Idk I Just Personally Think That Getting Chills From Music Is The Best Part Of Being Alive. Like When

I want to talk about Gaul and her view of the Games as a representation of human nature, which for her is that human beings are bad at their core, so when they are stripped of civility (even if you can argue the tributes were never treated with any civility at all anyway), they are violent and will do anything to "fall on top".

And that's very interesting to me because as much as Gaul thinks the Games are a representation of that, Leftie (on TikTok) explained very well that the 10th Games are filled with people proving her wrong again and again by showing mercy and compassion in their own ways - case in point, Reaper giving the fallen tributes a proper homage in their deaths, Lucy caring for Jessup, and even Lamina killing Marcus out of mercy.

More than that though, I think it's so ironically dry of Suzanne Collins to put Snow - civil, educated, polite, well-bred young Coriolanus Snow - as the one who actually has those instincts to be violent and do anything he can to win ("Snow always falls on top") in situations which are nothing like the desperate environment of the Games, but in the society they deem so superior - the Capital.

But even more than that, the more I think about the true State of Nature, the more I see Doctor Gaul's beliefs as extremely frail from a biological point of view: when we talk about human's state of nature, the closest we can get to observe that today are native tribal communities, as some scientists do to understand better how our ancestors lived.

But what we can observe from this too is that (and we all learned that before) human beings are social beings - we need a community (or a support net, as we can call them) in order to thrive, but community only forms with connection. If we were selfish, individualist, and violently prone to survive (bad, in fewer words) in our cores, then it'd make no sense for us to be social creatures because we wouldn't be able to form connections deep enough to live in communities.

Not ones that thrived as much as we did, anyway. We'd most likely be lone creatures. Instead, our understanding of community is directly linked to safety, both emotional and physical, to the point where our own language reflects that: the found family trope being so popular in books, poor families being more likely to stick together as an act of self-defense, the fact we love so much to consume friendships in artistic works, the instinctual need to find protection on other people when we feel threatened, and so on and so on.

"A child rejected by the village will burn it to feel its warmth", meaning not only that we need a community to thrive, but its lack leaves deep scarring in a person's character.

So when it comes to the state of nature of men, I'd say I believe much more in societal corruption - like Frankenstein - rather than a violent or bad nature by itself, unless of course, there's a natural precedent for such (like a biological inability to form deep emotional connections).

Katniss described Peeta as a dandelion in the spring. Lucy Gray described Coriolanus as pure as the driven snow.

“what radicalized you?” bitch what made you a stupid asshole?

I think what I found most fascinating about Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the brilliant exploration it makes on empathy.

Capitol citicents have been programed to ignore their empathy towards the people on the districts. We see that on Coriolanus and Tigris's grandma, she is incapable of feeling it and feels entitled to despise them as creatures naturally inferior to her.

Generational thinking is vital to the prevalence of long term propaganda.

Snow and Tigris on the other hand, are orphan, their parents didn't have enough time to teach them to ignore that empathy.

And they have lived much more precarization as kids than their grandmother, and therefore have more in common with the people of the districts than with the adults in the capitol. Is easier fot them to feel empathy towards the tributes.

If Snow and Tigris had allowed themselves to dive into that empathy, to let it drive them, their children would have been even more empathetic then them. Their generation was already different, already putting in question all the propaganda, we see that in many instances with Coriolanus's classmates.

But all it took was one of them with the determination to think like the adults, one of them with the determination to perpetuate the order, one of them choosing to be driven by pride instead of empathy, for the chain of empathy to be broken.

And the system endulged him, impulse him to power. Because he could feed into it, help it evolve and survive. Because that's what systems like those do. They scratch and kill and make bloodbaths to keep themselves alive. They create their own keepers.

Coriolanus Snow knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the people from the districs were human like him, he knew on some level they were deserving of his empathy. He chose not to have any for them. The perpetuators of the propaganda are hardly belivers of it themselves. They pull the strings because they know what they are made of, what would happen if someone broke them.

They want the power because are able to recognize everyone else is blind to it.

It was honestly bone chilling to read.

Slowly getting back into my marauder's phase I AM SO BACK WOLFSTAR !!!!!!

Something about the story of Lucy Gray, something about her disappearing in the snow, something about her song echoing in the mockingjay song, something about the woods of District 12, something about fire melting snow, something about dandelions peaking through the melting winter, something about the katniss being not quite ready to pick but growing, something about jabberjays mating with mockingbirds and making mockingjays, something about mockingbirds and mockingjays being the birds that inhabit the districts, something about nature and folktales and folk songs and mountains and forests and birds and the falseness of the Capitol not being able to reach it or understand it or predict it, something in it makes me think The Hunger Games and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes are pieces of literary genius.

when your circle small but y’all doomed by the narrative

i need a special episode where dazai and chuuya kiss

there's too much tension between the two for them to not be husbands

it was not on wheat...