u/Old-Savings-566

So i’ve seen an absolute ton of posts on here recently where people are saying “i hate Sunrise On The Reaping and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind”. That’s fine, i’m not here to change anyone’s mind but i am here to defend Suzanne Collins. She had an incredibly difficult task with this book. This will be quite a long post. I’ll just pick off some of the heavier criticisms, and explain why i think they’re a little unfair.

Firstly, people are frustrated that they didn’t know enough about Lenore Dove, or Sid, or his mother to really care when they died. Anyone who thinks this, i am with you. The fact that we knew so little about them, meant that we weren’t as sympathetic toward the actual characters but really we just felt bad for Haymitch because we knew so much about him and could therefore sympathise with his pain. But, what did we actually expect? Did we want her to expand the book to tell us five fun facts about each character so that we would feel bad for them? There wasn’t much she could do, she set the scene at the start of the book and the reaping followed soon after. If she started the book say a month before the reaping, then the sequence goes all haywire and people likely lose interest by page 50. This was something that couldn’t really have been prevented, what could she really have done to make Lenore Dove’s character more meaningful?

I’ll only touch on one more since i’ve taken up a bit of your time already. The accusations of fan service. I get it, you would prefer she expand on the universe rather than restrict herself to the already known Effie, Beetee, Wiress, Mags, etc. But think about it, at this stage Beetee would be one of very few District 3 victors. So it is not very hard to believe that he would be a mentor at the Quarter Quell, particularly when his son (who we suspiciously didn’t know existed until now) has been reaped to make Beetee suffer. And as for the rebel plot, he always rebellious so it is not hard to believe he got involved with Haymitch. As for Wiress and Mags, again, she didn’t have to select them as mentors but there is a good reason she did. In Catching Fire, we just presume Mags is borderline mute and Wiress half out of their mind due to the trauma of their Games and maybe some ageing on Mags’ part. However, Wiress in SOTR was totally sane before the Games. We now know why she went nuts, and it wouldn’t have made sense to torture her unless she was a mentor to the crazy District 12 tribute trying to blow up an arena. As for Effie, we now know how she came to be the District 12 escort. Her performance for the 50th Games was more than satisfactory, actually giving District 12 somewhat of an image in the wake of Drusilla’s ignorance and Magno’s complete disownership of his role. I didn’t mind that inclusion at all. I think this post has gone long enough, comment any other thoughts you might have. I’m open to anyone disagreeing.

What an insane book. I believe this was mentioned in the original trilogy, but it was something i was completely oblivious to whilst reading the book, but Deedee is literally Teresa and it took some post-read research for me to figure out that all this trauma is what led her to be so hell-bent on finding that cure at any cost. I’ll be honest i hated her after the originals, thought she was a traitor even though she ended up finding the cure (in the films only). But this prequel gives so much insight, i really feel bad she had to endure all that. And i understand why she was so loyal to WCKD. Without Alec, Mark and Trina, there is genuinely no cure. It’s also very rare to read a book where every character from the beginning ends up dead, we are only introduced to Deedee mid-book and she’s the only one who lives by the end. The book just ties in with the originals so perfectly, it answers a lot of questions about how the immunes were discovered. It all started with Teresa, and all the main characters in this book heroically allowed this to happen. Trina losing her memory was just the most awful thing and it was probably at that point where you really start to question if anyone relevant would survive the book, i thought her and Alec would be total goners and Mark would accompany Deedee to safety but i guess his paranoia really was the virus kicking in the whole time and so he was also a goner. Did anyone else think Mark and Deedee were going to end up being Gladers at some point? That obviously didn’t end up happening because everyone was infected. I don’t love the film adaptations for this franchise, the books seem to always come out on top. But, i would’ve loved to see a film for this one. Wish i read this book earlier, i read the OT like 7 years ago and just never thought the prequels would be any good. I was so wrong.

On my third read of Sunrise On The Reaping, i just picked up on something crazy. Not sure if anyone else has highlighted the same thing, but on Page 334 after Haymitch’s victory “The television glows. On-screen, a girl in a rainbow of ruffles sings a familiar tune with unfamiliar words”. Obviously, this is Lucy Gray and her performance at the 10th Hunger Games. Given the 10th Hunger Games were practically erased from Capitol history, the odds of these Games being broadcast to the public are next to none. Further on that, the low odds of Haymitch’s TV suddenly bursting to life and showing this means that it can only be targeted at him. So Snow here is basically showing Haymitch what he is about to lose, showing a Covey girl much like Lenore Dove herself to Haymitch. What seems strange though is that Haymitch picked up on the hint with the milk pitcher in the arena, yet seems really oblivious to this hint. He must surely have known how vulnerable she was going to be compared to him being the victor and all. Snow’s character in this book really went up a notch, we all loved him in the OT but the psychology with the milk pitcher and the constant mind games in this book is going to make for a killer show from Ralph Fiennes. Snow was always overly cruel, but he’s clinically insane in this book.

To clarify, they are exempt from the reaping, but they CAN volunteer in this scenario. I think there is a good chance that a number of Careers would have. Finnick, no I don't think so unless Snow threatened the lives of his family if he refused to go back. Cashmere and Gloss, without being super obvious it is heavily implied that they never wanted to return to the Games in the 75th. I mean, they literally tried to guilt the Capitol during their interview. Brutus and Enobaria are the two that I find very likely, they actually volunteered to go into the 75th Games so it seems pretty daylight obvious that the Capitol propaganda still had them severely brainwashed. For a Career, the only thing better than bringing pride to your district, is bringing MORE pride to your district. Winning another Games would put them as Gods in District 2 virtually so I could see their egos becoming too much for them.

There are pretty variable opinions around whether Caesar was spared by the executioners or not, and people have even gone as far as to claim that Collins confirmed this in some interview that we don't even have a record of. As much as I can see him being killed off for essentially selling the Games to the nation for decades, I have reason to believe that Coin would've wanted to keep him around. It's not confirmed that Coin actually wanted to hold more Hunger Games after the "symbolic one". But she was clearly turning into a dictator, so that suggests yes she would have there was clearly a built-up hatred from within toward the Capitol regarding what they did to 13. And who better to sell the Games again but Caesar Flickerman? The deal would've been as simple as she spares his life in return for him to essentially play the same role he'd been playing for decades. Except, he's the Master of Ceremonies for the Capitol Hunger Games. I don't know if this is a stupid concept or if it actually adds up, either way Coin was assassinated and Caesar isn't seen after so we'll never know his fate. But, I think this is a solid justification as to WHY his life might've been spared. Otherwise why not just kill him? He's done plenty wrong. I also think Coin was sadistic enough to have wanted the Games to operate in a similar way to the pre-revolution era, including the same presenter.

He is such an underrated character. Thresh didn't have to spare Katniss's life, given it was a competition where it's either life or death I was initially shocked that he just let her go like that even though she did protect Rue. And of course, we consider that if he kills Katniss, Peeta dies, you likely have a Career tribute win (Clove/Cato v Thresh), or maybe Foxface just waits it out and wins lol. Either way, the rebellion gets delayed by who knows how long. Likely not by more than 10 years, but still it is unlikely that the rebellion would've been as successful and may have even failed without Katniss being the Mockingjay and without the rebellion having taken place WHEN it did. So yeah, props to Thresh he barely got any screen time yet he was such a crucial character if you look at the big picture. Would the rebellion have happened? Yes, later almost definitely. Would it have been as effective in the absence of Katniss and the Mockingjay symbol? Unlikely from my perspective, others may think differently.

I feel like Johanna, Peeta and Katniss weren’t really unique success stories and there are more who really were talented. We’ve obviously seen that District 6 victors (it might be 5 please correct if i’m wrong) essentially camouflaged themselves until everyone else was dead. We know District 7 and District 11 actually had some strong tributes (Johanna, Chaff, maybe Blight way back in like the 15th Games or whenever. But with all that said, what do we think the ratio is from skilled victors who actually fought well to victors who essentially got lucky (Lucy Gray [which was rigged anyway so idk if we count her], morphlings, Wiress, Beetee, etc.)