burn with us
Okay, so I utterly failed at the 30 day meme, but I'm on a Hunger Games high still from the movie, so I'm just going to answer the remaining 28 questions in one day. It still counts, right?
Day 3: A character you hate that everyone loves: Gale Hawthorne. And again, this has absolutely nothing to do with shipping. I was largely indifferent to Gale in the first book; he just wasn't there, except as part of that life I desperately wanted Katniss to be able to return to. In the second book, we see a bit more of him, and I began to understand him more as a reactionary and a rebel. I got super-annoyed at him, with his, “I'm not running away if Peeta is” attitude to Katniss, which overlooked the key factor that Katniss was just trying to SAVE THEIR LIVES. But then he promptly got whipped nearly to death, and I felt kind of bad about my previous irritation.
So then Mockingjay happens. And the thing that Gale lovers are constantly saying is that having him be the one to build the bomb that kills Prim is a copout by Suzanne Collins. But I don't feel that way at all. I feel it was the logical progression of who we see him become over the course of that book. How much he likes the power he's given in District 13; how angry and bitter he is towards the Capitol; inventing snares for HUMMINGBIRDS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!; thinking nothing of trapping and killing hundreds of people underground. Whenever I think of Gale, all I hear in my head is that song lyric, “little boys, little boys, little boys, who became what they fear.”
Day 4: A character you love that everyone hates: Until the last few days, I really wasn't even aware that fandom did hate any of the characters, but I have read way too many reviews of the movie, saying how much better it is than the book because Katniss is less whiny, or we don't have to listen to Katniss whining all the time.
Okay, let's get this straight: Bella Swan is whiny. Whining is when you sit around complaining about nothing, because you have nothing better to do. Katniss Everdeen is the most traumatized girl in the entire world, and living in her thoughts, as she tries to make sense of everything she has been through, is NOT the same as listening to someone whine. Katniss is amazing and wonderful and-I can't stress this enough-HUMAN. And if you don't like her, you really shouldn't talk about this series at all. Ever.
Day 5: Your favorite fight/battle scene: Mostly I think the fights and battles are gruesome and not meant to be loved, which I deeply respect. But I enjoy the Cornucopia scene in the opening of the Quarter Quell. Katniss and Finnick as allies is pretty much the best thing ever.
Day 6: A scene that made you laugh: “Don't expect us to be impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” <3 Boggs. And Finnick. Also, in the movie, “That is MAHOGANY!”
Day 7: A scene that made you cry: Oh man, there are so many, but I will never not cry at Rue's death. I read the books aloud to my mom, and could barely get through it. I was a complete mess. Also, the scene that made me cry in the theater. But I was not alone! There were sniffles throughout the audience.
Day 8: The character you are most like: No idea. I know I'd be dead in ten seconds flat in the Hunger Games. I'd say maybe Madge. We don't know enough about her, but the quiet rebellion of free thought resonates with me.
Day 9: Your favorite quote: I don't know. That Boggs quote I used in #6 has got to be up there. Also, I love that last paragraph about Peeta and the dandelions. How all along, it's really been about hope.
Day 10: Peeta or Gale: PEETA. Even if there were no Peeta, it would still not be Gale. Honestly, I have such deep feelings about this, and most of them are not even in a shipper way. I loved Peeta as a character from the moment we hear the story about the bread. Because taking a beating to give someone bread is always going to be the most wonderful thing. I was mostly indifferent to Gale through the first two books; I didn't feel we knew him at all in book one, just Katniss's vague feelings and memories about him. In Catching Fire, we got to see a bit more of him, and I started to get an inkling of him as a reactionary, nothing very endearing, but nothing all that horrible either.
I'd like to stress that at least through the first book, I was not shipping Katniss/Anybody. I was just shipping Katniss/Life. And then through the second book, I was mostly shipping Katniss/Freedom. I just loved the girl to pieces and wanted her to live in a world where she was free and safe enough to love anybody she wanted. I didn't really care who it was (well, okay, I cared, and I loved Peeta, but I would have been okay with Gale, or anybody else. Really, I would. Almost). But in Mockingjay, from pretty much the beginning, I hated everything about Gale, how he cozied up to Coin, and thought up traps for hummingbirds, and manipulated Katniss into kisses, and blew up mountains, and built bombs with Beetee. But unlike a lot of people, I didn't feel any of it was a change in his character; I felt like it was the fruition of all we'd seen in him all along.
Peeta=Hope and Love; Gale=Bitterness and Hatred. The author spelled the whole metaphor out until my mind absolutely boggles at people who like Gale or ship Katniss with him. I don't know how you read the books and interpret it any other way. Why would you want Katniss, after all she's been through, to be with someone so angry and destructive?
Day 11: Something you hate about the series: Uh, it ends? I don't know. I read all three books in two days. I didn't have that waiting around for a year, to get my own ideas of how it should go and then being disappointed when it didn't go that way. I just love everything about it. I obviously wish a lot of characters hadn't died, but I didn't feel like the deaths were gratuitous; I felt they all served very distinct purposes, so I'm all right with that.
There are a couple of times when Collins uses “I” when it should be “me.” The grammar freak in me hates that, I guess.
Day 12: A character you wish hadn't died: FINNICK. *crying forever*
Day 13: A character you wish had died: You're kidding, right? Don't you think there's more than enough death already? I don't even wish Gale had died, because then Katniss's choice wouldn't have been her choice, and people would find even more reasons to cry foul.
Day 14: Your favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss): Finnick (though it's closer than you'd think between him and Johanna).
Day 15: Your least favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss): Cato. But I also think Collins does a beautiful job of making us hate him all the way through, and then at the end, making us realize he was never the Enemy at all. There's no glory or satisfaction in his death, any more than any of the other deaths. They're all just pawns of the Capitol. (A point that was really driven home in his speech at the end of the movie. Although in the movie, Clove was infinitely more terrifying than Cato.)
Day 16: A question you wish had been answered in the book: ...I feel like I must have some, but I can't think of any at the moment.
Day 17: The worst death: Rue's. I mean, Prim's is obviously the worst for Katniss, and it's a punch in the face for all the readers. But Rue's is the one that is protracted, where we're there for every excruciating second of it. She's twelve years old, and she dies from a spear to the stomach. It doesn't get any more tragic.
Day 18: A song that reminds you of the series: Mumford & Sons, “The Cave.” I basically listened to that song on repeat for a week after I read the series the first time. (And the entire time I've been filling out this meme.) As far as I'm concerned it's The Hunger Games in three minutes.
Day 19: Your favorite pairing: The girl on fire and the boy with the bread. Always. Runners-up would be Finnick/Annie, but every time I think of them, I just want to curl up in a ball and sob and sob.
Day 20: Your least favorite pairing: I don't really understand this. They're aren't a lot of pairings in the books, as it may be an ensemble, but it's Katniss focused. I don't like Katniss/Gale at all, but I understand its purpose in the narrative. I guess, if we're talking the books themselves, I don't see why Peeta's nice father got stuck with the horrible woman who beats his sons just because Katniss's mom married a coal miner.
Day 21: A pairing you don't get: If we're talking fanfic, I haven't ventured too far into that fandom, but I get annoyed by all the Gale/Madge fics. Bad enough she dies, you're going to saddle her with that mess, too? I also don't understand the people who still ship Gale/Katniss after book three, for all the above stated reasons.
Day 22: Your favorite book of the three: Catching Fire. It's the least depressing, better written than the first, and the whole event of the tributes in the Capitol is one of the most inspiring, liberating sections in the series.
Day 23: Your favorite secondary character: Uh, again, Finnick and Johanna. But if you're talking apart from the tributes, I love Cinna, Madge, and Prim.
Day 24: Your least favorite secondary character: Plutarch Heavensbee. He may be working for the rebels, but he still thinks like the Capitol, like a Gamemaker, and that hasn't changed, even at the very end. The idea of him still in some position of power makes me cringe.
Day 25: Your dream cast: Unlike a lot of people, I don't really cast everyone in my mind with everything I read. I get images of the characters in my head, of course, but oftentimes they are unrelated to anything except book descriptions. Not to mention, I'm way too out of touch to cast a movie mostly peopled with today's teenage Hollywood.
That said, there are a couple roles that I did have people picked out for in my mind. Not really the traditional choices, either, I don't think. But for some reason, in my head, Haymitch is John Cusack, maybe because I can see a young John Cusack as the handsome, snarky, arrogant boy in the Quell, and an older one as the bitter, caustic drunk. And President Snow is Joel Grey; I have no idea why. But he is.
Having seen the movie now, I think everyone did an amazing job, though Donald Sutherland as President Snow still makes me sad. No, not Mr. Bennet!
Day 26: Your favorite scene in The Hunger Games: Katniss shooting the arrow into the pig's mouth. Or Peeta camouflaged by the riverbank. (Damn were those awesome in the movie, too!)
Day 27: Your favorite scene in Catching Fire: The pre-games interview. It's so powerful, from the tributes' defiance, to Cinna's dress, to Peeta's announcement, to holding hands at the end. Love it.
Day 28: Your favorite scene in Mockingjay: The end, both the last chapter starting with Peeta planting primroses, through the epilogue. After all that bleakness, it's this wonderful glimpse of hope.
Day 29: Your favorite thing about the entire series: The messages, about the dangers of war, the evils or exposing children to an adult world too soon, the corruptions of government and the risks of taking everything you hear at face value, the repugnance of reality TV and vicarious living. And above all, the softly woven strands of hope and love that flow through it, beneath all the death and destruction. Also, Katniss Everdeen, an actual, real live heroine in a day and age when people think Bella Swan passes for one.
Day 30: A book/series that you would rec to fellow fans: Oh, I don't know. I haven't read anything like it, ever. Song of Ice and Fire, maybe, for its themes of corrupt government, pointless war and infighting, and badass heroines. But I'm sure that's a very late and unnecessary rec. And while there are things I enjoy about it, there are lots of things I don't.
Seriously, besides the fantasy books everyone else reads, everything I read is by female authors before the turn of the twentieth century, and nobody else cares, and certainly they don't have a lot in common with a dystopian future about reality television.
And now there is nothing but the unbearably long wait for the Catching Fire movie...
Day 3: A character you hate that everyone loves: Gale Hawthorne. And again, this has absolutely nothing to do with shipping. I was largely indifferent to Gale in the first book; he just wasn't there, except as part of that life I desperately wanted Katniss to be able to return to. In the second book, we see a bit more of him, and I began to understand him more as a reactionary and a rebel. I got super-annoyed at him, with his, “I'm not running away if Peeta is” attitude to Katniss, which overlooked the key factor that Katniss was just trying to SAVE THEIR LIVES. But then he promptly got whipped nearly to death, and I felt kind of bad about my previous irritation.
So then Mockingjay happens. And the thing that Gale lovers are constantly saying is that having him be the one to build the bomb that kills Prim is a copout by Suzanne Collins. But I don't feel that way at all. I feel it was the logical progression of who we see him become over the course of that book. How much he likes the power he's given in District 13; how angry and bitter he is towards the Capitol; inventing snares for HUMMINGBIRDS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!; thinking nothing of trapping and killing hundreds of people underground. Whenever I think of Gale, all I hear in my head is that song lyric, “little boys, little boys, little boys, who became what they fear.”
Day 4: A character you love that everyone hates: Until the last few days, I really wasn't even aware that fandom did hate any of the characters, but I have read way too many reviews of the movie, saying how much better it is than the book because Katniss is less whiny, or we don't have to listen to Katniss whining all the time.
Okay, let's get this straight: Bella Swan is whiny. Whining is when you sit around complaining about nothing, because you have nothing better to do. Katniss Everdeen is the most traumatized girl in the entire world, and living in her thoughts, as she tries to make sense of everything she has been through, is NOT the same as listening to someone whine. Katniss is amazing and wonderful and-I can't stress this enough-HUMAN. And if you don't like her, you really shouldn't talk about this series at all. Ever.
Day 5: Your favorite fight/battle scene: Mostly I think the fights and battles are gruesome and not meant to be loved, which I deeply respect. But I enjoy the Cornucopia scene in the opening of the Quarter Quell. Katniss and Finnick as allies is pretty much the best thing ever.
Day 6: A scene that made you laugh: “Don't expect us to be impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” <3 Boggs. And Finnick. Also, in the movie, “That is MAHOGANY!”
Day 7: A scene that made you cry: Oh man, there are so many, but I will never not cry at Rue's death. I read the books aloud to my mom, and could barely get through it. I was a complete mess. Also, the scene that made me cry in the theater. But I was not alone! There were sniffles throughout the audience.
Day 8: The character you are most like: No idea. I know I'd be dead in ten seconds flat in the Hunger Games. I'd say maybe Madge. We don't know enough about her, but the quiet rebellion of free thought resonates with me.
Day 9: Your favorite quote: I don't know. That Boggs quote I used in #6 has got to be up there. Also, I love that last paragraph about Peeta and the dandelions. How all along, it's really been about hope.
Day 10: Peeta or Gale: PEETA. Even if there were no Peeta, it would still not be Gale. Honestly, I have such deep feelings about this, and most of them are not even in a shipper way. I loved Peeta as a character from the moment we hear the story about the bread. Because taking a beating to give someone bread is always going to be the most wonderful thing. I was mostly indifferent to Gale through the first two books; I didn't feel we knew him at all in book one, just Katniss's vague feelings and memories about him. In Catching Fire, we got to see a bit more of him, and I started to get an inkling of him as a reactionary, nothing very endearing, but nothing all that horrible either.
I'd like to stress that at least through the first book, I was not shipping Katniss/Anybody. I was just shipping Katniss/Life. And then through the second book, I was mostly shipping Katniss/Freedom. I just loved the girl to pieces and wanted her to live in a world where she was free and safe enough to love anybody she wanted. I didn't really care who it was (well, okay, I cared, and I loved Peeta, but I would have been okay with Gale, or anybody else. Really, I would. Almost). But in Mockingjay, from pretty much the beginning, I hated everything about Gale, how he cozied up to Coin, and thought up traps for hummingbirds, and manipulated Katniss into kisses, and blew up mountains, and built bombs with Beetee. But unlike a lot of people, I didn't feel any of it was a change in his character; I felt like it was the fruition of all we'd seen in him all along.
Peeta=Hope and Love; Gale=Bitterness and Hatred. The author spelled the whole metaphor out until my mind absolutely boggles at people who like Gale or ship Katniss with him. I don't know how you read the books and interpret it any other way. Why would you want Katniss, after all she's been through, to be with someone so angry and destructive?
Day 11: Something you hate about the series: Uh, it ends? I don't know. I read all three books in two days. I didn't have that waiting around for a year, to get my own ideas of how it should go and then being disappointed when it didn't go that way. I just love everything about it. I obviously wish a lot of characters hadn't died, but I didn't feel like the deaths were gratuitous; I felt they all served very distinct purposes, so I'm all right with that.
There are a couple of times when Collins uses “I” when it should be “me.” The grammar freak in me hates that, I guess.
Day 12: A character you wish hadn't died: FINNICK. *crying forever*
Day 13: A character you wish had died: You're kidding, right? Don't you think there's more than enough death already? I don't even wish Gale had died, because then Katniss's choice wouldn't have been her choice, and people would find even more reasons to cry foul.
Day 14: Your favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss): Finnick (though it's closer than you'd think between him and Johanna).
Day 15: Your least favorite tribute (aside from Peeta/Katniss): Cato. But I also think Collins does a beautiful job of making us hate him all the way through, and then at the end, making us realize he was never the Enemy at all. There's no glory or satisfaction in his death, any more than any of the other deaths. They're all just pawns of the Capitol. (A point that was really driven home in his speech at the end of the movie. Although in the movie, Clove was infinitely more terrifying than Cato.)
Day 16: A question you wish had been answered in the book: ...I feel like I must have some, but I can't think of any at the moment.
Day 17: The worst death: Rue's. I mean, Prim's is obviously the worst for Katniss, and it's a punch in the face for all the readers. But Rue's is the one that is protracted, where we're there for every excruciating second of it. She's twelve years old, and she dies from a spear to the stomach. It doesn't get any more tragic.
Day 18: A song that reminds you of the series: Mumford & Sons, “The Cave.” I basically listened to that song on repeat for a week after I read the series the first time. (And the entire time I've been filling out this meme.) As far as I'm concerned it's The Hunger Games in three minutes.
Day 19: Your favorite pairing: The girl on fire and the boy with the bread. Always. Runners-up would be Finnick/Annie, but every time I think of them, I just want to curl up in a ball and sob and sob.
Day 20: Your least favorite pairing: I don't really understand this. They're aren't a lot of pairings in the books, as it may be an ensemble, but it's Katniss focused. I don't like Katniss/Gale at all, but I understand its purpose in the narrative. I guess, if we're talking the books themselves, I don't see why Peeta's nice father got stuck with the horrible woman who beats his sons just because Katniss's mom married a coal miner.
Day 21: A pairing you don't get: If we're talking fanfic, I haven't ventured too far into that fandom, but I get annoyed by all the Gale/Madge fics. Bad enough she dies, you're going to saddle her with that mess, too? I also don't understand the people who still ship Gale/Katniss after book three, for all the above stated reasons.
Day 22: Your favorite book of the three: Catching Fire. It's the least depressing, better written than the first, and the whole event of the tributes in the Capitol is one of the most inspiring, liberating sections in the series.
Day 23: Your favorite secondary character: Uh, again, Finnick and Johanna. But if you're talking apart from the tributes, I love Cinna, Madge, and Prim.
Day 24: Your least favorite secondary character: Plutarch Heavensbee. He may be working for the rebels, but he still thinks like the Capitol, like a Gamemaker, and that hasn't changed, even at the very end. The idea of him still in some position of power makes me cringe.
Day 25: Your dream cast: Unlike a lot of people, I don't really cast everyone in my mind with everything I read. I get images of the characters in my head, of course, but oftentimes they are unrelated to anything except book descriptions. Not to mention, I'm way too out of touch to cast a movie mostly peopled with today's teenage Hollywood.
That said, there are a couple roles that I did have people picked out for in my mind. Not really the traditional choices, either, I don't think. But for some reason, in my head, Haymitch is John Cusack, maybe because I can see a young John Cusack as the handsome, snarky, arrogant boy in the Quell, and an older one as the bitter, caustic drunk. And President Snow is Joel Grey; I have no idea why. But he is.
Having seen the movie now, I think everyone did an amazing job, though Donald Sutherland as President Snow still makes me sad. No, not Mr. Bennet!
Day 26: Your favorite scene in The Hunger Games: Katniss shooting the arrow into the pig's mouth. Or Peeta camouflaged by the riverbank. (Damn were those awesome in the movie, too!)
Day 27: Your favorite scene in Catching Fire: The pre-games interview. It's so powerful, from the tributes' defiance, to Cinna's dress, to Peeta's announcement, to holding hands at the end. Love it.
Day 28: Your favorite scene in Mockingjay: The end, both the last chapter starting with Peeta planting primroses, through the epilogue. After all that bleakness, it's this wonderful glimpse of hope.
Day 29: Your favorite thing about the entire series: The messages, about the dangers of war, the evils or exposing children to an adult world too soon, the corruptions of government and the risks of taking everything you hear at face value, the repugnance of reality TV and vicarious living. And above all, the softly woven strands of hope and love that flow through it, beneath all the death and destruction. Also, Katniss Everdeen, an actual, real live heroine in a day and age when people think Bella Swan passes for one.
Day 30: A book/series that you would rec to fellow fans: Oh, I don't know. I haven't read anything like it, ever. Song of Ice and Fire, maybe, for its themes of corrupt government, pointless war and infighting, and badass heroines. But I'm sure that's a very late and unnecessary rec. And while there are things I enjoy about it, there are lots of things I don't.
Seriously, besides the fantasy books everyone else reads, everything I read is by female authors before the turn of the twentieth century, and nobody else cares, and certainly they don't have a lot in common with a dystopian future about reality television.
And now there is nothing but the unbearably long wait for the Catching Fire movie...