This YouTube comment has been on my mind since I finished SOTR so this is what I came up with:
Lucy Gray was the mockingbird, living on the outskirts of district 12 and was there at the wrong time when they were forced to stay there after the Dark Days. They were subjected to the Capitol’s politics despite not being a part of Panem, technically speaking. Lucy Gray became part of the Games and, likewise, the mockingbird became affiliated with the Capitol through the jabberjay’s release into the woods, but it still continued to sing its own song.
Haymitch was the jabberjay, a Capitol tool that did what it had to in order to survive. The Capitol thought they could control them, but they retaliated in the form of rebellion. Haymitch refused to be a piece in their game and tried to end it, and the jabberjay, in the eyes of the Capitol, created a freak of nature that showed the Capitol’s lack of complete control.
Katniss was the mockingjay, a slap in the face of the Capitol, something that was never meant to exist. Together, the song of the mockingbird that lived on for generations and the stubbornness of the jabberjay that refused to die, the mockingjay had the best of both worlds. It was a symbol of rebellion and unity.
peeta after saying “if it werent for the baby”
It's the things we love most, that destroy us.
TOM BLYTH as CORIOLANUS SNOW and RACHEL ZEGLER as LUCY GRAY BAIRD in THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (2023) dir. Francis Lawrence
the hunger games with a sprinkling of our universe's problems as if they needed any more
I fucking hate that the general response to RFK Jr's eugenist take on autistic people is "autistic people do pay taxes, autistic people do work, autistic people do date!"
Some autistic people don't and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life. Some autistic people do need constant help and support and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life.
Once again we're falling in the right wing trap of :
They make a hateful, fascist statement
Instead of focusing on the fact that it is hateful and fascist we try to show them that they are factually wrong
We throw our own allies and the most vulnerable of us under the bus in the process
We legitimise an only slightly less hateful, fascist view as we go
They have completed their goal of making us accept the still hateful, fascist second version, hurrah. What a victory.
Right now what we're getting to with that is that autistic people who can work and pay taxes are okay, and the others aren't. Fuck this shit.
Same thing happens with the people who are being deported ("they have a visa!", "they didn't even have a criminal record!" -> even if they didn't have a visa, even if they did have a criminal record, deporting them and detaining them in what's essentially a concentration camp wouldn't be okay, you absolute tools of fascism.)
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.
“Appalachia is 90% white”
“Katniss is only described as olive skinned, that like so many Europeans”
“Prim’s blonde, that’s weird for a biracial person.”
Bitch shut the fuck you and just say your racist ass doesn’t accept that the Seam are stand in for minority races. Having two pasty ass group of people with different hair colours isn’t going make anyone notice or analyze the class divide between the Seam and Merchants. I fucking hate the movies for white washing Haymitch and Katniss because their Seam backgrounds are exactly why they understand each other. They have their own small culture and identity from the merchants.
It also visually shows how Peeta and her mother are outsiders. It’s important. It matters!!!!
And I get why Katniss and Haymitch were white back when the movies first came out, but times have fucking changed and I want the representation that existed in the books from the beginning.
Second of all, you can be biracial and have blonde hair as long as both parents have the fucking gene. 12 is small as shit, people get around and cross townlines from time to time. Shut the fuck up.
I fucking hate it here.
rereading catching fire and remember the part where snow ambushed katniss in her own house and was letting her know that he was keeping track on her/knows everything she’s doing even out in woods? this is probably obvious but i just realized that was probably because of lucy gray? snow probably bugged the hell out of district 12 the second he had the power to do so because you know he was paranoid like that. he didn’t want to leave any possibility that she was still alive out there, and as years go by, he forgot all about it until katniss beat the game lmao
noticing trends in your own ocs personalities can make you stare at your keyboard like. okay motherfucker take it to the therapist office not the toyhouse profile.
The Umbrella Academy when they're in trouble:
! TBOSAS SPOILERS
Honestly, after watching TBOSAS, I had so many questions. I was asking myself why Lucy Gray left Coryo, and even though after some reasearch I came to the conclusion that's it because even she became afraid of what he could do to her (kill her), I'm still not exactly sure. While watching that scene at the shack, I really felt like it deeply pained Lucy Gray to leave. I was so sure they loved each other and wondered; why, if she loves him, did she go? What is because since he turned his bestfriend in she was scared he would eventually do the same with her? I thought that if they were in love Lucy Gray would try to talk with him or something but then the scene in the woods really shook me. When he realised she tricked him with the snake (and still with that I'm not a hundred% sure) he turned mad. I feel like it was in this scene he realised he lost everything. Lucy Gray left him and I think it's then that he felt so much anger because HE helped her survived. If he hadn't given her scent to the snakes or hadn't given her poison she would've died, so maybe he felt betrayed that she would leave him so easily when he sacrificed so much for her.
I also wondered why he killed Dean and I think it's because he wanted to finish all that came his way and what/who contradicted what he had once believed? I mean their last dialogue is about the fact that it was because of him and Coryo's father that the Hunger Games began, and I thought Coryo, out of anger that Dean brought his father in the conversation, would kill him then, but the poison already was in the morphin. So I think after he lost Lucy Gray in the woods and came back to the Capitol, with the poisoned morphin, all he wanted was to prove to himself that all his efforts would come to an end, because honestly, at the end of the day, he did all of this for himself.
He exposed his best friend, which got him killed, only because it put him in danger. He was probably ready to kill Lucy Gray if ever she became a danger to his life. What I find confusing is the radical change, because in the first half of the movie all he wanted was for Lucy Gray to survive and sacrificied so much for her, so why and how did he change sides so fast? Killing the boy in the arena and feeling powerful is probably a factor of the questions appearing in his mind after that.
Overall I feel like he could have stayed in the light, and stayed good. My biggest question is If Lucy Gray stayed at the shack, would everything be different? Would they have runned together far away and establish a quiet life? Which is really to say that it's all Lucy Gray, and her leaving Coryo is what finally made him fall and turn evil.
(PS(?): The movie was amazing! Perfect cast, perfect everything! Loved it from start to finish.)