retrowitchy

[retrowitchy]

i've noticed sotr uses a rhetorical device I like to call suggestive sequencing. this technique frequently appears in haymitch's observations.

he offers the reader two reasons for why something has occurred: the first being his initial statement, then another immediately following it, almost like an afterthought or self-correction. yet, the sequencing is intentional. collins typically lists the more plausible or emotionally resonant explanation second, subtly signaling to the reader it's closer to the truth.

through recency bias and rhetorical framing, collins lends more credibility to the second, "corrective" idea. it's subtle, but influential. it allows her to control the interpretation without overtly stating what is genuinely true. it guides the reader's suspicions.

For example:

Rumor has it, Lenore Dove might be related to them on her pa’s side. They seem awfully fond of her, even if it’s not official. One way or another, there’s a connection there that Clerk Carmine discourages.

The first proposal is that Lenore Dove is biologically related to the Chances. It is then immediately softened with the qualifier that it may not be official.

The placement of the second idea reframes the initial idea. It nudges the reader toward the conclusion their fondness can't be from a biological connection, rather, something else, without saying it directly. The emphasis lands on the "even if", not the initial proposal.

As the retired Communication Professor Kirk Hallahan of Colorado State University defines it:

As a property of a message, a frame limits or defines the message’s meaning by shaping the inferences that individuals make about the message.

Collins uses this suggestive sequencing to frame the conclusions, effectively overriding the first idea with the second without explicitly refuting it.

Another example occurs in the scene discussing Haymitch's father's death:

Rumors spread after my father’s death, rumors that the fire had not been an accident. Some say he died sabotaging the mine, others that his crew was targeted by the Capitol bosses for being a pack of troublemakers.

Although both explanations are presented as rumor, the second carries more political and emotional weight. It also resonates more with long-standing fan theories about Burdock's death. By positioning the idea it was a targeted attack second, she subtly raises the credibility whilst maintaining plausible deniability.

neither claim is proven more true than the other, but the sequencing creates an adoptive tilt. the idea that Lenore Dove isn’t related to the Chances becomes more accepted than not, and the belief that Haymitch’s father (and later, Burdock) were victims of Capitol retaliation feels more persuasive than it just being a result of poor working conditions. it all comes down to the framing.

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happy pride month

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all this talk about how all the hunger games boys are so obsessed with their girls and that makes them unreliable narrators but NOT ENOUGH talk about how katniss is so obsessed with peeta and that makes HER an unreliable narrator

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I think the reason Haymitch constantly thinking of Lenore Dove (longing for her, wondering what she would do, hoping she approves of his actions) didn’t bug me is that Katniss does the same thing about Peeta in Mockingjay. They even do the same thing of kissing the gifts from their beloveds. The difference is that we haven’t had two other books to get attached to Lenore Dove, so it may feel less compelling to the reader, but it didn’t feel out of character for Haymitch: he and Katniss are so alike. And we’ve come to find out that means they’re both so sentimental. 🥹

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I bet Maude Ivory wore parts of Lucy Gray’s rainbow dress in her clothes after she went missing.

I bet that’s why the shreds of fabric are Lenore Dove’s now

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reminder that lucy gray's life was so much more than coriolanus snow and he was literally just a blip in her story and there were so many people and things that were so much more important in her life than him but we never get to see that because he just assumes he's the center of everything

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“because he loves Peeta too” is the only line ever because it tells us, with the plainest read of the text, that Haymitch loves Peeta just as Katniss loves Peeta; so Katniss admits she loves Peeta here; and, read another way, I think it also tells us that Haymitch loves Katniss, and he loves Peeta too

and Katniss knows they are loved by Haymitch (she articulates it more later, but the fact that she reaches for his comfort also speaks volumes), which is just … a whole thing …

and he’s there for his sweetheart, immediately, and they’re united in their grief over Peeta, even as everyone else is fretting about how they’ve lost their propaganda piece

he didn’t want to let them in and this is why — and he does know what she’s feeling, more than she can handle hearing right now, not only because of his past, but because he too is watching Peeta’s decline, and Katniss’s decline because of it … so he just tells her he knows, and he holds her

this messed up little family has my heart

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asexual finnick no i won't be elaborating at this time

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and you're very right for this !!!!!!!!!

a very happy pride month to everyone in the covey

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a very happy pride month to everyone in the covey

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this is why my account is 99% covey content

free hunger games characters from their heterosexual shackles, this is getting ridiculous.

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i think effie is a super interesting character and i've always loved her but MAN the way people blew up hayffie vs haydove (especially on twitter ugh) just makes me not want to engage with it at all and that makes me really sad. because i do love effie and i think elle fanning is gonna do a great job AND i think there's a lot of interesting nuance to haymitch and effie's relationship (whether you interpret it as platonic or more than that or whatever) but i don't wanna be sucked into all that negativity so i feel like i can't talk about it all without Claiming A Side In The War like god forbid a gal enjoy effie as a character and ship haydove at the same time

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katniss is so funny. she is always thinking she’s so matter of fact, so objective and lacking in feeling, and yet basically everything and anything she’s done since her father’s passed was motivated by a strong sense of morality and a shockingly deep love of her family, her friends, and what’s left of the good of what she believes in. there isn’t much in her toughened world that hasn’t been touched by grief and unfairness and hardship, but she doesn’t look at any of it with any less care and concern. she doesn’t romanticize any of it - in that sense she very much is very matter of fact - but she protects it all fiercely anyway and in her way loves it all fiercely anyway, even if she says it’s not love, it’s practicality. it so clearly is. she is so constantly confused by this unnerving force that speaks inside her head that she refuses to name as empathy, but everyone else sees it and responds to it. absurd resilience, unnerving strength in every sense of the word, all of it serving her seemingly neverending capacity for self-reflection and compassion, flawed as they can be, but all always pointed forwards, upwards, onwards to the next obstacle. that’s katniss everdeen

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wyd when u see the ghosts of ur situationships waltz together

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the d12 wedding tradition being BREAD and FIRE how were the gale x katniss shippers so loud back in the day like in what possible conceivable world is everlark NOT the outcome of the series??????? how could anybody come to the conclusion that she was meant to be with anyone but peeta????????

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rereading catching fire and it's insane how i never fully understood before the bigger picture of snow needing to be "convinced" of katniss and peeta's love for each other and how they were doomed from the very start of that.

it's not that they were bad at performing it. she says it herself, they're "borderline delirious in their love for each other" in public constantly. and not to mention, they really do enjoy each other's company and are around each other 24/7 during this time, never apart. they got publicly engaged. what more could they have even done??? started having sex on the stage???

literally nothing they would have done would have been enough. whatever katniss and peeta did couldn't satisfy snow because he is undyingly determined to project his own past onto this. no matter what, katniss will be equated to lucy gray in his eyes so she can never truly convince him that she loves peeta - because he is delusional.

reading the books growing up as a kid with autism, i just took everything katniss said and thought literally and was completely unable to read between the lines- and we all know that her perception of things is pretty unreliable. katniss, who is unaware that she actually is for real in love with peeta at this point, is convinced that SHE has somehow failed because she hasn't put on a good enough show. the irony is to the rest of the world, you're doing a perfectly good job babe because you both are LITERALLY IN LOVE, but snow will just never believe that because of a personal vendetta.

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my three babies !

propaganda im not falling for:

lenore dove hate

lucy gray hate

katniss everdeen hate