The echoes of what I didn't say @sol-exposito - Tumblr Blog

captain-ani

it couldn't have been me your honor I was busy drawing tiny maomao et al

ooppo

A PORN BOT UNFOLLOWED ME?

ooppo

not that i care

heartpeacenquiet

It's okay if it takes a little longer than you thought.

poisonintheink

my broken pieces flow to your shore /

— ʀ.ᴛ.

sherrypoetry

The ache of everything unsaid.

x-fag

a good sailor will always return to the sea

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.

beej-the-icebox

OP you’re so right and I’m glad you said it.

I would like to add that Collins lived in the southeast, and her world building is about how those powerful in the US ignore and exploit and ruin communities inside AND outside the states (x). [also both Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson were born and raised in Appalachian Kentucky (x)]

So District 12 is a reflection of the coal industry in Appalachia (x), and the districts reflect the poverty and oppression vs. prosperity and power in the different regions of the US (and the world), and how industry dominates culture and circumstance.

This also reflects the wider context of how the US regards the world at large, and the ways that war, exploitation, and power are constant realities in every country, culture, and region.

images of foxes with things in their mouths...

minyicho

starting a collection of my favourite AO3 author’s notes

honourable mentions

noisylovepatrol

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Key Animation

lelif

the beauty of life

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