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SUZANNE COLLINS FAILED HER DISABLED CHARACTERS & HERE'S WHY: A THREAD
all of the characters who came in the top ten in the 74th games are named except two. ( not counting foxface bc we all know that's not her name but like it's enough of an identifier to count ) and do you know which one isn't named and is barely given a passing mention?
the boy from district ten who has a "crippled foot". yes that is a direct quote. ( th other one who isn't named is the district three boy, who isn't a MAJOR character. but we know how he died, which is more than can be said for the boy from ten. )
and that's not even getting into the time katniss was like 'yeah ppl treat this mentally disabled woman as a pet lmao' and just ?? that's framed as being BETTER than murdering them?? and no one says, 'hm, maybe that's not how we should be talking about another HUMAN PERSON.
here's the full quote, because it's absolutely goddamn horrifying: "There’s a little girl, one of Greasy Sae’s grandkids, who wanders around the Hob. She’s not quite right, but she’s treated as a sort of pet. People toss her
scraps and things."
scraps and things."
in the later books peeta! is an amputee!! and suzanne is SO inconsistent bringing up when this actually affects him. similarly, katniss is partially deaf and that affects her how? not at all.
the disabled victors in catching fire are also treated like absolute garbage.
chaff was one of the last to die in the arena in 75 and what does he get! nothing!
chaff was one of the last to die in the arena in 75 and what does he get! nothing!
and why? because he is a black disabled man. there was NO REASON for him not to be in the alliance in catching fire, esp considering he and haymitch were friends, except that he falls into a bunch of minorities that suzanne hates and will not go away with his visible disability.
also, wiress ( and beetee, though his isn't as explicit ) is heavily autistic coded and suzanne spent wiress's entire time on screen bullying her and johanna is NEVER like, confronted about it????
like, wiress's canonical personality traits are:
1) special interest in technology
2) shuts down & goes nonverbal when sensory overload
3) socially awkward
which like, are standard autistic traits in media.
1) special interest in technology
2) shuts down & goes nonverbal when sensory overload
3) socially awkward
which like, are standard autistic traits in media.
and johanna never expresses remorse for the way she treats beetee and wiress, who are BOTH treated as though they're weak despite both of them having won the hunger games & canonically beetee killed SIX PEOPLE in his games.
which, speaking of johanna, her addiction in mockingjay is a prime example of suzanne sending people offscreen when they're dealing with trauma and entirely avoiding it. she handles katniss & peeta's trauma with a ten foot pole
and if a character is more ( visibly ) traumatized than katniss and peeta, she doesn't know what to do with them! take, for example, annie and finnick. annie is treated like she's crazy by everyone, including other victors.
annie is infantilized in fandom, as well as canon to an extent ( wiress, too, is often infantilized ) and finnick's mental health issues and trauma are entirely ignored until mockingjay and then we address it, but only for five minutes before we kill him.
and beetee! beetee whom i love! in mockingjay beetee is disabled because of the knife he got to the back in cf, and cannot walk because of it. but like. he sustains said injury at the cornucopia and goes thru the rest of the games w/o any issues????
and like. i'm not saying that CAN'T happen — human bodies are weird and resilient and complex and i am not a doctor.
i'm just saying it's a little goddamn convenient for her to only bring it up later on when there are no real consequences to this choice & she doesn't have to do any research or effort into portraying a disabled character, and she still gets points for representation!!
like i get making ur fictional totalitarian society shit to disabled people because irl society is often also, in fact, shitty to us, but if you do that you have to actually, idk, address the fact that what they're doing is bad because otherwise it looks like you're condoning it!
also this thread does not even TOUCH her issues w addiction, of which there are many.
anyway in conclusion @ suzanne
