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last week's spread and some old photos from earlier this year. i refuse to believe it's already september. time means nothing

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27/8/2020 | One more year in the place I love

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Went to a lovely little bookstore today.

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The best thing you've found in code

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5/100 ✨ {21/08/17}

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06.08.20 / i’ve been so busy lately with errands it feels so good to finally return to the usual today. russian notes ft. the plant corner in my study. hope your week has been fruitful so far. hang in there ♡

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Old memories… Pt. 4

IG: hristinasview

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tbr & some notes

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05.26.20; 1:30pm

completed the cards I made for the nearby masonic senior home and brought them to the post office this morning!

here are a couple snaps of my notebook for khan's ap art course 🔆

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gotta treat yoself once the exams are over amiright

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24.5.20

I was doing quite well this week until the deadline. I think I’ve just been going at full speed all week and sleeping not very well but I’m hoping I don’t give up. That’s what scares me - falling off the pedestal or going days without doing anything at all.

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24/3/2020 | 4/60 Days of Productivity | My flatmate and I have decided to self isolate at our flat at uni where we think we'll actually get work done. What are you guys doing in isolation?

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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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052020 - 15/30 days of productivity || week 9 of 2020 quarantine challenge

Wed - Are you a clean or messy person?

Clean when focused and motivated, messy when my mind's a mess especially when multitasking.

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28/100 days of productivity (20/5/2020)

playing catch up 💟☁️🥛