ginger, fandom obsessed

hot take: i think the tragedy of coriolanus snow isn’t that he never loved lucy gray. i think it’s that he did.

hear me out now, saying “he never cared about lucy gray” is easier to paint him as the heartless villain that he appears to be later on down the line when he was the capitol leader.

what I feel happened was that he did love lucy gray at the start, it is clear as day that he loved her; and he so proved it with many of his actions in both the book and film. he did love her, but then his love became confused with possession and control. lucy gray and coriolanus snow are completely different people— that’s why it didn’t, and wouldn’t work.

snow favoured control and power over love and freedom which is basically everything lucy gray is as a person. she’s unpredictable, desperate for freedom, independent.

snow loved her so much that his love turned into obsession, which grew into an immense fear that lucy, with her desire for freedom, would try and escape him. leave him behind— which she eventually did, which, in my opinion, is why he shot at her.

I personally really like the scene where they’re in the woods and he shoots at her without even knowing for sure if she is trying to escape. she was out of his sight for no more than a second before he opted for his gun. that shows exactly the moment his love had turned into thirst for control over her. he no longer loved her healthily but hungrily. he believed she was his— because he was entitled to her now due to his feelings.

and maybe that’s the irony.

because I believe snow fell in love with lucy gray because of her qualities, and then over time he started resenting her for it.

maybe he was jealous?

somewhere along the way, which I believe is when he shot at her, snow stopped seeing lucy as a person he loved and instead as a person he’s entitled to.

snow is my favourite character of thg series, because of how remotely complex of a character he is. I know he is a bad person, who did bad things, and wanted to continue doing bad things without consequence.

but I don’t believe he was always bad, and that’s what’s most heartbreaking about it.

could lucy gray have changed his outcome if he had chosen her over power?

which is why his character is so much more tragic.

Now, Finnick understood what someone pretty looked like. He understood his friends calling their school crushes pretty, even agreeing on a few. He understood that he was pretty. But he never understood what that meant, where to put that information to use.

He’d once confided to his friends that he didn’t all that much care about how pretty his future lover would be, just as long as he liked them and they liked him. His friends all chuckled and joked about it, “Finnick Odair, the gentleman, who woulda thought”. That was the moment Finnick realized it wasn’t normal. He wasn’t normal.

It appalled him, to be quite frank. The idea of spending forever with someone because of a fleeting idea of “pretty” sounded like a notion straight from the Capitol and their peacock-esque citizens.

After everything the Capitol did to Finnick, his feelings about that attraction never wavered, instead solidifying with every secret-bought partner. They only cared about pretty boy Finnick, Hunger Games victor. Not one of the vain, looks-obsessed moneybags truly cared about Finnick, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

When Finnick did finally find a partner, she was exactly what he’d needed. Annie Cresta may not have been the prettiest, or most normal, but she was better than anyone else Finnick could have dreamed of. Screw whoever made up the idea of pretty partners, having a lover based on beauty. Annie Cresta was a lovely girl who Finnick loved every part of, and who he knew loved every part of him, not just the pretty boyfriend dragged around the Capitol.

yes!!! this!!!! you get it!!!!!

katniss and peeta never had to go through the normal Victor Experience with the pain of mentoring or victor prostitution or the companionship within the victors. they just don’t Get It, like you said. and that’s not their fault!! the capitol shows these people hanging off capitol citizens arms, oohing and awing at everything in their path every year, fully convincing everyone that the victors are happy. that they want to be here, away from their home and families hanging off of strange men and women’s arms. they depict the perfect victors, who smile and wave and sign autographs. victors like chaff and haymitch get about five seconds of screen time before being pushed aside because they’re not interesting, they’re not the focus, they’re not complying with the image we are depicting. they don’t conform with the images we are showing to our citizens.

i truly believe that there was no way all of the victors liked katniss and peeta. actually, i don’t think many of the victors liked katniss and peeta. as in, there was probably like two that genuinely liked them. and also, from their perspective, these are the reason they’re going back into the arena!! none of the victors wanted to do that!!!

TBOSAS spent years being criticized for making readers inhabit the perspective of an unpleasant protagonist.

Snow is selfish. Snow is entitled. Snow is manipulative. Above all, he’s perceptive. He’s strategic. He’s incredibly similar to trilogy Haymitch’s most obvious traits. The book trusts readers to sit with that discomfort.

Some readers liked that. A lot of (very vocal) readers absolutely did not.

So if you imagine an environment where the dominant conversation around the previous prequel was "people don't like spending 500 pages inside the head of a self-serving protagonist," then SOTR is the perfect example of an overcorrection. The simpler, more blatant writing style also lends itself to the overcorrection.

Instead of a protagonist whose flaws drive the story, we get a protagonist who is nothing but “morally good”. Instead of someone who shapes events through his personality, we get someone to whom events happen. He doesn’t steer the ship with his strategy, he doesn’t “own it”, or end up carving his own path like Coriolanus. He frolics, takes care of his “geese” (or was it doves? I forgot), tries to sacrifice himself for a child that randomly appears at the end of the games, and even when he’s even remotely “bad” by differentiating himself at the interviews, he still apologizes to the other tributes because god forbid he be remotely self-serving like Coriolanus— a trait people vocally and widely hated.

The irony in the disconnect is that Haymitch became a fan favorite for almost the exact opposite reason. People didn't love Haymitch because he was morally pure. They loved Haymitch because he is an asshole, not the overcorrection that sotr tries to make to account for the criticism ballad received.

Collins did not plan on writing Haymitch’s story. She claims she thought about the premise of Hume’s implicit submission and Haymitch’s story best aligned. We all know that’s not true. Careers, capitolites, even Finnick alone would’ve made a better run at it.

Is it arguably the bleakest and least hopeful of all the hunger games books? Absolutely. It's also hands down the funniest book Suzanne Collins has ever written.

Unlike Mockingjay or sotr there isn't even the pretence of a happy ending, and you know something's gone horribly wrong when the supposedly privileged Capitol students witness horrors on par with anything the gamemakers will later devise, while the tributes are treated worse than animals.

But, amongst all the suffering you've also got...

'She was terrifying, really. And here he was in his uniform, clutching a rose like a lovesick schoolboy, hoping she would - what? Like him? Trust him? Not kill him on sight?'

-Meet-cute of the century right here.

'Who were all these people hanging around on a weekday at the zoo? Didn't they have jobs? Shouldn't the children be in school? No wonder the country was such a mess.'

-Future president Coriolanus Snow ignoring the fact he's in a cage at risk of being beaten to death by an angry mob

'"I'm supposed to fill out this questionnaire about your background. Do you mind?" He pulled out a single sheet of paper.

"Not a bit. I love talking about myself," she said'

-Lucy Gray 'any publicity is good publicity' Baird recognising the games for the PR opportunity they were.

'In rhetoric class, she'd once attributed his inability to decipher the deeper meaning of a poem to the fact he was too self-absorbed.'

-Coriolanus seething over Livia Cardew, the girl it's heavily implied he goes on to marry, in the immediate aftermath of a brutal murder, and essentially proving her point.

'They simultaneously leaned in for another kiss when the peacekeepers laid hands on her and led her away.

Festus nudged him on the way out of the hall. "That was some goodbye."

Coriolanus just shrugged. "What can I say? I'm irresistible."'

-Coriolanus 'I've kissed precisely two girls in eighteen years' Snow thinking he's a player. This right here is how you do unreliable narrators.

'Surely, if there had ever been an exception to the rule, it was Lucy Gray Baird. A person who defied easy definition. A rare bird, just like him. Why else had the pressure of her lips on his turned his knees to water?'

-Tell me you didn't have sex in high school without telling me you didn't have sex in high school.

'"I started out as a medical doctor, you know" she said.

"Obstetrics."

How awful, Coriolanus thought. To have you be the first person in the world a baby sees.'

-Dr Gaul getting not even a fraction of the roasting she deserves.

'Did you tell your best friend his crush was a cannibal? Never a rule book when you needed one.'

-Coriolanus 'I've internalised the horrors of war' Snow pretending he isn't still haunted by that severed leg

'Lucky did the weather report district by district, with the added fillip of Jubilee's company, but the bird refused to talk again, so Lucky began speaking for it in a high-pitched voice. "How's the weather look in district 12, Jubilee?" "They've got snow, Lucky." "Snow in July, Jubilee?" "Coriolanus Snow!"

Coriolanus gave the camera a thumbs up when they cut for his reaction. He could not believe this was his life.'

-Just A+ daytime TV content, the moment everyone realises 'oh damn, these kids are hiding rather than murdering each other, we're going to need to kill some time' and Lucky brings out the parrot still sends me.

'He gave Coriolanus a hard stare. "Are you like your mother?"

The conversation wasn't going the way Coriolanus had imagined. Where was the talk of reward money? He couldn't be persuaded to take it if it was never offered.'

-Coriolanus faced with the reality that Strabo Plinth is likely one of those rich people who got rich by not splashing the cash.

'She could only mean the one lake house that still had a roof. Probably his last roof, until he built one himself. How did you build a roof anyway? It had not been a question on the officer candidate test?'

-Coriolanus fresh of the back of thinking he's too 'exceptional' to adapt to a life in the woods, like sure my dude, you're probably too exceptional to do the washing up or take the bins out too.

Then you've got my personal favourite:

'And he did love her! He did! It was just that, only a few hours into his new life in the wilderness, he knew he hated it.'

Here, you have a District that is stricter than 12. While the peacekeepers in 12 shop at the Hob and turn a blind eye to Katniss's hunting, they shoot kids in District 11 for eating the food they harvest.

You have a District that has already given to much to Katniss, in spite of the Capital. They have given their children, they have given their bread. And now, they give their respect.

They are not a flawed utopia, and they are not some fantastical unknown version of a dystopia.

The Lost Cities is a nation governed by definition a authoritarian surveillance state.

Elections in KOTLC use candidates pre-chosen by the council- meaning the citizens actually have no say in who's elected at all. That's not a democracy. Not to mention we have no idea what to voting system in KOTLC actually is (first past the post, approval based, etc), meaning we have no idea how votes are counted (but that doesn't matter if theres no choice for the people about whos even up for election)

The lost cities have no checks or balances for those in power, trials do not have a judge or jury, and punishments range as un-harshly as a slap on the wrist to causing someone to have a severe psychotic break and then locking them up alone.

Speaking of shattering: Prentice was not shattered because they thought he was a terrorist- common misconception- he was shattered because they thought he was a traitor. It wasn't because he was a danger to the public, but because he was a danger to the state.

Elves wear tracking collars under the guise of national security, ones that we know from bk 8.5 regularly record the conversations and video of those wearing them.

The Matchmaking system upholds eugenics principles simply to allow the "greatest version of the elvin race" to presist.

It's mentioned several times that children at Foxfire are not taught comprehensive history about really important events that are covered up the council (ie the first gnomish plague). The council hides important facts in caches that are then hidden away from everyone.

It's even pointed out in the Peace Summit- the fact the other leaders of other intelligent species feel its just as important to hear from the Neverseen- which can either be seen as a group of terrorists or freedom fighters- as it was to hear from the Council.

Elves also use electronic currency, which means the council has full access to birth funds (basically the only real sense of money we get in Kotlc). Which means, if they truly wanted to, they could simply cut your income off for a perceived slight to the council.

The council commits so many war crimes throughout the series that I just need to make a separate post to go through all of them.

I'm pointing this out, because Shannon seems to believe her own book shows a flawed utopia, but it doesn't. If the so-called utopia (a life with a pre-chosen spouse where your constantly monitored and forced to keep up a mask, lest your life and sanity get stripped) only is allowed for some people and even then, only truly is allowed for those at the top, with no option for anyone, its not a fucking utopia.

And who's buying condoms on Etsy????

It's not pro-life, but it's also not not pro-life, if you get what I mean?

I think it's totally possible to be pro-choice yet believe that life begins at contraception, because pro-choice is about putting the mother's bodily autonomy and freedom of choice over anything else, which doesn't automatically mean that the unborn's life has no value at all.

Nonetheless I still think it was an unnecessary and over-complicating detail to add to the worldbuilding. I don't know if Shannon added it to reduce the age gap between Sophie and the boys she's shipped with, or if Shannon really had an agenda behind this all.

She made the decision to read the dictionary when she was little, not to impress people, but purely because she loved learning and found it fascinating. she memorized all the stars, which had to be more than just her photophographic memory. perhaps she did it for an astronomy class or something, but still.

not to mention, Sophie has canonically read fantasy books like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, which yeah, are more popular books, so that doesn't mean she's a nerd, but that's because Shannon Messenger wanted to reference books people would know.

I'd have liked to see more of nerd Sophie. She should have every right to on a rampage about her favorite element on the period table (perhaps I'm projecting, my favorite is radium) and why it's the best and who created it and all the little details. Surely, Sophie loved learning and reading, and also before she learned that people didn't want to hear these things (wrongly, there are definitely people who would love to hear her rambles, rip Sophie foster, she would have loved Tumblr).

i would love to see dex and Sophie nerding out together over science and exchanging words in quick rushes. also dex is a movie nerd, there's no denying that, and I fully believe Sophie is a fandom nerd, more leaning toward books, but she definitely would be able to discuss movies for ages.

(also, Sophie was greatly isolated as a child, she would have definitely spent her time in a book or watching her favorite movie/tv show for the fifty billionth time)

Oh, and Sophie is a music nerd. I think it'd also be neat to see Sophie obsess over the different styles of music with the different cultures with Dex, but them still being obsessed with human music.