the-bread-dictatorship

[the-bread-dictatorship]

first dance in the underworld

Fanart based (kinda) on @mostremote’s fic The Shivering Season! <3 thank you so much for creating such a wonderful piece of writing it changed me.

(Some doodles below the cut)

[the-bread-dictatorship]

Here’s the thing for me: the prequel does not make Katniss “the chosen one” (and believe me, I had such undeserved hatred for this book when it came out for thinking it did make her this fated hero; I love it now, for all the reasons below). Snow himself may perceive her as “the chosen one” because he’s self-absorbed, and that is something the prequel shines light on: why Snow is so myopic about hurting Katniss specifically, instead of being effective in crushing the rebellion. He sees the narrative as revolving around him exclusively.

In reality, however, Katniss is still just a good and brave oppressed young woman who said “enough” — what is “fated” comes from the folkloric, interconnected nature of Appalachian culture, a culture rich with music, story, and supernatural goings on, a place that stands as the antithesis of elite society. Once Lucy Gray’s music and memory were in the wind and water, they weren’t going away, no matter who picked them up.

Also, I think we sometimes forget that these books have a lot of very subtly supernatural elements: off the top of my head, we have the birds stopping singing to listen to little Katniss, the fact that OF ALL PEOPLE the boy who loves her is reaped alongside her (I mean, that’s the plot, but still, and it kind of proves my point), all the eerily prescient connections to The Hanging Tree (“midnight”), Katniss inhabiting Finnick’s mind in his last moments, kissing Peeta to break the “spell” Snow has on him, Prim’s spirit seemingly trying to stop Katniss dying after the parachute bombs go off, not to mention the parade of “ghosts” Katniss sees in her rehab. That’s not all realism. No, the reaping wasn’t rigged. No, no one planned for Katniss to lead the rebellion because she maybe possibly was related to the Covey. It’s just one of those strange things that did happen here.

A ghost girl left some songs echoing in the coal-dusted streets, and one day a little girl sang one in a Kindergarten classroom, and a little boy heard her, and Snow’s days were numbered from that moment on. That, to me, is the most fated moment of the whole series: Katniss and Peeta, and the Valley Song: a real song, an American folk song, once sung by Lucy Gray. From that point on, the chips fall where they will.

[the-bread-dictatorship]

To add to the symbolic significance of food in the books, there’s a clear correlation between overt sweetness and deception.

Katniss’s first impression of the Capitol in the books compares the colors of it to hard candy

“Artificial candy Capitol” Katniss describing the Capitol again

The super sweet sleepy syrup Katniss has to lie to get into Peeta

Katniss has peppermint candy in her bag when Haymitch, Peeta, and her are putting on an act in front of the Peacekeepers

Finnick appearing with sugar cubes while he’s playing up his persona and figuring Katniss out

Maysilee is described as being killed by candy pink birds

Haymitch mentioning the stale marshmallow scam from the candy shop

Lenore Dove being killed by gumdrops

That’s not to say that means all sweet things are bad in the books, just the excessively artificial. There are some sweet things that are shown to be sources of joy but they’re more on the balanced side.

The bakery Peeta comes from is known to produce a goat cheese and apple tart along with a nut and raisin bread. Both very balanced dishes in how sweet they are.

Hot chocolate which is portrayed more along the lines of comforting and a balanced sweetness. Which makes sense with the bitter roots of how chocolate originally tastes.

Sejanus’s mother sending baked goods

Clearly it’s a critique of artificiality, which makes it all the more satisfying that the Mockingjay was a girl who saved her family with dandelion salad and hunted fresh meat to feed them. A girl who tried saving her sister who made goat cheese made from a goat gifted out of love, not necessity. A girl whose relationship that ultimately brings down the Capitol finds joy and hope in simple, nourishing foods like cheese buns and nut and raisin bread.

[the-bread-dictatorship]

Donald Sutherland on Snow's relationship with Katniss (audio on obvs)

Donald Sutherland discusses Snow's relationship with Katniss extensively in interviews but these aren't very well known, so I ripped the relevant audio and set it to clips from the films, as well as using some pieces from the DVD extras. I cleaned up the audio the best I could but these are from a diverse range of sources so forgive the unevenness.

I didn't intend this to come out so... erotic(???) but Sutherland just talks Like That

[the-bread-dictatorship]

I don't think Snow wanted Peeta to kill Katniss.

He wanted Katniss to kill Peeta.

Peeta would attempt it, certainly, but a private reunion would be unlikely. Soldiers and doctors would be around and could help Katniss, which is what happened. Death is a possibility, but not guaranteed.

This reunion was meant to be a scarf with a snake underneath, an attempt to kill a lover.

And Snow expected that, stripped of the love that protected Katniss and with Peeta viewing her as a mutt, she would fire bullets back at him, lost in her hatred and her desperate need to survive. He would turn her into him.

[the-bread-dictatorship]

I am deeply fixated on the Hunger Games rn – more specifically Snow & the TBOSAS cast, but since there are countless essays and posts that say what I think about Coriolanus and Lucy Gray and Sejanus better than I will ever be able to, I turn my attention to Casca Highbottom because he is actually perhaps interestingly tragic – like Greek Myth sort of tragic, which is a very specific flavour of tragic. He’s perhaps the closest thing to something like prophecy – of the self-fulfilling sort – and inevitability we get in this book ,and that’s particularly interesting because this book is mostly that people are not predestined to be one way or another.

We all know the story, Casca Highbottom and Crassus Snow were friends once, close friends, close enough to be notable. Then they were paired together for an assignment to create a punishment for one's enemies so extreme that they would never be allowed to forget how they had wronged them, assigned by Dr Gaul. Casca created the Hunger Games drunk while Crassus got him drunker and writer all down and turned it in for a good grade. Casca got angry and broke it off with Crassus (which,,, okay, a bit of an over reaction for what was then just an assignment. He couldn’t have known that it would turn into what it would be then but I digress.)

Dark Days happen, Dr Gaul introduces the Hunger Games, introduces Casca as the architect of said Games. He becomes an addict. He takes out all his horror and agony and anger on Coriolanus Snow – Crassus’ son, casting the sins of the father onto the son. When Coriolanus eventually cheats for Lucy Gray, he sends him to the Peacekeepers. We know what happens then. Snow comes back, and Casca is poisoned by him.

So let’s get back to the point:

Casca Highbottom is a tragedy, but he is also a cautionary tale.

Casca – alongside Dr Gaul – plays very well against the themes of the novel, namely speaking, as Lucy Gray put it, that “there’s a natural goodness built into human beings.” But while Dr Gaul plays against it in a simultaneously more direct yet abstract manner with her thesis on humanity being inherently cruel and animalistic, Casca plays against it in a more personal manner by assuming that Coriolanus is a bad person, the same as his father, that there is rot in the bloodline. There isn’t, or there may be, but – if you isolate the various protagonists’ stories – Coriolanus is perhaps the least doomed character to exist in the franchise. Katniss was doomed to lose Prim, we see it with the very first sentence. Haymitch was doomed to lose his loved ones, he went through the Hunger Games and was a rebel and Snow has a grudge. Coriolanus is human with human wants and human needs, he could have chosen good, he didn’t in the end, but he could have.

Casca Highbottom is kind of the embodiment of a self-fulfilling prophecy here – to think that Coriolanus is a monster, and then to facilitate his transformation into that monster. He is the Hecuba to Coriolanus’ Paris, the Laius to Coriolanus’ Oedipus in that way, the Amulius to Coriolanus’ Romulus and Remus, to those familiar with Hindu literature he is the Kamsa to Coriolanus’ Krishna. He is cruel to Coriolanus and to try to get rid of him because all he sees is Crassus, the living embodiment of Casca’s mistakes and the cruelty that has been inflicted because of them. In this story, considering what we know of Snow in his future, that is perhaps a good thing at first. And in many ways, Coriolanus’ exile to the Peacekeepers – to Twelve, could have been a good thing, it was where he was most human after all, where there was less Capitol propaganda to influence him, the air is fresh with a freedom that could not be found in the Capitol. But no one could have known what happened next.

So Casca Highbottom sends Coriolanus Snow to the place the human will fully die and the monster will be reborn, and that monster will kill him and move on to the rest of the nation, the cycle of cruelty will continue to greater heights than just two petty people. Casca – someone who deeply hated the cruelty inflicted on the Districts, who is good in some parts and bad in other la – is now an accomplice to the oppression of the Districts . That’s a fate worse than death, I think, to have your name associated with something so horrible, and it's even worse to have been able to go the other way around if only you were kinder.