Ingrid made...

It's so ironic to me that a series that pulls no punches when it comes to propaganda, the dangers of rewriting history, and the power of controlling the narrative should have so many fans who have absolutely no desire to challenge popular opinion and properly interrogate the text, but here we are.

I'm not going to sit here and be like READ THE BOOKS! because while they give a far better insight into the structural and societal issues that have created this grim dystopia, at least 4/5 of these are relevant to those who've only seen the films too. (Warning, this is a long-read, but there will be memes under the cut)

Katniss and Lucy Gray as parallels

If y'all cannot see past the fact that beyond being two girls of covey descent from district 12 they have very little in common then I'm afraid I cannot help you.

In her ability to charm crowds, make people laugh, and not lose her creativity in a world that doesn't value it, Lucy Gray is far more of a mirror to Peeta (and don't even get me started on all those District 12 Victor posts that leave him out entirely).

Snow makes the mistake of assuming Peeta isn't a threat, or worthy of a home visit in Catching Fire, because in his mind Peeta is this poor little blonde cinnamon roll whose feelings are genuine, being manipulated by a girl who doesn't love him, so he completely loses sight of what an absolute genius Peeta is at playing the media.

Peeta's feelings for Katniss were genuine, but he was more than prepared to weaponise them against the Capitol, just as I believe Lucy Gray liked the guy who met her at the train station with a rose, and was grateful for his help, but recognised she could use the fact he liked her back to further her own survival.

Those who don't recognise that duality are making the exact same mistake that President Snow makes when he pins all the blame for the 74th hunger games ending the way they did on Katniss because he fails to see that the two of them are far more alike than she and Lucy Gray ever were.

Katniss uses her wits and her survival skills to get through the games, while Peeta uses his ability to forge relationships and make people like him, if you look past gender and ethnicity the true parallel becomes really obvious.

2. We need a third prequel with Finnick and/or Joanna's games

Do I really need to go into why this apparent act of fan service would be an all round terrible idea?

Well, for starters Finnick Odair, former child prostitute, is not an autobiography I actually want to read, and since it would be all but guaranteed to be adapted, it's definitely not a film I'd be keen to see. Is there a place within popular culture to do justice to the stories of victims of child sex trafficking? Sure, but it's not something I'd trust a big-budget hollywood producer to handle with the sensitivity and empathy it deserves.

The emotional payoff and overriding message of having a fourteen-year-old becoming the youngest ever victor would be immediately lost in any adaptation when they cast a 28-year-old to play him, and even if they found a proper Tom Holland-looking dude I'm not sure I'd have the stomach for it.

Am I curious about how he ended up mentoring and then falling in love with Annie? Absolutely, loads of potential there, but much as I enjoyed sotr, I feel like we've reached a natural limit when it comes to understanding the characters' origins and motivations.

The existing prequels work because they answer specific questions that thg does not. In the case of tbosas; what happened to the only other victor from district 12 and why does no-one remember her? And why is President Snow Like That? It turns a previously fairly one-dimensional villain (albeit one played exceptionally well in the adapted triology) into much more believable character, and adds so much to the overall world-building.

Sotr meanwhile finally gives us a response to Katniss question of why Haymitch spends his life as a victor completely alone, and it's every bit as devastating as we've been led to believe, but it also gives vital context on the revolution that the more short-sighted might assume started during the 74th games and only took three years to bear fruit. It has a couple of plot-holes, but still feels, for the most part, like a story that needed to be told.

What could we possibly hope to gain or learn from an additional prequel when Finnick and Joanna both got plenty of opportunities for character-development and reveals during Mockingjay? What would it actually add to the overall literary heft of the series?

3. Tbosas is the only book not written in 1st person because Suzanne Collins did not want to get inside Snow's head

I've seen this both as a serious take and a fandom in-joke so many times that I was almost prepared to believe it until I re-read the book. But some of y'all apparently don't know the difference between 3rd person omniscient and third person limited and it shows.

Far from thinking 'the change of narrative style gives me a sense of distance from this character' I felt like I spent the best part of 517 pages getting Coriolanus' take on everything from his views on animal testing (not down with it) to his views on murdering children for the crimes of their parents (worryingly down with it by the end).

Is it always a comfortable place to be? No, but Suzanne Collins put a hell of a lot of work into creating a believable and fully rounded character with ideas and prejudices that reflect the world he's been shaped by, and she does it with empathy, and humour, and tragic reminders of how different things could have been. Seems kind of rude to ignore all that because it doesn't fit as easily onto a meme.

About 90% of tbosas reviews that have 3 stars or less on goodreads are just people complaining that they didn't want to get this much pov from an antagonist, as if the sole reason to read books is to identify with the characters in all their goodness and wholesomeness.

It's precisely because it gives us so much insight into a character just teetering on the precipice of becoming irredeemable that tbosas turns a previously quite one-dimensional villain into a superbly well-written one and it will never not be a standout among the books for that.

4. 'We're not the Capitol'

Question: Are you reading this in a developed country filled with modern conveniences, which allows you to wear what you want, say what you want, and vote for your head of state, but which exploits poorer countries for their resources and will happily arrest or gun you down in the street if you attempt to interfere with the oppression of those who don't have the same rights you were given by birth?

Does it feel like, while wealth inequality is a bitch, the unbearable suffering of famine, armed insurrection, and natural disasters that destabilise whole economies are something that happens outside of your country's borders or on your TV screens?

Then congratulations, you're exactly like the citizens of the Capitol. This doesn't automatically make you a bad person, but it means you have a choice that many don't about whether you use your privilege to help create a fairer world, or bury your head in the sand. Most of us will never be Plutarch, because people who are Old Money are at most 0.3% of the population, and he's very much a once-in-a-generation anomaly.

However Suzanne does a great job of giving us a raft of characters born or raised in the Capitol who use that privilege to help lessen the suffering caused by the games; Effie, Cinna, Sejanus, Tigris, Lysistrata, and eventually a whole team who help Katniss infiltrate the city because they have insider knowledge of its sanitation system. Most of them aren't successful and a few even die, but it's important to recognise the good they managed to do was possible because they were Capitol citizens.

They chose not to be like the woman who dressed her poodles up as Lucy Gray and Jessup during the 10th games for the Capitol equivalent of going viral on tiktok and I think that's very sexy of them.

5. (Most controversial of the bunch) Coriolanus Snow is a misogynist

Don't get me wrong, I understand where this one comes from, and I'm not for a second suggesting he doesn't have problematic views of many of the women in his life, but certain terms seem to get thrown around so much in online discourse that people forget what they actually mean.

Misogyny intersects with other prejudices in so many aspects of our lives, but that doesn't stop it being a distinctive form of bigotry in its own right. And in the world of thg, both structural misogyny and the kind of day to day sexism most of us wish we didn't have to put up with are curiously, refreshingly absent.

Gendered insults are almost never used, women hold positions of power without anyone asking them why they never married or had kids and while it's recognised that male tributes have the advantage of being bigger and stronger, there seems to be a pretty solid gender-balance among victors, with wits and strategy counting for more than strength.

Coriolanus' whole existence and characterisation is shaped by the women around him, so while it's impossible to separate his views and perceptions of them from their gender, his classism and prejudice towards the districts tends to be the dominant -ism here.

We're talking about an 18-year-old who loved and misses his mother (though there's a whole separate discussion to be had about whether that strays into Oedipus complex territory), gets on with and is liked by his female classmates (he's even a bit gutted when Arachne is killed and she was a monster) and whose sole confidante is his 21-year-old cousin who works in the fashion industry.

His deep-seated fear of and eventual reverence to the head gamemaker never strays into gendered territory. He attributes his grandmother's inability to cook to her being Old Money rather than any notion that it's a woman's job, and his thoughts about Ma Plinth are definitely rooted in class bias rather than gender-bias.

There's a case to be made that he completes his villain origin-story arc in the book when he throws away the family photos and his mother's powder but keeps his father's compass, symbolically rejecting the feminine in favour of brute force.

But his narcissistic belief in his own exceptionalism rarely takes on anything resembling a gendered tone, so it kind of feels like the conviction that he's a die-hard misogynist to the core comes from a handful of specific interactions with Lucy Gray in the aftermath of her performance at the tribute interviews.

Leaving aside the fact that his sense of possessiveness over her is reinforced by pretty much everyone else around him from Pluribus to Satyria to Dean Highbottom, it's actually interesting to me how often Suzanne Collins chooses to swerve really obvious opportunities for him to reveal problematic views about women.

When he notices her constantly fixing her hair or adjusting her appearance he doesn't think 'ugh, girls are so vapid and shallow' he recognises in her a shared understanding that the games are all about spectacle and he respects it. When be begins to have his doubts about whether she really loves him, it runs alongside Sejanus lying to him about the money and fraternising with rebels, so his downward spiral is a lot less 'I can't trust women' and a lot more 'I can't trust anybody'.

And when they meet for the final time before the games, he does something no true misogynist would ever do, instead of pinning the blame for his feelings on her, he apologises, and admits that he's being unfair because her song made him jealous.

He rows back from his line of thinking too about what she may or may not have had to do to survive in District 12, because Tigris is ready to throw hands with him over the notion that a minor should ever be held responsible for going down that road and he pretty much concedes because the part of him that still has a moral compass is horrified by the whole idea.