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It's my journal, so I can do this.
I've decided to post an entry outlining and highlighting all the reasons why I did not like the Hunger Game Series. I'm not even sure I'll be able to post all that I want to about this. It's an ongoing list, really. Last night I tossed and turned because my mind seriously couldn't stop making a mental list of it.
Let's start with the main characters.
I don't really feel like I know any of the characters. Collins spends too much time talking about nightmares, or food, or how much Katniss owes other people that I don't really understand any of the characters that much. Okay, so Katniss is a hunter and awesome--but somehow, even though she suppose to be strong, she's one of the weakest girls I know. Doesn't suck things up--always whinning about the past and all the people she feels she owes (as if she's responsible for everyone's actions). Come on! She's a champion of the Hunger Games, grow a lady pair and act like it. Stop beign an emotional wreck. She's so ambivious she can't find two minutes to search herself and see who she really loves. She's so emotionally weak that when Peeta ends up all looney she makes out with Gale just cause she's lonely. And because this is a first person narrative, and because our first person is so self-absorbed, we can't really see any of the other characters clearly. Prim, her mother, Gale, Haymitch, Peeta. They're all brief little figures. Also, stop getting hurt. I don't even want to count how many times she got knocked out and woke up in the hospital or something.
Please notify Collins that the more she does this to the main characters, the less worried the audience is about their recovery. It's like the boy who cried wolf. Oh, Katniss is in the hospital again? Really? Well, I wonder if she's going to heal? I hope not.
Peeta, okay I get it. He's the heartthrob. But can someone tell me what's so special about him other than his long list of character traits of: being a baker, loving Katniss, and loving Katniss? He's as flat as the bread his name sounds like.
Dialouge plays a big factor in this. Perhaps people don't know this, but one of the quickest ways to expose bad writting is to read it aloud. Seeing as we had only one copy of each book in the house, we did this. It wasn't pretty. Collin's dialouge was so mechanical I felt stupid reading it. It simply wasn't natural. And, I think Ann Lamot said you should know your characters so well that if presented with a piece of dialouge, you'd know who said it--not only that but you're characters also should not sound like you. All the dialouge was the same. Seriously, unless it was Peeta oozing love for Katniss, you couldn't tell up from down.
I hated how jarring it was to read about how Peeta an Katniss just started making out in the cave. What the crap? I don't know.
Oh, why didn't we get a glimps of what watching the Games was like for her family and Gale? That would've done a great deal in the way of revealing depth to the characters.
The second book was a huge flop! Ugh? Lookin back I'm like, "what happened in that book again?" Umm...Peeta and Katniss go on tour trying to act like their in love, fake proposal, didn't work, Katniss learns of uprisings, something about District 13, Peeta and Katniss go back into the Games (which was really annoying and seemed like the author was like, "this seemed to work out pretty well for the first book, let's try it again"). And the audience is kept out of the loop on all the really cool rebel stuff happening and instead we get more overly sentimental stuff on the beach with a pearl.
Okay, now on to why I REALLY hated the last book.
Katniss has the oppotunity to be a really awesome leader here, and she gets her panties in a wad cause she feels like she's still a puppet. You know that saying, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" I think it applies here as well: no one can make you be a puppet without you handing the strings over. If Katniss stood up and was like, "hell yeah, I'm gonna get back at the Capitol for all the innocent murders." Then people would have actually respected her enough to maybe involve her a little on the war. Instead she hides in closets.
I was really excited when Peeta was hijacked! Not because I hate him, but because it made him more interesting! I was like, finally, this will snap Katniss into realizing how she feels, and we'll actually get to see them falling into a more mature love (if that was indeed the plot, which was suspected because the author devoted so much time to the Peeta/Katniss thing that it would have been super weird to throw Gale in there at the last minute). So yeah, I was like, okay--now maybe Katniss will have to discover that she really loves him--and try to help him realize that. But no. She goes off stomping away because now he knows the truth about how horrible she is. (Again, self-absorbed much? Not even really upset at the indecency that the Captiol just stole his identity, basically--took his memories, his life, in essence WHO he IS and turned it around to make him a peice in the game. No, she's just upset that she's a peice in the game. And that the guy who thought she was brilliant now has a more realistic ideal of who she is.)
So yeah, then they started making Peeta more mentally stable and you never got to see them actually fall in love. I read hundreds of pages of crap to get two measly little lines at the end of:
You love me. Real or Not Real?
Real.
WHAT THE HELL. I deserve more that than, Collins. I suffered through Katniss' ridiculous identity crisis' and her inability to decide who she wanted to kiss, all for two pathetic little lines.
She also completely ommited how Peeta came to start loving her again. Ugh. What a dissapointment.
So we go through the entire story hearing about how Katniss is just a puppet and everything and what does she do when she's free? Nothing? yeah, nothing.
Also, I'm pretty pissed that Prim dies. For one, that kinda makes Katniss volunteering as a tribute moot, wouldn't you say? Awesome. All Katniss wanted to do was to protect her sister. How lovely. And how absolutely stupid is it to kill her off. So the moral of the story is, "even if you sacrifce everything you are, sanity included, for the things that matter the most to you, it won't matter cause in the end they'll still BLOW UP RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. LITERALLY."
So yeah, not to mention that until the third book, you kinda forgot about Prim. Because she was basically a shadow. But, because Collins just couldn't kill off a character you didn't really care *that* much for she put more scenes with Prim in the last book--just to get you attached enough to her so that you'd be just the right amount of outraged when Collins blew her up. Collins basically even admitted she'd kinda ignored Prim--when Katniss realized she hadn't had much time to really talk to Prim since they'd moved to 13. The real tragedy? The reader realized that Prim was level-headed and mature, completely different from Katniss. Too bad she blewed up.
She blewed up in what was another one of the stupidest things about the book. So, Katniss decides that she's gonna go off and try to kill the Pres, right? Okay, so when all the pods go off and they're trying to make their way into the Capitol, it's awful. I mean, she's losing all the people around her. They're dying in her (fabricated) mission to kill the Pres. But, she figures, she's all in now--can't turn around or all these people would have died in vain. She HAS to kill the president. Awesome, except she really doesn't. Right when Katniss is starting to look somewhat hardcore and independent, Collins pulls the old exploding-sister card as a diversion. To make you forget that, HEY, THAT MEANS ALL THOSE PEOPLE REALLY DID DIE IN VAIN! And yeah yeah yeah, you can SAY that they let her go and shoot the President so it wasn't a loss. Yeah, and what would have happened if they didn't go off into the Capitol? If they'd just gone back to base camp? Hmmm, the Captiol would've fallen, Katniss and all the members of her crew would've been flown into the Captiol for footage of it. And then they would've let her kill the President too. No exploding sister, no mental breakdown, no murdered members of her team.
AND, on a more personal note: FINNICK WAS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER! What the crap! Not only did she kill him in this stupid mission that was pointless, she killed him off in the most uncerimonious ways! Oh there'a a mutt with his teeth around Finnick's neck. I'm gonna throw a bomb at them and run away.
I hate you Collins.
FYI, if you build up a character, make the reader like them and empathize with them, and then whimsically off said character, the reader is gonna be pissed.
Also, I feel like I should draw attention to the utterly horrible line that Gale says to Katniss after Prim's death. Something like, "Protecting your family was the one thing I had going for me."
Serious? Did Gale care nothing for the life and soul of Prim except for the fact that keeping her alive may be a way to jump Katniss' bones? What a callous and ridiculous thing to say after the death of a loved-one! He might as well of said, "Man, tough break about the sister, is that gonna hurt my chances of being with you?" And it's not Gale's fault, of course. I'm sure Collins didn't mean for this line to be taken that way but that just further proves my point of her being utterly useless at creating honest dialouge.
I've decided to post an entry outlining and highlighting all the reasons why I did not like the Hunger Game Series. I'm not even sure I'll be able to post all that I want to about this. It's an ongoing list, really. Last night I tossed and turned because my mind seriously couldn't stop making a mental list of it.
Let's start with the main characters.
I don't really feel like I know any of the characters. Collins spends too much time talking about nightmares, or food, or how much Katniss owes other people that I don't really understand any of the characters that much. Okay, so Katniss is a hunter and awesome--but somehow, even though she suppose to be strong, she's one of the weakest girls I know. Doesn't suck things up--always whinning about the past and all the people she feels she owes (as if she's responsible for everyone's actions). Come on! She's a champion of the Hunger Games, grow a lady pair and act like it. Stop beign an emotional wreck. She's so ambivious she can't find two minutes to search herself and see who she really loves. She's so emotionally weak that when Peeta ends up all looney she makes out with Gale just cause she's lonely. And because this is a first person narrative, and because our first person is so self-absorbed, we can't really see any of the other characters clearly. Prim, her mother, Gale, Haymitch, Peeta. They're all brief little figures. Also, stop getting hurt. I don't even want to count how many times she got knocked out and woke up in the hospital or something.
Please notify Collins that the more she does this to the main characters, the less worried the audience is about their recovery. It's like the boy who cried wolf. Oh, Katniss is in the hospital again? Really? Well, I wonder if she's going to heal? I hope not.
Peeta, okay I get it. He's the heartthrob. But can someone tell me what's so special about him other than his long list of character traits of: being a baker, loving Katniss, and loving Katniss? He's as flat as the bread his name sounds like.
Dialouge plays a big factor in this. Perhaps people don't know this, but one of the quickest ways to expose bad writting is to read it aloud. Seeing as we had only one copy of each book in the house, we did this. It wasn't pretty. Collin's dialouge was so mechanical I felt stupid reading it. It simply wasn't natural. And, I think Ann Lamot said you should know your characters so well that if presented with a piece of dialouge, you'd know who said it--not only that but you're characters also should not sound like you. All the dialouge was the same. Seriously, unless it was Peeta oozing love for Katniss, you couldn't tell up from down.
I hated how jarring it was to read about how Peeta an Katniss just started making out in the cave. What the crap? I don't know.
Oh, why didn't we get a glimps of what watching the Games was like for her family and Gale? That would've done a great deal in the way of revealing depth to the characters.
The second book was a huge flop! Ugh? Lookin back I'm like, "what happened in that book again?" Umm...Peeta and Katniss go on tour trying to act like their in love, fake proposal, didn't work, Katniss learns of uprisings, something about District 13, Peeta and Katniss go back into the Games (which was really annoying and seemed like the author was like, "this seemed to work out pretty well for the first book, let's try it again"). And the audience is kept out of the loop on all the really cool rebel stuff happening and instead we get more overly sentimental stuff on the beach with a pearl.
Okay, now on to why I REALLY hated the last book.
Katniss has the oppotunity to be a really awesome leader here, and she gets her panties in a wad cause she feels like she's still a puppet. You know that saying, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" I think it applies here as well: no one can make you be a puppet without you handing the strings over. If Katniss stood up and was like, "hell yeah, I'm gonna get back at the Capitol for all the innocent murders." Then people would have actually respected her enough to maybe involve her a little on the war. Instead she hides in closets.
I was really excited when Peeta was hijacked! Not because I hate him, but because it made him more interesting! I was like, finally, this will snap Katniss into realizing how she feels, and we'll actually get to see them falling into a more mature love (if that was indeed the plot, which was suspected because the author devoted so much time to the Peeta/Katniss thing that it would have been super weird to throw Gale in there at the last minute). So yeah, I was like, okay--now maybe Katniss will have to discover that she really loves him--and try to help him realize that. But no. She goes off stomping away because now he knows the truth about how horrible she is. (Again, self-absorbed much? Not even really upset at the indecency that the Captiol just stole his identity, basically--took his memories, his life, in essence WHO he IS and turned it around to make him a peice in the game. No, she's just upset that she's a peice in the game. And that the guy who thought she was brilliant now has a more realistic ideal of who she is.)
So yeah, then they started making Peeta more mentally stable and you never got to see them actually fall in love. I read hundreds of pages of crap to get two measly little lines at the end of:
You love me. Real or Not Real?
Real.
WHAT THE HELL. I deserve more that than, Collins. I suffered through Katniss' ridiculous identity crisis' and her inability to decide who she wanted to kiss, all for two pathetic little lines.
She also completely ommited how Peeta came to start loving her again. Ugh. What a dissapointment.
So we go through the entire story hearing about how Katniss is just a puppet and everything and what does she do when she's free? Nothing? yeah, nothing.
Also, I'm pretty pissed that Prim dies. For one, that kinda makes Katniss volunteering as a tribute moot, wouldn't you say? Awesome. All Katniss wanted to do was to protect her sister. How lovely. And how absolutely stupid is it to kill her off. So the moral of the story is, "even if you sacrifce everything you are, sanity included, for the things that matter the most to you, it won't matter cause in the end they'll still BLOW UP RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. LITERALLY."
So yeah, not to mention that until the third book, you kinda forgot about Prim. Because she was basically a shadow. But, because Collins just couldn't kill off a character you didn't really care *that* much for she put more scenes with Prim in the last book--just to get you attached enough to her so that you'd be just the right amount of outraged when Collins blew her up. Collins basically even admitted she'd kinda ignored Prim--when Katniss realized she hadn't had much time to really talk to Prim since they'd moved to 13. The real tragedy? The reader realized that Prim was level-headed and mature, completely different from Katniss. Too bad she blewed up.
She blewed up in what was another one of the stupidest things about the book. So, Katniss decides that she's gonna go off and try to kill the Pres, right? Okay, so when all the pods go off and they're trying to make their way into the Capitol, it's awful. I mean, she's losing all the people around her. They're dying in her (fabricated) mission to kill the Pres. But, she figures, she's all in now--can't turn around or all these people would have died in vain. She HAS to kill the president. Awesome, except she really doesn't. Right when Katniss is starting to look somewhat hardcore and independent, Collins pulls the old exploding-sister card as a diversion. To make you forget that, HEY, THAT MEANS ALL THOSE PEOPLE REALLY DID DIE IN VAIN! And yeah yeah yeah, you can SAY that they let her go and shoot the President so it wasn't a loss. Yeah, and what would have happened if they didn't go off into the Capitol? If they'd just gone back to base camp? Hmmm, the Captiol would've fallen, Katniss and all the members of her crew would've been flown into the Captiol for footage of it. And then they would've let her kill the President too. No exploding sister, no mental breakdown, no murdered members of her team.
AND, on a more personal note: FINNICK WAS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER! What the crap! Not only did she kill him in this stupid mission that was pointless, she killed him off in the most uncerimonious ways! Oh there'a a mutt with his teeth around Finnick's neck. I'm gonna throw a bomb at them and run away.
I hate you Collins.
FYI, if you build up a character, make the reader like them and empathize with them, and then whimsically off said character, the reader is gonna be pissed.
Also, I feel like I should draw attention to the utterly horrible line that Gale says to Katniss after Prim's death. Something like, "Protecting your family was the one thing I had going for me."
Serious? Did Gale care nothing for the life and soul of Prim except for the fact that keeping her alive may be a way to jump Katniss' bones? What a callous and ridiculous thing to say after the death of a loved-one! He might as well of said, "Man, tough break about the sister, is that gonna hurt my chances of being with you?" And it's not Gale's fault, of course. I'm sure Collins didn't mean for this line to be taken that way but that just further proves my point of her being utterly useless at creating honest dialouge.