Something about the story of Lucy Gray, something about her disappearing in the snow, something about her song echoing in the mockingjay song, something about the woods of District 12, something about fire melting snow, something about dandelions peaking through the melting winter, something about the katniss being not quite ready to pick but growing, something about jabberjays mating with mockingbirds and making mockingjays, something about mockingbirds and mockingjays being the birds that inhabit the districts, something about nature and folktales and folk songs and mountains and forests and birds and the falseness of the Capitol not being able to reach it or understand it or predict it, something in it makes me think The Hunger Games and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes are pieces of literary genius.
I think what I found most fascinating about Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the brilliant exploration it makes on empathy.
Capitol citicents have been programed to ignore their empathy towards the people on the districts. We see that on Coriolanus and Tigris's grandma, she is incapable of feeling it and feels entitled to despise them as creatures naturally inferior to her.
Generational thinking is vital to the prevalence of long term propaganda.
Snow and Tigris on the other hand, are orphan, their parents didn't have enough time to teach them to ignore that empathy.
And they have lived much more precarization as kids than their grandmother, and therefore have more in common with the people of the districts than with the adults in the capitol. Is easier fot them to feel empathy towards the tributes.
If Snow and Tigris had allowed themselves to dive into that empathy, to let it drive them, their children would have been even more empathetic then them. Their generation was already different, already putting in question all the propaganda, we see that in many instances with Coriolanus's classmates.
But all it took was one of them with the determination to think like the adults, one of them with the determination to perpetuate the order, one of them choosing to be driven by pride instead of empathy, for the chain of empathy to be broken.
And the system endulged him, impulse him to power. Because he could feed into it, help it evolve and survive. Because that's what systems like those do. They scratch and kill and make bloodbaths to keep themselves alive. They create their own keepers.
Coriolanus Snow knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the people from the districs were human like him, he knew on some level they were deserving of his empathy. He chose not to have any for them. The perpetuators of the propaganda are hardly belivers of it themselves. They pull the strings because they know what they are made of, what would happen if someone broke them.
They want the power because are able to recognize everyone else is blind to it.
It was honestly bone chilling to read.
Everyone has been focusing mostly on Snow shitting his pants when he heard "The Hanging Tree" sung by Katniss but if I remember correctly, that clip of her singing wasn't transmitted in the Capitol so it's unknown if Snow saw it. But there is another clip of Katniss singing one of Lucy Gray's songs that Snow definitely saw and it definitely haunted him.
The Meadow Song.
And you know what probably made him shit his pants even more? How Katniss not only sang one of Lucy Gray's songs but she also honoured a dead tribute. In that moment he wasn't only haunted by Lucy Gray's ghost, he was also haunted by Sejanus'.
so tbosas
. . ✦ ˚ . ✦ . . ゚ . • . , . . ✦ . • ✦ • ˚ . ☄ . . . • ✦ . . . . . . . ゚ . ✦ , . . ✦ . . ☀️ • . . . . • . . . .
✦ . ✦ . ✦ . • .
• . . 🌏 . . ✦ . • ✦ • ˚ . ☄ . . . . • . . ✦ . . . . . . . . . ゚ .
. . . . . . . . . ✦ . • ✦ • ˚ . . ☄ . • . . . . . • . . • ✦ . . 🪐 . . . . . ゚ . ✦ , . . . ✦ . • ✦ . 🌘 . . . . . . ゚ . ✦ , . . ✦ ✦ . • ✦ • ˚ . . ☄ . • . . . . . . ✦ ✦ . •
🔭
rebog
SotR is a realisation. A realisation that the rebellion didn’t start with Katniss. That all the people we see supporting her or helping her have all been wanting to fight but they’ve been failing. That there weren’t merely “rumours” of a revolution but there were many active plans playing out and failing.
It’s a reminder that the perfect Hunger Games we saw in the first hg book was an illusion because we had Katniss as our narrator. We didn’t have Haymitch, hell, we didn’t even have someone like Peeta because these people played the games. Katniss didn’t.
Katniss was introduced to us as a mad, simple, naive girl who literally only survived because of others. She didn’t know how much her taking Prim’s place mattered because she didn’t realise what it meant to everyone who came before her. To everyone who had heard rumours of how the last District 12 victor actually fought his games. No, Katniss had just kept her head down, hunting and providing for her family.
See, she grew up way before the Games got to her. She’d already lived through her dad’s death and watched it destroy her once lively mom. Haymitch didn’t have to go through that. Lucy Gray didn’t have to go through that. They were both angry, yes, but at the Capitol. Katniss? She was first and foremost angry at her mom. At her dad. She knew who was to blame but she had too much to do and deal with to think about that. She was already jaded in a way that the Games couldn’t touch.
Peeta? He was Haymitch. He knew what he was getting into and realised he was just on a chess board with no control. So, he adapted. He played the knight, the rook, the king, the pawn. Katniss? She just… did. Changing directions, not playing the piece she was assigned because she didn’t realise that’s what was going on. Remember her surprise at the crown twisting into two after the Games?? She was so oblivious. Until Catching Fire where everything caught up to her. Where everything so many other people had been waiting and working for caught up to her.
SotR is a history book. Rewritten and edited and published as a piece of fact. SotR is a mirror and it’s a reflection of what actually happens vs what ends up being shown. SotR is the playbook of those in control of any and every kind of media that we come in touch with. SotR is a wake up call and I truly don’t know how many will see it as such.
what makes Snow such a formidable villain within THG universe is that nothing he does was set in stone. there was no sense of inevitability about his actions and his brutality. Snow had enough perspective of poverty, capital cruelty, district hunger and not to mention his own arena experience’ and yet he actively chose at every moment to stray from natural goodness. its even more terrifying in the sense that he had the ability to care. Snow is not a mindless sociopath, he displays feelings to others such as sejanus, lucy grey and tigris but ultimately he will always choose himself. his ability to betray those he cared about in order yo advance himself makes him so much more than the stereotypical villain who is forced into his actions.
i knew there was a connection between why i want to embody klaus and sirius
ok but Klaus and Five are Sirius and Regulus variants
This YouTube comment has been on my mind since I finished SOTR so this is what I came up with:
Lucy Gray was the mockingbird, living on the outskirts of district 12 and was there at the wrong time when they were forced to stay there after the Dark Days. They were subjected to the Capitol’s politics despite not being a part of Panem, technically speaking. Lucy Gray became part of the Games and, likewise, the mockingbird became affiliated with the Capitol through the jabberjay’s release into the woods, but it still continued to sing its own song.
Haymitch was the jabberjay, a Capitol tool that did what it had to in order to survive. The Capitol thought they could control them, but they retaliated in the form of rebellion. Haymitch refused to be a piece in their game and tried to end it, and the jabberjay, in the eyes of the Capitol, created a freak of nature that showed the Capitol’s lack of complete control.
Katniss was the mockingjay, a slap in the face of the Capitol, something that was never meant to exist. Together, the song of the mockingbird that lived on for generations and the stubbornness of the jabberjay that refused to die, the mockingjay had the best of both worlds. It was a symbol of rebellion and unity.