17 KiB
[BST][DC] What would a rational Hunger Games look like?
-
Author: u/FTL_wishes superluminal*
-
Score: 8
-
Created: 2014-11-20T10:30:49
Post:
I've thought about this for some time, but I don't think of myself as a very rational person, so I’d like someone to critique my train of thought and provide feedback. Basically, I have a hard time imagining how a rational Hunger Games might be written.
First, are there any huge problems with the way Collins set up her civilization? I can't think of any, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. The lack of population to run the panoply of modern technology they have could be explained by access to universal fabricators, and I don’t see many other structural problems. The universe itself appears sound.
Then there’s the issue of a rational Katniss who develops rationality principles and learns rational techniques while growing up in poor conditions, without access to good education. Maybe her father? But how? Perhaps she’s just naturally intelligent? Because if people are growing up in district 12 conditions, rationality wouldn’t be high on the list of things of things you're teaching your kid, especially when you have far more relevant skills such as hunting.
Even if Katniss had the intellect of HPMOR!Harry, what good would that do her in the hunger games themselves? The canon games appears to be heavily based around physical skill, not mental prowess, with none of the game obstacles requiring any rationality. How would the games be changed to better accommodate a mental aspect to the competition, while keeping the original spirit of the games? Would the Capitol even like to see the 24 participants getting creative, since this is being broadcast to the districts?
Any help in fleshing out my train of thought would be appreciated.
Comments:
u/Evilness42 [+11] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 hours later)
Well, other than my top idea of the Capitol not oppressing the Districts and slaughtering children every year(pretty bad method of stopping them from rebelling again, in my opinion), I suppose the Games could be made more intelligent by having it, rather than, say, a forest, a dungeon full of traps where you have to be very careful and use terrain to your advantage. Like, an endless Philosopher's Stone dungeon, or something like the Oubliette from Malice.
Fill it with traps, hints, and odd stuff. Make it a Horror Story/Film as well as or rather than a Gladiator Deathmatch.
u/StefanGagne [+4] City of Angles Municipal Government (2 days later)
the Capitol not oppressing the Districts and slaughtering children every year(pretty bad method of stopping them from rebelling again, in my opinion)
This is my #1 problem with the entire Hunger Games universe. The theory that the games somehow quells and oppress the population instead of actually encouraging massive and frequent uprisings gets disproven right there in the actual work.
I'll admit to being a filthy casual who only saw the movie... but the scene where one of the kids is dramatically killed and that district IMMEDIATELY goes into uprising mode, overwhelming the guards and destroying equipment and generally being very effective and successful at venting their rage and utterly dominating the supposedly superior forces sent to stop this sort of thing from happening...? Is that in the books?
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (2 days later)
I'm not sure, actually. Haven't read the books in a while. But the actual uprisings don't actually really get going until book 3, though they sort of start part way through book 2.
u/FTL_wishes [+2] superluminal (13 hours later)
I suppose the Games could be made more intelligent by having it, rather than, say, a forest, a dungeon full of traps where you have to be very careful and use terrain to your advantage. Like, an endless Philosopher's Stone dungeon, or something like the Oubliette from Malice.
The problem with that is that I don't think the Capitol would be happy with the contestants demonstrating too much ingenuity. The canon games were as much about being stuck in the arena with no way out as they were about the contestants killing eachother.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (15 hours later)
Ah, but the fact that they're stuck in the endless dungeon can be portrayed as the fact that no matter how clever or good they are, they have no hope to stand against the might of the Capitol. They cannot escape no matter how many traps they overcome, and eventually they will lose all hope and fail.
u/Roxolan [+8] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (5 hours later)
[I have only seen the movies.]
After physical prowess, it seems like the most important thing to survive is to be likeable. To the audience, who can send gifts and pressure the game masters into playing fair. And to the other contestants, who can form alliances at least in the early game.
So rational!Katniss would come up with stuff like the star-crossed lovers, instead of being dragged into it kicking and screaming.
u/eltegid [+7] (59 minutes later)
To be fair, besides HPMoR, which is in another realm, it's seems that it's usually easier to make rational fanfiction from fiction that is heavily irrational to start with. That way you start by solving the obvious holes and run with that... An example iwould be Luminosity wich, despite having some extra rationality, has a lot of fixing the stupidities of the original story.
Also: No, the Capitol would not like to see the participants getting creative except in certain ways. Actually, one possible rational 'solution' would possibly be subverting the Capitol from within the rules of the games, being creative but with such a compelling narrative that they can't take you out of the games, etc. Slytherin-likerather than Ranvenclaw-like rationality, if you will. So, more or less what happens already but being counciouss of what they are doing...
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (7 hours later)
The books already do a great job of people being aware of crafting a narrative - and in turn, the game masters being aware of narrative crafting and actively working to prevent it. The biggest issue is that Katniss doesn't want to play puppet, but that's perfectly understandable.
u/Bobertus [+6] (6 hours later)
The world building seems a bit childish, with district 13 (= unlucky number) being the bombed one. And why numbers instead of names?
I'm also not sure how economically realistic it is. The book makes it seem like you have one distirct with only miners, one with only fishers, one with only industry, and so on. Is that realistic? And can a whole city be sthat stinking rich while the sourounding districts are that poor? Well, maybe there is a lot of poverty in the capital, as-well, it's just not show in the book.
What's the purpose of the hunger games? I would think they are more likely to spark civic unrest than to supress them. Maybe their role is more to placate the citizens of the capital? Religious reasons? Maybe the purpose of the games to recruite new people into the political elite of the capital?
I also wonder why, if panem is so awfull and exploitative, why do their children have to go to school so much? I'd expect district twelve to send their children into the mines instead of school. And why does Katniss know so much about electicity and nuclear power and exotic animals? I'd expect them to be very, very uneducated.
How would the games be changed to better accommodate a mental aspect to the competition
You could change the hunger games to the liar games. To keep more of the spirit of the hunger games, it seems easy to make the liar-games-style games more brutal by killing the loosers, or making them about food instead of money, or even about the resources and lives of the people at their home districts.
BTW. The hunger games audiobooks are available in the current [humble bundle](How would the games be changed to better accommodate a mental aspect to the competition).
u/gregx1000 [+6] (6 hours later)
Disclaimer: it's been a while since I read the books or saw the movies, so I may be wrong about some parts.
In a rational!Hunger Games, there wouldn't be most of the problems present in the novel, especially if the technological advancements present in the movies were applied intelligently. I have trouble imagining a society that can for public entertainment/intimidation create what must be a multimillion— if not billion dollar Mega Death Arena of Doooom would have trouble feeding it's populace. President Snow would be a Machiavellian politician; the unrest the develops over the first few books would never have happened in this AU, because the evil for the sake of evil oppression wouldn't happen. Take real life for an example. If gladiator battles fought with children were an effective means of controlling the masses, we would be seeing them every Sunday on the sports channel after the football game, in at least one or two of the various dictatorships IRL.
It would also be interesting to incorporate more of the technology shown into every day life. It's obvious the Capital has the capital (heh) to invest in various technologies; industrial mining and the like.
u/VorpalAuroch [+3] Life before Death (15 hours later)
... billion dollar Mega Death Arena of Doooom would have trouble feeding it's populace.
I don't think it does. It appears to starve the outlying population on purpose, and does not care that this is inefficient because it has way more technological benefits than necessary to sustain the Capital at a high standard of living.
u/gregx1000 [+4] (16 hours later)
But that then raises the question of why? Why not feed everyone damnit, or even go so far as to raise the standard of living so there're more contented malleable citizens in his empire? It can't be in Snow's best interests to create a breeding ground of dissent and opposition. He's either stupid or evil.
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (17 hours later)
Well he's definitely evil. But it's implied that keeping the districts quelled is only half the point of the Hunger Games, with the other half being keeping the Capital quelled. The Hunger Games are a huge event, and every Arena is turned into a tourist attraction after the fact. The Hunger Games are popular in the Capital, and keeping them running distracts from any problems that the Capital might have, or the risk of political instability from within.
The Capital doesn't really doubt its ability to put down the Districts, and if it does have to put down the Districts, that only solidifies the place of the powers that be in the Capital. Putting down a scapegoat is a time-honored method of keeping control.
(I believe that this is roughly as presented in the books.)
u/VorpalAuroch [+2] Life before Death (19 hours later)
Well, if you couldn't do the second, the first doesn't necessarily help you. Oppressed starving people are less effective at rebelling than oppressed fed people.
This assumes that there was some historical reason that non-oppressed people are not a realistic option, which puts a limiter on some aspects of how smart the political system can be.
u/RolandsVaria [+5] (4 hours later)
I can't see Katniss doing much better in the first book than she did in canon. There's just very little opportunity for it. Maybe in the second and third book, but even though it's been a while I don't recall any blatant stupidity there. The Capitol could probably utilize its resources better, but the war fought against them seemed fairly competent to my untrained eyes.
Once you get away from rules-lawyering the technology of that world, which is often more like poking holes in the story than actually planning things out intelligently, there doesn't seem to be that much room for improvement.
One thing does immediately come to mind though. The Capitol shouldn't specialize each district so much. If each individual district is more or less solely responsible for a certain product, then as soon as they rebel or are nuked to oblivion, you no longer have that product.
u/Bobertus [+3] (6 hours later)
I don't recall any blatant stupidity there
Well, maybe it's nothing that would change the plot very much, but, compared to rational!Harry:
- she does seem a bit slow to realize that book 1 spoiler
- she does seem a bit slow to realize that book 2 spoiler. Or maybe beginning of book 3?
- It was supid to book 3 spoiler
u/AmeteurOpinions [+2] Finally, everyone was working together. (6 hours later)
Specializing the Districts does help in that, individually, they can never wage war against -- they simply won't have the supplies or the means to create them.
u/illz569 [+2] (13 hours later)
Specializing the Districts does help in that, individually, they can never wage war against -- they simply won't have the supplies or the means to create them.
Is that point brought up in the books? Having only seen the movies, the whole specialization of the districts always seemed weird and unexplained to me.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+3] Finally, everyone was working together. (13 hours later)
It's not talked about in depth, but if the Capitol controls the trade between districts it would be trivial to siege and stave any that tried to rebel.
u/FTL_wishes [+2] superluminal (13 hours later)
It centralizes core sectors of civilization, making management and control easier. The Capitol provides the value added processing and controls the flow of goods between each district.
u/ishaan123 [+4] Sidebar Contestant (3 days later)
The moment that bothers me the most about The Hunger Games, is when she has a bow an arrow in her hand but the judges are ignoring her, and she shoots the apple the mouth of the pig's they are eating in order to get them to pay attention to her.
Not the assorted collection of important politicians and game-controlling people who are responsible for her predicament. The apple. With that level of accuracy, she could have taken out anywhere from 2-6 of them.
It's not like she was about to enter a game involving an extremely high probability of dying and therefore has nothing to lose or anything.
u/None [+3] (5 hours later)
"Ugh, I'm so stuffed from all this food all of us have."
u/puesyomero [+2] The Culture (5 hours later)
have katniss or more likely her father be a displaced/disgraced member of any of the following:the capitol, district 3(tech), district 2 (peacekeepers and weapons), or a spy from 13. therefore justifying the rationalist abilities. maybe make her a bit more emotionally tough (Jabberjays disabled her too easily!)
u/illz569 [+4] (13 hours later)
"Katniss help me!"
"Well that's clearly a trap. Peeta, can you pass me another rat-kebab?"
u/Charlie___ [+2] (15 hours later)
You could have a character go on the lam in the countryside, and explore how everyday people deal with this dystopian government, looking at things like grey and black markets in the USSR for inspiration. I'm imagining an unauthorized vegetable garden in a mining village, that has to be planted all mixed together to avoid showing up on satellite.
Another idea might be to give people more goals. How about giving more characters political aspirations from the get-go? Ties to different resistance groups, etc.
Rationality tie-in: the Robber's cave experiment, the psychology of soldiers, etc. How could someone who knew what was going on in peoples' heads try, not merely to not die, but to stop all the killing? How could you force or convince people to work together against some outside faction?
You could also go the Lord of Light (novel by zelazny) route, and up the importance of the Capitol's technology level. Then the big external goal is not political action, but 'stealing fire from the gods' and disseminating it.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
First, are there any huge problems with the way Collins set up her civilization?
Oppression seems like a bad way to achieve stability.
Maybe her father? But how?
Her father doesn't factor into the story at all. I'd choose her mother instead -- she was brilliant and rational until she suffered a head injury, resulting in her demeanor and overall usefulness matching canon and forcing Katniss to grow up.
if Katniss had the intellect of HPMOR!Harry, what good would that do her in the hunger games themselves?
Not a lot. It comes after, when deciding how to help the districts.