protect me

i think they would really like playing dnd and i do have ideas of what class all of them would play

Riz “the ball” Gukgak, my beloved

the epic highs and lows of high school bloodrush...

bits from ep. 9 but make it Calvin and Hobbes

So. How about this season so far

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

feels like we had matching wounds but mine’s still still black and bruised and yours is perfectly fine

i am so normal about lucy frostblade and kristen and how they were like ships in the night from each other and by the time kristen got to know her it was too late. IM SO NORMAL

a scholarly conversation about the future

When joking about how ridiculous it is that Fabian is popular I don’t think people realize how insanely cool the bad kids are in universe. As viewers we see their cool moments but we also see them being dorks and lame idiots. Think about their in universe reputations and how you would react to hearing about them if you lived in the same world as them.

There is a group of six people who saved the world 3 different times before they even entered their junior year of high school.

One of them never showed up to any of their classes until their third year and still passed. She is a rockstar and arch devil of rebellion who owns a recording studio in hell where she plays the bass.

One dude threw the greatest party the entire high school has ever seen, is captain of the sports team, and killed the school’s evil principal without facing any punishment.

One performed a motorcycle kick-flip that was doing a jump off of a mansion’s roof into a pool of flaming tartar sauce. Said kick-flip student has created a god, killed that god, brought herself back from the dead, and resurrected a completely different god.

One of the girls is the chosen oracle of all elves and punched her dad so hard he instantly died. Also if you dig deep enough into the political history books it turns out she caused there to be a feud (bordering on full war) between her home nation and the nation she currently lives in.

The quietest kid of the bunch is a super genius who invented a solar lasso that captured and contained an eldritch horror into his van, took 4 years of high school all at once and passed all of them, is currently acing his arcane mechanics and physical Ed studies, and is the second hand man on the school sports team. He also is the drummer for the arch devil’s band and launched a fully working satellite into space before he even started studying arcane mechanics.

Finally the “dork” of their group is an arcane consultant of heaven, became a P.I. after freshman year, is currently in every extra-curricular school club, and is beloved by seemingly all of his underclassmen. Also after he found out that the dragon his party was fighting ate his dad he fucking ATE IT to avenge him.

Obviously we know the truth behind all of these things and the actual way these six dorks act, but think how insanely sick they all sound in universe.

TTTTTTAKING OVER TEENAGE REBELLION!!!!!!

ive only seen one episode so far but ohhhh i missed them

From Zac's Instagram.

1.3.24

Watching both Critical Role and Dimension 20 you can really see the differences between Brennan and his players versus Matt Mercer and his players, because whenever Matt does something fucked up they just sit forlornly like 🥺 and then Matt also looks back at them like 🥺

but whenever Brennan does something fucked up they'll call him every insult imaginable and he'll own it completely and straight up say some shit like 'gonna kill that dog 😜' without a hint of fear or hesitation