John, the latest boy to enter the Girls’ Bathroom, is back, and this time, he applies his razor sharp dude analysis to Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay! Love triangle, you’ve been warned.

Hello everyone! A few weeks ago, I finally acted on a recommendation that Ms. Poshdeluxe had been pushing for many, many months. I read Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. I then swiftly moved on to read the next two in the trilogy. That would suggest that I liked the books, and…  I did! I liked them very much actually. However, there were issues that Ms. Poshdeluxe and her fellow FYAers left out when promoting the virtues of these books. I feel that the Hunger Games books (deservedly) get a ton of credit out there in the Internet, so I feel I can openly talk about some of the things I didn’t like quite as much. Particularly the ending of Mockingjay. Oh, and if anyone has come along to this post and not yet read The Hunger Games, please do not read this, and go and read The Hunger Games. Then come back and see if you agree with me!

Oh, and there are one or two rude words. I’m sorry. Katniss Everdeen brings out the sailor in me. I’m still talking about swearing here, not about weird sailor-infused fantasies focused on fictional characters.

First of all, I didn’t particularly hate the ending in and of itself. I kind of hate the entire damn series, really. Not entirely of course, but I have pretty strong feelings about it. The ending, however, remains a bit of a problem for me. There’s also the issue of the love triangle. Now, I gather that FYA readers love themselves a good love triangle. Swoonworthiness is an important aspect of any good FYA review after all. However, they drive me nuts. The complete insanity of the Twilight series normally distracts me from how annoying that central love triangle is, but I think that I should save my comments on the New Moon film for another day. When it comes to the Hunger Games, you are going to have to deal with the love triangle, whether you like it or not, and that provided a lot of frustration for me.

As I said though, I got through the trilogy pretty quickly and directly from one book to the next. There was so much about these stories that I liked. I really like that Collins made a huge effort to show that war sucks and there are no winners, and so on and so on. It was pretty bleak. President Coin is exposed as someone who is evil and can’t be trusted. But then, the surprise assassination of Coin didn’t really feel all that compelling, because we don’t know an awful lot about Coin. I wanted to know more about President Snow, and really his demise was pretty anti-climactic. I guess the tale of the book is that everything is broken in the future, unless you settle down with a blonde guy with a stupid name and have his babies. But more about that in just a sec.

Deciding to put the central character of a series written ENTIRELY in the first person into a mostly catatonic state for the climax of the whole series was just a wee bit frustrating. Just a bit. There was so much left hanging, and I feel like it wasn’t entirely part of a masterplan. Cinna, although personally I really could have done without the gay BFF character, gets a pretty terrible and ignominious exit from the entire series. Right up until the end, I was pretty convinced she was going to come across a tortured and beaten Cinna, or an Avox Cinna, or something. Seems like if Snow was that ruthless he would have milked it. I mean, I was struggling not to skip through the parts of the book that dealt with what a sartorial genius Cinna is, or how dignified and quiet and special he was, but even I got to the end of the book and thought “but where’s Cinna? Is that REALLY how she got rid of that character?”

Also, the massacre that takes out Prim (and really, these names were SO STUPID. I know an English footballer recently named his son Trendy, but come on) makes bugger all sense. Why would Snow bomb capitol children in any scenario? It seemed at that point in the war it was all over, exactly whose spirit was left to break? It was stupid. Also, at that point in the series, I was so sick of Katniss’ shit I really wanted everyone she cared about to die in front of her, so it didn’t carry a lot of emotional weight for me. I was fascinated by the idea that the leaders of District 13 were actually a bunch of bastards all along but I don’t think that was drawn out very well, AT ALL. Also, Plutarch basically becomes a huge ass right at the end and he isn’t even around to give any evidence of his assholeishness. We’re just expected to take it for granted that he was a ruthless bad guy all along.

UGH. I really like what she tried to do but I think she made a mess of it really. I’m not saying I wanted a happy ending, but it seems that for a lot of these ideas, she probably needed a couple more books. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize I wanted the story to go on. Clearly, that’s a good thing, and a testament to Collins’ work here. Now, in real life, people move on. She felt she had told the story she wanted to tell. She was ready to move on to other projects. I respect that. I would never tell an author what to do with his or her story. I am allowed however to go online and complain about it. That’s how the Internet works. Everything just kind of funnels into an ending and it all feels rather sudden. I just don’t feel that sensation of payback that I was looking forward to. The few paragraphs we had with Snow at the beginning of Catching Fire portrayed a deliciously evil figure. I wanted more of that guy! Then, I wanted our hero to knock him OUT!

So. The love story. First off, I was obviously never going to like it. I’m not trying to be sexist here, and I hope I’m not being sexist. The love triangle was CLEARLY aimed at teenage girls, because I remember trying to court girls who thought exactly like this, for years, going into my twenties. “You’re great and so wonderful, but I just don’t know!!! Why can’t we be friends so you can do everything I want and make me feel like a princess?” Screw Katniss and her shit. At one point in Mockingjay, SHE ACTUALLY CLEARLY STATES THAT SHE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO KISS EITHER GUY AND IT’S NONE OF ANYONE’S BUSINESS. YES IT IS. IT IS THE BUSINESS OF THE DUDES YOU ARE KISSING.

Sorry, but the two love interests are barely there. I’d describe their characters as cardboard but that’s being way, way too kind. There are several moments in this series where one of the guys just tells her that he will do whatever she wants, and he will wait for her, and she makes him angry but he will always be there no matter what, and she is a special snowflake and then she talks about the special connection she has with each of these characters and how much she cares about them but how they make her angry with the whole reasonably asking what the story is thing and she gets so upset because she should be able to do what she likes and Gale is the perfect man but he’s not as sensitive as Peeta and Peeta is wonderful but he doesn’t get her the way Gale does and then I almost break my Nook e-reader because I throw it across the room and make silent screaming prayers to Gods both Christian and pagan that this fictional character can become flesh and bone so that we can all gather together and kill her in the slowest and most painful method possible.

AGH!!!!!!

Far and away the weirdest and most annoying thing, is that despite the fact that we see TONS more of Peeta (what an awful fake name) throughout the series and in particular in the first book, he is no more believable or interesting than Gale. However, Gale completely fails to materialize as a real character. We’re told to take it on faith that they have a special bond after about eight pages in the first book, and we’re clearly meant to think of him as some kind of super handsome cool kid who still loves awkward Katniss, but when he should come into his own, particularly in the third book, he just completely fails to become interesting. I would say this was by design so that we would understand why she chooses Peeta, but it clearly isn’t, because she (Collins) decides the way to make us understand the Peeta decision is to turn Gale into a mildly psychopathic terrorist mastermind.

What the…? Seriously?

Then we have this baby thing, which isn’t even remotely a dilemma, at all. I mean, it makes sense that she wouldn’t want to have kids with the Hunger Games existing, but she’s 17 and she doesn’t even talk about sex (although I admit as a future parent I like that in a book with this audience – I will be a dad and not a mum, don’t forget, it’s my job to keep my little girls away from sex until they reach their late 20s or if possible, forever) but she’s obsessed with having babies. So the big rosy epilogue is that she has babies, and I wasn’t really angry, I’m just sitting there after three books and this is how the author decides to end it and all I can think of is: “Who gives a shit?”

Did anyone give a shit about her womb? Anyone? Who cares?

And finally, what THE EFF with suddenly having Hunger Games with children of capitol ringleaders, and why does Katniss agree? And why isn’t that addressed? And what exactly is it supposed to mean? Did it happen? Apart from the fact that it undermines every single damn thing that has happened in the book, what’s the story? Do the Hunger Games go on, or not?

I wanted to admire Collins for the ending, but I’m not convinced she meant it to work out the way it did. I really, really don’t think it was all masterminded. I think to a certain extent she said “eff this” and moved on. A fourth book could have helped. In fact, I would have been fine with a fourth and fifth entry. I feel like there was plenty to tell. I mean, we live in a world where Stephenie Meyer was actually re-writing one of her books from the perspective of the vampire. I would have been MUCH more interested in a book that focused on a young citizen of the capitol who got wrapped up in the revolution and learned what the world was really like in the districts. I also would have liked the ending to be drawn out some more, into a whole new book. Also, as much as I like grim endings and I admire storytelling that refuses to cop out, I just didn’t want these characters to live in a world where the bad guy was replaced by another bad guy. I like that it respects the reader, I like that the entire storyline is delivering a sophisticated message to young people about how power can be abused and the dangers of violence and propaganda, but I guess I wanted my happy ending. I know the happy ending is supposed to be Katniss having a baby with Peeta, but really, I consider that to be a few pages that some crazy person successfully sneaked into the printer when they were publishing the first run, and they decided to go with it.

It’s funny, but a lot of the reason I just refuse to acknowledge that weird “and then I learned to love the idea of having babies” ending comes down to why I liked the series in the first place. I didn’t even realize this until I watched Breaking Dawn, Part 1 last week. Bella Swan is awful. She’s just the worst. She’s willing to turn her back on her family for a guy she met in high school, she completely subjugates her will and her future to a controlling jerk. Katniss Everdeen is tough. She stands up for her sister. Sure, she has this incredibly infuriating love triangle that she goes on, and on and on and on and on about. Sure, she is beyond frustrating with her “why is everyone looking to me? All I did was publicly humiliate the evil police state and take a stand against oppression? WHY WON’T THEY LEAVE ME ALONE!” shtick. However, at the end of the day, she controls her life. She’s pretty badass, frankly. She lives in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be just as tough and successful as men. Women can be just as evil as men can be, too. The character who suffers the humiliation of becoming a sex object for the benefit of the powers that be is male. There’s a lot going on in these books that I really liked. I guess, just cut out the last few pages, remove the love triangle, and I’d have a large single volume book that would leave me crying out for a sequel. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

Related posts:

1. Mockingjay is eating my face!
2. Don’t treat me this way, Collins (Mockingjay ch 1-15)
3. EPILOGUE: Mockingjay kinda sucks?

Here at the ladyfest known as FYA, we occasionally coerce convince a real live dude to write about YA on our site. Given that most guys pull a Fred Savage when they hear the words “young adult,” we appreciate the rare opportunity to include a male perspective. But thanks to our Irish friend John, we might be seeing more dude-ishness around these internet parts. Early on, John appreciated the amazeballs awfulness of the Twilight movies, and he pretty much begged Posh and Jenny for a seat next them at the midnight screening of Breaking Dawn. In return, we asked him to share his brutally honest and totally hilarious take on the movie with all of you. You may agree, or you may get totally pissed off, but regardless, it’s great to have a boy back in the girls bathroom.

P.S. We recently got John to read The Hunger Games trilogy, so keep an eye out for his upcoming Mockingjay review.

I like the Twilight films. I like them a lot. I just don’t like them as they are intended to be enjoyed. I laugh at Twilight films a lot. Belly laughs. Horrified laughs. Laughs of disbelief. This isn’t me trying to be “too cool” for the series; I’m clearly not in the target market for this fiction. I came to this film series out of curiosity and I have stayed for the audacious level of awfulness that pervades it. This post is a reaction to the latest installment. I have never read the books, and I have no plans to do so. Ever. EVER.

Breaking Dawn assumes the crown of best/worst Twilight movie. It’s a masterpiece, really. Despite the low depths to which the earlier films gleefully plunged, despite the unrivalled ability of the two principal actors to make a scene feel like they have the ability to slow down time itself to fit in more boredom, and despite my preparedness (oh, damn my hubris!) for really crazy gender issues, this film ensured my jaw remained solidly open for long stretches of time. Nothing that has come before this in the series is even remotely as insane as what happens in this film. The male characters have never been creepier, the vampire characters have never been more bland or less interesting, the central character of the entire series has never been more infuriating and, frankly, never been more outrageously political in a way that I am not sure belongs in fiction aimed at young girls. Well no, allow me to correct myself. I am completely sure that politics like this (read: extreme) should not be in fiction aimed at young people of either gender.

Let’s get started then… The film starts with Bella being awkward (aww… bless!) in some high heels while Edward Cullen stands on a balcony looking forlorn and, crucially, ignoring the central character of the story, the woman he is about to marry. He just stands there looking out on to the veranda while his weird doctor “dad” carries wooden benches around on one shoulder. Incidentally, this begs the question, yet again, of just how stupid the residents of Forks have to be. We are way beyond Clark Kent and spectacles at this point. I mean, there has to be some kind of construction industry or events management in the Forks area, right? It’s a small town. There’s probably one contractor and everyone would know who it is. He or she would be upset they didn’t get set-up job for the Cullen wedding. Ok, only a few hours’ work, but hey it’s cash, and who did they get to move all that equipment and vintage wooden furniture that we are supposed to think grows naturally in the wild in Washington?

Anyway. Sorry.

So, Edward then turns up in Bella’s bedroom, because this is considered completely normal at this point and has been their standard courting procedure for four films now. He then does the forlorn thing and tries to talk her out of marrying him. The night before the wedding. He doesn’t deserve her, and this upsets him so much that he wants to make sure that her big day is ruined by him complaining. This is a theme, by the way. There’s more, though; he is not undeserving because of the usual fake humblebrag reasons, but because he has a murky vampire human-killing past. You see, Edward was a crime-fighting vampire, who would stalk nineteenth century American towns solving crimes, feeding only on would-be rapists and attackers. This horrifies him, because he’s the worst vampire ever, and has absolutely no effect on Bella whatsoever, because she doesn’t care about human life and just wants to make sure that Edward is comfortable and that he has everything he wants. Meanwhile I’m waiting for the flashback where he’s wearing a full on deerstalker a la Sherlock Holmes. It’s beyond terrible, makes no sense, was admittedly quite funny, and serves absolutely no purpose in this film except to show that Edward is an inconsiderate idiot who is constantly creating drama for no reason. Again: this is a theme.

So, the wedding happens, and to be honest, I found it very boring. Meyer’s cameo was pretty hilarious. The “first kiss” is predictably gross, and all I could think of was how young people today probably haven’t seen the scene in The Wedding Singer where Drew Barrymore describes a socially acceptable wedding kiss. Pro tip, kids: don’t make out on the altar. It’s gross. At the wedding ceremony, Edward brings Bella out to meet Jacob, because he’s understanding and he’s so secure in their love, and he can’t pass up the opportunity to have a huge amount of drama on the day that he is getting married. Jacob gets upset because Bella and Edward will do sex on their honeymoon, and this will kill Bella. Bella, in what is another theme in this film, is fairly convinced that the power of human will triumphs over scientific fact. Now that I think of it, Bella Swan has a lot more in common with Mao Zedong than I realized. Shortly after a meaningless shouting match, more guests get upset, and as is traditional at a wedding, share this with the young couple directly, because it’s not like this is an important day or anything. Then everyone gets together to cheer the fact that this guy is taking an 18 year old girl into his Volvo and driving her to a secret location. Bella’s dad points this out, and how we all laugh. Silly Charlie. They’re in love! Everything will be ok!

This secret location is an island that the vampires own. They have their own island. This has never been mentioned. This family has the means to charter their own private jets, they own a speedboat, and they own an island, and they have never mentioned this. How have they never mentioned that they own an entire island? Complete, of course, with a beautiful house and quaint native American house helpers, who walk around speaking Portuguese and performing admirably as typically racist caricatures. Then, Edward and Bella have sex. It’s hilarious.

From this point on, it is made abundantly clear that the male characters in this film are creepy, possessive jerks. In the previous film, this was mostly implied. Blindingly obvious, but implied. In Breaking Dawn… So, after the obligatory sex has been conducted, Bella is reminiscing about how AMAZING it was when Edwards points out that she has bruises lining her arms. She points out that she doesn’t care, that she loves him and the sex was good, and I really don’t have the strength to get into all of that. It’s creepy. What is more creepy, in my opinion, is that Edward then expresses remorse and refuses to have sex with her for the rest of the honeymoon. So, let’s get this straight: the groom finally yields to his bride’s insatiable (and let’s face it, sinful) urges, but then decides to use sex as a weapon against her by denying it to her for the next two weeks. Really.

Then, Bella is somehow magically pregnant. I say “magically” because this is treated as the biggest plot twist in modern fiction. Basically, we have been subjected for years now to a story about werewolves whose clothes magically grow back after transformations Hulk-style, vampires with iridescent diamond skin, and a weird Vampire-led illuminati operating out of Italy, and the biggest shock in the series is that an 18 year old woman got pregnant after she had sex? This is a joke, right? I mean, we’re all in on this one, aren’t we? RIGHT???  Edward’s reaction to this is to immediately become a caricature of the evil boyfriend who rejects God and worships abortion doctors. There is a lot of grabbing the phone away from Bella, yelling at her for being the reason that sex is inherently bad (pay attention, ladies!) and bringing in previously mentioned racist caricatures to glower at her and cry out in Portuguese.

This film turns into a very badly written political discussion piece on abortion. Really. I mean… Why would you do that? One of the most divisive issues in modern society, and you introduce it into fiction written for teenage girls? What? For no reason whatsoever, Bella and Edward now swap positions on the value of life. Bella suddenly starts talking about her baby and how the baby must live no matter what. At one point they tell her that she will die and the baby won’t make it anyway and she decides to try anyway because, you know, life is a miracle and like, she loves the baby so much, you know, and like… It’s really, really awful. Incidentally, I am not making any assumptions about the “correct” position in this argument. I just know this argument shouldn’t be happening in this film.

Meanwhile, the film has been busy introducing characters that I’ve never heard of while introducing subtle hints that pedophilia is an acceptable practice if you’re a werewolf. I wish I was joking. The best scene of the series so far, by a country mile, brings us a mad fevered dream of a run through the forest by a werewolf that ends with some kind of Model UN meeting between a bunch of CGI wolves having a heated discussion telepathically. There’s a lot of yelling while these wolves mug for the camera, and nothing really gets resolved, except that for some reason the entire werewolf community has gotten involved in this idiot’s (Jacob’s) teen drama. Also, there’s some kind of doggy face-off and power struggle, but the whole thing has less gravitas than a Beethoven film.

As the film is coming to an end, the filmmakers suddenly introduce some horror elements, and actually almost make it interesting. Bella drinks blood milkshakes, and it’s extremely disgusting and pretty cool. She has also by this time become horrifically emaciated. The whole “physical horror of childbirth” thing actually has a bit of a theme going for a while. Then there’s a deliberately vague scene that glosses over the disturbing specifics of the child’s birth, Jacob falls in love with a baby, and Edward injects an enormous syringe into Bella to try and save her life, then biting her all over her body including at least one rude place. It’s really, really odd. Also, werewolves turn up and they have another conversation and they explain that now that Jacob loves the baby, they can’t attack because pedophilia is the most important component of werewolf culture. Why they can’t murder everyone there EXCEPT the baby and Jacob, and then live happily ever after except for a weird conversation on adoption and parenthood at Thanksgiving dinner at some point down the road, is never adequately explained.

Also, I want to post a pro tip for my fellow dudes out there, particularly the younger dudes who may actually be in a “love triangle.” Hey, I’ve been in one or two. First of all, there is no love triangle. There is a person in the middle who likes attention. Secondly, if you marry a girl and she insists that this other dude be included at all times, and she wants to name your first born after him (unless it’s a girl, then she’ll make up an embarrassingly stupid name instead), you should leave her. Because guy, I’m telling you right now, she’s planning for a few “mistakes” after too much wine going forward. You know, while you’re out of town, attending the vampire conference?

I think the weirdest thing about this film is that despite all of the madness I just described, I walked out of the cinema feeling like nothing had really happened. I suppose, what did happen? A teenager got married, got pregnant, refused to include her father (or her mother) in an extremely important moral and medical decision, and then some werewolves shouted at each other. This series is insane. Bring on Part 2.

Related posts:

1. The Official FYA Breaking Dawn, Part 1 Drinking Game
2. A highly scientific analysis of the Breaking Dawn Part 1 Teaser
3. A highly scientific analysis of the Breaking Dawn Pt 1 Trailer

So after sitting with the story for a little while now, I’m realizing that Mockingjay left me with a different sort of TEABS. You could call it DE2ABSS for Disappointing End to A Beloved Series Syndrome. That’s not as catchy as TEABS, but hopefully it won’t need to be used as much, so it doesn’t need to be the kind of acronym that catches on. Although I do think more numerals need to be used in acronyms, just in general…

Anyway, after the jump there’ll be nothing but spoilers, so if you haven’t finished Mockingjay yet, you probably don’t want to keep reading. Unless you haven’t even started Mockingjay yet, in which case I’d say to you – don’t bother! Let the world of Panem and all of its beloved characters live on in your head untainted by this mess.

Sigh…

So first off, some history of me and The Hunger Games in general, because I realize I’m being a bit brazen by openly declaring the end of Katniss’s story a festival of suck, and tons of you will angrily disagree with me. That’s totally fine, and I realize I’m not necessarily the demographic for this book anyway (although there you could argue that none of us on FYA are *really* the demographic, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves).

At any rate, as a movie nerd first and foremost, I was predisposed to not really be into The Hunger Games. When PoshDeluxe first told me about this amazing book she was reading where a bunch of teenagers had to go into an arena and fight to the death I snarkily replied, “Oh, so some YA writer realized that most people in America still aren’t aware of Battle Royale and then decided to mix that in with Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery? Whoopity do!”

But she kept talking about it and raving, so I started to see that maybe there was something there. I’d blown off Harry Potter until she convinced me that the books were way better than the movies on their own, and I’m really glad I got into that as well as several other YA series that followed. So we agreed that if she’d watch the awesomely violent Battle Royale then I would also read The Hunger Games.

And it took me a couple dozen pages, but I quickly realized that I totally loved The Hunger Games, too. Suzanne Collins may have launched into her world from a series of incidents that I was familiar with, but she made it completely her own. And other than wondering about the technology that let them be filmed all the time throughout the games, I was completely hooked. The training! The careers! Cinna making me somehow care about futuristic female fashion! Rue! Poor, amazing Rue…

And the beginning of what would become the love triangle that consumed the books was so heartbreakingly real. Katniss realizing that Gale would be watching her as she pretended to love Peeta, not understanding that the longer she put on the act the more genuine her affection for him would become…  ouch.

When we would first get together and argue about whether we were Team Peeta or Team Gale it felt more like we were only talking about whether or not we thought Katniss should even bother with giving Peeta a real chance. Readers either loved Peeta’s passion and found his childhood crush on Katniss endearing or thought that unconditionally loving someone from afar didn’t really make sense and that anyone who acted that way in real life would totally be a stalker and bad in bed. I clearly sided with the latter camp, so I was Team Gale when we didn’t really know anything about Gale except that a) he was probably hurt by what Katniss had to do with Peeta to survive the Games and b) he was the best chance her family had for survival if she died (and that’s all I needed to know to realize that Gale was clearly a badass).

But yeah, that book was AWESOME.

Catching Fire wasn’t quite as strong for me, but I loved the way we got to see more of Panem, and once I got over the fact that the Quarter Quell felt kind of like a cheat by Collins as much as it was a dick move by President Snow, I was okay with that device and got sucked back into the arena. Plus learning about Haymitch’s history, seeing a bunch of victorious tributes get together, and getting to go back in with a little bit of an idea of what to expect from the damn game makers made it fun to be back in that world. Admittedly, I was a little peeved by the whole, “This has been a revolutionary plan all along and oh my god there’s randomly no District 12″ shock ending that felt like it came on too swiftly and a little too Shyamalanistic, but we knew there would be an entire book following that, and Collins had won my respect so completely from the death of Rue scenes, so I was ready to go for the ride.

And the first half of Mockingjay was a pretty great ride. I still find the destruction of District 12 a little bit over the top, but it gives us an excuse to get all of our protagonists inside the awesome flip side of dystopia that’s all underground and full of rigid rules. And seeing that as the alternative really did make me think about the world we live in and how it’s kind of impossible to get away from having different districts that are full of disenfranchised people. There are only so many resources, after all, and on Earth is America really all that different from the Capitol when we rely on third world slave labor to provide us with oil and Nikes and stuff? And maybe if President Snow is the embodiment of capitalistic greed, President Coin is a demonstration on how a Communistic attempt at getting people to share resources still falls apart because there’ll have to be someone at the top determining exactly how those resources are shared, and it would be impossible for that person to not become corrupt, and…

Then I’d slap myself and make fun of my brain for reading way too much into a book where a girl with awesome bow and arrow skills is having a hard time choosing between a baker and a hunter. But still, I enjoyed those thoughts, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Collins planted some of those ideas in there on purpose to help show that it’s not just that war is bad, it’s that fighting is part of the human condition and how we respond to that necessity is how we determine what our character is.

But I digress again. Because there we are, watching Katniss be manipulated and moved throughout this world, but we’re watching her come into her own for the first time, too. When Plutarch & Co. realize that they can’t get the soundbites they need by writing what they want her to say, they’re inadvertently helping her tap into that inner fire inside. In District 8 she breaks away and does what she needs to. In District 2 she risks her life to save a bunch of people who would have loved watching their career children slaughter her or Prim, and it’s awesome.

But then they send her in on a mission to get camera footage of her in a city (lame). Things go wrong (duh). Peeta is a walking time bomb because of the whole hijacking thing (not only lame but also robs even Team Peeta fans of the chance for Peeta and Katniss to really find their way to each other). Finnick dies, they hang out in the back of a fur shop, then the army is in the middle of the city anyway, meaning that the entire mission we’d just watched is pretty much pointless.

And before we even worry about the whole saving Prim was the only reason Katniss volunteered for the Games and started this shit storm but then Prim died anyway thing, what about the fact that it was sort of just a given that President Snow had a bunch of children hanging out in his front yard as some kind of deterrent. What the fuck is that?

Yes, the world is full of awful people who commit unthinkable crimes like using children as human shields (don’t click that link if you want to sleep ever again, cause you’ll realize you’re totally a Capitol citizen damn fast if you do). But why would anyone really assume President Snow just put them in his front yard? And if Coin did it as part of her master plan to make Katniss one last symbol of her new power, how did she do it? And why did she bother? Just for the one last Hunger Games? Because it wasn’t like Katniss was starting to think, “Hmm. Maybe I won’t choose Gale or Peeta and will just run away with President Snow instead!”  That whole mess comes out of nowhere, and then the kids thinking that the parachuted bombs would have food and prizes because they serve tributes that way during the Games was just another bit of WTF.

And yes, you can argue your way around it and say, “Well, Katniss and her gang were hanging out in tiger lady’s basement for a long time, so all sorts of things could happen above ground. It makes sense that Snow would do something and then and then Coin would do something and then something else would happen and the kids grew up watching the games so maybe at Christmas they have presents parachuted in to be cute and then that set up the thing with the bombs and everything.”

You can say that, and yes, it theoretically could have happened. But the fact that it could be possible doesn’t make it believable within the confines of the story, and that’s the problem with everything that happens after that fake mission into the city. As soon as they’re in the basement, the action is all off the page, which means that not only do we not get to see any of it, but none of it makes any sense. When we’re finally brought in to the “Let’s Have Another Hunger Games” vote, we don’t catch that Katniss is saying, “I vote yes – for Prim” merely as a way of stalling so she can kill Coin because we’re too busy going, “Wait, what the fuck is happening??”

And that’s lazy storytelling. Some of that, of course, is because we’re always trapped inside Katniss’s head, so we can’t know what’s going on everywhere else. But how awesome would the series have been if Collins had left that convention behind? What if The Hunger Games was from Katniss’s point of view, Catching Fire had completely shifted the action to Peeta’s POV, and then we experienced the events in Mockingjay from Gale’s perspective?? How much more powerful would the bombing and executing of Prim have been if we’d been able to see it coming but were unable to stop it, like Gale was? And then in the epilogue we could have pulled back to an omniscient viewpoint and been given the opportunity to check in on all of our favorite characters. Maybe without any inner monologue at all, because then there wouldn’t be this final sort of debate over whether or not Katniss ending up with Peeta was a good thing or a bad thing.

Of course, like I said in my other post, that Epilogue was great for me if only because it proved the point I’d been making since the first book: if she chooses Peeta, her life will suck. And to be clear to people that posted some stuff in the comments after my last post, I don’t at ALL think that having kids and being peaceful is automatically a sucky life. Hanging out with someone you love, producing more people that you love, and watching them grow up to become full fledged human beings in a world where you don’t have to send them off to a lottery every year just to get your allotment of grain sounds like it could be a beautiful thing. But even though there is a line about how holding the first baby alleviated some of Katniss’s fear, she still felt terror all over again when she got pregnant again, and because Collins has us trapped inside Katniss’s 37 year old mind even at the end we can see that she doesn’t think, “Wow, I used to not want children because I grew up in a horrible world. But then Peeta made me realize that thanks to all of the horrors and sacrifices that we went through, the world today is a better place. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s the kind of place where I could imagine starting a new life, of seeing into the future, of the possibilities of it all” and on and on. But she doesn’t. She says that it took fifteen years to agree to children, but Peeta wanted them so badly.

And she doesn’t look to the future or find hope. She dwells on the past, talking about the graveyard her nameless children play on, about the “tedious” task of making a list of every act of goodness she’s seen someone do. That’s a horrible existence, and it doesn’t ring true to the Katniss that we grew to love in the first book. Yes, she’s reactionary, but therein lies her strength, and her fire, and her only moments of actual joy. But in choosing to spend her life with a dandelion, she chose a life of sitting on a hillside in a meadow without ever leaving to go off with a hunting partner.

And here again, yes you can argue, “But that’s how it would really happen! War is bad and stuff!” And yes, war is bad. And yes, it *could* happen this way. But that doesn’t excuse that in a fictional world we should see things happen, and that those things should happen for an actual reason that is propelled by the interactions of believable characters and a plot that moves us from scene to scene. Instead, we only get Katniss kind of whining.

And she always did that in her head, and I think we all do that internally from time to time, and that was one of the things that connected us as readers to her plight in the first book and her painful realization that she was going to have to choose between suitors in the second. But ultimately she always proved that she was a person of action no matter what she thought in her head. And the second half of Mockingjay robbed us of that Katniss, and that’s nothing but disappointing.

Of course, if the epilogue hadn’t been in there, and there’d been a fourth book where Gale had to come back to District 12 as part of his Important and Awesome Work… Hmm. And THEN Katniss could see Gale on one of his visits and start to want to come back out and make the world a better place, especially because she has kids now and that fire inside her wouldn’t make her just worry about explaining nightmares. And there’d be some of that old tension, and she’s wonder if maybe she should have picked Gale after all, but then we’d meet Gale’s wife and she would be AWESOME and SUPER HOT and Katniss would realize that she no longer even had a chance.

Not only that, but we’d get to hear from Gale and how the whole disappointing ending of Mockingjay thing where Katniss didn’t actually choose at all but rather just ended up with Peeta because he was the only dude her age in her district. And Gale would explain that yeah, he used to love Katniss. But when he realized that she’d always think he’d directly killed her sister just because he had a good understanding of human behavior he realized that he was actually over her. She’d put him through the ringer, and for what? Because she kinda liked this dough boy, too? He didn’t need that shizz in his life anymore, so he did the only sensible thing any of us can do when we realize we’re in a love triangle – he took himself out of it and reminded himself that there are plenty of other awesome people in the world. Then he went and found one that understood how awesome he was and they also made babies together, but they did it with way more orgasms than Katniss and Peeta.

But still, Gale’s fire would reignite hers, and then she would light up again, and she would inspire Peeta, and he would use his power of knowing the right thing to say in every situation to rise to a status where he was improving Panem for everyone. Not as President, necessarily, but at least as a leader in a badass non-profit that was working to improve the life of miners in every district, or just as a mobile food bank operator.

Of course, he’d still be working directly under Gale’s supervision. And maybe he’d start to have a crush on Gale’s wife, too, because he realized that the girl he fell in love with was literally 7 when he decided to love her, and she changed so much as they grew together and then somewhere in the pandemonium he felt like he was losing her again, which made him cling on to her ever tighter, so then she thought she’d better go off on her own for a few months and try to rediscover herself, only to discover, to her horror, that she’d somehow become just as crappy at caring for her offspring as her own mother was because she totally abandoned her children to that milk toast baker.

And that, too, would be how things really happen in real life. It would give everyone their bittersweet ending that they needed because war is bad and they think that that’s what this series is about (even though it’s totally not). But it would be a bittersweet ending with some punch, with some fire, with some real hope of a continued existence.

Is it still bad fan fiction if the writing is actually better than the original story?

Also, dear Scholastic – I’m totally available to serve as editor for your next big crossover series. Or to help Suzanne do a rewrite before the paperback comes out.

Related posts:

1. FYABC: Before I Fall, Ch. 7 and Epilogue (The Cast)
2. FYABC: Before I Fall, Ch. 7 and Epilogue (Semantics)
3. FYABC: Before I Fall, Ch. 7 and Epilogue (Drama in Real Life)

Was I supposed to wait an entire day before posting this? WELL TOO BAD. Now that I’ve finished I agree with all the commenters from day one who just wanted us to read faster so we can talk about everything. So here we go:

This post is going to be spoilerific for every single aspect of Mockingjay. Don’t read this until you’ve gotten through the acknowledgements and know who Suzanne Collins wants to thank the most. Okay? Okay.

NOTHING BUT SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP:

Soooo many things to touch on here. Before going into the whole Peeta thing again, though, I just want to say

GOD DAMN IT, FINNICK!!

And then there’s a whole list of god damn its that could go out to Coin and Prim and Beetee and on and on. But their motivations all made sense.

So back to the hijacking and the way that would inevitably lead to Peeta and Katniss being together. I didn’t see The English Patient, Erin, but that’s because I could tell it was gonna be weak sauce from the trailer alone. So I agree that she had to do *something* to make it confusing and get Peeta into that state of kind of hating Katniss. But it would have been sooooo much more interesting if there hadn’t been venom involved, just actual doubt.

The only thing that would have worked was the “Peeta as potential weapon” device, but there was never any real tension in that for me, because clearly it wasn’t really going to come down to that.

Although, speaking of what things came down to, was anyone else a little bit disappointed by the way it ratcheted up at the climax and then just fell flat? Katniss was just kind of wandering in the streets, then there was a collection of kids, then some bombs, then… we wake up later. Then Katniss assassinates Coin and… we wake up later. Then she goes to sleep again, and then Peeta’s there, and then… we have an epilogue.

BUT WHAT AN EPILOGUE!!!

I mean, in actuality, looking at it as the end of a beloved trilogy, the epilogue kind of blew. But it’s exciting to me, because it proves what I’ve been saying all along: choosing Peeta = choosing a lame ass life of sucking.

I mean I get that rationale that Katniss needs a dandelion or something, but I still think that it’s sort of sad for her that after everything she’s been through she just hangs out back in the Shire making a memory book like she’s Bilbo Baggins or something. She *has* that fire, damn it, and instead of getting to go out and do something else to make the world a better place she’s just hanging out with KIDS THAT SHE NEVER WANTED TO HAVE until that stupid whiny baker talked her into it.

Again, go back and read that first paragraph: IT TOOK HER FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN YEARS TO AGREE TO IT. That is some PUSHY baking business. Now she doesn’t even care about their names, just calls them boy and girl (to be fair, though, Suzanne may have run out of crazy sounding names, and the FYA Hunger Games name post probably wasn’t up when she was writing that). La la la, save the world, hang out in a meadow, always worried that the girl is going to be scared of mommy’s night terrors.

Meanwhile, who knows what Gale’s important job in District 2 is? It’s tough to say, but you can be damn sure that after his plan killed Prim and took Katniss away from him forever he’s not interested in restocking the nuclear defense system. I bet he’s using his hunting instincts to build a new system of moving necessary supplies from district to district, and applying what he knows of human behavior to create a strong new economic model that can thrive under a true democracy. In other words, GENERALLY BEING AWESOME.

I’m also a little disappointed that he wasn’t mentioned at all in the epilogue. Real or not real as Katniss’s love for Peeta may be at the end after that love creeps up on her, Gale was still her best friend. I hate it when romantic entanglements make people lose their best friends, and after a few years I’m sure Gale would be over her and happy with someone else who crept up on him. Couldn’t they meet up after a decade, go hunting, and exchange stories? Although I’m sure it would have been heart breaking for Gale to see the shell she became thanks to a lousy choice in a lover…

I’m glad we didn’t get an epilogue for Annie, though. That would just be tooooo sad.

Ultimately, though? Yeah, TEAM GALE all the way.

After he was gone, I kept going back to my Gale = Han from the original debates. And if Katniss had stayed with him, she could have truly become Princess Leia, using the fire that burned within her to ignite a passion for rebuilding from the smoldering ashes that used to be Panem. Helping the rest of the population, all of whom no doubt had suffered losses just as tragic as her loss of Prim, to see that there was a point to fighting on, because we have to fight on, because as soon as we stop fighting we turn back to bread and circuses – BREAD and circuses, you crazy baked goods fans and citizens of the Capitol – and we leave a gap for the next President Snow to walk back through.

The girl who was on fire would not be content to just let that fire spread, either, she would be the Girl Who Became a Phoenix, and she would have lived a life full of meaning and fulfillment instead of just sitting in a meadow every day, trying to remember some times when she saw people displaying goodness.

Seriously, is Suzanne Collins a Mormon as well? Or do YA authors just hate women? Because for an author who created a character as awesome as Katniss, she sure did consign her to an old school woman’s role straight out of the Mad Men era. I think it’s safe to say that the best thing the movie studio can do now is cut her off, hand over the entirety of the creative control to Joss Whedon, and let him turn Katniss into the badass that she really needs to be.

And I think this is what I was always arguing for when I started being Team Gale – Katniss’s ultimate fulfillment. Yes, I framed most of that debate in the terms of sexual fulfillment, but there’s so much more to it than that. And a life spent hunting with your best friend, seeking out meaning in the world, and living up to your potential is so much more fulfilling than a life spent with a fricking dandelion.

Also, I still say that the sex would be way better with Gale. But that’s what happens when you pick the one who dotes all the time; that’s all they know how to do. “Are you okay, honey?” “You sure you’re okay? What  can I do to help?” “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay as long as we have each other.” GAH.

All right, fire away on everything you want in the comments.

Erin, I trust you’ll take my hurried words here and be more eloquent as always. But I hope you don’t feel it necessary to cling to your so obviously misguided opinions on Peeta just because you were wrong before. It’s okay to acknowledge that that was a mistake, you didn’t know how meaningless life with him would be for Katniss, and to congratulate me on my victory.

“I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion.”

Related posts:

1. the great peeta vs. gale debate (final round): Peeta = Riley
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate, round 2: Peeta is to Bryan Adams as Gale is to Jay-Z
3. the great peeta vs. gale debate: peeta is a pansy

Okay, so there are a couple of standard things to get out of the way before we get going here.

1) This post is covering Mockingjay chapters 1-15. Yes, I want to not be writing and instead finish reading and then talk about the entire book, but that is coming in like a day, and I can wait. Plus, it’s kind of interesting to talk about it in chunks like this, because I can make bold predictions and many of you will know how wrong I am BUT YOU CAN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT YET.

2) Because we don’t want any spoilers on this thread. We’ll be finishing up the book tomorrow, but for now Erin and I get to talk about chapters 1-15 only. If you’re caught up, keep reading this post. If you’re behind, don’t go past the jump because THERE WILL BE NOTHING BUT SPOILERS.

3) I didn’t pick this as the stopping point; Erin did. To be fair, she chose it before we knew what was going to happen, but Jesus, Erin – you picked a doozy of a sentence for me to walk away from the book on. Don’t worry, that isn’t a spoiler.

BUT EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON OUT WILL BE.

Okay, so first off let me just get this out of the way:

HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT.

Also, let me just say that I really hope they don’t let the Wachowski brothers direct the Hunger Games movies. The deeper underground they go in District 13, the more I keep picturing the shitty sequels to the Matrix against my will. Then I shake my head and squeeze my eyes and make myself picture Brazil (the movie, not the country), and everything seems much more proper. In fact, if they gave this series to Gilliam I think it would be full on art (if it ever got finished).

Anyway.

Things really heated up in the Peeta v. Gale world in this section, and while I’ll *never* admit that Erin’s right about anything other than dance parties, it does seem pretty clear that Suzanne’s moving us toward a conclusion designed to put Katniss in Peeta’s arms and is sort of cruelly trying to turn the audience away from Gale no matter what. Let’s look at the score card:

Gale lied to Katniss about having seen the Peeta announcement : -4 points, until you remember that Peeta spent an entire book lying to Katniss because Haymitch told him to, then -4 points off Katniss for being whiny.

Peeta warns District 13 of imminent attack, thus saving everyone’s favorite character, Buttercup : +15 points

Gale tells Katniss that “he knew she would kiss him because he was in pain” :  fucking lame move, -8 points

Gale leaves on the mission to save Peeta, even though he knows he’s the competition : okay, +8 again

But here’s where Gale loses me pretty much entirely – pg. 198, when he tells Katniss that he can’t kiss her because, “it would be like kissing someone who’s drunk.” WTF, Gale? KISSING DRUNK PEOPLE IS AWESOME. Especially if you’re drunk, too. It gets all sloppy and leads to mistakes and everyone knows that mistakes are very valuable learning tools, so kissing drunk people is highly educational even while being super fun. Not wanting to kiss drunk people? Super lame : -75 points.

Oh, and then damn it – wanting to kill everyone just because District 12 got bombed? Also super lame : -50 points.

So yeah, at this point Gale is way behind, and I’m sure Erin is just waiting to hear me talk about how she’s right and Peeta’s awesome and all of that. But here’s the rub:

Peeta has been “hijacked.” Really?!?!? That’s ridiculous. Because OF COURSE NOW KATNISS WILL WANT HIM.

The most obvious rule from the popular, unpublished self-help book for needy boys that I intend to write sometime in my late 40s, How To Escape The Friend Zone And Finally Get Laid, is that the number one thing the Needy Boy needs to do is suddenly and inexplicably stop caring about the girl (or at least pretend to). Seriously.

Of course, by not just having Peeta start liking other girls (which would totally have been enough to get Katniss to start drooling over him all the time anyway) but then having him actually try to kill her, Suzanne is taking a cue from Stephenie and going into the full on Stalker Fantasy genre. That scene along with Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” makes this officially the Summer of Abusive Boyfriends.

And yeah, Peeta’s been drugged and made to do it and blah, blah, blah. But I can’t get past seeing that hijacking as a lazy plot device. There are still many more chapters to go, though, so maybe I’ll come around? I’ll just feel cheated if I don’t get to see what Katniss would have done if Peeta had been Peeta and Gale had been Gale.

And for the record, I think that Peeta still could have won. Gale being a dick now that the revolution is on makes total sense. He was older when the mine accident killed his father than Katniss was, and he was full of testosterone. That made him hate in a manner much, much deeper than Katniss does. I think that Katniss could have cured him of that hatred if they lived in a different world, if they’d been allowed to grow up at a reasonable pace instead of forced into it by the games, and if they had metaphorical President Snows to fight against instead of the actual one. But the fact that they live in a world where that can’t happen is enough of a tragedy on its own. He would have sacrificed himself for the cause no matter what happened with Peeta, and the scene when he describes his selfish thoughts at seeing Peeta in the hospital is pretty amazing…

Ultimately, of course, Snow is an idiot. He tried to break Katniss by sending Peeta after her, and instead he most likely made Peeta the happiest man in Panem.

Anyway, I can’t wait to see how wrong I am about all of my suppositions. I love to write with conviction because it’s so much more fun when I get to come back and eat my words later. But for now I’ve gotta go. Katniss has been shot, and I need to get back into the Games.

I won’t comment on this thread anymore, though, because I’ll be further along. But Erin, I look forward to seeing what you think of this segment. Personally, I’m getting to be more and more Team Finnick after all. My favorite bit of relationship advice comes when Katniss asks him if he loved Annie right away. “No,” he says, “She snuck up on me.”

Even though it’s probably being used to set up the way Katniss feels like Peeta will sneak up on her, it’s pretty badass. Finnick is awesome.

Related posts:

1. i predict that mockingjay will melt my pants off
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate (final round): Peeta = Riley
3. Mockingjay is eating my face!

Super duper important – this post covers Mockingjay chapters 1-5. Erin and I are going to read it in chunks and discuss here on the blog over the next couple of days. There WILL BE SPOILERS for that part of the book, but there will be no discussion of anything past chapter five. And if you’re going to comment, don’t comment on anything from chapter six on under this post; save it for the next post, due sometime at the end of the day today.

For now, Erin and I are going to revisit our Peeta v. Gale debate while also reacting to everything else in Mockingjay in real time. This is a first for me, btw – all of my other YA books have been experienced purely through audio book. But I don’t like the lady who narrates the Hunger Games trilogy on iTunes any more than everyone else likes Suzanne Collins’ voice when she does readings, apparently, so I guess I’ll just go read it out loud to myself.

Anyway, I’m going to read now, my initial thoughts on chapters 1-5 will be after the jump. Don’t read that until you’re caught up! I hope chapter one is all about Cinna making out with Peeta…

AGAIN – EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON OUT IS FULL OF SPOILERS FROM CHAPTERS 1-5. IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED CHAPTER 5 YET, STOP READING THIS AND READ MOCKINGJAY INSTEAD.

Okay, so putting the book down to write for a couple of minutes is kind of tough. But five chapters in, Mockingjay is definitely off to a great start!

Here’s what we know:

District 13 fucking sucks! That’s a fun development. I’ve been rooting for revolution all along (which is a large part of why I’m so pro-Gale), but seeing that the people that stand to gain power in the post-revolution world are just as shitty as President Snow’s people is nice. I would like a dystopian novel that at least offered hope at getting to a regular topian world somehow, though.

If Snow is sending evil flowers and the rebels are making prep teams hang out in cells with drains over a couple of slices of bread, who the heck are we able to actually root for? Makes me wish Katniss and Gale had just run off into the woods back in the first book.

Cinna may be dead, but Buttercup is alive! I’m still thinking Cinna’s actually fine, though. The line about how he’s “believed” to be dead is too open ended. Yes, he was able to design her Mockingjay outfit before the Quarter Quell even got going, but he’s more than a designer. Until I see a well-tailored suit on a dead body, I’m holding out hope that he’ll be back.

As for Buttercup… that is one tough kitty. 18:00 – Cat Adoration. Awesome. I hope something comes from his open window later that’s more significant than just Katniss hearing something out of the window and then blah, blah, blah. We’ll see.

Most importantly, let’s tally up the score in

Peeta Vs. Gale!

Peeta is great with words. That’s really nice. Unfortunately, he’s retarded with thoughts, and that makes his words come out all wrong. Maybe he’s just trying to save Katniss, but no matter how hopeless the world may be, spouting out President Snow’s propaganda in the hopes that Katniss will survive is just annoying.

Peeta = +1 for oratory skills, -1 for spouting some bullshit

Of course, that’s just Katniss and Gale theorizing about his speech, but still. Gale, on the other hand, saved pretty much every character that mattered from District 12 by being the only person in the District to know about the swimming hole that lets you be invincible from fire bombing. Pretty badass. Too bad Peeta’s family doesn’t matter…

I also like that Gale is someone Katniss can tell secrets to. That’s telling. And when they hunt they’re two parts of one being. No words are necessary between them at all, meanwhile Peeta is able to lobby for a ceasefire using only words.

But. Asking Katniss about why she cares about her prep team reveals Gale’s one real weakness. While Peeta sucks because he’s blinded to the misery in the world since all he cares about is Katniss, Gale is too focused on that one small goal of overthrowing the authorities. I’m not saying he needs to keep Katniss on a pedestal above the rest of Panem the way Peeta keeps doing (because, yuck), but that level of not understanding what it would have been like to actually go through something as harrowing as the games is kind of shocking.

Gale = +2 for saving District 12 people, +1 for being a safe place for secrets, +1 for being able to hunt in silence. – 2 for not understanding that seeing people who’ve cared for you held in chains in a giant toilet might be upsetting to you.

Gale’s still in the lead 2-0 for now, but there’s room for change as we hear from Peeta directly.

But Katniss is still being used like a Calvin Klein model or something, and Prim is still the awesomest thing in the book. I’m sleeping for a few hours before going back into it in the morning, but I look forward to comments ABOUT CHAPTERS 1-5 ONLY, and I’m anxious to see how Erin takes Peeta’s interview and finds some justification for his shitty behavior. I’m also anxious to see more of what Haymitch has to say…

I should wake you up more often, little duck,

Henri

Related posts:

1. the great peeta vs. gale debate, round 2: Peeta is to Bryan Adams as Gale is to Jay-Z
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate (final round): Peeta = Riley
3. the great peeta vs. gale debate: peeta is a pansy

hopefully, y’all enjoyed the hilarity and tragedrama of our prom issue (and hopefully the image of my dress will gracefully disappear v. v. quickly from yr memories). but amidst the awkward slow dancing and ever present angst, you may have noticed something missing…. something teenage girls dream of knowing, and grown-up ladies still don’t quite understand.

that’s right, i’m taking about THE MALE PERSPECTIVE! just in time for prom to be a totally moot point, FYA has a little bonus up our corsaged sleeves: two prom accounts from ACTUAL BOYS EEEEEEEEEE!!! with PICTURES OMG!!!!! and they’re not just any boys, oh no. they’re FYA favorites brian katcher (gifted author and fro-grower extraordinaire) and henri (of the infamous peeta vs. gale debates)!

prepare yrselves for an in-depth glimpse into the high school male psyche… no seriously, prepare yrselves. it smells weird up in here. JUST KIDDING.

From Brian Katcher:

Junior prom, 1992

Okay, fall of that year, I went to a Key Club convention. I meet this girl named Kerri. We hit it off and exchange addresses (no e-mail or nationwide plans in those days, if you wanted to keep in contact with someone, you had to write a LETTER). Well, I was pleasantly surprised when her first letter was to ask me to go to prom with her (I could tell it took a lot of courage to do that). I, of course, said yes.

Complication: she lived two hours away, in a town where I didn’t know anyone. The only way this would work is if I spent the night at her house.

The fact that our parents agreed to this shows what big nerds we were.

So, I rent a tux (that’s why she’s not in the picture, I was just posing for my mom), fill up the 85 Buick, and head north. On our first date I have to meet her family (including her giggling younger sisters). She shows me around town, then we retire to separate bathrooms to get ready.

It was a great evening, somewhat colored by the fact we knew this would be our only date. Nothing life changing, no falling in love, no fistfight to defend her honor, no ‘first time.’ But, as it turned out, it was the only high school dance where I didn’t want to hang myself. And one of three times in my life that I wore a tux (my wedding was not one of them).

I don’t remember any of the music. At the end of the evening we say a blushing good night, and then I camp out on her living room couch.

YA moment (the best I can come up with): We double dated with another couple. Halfway through dinner, the girl freezes and looks at me in terror. I can’t figure out what’s going on. Later, she confesses she’d just dropped a stuffed mushroom down her cleavage, and thought I’d noticed.

photo bonus! we would be remiss in our awesome-mongering duties if we didn’t share this gem with you as well:

Brian at the Elvis is Alive Museum in Wright City, MO (just after graduation)

From Henri:

The main thing to know about me to understand my prom story is that I was one of those guys in the 90s who was so grateful when the generic sitcome Friends invented the term “Friend Zone” because I felt like they were ONLY SPEAKING TO ME. Also, I had zero self-confidence and if I could go back and tell that high school version of me that seriously, one day I would kiss a girl on the actual mouth I’d just stare back at future me and say, “Really? Oh, wow… thank you!” and maybe finally turn off the sappy R.E.M. song I listened to on repeat so I could switch back over to XTC’s “Dear God.”

So Senior Year– during a play, I think it was The Music Man, I start hanging out with Courtney. A lot. And really soon, Courtney and I are officially dating. But she’s Mormon and I’m a coward, so most of our dating isn’t actually making out – our romance is played out predominantly through writing letters and passing notes in the hall between classes. Meanwhile, I still have this ridiculous unrequited crush on Anne, one of the few girls who actually talked to me freshman year and laughed at my jokes and thought my drawings of Ren and Stimpy were super cool.

Four months later (and two months before Senior Ball), Anne totally asks me to prom. And her best friend asks my best friend, Sean.

Even though I’m totally dating Courtney, it makes sense to me that the four of us should go to the last dance of high school together because we’re all seniors, we’ve been through so much, and blah, blah, blah – I’m a huge dick. Courtney breaks up with me in a note that lets me know that I’m still in love with Anne. I’m incredulous, but not overly heartbroken. And then I realize she’s right. Oh well!

Anne and I are going to Senior Ball together. There are just two problems -
1) She and I have another mutual friend named Blair. And Blair also had a MASSIVE crush on Anne. I think he’d asked her to Senior Ball three months before she’d asked me, and she’d said no. Blair eventually found someone else to ask, though, so he was at the dance.
2) After she broke up with me, the tallest, most well built Mormon in our entire school, Grant, asked Courtney to the dance. She said yes. So she came to the dance, too.

Near the end of the night I realize we haven’t really danced to anything yet, and how am I going to convince Anne to fall in love with me if we don’t awkwardly sway and spin to some slow pop song neither of us are too familiar with because they didn’t play Ani DiFranco at the prom? Yeah, I know, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO FALL IN LOVE WITHOUT THAT.

Then the DJ announces the last song. I don’t remember what it was – Boyz II Men or something – but I know I found Anne, very sheepishly asked, “So… you wanna dance? It’s the last song and all…” and she agreed. I took her out to the dance floor to find a spot, and only after the crowd came in and we started turning around very, very slowly did I realize that on one side of us, sure enough, there was Blair with his date. But he wasn’t looking into his date’s eyes or anything – he kept staring at us and then pretending like he wasn’t whenever one of us looked at him.

And on the other side? YUP! Courtney and Grant. Also slowly turning, only Courtney didn’t pretend to not be watching. She just stared at us the entire time. So there we are, Anne and I, holding each other awkwardly, swaying slightly while spinning around very slowly, and the whole time one of us is looking at Blair while the other is looking at Courtney. And then as we spin we switch off, and we each keep looking at the two of them watching us…

Needless to say, Courtney and I have never been Facebook friends.

Anne and I still are, though. I met her daughter a couple of months ago. She’s only two, but that girl’s got some sass and is sure to be a handful. Her husband is a bad ass cyclist who last I heard was working to keep San Francisco safe from terrorists, though, so I’m sure they’ll be able to handle it.

Related posts:

1. the FYA prom mega spectacular, vol. 1
2. the FYA prom mega spectacular, vol. 2
3. The Boy Who Lived…Sort Of.

Thanks for bringing up Lost, Erin. Because it’s not that Katniss will become Claire at all. It’s that Katniss is stuck in a cheesy love triangle of “will she choose or will one of these boys die before she has to” shit-for-plot situations that mirrors Lost perfectly. And also happens to mirror many other TV shows and classic love triangles of literature from days gone by. And using that model I don’t even need to keep talking about why Gale rules and Peeta sucks, because many, many other stories have dealt with the same issues for centuries, and they’ve said everything I could possibly say with longer narratives.

And so, in the interest of saving time (and effort), let’s break down this debate by presenting it as every other debate that’s ever existed. Find your favorite love triangle interest and see where you fit in, because this breakdown is for fucking real:

Peeta = Riley. Gale = Spike.

Peeta = King Arthur. Gale = Lancelot.

Peeta = Roy. Gale = Jim.

Peeta = Noel. Gale = Ben.

Peeta = Luke. Gale = Han.

Peeta = Jack. Gale = Sawyer.

Peeta = Aidan. Gale = Big.

And I know, I know. Aidan was pretty great. And Peeta’s a stand up guy, too. It’s just that his love for Katniss isn’t based on real love at all, and that makes them a volatile combination. That’s the case with all of those other triangles, too. Of course, I think that deep down ALL of these love triangles come down to The One Who Objectifies You and The One Who’s Actually Good For You. And there are times when it feels really good to be up on a pedestal. I get that. Some girls like to be treated like princesses. But Katniss isn’t that kind of girl, no matter how much she likes twirling in pretty dresses.

In conclusion, feel free to be Team Peeta as much as you like. But you should really stop reading the Hunger Games series if that’s your cup of tea, because I think you’d prefer sitting down with a nice Nicholas Sparks novel. I hear he’s the best writer ever. Because based on every Nicholas Sparks novel I’ve ever heard about, that audience of stupid Peeta lovers is how he became rich.

Hmmm… I gotta stop writing argumentative essays on FYA and start writing Dear John 2! Erin, I think you’d totally love that shit. And I’d love to spend your money on producing the Hunger Games movies and making sure that the casting gets everything right…

In the meantime, you can totally have fun with Riley.

Related posts:

1. the great peeta vs. gale debate, round 2: Peeta is to Bryan Adams as Gale is to Jay-Z
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate: peeta is a pansy
3. the great peeta vs. gale debate: Gale is a Nice Guy

Okay, Henri, you’ve made some good points, although comparing Peeta to Bryan Adams was a low blow, and also completely untrue. Bryan Adams? Please. First of all, Peeta does not croon in music videos set to scenes from the 1991 movie, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Secondly, Peeta is not a Canadian. I know this, because I have no overwhelming desire to punch him in the face. (Sorry, Canadian readers! I’ve really quite enjoyed getting to know your rich heritage through the five minutes that the Today Show devotes to you every morning during the Olympics!)

Of course, your comparison of Gale to Jay-Z is just as laughable, because Gale is not, has never been, nor will ever be, a baller like Sean Carter. Can you picture Gale going triple-platinum, making his own vodka, marrying Beyonce and cheating on her with Rihanna? No. It’s just never going to happen. He’d end up friend-zoning Beyonce and helping her do the choreography for “Old Cat Ladies (Knit a Sweater for Them),” the follow-up to her smash hit “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

But allow me to instead draw another comparison, one steeped in a language which is a native tongue to me. Yeah. I’m talking baked goods.

Peeta is hot, muscled, smart, sweet, and a morally upright guy, and all of that is pretty important to lasting happiness, I guess. But what is MOST important is that he can bake.

Baked goods are currency for the soul. What stressful day is not immediately made better by a cupcake? What lazy morning is complete without croissants or hot cross buns? What birthday celebration is held without a cake, collapsing under the weight of all those candles? What food-related holiday meal is consumed without pie? What is a trip to the mall if you don’t hit up Cinnabun??

Baked goods are a celebration for the senses and a balm for the soul. (And extra padding for jeans, but whatever, Katniss could probably stand to gain a few pounds.) They are a gift to give to someone you love: “Here is not something you need. Here is something you want.”

And Peeta is capable of delivering on the gospel of baked goods! Peeta knows how to say, “You’ve had a bad day, fighting people to the death and also leading a revolution. Here, have a soufflé.”

And Katniss needs someone like that, for the very reason that Katniss doesn’t know how to cheer someone up. Can you imagine being Katniss’s friend and coming over to her house in the Tribute Village, sitting down on her couch and sighing, “Oh, Katniss. I just don’t know what to do. I think Chrislet* is cheating on me, and also President Snow came by last night and killed my parents.” Kat wouldn’t know what to do. She can’t pat you on the back and say, “It’s okay; I’m here for you.” She’d get up, storm out, and return with the head of President Snow’s aide on a platter. She wouldn’t even bother to decorate it with parsley or a reduced balsamic glaze and make it look fancy, either.

Kat’s a take charge, no-holds-barred, kind of girl, and I love that about her! But that needs to be tempered, balanced out, or else she’ll end up like Claire on Lost, all matted hair and crazy eyes. Peeta provides that balance, that light, that sweetness. Kat takes care of business; Peeta takes care of the soul.

Gale’s just too much like Katniss for it to really work. It’s why they’re great friends! It’s also why they’re attracted to one another, because everyone is just a little narcissistic. But those two crazy kids should take my advice: never date someone who is just like you. It’s a disaster! Instead of an even division of labor and fun, there is just all labor, or all fun, depending on what kind of people you are. And you end up sitting on the couch all day, playing Mario Kart and/or honing your skills with Duck Hunt. Nothing ever actually gets done.

Kat and Peeta, on the other hand, well! There’s a match made in post-apocalyptic dystopia heaven! Kat will be in charge of Getting Stuff Done, and Peeta will be in charge of Sitting Back And Enjoying The Little Things. And those are both important aspects of everyday life. Plus, Kat will go kill the food, and Peeta will make it actually appetizing. Kat will lead the revolution, but Peeta will lead the reconstruction.

If Gale and Kat were a food item, they would be the Bacon Explosion:

And don’t get me wrong. I really, really want to try the Bacon Explosion. Once. Just to say I did it. But then never, ever again. I mean, look at that thing! Can you imagine a relationship like that? All meat, delicious meat, but no sweetness, no light. Just depressing, artery-clogging protein every day of your life.

Katniss and Peeta, on the other hand, are totally the bacon cupcake:

Rich, delicious, and a little sinful. A perfect balance between indulgent chocolate and earthy bacon. Filling, but not suffocating. Complex and satisfying.

Now, see, if it were me? I probably would choose Gale. Cause I bake all the time anyway, but I often forget to eat meat unless someone puts it in front of me. (Let us avoid jumping to the obvious “That’s what she said” reply, just this once.) I’m the Peeta, the dreamer, the impractical one, the one who usually can’t remember to pay the bills, or how to drive to the place she works at everyday. Which is why I surround myself with practical, highly functioning people, who will tell me what day it is and whether my shirt is inside out or not. In return, I provide them with cupcakes. It’s a pretty good system.

But Katniss is already a practical, highly functional person. She needs someone to give her a cupcake and tell her to take five and daydream for a while. Which is why Peeta is the boy** for her.

And, in conclusion, Croissants.

*I was trying to come up with a name ridiculous enough to sound like it belongs in The Hunger Games. This led me to think about developing a “Find Your Hunger Games Name” quiz, so look out for that next week.

** Unless Katniss wants to give lesbianism a try, in which case, it seems that I’m the girl for her.

Related posts:

1. the great peeta vs. gale debate, round 2: Peeta is to Bryan Adams as Gale is to Jay-Z
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate: Gale is a Nice Guy
3. the great peeta vs. gale debate: peeta is a pansy

The fiercest debate in literary history rages on in Round 2 as Henri rebuts Erin’s defense of Peeta, aka FACE HARD!

Okay, I don’t understand any of what you’re talking about, Erin. Here’s how you describe Nice Guys: Nice Guys just want to help out.  Nice Guys want you to tell them your problems.  Nice Guys think, because they are so nice, you should let them touch you in the girly bits. That’s pretty much Peeta to a T.

1) Meredith pointed this out, too, but it’s worth repeating – Peeta has had a silent crush on Katniss for YEARS and never once said anything. And he wasn’t just in the satellite area or hanging out in his bakery watching her pass by without having an opportunity to say anything. He was in school with her for what I assume was a usual five day a week schedule. So that’s five days a week for years and years, and he never said a damned thing.

2) He’s sooo not a good guy. He doesn’t risk his life to feed anyone else from the seem (or however you spell it, I’m an audiobook man so I never know how to write made up words). He does it for Her, because it’s Her, and She is everything to him even though he doesn’t actually know her at all and just thinks she’s pretty and not like the other girls in school and so maybe, just maybe, she’ll understand him in a way that the other girls don’t. He doesn’t do anything because it’s the right thing to do. He joins the careers and wants to save Katniss not because it’s right, but because her life is more valuable to him than his own. And that might sound romantic at first, but think of it in terms of pop music. Peeta is basically Bryan Adams to Gale’s Jay-Z. You know it’s true, everything I do… I do it for you. Is that anyone’s favorite song? If it is, then yeah, Peeta’s the guy for you.

3) He’s always always asking Katniss to tell him her problems! It’s like all he’ll talk about.

4) I don’t think Peeta can play games, either. Yeah, he joined up with the Careers, but he didn’t do anything to really help Katniss while he was there until the end. He didn’t come up with any strategy for how to take them out, or have useful information for Katniss to use against them or ANYTHING. He just had a broken ass leg, and even though he wanted to die rather than know that Katniss would, he still lets her help him. And in the end, he’s completely willing to eat the berries and let her eat them, too.

PANSY.

Bottom line on Peeta: He loved Katniss before he knew her? That pretty much makes it clear that he’s actually just obsessed with Katniss and more in love with the idea of her than with the actual person. More than anyone else, he treats her like an object. But he’s worse for her than President Snow because he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

So let’s take a look at Gale. For starters, your assertion that he Secretly Pined For His Best Friend. I don’t buy it.

1) “This guy has grown up with Kat.” That’s just plain wrong. They met in the woods a few years ago, and have been slowly getting to know each other. Katniss says in the beginning of HG that there’s nothing romantic between them, and I believe her and think that was a two way street. Just like she only recently discovered she had some feelings for him, his feelings for her grew over time.

2) He hunts. Meat > Baked Goods. And I know I lost some of you there, but it explains a lot. Meredith’s favorite food is bacon. Sarah is a cupcake person. But man, there’s just no competition between those two things. And you can always trade it for bread and pastries when you need some carbs.

3) Yeah, he broods a bit, but the dude is PASSIONATE. In the coming battles, that’s gonna be much more necessary than Peeta’s ability to talk on TV.

4) Gale is pretty much the only person who doesn’t need her to take care of him. And as Meredith also pointed out, he’s the one that taught her to be able to take care of herself. That’s love, for the whole person, and the whole family. He gave her sooooo much more than some burnt bread.

Bottom line on Gale: Gale only loves Katniss because he knows her. And that, it just so happens, is the only way to actually love anything.

Related posts:

1. the great peeta vs. gale debate: peeta is a pansy
2. the great peeta vs. gale debate: Gale is a Nice Guy
3. a great and terrible beauty