I think the issue is simply a matter of what the author can write. She can write people running around killing each other quite well. (She can’t write it realistically, but she can certainly write it.) She can also do a decent job writing about movie stars who get delicious food, covered in makeup, and then have to do various TV-related activities, I just don’t care to read about that.

She can’t write anything else. And that’s the problem. In the other books, she was mostly in her comfort zone. The actual content was reprehensible, to say nothing of unresearched, but at least there was content.

So here’s what should have happened:

Skip this whole business with training and an army. Make it vicious guerrilla fighting. Make it so that taking out Snow by assassination is necessary.

Make it so there is no 13, no secret superpower there to lend a hand.

I mean, right now, Katniss was plotting desperately to get into the army and then take off because she’s worried they’ll win too fast and someone else will manage to kill Snow first. That is really not an interesting plot – or at least, it isn’t if we’re being told this is somehow heroic instead of flawed.

Instead, it should be needed, if not a good idea. That will double as removing the question of why Coin and company are protecting her. Instead, the useful-as-martyr mockingjay will be going on the suicide run to take out Snow. Either way, it’s a win.

And this, the author could write.

She can write the capital well enough, and a string of traps. It doesn’t make sense for military traps to be hugely diverse, but individual security systems, especially in a place as given to fashion as the capital, make more sense being varied. (And when Snow eventually figures out she’s coming, it’d make sense for those traps to be personalized for Katniss, because instead of being one of very many threats, she’s one of terribly few.) So Katniss goes off to sneak through the capital, using their network of spies. She can go off to rescue Peeta midway through, for the mandatory refusal to obey authority or sense section, and that would then explain Peeta’s inevitable presence in the book – she’s stuck with him. That can also be when Snow first gets wind Katniss is around, or perhaps Katniss justifies the attempt by the fact Snow’s already figured out she’s after him, so they won’t lose anything if Katniss is seen.

The concept of pods is painfully stupid, though. There’s no reason to have a prefab dispensor for all manner of individualized traps, and moreover, just the explanation kills a lot of suspense. Instead, there are traps and sensors and Katniss rarely knows exactly what they are or how to deal with them.

And Katniss’ bow? She’s got one because they’re a quiet weapon and they haven’t time to train her with something else anyway, or supplies to get her much of one anyway.

This gives time to flesh out the capital as well. Who are their agents? Are they people from the districts, brought in to do vital jobs people there aren’t qualified for or as non-Avox servants? Or is there dissent in paradise, and why? What do the people there think of the situation? What do they think of the rebellion, the districts, what do they think will happen if the rebels win?

The capital, after all, is basically America. But in America there are vast disparities of wealth, and plenty of people who, while far better off than those in the countries America uses, are nowhere near as rich as the actual upper class. It’s entirely possible that there’s a sizable underclass who thinks they’d be better off with a rebellion – and depending on how the wealth is distributed, it could even be possible that passing out items fairly would actually put the lowest class of the capital in a better position than they are currently. It is certainly possible to have people bitter enough to try it. You know how castles fell back in the times of knights and kings? Someone opened the back door, because when 95% of your population is oppressed peasantry, that means nineteen out of twenty people are going to figure they’re better off betraying the guy in charge. If there’s enough of a disparity of wealth and not enough upward mobility, you end up with a lot of people who think the only way to improve their current status is to take out everyone above them.

And, of course, you have your idealists. The cliché is that they’re sheltered and naïve, but idealists can be pretty scary hardass people. There may well be a core of spartan true believers in the John Brown mold who make the 13 we see in the book look like a bunch of undisciplined wimps.

It would also give us a chance to see what ordinary life in the capital is like.

First off, what sort of things do ordinary people have access to? The tributes are all kept in a single building. Is that an ordinary one, full of normal appliances, or is it full of the best and most expensive things the capital has to offer? Katniss spends a while in a magic shower that can detangle her hair with a button. At the end of the book, she gets her skin redone and her prep team is jealous because that’s more expensive than they can afford. So, what was the shower? Or the food she eats, and the servants waiting on her? Are the parties she goes to exclusive because of the quality of them, or can everyone get the same things and it’s just a meaningless popularity contest like elementary school kids with secret clubs, where everyone competes to get into the exclusive ones simply because other people are excluded?

Do the people within the capital have any concept of where food comes from? Do they understand things like seasonal food? Because apparently, Panem is not trading with any other countries. That means when something’s out of season, you can’t fly it in from somewhere it is. Same for when there’s crop failure. So does the capital have a way around that, like greenhouses and careful price control where they jack prices up to discourage demand but never allow a situation where they’re actually out of a given product, or do people understand the bare basics of where things come from and how? Are they utterly oblivious and insulated, or do they know on some level what’s happening?

What do they think of the people of the districts? We know the prep team doesn’t think much of Katniss’ appearance, but that’s the least of things, that’s an issue of style and time and effort. What do they think of how thin and small the kids look, or do they even notice? Are those things coded as evil in their media, like the scrawny, dirty foreigner is in ours? What do they think of how these kids kill each other for scraps at the beginning of the games? Do they fear the people of the districts, if the Hunger Games is so closely tied to the first rebellion? Is part of it a reminder to the people of the capital that the districts aren’t deserving of sympathy, aren’t real people but just vicious beasts who’ll turn on anyone if not kept under control?

And, of course, what are their social norms? It’d be interesting to make the capital actually have some more progressive views in some areas, while the districts can have some bad cultural views of their own, enough that simply removing the whole of capital society and leaving only the districts is not a perfect option.

The real problem is getting to this point.

Why do they rescue Katniss?

The easy answer is to skip book two. Katniss heads home and gets picked up by rebellion agents. If this plan is somehow found out by the capital, it could result in a firefight where they’re only able to get out Katniss but have to leave Peeta behind. And if we need 12 burned, then have the capital do that in retaliation – this would make blaming her for it far easier.

The rebellion saves her because they need her officially on their side, to counter the story that she did it just out of love. The fact she ended up saving her district partner is not going to do much for unity. It showed a weaknesses in the capital, which could be used to fan the flames, but getting them to work together, to let rebel members hide out across the districts rather than turning them in, that would be harder. It’s clear that districts are incredibly isolated and likely xenophobic. Katniss doesn’t have value as a martyr unless they can convince people she did it for everyone, not just her district. So they need her fighting for them first. And this would make the propaganda things be actually reasonable, instead of her being so awesome the mere sight of her visage on television makes people fight better.

After that, she’s allowed to go assassinate Snow, where she’ll either strike a huge blow for the rebellion or galvanize them with her death.

Also, skipping book two lets us skip Prim being the nonperson extension of Katniss’ feelings and keep the fiction Katniss actually cares about her. Prim dies in 12 when the rebellion comes to get her, so we never see the author’s inability to write her.

(But then, if we’re skipping things that don’t work we might as well just say we stop the series after the first book.)

So. Book Two happens. Let’s say we go with something I proposed then, that Katniss is told to act stupid and airheaded and callous but she can’t pretend she doesn’t care during the district tour. She shows that the rebel story of it being a strike against all the horrors of the capital fits better than the capital’s story of it just being a person from a district helping out another district member.

And Snow then counters this the best way he can – he takes the beloved victors of the districts and puts her back in an arena to murder them. If she dies, she’s gone and her supporters will hate whatever district did it. If she lives, the districts will hate her for it. It would be best if she could be specifically blamed for what happens – perhaps she’s given some sort of choice of what the next Quell will be, and the others are things like “seventy-five kids for the seventy-fifth games”. That would also give Katniss a chance to be a good person, because she’d be choosing to go back into the games herself to save others. It would be showing why she’s worthy of being treated as a hero.

Perhaps this could be done with the same two-person rule as before, so Katniss has the chance to save Peeta again. Of course, to do it again would risk making the districts think the capital is right, and all she cares about is her same-district lover.

So the rebellion has to manage a jailbreak midway through the games, before everyone’s dead. This doubles as a goodwill gesture to all the districts, by rescuing their victors. Instead of the arena goal being to keep Katniss alive at all costs, it’s to keep her alive and away from others, because if Katniss or her allies start murdering people, it’s a blow to the cause. The other victors mostly don’t know about the escape attempt, but there is an understanding that they should avoid fighting. They manage to get a reasonable chunk of the victors out.

I’d sort of prefer to skip the firebombing of 12, because it doesn’t make much sense to me (way to cut off your nose to spite your face there) but if it must happen, it’s because of Katniss’ rescue. Perhaps it’s even a mistake – after Snow killed the guy in charge of the games for not killing Katniss, the army assumes he’ll want the place leveled before any rebels have a chance to escape. This is why killing people isn’t actually a good motivator, because as an enraged Snow knew, the destruction of her district serves to unify the remaining ones – it wins the argument of if Katniss was doing it for her own district or everyone when her own district is razed to the ground. Snow probably responds to this by killing whoever gave the order, because he may be smart but he also rules by fear, and that should be a flaw.

The districts still can’t directly oppose the capital, which is much too powerful. But they’re now working together, instead of most people refusing to shelter rebels from other districts or turning them in for a reward or just a promise not to be blamed for whatever the rebels end up doing. The different groups finally can connect and plan something greater, with their resources expanding as more and more people are willing to take part.

And then Katniss is moved through an underground network through the districts until she ends up in the capital to kill Snow.