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I totally buy McKenna as Maysilee because I’ve seen her in the Handmaid’s Tale. That girl has the range AND the sass to pull off my icon Maysilee

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Katniss: Peeta is all that’s good in the world, everyone loves him and I must protect him at all costs

Also Katniss: What’s this weird feeling when he kisses me? Must be that admiration.

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instead of bitching why don’t we all just be thankful ao3 doesn’t have ads xxx

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Crimson Rivers combines by old obsession in The Hunger Games with my new obsession in Jegulus in a VERY DANGEROUS WAY

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something kinda gay about having a nemesis

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the fact that I cannot watch our flag means death because I’m in the UK is a fucking crime and I simply will not stand for it. hand the series over, this is a robbery.

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We forever reblog the nuance of my favourite series

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

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What if archive of our own had a Spotify wrapped where they tell us our top ships of the year, longest fics, time spent reading, top fic authors and top tags. That would be so interesting.

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Sirius Black is that kid who claims he’s dumb and doesn’t know anything and then does amazing in all of his exams because he just remembers stuff. Remus gets a bit jealous.

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why you gotta be calling us out like that

Fangirls say goodnight and then go read fanfics until 3am

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what's the point of enemies to lovers if it's not gay

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My 6.1” tall sister: *in a bad French accent* Hagreed

My sister: Do you think I sound like Madame Maxine?

My Dad: I’m not sure but you definitely look like her, ya giant

Me: *mouth hanging open*

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Why do English teachers talk about unreliable narrators like they’re a bad thing? They have no idea what’s going on and honestly, same.

I stand with unreliable narrators.

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that feeling after finishing a really good book or fic, that bittersweet lingering of love, of wanting more, so much more.....yeah

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Adam: I’m quite good at pretending I’m Gandalf in lord of the rings

Me: EXCUSE ME, I NEED TO SEE THIS. This is the character development we (and Adam) deserve.