jun-uppie

[jun-uppie]

I will forever respect Animorphs for tricking kids who are just really into animals to read a book series by going “Hey you, you daydream about what it’s like to be a dolphin or a bird or a wolf? Have I got a book for you!” and then slowly radicalizing them with 50+ books of “There are no winners in war. Whatever ‘victory’ you perceive comes at the cost of sacrificing your own morals and killing the part of you that is human. In the end you will resort to murder, torture and war crimes and the knowledge of what you have done will haunt you for as long as you live.”

[jun-uppie]

thinking about how the hunger games were designed to prove that without society, order, government, someone to rule, we devolve into little more than animals, and how the games themselves prove over and over again that this is not true. We see it in every single game we witness.

Katniss placing flowers around Rue's body in the arena. Thresh sparing Katniss because she was kind to Rue, even though he was making it that much harder for himself to win.

Haymitch going back for Maysilee after hearing her scream even though their alliance had been broken. Haymitch holding her as she dies the same way Katniss did Rue.

Coral's "I can't have killed them all for nothing" when she realizes she's not going home. Lamina cutting down Marcus at great personal risk. And, my favorite moment in tbosas, Reaper collecting the bodies of his fellow tributes, his peers, even the ones who tried to kill him, into a pile. Taking the weapons from their hands. Closing their eyes and crossing their arms in the best approximation of a proper burial he can manage, covering them with the Capitol flag as a makeshift shroud.

The Games bring out the worst in people, yes. But despite the extreme circumstances, despite the exterior pressure of the Capitol, despite the fact that it could mean pain and heartbreak and death, it also shows that people have an enormous capacity for goodness. That even in a situation purposefully designed to make empathy impossible, people can't help but have it anyway.

Snow looks at the Games and all he can see is what's inside himself-- this pure animalistic drive to conquer and defeat. He kills and it feels good and he thinks that everyone else must feel that way too. He doesn't realize (maybe can't realize) that he is the exception, not the rule. He cannot see outside himself, outside his own warped perspective, to realize that the fact that people do show humanity in the games proves his entire worldview wrong.

[jun-uppie]

[Dorothy] I mean, if he's selling encyclopedias, why didn't he try to sell us a set?[Rose] You know what else is so strange about it? He didn't bring them in. || S05E18

[jun-uppie]

sometimes i watch golden girls and i just tear up remembering everything each cast member did for the queer community

estelle getty lost her nephew to AIDS and moved in with him during the last months of his life to take care of him. she started a foundation that cares for people affected by AIDS that's still there to this day. she saw one of the writers on her show was queer, walked right up to him and said "you're one of us!" and promised to protect him. she put her career on the line to become an outspoken ally of AIDS patients at a time when it would've been career suicide

bea arthur was a staunch gay and trans ally who donated a lot of her time and money to helping homeless lgbt youth. when she died, she left them thousands of dollars to stay afloat after she was gone. she was incredibly socially active in the queer community!

rue mcclanahan was a staunch advocate of marriage rights for gay couples and openly devoted her time and money for the fight for equality. she also openly participated in queer spaces and loved the community with her entire heart. she was intimately aware of gay mens' particular love for her character blanche and she fully embraced it

everybody knows by now about betty white's activism, but i'll say it anyway. not only did she join the fight for marriage equality, but she was a great mother to her lesbian stepdaughter. she participated in anti-bullying campaigns specifically against lgbt youth. she accompanied liberace to events because it wasn't safe for him to be out. she loved us and she fought for us just like the others

all four of them did SO MANY amazing things for us, and it makes me happy that we had people like them -- that we still do in people like dolly parton! we didn't deserve them. i wish i could've met all of them and told them how grateful i am!

[jun-uppie]

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.

[jun-uppie]

Both the hunger games before and now the ballad of songbirds and snakes proves that the young adult genre can produce some genuinely good storytelling while also examining social issues without talking down to its audience, which makes the ungodly amount of popular bad ya novels all the more embarrassing.

[jun-uppie]

Suzanne collins wrote a trilogy where a main media propaganda strategy was to market a horrific act of violence as a love story to distract ppl and then it got adapted into a box office breaking movie and ppl made it all about the love triangle. so then since they didn’t get the point the first time Suzanne collins wrote a prequel story about the main dictator and she makes it so that you as a reader want it to be a genuine love story so badly even tho it’s so very clearly not and instead feels extremely unsettling to make her point even more meta which then gets adapted into another box office breaking film and now ppl are making romantic snowbaird tik toks. do u think she’s gonna write another book that’s somehow even more blatant or just give up and start executing ppl? hard to say but I wouldn’t blame her for the second one

[jun-uppie]

There is something so special about teen superhero team dynamics, from Power Rangers to magical girls and everything in between.

I help you fight evil. I let you sleep on my lap when we get back home. I know everything about you, things your parents never will. We've almost died together. We study for tests together. We are discovering ourselves. I hope I still know you in ten years. You turned evil once. I still got you a birthday present.

#fav #'

[jun-uppie]

Shelby: Your man doesn't have the mental strength to caramelize onions. Kendall: Your man thinks it takes 5-10 minutes to caramelize onions. Chase: Who's caramelizing onions? Have you sociopaths forgotten that apples exist? Riley: Do you think caramelizing onions is putting caramel on onions? Koda: Your man thinks caramelizing onions is putting caramel on onions.

#power rangers

[jun-uppie]

You're telling me I gotta be funny again? I didn't do it on purpose the first time!

Ziggy Grover, Power Rangers RPM

#I #power rangers

[jun-uppie]

Riley: Hey Chase! Are you wearing your running bottoms...and your hoodie? Shelby: Chase are you going running? [Chase nods] Kaylee: Have fun! [Chase leaves] Shelby: Oh my god what is wrong with Chase right now? Riley: Yeah what happened, are you guys okay? Kaylee: Chase is going for a run. If anything we should be asking what is right with him. Riley: He only goes running if he's upset. And he's wearing his sad hoodie. And by the looks of it it's been washed, which is bone-chilling. Kaylee: He's fine. Everything's okay. Tyler: I just passed Chase, on the street, running, on purpose! OH MY GOD! Kaylee: Maybe I was wrong. Tyler: CHASE! ARE YOU OKAY? I SEE YOU! AND I LOVE YOU! Kaylee: In my defence, no one here emotes in a normal way. Shelby: That's fair.

#power rangers

[jun-uppie]

You know, Zordon never contacts us to say, ‘Hey let’s have fun!’ It’s always ‘Hey, how would you all like to go and get yourselves killed?’

Zack Taylor, Power Rangers (2017)

[jun-uppie]

Rocky: Blue is the color of wisdom...but wisdom does directly contradict my life motto of live and don't learn. Adam: Since when has that been your life motto? Rocky: Since when have I ever done anything to indicate it's not?

[jun-uppie]

You'll see my face in every place But you can't catch me now

[jun-uppie]

I spent puberty reading The Clique series. Here’s what I remember:

1. Claire and Massie make a bet on how long Claire can go without repeating an outfit vs. how long Massie can go on a weeks worth of clothes, or something

2. The author described peoples outfits ALL THE TIME

3. The whole school goes to summer camp and Massie holds lessons on how to kiss

4. Massie has a subscription to a lip gloss delivery service that mails her a new flavor of lip gloss every day, and a lot of the flavors are really bizarre like pickles and BBQ sauce

5. So in one book, Invasion of the Boy Snatchers, this new girl who is Alicia’s cousin just comes in and steals everyone’s boyfriend

6. The fancy private school is Octavian Country Day, or OCD for short, and the public school is called ADD

7. Claire literally becomes a celebrity at one point, like she stars in a movie and becomes a famous actress and goes to Hollywood parties and is in tabloids

8. Alicia at one point drags down The Pretty Committee and almost destroys them in pursuit of her own clique. Alicia is really cool actually

9. The author mentioned these pubescent girls bra sizes…. Kind of a lot?

10. They all get suspended from school and Claire’s parents are the only ones who actually discipline her and the rest of them go shopping all day

11. Claire had a boyfriend for awhile. He was a good egg

12. The series concludes with confirming Massie has gone through absolutely no character development in all of nine books

[jun-uppie]

somewhere in the world Tyra Banks shat in her entire pants over this tweet

[jun-uppie]

Suzanne Collins has me deranged.

We know from the Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes that many of the features of the modern Hunger Games are Snow's invention, including those that motivate the districts, like prizes. It's fair to assume he likely came up with the idea for tesserae, it's an easy way to keep the districts well fed while encouraging/forcing participation and general involvement in the games. It's a great reminder, even the food you eat is linked to the games themselves. Tesserae is a type of tile work commonly associated with Romans which Collins draws a lot of inspiration from in her depiction of the Capital. It has also in the past been used as a token. In this case, you take the token of food in exchange for extra names in the bowl. Now that's fucking excellent on it's own, real neat bit of linguistic worldbuilding.

BUT what really gets me, what truly fucks me up is that Snow didn't name it that because he's like a language nerd. Tigris had to use tile buttons, tesserae buttons on his shirt during songbirds because they couldn't afford anything else. Snow inherently associates that material with poverty, specifically with the lack of food he had during that time. As a result tesserae represents poverty starvation and desperation to everyone in the districts. Snow is so god dam self obsessed he imbedded ,intentionally or not , personal fucking references to himself within the districts.

AND THAT is why Collins is so crazy to me that detail is tiny, you truly would not notice and in the grand scheme it's not that important but that's woman is on her shit and she's fucking thinking her thoughts and its genius. HER MIND UGH. truly has me messed.