The Hunger Games Prequels: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes with Traci Thomas

Summary

Sentimental Garbage Podcast Episode Summary

Title: The Hunger Games Prequels: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes with Traci Thomas
Host: Caroline O'Donoghue
Guest: Traci Thomas
Release Date: July 24, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of Sentimental Garbage, host Caroline O'Donoghue engages in a deep dive into the Hunger Games prequels, specifically discussing The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping with guest Traci Thomas. The conversation explores the intricate themes, character developments, and political nuances presented in these additions to Suzanne Collins' universe.

Overview of the Prequels

Caroline begins by highlighting the multifaceted nature of the Hunger Games series, emphasizing themes of violence, propaganda, fascism, and notably, hunger. She draws parallels between the fictional famine depicted in the books and the historical Great Famine in Ireland.

Caroline [00:00]: "The Hunger Games are a series of books about many things...but it's also quite simply about hunger."

Themes Explored

The discussion delves into the central themes of the prequels, particularly focusing on the portrayal of young men and their radicalization. Caroline appreciates how The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes balances storytelling with profound political commentary.

Caroline [07:00]: "We hear so much about how young men becoming radicalized has been the story of the last decade...the balance of Songbirds and Snakes does so well."

Traci echoes this sentiment, noting the book's exploration of entitlement and societal expectations.

Traci Thomas [08:05]: "I ended up liking Ballad...I was able to feel sympathetic towards Coriolanus Snow in a way that I know other readers were not."

Character Analysis

Coriolanus Snow

Coriolanus Snow emerges as a complex character whose journey from a poised student to a calculating antagonist is meticulously examined. Both hosts commend Suzanne Collins for creating a believable villain through nuanced character development.

Traci Thomas [09:54]: "I think she did a really good job of... building up this believable villain arc."

Lucy Gray Baird

Lucy Gray Baird, the female tribute from District 12, is portrayed as a resilient and cunning character. Traci expresses her admiration for Lucy Gray's strength and likens her to a prequel version of Katniss Everdeen.

Traci Thomas [20:57]: "She's a tough cookie. I love a tough cookie. She is Katniss, but pre Katniss."

Plot Discussion

The hosts dissect key plot points, including the evolution of the Games and Coriolanus's unethical decisions that set the stage for his eventual rise to power. They discuss the introduction of new elements like betting and the use of "Communicuffs," drawing parallels to modern influencer and YouTuber cultures.

Caroline [55:56]: "The way the students start talking to the camera about the donations they need is absolutely copied word for word, like influencer, YouTuber language."

Political and Social Commentary

A significant portion of the conversation centers around the political undertones of the prequels. Caroline and Traci explore themes such as eternal war, dehumanization of districts, and the struggle between maintaining power and fostering rebellion.

Caroline [36:27]: "There’s a lot of, like, argument in the play about who should be in charge and a lot of, like, these characters who are talking to the people and, like, basically doing these debates."

They also touch upon contemporary issues, such as the parallels between the book's depiction of genocide in Gaza and real-world conflicts.

Traci Thomas [41:16]: "I felt more than any of the other books, I did feel the genocide in Gaza more than ever in the fifth book."

Criticisms and Praise

While both hosts praise the political depth and character complexity, they also voice critiques regarding certain plot resolutions and the extensive focus on the Covey, which they felt was overrepresented.

Caroline [23:13]: "I was so coveyed."

They question the narrative choice of erasing the tapes of Lucy Gray's Games, pondering the implications for the series' continuity.

Traci Thomas [85:38]: "I hated that because you're expecting me to believe that a group of people...if none of them remembered."

Conclusion

Caroline and Traci wrap up the episode by expressing their desire for further exploration of Coriolanus Snow's rise to power in potential future installments. They acknowledge the complexities introduced in the prequels and how these enrich the overarching narrative of the Hunger Games universe.

Tracey Thomas [73:37]: "Suzanne Collins can do it. She can do what she wants."

---

Notable Quotes:

• Caroline [07:00]: "We hear so much about how young men becoming radicalized has been the story of the last decade...the balance of Songbirds and Snakes does so well."

• Traci Thomas [20:57]: "She's a tough cookie. I love a tough cookie. She is Katniss, but pre Katniss."

• Caroline [55:56]: "The way the students start talking to the camera about the donations they need is absolutely copied word for word, like influencer, YouTuber language."

• Traci Thomas [41:16]: "I felt more than any of the other books, I did feel the genocide in Gaza more than ever in the fifth book."

• Traci Thomas [85:38]: "I hated that because you're expecting me to believe that a group of people...if none of them remembered."

---

This episode offers listeners an insightful analysis of the Hunger Games prequels, blending literary critique with contemporary social issues, making it a valuable listen for fans and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Caroline]

BetterHelp online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax. The Hunger Games are a series of books about many things. They're about violence, they're about propaganda, they're about fascism, but they're also quite simply about hunger. Almost every character in the Hunger Games goes through a period of starvation. And this has always been like a really evocative theme for me and in children's literature in general. Like when I was growing up, I learned a lot about the famine as an Irish person. And it was always so frightening because the famine in Ireland in the 19th century happened, yes, because we had a potato crop that failed, but also because, you know, all the rest of the food that was in the country, all the kind of orchards full of fruit and all the vegetables and all the livestock was completely and 100% owned by by the British who had colonized the country and they were not interested in sharing. So essentially it was a man made disaster that I believe halved the population of Ireland, if I remember correctly. And so it's naturally very evocative reading about famine and fiction. It's very evocative seeing famine in the real world. So this week I'd like to turn you on to a charity called the World Central Kitchen. Now, the World Central Kitchen has been providing meals for people who are affected by this man made famine in Gaza. And the other day they had to stop providing meals. Let me read a statement from them. So World Central Kitchen teams in Gaza have run out of ingredients to cook warm meals. We served 80,000 meals on July 19, emptying the last of our replenished stocks. While eight trucks remain stuck at the border, our brave teams are still baking bread and delivering water each day. Essential lifelines for Gazan families. World Central Kitchen remains steadfast in its commitment to serving communities in need. Your contribution today will directly support our emergency food relief efforts in Gaza, priority providing sustenance and hope to families affected by this humanitarian crisis. I'm going to put the link to World Central Kitchen in the show notes and if you have anything left to donate, I urge that you do. If you cannot donate this week, I urge that you write to your MP and maybe possibly ask why that this food isn't getting Through. Okay, thank you. Hey, guys. So me and Tracey Thomas this week are talking about the Hunger Games prequels. That's the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which came out in 2020, and sunrise on the Reaping that came out earlier this year. Now, we thought we could talk about both books in one episode, and you'll see very shortly the folly of that, because we just get so involved in talking about sort of the various different ways in which Hunger Games feels like such a relevant series for right now. And we got so stuck in the conversation that I actually decided to split the conversation across two weeks. So this week will be mostly Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but again, we didn't think this was going to be two episodes, so there's kind of this chat about Sunrise and the reaping in part one, and then next week will be sort of mostly Sunrise on the reaping. I hope that's not too confusing or too annoying. Hello, and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast where young adult novels continue to have a menacing sense of foreshadow. My name is Caroline, and as always, snow lands on top. And joining me is the Flynn Striker with a heart of gold. It's Tracey Thomas.

[Tracey Thomas]

I love this.

[Caroline]

Hi, Tracy. How's your. How's your summer going? It's so strange. I never do this with people where I've never met them. And then we have our podcast a few months ago, back in March, I think, and there's been this whole wedge of time we went away to read these prequels. How has it been? How's your life been? How have the books been? How have the books influenced your life? Et cetera, et cetera?

[Tracey Thomas]

It's all been great. I was sort of dreading reading the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes because I'd heard so much, like, people didn't like it. And so I kind of needed this as an excuse to be like, okay, I'm gonna do it. And we can get to my thoughts about it, obviously, as we go. But I have just had, like, a very Suzanne Collins summer. I mean, I did Songbirds in June. I just finished Sunrise in July. And I love Suzanne Collins.

[Caroline]

You know what? Even when she's mid, she's great.

[Tracey Thomas]

This is what I think. We can talk about this, because these two are not nearly books 1 and 2 of the original for me. I did not find 4 and 5 slash 0 and negative 1 or whatever. I don't know how they go, but I just didn't find them to be as far as, like, the storytelling goes to be as good. But the political thought in these books has shown extreme growth to me from Suzanne Collins.

[Caroline]

Very. Yeah, I am inclined to agree with you, I would say. I mean, we're talking about both of them, I think let's go kind of chronologically in terms of release and also timelines. So let's do Ballad first and then Sunrise and the reaping next. But I think that like where Songbirds, for me, where it falls down on storytelling, really, it exceeds in sort of the kind of political points it's making. Quite. I think, like, you could really argue that the original Hunger Games trilogy is an incredible kind of introduction to teaching young people about like the power and the sort of the power and peril of media, I suppose, in general media and the power of the image and the power of violence in the image. But I feel like the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, despite, I think being really quite patchy on storytelling and really like, I was quite surprised by how thin some of those characters were because I've never really felt that way about Suzanne before. I felt like in terms of nuanced discussion, particularly about young men and power, it was amazing. It was incredible to me. And we hear so much about how young men becoming radicalized. Young men becoming radicalized has been the story of the last decade of we've empowered girls to sort of be, I don't know, be their own little Hermione Grangers or whatever. We've somehow left boys behind. They've fallen into this gulf of sort of media that has expressed, sort of trained them to be toxic. And we're like, oh no, the young boys. But what I feel balance of Songbirds and snakes does so well. It's famously from the point of view of Coriolanus Snow, who is the President Snow of the Hunger Games series. We're really diving right in. But I have so much to say to you. I know it is very much about like, how the way boys are radicalized when they have an unsatisfied sense of entitlement, like when they feel like they were supposed to get something and they didn't. But it also. It's about how that society in general teaches them they should have high expectations. Do you know what I mean?

[Tracey Thomas]

Right? Yes, totally. Totally. I mean. So I ended up liking Ballad, I think more than Sunrise, I think me too. On shocking for people. I do think some of the, like, I think that ballad was too long for sure. Like, and there were things that I wanted it to do that it didn't do story wise. There were Pieces that I thought we were gonna get to, that we never did. But I think to what you're saying about like young men and feeling entitled and being radicalized, I think that's very true. But I also think that, like, she. For me, I was able to feel sympathetic towards Coriolanus Sloan in a way that I know other readers were not. I know I spoke to a lot of readers who were like, I didn't like being with him. Like, he was just an entitled this and that. But I was also like, well, he also lost his family. And, you know, if he had been the good guy, like, if he had been a Haymitch or a Katniss or whatever, if he had been on like the victim, whatever side of the power diner, he would have been extremely sympathetic. Like, losing your family, being hungry, not having like all of these things. So I thought she did a really good job of being like, look, if he had been in the districts, we would have been rooting for him, but simply because of where he was born, right? Like, because we know where he goes, but at the start, like, we don't know. And I thought she did a good job of making of like showing his turn and, and kind of building up this believable villain arc. I didn't think that she started with a presumed villain. And I appreciated that.

[Caroline]

I really appreciated that too. And I also found him really funny.

[Tracey Thomas]

I liked being with him. People. I'm like, but I love a villain. How are you on books with like, unlikable characters or stories with very tough hangs?

[Caroline]

Love that stuff. I mean, I would say my favorite book of last year was Taffy Brideszer Achner's Long Island Compromise. And that is a book that I don't know if you've read it. Just wall to wall assholes. It's just like perverts, dickheads. People who are like the most sympathetic character in that book is trying to build luxury college dorms where a homeless shelter used to be. And that's the sympathetic sibling in. I love it. To me, the function of novels is probably my favorite art form, I would say. And I think they are my favorite art form because it's an individualistic experience that nobody else gets to see. You're reading a book and there could be anything happening in there. And so you get to commune with the kind of darkest, freakiest parts of the human psyche, the darkest parts of yourself and kind of stepping into like this post war society where a young man who is like starving in his kind of Erzatz luxury apartment Wearing old clothes and hating everybody and, like, just following him through this freaky little society where he tries to make ends meet and tries to sort of preserve any sense of dignity. Watching him become, like, I don't know, this, like, awful, like. But by, like, page 300, he has done some of the most unspeakable things. And I totally understand every step, how he got there. And I find that so far a greater feat of writing than, oh, wow, Haymitch, a guy I always liked, I like even more now, you know?

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, totally. And I feel like she set it up to the point where it's like, when he choked. The choices that Coriolanus is faced with, that she gave him the agency to make those choices. There's a version of this book where he chooses different when it comes to his friend, or he chooses different when it comes to Lucy Gray, and the book plays out differently. And I felt like. I mean, I knew what choice he was gonna make, obviously, but I felt like there was a world where maybe I would be surprised. Like, I was with it enough to be like, maybe she'll surprise me. Maybe he'll surprise me.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? I was actually surprised by my own conservative expectations, because what I thought was gonna happen in this book is that, like. Because also, I think I had seen the movie trailer as well, and I had. I hadn't. I watched the movie now, and I think it's fine. But I'd seen. Seen the trailer, and I had the impression in my head somehow that it was a love triangle and that it was like, you know, Choreo and Sejanus were these kind of brothers in arms who, like, they were different, but they were friends. And then Lucy Gray Baird was going to be the kind of the girl who got between the two of them. And that would be sort of the path to radicalization, would be him losing the girl to his best friend or something. And I think maybe that's why I put it off for a long time. Cause I felt like I could see the whole thing coming, and it just sort of subverted my expectations at every possible turn.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah. That's how I sort of felt, too. That's an interesting. I'm so glad it wasn't that. That would have sucked.

[Caroline]

I know. Yeah. Because it's like. I mean, do you want to go through the plot beats of it? Because, Yeah, I could get distracted. So. Okay, so let's just begin with, like, where we find ourselves in the story. So. Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes begins 10 years after the war, the unspecified war, at an unspecified futuristic time from our. You know, it's kind of. We have to sort of remember the Hunger Games does not really take place as far as in Suzanne Collins mind in an alternative universe. This is very much the future she's writing about, and sometimes you can forget that or what she thinks of as the future. And so we have Coriolaena Snow of the great Snow family. He lives in a kind of a yucky once great penthouse apartment with his once great family, who consists of his cousin Tigress, who we know from the Hunger Games books, and the Grandma.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes.

[Caroline]

Tell me what you thought of this whole setup.

[Tracey Thomas]

I. So, I mean, I like it. I went in thinking he was gonna be the richest of the rich, like, already in line for the presidency, like, in a legitimate way, more like royalty than a true president or whatever elected person. So I like this setup of his sort of believing in their once greatness, but it not actually being a foregone conclusion. Like, I liked being like, oh, how will he get there? You know?

[Caroline]

Yeah. And it's very like. I mean, the ways in which I was kind of originally turned off by the novel was the kind of. There's a. When you've come from, like, Katniss Everdeen, she's an archer, she's a huntress, she's, like, starving to death at the very edges of society to, like, what essentially feels like a dark academia comedy of manners.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes.

[Caroline]

In Choreo's world, which is like, he goes to fancy school every day. People at fancy school are kind of bitchy about, like, little status things, about who has a new shirt and who has this. And, like, it's. It's. It's kind. It's fun. But it's a difficult setup because you're like, your kind of empathy dial has to reconfigure a bit, you know?

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes. Yes. Cause he's not the worst of the group. Right. Like, that's also such an interesting choice because she could have made him the biggest bitch of them all, but she doesn't. He's actually like one of the more humble, sort of unassuming people. Like, you know, he has a bravado to himself.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Tracey Thomas]

And, like, an ego to himself. But outwardly, you know, he's nice to Sejanus. He's the only one who's, like, not on purpose nice to him, but outwardly he's nice. He's not making the snarky comments. He's not teasing the tributes. Like, so I thought Again, I just think some of the choices of how she played him really worked for the turn. Like, the heel turn that comes later.

[Caroline]

And, like, so much of this novel as well, because it's the only of these novels that's in sort of a close third person.

[Tracey Thomas]

Close third.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

And so all the other ones are first present.

[Caroline]

Right.

[Tracey Thomas]

They're like, not even past sense. They're like, this is happening to me now.

[Caroline]

Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting with this because I think so much of ballad is very much concerned with the. The gulf between your actions and your thoughts, which is a really interesting notion. Really?

[Tracey Thomas]

Especially, like, how people perceive you.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah. How people perceive you. And, like, because he'll often. He'll do noble things. For example, he's nice to the one kid who's bullied because he's a district kid, but he'll kind of legitimize his own niceness to himself as being like, yeah, I'm gonna sort of, like, rise above it and maintain my sort of classy patrician veneer by not stooping to the level, which is like, yeah, you're not doing it for empathy reasons. You're doing it for sort of your own private status reasons. But, like, it kind of. Then it leads you to like, oh, well, does it really matter if the outcome is still you're being fairly nice to a lonely child, you know?

[Tracey Thomas]

Well, and especially, like, you know, this book came out in 2020, I believe, and that was a time where everyone was, like, intent and impact and, like, impact over intent. And it's interesting because with that logic, a lot of the stuff that he does is, like, the correct thing. Right. Like, the impact was good. Like, he was nice to the bullied kid, but his intent was to be a bitch. It just didn't come off appropriately. Yeah.

[Caroline]

Cause he's constantly like. He's making these little digs at stuff to Janus. And Janus is like, wow, thanks. You're my best friend.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right? Right. And, like, everyone's like, that's your best friend. He's like, I don't like that. I don't like him. And they're like, no, you do. And he's like, okay, I guess he's my best friend.

[Caroline]

That is one of my favorite jokes of this whole novel was this whole thing of, like, he's not my best friend. And then it's like, yeah, well, if he's not your best friend, then where were you last night? He's like, I was with him. Okay?

[Tracey Thomas]

My best friend.

[Caroline]

My best friend. And then What's. I mean, like, we're jumping to the end, but like the. The really satisfying conclusion of that he's like. By the end when like Sejanus has been fucking hung and he's like replaced him in his family or whatever, he's like, yes, Sejanes, my best friend.

[Tracey Thomas]

My brother.

[Caroline]

My brother. Basically. Brothers. More than friends, actually. Right. So, yeah. So we have this whole kind of dark academia, sort of Jane Austen comedy of manners, full of these post war kids or whatever. And we're given this whole. It's really fascinating actually. It's a great little invention. This thing of. This is early on in the Hunger Games as a TV show. It is deeply unpopular. Most people think it won't last very much longer. And so this kind of academy that they're part of is taking part where they're assigning their top students to be mentors in the Games because they think it will help. And like there's these two sort of teacher figures called Dr. Gall and Dr. Highbottom. Dr. Gall is very evil. Dr. Highbottom is a drunk. And that's how. That's who they are. And they, yeah, assign everybody a sort of a mentee from the districts. And this is going to be the way that they're gonna like, you know, or what the way Choreo is going to distinguish himself among his peers. So he's assigned District 12. It's the lowliest district. They all watch these reapings on tv. His tribute is this girl called Lucy Gray Baird. Now tell me all of your thoughts on Lucy Graybeard. Spare none.

[Tracey Thomas]

I. I liked her. I just. I love Katniss so much and it just was like a little bit too like. She's Katniss but a singer, but of course I liked her. I'm rooting for her obviously. Like, she's a covey girl, which is basically like. They're like a family of singing. You know, they roam. They roam the Disney. Well, so they roamed the country. But then when the war broke out, they were. The last place they were was District 12. So they get stuck in District 12, the covey. And so they become sort of these like outlier district 12 people, which I also liked where it's like she's not really a district girl, but she is. But she's really more of a wanderer. I liked her. I mean she's very. She's very like cunning and you know, she drops a snake down another person's dress. The mayor's daughter. She's a tough cookie. I love A tough cookie. She is Katniss, but pre Katniss.

[Caroline]

She's kind of like Katniss through a Dolly Parton sort of filter, isn't she?

[Tracey Thomas]

I don't know. In my mind, she was more like sad girl. I don't know, folk singer. Like Joni Mitchell. Like a sad Joni Mitchell in rainbow ruffle.

[Caroline]

I sort of thought, like, her whole, like, if it's very Appalachian folksy wisdom, kind of like, if someone doesn't have a smile, give them yours. Kind of like.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, okay. Sure, sure, sure.

[Caroline]

So I think. I just.

[Tracey Thomas]

I think from, like, the blonde hair sequence, but yes, very, like, very. I don't know, not kitschy, but Tracy's.

[Caroline]

Bobbing her shoulders side to side.

[Tracey Thomas]

I'm doing my shoulders. Kind of like. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. But yes, full of sort of country wisdom, if you will.

[Caroline]

Country. I don't. I. I mean, there are. We. We see a lot of the Covey in these two prequels. We see Lucy Gray Beard in ballad, and we see Lenore Dove in in Sunrise on the Reaping. And I gotta say, I read these two books in quick succession, and by the end of it, I never wanted to hear about the fucking Covey ever again. I was so coveyed.

[Tracey Thomas]

There's too much Covey and too many song lyrics. Babe, just. Suzanne, I love you, but I don't need the entirety of the Raven. Okay. If I want to read the Raven, I could do it. We'll get there.

[Caroline]

I mean, I'm just like, honestly, like, Suzanne, join a band. Do you mean, like, you know, in the. In the 80s, Amy Tan and Stephen King and a bunch of other authors, they were in this band called the Rock Bottom Remainders. It's like, see if they're auditioning. Suzanne, clearly you have a desire to sing.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes. Or at least to write the music. I don't know. In the earlier books, there's a little bit of the singing. And I did love, like, the origin story of the Hanging Tree.

[Caroline]

Yes. Love that.

[Tracey Thomas]

But didn't need every folk song Suzanne's ever heard of. Didn't need it. It's like, this is a folk song. I was like, yeah, it is. Thank you.

[Caroline]

Particularly. I, like, I did audiobook for one of them, and the audiobook person was just reading with the least flowing intonation ever.

[Tracey Thomas]

Just not even singing it.

[Caroline]

No, no. And it was. It was tough going now, to be honest. But, like, yeah, I just. The Covey are basically. They're kind of part Romany. Gypsy inspired and they're sort of part manic pixie dream girl inspired. They seem very good at producing winsome girls who are always gathering their skirts and, and you know, running through the corn. It's very.

[Tracey Thomas]

That yes, they're very much running. They're, they're, in my mind they look like trad wives, but they're tough like Katniss, you know, like, it's like they're not real trad wives but they like, you know, Lenor loves geese. This other one loves snakes and birds. They love a bird.

[Caroline]

They love a bird.

[Tracey Thomas]

Songbird, which is I think, you know, a slightly heavy handed metaphor for. If Katniss is the mockingjay, these are the song, the songbirds that predate her. I was a little tough for me. But yeah, I mean, so this is the stuff where like this book was too long and it was too long in these places. It was too much covey. I think that covey is an interesting idea of these people that like get trapped in the system because they are undefinable. Like, I think that's an interesting idea when we talk about wars and like these two sides and the people that don't fit tightly anywhere. But I just didn't need so much of them.

[Caroline]

Right. And especially as well where it's like it would seem that the covey's kind of main role in life is that because we're, and this comes up and is very fascinating, we're living in a kind of a post book society. There's no personal technology anymore. Suzanne says that at some point that the war was so kind of long and bloody and factories just were completely given over to making weaponry. And so no one's had a mobile phone in decades at this point. And also books are rare and kind of out of circulation and people don't really have them. And so the covey's kind of role is to keep these kind of ancient ballads and poems alive, which is interesting. But I find it difficult to have these groups that have such a strong parallel to, you know, Romani Gypsies or Irish travelers or even, you know, certain kind of parts of Judaism at different parts of history. Like these kind of roaming nomadic people that don't seem to have any kind of ethnic identity. They don't seem to have any kind of like, you know, racism or xenophobia they come up against. Just like they love poems and songs and they travel around. I felt like as much material as we got about them, we got very little actual detail.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right, I agree. I also think they exist to show that, like, there is another thing that is possible, like, outside of the world that we're being told exists. Right. Cause, like, they. We don't know about them in the early books, but obviously this song, the Hanging Tree is this very powerful thing that Katniss's dad is like. Don't sing it. Like, that's what you know. So, like, there's definitely some sort. Like, the Covey is hanging over the first three books. We just don't know it. And I feel like in the second two books, the Covey really is about, like, while we don't know anything about them. You're so right. It hadn't even dawned on me that, like, piece of them, like, they would be discriminated against in some way.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

Whether it was, like, people thought they were stupid or people thought, like, right, whatever. They would be the butt of jokes or something.

[Caroline]

Exactly.

[Tracey Thomas]

Love their entertainment. But they are there to show us that, like, while these are the two options we've been given, capital or district, this world does have space for other things. But also, if it's another way of life.

[Caroline]

Exactly. If that were the case, though, wouldn't just everybody be a cuffy? You know what I mean? I like to sing.

[Tracey Thomas]

I don't mean that people could choose that. I just mean that. I mean, like, she's telling us that it actually doesn't have to be binary by having them exist. Do you know what I mean? Like, she's signaling that to her reader in some way.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And I think it's good. I think it's good as well, that, like. Because the, you know, the Hunger Games original trilogy takes place in a world where President Snow's power is total. That, like, by the time he's reached his reign, that's been going on for, like, 60 years, he has stamped out the Covey and stamped out most of their songs, which is, like, really interesting and chilling. New kind of shade that it gives the books.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

But, like, anyway, Lucy Gray is reaped. We later find out that she was kind of. Her reaping was kind of was rigged, I guess, because of. She's got this whole beef with the mayor's daughter, which wasn't that satisfying to me. But then we kind of learn more about how Tributes are treated at this point in the Hunger Games history. So they are taken from their home districts, they are piled into cattle carts, and then they are put in the zoo, which I found so funny.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah. I mean, I loved the evolution of the Games.

[Caroline]

The strongest part of the book, I think yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

So good. Just seeing how different things were, that they were struggling, that they just were like. Cause, like, one of the greatest parts of the original Hunger Games is, like, Katniss getting to eat all this fancy stuff and seeing this, like, fancy, elaborate world and sort of being not wooed by the Capitol. Cause she doesn't buy into it. But seeing what the Capitol actually is versus in these early books, immediately after the war, or close to immediately after the war, there's so much resentment from the Capitol and so much, like, direct hatred. Whereas later on, it feels like the Capitol's like, oh, this is just, like, such a fun little thing that we do. And, like, sorry to these kids, but we don't hate them. It's just like, we do this.

[Caroline]

That's so what it is. Yeah. Whereas there's so much active revenge going on still. There's still, you know, the people, the adults of this world have fought in this war. The children of this world have memories of this war. And, like, I think it goes a long way to. Because, you know, this is a novel ballad. It's just full of, you know, damaged parental figures who are trying to shape the next generation and doing a terrible job. I mean, who is it that said to me recently that there was, like, more serial killers in the 70s than any other era because they were the children who were raised by World War II vets?

[Tracey Thomas]

Is it that book Murderland, that just came out?

[Caroline]

Possibly. I haven't read it, but I think somebody was quoting it to me.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, I haven't finished it, but I started it. And she also talks specifically about this Pacific Northwest.

[Caroline]

Really? Okay.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

But, like, the world of the Capitol in ballad, it really is giving that choreo is slowly becoming a psycho because everyone around him is a traumatized psycho.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right. And I don't know. Do you. Are you a Shakespeare person at all?

[Caroline]

Not so much, but I like hearing about it.

[Tracey Thomas]

Well, so I didn't. I love Shakespeare, and I didn't do a deep dive. I just totally forgot. But Coriolanus is a Shakespeare play.

[Caroline]

Yes. A very violent one, Right?

[Tracey Thomas]

Very violent. And it's all. There's a huge argument at the center of the play. Play. About who should lead the people. And it's like, between these, like, factions, the plebeians. The plebeians. Plebeians. And, like, someone else I can't remember, but also worth noting is that the mother, Coriolanus's mother is Volumina, which is the name of Dr. Gaul. So Dr. Gall is Dr. Volumina. Gaul and one other character, I can't remember who it is, also has a name from Coriolanus, so I thought that was interesting. But the argument in Coriolanus is like, the people should be ruled by royalty or the people should be ruled by other, like, regular people. And Coriolanus sort of takes by force and then someone else later. Spoiler alert for this 500 year old play. Someone else later comes in and takes by force from Coriolanus. And by takes by force means kills, overthrows. But there's a lot of, like, argument in the play about who should be in charge and a lot of, like, these characters who are talking to the people and, like, basically doing these debates. There's like two or three scenes of debates to the people from different sides. And so she's definitely getting at that. Obviously, Coriolanus is also just like an extreme person who gets power, turns bad. So that name, like, as soon as I saw that his name was up, long before I read the book, I was like, okay, so we're doing.

[Caroline]

So we're doing this heel turn.

[Tracey Thomas]

Like we're going there. I mean, it would be like naming a character Iago. It's just like, so you're a liar and you're gonna ruin everyone's life. Do you know what I mean? It's like there's certain names we just know and it's sort of like that. So that's. I don't know why I'm telling you this, but.

[Caroline]

No, it's great.

[Tracey Thomas]

That's also part of it. No, I love that. I remember what the question was.

[Caroline]

No, I mean, what are we talking about? I mean, it's. It's all relevant. It's literally the character's name. And like, Suzanne is never subtle with her naming, you know?

[Tracey Thomas]

No, no, she literally named the bread boy PETA Go off the baker son. Wheat Loaf. I'm sorry, but I also just call it Wheat Loaf. She has to. There's so many fucking names in these books. It's like you have to have 24 kids every time from these different places. So she's like, you're from the mining district. You could be coal.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Or like, you're from the electricity district. How about wireless and bt?

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And then I love how sometimes she puts so much thought into it, and sometimes she's just like, I don't know, Mags.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, she's like, Michael.

[Caroline]

Yeah, Michael. How about this one's called Wyatt?

[Tracey Thomas]

All right, yeah, great, Whatever. Sure. But yeah, I mean, definitely with Coriolanus and then by making the doctor who sort of becomes his maternal sort of leader. Volumina, who is a pretty ruthless woman herself. She gives. She has a great speech in Coriolanus that's like, you know, do what you need to do. My son, like, telling his wife to, like, shut the fuck up, quit crying, lady. Like, we gotta do what we gotta do.

[Caroline]

I mean, and that's very much the character she's imbuing in this. I mean, she is, you know, his main kind of sort of his thought parent, really, I guess. And, like. And she kind of sets him this sort of series of tests throughout the book, which feel like. I mean, a kind of a critique that Suzanne Collins often gets is that she doesn't write characters, she writes essays with faces. And I think there's a lot of essays with faces going on in these two prequels. And. But one of the ones I really appreciated because there's a lot of, like, quite baroque, insane Hogwartsian shit going with. With Dr. Goll, like, the whole thing with the spider, the. The snakes in the tank, and she wants to figure out which student is lying and she almost murders one of them and all that kind of stuff. But it does really set up these brilliant conversations that they have. And one of those conversations is basically about, like, how war is constant, war is inevitable, and the only thing that we can do is to stay on the most powerful side of a war that will last forever. Which echoes a lot of, like, you know, the end of 1984, right? The idea of, like, an eternal war.

[Tracey Thomas]

And so in the acknowledgments of both of these books, Suzanne Collins specifically names the philosophy that she's dealing with in the books. And that, again, felt different than the first three books. That's why I'm like, these books are so much more political, because she's really grappling. And I think this one, it has to do with, like, can the people lead themselves or do they need a leader? Is essentially like, what this book is supposed to be about. Of, like, she says, you know, I'd like to thank my parents for their love and always supporting my writing, my dad for teaching me about the Enlightenment thinkers and the state of nature debate at an early age, which is like, if there's no government that steps in, what happens to the people kind of debate, which she's clearly grappling with. Like, if. If Dr. Gaul isn't sort of forcing the issue of the games and sort of pushing people towards the games, that the games are never created. Or what would the resolution look like between the districts and the Capitol?

[Caroline]

Yes, totally. And, like, there's a point later in the book where, for various reasons, Coriolanus is sent into the arena in order to save Sejanus, who has sort of, like, snuck in there. And while he's in there, the kind of. The Tributes turn on him and try to kill him, and then he narrowly escapes with his life. And Dr. Gaul kind of says to him, you know, they had nothing to gain by killing you. They wanted to kill you. They just did. And to defend yourself, you killed one of them. And, like, that's what humanity actually is, is that it's a boy beating another boy to death with a stone.

[Tracey Thomas]

Which is, of course, a false equivalent because they didn't need to be in there in the first place.

[Caroline]

Yes, exactly. You put them in there.

[Tracey Thomas]

Peacekeepers end. They could. Like, there's. That's the thing about this book is it's like. Like you were saying, the early books, all of these books are really about the propaganda and, like, what. What is seen and what is not seen and what. What people know and what is kept from them by the powers that be. But this whole thing of, like, see what they did to you? They didn't even need to kill you when they were going to. It's like, well, you have them in their program to kill everyone. And also, you sent this kid in when you easily could have sent in the adults who have weapons to get Sejanus out. Like, you did not need to throw Coriolanus in there. That was a choice that you all made. So that really shows the nature of who people are, not what the kids do after the fact.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like this kind of tilted lesson. It's like the dice is loaded at every turn. It's like, yes, of course. But, like, the whole kind of bond that builds between Lucy Gray and Choreo, which is that, once again, he wants to distinguish himself so he can kind of be eligible for a scholarship prize. And in order to do that, he sort of, like, puts himself in Lucy Gray's way a lot. He sort of makes sure that the audience sees her as a human being and not just another tribute. He finds ways to get her to sing on TV and all this stuff. And this is kind of a theme that runs across both of these prequels, which is the. The attempts to claw back the power of the image from the people who own the kind of means of production, which is the government and the people who, you know, the government Owns the TV station, and the TV station owns your life kind of thing. And, you know, it's. Lucy Gray is constantly on a battle to humanize herself to the people of Panem. And then in Sunrise on the Reaping, we have Maisali Donner, who is Haymitch's the other kind of the female tribute of District 12. Who is this kind of, you know, a real girl's girl, which I like to see in this book. Like, she likes jewelry. She likes. You know, she's kind of a bitch, and she likes eating nice meals, and I like that. But the thing that comes up.

[Tracey Thomas]

I can relate.

[Caroline]

I can relate. It's kind of a bitch who likes nice meals. And the thing that comes up with her again and again is, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna eat this sandwich with a napkin, rather, and, like, with a knife and fork or something, because I want to show them that I am a real human being and to make it as difficult for them as possible to dismiss me as, like, an animal, even though they've literally put me in a zoo.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, Maisli is a great character. Yeah, I liked her a lot. I liked her so much. Yeah. And I think that is, like, such a big part of both of these books of, like, who are these. Who are these kids? And, like, who. Who is to say who they are? Like, who gets to define them?

[Caroline]

Yeah. And, like, I know we talked about this back when we did the original trilogy, but there are still. There is still a war going on. There's still a genocide going on in Gaza, both months apart. And, like, it is interesting reading these books and then, you know, watching footage of people sort of being queuing behind cages for aid and knowing that these images are specifically like that. Like, treating people this way is meant to dehumanize them to both the people who are torturing them and to themselves and to the world that sees it. You know, let's see.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yep. And, I mean, I felt more than any of the other books, I did feel the genocide in Gaza more than ever in the fifth book. Like, I. To me, the fifth book, Suzanne Collins showed more of herself and her political beliefs in the book than any of the others. I mean, there's. I know we're kind of jumping ahead, so.

[Caroline]

Sorry.

[Tracey Thomas]

But there's a part at the end of Sunrise on the Reaping where Haymitch is talking to Plutarch. And I can't remember who says it, but I think it's Plutarch who's like, you showed them that another world is possible. And to me, I was like, that is just straight up prison abolition language. Like, she just lifted those words from, like, that's like sort of just groundwork for prison abolition language is like, we've gotta show that another world is possible. Like, our job is to show that there's another. Like, that's just like, you know, the bread and butter of the talking points. And I thought that was so interesting because as soon as she said it, I said, oh, of course. This is the abolition book. Right? This is the book that's like, this does not have to exist. Even more so than the early books that fight the system, but they're not nearly Like, Katniss is in the dark about so much. Haymitch is actively trying to say this is wrong and does not need to exist. And I'm gonna show you how. And all of these people are working together to prove that there's another way. And like, there's the scene with the kids at the tree with the crying career where he drops the chocolate down.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Tracey Thomas]

And I'm just like, she's talking about hurting children. She's talking about starving children and the. Yes. And like, babies. These babies. I mean, the scene where Maislie and Haymitch set out the picnic and she makes flowers with the napkins. I'm like, yes, she's trying to show her humanity. But also these are children using their imaginations. They are in make believe because the world is so bad. And I just felt like in this book, there's no other way to read the politics. Whereas we talked about before, you can kind of read the politics of Gail and Peeta and kind of make your own story. And I know people are mad at me because I don't, like, get PETA, but I still don't like him.

[Caroline]

And for those who must stand in.

[Tracey Thomas]

Your truth, well, people were like, Gail kills Primrose. No, babe, Gale doesn't drop the bomb. Gayle makes the technology. But if that's how you want to read, what happens that it's Gale is the murderer here you are so. You are so indicted. You are a murderer too, then. Like, if we're going to say that anyone that has anything to do with anything that kills someone else is the murderer. He made the technology. He didn't know they were going to drop it on primary.

[Caroline]

Like, I'm sorry anyways, but I do feel like no ethical consumption under Gale. Right.

[Tracey Thomas]

Like, I just feel like we're really gonna say that Gale is the murderer in this. He Was mentoring underneath Beedy or whatever. Anyways.

[Caroline]

Who we're still fine with, by the way. Like, he's very much a hero of Sunrise on the Reaping, but everyone's mad at Gale because of his perfect bone structure.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Peeta still sucks. And you wanna blame Gale for Prim's death. Like, I get it. He shouldn't have helped develop the weapons. But I. I mean, whatever. We could. You. If you want to blame him, you can also.

[Caroline]

Okay, sorry.

[Tracey Thomas]

Take that.

[Caroline]

I think. I think we should get back to that. Because, yes, he did create technology that helped kill Prim. And that blows. I'm sad that Prim's dead. We remain sad. But, like, yes, Katniss also does live in a peaceful post war society and Gale is working in the government. Do you know what I mean? And like.

[Tracey Thomas]

And also the choice to drop the bomb was President Coyne, right? She's the one who did that. So I don't think, like, I am anti military. Like, I think the military is not great. But I also don't blame individual soldiers for a war. Cause, like, then you'd have to blame Katniss for Prim's death too, right? Because Katniss is leading this revolution. Like, if you want to go back and sort of find a way to make Gale a quote unquote child killer, you could do that. But in the world of this book where everyone is literally cool with killing kids and he's fighting against that, like, you've gotta give me some.

[Caroline]

You're so right. This is literally. These are a series of books where kids are killing kids in their droves and Gale has a part to play in the death of Primary. And suddenly it's, fuck Gale, just forget Gael.

[Tracey Thomas]

I saw some of the comments on the post we had and someone was like. Cause I remember I hadn't finished the book. And you were like, oh, Gale does something bad. And then I got to it and I was like, I mean, I guess it's bad to develop weapons technology. Yes.

[Caroline]

But also, they were fighting against a force that had advanced weapons technology. So what were they gonna do?

[Tracey Thomas]

Like, I just. I don't want it. I don't want that fight with you people, because I think you're wrong. But anyways, in Sunrise on the Reaping, she doesn't even leave space for both sides. She is very clear. This is not an argument. This is correct. And you all are wrong. Like anything other than making this world a better place for these kids and fighting to that end is incorrect. Anyone who's in the middle ground is a villain in this book.

[Caroline]

Yes. It feeling like the most direct critique of Palestine and Israel. The thing of, like, just because something has always been this way doesn't mean it always has to be this way. This thing of like, the way in which people are often told to shut the fuck up about this. This issue is like, oh, well, this has been going on since sort of the 1940s. This has always been an issue. There's always been stuff in this region and this kind of assumption that we should all throw our hands up and leave everybody to get on with it just because, like, well, it's always been this way. It's like the sun does not have to come up on another reaping, my friends. Like, it just doesn't.

[Tracey Thomas]

Correct. And that. I mean, again, that is the whole, like the covey. That's the best bit of the covey that I think we get is like this way of thinking that we get from Lenore Dove of like, question it. Question it.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

Like, it doesn't have to be this. And again, another world is possible. Like, this is all just like, so abolitionist talking points or like ideology in a way that should. She is much more. She's much more out there, I think, in this book than any of the other books. And I have to imagine that it's not unrelated to the fact that she wrote this with a vision of what's happening in Israel and Gaza. Again, in this acknowledgement, she also thinks her parents. What does she say about her dad here? I wish my dad was here to see that. Our discussions on David Hume inspired Sunrise on the Reaping. And David Hume, I think, is one of the epigraphs at the beginning about. It's two of them. One of them is that the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible proposition and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation that it will rise. Which is really the whole crux of this book.

[Caroline]

Yeah. This summer, Instacart is bringing back your favorites from 1999 with prices from 1999. That means 90s prices on juice pouches that ought to be respected. 90s prices on box Mac and cheese, and 90s prices on ham, cheese and cracker lunches. Enjoy all those throwbacks and more at.

[Tracey Thomas]

Throwback prices only through Instacart.

[Caroline]

$4.72. Maximum discount per $10 of eligible items. Limit one offer per order. Expires September 5 while supplies last. Discount based on CPI comparison. Hi, I'm Kristen Bell. And if you know my husband, Dax.

[Tracey Thomas]

Then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much. We're really doing this, huh?

[Caroline]

Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your.

[Tracey Thomas]

VIN or license, and done.

[Caroline]

We sold ours in minutes this morning, and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon.

[Tracey Thomas]

Bye, bye, Truckee.

[Caroline]

Of course, we kept the favorite.

[Tracey Thomas]

Hello, other Truckee. Sell your car with Carvana today.

[Caroline]

Terms and conditions apply.

[Tracey Thomas]

Wait, we have to talk about the ending of.

[Caroline]

Yeah, we. Yeah, we've barely touched the middle of ballad.

[Tracey Thomas]

I know. I know. We're doing such a bad job, everyone. We're so excited. I'm sorry.

[Caroline]

Honestly, they're two massive books. The only people who will be listening are people who've read them both. Everyone gets it. We're. We're very smart and good. So I think we're doing a great job.

[Tracey Thomas]

We are great. You're right. Why am I being hard on us?

[Caroline]

Okay, another weak part of this book that. Not even weak. It's just that, like, I kept expecting it to come to fruition or mean something more than it did, which was that before the Games even begin, like, half the cast of characters gets picked off.

[Tracey Thomas]

It's dead.

[Caroline]

Dead. Like Coriolanus. Fellow students are dying in, like, random terrorist attacks in the arena. Like, one of the Tributes breaks loose and murders another person. And it's like, I get it. Because, like, by the time you get to the arena, you want to have a finite number of personalities that you want to be dealing with. But what I thought that was gonna be, because, like, you know, you're. They go into the arena, which is basically like a sports stadium.

[Tracey Thomas]

Stadium.

[Caroline]

Just a stadium. Like, basically a football stadium, which is, like, the way the Games are done is they just plop a bunch of weapons in the middle of a football stadium, and they wait for them to kill each other, which does sound like terrible television. And they go in, and there's bombs that have been planted in the stadium. They go off, a bunch of people are killed. And this is before the Games have even begun. A tribute called Marcus escapes all this kind of stuff. And, like, you think that there's gonna be. That there's some kind of rebel plot brewing or something, but it just kind of comes to mind.

[Tracey Thomas]

I thought that the Capitol placed the bombs.

[Caroline]

Did you?

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, I thought it was, like. I just thought it was, like, propaganda. Like, they wanted. They wanted the students to buy into the idea that the Rebels were really bad because they were getting too chummy with the kids and feeding them and like. So I thought they did it to be like, see, it's really dangerous still here.

[Caroline]

Wow, that is very. The capital. They are killing their own pretty indiscriminately and like feeding their kids to snakes and shit. So I had not put that together at all. I was just like waiting for like, oh, is this like Sejanus is leading some kind of district to revolution or something? But no, there. There does not appear to be any like, robust revolution at this point. It's just like, no, Billy Tope in the backwoods of District 12, like hoarding six guns in a pillowcase, you know?

[Tracey Thomas]

Billy Tope. What a name. Fucking Billy. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know. That's just how I read it. Like, I was like, oh, I don't trust these people. So it's got to be them. But there's no resolution either way. I'm not any more right than you. I think you could read it however. She leaves it pretty open.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And yeah, so I'll have to confess to you that this was around the part where before the Games where a bunch of people are dying. It all seems quite random and it's very. You know, the way in which the capital kids are mourned is so over the top. And there's state funerals and like horse drawn carriages and then the way that the. Then the kind of. The Tributes responsible are basically lynched. And it's this kind of. It's the sort of like the roses for the noble dead and then the kind of castigation of the. Of the rebels kind of thing. And it's like, okay, I get it. But. Okay, so we get the, we get the games. Some of the. Yeah. Another kind of thread of the games is that the kids or the kind of the mentors, the students are being asked to come up with ideas to help the games be more interesting. And Coriolanus comes up with some ideas, including introducing betting into the games and also introducing GIFs for the tributes into the games. And this is then managed via. This is one of my favorite parts of the book, actually. This is managed via Communicuffs, which is essentially an Apple Watch. Yeah, you get an Apple Watch if you have a living Tribute. And that is where you kind of manage all the kind of donations that come in for your tribute. And the way the students start talking to the camera about the donations they need is absolutely copied word for word, like influencer, YouTuber language. It's like, okay, guys, like. And subscribe if you want to see more of Lucy Gray.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, it's so. I mean, that stuff again, this, that stuff. All of the stuff about, like, the evolution of the games. Loved.

[Caroline]

Yeah, Yeah. I just. It really made me think, like, does Suzanne Collins have, like, teenage kids who are like.

[Tracey Thomas]

She does have kids.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

She thanks them in the acknowledgments. I think she has two boys or one boy.

[Caroline]

Like. Like, is she. Is she just watching them watch all these YouTubers being like, okay, guys, like. And subscribe and like, this is. This is coming from.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah. Oh, my God. I hadn't even put that. But it totally is that exact same kind of like front to camera stuff.

[Caroline]

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I love that. I love the whole, like the fact that they're all camped out in this TV studio with Lucky Flickerman.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

Who I loved as well and is played very well by. Oh, no, that young boy I like who's a man now. What's his name? He's a Coppola. Why can't I remember his name? He's in all of Wes Anderson's films.

[Tracey Thomas]

Jason Schwartzman.

[Caroline]

Yes. Or as I know him, that young boy I like who's a man now.

[Tracey Thomas]

The young boy I like who's now a man. What's not to like? I gotta watch the movie.

[Caroline]

Yeah, it's good. It's. It's okay. I mean, like, the, the. I would say the production values are really interesting because of, like how it's styled. Like kind of the capital almost feels like a 1940s sort of landscape.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right.

[Caroline]

But you don't really get his internal monologue as you don't get Choreo's internal monologue. So it doesn't really feel quite as potent. They get through the games. Long story short, Lucy Graybeard wins.

[Tracey Thomas]

And because Coriolanus helps her cheat. Cheats for her, cheats with her.

[Caroline]

Exactly. He has found out. And then in what I think is one of the more interesting parts of the book, he is sent to District 12 to be a peacekeeper. Yeah. Which is basically the kind of. Yeah. The. The police force of Pan Am who are. I mean, they're very interesting to me. They're brought up in all the other books, which is basically that they are cops who have to take a kind of a vocational role. Like they're not allowed to get married and they live in kind of barracks and they don't have any family communications. And it is. But it is like the. It's like the hugest possible loss in status for him.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right. Right. And that people from, like, districts one and two do this job, and it's sort of like a proud job to have, but for him, it's pretty shameful to be, like, demoted in this way.

[Caroline]

Totally. Sejanus comes with him because Sejanus is like, I wanna. I don't wanna live in the capital. Because, importantly, I don't think we mentioned this. Sejanus is a District 2 kid whose father is a weapons manufacturer who is so rich, he's managed to kind of buy himself a kind of a tenuous status in the capital, but everyone hates them because they're district. And yeah, that's. They. They're out there. And it's. It pretty much sucks. Except Coriolanus can now reunite with Lucy Gray Barrett and sort of have a life.

[Tracey Thomas]

And they're in love now also.

[Caroline]

They're in love now. What did you think of that?

[Tracey Thomas]

I mean, I understand that it needed. That it happened, but I don't. I mean, I was like, we're in love now. Okay. The thing is, I just didn't never believe they were in love. I just. I always thought it was a scam. I was, like, waiting for the other shoe to drop on their love story. Right. And I like that she was playing him, like, when they first saw each other, that she was gonna be like, oh, you're here. Yikes, I'm still with my boyfriend. Like, I just was using you. Like, I thought that's what was gonna be the love story. Like, that she was fucking with him and just using him because she saw that that was her ticket to win, but really were led to believe that they both loved each other for real.

[Caroline]

It's really tough because I don't think Suzanne Collins excels at romance writing in general. Like in Sunrise on the Reaping, Haymitch and Lenore Dove are supposed to be this paragon of passion, love, mutual respect, etc, and I just didn't feel it. I didn't care at all.

[Tracey Thomas]

Not at all.

[Caroline]

Which is enough to say that I can't care deeply about love in YA books. I can be very swept up by it. I just don't think it's where Suzanne Collins excels. I mean, like, she talks about the sort of the famous love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale as being not so much a love triangle as two sides on a moral war debate. It's like, that is not what Suzanne is here to do on this.

[Tracey Thomas]

I feel like that love triangle worked for me because Suzanne Collins was passionate about the debate. Whereas, like, the Love story. There is no argument. It's just like we love each other. We love each other so much. We are in love. Love.

[Caroline]

We love each other.

[Tracey Thomas]

And I'm just like, that's boring.

[Caroline]

I know. And like, also there's like a really great triangle waiting right there with them because Haymitch is getting close with Maily Donner in the arena. And it's like, oh, no, she's my sister. I love her like a sister. And it's like, okay, fine. Like maybe you have a little kiss. Like, I don't know.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, we could do it sometimes. Yeah. I thought he was gonna. I thought he was gonna turn to Maisily for a little in the adult book. I think maybe they go there, but I think maybe. Cause it's ya, it's like we don't really need to muddy the moral ambiguity of that. I feel like really complicates Haymitch in a way that maybe we don't have time for in a ya. You know what I mean? I just feel like a different audience. Maybe she could have punched it up, but I don't know.

[Caroline]

It's. Cause like the moral ambiguity in Suzanne Collins books is like, we love this character even though he's killed four people.

[Tracey Thomas]

Or whatever, where it's like, we can't.

[Caroline]

Love someone who loves two people at once. That's too much.

[Tracey Thomas]

Sure, sure. But I feel like. Don't you feel like. I mean, you've written for young people.

[Caroline]

Oh yeah, I continue to.

[Tracey Thomas]

And I feel like there are expectations similar to how they are in romance where it's like the cheater can never be happy that it's like there's some expectations from YA audiences that it would take too much work on her part to flesh that out enough so that people aren't like, hey, Mitch is an asshole. You know? Cause like there's a more. Less like there's like a less interest in some of that kind of complicated characters because of like the rules of those spaces. Do you know what I'm getting at?

[Caroline]

I don't. I actually disagree with you on that one.

[Tracey Thomas]

I do think, well, you're the expert. I don't know. So that was my theory.

[Caroline]

In my original trilogy that I wrote, there was like the main character had two people. I had like a boyfriend, a long term boyfriend of the series and also a kind of a evangelical fundamentalist Christian Nazi who. She had a kind of like a soul connection with that. I mean, it's a whole thing. I won't get into it right now, but I had some Tension between them that never actually came to anything physical. And all I get now is all I hear from his kids who wanted them to kiss. All I hear from his kids who wanted her to kiss the Nazi. So, like, kids want this kind of, like, romantic complication, I think, and they do want that kind of thorniness. But, I mean, sure. But like, I think it does get to a broader point, which is that, like, so the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the first and maybe only of Suzanne Collins's novels or Hunger Games novels that mentions sexuality explicitly. And like, so in the. The way.

[Tracey Thomas]

Oh, because they call Lucy a slut.

[Caroline]

They call Lucy a slut. And so the.

[Tracey Thomas]

I think the way it's tracked nicer than that. But they kind of do, though.

[Caroline]

They basically do. I mean, what the grandma says is, like, so, I mean, Tigress says about Lucy Gray Barrett, she's only a girl. And the grandma says that one hasn't been a girl in a long time. And, like, you know what she's saying.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, yeah. There's a few references to her promiscuity.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And of having a past life and a past boyfriend and whatever. And. And this all kind of bleeds into sort of Coriolanus's, like, wanting to possess her. And he. Every time it comes up that she has, like, a romantic history with, like, Billy Tope et al, he just, like, flies into, like, this kind of inner rage and. Yeah. And it's. Yeah. I mean, tell me more about what you thought about this kind of sense of. Yes, it's on the sur. Again, this is the kind of. So much of ballad is about the gulf between what you're doing and what you're thinking, which is like, he's behaving like a boyfriend to her and behaving like a lover to her. But internally, his monologue is not actually that affectionate. It's about owning a thing that other people want.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes. I mean, so this gets into. To the ending for me, like, that he wants to be in the light. He wants to be the hero so badly. And so he constantly is, like, aligning himself with Lucy because he sees that she is the thing that people desire. And so I think, like, he just wants what she has. He wants to be loved and adored and thought, to be smart and interesting and fun and cool and all of those things. He's just, like, jealous of her. I think in a lot of ways that was sort of my read on his, like, wanting to own her is like, I just want. He wants. He wants to be in her light as well. Like, and that's just not possible because she's a cubby girl. Cuddy. Girls don't belong to anybody. That was my read on him of, like, so desperately wanting to control this uncontrollable thing, which is Lucy.

[Caroline]

Yes. And having very little to do with romance or sensuality at all. Like, there's. I think there's a few kisses that they have. And I think it's so funny. I love how much this is why he's a great character. I love how much he hates music and singing because he's like. He's like, I. I appreciate that she's good at this and that people find value in her because she is good at it. But I, I myself do not like songs because I can't hear my thoughts when I'm hearing a song.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right, right, right, right. He's like, like, the arts are my hell.

[Caroline]

The arts are my hell. I love that he hates singing and I also love that he hates nature.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yes.

[Caroline]

Because he's like, they, like, they have this little. The covey have this kind of fishing, swimming hole like thing where they head out to you. Which I believe comes up in the. In the Hunger Games trilogy. I think it's a place where Katniss goes a couple times and it's like, oh, it's a three hour trek from District 12 and choreo is like three hours. And me reading it, I'm like, three hours.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I'm. Unfortunately, I'm Coriolanus for some of this stuff. Enough with the singing. Enough with the trek to the lake. Like, get a hose, rinse off. Like, it's fine. I'm like, isn't there water here? I don't know. Yeah. And he just like, is so not of this world. Like, he's just a city boy. He doesn't want to be out with the mosquitoes and shit. Me neither.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And he has, like a fun day going swimming with Lucy Gray. And he's like, you know, hanging out with her cousins, like Maude Ivory and all this. And he's like, this is okay. And he's very much looking around thinking, like, I am having an okay time. If I can't be the most famous, powerful person in the capital. If I have to be a peacekeeper, like, this is like, okay. I'm okay with this. And so shortly after that, he is, you know, she's playing some. There's a lot of. This is okay. This is a very interesting thing that I thought ran across both prequels which is that, like, the District 12 of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has a very lax rules. Like, there's. There's hoedowns, there's music, there's clubs. People are getting up to stuff. Like, everyone's poor, but they're having a bit of crack, I think. And then in Sunrise on the Reaping, there's like, District 12 is poor, but it's a kind of a rugged, hardy poor. Like, there are rich kids in District 12 in Haymitch's time. Like, the Donners have jewelry and their parents own, like, a candy shop. And there's, like, a nice little story about how a Peacekeeper left his bicycle behind and they all rode a bicycle all day. And it's like. It's quite like Enid Blighten Y or something. Haymish's District 12. But by the time you get to Katniss's District 12, it is, like, so unbelievably impoverished, to the point where, like, even Peter, who's considered one of the richest kids in town, has to eat, like, stale bread that's been unsold or whatever. And so it's. And then meanwhile, you get, like, in ballad, you get the capital, which is kind of impoverished as well. Then in Sunrise, they're doing a bit better. And then by the time we get to the original trilogy, the rich have gotten so much richer and the poor have gotten so much poorer. And I found that really fascinating.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, No, I agree. That's, like, a perfect spot. I have nothing to add. You nailed it.

[Caroline]

Sorry, I feel like I'm talking at you a lot.

[Tracey Thomas]

No, no, I love it. I just, like, there's so many things that I feel like Suzanne Collins is doing in these books that, like, some of the things that you picked up on, I hadn't actually picked up on in the same way, even though I had sensed it or, like, felt it. But I would not have been able to articulate that. But you're so totally right. I do think part of it is that, like, with the rise of the Games.

[Caroline]

Yeah, there is.

[Tracey Thomas]

There has to be, like. And with the rise of Snow as the president, there has to be more of a dehumanization of the districts, which means, like, a more strict ruling class. Like, the Hob in the first books is, like, everyone's at the Hob, even the Peacekeepers. Like, the. We're all sort of the same. We're all out here. Like, we're technically in charge, but if you don't make us be in charge, we can all be friends. And I feel like that's, like, before Snow becomes in charge. And by the time Snow becomes in charge, he does start to crack down. Because the only way the Games remain viable is if the hatred for the districts remains viable. And as you move further and further away from the actual war and less and less people remember it, then you have to make them enemies, rhetorically or, like, through propaganda, through these other things, which means you have to crack down on the enforcement by the peacekeepers. They can't be your friend anymore because you have to teach them to hate these people. Right. So I feel like that's also part of the tightening of the Snow purse strings, if you will.

[Caroline]

Yeah. I mean, he's a terrible dictator, but a very efficient one. You know, something he says, that was.

[Tracey Thomas]

My biggest thing I hated, I disliked about this book, is I thought we were gonna get more of his rise to power. So I'm hopeful that we get a sequel to Ballad that stays with Coriolanus, and it fills in that gap between him going back to the Capitol and him becoming the President and, like, how he gets there and what his first Games are, like, what changes he implements. Like, I just wanted. I was thinking that was what this book would do.

[Caroline]

Yeah, it's really interesting, that exact thing because, like, I would love that as well. I would love to get choreo in his 20s, in his 30s, even, even in his 40s. Like, I want to see, like, the rise and rise, the poisoning and the killing of all his different rivals and stuff and, like, all that stuff. But, like, the. And I think Suzanne could definitely do it, but because these books technically fall under ya, you can't have a main character who is in their 40s. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can.

[Tracey Thomas]

Even if there's, like, some kids in the Hunger Games that are still.

[Caroline]

Like, I wonder. I remember, like, having this conversation with an editor of mine where, like, for one of the books, I was like, oh, I'm gonna do a point of View character who's in their 20s. And they were just like, no, you can't. Like, it's kind. It's sort of an unspoken rule.

[Tracey Thomas]

Suzanne Collins can do it.

[Caroline]

Oh, yeah. I can't do it, but she can do it. She can do what she wants. Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

And I think we want her to want to do it. You know, I don't want to tell her what to do, but if she was listening. Suzanne, a big fan of your work, would love a Coriolanus.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Rise to power midquele.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, I Just, I need it. I need to know how it happened. And maybe you do it as part of that universe, but you focus. Like, maybe you do the first quarter quell or whatever. And we get to see that from another district 12 person who ends up dying. She's never done one. From the. From the point of view where the person dies and the book just ends.

[Caroline]

She never. I know it's cr. And it's so crazy how she's never done that and she probably never will. And like, very few books end with people just dying or whatever, but like, the fact that, you know, all of these various games have you on the edge of your seat, even though you know the narrator won't just stop. Like, you know, there are at least 100 pages left. And it's like, oh, he going to get out of this one. Sorry to come to the end on the Ballad of Hung Birds and the Snakes. It ends when Coro and Lucy Gray Beard are accessories to a murder of a some local people who I don't really care about. Billy Tope is in there. I don't. I just can't be bothered for that. And they. Coro freaks out. He's like, oh, no. You know, it's only a matter of days before people realize I killed this person. That means I have to flee with Lucy Gray Baird. And so they decide they're going to live in the wilderness together. And literally it is hour one, day one. And Choreo is like, I hate this. I hate nature. It's starting to rain. I can't build a fire. I'm cold. This sucks. And then Lucy Gray kind of figures out that he has murdered several people before. There is sort of a sense of distance that grows between them on this first day as escapees. He starts getting in his head about how Lucy Gray is gonna turn on him or whatever. And he sort of decides in the closing pages of ballad that he's gonna murder Lucy Gray. And he's like, literally out in the wilderness with a shotgun being like, Lucy Gray, like, like a fucking.

[Tracey Thomas]

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

[Caroline]

It's very that. It's very that. Like he's like turned on her in the course of a. An hour, and she has kind of disappeared. Essentially. It's purposefully written quite vaguely where a snake bites him. We know that snakes are her creature. He kind of has a bit of a hallucination. He sort of thinks he's shot her. He sort of thinks she's disappeared. There's a whole thing with a poem about her footsteps being Invisible, but essentially, Lucy Gray disappears into thin air. Shortly afterwards, he is invited back to The Capital by Dr. Goll. He is like, reenlisted into university, and then he begins his climb to the top.

[Tracey Thomas]

Okay, so I obviously think that he murdered her because it's left kind of like, does she run away? Does something happen to her? We don't know. But my question is, like, do you think Lucy Gray caught on to Corio or do and like, she left on her own? Or do you think that Corio became paranoid which caused her to run away? And, like, that's what all the hysteria is about. Like, do you think she left or do you think he had a psychotic break?

[Caroline]

Oh, that's very interesting. The way I read it was, is that she noticed the turn because she asked him a few questions with which he sort of like, he sort of. I don't know, he kind of admits that he killed some people and it gets sort of tense between them. And I think she's been going off him for some time and then she sort of makes the decision to just fuck off.

[Tracey Thomas]

But she, like, goes out and she's like, getting sweet potatoes or something. Do you think that she purposefully, like, ran away then? Or do you think she just was taking longer and then he was like, she's left me. Like, I gotta find her and kill her.

[Caroline]

Oh, no, I do think that she ran away. I do think she fully bailed.

[Tracey Thomas]

Oh, well, you know, I famously love like a murder, like a premeditated murder situation. And so I think this was like, she just took a second too long and he, like, freaked out. Like, I think that he is a monster at this point. And, like, it wasn't even that she had figured it out yet. She was maybe starting to put the pieces together, but he didn't even give her a chance. Like, he decided, this is what I have to do because I want to go back. I got into officer school. Like, fuck this lady. This is not my life. She's a liar. And he spirals out wildly and just kills her. And that the snake bite is not her. I think everything becomes part of his own justification for what he is going to do.

[Caroline]

Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so we've sort of. I have sort of skipped over that bit only because I'm conscious of timing and the fact that we've for some reason agreed to do two books in a one hour slot.

[Tracey Thomas]

How did we do three books last time? I'm so confused. I'm like, how did we do this?

[Caroline]

It's really hard. But yeah, the Whole thing with, like, he. There's the officer school thing, which, you know he's going to progress up the ranks of peacekeepers, so that's attractive. But there's also the whole thing. His real psychopath turn has been in selling out Sejanus, like he is. Janus is the main casualty of Coriolanus, which is that, like, Sejanus is sort of, like, joining the Billy Tope, who's some rando hillbilly who used to go out with Lucy Gray. He's got a revolution thing going. Sejanus wants to join it because he hates the capital. Corio is like, everyone knows Sejanus is my best friend, even though I literally hate him. If Sejanus, like, joins the revolution, I will be implicit in it. So I'm trying to control Sejanus. And then Sejanus goes beyond his control. He's like, I'm gonna have to just get rid of Sejanus. And then he essentially, like, grasses him in.

[Tracey Thomas]

Records him.

[Caroline]

Yeah, he records him using a jabberjay and then sends a doctor goal. And then Sejanus is hung to death.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah. Well, I don't think you can hang someone to hurt. I think you gotta go all in or all out.

[Caroline]

Yeah, that's it. You just haven't done it, really. Oh, God. To me, that was one of the kind of most haunting scenes of the whole book because this is kind of motif of, like, Mockingjay is hanging around hangings and the idea. And there's like, this whole thing with, like, Sejanus and his mom, and he's, like, calling for his mother. Ma. Ma. It's like. It's very Babe. It's very Ma.

[Tracey Thomas]

I mean, not to make this too serious, but it also. So, I mean, again, this came out sort of before four, but it's very Black Lives Matter. Eric Garner called out for his mom, famously, as did George Floyd, Though this George Floyd's death, I think, happened right after the book came out. But it has those. Like, the calling out for the mom from the Unjust State killings is definitely, like, a thing.

[Caroline]

Jesus. You're to. You're completely right as well. And it's like the imagery is very kind of borrowed from kind of classic American lynchings. You know, it's right.

[Tracey Thomas]

I was like. That's another thing. The hanging.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

The hanging piece of it is also obviously evokes black American terrorist. The treatment of black Americans, like, by the terrorist state of the government. Right. Like these extra judicial or judicial hangings. But yeah, I mean, the birds. I mean, I think that's why the song the Hanging Tree in the early books is so powerful.

[Caroline]

Yes, totally. Do you think that, like. Because we know these. I mean, we spoke in our last episode about, like, how characters are explicitly black and explicitly Southern and that kind. And they're kind of drawing from sort of classic American traditions, because this is still America just several hundred years in the future, I guess. But do you think the fact that, like, characters are identified not really racially, but by their district, the fact that kind of the lack of ethnic importance in the book. How does that sit with you?

[Tracey Thomas]

I think that that is a choice by Suzanne Collins so that she doesn't have to be mired in the way that anything that has to do with race becomes only about race. Like, I think that's a tactic that she's using, because at least I don't know how it is where you are. But here in the States, like, as soon as you explicitly say something is about a black person, then it's like, oh, you're playing the race card or whatever. So I think by do, like, by giving cues without actually saying it, you know, like, darker skin could mean a very tan person, or it could be a black person. Like, we use the language of race in a very weird way here. So if you say, like, they had a tan, you could be talking about Teresa Giudice from Housewives of New Jersey, or you could be talking about me, or you could be. You know, like, it's like, there's such a range. So I think it's, like, a tactic to not have to do race talk in this book and in the series.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

When the movies came out, people were so mad that certain characters were black because they had envisioned them as white. But it's like, the girl works in. Like, it was with.

[Caroline]

What's Rue's character?

[Tracey Thomas]

Rue. It was Rue. It was like, oh, why is Rue black? It's like, babe, she works in the south as an agricultural worker, like, on a plantation. What did you think she was. You thought it was gonna be Scarlett o' Hara out here? Like, what.

[Caroline]

They were expecting, like, Mara Wilson or something?

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, I'm just like, this is so bizarre. But I think that's why she did it, so that she didn't have to do full American racial politics.

[Caroline]

And it's smart because it's like any. It means that, like any. Anybody reading the books identifies with District 12, regardless of. Of where they're from kind of thing, whether they're even American or not. You know, it's like everyone who Reads the Hunger Games is from District 12 because that is the district we know intimately.

[Tracey Thomas]

And yeah, and they're definitely described as like having dark hair and like darker kind of tan skin. And it's Appalachia and it's like, yeah, well there are black people there. Like there were black people in Appalachia. So it's. She's. I have heard arguments that Katniss and Gale and all of them are black and then obviously like they're portrayed by white people. But I think there are arguments being made that some of the people in Appalachia are not white.

[Caroline]

Yeah, I mean what's interesting is that like, I mean this come. We're about to. Let's, let's like move on to Sunrise and the Reaping, although we may not have much time left. But like this comes up again and again. The thing of like oh, you know, we have in District 12 we have the seam who typically have darker coloring and we have the kind of the sort of town kids who are typically merchants and are fair haired or whatever and it's very hard to buy that they were. And like literally Haymitch says, you know, he's talking about Astrid who's Katniss's mother and his friend Burdock who is Katniss's father. Like, oh, you know, a seam kid never marries a town kid unless something's gone badly wrong. And like it's just not the dialogue that you really get about people who are blonde and brunette. Like there is like definitely there is a racial difference between these two groups of people that seems to fairly explicit.

[Tracey Thomas]

Yeah, there's something going on there which again I think backs up the idea that Katniss is not white. Which you know, the movies obviously were not going to do that, especially in 2012 or whatever. But I think there's an argument to be made that Katniss is not a white person. Okay, this is the one thing about book, about Book four that I have to ask you.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Tracey Thomas]

The thing that I hated, the thing that just stuck with me as an irritant was that in the end Dr. Gaul's like, we erased all the tapes. No one will ever know about Lucy because nobody in the District watches the Games and it's gone. And I have the one tape but it's basically over and nobody knows about her. And I hated that because you're expecting me to believe that a group of people, the Covey people and the District 12 people who pass down these folklores and all of these stories, if none of them remembered These people and remember Lucy Graybeard winning. And if that's the case, like, I just. I found the whole thing to be like, you have not justified this choice of there actually having been another Victor from this place. Like, somebody remembers. And people do remember a little bit in the Purple Book. But, like, by the time we get to Katniss, it's like, no one's ever won. This has never happened. But it would make sense that Katniss would know about this folklore at least. Of, like, oh, there was rumor that someone once won, but she, like. But then she never came home. Like, I don't know. It just. It is not rooted in the text.

[Caroline]

No, I know what you mean. And like, I mean, I would say that the easy explanation for that was that Suzanne Collins wrote those books 20 years ago and she came up with this idea five years ago.

[Tracey Thomas]

Do you know what I mean? Totally. I know she needed something. Yeah.

[Caroline]

To like, Usually, though, I feel like.

[Tracey Thomas]

She makes the things work. Like, she made the story that she wrote about Haymitch's Games in book two. She. She made those work in book five. She was like, okay, we gotta make this what I said here work. And for me, it's not even just the people in the districts wouldn't remember. If everyone is so crazy for the Hunger Games in the Capitol, and this is the Hunger Games that put your president on the map. There are people in the Capitol, Capitol historians, capital archivists of the Games who remember. Like, you're just telling me games 10, nobody remembers who won. Like, or did you just erase that Games completely and we're really on games. Like, 11 is really game 10 again. Like, I just. What about the people who are alive? Then we would remember.

[Caroline]

I know, exactly. And like. Okay, yeah, okay, so fair enough. That, like in the original trilogy, Lucy Graybeard is not a thing. And there's never been a District 12 winner. But like in Sunrise and the Reaping, we should definitely have more Lucy Gray Baird. Memories right there are like, he literally loves the COVID girl.

[Tracey Thomas]

And the brothers, or whatever. Cain and Abel, what are their names?

[Caroline]

Clark Kent, whoever.

[Tracey Thomas]

They're still there. They know her. That's her friends.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

Amber Tam and Cam. Clark Claremon. Whatever.

[Caroline]

Amber Tam and Clark Clam.

[Tracey Thomas]

It's fine. Like, but those people remember Lucy Graybeard. And you expect me to believe that Lenore Dove doesn't know who Lucy Graybeard is? Like, that she doesn't bring up because she is ostensibly her niece. Right. My sense was that her mom was.

[Caroline]

The little girl was Maude Ivory. Yeah. No, that was the sense I got as well. Yeah. I don't fucking know. I mean, I did read this book about over a month the go, so I do feel like there was a couple of references.

[Tracey Thomas]

Okay, so there was a few references to her, but it's like. It's like. Oh yeah, there was. They say there was a girl who won, but they never talked about her again. It's like it's been 50 years.

[Caroline]

People would remember.

[Tracey Thomas]

Like a lot of the people, like people are still alive who knew her.

[Caroline]

So I did take from that. That the people who would remember her ignorant Clark clam and the. Whatever. Yeah, that. Okay. So this was actually my argument against the idea that she died. So I think she is still alive and they are protecting her identity by not discussing her.

[Tracey Thomas]

Ignoring her.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Tracey Thomas]

Interesting.

[Caroline]

Was my.

[Tracey Thomas]

I need a murder. It's gotta be. He has to kill her. Yeah, he has to kill her. He's the villain now. He's the ultimate villain. He can't just. He can't. He couldn't have missed.

[Caroline]

Yeah, no. But I like the idea as well in my kind of headcanon that like part of the thing that has driven him insane is that Lucy Gray has been this kind of figure on the wind he's never been able to pin down. And he is like. He's sort of persecuted the covey and gotten rid of all these songs because I. And like deleted everything to do with her Hunger Games because it's the thing that's driven him insane. It's the things we love. Things we love most. Mrs. Of a demon.

[Tracey Thomas]

Right? Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze. Talk about refreshing. You know what else is refreshing this summer? A brand new phone with Verizon.

[Caroline]

Yep.

[Tracey Thomas]

Get a new phone on any plan with select phone. Trade in in MyPlan and lock down a low price for three years on any plan with MyPlan. This is a deal for everyone, whether you're a new or existing customer. Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals. 3 year price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate only. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.