Musings of the Obsessive Kind

hope_fuleigh found video fanfiction for The Hunger Games on youtube and it's freaking unbelievable! Seriously. OMFG, I've never seen anyone do anything quite like this. I am both incredibly impressed and slightly scared.

Go here..

Pssst, sabaceanbabe, there's Finnick/Annie stuff on there. Here it is.

So, I finally got interested to check out Hunger Games trailer, and it's fine except for one huge thing - the actors are way way WAY too old! I normally don't care about Hollywood's propensity for 20+ playing young teenagers, but the whole point is that the Capitol makes entertainment out of murdering children and making children murder each other for their amusement. Nowhere near the impact if it's a bunch of adults.

Also, Katniss is way too well-fed. She doesn't look like she's skipped a meal in her entire existence.

So, I finally got interested to check out Hunger Games trailer, and it's fine except for one huge thing - the actors are way way WAY too old! I normally don't care about Hollywood's propensity for 20+ playing young teenagers, but the whole point is that the Capitol makes entertainment out of murdering children and making children murder each other for their amusement. Nowhere near the impact if it's a bunch of adults.

Also, Katniss is way too well-fed. She doesn't look like she's skipped a meal in her entire existence.

Ummm...yeah. I've spent the entire evening, once Baby Mousie went to bed, reading fic. More specifically, Finnick/Annie fic. No surprise there - if you know my preferences, you know I'd be all over that ship like a loon.

Anywho, here are two Finnick/Annie fic recs - both long and both are R/NC-17 for pretty obvious reasons.

Treading Water by the awesome sabaceanbabe. She used to write awesome Farscape stuff and I am glad to see she's just as good in other fandoms.

Scylla and Charybdis by puella_nerdii (who wins for the most awesome user name ever. Thanks, littledelusion, for the link).

This reminds me. How do I go about downloading fic on my Kindle?

I continue my contrariness - I am about halfway through Mockingjay, the near-universally-reviled third part of the Hunger Games trilogy, and I adore it. Maybe even more than Catching Fire. In fact, the only book I don't care for is the very-loved first part of the trilogy, Hunger Games. I also don't have a problem with not seeing a wider world but sticking with Katniss POV - these are YA books. Sure, gritty ones, what with deaths and child prostitution, but still...

I like Katniss, but I can't say she is my favorite character in this - I like Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, and Finnick better than I do her. But I don't get the loathing fandom seems to have gone into. I've seen people complain that Katniss is surly in Mockingjay and/or whiny. I don't find her whiny, I do find her surly, but I am absolutely fine with it. She's seventeen. I am almost twice her age, and if I'd been through what she's been through, I'd be more than surly, I'd be locked up in a straight-jacket somewhere. She is gritted-teeth tough, but she is human and she holds it together better than most anyone would (including some of the characters in this).

Also, I don't really get the shipper wars in HG fandom. You know me, I am very easy to please, shipper-wise, and will ship almost any canonical couple, but even though I like Katniss, adore Peeta, and don't loathe Gale (though honestly, I find him almost a non-character), I just don't think Katniss/Peeta is a love story for the ages. In fact, I don't think Katniss should be with either Peeta or Gale because she's not ready (and possibly never will be - she makes me think of Haymitch) to emotionally open enough to a person. It has nothing to do with 'she's too damaged to love' (if you think about it, Finnick went through way worse, and he indubitably loves Annie beyond anything), but the way her damage manifests and the fact that, even before all the stuff happened, she just seemed like a very emotionally closed-off person. I guess I just don't see her as being happy in any relationship. So the rabid Gale/Katniss/Peeta shipping confuses me. I do ship Finnick/Annie like mad though - it hits all my fictional kinks. I need fanfic.

Other things - for some reason, the atmosphere in District 13 makes me think of BSG. Who gets to be Adama? Lee can certainly be Peeta (I don't know why I see the connection, but I do). Haymitch is Tigh, hello there drinking problem, toughness and my inexplicable crush.

Also, I guess that proves me like everyone else, but I pretty much decided Finnick is my favorite character. Ummm. Am embarrassed. Slipping into my hole now.

I continue my contrariness - I am about halfway through Mockingjay, the near-universally-reviled third part of the Hunger Games trilogy, and I adore it. Maybe even more than Catching Fire. In fact, the only book I don't care for is the very-loved first part of the trilogy, Hunger Games. I also don't have a problem with not seeing a wider world but sticking with Katniss POV - these are YA books. Sure, gritty ones, what with deaths and child prostitution, but still...

I like Katniss, but I can't say she is my favorite character in this - I like Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, and Finnick better than I do her. But I don't get the loathing fandom seems to have gone into. I've seen people complain that Katniss is surly in Mockingjay and/or whiny. I don't find her whiny, I do find her surly, but I am absolutely fine with it. She's seventeen. I am almost twice her age, and if I'd been through what she's been through, I'd be more than surly, I'd be locked up in a straight-jacket somewhere. She is gritted-teeth tough, but she is human and she holds it together better than most anyone would (including some of the characters in this).

Also, I don't really get the shipper wars in HG fandom. You know me, I am very easy to please, shipper-wise, and will ship almost any canonical couple, but even though I like Katniss, adore Peeta, and don't loathe Gale (though honestly, I find him almost a non-character), I just don't think Katniss/Peeta is a love story for the ages. In fact, I don't think Katniss should be with either Peeta or Gale because she's not ready (and possibly never will be - she makes me think of Haymitch) to emotionally open enough to a person. It has nothing to do with 'she's too damaged to love' (if you think about it, Finnick went through way worse, and he indubitably loves Annie beyond anything), but the way her damage manifests and the fact that, even before all the stuff happened, she just seemed like a very emotionally closed-off person. I guess I just don't see her as being happy in any relationship. So the rabid Gale/Katniss/Peeta shipping confuses me. I do ship Finnick/Annie like mad though - it hits all my fictional kinks. I need fanfic.

Other things - for some reason, the atmosphere in District 13 makes me think of BSG. Who gets to be Adama? Lee can certainly be Peeta (I don't know why I see the connection, but I do). Haymitch is Tigh, hello there drinking problem, toughness and my inexplicable crush.

Also, I guess that proves me like everyone else, but I pretty much decided Finnick is my favorite character. Ummm. Am embarrassed. Slipping into my hole now.

I must be the sole person who much preferred Catching Fire to Hunger Games. I didn't care for HG at all, and thought it was a vastly inferior Battle Royale rip-off, but I am quite in love with CF - it has its own story and there are actually emotional stakes as we get to know all those fighting in the arena (my big complaint in the first book - everyone except Katniss and possibly Peeta are barely cardboard cut-outs). Plus, there are nuances!

I know people complain that we are stuck in Katniss' head and thus don't see the big picture of the rebellion or anything, but I am actually fine with it. Let's face it, if the book was in omniscient third-person or with a narrator like Haymitch or even Finnick, it wouldn't be YA at all. I don't think Suzanne Collins has the chops to write a bloody adult epic (and she wisely knows it) but, more importantly, that is neither what she set up or contracted to do, not what her supposed audnce of 14-yr-olds could like. It would be another type of novel entirely. Would I love it? Sure. It would need to be done by Dan Simmons or similar though, and I have yet to see Hyperion Cantos in the YA aisle.

I did find 'which guy shall I pick' boring, but it's a tiny part of the novel, so it's easy to ignore.

Me = contrarian.

I finally got around to reading this book (peer pressure!) and all I can say is: I liked this better when it was called Battle Royale and written by Koushun Takami.

HG was a fun but forgettable read, dreadfully simplistic and with some seriously wonky world-building, but my main issue is that I kept comparing it to Battle Royale and the comparison was not in Hunger Games' favor. Battle Royale was a visceral reading experience for me, one that literally gave me nightmares. It didn't pull punches or create easy outs. I desperately cared for the characters because they seemed so average, like what I could have been. In Hunger Games, other than the general dislike of murder, I didn't care for any of them - all the characters except Katniss and, to an extent, Peeta were not complex individuals with their own lives and goals, but undeveloped cypher obstacles to our protagonist's success. Moreover, the ompetitors' background made it so far removed from modern life that it made them less relatable than the average kids of BR. And there was the fact that BR characters had all sorts of preexisting relationships.

There is also the fact that HG is pedictable where BR is not.

It bothers me to no end that Suzanne Collins claims to have never heard of Battle Royale. But even if somehow that was the case, why would I love an inferior version of the same story when I have already loved and read the original take.

I finally got around to reading this book (peer pressure!) and all I can say is: I liked this better when it was called Battle Royale and written by Koushun Takami.

HG was a fun but forgettable read, dreadfully simplistic and with some seriously wonky world-building, but my main issue is that I kept comparing it to Battle Royale and the comparison was not in Hunger Games' favor. Battle Royale was a visceral reading experience for me, one that literally gave me nightmares. It didn't pull punches or create easy outs. I desperately cared for the characters because they seemed so average, like what I could have been. In Hunger Games, other than the general dislike of murder, I didn't care for any of them - all the characters except Katniss and, to an extent, Peeta were not complex individuals with their own lives and goals, but undeveloped cypher obstacles to our protagonist's success. Moreover, the ompetitors' background made it so far removed from modern life that it made them less relatable than the average kids of BR. And there was the fact that BR characters had all sorts of preexisting relationships.

There is also the fact that HG is pedictable where BR is not.

It bothers me to no end that Suzanne Collins claims to have never heard of Battle Royale. But even if somehow that was the case, why would I love an inferior version of the same story when I have already loved and read the original take.