Reblogged
ballad of songbirds and snakes so far is just suzanne going “seems you missed the point the first time. let me fucking spell it out for you: reaping day is on the fourth of july.”
Reblogged
Personally, it's always a bit wild to me to see commentators interact with the Hunger Games franchise as if Collins were writing science fiction stories instead of essays with faces. She's just not that interested in fleshing out side characters or digging into the details of the worldbuilding. These characters are concepts and symbols before they're people. There's an almost mathematical precision to who and what she explores and how deeply she does it. This is a step or two away from pure allegory. If she were writing a couple of centuries ago, she'd have named her characters things like Innocence and Anger and Watch-Carefully-Your-Soul-Lest-Ye-Be-Damned, but since she's writing for modern audiences, she has to settle for puns and allusions. If she has another essay to write, she'll assign some faces to it; she's not going to look into backstories or other eras just for the sake of storytelling, and it's not a failing as a writer that she doesn't.
Reblogged
What I think is most different and most striking about Sunrise on the Reaping is how CYNICAL it is. To some extent we knew it was going to be. This is a midquel. That the reapings go on and the Hunger Games only ends 25 years later is a forgeon conclusion. We know nothing that happens here is going to work.
The book is about implicit submission, and why, with numbers on their side, the many submit to the few, even when the few are unjust. And it's because, the book seems to say, numbers aren't ENOUGH. the Newcomers alliance is much bigger than the Careers. They should be able to team up and defeat them easily. But they don't. Eighteen of them are killed outright, because the Careers have the strength, the skill and the training. And that's just that.
Plutarch asks why the tributes don't overwhelm the Peacekeepers during training, and Haymitch is rightfully outraged at the privilege of this question. Why don't they? Because they probably couldn't kill them all, and even if they could, what good would it do? It wouldn't stop the Hunger Games. It wouldn't change a thing. No one would even know about it outside that room, because the Capitol would change the narrative. Just like Katniss and the Star Squad can't REALLY take on the Capitol single handed and assassinate the president, the scrappy alliance of kids can't really do any real damage to the system the Capitol has in place. All they can do is choose if they want to die now or later. So why don't they, if there's no difference to them, as Plutarch asks. Because, as Snow puts it. Hope. The slight chance that one of them will come out of it. And, more cynically, the hope that if they are good tributes and obey, their families will be left alone. If they choose to rebel and choose to die now they guarantee retaliation against their families and perhaps their entire district. We see that even in the tributes that attack the Gamemakers in the arena. They rise up, they break that bond of implicit submission--and they die bloody for it.
Why don't they rebel? Because they don't have the privilege to lose.
Even Lenore Dove, the Joan of Arc of Twelve, fails to do any real damage or have any real effect. All she does is get herself a reputation for being a trouble maker, and eventually get herself killed. Was she killed as part of the retaliation against Haymitch, or was her punishment because she's a rebel, and that's what happens to rebels? (and Snow hates covey girls.) but she fails because she IS alone. She focuses on small, symbolic acts that do nothing, but that she hopes will rally the people to action.Unfortunately, the people of Twelve don't want their lives to get any worse, and they don't have the privilege of spending time and energy on revolution the way a teenager girl whose family doesn't need her income to survive does--sadly, Twelve will remain this way, in an uncanny valley where they're beaten down enough to need change, but not enough to have NOTHING to lose. They are not one of the districts that rise up. So acting alone does nothing, teaming up does nothing. How does one fight an enemy with better technology, better weapons, and better organization? Beetee's plan doesn't work out. Of course it doesn't. Could it ever? Was it just borne out of grief for his son? And even if it had, then what? What was the plan? Haymitch's poster gets edited away. The Newcomers fail. Lenore Dove dies. The most you can say is Haymitch himself becomes too important to kill, like Beetee, and Snow let him live to fight another day, but so destroyed that he no longer WANTS to.
So, then, what WORKS?
The answer is, quite cynically, Plutarch's version of the world. Numbers mean something, there are more of US than there are of THEM , but that isn't enough. You need weapons, you can't bring a knife to a gun fight, you need EVERYONE on your side. You need organization, not just a series of disconnected rebellions, and you need an Army, provided by Thirteen, as problematic as they are. The timing just needs to be right. And most crucially, what I think Plutarch and everyone involved here learned is that victory belongs to those who control the narrative. Those who control the flow of information and tell their story. And it's not Plutarch, for all his cameras and his propos and his idea behind The Mockingjay, who eventually does that well.
It's Haymitch.
Who learned to tell a story and sell a narrative with himself and the Newcomers. Who tried to paint his poster in the arena only to see it rewritten in front of him. Who won't make that mistake again. When it's time for the deciding factor in the revolution, it's Haymitch who creates the Mockingjay-- and is he also using Katniss and her image? Yes. but he at least sees Katniss and the human she is inside it, unlike Plutarch who hasn't changed much from the man who makes a grieving family do reshoots over and over so he can get his footage, while congratulating himself for letting Haymitch have his goodbye.
When Katniss sets off the spark twenty five years later, the world is ready. The work is in place. Plutarch, Haymitch, Beetee, everyone can say GO , and this time it'll work. So buckle in, and wait for the Long Game, even though only Plutarch really has the privilege to wait, the rest of them don't have a choice. It's cynical. It's awful. People die. The lone rebels and the plucky girls and the alliance depending on its numbers all fail. Plutarch motherfucking Heavensbee, the richest of the rich the privilegedest of the privileged, pulls off the revolution, takes the credit, and lives to see the end of it, without ever once examining his own privilege, and unpacking the fact that despite his head being on the right side of history, he's never managed to see the Districts as PEOPLE . (and you could argue, ANYONE as people. ) But it's just the only way.
But this book isn't the middle of the series. It's the end. How awful would it be to read if we didn't know that Katniss and the Mockingjay rebellion would eventually succeed. We know that despite the cynism of a failed revolution and all its players, that one day it WILL work out. This book is called sunrise on the Reaping....the sun rises on a world where this is inevitable. But one day it won't be.
Reblogged
a thing that i particularly love about the hunger games prequels is how it shows that people have fighting against the games since their inception
when i was younger and read the original trilogy for the first time i was so bothered how it was 74 years of games, i remember thinking how could it have gone on so long without anyone doing anything
these prequels highlight that people have been fighting from the get-go: lucy gray's defiance, reaper ripping down panem's flags to cover the fallen tributes, haymitch's games and how many others shared his ideologies - the capitol just drowns them out, they rewrite their stories so their efforts are forgotten
liberation takes time and it's built upon the actions of those in the past
Reblogged
sotr is such a beautifully tragic book like-
haymitch thinking to himself that he can't even be considered a proper rebel
the 50th hunger games being re-edited into a neat little package, and haymitch’s lived experience literally becoming more pro-capitol propaganda
haymitch getting sent home with the bodies of his fellow tributes, haymitch saying that after the games there’s no shame or indignity too great for him to bear after he lost everything
all the times haymitch physically held katniss back, the way burdock everdeen did for him when the abernathy house was on fire
our first introduction of haymitch in thg is katniss thinking he’s this lone wolf figure, that he doesn’t care about anyone or anything, that he has no one and doesn’t want anyone in his life, when really it’s that he cared so much about so many people, but he lost them all and had to push the remainder away
“Our way of saying good-bye to those we cherished. I follow suit, raising my hand high, because I have so many to honor.”
the continuation of the “history gets rewritten” concept introduced in tbosas, and the overall theme of propaganda- maysilee and haymitch talking about symbolically painting posters, the arena being shaped like an eye, snow somehow knowing to use the gumdrops to kill lenore just to show haymitch that he’s always watching, “I guess Snow lands on top”
katniss being surprised in cf that haymitch actually knows people in the capitol, and realizing that he must’ve known other victors like beetee, mags, and wiress through his games
“Trying to forget is my full-time job now.”
HAYMITCH CARRYING AROUND A FLINT STRIKER AS HIS TOKEN, FEELING UTTERLY DEFEATED EVEN THOUGH HE’S THE VICTOR OF HIS GAMES, WHEN HE’S LITERALLY ONE OF THE MANY SMALL SPARKS THAT HELPED START THE REVOLUTION ALONG WITH EVERY TRIBUTE WHO WANTED BETTER, LUCY GRAY, LENORE DOVE, RUE, CINNA, PRIM, literally anyone who wanted a different future than year after year of watching kids slaughter each other !!!
“You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”
anyways i’m really emotional about this book everyone say thank you suzanne collins !!
Don’t wait to act
ICE agents kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil who helped organize Columbia University pro-Palestine protests and this is the first “First they came for” stanza that you fuckers love to quote. This is the shit right here.
This is a man who not only has a green card but is married to a US citizen. Who was kidnapped by a federal agency and is being threatened with revocation of his green card and deportation for exercising his legal right to protest because he is palestinian. Because his activism was antizionist, and literally no other reason. And I’ll be the first to say it; democrats laid the groundwork for this. Democratic politicians like the mayor of New York and the administration of Columbia paved the way for this. With their false accusations of antisemitism to justify first their militarized brutality against the student revolution, and now the legal unpersoning of the Palestinians involved in it. This escalation of fascism in America has been a wholly bipartisan project.
I hope all the blue MAGA libs who've spent the past year emptily posturing about ‘fighting fascism’ see that this is where their zionist apologia and propaganda has led; You let this fascism in. This is Your side of history.
Reblogged subterra-rose
untitledsystemblog-deactivated2
people on twitter are surprised that a cis woman who owns a woman-only gym backtracked on including trans women, but that's just how transmisogyny is.
most people are not committed trans activists who are willing to deal with constant relentless harassment for standing the ground of "trans women should get to exist in public". it's just easier for them to abandon the one or two trans girls that they know than to deal with that stress. for many transfems, you can't 100% rely on people giving you their support, because suddenly rescinding it will always be the safer option for the people around you.
as sad as it is, it is extremely radical to genuinely love and cherish the trans women around you.
7 days without a single morsel of food entering Gaza 2 million people are trapped in Gaza, including my family who need food every day.
Please don't forget Gaza and my family still need you Please donate to us.
With the rise in prices, it has become difficult to obtain healthy food.
Reblogged softlatina
Hey guys! Hussam is still raising money for helping out family! Can we do another donation match for any amount you can spare? Please share this even outside of tumblr so more people can help out!
Reblogged rhubarbspring
7 days without a single morsel of food entering Gaza 2 million people are trapped in Gaza, including my family who need food every day.
Please don't forget Gaza and my family still need you Please donate to us.
With the rise in prices, it has become difficult to obtain healthy food.
Reblogged softwaring
Reblogged jewishdainix
Mahmoud has asked me to share these words with you. Please read them.
Imagine that your dreams are now worth a cup of coffee. We asked Gazan students what their dreams are for the future and that is what they said. Mahmoud, a survivor of the genocide, still holds onto his dreams, a has great hopes of fulfilling them, despite what he's been through. It's astonishing, the degree of ambition that students who've lost everything carry into a clouded and uncertain future. Students who've lost their houses, have been displaced multiple times, have lost loved ones, are struggling to even apply to college, whose daily struggles consist of finding power to study on electronic devices, on top of the endless queues for bread and water, being the sole provider their family... numerous struggles but a shared pain, and yet, they have hope for the future. This is a generation of young students who deserve all our support and all our efforts, and whom we must never stop rallying for, sharing their pain with the world, and striving for them to reach their goals and to graduate. This is a generation that has been abandoned to death for 15 months and yet they have not abandoned their goals, and so we must not abandon them. Don't they deserve your attention? Say you have 10 dollars and you've decided to get coffee. You might say you've lost 10 dollars, but an economist will tell you that not only have you lost those 10 dollars, but you've also lose whatever else might've been gotten with those 10 dollars had you not spent them on coffee. Of course, this is just an example, but in economics, loss isn't just what you pay; it's also the loss of the other opportunities that could have been. And time is the most squandered resource of them all. Please share the link with those interested in supporting a Palestinian student; maybe a small motion that you don't feel will become a great positive step for our ambitious students.