hobbitsandmockingjays

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Flow (2024)

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“Oh, you like Jane Austen? You should read Jane Eyre!”

Please, people. Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë are indeed both women and they both inhabited the same wet, European island (though they only overlapped for a year when Charlotte was a baby), but they have nothing to do with each other.

Jane Austen wrote satirical comedies of manners, praised for their realism.

Charlotte Brontë wrote dramatic gothic fiction, with miraculous supernatural communication methods.

If you feel that you must recommend a Brontë, the proper Brontë is Anne.

If you feel you must recommend a woman, the proper woman is Elizabeth Gaskell (start with Wives and Daughters) or George Eliot.

If you must recommend a English Wet European Island person, the proper person is Oscar Wilde (specifically his four drawing room plays).

Charlotte Brontë wrote negative reviews of Jane Austen and in uncanny preparation for such an insult, Jane Austen mocked the concept of Attic Wives 13 years before Charlotte was even born.

(A lot of people do like both Jane Eyre and Jane Austen, but something always has felt kind of inherently sexist about grouping them together since they write completely different genres and in different time periods. Like why not group Wilde and Austen, or Dickens and Brontë? George Eliot is noted for realism, which seems like a much more sensible match to Austen than Brontë. Anyway, I’m done my little rant.)

Carry on and/or suggest me which literary people we should actually be matching up in our heads.

Edit: forgot Oscar Wilde was Irish!

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- Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

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What do you mean there's no other explanation?

Don't you know its perfectly possible for a writer, while writing a book, to not know the events of the prequel they will be writing a decade later? That they can come up with new stories and ideas about preexisting characters long after finishing the original story, and that these new ideas need not necessarily have to have been in their head while writing the original books? SC or no one person involved in the movies ever mentioned her going around the set instructing the film makers or actors to act or do something in a certain way because she "knows" some backstory that they, and the world, as of yet, don't know. Do people really think an accomplished actor like Woody Harrelson really need the author of the book to come hold his hand and tell him what gestures to make while playing his character, when everything he need to know about the character is right there in the original books? Like there's no need for Woody to know extra backstory to act like this in this scene. Him (and the readers) already know that Haymitch has been watching kids from his district ride these chariots to their deaths for the last 23 years, so there's no need of a backstory involving a loved one for this moment to be traumatizing. It was always supposed to be traumatizing! We don't need a very specific backstory from sotr to know that.

I can understand interpreting this scene in this way as a headcanon. But insisting that SC already knew everything she was ever going to write in her life from day one itself, and that she went around discreetly imparting this knowledge on the movie set (with no evidence to base any of these speculations on), that is some wild levels of overanalysing.

Honestly though, all this general speculation and discussion involving and insisting that SC knew everything all along wouldn't have looked so funny to me if sotr didn't have any plot holes and inconsistencies regarding the original trilogy. Like wdym sotr is proof that SC had the whole back stories of all the characters planned out as far back as the late 2000s, when the book in question is shooting holes at the plot of the entire saga?

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Bellini is like the girl who tells you she doesn't like that guy because ugh, how disgusting, who could like him??? And then she gets mad at you because the guy in question asked for your Instagram, and you didn’t even give it to him because you don’t like him at all, but she still blames you for him looking at you instead of her. He's so pick me, so real.

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I just watched Conclave—what a masterpiece of a movie. It’s basically your average teen drama where the mean girls are fighting over the prom queen crown, while Ralph Fiennes spends 90% of the movie wanting to end it all because he has to deal with an Italian queen bee addicted to vaping, a sex scandal, and a pick-me girl who secretly wants the crown more than anyone else. And when he finally decides that maybe the best solution is for him to take on all the responsibility as the father figure of this dysfunctional family he’s spent nearly two hours managing, God decides to throw in a terrorist bomb which conveniently paves the way for the new girl transferred from a public school—the only one with street smarts—to take the throne.

Special shoutout to the classic sassy, cunty side character played by Isabella Rossellini, whose role is brief but intense. She’s over it all, observing everyone with disdain while chain-smoking in the bathroom and reading some Sartre.

I love it when fiction so perfectly captures the essence of my twelve years in Catholic school. Amen.

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girl help! the popular fanon interpretation of my favorite character is stupid as fuck

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Suzanne Collins: wrote the first thg trilogy making Katniss shoot Coin because the real enemy is fascism/dictatoship and not a single man, but the system

Fans after sotr: "Suzanne wrote sotr because she saw all of the Snow thirst trap and wanted to make you remember who the real enemy is!!! 😡"

... Clearly half of this fandom never get the point she tried to make since the original trilogy.

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There are always at least three books I have with me at all times for eternity, because you never know.

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Realized my problem isn't that I'm stupid, rather that I care too much about school. A 10 minutes assignment take me an hour.

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she understands me in a deeper level

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“Boromir apologist” he doesn’t have anything to apologize for????? He fell victim to evil ringTM like once. and then immediately redeemed himself. Guys come on.

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“Smart people” who only consume “smart things” are just prisoners of their own self-image. “Intelligence” is less about just what you consume and more about the insights you can extract from whatever you engage with.

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Sometimes Darcy gets accused of not actually being in love with Elizabeth at the time of his first proposal, that he just proposed out of lust, and like yeah lust was definitely a part of it, but I believe him that he truly loved Elizabeth.

Marriage was a big deal. He'd never really be able to divorce her. This was gonna be it for life—and while Elizabeth for life might be wonderful, he's also getting the Bennets for life.

I don't know how much he knew about the Bennets' financial situation beyond the entail, but he had to have known there was a strong chance Mrs. Bennet would end up living with him after Mr. Bennet died. He could afford to set her up in her own house, but they'd still have to spend a lot of time together. And it wasn't just Mrs. Bennet—he'd be saddling himself with the lifelong care of potentially multiple of Elizabeth’s relatives, which is bad enough when you actually like the people, but these are people who he can't stand, and rightfully so! I'd despise living with any of them except Elizabeth and Jane, and maybe Kitty. He's not being a snob when he criticizes them—they legitimately suck. (Well, he is being a snob and dumbass by saying it out loud, but Elizabeth herself knows the criticism is justified.)

On top of all that, he knows marrying Elizabeth is gonna piss off his own family, and potentially jeopardize his friendship with his bestie Charles.

And you're telling me that Darcy was willing to take on all of that shit just for sex?? Sex is easy to get. Hell, even sex with a pretty, kind, smart wife would be easy for Darcy to get. Elizabeth is not his only good option.

I know people's genitals make them do all sorts of wildly stupid things, but I don't think even Darcy's penis is powerful enough (and I've read fanfic, I know how powerful Darcy's penis is) to make him propose to Elizabeth Bennet if he didn't truly love her.

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rip coriolanus snow you would've loved The Birds (1963)

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genuinely YEAH the epigraphs at the beginning made know that immediately, this was gonna be her worst one yet.

the day SOTR was announced, i was absolutely miserable. i've been saying for ages that we didn't need a haymitch book. that's not just because i consider myself his biggest fan, but BECAUSE we already had everything we needed to know in a way that would give us light and understanding to a character who prior, seemed like a drunken miserable ass.

but no, he gets revealed as extremely intelligent and 10 steps ahead of the game. and they punish him for it. he tells katniss that it was the forcefield stunt in which killed his family within mockingjay, and so many people have been arguing with me about "falling for propaganda" or "we didn't have the whole story!" OG trilogy haymitch had his story laid out for us perfectly.

i've been saying this very thing in particular, but sunrise on the reaping could've been the story where a young, intelligent and cunning teenager utilizes the things around him in order to survive, armed with snark and wit to do it. i would've had his relationship with his girlfriend be a motivation, but it would've been subtle. haymitch would think about the beauty of the arena, and THEN go "i hope i get back to my girl." with his family, they'd be at the forefront of his mind.

they are his biggest supporters. he is their breadwinner. one of his friends could be taking care of his mother and brother, sure! but haymitch would agonize over not being there to protect them, not being their man in the house to provide. sunrise could've so deeply been about family, right up until he loses them in this deep horrible way. his girl would be a thought of relief in his time of stress; not constantly in mention, but spoke of when it matters to him. his interaction with snow would've been tense and chilling, and the loss of his loved ones would have near put him in the ground, WERE I SUZANNE COLLINS. that boy would've been haunted by shadows on the wall, scared of the reaper for the rest of the people he cares about.

he wouldn't drink until he gets deep in mentoring, but a young, fresh out of the arena haymitch would be in so much pain, both physically and psychologically. he'd wake up screaming for his family, he'd struggle to form coherent sentences, he'd dissociate. he would try so hard to avoid reminders of how he (a guilt-plagued young man,) had failed to do the one thing he had the entire time; protect. and his saviour complex would be made then.

all this to say (and i'm totally Not having to develop all of this in my own work on him anyway,) SOTR could've been impactful without in your face callbacks and weakly mentioned politics. it could've been the BEST book if done right, and i don't understand how people consider it to be such now.

Omg hi! Yours is one of my favourite blogs on here, this feels like a celebrity sighting.

I agree we didn't need a Haymitch book but I can't pretend I wasn't excited when his book was announced. I love Haymitch and knowing that SC has historically done well with his character I was looking forward to it. Needless to say I was thoroughly underwhelmed.

You get it. Haymitch is supposed to be snarky and sarcastic and SMART, instead sotr gave us a character who is so glaringly unintelligent that it's hard to believe he's supposedly the same Haymitch we see in canon, because I refuse to believe a kid this dumb who's girlfriend is even dumber and has a knack for pissing off the cops + government would make it to adulthood. I'll die on the hill that Haymitch as we see him in sotr on the reaping could be a GREAT character if we weren't supposed to pretend this is Haymitch Abernathy from the hunger games. If she'd named this character Carl and wrote the rest of the story the same way I'd probably defend him a bit more. If she'd made Carl die suddenly with Ampert after his failed attempt to blow up the arena and either left the book there or suddenly switched to a different POV I might actually think Carl was tragic and the story kind of silly but ultimately a lot stronger than sotr. Carl would be my little blorbo. Him and his dumb as rocks girlfriend would serve as a cautionary tale. Alas, I'm supposed to pretend that Carl is Haymitch and so the whole story falls completely apart because I spent the whole time thinking He Would Not Fucking Say That.

Once we got past the reaping I genuinely wondered why SC even BOTHERED to include Sid and Ma as characters. Supposedly losing them was one of Haymitch's formative events, something he struggles to even mentions years after their deaths, but to be honest I forgot about them most of the time. And you're telling me I'm supposed to believe Haymitch loved Sid as much as Katniss loved Prim? I dont think so. And don't even get me started on how dirty SC did Ma. Needless to say I wasn't convinced Haymitch even LIKED his family, let alone that they were his motivation to get home, which is so unfortunate because the potential was there. (Also, while I liked Haymitch's bootlegging job I think it's unfair to say he's the main breadwinner. He helps out, sure, but Willamae doesn't scrub miners overalls on a washboard all day to not be given the credit she deserved. She kept them from starving after her husband died and before Haymitch started bootlegging and I hate the way I've seen the fandom pretending like her labour did nothing for the family.) In any case, if I actually was supposed to believe that Carl Haymitch cared about his family at all, he should have been planning to die the second Snow made his veiled threat about them and Lenore Dove living a 'long and happy life' without him. But maybe I'm just a cynic.

I wholeheartedly agree we should have seen more of his grief + trauma + descent into alcoholism. In my opinion, the games themselves should have played a much smaller part in the story, especially because we already knew the broad strokes and because we already knew Haymitch would win. Hunger Games was suspenseful because we didn't know if both Katniss and Peeta would make it out alive. TBOSAS games had an element of suspense because there was no guarantee Lucy Grey would win, especially because Snow was an outside narrator. Haymitch's games were supposed to be suspensful because...he had a plan we knew would fail? Idk, i was just bored. That's not what I was there for, I was there for the aftermath that we didn't really get. Honestly, SC should have let you ghostwrite it, you would have definitely done a better job. We should have at least seen his victory tour, and I think it would have been more impactful to have the last scene be the first time he gets drunk. Like, the beginning of rock bottom. It would have staued with people more. And no epilogue at all. (Dear GOD don't get me started on the epilogue). the epilogue was so unnecessary. We know what happened to Haymitch. We saw him in the original trilogy (and I refuse to believe everything he ever did was because his dead fairy princess girlfriend's ghost told him too. Maybe that would be true of Carl, but not Haymitch).

Finally, the callbacks. for fucks sake i hated the callbacks, which is very uncharacteristic of me. Usually I love parallels and the occasional callback, but the sheer NUMBER in this book were overwhelming. Did SC want nothing in this book to be new AT ALL? Call me crazy but I don't think every scene in the original trilogy needed a deeper meaning. I think Haymitch calling Katniss sweetheart to mock her and having it evolve into a sort of endearment was a lot more impactful and showed their relationship growth better than having it have been genuine the whole time because Katniss reminded him of a dead girl. Lucy Grey did not NEED to make a cameo, she haunted the narrative well enough given everyone remembered twelve had another victor but no one knew who she was. And we all know how I feel about Lenore Dove- I shan't get into that again.

Anyway, you're exactly right. The book had potential, and Haymitch's story could have been the best of thg books if SC put any amount of thought or care into it and it's unfortunate that she did not. I still think that she should have written Wiress' games instead, for a whole host of reasons I already detailed on another post. But yeah, sotr was such a missed opportunity and i'll never not be mad about it.

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okay, I’ll say it: I love Suzanne Collins; I think her writing is salient, punchy, and infused with breathtaking symbolism, and she invented the best couple of all time (argue with the wall) but I am going to need people online to stop acting like she is something more or less than ~an author~ because that’s not fair to her or to any other authors, fanfiction authors included; it is okay for people to write stories because they want to write stories; and not out of spite, and not because “people missed the point the first four times” (God as my witness I am going to throw hands the next time I see this take); her books are not perfect, and they are not immune to criticism; they are (in my opinion) all lovely and meaningful stories, but I acknowledge they resonate with people differently; I think my point is this purity-culture-adjacent black and white take on authors is getting exhausting because it’s become some sort of moral thing; you don’t need to be a Suzanne Collins apologist and say she can do no wrong or a Suzanne Collins anti that accuses people of having a parasocial relationship with her; that’s such an unhelpful space to put any artist into, and if you are an artist, as so many people in fandom spaces are, you’re shooting yourself directly in the foot … anyway, this isn’t levied at anyone so don’t think I’m vague posting … I’m sure you can tell I am very much not being vague … I’ve just seen these sentiments a lot everywhere ever since the prequel came out … and I have … opinions 😉😘