Started Rereading The Hunger Games Series And I Feel Like It’s So Overlooked How In 74th And 75th Hunger

snow allowing katniss to live following her defiance of the capitol is so much more interesting knowing his past with lucy gray. i'm curious if he assumed, because of his experiences, that katniss would run away, just like lucy gray had? and she would have, had it not been for gale's insistence that he stay and help the rebellion grow. idk just very interesting to me

another idea that i take immense issue with in the hunger games community is that “peeta played the games better than katniss did” - essentially saying that he knew how to play the capitol and the audience but katniss didn’t.

there is a number of evidence to counter this. the first point the people who believe this like to make is that “peeta came up with the love concept”, and while this is true it’s only true to an extent. peeta did come up with the idea of telling the audience that he loved katniss, to gain their sympathy and favour for sponsorships, but not the ploy that happens in the games where katniss falls greatly in love with him too - in the audience’s eyes. we know this because and the end of the first book, peeta and katniss have a conversation where peeta seems to realise, to quote president snow in catching fire “the extent of her indifference” to him (though of course she’s not indifferent, just not fully in love with him at this point).

there’s also the moment post the 74th hunger games, when katniss and haymitch are secretly discussing how to justify the berry incident and haymitch tells her that “her only defence can be she was so madly in love she wasn’t responsible for her actions.” katniss responds asking if he had told peeta of the situation, to which haymitch says, “don’t have to. he’s already there” (thg, pgs. 417-418). what this explains to us is that peeta doesn’t actually need instruction on ‘the love ploy’ as he is actually in love with her. this is also backed up by the fact katniss was instructed with the sponsor items in the game wheres peeta isnt.

in terms of how katniss played the capitol and the audience, there’s great evidence to her proficiency in it, too. foremost is of course the berry incident, which she came up with knowing its meaning and its danger. it is an act done in anger at the captiol, at their murder of innocent children, at their manipulation to get the two people in the arena closest to eachother emotionally to be the last to standing, to have the greatest possible ending regardless of how it felt for the tributes. katniss realises “yes, they have to have a victor” (thg, pg. 402) so she makes them have two or none.

not to mention, throughout the entire 74th hunger games, katniss is constantly thinking of how the audience will view her actions. when peeta passes with the career pack, she “needs to look one step ahead of the game” despite the fact she is confused and angry, so she “gives [the cameras] a knowing smile” and thinks “there, let them figure out what that means”. (thg, pg. 191)

there’s also the moment where she calls out peeta’s name when she finds out they could both win together, the entirety of their time in the cave, the kissing and almost their whole relationship was a great con to get them both home, and was lead by peeta’s love, yes, but also katniss’ ability to play the capitol’s hearts.

there’s so much more i can discuss about the first and the other books bc i’ve mainly talked about book 1 but this is getting super long LOL. my point is not that peeta couldn’t play the games, or that katniss was better than him at it because i dont believe either of those things. it’s that i want people to stop acting like peeta was the greater voice of the revolution, was better at playing an audience and speaking. he certainly was excellent at it, especially in catching fire when he is aware of his need to act for the capitol (after the district 11 shooting and through to the end of the quarter quell), but katniss was too. that’s all!! sorry for the essay.

The Umbrella Academy when they're in trouble:

Fuck man, this doomed underground city doesn’t have any good kebab joints

Something I love about Suzanne is the fact that she leaves so many things for us to pick up on if we pay attention. One of the things I really began to pick up on was just how juxtaposed Peeta and Katniss and Snow and Lucy Gray are. We all know that she created both young Snow and Lucy Gray to resemble Katniss and Peeta, but the way she compares and contrasts them is just *chefs kiss*

Of course, the dynamics between the pairs are vastly different. Rachel said it beautifully in an interview regarding the comparisons between Katniss and Lucy Gray, “Lucy Gray is a performer forced to fight, Katniss was a fighter forced to hunt”, but I’ve heard little about people comparing Snow to Peeta.

My headcanon is that Snow also has a deep disdain for Peeta. Not in the same way that he loathes Katniss, but because he can’t help but see Peeta as a "weaker" version of himself.

Peeta wants Katniss to be free and is willing to let Katniss make decisions for herself. A fantastic example is when she starts her situationship with Gale. Peeta doesn’t force her to be with him. But, when Lucy Gray sings her ballad during her interview, Snow can’t help but feel disgust over the fact that he doesn’t have control over her; that she could be giving her love to someone else when he feels like he is the only one deserving of it.

Peeta cares so deeply about Katniss, showing time and time again that he’s willing to put his life on the line to ensure she survives and I believe that Snow can’t help but hate him for it. He can never fathom caring about someone more than he cares about himself; only caring about self-preservation. Snow may see Peeta's compassion and think it’s a waste of time. He probably believes that at some point Katniss will betray Peeta, much like he believes Lucy Gray did to him.

Suzanne writes with such intention, leaving no loose ends in any of her stories. There are so many comparisons between the characters that it is hauntingly beautiful, but she also makes them very distinct and unique. I can't help but believe that this decision to create these characters in this fashion was not only intentional but extremely implied.

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).

Guandalupe Nettel, from her novel titled "Stillborn," originally published in 2020

au where everything is the same except they come back with astral plane white hair

what if they filmed tbosas the way fleabag is filmed so that the audience got to see snow's inner monologue, so every so often tom blyth would turn to the camera and just talk.