Girls Gone Canon Cast - Patreon Public Release Episode 64 — The Hunger Games Episode 1: Act 1, "The Tributes"

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

A special gift from our Patrons, originally released December 2023. ----- The girls ended 2024 (and now, apparently 2024) by embarking on a new series by time traveling to the year 2013. In this first episode, we cover the world building that happens in the first few chapters of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and some of the inspiration behind it.  Spoilers all The Hunger Games trilogy; hints to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Want more coverage about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel book? Check out Arah's YouTube channel, ieatzebra: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGu9dGopzdFfXUhoMP2BNAchBWIkx0AGX  --- Intro by Kevin MacLeod, "Fairytale Waltz"

Welcome to the 74th Hunger Games. No I'm just kidding. Oh my god. Welcome to the 74th Hunger Games. No, I'm just kidding. Oh my god. Welcome to... Put on the affect. Put on the affect. Put on the accent. No, not yet.

I'm not ready for that. I gotta warm up to get to Effie. I gotta warm up a little. Hello, everyone. It's us. It's you girls. In some place you probably didn't expect us to be. Well, we told you, to be fair, but

welcome to The Hunger Games. Episode 1, Act 1, Chapters 1 through 9, this is our 64th Patreon episode, and yes, you heard that right, this is Act 1, Episode 1 of The Hunger Games, because there will be three episodes, three acts is the way that the book is split up. And that is the way that we are going to tackle it.

So first up is chapters one through nine. Yeah. Uh, are you ready for this is no, sorry. It's like, what if I just kept it? Uh, and yeah, I'm excited. I was starting to reread this honestly, even before it, I was like, should we just split it up? And you and your brilliance were like, Eliana, they're already split up in acts.

I was like, hell yeah. Boom. Hell yeah. And cause I was like, we could do a whole episode on just chapter one and we are not gonna do that because we've already done some long, we've already got another long-term project. So this is a medium term project. We love to start. because we've already done some long- we've already got another long-term project so

this is a medium-term project. We love to start- girls just love starting projects, don't you know? Don't you know? Yeah so I mean I'm pretty sure we're gonna do the whole the whole thing, the whole trilogy. Yeah I think the scope of this new project to lay it all out for you investors as you listen is that we are going to cover The Hunger Games in three acts, The Catching Fire novel in three acts, and then Mockingjay in three acts, all leading up to hopefully what I will lovingly refer to, this may help you Eliana, as Teeba's Ass. Teeba's Ass.

Which is the ballad of songbirds and snakes. Teeba's Ass. Tee ass. We will hopefully lead up to T boss ass. I know there's some differing opinions out there. Some people liked it, some people don't. I really like it. I like the prequel book. It grew on me. Some of it I was worried it would be kind of corny in some ways and I was like, all right, do we really need a snow prequel? But actually, I really love it. I really liked the movie. They did an amazing job. A lot of the original crew was back for it.

So highly suggest seeing it. It's out on digital now. Read it if you haven't. Definitely suggest reading it. And yeah, hopefully all this will lead up to reading T-Boss Ass with Eliana, everyone. Yeah, I'm definitely interested in it, especially after rereading like how Collins

has just set up this world and you know, kind of diving into the history of Panem. But if you did want more coverage of T-Boss Ass or the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that it's in depth, full spoilers, you can get that. There is someone covering that and it's our friend, Aura. You can find her on YouTube at I eat zebra that's I E A T Z E B R A and we've linked her YouTube channel in the description of this episode. Please go check it out. She has a couple of videos already on the ballad of songbirds and snakes, both the books

and the movies. So do go check that out. And with that, our spoiler scope for these episodes will be the main trilogy of The Hunger Games with slight hints at the prequel and information gleaned from the prequel by me, because I'm unable to separate it, but I won't be, I won't get too spoilery. We'll try to save a lot of stuff too as we go along, because there's so much to talk about and so much stuff that ties back into the other books. And to your point, the world building is actually fucking sick. Yeah, like we said, we're going to just spoil...

Talk about the whole Ola main trilogy, and, you know, if you haven't read these books yet, they're a quick read, they are a gripping read, you will just, I think, devour them. But also, this was like the biggest series of the early 2010s. And I feel like a lot of you might already more or less know what happened. They were like the biggest piece of media in movie theaters for a while. Yeah, it could actually only probably enhance your old watching experience from a decade ago. I mean, we're not gonna go line for line through this. We're not gonna go quote by quote. I know our A Song of Ice and Fire series is pretty thorough.

We're moreover gonna be talking about the big moments in each chapter and dissecting a little bit on how they reflect the future. But if you are not averse to that, honestly, yeah, I recommend go ahead, enhance your experience, listen to us chat about the books. I actually like that sometimes when it's a movie that I maybe haven't read the book and someone does a little book cast, I like to learn some of these details that I might not otherwise know.

Yeah, and speaking of which, so I think probably the first time I heard about The Hunger Games was obviously because the movie was coming out and I was like, the first time I heard about The Hunger Games was obviously because the movie was coming out and I was like, yo everybody's all about this. And I'm gonna be real, I don't remember if I watched the movie first or if I read the book first anymore because that was a hazy period of my life. And I think I might have watched the movies in theater first and then decided to pick up the book. My cousins. That's what I think happened. I've been like really trying to dive deep into my memory. I'm like, what? When did I read these? Yeah, I didn't read them first. In fact, I didn't really read them until this past year, pretty much. My mom loved the movie and loved the books and I liked the movies. I actually, I had a group of friends

that we were going to cosplay the tributes from the first movie. I was going to be glimmer mostly because I could do the braids very easily. Everyone else was like, I don't want to do braids in my hair but we were going to do the training outfits. I'm like, they're really easy braids, they're fish tail, you guys are so dumb. But anyways, I digress, hope they're not listening. That cosplay group never happened. I also wanted to cosplay Joanna, I still kinda do. That's another story when we get to Catching Fire, we'll talk all about Jenna Malone then. But I liked the movies and funny enough, I don't think I ever finished them when the

last Mockingjay, Part 2, Section 2, Mockingjay B came out, when that came out, I don't think I saw it. So I saw everything up to Mockingjay part 2, which is like I saw everything except the end of the entire story where everything you know comes together and all the themes. So I actually read it first and then, or no I'm sorry, I rewatched it this year, read them within like three days. I read each one. You and I were just talking offline about how easy you read they are and they are so gripping you don't want to put it down you just want to get it done and get through the next chapter. Every time is what about one more chapter? What about ten more? Yeah I think I've actually

reread them. This will be my third reread unfortunately this year because I reread in the beginning of the year I read them. In the middle of the year I read Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to get ready for the prequel, and then right before the prequel I reread all of them one more time. Just for fun. And now I'm... oh, sorry, this is my fourth reread, I just started with you. So that's good. Things are normal for me, but I'm hyper-focusing, it's fine. We're very into this fixation of The Hunger Games, so... Yeah, I think I'll probably finish up my second reread probably before we record Episode 2 of The Hunger Games. But this was my first time rereading them since, you know, picking them up 10 years ago. I remember opening the book and I was like, oh, okay, this is...

This is fucking solid, and then flying through them and again I am racking my memory trying to figure out like because I remember these books actually surprisingly well but I have little to no memory of the movies I'm like did I even watch the second movie I'm not sure that I did maybe I did in like fleeting moments at someone's house Same with the third movie like fleeting moments I'm pretty sure I never watched the fourth movie, but I fucking love that Lorde song Yellow flicker beat like had such a grip on me Oh my god, it's in every single one of my A Song of Ice and Fire play- playlists like for every character

Was that the third movie or the fourth? See, I don't even know what happened with the movies. I think it was in... Was it in Catching Fire or Mockingjay Part 1? I literally don't know. Might have been Catching Fire. Well, we'll definitely have to rewatch them. As far as the movies go, we'll probably rewatch them after all this and do an episode on the movies. You know, just to chat about them casually, because honestly, We'll probably rewatch them after all this and do a do an episode on the movies, you know

Just to chat about them casually because honestly They're very Like I have to say this. I know a lot of people have grapes I feel like you know what? I feel like I have like a fucking masters and adaptive works after watching game of thrones Like i've suffered so much like I should just have that by now I can say this like I think they're probably some of the best book to movie adaptations done

without sacrificing too much of the plot, the characters, et cetera, any changes, any omissions that are done. Like even in the prequel, I mean, they're big movies. The fucking prequel movie was like two and a half hours, two hours, 45 minutes, right? Like it's a long movie. They're long.

You have to cut stuff. If anything, I think catching fire should have been two parts, honestly. Not mocking Jay, but that's neither here nor there. I think there was so much in catching fire that they could have come back with. But even rewatching, like rewatching Hunger Games, it's so fast.

Things move so much faster. And that's the biggest way they save time. And Suzanne actually wrote the screenplay for The Hunger Games. So it is adapted great for screen while looking at, you know, the idea that she had to cut stuff, she had to move things. It was a first movie, so you don't know what you're gonna get. You have to be able to get through it.

And it was, honestly, it's pretty faithful in my book. That's right. She has a degree in dramatic writing, right? Like in actual theatrical writing. So that makes sense, that makes sense that she did that. And yeah, I think I was kind of afraid like that the ending would not be quite the same as the book ending, cause I know that a lot of people, we can talk about this in a bit,

but I know that people weren't like super jazz about it. I loved it, we'll get about this in a bit, but I know that people weren't like super jazz about it I loved it. We'll get to it in a bit. So let's talk about this before we dig in a little bit of a Little bit, you know meta about the series I find it very interesting because I wasn't into the books at the time, but these were published 2008 through 2010 and Suzanne Collins, like you said The good old days. Sorry.

God, to be young. My fuck. Oh, that's what you meant. I meant something else, but uh. Suzanne was inspired by a lot. As you mentioned, she is a fucking expert. She has a degree in writing for screenplays, etc. So not just that, but she was inspired by Shakespeare, by plays, by the 3-act structure,

as we'll get into as we go through this. And also Greek and Roman mythology, specifically Theseus and the Minotaur, right, where Minos forces Athens to sacrifice their children into the maze for the Minotaur and someone wants to put an end to that. And also, Roman gladiator games. You can see that a lot when you look at like, where the chariots come down on the main drag in the capital. It's kind of implied back in the day that was where chariots used to, you know, be glorious and come down back in their day as well. And then she was also inspired by reality TV. She actually has said in interviews that she was scrolling through watching reality TV

and then she switched the channel and there was a piece on the Iraq war on where people were, you know, dying, suffering, etc. The other fun stuff happening every fucking day. Those two apparently came together in her mind and she was like starting to form the basis for Katniss and honestly I did not put that connection together when I first read these books back then because I didn't watch a lot of reality TV at the time now I'm sure you if you are up to date with the Girls Gone Cannon episodes I have watched a lot of reality TV now I'm like a fucking expert in reality TV

now but not really there's so much reality TV out there that like I don't even know if I could get through all of it. But it's really actually given me a new perspective on the Hunger Games and seeing the trailer for T-Boss ass. You can do however you want. Okay, yeah, yeah. T-Boss ass, I like, it finally clicked for me. Again, have not yet watched or read T-Boss ass, but gonna get there and reality TV really, again, puts a new perspective on the Hunger Games. A lot of the idea of like how outside of that life Katniss is living a horrible survival life already where things suck. And then in the scripted glamorous life that's supposed to be quote reality TV, unquote reality, but it's not at all and it still sucks. So it's definitely interesting. Yeah, for me it was just like dang, we really... Alright, it was something in the trailer of T-Boss Ass.

I feel like this isn't a spoiler because it's in the trailer. You know, they're just in the little arena and it's just like filming them everywhere and I'm like, oh my god. I mean, we just... We really do sacrifice these people's mental health for our entertainment, absolutely. Yeah, whether it's reality, whether it's also fictional entertainment, I mean, there's a lot of that too, I think. The connection, the parasitic kind of connection back and forth between creation and artist and actor and everything, like what does it all mean? And I will say, without going into it too much, in ballads of songbirds and snakes, it is basically, you know, before the games

were the games. When you read it, when you see it, you're going to see how certain things in today's games, in Katniss's games, how they came to be. Interesting, yeah. I'm excited to get there, but I'm edging. Which is not a great segue into the next inspiration for Susan Collins, which is war in general, but especially the Vietnam War. Her father is a veteran of the war and growing up made sure that his children understood the consequences of war and like the things that led to war. And also I think you can really see her exploring those consequences when it comes to PTSD and veterans.

And yeah, he was also like a war historian, which we are not. But she writes a children's book eventually based on her father going to the Vietnam War. It's called The Jungle. I'm just going to read this brief review slash abstract. Ra'Collins offers a radical change of pace in this picture book inspired by her own childhood documenting the year young Susie's father goes off to the Vietnam War. At first the prospect doesn't sound all that bad to a rising first grader with a little grasp of time. How long could one year be?

Additionally, Dad is headed for the jungle and some of Susie's favorite animals live, at least by her reckoning, in the jungle. A year turns out to be a very long time, though. I mean, does it? Well, if you're a child, of course. Especially when postcards come only sporadically, people's efforts at cheering her up only fill her with heretofore, unconsidered anxieties, and Dad's brief missives seem increasingly distanced and confused. Theirs is a happy-ish ending. Dad does come home, although he looks different, tired and thin, and his skin has turned the color of pancake syrup. He stares into space. He is here, but not here." So there are some aspects here that talk about her life of getting

a birthday card from her dad that she would have gone to her sister, being showered with too much Halloween candy from a sympathetic neighbor, terrifying experiences of being tossed into a local swimming pool, and... It's really, I don't know, something so interesting and terrible at the same time about it is that it's a fictional world, but it could be applied to almost anything happening today. You know, I mean, you look at it and you can see the inspiration from Vietnam, you can see a bit of the inspiration from Iraq. Even today, right, we can see some inspiration going on. I really hate it, but love it because it's so well and simply written that it can stand the test of time. Back time, forward time, this is, these are the troubles and

the tragedies that soldiers go through when they're conscripted to go fight battles for people for resources. Absolutely. Their bodies also used as tributes, you know, for war. And yeah, it was something that clearly her dad made sure that she had an understanding of, and obviously it sounds like he suffered some PTSD as well. And I think, for obvious reasons, right? A lot of American media focuses on the PTSD of the Vietnam War veterans. And I know that the Vietnam War is something that also shaped George R. R. Martin as a conscientious objector. And as you were saying, right, the soldiers, they're discarded, used as bodies, and there's consequences to that trauma. And so I'm rereading this with the soldiers, they're discarded, used as bodies, and there's consequences to that trauma.

And so I'm rereading this with that context, because I think I didn't know that until I obviously was avoiding author interviews until I devoured the book series, which thankfully didn't take that long. And then knowing that about her father gave it really great context. But also, and so you can see that intergenerational trauma, but I'm also now trying to read this with the lens of not just like the trauma of US soldiers. But you know, at first I was like, maybe Collins isn't as intentional this, but knowing the

education now that her father made sure their family had, you know, like also the people who lived in these places and who survived the war. I'm thinking of Vietnamese people, right? I grew up in an area with a large Vietnamese population. My second home slash house in my hometown, one of my really good friends, his parents fled Vietnam, right? I moved to another area with a large Vietnamese population. And so I think that's something that I'll probably be kind of trying to tie into this too because I didn't like something that I'll probably be kind of trying to tie into this too because like

You know, I didn't like thought because I was younger much about like that kind of the trauma of like the families of people in my everyday life And I started thinking about this way more after reading this comic that I highly recommend That y'all should go out there and get called the best we could do It's like an award-winning comic slash some people like to call them graphic novels, they're fucking comics to me by Ti Bui about her own parents' survival of the war and also motherhood, which is something that I think ties together thematically with the Hunger Games as well. And I cried my fucking eyes out. So I will give that warning. I cried my fucking eyes out reading this graphic novel. And I recently finally started, I know I'm a little late,

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. And there's also a bit of this like what it means to be separated from your homeland and living with that curing that as well in like a much more, I think, child-friendly comic called The Magic Fish by Cheng Ling Wen and that one is a lovely story about like a queer coming of age, please check it out. But the first two that I mentioned, On Earth We're Briefly

Gorgeous and The Best We Could Do, very much about the intergenerational trauma of war and like I feel like this isn't much of a spoiler because it's in the first 20 pages of the book, but like in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, the narrator is already talking about the violence people experience. It's already talking about how violence that people experience and survive in conflict is something that they end up recreating in their own households towards their own children, and talks about his mother hitting him. Oh, yeah. That's something to really think about, especially as we think about the flashback for PETA, for Katniss and her mom. I mean, that was one of the flashbacks with PETA and his mom. It's not recreated or highlighted as much in the movie, but obviously not great. I mean, his mom's like beating the shit out of him with bread, like, for feeding someone starving.

There's definitely something, you know, as we talk about, I guess, like its critical reception, right? I think one of the things that maybe in the aughts, or after aughts, no, the teens, the tens. Twenty tens. In the tens. What are we gonna call these now? In the twenty tens. Yeah. Yeah, what the fuck are we calling the tens, my god.

In the tens, something that people also, I think, kind of disparage the story and not necessarily always in a bad way, because they have very similar premises, was people would say it's a rip-off of Battle Royale. And while they have very similar premises, I do think that they explore very different themes, right? And I think that there's a big focus on PTSD and on that, like you said, intergenerational trauma of war that we don't really get in Battle Royale.

So I think that was a big kind of like talking point in the 2010s, people be like, oh, it's just a rip off of Battle Royale. And I think both very much offer and hold an important space in literature. That's so interesting. And I agree, I remember hearing people say that during that time too. And I kind of had like internalized that before I went into the movie. And I don't know,

I didn't really see it in the movie. And I'm pretty sure now that I watched the movie before I read the first book as we go through this and I relive my memories. But when I read the book, I actually like, I immediately thought of Theseus and the Minotaur after reading the first book and I was like, this is a much stronger influence and turns out that is intentional and she's so good at bringing that to the forefront and I absolutely believe that as she said at the time she's like, yeah, she's like Battle Royale is great, I had not seen it before she wrote the books, which I think is true.

And it's just something that I think it's just a concept that people are interested in. Because as you pointed out, Roman gladiators clearly have been fucking doing this for a long ass time as a species. As a species, the gladiators as they are. I don't mean our civilization necessarily, unless you count our civilization going all the way back thousands of years, which you can. You shouldn't, but you can. No, I'm just kidding. You probably could.

Yeah, I think that probably turned me off at the time, like in association, just because I think other people might have said, like, oh, I'm not going to read that or oh, I'm not going to see that. It's just Battle Royale. Like a lot of the people I hanged out with at the time and people in my little circle in high school loved Battle Royale. So, yeah, so maybe that's why I didn't read them, but I had the same exact kind of revelation when I read them of, A, it's simply great.

Like the concepts and the way that she puts it, it's so well written and it's smooth and it delivers the punches where it needs to and it's not hard to understand but it's not overstated, right? Like you don't need her screaming in your face some of these big themes we're going to talk about. It tells you these themes on its own. And I think one of the other things, maybe because it's a little in some aspects it's youthy, right? Some people think it's a little young adult,

and it is, but I don't think that's bad. People really knocked it for the love subplot, the little love triangle, which made them give comments like, oh, it's a Twilight Battle Royale that was often said about it. People are like, oh, it's, I'm like, that's not. What an oversimplification. The love subplot, I mean, it's also silly

because it's like implying that adults don't fall in love, and that love isn't complicated, messy, and that life isn't about finding love, whether it's in a romantic partner or whether it's in a friend that you love dearly and you've suffered through things like whether it's a war or several years of a podcast. I was going to say, or a podcast. I thought you might like that. Yeah, I was thinking of you. You know, I mean, like, love is important. Yeah, I just think that, like, I don't know, of course it has a love subplot. Love is something that happens in life. It's kind of important to life. It's not like a bad thing.

And honestly, a lot of YA novels have love subplots and that's kind of what I like about them. I'm not against it but also I think that I didn't I don't remember the critiques that it was Twilight alongside I guess Battle Royale but it was it was coming out at the same time as Twilight movies which have a banging soundtrack. And honestly, like, there are times where I'm like, why are we focusing on this love-sub-fuck part, but at the same time, as we will discuss, it's so clearly a metaphor. Like, if you can understand in A Song of Ice and Fire, the choice between Dario and Hisdar as a metaphor for violence and peace and Daenerys subplot, I think you can fucking understand it here. That's what

Collins is very explicitly doing, and I think it's a very strong metaphor. STACEY Well, and it's like you were talking about with some of these great graphic novels that ruined your life recently. No, they made my life better. These emotionally destructive pieces that changed you for the better. I think I like emotionally destructive- no, anyway. Yeah, I mean, have you met us? We love that shit. But like, I think that it's about those sins of, you know, of the recreation, constantly recreating the environment that you were raised in, right?

And how do you beat that? And how can you get better than that? And Katniss and Peeta are young teenagers that have been forced to grow up far... Young adults? Yeah, young adults. They're teenagers that have been fucking forced to grow up far faster than they should have, way earlier than just the Hunger Games, not even just with the games.

And so the games on top of that create such a layer of trauma that I just think it's... Yeah, I think that you need the love subplot because at the end there is hope. I think that's what matters is there can always be some sort of hope. The love subplot, from what I remember reading it, isn't actually at the forefront as much as like people say it is. I think, yeah. It's really- there are times where I was like- And that's Hollywood, you know?

Well, there were also times when I was reading the books, I was like, where's the fucking love part? Bring back the romance, why are we focusing on this? But anyway. Yeah, well, a lot of the big themes that we're going to discuss and, you know, chat about a little bit, Why are we focusing on this? But anyway. Yeah. Well, a lot of the big themes that we're going to discuss and chat about a little bit, they're all happy. So get excited. I'm going to name some really happy themes for you all in this book.

Like inequality and class disparity. Division, isolation, control. Yeah? Yeah, you guys like that? Parentified children and parenthood. Hoo hoo! War. Yeah, we love that one. PTSD. Rebellion. Survival. Love and of course grief and loss. Grief and loss. All the big ones, Suzanne. She is hitting all the big ones. And now I'm like, maybe we should throw in intergenerational trauma, a little like different

Intergenerational trauma. Yeah, on PTSD or trauma in general. So, you know, there's a lot going on in these, honestly. Buckle up bitches. Yeah. Of course before we jump all the way into Penem, which if you do not know, Penem stands for Penem et Circensis, right, or Bread and Circuses in Latin. It's a phrase basically, it's superficial appeasement, right? This is like artificially placating people with lies, something the government was known and want to do. Ancient Rome, of course, is kind of where it originates from in Latin.

And it's, uh, the Romans would give free wheat to citizens and circus games and gladiator games to distract them, right? Entertainment, while taking political power in the background. So as we set the stage with the history of the capital of Panem, of the districts around it, we go all the way back to the First Rebellion. So 74 years ago, there were three years of conflict led by District 13, which brought about what they call the Dark Days. District 13 was destroyed, quote unquote, asterisk asterisk asterisk,

aka retreated below the ground, promising that Panam would not be embarrassed in front of the other districts for how bad they were getting their ass whooped. District 13 made a treaty. It's true, I'm not wrong. District 13 was like, we live underground now, but no one knows that. That's the most important part of what I'm saying. You don't know it, so forget it. We know that. Yeah. And thus, the Treaty of Treason was brought about between the districts and Panem, the

capital in Panem. It was basically a harsh peace and the Hunger Games, keeping control established across the districts, keeping the districts productive in making products for the capital. Yeah, I don't know. Every time you say Pan Am, I keep thinking of… Do I know a restaurant by this name? I don't know. Pan American? No, I think there might be one actually called Pan Am or something. So I thought it was really interesting that the entirety of this one region that rules all the other regions or city is

spelled capital with an O as someone who grew up in the DC area versus what the usual spelling is which is with an A right C-A-P-A-T-L versus C-A-P-I-T-O-L and the former with an A that's a city that's a seat of government. And the latter is a building that is a legislative body, specifically ours here in the US. And, you know, I did not know that about the origin of Panem's name, which maybe it's mentioned and I just like forgot, but very cool. Suzanne, you're so smart. And that kind of ties into why it might be called

capital comes from the Latin Capitolium, the name of the temple of Jupiter at Rome on the Capitoline Hill. Yeah, and more specifically, capital with the O usually refers to a physical capital building, right? Like Capitol Hill or the US Capitol building where capital for us in the states especially, it could be money or the death penalty or capital cities that house government. Yeah, yeah. So with an O, we're usually talking about that big round building y'all associate with the US Capitol. Well, no, that's literally it. Capitol Hill can also be like the neighborhood, but it is interesting, you know, that she doesn't't use the A but this is where the games are as you said there's the money there's the wealth that's all here and then of course death penalty and like that's literally what they do here

for no fucking reason that's the games that is the games that we're seeing here this capital punishment let's get into the punishment three acts of punishment are coming your way and today you're getting the first act and We'll start off with chapter one, where we get an introduction to Katniss, to Gail, to her family, the Seam, and of course, the Reaping. We are presented right at the front with her and Gail hunting and learning a little bit about hunting and a bit about how they've been surviving all these years with limited resources. And I love this bit, we get told that, you know, the fence that's around the district that they sneak under was built to keep predators out. But that's your first sign that it's meant more to keep them in.

Absolutely. And I think it's kind of interesting that like, they only have electricity two to three times a day, no one gives a fuck and they're also like what are we gonna we need this resource so most of the time it's off so much world building and like it's not being enforced yeah you can see that 12 kind of is uh the greasy wheel right the greasy se will uh it's getting just nothing and it's a good thing we start to learn when we get into the games right i'm really'm really struck by when she and Rue talk later. And Rue tells her so much about her district, and they've never been allowed to talk to other districts. So they don't know how the other districts have it. You don't get to travel. Everyone stays right there. Everyone knows each other. Everyone lives there. Everyone dies there. No one gets out, at least not alive usually. Yeah, and it seems like they live perhaps in a very small area of

each district, which kind of speaks to how much climate change and the wars decimated the population, is my assumption. No, that's totally real because they, the other thing is like, I think they have 4.5 million people is what the capital says they have first of all but if you count the people but if you count the people it's closer like two million from the district so they're lying because they're government but that's just that small two million dude that's my city like to put that in context for you guys like I live in a city of two million people yeah like that's all that's left that's actually kind of surprising New York is like nine million people we

discussed this during when we were calculating how many green seers there might be. Ha ha ha ha. Uh. That sounds like us, man. I was like, that's actually a fucking lot of green seers, everyone. There's a lot about the class differences going on here,

right, the scene class versus the merchant class, which I think is interesting and didn't quite get translated to the films. You don't really understand the difference, I don't think, between the two, but there's definitely a difference in town. And you get that illustrated here for a couple of different reasons, whether it's Pita, who's in the merchant class, or whether it's Madge, who is in kind of more the bourgeois class as well, being the mayor's daughter. Yeah, so something mayor's daughter. Yeah, so something that's interesting is we learn a little bit about the different

occupations that are in the merchant class. For example, the apothecaries and that those kind of fill in for doctors because they don't really have doctors and how Katniss's mother came from some apothecaries. Neither turns out, I was like, what is Katniss's mother's name? And then turns out neither she nor Katniss's father ever get a name. They are Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen. And honestly you know that's gender equality. Like George would have only given that father a name. I am joking. I am joking. But am I? Part of it is probably like the YA novel thing, but I just was kind of struck with about how

we don't really get much characterization of her grandparents other than that. Like it seems as though did they basically just disown their daughter and therefore their grandchildren or are they dead? Which is entirely possible because we don't even like get anything about her paternal grandparents. I just assume that they're dead, because why was no one helping take care of these fucking kids? And because I'm assuming they're dead, it kind of speaks to the short life expectancies in District 12. But also, none of that information gets passed down to them about their heritage, their family.

It kind of speaks to the way that people are cut off from their histories and past generations, right? Like they can't talk about what was the world like before Pan Am, right? Because they can't, you don't want people to be able to visualize a world that was better, Jesus, when you're trying to oppress them. And it's very much like tools of imperialism, right?

Like I think of the erasure of the history of pre-colonial Philippines, and that's absolutely a tool of oppression. Even from that very first chapter you start to see those lines of oppression that's such a yeah, bleh. It's interesting, I have to tell you that it is a fan discussion going back, I see a forum back to 2010 saying what's Katniss's mom's name? Maybe we'll get it in the last book. What's her name? Maybe they'll name her in the movie. I think the actress herself, it looks like, might have given her a name of Claire, just so she had a name. But no, this is a fan. You thought that we were crazy with the Dornish princess's name, right? No, here we are. No Katniss mom name. So good call out. I guess I never really

thought about it. But also no dad name. She talks about, she thinks about her dad a fucking lot for him to never have gotten the name. Oh, there's a really sick scene in the movies that I have to remind you all of if you saw the movies where when she gets hit by Tracker Jack or Venom, she sees her dad, like he turns into like 12 of the same coal miner. It's so trippy when you rewatch them. Keep an eye out for that. But yeah, he doesn't have a name either.

And regarding the grandparents, I wanted to say, I think they probably would have died. I mean, just thinking of the timeline, right? So like Kat is his parents, just eyeballing it. 40s, right? Late 30s, early 40s is my guess. Late 30s. So they were born, we'll say 40 years ago. So 40 years ago would have been the

34th Hunger Games, would have been a little bit after the, because after that is the quarter quell that they're alive for and they have friends in. So I would say that a little bit before that second quarter quell, they would have been born. And so the grandparents would have been around maybe back, you know, back like the 10th Hunger Games-ish, they would have been born either during the rebellion, a little before or a little after, right? So they would have to be older and mortality to your point is awful. Katniss remarks on that. There's a horrible sad bit where she's like, realistically everyone fucking dies of hunger here.

Like, they could call it what they want it, but nine times out of ten they would have gotten stronger had they had food, had they had access. So the mortality rate and the fact that you could just randomly fucking Kim Bustin die in a mine for fun because most of the time it's probably the capital. But it's probably the government, but it's probably the government. But like, yeah, there's not a good mortality rate there at all. Yeah, I mean, Katniss was like, we're probably gonna die right now, like, as children, when she's reminiscing her 11-year-old self, so...

Probably bad mortality. They don't expect to live, yeah. Yeah, no one really expects to live or has, much hope and you know, I'm not a war historian unlike apparently Mr. Collins, I didn't bother looking up his name is in her Wikipedia page. Yeah, you know, I just Southeast Asian Southeast Asian friends, but I'm thinking about another friend like she went to Vietnam for the first time this year. She's I don't know, a little older than me. And

that was also her mother's first time back to Vietnam since leaving it because it was too painful for her to ever think about or like return back there. And that means like that's over what? That is over 30 years. And her mother finally visited her father's grave for the first time since leaving. She had never seen this grave before. They'd never, my friend had never seen her grandfather's grave. Her mother had never seen her father's grave before since leaving and after the war. And like, so I don't know. Like when I think about the disconnect of Katniss from her grandparents, I think

about stories like that. Yeah. The scars are all over the land and their souls souls man. You can't return to that. Yeah Some people like can't you know, my other friend his parents Enjoy going back. It's a it's a lovely country now From what I hear and yeah, very safe, but yeah, it's a shame. We had to you know ruin it You know, it wasn't just us France had a big role too

Don't worry. We're gonna talk about those motherfuckers today too. So, cool. Cool. Um, Aliana, it wasn't just us. It wasn't just us. It was also France. I'm just saying, um, it was, you know, it was a complex and a lot of things happened anyways, so, so the intro, the intro to this book starts with it's reaping day and feels very much to me a little bit like the lottery by Shirley Jackson. I talk about the short story all the fucking time, but go look it up. You can see it easily online.

Very I could see that. It's also so awful and depressing like how it's like a normal day, right? Like this is a normalized day in her mind. Like even though there's anxiety around it, there's a routine built into this day. And she takes us through her step by step, like it's reaping day. So that means da da da. And that means da da da. And I found like how normalized it was just so awful.

Like we all know it's coming once a year, they choose a bunch of us lambs for slaughter and we all go to the square and we wait patiently in our nicest Sunday dress. Like it's going to Christmas church once a year, you know. I think it's so interesting also that you use the word slaughter, which is what you use for farm stock for living animals and beings versus reaping, which is associated with plants. Sowing. Yeah. So I'm going to bring this up just cause like,

this was a, speaking of big talking points during the movies, like for some fucking reason, there's a huge uproar when a black girl was cast to play Rue in the movies, which is stupid because it's very fucking obvious in the books. And like, I think Colin seems to be writing District 11 with a lot of intention in terms of that. I'm gonna throw it out there.

I'm not convinced Katniss's unnamed father was white. He has gray eyes, I guess, but I don't know, dark hair, olive skin. I'm like, I don't know, sounds more like me, but not necessarily Filipino, but just doesn't sound necessarily... He doesn't have to be white, is all I'm saying. And I think a certain, to that point, a certain people from the scene look that way, and that's a group of people that have lived there for a long time, and that's like who they are. And, yeah, um, but I mean, to be fair, Italians used to be people of color.

Oh my god. I'm just saying they were, like, back in the day. But, um- You know, I mean, that was when they first moved here. That's why the mob exists now. It is also interesting because it's what? It's in Appalachia, basically, right? And like, that's not a place that, you know, I necessarily associate with a lot of ethnic diversity.

I associate it like strongly with Scottish immigrants. And with the world building of the rest of Pan Am, I do kind of wonder about like, what happened? Because America is known as a place that is either a melting pot or a salad bowl, depending on who you want it to be like. But also, like prior to the war, prior to the first rebellion that led to the Capitol, there was war, right? There was climate change. And today in our real world, you can see how climate change leads to migration and therefore

war. That is one of the big risks of climate change. And I think Collins does a great job of capturing that. I would even add, you know, when I think of Appalachia, especially if you go southern Alabama, there were definitely native tribes, right? Like I think of Cherokee. Yeah. Yeah. I think there could definitely be tribes of people

that lived here before that, or that did migrate to stay alive. Honestly, it's very possible that she is indigenous because like, my understanding is catanus might be the term that was used for that plant in certain tribes. So I think that's like a strong possibility as well.

And you know, though thinking about District 11 and also about the other districts that we see, I do wonder if the capital, like did they redistribute people of certain ethnicities to different districts? It's not impossible. It's, I don't remember if this is like touched on in the later books or not yet, but or are like some of the districts more mixed than we would think and it's just not as addressed as much because we don't necessarily like visit those as much and we only see some of them because they're the ones who get brought up as tributes

or whatever or was there like a migration of certain communities? I do wonder that. I don't know. Ooh, I wish you'd just read this fucking prequel, girl. You piss me off so bad. I will! I will get there. I will. It's not like a full answer what you're gonna get when you read the prequel, but there is a group of people that especially kind of represent travelers that used to travel and no longer can. So once the rebellion and everything happened, the district does keep people where they are.

It's been this way for 60 years, basically now. I'm just like, did they redistribute? Cause like, did they put all the black people in district 11 is part of what I'm wondering. And like, I don't, I don't know. I don't think that there's an answer necessarily to that. However, there is like somewhat redistribution of people throughout this that you'll hear about.

True. There's a couple of mini answers to your questions, but no, there are no full answers. Sorry. But the capital, I mean, especially the way that it's portrayed in the movies, and also I mean even the books does seem very mixed, right? Like there's a lot of people of different ethnicities there. So it's interesting that they end up forming their own ethnic identity of the capital that is not based necessarily on skin color. Yeah. And I think you are onto something with the migration.

Like, I think migration is definitely part of it and like where people were forced to move. That definitely makes sense up until the rebellion. I mean people kind of had to right? It sounds like for resources. Yeah you couldn't survive elsewhere. Yeah. Oh I want a pre-prequel girl. Resources or like the melting of the ice caps and shit. Yeah a pre-prequel would be really hot Suzanne. Can you just tighten me that up baby? Yeah you're killing me because there are definitely a couple mini-answers or things that will add to your questions that are related, so I can't wait till you get to that. Yeah.

And one more thing about the Vietnam War in this chapter of, Candace's father dies in a mine explosion, which I mean we all know that means like the coal mining, but I don't know. The way that it's written, because apparently I highlighted this in my whatever thingy. I don't know, I also think of the lingering dangers of war. There's still landmine explosions in Vietnam. There are undetected landmines they're trying to extract. Not just there, there's a couple of other places throughout the world. It reminds me a bit of the mines that are placed around the cornucopia later by District 1 and 2.

They repurpose the mines, the career pack, and 4. Don't leave out 4. Don't leave out 4. No 4, are you sure? They play a big role, right? In the second one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We'll get into career packs next act. I'm excited about that because I find that fascinating, too. Chapter 2. We have a couple things. We have Katniss volunteering for Prim, but we also have the Pita Bread flashback where... Sorry. All I see is the movie, to be fair. When you phrased it. The Pita Bread flashback. You know what I'm talking about. Not the Pita Bread, the pita bread flashback. Not to be confused.

But this is of course the flashback where Katniss remembers the absolute worst fucking day ever, that if she did not get food to feed her fucking starving family, they would all die. They're emaciated, they are ghosts, they are about to be whisked away. She's like in the rain, crouched, clutching herself, dying, just like trying to stay awake, alive, conscious, and Peta defies his mother, who's beating the shit out of him for it in the meantime, and throws some burnt bread because he burnt it so that he could give it to Katniss, who was outside. Great setting the stage with the love story, right?

Because if you start with that, the end of the first act is PETA's POV of the flashback, but it's spun on a stage, right? We get Katniss' version here in Chapter 2, and then Chapter 9, PETA will stand on a stage and romanticize the memory for everyone in Pan Am to fall in love with. I think that's such a great bookend for that first act. Yeah, he's all like, oh no, she came here with me and uh, yeah, Peta's great storyteller, apparently very charming. Peta's got Riz. Actually though, yeah. I don't know, his name is still funny. It's both the bread, but also maybe stone, I guess, because he's a dependable young man. His proclivity to painting himself to look like stone is very good too.

Oh yeah, I forgot that. Yeah, he's so talented. Yeah. It's funny, you were talking about how it was easy to get right back in like an old friend, you know, and it was. I mean, I sat there on chapter two sobbing my fucking eyes out when Katniss volunteers, you know, and it was, I mean, I sat there on chapter two sobbing my fucking eyes out when Katniss volunteers, you know, the ultimate, I mean, Katniss volunteering for Prim is such a huge, I mean, you sit there and you think who wouldn't do it, but then you look around and realize a lot of people wouldn't do it.

All those people, Peter's own fucking brothers. Yeah. Yep. And Katniss knew that she couldn't, she couldn't, she couldn't let her sister go into that. She couldn't let Prim die that way. Oh god. Anyways, she couldn't let Prim die by the Capitol. And I mean, I love that in that moment, it wasn't calculated, right? She didn't even think, she just screamed, she just said it because it was the only other way to protect her sister. And I sobbed so hard. Of course, they do the three finger salute that has become very famed from the series, the entire crowd does this. And the line from the book gets me every time, if

I can get through it without choking. I know. You didn't even start reading it and I was already tearing up just reading it. It hurts. It dies. I'm like, this is a YA Twilight Battle Royale knockoff. Why am I crying? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks. It means admiration. It means goodbye to someone you love. It's the ultimate sign of, yep, get them out now, everyone. Take your crying break.

It's the, the club is the podcast. The club is District 12. And you're all invited. The club is the scene. Just kidding. Yeah, it's such a sign of just like, something that they've never seen done, right? They haven't seen this done in District 12, where people have lost so much of their hope of their lives, where they have no livelihood, right? And it still exists,

that little spark that could catch fire. Yeah, everyone's just, you know, scrambling to survive for themselves and to see whatever little life they can get for themselves, to see someone give that up. I also literally started crying at this line, and I was like, we're on chapter two. We're on chapter two. There's a lot of good moments and lines lines though, I think, in this chapter. I'll just read some of them aloud as we get to them. It's a really good packed chapter. We get a lot of great character introductions like Haymitch.

We see Haymitch, he's late for the reaping. We get the background that he is the only living that we know of. District 12 tribute, that is one. So that's pretty devastating. the winners get a little house You know they to live in the Victor's Village where there are like four Desolate houses sitting there and his is one of them covered in booze bottles. He makes a huge scene When Katniss is chosen and it's kind of something that if you're reading it and you're not really sure How the story goes and you're not really sure where it's going, you might just like shrug it off and say,

wow, what a drunk. And I love that it's written that way because looking back at this moment, he's making a huge scene and distracting, right? The crowd is being distracted by his huge scene. Oh, look, there's that drunk Oph Hamech all over again. Look at him go, he's falling over. Oh, ha ha ha. But what he actually says gives it away as well. Will you do the honors, Eliana? Will you read what he says? Yeah, this is another one that I highlighted because I just thought it was so good. He goes, spunk, he says triumphantly.

More than you. He releases me and starts for the front of the stage. More than you, he shouts, pointing directly into a camera. The cut goes wild. Or maybe they don't. They don't go wild. They do a salute or whatever. But that, like that is, when he says that, you might think he's just a drunk oaf, but

right there, what did he say? She has more spunk than you. It's so good. And the fact that like his games- It's such a condemnation. Yeah. And it's like, you start to realize on the train and when he starts training them rather reluctantly, you start to feel a lot of, you know, his trauma and we don't get a lot into it. And to catching fire really is where we start to learn more about why he is this way and

what happened in his games. Because spoiler alert, if you win the Hunger Games, you're gonna be fucked up in the head. That's something you also win when you win the Hunger Games. You get no fun and you get to be fucked up in the head. Because trauma sucks. Yeah, yeah. And even though he's shit-show drunk and he stays drunk because of all the pain and trauma,

he's smart enough to see and to speak and he was smart enough to make a distraction so Katniss and so District 12's, you know, their declaration of love and hope and respect for what Katniss has done in defiance of the Capitol, right? This is a defiance for them to give their treasured salute that they don't give for others. This is like an act of defiance in a way of saying, you're taking one of ours and we don't want you to, but she's not letting you do it the way that you want to. You know, we're not letting you do it.

Just like Peta says later, I wanna still be me in the face of it all. And later on in the game maker session, Katniss asks, will they kill me? And he says to her, hey, Mitch says, it would be a pain to replace you, implying he knows it's not out of reach that the capital could do it. He knows they're capable, but he's also smart enough and knows enough, having been through this process for, oh, you know, 24 years now, to understand that when the capital's invested

and when they aren't in the narrative and controlling the narrative, and he knows what he can get away with, right? He knew that District 12 would be punished for their salute, for their heartfelt sentimental moment that could break the Capitals' viewing of the Hunger Games and how those people get to stay blind to what's happening, because it's all about keeping them in the dark too.

You know, they're also kept in the dark by the Capitol, but I love that he's portrayed like this from the start to cover it all up. You don't realize it, you don't know, and we undig it. And I highly recommend, if you haven't seen it already, if you're not one of the 13 million plus people that have viewed this on YouTube.com, which is more people than in Panem. Which is more people than in Panem.

Yeah, more people than in Panem. See, another thing the government's lying to us about, have viewed this video. This actually came out before the movie. So I need you to understand this is 2011, Hunger Games, the second quarter quell by YouTuber MainStay Pro. They do a reenactment, there's cast.

Actually, it's cast. Actually it's like fucking fabulous. For a 2011 YouTube video that came out before the movies, they do their own little reenactment of the end of the 50th Hunger Games of the second quarter quell of Hey Mitch and what happens with him and with some of the people he's with. So highly recommend watching it. It's actually really good work. I really, I love it.

Fucking love it. We're gonna have good work. I really love it. I fucking love it. I'm gonna have to check it out after we finish recording. You really fucking should, dude. Well, I will. I clicked on it and I was like, I don't have time yet. So I was gonna come back. I had to prep for this episode. We have a lot to get through.

Yeah, we do. We're not even halfway through this document, everyone. In a later chapter in this act, I also love the nuance with which, like, I mean, Haymage has a lot of nuance, right? And that Kat resents him, especially initially for acting this way, you know, questioning whether or not he was actually helping any of the District 12 tributes survive. She feels that he wasn't, and honestly honestly he probably fucking wasn't, but assumedly only after some amount of time because like, I assume that he tried for a bit to help people, but then they just kept fucking dying because they were at a disadvantage in their district.

And I mean, should he have kept trying? Yeah, of course, in an ideal world, but they don't live in a fucking ideal world, so maybe it's inexcusable, but it's very understandable why he doesn't anymore. Yeah, it's hard because how do you exactly how do you get close to these tributes and that's what people kind of explores to these kids, these teenagers that are going to be again slaughtered. And 12, you know, we get a lot of information about how skinny they are, right? They don't have food. They're all pretty much skeletons. They're dumped like a bucket of bones at the Capitol to die. They don't have training. The career packs, as we'll learn as we get into the second act, you're not supposed to train for the Hunger Games. It's against, you know, the rules, but the career packs do it from the time they can heft a weapon.

Yeah. Some of these districts, you know, they don't go down without a fight. We're 12, no one's ready. No one's ready. Yeah, you're right. We're gonna really have to dig deep into the districts one and two and the careers as well. I really hope whatever she writes next actually has a tribute, vocally, from one, two, or four.

I think it would be really interesting to see from a popular district and maybe subvert some of the expectations that they're all assholes, because for example, the end of this book, Kato, right? His death in the book compared to the movie, I will say I dislike what they did with it. I'm fine with it, but they dropped a lot of the depth of like he was just a sad, scared boy as the mutts teared him apart. You

know, he's not actually as evil as he looked and the games have sharpened him into that weapon. Yeah, I have thoughts and I'm gonna- Yep. Edging everyone, chapter three. Short goodbyes from her family, from Katniss's family, and Madge, the mayor's daughter, Gail, also Peta's dad? Yeah, that one's left out right from the films, and I think it's kind of important too for book, especially for Peta and his relationship with Katniss, but also for something going on that I've noticed through this read through with Peta's dad and Katniss's mom, it seems that Peta's dad was in love with Katniss's mom. Katniss's mom married Katniss's mom. It seems that Peta's dad was in love with Katniss's mom. Katniss's

mom married Katniss's dad instead, which is really interesting. Well also because he he has the look that Gail has from the scene and Peta's dad is blonde blue-eyed like Peta, right? So you have that same kind of trio going on for Katniss's mom that was echoed with Peta's dad and the Gale lookalike her dad. So I think that's a really interesting combo to bring up throughout the books as you kind of hear from Peta, but Peta's dad gives her some cookies and tells her they're rooting for her, thanks her for, you know, looking out for Peta on the road, and later we hear of course Peta tell Katniss what his mom said instead, and that his mom said, oh we might finally have a winner, that girl's a survivor,

speaking as if he won't come back and Katniss will. So there's a lot of really hard relationship going on there. Yeah, everyone in PETA's family just likes Katniss more than PETA. That happens to me all the time. I don't really know anything. I want to talk about Madge and the relationship with Madge. This is something else that we don't really get as much in the movie. There's not a lot of time for it. I get that. Madge is the mayor's daughter and we do get a little bit through her of some peaks at the two classes in, you know, Panem, in

District 12 especially, that it seems there is a division as far as class goes that you have the merchants and you have the seam. And the seam works a lot of those, you know, mining jobs, physical labor jobs, where you have the merchant class. And they're seen almost as a little higher of the merchant class. Like during Europe and as feudalism was coming to a crash, the bourgeois, right? But they're not technically the bourgeois. They also suffer and have their hardships as well. But Gale kind of expands on that for us and perhaps it's because it's

reaping day as Katniss so generously provides for Gail and why he's being a piss baby towards Madge, but Madge and her family usually buy things from Katniss and Gail, who go out and hunt and poach and pick strawberries. They usually buy strawberries. And Madge and Katniss have started to kind of develop a friendship. Gail's attitude in chapter one about Madge versus Katniss versus the Mockingjay pin that she gives her, right? Madge gives her a pin that's a Mockingjay and it's a special pin, we'll get to that in a moment, but Gail makes this remark because you know Madge wishes everyone luck. She says hopefully you know we'll all get out of this odds in our favor, whatever.

And Gil kind of says, oh, but the odds are in your favor, aren't they? Which is interesting, especially because Prim's the one that ends up getting picked who had the odds in her favor as well, just like Madge, right? You're right, this is Gil's fault. It is Gil's fault and we should kill Gail. We're an anti-Gail podcast, so if you didn't guess that already before this, I'm sorry. We should have announced it at the top. It's time to exit.

No, I'm just kidding. We will fairly assess Gale. You know, I do think that especially the second book, we'll talk a lot about Gale and give him some fair assessment because he has a lot on his shoulders as well, just like Katniss. But it's interesting to me that he's so mean about Madge and I'm like Prim doesn't have odds like that either and she doesn't have a famous mayor dad you know like it sucks it does suck but it's hard like when you're poor and hungry and you've had to fight to feed your family and house them and clothe them and other

people don't have to do that, it makes it very unfair. But there's one enemy and it's not that person. Yeah, I kind of, I totally get Gail's perspective and, I don't know, depending on how much I've eaten that day, which probably would not be a lot if I lived in this society and how much rest I'd gotten that day, which probably again would not be a lot if I lived in this society. Maybe I would have said something shitty too, you know? But Madge gives the mocking J-Pin and I was like, knowing what it means now and its significance, I'm like, yo, Madge is a real one.

And like her insistence that Katniss, where I'm like, Madge is a real one. I think I literally messaged you right out, I was like, Madge is a real one. And yeah, I mean, again, I understand how why Gail feels that way. But Madge, Madge understands solidarity, you know, class solidarity, being a class traitor for herself, even though, you know, and the need for connection when it comes to rebellion, which Gail, as we see, like even from the beginning, presents a much more divisive point of view and very isolationist mindset. He's like, let's go get ours. Let's go run away. And Katniss is like, well, what about my family? And yeah, not just family,

right? People like Madge, yeah, that live in 12 and will suffer under the capital's regime. Yeah, capital's regime. Yeah, that's true. Gael is like in it for them, which I understand. You carve your paradise where you can, whereas Madge is like, let's fucking do this. I assume. 12 is so interesting too, because as we get through, we'll talk more about like the peacekeepers and their relationship in Catching Fire, that changes. The peacekeepers that were previously there, and from what Katniss learns during the games, their peacekeepers are nice compared to other peacekeepers, like in Eleven. They don't have public whippings every day like other places do, and that starts in Catching Fire. It's interesting because

those lines, blurring those lines of people who are servants to the oppressors, bringing them down, right? Bringing these people down. Those lines kind of change and you realize that we're all suffering under that oppression. And Madge is an interesting character and there's a lot of backstory that I think that Suzanne's had a little time.

Suzanne, my girlfriend, Miss Collins, if you're nasty Ms. Collins, if you don't know her first name and never made one. Mrs. Collins. Yeah, anti-feminist Suzanne Collins. Can't believe she didn't name Katniss's mom. This is so fucked up. No, no, she's a judge or egalitarian because she did not name her father either, even though he's so important to her.

She really loves equality that Suzanne Collins. Yeah, she's equal rights. When we get to Catching Fire, I think a lot of this unwraps and a lot of these details start to become clearer. But we learn about Maisley Donner a little bit, who was Madge's aunt, and also was Mrs. Katniss' mom's best friend. So, so- Mrs. Katniss' mom, sorry. It's okay, thank you. I'm glad that had the effect that I wanted it to have. So some of these great parallels and echoes come back, right?

As we talked about kind of that little love triangle between Katniss' mom, Katniss' dad, and Peta's dad. And then now we have Peta, Katniss, Mazely, and Haymitch. And Mazely and Haymitch were, they went to the end together, and Mazely broke away from him, which becomes a big echo in the first game here that Katniss is in where, you know, she wants to, or not Katniss, but Peeta has to break away from the career pack and later in Catching Fire, when Katniss is like, we have to break away from the career pack, we have to go out on our own, otherwise we have to kill them.

The alliance is broken and Maisley says, okay, good luck, bye, and she dies and it's horrible, and Haymitch just barely wins. Maisley is blonde and blue-eyed from the merchant class, so has a little bit of that PETA to her. And she has a twin sister who is Madge's mom. And Maisley doesn't come home alive, and it gives a little background for Katniss's mom, too. Yes, when Katniss's mom's husband dies, she goes catatonic, as we learn, and is unable

to do anything. Completely catatonic. And Maisley was also dead a little bit before that, which I think gives a lot of shading to Katniss' mom and her trauma, right, of her own best friend dying a horrible death on national TV that everybody has to fucking watch because otherwise you get beat if you don't watch it.

Otherwise you're rebelling and that's no good. I think the pin is so symbolic and holds so much more weight there, right, because otherwise you get beat if you don't watch it. Otherwise you're rebelling and that's no good. I think the pin is so symbolic and holds so much more weight there, right? That Madge gives Katniss that pin, that Madge and Katniss can be that kind of friend that Maisley and maybe, who knows? Where did Maisley, maybe she wore it, right?

Was this the pin Maisley Donner wore in the ring? Was Maisley maybe almost the hope? You know, her and Haymitch were almost the hopes then. You start to get into the conspiracy as we go through the books of how deep this rebellion goes and how people have been planning to reemerge and how XIII has been planning for a reemergence and to fight the capital and to bring Katniss as the symbol, even so far as Cinnah knew. Cinnah was connected with these people, we'll learn. So it makes you wonder about that pin and did Maisie Lee wear it?

Were there plans even back at the 50th Hunger Games that people were trying to do something to maybe escape or get free? Who knows? I would love to get more. I think that Suzanne has to have a little bit of that planned because of that, like it's so much info that she lays out there and I think she wants to play with it. I think it's such great world building

and gives you just like some background on some of these characters we don't actually get a lot of information about in a really quiet way, in a simple way. And I think that Katniss and Madge's friendship reaches across some of those lines that separate them, whether it's class or education or where you live, your job. I think those are very interesting things to have with this one character that we don't get a lot of time with.

And I mean, for Madge to find importance in that, like, especially if she is inspired by her aunt, right? Like, her aunt died long before she was born, and yet for her to be inspired by that history is really interesting. And especially like in a system in which her father seems to benefit. Madge is a real one. So in this chapter Katniss is saying goodbye to her family. She's imploring her mother not to go away again. And as you said, right, like a lot of that might be due to, I mean, how many people has her mother lost, right? And I do think the portrayal of her parents who are both not named is really interesting. There's a very clear stark dichotomy between them. I kind of believe that both of them and Heimlich to an extent are like different embodiments of, I don't know necessarily

Collins' father and like experiences with the war, but also in general, drawing inspiration from what it means to have parents who experience PTSD, or the PTSD of veterans in general. It's interesting that Katniss absolutely idolizes her father. He has no faults, and she can put him on that pedestal, because he's gone. You only really find out your parents' faults, or you only really think about them more as you get older to some extent. And for Katniss, that's kind of when this all happens and you start seeing them as people. So she never gets to that stage with her father. He stays perfectly encased, whereas there's this very much kind of demonization of her mother. And I kind of think it's a, for me, it's a little jarring, but then thinking about it, a lot of it is this fear that Katniss has that she'll end

up like her mother. And, you know, part of it is I think of Soraya Chamali's like book Rage Becomes Her and like this discussion of how like the daughter and the father tend to like kind of team up sometimes against the mother, you know, as the daughter tries to differentiate herself and get power away from like this patriarchal system, but then ultimately ends up in doing so can end up reinforcing it, and then ending up in the same position as the mother, right? This powerlessness. But as you said, like her mom's fucking traumatized, her mom's depressed, like she is grieving and she has two kids, so like did she have the luxury to do that? No. Did Tamich have the luxury to not take care of those kids? No, but I don't know. Life's hard and you know Katniss' insistence from the very start of the novels that she won't marry and she's not gonna have children,

yeah, part of it is a reaction to the cruelty of their world. You know, she doesn't want to be a cog in the machine, feeding the machine with more bodies for labor. But also, I think it's very much born out of the fear of repeating the cycles of trauma that she experienced with her mother. She doesn't want to do that to some kids. She doesn't want to potentially fail them. And she's also already kind of raised her sister, but anyway. It's something I think about when you talk about Rage Becomes Her is all of the different thoughts on anger. And what anger really is, and that it's kind of an assertion of your worth, of your rights. And Katniss, as a child, had that right to have a childhood.

And it was taken away from her And it was taken away from her. It was taken away from her. And that's where that anger, that obscene anger, and there's even anger at her dad. She doesn't know is there to your points. She's never gotten to be angry at her dad or have to be. I mean, he left them too. He didn't mean to. It wasn't his fault, but he did leave them too.

And everyone leaves her. I think she can't let herself feel that. And we start seeing that later on. And she's like, why did I stop singing? But she can't let herself feel that because she has to have something that represents hope and a happy time in her life. And so she kind of dumps it all on her mom. But she does regret, she does regret, like, you know, she's like, I wish I had

told her more, you know, I guess I said I loved her, but, you know, she, she wanted her mother there and. She needed her. I mean, she was 11. Of course she needed her. So yeah. I mean, that's a time for us that like our moms should be handing us fucking tampons or pads or, you know, helping you learn how to do your hair and how you should dress and how to talk to boys or girls. Yeah, you know, that's her mom does come back a little but again, like I think that know from depression, like when I come out of a fit of depression

or have a burst of clarity or lucidity out of it, like shame, that's a huge thing to feel out of that. Like embarrassment, shame that, you know, you just went into a cave and you couldn't come out even though like a normal thing would be to roll yourself out of whatever you're doing to do a thing. Like, I mean, even the simplest things become so paralyzing.

Yeah, I think Katniss, like, resents her mother, A, because of what was put on her, but also because she's terrified of becoming that. Absolutely. So we begin that trip to the Capitol and learn of other tributes on the way, very vaguely in the background, and then Chapter 4 comes, where we are traveling to the capital, eating tons of fucking food to put weight on, and also finally forcing Hamish to dry the fuck out and teach us about the games. And at the chapter's end, they arrive at the capital, but this is definitely one of... Honestly, I really love Chapter 4. I found the time they spend on the train it's a little reduced in the movie, but in the book it's so expansive and there are so many character building interactions and moments between Katniss and Haymitch or Effie and everyone.

Oh Effie, that's not how pearls are made you dumb bitch. I love her so much though, I really do. And of course, PETA and Katniss, right? This is where they really start to have character interactions and they start to kind of push on each other and test on those interactions. LW- Absolutely. And I'm sorry, I can't help who I am, like, and I know this is opposite the point of the books, but like the food sounds so insanely fucking good on the train. And I mean, that's the point, but it sounds so good. Like, over the past decade, and I know people have made recipes of it, so I should really try to do it. I do think about that lamb and...

Plum. Yeah. Yep. Dish. I have a recipe open right now. I'm looking at somebody's version of it just because it sounds so good. And... Oh, man.

It's uh, you know, it's better than Greasy Say's lamb soup probably, so it is Katniss' favorite. I love when she gets it in the arena when they deliver it to her. I'm like, yes! That's our girl. You know, something harrowing and haunting that is in this chapter is this is like where the entire theme for catching fire and mocking Jay of, you know, real or not real. Is this real? Is this happening? Really starts here, especially between PETA and Katniss. Katniss is left to wonder, is PETA being authentic? Is this for show? Does he actually like Katniss? This is a game where they murder each other, right? And PETA's acting exceptionally nice to her. His first act of kindness was back in childhood, which she was already confused about whether or not he meant it, right? Because

it's pouring rain, the bread's burnt, he threw it on the ground and walked away. But he was putting on an act there, for his parents as well well in order to be able to do it. Everything's always been a game for PETA unfortunately, poor fucker. But this furthers the confusion between their interactions. His act of charity is smothered in abuse from his mother, and at the same time his act of charity is nourishing. It's kind. It's food. It feeds them.

God, she talks about remembering going home and slicing it open and how they put some butter from Prim's goat on it and just how it was like the most beautiful thing they'd ever had, still hot, even though it was burnt, you know? It's better than nothing if it's burnt and in the mud, by the way. It's still better than nothing, obviously, and Katniss kind of explains that prevalence of hunger like we talked about and how people die from it. Peta's kindness on the train starts that battle for Katniss kind of explains that prevalence of hunger like we talked about and how people die from it. PETA's kindness on the train starts that battle for Katniss in her mind. He's better at acting, right? PETA's a performer. Katniss is a survivor and PETA is a performer. So is this real on the train? I mean, I think it is, obviously. But she has to wonder, is this real? Is this really PETA

that I'm getting to know? Or is this a boy that's going to transform, before my eyes, into a monster, like a mutt of the capital, ready to ravage and murder her to survive?" I also think it's real, but it makes sense for her to question it because, yeah, like, they're all going to death. Pita's out here, though. He's ready to fucking die, you know? And Katniss, she has something to live for, but Peta's like, I'm gonna die for love. Like, from the get go, he's thinking it. And it makes sense for her to question it, because she has friendships and connections now. But for some of those formative times in her life and years, she didn't have expressions of love. She doesn't know how to receive it. And you know, the food, the food that they're all given kind of feels a little bit like the fattening up

of the slaughter for consumption. So fucking as you were saying, there's some great lines also in this in this chapter. I love this one of in late summer, we get the origin story, the name in late summer, I was washing up in a pond when I noticed the plants growing around me tall with leaves like arrowheads blossoms with three white petals I knelt down in the water my fingers digging into the soft mud and I pulled up handfuls of the roots small bluish tubers that don't look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato Katniss I said aloud and now take that, Barristan, sell me, girls do like mud. And

I'm sure this has already been dissected a lot by a lot of people. This was, again, the biggest media franchise of the early 2010s. And the Arrowhead plant, or I don't know, there was also Twilight, good point. The Arrowhead plant and arrows and archery, of course, and the three white petals kind of makes me think of the three finger salute of district 12. It doesn't look like that on the plant, but whatever, you know, go with me. Also obviously as a symbol of survival, but also the water, right? The water plays a big role in the next act. It does. It really does. I actually, I never would have thought of that with the three pedals so beautiful. Really well done.

I'm sure someone's thought of it. Congratulations. Well, not to me they haven't. Okay. It's Eliana's theory. It's like this one time when I was a kid I was playing umbrella on the guitar, I was a teenager, I was playing Umbrella by Rihanna on the guitar and my dad would hear me play it and he thought that it was my song I guess so I guess one day it came on the radio and he called my mom and he's like the song Chloe wrote is on the radio what happened it was so funny I'm like oh my god daddy that's Rihanna stop but that's how I feel about you here I'm

like that's Eliana who stole this theory in 2012 I love that your dad supported that in you. Thank you. Is that not the most classic him moment? Mr. Chloe's dad. Yeah, knowing Mr. Chloe's dad and Mr. Chloe's mom. That's a pretty classic moment. No, I love the fucking symbolism of the three white petals. And in a way, I think that language of three, and you circle around it with like the trio, the the tryst going here of like Pita, Katniss, Gail are like three different people that can exist much like the capital, the people of the capital, not the government of the capital, and the people of the sea and the people of the merchant class could all coexist. Yeah, this isn't a previous chapter but I definitely, I want to read it aloud because I sent it to you of like

Gail going how different can it be really in regards to killing people versus hunting animals but also there's another line here within here that I also sent you the screenshot but it didn't send because I was on a plane of and so I just like gave up I hank the knife out of the table get a grip on the blade and then throw it into the wall across the room. I was actually just hoping to get a good solid stick. But it lodges in the seam between two panels, making me look a lot better than I am. And so, I don't know, I don't necessarily think it was a play on words, but maybe it was a play on words, because it says, you know, the seam, right? She doesn't end up just lodging a stick in words, because it says, you know, the seam, right?

She doesn't end up just lodging a stick in there and keeping it alive. The seam itself becomes, has the knife, and that's the spark of the rebellion. I also think there's something there too of like her and Gail and separating her and Gail, right? Splitting the seam. Oh. Yeah. Interesting.

Or even the divide of the seam in the merchant class too, I think. There's some really interesting wordplay. And again, subtle, simple. She's so good. Yeah. Also even like the fact that the seam should be something that, uh, I think as you were saying, right, it's something that should bring people together. It's a seam is tires, two pieces of fabric. Yeah. So much, so much of fabric. Yeah. Yeah. So much. So much.

Ms. Collins. Ms. Collins. All right. Chapter five, Katniss meets her stylist team. The Chariot opening night ceremony happens. So we get our CINNA introduction, which I love CINNA. Heartbreaking, devastating. I can't remember these books.

I'm so mad already. I'm just thinking it was death. Cinnah actually, there's a great line that he volunteered to take District 12 for styling, so it echoes and parallels Katniss volunteering for Prim, and it also gives us our first hint at his rebel connections, right? That he wants to style Katniss for a reason. Yeah, I think I must've watched the second movie, because I have this scene in my head of Katniss for a reason. Yeah, I think I must've watched the second movie because I have this scene in my head of Katniss flipping her shit when they take some of the stuff.

Yeah, that was it. I must've watched the second movie. All right, cool. You had to have. Memory unlocked. So I wanna talk a little bit about Sina's name, right? He is the mastermind between the girl on fire and Sina name, I don't know, maybe it's like from

Cinnamon? Maybe it's a little bit of a reference to Cinnabar, a mineral that's bright red and provides like the dye for Vermillion, which is very confusing in the Pokemon games because Vermillion City is orangish and that's where Lieutenant Surge is, but there is a Cinnabar island that is more red. Anyway, these colors are more similar than I thought. It's a mineral that's associated with volcanic activity, which I don't know about all of you, I associate with fire, even though it's not necessarily fire, but it's pretty fucking hot, okay?

Heat. And then also Cina, maybe the name, Cina, maybe like Sinner, someone who goes against the rules, you know, rebellion. I love that. And I was also thinking that he technically has a plant name, right? Cinnamomum, the evergreen aromatic trees and shrubs that belong to the laurel family. This basically have the aromatic oils in their leaves and bark. family. This basically have the aromatic oils in their leaves and bark. And then also the Latin etymology for this is interesting. Cinnamum. It was once a term of endearment as well as the name of the spice. Yeah. There's a lot of plant names in the series. A lot of them, yeah. Primrose, Katniss. Rue. Rue. This is

completely off-topic. Cina, when preparing Cat to go out there, we're on nickname basis, me and Katniss, says, remember they already love you. Which, throwing it out there, good advice for anyone going out on stage. If you got stage fright or anything, you're performing, you know, on an actual stage, maybe not online, people are really mean online. But, someone's paid to go see you perform. They want you to succeed, for the most part. They came here for a good

time. They're rooting for you. They do not want to not have their money's worth. Yeah. They came for fun. They came for fun. Yeah. Do not take this advice for Twitter.com. Thank you. No. They came for the Hunger Games. They came to watch you get killed. This is Sinnoh's first Hunger Games, so it's also his first time, Katniss. And there's something interesting going on with what it takes to be a stylist and what it means to style for the games. It's something that, you know me, with my little cosmetology license, I'm very interested in it.

We will kind of start to touch on it with Tigress in Mockingjay when we meet her. She was the original OG stylist for the games, and if you have seen the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I will let you find out how she fits back into that as well. But it's interesting to think, right, that this ushers us towards the answer. We don't have the answers to some of these things, but because she's given us a prequel that covers so long, right? You have the prequel covering the tenth Hunger Games and then omission of, you know, sixty-five years until the next, or sixty-four years until the next Hunger Games, and by showing Tigris then in Mockingjay, you

really get to catch up a little bit and read in between the lines. And it leaves so many questions, right? And I wouldn't be surprised if, again, Susie, Miss Suze, Miss SC, Mrs. Suzanne Collins, Miss Suzanne Collins, whatever we want to name her, Miss Collins, I wouldn't be surprised if she already has all of these things figured out in her mind somewhere and will learn it someday, especially because we kind of meet the whole team in total here, which implies like, they probably go to school for it, right? Cosmetology of some sort and stylist school, it probably becomes standardized like many

other things in the capital and, you know, a process of the way that we do things, a procedure, the stylists do this, the stylists do that. Because as we meet them, they are meticulously going over her body, they are using Capital fucking magic on top of it, Capital technology to, you know, make them look like fucking slick smooth babies, remove all the hair, remove every blemish. You know, other people after these games, when she's passed out, they talk about actually enhancing her breasts, and I guess Haymitch stops it, which is very nice of him, because you know, like you said earlier, their bodies aren't theirs.

Their bodies are no longer theirs. So it's interesting to think that they would have to learn to do things the way President Snow wants them done for the games. So basics of stylings, but also they'd probably learn how to interact with tributes, understanding tributes needs, understanding how to separate emotionally from them, but also understanding how to put on the best show. And additionally, I wonder how much influence was Tigris as the first stylist for the games able to exercise then? What was she able to put into stone and put into effect to either protect

or endanger, accidentally maybe, these tributes? I would be really interested in that especially because when we meet her, obviously she is in with the rebels. I'd imagine she's probably the very heart of these stylists, right? Like what pumps in Sinna's blood, that the small bit of raw emotion left in that system in styling tributes, that small bit of sentiment that could somewhere be in there, or goodness in it, stems from her. And even the prep team, like they're from the capital and they're ignorant, we learn, to what goes on in real life outside of where they are. Flavius does hair, Vina does waxing and brows, Octavia does nails, and Cina directs them. But also they're not bad people. Katniss explains that they're kind of like pets.

She's like, they're just stupid fucking pets. You can see that they just are a little, you know, ditzy and they don't have much going on. I would love to have learned a little bit more about them. I think when we do get them back in Mockingjay, it's so sad and they have a big effect on the plot of what's going on in District 13 to look out for. But it's interesting to think about, like, as a unit, they're not bad people. And this is the first real interaction other than Effie with people from the capital that we get where you kind of see, oh, Effie's fine. And they're actually fine too. Like they're not bad people. They're just frivolous. They're frivolous and privileged, right? And they're trying to, I mean, this, the system

is what they know as good. They are taught that this is good to buy into it and they are, they are living by those rules. And yeah, uh, I think that they're, they are taught that this is good to buy into it and they are living by those rules. And yeah, I think that they're portrayed really interestingly, there's like a line, is it here, is it later? Where she's like, you know, they've all gotten some work done to look younger and she's like, this is weird for us because it's a privilege to grow old in District 12, you know, as you were saying about life expectancy.

You can tell that Sina is cognizant of these dynamics when he volunteers because he knows like I love this line and highlighted this one too, I look up and find Sina's eyes trained on mine. How despicable we must seem to you, he says. Has he seen this in my face or somehow read my thoughts? He's right though, the whole rotten lot of them is despicable. And on one hand, like, I love that line because it's true, right? The frivolity, the indulgence is kind of despicable, right? Especially the things that they prioritize for Katniss when it comes to getting ready for the games that she doesn't think about before, but also later on, to an extent, there's a part of it where it's realizing the whole rotten lot of them are not despicable and you need the solidarity to launch the rebellion, but at the same time, like, he's not wrong, that they are despicable to someone who has lived with nothing compared to the success.

Yeah, and I think that's something so important about their bond, right? He's transparent with her from the start. He doesn't lie to her. He tells her why he's there, what he's going to do. And he also sees her as a person for the first time. No one else from the capital has seen her for who she is. Her quietness and the thoughts, like you said, running through her head. He reads that off of her. He knows what she must be thinking. And he's also the first person to see someone from District 12, right, as a real person. We learn all the other District 12 people just get dressed up like miners, you know, like that they're just like, yeah, cover them in coal and give them some fucking mining outfits and a mining pick and some whatever like that.

That's the peak of fashion for District 12 tributes. And he actually shows that if you're set up for success, if you're styled correctly, there's a chance for you to survive in the game. There's a chance for you to get sponsors. Like District 12 has been done in every time because no one cares about them. Yeah, no one cares about them. And I mean, they're not, it sounds like they weren't very talented. Katniss talks about some of them were just sent out there naked and covered in coal dust. And I'm like, the fuck?

Yeah. I mean, realistically, he's the first person to think outside of the box. And he's like, yeah, why don't we do something sexy? And everyone's like, yeah, why don't we do something sexy? And everyone's like, God, why didn't we think of that? Yeah, the coal is in and he understands, you know, that that connection to right? He's insistent that they hold hands when they do the parade, but also Side note the coal mining is interesting when you think about the resources the the lack of resources, and the climate change thing. Yeah. Anyway, back to the capital, Chapter 6.

Katniss sees the Avox she knows, and Peta lies for her, Peta and Katniss' rooftop getaway, because they realize that they're being watched and listened to, andtymology is pretty straightforward. AVOX, no voice. Yeah, if you've only seen the movies and you're listening, AVOXs are They're in the movies, but they're not expanded on too much. Mockingjay, we get a little expansion when we meet Pollux. They're not focused on though, and this scene isn't really included from the books. They're not focused on though, and this scene isn't really included from the books. Katniss goes on to tell us a memory eventually of the Avox she thinks she sees at the Capitol. PETA covers for her, right?

He's like, oh yeah, she looked just like Deli Cartwright, this girl from school. That's so crazy. Haha, Katniss. Because he can tell that she's kind of off about something and he makes her tell him what happened. Avox's have had their tongues taken out by the capital, they are enslaved by the capital generally as punishment for desertion or rebellion, not only by the government but also to serve folks in the capital and sometimes as civil servants working in the sewer system, the

transfer beneath the city, or in sanitation, doing jobs that no one else in the capital wants to do, but they're also enslaved by private citizens in the capital as well. In the prequel we get an instance of that and we see it a little bit. The Avoks that we see here, Lavinia at the capital, is one of two people she saw attempting to escape in the woods in District 12 and they were caught by the capital. She saw them caught, they begged for help, but there was nothing she could do. And she felt helpless, right? She felt weak and helpless and horrible about it. She wanted to be able to help, but what do you do in the face of that? This is using the same drones we later see used during the Hunger Games to come and get the bodies of the dead.

And this theme is then repeated in Catching Fire with Darius, right? The peacekeeper who gets a little too friendly for the likings of the capital with District 12, especially after the defiance of the win from Katniss and Peeta. We also learn that you cannot speak to the Avoks in this chapter unless you give them an order, which is further meant to demean the person and isolate them and take away any free will they once had as punishment. Damn. Yeah. Fuck fucked up.

KS It's pretty brutal punishment. I think it's very pointed. You were talking earlier about how Miss Collins is a fan of Shakespeare. She does have that guy who eats people as a tribute, mentioned later on. His name is Titus. But the name here, Lavinia, is particularly pointed. That's another character in Titus Andronicus, the daughter of Titus whose tongue also gets cut out, her hands are also cut off so she cannot name her rapist, so she figures it out though with a stick. She's a crafty girl. And yeah, so really pointed that that's the name and that reference. The fact that they go to the rooftop to talk about it because they don't want to be watched and also the when they see Lavinia right out in the forest and this monitoring and everything it reminds me you know Gail and Katniss they go to the forest to be able

to speak kind of these sort of traitorous things and they're afraid in general that they will be overheard somehow by the Capitol, right, which speaks to this idea of the Panopticon, the surveillance state that the Capitol has, which is kind of fucking confirmed at the beginning of the second book. But anyways, they have a fear of being overheard because they could be watched anywhere. And then you go into the Hunger games, which ends up being actually a literal panopticon and interesting play on things. You know, she's talking about like her inspiration from, from reality TV, but you also see, you know, it's a dystopian idea, right?

Big brother is a panoptic entity in 1984. The novel, the hit novel. And then you have the hit TV show, Big Brother, which is not about that kind of dystopian reality. Maybe it's closer to like a Brave New World one in some ways and how we can see anyways. Yeah, interesting. I love that rooftop scene though, especially when we're looking at the avoxes, right, as the big theme of the chapter, who have been altered by the capital and they no longer have free will.

And Peta declares in the face of that, right, that he hopes he will still be himself, that he doesn't want them to change him, and that if he goes, he wants to basically go on his terms, still is who he was when he lived. When he lived. And you get a mirror of that later, right, with the mutts attacking and the fallen tributes

being transformed into the mutts. And the eyeballs of them didn't translate. They couldn't really do that in the movie. It wasn't, that's like probably my only disappointment in the first movie. I wanted a longer train scenes because there was more time on the trains, but I get why they cut that, so I put that one away. That's not my complaint. My biggest complaint is the mutt scene, because the mutt scene is so grotesque and so sad.

Oh, so terrible and sad. Yeah. Especially when it mirrors things like this, that Peta wants to die himself. Yeah, that's a great point and like, you know, how the Capitol takes them and transforms them into horrible versions that turn against each other and yeah, ugh. I'm so sad. I'm so sad. What is with these books?

Yeah, we just love to be emotionally devastated. Every day, babe, every day. Yeah, that's chapter six. What devastated. Every day, babe, every day. Yeah, that's chapter 6. What's up with 7? 8, 9? Ah-ha! Pita and Katniss must decide to train separately or together. They prepare to train with the other tributes and then they see their competition up close.

They practice and learn some survival techniques and they practice at camouflage, which Pita is amazing at. And Rue begins to watch them on day two, day three begins then their private sessions for the Game Makers, which is a classic Katniss scene, and then the chapter ends. Yes, we get a first look at the competition, and it's kind of funny going back to this one. Book one, we get District 3, District 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 5, with the exception

of Fox Face, unnamed. She does not name them, and it totally makes sense. I'm not complaining about that, trust me, we'll come back to that. Yeah, I mean, in her defense she didn't name Kat this as parents, so whatever. Yeah, but she named Glimmer and Marvel from District 1. District 1, we get Glimmer and Marvel. District 2, Kloven Kato. District 5, Fox Face. District 11, Rue and Thrush.

And then District 12, Katniss and Peeta. Glimmer's name still makes me laugh though, because I think I just associate it now with Glimmer from She-Ra. It's really funny because now I'm never gonna unsee that. Thank you. Thank yousee that. Thank you. Thank you for that. I never finished it yet. I intend to.

I haven't finished it yet, but I've watched a handful of the first season and I just haven't gotten back to it, but everyone I talked to loves it. And I thought the characters are fun. They're very fun. But now I'm never gonna unthink that. So thank you.

You're welcome. Glad I could do that for you. From a meta sense especially, because it's like the first novel of the trilogy, there's no reason to focus on unnamed people who are gonna be dead from the bloodbath, right? There are a lot of redshirts in there, so of course they're gonna be murdered off, that's the whole point of the plot device called the Hunger Games that she uses. But I think it's really interesting because something that just happened

was in the prequel novel, we actually get most of the names of all of the districts of the tributes in the prequel and the movie erased pretty much those districts. We only get a handful of names. So I thought that was really funny. I was like, damn, Suzanne finally was like, I'm gonna name all of my tributes. Just an interesting note, I thought that was funny, but I don't know. I think it's good though not to name that many tributes because it gives her more time to world build for those districts as she goes. You know, it's a lot. That's a big chunk of like 12 districts to world build, build out every single one. No wonder she didn't name them all. She needs some time. Yeah, she might not have had the naming convention because she hadn't really, you know, as you were saying, fleshed out the whole world.

She has a lot and she's already done a lot of work. She's fleshed out a lot here. So... Yeah. Take your time, Miss Collins. Of course, I have to say we gotta love Katniss for shooting the arrow into the pig, into the apple in the pig's mouth. So good. Love her. Good for her. You know, sometimes I get angry and do things. I love that for her. Yeah, same. And I mean, as you said, iconic moment, not just for the readers, but apparently in-world for the game makers as well. And I mean, yeah, like how dare they like be so drunk by the end for the people who already have the least, you know?

Well, and as we talk about here in chapter eight, like the aftermath of these private game maker sessions, the whole point is that it's like sports, right? Like you're watching the draft basically is what's going on. This is made for content that they can, so that Caesar Flickerman, I mean, he's basically a content creator. Like if the Hunger Games were actually a little more modern, he'd like have TikTok reels

of him. Well, he probably does. But I mean, in universe, he'd be on TikTok everywhere. But he probably just has to sit there with all of his content streaming around him. And this is like sports season. Like they're like, ah, here's your specs on this athlete that's coming into the games this year. And so your score dictates that, but also it dictates how others in the games are

going to treat you. So by giving Katniss a high score, it's also like to crown her is to kill her. That's telling all the other districts, Oh, you better fucking watch out. District 12's girl this year is a problem, and it's also what kind of incites the other tributes to try to kill her, immediately, because they think she's a threat. And I still love, though, everything she does incites the Capitol to move against her, and the people of the Capitol love her anyways. And it's so great that they did this, like they gave her this high score, whether they were impressed or not, or whether

they were damning her by giving her this high score. It's kind of also like a double-edged sword, right? Like something that comes to really become apparent is how much President Snow is afraid of being embarrassed publicly and afraid of the districts making the Capitol look bad and look like they don't have control. And so it's a double-edged system here that Snow made it so sure, embarrass yourself, but the Capitol's gonna embarrass you and vice versa, vice versa forever, back and forth. And it's kind of interesting in the reflection of how it ends with him and Coin then, who Coin also has similarities in that pride hubris. Yeah, yeah.

And I like what you're saying about it being a double edged sword because not just is it something that is both damning and a boon, but ultimately, what they're going for is something that just adds to the drama, right? Like they're out here tilting the scales, being like, yo, she came into this interview said I'm not here to make friends. Now that's not obviously what happened, but they're trying to do something that whether it paints a target on her or not, whether it helps her or not, it adds to the spectacle.

CB. Mm-hmm. Totally agreed. JG. You know, in the aftermath, I find her reaction so interesting. Katniss has this fit of anxiety about her impulsiveness and how it might lead to potential consequences for her family. She regrets that act of impulse and it really speaks to her perennification. That she even feels like this anxiety, feeling as though everything is her fault and assuming responsibility for the things that aren't her under her control, right, in order to feel more control about the situation. But also because she's always had that weight on her shoulders, everything, like every fucking move

that she makes has had to be very intentional for the protection of her family. She's been doing that, but I mean, it's not untrue though, at the same time, because like, Panna makes it citizens, in quotes, I don't know, the people it controls, whatever, live in fear. I guess they're not citizens. Residents? Pop population, live in fear of how their every action may have consequences and then also weaponizes the connections people have with one another against them. Yeah, the isolation that they kind of push and the fear and those consequences, they want them to feel that way. They want them to be afraid in order to keep them from misacting. Yeah.

I love what Effie does here. to be afraid in order to keep them from misacting. Yeah. I love what Effie does here. Again, even Effie has moments where you're like, oh bless your heart, you're actually not a bad person. You just don't know things because you live here. She even is kind of like offended when she hears that they didn't pay attention to Katniss, and she's like, well, they should have been paying attention to you. That's their job. What the fuck else are they doing? Katniss is like getting drunk with each other and eating pig. Effie, you can see, starts to be at this moral kind of corner, this point where she's constantly suppressing her feelings through manners and political correctness. So when Haymitch acts disgusting, she's like, oh, that's abhorrent.

But as she learns why he acts this way, she starts to soften towards him. And you see that. And to your points, from that fear and the politics of the capital, this behavior of, well, that's not correct. That's not right. That's not how we act.

That's not proper manners. That's ingrained in her from that fear from the capital. And even here though, she smiles at Katniss' defiance. And that disconnect and divide starts to show that the Capitol has trained Effie and its citizens or residents, whatever we want to call them, just about what being polite and proper and being appropriate looks like while they lie and cheat and are improper and inappropriate at the top and they do horrible dastardly things at the top. And everybody else has to live to this specification in the meantime. What you're saying about Effie and like all these things that she does, like this is what they've been trying to do. This is what survival looks like in the Capitol, right?

Like that's what that kind of, it's a different kind of survival, but it is one and she's teaching Katniss how to do that even though it is, it is despicable, right? Like having to live that way and live by those rules, it is despicable. But you said what you were saying about Haymitch earlier at the stage at the reaping made me kind of question like when Effie said this thing, is it something that Effie did because she truly believes it or to save Katniss from the Capitol? And Katniss' inadvertent act of defiance by volunteering to take her sister's spot, like Effie goes, oh, you couldn't let her take all the glory, could you? Which is also, it's a despicable idea. Does Effie truly believe it? Now I question, does she truly believe it, or would she very much might, or is it something she said to protect Katniss?

I think it could be a little both. I think she does believe it though still, because it's the unwavering faith of the only thing they have. And I think that if she was acting also to save, I think she's acting to save Katniss because she believes in it. Because she believes in it and knows that the capital values those values, if that makes sense. And I think that her arc, it's more important

for her arc to become understanding where Katniss comes from and the way that Katniss survives versus her survival, if that makes sense. I think she starts off at one point and ends at another, which is good. That's generally how you want characters to develop, I suppose. Honestly I kind of almost think, like, is it a good thing she said pearls instead of diamonds? Diamonds are kind of, those can be dangerous, very hardened material, you know.

Well and it's interesting, the other thing I'll add about the Pearl, now that you say it though, District 13, Graphite, Diamonds, I think, don't they also do some Diamonds? I don't remember. Maybe not. Probably. I don't remember. I'll finish my second read through by the next episode. No, I'm sorry.

I feel like Diamonds might be District 1. I apologize, but District 1 does Diamonds. Uh, and I'm sure that you could get diamonds out of District 13 had they been alive, so it makes me wonder if she's like, oh, well, I won't say diamonds, that's inappropriate. But I love that it's pearls, especially because it echoes Pito's pearl in Catching Fire. I don't remember that either.

Oh my god, it's from the best scene. We're gonna get to it, but it's when they have the last supper, basically. They have their own shellfish last supper and it's so sad and they and he gives her a pearl Anyways, we're gonna get to it. You're gonna cry. Don't worry. I yeah, I'm gonna probably cry a lot during the series. Um All right, let's let's let's not cry because we have some some shocking stuff here. Get ready some gotcha TV Chapter 9 the interview Peter's love story with Katniss coming out. Eliana, what do you got for me? How do you feel?

I, uh, again, I have some lines that I love from these chapters. When Heimage is training her of like, this is what you're going to do when you go out there, just be you, tell them about yourself and your past. And Katniss hates that. And she goes, but I don't want them to. They're already taking my future. They can't have the things that matter to me in the past, I say. And honestly, I have a lot of sympathy for certain kinds of public figures and how the public can feel really entitled to like their past or like celebrities and stuff, you know? And like feeling entitled to their performance of their pain or like celebrities and stuff, you know? And like

feeling entitled to their performance of their pain or like, I don't know, literally anything about them because honestly we're not entitled to it. We're not entitled to their lives, right? We don't need to know all their views depending on like what it is. And within the context of the story, I will, this is a little different. There's a lot of nuance in these books. And social media was different when these books were coming out. You're talking about what Flickerman would be different. CB. Lucky Flicker, or Caesar, Caesar Flickerman. Oh my God, I'm sorry. LS. Probably be putting TikToks out there. And honestly, that concept in that form didn't exist when these books were coming out so it's really interesting. But within the context of the story, the books do push Katniss towards sharing more about

her past and that's not portrayed as a negative in this story. I don't think it should be because it's meant to have her character confront those parts of her humanity and this vulnerability to strengthen her and PETA is a great foil for how that is a form of strength and beneficial. But also again, like when it comes to real life, I talk about this line all the time to people in my life, but I'm always thinking about this line from this John Delaney interview. I don't think he, I even watched the video, it came from, I read it in an article. He starts talking about something in his past when it comes to his addiction and then he stops and goes,

no, that's for me. You don't get to have that. And you know, you're talking about the performance of who the capital is shaping Katniss to be in the narrative, what they're shaping in this narrative for PETA and Katniss. But I just love that act of defiance of, as you were also saying, of like getting to die as yourself, what you get to keep of yourself, what you get to keep of yourself, what you get to keep about yourself for yourself. Absolutely, I love that. Especially for PETA, especially because we don't get his POV and he's such a quiet character.

He doesn't always say what's directly on his mind, and a lot of this is performance for him from here on out. I think that's so great to think about. Yeah. I mean, they're taking her life. How much of their life, her life do they need? Yeah. How much is enough, man? Peta kind of chooses to train alone, right? So the big argument came up of training together, and they did train together originally, but PETA decides to train alone and we understand why at the end of the chapter. He was planning to choose his angle of how he's coming at

the Hunger Games and how he's going to get his sponsors. And when he comes out training alone, she feels a betrayal, right? She feels hurt that he chooses to train alone, because she kind of started to think that they had something going, when realistically he was doing something that might even save her life. Right? In the end. Anything to save his own life as well as Hers. It's interesting because this event that changed Katniss's life, the bread, that she doubts already, that she already questions, like, was he doing it because he

was he really doing it because he likes me or was he just throwing bread out? You know, she doesn't know and then PETA and her start to grow closer and suddenly he's pulling away to train on his own and then the interview and he Drops that one off in front of everybody that he came here with his crush. How could she ever trust him? I mean, that takes a lot to build that kind of trust back up. How could she trust what his memories out loud are real or fake, or if this is real or fake, because he's performing it for an audience? It is hard, and her raw emotional reaction is sold for the act.

And it does feel like a betrayal, right? To give away something so intimate and to feel like, I mean, is he lying about it? Especially because she doesn't know. Because her life is also at stake. And I don't know. It's powerful. And that's, I can't believe that's the end of Act 9.

Not Act 9, Chapter 9. Yeah. Though we did, let's talk about Katniss' speech, right? Her back and forth with Mr. Flickerman. And as you talked about, she finds her angle by not listening to Haymitch. Haymitch gives her a bunch of angles and he's like, you're useless, none of these are working, good fucking luck, you're very unlikable and you're being a bitch basically. And I'm like, so real, that's so me too. I love that about Katniss actually, I love how she is not a performer at all. It comes through very, and maybe it's J-Law, right? Jennifer Lawrence is

charismatic and it's hard to separate those from her. She does a great job either way, I do like her as the role, but Katniss in the book is a little more isolated and harder to work with. And why should she smile for them? Fuck you. But she finds her own rhythm because of Cinnna, right? Cinnna tells her, look at me,

pretending you're talking to me, an old friend now, your new old friend in the capital, Cinnna. Pretend you're talking to me, an old friend now. Your new old friend in the capital, Cinnah. Pretend you're talking to me." And she's very successful. She pulls it off, and of course she has her very fancy dress as well. Yeah, Cinnah's the protector figure. He's the fairy godmother figure in the… when we think of like, archetypes and then the hero's journey and things like that, right?

He's the one who gives the sword, and the sword is, it's the dress. He's like fucking twirl. Before we, we have a lot to discuss in this fashion hour before we dig deep into Katniss, I do wanna quickly brush on districts one and two and what we hear about like how they dress their tributes by, I mean, honestly honestly not really dressing them up apparently they just send them out there sometimes nude or very seductively as a way to win over audience

support which again speaks to like the commodification of these bodies but also remembering I'm like remembering like whoa whoa whoa wait these are fucking these are kids you know they're so young they're they're below 18 because that's when you can stop being fucking raped and i'm not super sure if this is something cons is playing with intentionally or not um probably maybe she seems very intentional in a lot of things but i think of how this book came out in 2008 and it's on the heels of people being really weird with the countdowns of the olsen twins turning 18 and a lot of these the performers of the time Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears right and and a lot of what they were doing and I think of like the sexualization of these

literal children for the Hunger Games and then also how it becomes part a strategy for survival it's very weird. Yeah I mean the Capitol traffics their tributes for many different reasons to many different people, we learn. Fennec O'Deer, later in Mockingjay, comes out and tells a story of how Snow would traffic him to high-paying citizens of the Capitol in order to gain favor and gain money. And it's a... like you said, their bodies are never their own distance the capital in order to gain favor and gain money.

And it's a, like you said, their bodies are never their own even after war in a much more literal way that someone is stealing their bodies from them in a different way, in a much different way. And it's so weird because you bring up like those stupid fucking gross countdowns. It's such a language that was acceptable. Ten years ago, even five years years ago, even, honestly. People would comment and say on things, oh man, when she turned 18, when she turned 18,

I mean, I feel like this has just gone away. People still do it, yeah, in certain circles. But it's only recently become normalized to frown upon, where it was normalized to say constantly. Yeah. About 16-year-olds. No, they still do it. Yeah. About 16 year olds. No, they still do. Absolutely.

I mean, 15, 14. Oh my God. I remember like every now and then, if you go through the Song of Ice and Fire, like subreddits, we try to, I don't anymore. That's not my job anymore. But, you know, like people are weird about being like, oh, well, it's normal because 13 year olds can breathe. I'm like, yeah, but, it's normal because 13 year olds can breed. I'm like, yeah, but they didn't actually really do that in the real past as much because

they thought they would die. And you know, it's not good dying in childbirth. Yeah, it's a total fucking medievalism. It's like a total fake fucking fact. And not even that rate, like I've seen people saying stuff about characters in the books like, oh, they're going to be so beautiful when they get older. What the fuck? Why is when you look at a literal teenager pre teenager child, why is the first thing

saying oh, she's gonna be beautiful, you know, like that? Why are you already thinking and waiting for that sexuality to emerge? Yeah, yeah, gross. It's gross. But I think it's so interesting like the way the capital does that because it is as you're saying now like absolutely then a reflection of our society. Of our society and like what we what we extract from people like and I mean we see it with young content creators now I'm sure too. I wasn't there I can't comment on it but

there are many people in Hollywood that were once of a younger age that were definitely trafficked out for their bodies. I'm not going to name any names, but it's very obvious. There are many. It's a normal thing. A lot of it goes hand in hand when you get up to wealth. Wealth is, you know, when you get up to wealth, there's drug use, there's drug trade, there's trafficking of drugs, trafficking of people, trafficking of bodies, and it turns out that the entire economy runs on the bones and bodies and blood of the

people. And it's the same here. Something I wanted to talk about was, of course, this is her first dress. She has many twirly Mockingjay dresses to come. Everyone get excited. We love that. I love how you've described it as her own new weapon, right? She's great with a bow and arrow, but this is the weapon she needs to perfect in order to survive right now, in order to acclimate. And unbeknownst to her, she's being turned into a symbol of rebellion. Right? She's put into kind of these trappings of no power, but hoping for enough power to escape. She is becoming a symbol of rebellion, not just for those that are making her one, but

also the people of the capital love her, and the people of the districts are finding her beloved for a completely different reason. And I think there's a lot of history, right, in rebellion and fashion. And I love that Suzanne focuses on this. I think of like the history of young women in the punk movement defying some of those commercial fashion norms.

And I mean, even Suzy Sue from Suzy and the Banshees, once Suzy Sue said in an interview that her makeup is armor, it's tribal, it's primal, it's still war paint. And I love that because that's what this outfit is, it's war paint or denim, right? You think about the history of denim, that it became kind of a symbol of rebellion because women did not wear jeans. It wasn't really normalized or accepted until the fifties. Jeans were seen as a sign of rebellion. You look at James Dean, who popularized them, Elvis. And then come 60s,

Marilyn Monroe wore them, right? And it became to be a little more normalized. And it was also kind of a symbol of equality that it was okay for genders to wear jeans that are not men. And another thing that I thought of is that that always makes its comeback, Diana's revenge dress. Princess Diana's revenge dress. The night of Charles's infidelity being announced. That's like a very symbolic like piece of rebellion because she was kept under lock and key, right?

Not unlike these tributes, everything she watched was set, everything she said was set, everything she said was watched, etc. And going all the way back, going all the way back, rewind your wheel a little bit, back to the 1700s with me. I want to talk about guillotine fashion, because I think there's something here with the French Revolution, which I have to say, no one protests like the French. You have to understand that like 1789 through the late 1790s during Napoleon Bonaparte's rise, this was why they were so good at rebelling and protesting in France.

Because when the feudal system was weakening throughout the 1700s, it starts to dissipate throughout Europe, right? The bourgeois, so the merchant class, not the seam, the merchant class, the business classes, not quite the kings and queens, but they had a little money. They started rising in power, and they were starting to want to become more successful and hold positions of power in politics, or in other places where they could get a little piece of the pie. And peasants were also starting to get a little piece of the pie. Theyants were also starting to get a little piece of the pie. They were beginning to have their own land.

They were beginning to have an education. Mortality rates were rising. The population was growing. It was growing very strong. The demand for food and goods was increasing rapidly. But in the 1770s, a bunch of economic crises hit at once. And not just crises, right? Like a political crisis landed on top of that

of like post-war Europe raised taxes on the nobles and the clergy's. Up until then the clergy's were pretty much tax exempt. Don't know what that's like America, just kidding. The backlash also then caused the American revolution simultaneously and the French participation in that, back to our French and American tie here, that participation ended up that the French, their government was close to bankruptcy. So crop failures then happened. The bourgeois started being excluded

from those positions of political power. And of course, philosophy played a huge part. There was a big changeover, right? 17th century philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza were out and Rousseau and Voltaire were in. New thoughts were really leading in France. They read more philosophy than anyone at this time. So now the exciting part of this, of this rise of all these different things was also the rise of the guillotine, right?

A humane execution style. It was used to murder the shit out of the rich, which was awesome. And in support of this cause, rose something else great. Guillotine chic or guillotine fashion. I'm not fucking with you right now. I just like that you're framing it as like, something great. You'll like this. I was watching Mad Men. I'm watching through with you right now. I just like that you're framing it as like, something great. You'll like this. I was watching Mad Men. I'm watching through for the first time. I never watched.

And JFK dies, historically, so it's not a fucking spoiler. But a lot of the characters in the episode are like freaking out. The girls are all like crying like JFK. And I'm sitting there like drinking and I just look over at Emmett. He's seen it, and I look over at my roommate and I say to him, it's just the president. And he bursts out laughing, he's like, that's the most you thing I've ever heard you ever say. It's just a president, not the president, a president. They'll get another, I say. That's so funny that you bring that up though,

because that was historical because it was the first time, right? The death of a head of state was captured on like television and media or and uh that's- And now we get to see two of them happen in the Hunger Games. No, I'm just kidding. Oh my god, but I mean like like that that death on television right thing and uh that's a little bit about what this is about. Yeah, if you haven't watched it, because everybody else has, by the way, except me, apparently. I'm sorry, do you mean JFK's death? No, Mad Men. Mad Men.

Oh, I never finished it. It was too depressing, which is why I read these books instead. All the books we do instead. I'm like, of course I saw JFK die. I've seen Jackie's fat ass, okay? I know. But... I was like, are you telling everyone, go look up JFK die. I've seen Jackie's fat ass. Okay, I know but Go look up JFK's death Jackie's fat ass. No, if you haven't watched mad men, you should though like you should finish it out someday because I'm very invested Now I can't believe I took this long. I was young though. It made me I like keep trying to watch it I would like would do it every few years and continue a little bit more than I was like,

dang. Skill issue. All right, listen, we have to get back to the topic. Okay, guillotine chic. So female presenting prisoners cut their hair short, right? Speaking of Titus, you brought up Titus earlier. That was the Titus look it was, to cut your hair super short. Maybe like a shaggy pixie cut is what we would call it today. This is to avoid getting it stuck in the blade at execution time.

And women were cutting their hair short, blunt. They were wearing chokers made of ribbon or lace to mimic the line, the chop chop, where the head would get chopped off. They would also wear red shawls, symbolizing blood that was inspired by Charlotte Corday, who was executed for assassinating Jacobin leader Jean-Paul

Marais, or Marie Antoinette's white shift. Marie Antoinette wore a white shift famously when she was chop chopped, and the women adopted it. So we see a lot of this with Katniss's style in the capital, people that maybe don't even understand the full political event occurring in front of them because they don't have all the facts, but people adopt her braids. There are mocking J pins and symbols on everything, right? We start to see this take over without even necessarily understanding the symbolism.

And meanwhile, the districts are taking the true meaning of who Katniss is and what she is standing for in front of them and her defiance of the Capitol. They're taking that to heart as well. And so what Sina has created in this dress that he put on Katniss and the girl who caught fire, right? The girl who is sparking off flames as she twirls, that dress is something also that Katniss would never wear. Katniss prefers practicality in her clothing. She prefers clothing that lets her move, clothing that she can go hunting in.

She would never wear high heels and be trained by her own want by Effie on how to wear high heels. She would never wear this frilly red dress. The dresses she does enjoy wearing are from her mother, right? Something that was special to her mom that makes it special to her. That simple blue dress that is something so special to her that her mom's letting her wear it. This is something she'd never wear. But Cinnna puts her in this, her new weapon, her new

costume, and it turns her into a huge symbol that sweeps the nation. Yeah, that in the part where he literally sets her on fire. Literally. Well, yes and no, but it sounds like it kind of a little bit was because I loved that moment where they're like, oh good, it worked. And I'm like, what the fuck? That's so cosplay real, by the way, like everything Senna does in this book, I like look at him like, man, when I used to cosplay like that, I feel this Senna, by the way. Like, everything Cinnah does in this book, I like, look at them, like, man, when I used to cosplay like that, I feel this, Cinnah, I feel this.

Thank God it worked. Yeah, they're like, I'm glad it worked and they did it brutal live. I'm like, what the fuck? But yeah, I mean, I love everything that you said. It's a performance, but it ends up, I mean, like, it's a trend, but it ends up, I mean, like it's a trend, but ends up becoming this widespread movement. And I mean, we even like see that in, you see that in real life, you know, people will wear like pins to symbolize associations with certain causes, like the pink breast cancer one or the pink pussy hats. I'm thinking of the pink pussy hats. That's true.

Or I mean, you were talking earlier about Rosie the Riveter, right? Like that styling and that headband. So it's how you show your loyalty to certain causes. And, but Katniss here, I mean, he protects her with by arming her in something that isn't hurt. Yeah. By creating a persona that in something that isn't her. Yeah, absolutely. By creating a persona that makes people want to support her. And that's what kind of makes it worse later when he dies

that we're gonna talk about every single time we're here. Oh my God. But what makes it worse though, what I mean by that is like that what he's done is something that she doesn't necessarily know. She's being made an act of rebellion in this way, right? Like it's just a dress.

This is just a dress for the interview for the Hunger Games and she's supposed to look pretty. And oh, she's just on theme. This is just a theme dress, but Snow suspects it. And that's why he has him slaughtered in front of her to send a message that if you are doing this, you know, like, I know I see you and I will end you. But it's so cleverly done that she doesn't necessarily know anything about the rebellion until the end of Catching Fire. Right? Like she

doesn't understand something I love about that book is she doesn't understand why the tributes are such fucking weirdos towards her. And she does it. She's like, why are you all so weird? I can't believe I have to like try not to kill you or hide until you die. This is horrible. It's interesting because she just is given, you know, just enough here that reasonable suspicion that she's not involved. Yeah, and to an extent, like, in a way, that's almost a betrayal of Sina, right? Like, amazing that he does this and helps spark a rebellion. But, and we'll discuss this much more in later books, especially in the third one, I think.

You have here, like, and you've said, it turns Katniss into a symbol, but a symbol is not the same as a leader. A symbol is not the same as having agency. The symbol is still, to an extent, an object and an idea, but not a person. Yeah, and she grapples so much with that when we get to Mockingjay, right, where she's still not treated like a person, she's treated only as a symbol, as a figurehead that's doing nothing. As a weapon. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Wow. I'm so excited we're doing this, you guys. I say you guys because I'm like you all that are listening.

It's like you're here with us right now. I wish you were. Weird, but neat. Yeah. I need a bigger room, but... Your room's pretty big! I think we could fit them. No, actually we probably couldn't. I thought about it for every moment. Maybe 50? 50 people? I don't know, that's a lot.

I gotta work on this space. We'd be pushing fire codes for sure. Yeah. Catching fire codes. Oh my gosh. Hey, I am so excited to jump into this. Next time, when we get back to the next chapters, the next act in the Hunger Games, this was the tributes, right? Act one, the tributes. We'll get back to act two. It'll be exciting cause we could jump right in now that we've gotten all the big stuff out of the way. We're gonna get loose, get into it. Yeah, I'm excited to get into the actual games

that will be the next. It's the actual Hunger Games, devastatingly awful and lots of gore and action. And I'm sure we'll cry. There'll be some death. There'll be some life. Oh'll be some life. Rue. Uh, I look forward to it. I do too. I'm really glad that we're doing this series.

Yeah. I'm excited to watch all the movies for the first time. I apparently have watched the first two. Clearly I do not remember them. They'll all come flooding back to you. It's been a decade. Actually, though. Literally. Well, until we come back, thanks for listening to the 64th episode.

Wow. For patrons, for bonus episodes. The Hunger Games. Oh. Oh my god. The 74th, yeah. Yeah, I'm joking. And welcome to the 74th Hunger Games.

The 64th. We're so close. Oh my god, the 74th, yeah. And welcome to the 74th Hunger Games. The 64th, we're so close. Oh my god, we could have started this... If we had started this instead, on episode 65, we would have ended with episodes of... Well, actually we don't know, but we might throw in a few more Patreon episodes in there. Never mind, don't listen to me, everyone. Ignore me. Yeah, for those of you wanting to know about the next episode release,

we will be working towards it. This may not be in every single month. We might start doing them every other or every couple. So we haven't quite decided how to pace that out yet. So keep your ears peeled. We'll keep you updated as usual in episodes and our regular POV episodes, but hopefully we'll be back in 2024 with more Hunger Games for

you. Thanks for listening. Yeah, 2024 is going to be a big year, Hunger Games, and even more bigger Unleashed or Harder D. God, that D is going to get big. Can't wait to see you there. It's Hero the Dragon. Thanks, guys.

We'll see you next time. Goodbye! Bye. Bye. Bye.