EPILEPSY WARNING FOR HUNGER GAMES

EPILEPSY WARNING FOR HUNGER GAMES

During the evacuation in District 13, when everyone is decending the stairs, there is a very strong flashing blue light.

Please be aware of this if you’re seeing the movie and your epilepsy could be triggered by this.

The flashing ends once the 3 characters are through the doors (sorry, trying not to spoil too much as well).

Please reblog to spread the word.

the best part of the hunger games is when prim gets called and katniss is screaming about it NOT MY SISTER and then peeta gets called and he has like 50 brothers and they’re all just like sucks dude…

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.

things about the hunger games franchise that should anger you

katniss’s deafness was erased in the movies

peeta’s amputation was erased in the movies

our media is acting exactly like the capitol

katniss’s prep team aren’t real characters in the movies

things about the hunger games franchise that shouldn’t anger you

“katniss is so annoying and whiny and cold and weak!!”

 the hunger games is basically hadestown with more murder

don’t tell me peeta wouldn’t go into the underworld with only the power of love and song and accidentally start a revolution like orpheus (yes i know katniss is technically the one who started it in the books but she’s Eurydicie in this  - hungry young girl, fuck this romance nonsense, better survival instincts et cetera - cause i feel liker Eurydice is the true hero of the musical)

i mean, one of the songs is literally called “his kiss, the riot” 

they’re both stories about trying to save your loved one and accidentally starting a whole thing you weren’t really trying to start, but now that it’s started they’re sure as hell not gonna stop it

plus i think patrick page would be a good president snow

it's sorta funny to me how president snow basically ignored peeta until mockingjay, despite peeta being veeery similar to snow when he was young. they were both:

experts at lying and manipulating (peeta successfully lied to the entire nation on multiple occasions, and snow made everyone think he was a sweet, studious, polite person when underneath it all he was a snake).

star crossed lovers with a singing black-haired girl from the seam who was initially only in the relationship for survival (although in lucy gray's defense, it might not have been entirely for survival. she might have genuinely loved snow to some degree, we don't really know. snow perceives her as a user who played with his feelings, but it's just as likely that she truly liked him and he just thinks she's a manipulator bc he got dumped in the end lol).

relationship with said girl starts in the hunger games (although snow is a mentor and peeta is a tribute. I'm probably reaching but there could be some meaning in this? at least in peeta and katniss' relationship, they were both tributes, so they started off as equals in their relationship. whereas as snow was in a position of power over lucy when they dated. he basically abused his authority, although he doesn't seem to realise it).

jealousy over a boy from the seam despite their love interest either a) no longer having any feelings for that boy bc he hurt her too badly (lucy) or b) never having any romantic interest in that boy in the first place (katniss). (although peeta is way more reasonable and not toxic about it like snow was, which shows the difference between the two of them).

both charming and charismatic, and use this to their advantage. they know how to talk to ppl, they know how to make the audience like them.

both always thinking five steps ahead. they're extremely intelligent, neither of them are dumb blonds.

both from upper class families in their society (peeta was from the wealthy merchant class of district 12, snow was from the aristocratic snow family).

and in spite of them both technically being upper class, they also struggled with food insecurity. peeta's family couldn't afford a varied diet and they had to live on stale bread. and snow's family lived on cabbage and lima beans and he often went hungry.

they have one nice parent (peeta's dad, snow's mum), and one cold parent (snow's dad, peeta's mum).

the connection to poison. peeta (accidently) poisons foxface, and then tries to commit suicide via nightlock. snow gives lucy rat poison to use on her opponents in the arena, and then begins to directly poison ppl himself who he thinks stand in the way of him gaining/maintaining power.

they both have flower motifs. peeta decorates cookies with flowers, and is compared to a dandelion by katniss. and snow has his grandmother's rose garden, the rose powder and compact belonging to his mother, wears a rose in his lapel at events, gives a rose to his tribute, and later on uses roses as his calling card in the main series.

they even have the same hair and eye colour.

i know snow was focused on katniss bc she was the one who pulled out the berries and sparked the rebellion and reminded him of his ex-girlfriend but considering how self-centered snow is, you'd think he would have taken more of an interest in peeta, who was so similar to him. I feel like peeta is what snow could have been, if he hadn't lost his parents, fallen into poverty, and developed a need for control and status bc of that, and if tigris, lucy and sejanus' influence on him (trying to convince him that humans are inherently good) had outweighed dr gaul's influence on him (convincing him that humans are inherently brutes and need to be tightly controlled in order to stop society from collapsing). the main difference between them is that peeta was selfless, while snow was very similar to him in every other way but with a big dose of selfishness. peeta was fundamentally good, and never could have taken the dark path that snow did, whereas snow was morally grey but had the potential to be good like peeta. unfortunately he ended up rejecting the good traits he had in favour of furthering his career.