even despite years of drinking (he was able to convince both Katniss and Peeta that they were going to save another person) and manipulative (he was capable of selling the tragic romance between his tributes to the Capitol citizens).

These features made Haymitch a useful ally to the rebels and a character the readers would root for, but they were balanced out by his meanness and the way he seemed to despise everybody else. That's why Haymitch's Games were my favourite part of CF: here we get this snarky kid who sneers at everybody and proclaims himself to be the smartest. And then he goes and proves himself to be exactly what he claimed to be: an intelligent guy that managed to win using Capitol's technologies. It also gave us an understanding of what Haymitch's idea of himself had been. Unlike Katniss and Peeta, who constantly underestimated themselves, Haymitch knew what he was good at. He was a scrappy and snarky kid from a poor district, so he had no reason to respect the Capitol citizens or his fellow tributes (in THG we learnt from Katniss that people knew virtually nothing about life in other districts) and was not afraod to show it.

And here comes SOTR, and Haymitch goes "oh, I only know how to make moonshine and maaaaybe something about mechanisms". So where did his vast knowledge come from? Did he go to a nightschool in between his drinking sessions in D12? Did Lenore Dove's braincells leave her body and attach themselves to Haymitch after her death?

Yes, people tend to be a lot smarter at 41 than they used to be at 16, but we were shown in CF that Haymitch was incredibly intelligent, why take that away from him?

Moreover, Katniss is also 16 in the first book and she is naive but far from dumb: she manages to decipher Haymitch's messages, she devises a plan to kill several Careers, she has been feeding her family for years, ffs. And we know from CF that Haymitch was from Seam (and we get no mention of his father), so he was likely forced to earn some money even before the Quarter Quell. But no, apparently the only use Haymitch has for his brain in SOTR is to learn a single fucking poem.

The only thing I find more annoying than dumbing an already established smart character down is making them **nice**. The original trlogy Haymitch was perfect as an adult figure who has had more experiences (almost exclusively bad experiences, mind you) and therefore was biter and unpleasant. The Haymitch from the Quarter Quell was a teenager on his way to become the arrogant alcoholic we know and love. He was already unhappy with his life but was trying to claw his way out of the arena. And then Haymitch did it, he got out alive, but Snow disliked the way he won and killed everybody Haymitch loved and cared about. This read as the thing that broke Haymitch and drove him to alcoholism (and the other 46 children dying not help). Yet in SOTR, we get this dumb but well-meaning kid who keeps trying to die, so somebody "more deserving" could win.

The Newcomers Alliance in general seems to be a result of Collins thinking, "Hm, the readers liked how Katniss befriended Rue and cared for her. Let me juuuust CntrlC and CntrlV, CntrlV, CntrlV...."

The book also has a sentiment of "the charming persona Katniss (and the readers) saw in CF was propaganda, created by Capitol" which I kinda despise. The audience liked Haymitch for being a mean drunk, so we wanted to read a book about that guy, not a loverboy who is painfully nice and "only pretends to be a rasca"l.

And the part that made want to throw the book across the room was the "sweetheart" retcon. Seriously, I started to growl in annoyance.

The way Haymitch treats Katniss in the books (especially at the beginning) is supposed to be condescending and unpleasant. It's like when John Constantine (the comics version, not the one from stupid American adaptation that made him stoic and straight) calls people around "love" or "pet", it was written, so the readers, especially young girls could relate and get annoyed. And SOTR tells us that it "slipped out because Katniss reminded him of another dead child". Suzanne took the most interesting relationship in the book (disenchanted older mentor - angry young student) and turned it into a weird nostalgia bait both inside and outside the story. Why, why did we need to change and retcon the stuff that clearly didn't need it?

In conclusion, now I don't want a book about Finnick because we're going to learn that he was reciting Albatross by Baudelaire every time he killed a tribute or something.

I do not like Snow's characterization in SOTR. As much as I love when the main antagonist has a personal connection to the protagonist, they still need to seem like a threat. The garden scene did not make Snow an interesting foil to Haymitch, nor did it showcase his pettiness in a believable way. It just made Snow pathetic and out of character.

THG Trilogy Snow would used that oppurtunity to exert his control and he would have never allowed himself to seem so weak in front of a random district kid. SOTR Snow wasn't intimidating. His attempts at scaring Haymitch felt inconsequential, even though I knew how the story would end. Honestly, this quote from SOTR said it the best, “if you can get people to laugh at someone, it makes them look weak".

Instead of vomiting and info-dumping about his ex-situationship, what would have been chilling is if Snow started showed Haymitch photos or recordings of his family and girlfriend in a "I know where they live and I can kill them anytime" way. Then Snow is the one who gives Haymitch the phone that has Lenore Dove on the other line. Haymitch has to share his, presumably, last moment with her under Snow's gaze, knowing that he wouldn't hesitate to punish him through her. And as the reader we might know that Snow has an unhealthy obsession with the Covey, but it's never made so explicit that it makes Snow look laughable.

I don't know if this has been talked about before, but I really disliked the way the Careers were characterised in sotr. They felt like more of a caricature than in thg1, even if they were the minor antagonists in both. But they seemed more believable in thg1, although they had less lines. More competent? Like, if they trained for the Games for years, why would they be so airheaded? If it were up to me I'd make sure my volunteers were both strong and bright. And teach them how to prepare for the interviews!

And them always being the bully stereotype misses out on really interesting topics. For sure fame is one of the motivators, they're teens made to believe the Games are the highest honour, but why do they always have to be fame seeking brutes? Why don't we ever see them from the angle of training to protect the younger or sick kids from their district, even if it's just implied? If someone is guaranteed to volunteer each year in the career districts, the non career kids have stress-free teens (unless there's a QQ twist, I guess). They can take all the tesserae they need because it doesn't really matter how many times your name is in the bowl, their parents need not worry, no one's starving...

Idk, I guess all these things can be implicit because we know the system, and it makes sense they're minor antagonists because we seem them from a non career pov. But. I feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities world building wise when it comes to Career districts; not in a way that woobifies them (they're not the most oppressed district if such a thing can be compared, although, they're still district yk) it's just!!! interesting stuff that makes sense and I wish it was more present. I have more to say but this post will be more of a jumbled mess than it already is lol.

That’s it. THAT’S what SOTR should’ve been.

As someone who has spent way too much time thinking about Haymitch, I always suspected that the first sparks of resistance started around the 50th (mostly based on the symbolism of Maysilee being established as the OG owner of the mockingjay pin, really). The Capitol suddenly reaping double the amount of kids? That’s majorly pushing the boundaries of what even the most oppressed districts would accept. People are angry. People are restless.

Then, out of nowhere, comes this kid from the most underprivileged loser district of them all, and he has no qualms about announcing that he doesn’t give a shit about their games. Instead of dying a quiet and swift death like he was supposed to as a D12 tribute, he then proceeds to use his sheer force of will, an outrageous amount of audacity and his own intelligence and wits to crawl his way to the biggest fluke victory ever, ruining their grand quarter quell.

That’s it. That’s enough to inspire resistance, wouldn’t you think?

The force field thing was bad, but not kill your entire family bad. I think the killings would’ve happened in response to rising unrest post 2QQ in district 12 and perhaps even other places - know where your place is, or you’ll end up like Haymitch.

We did not need a contrived plot to blow up the arena. We just didn’t. And the evidence of what she originally intended is still right there in the text. I think so, anyway.