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holden-norgorov · 4 years

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Why Katniss Everdeen is definitely an INTJ.

Due to the lack of general consensus regarding The Hunger Games main character’s personality type, I’ve decided to provide an analysis aimed at demonstrating that Katniss Everdeen is indeed an INTJ, and at narrowing down why she often gets mistyped by a huge bunch of the Internet – which is, mostly, because people who are not so familiar with the theory tend to type characters formulating their thesis on dichotomies rather than cognitive functions, and without knowledge regarding how cognitive functions work and interact with each other.

Disclaimer: I’ll preface this entire post by clarifying that I’m talking about the literary character, not the cinematic one. Katniss, as portrayed in the movies, seems to be inevitably too expressive than how she is described in the books. Overall, Jennifer Lawrence’s performance it’s still a great adaptation of the character, that’s unquestioned; but acting itself is a discipline entirely focused on conveying emotional resonance through body language, and, as opposed to what happens with literature, emotions have to be seen on screen rather than just read on paper. This means that the actress herself, in order to give the audience a glimpse about what’s happening inside the character she is portraying, sometimes has to show it through expressive reactions and behaviors – a scheme that, repeated periodically, ends up making it look like Katniss might rely on Fe as a response mechanism to the external world (which is not the case). So, keep in mind that I’m talking about the character as described in the original, literary work.

In this post, I’m going to thoroughly focus on the main response that the MBTI community provided to the character, and confute the almost-taken-for-granted idea that she is a Sensor, which always gets thrown in without any argumentative and explanatory back-up to support it. Just because Katniss is skilled at archery, it doesn’t mean that she uses sensory lens to interpret the whole world. Aside from INTJ, Katniss gets often typed as an ISTP or an ISTJ, and despite understanding where both these typing choices come from, they are both flawed perception on her for different reasons.

Why Katniss is not an ISTP:

ISTPs lead with Ti (Introverted Thinking) and consequently have Fe (Extraverted Feeling) as their bottom function. This means that their first extraverted function is a Perceiving one (Se) and that they extravert their feeling side rather than their thinking side in social circumstances. IxTPs, despite being extremely logical, tend to keep their rational side hidden to others and, in relating to them, are more able to grasp the collective harmony of the group and exude a certain ability to conform to it. Ti/Fe users are less comfortable with displaying Ti’s internal, complex logical framework when dealing with people, but mingle with them exploiting their own – usually untrained, but still accessible – Fe persona. ISTPs in particular, having Se and Fe as their extraverted functions, can be quite good in going with the flow and at the same time understanding the collective needs and adjusting to them. In the inside, ISTPs may feel lonely in the middle of a crowd – mainly because of their internal “library” of logical, organized facts rarely shared externally – but on the outside, they appear to be quite well-adjusted, in tune with the environment and striving to be accepted by or to please others, other than, to a lesser extent, being expressive of how they feel with their attitudes (faces, gestures, etc). Dominant Ti users, leading with an internalized judging function, are also prone to indulge in overthinking and self-questioning dynamics every time new external data seem to contradict one of their internally-processed conclusions. They always look for logical inconsistencies between what they grasp from the outside and what they have previously deemed as logically accurate in the inside. Ti is naturally prone to engage in constant re-evaluations of logical facts, often generating self-doubt, and to increasingly complicate the reasoning upon them: it’s a theoretical way of thinking.

ISTPs have Se (Extraverted Sensing) as their Auxiliary function. This makes them externally chaotic despite their inner organized system. Extraverted Sensing, as the first extraverted function in a person, makes Se users thrive in the unpredictable. Se users gain energy in highly-stimulated scenarios where they can react freely and spontaneously to their environment: they shine when they get to be (physically) responsive and reactive to the world, and avoid being pro-active and trying to actively shape their path with previous decision-making procedures, because to them that feels debilitating. A perfect example of an ISTP female character is Fa Mulan, from the Disney Classic “Mulan” (1997): she is constantly overthinking and questioning herself because she experiences her world trying to grasp out of it what makes sense according to her internal logical system (Ti); she is at her best whenever improvisation and reactive skills are required in the physical realm (Se) and consistent with her Ti’s conclusions; she has deep problems within herself because she is unable to please her family (low Fe), and because of this she spends her entire life up to the movie events without knowing who she actually is (Fi as the demon function). ISTPs’ Ti/Se combination can provide them with a natural and exceptional expertise in practical matters without requiring the average amount of effort, as seen when Mulan is able to succeed when other soldiers can’t despite her lack of previous training. They are theoretical thinkers and spontaneous doers at the same time, which makes them ultimately practical.

Katniss, on the other hand, is neither theoretical in her way of thinking nor particularly spontaneous in her way of doing things. It’s stated countless times in the books that she is completely oblivious and/or careless of the collective social harmony that encompasses her. She always stands out as being cold, standoffish, uncompromising and individualistic in her way of socializing. She has a tendency to keep her emotional side hidden, to engage in unexpressive attitudes – the so-called “resting bitch face” – and relate to others through blunt rationality as a protective wall, which is the exact opposite of how a Ti/Fe user behaves (especially with strangers). Katniss extraverts her thinking side with others, which makes her a Te/Fi user. She fails again and again to realize how social codes actually work and is particularly inept when it comes to decrypt social behaviors, to the point that she spends years of her life without realizing Madge Undersee considered her as a friend all along. It’s extremely clear that she filters her interactions via a Te-based way of interpreting reality. The main difference between Ti and Te stands in the location of the logical framework: Ti users develop it internally, Te users externally. Te users, having this “library” of logical facts outside themselves, project its organization on the external environment and are able to modify it without incurring in overthinking and self-questioning dynamics. Whereas Ti is prone to over-complicate reasoning to look for internalized inconsistencies, Te is prone to over-simplify it to look for a quick external conclusion – hence why, outwardly, Te users appear more confident and decisive than Ti users. Te makes up for a pragmatical way of thinking, and Katniss is as pragmatical as they come.

“Besides, if he wants kids, Gale won’t have any trouble finding a wife. He’s good-looking, he’s strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt. You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.”

In fact, she is so pragmatical that in Catching Fire she coldly rationalizes a way to kill everyone in order to ensure Peeta’s survival and she shows no difficulty in conceptualizing human murders as anything more than common animal killings. She shows a natural ability to detach herself from the physical world and conceptualize people, things and actions in symbolic structures, dehumanizing them (Ni). Katniss is also not an extraverted perceiver. She is controlled, collected and measured in how she acts. Everything she does is deliberate, is purposeful. Her resourcefulness comes from her open-minded mental disposition and her quick intuitive ability to select possibilities, other than from her rebellious tendencies; it doesn’t come from being spontaneous or gaining energy in the here and now. In fact, Katniss is a meticulous and constant mental planner on a daily basis, as I will explain later on. She uses Se as a fairly developed inferior function, which she had to learn how to properly hone for survival purposes. But on a cognitive perspective, it’s quite clear it’s not something she naturally uses to perceive reality.

It’s so obvious that people tend to type Katniss as an ISTP purely using dichotomies – she’s Introverted, she is a Thinker, and she is skilled at archery so she has to be a perceiving Sensor, right? Labeling her as an ISTP steams from an extremely superficial reading and interpretation of the character. Katniss is not a Perceiver, nor is she a Ti/Fe user in any way.

Why Katniss is not an ISTJ:

Unlike ISTPs, ISTJs express judgments in the external world through a Te/Fi approach, which suits Katniss more accurately – so, it’s actually much easier to understand why Katniss might be mistyped for an ISTJ. The difference between ISTJs and INTJs lies in how they perceive information. ISTJs are Si users, and Si as a dominant function acts as a collector of sensory data in their concrete, practical essence. Si users have excellent memory regarding details of the physical world. Those details are internalized in the ISTJs’ world-building process according to their factual qualities, not their symbolic ones. This is why they develop an attachment to the past: because for them, experience is not something to analyze and conceptualize, but to preserve and estimate in the concrete, physical effects it had on them. Si users place the value of something in its empirical form; Ni users place it in its idealistic one. Ni users, instead, conceptualize any experience they absorb. They tend to quickly forget the concrete aspect of it and save the conceptual pattern behind it. Ni as a dominant function acts as a collector of intuitive patterns in their abstract form. Those patterns, once fully accessible and narrowed down, are gathered inside the INTJ who, from that moment on, has immediate access to it every time it is recognized in new sensory elements, even ones that superficially can seem completely unrelated (this is why Ni users are said to experience sudden “aha!” moments out of nowhere: because they witnessed the recurrence of a symbolic pattern they previously stored and are now able to access it without being conscious of the process). Si users are uncomfortable with abstract thinking and devalue the intuitive ramifications steaming from the source material (low Ne); Ni users are uncomfortable with practical details and devalue the raw source material that provided intuitive patterns (low Se).

For an ISTJ, every experience is an irreplaceable cornerstone that should be preserved and valued (eyes to the past); for an INTJ, every experience is a possible source of new patterns to be exploited from that moment on (eyes to the future). As a consequence, ISTJs develop a strong trust in established methods, rules and hierarchies, because they perceive them in their concrete efficiency and recognize their merits in letting them live their experiences; INTJs, instead, develop a complementary strong distrust in them, because they perceive them in what they conceptually represent and place value in the patterns underneath, i.e. what let them analyze their experiences.

That said, Katniss Everdeen is an INTJ mostly mistyped as an ISTx because she had to grow up in an environment and live through childhood circumstances that forced her to temporarily suffocate her Ni in order to develop her Se earlier than usual. But she is not a Sensor, and her Ni lens are still predominant in the narrative.

One of the biggest differences between ISTJs and INTJs is the relationship they have with authority and power. Si users see their own value as people in the role they play in the community they belong to; they tend to be the keepers of the established order because it’s what gives them their sense of identity and belonging. And it’s not only about the “overarching” order of things, but also the one that is ever-present even in the smallest of things. They value conformism and respect to those rules, because they made their experiences possible – and those experiences are what their worldview is based upon. Ni users, instead, don’t place their value in a community system, and see themselves as above or independent to its rules. How many times did you happen to read “INTJs are considered the most independent of all the types”? This is why. It’s about mental independence, which is also the source of subversive behaviors and rebellious attitudes, that are very common in Ni users and extremely atypical in Si ones. And Katniss is an extremely independent person under every aspect. Due to this sense of identity projected in their social role, Si user are also exceptionally prone to master social codes and conventions, while Katniss proves to be extremely deficient in this regard, showing a deep inability to grasp the basic norms of human collective interactions despite having been forced to engage in them every day at school and at work for presumably years. Her intuitive nature is particularly obvious in this case, because it shows how she is naturally able to detach herself from the sensory realm and its details, engaging in it exclusively through Te’s pragmatical lens – every interaction becomes a practical exchange, almost an economic proposition with cause-and-effect regulations. But at the same time, she constantly associates people’s actions with symbols (Ni).

“To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope, and the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed. And more than once, I have turned in the school hallway and caught his eyes trained on me, only to quickly flit away. I feel like I owe him something, and I hate owing people.”

In order to properly grasp the difference, let’s draw a comparison with another famous ISTJ female character, who also happens to be an archer as well: Susan Pevensie, from The Chronicles of Narnia. Susan shares with Katniss her exterior stubborn, resolute attitude through which she conveys her rationalism, and her pragmatical approach in dealing with unfamiliar situations (Te); she is also emotionally introverted and very much in tone with her own personal values (Fi). Other than that, Susan is also extremely well-mannered and receptive of conventional rules, almost narrow-minded in her persistence in following “by-the-book” etiquette and always incredibly skeptical in evaluating idealistic possibilities when facing the variation of her reality. Her core worldview revolves around the sensory experiences she internalizes, and her own identity gets defined by the rules and the codes she strives to follow by herself, and that she constantly reminds others to follow as well. After the Pevensies are brought away from their mother because of the war, Susan decides to self-impose on herself the social role of “new mother” of her siblings in order to find her new purpose and maintain a pro-active control on her life. Katniss has to do a similar thing after her father’s death, but out of survival purposes because of her mother’s fall into depression. Katniss commits to the process in an INTJ fashion, using her Ni to visualize the conceptual goal (her family’s survival) and rationalizing the most efficient and optimized way to reach it through Te; Susan, on the other hand, commits to it out of no life-or-death obligation, but simply because she feels the need to in order to perceive her identity as validated (Si). She is repetitively dismissive of unconventional situations and finds comfort in a constant tendency to refuge in tried-and-true methods. Both as a Queen in Narnia (before aging back to be a teenager again) and as a growing adult in our world, Susan ends up revolving her life around the sensory experiences she collects; in Narnia she learns to grow accustomed to local rituals and becomes widely known for engaging in traditional lifestyles, whereas in our world she gains new concrete experiences that lead her to “forget” (or more likely, deem as less important) her childhood ones in Narnia. The more her social importance increases here, the more Narnia becomes an idealized fantasy in her mind, i.e. something to be devaluated (low Ne).

Another example of a female Te/Si user is Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, who is an ESTJ. Hermione’s entire knowledge system is completely dependent on a methodical text-book approach of assimilation of notions, which she rarely question or devaluate in any way; outside of what is learnt by the tried-and-true methods, she is discovered to be quite skeptical of the unfamiliar and less comfortable with (but not incapable of) exploring unknown imaginative possibilities (tertiary Ne). She is also extremely reluctant to break the rules, especially in early evolutionary stages, when her third function has yet to develop.

On the contrary, the first thing we learn about Katniss is that she inherited by her father the unconventional way of thinking and the reluctance to be subordinated by the system. She recalls how since she was a child, she had a tendency to engage in subversive language which could have been taken as rebellious if she had been heard by Peacekeepers. Her mother soon took corrective methods and Katniss learnt to keep her observations to herself. But despite that, her subversive nature still remains the core of who she is and will become during the saga. One of Katniss’s most recurrent traits is, indeed, subverting either governmental rules or societal expectations. She does that all the time, and in every way possible. She starts by hunting illegally in prohibited territory and selling the wild game to marketers, showing an independent nature which gains the admiration of her peers; then she volunteers as a tribute to replace her sister (something unprecedented in her district); she rebels against the lack of attention from the Gamemakers in her training evaluation session, intimidating them by showing her skills through insubordination, and gaining the highest score; she rebels against Seneca Crane’s last-minute-rearrangement of the Game’s rules by suggesting she and Peeta ingest the berries at the same time and commit suicide, already foreseeing the successful outcome of her strategy (Ni/Te); she shows insubordinate behavior in front of President Snow himself; she hangs Seneca Crane in front of the Gamemakers; she appears completely unable to obey basic orders that she deems as pointless and dismisses any kind of authority to the point that President Coin targets her rebellious temperament as her most-defining trait and the one she should conquer to be accepted in the Mockingjay mission; in District 13, she never follows social protocol nor she attends half of the events she should partake in. So, not only doesn’t she place her identity value in her community, but she also despises the idea of becoming part of a community at all, because there’s nothing she craves the most than independence, and relying on others is perceived by her as a weakness. This is quite the norm for INTJs.

Katniss’s archery talent per se is also completely unrelated to how she perceives the world and to her cognitive preferences, because it was something she was forced to develop; but the way she engages in it is very telling. Many INTJs have interests in pursuing solitary physical activities, and their dominant Ni pushes them to apply their perfectionistic tendencies in everything they try to accomplish. This is why Katniss grows to master that practice, becoming an excellent archer (Gale describes her as “the best one he knows”). INTJs can be so obsessed with achieving excellence that they could be reluctant to show their interests, hobbies or activities at all before being sure to hone them completely. Katniss was basically forced to engage in hunting sessions to provide for her family, and this helped her in developing her inferior Se and learning to adjust to the environment around her. Nevertheless, her hunting style is still methodical, calculating and based on strategy tactics and mind games she plays to foresee her prey’s reactions and behaviors and win over them. She is never shown to gain energy and engage in it with the chaotic flexibility that high Se-users would show (as, for instance, Mulan constantly does in the Chinese Army): she is still precise, deliberate and focused in reaching an established goal, i.e. anticipating her opponents. It’s almost like she is playing chess with her preys. She conceptualizes her sensory activities and her body becomes a tool for her mind to use. Being a solitary activity in a solitary environment, Katniss is soon able to thrive because it gives her the opportunity to detach from the real world outside the woods and retreat safely in her mind, where she can perceive herself in control.

Another main trait associable with Ni/Te users is their strategic thinking. Ni’s ability to extract conceptual patterns from sensory elements and Te’s pragmatical approach in decompressing them give INTJs natural access to a pro-active way of interpreting reality and a strong desire to control it in a structured, foreseeable manner. INTJs naturally develop an automatic mental disposition to strategize every action they make in order to them to fit their vision and help them in reaching their desired goals. And it’s not just about the Big Strategies, or the Mastermind Plans: it’s a mental framework and it applies on a day to day basis, sometimes in the most insignificant things, often subconsciously and in extremely basic forms. We get to experience Katniss’s interaction with the outside world during the books, and she constantly strategizes. The first thing she thinks about after volunteering to save her sister (a very Fi-driven act for “the only person she is sure she loves”) is that crying as a response mechanism must be avoided because it would be caught by the Square’s cameras, and that she must not indulge in it even after the Reaping ceremony ends, because there will also be cameras in the train station after the tributes get to give their farewells. This by itself, as spontaneous as she makes it look like, is still a calculating way of thinking. She is used to foresee and evaluate strategically the long-term effects of her actions and choices. When she gets to see her family before leaving, she is distant and controlling: she doesn’t waste time in emotional matters, but straight-forwardly communicates a planning schedule of things to do in order for them to be able to survive without her.

She promises to her sister Prim that she will try to win – which now becomes her Goal – and strictly after that she already shows to be comfortable with the idea of dehumanizing other people to reach that goal. She is so calculating and detached from the sensory rules that she actually believes Peeta Mellark’s spontaneous emotional reaction to be a strategy for the Games, which indirectly underlines that it’s something she would do just for strategy purposes – just like we discover former victor Johanna Mason (ENTJ) did. When the night before the Games Peeta (ENFP) shares with her his open, individualistic unwillingness to be a slave to the Capitol (Ne/Fi), Katniss’s skeptical attitude and strategic focus on what she needs to do to accomplish her Goal makes her keep her inner perspective (Ni/Fi) hidden from him and use Te to provide pragmatical feed-back.

“Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to… to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games,” says Peeta. “But you’re not,” I say. “None of us are. That’s how the Games work.” “Okay, but within that framework, there’s still you, there’s still me,” he insists. “Don’t you see?” “A little. Only... no offense, but who cares, Peeta?” I say. “I do. I mean, what else am I allowed to care about at this point?” he asks angrily. He’s locked those blue eyes on mine now, demanding an answer. I take a step back. “Care about what Haymitch said. About staying alive.” Peeta smiles at me, sad and mocking. “Okay. Thanks for the tip, sweetheart.” It’s like a slap in the face. His use of Haymitch’s patronizing endearment. “Look, if you want to spend the last hours of your life planning some noble death in the arena, that’s your choice. I want to spend mine in District Twelve.” “Wouldn’t surprise me if you do,” says Peeta. “Give my mother my best when you make it back, will you?” “Count on it,” I say. Then I turn and leave the roof.

Inside the Arena, she avoids human interactions as far as possible, trying to maintain an independence of mind that allows her to function properly. This solitude allows her to focus on her primary Goal so much that she actually forgets she is supposed to be playing a love story with Peeta – something she thinks makes her appear weak. Once she is tracked down by the Favorites, she quickly comes up with a plan able to keep her safe and endanger them at the same time: she climbs a tree, knowing she has much more expertise of any of them in doing so and already picturing them trying to throw their weapons at her once she is out of their reach, hoping to be able to collect one – showing a futuristic and utilitarian approach to the situation.

When dealing with people, she is very selective, trusts her guts and is almost never wrong (Ni). She makes an alliance with Rue here, and shows sympathy for Mags, Beetee and Wiress in the next book, highly distrusting every other tribute. She comes up with another plan involving setting up several fires to distract the Favorites and destroying their supplies by exploiting the underground mines near the Cornucopia. When Seneca Crane announces that there can be two victors from the same district, Katniss decides to incorporate Peeta’s survival in her ultimate Goal, and from that moment she is determined to find him, protect him and carry out their romance as efficiently as she can.

The most emblematic moment where Katniss’s INTJness truly stands out in the first book is at the end, when the rules are changed back and just one victor is allowed. Peeta gets acceptive of the inevitable consequences that it entails, but Katniss can’t find satisfaction in it because she feels like she has been played. She managed to adapt to the Games’ logic and reach both her Goals – keeping her promise to Prim and allowing Peeta to survive with her. And suddenly she has to sacrifice one of them, even though she conquered both? This tyrannical twist aimed at controlling her is what definitely triggers her into attacking the whole system, finding a way to make the Capitol conform to what she wants and not the other way around. If there’s something INTJs hate, that it’s being manipulated and stripped of control. With the trick of the berries, she knows she is subverting the rules and that consequences will arise, but she first and foremost is confident that she will get what she wants out of it. And she does.

Katniss’s dominant Ni (Introverted Intuition) is also evident, through the whole saga, in the constant symbolical associations she makes between objects/people and images/concepts. In her mind, Prim is her “little duck”, Peeta is “the boy with the bread”, the soup in the Arena becomes a linguistic code to decrypt from Haymitch, Rue herself becomes a shadow of her sister, the Mockingjay pin becomes a self-projecting symbol, Snow’s white rose becomes a hidden form of communication between them. She sees items as conceptual containers.

In the second book, she gets visited by President Snow and she studies him, analyzing his behavior and persona and carefully weighting his words.

Perhaps it is the newness of the house or the shock of seeing him or the mutual understanding that he could have me killed in a second that makes me feel like the intruder. As if this is his home and I’m the uninvited party. So I don’t welcome him or offer him a chair. I don’t say anything. In fact, I treat him as if he’s a real snake, the venomous kind. I stand motionless, my eyes locked on him, considering plans of retreat. “I think we’ll make this whole situation a lot simpler by agreeing not to lie to each other,” he says. “What do you think?” I think my tongue has frozen and speech will be impossible, so I surprise myself by answering back in a steady voice, “Yes, I think that would save time.”

During the Victory Tour, despite Snow’s warning against her rebellious tendencies, Katniss shows once again her inability to stick to established procedures and etiquettes by coming up with an individualistic speech about Rue (Fi) that leads to an uprising and public execution. Back in her district, she keeps breaking the rules and attending the woods despite knowing that the President keeps his eyes on her movements.

As soon as the Quarter Quell is announced and the tributes are selected, Katniss decides that this time her long-term Goal will solely be Peeta’s survival, and from now on she takes her ultimate sacrifice for granted in her mental schemes, as a necessary step. Because of her Ni, Katniss develops a curiosity for Beetee (INTP) and Wiress’s intellectual approach to their training session and learns about force fields. Katniss’s archery training here is extremely probative of the mindset she enters into when hunting. She refuges inside her own head and lets her intuition overtake her body and dictate her movements in a harmonious and efficient continuum. She doesn’t lose herself in the environment (high Se), but in her own mind (high Ni), alienating herself from her physical surroundings to the point that she fails to realize she is being observed by everyone and doesn’t catch them applauding her until she sees them after her session is completed.

This time, in the Arena, she ends up being much more assertive – mainly because she has already made peace with the fact that she is not going to get out alive. This certainty is what ultimately suffocates her humanity and lets her approach the competition in a much more cold-blooded way – if she has come to have no problem dying to save Peeta, she surely has no problem killing everyone else as well to do it. She openly discusses with him about betrayal strategies and spends the majority of the time conjecturing ways to kill her temporary allies. She is so intensely focused (in a Ni tunnel-vision fashion) on her own scheme that she fails to notice than a much greater plan, arranged by the rebels, is being implemented by some of the other tributes which involves keeping her alive. Once she realizes that something is wrong with the way they are behaving, she comes up with another plan: she exploits the operative system of the Arena combined with her newly-acquired ability to recognize holes in force fields to throw an electrified arrow into the weak spot of the Arena’s one and provoke the explosion of the entire structure. Katniss shows to be attracted not only to the pragmatical efficiency of the gesture (Te), but to its symbolical connotations as well (Ni), which seem to convey an open declaration of war to Snow himself.

In the third book, she goes back to crave her independence from others, estranging herself from the social activities held in District 13 and developing an intuitive and instinctual distrust in President Coin as an authority figure. She decides to accept her propaganda role as the Mockingjay, symbol of the Revolution, just because it’s the only way to ensure the progression of the rebellious strikes and therefore to aim at Snow’s ultimate defeat – in a not-so-different way from INTJs’ tendency to engage in leadership roles once they conclude it to be the only possible solution to ensure the highest efficiency of a system. In exchange of embracing the role, Katniss provides a list of demands to be accepted – including the claim of President Snow’s execution. This becomes her new Goal.

Having witnessed at first-hand Katniss’s insubordinate nature and fearing for it to become a serious problem, President Coin decides to include a brainwashed Peeta in the Mockingjay mission. Katniss realizes quite instantly that Coin could profit from her death and that she wants to use Peeta as a weapon to control her and potentially get rid of her. Her distrust of Coin increases rapidly, but she keeps being focused on her primary Goal – to the point that, after Boggs’s death and her taking charge of the team, she pretends to know about the existence of a secondary, back-up plan established by Coin and only shared with Boggs and herself aimed at infiltrating the Capitol and killing the President.

Nevertheless, one of the most impactful moments in all the saga happens when the reader gets to experience Katniss’s Ultimate Plan. After District 13 gives order to detonate two groups of bombs from hovercrafts bearing the Capitol seal resulting in a massive genocide of children and rebel medics – including Prim –, Katniss is able to foresee (Ni) Coin’s real intentions of generating an internal conflict in the enemy lines and therefore manages to rationalize the danger she represents for Panem’s future liberty. She realizes that, in order for the people to be ultimately free and for Prim’s death not to be in vain, she needs to find a way to get rid of both Snow and Coin at the same time, because Coin’s thirst for power steams from similar roots of Snow’s, and must be sedated as quickly as possible. So, she meticulously and carefully crafts a strategy to gain Coin’s ultimate trust and then betray it publicly.

Was it like this then? Seventy-five years or so ago? Did a group of people sit around and cast their votes on initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy that was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts’ children? The scent of Snow’s rose curls up into my nose, down into my throat, squeezing it tight with despair. All those people I loved, dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now. I weigh my options carefully, think everything through. Keeping my eyes on the rose, I say, “I vote yes . . . for Prim.” “Haymitch, it’s up to you,” says Coin. A furious Peeta hammers Haymitch with the atrocity he could become party to, but I can feel Haymitch watching me. This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me. “I’m with the Mockingjay,” he says. “Excellent. That carries the vote,” says Coin. “Now we really must take our places for the execution.” As she passes me, I hold up the glass with the rose. “Can you see that Snow’s wearing this? Just over his heart?” Coin smiles. “Of course. And I’ll make sure he knows about the Games.” “Thank you,” I say.

She manipulates her by pretending to agree at the establishment of new Hunger Games in Prim’s memoir while keeping her eyes fixed on Snow’s rose and mentally recalling their conversation in the previous book. Haymitch – who is probably an INTJ as well (with Se-grip problems), since Katniss spends the entire saga stating how alike they are – instantly understands Katniss’s plan and votes in her favor. By doing this, Katniss ultimately gains Coin’s trust, who has no reason now not to arm her and let her execute Snow in a public ceremony. Katniss manipulates Coin even more by making her think that giving him the white rose is an attempt to symbolize revenge, while it actually is a way for Katniss to re-awake in Snow the memory of their previous exchange. Katniss’s attachment to symbology here is extremely evident. When she finally gets to be in front of Snow, she states that he has nowhere to go, no allies left. There is no way for Snow to still be a threat ever again, regardless of her actually executing him in this instance. But on the other hand, now she is given the unique, unrepeatable possibility of erasing Coin’s threat as well. And she grabs it.

I feel the bow purring in my hand. Reach back and grasp the arrow. Position it, aim at the rose, but watch his face. He coughs and a bloody dribble runs down his chin. His tongue flicks over his puffy lips. I search his eyes for the slightest sign of anything, fear, remorse, anger. But there’s only the same look of amusement that ended our last conversation. It’s as if he’s speaking the words again. “Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other.” He’s right. We did. The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

This execution is almost a by-the-book case of INTJ’s combination of strategic planning and the ability to foresee dangerous future outcomes and prevent them from happening. Katniss’s plan was supposed to end with her suicide, but soon after Coin’s death, Peeta is able to grasp her intentions and stop her in time. Katniss, having already calculated that she was going to be executed as well for Coin’s murder, loses her cool because the final step of her strategy has been prevented, and searches for Gale in the crowd hoping to be mercifully killed by him. But she isn’t. Eventually, she gets quarantined and the newly-established Paylor’s government decides to spare her.

Overall, I think it’s safe to say that the tendency to mistype Katniss as a Sensor steams from an approximative, superficial lecture of her character and the way she operates. People tend to place the “S” label upon her purely because she is an expert in a physical activity and think that is enough for her to be a Sensor – as if there are no Intuitives more than capable of mastering “sensory categories”, which is basically the same as implying that Sensors can not be able to develop a comfortable relationship with conceptual subjects. Typing characters basing personal assumptions on dichotomies and therefore discrediting cognitive functions is an extremely biased and inefficient procedure which leads to great misunderstandings. All it takes is to dive a little bit into the core nature of the character to get a proper picture of how said character perceives the world and engages with it. And with that in mind, Katniss Everdeen can be nothing else but an INTJ.

“To hear Delly describe it, I had next to no friends because I intimidated people by being so exceptional. Not true. I had next to no friends because I wasn’t friendly.”

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

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Hi! I just finished rewatching the Hunger Games movie for the first time in years and I'm curious: why do you think the ending didn't make sense? You have such good insight. Congratulations on your doctorate!

So this might be a bad answer, because I have not seen any of the Hunger Games movies except the first one, but. I’m not a huge fan of the ending of the book series because I think there’s a fascinating political story there that gets a little lost behind the romance and adventure angles.

I really like that Katniss ends up killing President Coin and destroying her own symbolic role as Mockingjay in the process. I really like the horrifying hints of how easy it would be for the new boss to be just like the old boss, once the dust settles. I really like Katniss’s realization that she and Gale have grown apart, to the point where she can no longer support his extreme views. That’s the aspect of Mockingjay I enjoy, and could happily read a whole book about.

However, all of that happens pretty quickly in the background of a whole other mess of plot threads. Most of the book is devoted to having Peeta be brainwashed into trying to kill Katniss (and then just kinda not anymore? for reasons that happen offscreen?) and the former winners talk about their lives and Katniss feeling conflicted about Gale vs. Peeta and the plot with (I cringe even thinking the phrase) “Welcome to the seventy-sixth Hunger Games!” as a fun thing to say just before a bunch of people die.

None of that works, in my opinion, and none of it feels like it captures that made the first two books so good. Hunger Games has Katniss’s mom’s long struggle against depression, and Katniss’s deeply complex feelings about that struggle and its impact on her and Prim. Mockingjay has Peeta going through two different personality changes like a switch being thrown, with 0.05% of the respectful depiction of mental health that Katniss’s mom got. Hunger Games focuses on a single plot conflict, with various characters’ personalities revealing themselves to the minimally-insightful Katniss as they’re forced to struggle against each other. Mockingjay wanders through several characters’ lives and in some ways tells us too much about their trauma, in ways far less effective than the horrifying-by-implication hints we get in the first two books.

Hunger Games gives us a heroine who can easily be read as queer for her strong devotion to family ties and utter indifference to the vagaries of romance. Mockingjay transforms most of that into a YA SF love triangle, creating a “competition” between Peeta and Gale for the “prize” of Katniss and then forcing the issue of one getting knocked out of the running. Hunger Games hints that Katniss’s stable life is over no matter what, even if she has gained a friendship with Peeta and managed to stick it to the Capitol, because the entire time Haymitch is there as a foreboding specter of her likely future. Mockingjay forcibly throws yet another Hunger Games approximation into Katniss’s path (with almost none of the cleverness of the first two) and then ends on Katniss and Peeta WATCHING THEIR CHILDREN SKIP HAND-IN-HAND THROUGH A FIELD OF FUCKING DAISIES. Yes, yes, I know that there are complexifying hints in the way that image is presented, but THEY’RE SKIPPING. Skipping through A FUCKING FIELD OF FUCKING DAISIES. To say it’s “tonally inconsistent” with the rest of the series is like saying Dashcon was “less successful than expected.”

Mockingjay’s great strength is the same as that of Hunger Games: critiquing media narratives and the ways that the strangers’ pain is milked for entertainment by mainstream American society. In Mockingjay, that specifically takes the form of Katniss getting turned into a media icon that then gets used to represent ideals she doesn’t stand for. The contrast between “ad libbed” Katniss and “canned” Katniss does an excellent job of critiquing propaganda, even propaganda that has good intentions. Coin’s assassination, which no one watching all that footage at home could’ve predicted, feels beautifully inevitable when we see the whole revolution through Katniss’s eyes.

I could happily read a whole other book just about the messy political situation that Katniss makes messier when she kills Coin. But all of that gets rushed and shunted aside for the kinda-silly kinda-trite romance stuff and “lol, these traps are just like the Hunger Games” stuff. (Maybe I should watch the movies. Didn’t Mockingjay get two films to itself?) That series is amazing and brutal and heart-wrenching at its best, and frankly none of Katniss’s interaction with Peeta or Gale in that last book are “its best.”

#nothing to do with animorphs #hunger games #mockingjay #catching fire #suzanne collins #katniss everdeen #book reviews #hunger games negativity #criticism #marilyn notmonroe #asks #shouting

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everlarkbirthdaygifts · 6 years

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Happy Birthday, finnickfoxes!

We wish a very Happy Birthday to @finnickfoxes! We hope you had a wonderful December 21st full of cake and surprises. To help kick the birthday cheer up a notch, @ally147writes has written a story just for you!

AN: Happy Birthday, @finnickfoxes! I apologise for the short delay; I’ve been a tad unwell these past few days. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this blend-up of a little enemies-to-lovers with a bit of kinda-sorta fake relationship. (I may expand on this one in the future, too, just to flesh it out a bit and make the ending a tad better). Unbeta’d, untitled because titles are hard when you’ve got a headache, and rated M-ish for language; all errors and questionable decisions are my own. Enjoy!

In between another sharp nip of his teeth and a vengeful swirl of his tongue, Peeta Mellark, pain-in-her-ass jerk wad for the better part of her senior year of high school, then her entire college existence, whispers against her lips, “You plan on explaining yourself anytime soon, sweetheart?”

She bites his lip, hard enough to make him groan into her mouth. She swallows the sound and kisses him again. They’re forceful things, rough and punishing. But they’re addictive, too, and full of so much intensity and indefinable feeling. Nothing at all like a kiss should be. At least, not one you’d have with a guy you hate, let alone in public.

“Not yet.”

She should, though. She owes him big. What’s the going rate for accosting a guy, with whom you’ve had a mutual hate-fest going on with for the past three years, in the middle of a busy guild coffee shop and kissing him with no explanation?

(In her defence, she’d like to point out that she had no idea it’d be Peeta she’d be turning around and landing lip-first on. She just thought it’d be another blond-haired, broad-shouldered… literally anyone else she could have explained the situation to and bought a coffee for to apologise).

But his kiss is nothing like she expected. Nor is his reaction. He should have shoved her away — she would have, if the roles were reversed — not drawn her in even closer with one hand cradled around her head and the other wrapped around her waist like they’re… like they’re an actual couple or something. He tastes… sweet. And spicy. Like cinnamon sugar. Funny. She figured someone with their head so far up their own ass would taste like —

He slows the kiss to something that threatens to melt her. She shouldn’t be enjoying this anywhere near as much as she is. She tries to drive the kiss back to the hateful roughness of before, to match the tone of all their interactions so far, but he doesn’t let her. His lips are soft and strong, wresting control away from her. They’re in dangerous territory, but there’s not much she can do about it. Hell, there’s not much she wants to do about it…

He pulls away at last with a soft, damp smack and smirks down at her; the expression he wears is unreadable. Par for the course for the two of them since high school ended. She doesn’t think she’ll ever understand the smarmy bastard and just what it is he does to her.

Still, she stares as he licks at his red, swollen lips and fights the shiver that threatens to take her over. She needs her head checked, that’s for sure.

“Well, princess,” he drawls, but he doesn’t move away; his warm breath fans over her face with each exhale, and he draws small circles against her hip with his thumb. It’s lulling, and almost enough to make her forget about… “Is he gone?”

She darts her gaze to her right where, just beyond the window, Gale Hawthorne — the second-biggest pain in her ass for the better part of her entire college existence — stood just a moment ago, tapping on the glass to get her attention. Or was it even longer ago? Seconds and minutes seemed to bleed and meld with Peeta’s lips on hers, though it couldn’t have been more than five, ten, fifteen seconds, surely…

She jolts back and shoves Peeta away from her with more force than necessary, and gains a little more satisfaction than she should when he stumbles into a (mercifully) empty table and lands ass up. The café goes silent, and he stares up at her like she’s the insane one.

Maybe she is. The kiss addled her brain something fierce.

“Yeah, he’s gone,” she says with a shrug, though it’s hard to act casual when you can’t get your breathing back under control. “We’re done now.”

He quirks a brow at her from his spot on the floor. People are gawking, but they all seem enraptured by what might happen next. She doesn’t blame them; it’s like a scene out of a bad soap opera. Even she kind of wants to know what happens next.

“We’d have had to start for us to be done, sweetheart.”

She almost freezes. They came so close to starting, all those years ago. It scared her how much she wanted them to start. “Don’t care, Mellark.” She waves him off and turns to leave. The sooner she can leave his stifling, baffling presence, the better.

“Don’t I at least get a thank you?” he calls after her. “Anyone else would have bought me dinner before they start batting around my tonsils. Or at least paid for my tea for me.”

She flips her middle finger over her shoulder and steps out into the sunlight, far, far away from Peeta Mellark and his confusing lips. “Screw you, Mellark.”

XXX

She’s beginning to wonder if there’s such a thing as far, far away from Peeta Mellark’s lips.

The memory of the kiss follows her for the rest of the day. To her classes and to the dining hall, and consuming every step in between. It’s not fair for a fake kiss with a guy she hates to be the best kiss she’s ever had.

She wants to be angry, that it could affect her so much, but Peeta Mellark isn’t really to blame, is he? She’s the one that initiated it, that allowed it to happen. Just that thought pisses her off more than she ever believed possible.

It even follows her to the library later that evening, where she’s pretty sure it’s illegal to have any sort of even remotely smutty thought. Her lips still tingle with a vivid sort of after-memory, still feel swollen and chapped. She’s sure everyone she walks past can see it on her face, can feel the conflict rolling off her in waves.

But the library is deserted, so quiet that Katniss can hear her footsteps padding over the carpet. She passes a few people on her way to the elevator, and thankfully shares it with no one as she mounts it to the fifth floor, where Gale said he’d be waiting.

Her respite from Gale was never going to last long, not when they’d been partnered up for an ecology paper at the beginning of the semester. It’d been all right at first; they’d compared their similar upbringings, shared similar tastes in music and pop culture. They both hunted to keep their families afloat, lived a mere town over from each other back at their respective homes, and were forced to grow up too fast when their fathers died (in the same mine explosion, they’d later learned). But where Katniss could laugh off the suggestions from their classmates that, with their matching black hear, grey eyes, and dusky olive colouring, she and Gale could almost be siblings, Gale would glare them down and scoff, like he’d been offended in some way.

Something in him shifted after that. From then on, he’d touch her more — never anything inappropriate, just light, fleeting things she thought were accidents until they were happening all the time. Next came the innocuous invitations to parties, movies and cafés he thought she’d like, and not-so-subtle hints about a cabin by a lake he knew about in the woods. All the while she’d smile tightly and decline. But he never quite seemed to get the message…

She finds him at a table in the farthest corner of the floor. He’s hunched over his computer, his back facing her. Katniss takes a deep, bracing breath and pads closer.

He doesn’t even look up, or turn around at her approach. “Hey, Catnip.”

She grits her teeth. One day, she’s going to snap and strangle him for calling her that. Soon, too, she thinks. “Hey, Gale.”

He looks up from his computer like she’s inconveniencing him somehow, and fixes her with a blank look. “So, how you wanna do this?”

Katniss slips her bag from her shoulder and takes the seat opposite Gale. “Well,” she says as unzips her bag. “We should probably get the rainfall data down, so we can start on the actual report.”

He nods and shrugs, like it has no real bearing on his grades or anything, like the report’s not worth sixty-percent of their final grade. “Whatever.”

Katniss rolls her eyes, but says nothing. He’s an ass, but it’s a welcome change from him ploughing her for details on her personal life. She takes out her notebook and a pen, and carefully writes down the stats Gale recites for her, all while the memory of the kiss plays on repeat in her mind. She’s not sure she could banish it if she tried now.

They’ve been working together for close to an hour, drafting out their report and dividing up the tasks, when Gale clears his throat and says the words she’s been waiting for.

He doesn’t even look up from his laptop. “Saw you in the coffee shop earlier today, Catnip.”

“Really?” she says, hoping her complete and utter disinterest shines through. “I didn’t see you.”

Gale snorts. “Bet you didn’t, what with your tongue down that random Blondie’s throat.”

Katniss blushes, but a hot lick of anger is building inside her, too. Who the fuck does Gale think he is, and where the hell does he get off judging her?

“Uh… yeah. It’s not random, but it’s still kinda… new, so…” She doubts she sounds all that convincing, but Gale’s derisive slip of laughter tells her she managed it all right.

“Yeah, I bet. Madge didn’t even know about him.”

Her hand jolts hard enough to send the nib of her pen clean through the paper. She’s going to have a chat with Madge when she gets back to their shared dorm tonight. “You’re asking my friends about me now?”

Gale shrugs. “You weren’t going to tell me anything.” The fact that Madge has a giant, exploitable crush on him goes unsaid.

“And that wasn’t hint enough?” She slams her notebook shut and shoves it into her shitty bag. Gale glances up from his laptop for once and watches her pack her things away with a look of annoyance. She doesn’t think she could keep working, let alone glance in Gale’s direction again tonight.

“I’m not interested in you, Gale. I never was and I never will be. So how about you grow up and leave me the hell alone, all right?”

She storms away from him, ignoring his yells of her name. She’ll finish her part of the assessment on her own and email it to Gale in the morning. Colossal twat though he is, she admits that he’s much better at the design side of things than she is. Besides, Madge owes her a explanation, and it better not have anything to do with Gale’s arms…

XXX

All’s well that ends well, Katniss supposes as she wanders the campus, looking for lunch. After a chiding better suited to a small child than a good friend, Madge is off her back and more contrite than ever; Gale is cordial, if a little cold, but now that both their intentions are out in the open, they’re working together fine. And she hasn’t seen Mellark since that fateful morning. Hell, she’s barely thought of their kiss in days.

She skips the guild coffee shop. Something tells her she wouldn’t be welcome there after last time anyway. Instead, she ventures further across the campus, to a tiny restaurant run by the adjoining culinary school.

It’s not quite midday yet, so the restaurant is quiet and peaceful. Only half a dozen other students take up tables, eyes locked on their laptop screens while plates of pasta steam at their elbows.

She places her order at the counter — a big, cheesy bowl of spaghetti sounds more than perfect — and shuffles along the parade of two-person tables, until a sickeningly familiar voice stops her in her tracks.

“Katniss Everdeen.” She closes her eyes and bites back a groan.

When she looks up again, Peeta Mellark leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. “Back for more?”

She scowls. “Don’t be a pig, Mellark.”

He grins. “Not that I’d mind being ambushed for random kisses from you again.”

“Fuck this,” she mutters to herself, and starts to walk away.

“Katniss,” he calls after her, and something about the soft command in his tone stops her in her tracks. She turns back and watches him kick out the chair opposite him. “Sit down. We need to talk, all right?”

“If this is about the kiss and… shoving you, then I’m sorry, all right? Otherwise, I don’t have a damn thing to say to you.”

“Fantastic. You can sit and listen to what I have to say, then.” He nudges the chair out some more, until it bumps up against her shins. “Sit down, Katniss. Please.”

She does, but she’s not happy about it. She drags the chair back across the floor as she pulls herself in, the scraping both deafening and obnoxious.

He sighs. “Thank you. Look, Katniss. I’m not sure what I ever did to make you hate me so much —”

“— You know perfectly well what you did, you sorry son of a bitch.”

He slaps a hand down on the table, firm enough to rattle the cutlery. When she levels her gaze with his, his eyes are the same angry blue as a hot flame. “That’s the thing, actually: I don’t. I’ve got no idea what I did to piss you off. All I know, is that we were friends — as much as anyone could be your friend, anyway — and then one day, we just… weren’t anymore.” He shrugs, helpless. “You started acting like… God, I don’t know what, like I’d killed your puppy or something, and you never once told me why.”

“You ditched me for Glimmer fucking Carmichael,” she hisses. Even now, five years after the fact, the memory still threatens to suffocate her in humiliation. She’d only left the shitty hotel ballroom for a moment before Peeta was sticking his tongue down Glimmer’s throat.

At his slack jaw, she lets out a derisive snort. “You remember that? You made this huge fuss about that night, going on and on that we could just go as friends, and then you just —” She stops, unwilling to go further. The fact that she was then, and still is now, so incredibly hurt by what happened, makes her want to lock herself in a dank, dark cave forever and never come out. God she was such an idiot back then, wanting all of it, all of him, so much.

“I don’t know what I even expected out of that night,” she mutters to herself. “Of course, if given the option, you’d choose her over me.”

He’s silent for a long time, but when he speaks, his voice is soft, regretful. “Kat, no. I didn’t…”

She bites back a gasp at the nickname only he ever used. Mostly because he was the only one who ever bothered to give her one.

“Look, it doesn’t matter now —”

“Yes, it does,” he cuts in. “It matters a lot.” He runs a hand through his curls and lets out a noise like a growl. “I didn’t want Glimmer that night, Kat, or ever. I didn’t even know you saw her with me. She just…” He sighs. “I didn’t want to be rude. You went and did whatever you did, and she just started dancing with me, and before I knew it…”

“You didn’t look like you minded,” she mutters. The image of them pressed together with no ending or beginning is burned into her mind with no hope of removal.

“Katniss, I wanted to be there with you that night,” he says, and with the surety in his voice, there’s no way she can’t believe him. “I asked you there as friends because that was the only way I could get you to go there with me at all. By the time I got Glimmer off me, I couldn’t find you anywhere. I called, I checked your house… I looked everywhere I could think of for you but… nothing.”

She shakes her head. “That’s the general idea when you’re trying to avoid someone.”

He reaches across the table and covers her hand with his. She wants to pull her hand away, but can’t; with his warmth covering hers, she feels frozen to the spot.

“Please don’t shut me out, Kat,” he pleas. “Not when… god, this whole thing was just a stupid misunderstanding. I lost my best friend because of a stupid misunderstanding.”

Katniss’ heart feels like it’s about to beat out of her chest. He’s not… he couldn’t possibly... “What are you saying?”

He squeezes her hand. “I’m saying, I never wanted Glimmer touching me. There’s only one girl I’ve ever wanted touching me, and if she stayed long enough to watch me push Glimmer off me, she might have understood that sooner.” He leans forward, close enough to kiss her again, but he doesn’t, and she’s not sure how she feels about that. “It’s always been you, Katniss. Always.”

She swallows, but it feels like there’s a lump of cotton lodged in her throat. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He quirks a brow at her. “Would you have listened?”

“So, you decided you’d be a huge ass jerk right back?”

He smiles at her, and though it’s cliché as all hell, she swears her heart skips a beat. “Pot, kettle? Besides, Kat, that was literally, literally, the only way I could get you to speak to me after everything. I tried being nice. All you did was bite my head off.”

“Well, I’m listening now.”

“Yeah,” he says softly. His thumb is tracing circles over the back of her hand, kicking up a trail of goose bumps. “I guess you are.”

“Sorry for being… you know, a massive cow.”

His smile spreads even wider. “Thank you. And, uh… ditto.”

They’re quiet for a moment again, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. Rather, it’s a charged, electric thing she can just about feel, so laced with hope and anticipation that she could almost choke on it.

“Kat, can we try again?” he suddenly says. “I just… I want what we were so close to having before. I never stopped wanting it, even when we were at each other’s throats. And before you say anything, just consider —” He trails off, his smile turning into something sly and mischievous “— we’re awesome kissers.”

She taps a finger to her chin and ponders all the infinite possibilities, just long enough to make him squirm. “I don’t know. Maybe that kiss was just a giant fluke.”

He grins another heart-stopping grin. “Maybe we ought to try again, then? Just to make sure we’re not getting into anything we might regret.”

She smiles back, and feels the same flutter in her stomach that she always felt around Peeta Mellark as a hopeless, awkward teenager with a crush. “That might be the best idea you’ve ever had.”

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlarkbirthdaydrabbles #everlarkbirthdaygifts #fan fic #by ally147writes

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rachelbracewriting-blog · 6 years

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Young Adult Fiction and the Reader

The debate over the merits of young adult fiction centers around its tropes, plot complexity, and general ease of reading. However, it is rare that anyone looks at the opinions of the readers themselves and how they choose books from the entire scope of the genre. Within every genre of literature there are a range of books from those that are well written to those whose literary status is questionable at best. Critics of young adult fiction seem to look only at the most popular books from the genre, usually those that have movie adaptions. There is no consideration of how polarizing these books tend to be with readers of the genre, or that the phenomena of popular books often stem from the effort publishers put into marketing a book. Critics of young adult literature analyze a few novels as a representation of the genre as a whole, without choosing their sample based on the reading patterns and preferences of those who regularly read within young adult literature.

Janice Radway investigated a similar instance of reader and critic dissonance within the romance novel genre. She found that the major failing in analyzing why women read romance novels was that “they ignore romance readers’ own book choice and theories about why they read”1 and instead “produce their explanation merely by positing a desire in the reading audience for the specific meaning they have unearthed”2. This occurs within many articles written about the negative aspects of young adult fiction. Most articles mention at least one of the following popular books: Divergent, The Hunger Games, Twilight, and The Fault in Our Stars. Ruth Graham, in her article “Against YA” says “Let’s set aside the transparently trashy stuff like Divergent and Twilight, which no one defends as serious literature… These are the books, likeThe Fault in Our Stars, that are about real teens doing real things, and that rise and fall not only on the strength of their stories but, theoretically, on the quality of their writing”3. She goes on to claim that “these books consistently indulge in the kind of endings that teenagers want to see, but which adult readers ought to reject as far too simple. YA endings are uniformly satisfying”4. Of all the novels commonly cited, only Twilight has a truly neat and tidy ending. Katniss and Peeta battle PTSD for the rest of their lives, Tris dies almost arbitrarily, and Hazel buries her boyfriend while coping with the fact that she will die soon and leave emotional wreckage in her wake. This reading of young adult fiction ignores both the endings of the books she herself uses as examples, as well as the reasons people may read these books.

Critics present reasons behind the consumption of young adult literature which ignore why readers themselves claim to read the genre. The book choices themselves are clearly from those that were made into movies and had a large initial surge in popularity that made them sensational. Many within the reading community, however, do not feel that these are a reasonable sampling. On Goodreads, a social media site that is described as Facebook for book lovers, these books are polarizing. For Divergent, many reviewers take issue with a lack of world building they see evident in the novel.5 Reviewers of Twilight who rated the book less than three out of five stars all cite either poor writing or badly developed plot.6 Graham and other critics ignore readers’ method for choosing books in citing the reasons for the popularity of young adult literature as “escapism, instant gratification, and nostalgia”, the nostalgia being only applicable to adult readers of this genre.7 Readers themselves, however, cite very different reasons for why a young adult book is worth reading or not. The most popular young adult fiction book of 2016 on Goodreads was Salt to the Sea, and nearly all the reviewers who loved the book list the beautiful writing as one of their top reasons that the book blew them away.8 The most popular young adult fantasy book on Goodreads was A Court of Mist and Fury, and readers most often discuss the beautiful storytelling and character arcs as a reason the book was their favorite.9 None of the reasons listed by Graham are found in the reviews on Goodreads, showing a lack of connection with the actual people who read young adult fiction. Considering the scope of young adult fiction, it is telling that the same titles reoccur again and again in articles that bemoan the genre as a whole; analysts of young adult literature are ignoring how readers themselves choose books and why.

A common criticism of young adult fiction is that the heroines are poor role models for young girls, Mary Sues who exhibit no personality and whose existence is reliant on two boys, neither of which she can choose between. This once again shows that critics do not take reader preferences into account when looking at young adult literature. Most consumers of young adult literature are put off by books that fit this exact description, and they prefer books with nuanced and diverse characters and heroines. Tara Burton, from her time as a ghost writer of young adult fiction, claims that “The typical ‘character pack’ provided with my outline tells me that Mary is ‘nice, smart,’ and other vague adjectives; she rarely gets narrative space to prove it”.10 However, reviews taken from Goodreads show that heroine personality matters when picking books. For Dark Triumph, one five-star reviewer said “Sybella took me some time to adjust to. She’s darker, moodier, more pained, and sometimes verges on crazy, though one can’t blame her. However, as I got used to her and came to know more about why she is the way she is, I became even more bonded to Sybella, and even more desirous for her to overcome the horrors of her life”11. This character description clashes with Burton’s insistence on the young adult Mary Sue heroine. In the first ten reviews for Dark Triumph, all mentioned the characterization of the main character and discussed why they did or did not like her. One explanation for this difference in experience with young adult novels could feasibly be that Tara Burton, as a ghost writer, only interacted with the portion of novels that are written quickly by publishers in order to tap into a trend. These novels are focused on quantity over quality. This demonstrates what Radway claims is necessary for critical analysis of a genre, a consideration “first whether she is a member of a different interpretive community than the readers who are her ostensible subjects”12. The majority of critics of young adult fiction are adults, oftentimes ones who do not consume any young adult books at all. A belief that all young adult heroines exhibit ‘Mary Sue’ characteristics clashes with readers’ own preferences for books with complex heroines.

Critics continually dismiss young adult fiction as lesser literature, however their analysis of the genre hinges on a few highly sensationalized books. These books, which often are poor examples of novels favored by young adult readers, are chosen partially based on popularity. Readers’ own opinions of what makes a good young adult novel are not factored into the analysis of why individuals read these kinds of fiction. The readers’ preferences are not examined or considered when deciding which books are representative of the genre, leading to the dissonance between critical opinion and reader thinking.

Janice A. Radway, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” in Feminist Studies Vol 9 No. 1, (Feminist Studies, Inc, 1983), 54.

Radway, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” 54.

Ruth Graham, “Against YA,” The Slate Book Review, (June 5, 2014): http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_embarrassed_to_read_children_s_books.html.

Graham, “Against YA,” http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_embarrassed_to_read_children_s_books.html.

“Divergent,” Goodreads, accessed February 17, 2017, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13335037-divergent?from_search=true.

“Twilight,” Goodreads, accessed February 17, 2017, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41865.Twilight?from_search=true.

Graham, “Against YA,” http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_embarrassed_to_read_children_s_books.html.

“Salt to the Sea,” Goodreads, accessed February 17, 2017, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25614492-salt-to-the-sea?from_choice=true.

A Court of Mist and Fury,” Goodreads, accessed February 17, 2017, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26073150-a-court-of-mist-and-fury?from_choice=true.

Tara Burton, “‘Ghost Stories’: The ubiquitous anti-feminism of young adult romances,” New Statesman, (February 24, 2013): http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/02/ghost-stories-ubiquitous-anti-feminism-young-adult-romances.

Christina (A Reader of Fictions), May 10, 2012, comment on “Dark Triumph,” Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9943270-dark-triumph?ac=1&from_search=true.

Radway, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” 55.

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