#But Johanna is more palpable so people support her more

[ssaseaprince]

It's time for my annual controversial Hunger Games post

The fact that Gale is so villianized is such a strong testament to the fact that people will only stand with the oppressed if they find them palpable enough. If you think his anger was extreme and his actions were unnecessary, then you have no real grasp on how revolutions actually work.

[buffyspeak]

obviously there are much more obvious and physically brutal tools of oppression the capitol employs against the districts, but something i find especially cruel and sinister is how often they weaponize an illusion of choice.

the careers can train for years and choose to volunteer and have even have a significant upper hand in the games, but the indoctrination in those districts runs so deep, they seem to forget (or i guess actively reframe, if the idea that many of them express that they're bringing "pride to their district" is anything to go by") that at the end of the day, they are being sent to slaughter as much as anyone else. if the careers stopped volunteering, they wouldn't suddenly be exempt from the games. and even in the years they win, it's still only one that comes out.

& katniss notes that in district twelve, one of the few freedoms they have is to choose who they marry, but even that is... sort of murky because of how divided the district is between the seam and the merchants, with ms. everdeen giving up whatever comforts she had growing up in town to marry katniss' father because she loved him. and it seems pretty heavily implied to me that she was estranged from her family because of this, because, as far as i'm aware, we get no real mention of them. they have no other support system after katniss' father dies. so yes, anyone in twelve can choose who they marry, but we see pretty clearly that marrying across the class divide can often mean one risking their home, their family, their livelihood for a life spent in impoverishment. and that doesn't mean it wasn't a choice on ms. everdeen's part - it clearly was, and it was the radical choice to make. it just makes me wonder how many people in twelve could, theoretically, have chosen to marry someone they loved, but were not either able or willing to risk being placed in such a position.

& even more relevant to catching fire, katniss is noting this elusive freedom they have because it's one she sees being taken away from her right before her eyes. yes, katniss and peeta can "choose" to get married, and yes, it's even her idea, but it's obviously not something being done out of desire. they are desperately looking for any way to appease snow, and katniss figures it's going to happen anyway, so they might as well do it when they can make it work in their favor. what i also find notable about this scene is that when peeta agrees and then holes up in his room, clearly upset, katniss asks haymitch why he was so upset when she thought it was what he wanted. and haymitch responds that it's because he wanted it to be real. and i think that's true but sometimes gets boiled down to a surface-level reading. and to be clear, i think haymitch himself knows it's not as simple as that might make it sound! it's not just about being upset or having his feelings hurt thinking that katniss doesn't feel the same way as him and is suggesting this. he knows why she does! he gets it! it is about the fact that he is being backed into this corner, too. this is not a choice he is making for himself either, not really, same as katniss! they both agree to it under the duress of trying to figure out how to protect themselves and their loved ones. this is not a choice he WOULD make for himself, knowing (or at least believing) that katniss doesn't love him in that way, and certainly not for the reason that they're doing it. not if they and their loved ones and the people starting to rebel in the districts weren't in active, palpable danger. it twists a real desire, a genuine love, something about himself he values, and turns it into something the capitol can control and strip away and then gloss over with a shiny veneer of false choice and saying, look, you got exactly what you wanted.

and this is also very important when it comes to finnick and johanna's stories because as we know, finnick is literally sex-trafficked in the capitol under the threat of having his loved ones harmed, and it's heavily implied that johanna endured the same threat and has had all her loved ones killed for refusing. finnick, in contrast, is made to - whether by pressure from the capitol or as a coping mechanism (i suspect a mix of both) - not only endure this sexual exploitation but perform a persona that he enjoys it, that he's The Sex Symbol of Panem, that it is a Real choice he is making and not outright coercion, that he is desiring of and therefore somehow complicit in the abuses committed against him (obviously not true.) and truly, i cannot even for one moment fathom blaming either of them for the way they react to these deeply horrifying circumstances because neither of them have any actual good choices!!! two "options" are served to them, both despicable in their own rights, and they just have to do whatever they feel they can live with.

idk what the point of this is it's just something i find so uniquely sick about snow and the other powerful capitol higher-ups, because it is, of course, a form of control in its own right - after all, while cruel and horrifying, giving a public pretense of choice while making it clear privately how limited any of their options really are is, in fact, a very effective tool in the system of control he's built.

[freespeechfandom-blog]

Villain appreciation: Jo Zirimis

With Ares, Nimue, the return of Apollo, black mages, fey, etc... RtS had sadly too many villains with too few scenes of substance to really appreciate them, but I'd like to highlight a villain who stood out to me as one of the best in the series so far, and that's Johanna. She did give off major Myra déjà vu vibes, but had a lot going for her on her own, like the following five major points.

1) She’s a strong, well-crafted character. She's really intelligent and resourceful, and her sneaky observation game was on point, learning as much as she could as an acolyte. She strategizes well too, as she hid her genius long-term plan in the background while her more ambitious fellows screwed themselves over. She also uses her disadvantage to her advantage, using secret necro tricks to use the Badlands and one-up  every Pythia in history. And had a plan that not only played to her strengths, but negated the organization and numbers of her enemies, and blindsided everybody. Total badass.

“Ah, still thinking like everybody else.” Johanna clicked her tongue in disappointment. “Then how should I be thinking?” “Like a Pythia! Or, better yet, like a necromancer.” “A necro—” I stopped. “Now you’re getting it.” She sounded like a teacher with a particularly dim-witted pupil.’

2) She is fleshed out with in-depth build-up. She does get a few minus points for gloating needlessly, and basically doing the cliché 'villain monologue' in which she tells the protagonist all about her evil plan that enables her to be stopped. What's great about her though was that she has a genuine connection with the protagonist. While Ares was drummed up in previous books, she came with little build-up; but we only saw a little of Ares in really impersonal not very impactful abstract terms, while she was fleshed out, had a face-off with Cassie, and we got to know her over time. I’d love to see her to return, because her dynamic with Cassie was particularly fascinating:

‘It was acid. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up smarter than everyone else, more talented, more powerful—just not in an accepted way. So they shun you, or if you manage to successfully hide what you can do, they condescend—God, how they did! To me, who was a thousand times better than any of them!”’

3) She is in a palpable believable opposition with the protagonist. Because damn, that quote above highlighted brilliantly that Jo is Cassie's double. She is a shadowy could-have-been-Cassie and it’s almost uncanny. They're both necromancers, something we almost didn't see at all in the series, due to how stigmatized that is, and here they are showing us two sides of the same coin. In a way, Jo embodies what Cassie could have been like, had her life unfolded differently; or at the very least showcases what Cassie would have had to deal with, had she been returned to her 'proper place' in magical society (ignoring for now that the Spartoi would have killed her the moment she was discovered).

4) She has humanizing, understandable motivations. 

“[...] the magic workers . . . like those who marginalized me, belittled me, humiliated me my whole life, because my magic was different from theirs?” “I wanted to kill myself so many times,” Jo was saying. “Dreamed about it, lusted for it. But something always stopped me. Some rage at the unfairness of it all, the knowledge that I could die, but they would still be there, that they would win."

Johanna’s story is quite heart-wrenching to read about, and it hits even harder knowing that this could have been Cassie so easily. Not only would she have been a necromancer to be shunned, but a child of a Guild/Black Circle mage and a disgraced acolyte, which is far wose. As for Jo, these exchanges really humanize her and make her motivations clear and understandable, which worked so much better than 'Grr, I'm a life-sucking god-face' imo. Does having this tragic backstory mean that Jo is relatable, or in the right? Nah, but it gives her character a far more profound weight, and I love these quotes, despite the somewhat cliché 'villain with a tragic backstory' and this is why:

5) She highlights the fascinating discourse about nature vs nurture.

“I’m bringing back a weapon, a weapon against the world that hated me from birth. Let them die—let them all die! And I will laugh in the flames!” “You’re crazy,” I said as the officer appeared in the door again, walking backward, his face incredulous. “You’re completely insane.” “If I am, it’s because they made me that way."

This highlights the ubiquitous dilemma of whether people are shaped by nature or nurutre. In this context, are people born bad, or do the circumstances of life make them so? I don't know which side of that grand debate the Cassie books support, but I'm leaning towards nurture, as they show the defects of the magical community producing its own monsters. And as comforting as it would be to imagine that Cassie would never do something like this, or never become something like this, wouldn’t she have become jaded and broken too in Jo's shoes, and given the same affection and support as Cassie, wouldn’t Johanna have become just as good? The last time I genuinely enjoyed a villain-dynamic this much was in the Dory books, with Radu, Dory and LC reflecting about the same nature vs nurture topic in relation to Drac. And damn, that's just really, really good stuff. Kudos to the villain of Johanna.