[ SECRET POST #1870 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1870 ⌋


Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 67 secrets from Secret Submission Post #267.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[van.livejournal.com]

I agree. Although what tended to bother me the most was the writing style. I just thought it was unnecessarily full of fragments and poor quality. I get it's Katniss's POV and I totally think fragments later on when she's fighting for her life and not thinking properly would work, but when the book opens there's no reason for it, unless to perhaps show how uneducated Katniss is, but she doesn't seem to be particularly uneducated so. It was just really distracting.

I thought it an okay book, but the rabid fans surrounding it surprise me. But then again, most massive fandoms are surprising, and I guess even in myself I find I don't get fannish about genuinely AMAZING works. It's the bad ones I want to "fix" and play in. The really excellent ones are perfect as-is so I don't need to dabble in them. (There are, of course, exceptions, but it makes sense to me with regards to this fandom.)

[fadsforwhatever.livejournal.com]

This! Maybe it's because I spread out my reading of the series over a long period of time, but I was shocked at how poor the writing was! Laughably bad in some places imo. I think it's the kind of thing that will transfer well to movie format, so maybe I'll like that better.

[van.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought the same thing. I'm usually much more fond of books than movies based on them, but in this case I feel like I might enjoy the movie more. It doesn't help that I didn't find Katniss to be very interesting/original or sympathetic, so I wasn't really rootingfor her and having it all from her POV was a drag since I WAS interested in some of the other characters.

In any event I do intend to see the movie, so as uninteresting as mediocre as I thought the book was, I still enjoyed it enough to want to see the movie. (Though perhaps not enough to want to read the second book...)

[captain-loki.livejournal.com]

What bothered me about the writing style was that the action scenes (which admittedly is most of the books) worked fine, but then when we see characters interacting, it just felt like the author had no personal experience in what she was trying to convey...I don't know if that makes sense.

A lot of the emotion was written in a way that was like "this is what we are feeling!" but there was a lack of actually showing it instead of Katniss straight up telling us...at least that is how I felt.

[madrigog.livejournal.com]

I like your point about enjoying the fandoms of flawed works most; when something's really, really good I get self-conscious about not doing it justice through fanworks. But some of the most compelling fics I've read have been for Twilight and Glee, which (arguably) have a lot of potential for exploration and development that has never been realized in canon. Maybe something similar's going on in the Hunger Games fandom - although I haven't really looked into it, so I have no idea.

[lit-wolf.livejournal.com]

I keep seeing people talking about how bothered they were by the writing style but I totally missed it, and I'm usually very quick to toss away a book based on the writing style alone. I once stopped reading a book because the characters all spoke with a heavy accent and the author had written out what they sounded like. It made their dialogue completely impossible to understand.

Maybe I should reread the series and see if I can pick up on this bad writing because I completely missed it. Granted, it wasn't the best writing style I've ever read but I didn't think it was poor enough to rate it with the books I've stopped reading because of their writing.

[van.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have ignored it, but it was a distraction to me from page one. It wouldn't take long to reread a small sampling to notice it. I got used to it after a while, for the most part, but it definitely started me out on the wrong foot with regards to how OMG AMAZING the book was touted to be.

[lit-wolf.livejournal.com]

Okay, I reread the first chapter or so and I still don't see this bad writing. Sentence fragments? Yes, but I like them in a first person narrative because it's coming from a character's thoughts, a character's POV. I can't speak for everyone but I know I think a lot in sentence fragments. I look out the window in the morning to judge the weather and think, 'Dark clouds. Might storm. Should grab an umbrella, just in case.' So that's fine with me. And, even so, it wasn't like the entire thing was littered with sentence fragments. Is one or two per paragraph really that much? I've read stuff with a lot more and still wasn't bothered by it.

Now 'The Time Traveler's Wife'? That one drove me up the fucking wall. Every other line written in that damn book was a sentence fragment, some of which didn't even make any sense. Or they were run on sentences that were three or four lines long. That was a book I nearly put down because of the writing... and the story... and the characters... I really hated that freaking but but I finished the damn thing because I did not want to give the shitty book the satisfaction of beating me.

My point of that little rant is that even book considered great by the majority of the world (as 'The Time Traveler's Wife' has won awards and is praised by many), people can dislike something. So I really do understand where you're coming from with your dislike of 'The Hunger Games'. I just can't see the writing as that bad for myself, especially in comparison to 'The Time Traveler's Wife'. Was there something else that bothered you? Because, as I said, I have seen dozens of people online complain about the writing style but I never saw anything in the YA trilogy that bothered me as it has bothered everyone else.

[van.livejournal.com]

I've not read The Time Traveler's Wife, though saying "You think this is bad? You should read [Unrelated Thing]!" isn't going to win you any arguments. I did get used to the writing style eventually, but for me it just felt like sloppy, juvenile writing, not "omg we are in Katniss's head!!" Your mileage may vary, of course. I'm also not fond of first person narrative, so I have an instant knee-jerk reaction to stories with it as I find they're usually so poorly done. (Not always, however, I stress. I just finished some Heinlein which was in first person and it didn't bother me at all; a true feat.)

As I said in my initial reply, I didn't think the HG was bad, but it didn't feel especially new or original or amazing. Perhaps I'm just one of those annoying fans who read and saw "Battle Royale" 10 years ago and found this to be mostly a rehash of that. Different in many areas, of course, but I went into the HG knowing NOTHING about the story, and was like "...." within the first few chapters because it was like something I'd read 10 years ago. Not that anything is new under the sun, but it definitely negatively affected me vs. the way it might've been for someone who'd never heard / read / seen Battle Royale.

I did still read the book, and even enjoyed it, but for me it was hard to get into. I wasn't interested in Katniss or Peeta at all. The characters I was interested in were all other tributes, and I knew that meant they were going to die, so it was hard to let myself feel very much for them or grow attached. All in all, I think it's a great book for YA readers to read and enjoy. I can see why it appeals to some older audiences, and I'm all for books that get kids to read. It just sort of baffles me to see 30-year-olds flailing about it, or looking at the huge following growing up around it. It's enjoyable, sure. Maybe it's even "deserves to be turned into a movie" enjoyable, but EVERYONE flailing about how OMGAMAZING it is has left me scratching my head.

Probably my standards are too high from reading more quality literature, and probably my expectations were raised too high from all the hype.

[lit-wolf.livejournal.com]

I didn't offer up 'Time Traveler's Wife' to win any arguments. I offered it up to say that I understood where you were coming from in the thought process of 'Why does everyone keep praising was I see as garbage'. I wasn't trying to offer up a title as a 'there are worse things out there' defense.

And I have to say that if you don't like first person narrative, then your opinion is biased off the bat. That would be like a friend taking me to the concert of a rapper (and I can't stand rap) and then asking me afterwards what I thought. Of course I'm going to have negative things to say about it because I already hated rap.

I'm sorry you appear to be getting bombarded by excited fans but every fandom has them. Twilight, Harry Potter, Eragon, His Dark Materials, all fandoms have their crazy fans. Try not to let the fans put you out so much.