No But The Hunger Games Really Said "what Do You Hate More- The Atrocities Or The People Who Commit Them

the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

sesbian lex

i think it was a very interesting choice by muir that, out of all our protagonists and characters, the only two people who tried to stop the lyctor trials in gtn were:

1. silas octikiseron

2. judith deuteros

the two most devout characters! and both characters’ opposition to the trials that were explicitly sanctioned by god and designed by the lyctors stemmed from their devotion to the laws and practices that developed from their empire and god.

silas wanted to stop the trials on the grounds he believed it was unholy and judith wanted to stop the trials right after the fifth died on the grounds that people were getting killed over this and it’s her duty to prevent that.

and like. silas is the one who attacks ianthe, a now SAINT, and brands her a heretic for becoming exactly what god wanted them all to become. and it’s judith who attacks teacher to flag down the emperor’s ship for help, which is what cytherea wanted because it endangers god. and silas, and later judith, both refuse to become lyctors on the basis of their moral belief systems.

and anyways where im going with this is that all throughout gtn muir paints them in an unquestionably negative light from the lens of our protagonist but ultimately both end up being right? in the most ironic possible way. i think it was a really neat choice for muir with her book that plays heavily on the theme of religion and dogma and what it looks like in different people.

In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities.

After years of trying to change people’s minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away.

In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity.

In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.”

Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.

This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.

The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.

People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.

It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.

He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil – incapable of seeing that it is evil.

Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

Bonhoeffer died due to his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler, at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp - just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity

The reason categorizing fanfiction by tropes works is because there's already an established setting, cast of characters, and theme in the original work, so when people write fanfics they're building sand castles in pre-existing beaches, but when you advertise your book as "sci-fi enemies to lovers where there's only one bed and also they're gay" it says nothing about what the premise is, who the characters are, or what the book is actually trying to say. That's not to say that books containing stuff like "sci-fi enemies to lovers where there's only one bed and also they're gay" can't be absolutely fantastic books, but if you only advertise by listing off tropes that are inherently cookie-cutter then you're implying (whether intentionally or not) that there's nothing interesting or memorable about the book besides smashing tropes together like you're playing with action figures.

Sequences from my finished animation. Inspired by a dog named Teacake.

Personally, it's always a bit wild to me to see commentators interact with the Hunger Games franchise as if Collins were writing science fiction stories instead of essays with faces. She's just not that interested in fleshing out side characters or digging into the details of the worldbuilding. These characters are concepts and symbols before they're people. There's an almost mathematical precision to who and what she explores and how deeply she does it. This is a step or two away from pure allegory. If she were writing a couple of centuries ago, she'd have named her characters things like Innocence and Anger and Watch-Carefully-Your-Soul-Lest-Ye-Be-Damned, but since she's writing for modern audiences, she has to settle for puns and allusions. If she has another essay to write, she'll assign some faces to it; she's not going to look into backstories or other eras just for the sake of storytelling, and it's not a failing as a writer that she doesn't.

ive tried to verbalize this time and time again and i never rlly get there but as a femme lesbian i have a rlly hard time connecting with femenine straight women i dont know what the fuck they r talking about ever and they have always known (since i was a small child) that i was weird and other. INSTEAD i feel as if i can read the mind of fem gay men literally dyke2fag mental communication it is real and exist and im Tuned In i want to be an old queen when i grow up bc they r the only ones that get it

- Harrow repeated fumblingly, and then could say no more.

My fanart debut for the books that overtook my life this Halloween, brought to you by @winterscarf ‘s commission fund (and book pitching agenda)~

My two yr old is looking through a book about prehistoric art and she saw a picture of those cave painting of hands and she held up her own and said "hand!" And I gotta be honest. That hit