"Oh, which bit is that? Remind me."

"I um, the person, I forget his name, he's bad, he's posing as the um, sex healer, and um, has the girl tied up in thread..." He's blushing and can't say any more. 

"You're so cute." She pats his hand.

He blushes and drops his head down onto the table again (moving the food out of the way, he doesn't want ice cream face). "Look, you're the one who has me thinking about all this stuff now," he says, with a mild amount of muffled indignation. (This is not entirely true, the bit in the library (that she caught him at...) shows he thinks about this stuff a lot, even independently, but she certainly has been helping things along.)

"I will accept blame for having been a very aggressive recent reminder." She pats his head. And nibbles her ice cream.

"Well, good." he says, not entirely sure what else to say. He sighs and picks up his head, and takes the penultimate bite of his burger (he should probably finish before his ice cream melts too much). "So what about you," he says as he swallows. "Have you been reading anything good lately?" 

"I'm in a bit of a lull, actually. I should scour the internet for interesting fanfiction. Or you could recommend me something! Or both!"

"I'm not sure what to recommend, especially since I've been 'recommending' you books for a while without realizing it." 

"Fanfiction it is, then." Om nom ice cream.

"Well, let me know if you find anything good."

Ice cream time! Chocolate and peanut butter, with nuts and chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry and banana. Does it taste as good as it looks? (It looks very tasty.) 

"I certainly will."

The ice cream is delicious. The Rosy is adoring.

It's very cute how adoring she is. It's also very... a lot. 

In search of conversation topics... "So I realize we sorta mentioned it before, but do the books explain what exactly is up with the dystopia? Like, why exactly do they have a child-killing tournament, and why does it work? How does it work? I assume they get taken down, eventually, but like, how does something like that even come about, and, I realize we saw riots, but, why don't they happen regularly about the hunger games happening? It seems like the sort of thing even an oppressed people should just... not allow to happen. It's awful." 

"Yes, it's really awful," she agrees. "As I understand it the author was drawing on the old notion of Rome pacifying the population with bread and circuses, hence the country being named Panem - but of course it's more complicated than that, because making people's children murder each other is hardly very soothing; the Capitol is where everyone is treating the Hunger Games as light entertainment and reacting accordingly. In the Districts the pacifying effect of the Games is founded in fear. I think the backstory, such as it is, just says that there was a war when the oppressed Districts tried to rebel against the Capitol, and the Capitol won and imposed the Games to remind the Districts of their place. A catastrophically foolish idea if you ask me."

"A really foolish idea! It shouldn't even work! But even if it does, like... it's still a bad thing to be doing. The capital has all these... excesses, all this technology, wealth, they can make dresses that light on fire, and they're using it to torture these kids as an example to their... serfs? Slaves? I don't even know what to call them. Their society could be working so much better, no matter how they got there in the first place, if they weren't so... short sighted! I assume it all comes back to bite them in the ass, excuse me, at some point? I hope so, at least?"

"Of course it does. I think it's not really supposed to be... seen from the inside, though? It's an allegory for capitalism. Well, maybe not literally for capitalism specifically, but more for the general tendency of people to act like it doesn't matter who or what they exploit or how much damage they're doing in the process as long as they get their way and don't have to face up to the consequences. I get the feeling that trying to seriously ask questions like 'why, in-character, did they set up the Hunger Games instead of doing, like, any other conceivable thing' is... coming at the text from an unintended angle. Which isn't to say I object! I love coming at things from unintended angles! Just, there might not be an answer already waiting there, you know?"

"It's hard not to come at it from that angle, I guess. But even as an allegory, it seems short sighted? People should care about other people, that's how society functions. That's how it gets to be a better place. We don't all go around only caring about ourselves, and caring about each other makes everyone better anyways, so having a less self-centered view is still going to be better for yourself in the long run. Better for everyone! I don't know why people don't see that." 

"I mean, of course I agree. But I don't think that makes the allegory short-sighted, just cynical and aggressive. There really are people out there who think in the ways the Capitol is caricaturing, and the series is trying to show those people what the ultimate bounty of that seed tends to be. Or at least I think so. I probably see allegory in more things than allegory is actually in. It could just be that the author thought it was fun to write about people in an incredibly upsetting situation, which, well, don't we all."

"I didn't mean the allegory itself is short sighted, I meant that... the people acting that way are short sighted. The people who are being allegorized." That isn't a word. "Whichever. I don't think it would ever get anywhere near as far as what's in the movie, honestly, I don't think people will... let that happen, on either side, really, people will speak up. But regardless... people do sometimes need help seeing why getting along is the right thing to do, but... it's the right thing to do! I don't know if that makes any sense." He might be rambling a bit here. 

"I think I might be more cynical than you, then, which comes as a shock to me, let me tell you. Not that I think the events of the Hunger Games are going to literally happen, but... when one population has power over another, the part where they care about what happens to them sometimes takes a long while to show up. See also: slavery, factory farming."

"...those things do happen, it's true." Though he's not sure what the big deal is about factory farming (possibly he should look into that?). Slavery is the relevant thing though. "But like... there were people speaking out against that sort of thing back then, even if it was small." He thinks, he doesn't know for sure. "And... we've learned since then? I realize people need help realizing that doing the right thing makes things better, as I said... but... I feel like we're making progress? People can see the benefits of treating people equally and making sure people are safe and happy. I know it's taking time, but, still. I think we're going to figure it out." 

"Well, yes, I think so too, but... it's still possible to write a story about the time where we as a society had not stopped doing the bad thing yet. And people won't necessarily figure it out from first principles; sometimes someone has to rub their noses in it."

"I suppose that's true. It just makes me mad to see people doing stuff like that, treating people that way, not understanding they're just cutting off their nose to spite their face. I suppose that's the point, though." 

"I think part of the tragedy of stories like the Hunger Games is that the bad thing can go on for long enough that some of the people who started it aren't even around anymore when the consequences come calling!"

"...that's fair." He thinks of the slave trade. Those people were long dead. "But I don't know how important it is to like... punish people like that? I mean, I very much get the desire -- and I do want to see the capital crash and burn and everyone die, that dude being locked in the room with the poison berries was great, though I'd rather it be the Chairman -- but, I'd rather... them understand what they did wrong, understand why it was wrong, and then be a part of the solution? I want people to get along, not pass blame around. Just fix it." 

"Right, no, sorry—I mean that, if you're the guy who invented the Hunger Games, and you thought 'this will keep my oppressed laborers in line until long after I'm dead, and I don't care what it will do to the health or happiness of the laborers, or the lives and minds of their children, or the peace and prosperity of my descendants', then you're just actually right. And that's tragic. The tragic thing is that someone who's determined enough to not care about other people can do terrible things for their own gain, and gain what they meant to, and not have to deal with the inevitable fallout of their own decisions, and they're not even cutting off their nose to spite their face, they're industrializing nose production in an unsustainable way that their children's children will come to regret while they get to enjoy having their noses and eating them too for the rest of their natural life. I have committed several atrocities against metaphor here but I hope you see what I mean."