I'm going to put this under a read more so people don't have to see it if they don't want to and also to hopefully limit the number of angry anons that will visit my inbox today.
I like Effie as a character. I don't like Effie as a person. The idea that she is a sympathetic character baffles me. The idea that she is viewed as more sympathetic, and is more well-liked, that Gale Hawthorne blows my mind. But that's a conversation for another time. Effie gleefully sends children off to the death. She doesn't care about them. She cares about the fame that comes because of them. If Katniss and Peeta wouldn't have won, she wouldn't have cared about them at all. They are her victors. Her trophies. They are not people to her. They never were. She tells Katniss to celebrate, because she earned it. She earned it by killing people. She's angry when they get sent back into the arena because they are HER trophies and SHE barely got to reap any of the benefits. When she first meets Katniss and Peeta, she talks about how the tributes the year before had no manners and ate with their hands. They ate with their hands because they were starving to death. She's not one of the good guys. She's just not.
As for Francis Lawrence. Well. He's said and done things that I take issue with, most notably, "Gale stands for war and Peeta stands for peace." and most recently that Effie provides fun and warmth and levity. He took out a lot of things in Catching Fire that were very important to me. Katniss having to be held back by full grown men after Gale was whipped, how Gale told Katniss he loved her (he changed it to a very demanding "do you love me" that is very wrong), he took out the Gale/Katniss reunion hug. And also the way he made Effie look sympathetic when she's really not. And a lot of other things he's said about the series that I don't agree with. I know this is an unpopular opinion and Flawrence is God but *shrug*. I'm used to having unpopular opinions so.
