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Rocky and Grace being in some kind of meeting with the science thrum on Erid's surface (Grace in his xenonite suit), shortly after they arrive, when Rocky notices that Grace is being even more clingy than usual. Like he's constantly got at least one arm on Rocky's carapace, and has not moved away from Rocky since the meeting started. He's much stiller than he usually is— even accounting for his weakness from the malnutrition— and his light sensing organs keep rolling around in their sockets, meaning that he's anxiously scanning the room.

Rocky begins to worry. Is Grace getting sicker? Is the higher gravity having a worse impact than they thought? Or is he just nervous to be around strange Eridians? (Though he hasn't had this reaction to anyone else? Is there something up with the science Thrum??)

Rocky is like spiralling into anxiety until they have to move to a different part of the room for some reason and Grace, slowed down by the suit, briefly loses his hold on Rocky.

Immediately, he crashes into a table. And then backs into a wall. And then nearly knocks over some important Eridian science equipment. And then stands in the middle of the room, looking confused and slightly freaked out, both hands stretched out in front of him, opening and closing like he's grasping at the air.

Wait.

“Grace.”

“Yeah Rock?”

“At which point during meeting did light emitting devices in room stop working question?”

“Uh… like two minutes after we got in. Sorry, didn't want to be a bother.”

It’s what makes him a villain, right? Mindset. The idea that no matter what your choices are: love, kindness, betrayal, if you're rationalizing them through selfish means, or refusing to acknowledge that said choices were harmful, then your mindset will never allow you to be a good person. That's like the whole book.

I guess my point is, when I reread the book and come across that scene in which Coriolanus explains that he was the one kid who was not outwardly rude to the district boy, and he explains that the reason why he did so was to look amiable, not because of friendship, I genuinely wonder if that was the case.

Perhaps an eight-year-old boy was just nice, not even terribly kind, just nice to a boy. Perhaps, even for a moment, he forgot that he'd been raised to think this boy was subhuman and just saw another boy being bullied and decided not to do it.

What was a surprise was how well-developed, even in a third-person-limited rather than full first-person POV that need for control comes across, and how rapidly it oscillates between young Coriolanus doing things that are genuinely brave and borderline heroic for the wrong reasons and doing things that form key pillars of his villain origin story while convincing himself they can't be that bad.

He rescues Sejanus from the arena and nearly dies in the process, which is probably the closest any kid from the Capitol will ever get to knowing what it's like to be a tribute, but he convinces himself all along he doesn't even like Sejanus that much and only wants to endear himself to the Plinths on the off chance they'll help him out financially. When he goes to meet Lucy Gray at the station, brings her food, and goes way above what's expected from a mentor, he doesn't even entertain the possibility that he might love her, or even just fancy her a little, until she kisses him, and even then those feelings are so repressed it's pretty tragic to watch.

And yet he's so quick to assume no-one in the Capitol will bother to listen to the jabberjay recording he intentionally made with the purpose of betraying his friend, to mask his own guilt. The first time he kills someone (in self-defence) he has what we'd consider a pretty normal reaction in line with what some of the other tributes go through, then, the second time he's immediately like 'oh well, this was self-defence too' (it defo wasn't).

I suppose part of Suzanne Collins brilliance as a writer is establishing the importance of luck and timing within the context of the story in shaping how a character succeeds or fails. The winning tributes aren't always the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest, often forces beyond their control conspire to create what can look like pure dumb luck, and those in the Capitol aren't as shielded as they'd like to think from the same fate.

The great tragedy of Tbosas isn't that Coriolanus Snow was born to be a dictator, it's that when you give an eighteen-year-old a bunch of trauma, and a few problematic, but not automatically 'evil' qualities (in this case narcissism, unchecked ambition, and a general need for order and control) then allow the narrative to consistently punish him for trying to do the right thing while rewarding him for doing the wrong thing, he's going to believe, pretty quickly that's how the world works.

He leaves the Capitol for District 12 because he broke the rules and overstepped his mark as a mentor to save Lucy Gray's life (however good she might be with real snakes, I genuinely believe Dr Gaul's technicolour horrorshow would have killed her if he hadn't intervened) then returns because he betrayed his friend, got at least two people killed, and decided that love is a weakness. Not only that, he finds on his return that his family's financial woes are over and he's able to poison the one guy who tried to stop him without anyone catching on.

Day THREE of filling this with aro and/or ace characters

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hey don't worry? completely unrelated giant dump of heartwarming PHM doodles ok??

eridian oc based off my favourite periodic element, bismuth : 3

Here comes the sun