Echoes of the Mockingjay

Capturing an aca-fan's work to study fan engagement with The Hunger Games trilogy characters on tumblr. aca-fan: someone who is both a fan and an academic studying the thing(s) they love. Database of Posts: Tags Index Posts about my research: Info/Updates

[looking4answers25]

Introduction

11 April 2025 (Friday)

Hello! I made this tumblr as part of the thesis project for my master's in digital humanities (my personal one would not be suitable for this). I am investigating fan engagement on tumblr with characters and the narrative from the hunger games trilogy.

I'm being upfront about the fact that I'm researching this so it doesn't seem like I'm sneaking around and gathering data like a racoon in a trashcan.

Part of my data collected includes how I and other fans talk about the characters and narrative (including meta-statements) but not about fanfiction/fanart (which is what a lot of fan studies talks about). So my activities here have a couple of steps:

Blogging as I read/watch the books and movies (excluding the prequels)

Spending some time just reblogging and engaging with posts from others.

(Steps 1 & 2 count as digital field work/ethnography)

Updating (for myself, not sure who else is going to see this) the blog with my progress

Large scale data post collection for corpus analysis (I'm not going to look at the actual content at this point) - to do some topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and stuff just to get some statistics about the most popular scenes, characters, subjects, trends, etc. Discourse analysis - looking at the most popular (and/or detailed) posts about specific aspects/characters, etc. and analysing the language use and how the user processed them

Digital (Auto) Ethnography: A self-reflective analysis of my blog and the posts I created and interacted with.

Ethical considerations: I will definitely be anonymising everybody's user names.

Feel free to contact me via the ask box if you have any questions.

Note: Will update this if anything changes.

UPDATE (28 April 2025): Changed the discourse analysis aspect of the project Created a tags index to make navigation easier:

Tags Index

[peaonfire]

shooting me would have been kinder, Suzanne!

[lixbf]

finnick being like the only one to remember that katniss is "pregnant" fjsbcjdbcjd

[rosegardeninwinter]

Finnick “commit to the bit” Odair

[absolutlynoidea]

Truly the biggest difference between gale and peeta is showed so well in mocking jay. Gale says killing everyone in the nut is OK because they are helping the enemy. Later Peeta talks about the people that needs to be avenged he adds the careers who were their enemies in the games.

Peeta knows who the real enemy is, Gale doesn't. That's it, that's their biggest difference.

[you-askedforthis]

[gay-mormon-wizard]

We assume that Katniss doesn't convince everyone in the districts of the authenticity of her love for Peeta because Snow says so. Snow believes that convincing the districts will calm them down. But Snow, as characterized in the prequels, fundamentally does not understand love.

Katniss DOES convince most everyone in the districts. The only district people to question the love story are the other victors, because they alone understand how the Capitol's propaganda works, how stories are controlled and victors are forced to play their part.

But when Katniss visits District 8, everyone seems fully convinced. People assure Katniss that they know Peeta was just speaking under duress. They're so upset about Katniss "losing the baby" that one woman actually weeps over it. The everyday District citizens buy into it fully.

The issue is that Snow doesn't understand how powerful love is. Katniss and Peeta's act fuels the rebellion instead of tamping it because choosing love over violence is rebellious. Like when Katniss and Peeta hold hands and Haymitch calls it the perfect touch of rebellion, or when Katniss covers Rue with flowers, or when all the victors hold hands on interview night. Compassion, love, friendship between competitors, it's all in defiance to the Capitol's agenda.

Snow thought that the districts would hear, "I'm just a silly little harmless teenage girl doing impulsive things because I'm in love! How nice of the Capitol to let me keep my boyfriend!" Instead they heard, "My love gave me the courage to defy the Capitol." They heard, "My love held firm in the face of all the Capitol's power and cruelty. I refuse to kill him or even passively let him die." They heard, "The Capitol is not strong enough to corrupt a steadfast heart." And if the Capitol can't even overcome two teenagers' puppy love, it certainly can't overcome thousands of adults' love for their neighbors, children, and homes, or a unified people's passion for freedom and justice.

Snow underestimated love, and it was his downfall.

[iamatmybreakingpojnt]

hijacked peeta being messy as hell was unfortunately the highlight of all three books for me (followed closely by katniss being a hater)

like omg.. “you’re a real peice of work” to katniss… him joking about stealing annie right in front of finnick and katniss… johanna making fun of peeta for talking to himself in public… saying he remembered a lot of “nights on the train” in front of actually everyone at lunch… randomly describing in detail the torture he watched happen when literally nobody asked and then being upset when no one responds… pouting on a chair because katniss refused to kill him… saying “are you serious” to president coin… somehow getting along with gale and talking about katniss when she’s two feet away from them…

and thats just off the top of my head HE’S TOO FUNNY

[maxiemumdamage]

Thinking about Katniss’s therapist from the end of Mockingjay tonight.

Thinking about how when I was a kid and I read those books, to me the therapist seemed like either a punchline — about how ineffective therapy is for someone as uncommunicative as Katniss, how little talking to one would change about her profound trauma and grief, or about how shitty mental health care would be in Panem — or an example of people around Katniss being negligent with her well-being.

But then I think back on it, and like…I actually think napping though their appointments, not forcing Katniss to engage, was the best thing that therapist could’ve done for her.

Katniss did not have a choice about going to those sessions. After Prim died and Katniss was burned and mute and grieving beyond what words could describe, Katniss was forced to see a therapist by the new regime.

And even if Coin didn’t personally order that the Mockingjay receive counseling, as a way to find out if Katniss still had the presence of mind to oppose her…I have no doubt she and dozens of others would’ve had access to anything and everything Katniss said during those mandated therapy sessions.

I’m not gonna pretend Katniss did not profoundly fucking need some professional help after all she went through. But when she’s receiving professional counseling at the end of Mockingjay, it’s a total farce — Katniss’s well-being is not the point, not in the least because she still has received no catharsis, no certainty that the horrors of war are over.

Not forcing Katniss to say anything, especially anything incriminating, was probably the kindest thing that therapist could’ve done. He let her heal and piece herself back together mentally, in a place where Katniss felt safe.

When she’s sent bad to 12 Katniss says her therapist testified on her behalf during her trial. That he told the court she was mentally unwell and couldn’t be held accountable for killing Coin. She presents it as though it was some kind of grand deception, a sneaky trick to keep her out of jail.

But I think that therapist just saw a traumatized 17-year-old girl for what she was, and helped as best he was able.

[looking4answers25]

Snow's speech in the beginning of MJP1 is so so ominous and I think it's really important that it be understood that both sides of the conflict here have one goal - the other side must lose and losses on their own side are acceptable if they give you an advantage. And that's not just fictional. If you have even a bare minimum knowledge of history, you can see/hear echoes of it in fiction and SC does this really well with THG and (so far) , the movie translates that.

"Since the Dark Days, Panem has had an unprecedented era of unprecedented peace... built upon cooperation and respect for law and order."

No. It was built on the blood of 24 children being forced to fight to the death every year for the entertainment of the country (specifically the privileged) and to reinforce the lack of power in the rest of the people.

"The Capitol is the beating heart of Panem."

Absolutely not. If anything it's a parasitic leech - sucking all that the districts are forced to give them and returning nothing but pain.

[looking4answers25]

Just started watching MJ Part 1, and I don't know what it is exactly - but something about President Coin makes me so uncomfortable. Her tone is just... it sounds kind but there's something off about it. Don't know if my perception is just being coloured by the fact that I've read the book but that whole first conversation she and plutarch have about keeping the momentum of the rebellion and needing Katniss to do it just reeks of manipulation. Like it's been mentioned before here, they're selling Katniss' YA protagonist arc to the people of Panem and us by pretending there's more power in her hands than there truly is - that she's the only one who can lead them to freedom and go against the Capitol. It's gross and I think the movie did well to translate that.

[mage-chocolate]

A really underrated Katniss moment in the books is the end of the first book when she thinks about how unfair Peeta is being— and how she wants to tell him she already misses him but that wouldn’t be fair on her part.

Given his home life, it really doesn’t seem like Peeta is shown much grace—and yet here’s this girl, trying her best to be fair to him, even when she feels he isn’t being fair to her.

[mage-chocolate]

To add to this, Katniss is really nice to Peeta every time he withdraws himself from her. She jumps right to holding his hands when he tells her he wants to be friends with her after months of icing her out. She gives him a big hug after the three months of him being a drill sergeant and hardly acting like her friend.

This isn’t even saying Peeta was particularly bad. It’s just really nice that the boy who was beaten for burning bread in what looked like an accident, is never denied affection when he’s not perfect and charming with Katniss.

[cuethesolareclipse13]

they’re falling in love again I think I might cry

[mandrake-mistakes]

Ya know what Katniss never says? That all the stuff she has to do with Peeta for the SCL act (star crossed lovers has an acronym now. Pass it on) is icky. She hates to perform, she’s terrified she won’t do a good enough job etc etc. But never once, not even a little bit, does she complain that she doesn’t want to kiss him, hug him, hold his hand. Imagine if you had to make out with someone you just met, and a lot, for weeks. I’d be HELLA uncomfortable even if he was nice about it. But katniss is never bothered by Peeta’s touch. Never. I just think that’s interesting

[looking4answers25]

In the middle of cleaning my dataset and adding tags to be excluded for my research because they're fanfic related (not relevant to my project) or THG prequel related (also not relevant) - and just saw this tag -

"tw: gale hawthorne".

[mage-chocolate]

There’s something so precious about Katniss—with all her trust issues—never even considering that Haymitch might lie to her.

And then there’s Peeta who is just as much of a problem child as Katniss, basically calling Haymitch a liar on national television.

[haveihitanerve]

Never forget the moment Peeta blustered onto the whipping block and tried to defend Katniss too and Haymitch just went “nope! You absolute fucking nutter I cannot have another child put themselves in harms way omfg you guys crave the bullets don't you.” and just yanked him back behind him 

[rosegardeninwinter]

hey Snow … this should have been your big lightbulb that Katniss isn’t faking her love for Peeta … if it was purely for sponsors, if she really was prioritizing getting home to her family above all else, if she really was as unfeeling as Snow wants to believe she is … her easy victory is RIGHT HERE … and it’s in such a desperate situation, even if you want to say she couldn’t kill Peeta for shame of going back home, no one would have blamed her for shooting Cato and hoping he wouldn’t take Peeta down with him … she had her out!!! two boys with one arrow!!! she doesn’t shoot because she cannot and will not leave this arena without Peeta Mellark