#and then ellie makes her war diaries into a book in the ellie chronices after the war

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

me in 2012/2013 reading the first hunger games book because it was popular bc of the movie: ooh seems cool but super political so that’s not cool bc political stuff is boring and stupid and not something that i’ll ever have to understand. plus all katniss does is fucking whinge. she’s so whiny. it’s annoying. guess i won’t read the rest of the books or watch the other movies.

me now, in my mid 20s having finally watched all the hunger games movies, having read the first two HG books in full and still reading mockingjay, all because suzanne collins was like “oh hey here’s a new book about president snow!” and also thinking about how the world is practically in ruins by 2020: yknow what? suzy has a fucking point! of course katniss is whiny, teenage me, she comes from the poorest district in the whole of Panem; where wealth is basically non existent except for those who live in shops. the capitol loves to watch 24 kids die each year while they live in extreme comfort and fancy, whereas every district from 2 down to 12 are all slaves to the capitol: even if they have some better off people in the districts, that work for the army (district 2) or run the electronics factories in district 3 or whatever else in the other districts. besides the motto of Panem’s capitol being “breads and circuses” which are provided by the districts; which katniss and peeta meet in Catching Fire, at the party for their state media orchestrated wedding (Y I K E S™️ am i right?) where octavia (one of katniss’ stylists) invites both katniss and peeta to use some funny concoction to make themselves throw up in the bathroom to fit more of the overly decadent capitol food dishes into their stomachs. talk about “waste not, want not” somewhere else away from katniss; because she’s literally almost starved to death and seen others starve to death countless times in district 12. and surely you could’ve recognised the reference to “bread and circuses” at least, after fucking studying ancient rome for two whole fucking terms in year 11, teenage me????

in addition to the above, the victors of the hunger games are forever terrorised by the government via various means; and especially so if they’ve defied the capitol like katniss & peeta or even haymitch (though that isn’t partly revealed til halfway through catching fire and wholly revealed through haymitch in mockingjay). they torture peeta to insanity, basically and then seemingly “deliver” him back to katniss in district 13 programmed to kill her!!!! they parade the tributes like beauty pageant contestants and animals for slaughter at a cattle show in district 10; right after training them as killing machines for the arena, where they’ll exhibit their newly honed murdering skills before an entire nation each day. like girl!!!! there’s so much to relate to the real world in this text!!! but you’re just going to brush it off because it’s “too political” and because “katniss is a whiny bitch!!!”??? like of course she’s whiny! she’s 16/17!!! just like you!!! but you’re just an asshole. learn to empathise with other fictional characters that A R E N T harry potter and the cast of characters in that series, for fucks sake. or alternatively, learn to empathise with characters that A R E N T ellie linton and her friends in the tomorrow series doing their guerilla fighting during a war in australia. because by Mockingjay, katniss is as much a guerilla fighter as ellie is a rebel fighter against the enemy country that invades australia in the tomorrow series. like yes, the tomorrow series isn’t set in a futuristic american post-apocalyptic hellscape like Panem. but that doesn’t mean that the state war that’s fully raging in mockingjay and breaking out in catching fire, due to the quarter quell and the former tributes being recruited again to go through the Murder Olympics™️/Hunger Games again as a form of state sanctioned terrorisation on their psyches, and those victors becoming enemies of Panem due to them voicing their feelings of injustice about being forced to compete in the arena again during their interviews...... is not the same as ellie in normal but war-torn 1990s australia; where ellie and her crew of friends basically become state enemies because of their large scale guerilla activities like blowing up enemy ships and airfields. just like how katniss and gale blow up bombing airships from the capitol in district 8 with their bomb loaded arrows or blow up the military base with rebel army fighters in district 2 in mockingjay. but yeah. just learn to empathise and connect with/relate to characters outside of your incredibly limited reading palate.

moreover, 7-8 years into the future in 2020, the world is in political turmoil, believe it or not. maybe you’ll relate to katniss as you grow more tired of the aussie government forever penalising the younger generations by taking away penalty rates on weekend and public holiday shifts in an already terrifyingly precarious job market that’s become highly casualised/part-time based, which is pricing them out of the property market also, due to lower wages/earnings bc part-time/casual roles don’t pay very well. then on top of that, having a generation defining pandemic. then thirdly, also having the worst set of bushfires in 2019 and earlier this year, that saw like 55million native animals die and millions upon millions of hectares of bushland be burnt to the ground. finally, they’ve made your dream arts degree basically unobtainable due to raising the fees by 113% to $43,500 instead of the $23,000 that it was when i graduated from that degree in 2018. also if you fail they want you to pay your fees upfront instead of relying on hecs to cover it all. all because it’s apparently for “saving the aussie economy.” are you pissed now, teenage me?

across the seas in america, however, donald trump is leading the country as president and he’s turning the country you bizarrely loved more than your home country (due to all the american docos and teen shows you watched/were watching) into a fascist shitshow which is killing millions of people. like i won’t be surprised if donald trump (or even scott morrison/scommo/scummo) if he/they get/s another term in office, and tries to introduce a hunger games style olympic games or something all so the poorest classes learn their place after rioting for most of this year over BASIC FUCKING HUMAN RIGHTS FOR BLACK LIVES MATTER (even here in australia too); because the police are turning into the brutal peacekeepers of Panem, but on a worldwide scale.

like if they introduced some type of HG style murder olympics, they’d do it just to prove that they may have actually read something other than their own stupid self-aggrandising and country/state-destroying twitter rants before they post them.