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My random unsubstantiated hypothesis of the day: the popularity of "stim" videos, fidget toys, and other things like that is a warning sign that something's Deeply Wrong with our world.

Don't freak out. I am autistic. These things are not bad. However, can we just...take a second to notice how weird it is that there are entire social media accounts full of 10-second videos of things making crunching noises, people squishing slime in their hands, and objects clacking together, and that enjoying them is mainstream and normal?

It seems that nowadays, almost everyone exhibits sensory-seeking behavior, when just a decade ago, the idea of anyone having "sensory needs" was mostly obscure. It is a mainstream Thing to "crave" certain textures or repetitive sounds.

What's even weirder, is that it's not just that "stim" content is mainstream; the way everything on the internet is filmed seems to look more like "stim" content. TikToks frequently have a sensory-detail-oriented style that is highly unusual in older online content, honing in on the tactile, visual and auditory characteristics of whatever it's showing, whether that's an eye shadow palette or a cabin in a forest.

When an "influencer" markets their makeup brand, they film videos that almost...highlight that it's a physical substance that can be smudged and smeared around. Online models don't just wear clothes they're advertising, they run their hands over them and make the fabric swish and ripple.

I think this can be seen as a symptom of something wrong with the physical world we live in. I think that almost everyone is chronically understimulated.

Spending time alone in the forest has convinced me of this. The sensory world of a forest is not only much richer than any indoor environment, it is abundant with the sorts of sensations that people seem to "crave" chronically, and the more I've noticed and specifically focused on this, the more I've noticed that the "modern" human's surroundings are incredibly flat in what they offer to the senses.

First of all, forests are constantly permeated with a very soft wash of background noise that is now often absent in the indoor world. The sound of wind through trees has a physiological effect you can FEEL. It's always been a Thing that people are relaxed by white noise, which leads to us being put at ease by the ambient hum of air conditioning units, refrigerators and fans. But now, technology has become much more silent, and it's not at all out of place to hypothesize that environments without "ambient" white noise are detrimental to us.

Furthermore, a forest's ambience is full of rhythmic and melodic elements, whereas "indoor" sounds are often harsh, flat and irregular.

Secondly: the crunch. This is actually one of the most notably missing aspects of the indoor sensory world. Humans, when given access to crunchable things, will crunch them. And in a forest, crunchy things are everywhere. Bark, twigs and dry leaves have crisp and brittle qualities that only a few man-made objects have, and they are different with every type of plant and tree.

Most humans aren't in a lot of contact with things that are "destroyable" either, things you can toy with and tear to little bits in your hands. I think virtually everyone has restlessly torn up a scrap of paper or split a blade of grass with their thumbnail; it's a cliche. And since fidget toys in classrooms are becoming a subject of debate, I think it pays to remember that the vast majority of your ancestors learned everything they knew with a thousand "fidget toys" within arm's reach.

And there is of course mud, and clay, and dirt, and wet sand. I'm 100% serious, squishing mud and clay is vital to the human brain. Why do you think Play-Doh is such a staple elementary school toy. Why do you think mud is the universal cliche thing kids play in for fun. It's such a common "stim" category for a reason.

I could go on and on. It's insane how unstimulating most environments humans spend time in are. And this definitely contributes to ecological illiteracy, because people aren't prepared to comprehend how detailed the natural world is. There are dozens of species of fireflies in the United States, and thousands of species of moths. If you don't put herbicides on your lawn, there are likely at least 20 species of plant in a single square meter of it. I've counted at least 15 species of grass alone in my yard.

Would it be overreach to suggest that some vital perceptive abilities are just not fully developing in today's human? Like. I had to TEACH myself to be able, literally able, to perceive details of living things that were below a certain size, even though my eyes could detect those details, because I just wasn't accustomed to paying attention to things that small. I think something...happens when almost all the objects you interact with daily are human-made.

The people that think ADHD is caused by kids' brains being exposed to "too much stuff" by Electronic Devices...do not go outside, because spending a few minutes in a natural environment has more stimuli in it than a few hours of That Damn Phone.

A patch of tree bark the size of my phone's screen has more going on than my phone can display. When you start photographing lots of living organisms, you run into the strange and brain-shifting reality that your electronic device literally cannot create and store images big enough to show everything you, in real life, may notice about that organism.

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“oh no autistic wiress has been disproved in sotr because she could communicate normally until she was tortured! :(“ WRONG. literally the first thing haymitch thinks when he sees her is wow she’s weird. it’s said that she “shuts down” after giving them tips for the games and doesn’t give a proper goodbye. and she “can’t” elaborate about how she won her games. she was always semi-verbal/experienced verbal shutdown!! it was just significantly worsened by trauma!!

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Genuinely the most compelling part of Sunrise on the Reaping to me was the two pages we got describing Wiress' games. It's indescribably fascinating to me how Haymitch seems to find her initial serenity and intelligence off putting and vaguely creepy. Like, to the point where I think I would have preferred if SC had written her games instead of Haymitch's for this prequel. Haymitch thinks she's 'bizarre' and notes it was hard even for the districts to root for her because of the eerie manner in which she outsmarted the capitol. It would have been fascinating to see what day to say life is like in a district other than 12 for once, and to see a tribute who won without killing anyone (a complete antithesis to the way the games are supposed to be played). It would be interesting to see the retribution she would face from the capitol in the immediate aftermath. I think it's safe to say prior to the arena that it's unlikely that Wiress was a fan favourite, but I want to see her interview persona, what angle was decided as her best shot of getting sponsors, and the outfits her stylist chose. I want to see her noting the shiny stuff in training and later kicking herself for not realizing it was connected to the games. We'd get to see Beetee as an actual mentor, showcasing his true brilliance with a pupil who could meet him on his own level something missing from the original trilogy and SOTR both. Hell, she could even include a mention of Ampert, or even a cameo of him at the District 3 reaping. We could hear Beetee potentially lament his fear of Ampert being reaped to Wiress, or it could even just be an offhand thought in Wiress' mind, that the eldest child of District three's most recent (and disliked/problematic) victor would be twelve next year. Maybe one of the careers in her games could be the child/neice/grandkid of a former victor and she could think back to meeting Beetee's family before leaving on the train and wonder if that would happen to Ampert? It would be interesting to explore Beetee's fear and Wiress' perhaps preumptive pity from that angle. It might have hit harder even, for us to see a brief cameo of eleven year old Ampert and hear about Beetee's transgressions against the capitol, but have Ampert's fate left ambiguous/a sword hanging over Beetee's head.

Also- the Nest of Mirrors? Come on. Katniss makes a point in the original trilogy of saying the arena can look like anything, but a Wiress book would be the first games we'd read about where the arena doesn't look- at least on the surface- like some random lanscape, not to mention the horror of the entire concept. Blood reflected off any and all surfaces, being unable to get your bearings, nothing being where it appears to the point you could end up impaling yourself on a sword you thought you were dodging? It's an arena with the highest and most blatant element of psychological horror we've ever seen and it would have been really interesting to see how those games played out, especially through Wiress' narration. Not only is Wiress very intelligent and grounded, but she hid in plain sight. She was IN the games but she wasn't an active participant. The narration would be almost from the point of view of a spectator, like those in the districts or the capitol, except with a level of scrutiny no one but a competitor could have. The fact she didn't directly kill anyone would further highlight this- but so would the fact kids might be dying literal feet away from her that she couldn't save or defend herself from if it came down to it. We even know we'd get to see her judgement call, the decision she had to make about when to stand up so the final Two boy would see her, charge at her, and brain himself. We know she understood how to play with the mirrors and how the light beams work, so she must have intentionally placed herself in a way she knew he'd run right into one of them. But how did she know he wouldn't try a long range weapon to kill her from a safe distance? And why did she wait so long after she won before letting the hovercraft pick her up? What was she thinking? What was her post game interview like? What did Beetee say?

I can see how this her victory and reticence could appear so eerie from an outsiders perspective- district and capitol alike- especially when it seems so antithetical from the way most contenders in a typical games play and participate. Wiress didn't participate and that's why she won. It's wild. It's facinating. It should be explored. She didn't participate and she won anyway which should be impossible. But she did it.

Then there's the fact that one of the themes of SOTR was propaganda (and was, imho, the most poorly executed element of the novel, please don't @ me). I think Wiress' book could have the potential to address this in a more subtle but better executed way. Just thinking about mirrors and the arena and the symbolism that could come from it. Something about the same image (or narrative or word or-) seen from a thousand different angles by thousands of different people, how they warp and change and become distorted. Something about retroactively convincing the public that the girl who didn't participate was a strong contender the whole time. Something about spinning the Capitol's inability to find her into something humorous instead of an unintentional display of weakness and gross incompetence. Something about playing up Wiress' 'oddness' so as to make her undesirable and unpalatable to even district citizens so no one would ever rally behind her much less take her or her refusal to participate as a viable option let alone a strategy.

Yeah, to me, not writing Wiress' story instead of Haymitch's will always be a missed opportunity.

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Plutarch is the Raven, change my mind

Elaborating on this by absolutely no one’s demand but my own.

I saw multiple comments under a few sotr videos equating the raven to Snow or more broadly to death/fate/tragedy, which are all valid interpretations, but the thing, to me, is – the raven in the poem isn’t actively malicious. It’s just repeating an uncomfortable truth over and over, and the first character that pops into my head when I think about uncomfortable truths delivered quite nonchalantly is Plutarch.

From there I went and re-read the poem, and found a few other parallels (more under the cut!)

The raven perches on a bust of Pallas aka Athena aka the ancient Greek goddess of knowledge and military strategy, among other things. | | Plutarch lives in a huge mansion with a huge library and laments how reading is not a popular pastime in the Capitol. By the time of Mockingjay, he’s also become one of the key strategists of the Second Rebellion.

The narrator describes the raven as looking placid and unruffled throughout. In fact, it barely reacts and seems pretty unbothered even when the narrator starts yelling and cursing at him | | Plutarch is pretty damn nonchalant about his role in the Games and failed rebellion both. We very rarely see him irked, let alone angry or frightened, even in the face of possible consequences for his treason (I mean, we’re talking about the same guy who’s described as being all cheer and smiles while 13 is about to be bombed in Mockingjay…). Haymitch also calls him out for “looking well” and being way too blasé about their failed revolution attempt while many others have suffered the consequences.

The narrator is convinced that the raven knows the ultimate fate of his lost Lenore and more than once begs it to tell him if he’ll ever be able to reunite with her. | | Plutarch is the one who puts Haymitch in contact with Lenore Dove after he’s been taken to the Capitol, and once again the only person Haymitch can rely on to get news about her after his victory.

Towards the end of the poem, the narrator snaps at the raven when it doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear. | | During their last dialogue in sotr, Haymitch snaps at Plutarch after the latter keeps dismissing his grief by trying to convince him that his loss has actually made him more powerful.

The raven ultimately refuses to leave and haunts the narrator for the rest of the night (the rest of his life?) | | Haymitch does his best to avoid Plutarch both during training and later during his Tour, but the man keeps hanging around him, whether he likes it or not. I guess it’s also safe to say that Plutarch must have kept in touch with him one way or another, as by the time of the 75th Games he’s managed to talk him into giving revolution another chance.

tl;dr Haymitch is the narrator, Lenore Dove is his lost Lenore, and Plutarch is the raven who’s been haunting him since the day he was reaped

(not included since it’s a literal case of “the curtains are just blue”, but still fun to think about: the curtains on the window the raven flies in through in the poem are definitely “just purple”, but there is one character who’s explicitly described as wearing purple during his first appearance in sotr and once again in the og trilogy…)

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The Matrix (1999) vs. The Matrix Resurrections (2021): a series of parallels, references, easter eggs, callbacks and other meta stuff [ 29 / 36 ]

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and what are we going to do when the HP series comes out and we start seeing a resurgence of the fandom here including gifsets and fics. like are u guys gonna bring up your neurodivergence and cry "can we separate the art from the artist!!!!! you dont need to pay to watch it!!!!!its my comfort show and I'm DEPRESSED and AUTISTIC"

what then

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They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. That's what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that's important to us.

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Kudos to "The Matrix: Resurrections" for many things (namely eviscerating the idea of a legacy sequel and letting the makers burn the entire thing to the ground on their own terms rather than let ghouls own it), but for me personally: Machines among the crew. Aside from looking cool, it shows that even literal agents of the State can find it within themselves to do the right thing... It's never too late to change.

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I just watched The Matrix: Resurrections and it blew me away at how good it was as an entry that took the story in new directions that made it fresher and different while also tying in important plot points from the previous story in with the new, which enhanced and advanced the story, and simultaneously paying homage to everything that made the original so good and improved upon it AND complimented the new movie like--

How the frick is that even possible??

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things you DO NOT need to be a man

a dick

he/him pronouns

XY chromosomes

things you DO need to be a man

the swiftness of a coursing river

the force of a great typhoon

the strength of a raging fire

the mysteriousness of the dark side of the moon

^this post was brought to you by LGBT^

Let's

Get down to

Business

To defeat the huns

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Lenore Dove is so misunderstood and mischaracterized by the fandom it makes me sad to see.

She is not this manic, dream pixie girl. Her character very much shaped, flawed and real. Haymitch is able to oversee and ignore her “flaws” because he’s a 16 year old teenage boy who is madly in love with her, but it is not hard for us readers, to look between those lines and see how fleshed her character really is.

She is seen to act before thinking, making rash decisions which aren’t the best for her wellbeing. She is way too emotional, feels too many feelings and has too many thoughts and she doesn’t know how to articulate them into words because she’s an introvert and she fears her words being lost in translation.

She only reveals her unfiltered, (sometimes) dark thoughts to her loved ones, and often enough she does it by using metaphors so she can still backtrack incase she gets misunderstood because she still feels like her thoughts could be a burden to the people around her.

She is not a “Lucy Gray Rip-Off”.

Lucy Gray was a born performer. She loved to be on stage, she loved performing for her people and knew how to get the crowd on her side, how to keep them entertained.

Lenore Dove doesn’t sing in front of people. It makes her uncomfortable. She’s not a “Born Performer” nor does she know how to control a crowd, at least not in the way Lucy Gray did.

She’s a rebel. She’ll only use her voice when she realizes she absolutely HAS to. She’ll use it when she’s mad, and sad, and in despair.

She’ll go against the rules at any given time, especially when it comes to protecting her loved ones. She doesn’t realize nor care about any consequences at the time, she only acts because she’s in pain and wants to avenge her people.

She’s a sixteen year old girl who dreamt big in a world where dreaming was a luxury and not something many people can afford.

In spite of her dark, burdened thoughts, she had still kept her innocence and was able to dream of a world without the reaping, she had hopes that one day that dream could become a reality, no matter how crazy it sounded to others.

She also had dreams of growing up, having a loving family and living peacefully with her loved ones and her boy who she loved more than anyone and she was willing to die for him.

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theres a distinct difference between Katniss’s and Haymitch’s narration style that i think a lot of other people are noticing and it is that haymitch seems to know a lot more about District 12 and Panem than Katniss seemed to. and SotR might seem like lore dropping or name dropping but like. i think it says a lot about them as people.

I think the lack of context we get from Katniss isnt just due to propaganda, but largely due to the fact that she’s so deeply rooted in poverty and survival mode that she simply doesn’t have the mental capacity for anything else. When traumatized, our brains automatically retain less information than they ordinarily would and we see that with Katniss. Not for friends, or school, nor propagandized television lore. Notice how we get descriptions of most tributes before she remembers their names, if she ever does, while Haymitch actually remembers a lot of their names right off the bat. When you’re fighting for your life every day, it really doesn’t leave much energy for anything else. She’s used to saving all of her energy for providing for her family.

But Haymitch isn’t providing for his family. He has several friends, a healthy romantic relationship, and retains information about society because hes not neglected.

It’s just so interesting that Katniss is the luckier of the pair because in their childhood parallels, she drew the short stick compared to him. She’s only luckier cuz she had him.

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For those with a copy that doesn't have the interview, here's a fan theory Suzanne confirms: the fiddler at Finnick and Annie's wedding in Mockingjay is Clerk Carmine.

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Katniss in the arena: I could be killed at any time, so it’s important that I stay on high alert

Haymitch in the arena: OOH LOOK AT BUNNY

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rereading the entire hunger games trilogy and just reached the part where Peeta and Katniss watch Haymitch's games and idk if this has already been talked about but the exact lines are

"We watch from the point of view of one of the tributes as she rises up through the tube from the launch room to the arena."

first person pov. of a female tribute. someone capitol had put a camera on. as in, someone who has been bugged by the capitol.

AS IN, FUCKING LOU LOU!

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“Find Haymitch.”

A pair of little hands wrap around my boots and Lou Lou’s face, splattered in dry blood and dirt, materializes over them.

(SOTR page 224)

on my first pass, i was suspicious and thought that, surely, lou lou was sent to find haymitch by the gamemakers in her ear. and, of course, i still think that’s a very viable explanation…

however, on my reread, it just occurred to me that the much sadder explanation could be that as wyatt sacrificed his life to protect her, he may have—in his last moments—told lou lou to find haymitch, knowing that haymitch would do his best to protect her despite how he insisted on going it alone

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Thinking about how Wyatt Callow is proof that Dr. Gaul’s and Snow’s assertion that humanity’s essential nature is violent (which is part of their argument for the Capitol’s control being necessary) is false. That “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed… A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.” is false.

I’m sure he had it all calculated. He knew exactly what choices would give him the best odds of survival. He knew that the faster he got out of the initial bloodshed the better his chances would be. He knew that letting other kids die would benefit his odds of survival. He knew exactly what he should’ve done to preserve himself.

And yet, he threw all those statistics and odds, all that reason and logic out the window in the name of protecting Lou Lou, a girl that wasn’t even from his district. He threw it all out the window in the name of helping another human being that was in an unfair situation and had worse odds than him. He knew who the real enemy was; he knew it wasn’t the other kids being taken advantage of by the Capitol just like him.

That is humanity.