#suzanne collins the woman you are

[timelesslords]

thinking about how the hunger games were designed to prove that without society, order, government, someone to rule, we devolve into little more than animals, and how the games themselves prove over and over again that this is not true. We see it in every single game we witness.

Katniss placing flowers around Rue's body in the arena. Thresh sparing Katniss because she was kind to Rue, even though he was making it that much harder for himself to win.

Haymitch going back for Maysilee after hearing her scream even though their alliance had been broken. Haymitch holding her as she dies the same way Katniss did Rue.

Coral's "I can't have killed them all for nothing" when she realizes she's not going home. Lamina cutting down Marcus at great personal risk. And, my favorite moment in tbosas, Reaper collecting the bodies of his fellow tributes, his peers, even the ones who tried to kill him, into a pile. Taking the weapons from their hands. Closing their eyes and crossing their arms in the best approximation of a proper burial he can manage, covering them with the Capitol flag as a makeshift shroud.

The Games bring out the worst in people, yes. But despite the extreme circumstances, despite the exterior pressure of the Capitol, despite the fact that it could mean pain and heartbreak and death, it also shows that people have an enormous capacity for goodness. That even in a situation purposefully designed to make empathy impossible, people can't help but have it anyway.

Snow looks at the Games and all he can see is what's inside himself-- this pure animalistic drive to conquer and defeat. He kills and it feels good and he thinks that everyone else must feel that way too. He doesn't realize (maybe can't realize) that he is the exception, not the rule. He cannot see outside himself, outside his own warped perspective, to realize that the fact that people do show humanity in the games proves his entire worldview wrong.

[grishaxverse]

don’t disturb me honey mommy is busy rooting for haymitch in his hunger games book

[bookdragon-shenanigans]

THE FACT THAT THE FIRST SCENE OF THG IS ON HAYMITCH'S BIRTHDAY AND WHEN WE MEET HIM FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS DAY HE'S BLACKOUT DRUNK

[markofheroes]

me reading the hunger games books for the first time in 2023 is very embarassing but i can at least say i finally get the obsession. making this post purely to explain why i may be posting about this YA series from 2008 like it came out yesterday in the near future

[danyllura]

The capitol callously watching and commentating on the hunger games as defenceless children are subjected to horror and death but standing up and gasping in horror at Reaper ripping down the flag. Reaper laying the bodies of the murdered children to rest and looking to the camera asking for acknowledgment of their suffering only to be cut off and for the only reaction of horror mustered from the capitol citizens coming from the news of the death of one of their own. The Hunger Games will never not successfully act as a horrifying mirror to the atrocities in our world.

[fatherforgivethem]

I saw this on TikTok so it’s not an original thought but it is however something that I can’t stop thinking about.

The differences between Lucy Gray’s “Hanging Tree” and Katniss’. When listening to both and reading the books it’s so clear in the way that the song has been passed down through the years. It’s been over 60 years since Lucy Gray strung her guitar and sung the lyrics. When Katniss sings the song, it’s an old folk song that her father learned from his family. A song that was carefully passed down. But like most family heirlooms, they collect rust with each hand they are passed down to.

Lucy Gray sings the song as if she’s been waiting an hour or so for her lover to meet her at the tree. “Are you, are you, coming to the tree?”. Her tone says “hurry along we need to leave now, or else we’ll never leave. Are you here yet? Are you on the way?” She waits for Snow to meet her at the tree so they can leave Panem and live a life of freedom together.

Katniss sings the song, in my opinion, as the man being hanged. “Are you, are you, coming to the tree?” Her tone is darker, it’s full of exhaustion. Like she’s ready for it to be over and done with. Like she’s been waiting over 60 years for her lover to meet her at the tree. And she’s so done with waiting, that she’s now just asking her lover to swing with her. “Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.” She’s asking her lover to join her in death. For if she can’t have them when they are both alive, then they might be allowed some peace together in the hanging tree, swinging side by side. Their hands just barely touching as they sway in the wind.

[honourablepranksinatra]

Okay the rest of the trilogy holds up too

Just finished rereading the hunger games for the first time since I was a kid and I'm happy to report it still majorly holds up and is even better than I remembered

[nobleflowers]

I've got a gut feeling that the new Hunger Games book won't be in Haymitch's pov

[starlavastra]

My middle school self will be shitting herself on this announcement. Ohhhh after that 3am wall-staring contest after she read that scene in catching fire and almost literal DECADE on waiting to quench her curiosity that is Haymitch's Quarter Quell Game?? One of the first instances on beating Capitol on their own game with their own creation?!!?? SHE'LL HAVE A FIELD DAY

[sheisoverhere]

Me telling my little sister about the greatest day of my life.

[queercatcave]

Annie went mad after her district partner was decapitated. And then her husband was decapitated.

[fictionadventurer]

Me: Don't do this to me, Suzanne. I've made a point of praising your decision not to tell the stories fans demand and to only write books when you have an issue to explore/something to say.

AP News: “With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins said in a statement. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

Me: Carry on.

🚨 BREAKING NEWS!! 📰

A new Hunger Games novel will be released on March 18, 2025.

"Sunrise on the Reaping will revisit the world of Panem twenty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell."

The 50th Games is canonically won by Haymitch Abernathy, District 12's second victor and Katniss Everdeen's mentor.

[judas-is-scary]

Suzanne Collins has me deranged.

We know from the Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes that many of the features of the modern Hunger Games are Snow's invention, including those that motivate the districts, like prizes. It's fair to assume he likely came up with the idea for tesserae, it's an easy way to keep the districts well fed while encouraging/forcing participation and general involvement in the games. It's a great reminder, even the food you eat is linked to the games themselves. Tesserae is a type of tile work commonly associated with Romans which Collins draws a lot of inspiration from in her depiction of the Capital. It has also in the past been used as a token. In this case, you take the token of food in exchange for extra names in the bowl. Now that's fucking excellent on it's own, real neat bit of linguistic worldbuilding.

BUT what really gets me, what truly fucks me up is that Snow didn't name it that because he's like a language nerd. Tigris had to use tile buttons, tesserae buttons on his shirt during songbirds because they couldn't afford anything else. Snow inherently associates that material with poverty, specifically with the lack of food he had during that time. As a result tesserae represents poverty starvation and desperation to everyone in the districts. Snow is so god dam self obsessed he imbedded ,intentionally or not , personal fucking references to himself within the districts.

AND THAT is why Collins is so crazy to me that detail is tiny, you truly would not notice and in the grand scheme it's not that important but that's woman is on her shit and she's fucking thinking her thoughts and its genius. HER MIND UGH. truly has me messed.

[official-saul-goodman]

No but a passing comment about how you noticed the same thing suzanne collins noticed would have been enough. It feels like you cunts are having fun making hunger games comparisons to real life events. It's not 'dystopian fiction' it's dystopian reality, stop comparing reality to fiction all the fucking time just so you get your opportunity to geek out about hunger games again. There's protesters outside of the met gala who are fighting for a free palestine while millionaires have their stupid party inside the met gala. That's a statement enough without you using the face and body of a woman of colour to represent your fictional 'capitol city'.

[daydreamer-in-reverie]

I think that, as a literary device, Finnick’s story is one of the most effective ones I have ever read.

When you think of victims of sex-related crimes, you so rarely think of a man.

In our modern society, we more often imagine women to be victims of such crimes. Beautiful women who are battered and bruised, their eyes holding that faraway gleam of pain and trauma. Sex-related violence against women is such a common occurrence that it is difficult to find a woman who doesn’t have intimate knowledge about it. Perhaps not every woman has been raped but every woman knows at least one who has. As young girls, we’re told so many things to try and prevent rape. Don’t go out by yourself at night. Be careful of what you wear. Don’t drink alcohol. Fight them off. And yet, if you did everything right and still fail at protecting yourself, just give in. Better raped than dead. Come home to your family and friends hurt and bruised but alive.

And it is this message that Finnick, a man, lives by.

Better taken advantage of, bruised and hurt, than dead. Better you than your parents or your siblings or Mags or Annie. Do whatever it takes to stay alive.

And, the thing is, we didn’t have to hear this story from him. We could have heard it from Cashmere.

In his propo to the Capitol, Finnick reveals that attractive Victors are pimped out by President Snow to the residents of the Capitol. One such Victor is Cashmere.

Knowing this layer of her story makes Cashmere the picture perfect victim. A woman who is repeatedly described as beautiful. She is a typical description of what a rape victim is. Suzanne could have used her character instead of Finnick’s to portray an instance so familiar to so many women and yet, she didn’t.

She chose Finnick. And I think the reason why she did that is because hearing it from Cashmere would have made the story fall flat.

Would we have blinked an eye had it been Cashmere who revealed the horrors of being a Victor? Would we have felt anything other than a vague sense of sympathy? I don’t think so. Like so many women before her, Cashmere’s story is so familiar to us that it no longer leaves that bitter taste in our mouths. We, as a society, have been so deeply desensitized to this plight that we no longer feel the same indignation we used to feel. Instead we are resigned to our fate. Cashemere isn’t the first victim of rape and she won’t be the last.

Yet to hear it from Finnick had us shocked. Finnick? A man? Attractive, to be sure, but he is at the prime of his life and yet he is a victim? Finnick, who can wield a trident so effectively he became the youngest Victor in the 75 years the Hunger Games operated, was raped? Finnick, who has literally killed people with his bare hands, was prostituted? Finnick, who cracked jokes about killing people was whored out by President Snow?

It is absurd! It is a bizarre and strange! It has to be untrue!

And yet it’s not.

Finnick being representative of that particular storyline was effective at reminding us of what it means to be victimized like that. And using Finnick, a man, instead of Cashmere, a woman, reminded us of why we have to be rightfully angry and upset about such things instead of resigned to our fates.

Suzanne Collins is an absolute literary genius.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Character Development: External & Internal Journey

Every character in every great story–regardless of length, medium, or genre–has not one journey to complete but two:

An external journey and an internal journey.

And those journeys must be intricately linked. 

External Journey 

The journey that the character physically takes.

The external story is the stuff that’s happening to the hero on the outside. Examples:

The hero’s quest to find a buried treasure. The journey to another planet to recover a lost space probe. The hero fighting the evil queen who killed their brother.

Internal Journey

The transformation that occurs as a result of that physical journey

It’s that internal journey that so many of us forget about or neglect or simply don’t put enough effort into developing.

But it’s also the journey that matters and makes your story matter. 

The internal story is the emotional stuff that’s happening to your hero on the inside.

It’s the hero’s internal journey toward learning their ultimate life lesson. 

Examples

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

External: An alcoholic woman helps solve the case of a young woman’s disappearance. 

Internal: A troubled woman confronts the demons of her past.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

External: A girl is forced to leave her home and fight to the death in an arena with 23 other teens.

Internal: A girl finds the strength to stand up to the corrupt Capitol and refuse to be just another pawn in their games. 

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

External: A woman becomes the caretaker for a quadriplegic man whom she falls in love with.

Internal: A woman finds the courage to live her life for herself, and stop living it for everyone else. 

Source Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character