I Like To Talk About Books

Children’s Literature Grad student- I’m bad at taking notes so I’m giving this a try. Lover of dragons & crafts

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

an ice cold beer topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. lying on top of the ice cream foam is a salted peanut. this is the angel. around him are sprinkles (his tears). this is "the angel's lament", my new cocktail

[roadrunnerposting]

Sure, why not. ‘Angels lament’

[kadekuro]

[shencomix]

I did an experiment on myself

I like to browse social media, but it's not really me who likes that. It's some baser, more lizardish part of my brain. It does not even know what it's looking at, or care -- it just knows it gets little dopamine snacks from it, and likes them.

I decided to do an experiment. I wanted to see what that part of my brain would do if I deprived it of what it usually likes. I blocked all social media in my desktop browser via an extension, uninstalled all my social media apps, and even blocked the websites on my phone just for good measure.

So, what would I do now?

It turns out I start going on wikipedia. I liked to look at the "on this day section," and use the random page button. It's kind of like social media because I never knew what I was going to see. It scratched that same itch.

But I wanted to go farther, so I blocked wikipedia too.

Turns out, after that, I start going on google maps streetview and exploring random towns in Chile or Mongolia. I see hotels and restaurants with 1 review. Who are you, reviewer. Why have you decided to give this pizza restaurant that just looks like a normal house this digital baptism.

But I wanted to go farther, so I blocked google maps too.

Then, I started going to my local library. The library had more information than I could ever read about practically anything I wanted to read about. I started reading about French history. The region we know today as France may look pretty innocuous, but you wouldn't believe some of the shit that went down.

But I wanted to go farther, so I stopped even going to the library. What would this part of me, that so desperately craved a constant intake of information, do now.

It was then that I descended into the sewers, and became the Rat Man.

I quickly became a legend in my town. Some teenagers saw me clamber out of one sewer grate and then into another across the street. They told their parents about it. Their parents didn't believe them. Truth be told, I almost didn't believe them either.

A woman eating oreos on a park bench once dropped one near a sewer drain at the local bike path, and yelped when she saw my arm reach out from the drain and swipe it. However, later on, she left another oreo there. She took pity on the Rat Man. I saw the Man that was left there, even though it was mostly Rat.

Ultimately I decided to allow myself the library.

[tryingssss]

maysilee "I'll be your sister" donner and wyatt "whoever she is guess she's ours now" callow

[lowkeyasolo]

the found family trope in the most heartbreaking way

[greelin]

warm baked goods are insane. something so beautiful and almost maddening about absolutely tearing into them when they’re fresh. feeling warm all over after. I really do get vampires for real

[greelin]

people still regularly jumping on this post like “ummmm…” “what was that last part???” “not where i expected this to go AT ALL” what’s not clicking. Something is wrong with YOU. not me.

[mockingjay-sings]

“Bet I know a thing or two about your dove.” “Like what?” “Like she’s delightful to look at, swishes around in bright colors, and sings like a mockingjay. You love her. And oh, how she seems to love you. Except sometimes you wonder, because her plans don’t include you at all.” Something something, Coriolanus calling Lucy Gray "my girl" versus Haymitch calling Lenore Dove "my girl."

[greyishdisaster]

When my boyfriend calls me “his girl” it’s because I’ve told him I like it when he calls me that, not because he thinks I belong to him.

When Haymitch calls Lenore Dove “his girl” it’s because that’s the term they use most often in his culture to describe a girlfriend, and Lenore Dove is okay with it. But Haymitch wouldn’t even pretend he owns Lenore Dove, or that he can control her. He knows she’s as free as she wants, and he’s hers as much as she’s his.

When Coriolanus calls Lucy Gray “his girl,” it’s because he thinks he can contain her, like a songbird in a cage. He thinks he can have her for himself. He thinks he owns her. He doesn’t care what she thinks, not really.

When Snow has this conversation with Haymitch, he can’t understand that Haymitch (while occasionally uneasy about Lenore Dove’s dangerous habits) is willing to let his girl have autonomy. It still leaves Haymitch uneasy, but nit because Haymitch is mad Lenore Dove “leaves him out.” It’s because Haymitch is scared Lenore Dove has left him out of something that will get her killed by the megalomaniac standing in front of him.

[texaschainsawmascara]

Mona Lisa cat nest 😭

[tenaciousmoneymuffinzine]

Comparing Haymitch and Katniss' narrative styles is so funny to me because he's a yapper and she's a gatekeeper. He drops more lore on D12 in the first two chapters of SOTR than she does in the entire trilogy.

Haymitch is like "Yeah, so this person is related to this person who's related to this person and things are this way because of this and this thing actually came from here and this person is actually my best friend and also here's this extra tidbit of random info cause all my lore dropping comes with it's own additional bonus content and all my unnecessary commentary."

And Katniss is over here like "Tf do I care for if y'all know all the lore of District 12? I'm talking about my beautiful husband's beautiful eyelashes."

[sydneyofalltrades]

sunrise on the reaping spoilers (question mark?)? mostly talk about the ballad of songbirds and snakes so

but yeah it’s so funny to me how out of all the songs lucy gray sings that are still known to the remaining covey (“the old therebefore,” “the hanging tree,” “nothing you can take”) and the ones the capitol adored (“the ballad of lucy gray baird”), the song she sings for coriolanus is suspiciously absent from retellings and shows

it’s so hilarious to me that “pure as the driven snow” is the only song that isn’t repeated throughout the books, because its message is no longer relevant or true. lucy gray doesn’t love, trust, or need coriolanus at the end of the ballad of songbirds and snakes, whereas every other song in sunrise on the reaping has a purpose.

burdock sings “the old therebefore” as it’s a covey funeral song.

the covey performed “nothing you can take” and maysilee’s grandmother tells her the lyrics to comfort her.

“the ballad of lucy gray baird” is televised to haymitch to taunt him, and he makes the connection between the song and the only little known district 12 victor.

“the hanging tree” is a song of defiance that ends up in the mockingjay’s life, and is used as a rallying cry for the earliest stages of the rebellion in twelve.

but “pure as the driven snow,” a song of devotion for a man who no longer deserves it, is conspicuously absent from the rest of the timeline after its first and only performance.

[livingfandomly]

SotR is a realisation. A realisation that the rebellion didn’t start with Katniss. That all the people we see supporting her or helping her have all been wanting to fight but they’ve been failing. That there weren’t merely “rumours” of a revolution but there were many active plans playing out and failing.

It’s a reminder that the perfect Hunger Games we saw in the first hg book was an illusion because we had Katniss as our narrator. We didn’t have Haymitch, hell, we didn’t even have someone like Peeta because these people played the games. Katniss didn’t.

Katniss was introduced to us as a mad, simple, naive girl who literally only survived because of others. She didn’t know how much her taking Prim’s place mattered because she didn’t realise what it meant to everyone who came before her. To everyone who had heard rumours of how the last District 12 victor actually fought his games. No, Katniss had just kept her head down, hunting and providing for her family.

See, she grew up way before the Games got to her. She’d already lived through her dad’s death and watched it destroy her once lively mom. Haymitch didn’t have to go through that. Lucy Gray didn’t have to go through that. They were both angry, yes, but at the Capitol. Katniss? She was first and foremost angry at her mom. At her dad. She knew who was to blame but she had too much to do and deal with to think about that. She was already jaded in a way that the Games couldn’t touch.

Peeta? He was Haymitch. He knew what he was getting into and realised he was just on a chess board with no control. So, he adapted. He played the knight, the rook, the king, the pawn. Katniss? She just… did. Changing directions, not playing the piece she was assigned because she didn’t realise that’s what was going on. Remember her surprise at the crown twisting into two after the Games?? She was so oblivious. Until Catching Fire where everything caught up to her. Where everything so many other people had been waiting and working for caught up to her.

SotR is a history book. Rewritten and edited and published as a piece of fact. SotR is a mirror and it’s a reflection of what actually happens vs what ends up being shown. SotR is the playbook of those in control of any and every kind of media that we come in touch with. SotR is a wake up call and I truly don’t know how many will see it as such.

[supervig]

just having the the stark realization that the failed act of rebellion was 24 years before katniss volunteered. that begs the question of whether or not there were more attempts. did johanna suffer the same fate as haymitch? did the capitol lie and say she was hidden the entirety of her games because she was given a similar (failed) assignment from beetee? did they have to erase countless hours of footage? edit things to make it seem like she was never where she actually was, simply hidden away from the chaos? how many mockingjay figures did they cycle through before landing on katniss? how many did they cycle through before the revolution actually began?

[ohsuestorm]

gotta love Suzanne Collins' dedication to dropping a banger every few years, re-traumatizing a whole generation and disappearing back into the abyss without a single word

[creelcarlbrun]

“In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies“ Utah = on the edge of the Rockies

President Snow/early Capitol are Mormon send tweet

[softchouli]

Coin being frustrated that she didn't get her wanted prize at the claw machine, as if the plushie with the bread wouldn't successfully gaslight her entire district on day one just to rescue his pregnant wife

[softchouli]

[safirefire]

District 12 being one of the poorest, underfed Districts showing how ripe a revolution really was and they were also coal miners and associated the most with music and singing and mockingjays and songbirds they were literally the canary in a coal mine

[knightofleo]

[thisisallthehattersfault]

Hunger Games didn’t really eat holes in my brain the way that it did for some other people but god the opening lines. The opening lines. Katniss wakes up in bed and immediately, instinctively reaches beside her, only to find the bed empty and cold. Before we even know her name – before we know literally anything about her or this world or her place in that world – we know that she loves someone. We know that she is reaching for where Prim should be, sleeping safe and warm beside her, but Prim is not there. She is not there, and her half of the bed is cold and empty. People talk about characters being “doomed by the narrative” when most of the time the character was literally just a well-foreshadowed death, but Prim WAS doomed by the narrative. It’s the very first thing we learned. It’s the most key, integral, important piece of information we’re given about everything that is about to happen: Every single choice Katniss makes is to protect her little sister, and it isn’t enough. In the end, Prim still dies. Prim was dead before the story even started. Katniss, reaching. Prim’s side of the bed was cold and empty. There is no version of this story where Prim could have been saved. Katniss, reaching. The very first thing she does in the series. She wakes, and she reaches, but Prim is already gone. THAT is how you do Doomed By The Narrative. Edit: Also it is key that there was literally nothing Katniss could have done differently. If she had not acted to save Prim, Prim would not have survived the Hunger Games. But by acting to save Prim, Katniss accidentally kicked off an entire rebellion and ultimately massively increased the amount of danger Prim was actually in. The key is that this is irrelevant. If Katniss had done literally anything differently, Prim still would have died. If Katniss had faltered or changed course at any point, Prim still would have died. There was never a point where Katniss could have changed Prim’s fate. There’s no version of this story where Prim lives to see the end of it. She’s dead before the story begins. That’s doomed by the narrative.

[little-miss-rasputin-pageant]

in almost every other children's book where the main heroine is swept away to a land of whimsy she's shown having a lovely time; braving dangers occasionally, trying to find her way home, sure, but ultimately delighting in the magic around her. meanwhile alice spends her entire time in wonderland like