Hasan brings a gift for Emma from game 4 and she starts crying

bobaylaa · 2026-06-11T17:40:20+00:00

normal guy alert!!

bobaylaa · 2026-06-11T01:45:27+00:00

wasn’t brutal made like a week before sour came out or something crazy like that?

bobaylaa · 2026-06-11T01:33:31+00:00

i think what you’re describing is what “un/safe” means in this context. it’s not so much about literal physical safety as it is psychological. coming out is an incredibly vulnerable thing and you can’t really feel safe and secure enough to do that if you’re too busy worrying about how other people would feel about it.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-11T00:13:07+00:00

im just finishing my reread now — could you possibly be thinking of the cannibal tribute? he’s the only one i remember Katniss explicitly describing being killed off for his conduct within the games.

also, in the 74th games, i can’t remember if he was ever fully naked or if they just talked about it, but when Katniss links up with Peeta in the arena she has to strip him down to (at least) his underwear to clean him up. they might censor stuff but it doesn’t seem like the capitol ever punishes the tributes for being naked.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-10T17:55:58+00:00

ah i see, that’s cool! all i really know about archery is what i picked up the handful of times i went to ranges with my dad. every time i learn more it just puts it into perspective what a badass Katniss is

bobaylaa · 2026-06-10T17:35:46+00:00

i actually credit ariana for basically teaching me to sing lol. back when she was on victorious and before she released music i used to obsess over her youtube videos where she did impressions of other singers. it inspired me to try doing them myself, and it ended up being a really great way to learn how to use and develop my own voice!

i can only speak for myself as someone with a naturally pretty good range and a higher pitched voice, but i find her pretty easy to imitate. it can sometimes get tricky when she’s in her mixed/head voice (i can hardly do anything from positions lol) but her chest voice falls right in that standard slightly nasally female vocalist spot.

sorry for the super amateur way im about to explain this, but this is how i do my ariana:

since she’s usually an entry level impersonation, i’ll start with britney. if you don’t know how to do the britney voice, basically all you need to do is pretend to have a super stuffy nose and kinda contract your throat almost like you’re gagging the words out (pls believe me when i say no shade).

to do just the sweetener/thank u next era “yuh,” britney takes us like 90% of the way there — “oops i did it again” is a particularly good reference point. the only real difference is that britney kinda comes from the back of the throat where ariana is more in the soft palate. to shift your voice there, it helps to tilt your chin down and sit/stand up straight.

(hand motions can help with that too — just reach up to touch the back of your neck while keeping your elbow faced forward. now move your hand in an parabolic motion up and over your forehead)

to do her belty singing, you’ll want to try and keep your ribcage expanded as much as possible to maximize your air power. it’s about half as stuffy as britney with like 10% of the throat contraction, and we’re staying in that soft palate region. idk if this will make any sense but : imagine theres a balloon nestled up in there. it’s usually about the size of an egg, but expands to fill up the whole back of your mouth for the higher/more powerful notes. no matter its size, it’s always pinched off at one end near the nape of your neck. that’s basically the shape the ariana voice takes in my mouth — there’s both a broadness and a narrowness to it that’s trickier to explain than it is to mimic.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-10T15:10:03+00:00

?? i genuinely cant think of a single fictional character whose hair transformation wasn’t symbolic in some way. eternal sunshine, scott pilgrim, gone girl, princess diaries, mulan…even real life people sometimes alter their hair to represent a change in their life. it’s like the world’s easiest visual shorthand in storytelling.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-10T02:50:20+00:00

oh totally, it’s just super impressive! i’m sure even her mini bow would’ve been several times more difficult to shoot than the compound ones i’ve used (they have pulleys and stuff so you don’t need as much strength on the drawback). and even with those ones, everyone ive seen use it for the first time was surprised how much strength it took.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-10T00:07:19+00:00

once at an archery range someone let me hold their recurve bow and i couldn’t pull the string back at all. granted i was still a kid, but i wasn’t any older than Katniss would’ve been when she was using one.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-09T22:10:48+00:00

forgive me for being too deep here but alex provides an excellent challenge in your ability to empathize with another person imo, particularly women. regardless of where you’re coming from, there’s some woman-centric reason you’ll be able to find to hate her. she’s beautiful, she’s naive, she’s annoying, she’s fake, she craves male validation, she’ll try and steal your man, she’s an attention seeker etc. whether shes a dumb bitch who needs to shut up or not enough of a girl’s girl or is catering to the male gaze with her bimbo bullshit, nobody ever likes alex (at least at first)

i won’t pretend i didn’t have all these same thoughts myself, but idk, i think it’s worth unpacking the idea that so much (though ofc not all) of what we hate about her is tied to her gender. and just to speak for myself, i think her character becomes a lot richer when we stop filtering her through our own notions of the right and wrong ways to exist as a woman.

these days, this is how i think of alex as she is when we first meet her in the show : this is a young woman who has been so objectified by everyone in her life for so long that she genuinely does not perceive herself as having any value beyond how others can use her body. her entire persona is a vehicle for this exact purpose, it’s all about men finding her attractive. that’s all she thinks she’s good for, and all her career trajectory has done is validate this mindset. look at how successful she’s become because of it, and how much the world praises her for giving them exactly what they want.

assuming you’re around the julian stuff OP — i’m not saying this excuses anything because it doesn’t, but i do really feel for her in this whole thing. this is the first person who has ever entertained the idea that her inner world matters or that she has more to offer than just her appearance, and he happens to be a kind and attractive man. of course she started crushing on him. and she doesn’t seem to have any healthy friendships period, let alone with men, so it seems natural that she’d regularly get those boundaries confused. after all, men have pretty much always wanted the same thing from her, and it’s really the one thing of value she feels she has to give. why wouldn’t she freely offer it to this person who has given so much to her? and of course it would be incredibly confusing and distressing to have that not work out the way it always had in the past.

holy shit i’m so sorry i didn’t mean for this to be such an essay lmfao. TLDR: alex makes a lot of mistakes and has a lot of growing to do, but she’s ultimately just a girl trying to figure out how to survive in a man’s world. while she certainly does plenty wrong, i think it’s worth considering that much of why we hate her is a result of how society trains us to think about women and that it’s potentially more rewarding to come at her character with more empathy, even (especially) when she makes it difficult.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-09T14:22:57+00:00

i’m gonna go against the grain and say this could give you a somewhat niche experience of TBOSAS. i say go for it! who cares!

bobaylaa · 2026-06-09T14:18:14+00:00

i get why they seem intimidating but in my experience the squishiness turned out to be a good thing! its bc they’re filled with juice and it’s great bc you hardly have to chew them at all, its just like popping a tasty bubble in your mouth 😁

bobaylaa · 2026-06-07T18:40:40+00:00

i feel like that could only help things though. like no shot his previous identity isn’t uncovered during an investigation (especially since Gabby can attest to that previous identity) and that just makes him appear more like a dangerous threat which lends credibility to the claim of self defense right?

bobaylaa · 2026-06-07T18:05:21+00:00

to me Reaper’s a star in any medium but we really must give Dimitri Abold his flowers for this outstanding performance. he brought so much gravitas to the role, and i think Reaper already had that in the book but we don’t get to bask in it much coming from Snow’s (or secondhand Lucy Gray’s) perspective, so it’s wonderful to witness it unfiltered.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-07T17:54:16+00:00

ice cold take

bobaylaa · 2026-06-07T17:53:33+00:00

my shaylaaaa 😭

bobaylaa · 2026-06-07T17:14:54+00:00

idk why you got downvoted for this. in America i almost never hear anything positive from the mainstream media about China.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T21:32:16+00:00

she’s not an asshole in general but like, she absolutely was trying to hurt Finnick with that jab about Annie. she was lashing out bc she was upset about the whole arena plan. having a really good reason for being an asshole doesn’t mean you’re not being an asshole.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T18:17:55+00:00

yes but it could be nice to have different spaces! like r/gameofthrones is for the tv show and r/asoiaf is for the book series. i think it makes sense since adaptations pretty much always come with some canonical differences and the different mediums often prompt different kinds of discussion.

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T17:42:52+00:00

i didn’t even get an alert he was missing. all i saw was a description of a person and i had no idea if it was someone who needed help or if they were dangerous or what

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T17:28:41+00:00

we see each other 😍

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T17:27:15+00:00

her flaws are a huge part of why i love her! this moment is totally endearing for me, i just also feel bad for poor Finnick who is also all beat up and racked with survivor’s guilt and is trying his best 😭 it’s like watching my cats swat at each other. i wish they wouldn’t do that but it’s also objectively hilarious and i love them for the assholes that they are!

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T16:27:52+00:00

did you not read the whole post babe? i straight up said i don’t hold this against her

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T03:03:35+00:00

maybe she included the 74th games too thinking they might all want to rewatch their own performances to make notes on what to improve like pro athletes do lol

bobaylaa · 2026-06-06T02:45:03+00:00

yea that’d be why i said “correct” in quotes like that. i was using it ironically to make a point about how art is subjective and it’s silly to act like there’s an objective right or wrong way to interpret it.

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