#Capitol One Arena

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Afraid of a little cold weather, Donald Trump will break with years of tradition to move his inauguration ceremony indoors. He will deliver his address inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda before joining supporters at the nearby Capital One Arena. “There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!),” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. 

Apparently, now he cares about the safety of law enforcement at the Capitol, unlike four years ago, when he allowed those law enforcement officers to be brutally beaten by his supporters who were, at his behest, trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 12 PM ET on Monday, when the temperature in Washington, D.C., is expected to be 22 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, with the wind chill around 8 degrees. That puts it close to the 28 degree temperature and mid-teens wind chill during Barack Obama's first inauguration, in 2009, according to historical data from the National Weather Service. And Obama didn't chicken out and move the ceremony inside.  [...] Holding the event indoors will make it so that Trump won't get to look out at a crowd of supporters as he delivers his inaugural address, which will probably be insanely dark and xenophobic. [...] Trump is infamously obsessed with crowd sizes. He often lies about the number of people who attend his campaign rallies to say that more people showed up than actually did. And no one can forget the rage he felt when his 2017 inaugural crowd was significantly smaller than Obama’s in 2009. He was so mad he forced the National Park Service to provide images that made his crowd look as big as the ones Obama had.

Monday’s inauguration will be cold, but not the coldest one in history, as Donald Trump’s 2nd inauguration ceremony has been moved indoors for the first time since 1985 (Reagan’s 2nd inauguration) purportedly due to the cold, apparently to avoid being clowned for having a smaller crowd than even his first one, let alone Obama’s or JFK’s.

JFK had his in the snow, and Obama’s first one was also under cold temperatures, yet they didn’t chicken out of hosting one outdoors.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump's Inauguration To Be Moved Indoors As Freezing Temps Move In

The Guardian: Donald Trump moves inauguration indoors due to severely cold weather

[popentertainment-concertphotos]

Kesha – Jingle Ball – Capitol One Arena – Washington, DC – December 17, 2024

Photos by Jamie LeBlanc © 2024. All rights reserved.

[doublescribble]

Kyle Kuzma 2023-24 NBA Regular Season

[sucka99]

[lunar-years]

“I know Haymitch will be up for hours. He doesn’t like to sleep when it’s dark out.” Okay so what terrible thing happens at night in Sunrise in the Reaping that’s going to emotionally shatter us :)

[magpie-trove]

If Hunger Games is about the innateness of human dignity and what happens when you try to strip people of their humanity, BoSaS says an innate part of human dignity is responsibility for others and for your choices and is about the dehumanization that happens when you lose that

[things-stronger-than-fear]

can we talk about the katniss/lucy gray parallels (or lack thereof) for a sec?

they're superficially the same, because of the things we talk about all the time: they're both female victors from 12. there are things that come with that culture and background -- the mockingjay, the plants, the songs. those similarities aren't so much between them as people, as individuals -- they're born of coming from the same culture. the most significant thing they share is their resilience; their spirit of resistance and rebellion. their defiance.

but really, all those things they share, only serve to demonstrate just how different they are as individuals (because personality is different from upbringing or values).

we parallel their sarcastic bows, but they're so so different. lucy gray is a performer mockingly curtseying and saying "kiss my ass", where katniss is a hunter who doesn't have time for this society bullcrap.

they both sing the hanging tree, but as i've ranted about, their renditions show how different they are: lucy gray, again, a performer with a spirit unbroken, loud and charming and sassing right to the capitol's face, daring them to defy her, daring them to look away. katniss, again, a hunter, quiet but unyielding, sparking rebellion under the capitol's nose.

they both won their games, but in such different ways. lucy gray charmed the snakes (both literal and in the form of one coriolanus snow), while katniss threw down with weaponry.

lucy gray said look at me, care about me. katniss said fight for me, fight with me.

and so what we see is that they are not at all the same person, but that's what's so important. because it's not just one person or one type of person that puts their foot down and rebels. we don't need a specific kind of Chosen One to light the spark -- anyone can.

[gatheryepens]

okay some thoughts about Sunrise on the Reaping, because if I don’t say anything I might go insane….

[takemetobogman]

rereading the entire hunger games trilogy and just reached the part where Peeta and Katniss watch Haymitch's games and idk if this has already been talked about but the exact lines are

"We watch from the point of view of one of the tributes as she rises up through the tube from the launch room to the arena."

first person pov. of a female tribute. someone capitol had put a camera on. as in, someone who has been bugged by the capitol.

AS IN, FUCKING LOU LOU!

[popentertainment-concertphotos]

Teddy Swims – Jingle Ball – Capitol One Arena – Washington, DC – December 17, 2024

Photos by Jamie LeBlanc © 2024. All rights reserved.

[brynnsasha191]

Am I the only one who, for some reason, can't not constantly think about the memorials Katniss references in the epilogue?

"The arenas have been completely destroyed, the memorials built."

Is there a memorial for all the children who were murdered in the hunger games? All 1,725 of them? Did someone manage to dig up the names of all the past tributes? Can Haymitch go to the capitol and run his fingers over the L in Louella's name? Can Katniss look at Rue's name, engraved in something permanent?

Is there a memorial for all the rebel soldiers who died while fighting the capitol? Does Finnick's name reside right next to Prim's on a big glossy slab of marble or granite?

[bakedgoodsforbucky]

Thinking about tbosas from the other perspective is so funny to me because imagine you’re Lucy Gray and the way you make a living is by singing and being a charming, charismatic performer. The people in your district love you, you have a nice family, sure your parents are dead but things aren’t so bad.

Then you get Reaped because your boyfriend cheated on you - so now you have to fight for your life in an arena.

When you get to the Capitol you’re met by a guy around your age who says his job is to take care of you in the arena, so you figure you should probably use some of those charms you live by on him so you have a better chance at survival. So you flirt with him a little, save his life etc. It works! He helps you! Now you’ve won the Hunger Games! You get to go home and see your family! Thank you random Capitol guy for your help, bye bye now.

And then you’re singing on stage, with your family who you literally killed people to see again, thrilled to be alive and this fuckin Capitol guy has followed you home.

Oh and also he’s a peacekeeper now so is legally allowed a gun.

And now he kind of won’t leave you alone - the charm worked too well and he’s obsessed with you. Brilliant. But you’re a survivor. So you let him get closer, just enough to feel safe. And as you get to know him better, maybe you’re thinking, hey this guy isn’t so bad, he’s kind of cute with his buzzcut and he seems to really like you, maybe this could be something. Also it might be useful to have a peacekeeper on side - everything in your district is about survival.

Things are going well, you write a song about him, he cries, your little cousin loves him.

And then he murders someone in front of you and you’re like oh shit he crazy. And THEN you realise that because of the person he murdered, the mayor is now out for your blood and you’re probably gonna die so you have to get out of there ASAP so you say bye to this guy and he INVITES HIMSELF TO YOUR ESCAPE PLAN and you have to be like “oh sure, that’s super news, would absolutely love to have you along with me, I’m so glad you asked.” So now you’re stuck with him again.

And THEN you’re in the middle of escaping and he fuckin tells you he’s murdered an extra person you didn’t know about and when you ask him who, he says his old self and now you’re thinking oh shit he CRAZY crazy. And THEN he finds the gun he used and you realise that if he destroys that evidence then you’re the only loose end and he has a kind of crazy look in his eye so you’re like, okay time to nip this in the bud, I’m outta here gotta go pick some katniss. So you run away from him and THEN he follows you again and fuckin shoots at you so you run FASTER and now you’ve disappeared and no one will ever find out what happened to you which drives him absolutely crazy for 60+ years.

Oh and also they’re going to erase all footage of your Games so no one will remember you and he’s going to become a tyrannical dictator who has personal beef with three different sixteen year olds from your district over the years, all because you hurt his feelings one time.

[degloved]

from katniss' perspective, the 75th hunger games & the 3rd quarter quell are all about her disobedience (and peeta's to some extent, but most of all that was her doing.) being that this was the only perspective we've had for years and years and years, that's the only assumption the rest of us could've made too. and sotr, against all odds, continues to ruthlessly add context to so many aspects of the series, whether we like it or not. the inclusion of so many known names and faces is something i've seen criticized and accused of being fanservice/nostalgia fuel, which... spectacularly misses the point.

beetee has, up until then, been a victor with known rebel tendencies. he's already being punished for that in sotr, let alone after. we don't know the details of mags' and wiress' involvement with the rebellion attempt in sotr, but we last see them tired, hurt, and visibly post-torture. johanna mason won her games by doing nothing offensive at all (...for all we know...) and yet her whole family has been wiped out—why? what did she do in the games, after the games? before the games? annie, who was herself reaped for the quarter quell, won when a huge wave drowned all the remaining tributes—think about it: is that what the capitol likes? so many "boring" deaths in one fell swoop, is that entertaining tv? of course not. what happened in that arena that caused this potential error in the system that ended up being played off as annie's great strategy?

point being, there are so many things we don't know but can possibly infer about the pre-quell lives of these specific tributes & how they may have rebelled, incited rebellion, or attempted to undermine snow/the capitol. yes, this quell was rigged. yes, snow did this largely to punish katniss in that moment in time specifically. no, the selection of her fellow tributes was not happenstance. (neither was, for that matter, the selection of the careers random: gloss and cashmere, siblings, beloved of the capitol and certainly the pre-determined winners.)

snow's fatal mistake here was not being able to let the sleeping dogs lie; he saw the chance to punish everyone who pissed him off, took it, and paid very dearly for the arrogant stupidity it takes to put panem's smartest and deadliest and angriest and rebelliest eggs in one tiny horrible basket.

[timelesslords]

thinking about how the hunger games were designed to prove that without society, order, government, someone to rule, we devolve into little more than animals, and how the games themselves prove over and over again that this is not true. We see it in every single game we witness.

Katniss placing flowers around Rue's body in the arena. Thresh sparing Katniss because she was kind to Rue, even though he was making it that much harder for himself to win.

Haymitch going back for Maysilee after hearing her scream even though their alliance had been broken. Haymitch holding her as she dies the same way Katniss did Rue.

Coral's "I can't have killed them all for nothing" when she realizes she's not going home. Lamina cutting down Marcus at great personal risk. And, my favorite moment in tbosas, Reaper collecting the bodies of his fellow tributes, his peers, even the ones who tried to kill him, into a pile. Taking the weapons from their hands. Closing their eyes and crossing their arms in the best approximation of a proper burial he can manage, covering them with the Capitol flag as a makeshift shroud.

The Games bring out the worst in people, yes. But despite the extreme circumstances, despite the exterior pressure of the Capitol, despite the fact that it could mean pain and heartbreak and death, it also shows that people have an enormous capacity for goodness. That even in a situation purposefully designed to make empathy impossible, people can't help but have it anyway.

Snow looks at the Games and all he can see is what's inside himself-- this pure animalistic drive to conquer and defeat. He kills and it feels good and he thinks that everyone else must feel that way too. He doesn't realize (maybe can't realize) that he is the exception, not the rule. He cannot see outside himself, outside his own warped perspective, to realize that the fact that people do show humanity in the games proves his entire worldview wrong.

[yelenadelova]

And if I said Mags was one of the most tragic characters in The Hunger Games? What then?

No but seriously this woman lived an entire lifetime with the cruelty of the Capitol and the games, watching as it twisted and changed and found new ways to torture the people of the districts. And for years and years, decade after decade, she mentored these kids (even ones not from her district). She cared for them and watched them die, over 100 kids.

And yet when we see her in Catching Fire she is still kind and capable of joy. She cares so much about not only Finnick but Katniss, who she’s only just met. And she is still fighting for the rebellion, hoping for a better future after 80 years.

And then she dies. She dies in the arena, sacrificing herself for the people she loves and for the hope of a brighter future. She dies in the arena, the very thing that has haunted her entire life, the thing that has stolen so much from her. And she dies without ever getting to see a future free from the Capitol and The Games.

[findmewheretheseameetsthesky]

What do you mean wiress came out of the arena without a scratch on her? What do you mean she didn't get into a single fight? What do you mean she sat in that blindspot for an hour letting the hovercraft try to find her? My girl single handedly dealt out one of the biggest 'fuck you's to the games and the Capitol and im too scared to imagine how she was punished for it.