Josh looks better because they didn’t dye his eyebrows blonde after the first movie!

9:10 “this is who y’all hate? the selfless guy who’s thinking about everyone else’s families?” honey, you’ve got a big storm comin 😀

I’m surprised Johanna’s elevator scene didn’t make it in 😂

showing plutarch as a character who cares more about the rebellion succeeding than the people the rebellion is for is a very interesting move. because in that scene with snow he does several things, he makes himself look like a hardline capitol supporter to snow, which will make him more free to make risky moves down the line, and he makes things actively worse for the districts, which makes them MORE likely to rebel. he’s trying to raise the anger in the districts. it’s interesting because it shows that he’s actually become like snow in this respect, not seeing or caring about the people who are killed as long as the goal or the “greater good” is achieved. it shows how people in power in all movements, whether good or bad, can lose sight of what is important and become corrupted.

Didn’t hate Gale in book one, his jealousy in book two was very annoying, but book three is where the actual hatred begins - and it’s 90% nothing to do with the romance. You’ll understand 😌

Keep in mind that the REAL start of katniss’ affection towards peeta was the day he threw the burnt bread towards her. That’s the foundation. He selflessly provided to her and possibly my saved her and her family from starvation.

The thing with Gale is I never registered katniss loving him romantically. In the books she very actively is like “I don’t want to love because love means children and I refuse to bring children into this world”. Gale is like her brother, I always felt like he felt for her more than she did him. Peeta is the one she starts to genuinely love and ends up representing the hope for a future where she could love and have a family in a changed world. Gale is the steady past, the childhood rock. Peeta is the hopeful future that brings out the best in her.

it's very calculated on the Capitol's part to make the victors and the tributes families meet like that. like you said, it sows animosity between them and works to deflect the justified rage of the families on to the victors rather than the real culprits: the Capitol and Snow. the families see the murder happen and meet the murderer and forget that it was all state sanctioned and that the Capitol is behind it all in the end.

Found this series yesterday, and I’m really enjoying living vicariously through you experiencing this for the first time. I’ve read and seen them many times and love them every time

holy shit i just thought of the fact that since you didn’t see this in a movie theater you didn’t get to experience the CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE that is the moment when katniss goes into the arena bc they changed the aspect ratio to be wider and it was so crucial to the experience and impressive to watch

I think a lot of the love for Gale comes from movie-only watchers. In the books, Gale isn't whipped because he does something heroic and saves someone, he's whipped because he's caught carrying a dead turkey

13:13 Because Katniss is so new to being a victor, and the other victors already know/have rapport with each other, it’s a kind of way of hazing/initiating Katniss into their group. The reason they’re so brazen about it is because she was so squeamish around Peta in the first book. She couldn’t stand for him to be naked around her, so she went another way about trying to get him and his wound clean. Johanna strips down in the elevator to make her squirm. It’s just their way of picking on her.

The thing about Gale is that he's more worried about Katniss choosing him over anybody else after she just went through a traumatic experience, even before you go to the big things he does that makes us not like him (in Mockingjay) I was so frustrated with him, speacially in Catching fire obviously, like Katniss had to kill people, watch people get kill and surviving all of that just to come home and having fking Gale being like "but do you love me or not?"  haha and making her feel bad about not being emotionally available sooooo that's why I wasn't the biggest fan of him from this point on, I get why he's so angry with the capitol and why he wants so badly to fight them but he's just not being nice to Katniss when all she wants is to protect her family

Don’t forget the fact that the only reason Peeta is Gale’s “arch nemesis” is because he’s his only competition for Katniss’s romantic love interest. That’s literally it. Never mind the fact that his motivations seem to be more about guilt tripping Katniss into liking him back than it has been to combat the Capitol for the most part, but he also hasn’t experienced the culture of the Capitol or brutality of the games that only Katniss and Peeta could understand and trauma bond over. Gale sees everyone in the Capitol as the same type of evil (as if Cinna for example was no better than Snow) so he was a more one-dimensional character IMO.

1:38 his little claps for Haymitch always gets me. I get you. I love him too.

I’m stealing your opening line..” you have to endure the hunger games to enjoy the twilights”. Wise words.

The districts are supposed to loosely represent parts of America. The seam that katniss comes from can be interpreted as reservation area and katniss is Native American coded in the books although it isn’t explicitly said. Likewise district 11 represents the south/long held tensions from American slavery. When Rue describes the way work functions in district 11 it can be interpreted as restrictive oppressive slave labor. It is mostly based around agriculture and the tributes katniss mentions from district 11 mostly all have dark skin I believe. The movie kind of fails to accurately represent this because they make district 12 white so the cotton and agricultural labor of district 11 is very jarring. But race is a very interesting detail in the books!

Plutarch's plan of having the Districts suffer under the Capitol's hand with floggings and such reminds everyone who their real enemy is and gives them someone to unite against When he tells Snow everyone will hate Katniss he is 100% lying his off.  He knows they won't despise her, they will despise Snow and the Capitol.  He's just betting that Snow won't know any better. And it turns out that he is right about that, in fact.

The quote “sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can be is compassionate,” sums up a lot of the meaning behind this book series and I love it so much (even though it’s heartbreaking.) A society which attempts to suppress our instinctive desire to connect and relate to others is truly dangerous. But empathy is a muscle. If it can be weakened, it can also be strengthened. I think a lot of people dogpile on Gale and it is a little undeserved. Gale and Katniss lost a parent in the same mining accident. Overnight they became the head of their families despite only being children themselves. They share in this grief, and together they learn to shoulder this new responsibility. I think the movies can gloss over how important a relationship this is for Katniss. Gale is the one person Katniss can 100% rely on, and she finds a lot of comfort in that fact. And it’s so damn cruel that following the Hunger Games she returns home to find out the one person who could always understand her no questions asked she can no longer relate to. She’s changed, and she hadn’t even wanted to. Unfortunately I think Gale often allows his anger at the Capitol, as righteous and well-deserved as it is, to blind himself to the bigger picture. Katniss has the unique opportunity to see what life is like in the Capitol. She sees how the Capitol is completely inundated with propaganda, and how they’re brainwashed from the second they’re born. She also meets people like Cinna, someone from the Capitol who was kind and compassionate, and was willing to put his life on the line to stoke the fires of the rebellion. But Gale doesn’t get this opportunity. To him, the people in the Capitol are truly despicable. Every year they watch as children kill each other, and every year they cheer and place bets on who they’d like to win. And then they took his best friend away from him, the girl he’s in love with, and she never really came back to him even when she won the Games. I don’t hate Gale, but going into the next book Gale’s rage and indignation at the Capitol is definitely a thing to keep an eye on (and how it influences his decisions.) Honestly, I think Gale and Katniss are very similar. Strong, stubborn and brave. While Peeta is completely different and challenges the stereotypical idea of a male heroine. Peeta is kind, sensitive and compassionate. He’s a baker and a painter. He isn’t a hunter or a fighter like Katniss or Gale. Instead, he brings out a different side to Katniss, not to say Katniss doesn’t have her own inherent goodness but I think Peeta really helps her act upon it more. I honestly think if Gale was put in arena with Katniss instead the rebellion wouldn’t have happened because Gale would have been too busy being pragmatic, coming up with  the quickest and easiest way to take everyone down so Katniss could go home.

21:23
Manacled mention!! I love that fanfic