Just saw a post (in a community, why can’t we reblog them if they show up in my feed?) about Haymitch being scared to go back to 12 after the 74th games. And I agree it must have been terrifying that history would repeat itself and asterid and prim would be on literal fire. But I also think he KNEW someone was going to pay with their life/lives and he worked very hard to make sure that person was Seneca Crane. The line Snow says in CF that if the had any brains at all he would’ve blown them to bits. I always assumed that was something Haymitch fed to Plutarch or one of the other gamemakers?
men have those slutty veins in their hands and expect you not to lose a lil focus
I remember reading thg for the first time as a kid and thinking how exciting the book was. How Effie was so quirky and funny. How Cinna was so cool. How her stylists were such kooks. How Flickerman was just there to help her feel better. I even remember thinking “omg this isn’t so bad, is it? They’re just quirky people with money”.
Cut to reading its prequels, to rewatching the movies, to rereading the books over a decade later and all I can associate it with is to the kind of books George Orwell wrote. Books about government, power, propaganda and lies. Books about keeping people submissive and scared until they just get used to that way of life. Until they accept it and think it can’t be any other way…
Plus, the prequels are such a stark realisation that Katniss was surrounded by the best versions of what was to offer. No Drusilla insulting her but a caring, albeit naive, Effie. No Magno who couldn’t care less about how the tributes were perceived but the all-out Cinna to make sure they were recognised as a threat. Even Flickerman has gotten much subtler and smoother by the time Katniss sits in front of him. If we didn’t have the prequels, we genuinely wouldn’t even know any of this which goes to say a lot about people existing in the trilogy as well.
me, the motherfucker with over 50 abandoned works in progress: i have an idea
“no one really feels married in District 12 until they've had the toasting”
Finished the book and one thing I absolutely HATED is how Snow drags out Haymitch's torment. Once the games are over and Haymitch is forced into submission, Snow milks that shit for days on end. He puts him in a gilded cage!!!! And he makes him play the role of the good little propaganda puppet. All the while endlessly feeding him milk and bread. Snow is absolutely deranged
And he tries to do the same thing with Katniss. In catching fire, once she realizes the danger her loved ones are in, Katniss is ready to play the role of the puppet - to do everything she can to convince Snow and Panem.
Snow immediately starts puppeting her into this twisted, deranged image by having the capitol vote on her wedding dress and by making her wear it for the interviews.
But Cinna undermines all that! He frees Katniss from Snow's grasp and helps her reclaim her dignity. He transforms her from Snow's propaganda puppet into the greatest symbol of the rebellion. Cinna gives her wings to fly free... and it's the biggest fuck you to Snow
i've thought on the fact that we see lucy gray's grave at the end of sotr and whether that cheapens tbosbas (and some maintain that to this day she is a living child and all that) and i've decided that it doesn't. there are three options regarding that grave:
1) the covey found her body and buried her (not my preference, but it still keeps her death and mourning away from snow, so not horrible),
2) lucy gray survived and asked them to grieve her as if she were dead, since she can't ever come home (bad. too concretely optimistic. a confirmed survival is worse than a confirmed death.), or
3) they never found her body but, reasonably, assumed that she was dead and hidden where they couldn't find her, and so they made her a headstone anyway (best option this is the one i choose to believe)
so long as suzanne collins never tells us which of those three is the true one, i'd say we stand exactly where we did at the end of ballad, where she's concerned.
I very much read it as the third one, they have her a headstone to give themselves some closure and mourn her. But I think they acknowledge it a little in the part of the poem they use on her headstone. The other two use quotes where it's outright mourning the charecter. They explicitly use the part where her name is dropped that alludes to the fact she MIGHT still be alive.
I very much consider the final fate of Lucy Gray as unknown to anyone.