Hot Nerd Girl

Tag: the hunger games

  • Thirsty Games – The Hunger Games Drinking Game

    Note from HNG: Hey Nerds and Nerdettes, your favorite virtual drinking buddy is back!  You may remember Vivian’s fantastic Firefly Drinking Game post (or not, depending on how drunk you got while playing it) and this time she’s created a Hunger Games Drinking Game that will make you Rue the day you didn’t drink while reading it (what? too soon?)  So without further ado, heeeeeeere’s Vivian!

    Hey there! Guest Nerd Girl Vivian again. Since you were all so incredibly supportive of my last admission of addiction, I thought I’d share another one with you. And that is… books. Books are great. Books are underappreciated. And books are sexy. There’s a vicious cycle that I’ve been caught in for many, many years. It goes something like this:

    Step 1: Fall in love with a book.

    Step 2: Find out a movie is being made based on said book, and get very excited.

    Step 3: Be disappointed with the movie.

    In case of sequels, repeat.

    And so it was with The Hunger Games. I was a little late to this party, and I didn’t start the first book until just a few months ago. But I made up for my tardiness with unabashed, obnoxiously vocal adoration. I was that person who worked “that’s like when Katniss…” into every conversation. If woman and young adult literature could wed, I would ask these books to be mine forever. And we would honeymoon in District 7.

    I was so devoted to the books that I resisted watching the movie trailers or clips, or looking at the casting choices, until I’d finished the series. (I had the same strategy for the Harry Potter movies, which only lasted through about four of them before I caved.) I just didn’t want anyone else’s images in my head, and I also didn’t want to be disappointed. But then, immediately after finishing the third book, I did watch the trailer, and… daaaaammmn. It was so beautiful. And thrilling. I don’t think I exhaled through the whole thing. And my expectations for the movie shot sky high. To be fair, I was not actually disappointed by the film. I loved it. I had issues with it, but when a movie focuses on a girl whose major personality trait is her inability to outwardly express her thoughts and feelings, a lot of the book’s magic will inevitably be lost, and I accept that. Overall, the movie served as a sort of Cliffs Notes companion to a book I can’t get enough of. So I enjoyed every minute of it. (Well, almost every minute. I found Cinna’s scenes maddeningly boring and those damn CGI mutts were doomed to suck. Also, “enjoyed” is a really strange word to use when describing a movie about kid killing.)

    So this one-trick capitol-engineered pony is back, with a new literary drinking game for all of you who love these books like I do, and for those who just want an excuse to drink alone. Cause why should drinking games be reserved for movies? Answer: they shouldn’t. I suppose that this could feasibly be played with the film, but as a friend of mine so harshly put it “the alcohol intake would be just as watered down as the emotional impact of the movie.” Zing. So, really, enjoy a book. And a beer. Let your young adult fiction flag fly. (Note: This game is specifically based on the first book. I don’t think it would carry over to the other two very well. Or prove me wrong.)

    Let the First Annual Thirsty Games begin! And may the odds be ever in your favor!

    Drink when:

    Katniss fires an arrow. This seemed like the logical place to start. Drink twice if she misses her target.

    Drink.

    Anyone uses the words “Girl on Fire.”

    Anyone climbs a tree.

    There’s a lot of time spent hanging out in trees. Maybe next time, bring a book. And a beer.

    Katniss has a foodgasm. Suzanne Collins spends whole pages describing those meals, and it’s one of my favorite things about the book that really couldn’t be adequately conveyed in the film.

    Katniss expresses naïve statements about not understanding her feelings for Peeta or Gale. Oh, the wonderful romantic confusion of young love triangles… whilst trapped in an arena of death, broadcast to an entire nation. Sure, not an easy situation; but still, that girl is as dense as District 12 bread.

    She mentions her mother’s depression. Cause, ya know, just drink away those my-husband-was-killed-in-a-mining-accident-and-now-my-daughters-and-I-are-going-to-starve blues.

    Katniss (or anyone, if you’re going all out) incurs bodily injury (but doesn’t die).

    Drink twice for emotional injury described as physical pain. Katniss is so emotionally closed off that feeling feelings gives her chest pain and makes her throat close up. That’s my kind of girl.

    Drink when Haymitch drinks. Drink twice when he vomits.

    Here’s the big one: Drink for each tribute projected in the sky. That first night is a doozy!

    And, just for funsies, some themed drinks!

    The Capitol

    1 part Goldschlager

    2 parts Sprite

    1 dash grenadine

    serve in a highball or martini glass, rimmed with pink/green/some unnaturally artificially colored sugar

    Girl on Fire

    3/4 shot of Amaretto (almond liqueur)

    Top off with Barcardi 151.

    Light the shot on fire. (Yes, light it on fire. Be careful, please.)

    Drop the shot in a half-filled pint glass of beer, and down the whole thing.

    The Haymitch

    Gin.

    Enjoy!

  • Hungry for some Hunger Games

    I read a lot.  I mean, A LOT.  As in, I’m pretty much exhausted every day because I’ll stay up until 1am (or 5am) reading when I should be sleeping because I don’t have any time during the day to satisfy my craving for the written word.

    I also read VERY quickly, a gene I picked up from my Dad.

    Therefore, I’m constantly on the lookout for new books of all types to read.  I mostly read sci-fi and fantasy but I’ll crack open pretty much anything.  I don’t mind YA novels, they CAN be pretty good.  Usually there’s not enough sex, but whatever, I can deal with that if there’s enough violence or something else to get me interested.  A friend recently recommended that I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I consulted with other friends via facebook and discovered that many people whose opinion I respect were equally as enthusiastic about the sci-fi series.  Kick. Ass.  Amazon, here I come.

    The trilogy arrived and I devoured them in 3 days.  Yes, 3 days.

    Here’s why (without giving too much away):

    I love fictional (not real, mind you) gratuitous violence.

    Yep, like that.

    I don’t know why but it makes me soooo happy.  Maybe it’s a generational thing and I grew up with too many violent movies and video games but the more blood and gore, the better.  I had a thing for horror movies as a kid and would gleefully watch as some dumb teenager got hacked apart.  Haha…I swear I’m not disturbed!  Anyhooters, The Hunger Games trilogy is full of violence.  Kids killing other kids for sport, traps designed to incite more violence, a civil war in which giant mutant human-lizard hybrids are dispatched to tear people limb from limb.  And the author isn’t afraid to kill off main characters.  It’s pretty awesome.

    I love strong women.

    Uhhh…not like that.

    The protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, would certainly be the most obvious example of this.  She risks her life daily by hunting illegally, doesn’t take shit from anyone, and runs into battle when she’s told to go and hide.  She rocks with a bow and arrow.  She also freaks out and shuts down on occasion, but wouldn’t you if you were 16 and forced to kill other kids?  She’s not the only example either; the series is full of bad ass ladies.

    I love love triangles.

    Is bigamy really so bad?

    They’re so juicy!  I’ve never watched a soap opera in my life but I can certainly appreciate a good love triangle.  I strive to live a drama-free life (cause I don’t need any of that bullshit) so it’s always fun to live vicariously via manufactured drama.  I’ve sort of been in the middle of love triangles myself and they sucked major monkey balls but when it’s all fake, it’s all good.  It’s agonizingly awesome when you want both guys to get the girl.  And I REALLY wanted both of these guys to get the girl.

    I love when advanced technology meets post war/apocalyptic/rudimentary conditions.

    I think yer gonna need some bigger torches

    Like in Terminator, District 9 or Cowboys & Aliens, there’s just something kind of awesome about conflicting genres joining together to create a whole new brand of bad ass.  In The Hunger Games, the Capitol utilizes cloaking hover crafts and high-tech showers (Uhmm, hello?  Can we please invent these already??) while forcing the Districts to live in poverty and squalor.

    I love when books make me cry.

    Not to sound like a pussy or anything, but I cried twice in the first 50 pages.  Yeah, I’m pretty embarrassed to admit that, but what the fuck, I admit all kinds of shit on this blog, right?  I kind of dig it when books make me cry, it means that they are that good and they touched a nerve.  There were parts of this series that devastated me.  For real.  I see a lot of myself in Katniss….uh…except for the whole killing people part…

    At any rate, I haven’t really done any book reviews, but even though I’ve read two books since finishing this series about a week ago, I’m still pretty obsessed with it so I figured I’d get it out of my system.  At least until the movie comes out in March, which I’m uber excited about.  My boss’s kid is friends with a girl who plays one of the Tributes and I’m being told good things about the film.

    “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!”