*screams for eternity*

Books y'all SOC, TRC, and PJO mainly but others'll show up

[koalas-koalas-everywhere]

Remember how Percy actually thought the Ancient Greek exhibition at the Met was pretty interesting and was telling people to shut up so he could listen better? That boy totally would’ve had a greek mythology phase if he hadn’t… you know, had that other greek mythology phase.

[velinxi]

young gods au doodles

[velinxi]

Perseus, you’re back! Where is my sister?

[thaliasthunder]

Zeus: u can have absolutely anything in the world, we swear on the river styx

Percy: i want yall to be responsible parents

Zeus:

[silima]

baby's first swear

[jamesscarstairs]

peeta mellark really was that bitch, pulling that “if it weren’t for the baby” line out of nowhere, oh he knew

[earlsgrey]

if peeta mellark was in the game of thrones universe, he would have won the throne in 2 seasons max

[mayfriend-archive]

#president snow aiming to kill them without making it a public spectacle #peeta; about to invent a pregnancy: oh haven’t you heard?

[creativefiend19]

Peeta whenever a mic is shoved under his nose

[velinxi]

Nico doodles from my twitter

[transpercy]

are you even claimed 😭😭 + some comments

[velinxi]

Have some more percy jackson content in 2021

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Nico and Percy’s dynamic in BotL is honestly the funniest fucking thing because Percy’s this emotionally exhausted 15 year old who is the sole person concerned about this feral 11 year old street urchin that wants to kill him…Chiron and the rest of the camp are just like ‘sometimes, children are homeless and they die. what can you do😔‘ and Percy’s just like ‘no???? we need to make sure he’s eating???? and that he’s not captured by an army of monsters???’ and Nico keeps trying to plot Percy’s downfall except he can’t actually come up with a plan because he’s Eleven or whatever and it’s just….remember when you were 15? remember what that felt like? now imagine being 15 and trying to wrangle an 11 year old that’s hissing and kicking your shins into brushing his teeth. imagine trying to tell this little asshole to go to bed before 10pm and he pulls out a fucking sword. how is someone supposed to handle that??? Percy surely doesn’t know! there’s a scene in BoO where Nico’s like ‘I don’t want to eat anything, but I know Percy would annoy the fuck out of me to force me to eat if he was here ugh’ sfkjsdfkj Percy literally had to CONDITION him into acting like a functioning person…and Percy’s inner monologue half the time is like ‘Yes I would kill for Nico di Angelo. Yes he is the worst person I know and I Will strangle him to death one day.’ like he doesn’t even completely like Nico as a person but everyone else is just chill with letting him run around by himself so Percy somehow ends up having to pseudo-parent this goth brat when he’s 15 and Barely Holding His Own Shit Together like….objectively an incredible dynamic lmao

[nothewraith]

nina would NOT be good with kids this is a fact

[nothewraith]

good w kids: inej, jesper, kuwei

better w kids than you would think: kaz, matthias

uncomfortable w kids but not bad in long run: wylan

horrible w kids: nina

[naslostcontrol]

I need you, Inej

[petruchio]

i get why a lot of people don’t like reading mockingjay as much as the rest of the trilogy, but i think it’s actually so essential to understanding the central thesis of the entire hunger games series.

the whole point of the hunger games is this: all human life is valuable, and artificial divisions between people keep them weak. and the only way out is radical love.

and this is something that is literally echoed again and again in the books. take, for example, gale. why is gale such an interesting, complex, and yet reprehensible character? yes, it’s because at the end katniss cannot separate his bomb from prim’s death. but it’s deeper than that. why does gale build the bomb in the first place? it’s because gale doesn’t see every human life as valuable. gale is willing to kill people and to deny them their humanity simply because they are his “enemy.” so, there’s the obvious example of his willingness to blow up the nut with everyone inside and his disregard for the human casualty. and the people in the nut aren’t even from the captiol, he just wants to do it because the stereotype of that district is their allegiance to the capitol, and gale hates that.

but there’s another scene, also in mockingjay, that i think goes under-discussed which is his view of katniss’ prep team. when katniss finds her prep team literally imprisoned in 13, she’s horrified and upset by the conditions they are in. but gale isn’t. and he’s confused about why katniss would care for them! her response is to say that it’s because they cried when she went to the quarter quell. and gale is like, “sure, but they’re still from the captiol.” and this argument is so important. because katniss argues that the prep team deserves to be treated as human beings, and when he presses her on why, she basically says because they treated her as a human being. but gale can’t see that–all he can see is that they’re from the capitol, and he’s confused about why katniss should care.

and this is, so crucially, what katniss learns in the hunger games. she realizes that she doesn’t want to kill the other tributes just because they are from the other districts. she hates the fact that they have turned her against people who are, in their core, just like her. frightened children who have been manipulated to kill other children against their will, all selected based on their district, a social divide that has literally been invented and imposed on them.

and another just absolutely essential thing to understand here is that peeta knows this all along. we talk at length about how peeta’s defining trait is his kindness. but what’s so important about peeta’s kindness is how it transcends any boundaries of social class or social division.

when peeta gives katniss the bread, it’s important to note that just before he does that, we hear his mother talking about “seam brats pawing through her trash.” peeta’s mother buys into the social divides in district twelve–she views herself as better than someone from the seam simply because of her standing as a merchant, and reinforces these class divides by refusing to extend the simplest humanity to a child from the seam. she literally refuses to feed a starving child on the grounds of a social divide, within a world that already has divided them into districts. but peeta doesn’t see it like this. peeta refuses to deny katniss food just because she’s from the seam. peeta gives her kindness. peeta gives her humanity.

and he does the same thing in the games! his entire first interview, the dramatic king focuses, not on the games, but on his genuine love and adoration for another tribute. how radical! to refuse to subscribe to a system which asks him to hate her? to want to kill her? and to instead confess his love for her? sure, katniss ends up being the mockingjay. katniss might have held out the berries. but peeta in that moment is the one who sets the rebellion in motion. peeta is the one who refuses to engage in the senseless hatred of someone who “should” be his enemy. instead, he reaches out in love.

and it all culminates at the end of mockingjay, when katniss votes for the capitol hunger games to gain coin’s trust. and peeta is utterly horrified by this. because he can’t understand how she could have been through everything he has been through and not understand that continuing to senselessly kill human beings (children!!) for some kind of revenge just reinforces these binary modes of thinking. but the thing is–katniss DOES see that. and when coin proposes it, that’s when she knows she has to stop her. because coin, like gale, like peeta’s mother, and like so others many around her, is still buying into these divides. is still viewing the captiol as the enemy. is still viewing a human life as expendable. 

and there’s a quote in mockingjay that i think lays this out pretty explicitly. katniss says, after she kills coin and is recovering, point blank: “they can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them.” she’s realized the crux of the entire hunger games–that manipulating us to hate and kill our fellow humans, that drawing up divisions between people because of where they live and what they produce, that believing that hating someone on the basis of any of these is justification for their death, is all a farce. it’s all a distraction. it’s all pretend. she says, in the same chapter: “no one benefits in a world where these things happen.” not the districts. not the capitol. not the victors. no one.

the entire arc of the hunger games is really just about katniss catching up to what peeta has known from the start. katniss overcoming all the manipulation from those around her, all the glitz and glamour, all the artificial social and class divides to see what peeta has seen clearly from the start: love.

[petruchio]

the writing style of the hunger games is addictive and that’s a huge part of the appeal of the novels that didn’t get translated to the screen. i always think about the stephanie meyer (lol) quote on the hunger games book where she says “i couldn’t put this book down i had to take it out to dinner and keep reading it” and i mean, so true bestie stephanie, but here’s why.

it’s because every chapter ends in a cliffhanger. and i’m not kidding when i say that it is so flawlessly paced that you can’t put it down, but those beats are so crucial to why the book is so amazing to read. think of the end of the literal first chapter of the book: “it’s primrose everdeen.” that is a BOMB that she drops in that first chapter, and after the introduction, you as the reader are as blown away as katniss. so, you can’t help but turn the page and keep reading!! because you HAVE to know what happens next. and how does the second chapter end? like this: “of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.” you, the reader, are instantly thinking, oh my god, what is going to happen? are the odds going to be in her favor? is she going to have to kill peeta? you HAVE to know. so you turn the page.

the reason this works so well is because suzanne collins wrote for television and you can tell. it is my personal belief that thg should have been adapted for television and not into films, because missing those beats, even just the white space of the page, i think fundamentally warps the pacing and the structure of the novels. i know i go on and on and on about the “because she came here with me” and “if it weren’t for the baby” lines but seriously this is why peeta is a media genius, its’ because suzanne COLLINS is a media genius. can you imagine watching that on television and the screen just cuts to black and goes to commercial or the episode ends and you have to wait to see what happens next?? it’s GENIUS

furthermore, the hunger games series as a whole is divided into a trilogy, but within that, divided into three sections each. and each section ends with an even bigger cliffhanger than the last. i see these, in the world of television, as mini season breaks within the larger three “seasons” of the show (that being the whole trilogy). here are the first three endings of all the sections. imagine you’re watching this on television and these lines drop, and then you have to wait several more weeks for the next installment. you would be climbing the walls for it. part 1 (the tributes): “beeta blushes beet red and stammers out. “because. because. she came here with me.” part 2 (the games): “before i can stop myself, i call out Peeta’s name.” part 3 (the victor) (the end of the book): “i take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when i will finally have to let go.” those are ALL cliffhangers and make it impossible to stop reading.

(also, we can talk about the fact that all three of those beats are focused on peeta, the one who seems to most intrinsically understand dramatic timing and using his words to create a narrative.)

anyway that is why it is my personal and impassioned belief that the hunger games should have been adapted for television rather than film, because it would have been far more in keeping with the spirit, tone, and pacing of the novels to adapt it into a serialized form rather than a 2 hour film. 

[petruchio]

one of my favorite things about katniss especially in the first book is that she is literally ALWAYS scheming. and like it’s a great character trait honestly because she’s super observant and aware of how she is being perceived, but it’s also fucking hilarious because she constantly assumes that everyone around her is the same way. like when peeta is crying after being selected and she’s like “hm. what could this strategy mean? is he possibly trying to look weak to trick me? won’t work on me you chiseled beast” LIKE KATNISS HES JUST SAD

[sentrysvoid]

The Hunger Games (2012) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

bonus:

[medievalthymes]

peeta:

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I unironically love the character names in the Hunger Games series.

Haymitch, Peeta, Hazelle, Leevy, Maysilee, Finnick and Greasy Sae look bizarre when you first see them written down, but then if you think about how they look and/or sound it's pretty clear that they're meant to be modern names, only modern names that have changed spelling and pronounciation over time— as you would have expected them to have done so over how ever many hundreds of years it's been since our modern day.

(Remember, though The Hunger Games themselves have only been going on for 75 years, the universe they're in is canonically post-apocalyptic— the reason nobody ever mentions what's happening in the rest of the world is that everywhere except America was destroyed in a nuclear war. We're not given much of an indication how long it's been since then.)

Peeta is Peter, Haymitch is Hamish, and Hazelle is Hazel, Maysilee is Maisie— the changes in pronunciation are slight (Peeta and Peter are already virtually identical in my accent), and the spelling has changed to match.

Leevy is either a corruption of Lily, or more likely I suspect 'Livvy', a common nickname for Olivia; Finnick is probably from Finnegan (shorten in to 'Finneg' and then say it over and over very fast); Sae could be short for Sarah, or Sally or even Susan— it's not uncommon for nicknames to become real names in their own right (look at Harry or Molly as examples).

I also love the trend of having District 1 parents give their kids names relating to the luxury items their district produces— Glimmer, Marvel, Gloss, Cashmere, Velvereen (presumably a corruption of 'velveteen'), Facet— because those things are all a) objectively pretty/nice (like naming a kid 'Diamond' or 'Star' today) and presumably status symbols in their district.

Meanwhile District 3 does the same thing, but all the pronunciations are corrupted. You've got technical names to do with the manufacture of electronics— Wiress (wireless), Circ (circuit)— but you've also got what I'm pretty sure are meant to be corruptions of modern brand names— Beetee (BT), Teslee (Tesla).

To me this kind of suggests that District 3 is less conscious of this influence than District 1. Like, parents in 1 are more likely to deliberately think "I'll name my kid Glimmer, because things that glimmer are pretty" whereas 3 as a culture might have genuinely forgotten that those names used to mean something, in the same way that most of us don't think much about how the name 'Arthur' comes from the old word for 'Bear'.

And of course, then you've got the Capitol leaning hard into those ancient Roman vibes with names like Fulvia, Plutarch, Seneca, Tigris… but still using the European/American personal name+family name format, which the Romans didn't really do. Like it's very clear that this is a future society fetishising the classical era, rather than an actual resurgence of Roman culture.

It's just such a cool world-building detail. So many dystopian novels just go for modern names (and there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're only looking a couple of hundred years into the future) but thinking about how names might have evolved over the centuries and the different naming traditions that might have developed in different areas really adds a whole new dimension to the culture of Panem.