Last time on Mockingjay, nothing makes sense and everything is stupid. But then Katniss gets shot! ::::D

Unfortunately, as our narrator we know she’s fine. This chapter opens with her chasing around Peeta in some hazy drug-induced dreamworld.

Morphling dulls the extremes of all emotions, so instead of a stab of sorrow, I merely feel emptiness. A hollow of dead brush where flowers used to bloom. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of the drug left in my veins for me to ignore the pain in the left side of my body.

That is not actually how morphine works. What it’s sounding like here is that her problem is she’s on nowhere near enough morphine. See, if you’re legitimately in pain, the opiates are pretty much tied up dealing with those, not also fucking with the rest of your brain. If they are, they’re making you feel happy. Emotional dulling requires extreme levels of habitual overuse, and wears off with the drug.

Now, your regular clinical depression, on the other hand, would fit well with her endless nightmare of searching for Peeta and sense of empty deadness.

(Incidentally, did you know that painkillers actually improve recovery? The pain and stress hormones flooding your body aren’t good for it. So she should be properly doped up here.)

The white curtain that divides my bed from the next patient’s whips back, and Johanna Mason stares down at me.

JO~HAN~NA~ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 Katniss once again flips out, reminds herself that Johanna hacking her open was part of the rebel plot, then that she doesn’t know how else was an act. None of it, Katniss, Johanna just doesn’t like you.

“I’m alive,” I say rustily.
“No kidding, brainless.”

<333333333333

Johanna walks over and plunks down on my bed, sending spikes of pain shooting across my chest.

<3333333333333333333333333333333333

And no, that wasn’t accidental, next line is her smiling at Katniss’ pain.

With an expert hand, she quickly detaches the morphling drip from my arm and plugs it into a socket taped into the crook of her own. “They started cutting back my supply a few days ago. Afraid I’m going to turn into one of those freaks from Six. I’ve had to borrow from you when the coast was clear. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

Yes, Johanna is first ascertaining that yes, Katniss is currently in pain, then stealing her morphine anyway.

Apparently Johanna has been talking to some shrink, who she’s unimpressed with.

At least twenty times a session he reminds me that I’m totally safe.” I manage a smile. It’s a truly stupid thing to say, especially to a victor.

Um, no, it’s the right thing to say.

People who are in a bad situation have a tendency to stay stuck in that mindset. But they’re no longer in the games. Even if they’re still in some sort of danger, it’s simply not the same situation.

Now, it may not be what Johanna needs to hear, because clearly Johanna can handle such minor things as childmurder games and torture, and as we see from her cheerful drug theft, she has clearly adapted to her new surroundings just fine. But Katniss shouldn’t be projecting her own neurosises onto her.

Also, if they do have psychologists then why isn’t a team of them following Katniss around? Looks like I’m right and they all said, “Fuck it,” in unison.

Johanna condescends to ask how Katniss is feeling. Katniss is all :( got shot :( and Johanna is all LOL you’re fine, body armor. Just a little exploded spleen, and you don’t even really need a spleen. As proof of this, Johanna points out that if Katniss did need one, they’d have gotten one. It’s everybody’s job to keep you alive.

Incidentally, while the spleen is not required for continued functioning, it isn’t good for your ability to heal from injuries and jacks your chance of deadly infection way up, so I’d assume they’d want to stuff a new one in her. They have magic bio technology that’s surely good enough for a bit of cloning, and they have no shortage of dead bodies either.

Katniss asks if the whole everyone else is a meat shield for Katniss thing is why Johanna hates her. That is indeed a good reason.

Johanna, unfortunately, calls this jealousy, and not that it’s just fundamentally fucked up.

I also think you’re a little hard to swallow. With your tacky romantic drama and your
defender-of-the-helpless act. Only it isn’t an act, which makes you more unbearable.

I know the whole “isn’t an act” is probably meant to mean Katniss is awesome, but no, Johanna’s right, it’s pretty obnoxious. Katniss non-ironically doing the whole Romeo and Juliet suicide game, and Katniss viewing herself as the savior of everyone? Not actually positive traits.

Katniss says Johanna should’ve been Mockingjay, since she’s better with words.

“True. But no one likes me,” she tells me.

LIES

FILTHY FILTHY LIES

“Your cousin’s not afraid of me,” she says confidentially. She scoots off my bed and crosses to the door, nudging Gale’s leg with her hip as she passes him. “Are you, gorgeous?”

Oh Johanna, you make every scene you’re in at least 20% more awesome.

But all good things must come to an end, and now it’s time for just Gale and Katniss to chat.

Katniss is still upset about the whole blowing up a ‘mine’ thing.

“Katniss, what difference is there, really, between crushing our enemy in a mine or blowing them out of the sky with one of Beetee’s arrows? The result is the same.”

Katniss says the difference is she shot people who were attacking them. Gale points out the people who were attacking them came from that fortress. With those hovercraft destroyed, there won’t be further attacks. He doesn’t bring up a more depressing point – the people Katniss burned died for nothing, since enough got through to kill everyone in the hospital anyway. Unlike them, these deaths will save others.

“But that kind of thinking…you could turn it into an argument for killing anyone at any time. You could justify sending kids into the Hunger Games to prevent the districts from getting out of line,” I say.

Well, not really.

See, the reason that’s so horrible is in large part because it’s a high price paid for nothing. It’s the same issue as torture. It’s not that it’s a terrible serious thing we should weight the costs of vs benefits, it doesn’t work. Conversation over.

There’s a lot philosophy says on the subject of deciding what price is ethical to pay, and none of it applies because childmurder doesn’t work as a deterrent in the first place.

Katniss, here, is invoking the slippery slope, and there’s a reason that term is generally finished off with ‘fallacy’. “You say it’s okay to kill this person for this reason, therefore you could say it was okay to kill anyone for any reason.” No. That is not how it works, shut up before more of your stupidity escapes your mouth to infect the world at large.

She claims she knows this is bad because she’s been to the arenas, having apparently forgotten that both times she was there she promptly decided it was morally just to kill everyone to prevent first herself and then Peeta from dying. I have no idea what the book’s trying to say here.

We find out that after she was shot (and that it was by some other guy than the one she was being idiotic to directly), the workers attacked the capital troops and took them out, and the rebels just watched. I’m sure this is meant to show how good and pure and not coerced it was, but if I was a worker trying to beat the better armed and trained troops, I would have appreciated some backup.

Anyway, now they have all the districts and they’re taking a breather because the capital’s cut off. That is really stupid, because now is right when the capital would try something suicidal.

“Oh, the city might be able to scrape along for a while,” says Plutarch. “Certainly, there are emergency supplies stockpiled. But the significant difference between Thirteen and the Capitol are the expectations of the populace. Thirteen was used to hardship, whereas in the Capitol, all they’ve known is Panem et Circenses.”

Oh god tell me we’re not.

“It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains.

How can you think this is a good idea.

“Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

You know, I think what gets me most is the stupid, stupid names. The worst part is you can tell the book thinks it’s so damn clever for third grade level wordplay. Muttations so you call the wolf things mutts! Trackerjackers! Jabberjays! And now they named the country after some phrase why the hell would you do that?

Also that’s not how bread and circuses worked.

I think about the Capitol. The excess of food. And the ultimate entertainment. The Hunger Games. “So that’s what the districts are for. To provide the bread and circuses.”

THE POINT OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES IS TO DISTRACT THE POOR SO THEY DON’T REVOLT!

If you know how bread and circuses work, then you’d know you need to apply that to the districts to control them.

Anyway therefore they’re going to win the war by providing better entertainment seriously?

You know what this reminds me a bit of? Feed. Feed was an awesome book about future America where everyone has been successfully distracted by the corporations, and they’re so hideously broken. It’s narrated by one character and he’s self-centered, uneducated and devoid of real thought, and there’s a point maybe halfway through the book or a bit earlier where another character, one who wasn’t quite so plugged in, says the reason she likes him is he’s the only one in the group who uses metaphor, and you realize this kid whose empty head we’re in is one of the brightest and most original thinkers around.

The thing is, when he’s praised for his metaphor, it’s not because the author wants us to notice how brilliant the metaphor is, it’s a sign of how completely broken things are that a basic metaphor is impressive. When he champions how awesome things are, he’s wrong. There are chunks of the book devoted to how fashionable the mysterious lesions that are showing up on people’s skin are.

This book is somewhat like that book if that book had been played straight.

See, people like weddings, so Patriach is going to throw one for Finnick and Annie that will be a disgusting orgy of consumerism and therefore attract attention. Clearly, that’s a better way to win hearts and minds than showing them the deprivation they forced the districts to live in and asking for sympathy. Instead, continue pretending unsustainable lifestyles are totally here forever.

There’s also the fact that they control all of the country except for the capital, which is apparently mostly made up of pampered idiots, so they don’t even need to win those hearts and minds, they can just explode them.

On the hovercraft ride, I decide she’s less mad than unstable. She laughs at odd places in the conversation or drops out of it distractedly. Those green eyes fixate on a point with such intensity that you find yourself trying to make out what she sees in the empty air. Sometimes, for no reason, she presses both her hands over her ears as if to block out a painful sound.

No, that’s definitely mental issues, particularly the part about her hearing stuff that isn’t there.

This seems like more TV madness. I mean, I’m not going to say someone couldn’t act this way, but it’s both very convenient and also pretty much the same issue as poor Wiress had. And the people who do act this way I wouldn’t actually class as insane. That’s actually some pretty decent coping, especially considering she has a reason to be stressed, what with being flown out of safety into the burnt remains of a district. The only one of these that’s severe is the bit where she’s covering her ears, and that shouldn’t be “for no reason”.

You know what one of the things disturbed people are? Fucking annoying with a side order of creepy. There’s a reason people aren’t lining up to work at mental institutions. See, fundamentally insanity is the malfunctioning of the meat computer in someone’s head. How often does your computer’s malfunctioning happen in a quirky way that teaches you the value of everyone’s differences and inspires you to pity it? No, you’re just really frustrated because it doesn’t work right. Now take that feeling and apply it to something that’s running the same operating system as you are.

Disturbed, unstable people might repeat the same sentences or phrases over and over again. I don’t mean twice or maybe three times so it gets across the message they’re “strange” and not exactly like normal people, I mean as in I hope you weren’t doing anything because it’s broken record time for the next two hours. If you’re talking to them, they can also latch onto something you said, probably misinterpreting it, and start babbling about it because it reminds them of something they’re anxious about. Good luck trying to explain to them it’s not anything to worry about and maybe they’re actually wrong and it’s not even an issue, because you know what, if they could understand that kind of thing they probably wouldn’t be crazy. And related to that, it’s often very hard to actually communicate with them at all because they just don’t process new information right, even if you’re not inadvertently setting them off on a rant or triggering a panic attack. They also often have further creepy uncanny valley type startle responses or just regular overreact to particular sights/sounds around them and you don’t know why but now you’re going nuts because you’re programmed to freak out over someone else freaking out because normally it means there’s actual danger. And if they’re keeping quiet, that probably means THEY NEED QUIET for whatever mental thing they’re doing to try to approximate normal function, and if you don’t shut up now and stay completely so you will end up snapping the frayed strings holding their mind together and get to have a front row seat for a complete crash.

And pressing hands over ears? Come on. Try actual contortions.

People crazy from trauma is not cute and convenient.

All right, she’s strange, but if Finnick loves her, that’s good enough for me.

I can’t make heads or tails of this. And if Finnick didn’t love her, then…? The only guess I can make is that Katniss is saying she’ll tolerate Annie’s existence despite being “strange” due to trauma-induced insanity since Finnick likes her, but otherwise it’d totally be arrow time.

Dalton, the cattle guy from 10, conducts the ceremony

STOP REUSING CHARACTERS STOP IT RIGHT NOW

Then there’s the cake. Peeta frosted it.

Haymitch has been keeping a great deal from me. The boy I last saw, screaming his
head off, trying to tear free of his restraints, could never have made this. Never have had the focus, kept his hands steady, designed something so perfect for Finnick and Annie

He only did all that because your name was brought up. Every time we’ve had an update on him, and god have there been those, it’s clear he’s perfectly functional except around you.

Katniss learns that Peeta’s seen Haymitch and only screamed and lunged over perfectly rational things, such as not letting him know about the arena plan, so they think he’s improving. That makes no sense because there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t have been just as reasonable in his hating of Haymitch from the start. Anyway, he asked to see Katniss. So he is improving, he’s now planning out his murder attempts!

So Katniss is going to go, because otherwise the plot wouldn’t move on.

But first we need an update on how the shooting of the wedding is going, because that matters. Patriarch is happy.

“The best thing about the Capitol basically ignoring Twelve all these years is that
you people still have a little spontaneity

I don’t see what one has to do with the other and also I don’t care. To think I thought last book was slow paced. We’re over halfway through and the stupid TV subplot refuses to die.

Anyway, she goes to see Peeta, who apparently doesn’t have any clear memories of her. I’m personally going to blame their treatment attempts for this, since he sure seemed to remember her before. Maybe they tried electroshock therapy. Peeta says she’s not that pretty, and Katniss gets all upset and snaps back that he doesn’t look like much either, and Peeta laughs and says she’s not too nice, either.

She says niceness was more his thing. I’m sort of enjoying Katniss not handling this well and then she ruins it by explicitly pointing out to use that she’s acting like that and how it’s unforgivable when he’s been through so much. Well, so has she. It’s terrible of her to act like he’s nothing if he doesn’t love her, but she’s allowed to have stress and worry of her own instead of needing to put that aside for whoever’s worse off.

She says she doesn’t feel well and she’ll try seeing him tomorrow, which is an impressively good response, but then Peeta says he remembers giving her the bread.

“I must have loved you a lot.”

So yes, Hollywood semi-amnesia. Never mind, can we go back to the filming plot? It’s stupid but in a nice dependable way.

Katniss says yeah, he loved her, and then dodges the question of if she loved him.

In that first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers.”

Yeah, well it looked like you tried to kill her first, or did you miss the part about how you were in the group of people who chased her there and tried to climb up to kill her?

He says there’s also a lot of kissing, but it didn’t seem too genuine. Katniss does not point out that she was doing it so they’d send him food, because when has this book ever had people explaining things reasonably.

Peeta asks about Gale. Katniss snaps that he’s not a bad kisser either.

“And it was okay with both of us? You kissing the other?” he asks.
“No. It wasn’t okay with either of you. But I wasn’t asking your permission,” I tell him.
Peeta laughs again, coldly, dismissively. “Well, you’re a piece of work, aren’t you?”

Lovely, one of the only things I didn’t hate about this plotline and apparently it was supposed to mean Katniss was a slut.

Here’s the thing – Katniss is never officially in a relationship with either one. I do think there’s something questionable about how she’s juggling two relationships, but on the other hand, neither of them will back off either. And she’s not even jumping between them fast. Each time shes’ gone to Gale, it’s during an extended period of estrangement from Peeta. And conversely, when she’s with Peeta it’s always been under severe duress.

And now we end with Katniss leaving to sulk in a closet again about how now Peeta knows what she really is.

Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly.
And I hate him for it.

She’s not manipulative. It’s not her fault Peeta fixated on her for ten years because she had a pretty voice and then manipulated her into having no choice but to pretend to be in a relationship with him during the games, and it’s not her fault Gale was jealous someone else was creepily hitting on her but never made a move either until after Peeta did. She’s never tried to make either boy care about her, let alone use it for anything. In fact, the one constant in Katniss’ relationships seems to be she gets jack shit out of them once they’re mutual.