Character consistency vs. character development

This is not a review, but something I thought was important enough to put on here I guess.

I posted this gifset on Tumblr last week after the new TV spot for Catching Fire aired for the first time, because her expression in the bottom gif really struck me. But the responses to it have seemed to indicate that it struck other people for a different reason, and it's not really a reason I agree with. I think that saying this represents "character development" disregards Katniss's circumstances as well as her actual character development. So I wrote this long post about it.

So, since I posted this gifset I've obviously seen a lot of comments added to it about what the difference between the two scenes looks like to everyone, and a lot of them have been along the lines of "character development" and "look at Katniss being a take-no-prisoners badass in Catching Fire." Now obviously I'm not the authority on the subject here, but I can tell you that the reason I posted this gifset was not to show her character development into someone who's less naive and more willing to charge into dangerous situations and start a revolution. Because that is not what's happened to Katniss.

She was never naive. She knew exactly what happened in the Games each year before she went into them. She's not going into the 75th Games ready to kill and kill and never look back. She's still terrified-- heck, she's probably more terrified this time around, because this time not all of her enemies are in the arena, and the ones who are happen to be other victors. People who are on what would technically be a level playing field with her if she had not been from District 12, where not only is there no chance to keep up with training, but where Katniss herself has been starving for her entire life.

Not only is she completely afraid of what's about to happen, but she's expected to be a hero for everyone, when the only person whose life she truly cares about saving is Peeta's. She never wanted to be a hero. She wasn't some kind of chosen one who accepted that she was the only one who could do this; she didn't ask to be that person. She did everything she could to appease President Snow, and it was only when she realized that she couldn't appease him that she finally assumed the status that was thrust upon her as the leader of the rebellion. And that wasn't until Mockingjay, when she could negotiate her own terms for the job.

So what was my reason for posting this gifset, if not for the "character development"? It was to show character consistency, actually. These two gifs are the same character. Both are scared, both never asked for this, and neither wants to play the game. The only difference is the game they are playing. In Catching Fire, Katniss knows that the Games are part of a bigger game masterminded by the Capitol. A game where the object is to silence her and anyone else who speaks out against them.

And she's done. She's not being a badass in the second gif. She's not going into the arena fearlessly, expecting to take down her enemies and get out alive. In fact, she's expecting to die. Her face may look blank, but to me it's intensely emotional. You can see behind her eyes the culmination of everything she knows:

• she had to watch her friend die in the last Games;
•  she barely made it out alive herself; 
• the president has threatened to kill her family and is sending her into these Games essentially to end her and any influence she has in the districts;
• and all the while she's got the beginnings of a revolution hanging on her every action, when all she really wants is to keep Peeta alive.

She is seventeen years old. All of this is wrong, and she is so done with it being that way.

Of course Katniss has character development, but these gifs are not showing that. How can they be? To me, character development is when a character evolves enough to react a different way to the same situation. It may seem like it on the surface, but in Catching Fire, Katniss is not in the same situation as she was in the first time. Not at all.

No, these gifs are showing the development of her circumstances. A gifset that shows her character development would be one that shows her saying goodbye to her mom in The Hunger Games next to her letting her mom comfort her the night she finds out she's going back into the arena in Catching Fire. In one, she's keeping her mom at a distance, telling her how to take care of someone else, and in the other, she's finally letting someone else take care of her. That is Katniss's character development. From the person who guards her emotions from everyone and is self-reliant to the point of isolation, to the person who sees the value in letting herself need other people.

One of my favorite sayings is that the hero's journey is not from weakness to strength, but from strength to weakness, and I can't think of a single character who exemplifies this more than Katniss Everdeen. So go ahead and say that these two moments in the movies show her character development, but I personally think that doesn't do the actual thing justice.