#rambling at 4 am

[thewormformerlyknownasletojrjr]

The thing is they’re all foils of each other, you’re supposed to see each of them in everyone, Katniss and Peeta and Gale (though nobody really cares about him, sorry dude) in Sejanus and Lucy Gray and Coryo. There’s Katniss in Lucy Gray’s singing and the mockingjays, in the curtsy, in their similar looks; in Sejanus’s ‘act first think later’ reaction, in the way they honor the dead and how they want to protect the innocent; in Coryo’s distrust of people’s motivations, the way he second guesses everything, in their survival being the first thing in their mind in dangerous situations, in their food insecurity, there’s a reason that Katniss says the two of them have always understood each other. There’s Sejanus in Gale’s righteous fury, the fire he has, the fierce morality, there’s Lucy Gray in his loyalty and honesty, there’s Coryo in the way he gets taken under the wing of a powerful and prominent adult (Dr Gaul for Coryo, Coin and Beetee for Gale) as a teenager, manipulated and offered power and used to create atrocities in the name of a greater good. You see Peeta and Lucy Gray paralleled as performers in a hunt, using their charm rather than physical ability; Sejanus shown in Peeta’s compassion for others and in the symbol of bread, given to save Katniss for starvation, sprinkled over the bodies of the dead tributes; you see Coryo in Peeta’s determination to save his girl, to get her out of the games, the way he manipulates a crowd for his own gain, in their blonde hair.

And the thing is it’s absolutely brilliant because it only furthers the notion that none of them are set in stone.

Peeta is unfailingly good, even though his survival is predominantly thanks to those manipulation tactics. He uses them to sway the opinions of those in power without them noticing it, he even makes THE CAPITOL hate the games prior to the Quarter Quell. In the beginning of Mockingjay he uses it to sway Capitol favor towards Katniss in case the rebellion fails, at this point he is not focused on what the ‘right thing’ to do is, he’s looking to keep her alive at any cost. Katniss frequently describes Peeta as ‘playing the game’ even when they arguably aren’t in the Games, he knows what he’s doing, yet we never doubt in his goodness. The ability to manipulate people like that is pretty much never seen as a positive trait in any form of media, but we never doubt him, not when we’ve witnessed his compassion, his empathy.

Gale and Sejanus are both fiercely for the rebel cause from the beginning, even when they have no chance, the idealist, tho one who doesn’t care whether they get hurt to do the right thing, the paragon of morality, the ideal hero type. And yet still, by the end of the series, we cannot describe Gale as good anymore, even if what he did was for the right reasons. The power of taking the typical type of main character and showing how their ideals can be used against them, how they can get too caught up in the cause and fail to see the consequences piling up is fantastic, because there’s a certain point before Snow becomes an absolutely irredeemable monster where the two have a lot of similarities in their arcs, even though personality wise they couldn’t be more different. Snow is a fantastic villain because, in the end that cognitive dissonance overpowers the part of him that has misgivings, he is entirely convinced he is doing the right thing no matter the cost, a path we see Gale head down in Mockingjay. We even start to see Gale considering the Capitol citizens, including children and other innocents who played no part as ‘other’ and inherently monstrous. Coin and others in 13 wanting to do a Capitol Hunger Games illustrates that point as well, the escalation of it, the end result, when a revolution ceases to be a revolution and simply becomes a change in oppressors, but Gale is integral to that point because he is the early stages of it. Coryo is in the early stages of it for a large portion of his book. Obviously the difference is that Snow has 65 years to become very comfortable with this in his fascism and increasingly monstrous tendencies, but it’s the same beginning stage, and it’s incredible how Collins shows that a revolutionary type can quickly become something bad if they aren’t careful.

For Katniss as the reluctant hero type to never really willingly step up to the role, only be strong armed into it, is brilliantly done. Most ‘chosen one’ types don’t want to be, but eventually they do take it up with some willingness, but the Hunger Games is above all about using children in immoral ways whether for ‘good’ reasons or bad. Katniss only chooses to be their hero in the face of direct threat to herself or her loved ones, but that doesn’t undermine her actions. Even though she is supposed to be their tool, she exercises her free will time and time again, she makes calls that she know place her and her loved ones in political danger with 13, she makes herself their symbol on her terms. For someone who’s first thought is how to keep herself and the people she cares about alive, this defiance means a lot, particularly because she doesn’t trust people, she genuinely isn’t sure if there is going to be someone in her corner standing up for her, protecting her from the consequences of her actions, and most of the time when there is someone she’s surprised. She fully expects the worst case scenario, the worst in others, but unlike Snow she doesn’t hesitate to offer the best of herself in spite of having everything to lose and nothing to gain. Even though she fully expects everyone to have an ulterior motive, everyone to be lying, she cannot help but be anything but genuine, anything but true to herself. She doesn’t necessarily believe in any inherent goodness in others, oftentimes the opposite, but she still offers kindness rather than violence and that is all the more powerful.

In the frame of the Hobbes/Locke duality that TBOSAS really leans into, Peeta believes in an essential goodness in people, Gale sees it as us versus them, with his side as naturally ‘good’ and the other side as inherently bad, but Katniss by default thinks of people as self serving, something she still struggles with in the epilogue, having to remind herself of evidence to the contrary, she is consistently fighting that idea, disproving it with every action, at every turn, which is much more powerful than her just seeing the world in a positive light.

The thing is Suzanne Collins has them all start out as kids, each with a personality type, Katniss most like Coryo, Gale most like Sejanus, and a melange of other characteristics and traits—Peeta and Coryo most similar in their way of dealing with people, for instance—and through the choices they make she shows that they’re not set in stone. That it’s not some inherent goodness or badness in them from birth, it’s not just the way they behave around their peers. Every choice they make, every situation out of their control sets each of them on a path. Time and time again Coryo is only protected or assisted by the corrupt adults around him, he’s shown that only a very specific type of person will protect him, and they will always have something in it for them, and they will not tolerate him being anything less than like them, and in the end he chooses to have security in his survival, to have control, over everything else, and he lets that warp him into an atrocious human being. He takes the easy way in life, in contrast to Katniss and her uphill battle for the goodness in human nature.

Collins didn’t even try to be subtle about it, it’s very deliberate in the book in the way that he narrates as Coriolanus through the entire thing, but narrates the final chapter as Snow. It’s as clear as a marker flag, the way she says, ‘this is him crossing the line of no return’. Your sympathy for him in the book doesn’t come from him being sexy or charismatic, because you’re in his head and he’s an absolute disaster honestly. His internal monologue is basically just panicked screaming. The urge to root for him comes from the fact that Collins introduces him to us as a scared teenager, a kid. He’s not necessarily a great person, but it’s not yet in a ‘set to become a fascist dictator way’ it’s just in the way that a great deal of seventeen year olds are. There were so many times in reading the book that I laughed a loud because he was SUCH a teenager in his reaction to things. There isn’t any point to having a book with a character who was poised to be evil from the start, the whole point is watching what he becomes, it’s ‘be careful how you treat the children of the world now, they grow up to run the world, and who they are is shaped by who is kind to them and who isn’t’. Casca Highbottom didn’t see Coriolanus Snow for who he was from the start, he saw an adult who had wronged people in a child and mistreated the child according to his beliefs, and in doing so opened the doors for that child to become exactly what he feared and worse.

The whole point is that they’re kids, the whole point of all four books, they were all just children to begin with, some more similar than others but they all ended up in completely different places and who they ended up with wasn’t the same as the people they had been most alike when they were young. The point is that you can’t look at a child and decide they are more or less likely to be the world’s next great monster just because of their personality traits or how they see the world or who they’re friends with. Children are blank slates for adults to write on, and then they have to take all that writing and make a book of who they are out of it someday, and they might be the ones to make that book in the end, but it matters what you write. It matters when you give them kindness, or when you hurt them, it matters when you leave them to fend for themselves too young, it matters when you give them everything they could ever want and teach them that it’s not precious to have things and that they should always get them and that others shouldn’t and that it’s nothing less than what they deserve, it matters whether you starve them, or you bomb them, because whatever they make of themselves they make with the words that you write on that slate, and even though they might be able to turn it into anything if they want to, it’s far easier to write a horror story with violence than it is to write a gentle poem.

So they are all meant to mirror each other, every one of them, to show different roads taken with circumstances similar and different.

To show you two blonde boys who could part seas with the way their words affect people, and ask you to look at them when they are five years old, or ten, or fifteen, nameless, without context, just pretty boys with prettier words in their mouths, and ask you: which one will be the monster?

[qitty-qat-quorra]

I want more piercings, but I don't know what to get that suits my face... maybe a septum, but they take so long to heal 😓

Maybe snake bites? 🤔

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I think I made some of you guys a little sad with my last post, so you can have some happy aftermath twins before part 2, as a treat ❤️

[rohans-daughter]

oh also look what my husband built for me

any guesses??

a yarn shelf!!! I suggested adding dowels on the sides for skeins, but he designed the rest, building it out of birch plywood, premade trim, and some oak scraps leftover from a job renovating a church.

I think this is my favorite thing that I own now.

[ningadudexx]

monkie kid season 5 major spoilers!!!!

if you have not seen lmk s5 yet then be warned!!! you can find uploads of s5 on youtube!!!

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season 5 got me skipping through meadows and singing with glee

[sunnymainecoon]

I know damn well I misunderstood the assignment but we roll, I'll understand it some day

It's killer and dust btw. If you couldn't tell. Which you probably couldn't.. forgor to say but shhh 🤫 Killers having a convo with himself..

..I kinda wanna change my url but idk to what

[coatl-cuddles]

" WIP DELETE LATER 🤪🤪🤪" ok who gaf?

[batmecha]

NO WAY

also extra v1 v2 vocaloid cosplay doodle under the cut :3

how

[dykesevika]

WIP

Cowgirl Sevika??? Cowgirl Sevika.

Men DNI

[yukipri]

lmao of course now i try to update fic, and AO3 is down😂💀

Override chapter finally done with editing, it'll go up whenever the site's back🙃

AO3's status:

[nnnneeev]

I wish solomon would tuck me to bed

[divine-misfortune]

Phantom getting a little belly after about a year or so on the surface. His pants fit a little more around his thighs (and perfectly around his ass if you ask any of the other ghouls). His cheeks look a little less gaunt, he just starts to look softer. His vessel begins to look well loved and cared for.

[bethnaberrie]

leroy jethro gibbs was really out there in 2005 running a team of highly trained federal agents queer kids with daddy issues

[otrtbs]

PUTTING UP MY FIRST EXHIBIT EVER RN CURATED ENTIRELY BY ME !!!!!!!!!!! RAHHHH 😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈

IT’S OPEN 2 THE PUBLIC NEXT WEEK ‼️‼️‼️

[soupacool]

psssst look under the cut

surprise I actually screen printed this poster

sorry I only have the one process pic but it was finals when I made this so I was in a rush

14x17, 5 color screen print- one for each type of skill + black. getting the layering and registration just right was a bitch and a half but I love how it came out <333

[kaiserouo]

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