I’m Gonna Cry It’s Raining Right Now And I Just Passed By A Family Where Both Parents Were Without

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

PERCY JACKSON FANS HEAR ME OUT!

It’s season 3 of the PJO show AKA The Titans Curse. Percy (Walker) is sitting in front of Aphordite Goddess of Love and Beauty who just so happens to look like an older version of his best friend Annabeth (Leah) totally unrelated we’re sure.

Then he blinks and the beautiful woman in front of him changes….now she has brown hair and blue eyes she smiles, its Alexandria Daddario movie Annabeth. Just a split second cameo and then she’s gone.

Now a different woman is sitting in front of Percy, a woman with blonde hair and hazel eyes Kristen Stokes Lightning Thief Musical Annabeth. She shifts and changes again.

The final and last woman we see before Percy has curly blonde hair, tanned skin, and stormy grey eyes it’s book Annabeth.

Percy doesn’t realise it but we do. The Goddess of love shows him every version of the girl he loves from every universe he loves her in. It’s beautiful, it’s cinema, it needs to happen.

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

there was a moment when the people in the movie theatre and the capitol audience in the stands were laughing at the same things, having the same reactions to the games, to the deaths, to flickermans jokes, to the doctor's announcement...i wonder aren't we watching it for entertainment too

suzanne collins' books may exist in popular culture as "dystopian", but they have always been a meticulous and startlingly close social critique of our world. at what point does our own idolization of the movies and the books repeat that story? we watch just as the capitol audience does.

all dystopia eventually crosses a line from realistic futurism to current relevancy. how long will it take us to realize we've already crossed that line with these books? and the very people who need to realize this are the ones in that audience...real or fake, we're the same: consuming and consuming.

guys we’re gonna have new content we can make GIFSETS we get to hear “look I didn’t want to be a half-blood” brb im crying 

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.

annabeth trying to dismantle a GOD's unbeatable machine because her fatal flaw is hubris and percy just knowing he was going to sit on the machine because his fatal flaw is loyalty THIS FUCKING WRITERS ROOM PLEASE SPARE ME

percy, at some point in season three after bumping into a random red haired girl at the Hoover dam: i know who you are. You’re Rachel Elizabeth Dare. You can see through the Mist, and you’re gonna be the next oracle

shut up seaweed brain jst hold me for a while ☹❤

poor frank when he found them 😭😭

In my bedroom but wanting to get home