hello yes we are late but also yes we are going to temporarily turn into a The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes stan account
i have so many feelings about it
so first let's start with the obvious, hottest take. the story is not a parallel of snow/lucy being like katniss/peeta. it is actually a parallel of snow/sejanus and katniss/primrose. i suppose the common denominator is snow and katniss, but it's just - it's what could have been. that's why snow was so fixated on katniss, because they were the same. different, obviously, but the same. sejanus and primrose were the medics, the soft, the wanted to make the world a better place. they also both died. snow and katniss, they were survivors, and snow saw that in her, and it killed him that she didn't turn out like him because he knew they were the same person with slightly different circumstances, so why didn't they end up the same overall? but that was the capitol vs the districts, that was the 1% pull yourself up by your bootstraps vs the people who didn't even have any bootstraps.
second hot take is that snow is was and ever shall be a villain and the reason why the story was so hard to read was because suzanne put enough humanity in him initially that you hoped that the story would end differently than you knew it would. she played us like the humans we are and if you didn't register that then i don't know what to tell you. that's part of the message, the eternal hope of humanity. the eternal wish for humans to be good, deep down. snow saw it, rejected it, and became what he was in the trilogy. in my mind, the "real" snow only came to the surface in the last twenty or so pages of the book, but it was the little hints throughout that were terrifying and sad to me.
oh my god and thats another thing! yes, the hunger games were boring. it's almost like... kids fighting each other... isn't entertaining... isn't colorful.. doesn't serve a purpose... huh, imagine that. it's only when you dress something up that it becomes interesting, engaging, entertaining. a show isn't a show if it's just the bare minimum.
speaking of colorful, it's time to talk about lucy gray baird, the lyricist and songwriter of the hanging tree. the first mockingjay, as it were. a gray little thing that spread her wings to reveal her pure humanity beneath. a wonderful girl, a wonderful character study, a wonderful songbird, a wonderful snake. venomous? maybe. but with a voice like that, who wouldn't be drawn in by a siren?
"the show's not over 'til the mockingjay sings." and the trilogy. ended. after the mockingjay. sang.
