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stream

Dazed and Confused (1993) dir. Richard Linklater

paper-wounds

Fortesa Latifi, from The Truth About Grief.

loveridden1999

doing things at the right age is literally a made up concept. you can start/pursue anything at any age. btw.

loveridden1999

remember remember

fictionadventurer

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”. The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA.

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

datasnake

Other examples of “blamed for things their copycats did” include Watchmen (blamed for the gritty antihero comics of the 90s) and Madoka Magica (blamed for excessively edgy and grimdark magical girl shows).

fictionadventurer

Four years on, and I think you might be the first person to add this type of comment to this post. After receiving so many comments that are like “THG is nowhere near on the level of LotR” or “THG didn’t invent YA dystopia”, it’s so refreshing to see someone understand exactly what I meant by framing THG as “a work blamed for its copycats”, and expand on it with examples that I didn’t know about.

It’s so rare to get an original comment on this post. Thank you so much.

jackdaw-kraai

Also to add to this, the love triangle being awkward and forced was the point! It was the whole point! It was older, manipulative adults putting three teens into that position for their own gains and forcing strife and trauma into their lives without the idea of what’s best for the teens even being remotely up for consideration! The love triangle feeling forced and disruptive of the plot is the point!

Collins didn’t put in a love triangle because romance and by extension the implication of sex sells, but as a criticism of that exact concept! It was a blatant criticism of teens being forced into adult situations for the amusement and benefit of adults before they were remotely ready! That’s the point! So much of the Hunger Games is about criticizing exactly how adults force kids into situations that are normal and relatable to adults for their own amusement and ignoring how it fucks up the kids along the way because kids are just seen and treated as tools instead of whole entire people that need to have control of their own lives the love triangle being unnatural is the point it’s the point it’s the entire point I’m not even anything more than a casual reader of these books once in my childhood but even I realized at twelve that the whole point was that for kids it’s a warning about adults who want to use you and treat you like an adult being bad fucken news

Like, for adults it reads as a criticism of their own behavior and failings but I remember very clearly as a kid even when the books weren’t my favorites that Collins was pretty much the only writer who used her books to sit me down and say “hey, you’re a kid, and that’s not a bad thing. I get you want to be treated like a person, and that’s normal, that’s your right, you’re not crazy for that. But adults trying to treat you like an adult aren’t safe and are very bad news don’t fucking trust them they’re not safe they don’t actually care about you they’re trying to use you and it will fuck you up. Don’t fall for it, I know you’re smart enough not to if someone warns you about it.”

Collins didn’t write her books for adults to argue about them. She used them to be one of the only voices telling kids very frankly about the dangers of grooming, what it looks like, why adults do it, and what it can do to you. She trusted children to be smart, clever, and aware enough to understand her messages and make use of them, and she’s frankly one of the only writers who understood that children are not only ready for this info, but that adults aren’t. She sat millions of kids across the globe in multiple languages down and told them very frankly what it means for an adult to want to treat you like older than you really are, what it looks like, and what it does to fellow kids exactly like you. She told kids it not only isn’t right for adults to want to force romance and those kinds of adult relationships on you, even with your fellow teens, before you are ready, she also showed what it means to be used in many, many other ways and how it will fuck you up, even if the adults don’t actually mean to harm you.

Collins showed, without mincing words, that adults who try to make you love, fight, politic, perform, even kill like you’re an adult aren’t doing so because you’re mature for your age, but because they want to use you without caring what it will do to you. I can’t even tell you what it did to me as a kid to learn that and then see militaries try to recruit as young as they can, contests designed for kids to compete like adults, and adults try to apply “you’re mature for your age” in so many different ways. It made me aware, as a child, that I not only was right in feeling like adults were failing me, but that I had the right to outright say “I am a kid, this isn’t how you treat a kid” which saved me from a lot of adults being able to worsen my trauma without pushback because I didn’t know any better.

Hunger Games weren’t my favorite books as a kid, and still aren’t now. But they were some of the only books who were legitimately, truly, and completely on my side as a powerless child, tween, and teen and armed me with a knowledge no other adult tried to give me without mincing words. They allowed me to be secure in my own mistrust of school staff who ended up trying to ruin my life because I looked bad on their records for being neurodivergent and not give them an inch. They allowed me to tell my assigned guidance counselors in the program I ended up in that each of them lied to me when they said they would be there for me and I ended up being transferred between counselors four times in about two years and that I couldn’t trust them because I couldn’t trust they wouldn’t be gone in a few months to which the last one ended up agreeing.

The lessons Hunger Games taught me allowed me time and time again as a kid and teen to outright defy adults who I realized weren’t acting in my best interest and that being a child didn’t mean I couldn’t trust my own gut and instincts. I still ended up horribly traumatized but I know for a fact that those lessons kept it from being endlessly worse by teaching me right as all the bullshit began that it wasn’t me. I was a kid. And adults don’t treat kids this way.

Say what you want of Collins, but she knew exactly what kids needed to know and understand that no other adult would be willing to tell or teach them. Even if it meant other adults would tell her she was every horrible thing under the sun for it.

phobic-human

Victory To The Palestinian People

Artist: Unknown

Circa 1970

depsidase

putall

David Hoffman, London, 1973

mysharona1987

thereadmind

digitalspite-deactivated2025072

Took me years to get this

ladyimtolstoy

A friendly reminder to USians: if you are planning to vote on Election Day, your mantra is "Nothing I see today convinces me not to go vote."

Exit polls suggest DT cannot be caught? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Exit polls suggest KH has it in the bag? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly red? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly blue? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Polls can be misleading (intentionally or not). The methodology can be biased (or simply poor). Early results may not reflect what the full count will show. There may be a red mirage. NOTHING YOU SEE CONVINCES YOU NOT TO VOTE.

The biggest Democratic win in swing states means nothing if democrats don't turn out everywhere to keep the reliably blue states blue.

VOTE. Wear appropriate weather gear if you think you may have to stand in a line outside (coat, hat, gloves, umbrella, sunhat, whatever, you know where you live). Bring water and a snack and something to do (book, game on your phone, podcast and headphones, whatever, you know what you like). GO VOTE.

NOTHING YOU SEE ON ELECTION DAY CONVINCES YOU NOT TO VOTE.

ultrareginarules

THIS. NOTHING MATTERS EXCEPT YOUR VOTE. GET IT CAST THEN YOU CAN SIT BACK AND LET THE DEMOCRATS DEAL WITH ALL THE BULLSHIT MAGA WILL DO TO TRY AND INVALIDATE IT. JUST GET IT DONE.