annikasafternoonread

[annikasafternoonread]

There have been many posts crediting President Snow for his “genius” decision having the tributes being previous winners for the 75th Hunger Games, however, I think it is probably the biggest mistake he makes in the series… And Plutarch’s smartest move.

The main rule in the Hunger Games is that there is always one winner. Not only is the winner awarded a fancy house and a large sum of money, but they are paraded around the capital. Their status is elevated and their home district views them as a celebrity. It is the only ticket to “rise up” in society. We as the reader know that being a Victor is still a terrible fate (body sold to capital citizens, used as a prop, forced to be a mentor), however, they symbolize a win for the district as a whole and enforce the hatred districts have for each other. 

In the 74th Games, Crane makes the decision to change the rules and allow two tributes from the same district to win the games. Whether this is purely for drama to make the romance element sell better or a clever way to introduce false hope, all tributes believe this rule is real. There is a chance Katniss and Peeta can really win together. When the rug is pulled out from under them, they are forced to choose who will win causing all hope of their dual survival to be lost. Both Katniss and Peeta want the other to win, however, they know the toll it will take emotionally on that individual to be the lone survivor (survivor’s guilt). With no hope of a fair life, they are both willing to die together creating an all or nothing situation. Crane is forced to let both of them win, knowing that if no one wins the games, the districts might realize that “their sacrifice” was for nothing. He believes two winners are better than none (And honestly he’s lowkey right), and it costs him his life. 

During Snow’s conversation with Crane he states, “Fear does not work as long as there is hope”. Katniss and Peeta winning together is not inherently revolutionary, it was not done to spite the capital, but Snow cannot let go of the idea that they broke the carefully constructed rules of the games, and, therefore, must be punished. He forgets that Katniss and Peeta are not universally liked, especially in districts where they had to kill their tributes (district 1 and 2). Snow blames Crane for even introducing the idea of two winners in the first place, the rules of the Hunger Games have been solidified for good reason. Ironically, the ending of the games is not what brings on the rebellion, it is really Rue’s relationship with Katniss. The kindness Katniss shows shows during Rue’s death unites the Districts for a moment, and creates a connection between District 11 and District 12.

This push for fear and punishment blind Snow when Plutarch becomes the game maker. Although all the districts know the 75th Games will have a twist, deciding to draw tributes from the existing Victors is a critical mistake. Yes, it allows Snow to “punish” Katniss for bending the rules, however, Snow forgets that the Victors symbolize hope to a necessary degree for society to function. The districts need to feel like they can win something, they need some distraction of power to stop them from realizing they are constantly being manipulated. Taking two of the golden children away from every district unites the efforts of rebellion. It is the clearest way to say “no, you are all losers at the end of the day”. This blatant reminder is not needed, and spreads anger throughout the entire Panem system. 

Snow’s weakness is he doesn’t understand that fear cannot work without the idea of mercy. There must be some possible reward to work for, or hopelessness will take over and people will act without care for their lives. If both options bring death and torture, why not rebel? The additional scenes in Mockingjay Part 1, demonstrate this notion perfectly (the dam in District 5 and the bombs in District 7). 

#‘fear does not work as long as there is hope’ nah bitch if you have no hope then there’s nothing to lose #if you kill all hope you kill fear too #he was so wedded to rules and hate that he forgot the actual goals and consequences #he threw people that the CAPITOL cared about into the powder keg and made them all pick a side #neutrality was no longer an option it was rebel or die

[annikasafternoonread]

I love when our girls get to Canaan house and one of the first interactions they have with non ninth human beings is Dulcinea commenting on how charming and novel it is to meet a ninth house nun, and then Harrow leads them in the Ninth version of the prayer and everyone stares at her like she has twelve heads, and Gideon is treated like the avatar of death itself swooping through the corridors

And we, as the reader, had just been going along with the bone motif the whole time. This is a book about necromancers, sure, skeletons working the fields, skull paint, bone prayer beads. That tracks.

And then they get out in the real world and it turns out the Ninth are just fucking weirdos being treated like a 12th century nun just walked onto the set of a modern reality show set because that's exactly what fucking happened.

#gideon the ninth #the locked tomb

[annikasafternoonread]

all my students in my dystopian film class think gale is a better match for katniss than peeta and i told them they were Objectively Wrong and they assigned me a slideshow for homework to prove it and—

look. these children are about to be destroyed.

#The Hunger Games trilogy #not my post #also sorry I disappeared... I keep thinking about coming back at least to read ABFE but I keep not doing that #maybe someday but maybe not #it is what it is #(executive dysfunction is what it is)

[annikasafternoonread]

suzanne collins killing prim after everything katniss did to save her.......... THATS how you write a story about the brutality and futility of war ma'am thats what we call a compelling and fucked up narrative yessums thats storytelling babes!!!!

#RUDE #The Hunger Games #The Hunger Games trilogy #why is Suzanne Collins the best and also the worst #Suzanne Collins

[annikasafternoonread]

gideon and harrow have a lot of catching up to do and it’s going to be so funny

#not my post #The Locked Tomb #Harrow the Ninth

[annikasafternoonread]

I sometimes have a recurring dream about walking into target or w/e and finding bionicles on the shelf, and I recently learned that within the community of people who still like bionicles this is referred to as “The Dream” and happens to everyone

huh what huh. what. 

#An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #Hank Green #not my post #I'm not crazy right this is kind of an uncanny resemblance

[annikasafternoonread]

And that’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. We did it! Damn, that book really fucking holds up on a reread. I’m still heartbroken by twists I knew were coming, gobsmacked by details I forgot, gut punched by new realizations. It’s fucking fantastic. 

I’ll get a writeup of the book done when I can, hopefully in a few days (I’m getting my COVID booster in about 13 hours, so maybe that’ll mean I have lots of time where I don’t want to move, or maybe it’ll mean I have no brain for anything at all). And then it’s on to the sequel, and all the new drama and trauma and biting insights and critical analysis it will contain. I’m excited! 

See you soon :) 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #goodnight! #bookend

[annikasafternoonread]

not to have a one track mind but I have Opinions about certain most liked/retweeted tweets. no I will not elaborate. 

but April’s tweet being bigger than those is acceptable, I suppose. 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 25

[annikasafternoonread]

“The most insidious part of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool. And if that tool wasn't being used, sharpened, refined, or strengthened at every opportunity, then she was letting the world down. April was a person, but we all convinced her that she was both more and less than that. Maybe she did that to herself, maybe Carl did it to her, maybe it was me or Peter Petrawicki or cable news. But near the end, even I forgot, most days, that April May was a human being.”

Andy gets it. He didn’t get it for a while, but now he gets it. And I’ll give him props for that, for getting it and for getting that he didn’t get it. 

You get me? 

But like just in general, it was... April lost herself. Not in the ways that a lot of people lose themselves, not in a way that’s as obviously destructive or harmful, but it still was. She might not have been rude or cruel, might not have given herself over to substances or possessions or what have you, but she was still lost. She was someone new, someone she barely knew, someone who was built out of what others saw. If they saw someone bad, then she was someone bad. If they stopped looking, she stopped being. If they saw someone to worship, she was a god. She was whoever people believed her to be. But that makes it hard to believe in herself. 

Again, it’s so fucking critical for people in this position to have people to ground them, people to say no to them, people to call them out and remind them who they were -- who they are. People who see them as they are. Andy lost that perspective, for a time. It was too heady, April was too good at pretending, he was too caught up in things, whatever reason you want to give. It’s not his fault, but it is a burden he will carry. 

They all carry it. I’m not sure whether that makes it worse or better, to not be alone in having killed a friend twice. Once when she went from April May to April May (TM) with your help, and once when she lay alone and gasping in a burning building because you hurt her enough to leave.

#quote #annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 25

[annikasafternoonread]

They don’t find a body. It can’t have burned up -- the fire wasn’t hot enough -- they know where she was -- but they can’t find her body. It’s just. Not there. 

They find the people who did it, who set the trap and set the fire. They charge them with kidnapping, false imprisonment, arson, attempted murder -- but not murder. There’s no body. There’s no proof she’s dead. She has to be dead, according to all that they know to be possible and true. But they’re also not sure that they’re right about what is possible and true anymore. The Carls are not possible, and yet there they were. 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 25

[annikasafternoonread]

lmao of course Peter Petrawicki winds up getting into cryptocurrency. Hank really knew what was up and he wasn’t afraid to say it.

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 25 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14

[annikasafternoonread]

They did it. Somehow, together, they did it. The Carls in Russia and China were under military guard, and they opened fire, but they did it anyways. They believed in whatever this was. They believed they had to try. Together. 

Was that foolishness? Was that wisdom? Was that just... beautiful? 

#annika reads #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 25

[annikasafternoonread]

She was chosen. The entire time, from the very beginning, from before her video, from before she’d ever seen Carl, she was chosen. Guided to the spot where they needed her to be at the moment they needed her to be there. 

I’d forgotten that. 

Fuck that’s heavy. That’s terrifying. That’s... why? Why her? How did they pick her? To what end? 

Was it because she had the skills and the storytelling to go viral on her own, or did they help with that too, manipulating the algorithm to put the video where they needed it to be? Was she the only one they chose, or were there others too? 

They said they came here to observe humanity. How long were they observing her first? 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 24

[annikasafternoonread]

April asks Carl what he (they?) think of humanity. And Carl simply responds, “Beautiful.”

And that’s... that’s its own kind of beautiful. A lot of people have done a lot of bad things. There is no denying that. A lot of people have been scared or suspicious or even downright hostile. 

But a lot more people have done a lot of good things. A lot of people have come together to collaborate and cooperate and lift each other up and learn about each other and do something beautiful as a community. A global community. A lot of people have been optimistic, clever, creative, dedicated, helpful, caring. A lot of people. 

I wonder if Carl sees the good overshadowing the bad, or if he sees beauty in the defensiveness too. If he sees community there too, sees people who desperately want to protect their world and their loved ones. I wonder if he sees potential for growth and learning. I wonder if he’s right. 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 24

[annikasafternoonread]

Carl has a sense of humour! Three questions, because it’s a tradition in earthling stories. 

And also because you’re dying. 

Maybe that’s not supposed to be funny, but it is. 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 24

[annikasafternoonread]

April finds herself in the Dream, face to face with Carl, and for perhaps the first time, she sees him as “menacing, maybe because my mind was expecting danger, maybe because I had just watched my body get ripped apart, maybe because Carl had torn my world open and I knew it could never be put back together again or because so many people had died on July 13 and I wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was just because Carl was actually pretty scary-looking.”

That’s... a really interesting moment. A really interesting insight. April, who has spent the past... I don’t know how long, absolutely convinced that the Carls are a force for good -- she looks at them and she sees “menacing.” She sees “scary-looking.” She sees “threat” and “destruction” and “too powerful.” 

She sees what a lot of people she deeply disagrees with have seen. I don’t know if she realizes that, but she does see it. 

maybe because my mind was expecting danger. For people who are already afraid, any new unknown can feel like more danger, more fear. For people who expect a threat, a threat is what they perceive. And, like, that’s not entirely a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a healthy thing, and it can be exhausting if it’s all the time, but when a being is under threat it is natural and honestly a form of self-preservation to presume that things are threats. 

I don’t want to live in a world where everything is a threat, where I am constantly afraid. I mean, some days I still do. But it’s tiring. It’s painful. It sucks. 

Carl is a threat to the way things are, to the world people know. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to make it worse, but it is undeniable that he is going to change it. And change is scary. Change is painful. 

I wonder if she understands that, in this moment. Or if it’s just us reading who are supposed to. 

#annika reads #quote #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: chapter 24

[annikasafternoonread]

Hello friends! I’m back to finish off AART, and then it’ll be time for ABFE -- I can’t wait! 

Last we left off, April was not doing so hot (I mean, she was in a burning building, so arguably things were very hot, but you know what I mean). Things are not going to get much better for her in the last two chapters, but I’m fascinated to see where that leads in the next book. But first, gotta finish this one!

Let’s go. 

#annika reads #Hank Green #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: day 14 #hello! #bookend