since this lovely lady blocked me, i’ll have to work with a screenshot (i could have not mentioned her at all, but like i said before, when i want to direct something to an specific person and not a pattern behavior, i mention their names. And since i can’t mention their names, that’s the only way i have)
“Only cared about Katniss and Peeta when she thought they would help her get there” Did she?
Effie was described as taking care of them since the second they stepped into the trem. She made sure Katniss was comfortable and well settled, as well as informed by their schedule, which we know that wasn’t part of her job. As soon as they reached the Capitol, Effie again assumes a position that wasn’t required from her, and starts sweet-talking sponsors and using her connections to work around the situation Haymitch had created during the reaping, so Katniss and Peeta would get better chances of getting sponsorships —which, as we all know, was no guarantee that they would even have a chance to win the Games. A sponsor was just the way to make sure their time inside the Arena would be easier, and Effie was aiming to that. And she did it all before knowing how promising Katniss and Peeta were. Actually, for all she knew, Katniss was going to be a disaster. She was reckless and dangerous and Effie had seen how those actions were extremely risky for them all.
But fine, you wanna argue that she was only treating them nicely (cause you can’t argue that she wasn’t treating them nicely) because she saw in them the potential to move up for a better District? Okay, so let’s talk about Effie in Sunrise on the Reaping.
Since her first appearance, Haymitch describes her as a nice person. She is kind, she is compromised and she does her absolute best to make sure they’re all comfortable and well treated. You can’t say she was doing it out of anything but kindness —since she made sure that she was not taking credit for none of the things she helped in the Quell. She wanted to be in the shadow— they were not advantageous to her
“That women wanted to work in the middle of child murder” Did she? Can you guarantee that?
In both the scenarios where Effie got involved in the Games, either from being dragged as their “not quite stylist” by Drusilla or becoming Twelve’s Escort, we can’t say she had any saying on the matter. Drusilla had tagged her along with the team with not much of an invitation and Plutarch said (very clearly) that he’d pitched her —not specifying how active she was on this decision. So, based solely on the books and not in the things you took out of your mind, there is no way for us to know how much she wanted to be there
“was rude and looked down on district people unless they were advantageous to her”
I could bring here many scenes to prove that Effie never, in four books, treated her tributes as they were not deserved of comfort and affection, but i don’t think we have enough space for that. She might have her disturbing ideas (that were carved into her scowl since birth from a very powerful and constant propaganda that was designed to make her believe District people were worthless) and she was wrong in state that District people were savages. No one is arguing with that. But she voicing her believes and her treating them as they were worth less than her is two completely different things. And this isn’t true:
Here, i said i wouldn’t bring scenes after scenes to prove my point, but i will bring this one. Effie is helping her sister to “beautify” the tributes (which was pretty much everything that guaranteed them enough money to result in Haymitch not starving to death in the Games), but instead of demanding and forcing her way, she asked Maysilee’s opinion on the matter. Unlike Drusilla, who treated them as animals and didn’t give a shit to what they felt or had to say, Effie respected her enough as a person to grant Maysilee the right to share her opinion and influence her job as equally capable —you can’t say this shows how she “looked down at them”, cause she did not.
But if you want to use Suzanne Collins to support your argument, here is what she said about Effie:
“You can see her clinging to good manners for reassurance of humanity's decency. But in terms of the Hunger Games, Effie being assigned as their escort was a lucky break for District 12. She might be ridiculous, but she's not malicious.”
In conclusion, although you have all the right to dislike and not support the character (which is fine, not everyone can handle a morally gray character), let’s not distort the things we got from the books just to justify our hate, shall we? Effie Trinket has always being a character which main purpose was to highlight that, despite being very supportive of an oppressive system, and having a direct impact into child murder (willingly or not), she always did it with kindness and humanity. She was controversial and problematic, but she was not intentionally rude, or malicious. She was a kind person —maybe not in the convencional way you want, but she was. There is nothing you can do to say otherwise, without going against the narrative, the books or Suzanne Collins
