1. I read an interview with Collins in which she talked about the issue of war and its devastation. I ...okay, so you know my dad is very war-damaged, yes? No physical trauma, but an artist who can't make his art for 35 years is not okay. So I am SO ON BOARD with the whole issue of what war does to humans and what it means to train humanizing and dehumanizing allies and enemies, and how badly we (we: humanity) have screwed up the psychology of this over and over. But I was afraid from that interview that she was going to go making this a story that didn't match HG and CF in exactly the way you're talking about here. I hoped what she was going to do was make the same points by way of the story she was already telling, but she didn't.
2. after being afraid to consider it for fear they might have to go to the Games. I don't think that's entirely what she was afraid of. I think she was afraid of trying to raise a child having had to raise herself with a traumatized mother, having all this attachment crap that's so messed up (because any 17 year old that carries in her head a list of people for whose death she is responsible? And it turns out half of them are people she loved? Yeah.), and I think she was afraid of the knowledge that if she was as damaged as she feared in that regard, she would have to tell the child, eventually, that it's not the child's fault, but hers. That the child is the child of murderers and sociopaths. Which, not that I'm making the case that's what K and P are, but that if she couldn't be what her child needed, it would be because this war had made her those things, and how do you tell your kid oh by the way...
3. So Effie Trinket could survive, but not Finnick or Madge or the avoxes or the dist 8 refugees? I don't know what to do with that.
4. I was very sure from basically the moment Katniss said she should get to kill Snow that Coin was as badly corrupt as anyone in the Capitol. The regimentation of 13 freaked me out in a Brave New World kind of way, and I was in no way surprised the Katniss killed Coin; I expected that from early, though I thought she'd get TO Snow and then basically welcome Coin with an arrow to the eye. But also yeah, I knew when she voted what was about to happen, and I knew without a doubt when Haymitch said he voted with her that he knew it, too.
5. Boggs. Woe. And yeah, Madge. And Cinna.
6. I think Peeta's damage is the story she wanted to tell here, by the way, as far as point 1 above. I think she chickened out by letting him heal from the true loves, too.
7. I think the POV was a great selling point for Hunger Games and Catching Fire, but deliberate or not, I think it fell apart badly in Mockingjay. The story of someone whose experience and ideals and expectations all keep getting shattered over and over can be a fascinating one, but trying to see everything through the shards isn't just difficult and unsettling (which would be fine), but maybe so disruptive to the story that it stops being a story and is rather a list of events.
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2. after being afraid to consider it for fear they might have to go to the Games. I don't think that's entirely what she was afraid of. I think she was afraid of trying to raise a child having had to raise herself with a traumatized mother, having all this attachment crap that's so messed up (because any 17 year old that carries in her head a list of people for whose death she is responsible? And it turns out half of them are people she loved? Yeah.), and I think she was afraid of the knowledge that if she was as damaged as she feared in that regard, she would have to tell the child, eventually, that it's not the child's fault, but hers. That the child is the child of murderers and sociopaths. Which, not that I'm making the case that's what K and P are, but that if she couldn't be what her child needed, it would be because this war had made her those things, and how do you tell your kid oh by the way...
3. So Effie Trinket could survive, but not Finnick or Madge or the avoxes or the dist 8 refugees? I don't know what to do with that.
4. I was very sure from basically the moment Katniss said she should get to kill Snow that Coin was as badly corrupt as anyone in the Capitol. The regimentation of 13 freaked me out in a Brave New World kind of way, and I was in no way surprised the Katniss killed Coin; I expected that from early, though I thought she'd get TO Snow and then basically welcome Coin with an arrow to the eye. But also yeah, I knew when she voted what was about to happen, and I knew without a doubt when Haymitch said he voted with her that he knew it, too.
5. Boggs. Woe. And yeah, Madge. And Cinna.
6. I think Peeta's damage is the story she wanted to tell here, by the way, as far as point 1 above. I think she chickened out by letting him heal from the true loves, too.
7. I think the POV was a great selling point for Hunger Games and Catching Fire, but deliberate or not, I think it fell apart badly in Mockingjay. The story of someone whose experience and ideals and expectations all keep getting shattered over and over can be a fascinating one, but trying to see everything through the shards isn't just difficult and unsettling (which would be fine), but maybe so disruptive to the story that it stops being a story and is rather a list of events.
8. To sum up: Argh.