Last time on Mockingjay, a series of unbelievably convenient disasters happened. Also, Peeta killed someone in the process of trying to kill Katniss.

Peeta, for some reason, is really distressed by this.

I think we’re in retconville again. He’s going on about how he had no idea he could lose control like that, but we know he attacked Katniss before and apparently he went crazy a lot of other times when anyone mentioned her. If those attacks are severe enough he doesn’t even have memory of them, then there’s no reason he wouldn’t have blacked out this time – especially because this episode ended with him going unconscious, not exactly conductive to long term recall, so why would this time be the one exception?

Also, bear in mind Peeta’s killed a lot of people already.

Anyway, cue comforting about how they know he didn’t mean to do it. Wow.

See, yeah, he didn’t mean to do it. But we’re not talking rational response here. Someone just died a horrible and unnecessary death and Peeta caused that to happen. Someone they knew and trained with and supposedly cared about. Their first response should be shock and grief, not telling Peeta all about how they don’t blame him.

“You can’t take me with you. It’s only a matter of time before I kill someone else.” Peeta looks around at our conflicted faces. “Maybe you think it’s kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that’s the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol.

This actually puts his behavior in a different light. It makes sense he’d be panicking about them leaving him over this. On both a practical and emotional level, you’d expect people would want to ditch him, and it makes just as much sense that’d be something he was more afraid of than death. Of course, that’s pretending anyone cares about side characters when we all know only important people matter.

If this is so, tell me

Whoa no wait a minute.

It makes sense Peeta would be panicking about this because he’s been tortured. However, other people, like Katniss, should be able to look at the situation more rationally.

They fucked with Peeta’s head with the idea he’d end up back near Katniss and get a chance to kill her. But that was back when the fighting was away in the districts, not their doorstep. If they catch Peeta, they’ll kill him, use him as a bartering piece/bait, or just let him go again and hope he manages to find Katniss in time to kill her. They just don’t have time for anything else.

For some reason, the last stanza to “The Hanging Tree” starts running through my head. The one where the man wants his lover dead rather than have her face the evil that awaits her in the world.

I don’t even know.

Seriously. There’s nothing in the song about the guy being altruistic and everything to suggest he’s just your standard ghost trying to drag down the living. Now, this can definitely be read as more of Katniss’ terrible fucked up issues, but as we’ve established, Katniss is 110% reliable as a narrator except on rare and clearly marked occasion.

About the only plus is that this glorification of bad relationships isn’t necessarily sexist, since despite Katniss identifying the person in the song as a man with a female lover, she’s using this as a rationalization to kill Peeta for his own good.

Interestingly, it’s Gale who jumps at the offer. So it seems he really is just trying to murder his rival.

Peeta hesitates, as if considering the reliability of this offer, and then shakes his head. “It’s no good. What if you’re not there to do it?

Peeta, sweetie. When Gale says “I’ll kill you before that happens,” says Gale. “I promise.” he means “I am going to shoot you the first chance I get no seriously I just need to find something shiny to distract Katniss first.”

But Peeta, like everyone, isn’t that bright, so instead he demands a cyanide nightlock pill.

Katniss points out it’s kind of a plot hole how he didn’t get one, but like everything, it’s sure convenient, because if he did, he’d have tried to eat it instead of asking for them to kill him.

See, what they should do is give him one of their pills. Everybody else is armed, so they can shoot themselves if it comes to it. Peeta doesn’t get bullets, so he needs the pill more.

I don’t know if it’s the pods, or the fear, or watching Boggs die, but I feel the arena all around me. It’s as if I’ve never left, really.

SHOW DON’T TELL

So naturally, Katniss refuses both to kill him and to give him any reasonable way of killing himself if he’s captured. She partially rationalizes this by saying he’d probably take the pill now or at least generally “soon”, but that’s dumb, since it’s clear a good part of why he’s freaking out so badly is he doesn’t have any way to kill himself if it comes to that and he’s understandably afraid that the others might not want to shoot him. He’d be much less afraid if he could bite a pill rather than hope someone else shoots him in time.

Instead they go looking for food.

Messalla proves most valuable because he lived in a near replica of this apartment and knows where people would be most likely to stash food.

Hey wait.

The two cameramen and Cressida are also still alive. Why wouldn’t they know the same thing?

This is sort of an interesting tidbit, in that it does suggest things were incredibly homogenized in the normal capital, with the version Katniss sees being the exception rather than rule. But it’s an afterthought. Why aren’t the other three useful, did they live in a different model apartment? How many different layouts are there, and do they vary significantly or just in minor ways?

Anyway, they find thirty whole cans of food hidden away, although otherwise the place is bare.

The hoarding disgusts the soldiers raised in 13.

…Okay.

See, that response would make sense for the 13ers, except the narrative just referred to it as hoarding, so it’s editorializing on how bad this is at the same time. And thirty cans of food isn’t hoarding. It’s practical.

Messalla says that in the capital, this isn’t illegal, it’s expected, which seemed a very reasonable answer. Honestly, the 13 attitude that all food must be controlled and you can’t do so much as walk out with a crust of bread isn’t actually…

“Even before the Quarter Quell, people were starting to stock up on scarce supplies.”
“While others went without,” says Leeg 1.
“Right,” says Messalla. “That’s how it works here.”

Oh jesus christ book, why do you do this?

Let me explain to you how supply and demand work. If more people buy food, food becomes worth more and more people make food. Food is not a fixed commodity. That’s why it’s good for people to make sure they have a reasonable stockpile of food. They’re investing their money/effort in other people making food, so that the net total of food available in the event of a disaster goes up.

Hoarding is a real issue but this is not it.

The book is obviously looking at this as if by buying food they’re stealing from the food left for other people to eat, but that’s completely misunderstanding distribution. Even in the short term where there’s no time for more food production to kick in, it’s still a good idea. In a crisis situation the government may not be able to pass food around even if it’s managed to collect a big enough stockpile, and it’s better if people don’t need to rely on that.

Again, there’s about thirty cans there. Oh, and a few boxes of cookies. Assuming a single person eating one can per meal, that’d last a week and a half. Stockpiling cookies is an argument in favor of children being involved here. Let’s be conservative and say three people, two parents and one child. That’s now a mere ten cans per person, three days worth.

In conclusion, it’s good to prepare for a disaster by having food on hand. Not only is this good for yourself and your family, but it means you won’t be taking up limited aid and that can go to other people, and in the event of a particularly bad emergency you’ll have the supplies to help others. It’s only hoarding if you’re purchasing in excess of what you could ever use and preventing others from getting needed supplies in the process.

…But, this is forgetting the real question.

Why is the food here? The people have obviously left. Did they stockpile more food than they could carry? It’s very odd that the food left behind would be the stuff the owners had specifically hidden away because they valued it. Were they worried about looters? It seems unlikely they’d believe that things would stabalize enough for them to return to their homes without things improving enough there was food in the markets again.

Peeta holds out a can to me. “Here.”
I take it, not knowing what to expect. The label reads Lamb Stew.

Oh god not again.

See, we can actually take something interesting from this. First, yes, the capital really does have a very limited selection of food. Not only is the food Katniss gushes about actually a standard mass produced soup, but it’s the mass produced lamb stew. They don’t have brands or varieties.

So, the decadent amazing food they give to the tributes is actually their equivalent of generic bargain brand stuff.

Except, it isn’t. Katniss lovingly details her various meals and many of them involve fresh ingredients. In the first book she even has access to a device that can make anything she wants appear. If they’re trying to wow the tributes with the most expensive food possible, then she should never have had the lamb stew. If they’re feeding them cheap food knowing that the starving hicks will still think it’s amazing, she shouldn’t have been chowing down on fresh fruit as well.

Either option would have worked fine – Katniss could try the lamb stew and realize it’s nowhere near as good as the stuff she had back then instead of telling us it’s the same – “It even has dried plums.” Or, the food in the cans could be half the meals she ate, because the capital diet is actually quite monotonous, since they don’t have the production capability to produce too many varieties.

Now this place tastes like the arena, too.

On a different note, this is yet again not how you do trauma. Katniss’ associations for the meal are during the period she was terrified before the games and during the games. More, she’s been constantly in high stress situations where she’s eating fancy food. At no point does Katniss ever start associating them with the events around them, but instead gobbles them up with glee.

Anyway, the TV comes back on.

Then the man himself appears, seated at his desk, a flag draped behind him, the fresh white rose gleaming in his lapel.

What flag, book?

It’d be nice to have a description here. Does the capital have a particular flag? Or is it the flag of Panem? I’d assume it’s not the American flag, but it’d be nice to have that be stated, and better yet, to know if it shares anything or if there’s no connection between the two.

I think he might have recently had more work done, because his lips are puffier than usual. And his prep team really needs to use a lighter hand with his blush.

This is probably the most extreme example we’ve seen of tying evil to appearance. Snow’s prep team (and plastic surgery team, for that matter) are undoubtedly the best in the country. If Katniss can, at a glance, not only tell he looks wrong but diagnose exactly what the prep team did wrong, they’re complete amateurs. But the book can never turn down a chance to make a catty jab about appearance.

Snow is there to tell the peacekeepers that they’re awesome for ridding the country of the menace called the Mockingjay.

Oh, Snow. I want to believe you’re a smart dictator, I really, really do, but at every turn you act even dumber than Katniss and Peeta’s inbred, lead eating baby. You say the mockingjay was nothing and that this proves it, not that she was some great menace. That’s giving her power. Really, this is PR 101 here!

Snow then tries to say that without Katniss, the rebellion is doomed because she was their leader and they’re unable to act without her, because gloating sure does convince people!

Anyway, the rebels cut in. Sort of a waste of effort, since Snow is already doing all their figurehead/martyr work for them, but anyway, Coin’s there and identifies herself as the actual leader thank you very much. Anyway, Katniss was awesome, blah blah, never give up, fiery picture of Katniss, cut back to Snow.

“I had no idea how much I meant to her,” I say, which brings a laugh from Gale and questioning looks from the others.

Or alternatively, Coin wasn’t trying to kill her in the first place and only the crazy paranoids thought so. Seriously, look at this. No one else seems to believe it’s true, despite seeing the same “proof” that convinced Boggs and Katniss.

Anyway, she’s exhausted and just wants to sleep.

To cocoon myself in a comforter made of rabbit fur and goose down

After all the bitching about hoarding earlier, I feel I should point out that that’s even worse. The food is likely produced cheaply, while that stuff is pretty cost intensive. Katniss is really not winning any revolution points by acting like that’s the sort of stuff she should just get.

pull out the Holo and insist that Jackson talk me through the most basic commands–which are really about entering the coordinates of the nearest map grid intersection–so that I can at least begin to operate the thing myself.

This doesn’t make any sense, really. We’re told it’s intended that the soldiers should be able to use it in the even their commander is incapacitated during an attack, so why was only Jackson taught to use it? And given Katniss doesn’t know how to use it and she’s not going with Boggs’ plan of taking off alone, why not just give Jackson the damn thing? She’s going along with this stupidity.

Katniss manages to get enough of a handle on it that she can see they’re utterly fucked. Pods are everywhere and they’d have to trigger some to get through, which will alert the capital.

I decide it’s best not to adopt some sort of superior attitude when I’m with these people.

Why would you ever think it was best to have a superior attitude in the first place?

By that, Katniss means asking for help. Seriously, why is she even leader?

Finnick says they can’t go through the streets. Leeg, or Redshirt as they’ll all be known from now on, says the roofs are out too. Redshirt B says they might be able to withdraw if they act now, but it’ll mean failing the mission. Katniss has .2 seconds of guilt about the fact there is no mission, but all she actually says is it wasn’t intended for everyone to go with her. Not that they have any chance of leaving without the holographic map she won’t let go of, of course.

Jackson says that it’s how it worked out. Poor Jackson, thinking she has to go along with this because it’s what her superiors wanted and trying to do the best under the circumstances. She says their only option is the tunnels.

Wait just a second. So they mined the places people are walking normally all the damn time, but you’re telling me they didn’t put mines in the places that would only see traffic in the event of soldiers attacking them?

This is like the obligatory sewer level in video games.

The Holo can show subterranean as well as street-level pods. I see that when we go underground the clean, dependable lines of the street plan are interlaced with a twisting, turning mess of tunnels.

And why would the lower level be more jumbled?! That’s the part where you don’t have to give a fuck about what people want and can make it as orderly as your little city planning heart desires!

Two doors down, a vertical tube connects our row of apartments to the tunnels.

What.

How does that even work. Who designed this.

Seriously, this is the obligatory sewer level, complete with an inexplicable entrance and a nonsense architecture layout. I can’t wait for the part where they have to run around finding items to put into slots to open the doors.

Peeta officially graduates to OOC plot device, refusing to come and saying he’ll just hang out there.

“I’m not going. I’ll either disclose your position or hurt someone else.”
“Snow’s people will find you,” says Finnick.
“Then leave me a pill. I’ll only take it if I have to,” says Peeta.
“That’s not an option. Come along,” says Jackson.
“Or you’ll what? Shoot me?” asks Peeta.

Remember the opening of this chapter with Peeta begging them to kill him so Snow doesn’t get him? Because yet again, the book’s already forgotten. And while Peeta’s behavior then fit in with what we knew of his character, there is no way you can rationalize this as making sense. Peeta should be willing to do anything if it means not being left behind for Snow to find. I’d expect him trying to do a suicide-by-proxy and rushing someone in the hopes they’d shoot him. That’d actually be a good scene – they think he’s gone crazy again and take him out nonlethally, only for him to admit he isn’t, he just wanted to trick them into killing him.

Why can’t I just let him go? Slip him a pill, pull the trigger? Is it because I care too much about Peeta or too much about letting Snow win? Have I turned him into a piece in my private Games? That’s despicable, but I’m not sure it’s beneath me.

Now, Katniss is definitely a sue by this point. But as the book shows, you can write a sue and still bash her unfairly at the same time.

Refusing to let someone commit suicide unnecessary is not a selfish act. The book insists that whatever Katniss is doing is the right thing, except when Peeta is concerned, at which point anything she does and anything she feels is somehow not good enough, not worthy of his pure noble love.

I don’t know quite where she got the starting idea, but she’s pretty much surrounded by people channeling Kyubey, so I can see why her self-esteem is completely gone in this respect.

She insists he come. Redshirt asks if they should undo the cuffs, which Peeta refuses, and instead Katniss says she’ll get the key.

In this apartment, one of the bedrooms has a door marked utility instead of a bathroom. Behind the door is the room with the entrance
to the tube.
Messalla frowns at the wide circular cover, for a moment returning to his own fussy world. “It’s why no one ever wants the center unit. Workmen coming and going whenever and no second bath.

What.

WHY WOULD YOU DESIGN IT LIKE THIS?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

No. Not done.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Okay.

So in an apartment building you have hallways people walk through to get to their apartment. If you need a maintenance area, you just make it an extra room off of that hallway. You do not put the room in the middle of an apartment. That is fucking stupid.

Next, an entrance to the sewers is not a maintenance area in the first place. There is no reason you need to put it there. You can put it anywhere. If you absolutely need to put it near where people live, because, I don’t know, you made some sort of deal with the devil that requires you to make really shitty urban planning decisions, why not just stick it in whatever the poor lower-class guys you’ve got doing the work live? As a bonus, it’ll cut out their commute so they can spend more time working and less time getting in your more valued citizens’ way.

Also just – why would you have a second bath in all the apartments? That’s a bad use of space!

We gather at the foot of the ladder, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the dim strips of lights, breathing in the mixture of chemicals, mildew, and sewage.

…you’re really able to make out not just chemical smells but mildew over the smell of shit?

Anyway, Pollux is freaking out in what’s actually a decent depiction of PTSD! God are my standards low. I can’t wait to be done.

See, they use their slavemutes to handle this area.

Okay, look. Slave labor does not work. I was accepting this for servants because obviously servants are already an indulgence you’re keeping around for the sake of it, so the fact slaves are an inefficient way of doing it doesn’t matter much.

Of course. Who else would they get to maintain these dank, evilsmelling passages mined with pods?

First, maybe people who didn’t have a massive vested interest in setting off those pods in an attempt to kill others? Second, we were just told there are fewer pods here and that the majority of the capital is mined with far thicker numbers of pods. Third, no really, why would you put people who hate you and have nothing to live for next to your weapons, completely unsupervised? Why the fuck did 13 even have to bother with a rebellion?

His brother says it took them years to pay enough to get him to ground level, during which time he never even saw the sun. Um, weren’t we just told that no one likes the center apartment because the workers keep coming and going through it? But the workers are never allowed to come out?

No one is sure what to say, which Katniss ascribes to the fact they’re exhausted, forgetting the fact that people have been pretty shit at dealing with trauma this whole book long. Anyway, Peeta saves the day by saying that means he’s valuable since he’ll know what’s down there. Katniss realizes this is sort of a big deal because Peeta’s behaving like his old self. This would probably be far more striking if Peeta’s character was consistently written well enough that this difference was more noticeable without having to just tell us about it.

What can be said is that Peeta is paying attention to his surroundings and the feelings of others, which is a point in his favor on both the good person and sanity meansures.

There is a simple network of wide tunnels that directly corresponds to the main street plan above, underlying the major avenues and cross streets. It’s called the Transfer, since small trucks use it to deliver goods around the city.

Through the sewers.

During the day, its many pods are deactivated, but at night it’s a minefield.

Ah, video game logic.

You know, while the point at which we’ve reached actual, honest to god video game plotting is a new low for the book, I’m not really going to complain much. It’s not like the rest has been any good, and the one thing you can say for video games is that when they make no sense, they do so in service of cool visuals and fun puzzles. Bring on the jumping puzzles!

So they go a ways and then hole up to take a nap. This is actually a good idea. The capital won’t expect them down here (although one wonders why the surveillance cameras aren’t around…) so it’s probably the safest place to rest for now.

After her nap, Katniss goes over to chat with Peeta again. The repetitiveness of this actually fits well with our videogame focus. She’s just running through each scripted chat that comes during the non-fighting periods and has to pick the right answer to progress their relationship.

She recalls he said something about guessing the memory of people being tortured was real, and Peeta explains that the venom-distorted memories are all weird in a particular way, too bright and prone to shifting around.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” I ask. “If you can separate the two, then you can figure out what’s true.”
“Yes. And if I could grow wings, I could fly.

Uh, that’s random as shit, Peeta. She just made a perfectly valid suggestion based on what you already said, and you’re dismissing it as if it’s absurd.

Then Peeta says people can’t grow wings and asks if that’s real or not, because the author thinks the real/not real thing is so incredibly brilliant and has to keep popping up.

Real, Katniss says, but also people don’t need wings to survive in the first place so you know…and then Peeta says people don’t but mockingjays do. DUN DUN DUUUUUUN no that’s not going anywhere, is it? Is it just supposed to be vaguely ominous, or maybe suggest Peeta’s still plotting to kill her? Whatever it is, I’m betting it doesn’t matter.

She gets him to lie down and go to sleep and he asks if she’s trying to protect him. Well, no, he makes it a statement and then asks if it’s real or not real because who cares about realistic dialogue when you can repeat the same damn phrase forever, and she gets him to actually fall asleep.

Right as it’s time to go and they start waking people up, Katniss notices a weird hissing sound. That’s right, their enemy waited until they finished sleeping and were just about to get going anywhere before launching the next attack. Dammit, even videogames will have you get jumped at the inn!

The hissing sound is like voices whispering a single word. Three guesses whose name it is.

It’s hard to say. I think this actually should be an okay dramatic ending line, but it just feels silly. It’s just impossible to feel any real sense of suspense here. Katniss is on an entirely voluntary mission where she’s trying to beat the rest of the army to the center of the capital, with the capital’s actual fall being a foregone conclusion. So, there’s some weird whispering. Any other time, I’d be creeped out and wondering what this is. My first thought was that it’s an echo from above, part of a manhunt so massive it’s filtering all the way down through the pipes. Or it could be something hunting in the tunnels for her. So many lovely creepy options!

And I just don’t care. It’s not that I hate the people involved, though I do, it’s simply that I know no matter how many good options there could be, the book is going to pick one that’s stupid and then it’s going to execute it in an even stupider way, and then by the time it’s over it’ll be described in a way that contradicts it and is still more idiotic.