Mockingjay
Jan. 2nd, 2014 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWow. That is one miserable story.
I mean, as an ending to that story, it fits, but wow, that is one miserable story.
I know I said I wanted to know what happens next and how it ends, but as it turns out, that was not quite what I wanted. I think I wanted to know how they'd fix it. And the only hope in that book is in the last three pages, which cover considerable time in not much detail and don't leave much time for the reader to decompress or have another reaction. So it's basically a whole lot of going through hell.
... I think that time I decided not to read them because they sounded epic miserable was in fact the better decision.
The whole set remind me of one of the things I read about female action heroes for my dissertation:
There's a whole lot of large scale consequences, but the main struggle all through was between going along with the script for survival and taking control of herself. Not even her own life, she spent most of the time expecting to be dead (or actively planning to), just trying to find out what her own feelings and own decisions would be.
From that perspective I'm not best pleased with the ending. Two dead presidents isn't the same as getting rid of the puppet masters, let alone the stories they'd writter her into. Deciding to not-be, either through going mute or actively planning suicide, isn't the same as achieving agency. And ending up with Peeta... I can see her reasons on the last page, they're pretty good reasons, contrast Gale's hate & destruction with Peeta's compassion & nurture and it's not even difficult, it's just that I was on team Katniss and was hoping she'd have her own feelings. Possibly meet someone completely different. I guess most readers would have hated that, but Peeta and Gale both had feelings at her, she was not obliged to fit, she rarely seemed to welcome it, and I was hoping she could have her own feelings and not just get sucked in to that story where guys having feelings at her was important. More important than her not wanting them to. Even right at the end, she has kids because he wants to, not because she does. She agrees after 15 years because Peeta wanted kids so badly. Not a single word about wanting them herself. And it's just plain creepy that the Capitol constructed and arena shaped narrative is the one she fits into. Rebel Gale vs media manipulator Peeta who rewrote her? How is that about Katniss? Her story had more than two choices and she never once saw that.
So I don't feel like she won, at the end. She survived, yaays, but not by her own will or on her own terms. Which was what I was waiting for. Not romance.
I also was not hoping for District 13 to be real. Epic dystopia time. Instead of the rise of the workers, it was a fight for control between the consumers and the military. Everybody loses. So Katniss and her arrow fix it so there's elections and someone from one of the Districts that actually did work gets to be the boss. That part was a win. It just didn't seem to involve Katniss winning herself back.
So that ending very much fit that story, completely fair and in keeping, and... it's leaving me wanting fanfic instead. Boo.
Actually, probably not even fanfic. Just being :-( about it.
:-(
I shall go back to starship captain stories with more choices in them.
I mean, as an ending to that story, it fits, but wow, that is one miserable story.
I know I said I wanted to know what happens next and how it ends, but as it turns out, that was not quite what I wanted. I think I wanted to know how they'd fix it. And the only hope in that book is in the last three pages, which cover considerable time in not much detail and don't leave much time for the reader to decompress or have another reaction. So it's basically a whole lot of going through hell.
... I think that time I decided not to read them because they sounded epic miserable was in fact the better decision.
The whole set remind me of one of the things I read about female action heroes for my dissertation:
“While traditional heroic texts foreground the establishment of control over others […] female centered texts primarily articulate concerns/tensions with autonomy, issues over gaining and maintaining control over the self. In other words, female control is about establishing the independence and self-determination with which heroes begin.” [Heinecken, The warrior women of television, 2003, p152]
There's a whole lot of large scale consequences, but the main struggle all through was between going along with the script for survival and taking control of herself. Not even her own life, she spent most of the time expecting to be dead (or actively planning to), just trying to find out what her own feelings and own decisions would be.
From that perspective I'm not best pleased with the ending. Two dead presidents isn't the same as getting rid of the puppet masters, let alone the stories they'd writter her into. Deciding to not-be, either through going mute or actively planning suicide, isn't the same as achieving agency. And ending up with Peeta... I can see her reasons on the last page, they're pretty good reasons, contrast Gale's hate & destruction with Peeta's compassion & nurture and it's not even difficult, it's just that I was on team Katniss and was hoping she'd have her own feelings. Possibly meet someone completely different. I guess most readers would have hated that, but Peeta and Gale both had feelings at her, she was not obliged to fit, she rarely seemed to welcome it, and I was hoping she could have her own feelings and not just get sucked in to that story where guys having feelings at her was important. More important than her not wanting them to. Even right at the end, she has kids because he wants to, not because she does. She agrees after 15 years because Peeta wanted kids so badly. Not a single word about wanting them herself. And it's just plain creepy that the Capitol constructed and arena shaped narrative is the one she fits into. Rebel Gale vs media manipulator Peeta who rewrote her? How is that about Katniss? Her story had more than two choices and she never once saw that.
So I don't feel like she won, at the end. She survived, yaays, but not by her own will or on her own terms. Which was what I was waiting for. Not romance.
I also was not hoping for District 13 to be real. Epic dystopia time. Instead of the rise of the workers, it was a fight for control between the consumers and the military. Everybody loses. So Katniss and her arrow fix it so there's elections and someone from one of the Districts that actually did work gets to be the boss. That part was a win. It just didn't seem to involve Katniss winning herself back.
So that ending very much fit that story, completely fair and in keeping, and... it's leaving me wanting fanfic instead. Boo.
Actually, probably not even fanfic. Just being :-( about it.
:-(
I shall go back to starship captain stories with more choices in them.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 11:34 pm (UTC)And does it seem like “meet the new boss, pretty much same as the old boss” and victories that consist of little more than carving out a tiny brief peace in an otherwise unrelenting shitstorm are becoming common themes?
~