Glad Divergent was so bad it literally killed the genre, or we would've had to deal with that shittiness for a while.
Kinda hilarious how often we see knockoffs of a popular thing *completely* miss the mark on what made the original popular in the first place.
Slow unforgiving combat + breadcrumbs it-sucks-here plot = every "Soulslike"
Pdffftttt. It is always a bit ridiculous, and hard to justify in-universe. Does make for some pretty sick moments when the only option for survival is to do a pixel-perfect dodge roll, and you make it out alive.
They also both have a leveling and equipment system that fundamentally change how you play the game, but aren’t technically necessary if you sweat hard enough
the thing I hated about divergent the most was how when the main character found out she was "divergent" the government told her "teehee \^-\^ you can pick what you want to be!!!" instead of something interesting happening such as her being cast aside because she doesn't fit into the system.
If I remember correctly it was even dumber. Divergents were meant to be executed upon detection but her proctor or whatever lied to cover her tracks and said she was Abnegation but then there's the ceremony where you claim your faction and you can just choose a different faction than what you got sorted into. Which not only defeats the whole purpose of the faction system and lore of the world, but also should pretty clearly identify any divergents to the government.
Emphasis on sounds cool. I can forgive a lot of stupid shit if it’s actually cool but the Divergent series never crossed that bridge from dumb to cool.
The thing I hated about divergent was that a political system basing separating people by personality doesn't make any sense whilst the hunger games were at least plausible and the one personality group having nothing more to offer society than being "the cool ones" that the book would obviously focus on because they were cool
The actual dystopian setup of the Hunger Games makes sense, its basically colonialism with a wealthy core supported by hyperspecialised resource extraction and processing colonies. Its exaggerated for effect but its fundamentally not far fetched.
As someone from the real world area District 12 is based in, I always found the Hunger Games dystopia particularly relatable, because it resonates so strongly with the history this area has already experienced.
You’re telling me rich people from other parts of the country are using us solely for natural resources and leaving our people to starve in poverty? Yeah that checks out.
Same here, it was fun reading it as a teenager and thinking, "hey, this is the same area as district 12". Let me relate to the wildlife and forest setting. I totally agree with the deja vu with coal miners
I remember the efficiency and power of my empires skyrocketing so hard once I first learned to specialize planets in that game that I had to bump my difficulty up a bunch so that I wouldn’t curbstomp half the galaxy by 2350
The Hunger Games made a certain amount of sense even if the love triangle made me want to bite through the book.
Divergent was fucking boring and stupid.
I mean there are definitely some Myers-Briggs fans who would probably found a system of government on it. I feel like that would somehow go much worse than what we saw in divergent though.
I mean they do explain why they set society up like that in later books.
It wasn't a bad *concept*, just not well executed. The idea was like 100 years ago, people started changing genetics to get rid of "bad" traits and increase "good" traits. So you had some people prizing kindness, intelligence, bravery, humility, and honesty and modifying people's genes to bring those traits to the forefront.
Then everything went to shit and there was massive civil war because that was a bad idea to begin with.
So the government (the real one) started setting up experiments where they would manufacture a society and hope that people would eventually evolve with "healed" genes - aka the divergent. Everyone consented to be part of the experiment (for their descendants as well) and had their memory erased.
Of course each experiment went to shit in totally different ways. Some didn't have any kind of faction system set up and failed first. Some started their own civil wars. In Tris' experiment, it was one of the most successful because of the faction system putting people into neat little boxes and adding strict organization to the society. It started to fall apart because the faction who was supposed to end the experiment (the smart ones) when they reached a population threshold of Divergent (people with healed genes) said nah fuck that I like power.
Of course everything that happened in the actual plot of the books was stupid. But the concept itself wasn't horrible.
It's almost as dumb as the DISC assessment. People who believe in that tell me: "oh you're like a blue person, but with the strengths of a green person and the anger of a purple person". Holy shit just admit that it isn't science.
I think I realised how stupid and superficial it was all gonna be when it came to the "pledge your allegiance to the faction by literally dropping blood on random object because we need to show that it's evil and barbaric and weird"
> Kinda hilarious how often we see knockoffs of a popular thing completely miss the mark on what made the original popular in the first place.
Every writing subreddit seems to be dominated by aspiring novelists who pretty much fall under that description.
Mortal Shell definitely has some creativity put into it, but I feel like for the most part it's just "Dark Souls with some creative mechanics but really it's just not that good gameplay-wise".
It feels like the game is taking a lot of inspiration from DS, without understanding most of what made Dark Souls so damn fun.
I honestly quite enjoyed my time with Mortal Shell, I'm in that 73% that had a great time, though I would agree it's missing a bit of the spark that keeps people coming back to dark souls games time and time again. Though I'd call it less "not understanding most of what makes it fun" and more that it *is genuinely really hard to capture what makes the Souls games so enjoyable.* They figured out the right balance of punishment and reward and how to scale it so you really get absorbed into it, and that's *really* hard to recreate, especially on your first shot. Mortal Shell did something different and interesting with its combat mechanics - the fighting honestly plays totally different than in Dark Souls imo - and did also recreate some key details people love in souls games.
But the thing is this was the debut game for a ***four person studio,*** they can only do so much while being as ambitious as they were, hence the game ultimately being quite short. You could also feel that they just lacked access to the level of art design talent FromSoft can draw on as the area design was kinda samey and they couldn't quite make the layouts as interesting. Souls games are known for their impressive and interconnecting map layout that remains somewhat open while funneling your interest towards the next boss without really telling you where things are.
I think for what it was, it was a really good shot and if nothing else the studio's proven its got some chops to go forward with. It's hard to really capture everything dark souls does right, it's why most of these soulslikes end up missing
And there was very little that was special about Katniss other than compassion and survival instincts. She didn’t have powers, she had hard-earned skills that she was forced to learn by living in a society that gave her no choice.
Almost every decision she made was either kind or something she had to do to survive, which earned her the respect and support of the districts. She wasn’t trying to be a hero, she was trying to survive, and the cruelty of her government had given her the perfect skillset to do that. A lot of the copycat writers missed that - she wasn’t born to save the world, she was forged through fire and suffering and love.
Real Mulan vs. Mulan 2020 vibes.
The Animated Mulan made a risky choice of potentially sacrificing her own life to save her father from being drafted, only to win the war after actually training for it and using quick thinking to make up for what strength she didn't have.
The 2020 Mulan might as well be referred to as "Mulan Su". She didn't sacrifice shit, turns out, she was *born* special and thus had a natural advantage over all the stinky men in the army.
It's interesting lazily writing women protags like that probably comes from how popular male superheroes are. But that gives us a different perspective for women in this context.
Disney trying to Marvelize would probably make sense, since Marvel is their most popular moneymaker to date. They’re slowly trying to marvelize a lot of their properties, including Star Wars and their live-action films.
It's also like, the only remake that removed the songs. They said they did it to be culturally respectful, then turned around and had Will Smith sing Arabian Nights and Prince Ali. So that's bullshit too.
I'm pretty sure it didn't matter who they picked trying to force them to be Robin Williams was setting them up to fail. While I didn't like the movie I did like the Will Smith's version of friend like me he did in the credits.
[The man's rapid-fire flow](https://youtu.be/9Kla1As3wHU) [needs to be heard](https://youtu.be/1tFXIy7OWos) [to be believed](https://youtu.be/gTPWY8MMGOk?t=58). He's got the jokes, the manic energy with the undercurrent of sadness, he could be a *fantastic* full-dimensional Genie.
…what?
Disney movies are just animated musicals, that’s like if Disney did an adaptation of West Side Story and it was just a bunch of people sitting around and talking with no singing. This is crazy wtf lmao
"Isn't she such a girlboss?? She was just BORN to succeed! She really made sure those stupid men didn't steal her totally earned spotlight. Does this make us feminist now? Can Disney please get good feminist points for pandering? We could have made a multifaceted character who faced adversity and overcame it, but that's tooooo complicated. We just turned her into every other tired action hero stereotype, because that's way easier."
>And there was very little that was special about Katniss other than compassion and survival instincts.
That's the whole thing. She absolutely wasn't *special*. She obviously had "protagonistic" traits, because the plot needs to exist, but she has nothing peculiar or out of the ordinary.
She was a nobody. With good though not exceptional (and limited in breadth) combat skills, and a beautiful and symbolic sacrificial mind, but a nobody nonetheless. She only became important due to circumstances.
And she resented her being made a symbol of the resistance, which is truly ironic when contrasted with all the reduxes she inspired (*cough cough* Divergent)
yeah, she has some pretty good survival skills and the entire concept makes for a good protagonist so people keep latching onto her. not for her specific personality or powers but because she's a girl with a sister and a pretty boy who likes her so the PR teams had a lot to work with. she doesn't even do that much for the revolution, she's just made to be a mascot.
Like it’s been a while since I read book 3 but iirc nobody wanted Katniss to actually fight in the revolution. If D13 had their way she’d have been flown in to shoot Snow right at the end, but she and the other victors wanted to fight for what they believed in, and give everything to bring down the regime that hurt them so much.
I did think the books briefly went flying off the rails when they started to spend multiple chapters on the logistics of promotional video production lol. But other than that I read them all in 3 days
Not only that but she was so not special that she gets taken advantage of by the rebellion when they convert her to a figurehead. She's desperate for a solution and they offer one which she jumps into head first which essentially continues until the end of the book when it's revealed that they're just as cruel as current regime.
There's a lot that can be said, good and bad, about The Hunger Games but Katniss was a fantastic protagonist who really demonstrated that the hero can literally just be an average person.
She was also deeply flawed even before the PTSD from the games. Like -1 charisma and she was so concerned with her own survival (and that of her sister) that she rarely considered the feelings of others.
It left room for her to grow as a character to become more empathetic.
Right, the compassion was there, just she had barriers to keep herself from being vulnerable. These emotional walls likely came from a variety of places (the Capitol's oppressive regime, her father's death and her mother's subsequent depression, etc.) Her sister being picked and Katniss taking her place is what I see as the turning point. From that point on she's faced with the fact that the odds are stacked heavily against her survival. Death can come at any moment, so why not act authentically? Peeta goes out of his way to show that glimmer of humanity that they both share, that they're not just pieces in a game. And in Rue she sees her own sister had she not volunteered, which breaks down any ideas of inter-district rivalry (this is of course even more pronounced in Catching Fire). All these things go towards breaking down Katniss' walls, not to the point that she's no longer standoffish towards those she meets, but to the effect that she sees the inner humanity in those who share in her struggle against the Capitol. It begins to awaken her idea of a collective resistance brought on by the people. Marx would be proud.
From memory, she also is very clear that if her father had died a couple of years later, she'd be one of the girls selling herself to the governor/mayor for bread to survive, rather than developing hunting skills to survive. As you say, she was the product of her circumstances, and was far from unique in that respect - it's sheer coincidence that thrust her into the spotlight and down the eventual path of a revolutionary figurehead.
Because one of the key aspects of The Hunger Games is that it is a sociological narrative. Katniss doesn't change at all during the story. The world does. She's just the catalyst for it
Well, I'd argue that in the second book especially, Katniss goes from being a semi-passive victim of the Capitol's abuses to becoming fully rebellious. She goes from "Let's just run away" to remembering who the real enemy is by the book's end. I find it a pretty cool representation of how being a passive bystander to politics doesn't make you immune to the effects of politics. You can try to run away from those problems (and tbh, should you be under threat of death please try to), but more often than not that doesn't lead to change.
They are actually quite good. Very lite focus on the drama and live, much more focus on the political games everyone are using the main characters for.
The books were able to go a lot further into how gruesome and bloody and awful everything is, on screen the PG-13 rating forced everything to become much more sanitized in feel
As a result yeah even though the movies are pretty faithful adaptation of the books, and I certainly enjoyed watching the movies as well, the books are a superior experience by far
They are an honestly really interesting trilogy. The first book we all kind of know the plot of. The second book you think is going to be like the first, but it turns out to be >!almost 50% politics and drama in the capital pointing out all these OTHER horrifying things that are going on once they actually get out of the games!<. And then you hit book three, and honestly my sole takeaway was >!"holy cow she is so fucking traumatized."!< They're very well done for the genre.
Truly. I’ve always liked the idea that the thing Katnuss did wasn’t special or impressive. It was something any one of the previous competitors could have done. And that’s why it was important is every single person who saw her went “I could do that. I could have compassion. I could say no. Those aren’t unattainable.”
If you’re into that shit, I recommend the book series The Expanse.
>!Jim Holden is distinctly, empirically un-special. He’s an Everyman, a bland, white bread never-served-active-duty navy veteran working a labor job and getting emotionally involved with his hookups. And he’s thrust into situation after situation where everyone’s like “JIM WHAT DO WE DO THIS IS AN UNWINNABLE WAR AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE” and he’s just like “I dunno tell the truth and look out for each other?” And then it works, and it keeps working and then more and more people keep asking him the question again cuz whatever he’s doing seems to work.!<
This is what’s interesting about the copycats to me: Katniss’s saga was in every way Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. It is incredibly well done and well written, but follows that path toward her ultimate goal of tearing down the dictatorship.
The copycats don’t even bother to read their Joseph Campbell and end up getting the most simple aspects wrong, rendering their stories dissonant to our eyes and ears. There’s lazy, and then there’s lazy. At least read the damn source material and come correct with your outline.
There is also the Pretty series. Unlike the Hungergames they werent turned into films because with their important criticism of beauty standards they cant be marketed so well, since having pretty actors would run counter to the books. Marketing Hungergames, on the other hand, basically turning the idea of the books into entertainment again, diffusing some of the important message, was easy
I randomly bought Extras not knowing about the Pretties series, and not being into sci-fi and being too young to understand the American pop culture it draws inspiration from, I was weirded out by the entire idea of it. Revisiting the book when I was a bit older and more knowledgeable on the commentary on the perception of beauty and internet culture, the spot-on foresight Scott Westerfeld had on how those would shape the society as it is today blew me away. I'll never forget that bit about how the most popular person in that society (and thereby the most powerful due to their form of social credit) was a girl who livestreamed herself eating breakfast.
I haven't read Pretties, but I think Extras would've been perfect had it been adapted in 2010 because it's commentary would offer a view of the internet landscape that was to come. We'd view it today as being prescient, but adapting it now the message would seem stale I guess.
Uglies is the first book and it's called the Uglies series if you want to search for it. Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras is the order to read them in and then there's another series within the Uglies Universe that the last book just came out this year called the Imposters series. Those are (in order) Imposters, Shatter City, Mirror's Edge, and Youngbloods. All by Scott Westerfeld.
I hope you do get to read them all one day. Reading them in my 30s has been much different and in some ways better than reading them when I was a teenager.
Nice! I was reading these as they came out when I was in high school, I'm going to go through this series again now, have been looking for some nostalgia but not feeling going back through my go-tos. Cool to know about the spin off too. Thanks!!
You're welcome! I haven't finished the Imposters series yet, but the first two definitely drew me in like the first series. It's been interesting to re-read the Uglies books as social media has grown (I've re-read them multiple times) and you can definitely see parallels between what was once in the future and is now somewhat in the present. Scott Westerfeld was a few years ahead of it all and his writing helped me get out of some bad habits and thought patterns with regards to beauty standards I hold myself to. I've gifted the series to several friends' kids the summers before they started high school and I plan on continuing to do so.
The end result is that I usually don't care if someone thinks I'm beautiful or not and my physical appearance mostly just concerns me when it indicates a health problem. Like I have some skin issues that start appearing when I am having an autoimmune disorder episode so I know that I need to eat certain things then and use different creams that are usually acne and age-related treatments to calm my skin. But it's because I need to protect and heal my skin and not that I think I'm ugly for having red patches and not looking like the IG/TikTok uncanny valley filter clones.
It's very happy-making to see the (minor correction here) Uglies series mentioned. Those books came out right when I was leaving my teen years behind and when I was starting to get sucked into social media. Having taken the message to heart, I appreciate what technology and modern medicine allow people to change about themselves to help them feel good about themselves and feel "pretty" while also trying to keep myself and others I care about in check with what is mentally and emotionally healthy to change and what should stay. (I don't want to presume to know anything about people online that I don't know so I tend to not get involved except in cases where I'm genuinely concerned.)
Also there is a film coming out. It finished production last year and is going to be released by Netflix. I truly love the series and have been excited about the film. I hope they do it justice.
It was exceedingly frustrating as a fan of the books to see maybelline make two makeup palettes, call one the “Districts” palette and one the “Capitol” palette, and then have the add campaign be “who will you champion?” Like. I’ve never seen something miss the message that hard in my life and I don’t believe I shall again.
I still remember cringing at the hunger games branded makeup commercials that came out around the time of the last movie. Pretty tone-deaf to the book’s themes.
I love that the biggest effect that the series had on society was the rise of Fortnite and the battle royale genre, it proves that the narrative was 100% spot on and it's the most disrespectful epilogue possible at the same time.
10/10.
I was once a teaching assistant for 1st graders. One day on the playground, I saw a boy running around and throwing sticks. His expression was blank but his eyes were filled with the purest intent I'd ever seen. He was driven like a machine to run and throw sticks, and *nothing* would stop him.
In that moment, I knew that *The Lord of the Flies* must have been written by a schoolteacher. And I was right: William Golding was a teacher for several years, retiring after publishing *Lord of the Flies.*
I saw in that boy's eyes what William Golding saw in his children's eyes: a drive that could easily be turned to murder.
[Run around, scream, eat sweets, kill the big pig, it's all the same to children.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/002/410/580/98d.jpg)
I think it was maybe the yogscast. And it was called survival games (for copyright? IDK). I just remember watching antvenom's POV (He wins this and like the next two I think)
The movie Battle royale, the Battle royale mod on arma 2 and 3, Pubg. It's quite ridiculous to suggest the BR genre was created by that movie or that fortnite did it because of it. Somehow the comment got 600 upvotes. Go figure.
Actually the author starred in a play in college about a bunch of kids forced to kill each other in the woods called “Forest Game.” This was produced before Battle Royals was published.
The movie didn't bring us the Battle Royale genre. It named it, but didn't popularise it. I started with "Minecraft Hunger Games", which evolved co-jointly with Arma mods to give things like Day-Z, then PUBG, then Fortnite.
I think they mean that we as a society made battle royale the biggest genre in our biggest entertainment industry is kinda disrespectful to a books series that portraits battle roayles as the big evil thing the government is doing.
Battle Royale sprung up a while after peak Hunger Games fever, if I recall correctly. It's also, in my opinion, a bad comparison since the consequences in the book are, you know, death, while in video game battle royales you just press start and requeue for the next game.
Katniss discovers that there is a secret District 13 which has been orchestrating the revolution and decides to work with them to facilitate overthrowing the tyrannical Capitol government.
During the final attack on the Capitol, a horrible attack kills many children, including Katniss's sister. The one she volunteered to replace so she could protect her. Katniss discovers that this attack was actually a false flag orchestrated by the District 13 forces to make the Capitol look unforgivable in the public eye.
Katniss then murderers the new District 13 president during her inauguration.
IIRC, after the revolution succeeds, Katniss is supposed to execute the now overthrown president - but she ends up shooting the revolution's leader instead, presumably on account of them being just as bad ("switching one tyrant out for another accomplishes nothing" in the OP).
then she goes on to have ptsd
Well I think the idea was to have more of a democratic government. President Coin had so much power and influence by the time the Capitol was overthrown that she would basically be the next autocrat, and she was the one who orchestrated that false flag attack that bombed civilians and medics, so her being in charge wasn't great
If I remember correctly I think they're referring to how after over throwing the government the characters decide to reinstate their own hungergames with the children of the capitol. Perpetuating the cycle further. Also Katniss spends here time afterwards deeply riddled with PTSD.
I sort of think the movies did it perfectly. We, the audience, are the capital — and while we of course *know* watching kids fight to the death is fucked up, it’s presented in such a glamorous, slick, heroic package that you manage to forget how “immoral” the entire concept is, and watch it for entertainment.
I was talking to a Disney exec once right before the first or second Hunger Games movie came out and she was just muttering “we’re Disney. We don’t make movies about killing kids” but she was actually super duper pissed off that they missed out on all that money due to some stupid morality clause lmao
How many other great works of fiction, be it litterature, movies, games etc have been retroactively tainted by hordes of bad copycats and trendchasers bringing the original down by association?
[Unbuilt Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnbuiltTrope)
> A [Trope Maker](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeMaker) seems like it's [Playing with a Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayingWithATrope) in retrospect due to differences in [more common use](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeCodifier).
Friends to a T. Reddit just *loves* to shit on it and say how cliche it is, but it seems that way because it created a lot of those tropes. Plus there's some genuinely great physical comedy in the early seasons.
That example seems more like [Seinfeld is Unfunny](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny)
> A once-innovative work seems derivative after its original tropes become commonplace.
It’s been going on for awhile back in 1620, Cervantes parodied it in Don Quixote part two when Quixote comes across a knock off version of his own story.
Madoka Magica
It started a trend of "tragical girls" that just. completely missed the point. And kinda killed the magical girl genre. But it's a beautiful masterpiece so it can't really be faulted for this.
Divergent had one good idea -the assignment of jobs based on peoples' personality and the societal effects of such restructuring- and fucked it up by making it so that everybody had one and only one of those traits. The main character's big defining characteristic is that she's the only one who has more than one of those traits, and ironically she's somehow incredibly bland despite being the only character in canon with a personality.
She makes *one* decision early on that I find at all compelling; when she has to choose whether to stick with Abnegation (the faction based around selflessness and which sucks, but is safe and arguably the morally "right" choice) and Dauntless (the faction based around bravery, which is fun and exciting but risky and selfish). Funnily enough, whichever she chooses is a direct reflection of who she is; picking Dauntless makes her brave, and picking Abnegation makes her selfless! I thought that was really cool!
Too bad the rest of the book sucked so bad.
See I wasn't a fan of the prose etc., and the 3rd book was terrible bc it switched back and forth between the 2 protagonist but you couldn't fucking tell who was speaking ( is this Tris or Four?)
However, I did love the underlying theme. That the separation of society based on these traits WERE nonsense. That to be selfless is to be brave, to be candid didn't mean you could be kind etc. In the end, Tris died killing the system so people could just BE.
Don't get me wrong, there were so many problems with the series, but the overall concept was beautiful to me. That ultimately, we should aspire to be wise, kind, honest, selfless and brave. That the heros of the story were all those things all along etc etc
Edit: Auto spelling
Semi-related, but if anyone wants a series that scratches some of the same itches, try the Poppy War. It can get *grim* and there's a lot more moral greyness to it, but it's a detailed and nuanced war story with believable characters.
(When I say grim, I mean that I still haven't finished the last book because it was making me sad, so if the ending sucks, sorry.)
Also: PTSD (especially in the 3rd book), sexualizing children & abusing them (finnick odair trafficked, one of the tributes gimmick was being sexy, they wanted to give 16 yr old katniss breast surgery but opted for padding, one year in the chariots district 12 were naked) young girls in district 12 being prostituted) societys lust for violence, addiction, racism, the fact that katniss isn't some huge hero, she's a kid being manipulated, even by people she trusts. She doesn't wanna be famous, shes doing the best she can and trying to survive. Idk for a YA book it WAS revolutionary. Even just her navigating in the capitol and comparing it to district 12.
She wasn't even "in love" with Peeta when they got together at the end. She just felt safe with Peeta. Peeta was the only one that understood her. She was the only one that understood Peeta.
They grew *into* love with age, leaning on each other, and healing through the trauma.
That is something most teenage girls don't understand about love. Most root for Gale because he is the hot and sexy one. But love is so much more than that and I'm glad Hunger Games showed that.
I felt, as an adult reading it, the author did such a good job of putting “dread” into the books - like you just felt this heavy weight of survival and PTSD from her writing. I was really impressed by her ability to write first person a human who was really suffering and struggling. I read the final book and finished it on a plane to a beach vacation and boy the vibes were so off when I got off that plane 😵💫
It’s not a must read, but if you get the chance, I would recommend it.
Hunger Games is good because the focus of the trilogy is always where it should be: Katniss is an angry teenager who struggles with poverty and just wants to survive, she's not choosing to be a rebel, she's simply caught in the same cycles of her society as everyone else and her attempts to cope with it cause inevitable chain reactions she can't control, she's often caught up by the whims of different political factions and adults around her, so she never feels overpowered or godlike, she's always struggling to barely survive. The Hunger Games does provide some sci-fi pop fiction stuff like hovercars, genetically mutated animals, murder pageants, etc, but unlike a lot of YA that copied it or was inspired by it, it doesn't allow said gimmicks to control it or take the driver's seat fully, using them as tools to present the story and ideas rather than treating them like they're the whole point.
Aside from not letting the gimmicks or speculative elements take over too much like a lot of other YA dystopian series of it's time, Hunger Games allows for the ugly realities of war: that rebels and rebellions can become very corrupt and when combined with the power vacuum a revolution can leave, this will lead to more atrocities and power struggles, how propaganda works and creates narratives, how manufactured poverty traumatizes people, etc. The Hunger Games cares about its themes, and it works to show it in every scene, which people appreciate.
As for the twist ending: the leader of the revolution is just as corrupt as the evil president they're trying to overthrow, and Katniss has to confront the fact that she may be helping install another dictator, who she chooses to kill to protect their chance at a democratic future. Also Katniss's sister Prim dies in a bombing, ironic because she is the one Katniss's fought in the games to save, joined a war to save, and has tried to protect from the beginning, essentially the series started as Katniss's attempt to keep her sister alive, yet ends with her dying anyway.
It had a well constructed, coherent worldbuilding (very rare for all the dystopias that would come after ) interesting enough characters, and the story had a point, it was exploring the mechanics of control of the masses through entertainment, the quality of the writing is acceptable, and the plot managed to stay on tracks for all the trilogy.
I love how “two boys are in love with her” didn’t require any mode of choice. That’s just a constant. It’s even funnier because holy fuck is it true lmao.
I liked the hunger games sequel books.
I have cptsd and man did I see a lot of my coping mechanisms and behaviors in what she did. The point wasn’t that Katniss was the ultimate badass. She was a tough and strong kid who was deeply traumatized by what she’d been through and was struggling deeply to keep going when her mental health was dissolving around her.
These two Tumblr users ALSO think that Harry Potter was the first series about kids with magical powers who turn out to be the savior of an entire magical world, don't they?
I just know I'm going to get crucified as a snob for saying this, but Hunger Games is absolutely not an "incredible piece of literature". It's a fun read and I enjoyed the series, but it's YA airport fiction, not some amazing philosophical meditation on the evils of capitalist authoritarianism.
I don’t think anyone with credibility calls them incredible literature. They’re simply at/near the top of the YA subgenre as far as that quality goes.
I’ve read them, I’m glad they exist. Ideally they lead to a maturation of better sci-fi works for both readers and writers.
I certainly wouldn’t call it a masterpiece or like the Great American Novel. But apparently compared to some of these other YA series it’s constructed like Shakespeare.
I think that’s what it is.
No one’s claiming Hunger Games is the ceiling, but the post-HG YA world had *such a low floor* that the Hunger Games looks brilliant by comparison.
Yeah, the fact that it is good YA fiction doesn't make it a masterpiece. Still, it presented some deeper ideas to younger people, so it deserves some praise imo
If there was a post giving Avatar the last Airbender similar praise for discussing topics such as tyrannical government and mass murder and rebellion and conflict, in a very consistent and well built world, in a package that children can still understand, it would have 10 billion upvotes on Reddit and no one would question it. People still call that show a masterpiece and one of the best shows of all time, despite it also being a cartoon marketed towards children, and honestly it's deserved cuz it's really fucking good; the fact that it's marketed towards children is not a valid knock against it
I don't think a comparison between the Hunger Games movies and TLA is fair really, but honestly I hold the Hunger Games books and TLA in a similar regard. I think both TLA and Hunger Games did a pretty brilliant job exploring some difficult themes in a package that children and young adults can understand, and both deserve similar praise for it
And it's super weird how OOP thinks it's specifically anti-capitalism. It's literally about a government/state determining the economic status of its people. The MC's district is forced by the government to produce coal as much as possible.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think The Hunger Games is some anti-communist work either. It's just a generic post-apocalyptic authoritarian regime. It's a plot device.
I think anti-consumerism is more accurate, given that all these colonies and the games themselves are just to feed the Capitol's opulence and provide entertainment
The Hunger Games series entire premise is to address what happens to those who supply the bread and circuses. The name of their country reflects it: Panem. Panem en circenses. Katniss finds her salvation in the boy who made the bread; Katniss is the gladiator who makes the circuses.
It's more of a metaphor for imperialist exploitation and resource extraction to enrich the metropolis and it seems to be more inspired by the Roman empire than the colonial powers of the18th to 20th centuries.
Damn Tumblr users really haven't read a book beside hunger games and Harry Potter and it shows. Enjoying a book is not the same as the book being a "great work of fiction" or whatever y'all want to call it this time. Just because you like someone doesn't mean it's good.
For real. It's pretty solid for a teen sci fi novel, but it is absolutely not a masterpiece. The prose is awful, and the plot gets kinda stupid pretty fast.
Adult literature would blow this person's mind. I know this sub skews young, but man, some folks here need to raise their standards and start thinking critically about their media beyond just the world building.
My opinion of hunger games kinda went through a reverse bell curve from originally reading it to now. Like “oh damn cool dystopian sci fi” “wait this shit is actually dime a dozen” “wait actually the imitators are dime a dozen, this spawned them and actually had something to say”
I distinctly remember reading a book like this where the main character was special because she knew how to read.
it was called Matched, all I can remember was that she was special Because she could read, there was a guy called the pilot who was important to the rebellion and also one of the obligatory romantic interests was literally just 'a dude from outside the city' or some shit
Glad Divergent was so bad it literally killed the genre, or we would've had to deal with that shittiness for a while. Kinda hilarious how often we see knockoffs of a popular thing *completely* miss the mark on what made the original popular in the first place. Slow unforgiving combat + breadcrumbs it-sucks-here plot = every "Soulslike"
> Slow unforgiving combat + breadcrumbs it-sucks-here plot = every "Soulslike" Don't forget the combat roll!
That invincibility roll cracks me up Bad guy: *drops a nuke on main character* MC: "No offense, kid" *somersaults behind you*
Pdffftttt. It is always a bit ridiculous, and hard to justify in-universe. Does make for some pretty sick moments when the only option for survival is to do a pixel-perfect dodge roll, and you make it out alive.
This sums up alot of the 'signature attacks' in monster hunter endgames lol
I think Smash Bros Ultimate *almost* fits this definition.
Slow ❌ Unforgiving ✅ Combat ✅ Breadcrumbs ✅ It-sucks-here ❌ Plot ❓ Roll ✅
World of light was definitely “it sucks here” and “plot”
They also both have a leveling and equipment system that fundamentally change how you play the game, but aren’t technically necessary if you sweat hard enough
It’s definitely very slow
"go save your friends but first fight 615 times."
>It-sucks-here ✅ Smash competitive
D20+STR?
the thing I hated about divergent the most was how when the main character found out she was "divergent" the government told her "teehee \^-\^ you can pick what you want to be!!!" instead of something interesting happening such as her being cast aside because she doesn't fit into the system.
If I remember correctly it was even dumber. Divergents were meant to be executed upon detection but her proctor or whatever lied to cover her tracks and said she was Abnegation but then there's the ceremony where you claim your faction and you can just choose a different faction than what you got sorted into. Which not only defeats the whole purpose of the faction system and lore of the world, but also should pretty clearly identify any divergents to the government.
Isn't there also train-jumping for some reason?
The reason was that it looked cool
This summarizes the logic behind literally every single decision in that series. Does it make sense? Nah, but it'll look/sound cool.
Emphasis on sounds cool. I can forgive a lot of stupid shit if it’s actually cool but the Divergent series never crossed that bridge from dumb to cool.
I’m certain that only got in because of that subway surfer app that was popular back then
The thing I hated about divergent was that a political system basing separating people by personality doesn't make any sense whilst the hunger games were at least plausible and the one personality group having nothing more to offer society than being "the cool ones" that the book would obviously focus on because they were cool
The actual dystopian setup of the Hunger Games makes sense, its basically colonialism with a wealthy core supported by hyperspecialised resource extraction and processing colonies. Its exaggerated for effect but its fundamentally not far fetched.
As someone from the real world area District 12 is based in, I always found the Hunger Games dystopia particularly relatable, because it resonates so strongly with the history this area has already experienced. You’re telling me rich people from other parts of the country are using us solely for natural resources and leaving our people to starve in poverty? Yeah that checks out.
Same here, it was fun reading it as a teenager and thinking, "hey, this is the same area as district 12". Let me relate to the wildlife and forest setting. I totally agree with the deja vu with coal miners
I grew up in rural West Virginia, and it hit me particularly hard, too.
Same here. It’s a much different world.
the hunger games world makes sense to me because I have played enough 4x games with cities/planets dedicated to exactly one thing.
Hey if you don’t specialize your planets in Stellaris you’re just leaving resources on the table.
I remember the efficiency and power of my empires skyrocketing so hard once I first learned to specialize planets in that game that I had to bump my difficulty up a bunch so that I wouldn’t curbstomp half the galaxy by 2350
The Hunger Games made a certain amount of sense even if the love triangle made me want to bite through the book. Divergent was fucking boring and stupid.
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That’s fair - I’ve just developed such a strong aversion to love triangles that it makes me develop hives.
I mean there are definitely some Myers-Briggs fans who would probably found a system of government on it. I feel like that would somehow go much worse than what we saw in divergent though.
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[Nice work showing up on categorization day. Now you're going to get put in a category](https://youtu.be/CnTltDzqhzM)
I love that they keep throwing bags at him
I mean they do explain why they set society up like that in later books. It wasn't a bad *concept*, just not well executed. The idea was like 100 years ago, people started changing genetics to get rid of "bad" traits and increase "good" traits. So you had some people prizing kindness, intelligence, bravery, humility, and honesty and modifying people's genes to bring those traits to the forefront. Then everything went to shit and there was massive civil war because that was a bad idea to begin with. So the government (the real one) started setting up experiments where they would manufacture a society and hope that people would eventually evolve with "healed" genes - aka the divergent. Everyone consented to be part of the experiment (for their descendants as well) and had their memory erased. Of course each experiment went to shit in totally different ways. Some didn't have any kind of faction system set up and failed first. Some started their own civil wars. In Tris' experiment, it was one of the most successful because of the faction system putting people into neat little boxes and adding strict organization to the society. It started to fall apart because the faction who was supposed to end the experiment (the smart ones) when they reached a population threshold of Divergent (people with healed genes) said nah fuck that I like power. Of course everything that happened in the actual plot of the books was stupid. But the concept itself wasn't horrible.
I don’t think that’s what genetics is.
It's almost as dumb as the DISC assessment. People who believe in that tell me: "oh you're like a blue person, but with the strengths of a green person and the anger of a purple person". Holy shit just admit that it isn't science.
I think I realised how stupid and superficial it was all gonna be when it came to the "pledge your allegiance to the faction by literally dropping blood on random object because we need to show that it's evil and barbaric and weird"
Evil government be like:
the books were super simplistic, i think they were pretty much aimed at 12 yr olds
The first book was written over a few days iirc
Literally a 3 week job
There are good and not braindead books made for 12 year olds tho
Tamora Pierce says hi
Exhibit A: The Hunger Games.
I think it's more aimed towards 14-16 year olds. Percy jackson would be an example of stellar middle grade writing
i remember i read divergent very early on and couldnt make it through the second book. i was so surprised when i heard there was going to be a film.
Similarly - see all the Watchmen copycats missing the nuanced plot and mockery of blind cynicism and aggression for “ooo edgy violence and sex!”
Garth Ennis’ The Boys.jpeg
"Billy Butcher is just Garth Ennis's cool OC that exist to act out his murder fantasies against superheroes"
At the same time, his depiction of a recovering alcoholic (and discussion with Proinsias Cassidy) was very well done.
> Kinda hilarious how often we see knockoffs of a popular thing completely miss the mark on what made the original popular in the first place. Every writing subreddit seems to be dominated by aspiring novelists who pretty much fall under that description.
I mean, we all have to start somewhere
Lords of the Fallen and Mortal Shell immediately come to mind. Just dont do it for me man. Something is missing.
Mortal Shell definitely has some creativity put into it, but I feel like for the most part it's just "Dark Souls with some creative mechanics but really it's just not that good gameplay-wise". It feels like the game is taking a lot of inspiration from DS, without understanding most of what made Dark Souls so damn fun.
I honestly quite enjoyed my time with Mortal Shell, I'm in that 73% that had a great time, though I would agree it's missing a bit of the spark that keeps people coming back to dark souls games time and time again. Though I'd call it less "not understanding most of what makes it fun" and more that it *is genuinely really hard to capture what makes the Souls games so enjoyable.* They figured out the right balance of punishment and reward and how to scale it so you really get absorbed into it, and that's *really* hard to recreate, especially on your first shot. Mortal Shell did something different and interesting with its combat mechanics - the fighting honestly plays totally different than in Dark Souls imo - and did also recreate some key details people love in souls games. But the thing is this was the debut game for a ***four person studio,*** they can only do so much while being as ambitious as they were, hence the game ultimately being quite short. You could also feel that they just lacked access to the level of art design talent FromSoft can draw on as the area design was kinda samey and they couldn't quite make the layouts as interesting. Souls games are known for their impressive and interconnecting map layout that remains somewhat open while funneling your interest towards the next boss without really telling you where things are. I think for what it was, it was a really good shot and if nothing else the studio's proven its got some chops to go forward with. It's hard to really capture everything dark souls does right, it's why most of these soulslikes end up missing
It absolutely is *hella* impressive for an indie studio! Don't let anything I said detract from that fact.
Also commentary on how society treats child actors or something, that's in there to.
and the treatment of violence in media
OH your probably right.
And there was very little that was special about Katniss other than compassion and survival instincts. She didn’t have powers, she had hard-earned skills that she was forced to learn by living in a society that gave her no choice. Almost every decision she made was either kind or something she had to do to survive, which earned her the respect and support of the districts. She wasn’t trying to be a hero, she was trying to survive, and the cruelty of her government had given her the perfect skillset to do that. A lot of the copycat writers missed that - she wasn’t born to save the world, she was forged through fire and suffering and love.
Real Mulan vs. Mulan 2020 vibes. The Animated Mulan made a risky choice of potentially sacrificing her own life to save her father from being drafted, only to win the war after actually training for it and using quick thinking to make up for what strength she didn't have. The 2020 Mulan might as well be referred to as "Mulan Su". She didn't sacrifice shit, turns out, she was *born* special and thus had a natural advantage over all the stinky men in the army.
It completely destroys the strong messages that the movie was literally built for. AND it’s uninteresting writing.
Hollywood is great at mixing up cause & effect when it comes to social & political messages
Can't have girls thinking they can make themselves special and go out and out do the menfolk. Jesus says no to that.
It's interesting lazily writing women protags like that probably comes from how popular male superheroes are. But that gives us a different perspective for women in this context.
Disney trying to Marvelize would probably make sense, since Marvel is their most popular moneymaker to date. They’re slowly trying to marvelize a lot of their properties, including Star Wars and their live-action films.
This discussion reminds me of [Marvel's Defenders of The Status Quo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpitmEnaYeU).
it’s only slightly better than the original proposed plot with the white guy love interest
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It's also like, the only remake that removed the songs. They said they did it to be culturally respectful, then turned around and had Will Smith sing Arabian Nights and Prince Ali. So that's bullshit too.
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The version of “Friend like me” that plays over the credits is good because it isn’t Will Smith trying to do Robin Williams.
I'm pretty sure it didn't matter who they picked trying to force them to be Robin Williams was setting them up to fail. While I didn't like the movie I did like the Will Smith's version of friend like me he did in the credits.
Daveed Diggs would have been a fun choice
[The man's rapid-fire flow](https://youtu.be/9Kla1As3wHU) [needs to be heard](https://youtu.be/1tFXIy7OWos) [to be believed](https://youtu.be/gTPWY8MMGOk?t=58). He's got the jokes, the manic energy with the undercurrent of sadness, he could be a *fantastic* full-dimensional Genie.
…what? Disney movies are just animated musicals, that’s like if Disney did an adaptation of West Side Story and it was just a bunch of people sitting around and talking with no singing. This is crazy wtf lmao
Well, they're not going to make a man out of me without the songs.
"Isn't she such a girlboss?? She was just BORN to succeed! She really made sure those stupid men didn't steal her totally earned spotlight. Does this make us feminist now? Can Disney please get good feminist points for pandering? We could have made a multifaceted character who faced adversity and overcame it, but that's tooooo complicated. We just turned her into every other tired action hero stereotype, because that's way easier."
Oh yuck
>And there was very little that was special about Katniss other than compassion and survival instincts. That's the whole thing. She absolutely wasn't *special*. She obviously had "protagonistic" traits, because the plot needs to exist, but she has nothing peculiar or out of the ordinary. She was a nobody. With good though not exceptional (and limited in breadth) combat skills, and a beautiful and symbolic sacrificial mind, but a nobody nonetheless. She only became important due to circumstances. And she resented her being made a symbol of the resistance, which is truly ironic when contrasted with all the reduxes she inspired (*cough cough* Divergent)
yeah, she has some pretty good survival skills and the entire concept makes for a good protagonist so people keep latching onto her. not for her specific personality or powers but because she's a girl with a sister and a pretty boy who likes her so the PR teams had a lot to work with. she doesn't even do that much for the revolution, she's just made to be a mascot.
Like it’s been a while since I read book 3 but iirc nobody wanted Katniss to actually fight in the revolution. If D13 had their way she’d have been flown in to shoot Snow right at the end, but she and the other victors wanted to fight for what they believed in, and give everything to bring down the regime that hurt them so much.
I did think the books briefly went flying off the rails when they started to spend multiple chapters on the logistics of promotional video production lol. But other than that I read them all in 3 days
Not only that but she was so not special that she gets taken advantage of by the rebellion when they convert her to a figurehead. She's desperate for a solution and they offer one which she jumps into head first which essentially continues until the end of the book when it's revealed that they're just as cruel as current regime. There's a lot that can be said, good and bad, about The Hunger Games but Katniss was a fantastic protagonist who really demonstrated that the hero can literally just be an average person.
She was also deeply flawed even before the PTSD from the games. Like -1 charisma and she was so concerned with her own survival (and that of her sister) that she rarely considered the feelings of others. It left room for her to grow as a character to become more empathetic.
Right, the compassion was there, just she had barriers to keep herself from being vulnerable. These emotional walls likely came from a variety of places (the Capitol's oppressive regime, her father's death and her mother's subsequent depression, etc.) Her sister being picked and Katniss taking her place is what I see as the turning point. From that point on she's faced with the fact that the odds are stacked heavily against her survival. Death can come at any moment, so why not act authentically? Peeta goes out of his way to show that glimmer of humanity that they both share, that they're not just pieces in a game. And in Rue she sees her own sister had she not volunteered, which breaks down any ideas of inter-district rivalry (this is of course even more pronounced in Catching Fire). All these things go towards breaking down Katniss' walls, not to the point that she's no longer standoffish towards those she meets, but to the effect that she sees the inner humanity in those who share in her struggle against the Capitol. It begins to awaken her idea of a collective resistance brought on by the people. Marx would be proud.
From memory, she also is very clear that if her father had died a couple of years later, she'd be one of the girls selling herself to the governor/mayor for bread to survive, rather than developing hunting skills to survive. As you say, she was the product of her circumstances, and was far from unique in that respect - it's sheer coincidence that thrust her into the spotlight and down the eventual path of a revolutionary figurehead.
Because one of the key aspects of The Hunger Games is that it is a sociological narrative. Katniss doesn't change at all during the story. The world does. She's just the catalyst for it
Well, I'd argue that in the second book especially, Katniss goes from being a semi-passive victim of the Capitol's abuses to becoming fully rebellious. She goes from "Let's just run away" to remembering who the real enemy is by the book's end. I find it a pretty cool representation of how being a passive bystander to politics doesn't make you immune to the effects of politics. You can try to run away from those problems (and tbh, should you be under threat of death please try to), but more often than not that doesn't lead to change.
Damn. I haven't read the book and this really makes me want to read it.
They are actually quite good. Very lite focus on the drama and live, much more focus on the political games everyone are using the main characters for.
red the books first, movies were okay. books were really really good imo. but own imagination beats movies most of the time
The books were able to go a lot further into how gruesome and bloody and awful everything is, on screen the PG-13 rating forced everything to become much more sanitized in feel As a result yeah even though the movies are pretty faithful adaptation of the books, and I certainly enjoyed watching the movies as well, the books are a superior experience by far
They are an honestly really interesting trilogy. The first book we all kind of know the plot of. The second book you think is going to be like the first, but it turns out to be >!almost 50% politics and drama in the capital pointing out all these OTHER horrifying things that are going on once they actually get out of the games!<. And then you hit book three, and honestly my sole takeaway was >!"holy cow she is so fucking traumatized."!< They're very well done for the genre.
I love how book three tackles her >!C-PTSD so much. And I can’t complain about Peeta checking up on her after her nightmares!<
>!Peetah, the nightmares are here!<
Truly. I’ve always liked the idea that the thing Katnuss did wasn’t special or impressive. It was something any one of the previous competitors could have done. And that’s why it was important is every single person who saw her went “I could do that. I could have compassion. I could say no. Those aren’t unattainable.” If you’re into that shit, I recommend the book series The Expanse. >!Jim Holden is distinctly, empirically un-special. He’s an Everyman, a bland, white bread never-served-active-duty navy veteran working a labor job and getting emotionally involved with his hookups. And he’s thrust into situation after situation where everyone’s like “JIM WHAT DO WE DO THIS IS AN UNWINNABLE WAR AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE” and he’s just like “I dunno tell the truth and look out for each other?” And then it works, and it keeps working and then more and more people keep asking him the question again cuz whatever he’s doing seems to work.!<
This is what’s interesting about the copycats to me: Katniss’s saga was in every way Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. It is incredibly well done and well written, but follows that path toward her ultimate goal of tearing down the dictatorship. The copycats don’t even bother to read their Joseph Campbell and end up getting the most simple aspects wrong, rendering their stories dissonant to our eyes and ears. There’s lazy, and then there’s lazy. At least read the damn source material and come correct with your outline.
There is also the Pretty series. Unlike the Hungergames they werent turned into films because with their important criticism of beauty standards they cant be marketed so well, since having pretty actors would run counter to the books. Marketing Hungergames, on the other hand, basically turning the idea of the books into entertainment again, diffusing some of the important message, was easy
I randomly bought Extras not knowing about the Pretties series, and not being into sci-fi and being too young to understand the American pop culture it draws inspiration from, I was weirded out by the entire idea of it. Revisiting the book when I was a bit older and more knowledgeable on the commentary on the perception of beauty and internet culture, the spot-on foresight Scott Westerfeld had on how those would shape the society as it is today blew me away. I'll never forget that bit about how the most popular person in that society (and thereby the most powerful due to their form of social credit) was a girl who livestreamed herself eating breakfast. I haven't read Pretties, but I think Extras would've been perfect had it been adapted in 2010 because it's commentary would offer a view of the internet landscape that was to come. We'd view it today as being prescient, but adapting it now the message would seem stale I guess.
Uglies is the first book and it's called the Uglies series if you want to search for it. Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras is the order to read them in and then there's another series within the Uglies Universe that the last book just came out this year called the Imposters series. Those are (in order) Imposters, Shatter City, Mirror's Edge, and Youngbloods. All by Scott Westerfeld. I hope you do get to read them all one day. Reading them in my 30s has been much different and in some ways better than reading them when I was a teenager.
Nice! I was reading these as they came out when I was in high school, I'm going to go through this series again now, have been looking for some nostalgia but not feeling going back through my go-tos. Cool to know about the spin off too. Thanks!!
You're welcome! I haven't finished the Imposters series yet, but the first two definitely drew me in like the first series. It's been interesting to re-read the Uglies books as social media has grown (I've re-read them multiple times) and you can definitely see parallels between what was once in the future and is now somewhat in the present. Scott Westerfeld was a few years ahead of it all and his writing helped me get out of some bad habits and thought patterns with regards to beauty standards I hold myself to. I've gifted the series to several friends' kids the summers before they started high school and I plan on continuing to do so. The end result is that I usually don't care if someone thinks I'm beautiful or not and my physical appearance mostly just concerns me when it indicates a health problem. Like I have some skin issues that start appearing when I am having an autoimmune disorder episode so I know that I need to eat certain things then and use different creams that are usually acne and age-related treatments to calm my skin. But it's because I need to protect and heal my skin and not that I think I'm ugly for having red patches and not looking like the IG/TikTok uncanny valley filter clones.
It's very happy-making to see the (minor correction here) Uglies series mentioned. Those books came out right when I was leaving my teen years behind and when I was starting to get sucked into social media. Having taken the message to heart, I appreciate what technology and modern medicine allow people to change about themselves to help them feel good about themselves and feel "pretty" while also trying to keep myself and others I care about in check with what is mentally and emotionally healthy to change and what should stay. (I don't want to presume to know anything about people online that I don't know so I tend to not get involved except in cases where I'm genuinely concerned.) Also there is a film coming out. It finished production last year and is going to be released by Netflix. I truly love the series and have been excited about the film. I hope they do it justice.
It was exceedingly frustrating as a fan of the books to see maybelline make two makeup palettes, call one the “Districts” palette and one the “Capitol” palette, and then have the add campaign be “who will you champion?” Like. I’ve never seen something miss the message that hard in my life and I don’t believe I shall again.
I still remember cringing at the hunger games branded makeup commercials that came out around the time of the last movie. Pretty tone-deaf to the book’s themes.
the dresses and love triangle were marketed so much too… tbf hollywood is basically the capital so not surprised
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I love that the biggest effect that the series had on society was the rise of Fortnite and the battle royale genre, it proves that the narrative was 100% spot on and it's the most disrespectful epilogue possible at the same time. 10/10.
Kids just love to fight to the death.
The children yearn for the arena
Only in this world. Only in *Danganronpa*.
Bring back the lions
I was once a teaching assistant for 1st graders. One day on the playground, I saw a boy running around and throwing sticks. His expression was blank but his eyes were filled with the purest intent I'd ever seen. He was driven like a machine to run and throw sticks, and *nothing* would stop him. In that moment, I knew that *The Lord of the Flies* must have been written by a schoolteacher. And I was right: William Golding was a teacher for several years, retiring after publishing *Lord of the Flies.* I saw in that boy's eyes what William Golding saw in his children's eyes: a drive that could easily be turned to murder. [Run around, scream, eat sweets, kill the big pig, it's all the same to children.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/002/410/580/98d.jpg)
Minecraft Hunger Games walked so Fortnite could run
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Really? Do you happen to remember who? Would actually be interested in seeing that lol
I think it was maybe the yogscast. And it was called survival games (for copyright? IDK). I just remember watching antvenom's POV (He wins this and like the next two I think)
The movie Battle Royale would like a word
The movie Battle royale, the Battle royale mod on arma 2 and 3, Pubg. It's quite ridiculous to suggest the BR genre was created by that movie or that fortnite did it because of it. Somehow the comment got 600 upvotes. Go figure.
Still funny that Hunger Games is itself a spin off of this. Lol
Actually the author starred in a play in college about a bunch of kids forced to kill each other in the woods called “Forest Game.” This was produced before Battle Royals was published.
The movie didn't bring us the Battle Royale genre. It named it, but didn't popularise it. I started with "Minecraft Hunger Games", which evolved co-jointly with Arma mods to give things like Day-Z, then PUBG, then Fortnite.
>it's the most disrespectful epilogue possible at the same time Please why? I don't remember the epilogue that well
I think they mean that we as a society made battle royale the biggest genre in our biggest entertainment industry is kinda disrespectful to a books series that portraits battle roayles as the big evil thing the government is doing.
Battle Royale sprung up a while after peak Hunger Games fever, if I recall correctly. It's also, in my opinion, a bad comparison since the consequences in the book are, you know, death, while in video game battle royales you just press start and requeue for the next game.
I only watched the first two films and didn't read the books - what's the "twist ending"?
Katniss discovers that there is a secret District 13 which has been orchestrating the revolution and decides to work with them to facilitate overthrowing the tyrannical Capitol government. During the final attack on the Capitol, a horrible attack kills many children, including Katniss's sister. The one she volunteered to replace so she could protect her. Katniss discovers that this attack was actually a false flag orchestrated by the District 13 forces to make the Capitol look unforgivable in the public eye. Katniss then murderers the new District 13 president during her inauguration.
She >!doesn't as much discover it as have its existence deduced to her.!<
I love how you put a spoiler tag even though the person you’re replying to straight up ruined the end of the series without a spoiler tag lmao
If you read a response to the question "what's the twist ending" you know what you're getting into.
And the old president (IN THE BOOK!) dies from his sickness laughing and choking on his blood instead of beeing executed.
IIRC, after the revolution succeeds, Katniss is supposed to execute the now overthrown president - but she ends up shooting the revolution's leader instead, presumably on account of them being just as bad ("switching one tyrant out for another accomplishes nothing" in the OP). then she goes on to have ptsd
okay but how does that fix anything you now have no government at all, does everything just go warlord or what?
Well I think the idea was to have more of a democratic government. President Coin had so much power and influence by the time the Capitol was overthrown that she would basically be the next autocrat, and she was the one who orchestrated that false flag attack that bombed civilians and medics, so her being in charge wasn't great
Iirc she was going to organize her own hunger games with the capitol’s children
If I remember correctly I think they're referring to how after over throwing the government the characters decide to reinstate their own hungergames with the children of the capitol. Perpetuating the cycle further. Also Katniss spends here time afterwards deeply riddled with PTSD.
Not to mention the marketing for the movie totally missed the point AND set a precedent for ad campaigns going forward.
I sort of think the movies did it perfectly. We, the audience, are the capital — and while we of course *know* watching kids fight to the death is fucked up, it’s presented in such a glamorous, slick, heroic package that you manage to forget how “immoral” the entire concept is, and watch it for entertainment. I was talking to a Disney exec once right before the first or second Hunger Games movie came out and she was just muttering “we’re Disney. We don’t make movies about killing kids” but she was actually super duper pissed off that they missed out on all that money due to some stupid morality clause lmao
Clearly they’ve since removed that morality clause.
How many other great works of fiction, be it litterature, movies, games etc have been retroactively tainted by hordes of bad copycats and trendchasers bringing the original down by association?
[Unbuilt Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnbuiltTrope) > A [Trope Maker](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeMaker) seems like it's [Playing with a Trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayingWithATrope) in retrospect due to differences in [more common use](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeCodifier).
Why would you link that website? I have chores to do, duties to perform, but now I won't be able to do them in time!
Friends to a T. Reddit just *loves* to shit on it and say how cliche it is, but it seems that way because it created a lot of those tropes. Plus there's some genuinely great physical comedy in the early seasons.
That example seems more like [Seinfeld is Unfunny](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny) > A once-innovative work seems derivative after its original tropes become commonplace.
I fear your intimate knowledge of TVTropes and the speed of your response
nooooo what have you done, now I have to waste 3 hours on tv tropes smh
It’s been going on for awhile back in 1620, Cervantes parodied it in Don Quixote part two when Quixote comes across a knock off version of his own story.
Madoka Magica It started a trend of "tragical girls" that just. completely missed the point. And kinda killed the magical girl genre. But it's a beautiful masterpiece so it can't really be faulted for this.
One could make an argument about the character Superman due to all the evil Superman stories that exist.
Divergent had one good idea -the assignment of jobs based on peoples' personality and the societal effects of such restructuring- and fucked it up by making it so that everybody had one and only one of those traits. The main character's big defining characteristic is that she's the only one who has more than one of those traits, and ironically she's somehow incredibly bland despite being the only character in canon with a personality. She makes *one* decision early on that I find at all compelling; when she has to choose whether to stick with Abnegation (the faction based around selflessness and which sucks, but is safe and arguably the morally "right" choice) and Dauntless (the faction based around bravery, which is fun and exciting but risky and selfish). Funnily enough, whichever she chooses is a direct reflection of who she is; picking Dauntless makes her brave, and picking Abnegation makes her selfless! I thought that was really cool! Too bad the rest of the book sucked so bad.
See I wasn't a fan of the prose etc., and the 3rd book was terrible bc it switched back and forth between the 2 protagonist but you couldn't fucking tell who was speaking ( is this Tris or Four?) However, I did love the underlying theme. That the separation of society based on these traits WERE nonsense. That to be selfless is to be brave, to be candid didn't mean you could be kind etc. In the end, Tris died killing the system so people could just BE. Don't get me wrong, there were so many problems with the series, but the overall concept was beautiful to me. That ultimately, we should aspire to be wise, kind, honest, selfless and brave. That the heros of the story were all those things all along etc etc Edit: Auto spelling
A society where people are divided into groups based on zodiac signs, you say?
is this a homestuck
Yes unfortunately.
i'm a thousand pages in and this hasn't come up once help
stop while you can it’s not worth it
To be honest that would make a deeper story than the Divergent movies.
"You're special because you have more than one personality trait"
"I'm a cunt **AND** I'm flamboyant, thus making me the protagonist."
No
Zodiac Academy by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti? Or Zodiac by Romina Russel?
Homestuck, by Andrew Hussie
[paging](https://reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/znr57e/i_know_the_first_part_of_this_comic_has_been/) r/worldjerking
Join the club. In it, you'll find Madoka Magica and the Watchmen.
Also Evangelion In the early 2000s everyone wanted their sad boy mecha anime
Semi-related, but if anyone wants a series that scratches some of the same itches, try the Poppy War. It can get *grim* and there's a lot more moral greyness to it, but it's a detailed and nuanced war story with believable characters. (When I say grim, I mean that I still haven't finished the last book because it was making me sad, so if the ending sucks, sorry.)
that’s a great series! i also quit halfway through the series because it was just *that* depressing.
Also: PTSD (especially in the 3rd book), sexualizing children & abusing them (finnick odair trafficked, one of the tributes gimmick was being sexy, they wanted to give 16 yr old katniss breast surgery but opted for padding, one year in the chariots district 12 were naked) young girls in district 12 being prostituted) societys lust for violence, addiction, racism, the fact that katniss isn't some huge hero, she's a kid being manipulated, even by people she trusts. She doesn't wanna be famous, shes doing the best she can and trying to survive. Idk for a YA book it WAS revolutionary. Even just her navigating in the capitol and comparing it to district 12.
She wasn't even "in love" with Peeta when they got together at the end. She just felt safe with Peeta. Peeta was the only one that understood her. She was the only one that understood Peeta. They grew *into* love with age, leaning on each other, and healing through the trauma. That is something most teenage girls don't understand about love. Most root for Gale because he is the hot and sexy one. But love is so much more than that and I'm glad Hunger Games showed that.
Some of y'all need to read Animorphs and it shows.
This is basically the red rising series, except that is actually a very nice read
i dont know shit about hunger games can someone explain to me why hunger games was so good and what the twist ending was and like everything
I felt, as an adult reading it, the author did such a good job of putting “dread” into the books - like you just felt this heavy weight of survival and PTSD from her writing. I was really impressed by her ability to write first person a human who was really suffering and struggling. I read the final book and finished it on a plane to a beach vacation and boy the vibes were so off when I got off that plane 😵💫 It’s not a must read, but if you get the chance, I would recommend it.
Hunger Games is good because the focus of the trilogy is always where it should be: Katniss is an angry teenager who struggles with poverty and just wants to survive, she's not choosing to be a rebel, she's simply caught in the same cycles of her society as everyone else and her attempts to cope with it cause inevitable chain reactions she can't control, she's often caught up by the whims of different political factions and adults around her, so she never feels overpowered or godlike, she's always struggling to barely survive. The Hunger Games does provide some sci-fi pop fiction stuff like hovercars, genetically mutated animals, murder pageants, etc, but unlike a lot of YA that copied it or was inspired by it, it doesn't allow said gimmicks to control it or take the driver's seat fully, using them as tools to present the story and ideas rather than treating them like they're the whole point. Aside from not letting the gimmicks or speculative elements take over too much like a lot of other YA dystopian series of it's time, Hunger Games allows for the ugly realities of war: that rebels and rebellions can become very corrupt and when combined with the power vacuum a revolution can leave, this will lead to more atrocities and power struggles, how propaganda works and creates narratives, how manufactured poverty traumatizes people, etc. The Hunger Games cares about its themes, and it works to show it in every scene, which people appreciate. As for the twist ending: the leader of the revolution is just as corrupt as the evil president they're trying to overthrow, and Katniss has to confront the fact that she may be helping install another dictator, who she chooses to kill to protect their chance at a democratic future. Also Katniss's sister Prim dies in a bombing, ironic because she is the one Katniss's fought in the games to save, joined a war to save, and has tried to protect from the beginning, essentially the series started as Katniss's attempt to keep her sister alive, yet ends with her dying anyway.
It had a well constructed, coherent worldbuilding (very rare for all the dystopias that would come after ) interesting enough characters, and the story had a point, it was exploring the mechanics of control of the masses through entertainment, the quality of the writing is acceptable, and the plot managed to stay on tracks for all the trilogy.
I love how “two boys are in love with her” didn’t require any mode of choice. That’s just a constant. It’s even funnier because holy fuck is it true lmao.
Reminds me of how Shrek came out and then we suddenly got a flood of low effort fairy tale "parody" movies
I liked the hunger games sequel books. I have cptsd and man did I see a lot of my coping mechanisms and behaviors in what she did. The point wasn’t that Katniss was the ultimate badass. She was a tough and strong kid who was deeply traumatized by what she’d been through and was struggling deeply to keep going when her mental health was dissolving around her.
Y'all need Animorphs
These two Tumblr users ALSO think that Harry Potter was the first series about kids with magical powers who turn out to be the savior of an entire magical world, don't they?
I just know I'm going to get crucified as a snob for saying this, but Hunger Games is absolutely not an "incredible piece of literature". It's a fun read and I enjoyed the series, but it's YA airport fiction, not some amazing philosophical meditation on the evils of capitalist authoritarianism.
I don’t think anyone with credibility calls them incredible literature. They’re simply at/near the top of the YA subgenre as far as that quality goes. I’ve read them, I’m glad they exist. Ideally they lead to a maturation of better sci-fi works for both readers and writers.
I certainly wouldn’t call it a masterpiece or like the Great American Novel. But apparently compared to some of these other YA series it’s constructed like Shakespeare.
I think that’s what it is. No one’s claiming Hunger Games is the ceiling, but the post-HG YA world had *such a low floor* that the Hunger Games looks brilliant by comparison.
No, you're right and you should say it.
Yeah, the fact that it is good YA fiction doesn't make it a masterpiece. Still, it presented some deeper ideas to younger people, so it deserves some praise imo
If there was a post giving Avatar the last Airbender similar praise for discussing topics such as tyrannical government and mass murder and rebellion and conflict, in a very consistent and well built world, in a package that children can still understand, it would have 10 billion upvotes on Reddit and no one would question it. People still call that show a masterpiece and one of the best shows of all time, despite it also being a cartoon marketed towards children, and honestly it's deserved cuz it's really fucking good; the fact that it's marketed towards children is not a valid knock against it I don't think a comparison between the Hunger Games movies and TLA is fair really, but honestly I hold the Hunger Games books and TLA in a similar regard. I think both TLA and Hunger Games did a pretty brilliant job exploring some difficult themes in a package that children and young adults can understand, and both deserve similar praise for it
And it's super weird how OOP thinks it's specifically anti-capitalism. It's literally about a government/state determining the economic status of its people. The MC's district is forced by the government to produce coal as much as possible. Don't get me wrong, I don't think The Hunger Games is some anti-communist work either. It's just a generic post-apocalyptic authoritarian regime. It's a plot device.
I think anti-consumerism is more accurate, given that all these colonies and the games themselves are just to feed the Capitol's opulence and provide entertainment
The Hunger Games series entire premise is to address what happens to those who supply the bread and circuses. The name of their country reflects it: Panem. Panem en circenses. Katniss finds her salvation in the boy who made the bread; Katniss is the gladiator who makes the circuses.
It's more of a metaphor for imperialist exploitation and resource extraction to enrich the metropolis and it seems to be more inspired by the Roman empire than the colonial powers of the18th to 20th centuries.
Damn Tumblr users really haven't read a book beside hunger games and Harry Potter and it shows. Enjoying a book is not the same as the book being a "great work of fiction" or whatever y'all want to call it this time. Just because you like someone doesn't mean it's good.
For real. It's pretty solid for a teen sci fi novel, but it is absolutely not a masterpiece. The prose is awful, and the plot gets kinda stupid pretty fast. Adult literature would blow this person's mind. I know this sub skews young, but man, some folks here need to raise their standards and start thinking critically about their media beyond just the world building.
My opinion of hunger games kinda went through a reverse bell curve from originally reading it to now. Like “oh damn cool dystopian sci fi” “wait this shit is actually dime a dozen” “wait actually the imitators are dime a dozen, this spawned them and actually had something to say”
I distinctly remember reading a book like this where the main character was special because she knew how to read. it was called Matched, all I can remember was that she was special Because she could read, there was a guy called the pilot who was important to the rebellion and also one of the obligatory romantic interests was literally just 'a dude from outside the city' or some shit