GarnetShaddow
GarnetShaddow t1_jdeo84n wrote
Reply to Appreciating the Hunger Games by Friesandmayo2665
I have to respectfully dissent. I hated the books, because I had already read all of the books she smacked together to make this one. I did feel that it was a master class in plagiarized stories.
The main characters: the love angle is basically Bella, but she ends up with Jacob instead of Edward. They aren't even really built out much more than that. We have lovely brunette damsel, tough broody dude, and more sensitive dude who is also somehow tough. Actually, I liked Twilight. It was an interesting twist on vampire lore. I didn't like the copy. It felt very flat. Katniss/Bella reacts. She takes no action. She is along for the ride in the story we are seeing through her. It's hard to care when she doesn't.
I have to say it. Hunger Ganes is heavily sanitized Battle Royale. This is one of my favorite books of all time. I have read it a lot. You follow 42 children as they die... Trying or trying not to. And in the end you find out the "game" is not an experiment. It is to show people that you cannot trust anybody... Even if you see them every day. So we go to the Hunger Games. It is set up like a cheap sports rivalry. These people have never met, don't really interact before the game, and have zero reason to kill anybody. Except that like in The Running Man, they are hyped up on stage to be... Whatever the public says they are. They are fighting to get back to their families and for a boost of food to their districts. There is literally nothing stopping any of them from protest by suicide at any time. If indeed they all grew up watching this on tv, don't they know that it's pointless? (Why would any district keep watching after their players have died anyways? They have literally no stake in this. What is this, 1984 where you can't turn the TV off?) No society this opressed would have no spark of rebellion. Plus, it IS on tv. No dictatorship would be dumb enough to run a fully live feed. They want blood, not a "rival" covering a somehow bloodless corpse in flowers. If they can't turn the TV off... Why show rebellion? Remember in The Running Man when they censored all his tapes so his proof of life could not also be a public statement? So, the game. They already know they are sending children to die. They already know it's some sort of ritual. The thing that makes it a method of control is the shadow of mystery. The Battle Experiment. What is the experiment? Why is it important? What really happened to those children besides a list of casualties and how they died? You see a "winner" coming out of a black box the public assumes they had no choice but to fight their way out of. That fear controls the public. Not the game as designed. They don't even have dumb fake rivalries as if it were a sport. Like district 8 out for blood after district 3 killed their player last year. That might at least have made it interesting.
I could go on, but I suspect the downvoting started after saying I have a dissenting opinion.
GarnetShaddow t1_jdmx59q wrote
Reply to Book ban attempts reach record high in 2022, American Library Association report says by audiomuse1
A lot of this is just people going to meetings and making a scene. Apparently one lady who has no kids and hasn't read most of the books she keeps trying to get banned just shows up and makes a fuss.
Has anybody else ever thought about organizing in favor of books? People need to stand up and say that these works need to stay available.