is coriolanus snow evil and vile? yes. yes he is. but you know what else he is? a big lame LOSER
peeta after saying “if it werent for the baby”
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) + letterboxd reviews
time and time again i am reminded that resistance is and will always be a team effort.
no matter how much capitalism tries to push us away and shove individualistic competitive culture down out throats, we band together and wield our strongest weapon. we love and thats our greatest strength.
listen, listen. A few things:
Jennifer Lawrence did an outstanding job portraying Katniss in the movies. I cannot really imagine any other actress in her place.
THAT BEING SAID
it pisses me off that people conveniently forget that Katniss is a colored girl.
That's right, folks!
People from the Seam are described as dark skinned, with grey eyes. Katniss is personally described to have 'olive skin' in the books. I know that there's not much compensation that could have been done in the casting, since Jenn was such a perfect choice- but at least depict her as colored in fanart. Same as Haymitch. Haymitch is also from the Seam.
I also find it so beautiful that Suzanne Collins had a teenage colored girl to be the one to dismantle an oppressive and tyrannical government, acting as a huge symbol of rebillion.
And keep in mind, while the series is marketed as a 'dystopia' it has an alarming number of similarities to the current real-world.
Fuck man, this doomed underground city doesn’t have any good kebab joints
i am going to shout this from the rooftops:
Katniss, Haymitch, and the Seam inhabitants are all described as olive-skinned, brown-eyed (edit: and gray-eyed), and dark-haired.
Peeta, Maysilee, Katniss’ mother and the Merchants are largely described as blond haired, blue eyed, light-skinned.
The Hunger Games adaptations have a huge weakness to their casting because they allowed their white audience to overlook this very important fact, that the Mockingjay is a brown girl, that her mother was disowned for having a mixed-race and mixed-class marriage, that Katniss and Haymitch were long shots not just because they’re Seam but because they are brown… because the only brown characters in the movies (i.e. Rue, Thresh, 11 in general) were there to be tragic, not to be saviors.
Katniss Everdeen is brown, and I won’t forgive or forget the movies for erasing that part of her character.
this has been another tea time with hawk ☕️🦅
🌈🌈🌈🌈
The first real conversation Katniss has with Peeta is when he tells her that he wants to die as himself, that he doesn't want the games to change him into something he's not, and that he wants to keep his identity and prove he's more than just a piece in their games because that's the only thing he has left to care about.
The first time we see Lucy Gray she sings a song that basically says that nothing they could take from her was worth keeping. "Can't take my past. Can't take my history... You can't take my charm. You can't take my health."
The capitol has taken everything from them both, but at the same time, they could never take away who they are.
They are both likeable charismatic and funny, with the kindest hearts, and incredibly loyal to the people they care about.
At the same time, everything they do before the games, and during is calculated. Lucy Gray singing a love song and winning the hearts of the capitol. Peeta confesses he's in love with his district partner, therefore cementing her identity as desirable. Both of them know how to sway people with words, how to charm people, and how to manipulate crowds. Neither of them has any problem doing so to keep themselves, and the people they love safe.
Lucy Gray's song The Old Therebefore, about learning how to love and live her life to the fullest before death, a final and calculated stroke in a last-ditch effort to save herself from the arena. This evokes enough emotion in the watchers to get them to rise to their feet and plead for her life alongside Snow.
Snow, watching the 74th and preparing for the 75th Hunger Games sees Lucy Gray in Katniss. A young girl, from the 12th district. Unafraid at the reaping. Selling a false love story, manipulating a boy who loves her in order to get out and supporting the revolution with the mockingjay as her symbol.
He threatens her family to get her to sell that she and Peeta are in love, to prevent the revolution, because obviously, she's pretending. He's had experience with a girl just like her before. He has no doubt that she has the acting ability to sell this story because clearly, she manipulated the first Hunger Games in her favor, the same way Lucy Gray manipulated him.
Watching the interviews for the 75th Hunger Games he realizes-
Katniss is just an impulsive girl, in a Mockingjay dress she didn't know about, made by someone who supports the revolution.
Peeta is a boy who has the ability to move people with just his words. He made Katniss desirable, he was the one who sold the love story, and he was the one to make their romance seem real. Katniss only started the revolution because she would rather risk dying with him than live without him. A concept President Snow was completely unfamiliar with. And it is with all these realizations crashing around him Peeta drops the baby bomb. He knows the baby's not real, and so does Snow. But it evokes enough emotion in the watchers to get them to rise to their feet and plead for the lives of the tributes.
Is it Lucy Gray or Peeta?
By the time Snow realizes he's made a mistake, it's too late.
Peeta is still charming and manipulating the capitol. Katniss is in love.
He goes up against a kindhearted boy expecting to beat Sejanus again, only to find out that it's Lucy Gray he's fighting; knowing he will never be able to escape their ghosts.
-from a conversation i had with @grandtyphoonpoetry breaking down every character in the hunger games.