Guys. Guys please. We have to remember that protagonist is not a stand in word for hero and antagonist is not a stand in word for villain. Please. We learned this in middle school. The protagonist is the character the audience follows. The antagonist is the character who is working against the protagonist.
i think its really really important to remember how EASILY stan couldve dropped a "now i have to deal with you BRATS for the summer.." or ford to slip a "dont let these snotty little children near my lab again, stan." but instead they never do that like. idk.
i like how the show makes it a very important and clear point that at least hear, the twins are Loved and Cherished and Wanted. so very wanted.
stan ADORES THEM. in his bones. hes trying to give them freedom but he is so so worried.
ford goes from growling to MELTING on sight "shermie had kids?" they are his babies.
its a very good and nice point like. these children are Loved and Wanted and their guardians are trying so hard and that is the bare minimum. and Not loving your kids is a bad fucked up thing to do with bad consequences.
dipper is a weirdly special kind of character to me because I was that type of kid, the one who wanted to grow up too fast and got irritated at their sibling not taking things too seriously and never wanting to seem childlike. i connected heavily with him, and honestly the entire arc of Gravity Falls being in part about him learning to just be a kid really helped me in the long run. it was a great wake up call seeing a character so similar to me at that age learn to finally stop trying to be an adult before i was ready.
i think something that elevates the hunger games franchise is not just the quality of writing but the integrity of it. tbosas isn’t just a cash-grab by suzanne collins in the age of sequels and reboots (though i won’t pretend that didn’t play a part), it’s a character study of the main antagonist with a different structure than the main trilogy. and importantly, it doesn’t just re-hash the same old themes and beats the main trilogy had, it expands on not just the world of the hunger games but the themes as well, it actually has something new to say about the trilogy’s themes about class, capitalism, power, and control, in a way that couldn’t be explored with the main story because the protagonist of that story simply did not have access to the world that’s being explored in tbosas.
i understand the people who call for books/movies to be made about haymitch, finnick, johanna, different years of the games — we love those characters and want to see more of them! i’d kill for a novella on finnick’s days mentoring tributes, or katniss’s parents falling in love. but at the end of the day we probably wouldn’t be very satisfied with those stories being fleshed out if they had absolutely nothing new to say about the world, they’d be enjoyable, but not as interesting and engaging as tbosas has been.
In the epilogue of Mockingjay, Katniss only refers to her children as 'the boy' and 'the girl'. We never learn their real names. Throughout her life, Katniss has never really been allowed privacy or the ability to make many of her own decisions. Whether this was caused by the living conditions of the Seam and having to constantly provide for Prim and their mother, or by the fact that she was forced into the scrutiny of the public eye when she was reaped/volunteered and became the face of the rebellion- The Mockingjay.
So then all of this passes, she and Peeta are living together in District 12 in the Victor's Village, and they are finally allowed to choose how they want to live. After 15 years, she decides that she's ready to have kids. They can be raised in a safe environment with no Games, no threats. So the one choice she makes at the end is to keep their names from us, the audience. The one thing that gives us our identity before anything else. The one thing that, essentially, makes us who we are (also Suzanne is so meticulous with picking names throughout the series, so it would be special to Katniss and Peeta). She decides that that's only for her and her family to know.
We, who have literally seen every inch of her life from the reaping up until now, are being told that no, we don't get to see parts of her life without her permission anymore. And it always makes me so emotional. Like yes! Take back your life! Rest. Live. Love. But on YOUR terms and no one elses.
(I posted this on my TikTok acc @narniachrons as well. It wasn't stolen, I swear!)