Reading TBoSaS was an eye opening experience for me because for a minute I was like Katniss and Peeta had it so much better than Lucy and these other children who were treated like literal animals- transporting them like livestock and putting them in cages not to mention the very public, dehumanizing parades. But then I was horrified at myself because I couldn’t believe myself. It wasn’t better at all, Katniss and Peeta were brought there for the same exact purpose and putting them in fancy dresses and providing them with expensive amenities doesn’t take it away. It’s still the same horrible, wretched, gruesome tradition, I just thought it was better because it was also wrapped up nicely with a pretty bow which I guess was the whole point.
i need someone to talk about reaper ash from district eleven. i need someone to talk about him and how he had collected his fellow tributes’ body one by one after they died and covered them with ripped out flags as a way to give them their own resting place in the arena. and i need someone to talk about how, after lucy gray had tired him out, he just made his way to his own makeshift morgue, rested beside his fellow fallen tributes, and covered his body with the flag before he himself died.
and how that was literally all he did. he didn’t kill anyone there (which was not said to uplift him from the others because it is a kill-or-be-killed situation, just to make a point) despite what he had said to them the night before, and how he had his own way of resisting against the capitol by refusing to play its games. someone talk about him!!!!!
As The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds lingers in my head, I have grown to really understand that the 10th games are as much of a tipping point for the continuation of the games as 74/75 are the tipping point of their destruction. Highbottom, the creator of the games clearly does not want them to continue. No one even watches the games and tributes die before even entering the arena. Dr. Cual is the only one who seems to love that games but she’s too vicious to know how to expand the necessity of games “correctly”.
The tenth games are a mess and could have been framed as a mistake to continue with, as Highbottom seemed to be pushing for. Dr. Gual was pro- killing the 24 tributes in whatever way, not fully playing into the killing sport of it all. She was willing to have the snakes kill all of the tributes in one go, essentially ending the spectacle with all the blood on the capitals hands. Snow combines the essence of humanity, the notion of punishment and need for entertainment to build out the continuation of the games.
All the lessons Snow learns from District 12 are weaponized to full effect by the time we read about the 74th games. Adding tvs and holograms to every district, betting on the winner, having the districts route against each other, heroizing the winner and marching them around as a prop. The victors not being able to return to normal lives and being pimped out by the capital screams like a greater punishment for Lucy’s escape attempt. Snow knows how to add stakes and, in turn, flex the power the capital holds over its citizens.
Snow road the middle for so long that he could see the cracks in the foundation and smooth them over to continue the process for years to come. Without Snow’s experiences, the games would never be as brutal and brilliantly propagandized as we see in the future, and most likely would have ended far sooner.
bringing my thread here in honor of the ballad of songbirds and snakes trailer today because the “lucy gray parallels katniss” people are out there and they are wrong, lucy gray baird is peeta mellark and sejanus plinth is katniss everdeen and i will die on this hunger games hill
“From the very beginning you are being told to compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease. It is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible.” - Osho
