were I to create an original piece of media I would create bait so queer in order to create a fanfic environment I like. I find you guys do your best work under duress.
So we all know the 75th Quell wasn’t just for Katniss now, right??
It was - get rid of Finnick, people tell him too much and like him too much
It was - get rid of Mags (she’ll volunteer to save anyone), she’s always been too much of a rebel and cares more about the tributes than the games (i.e. hiding Finnick from cameras)
It was - get rid of Beetee, we’re finally done with him (I want to know why he’s suddenly disposable though). But let’s make it as awful as possible and remind him every day what his son was feeling in his own last days
It was - get rid of Wiress (and also show the world what she’s become) because she never should have won (and we’ll show people what happens when you think you’re smarter than the Capitol)
It was - get rid of Johanna Mason, we killed everyone she loved and it didn’t break her enough so now we can’t control her
And of course, it was - get rid of those rebels from 12
But it wasn’t just punishment for Katniss. She had no idea how influential and volatile of a group they were.
Honestly, I feel like the 3rd Quell might have actually worked if the Capitol hadn’t decided to just send all the most rebellious and threatening victors into them. You can’t put 10+ people who rebelled in their own games back into an arena (and this time they’re all together) and expect it to go well for you???
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's the things we love most, that destroy us.
TOM BLYTH as CORIOLANUS SNOW and RACHEL ZEGLER as LUCY GRAY BAIRD in THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (2023) dir. Francis Lawrence
shout out to suzanne collins for, in the middle of Everything Else she was doing in sotr, dropping a paragraph that’s just “btw fuck ai”
I’m not typically one for contributing to head-cannons, but I do have one for TBOSAS that I’m willing to stick by: Lucy Gray is the reason they have someone from the Capital read the names.
Snow saw what happened when the games were rigged to settle personal scores, and he knew exactly how the scales were tipped (Lucy Gray even stresses that the reaping was “bad business” instead of plain bad luck). I don’t think he would implement this change for any noble reason to stop this kind of infighting, but rather so any rigging was done on his part rather than left up to the people of the districts. No one else could have a last minute revenge like Lucy Gray to stand out or remind him of her.
In conclusion: Lucy Gray and the Mayor’s blatant rigging of the 10th reaping are why Effie and her predecessors had to come to 12 every year
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.
A heart’s a heavy burden to bear
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.
“Appalachia is 90% white”
“Katniss is only described as olive skinned, that like so many Europeans”
“Prim’s blonde, that’s weird for a biracial person.”
Bitch shut the fuck you and just say your racist ass doesn’t accept that the Seam are stand in for minority races. Having two pasty ass group of people with different hair colours isn’t going make anyone notice or analyze the class divide between the Seam and Merchants. I fucking hate the movies for white washing Haymitch and Katniss because their Seam backgrounds are exactly why they understand each other. They have their own small culture and identity from the merchants.
It also visually shows how Peeta and her mother are outsiders. It’s important. It matters!!!!
And I get why Katniss and Haymitch were white back when the movies first came out, but times have fucking changed and I want the representation that existed in the books from the beginning.
Second of all, you can be biracial and have blonde hair as long as both parents have the fucking gene. 12 is small as shit, people get around and cross townlines from time to time. Shut the fuck up.
I fucking hate it here.