#the best line in the book

[my-heart-of-heart]

I’ve been waiting for this one…

[suntails]

reality

[dansemacabre]

i’ve been thinking about “sixer, it would eat you alive” since i read it and. man. every layer you peel back makes it worse. im not a bill apologist but. shit

if you (1) take it at face value, it paints bill as an apologetic murderer in his single (and maybe sole) open moment of regret. he doesn’t let his walls down often- only with ford do we even get to see the remnant of his galaxy, see the “actual remorse” ford describes, get just a hint of his origins. but he does it, because he thinks ford should know.

if you (2) take it from ford’s point of view, as something he committed to journal three, like. wow. imagine being so committed to a being that you’d hunt down and kill the monster that destroyed his home, only to (assumably) figure out later that that being was the monster. the small moments of trust, the “good times”, are so key to manipulation. how long did ford hold onto that one shred of vulnerability? no wonder ford stayed for as long as he did. in his eyes, bill was a survivor. ford wanted to survive too.

(slight tw below for unreality- any time i mention our reality, i mean “our reality” as a narrative device used in the book of bill as a proxy for the idea of bill being in our reality, since he can’t actually be in our reality. all of this is a fictional theory about a show/book with fictional contents!)

but if you (3) remember that “even his lies are lies” and absolutely Nothing bill says should be trusted. Whoo boy. if i read tbob right the book itself is being created in the theraprism (even tho it shows up with the ciphertologists at some point? idk that’s a whole other post). it’s meant to show what the reader wants to see; it manifests in our reality as what the collective fandom wants to see. so if we want to see truth, if we want to see where bill ended up and who he actually is, there’s a non-zero chance that the whole interaction was a complete fabrication.

imagine bill, stuck in the actively harmful, probably earth-illegal theraprism, once again being forced to be “fixed” and molded into something more palatable, being forced to conform no matter how much it hurts. (i know natural uncontrollable mutation ≠ just so much murder and destruction and chaos, but. you can’t ignore the similarities. bill has obviously been thinking about those silly straws.)

he looks back on everything that went wrong, back on his relationship with ford, back through every dimension where he wins. would that one moment, that one truth amid centuries of lies, have saved him from purgatory? if he had just been open? shown his damage? maybe he did think of his parents, or his henchmaniacs (especially the oracle). people who he might have once opened up to. maybe he just wanted to open up to someone again.

so in his own weird way, stuck in a cell, he reshaped reality again. in this reality, for this fleeting moment, he had been someone worth believing. and ford had listened, hell, ford had wanted to help. looking back, knowing how he treated ford, knowing how ford ended up because of it, maybe bill would have said the most honest thing he’d ever told ford: i am the monster, i am not worth your time or belief, and i will eat you alive.

[ofswordsandpens]

lowkey it’s a relief to know someone else who didn’t enjoy sunrise on the reaping because i really (sadly) disliked it but everytime i check the sotr tag it’s nothing but praise. it’s not entirely unwarranted because the general ideas and themes of this book ARE good they’re just… not done with the finesse and skill i’ve come to expect from suzanne collins.

but if you want to, i’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the book and its problems, especially re: haymitch’s characterization and the rebel subplot.

I think the crux of the issue of SOTR for me is that while it is a very interesting story with powerful concepts and messaging and themes, it doesn't quite feel like it was supposed to be Haymitch's story.

It feels a little too at odds at times from what we learn of Haymitch when Katniss and Peeta watch his games in Catching Fire. And before anyone tells me "that's the point!" or "you're falling for Capitol propaganda! We all fell for Capitol propaganda!!" the issue here is that no, I don't think we did, because when SC wrote about Haymitch's games in Catching Fire, I doubt she was doing it in mind of a Haymitch prequel more than a decade down the line that would recontextualize the entire story. I think what she wrote in Catching Fire in 2009 about Haymitch's games is exactly what it was supposed to be.

Then I think present day SC sat down to write sotr and decided she wanted to write a story about the long-standing power of propaganda. That rebellions are long burning and slow building and people will try and fail and try again. And so she adapted Haymitch's story to fit those themes.

And that's fine! It's fine that it's a bit of a retcon. A retcon doesn't have to be inherently bad and I did find SOTR entertaining overall but like I said, I don't think it fits so cleanly with the rest of the trilogy as others seem to think it does.

For instance, taking these scenes from Catching Fire:

Given what know now from SOTR... well Katniss and Peeta's understandings and takeaways aren't quite right anymore, are they? "But what she doesn't know, and what he does, is that the ax will return." The implication here being that Haymitch planned that moment. But actually Katniss, that's wrong! Haymitch wasn't intentionally leading Silka to the cliff to use the forcefield against her, that was all a complete accident. And it's even worse because Katniss follows it up with: "I think I finally know who Haymitch is. And I'm beginning to know who I am." because now this is a scene where she's actually misreading Haymitch to a degree. Sure, her final conclusion is still ultimately correct: She and Haymitch are both people who have caused the Capitol trouble. And she's right in more ways now than she can know but she's also wrong about Haymitch in a significant way as well. (And it sucks because I've seen so many takes now joking about how Katniss is just sooooo bad at reading people but guys I think she was spot on here until Haymitch's story was altered lmao)

And then, just in a general sense, I think the pacing of SOTR is odd at times. I also think it occasionally suffers from a telling instead of showing, being a bit more heavy-handed in its messaging where the original trilogy wasn't. (Like when Haymitch abruptly called Maysilee his sister, just to make sure that we the readers understood their dynamic).

I also struggled to get into Haymitch's and Lenore Dove's romance because despite him waxing poetic about her every page, we only had a single chapter to establish their relationship and her character before they spend the rest of the book apart until the very end. And its a struggle for me because her presence takes up so much of the story and his thoughts, to a degree that I almost felt I wasn't reading about Haymitch anymore at times. On the flip side, I felt like his brother and mother didn't take up nearly enough of his headspace. Like Sid gets pretty much a single line in the epilogue in a sea of Lenore Dove paragraphs.

As for Haymitch's characterization... this is where we get far more into a personal preference territory, but I won't lie, I was and still am far more partial to a "resourceful Haymitch exploring the arena out of his own volition and outsmarting the gamemakers through his own ingenuity" instead of a "resourceful Haymitch acting out a rebel plan from others". I also am more interested in a Haymitch that lead Silka to the cliff to goad her into essentially killing herself than a Haymitch that ended up there seemingly just to escape her or buy time. And sure Haymitch was still intelligent in SOTR, but too often it felt like he was no longer the driving force in his own story. (which very well might have been the point? but if it was, then the execution of it didn't do much for me).

As for the rebel subplot: conceptually I thought it was interesting... but again, I thought the execution of it left a lot to be desired as it completely lost me the moment Haymitch wasn't insta-killed after blowing the water system. And I know we're given in-universe reasons for why he wasn't killed, but I simply can't buy into it. There were still plenty of tributes left, so it's not like the game makers and Snow had to keep him around. I don't think it would have mattered how popular Haymitch was at that point to the viewers. Haymitch also hadn't done anything yet that couldn't have been edited out so it's not like he had to be kept around by Snow and made into an example for other victors. And I think Haymitch had "suffered" enough in the games at that point for Snow to take him out with mutts. (ALSO - I couldn't help but feel that this rebel plot might have been better suited to an Ampert-centered story? Since Ampert seems to be driving so much of the crucial, behind the scenes work that is.)

But this is grossly long so to wrap this up: In my ideal world, this prequel would have gone one of two ways.

(1) A prequel with the themes and messaging and storylines of SOTR but centered on a different character (Ampert? A career, even? This could be an entirely different year of games with no Haymitch)

(2) A Haymitch prequel, but his games are way more in-line with what we were presented with in Catching Fire (still with a degree of propaganda), no beetee-rebel subplot, and we would've spent more time before the games in district 12, as well as after the games tracking his downward spiral.

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Murderbot is Agender, Aromantic, and Asexual and uses it/its pronouns!

[discard-celestia]

poster of lestat de lioncourt as liane de pougy:

based on a poster (under the cut) of french courtesan Liane de Pougy who was openly bisexual, left her husband armand, escaped to paris where she tried acting, had a long-term relationship with a woman whom she wrote a book about after said woman left her, had a long list of affairs, described herself as a terrible mother who saw her child as a doll to dress up, was regarded as one the most beautiful women in Paris, and ultimately became a princess. fascinating woman, really

Poster for Liane de Pougy at the Folies Bergères, Paul Berthon (c. 1890s).

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs #2: The Visitor thoughts (pt. 3):

Love how quickly Rachel and Jake jump to Tobias's defense when Marco makes a rude joke about eating rodents. You tell him, kids!

This team needs an Ax. Cassie doesn't know how many morphs a person can acquire before hitting a limit? Rachel isn't sure it's possible to morph twice in one night? This team needs an Ax.

"'Sometimes when I'm feeling depressed, I really wish I could just morph.'" — Jake, p. 71. Aw, kid. Kid. You'll get your wish 52 books from now, whether you like it or not.

Related to the Berensons talking on the bus about how much they hate small morphs and love big ones: is this when Jake's moment of "morphing to tiger and running around on people's roofs" (#21, p. 40) occurs in-story? This is where Jake talks about having dreams of "Stalking through a dark forest at night. Hunting something" (he hasn't figured out who the "something" is yet 😭) and always wanting to go back to tiger morph (p. 70).

"[Fluffer] was trying to communicate was 'Don't mess with me. You may be bigger than me, you may scare me, you may make me run away, but if I have to I am ready to fight'" (p. 82). This is my first time reading #2 since getting cats, and this is 100% accurate. I keep explaining to Chaos that she can inflate herself to look scary or she can hide under the coffee table, but that both at once is counterproductive. So far she hasn't taken my advice.

Animorphs books can be read here | Book Club schedule is here

[erandraws]

Current piece so detailed, I shadowgasted a wrought iron fence

[sirazaroff]

Comms are down 🐰🧰

[not-so-superheroine]

[ruegarding]

this is one of my favorite parallels. kronos repeats luke's words from tlt slightly wrong in tlo. just how he tries to achieves luke's goal slightly wrong, slightly corrupted. the same idea, but different meanings. different endings.

[the-plantman-is-queer]

I’m going insane rn

Doing one of my never-ending rereads and... even when Neil hated Andrew and fully believed all the worst rumors, he still expected someone to be in Andrew’s corner... and then in book three we see him decide to be that person:

something about the way Neil, a perfect stranger to the concepts of friendship and teamwork, still expected better from Andrew’s team and family... I know that’s the entire core of their relationship but it still knocks a hole in my chest to see it laid out so baldly

[thistransient]

Very into this book stand

[nyxi-pixie]

actually incredibly funny to me that ranpos entire thing centres on how his intelligence is not because of an ability or any other great thing, its just him. hes entirely, completely, inarguably human. and Yet, when it comes to dazai, so many people are Desperate that there just Has to be another explanation. his intelligence cant just be that hes unusual, no it must be a marker of separation, of difference so great it disallows the reality of his humanity.

[davenzineveryuniverse]

If Alex’s, “Fuckin’ ghost me for a week, make me stand in the rain like a brown Johnn Cusack, and now you won’t even talk to me. I’m really just having a great time here. I can see why y’all had to marry your fucking cousins.” Doesn’t make it into the movie, I’m going to be so sad!!!!!

[karleksmumskladdkaka]

RukiYui (+Mukami fam) scans from the Vandead Carnival Official Fanbook (*´ω｀)♡

Spoilers for Ruki's route below!