Latest Posts by littlecorners - Page 4

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) + letterboxd reviews

I think the most radical thing the hunger games does is tell young people that the most revolutionary thing you can do is have unconditional love for humanity. Katniss throughout the entire series is guided by a deep sense of compassion for the people around her. It is what causes her to volunteer, to bury rue, to mercy kill cato, its why she tries to save peeta, why finnick telling her to remember who the real enemy is works, and even though her compassion for the larger world falters when peeta is kidnapped, it comes back when she visits hospitals and asks for mercy for other victors and ultimately, it is love and belief in a better humanity that makes her kill coin. Through it all, she maintains an unfaltering belief in the fundemental goodness of humanity, which is diametrically opposed to dr gaul's and snow's worldview. Peeta is even more unwaveringly compassionate

So the series tells young people that the most revolutionary thing you can be is compassionate. Let compassion drive your politics. Let yourself believe in the fundemental goodness of people. And i think that's deeply important in a world that touts the superiority of pure reason or logic, to allow yourself to be guided by something as emotional as compassion. Katniss everdeen tells us that your politics should be rooted in compassion in a world that thinks detatchment or cynicism is intelligence and i think thats v cool

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) + tweets

i’m obsessed with the significance of the hunger games’ utilization of food as a metaphor for a character, their perspective, and their story. on that note, coriolanus and tigrid witnessing a starving man eating his maid’s leg.

understandably, a large amount of coryo’s food metaphors are centered around his distaste for food he considers undesirable. or, food that doesn’t live up to that which he is entitled to.

but i’m stuck on cannibalism. coriolanus knows what its like to be starving. he has never literally eaten another person, can barely wrap his head around eating “poor people food”. but coriolanus knew, from a young age, that desperation turned a man into an animal. he decided he would never succumb to that hunger, would never let desperation control him. yet he still deluded himself into believing he killed in self defense, that he killed to survive.

coriolanus says the hunger games are intended to reveal what humans become when they are desperate to survive. president snow somehow convinced himself that district-born were subhuman, yet he acknowledges their humanity as a definitive statement. the purpose of his greatest achievement; turning humans into animals.

humans, if starved for long enough, will become cannibals, or die trying to be anything else. the districts have eaten each other, and then their own tails.

coriolanus, with an infinitely widening margin of what is and is not starvation, kills whenever he is threatened with the possibility of hunger. somehow, he thinks this is different. that he is not terrified of starving just like every child he has locked into a cage to secure his own fullness.

eat his own words, eat his past, eat himself whole; both the starving man and the maid. maybe he died realizing, for the last time, that he’s always been an animal. his final exhale around a mouthful of blood.

having read tbosas right before going to see the movie i feel like i’m upset at key parts being left out which made the movie feel so rushed, i think this would have been a great opportunity to split the book into two parts…

the treatment of the tributes, the days that passed that showed how close lucy gray and coriolanus got and ma plinth’s character were some of the most important parts that were left out and could have added so much more depth to the film. and sure i get why they changed so much of what happened in the arena because it was described so graphically in the book and because it was a lot more boring since there were long periods of nothing but i really feel like they could have made the construction of the area better because the scene where coriolanus had to save sejanus was so downplayed. and there’s also all the little details from the end like the fact that the tenth hunger games was erased from the vault is HUGE in my opinion because it shows that they were willing to do everything to make sure something “uncontrollable” couldn’t happen again, and how snow was practically living off the plinths like it makes sense that it was left out of the movie because that relationship was practically nonexistent but i think it could have been huge to keep it in to show how snow lands on top…

but what i can’t lie about is that the actors did an absolutely incredible job with these character! viola, tom and rachel are so so talented! i would definitely go see the movie first then read the book because so many details about the way snow’s mind works helps bring the movie to a completely new level!!

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

! TBOSAS SPOILERS

Honestly, after watching TBOSAS, I had so many questions. I was asking myself why Lucy Gray left Coryo, and even though after some reasearch I came to the conclusion that's it because even she became afraid of what he could do to her (kill her), I'm still not exactly sure. While watching that scene at the shack, I really felt like it deeply pained Lucy Gray to leave. I was so sure they loved each other and wondered; why, if she loves him, did she go? What is because since he turned his bestfriend in she was scared he would eventually do the same with her? I thought that if they were in love Lucy Gray would try to talk with him or something but then the scene in the woods really shook me. When he realised she tricked him with the snake (and still with that I'm not a hundred% sure) he turned mad. I feel like it was in this scene he realised he lost everything. Lucy Gray left him and I think it's then that he felt so much anger because HE helped her survived. If he hadn't given her scent to the snakes or hadn't given her poison she would've died, so maybe he felt betrayed that she would leave him so easily when he sacrificed so much for her.

I also wondered why he killed Dean and I think it's because he wanted to finish all that came his way and what/who contradicted what he had once believed? I mean their last dialogue is about the fact that it was because of him and Coryo's father that the Hunger Games began, and I thought Coryo, out of anger that Dean brought his father in the conversation, would kill him then, but the poison already was in the morphin. So I think after he lost Lucy Gray in the woods and came back to the Capitol, with the poisoned morphin, all he wanted was to prove to himself that all his efforts would come to an end, because honestly, at the end of the day, he did all of this for himself.

He exposed his best friend, which got him killed, only because it put him in danger. He was probably ready to kill Lucy Gray if ever she became a danger to his life. What I find confusing is the radical change, because in the first half of the movie all he wanted was for Lucy Gray to survive and sacrificied so much for her, so why and how did he change sides so fast? Killing the boy in the arena and feeling powerful is probably a factor of the questions appearing in his mind after that.

Overall I feel like he could have stayed in the light, and stayed good. My biggest question is If Lucy Gray stayed at the shack, would everything be different? Would they have runned together far away and establish a quiet life? Which is really to say that it's all Lucy Gray, and her leaving Coryo is what finally made him fall and turn evil.

(PS(?): The movie was amazing! Perfect cast, perfect everything! Loved it from start to finish.)

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.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was an excellent movie adaptation plot wise. It also solidified to me 2 reasons why Snow knew Katniss was such a threat beyond the basics and they were that

He recognized Haymitch as a mentor rewarding romantic behavior within the arena with sponsored gifts because a) it was his idea and b) before the drone system was perfected he saw how mentors themselves could technically follow rules while influencing the games and

He noticed how much sympathy and connection the Capitol citizens could form with the Tributes from all the nurses crying at Lucy Gray’s “last performance” to his entire class chanting to get her out of the arena which forced someone as influential as Dr. Gaul to listen

Snow’s not an idiot he knows Katniss herself held very little power at least at the beginning. But he instantly recognized how her story could be marketed and used to turn both District and Capitol citizens against him especially by people like Haymitch or Coin who knew what they were doing

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.

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.

I love the irony of an author making a cautionary tale like "don't you think it's fucked up when society do thing" and then society goes anf just proves their point

Like when Nabokov wrote a book about how a criminal used flowery language to romanticize his crime trying to justify the monstrosity he committed then society went like actually a younger girl being loved so much by an older men is both hot and aesthetic pleasing

Or how Susanne Collins wrote about the horrors of making a spectacle of the murder of children and how Hollywood exploits the young only for people online to be begging for her to write more books about the children getting slaughtered

It's so tragic and so telling I just love it

the hunger games with a sprinkling of our universe's problems as if they needed any more

The thing Peeta valued and feared losing most in the games was his humanity. That the games would change him, strip him of his kindness and heart. Death was never his fear. Because Peeta knew early on he likely wouldn’t survive and he also knew that he was willing to die if it increased Katniss’ chances of winning. Again, when he’s pulled into the quarter quell it’s not death he fears. Never death. His humanity is the part of himself he values most, and it is what Snow takes from him with the high jacking. But despite that being his biggest concern from the start of the series, the fear of losing himself and becoming the monster the capitol wants, I have no doubt Peeta would lose himself over and over again if it meant Katniss was safe. Because while Peeta maintaining his humanity is his biggest concern regarding himself, his biggest concern in general is Katniss’ safety, and her survival has always outranked his own needs in terms of importance.

"He's still smiling when he settles the second on my head, but his eyes, just inches from mine, are as unforgiving as a snake's.

That's when I know that even though both of us would have eaten the berries, I am to blame for having the idea. I'm the instigator. I'm the one to be punished." (THG pg 348)

Snow ignored Lucy Gray's flaws. He looked past them thinking that she belonged to him and therefore it was forgivable. He could look past it by saying she just didn't understand. He rationalized it for her in order to not have to feel he was compromising his own fucked up morals.

But it's the very thing he rats Sejanus out for. He's a part of the rebellion and Snow can't look past it. Both Sejanus and Lucy Gray dislike the Capitol but Snow ignores it for Lucy Gray.

He also pretty much ignores Peeta, the boy who reminds us so much of Lucy Gray. He's a performer, a lover at heart, and more importantly he's just along for the ride.

Katniss is who Snow blames. She's another Sejanus. She's set on tearing down the Captiol and watching it burn. I was just so shocked to find this beautifully reflected back in the original Hunger Games book one.

Suzanne Collins has such a deep understanding of her own material. It's rare to see books hold up so long and even more so to get a good add on to a series years later.

But still you can find a ton of small moments in the original trilogy that hammers home what tbosbas says.

Theres something to be said about Sejanus recognizing the peoples’ humanity and using it to defend them, while Snow saw that same humanity and used it against them

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes p344 / p504

Edit: I love how ‘clever, devious, deadly’ perfectly applies to Coryo as well. Birds of a feather, for lack of better words.

peeta after saying “if it werent for the baby”

rereading catching fire and remember the part where snow ambushed katniss in her own house and was letting her know that he was keeping track on her/knows everything she’s doing even out in woods? this is probably obvious but i just realized that was probably because of lucy gray? snow probably bugged the hell out of district 12 the second he had the power to do so because you know he was paranoid like that. he didn’t want to leave any possibility that she was still alive out there, and as years go by, he forgot all about it until katniss beat the game lmao

I think the ballad of songbirds and snakes is important bc it shows so clearly the cruelty and unfairness of the games. And that is the POINT. Coral dying and saying “it can’t have been all for nothing. I can’t have killed them all for nothing.”

Dr Gaul telling Snow that the world is the arena and you have to be a victor, because humans are at their base level cruel and vicious animals. They’ll either kill or celebrate your death. Cry for their favorites who die and ignore the games’ cruelty for the ones who don’t matter.

Lucy saying even at the end that people are born with goodness inside of them and the world turns them evil. Who writes songs about what the Capital cannot take away. Whose songs drive snow insane because he can’t make them! He can’t truly understand them! Because what is the opposite of death and cruelty and bloodthirsty spectacle? Life and celebration and the soul. Lucy turns the murder of someone at the hands of the state into a song of rebellion. And that same song eventually brings snow down.

It’s two opposing points of views-what drives the world? Death or life? What is humanity’s base nature?

And snow and the games argue that it is always death, which is why his downfall comes from a girl named after a food source plant, who sings, and a boy who literally gives her the bread of life out of a random act of kindness .

It’s why Gale loses everything too. Because gale in the end sees the world the way snow does. All humanity is about cruelty and survival through more cruelty. And with that attitude you can do anything. You can kill children to make sure more children don’t die.

It’s not about capital and districts or the arena and the world-it’s that all these are one thing-so what are they? What makes up the world? What is humanity?

Collins is once again light years ahead of where anyone thinks she is.

i truly disagree with and resent the idea that “everlark is what snowbaird could have been”. rachel zegler said it recently in an interview, and in my opinion it couldn’t be farther from the truth. describing coryo as “a kind eyed blond” is so inaccurate it’s laughable. even in the film tigris says about the hatred in coryo’s eyes. from even the beginning of the ballad of songbirds and snakes novel, we see how highly coryo deifies power. from the start, he keeps up his image as a charming but humble rich boy, regardless of the fact he’s starving and penniless, simply because its the best way for him to maintain control over others.

coryo only ever is kind to others when it is convenient for him - take sejanus for example. his parents gave him gifts and fed him and treated him with great respect (to the eventual point of leaving him their fortune when sejanus dies) simply because coryo pretended to care about their son to receive those effects.

with lucy, it was, to use her own words “written in the stars” that their relationship would end up in ruin, because ultimately coryo was never a person who valued love over power. i stand by the fact that while he may have cared for and loved her, the ultimate truth is that that love did not trump (in coriolanus’ values) the inheritance of power he believed he was owed generationally, from his father and every other snow before him. he would have done anything to get back to where he “belonged”, in the capitol. even had she not run from him, it would have happened a different way eventually.

SHJDJFN STOP PUTTING SNOW ON A PEDESTAL AND SAYING U CAN FIX HIM NO YOU CAN’T HE’S HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!! THE WORST!!!!!!

i don’t think any love of his would have led him to a redemption!!

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

Everyone has been focusing mostly on Snow shitting his pants when he heard "The Hanging Tree" sung by Katniss but if I remember correctly, that clip of her singing wasn't transmitted in the Capitol so it's unknown if Snow saw it. But there is another clip of Katniss singing one of Lucy Gray's songs that Snow definitely saw and it definitely haunted him.

The Meadow Song.

And you know what probably made him shit his pants even more? How Katniss not only sang one of Lucy Gray's songs but she also honoured a dead tribute. In that moment he wasn't only haunted by Lucy Gray's ghost, he was also haunted by Sejanus'.

Katniss, oblivious: My dad sang me this song, I miss him very much. This is a forest where he used to take me. I learned to swim in this lake.

Coriolanus Snow:

I love how Snow's inevitable demise is constantly foreshadowed throughout the movie with Dr Gaul's "rainbow of destruction".

First we see it in Lucy's dress:

Then the snakes:

And finally, the very last scene:

It doesn't matter that "Snow lands on top" at the end of this movie because everyone knows how his story ends. Even though it will take a very long time...

That's what I call poetic cinema👏

I’m sorry but if this paragraph doesn’t fuck you up Idk what will:

“Coriolanus felt his anxieties melt away. Full of fresh food, shaded by the trees, Lucy Gray singing softly beside him, he began to appreciate nature. It really was beautiful out here. The crystal clean air. The lush colors. He felt so relaxed and free. What if this was his life: rising whenever, catching his food for the day, and hanging out with Lucy Gray by the lake? Who needed wealth and success and power when they had love? Didn’t it conquer all?

- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (pg. 438)

what makes Snow such a formidable villain within THG universe is that nothing he does was set in stone. there was no sense of inevitability about his actions and his brutality. Snow had enough perspective of poverty, capital cruelty, district hunger and not to mention his own arena experience’ and yet he actively chose at every moment to stray from natural goodness. its even more terrifying in the sense that he had the ability to care. Snow is not a mindless sociopath, he displays feelings to others such as sejanus, lucy grey and tigris but ultimately he will always choose himself. his ability to betray those he cared about in order yo advance himself makes him so much more than the stereotypical villain who is forced into his actions.