You are all gathered here today to please me with your ear-full indulgence as I smack your brains with a big-stick-like rant that’s been a long time coming. No, I won’t smack everyone. This rant is meant for those few who revel in the defamation of the beautiful. Those impious few who compare The Hunger Games and Twilight. Those who infuriatingly say “The Hunger Games is basically the Twilight love story, yuh know? Ya-uhh” (read with a prissy, preppy male/female voice). I’ll warn you now: if you like Twilight, you might want to stop reading here. I don’t want to offend anyone with any of this, just slap them for offending me. See? So let’s now just agree to all be happy! After I slap you in the face. *Ahem* Let us start our completely dispassionate discourse at the base of this totem pole of rotten logic.
The Hunger Games and Twilight. The first mistake here is placing them on common ground as written works. Right off the bat every silly comparison FAILS. This is the primary heresy upon which every other bad argument here is based. To use the accusers’ own second-grade logic: The Hunger Games is good writing, Twilight is not. There is no fair connection between these two works of fiction. The Hunger Games is deeply thought through and written from a realistic emotional standpoint. It’s not written in a simple, limited style. There’s not a simple description of events coupled with outbursts of emotion. You only know Katniss and what matters to her at that moment. That fact may annoy some readers, but it’s a rather ingenious way to tell the story. In fact, the story really couldn’t sensibly work any other way! No over-arching descriptions of the world or events. Just the basic emotional connection to the moment. And, ultimately, it’s what matters to her that drives Panem forward.
If there were some egregiously demented alternate-reality wherein Twilight and The Hunger Games could be homologized, the emotional disparity would be laughable. Twilight is not a valid source of emotional understanding. It unwittingly succeeds at portraying the full emotional depth of a turdy potato. And not a funny, GLaDOS-infused potato. Just a normal, dirty, brown one. Really, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Twilight is a simple story about simple characters in a simple world simply fighting for no reason other than to fuel a simple love story. And some people like that! I have to respect Stephanie Meyer. I may not like her story, characters, writing, or published ideas about how to deal with anything in real life, but she knows her demographic! Twilight‘s a nice, quick, simple read. Nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s for the “dreamy-eyed girl” or for “those who adore innocence” or “abstinence” (please notice the quotes there). But we’re not talking Mrs. Meyer’s demographic. We’re talking about an alternate-reality’s moronic comparison to The Hunger Games. When you do that, suddenly Twilight isn’t “for the dreamy-eyed”. No. It doesn’t display innocence. Just ignorance. Ignorance to how the real world works and how real emotions affect people. Some people might say “Oh, lighten up! It’s just for a very young crowd, let the tweeny girls keep it.” Fine! Keep it far away from my Hunger Games.
Bella can’t be considered a realistic human. Her decisions are too unreasonably asinine to be contemplated by even the most desperate of our race, much less a love-struck high school nobody. Everyone in Forks deserves to be sent to a mental institution for not sending her to one immediately after her arrival. If you think too hard at all about it, you realize it’s one giant “who cares?” scenario after the next, none necessarily leading from the last. Bella moves to Forks even though her mom says she doesn’t have to and she hates it there. Why? No reason. She meets multiple guys who like her emotional instability. Why? No reason. Next book we find some stupid vampire girl chasing after Bella because Bella was there when her boyfriend died? Uh… who cares? Pointless. She’s a little teenage girl, for crying out loud. You’re a vampire! You’ll live. Forever, actually. Go to Australia or some place nobody hunts you and find a new bf. Why doesn’t she? No reason. Eventually Bella’s necrophiliac tendencies get the best of her and she carries vampire-Edward’s baby. Except he can’t get an erection. So why’d that even happen? No reason. Yikes, this is starting to sound like Rubber…
The whole thing is mush. There is no emotional accountability. Bella’s incessant gloomy-gussliness is impossible to grasp and doesn’t drive anything but the most rudimentary of “story arcs” to completion. The love triangle of Twilight is based upon Bella’s bewildering illogicality. She experiences emotional swings back and forth from Edward to Jacob based upon her puberty/male-awareness sparked addiction to attention. Either that or some inherent will to act slutty. Can’t tell sometimes. Twilight’s love triangle is logically baseless and statementally pointless. It has no effect on the greater world, mythology, or story base. Nor does it really have an effect on the way characters react to situations. She’s Bella. She’s always going to be the definitive emo-chick… until the end when Bummer-Bella Swan becomes happy and gets everything she ever wanted. Because of course she does. As if the “Twilight Saga” had been a fairy tale all along.
Katniss isn’t a star-struck tween who just can’t make up her mind over which guy is hotter. She’s been through hell. Twice. She’s been forced to leave her family behind. To murder friends. To watch pre-teen children helplessly be slaughtered. To endure people drowning, blown up, ripped apart, dragged away, and eaten slowly by mutant animals. All this after a childhood of poverty. Life’s not been kind, and she wears down. Loses some sanity. And because of the emotional writing style, we’re taken right along with her. She really doesn’t want Gale as an interest but finds herself forced into the position after Peeta’s taken and Gale gives her a punching bag (metaphorically). She drowns the fact Peeta’s been brutally tortured and ruined by her own actions in her best friend. She becomes to Peeta what Annie is to Finnick. A liability. She wants Peeta, but doesn’t understand his dedication. She wants to, though. So while the reader may like Peeta more and just “want Katniss to choose already” there really never was a choice. Of course her emotional well-being needs Peeta. But does she ever get what she needs? The love triangle here isn’t based on a girl’s whims or what “Katniss wants” in any way. There’s something bigger at play here. The relationships here have a firm basis and are a driving force with real purpose through the series.
The Hunger Games‘ love triangle has no more similarities with Twilight‘s love triangle than it does with LOST’s or Harry Potter’s various entanglements (to choose a few popular series of late). So let’s do the only logical thing and RATE ‘EM!/@!
5.
Twilight.
We’ve already reviewed Twilight‘s love triangle. I think we can safely place it at the bottom of the list.
4.
Avatar: The Last Airbender.
HAH! I just needed a buffer between Twilight and LOST so I didn’t have to see them next to each other. I suppose you could pull a “Zutara” and claim there was always an invisible love triangle between the characters. It would still better than Twilight.
3.
LOST.
LOST’s love triangle between Sawyer, Kate, and Jack was a “big deal” up until Season Five. It was a choice of two different lifestyles for Kate: Jack’s perfectionist life or Sawyer’s freedom. It established an emotional plausibility for Jack and Kate, and gave the audience something to root for. Beyond that it didn’t have a point. This can be third on the list.
2.
Harry Potter.
Then comes Harry Potter’s various romantic musings. I suppose in this case we can choose Hermione and Krum from Goblet of Fire. This relationship was more believable because Ron was being a jerk. So, Hermione accepted Krum’s request to go to the dance. They were both pretty, were both happy, and Hermione was as giddy as the school girl she was about being the most popular girl at the dance. Like anyone would be! Doesn’t win the grand prize because it didn’t have much story drive beyond that section of the fourth book (cuz, you know, he got possessed and all). However, it shouldn’t have anyway. Thus, it did its job and earned its place here.
1.
The Hunger Games.
Please see above post for tons of reasoning!
-
Countless stories exist with “love triangles”. Just because a story includes one doesn’t mean it deserves ANY comparison to Twilight. Both Twilight and The Hunger Games occur in North America and include a love triangle. That’s the only comparison. They don’t occur in similar situations. They don’t occur within the same thousand years of eachother. Not even the same genre of reading material! Comparing any of the items listed above to one another in this light is just plain silly! The Hunger Games deals with a reaction to the world of Panem from Katniss’s emotive center. Is President Snow really always sending her specific signals to break her? Of course not! Granted, he is a smart, ruthless, cunning killer (that bloody mouth, anybody?) and some remarks in her direction are clearly meant to dig into her psyche. But not all. That’s how the book is written. It’s her emotional state. The reason we hear at all about the television broadcasts where Snow is “staring her down” is because that’s how she makes sense of it emotionally. It’s all applied to her, like a realistic human being. The Hunger Games is based on violence. It’s how Panem is controlled, it’s how the Games are played, it’s how the rebellion tries to overthrow the Capitol. The Hunger Games doesn’t have a happy ending. Turns out it’s not a fairy tale after all.
Happy Trails,
Sam.
