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I think there’s something psychologically wrong with me that this moment is what made me suddenly and unexpectedly ship Jonah and Kinga 😬 I need to call my therapist.

That's right, Jonah. I'm allergic to guff!

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They all deserve the Barbie Treatment™

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Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes find that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.

Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.

It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games in the pursuit of vengeance, but later stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.

So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games, and he sees the ghost of his own past. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He's up against the version of himself that he once wished to be, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.

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coriolanus: lucy gray just left

sejanus: did you cry like a baby?

coriolanus: of course not

coriolanus: a baby does not have the lung capacity to do what i just did.

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The Fall of the House of Usher 1.08 | The Raven (2023)

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Leave it to Mike Flanagan to pump out a masterpiece every Halloween and then disappear for a year

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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 1x08 "The Raven"

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A detail from The Fall of the House of Usher that I didn't catch until the second viewing: When Leo buys the black cat from Verna, he asks her to pose it for a picture that he can compare to Pluto.

It's adorable, too good to be true. However, after Leo dies, THIS is the picture that Pym finds in Leo's phone:

Verna had given Leo a rat, because that's what cat's do.

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Man, this was staring me right in my face, but Usher's critique of people who sell their children's future for a more luxurious present isn't just like, the stuff of fairytales and bartering your first born to Rumplestiltskin.... it's literally what capitalists actually do.

Plenty of them *KNOW* what they're peddling is harmful, but their various poisons are slow acting enough that many of them figured THEY wouldn't have to reckon with the consequences in their lifetime ... no, leave that to burden the next generation with.

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Other Flanagan shows: introspection on love and grief and life and death and the horrors of regret and the ghosts of the past lingering and—

FotHoU: Hey wanna see this hot goddess of death kill a douchebag billionaire every ep? Sure I'll sprinkle in all the usual flanaganisms but you're gonna be in it for the assholes who are given every chance to be redeemed die deaths befitting the stupid lives they led.

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I feel like Hill House and House of Usher are teaching the same moral using opposite techniques.

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I love this duo

So much 🥺🫶 (bonus coloured version \/)

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My ass walking to the elevator after deactivating Roxy when she told me I'm number one twice and my friends will show up to my party this time and wished me a happy birthday and

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FLORENCE PUGH as Alice Chambers DON’T WORRY DARLING 2022