😊😊😊

Sejanus Plinth 

“And that’s the main thing for me, isn’t  it? Not this district or that. Not student or Peacekeeper. It’s living in a place where they can’t control my life. I know it seems cowardly running away, but I’m hoping that once I’m out of here, maybe I can think straighter and come up with some way I can help the districts.”

This crime against humanity that the masses in the Capitol have long accepted as a fun spectacle by the time the 74th rolls around? That Snow sees as a necessary means of maintaining control and preventing chaos in the districts? The whole thing literally started as a joke. A laugh two drunk friends shared while doing their homework. Then it got co-opted by their professor and put into practice as equal parts a means of punishing the districts and a self-serving experiment to validate her ideas about humanity’s need for control.

I’ve seen a few people complain that this cheapens the Games, but if anything, it makes the book even more haunting. How timely is this? We’re living in a world where a substantial number of people write in joke candidates or refuse to vote at all, yet are horrified when everyone is left to deal with the consequences. The fact that nobody can tell the difference between an actual headline and something from The Onion anymore has become a meme. And if the people voicing their concerns about the rise in authoritarianism around the world are anything to go by, the state of the world is, for all of its absurdity, no joke at all to the people who stand to gain the most from it.

The most uncomfortable part is that this is a prequel, where we know that the Games keep going for another 60 years. Given how symbolic everything in this series is, I think Casca and Crassus’ story is meant to be a warning.

Nobody thinks anything like the Hunger Games could ever actually happen, much less become normal.

Nobody would ever allow that to happen to their kids, to their world! It’s just a joke, right?

This small, dark-haired Seam girl, making a scene at the reaping. Drawing the Capitol’s attention in the parade, and in the interviews, and with her training score. Haunted by tragic love as she enters the arena. Singing to Rue as she dies, and adorning her body with a rainbow of flowers. Cheating the Games to bring her and Peeta out alive.

And then - unwillingly - figureheading a revolution. Being hailed the mockingjay - the very thing that Snow so hated, that he so passionately wanted destroyed. Refusing to relinquish her own agency, refusing to play the Capitol’s game by its rules. Singing The Hanging Tree, by the lake. Dancing with Prim at Finnick and Annie’s wedding, spinning around the room to folk music.