The first real conversation Katniss has with Peeta is when he tells her that he wants to die as himself, that he doesn't want the games to change him into something he's not, and that he wants to keep his identity and prove he's more than just a piece in their games because that's the only thing he has left to care about.
The first time we see Lucy Gray she sings a song that basically says that nothing they could take from her was worth keeping. "Can't take my past. Can't take my history... You can't take my charm. You can't take my health."
The capitol has taken everything from them both, but at the same time, they could never take away who they are.
They are both likeable charismatic and funny, with the kindest hearts, and incredibly loyal to the people they care about.
At the same time, everything they do before the games, and during is calculated. Lucy Gray singing a love song and winning the hearts of the capitol. Peeta confesses he's in love with his district partner, therefore cementing her identity as desirable. Both of them know how to sway people with words, how to charm people, and how to manipulate crowds. Neither of them has any problem doing so to keep themselves, and the people they love safe.
Lucy Gray's song The Old Therebefore, about learning how to love and live her life to the fullest before death, a final and calculated stroke in a last-ditch effort to save herself from the arena. This evokes enough emotion in the watchers to get them to rise to their feet and plead for her life alongside Snow.
Snow, watching the 74th and preparing for the 75th Hunger Games sees Lucy Gray in Katniss. A young girl, from the 12th district. Unafraid at the reaping. Selling a false love story, manipulating a boy who loves her in order to get out and supporting the revolution with the mockingjay as her symbol.
He threatens her family to get her to sell that she and Peeta are in love, to prevent the revolution, because obviously, she's pretending. He's had experience with a girl just like her before. He has no doubt that she has the acting ability to sell this story because clearly, she manipulated the first Hunger Games in her favor, the same way Lucy Gray manipulated him.
Watching the interviews for the 75th Hunger Games he realizes-
Katniss is just an impulsive girl, in a Mockingjay dress she didn't know about, made by someone who supports the revolution.
Peeta is a boy who has the ability to move people with just his words. He made Katniss desirable, he was the one who sold the love story, and he was the one to make their romance seem real. Katniss only started the revolution because she would rather risk dying with him than live without him. A concept President Snow was completely unfamiliar with. And it is with all these realizations crashing around him Peeta drops the baby bomb. He knows the baby's not real, and so does Snow. But it evokes enough emotion in the watchers to get them to rise to their feet and plead for the lives of the tributes.
Is it Lucy Gray or Peeta?
By the time Snow realizes he's made a mistake, it's too late.
Peeta is still charming and manipulating the capitol. Katniss is in love.
He goes up against a kindhearted boy expecting to beat Sejanus again, only to find out that it's Lucy Gray he's fighting; knowing he will never be able to escape their ghosts.
-from a conversation i had with @grandtyphoonpoetry breaking down every character in the hunger games.
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It's about Crowley bearing witness to Aziraphale's desire, about the way that desire is animal and visceral and enormous and terrifying*. And about how Crowley sees that and wants it. Crowley offers the ox rib and watches Aziraphale eat because eating provides them no sustenance, it's purely for pleasure, sensual, selfish. And Crowley introduces Aziraphale to this, and thousands of years later still takes obvious pleasure in feeding Aziraphale, in watching him eat. In watching Aziraphale's pleasure.
And I think it's significant the things we see Crowley put into his body in s2, and why: six shots of espresso, as something bracing before seeing what it is that made Aziraphale call him in his "something's wrong" tone; whiskey, because he has to give Aziraphale some bad news; wine, because they "might as well get comfortable" during the storm coming down on Job, after Aziraphale learns that Crowley is actually pretty unhappy with Job's suffering; and poison, to dispose of it so Elspeth (or Wee Morag, I've fogotten which is which) doesn't die. Crowley doesn't take Aziraphale's "something that calms you down", only consumes things that not only don't bring him pleasure but are an attempt to prevent pain. Crowley, who introduced Aziraphale to this important physical, sensual, selfish pleasure, denies it to himself. He denies himself the eccles cakes, he denies himself partaking in food, and he denies himself Aziraphale.
And we see throughout the rest of the season other things he's denying himself: the comfort and safety of a home in the bookshop in favor of the mobility and ready-made escape of living in the Bentley, the surety of saying what he really means during the confession. He cannot bring himself to admit what he wants, that he wants. Gabriel and Beelzebub "going off together" is not what he wants. He wants Aziraphale, but he doesn't say that, because he's never, in the years and years and years we've seen this season, let himself want or be seen wanting. "Going off together" is as close as he can get to speaking it. "A group of the two of us" is as close as he can get. So he has to watch as Aziraphale leaves and takes his pleasure in the world with him.
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the way can't catch me now could easily be about sejanus too is a stroke of genius on olivia's part. because, in a way, snow was haunted by sejanus. sejanus' death was his final pushing point into cruelty. sejanus was the only good left in him, the only thing holding him to goodness, but the moment coriolanus betrayed him, he was changed. he became snow. he is haunted by sejanus in the jabberjays, the mockingjays, he sees him in katniss, in her stubbornness, in her unwillingness to be easy for others to shallow, in her bravery, in her fierceness. everywhere he looked, he saw sejanus, in the whole rebellion, in the face of his parents who basically adopted snow, in katniss honoring rue's death by surrounding her with flowers the same way sejanus honored marcus' body by sprinkling bread on him to help his journey. he caged peeta, the same way he wanted to cage lucy gray, but he couldn't cage katniss. he couldn't cage sejanus. no matter how hard he tried, sejanus remained a good person, remained true to himself till his death. he killed sejanus but he couldn't kill what he stood for, he couldn't kill the inherent goodness in people. lucy haunted him till the ends of his days, but so did sejanus.
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