Sunday, March 23, 2014

Meeting New People, Part Hunger Games

I am soooooooooooooo so sorry that I haven't written in so long. So let's do the second part of "Meeting New People", shall we?
(Spoilers for the Hunger Games Trilogy.)
So Katniss is a pretty funny gal. She kind of has a people problem, she isn't very good in social situations. (Kind of like your average fandomeer.) So honestly, the way she felt about these people when she met them is pretty much the exact opposite of their relationship at the end of the story. It's kind of ironic. Nice one, Suzanne Collins.
So first, Katniss and Peeta. Which is pretty much the most ironic one of them all. So Katniss meets Peeta and he is a totally sweet guy. He gives her hand a comforting squeeze, he cries when he says goodbye to his family, he smiles at her, he gives her his jacket, he is a really nice guy. Aha, but wait a minute, guys, this is the Hunger Games. Everyone is out to get everyone else. (Who just thought of Brave New World? That's what I'm reading for my next book project in school. "Every one belongs to everyone else"..... That book is so disgusting.) His hand probably just had a nervous little spasm or something. He might be pulling the defenseless look like Johanna Mason. And above all, he is trying to get Katniss to trust him so he can kill her no problem when they get in the arena. Or, Katniss, maybe he's been in love with you since he was five years old. Maybe that's it. So pretty much Katniss is planning to kill Peeta and does not trust him at all. Quite a number of things can happen in a few years.... Like marriage and two children and a loving bond that not even hijacking can break. (Which is pretty much why Peeta is the best character ever and Mockingjay alongside the Harry Potter series best represents love over all fiction novels in the world.) That's pretty intense.
Gale...... This relationship is pretty depressing. Katniss and Gale, in the beginning, were inseparable best friends. They would do anything for each other. They were like siblings. That's all... at least for Katniss it was. What Gale wasn't saying was that he had been in love with Katniss for the past six months. And then she gets taken to the arena, comes back and wins with a boyfriend for the camera, and then Gale decides to speak up about his feelings. Guys, this is why you never say how you feel about them while you're still young kids. Why? Because Gale ends up running away to District Two to have a big important job or something, and in the end, Katniss doesn't even care. Don't get me wrong, I am one of the biggest Peeta shippers you will ever meet. But I wanted Katniss to end up with Peeta while staying friends with Gale. I guess the problem was Katniss and Gale are both not very good at forgiving or forgetting. I guess there was too much in the past few years to forget about, and the only way they could forget was for them to be separated.
Haymitch. In the beginning Katniss only knows him as the old victor from when her mom was a kid, the only victor of District Twelve that's still alive. When she finally gets to have actual in-person contact with him, she's not a big fan. He's not your idea of the perfect mentor. He is a drunk who honestly doesn't really care that much. About anything. Katniss and Haymitch cannot stand each other. But Katniss and Haymitch, in the end, I think remember each other as great friends. In the epilogue Suzanne Collins doesn't really say that much about Haymitch and the relationship they have with him after all those years. Maybe he isn't around anymore. Maybe he doesn't get out? She kind of said in the chapter previous that he didn't. He drank and raised geese. But they can't just forget the kind of father-daughter relationship they had. No one can replace Katniss's father. But at least she got to have a new father figure in her life.
Prim............... Don't cry. Don't cry. Not much changed about Katniss and Prim's relationship. Except for one thing, that I guess is a pretty big thing. It just goes to show that a lot can happen in a year, or even in just a few months. Katniss, in the beginning, has to completely take care of Prim. Prim was just born delicate. I wouldn't say frail, because that implies easy to break in a negative way, but Prim is an absolutely beautiful girl. (I've always really liked her.) She was more like her mother than her father, but she still didn't know that much about how to take care of anyone. She was a dainty little thing. So Katniss knew she had to take care of her. I guess that Katniss was expecting to have to take care of Prim when she got home, but I think she was highly mistaken. Because when Katniss gets home, Prim knows a lot about taking care of people and is honestly quite a motherly person and that is just adorable. So there is only one thing that changed about their relationship: instead of all the weight being on Katniss's shoulders, Prim grew strong and they helped take care of the family together, with the help of their mother who also got her mothering skills back. She'll always be remembered as a great sister.
Finnick Odair was an untrustworthy guy. He was a monster in his Games, is extremely attractive, has pretty much all of the Capitol convinced he's in love with them and to top it all off, now he's flirting with her. Yeah, I wouldn't trust him either. What we find out after that is that he was just trying to get close to her so that he could get her out of the Games alive. He was  a part of the rebellion. Which of course makes him really cool. Once Katniss knows this and gets over the fact that he and Haymitch betrayed her by saving her instead of Peeta, she is willing to be his friend. And they became really close. Katniss even made sure they remembered him in the additions to the family book that they were making. And she'll always remember him as a great friend.
Ahaha. Oh, Johanna....... Katniss isn't exactly what you'd call fond of this girl either. With the elevator incident, her making fun of Wiress and Beetee and pretty much everything about her Katniss isn't totally cool with her. And Johanna doesn't like her either. But honestly, were Katniss and Johanna not literally created to be best friends? They're just enough alike and just enough different to be BFFs forever. I guess some things just take time, because over the course of everything Johanna and Katniss become pretty good friends. Before we even knew what was happening, Katniss was bringing Johanna some needles from trees as a gift that she thought she would like. And we're almost wondering how that happened so fast. We don't know what happens to Johanna, but we do know that that Katniss and Johanna did have an adorable friendship.
And Effie. Katniss didn't like Effie at first. She was pretty much the exact definition of a Capitol person. But Harry didn't like Hermione at first, either. Again, a lot can happen over a few months. And Katniss and Effie didn't have the relationship that she and Haymitch did, or her and Finnick or even her and Johanna. But they still had something. And I think Katniss really loved Effie, and I think Effie really loved Katniss. That last encounter in Mockingjay. I'm just like uggh! I can't!

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