heart attack

people are also currently asking board to ban saying that the founding of israel was colonialism—equating this to saying racial slurs—and were complaining about my status back when it was "palestine will be free", too

suffice to say, fuck that place, don't give the OTW your money, and don't fucking volunteer there

Bonus: Person C can be OT3 or NOTP.

nat - got yeeted off a cliff for a rock for a male character's development

steve - abandoned his morals, left his two of his best friends for the past (whether you think their relationship was romantic or not it was ooc)

bucky - had his childhood friend taken away from him because of shitty writing, had 0.5 seconds of screen time

sam - had his right hand man (or rather left hand man) taken away from also because of shitty writing, had 0.5 seconds of screen time

thor - his mental health and weight gain was used for constant comedy relief

clint - got turned into an executioner type character and it was never talked about again, ALSO he should've been the sacrifice at vormir cause that's what his endgame arc was leading up to and that's on the russos' sexism

bruce - was turned into some weird combination of the hulk and bruce with no character development leading up to it

scott - used as comedic relief throughout the whole movie despite the fact that time travel was his idea in the first place, and the fact that a RAT rescued him instead of one of his teammates/friends is just yikes

ava - didn't even get mentioned or have any screen time what so ever in endgame

luis - his van was used as a plot point and yet his name wasn't even mentioned once

gamora - killed in infinity war (and was completely forgotten too) only to be brought back as a love interest for peter, didn't get to kill her abuser

nebula - also didn't get to kill her abuser despite her arc leading up to that, and was forced to kill her past self for whatever "symbolic" reason

carol - had 0.5 seconds of screen time despite being the most powerful character and instead of showing us what she was doing to help other planets she was just left out and ignored

pepper - never, not ONCE, interacted with her daughter, to the point where some people originally believed morgan was a robot, and almost all her scenes where just her being tony's trophy wife and moral advisor

shuri - canonily the smartest character in the mcu, and was conveniently dusted only so tony could show off his smarts

okoye - took charge of wakanda while it's entire royal family was gone but we were never shown that

peggy - had her entire life and autonomy taken away so she could be steve's trophy wife

sharon - completely forgotten by steve despite the fact that she was his love interest literally two movies ago

tony - i'm gonna be honest i don't really like tony but like, the fact that they killed him off after just giving him a family is just cruel and shitty writing

there are definitely some characters i missed so feel free to add on to this

For easier reblogging purposes! :D Or if you just want everything organized.

[MASTER LIST]

[Part 1] (18 AUs) [Part 2] (13 AUs) [Part 3] (17 AUs) [Part 4] (15 AUs) [Part 5] (16 AUs) [Part 6] (28 AUs) [Part 7] (18 AUs) [Part 8] (15 AUs) [Part 9] (32 AUs) [Part 10] (30 AUS)

the stereotype surrounding ravenclaws is that they are only book-smart, but they are much more than that. ravenclaws are also quirky, curious, and creative and tony stark exhibits these characteristics. he’s quirky - who else would eat doughnuts inside of a giant doughnut during difficult times? he’s curious - wanting to hack into shield’s mainframes? he’s creative - dude built a suit inside a cave full of scrapes. 

ravenclaws are generally tolerable people who accept those who are odd or don’t fit in -  accommodating people who have different ideas or areas of study (tony opening his home to bruce, who is also a ravenclaw to me, and giving him a separate lab in aou). ravenclaw is also the house that people tend to shun for their intelligence (sound familiar?) and while other houses (namely slytherin) are also shunned, ravenclaws are rejected for their vast intelligence, ability to adapt to situations, and their ability to learn tough subjects in short amounts of time (remember when tony became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics over night?).

they find their motivation in logic and academic argumentation!! hahaha, that’s tony fucking stark. this isn’t to say that tony doesnt have characteristics from other houses (because he’s brave like gryffindor, cunning like slytherin, and dedicated like hufflepuff), but that the reason ravenclaws excel is their devotion to portraying a sound argument by looking over all possibilities (ravenclaw tony stark gawd!!). they tend to value all subjects, no matter how ridiculous others see them, as long as there exists logical explanations. how is this not tony stark? and when they cant make sense of something right of the bat, they find ways to do so often spending several hours, days, or weeks to find answers, to rationalize.

tony stark is a ravenclaw to me because ravenclaws dont take things at face values or by blind faith and that’s 100% a tony stark thing (tony’s suspicion of shield in the first avengers movie, for example), he has to rationalize to himself why there needs to be a such a system in place despite his personal opinions. ravenclaws are not as stubborn as gryffingors, but unless you present a sound argument they dont tend to change their stances on topics (look at cap 3). their need for academics might make them seem generally detached, but that’s not always the case. in fact, ravenclaws are more than willingly to share their thoughts and opinions on a subject but find difficulty explaining their reasoning into words.

I mean had I been sixteen I too WOULD have a little crush on the 1 charming capitol boy who waited for me at the train station for hours with a rose — a v BEAUTIFUL rose and traveled with me in a CATTLE CART almost getting KILLED and always smuggling food for me so that I don’t starve even if it put himself in GRAVE danger and the list goes on and on

Whew, this thing was a trip.

This book felt like Suzanne's response to the hunger games media adaptation and the state of the world a decade later, like she needed to remind us how awful and amoral the games are by stripping away the glitz and glamour. Much of which we've imposed on it, treating it no differently than the Capitol audience.

It's well written though. The origins of the games and Snow's gradual devolution is just brutal. The way he kept finding justification for his actions, living and actively participating in the government of, what was essentially some amalgam of nazi germany and north korea, was really well done.

Snow as a character is utterly irredeemable, again and again he interacts with people who show him the evil in his choices but he continues to actively make them. Choosing again and again, the totalitarian society that benefits him over friendship and loyalty and even love. The romance isn't really a romance at all, it's toxic and possessive and just goes to show how far gone he is. I always assumed she was playing him to survive then developed a slight affection for him when he showed up in 12 only to realize reality whenever he opened his mouth around her. Lots of flags, mostly red.

Plus there's the obvious parallels to Katniss/Peeta, and it makes me wonder if he saw something of himself in Katniss later on, disappointed when she chose to not kill Peeta to save her own skin as he would have done. And as everyone else has been saying, how shook must he have been hearing the hanging tree sung by another Seam girl so very, many years later?

When the title was first released, the easiest thing to do was think that the "songbirds" refers to the D12 tribute and the "snakes" refer to Snow. After all, Katniss and the Rebellion became associated with Mockingjays, and Snow is described as snakelike and is a poisoner.

And to an extent there is a truth in how Lucy Gray sings and becomes one with the Mongkingjays at the end. And Snow works with Dr. Gaul, who breeds snake mutts.

However, the opposite association could easily apply to them as well.

Lucy Gray

Is introduced using a snake as a prank and mentions how they are her friends.

Actively uses the snakes in the arena and chills with them.

Ends up issuing the ultimate prank with Snow by using a snake, and she's definitely way more cunning than him.

Snow

Sings the national athem, and his recording is used again afterwards.

Uses Jabberjays and gains a major respect for them.

Ends up becoming an brood parasite (like a Cuckoo or Cowbird) to the Plinths. Props to @captainofthegreenpeas for catching that as well.

First main theory is that 12 is the reason why Snow’s lungs are damaged, because he always refers to the thick air and choking on the air quality and finding it difficult to breathe. I mean, my mans died choking on the blood in his lungs, and why were his lungs so damaged? Because the air quality in 12 is so poor because of the mines, and he’s already got potential lung damage because of the bombings in the Capitol as a child on top of the bombing at the arena. He has the lung quality that you’t typically see in miners because he’s had to live and work there even though it wasn’t for very long, but his lungs are already susceptible to being ruined by the coal mining district and it likely started showing up later in life when age and the stress from the Mockingjay exacerbated his symptoms. Snow would have died ANYWAY because of his stay in 12 and it makes it perfect that Katniss, the 12 rebel that reminds him SO much of Lucy Gray was the final cause of his lung failure.

I loved just how much we learned about Snow’s character because it explains SO MUCH about why he hates Peeta and Katniss with a burning passion. Like can you imagine going 64 years sorting out the games to then have this girl from the Seam in 12, wearing a blue-GRAY dress, cause a huge scene to volunteer for her sister and makes the Capitol fall in love with her in seconds, which is already making your games look bad, and then you find out her name is Katniss? The name of the flower that your ‘love’ went to find before she left you alone in the woods of 12? Katniss Everdeen never stood a CHANCE with Snow and that’s before she’s ever even The Mockingjay.

And THEN, Peeta and Katniss start running with this “Star-crossed lovers” story and Snow is immediately so jealous because these people are getting the publicity and the hearts of the Capitol that he felt he deserved. Which leads on to the next theory that Snow never loved Lucy Gray, he just loved the idea of her because she was bright and shiny and new and the Capitol LOVES her. He is so jealous of that love and affection that she gets and he thinks that he deserves that love because of his name; he constantly refers to her as an object and feels he has a right to her.

Snow sees one Mockingjay and declares that he “hates them already”, like honey you’ve got a big storm coming. 

The fact that Snow KNOWS 12 so well too?? He is so aware of the poverty and the lives of the people living there that haven’t changed in the 64 years between him being a Peacekeeper and him being President of Panem. He knows the Mellark’s Bakery, he knows about the underground gambling and illegal trading and that girls sell themselves for money; but he’s so BITTER that he won’t do anything to make lives better for anyone except himself. 

Also the similarities between Sejanus and Peeta are astounding; both of them were thrown into the Capitol against their will and only Snow knows that Peeta wont conform unless they force him to, because he’s seen it with Sejanus, so instead he hijacks Peeta with Trackerjacker venon to make him do his bidding. 

The fact that Snow then takes the Plinths money and fuels it into the Hunger Games is so distasteful and disrespectful to Sejanus’ memory because he knew damn well that that wouldn’t be what Sejanus’ would have wanted. He’s so manipulative and uses his ‘charm’ to wrap the Plinths around his little finger and most likely ran with the “I tried to contact you about his death but I had no time!” while also being actively responsible for Sejanus’ death.

Also Katniss’ Dad was 100% Maude Ivory’s son, because Katniss knew the Hanging Tree song DECADES after Snow had banned it, she also knew the Meadow and the Meadow Song and she learnt to swim in the lake - which was how she was safe in the Quarter Quell games. How else would she have learnt all this if she wasn’t descended from the Covey people? Maude Ivory was able to recall a song after hearing it once and Katniss’ Dad used to sing to her; Katniss is Covey.

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So I know when Suzanne Collins announced she was releasing a prequel to the Hunger Games, there was a lot of backlash that the main character was President Snow. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed TBOSAS and have a lot of thoughts about it. (Bear with me this will be really long)

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1. My first thought: Tigris? Like ~the~ Tigris from Mockingjay? They seem so close what happened between them to make Tigris willing to betray her family to Squad 451… obviously she was fired as a stylist for being too altered, but is there more?

2. I find it interesting that some of the improvements to The Hunger Games were Snow’s idea, like the betting and the providing the tributes food to make a better show

3. It’s absolutely horrible to see that the tributes were treated so inhumanely (Kept in the Monkey House at the zoo, starved, and given a veterinarian rather than doctor) but it’s also haunting to see the desensitization that eventually came along when it became more like a sport than senseless revenge in the Capitol. At least the Capitol children saw the problem in the 10th Games compared to the 74th

4. Reaper apologizing for having to kill the other tributes (188) is such a stark contrast to how Cato and Clove relish in killing when Katniss is in the 74th Games, which shows how well President Snow (or perhaps Dr. Gaul) did his/her job in turning the districts’s enemy into the other districts before the Capitol

5. It’s also interesting how Snow’s tribute (FROM DISTRICT 12) won the games because Snow bent the rules and relied on cleverness much in the way Katniss (obviously also from District 12) won her games

6. I LOVE that Lucy Gray wrote the Hanging Tree it must’ve been so haunting for Snow to hear when the propo of Katniss singing aired

7. The similarities between Lucy Gray and Katniss!!!

-Both have a younger relative they take care of

-Only females victors from 12

-Won by using cunning intelligence (Lucy Gray with the poison, Katniss with the berries)

-Singing the Meadow Song and the Hanging Tree

-Swimming in the lake

-Both consider running off the escape from 12 and survive in the woods

8. Snow defies the capitol (handkerchief in the snake tank) just like Katniss (the nightlock berries) to help win the games

9. “Some people call them swamp potatoes, but I like katniss better. Has a nice ring to it” (436) oh Lucy Gray! I know Katniss is a plant but it’s so fun seeing the name casually mentioned in the prequel not as a heroine but just as an ordinary name. Little does Snow know, a girl named after that plant is going to be his downfall

10. “What if this was his life: rising whenever, catching his food for the day, and hanging out with Lucy Gray by the lake? Who needed wealth and success and power when they had love?” (438) contrasted with “He [Corionlanus] imagined a group of people in wild animal furs scraping out existence in a cave somewhere. He supposed such a thing could happen, but that life would be a big step down from even the districts. Barely human” (395)

-It’s no wonder Coriolanus wants to marry a woman he detests (516) if loving Lucy Gray made him consider living in conditions he called “barely human”

11. I love Snow’s disdain for the mockingjays obviously because Katniss becomes ~the Mockingjay~, but I also love how Snow hates them because they represent a failure to the capitol, an “unauthorized co-opting [of] Capitol technology” (439), showing that the Capitol is not as necessary as they would believe (which Katniss as the Mockingjay emphasizes in the future when she dismantled the Capitol)

-“Coriolanus felt sure he’d just spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight” (352)

-“He [Coriolanus] didn’t mind the jabberjays so much — they seemed rather interesting from a military standpoint— but something about the mockingjays repelled him” (417)

12. Do you think Sejanus knew that Snow betrayed him when he mouths Coryo? (470) For his sake, I hope he didn’t so that he could die feeling as though he still had a best friend rather than add more sorrow to his death

13. “Was the goal of survival further survival and nothing more?” (495) —> “but at least he would ensure survival for survival’s sake” (516)

-This reminds me of Gale’s rants in the woods when he and Katniss are hunting, how they’re surviving but not living, and that it’s a cause for rebellion and uprising

-It’s interesting to see Snow’s mindset change, from when he considered survival as the only virtue in his life when he and Lucy Gray were about to run off compared to when he decides he is capable of becoming the president and ensuring survival

-When Snow decides to ensure survival, it seems more as though ensuring the survival of the oppression to maintain his power rather than save humanity, as he claims. He, too, had scorned the idea of surviving to survive earlier (495), so why should he want the people in the districts to survive just to survive? Certainly not for humanity

14. Even the person who created The Hunger Games — Dean Highbottom — thinks they’re awful (515)

15. “Snow had been the ruination of them both” (516) 

-Even though Snow doesn’t know what happened to Lucy Gray that day in the woods, I would assume she died because in the Hunger Games novel, “Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had only two. Only one is still alive” (THG, 19). Obviously the victor still alive is Haymitch.

-Although, perhaps she starved because music became outlawed with the arrival of the new mayor.

-I find it interesting that District 12 even knew there was more than one victor seeing as Dr. Gaul destroyed all evidence of the 10th Games.

16. Snow hates the idea of women selling their bodies in exchange for things  they need to survive, as he sees it as losing all dignity, (like when he feels disgust at the line in Lucy Gray’s song from her interview on page 175), but then he makes the victors sell themselves once he’s president

17. It’s interesting to see the effect that Dr. Gaul has on Snow, because obviously her teaching is what made Coriolanus’s mindset change

-He calls her a lunatic (114) and agrees with Tigris when she calls Dr. Gaul sadistic (125) and felt horrified at the way Marcus’s body was displayed once caught (206), but he still says that he’ll continue the Hunger Games when he’s the president (516)

-He felt guilty murdering Bobbin (248), but in his reign as the president he was responsible for hundreds of deaths (which he never denied but did not seem to feel guilty for either in Mockingjay)

One of the main argument is that people didn’t want to read through Snow’s point of view. I get it; he’s a horrible human being in the original trilogy. And I think people wanted to believe that it was going to be a story like “wait, Snow is good ACTUALLY!!”. But it was clear that it wasn’t Suzanne Collins’ intention at all, in fact she never justified his actions. To me, it brought so many interesting elements about the Capitol’s point of view on the war and on the districts. I also liked that Snow made up so many excuses about his behaviour (being poor, protecting his reputation, claiming to be in danger etc…), that it lead him to being a terrible dictator.

An other argument is that these hunger games were boring. Which was the POINT! The games aren’t supposed to be entertaining, children are litterally dying! I think she came up with this book to call us out (once again) and to tell us that we might be more like the Capitol people for liking the games and rooting for our favorite tributes. 

People also complained about the romance but didn’t they learn from the Hunger Games trilogy? This is more than a romance, such as the Hunger Games was more than a love triangle romance. It was to show Snow’s manipulative character and how he used Lucy Gray for his image and for ambition. Their relationship was unsettling, and I felt like it was supposed be like that.

To conclude, I trusted Suzanne Collins on this prequel and she didn’t disapoint me. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was interesting for its political themes, its war theory and all of the thought-provoking elements. And it is a shame that people didn’t want to see beyond that point…