𝑲𝒂𝒕𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒔 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒏

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒚 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆, 𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒕.

[swirlingvortex]

If I could be a fictional character, I'd want to be the one what haunts every aspect of the narrative long after they're gone.

[fictionadventurer]

Personally, it's always a bit wild to me to see commentators interact with the Hunger Games franchise as if Collins were writing science fiction stories instead of essays with faces. She's just not that interested in fleshing out side characters or digging into the details of the worldbuilding. These characters are concepts and symbols before they're people. There's an almost mathematical precision to who and what she explores and how deeply she does it. This is a step or two away from pure allegory. If she were writing a couple of centuries ago, she'd have named her characters things like Innocence and Anger and Watch-Carefully-Your-Soul-Lest-Ye-Be-Damned, but since she's writing for modern audiences, she has to settle for puns and allusions. If she has another essay to write, she'll assign some faces to it; she's not going to look into backstories or other eras just for the sake of storytelling, and it's not a failing as a writer that she doesn't.

[waitingformydandelion]

Do we think there’s a chance that Sunrise on the Reaping is not from Haymitch’s perspective? He makes the most sense, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet.

[judas-is-scary]

Suzanne Collins has me deranged.

We know from the Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes that many of the features of the modern Hunger Games are Snow's invention, including those that motivate the districts, like prizes. It's fair to assume he likely came up with the idea for tesserae, it's an easy way to keep the districts well fed while encouraging/forcing participation and general involvement in the games. It's a great reminder, even the food you eat is linked to the games themselves. Tesserae is a type of tile work commonly associated with Romans which Collins draws a lot of inspiration from in her depiction of the Capital. It has also in the past been used as a token. In this case, you take the token of food in exchange for extra names in the bowl. Now that's fucking excellent on it's own, real neat bit of linguistic worldbuilding.

BUT what really gets me, what truly fucks me up is that Snow didn't name it that because he's like a language nerd. Tigris had to use tile buttons, tesserae buttons on his shirt during songbirds because they couldn't afford anything else. Snow inherently associates that material with poverty, specifically with the lack of food he had during that time. As a result tesserae represents poverty starvation and desperation to everyone in the districts. Snow is so god dam self obsessed he imbedded ,intentionally or not , personal fucking references to himself within the districts.

AND THAT is why Collins is so crazy to me that detail is tiny, you truly would not notice and in the grand scheme it's not that important but that's woman is on her shit and she's fucking thinking her thoughts and its genius. HER MIND UGH. truly has me messed.

[thequeenofuselessinformation]

"Not all men" you're absolutely right, Sejanus Plinth would never treat me like this

[oopsistartedthinking]

The new Hunger Games novel is called “Sunrise on the Reaping”

And Peeta’s favorite color is “orange like the sunset.”

Haymitch is the beginning of the end. The dawning of change. Without him going first Katniss (and Peeta) wouldn’t have made it out.

Lucy Gray was forgotten, like a dream.

Peeta and Katniss are the sunset of the Games. And afterwards they are safe and can close their eyes. And when again they open, their children will grow up in a safe and warm world.

Haymitch is in the middle. I’ve connected the dots.

[rosegardeninwinter]

Here’s the thing for me: the prequel does not make Katniss “the chosen one” (and believe me, I had such hatred for this book when it came out for thinking it did make her this fated hero). Snow himself may perceive her as “the chosen one” because he’s self-absorbed, and that is something the prequel shines light on: why Snow is so myopic about hurting Katniss specifically, instead of being effective in crushing the rebellion. He sees the narrative as revolving around him exclusively.

In reality, however, Katniss is still just a good and brave oppressed young woman who said “enough” — what is “fated” comes from the folkloric, interconnected nature of Appalachian culture, a culture rich with music, story, and supernatural goings on, a place that stands as the antithesis of elite society. Once Lucy Gray’s music and memory were in the wind and water, they weren’t going away, no matter who picked them up.

Also, I think we sometimes forget that these books have a lot of very subtly supernatural elements: off the top of my head, we have the birds stopping singing to listen to little Katniss, the fact that OF ALL PEOPLE the boy who loves her is reaped alongside her (I mean, that’s the plot, but still, and it kind of proves my point), all the eerily prescient connections to The Hanging Tree (“midnight”), Katniss inhabiting Finnick’s mind in his last moments, kissing Peeta to break the “spell” Snow has on him, Prim’s spirit seemingly trying to stop Katniss dying after the parachute bombs go off, not to mention the parade of “ghosts” Katniss sees in her rehab. That’s not all realism. No, the reaping wasn’t rigged. No, no one planned for Katniss to lead the rebellion because she maybe possibly was related to the Covey. It’s just one of those strange things that did happen here.

A ghost girl left some songs echoing in the coal-dusted streets, and one day a little girl sang one in a Kindergarten classroom, and a little boy heard her, and Snow’s days were numbered from that moment on. That, to me, is the most fated moment of the whole series: Katniss and Peeta, and the Valley Song: a real song, an American folk song, once sung by Lucy Gray. From that point on, the chips fall where they will.

[thesmileykate]

watching the movie has really brought to my attention that what katniss did with rue was not new.

like watching reaper make a mass grave of the children, covering them with the symbol of a government whose job it was to protect them. or lamina giving a mercy blow to marcus, putting him out of his misery.

and then thinking about haymitch and maysilee. the way he ran when he heard her screaming. and stayed with her until she died.

memorializing the other children in the games might have been less common, but it was not new. because, as it turns out, children do not like to see their friends, their peers die in front of them.

and so, it makes me feel a little more dubious when people say that katniss's memorialization of rue in the first book was *the* catalyst for the revolution. and that is not to say that it was not part of the reason, but it just wasn't the most revolutionary thing that happened.

because while the movie directly connects that incident with the first protest in district eleven, that is not what we get in the book. in the book, all we get is a little gift of gratitude from district eleven to the girl who protected a child.

so, what was so revolutionary?

i think it all revolves around katniss's actions that put aside her will to survive to protect the people she loves. because when push comes to shove, she will not become the monster that is set solely on self-preservation. one that is only focused on her survival.

and for some reason, in my head, katniss's actions with peeta are a little more important than her volunteering for prim.

because while she did volunteer to enter an arena that almost guaranteed her death, it was for her sister. a perfectly healthy girl with a future ahead of her.

but when peeta was dying, it was a little different. she didn't need to do anything and she would be guaranteed safety. he would just die and she would be crowned victor.

even if she could save him, who knows if he would even survive when the capitol picked him up. (i mean... he almost didn't). so, it literally does not make any practical sense why she would sacrifice her life for a dying boy.

but she couldn't let him die. so if that meant that if she had to gamble her life to possibly get him to safety, she would do it. because she had no choice. because she loved him, she gambled her life to call the capitol's bluff.

and that was revolutionary.

[symbolofrebellion]

To think it was Lucy who'd named Katniss all those years ago...

65 years later, Snow's history finally caught up to him.

[roseate-spoonwilliam]

“I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother’s face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.”

(The Hunger Games: Ch. 19)

How often do you reckon, after Katniss started hunting, Mrs. Everdeen would hear boots clicking against the ground and brighten momentarily before she remembers?

[deanwinchesterapologist]

im like if there was someone who never knew what was happening or going on

[adsosfraser]

with the way katniss neglected herself so much after mockingjay that she would barely even eat unless greasy sae was there, I imagine her hair would get matted in that time and one of the first physical touches between everlark after their hug is peeta gently working his way through every single knot for hours and it being therapeutic for both of them. for him to concentrate on one thing and work with his hands again. for her to just sit back and feel something besides the fog of her mind or the drowning grief. he apologises each time he has to cut out a section or it simply comes out (and he’s still unsure if his apologies hold a deeper meaning yet). in the end, he would attempt katniss’s signature braid and laugh so hard at the disjointed mess that katniss has no idea what’s going on back there but laughs along with him because it feels so good to hear that for the first time in years really. he unravels it and instead does two simple braids down her back, just like his girl who sang the valley song

[flodaya]

I saw someone say thg franchise is the only teen dystopia that understands that history and trends are not linear but a cycle that keeps reinventing itself, and how in the world of the hunger games this is clearly reflected in their clothes and architecture

[loungemermaid]

Thinking again about how Peeta gets sick from the train food, that it’s too rich for him, that he lived on stale and burnt bread, that he might have had materially enough food but not the right kinds. Thinking about how malnutrition is a spectrum, and food insecurity looks different in different households. That yes, he might not be one missed meal from starving to death, but that his teeth are probably weak. His mouth probably breaks out in ulcers when he eats fresh fruit. That he probably snuck down to the bakery when he was hungry and all there was were spoonfuls of sugar or jam. Maybe he had to take cake scraps to school for lunch, and how awful that would be, because it looks so luxurious but it’s not. How he probably loved when his dad bought one of Katniss’s squirrels because it was so fresh and alive, so unstale. Thinking a lot about food insecurity.

[galacticwildfire]

The older I get the more I respect Peeta for looking at Katniss after she threw him into a wall and saying I’m gonna wife her

[symbolofrebellion]

Tigris was to Coryo, what Katniss was to Prim.

[thelonemockingjay]

He thought of the time he had collapsed and lain in the street with the swan flu and no one, no one would stop to help. Racked with chills, burning with fever, limbs spiked with pain. Even though she was sick herself, Tigris had found him that night and somehow gotten him home. - Tbosas

Throughout the book, Tigris resembles Katniss in the way she took care of Coriolanus, looking out for him to the best of her abilities. She was 3 years his elder, working day and night just to put food on the table, the same way Katniss was 4 years Prim's, hunting and trading for food. To Tigris, Coryo was her 'baby cousin who wouldn't hurt a fly', much like how Katniss has always viewed Prim. Their love for their little sister/cousin is almost maternal. But in the end, while Katniss ended up inciting a rebellion to protect her little sister, Tigris joined in the war to end Snow.

[symbolofrebellion]

I just KNOW Lucy Gray Baird saying "The show's not over until the mockingjay sings" played inside Snow's head as Katniss singing 'hanging tree' played on his television.