i think something that elevates the hunger games franchise is not just the quality of writing but the integrity of it. tbosas isn’t just a cash-grab by suzanne collins in the age of sequels and reboots (though i won’t pretend that didn’t play a part), it’s a character study of the main antagonist with a different structure than the main trilogy. and importantly, it doesn’t just re-hash the same old themes and beats the main trilogy had, it expands on not just the world of the hunger games but the themes as well, it actually has something new to say about the trilogy’s themes about class, capitalism, power, and control, in a way that couldn’t be explored with the main story because the protagonist of that story simply did not have access to the world that’s being explored in tbosas.
i understand the people who call for books/movies to be made about haymitch, finnick, johanna, different years of the games — we love those characters and want to see more of them! i’d kill for a novella on finnick’s days mentoring tributes, or katniss’s parents falling in love. but at the end of the day we probably wouldn’t be very satisfied with those stories being fleshed out if they had absolutely nothing new to say about the world, they’d be enjoyable, but not as interesting and engaging as tbosas has been.
it has always been so cute to me that even tho a war has just happened half of camp is destroyed or dead that the campers still thought it would be fun to bully percabeth
like did we ever learn why all of camp was just there when annabeth and percy kissed ??
like did annabeth recrute ppl to help ??
like maybe annabeth got malcom to help with the cupcake and he started the wildfire that was “annabeth and percy are sitting really close ALONE together for his birthday” so everyone went to eavesdrop or smth
or actually tyson definitely did that by accident now that i’m thinking abt it like he just told ppl who asked and everyone was like “thanks for letting me know >:)”
i always kinda thought maybe clarisse knew it was percy’s birthday and was planning on being a menace but when they pulled up annabeth was already there then the kiss happened and everyone was like “holy SHITTTTT”
like maybe the plan was to dunk percy in the water but they couldn’t find annabeth so they showed up late just to witness the kiss some kids probably cried a little but clarisse was like “sick now i can dunk BOTH of them” so that’s what they did
to me i always loved that clarisse was the one to be the head of that bc throwing them into the water to celebrate wasn’t for her - personally i don’t think clarisse could give two real shits abt percabeth actually dating or not (not that she doesn’t think they should- it’s just not her buisness) but yk who did ?? selina
there were probably long talks where all selina talked abt was the percabeth tea
“i have insanely hot gossip right now. >:)”
“ooo really?? >:)”
“yeah and it involves your two favorite people >:3”
“oh…really…… :|”
i like to think that was for her and i love that
I would fall into the pits of hell with you rather than face the thought you might suffer alone. A powerful goddess erased all my memories but she couldn’t make me forget the sound of your laugh. You are my tether to mortality and the hand that saved me from drowning. The first time you kissed me I caused a seismic volcanic earthquake. When I met Aphrodite I thought she looked like you. The divine rulers of this universe fear I might burn down the world if you asked. And I would. Without hesitation. Do you get it? Do you understand?
suzanne collins is such a genius... the cultural phenomenon of her series leading to the hanging tree house remixes, mockingjay being milked for two (bad) movies, the capitol-inspired makeup palettes, the halloween costumes, the explosion of the market for dystopia, the butchering of her characters and removal of disabilities, disfiguration, and racial tension + representation to sell more tickets, the extra gale scenes to fuel discourse, and the audience showing up to cinemas to watch what was pretty honestly marketed to them (the jacob vs edwardification of the symbolic love story and also to watch children fight to the death) it's just so ridiculously ironic i would say you can't write this shit, but she did write about it... in The Hunger Games published 2008
People talk about District 12’s meadow being a graveyard after the war, but if you think about it, the entire district is a graveyard.
Many of my ancestors do not have graves because they died in coal mining accidents and no one bothered to take their bodies out because it was too expensive. My dad can even point out where they are. There are warehouses built on top of essentially a graveyard, but that apparently doesn’t matter because they didn’t have enough money to be important.
Think about how many people are underneath District 12 because they were never gotten out of the mines. It was a district built on top of death from well before the war.
Grover being all sweet innocent cinnamon roll reasurring Percy and Annabeth that he'll be okay staying behind with Ares like he isn't planning 5D chess psychological warfare on the god of war be like
Penumbra, a small self-indulgent personal project
It was all painted in Photoshop, for anyone curious :)
WHEN I TELL YOU I SCREAMED
immediately, percy walking into crusty’s water bed palace saying “i know who you are. you’re procrustes. son of poseidon, murderer of travelers” and “i know the beds are a trap” and “i know there’s a secret entrance to the underworld here” and i know this and i know that is making me want to rip rickald to shreds and gnaw on his bones. so they know about medusa before they enter her lair. so they know about the lotus casino before they go inside. so they know everything about everything and there’s no real element of discovery and revelation because he’s somehow armed with allll this knowledge he’s not supposed to have, drastically reducing the stakes and excitement of one of the most naturally exciting plot lines ever, completely slamming a wrecking ball into the fact that he’s a 12 year old on his first quest who has to learn that everything is a trap and reality is never what it seems. so now instead of the three of them running unknowingly into procrustes’s creepy business as they’re trying to escape a gang of LA street bullies (bc surprise surprise the real world is where the monsters also are), he just fucking walks in and knows everything with a plan already hatched, courtesy of annabeth. how are you going to make me hate the episode five seconds in?
I hate when I tell people I like the hunger games and then their immediate reaction is “team gale or team peeta?” Like what. Team paying attention to the main point of the book which is an extremely moving comment on society and the world we’re heading towards, on classism and the patriarchy and the government and all the evils that go on in the world with the privileged turning a blind eye. On death and suffering and cruelness just because we can. On being corrupted by power on everything being unfair, on our minds and how they shape the world and our minds and how they can change the world and the good and bad and love and hate and brainwashing and revolution. But sure, team peeta.
This right here is the thesis statement for the entire Percy Jackson series.
Ironic that here you can know more about me than anywhere else. (English isn't my first language, sorry for any mistakes.)
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