#thg cf

My baby 🥹

The one thing I never pictured myself in was The Hunger Games. I never wrote one shots about Panem, in fact it’s probably the only piece of media I have never consumed a single fanfic about. Not only did it feel wrong but I plain didn’t want to.

Katniss told us what it was like in a way that left very little to the imagination. Yes, she’s kinda obtuse in some instances but she’s also a literal teenage girl and as a prior literal teenage girl, sometimes you overthink the things that don’t matter and underthink the things that do.

The point is: Suzanne Collins did a really good job writing a piece of media that forces you to experience the story in a way that I’m not sure many others do. Yes, you experience the story but I feel like Collins was very effective in making you feel it too. She told the story and made you feel it, made you understand it. You witnessed all of the brutal and unholy horrors that the Capitol subjected each of the districts to. She didn’t allow for a single word to be wasted over-explaining to the point of boredom and she certainly didn’t allow you to look away from the monstrosity.

I’ll admit, I fell victim to the “the new books are a cash grab” mindset when Ballad was released, although I did borrow it from a friend a few weeks after release and ate my words for it. Granted, the narrator was the most unlikable character in the entire series so it’s not one I can really say I enjoyed. But the story was consistent with the original trilogy and the change from first person to third person was masterfully executed and a very interesting (in a good way) stylistic choice. Perhaps I brushed it off and didn’t give myself as much time to digest it as I did the original three, and maybe one day I will and I’ll decide I like it more.

However, Sunrise on the Reaping really sealed it for me. I think it is easily the best book in the entire series. And even then. Even laying beside Maysilee and Hamitch in the bed of katniss in the arena, even then I never thought, “I wonder what that would be like.”

Because Suzanne told us, and Katniss told us, and Haymitch told us, and, hell, even in his own twisted and distorted way, Coriolanus Snow told us:

“This is not what you want.”

And I never did.