the gale/prim stunt was so cheap too bc narratively killing prim didn’t do ANYTHING and it was only written so suzanne collins could easily solve the dumbass love triangle She CREATED. so katniss loses her sister, her mom leaves, And her best friend from childhood leaves. and what she has at the end is fucking uhhhh Peeta Parker and some kids she never even wanted ???? like ?? gale was a whole antifa legend for 2.9 books and she ruined All that at the VERY end for some romance?! completely glossing over the fact that katniss did not romantically want to be with either of them!!!!
the whole reason prim died is because it IS senseless. like that is literally the point.
suzanne collins and ka applegate are cut from a similar cloth and that cloth is refusing to shy away from depicting how brutal, how senseless, how cruel war is. prim died for no reason and that is the point. it had absolutely nothing to do with resolving a love triangle.
also Y’ALL COME ON the presence of romance in a book does not make the book A Romance; the ‘love triangle’ was literally never ever the point - which is why it’s what the capitol focuses on.
also katniss’s happy ever after: she fuckin grew up, y’all, come on. listen, I get the knee jerk hate for a baby boomer-style happily ever afters (I will sue jk rowling in court for the epilogue) but the fact that katniss, after everything she went through, felt comfortable enough to settle down with peeta and actually have kids - kids she knew were not going to be thrown into a gladiatorial arena for the entertainment of the super wealthy - is proof that what she did mattered. it cost katniss goddamn near everything she had - her family, her friends, her hearing, her home - but it was still the right thing to do.
the hunger games is about the cost of revolution: it’s so, so high, but in the end, it’s necessary.
Furthering this, Katniss said she didn’t want kids because she didn’t want to bring them into the world she grew up in. The fact that Katniss grows up to have kids is supposed to show the reader that the world has indeed changed for the better. Not wanting kids was conditional, and the conditions changed.
