#the capital

[licorice-lips]

I want to talk about Gaul and her view of the Games as a representation of human nature, which for her is that human beings are bad at their core, so when they are stripped of civility (even if you can argue the tributes were never treated with any civility at all anyway), they are violent and will do anything to "fall on top".

And that's very interesting to me because as much as Gaul thinks the Games are a representation of that, Leftie (on TikTok) explained very well that the 10th Games are filled with people proving her wrong again and again by showing mercy and compassion in their own ways - case in point, Reaper giving the fallen tributes a proper homage in their deaths, Lucy caring for Jessup, and even Lamina killing Marcus out of mercy.

More than that though, I think it's so ironically dry of Suzanne Collins to put Snow - civil, educated, polite, well-bred young Coriolanus Snow - as the one who actually has those instincts to be violent and do anything he can to win ("Snow always falls on top") in situations which are nothing like the desperate environment of the Games, but in the society they deem so superior - the Capital.

But even more than that, the more I think about the true State of Nature, the more I see Doctor Gaul's beliefs as extremely frail from a biological point of view: when we talk about human's state of nature, the closest we can get to observe that today are native tribal communities, as some scientists do to understand better how our ancestors lived.

But what we can observe from this too is that (and we all learned that before) human beings are social beings - we need a community (or a support net, as we can call them) in order to thrive, but community only forms with connection. If we were selfish, individualist, and violently prone to survive (bad, in fewer words) in our cores, then it'd make no sense for us to be social creatures because we wouldn't be able to form connections deep enough to live in communities.

Not ones that thrived as much as we did, anyway. We'd most likely be lone creatures. Instead, our understanding of community is directly linked to safety, both emotional and physical, to the point where our own language reflects that: the found family trope being so popular in books, poor families being more likely to stick together as an act of self-defense, the fact we love so much to consume friendships in artistic works, the instinctual need to find protection on other people when we feel threatened, and so on and so on.

"A child rejected by the village will burn it to feel its warmth", meaning not only that we need a community to thrive, but its lack leaves deep scarring in a person's character.

So when it comes to the state of nature of men, I'd say I believe much more in societal corruption - like Frankenstein - rather than a violent or bad nature by itself, unless of course, there's a natural precedent for such (like a biological inability to form deep emotional connections).

[wifeofsnowbaird]

Can you write something with Katniss meeting Coriolanus wife. And she's like 'he wasn't always like this' ???

thats so depressinggggg but absolutely its my job. sorry its so short tho, i tried but this felt like an end ykwim?

He was my man, but now he's just a stranger...

(no ship ig, kinda Hunger Games trilogy! Coryo x wife!reader)

Queen of Hearts vibes

Summary: Katniss meets the First Lady of Panem.

Meeting [Name] Snow was a slow anticipated reach into the tresses of the Capital 'nobility'.

Katniss was slightly terrified, having heard that she was a scary woman who would order Peacekeepers to cut your head if you even passed her.

All Snow's are Lions, she'd learned, aiming for nothing but the kill.

But looking at her now, with her long, shimmering, dark blue dress cascading over her frame and her sad [e/c] eyes gazing into the bright rose garden, she had nothing but sympathy in her veins for Snow's wife. By her tensed body, Katniss knew she noticed her walk into the room.

"You know, that rose garden and I, we aren't much different. He prizes us but he says we do nothing but wither." She gazed at the brunette, analyzing Katniss' emotions through her bright green eyes.

" He wasn't always like this...I miss those times."

Katniss burst into laughter, shaking her head as disbelief struck her core.

" No, a man like Snow was born evil, and they deserve to rot in hell."

A slow, sad sigh fell from the First Lady's lips, reminiscing about the life she had with Snow before his yearning for power.

" That's what I thought too, till I fell for nothing but his sweet smile..."

[estuschan]

Soulstober Day 18: Gold

[opponentsheir]

President Coriolanus Snow

[wgm-beautiful-world]

Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation - Building in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation

[abacteral]

Cashmere lore

hi everyone!!! can anyone provide me with cashmere lore, im writing something with cashmere as a major character, and i was just asking does anyone like have head cannons or anything about her? (relationships with other victors other than gloss?)

[trendfilmsetter]

“[As a kid] For Halloween I was obsessed with how the Capital people were in costumes so I made my own costume and now in [Hunger Games] as a Capital person”

- Hunter Schafer promoting THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

[election-destiel-brought-me-back]

Sorry sorry I’m just realizing I have so many thoughts about the fact that we don’t really get to know the capital citizens and peacekeepers that well in the movie versions of the hunger games. We get so much insight into Darius as a character, and into the different peacekeepers in district 12, which I think really informs  a lot of Coriolanus‘s experiences when he goes to 12 during the ballad of songbirds and snakes.

We get to see the early days of the Hob in tbosbas and I love that in the books we get to know how the peacekeepers interact with the citizens of 12. I think it really goes to show that the lines between classes, even in the hunger games universe, are blurrier and thinner than we believe them today. We lose a lot of that in the movies, I really have a lot of hope that we’ll see more of it when tbosbas comes out this fall

I’m rereading catching fire, and I am just really sad we miss out on all of the scenes with Darius in the movies.

[sad-trash-hobo]

That was absolutely insane of Suzanne Collins to have a pen full of children be bombed. For one, just to show that the capital people were ok with other people's children being taken away, not knowing if you'd see them again, but then fighting so hard to keep their own children next to them. Then to so blatantly show that Coin was no different from Snow, she just didn't have the power to enact her hate. To be shown so clearly that the outcome of any war is the death of innocents, no matter who wins.

[lit-erary-memes]

I recently saw a tiktok about how the mutts in Hunger Games were made specifically to look like the dead competitors and I brought it up to my mom. She figured that the capital is technologically advanced enough to grow flesh and to create the mutts just through artificial means. But I think that considering the hunger games themselves are designed to be as cruel as possible, that the mutts were in fact built out of the dead bodies of the other competitors. A genetically modified giant dog that is modified to look part human is less viscerally terrifying than being faced with a creature not built for long term survival and is basically a reanimated corpse of the other competitors.

[lvcygraybaird]

favorite hunger games passages [68/?]

[doublescribble]

LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma

[alanshemper]

reading group picked our next read

[happypeachsludgeflower]

There are times where I’ll look at couture fashion and be like “!!” and think “that’s beautiful!” and others where I die a little inside and suddenly know exactly how Katniss Everdeen felt in the Capital…

[scretladyspider]

“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.