#bambijo

Peeta grew up in a very toxic household. With a mother who was abusive towards him physically/emotionally/mentally and a father who, while very loving and kind, did little to dissuade his wife's treatment of him and their other sons. So he would have learned to be quick to say the right things, do his best to mask any mistakes in order to avoid punishment. And slowly but surely it grew to be one of his best strengths, which he immediately capitalised on when given the go ahead to.

I just have one thing to say.

It seems you guys are the ones who don't know the comics well enough to know that the Despair we predominantly see in said comics? She isn't the first incarnation for Despair of the Endless. Despair, in her original form, before meeting an undescribed demise (heavily implied to be murder), was just as confident, self assured and captivating as Desire. Hell, she orchestrated the destruction of KRYPTON with EASE for crying out loud. Commandeered it without hesitation and reaped what she'd sown with gusto.

And guess what? Guess what is explicitly stated and shown when discussing her former self? SHE LOOKED EXACTLY THE SAME AS SHE CURRENTLY DOES NOW. THE ONLY REAL DIFFERENCE TO HER PHYSICALLY IS THE FACT THAT SHE IS NOW MONOCHROMATIC, SLIGHTLY SHORTER AND SHE DOESN'T HAVE THE BRIGHT RED TATTOOS THAT SHE FORMERLY HAD. THE ONLY SIGNIFICANT CHANGE OF WHO SHE IS AFTER HER FIRST DEMISE IS HER PERSONALITY AND THAT IS MORE THAN LIKELY A SIDE EFFECT OF THE TRAUMA BROUGHT ON BY HER MURDER.

So, in summary, I personally feel that Despair is meant to be an analogy for what a traumatic experience can do to a person. How it can change them and cause them to withdraw/change. And we do see that physically with her becoming dark and gray, losing her striking tattoos etc. But those are the only changes we see. Nothing else about her is a drastic change, there are no big shocks to any characters (particularly her family) that she looks the way she does and neither is it made out to be a bad thing. There are no doubts of her ability, her strength, no instances of the others viewing her as a burden for the way she looks or treating her with kiddy gloves.They just see her as a fully realised and capable member of their family.

But really though. There is nothing in Despair's appearance or the way she is played that has anything to do with fat shaming or disdain towards plus size individuals. Her weight is not made a major factor of who she is as a character, nor is it commented upon or treated as a bad thing. It is just a part of her. This is especially prevalent in the scene where she is interacting with Desire, her twin. The show could have easily made it so she was compared unfavourably to them due to their appearance being more societally attractive but no. She was welcomed lovingly and allowed to be herself and be comfortable as herself within that space.

Another issue people seem to be having is the fact that Despair is an antagonist. While there is a trend of a lot of antagonists being made plus size in order to alienate them and make them unseemly to audiences, that simply isn't the case here. There are many skinny or physically attractive villains within the canon of the series and Despair is far from the worst the series had to offer. Everybody is capable of doing some very terrible things. And I like that the show isn't shying away from that.

Take Cleopatra for example. Contrary to what pop culture osmosis would have you believe, Cleopatra was no great beauty by the standards for physical appearance during that time. But she has gone down in history as one of the most beautiful women in memoriam. Why? Because of her charisma, cunning and wit. And most if not all of the people portraying the characters in the show have that in fucking SPADES. Who tf would want to just look at overwhelmingly pretty people all the time anyway? Being exposed to that for too long just makes you lose interest so quickly and it makes all the characters feel the same/one note.

This is in the sense that he himself is an unknown, with little to no history (particularly when his true nature is revealed-) and with little hope of leaving behind a legacy. His obsession with the power that comes from authority/status also indicative of this. Because often in society, power is considered to be an essential when carving a place for yourself within history.

That's why he so desperately wished to have control of Tuunbaq, to be able to command it. So at least he could go down in legend, good or bad, and have a legacy to leave behind when it becomes clear they have landed in a place where status is so easily stripped and rendered down into nothing.