SHHG! Episode 21: Accountants' Day
Added 2024-01-13 17:00:07 +0000 UTCCatching Fire chapters 18-19
We are so back! We kick off 2024 with a rowdy return to podcasting about work sucking, holidays sucking, and Peeta sucking. We have some exciting news on that front this week however, although neither of us is convinced it really happened. Still, even if things are feeling a bit predictable, we certainly can't accuse these chapters of being boring! Waterworld antics, bonkers lies, trident headshots--there's a lot of wild stuff packed in here as we finally get to the Hunger Games part of this Hunger Games novel.
Comments
About the Neopets fan merch thing- it actually seems similar to the policies games like Genshin Impact and Hollow Knight have been making around fan merch. It seems like an acknowledgement that fan demand for merch exceeds their ability to provide it in house, and an open policy around fan merch might mean more visibility at conventions and the like, without having to spend on marketing themselves. Neopets has already just been hitting the part of it's nostalgia cycle where I've seen it popping up as indie artist acrylic charm sets, so formalizing and encouraging it right now does feel like a smart move.
Sarah Potter
2024-01-30 16:58:46 +0000 UTCim listening to this now and the intro is just "xeecee and liz reinvent college spring break" x) as much as i hate my grad student salary and bitch and moan about academia, having a random month in march for vacation is extremely goated
Ilana SB
2024-01-25 18:17:30 +0000 UTCSo my reading of the whole Capitol bit is much more cynical - I've always read the bits that seem to show them "sympathetically" as actually pretty critical, underlining that they like to flatter themselves as moral people but they still fully partake in the spectacle. In this bit in particular, the citizens are rioting about the baby reveal, but I think it's notable that the book says they don't actually know WHY they are - even with this hollow outburst of emotion, they aren't willing to do so much as call for the games' cancellation, and are gonna be watching along as soon as the tributes are in the arena.
Jolene Blake
2024-01-17 19:33:05 +0000 UTCDon’t worry he made sure everyone knew they didn’t do it outside of wedlock.
Zachary Coleman
2024-01-17 01:00:00 +0000 UTCfeeling so represented as I listen to this episode at my government job with a Roman numeral in the job title ❤️
Gilmartin Fitzpatrick
2024-01-16 21:01:39 +0000 UTCseconding that any affection my wife and I have for peeta is CERTAINLY bc of josh hutcherson’s incredibly gormless portrayal (and a good chunk of his smarmier behavior being cut/toned down). but your discussions have really made me realize that peeta’s role is kind of just like. macguffin
sam
2024-01-16 02:30:41 +0000 UTCSorry truly nothing is funnier to me than Peeta’s dramatic ass dropping “If it weren’t for… the baby!” Like he’s just this boring ass baker’s boy who upon being Put in a Situation uncovers an innate skill of being good at tv (which I think where we differ in thought is to you guys he likes that he’s good at tv and to me he’s good at it but not because he wants to be which is funnier like he doesn’t enjoy sewing a narrative but they just come to him
Marisa
2024-01-16 02:07:54 +0000 UTCI was ALSO thinking recently about how we need at minimum one holiday for every month, and I get 12 paid holidays a year!! april especially is just such a dead zone. give us earth day off you cowards
TJ Guiney
2024-01-16 00:33:37 +0000 UTCWhenever you mention something Peeta does all i can think is "which may or may not be strat" in a way that at this point could be considered compulsive
Ioana Moga
2024-01-15 19:56:34 +0000 UTCschools usually have good friday off but thats about it
sarah
2024-01-15 12:20:52 +0000 UTCI think, based on the rest of these books, that if we were meant to think the Capitol citizens were hypocritical for their reaction, Katniss would have told us that in her narration.
Ryan
2024-01-15 09:24:12 +0000 UTCSomething that bothers me about Hunger Games is that the books are clearly going for a bread and circuses idea (Panem even coming from “panem et circenses”), but they aren’t actually doing that. The point of the “circuses” is keeping the masses distracted by amusing them with mass entertainment. The hunger games aren’t entertainment for the masses, they’re punishment for them. It’s not meant to amuse them, but remind them how much they suck and how powerless they are. The games are only entertainment for the upper class. Like you mention, its weird mix of decadent Versailles and lowest common denominator reality tv, which don’t go together. It might be the author wanting to show the evil culture as only belonging to the elite minority and avoid indicting the “ordinary Americans”.
Ryan
2024-01-15 09:17:30 +0000 UTCListen, Does Peetah know what a pregnancy is? Do they teach sex ed at coal school?
Cutey! Candy!! Cataclysm!!!
2024-01-15 09:11:45 +0000 UTCI love that a lot of the points you two bring up about these books are things I haven’t heard the fandom talk about in like more than a decade of tearing them apart. I mean, Peeta gets hate (mostly from Gale fans) for a lot of the same reasons you bring up here, but I’ve never seen anyone actually go THIS hard on him
Liam Philipson
2024-01-15 09:00:26 +0000 UTCOmg, I am so saddened by the Peeta hate. 😅 I HATED Gale when I read the books, but loved Peeta as a character.
Pamela Koehne-Drube
2024-01-14 18:39:38 +0000 UTCyea, when i think about it it makes sense, obviously. I'm still surprised to learn america only has the one christian holiday off with Christmas, especially since Easter is the Holier Day. I guess I think of America as only nominally having seperated church and state, but in this one way they actually have. Huh.
Frejo
2024-01-14 17:30:22 +0000 UTCThat's what separation of church and state gets you. Now you have to work on Ascension Day
A sudden absence of bees
2024-01-14 17:22:43 +0000 UTCcontent warning for this comment for abortion discussion I didn’t pick up on this reading as a teen but a few years ago I saw someone point out that Suzanne Collins might be trying to do an allegory for people who are anti abortion here with the capitol citizens outrage. The idea of this unborn child (that Peeta made up) dying is outrageous but they have no issue with kids being killed in the games. I agree with you guys where I don’t know if it actually makes sense for the capitol citizens to care. But that could be part of what she was trying to say with the baby stuff
Georgie
2024-01-14 14:02:20 +0000 UTCabout the one sentence podcast thing, when i recommend shrieking shack to other people, i usually say "its a podcast where the hosts do a recontextualization and analysis of harry potter in our current times" + you guys don't overpraise jkr and criticize her in ur podcast. i got a friend pretty into ur podcast when i told him that since u guys finished hp u are reading and analyzing books from the 2000s and early 2010s. so yeah, a bit pretentious but i love u guys analysis on various works. also march does have spring solstice so maybe we can celebrate that. i know back in agricultural times ppl held feasts during solstices.
stac
2024-01-14 11:03:51 +0000 UTCThere's definitely room for the story to go there! This chapter did make it seem more like they were actually Morally Upset, at least through Katniss's perspective--which is always sort of a weird situation because her perspective is sometimes just correct
The Shrieking Shack
2024-01-14 01:18:35 +0000 UTCI watched Catching Fire for the first time recently and that seems to be what the movie was getting across too?? Like, some of the audience getting to a moment where the gears were just starting to turn.
Susan T
2024-01-14 00:32:17 +0000 UTCWhen I read recently I took it as a mix of people at varying places between what you said and genuinely being disillusioned. I am probably being too charitable though.
Zachary Coleman
2024-01-13 23:54:39 +0000 UTCI always thought that the capitol people were pissed because their favourite characters were being killed off rather than any self reflection on their part. Also I haven't read the books in a while, but now I'm thinking most of the Peeta fandom comes from Josh Huchersons very charming portryal of him lol
cem
2024-01-13 23:33:09 +0000 UTCI liked these chapters. And I feel like Peeta is desperate and trying to think of the only thing that even possibly might stop the games is that Katniss might be pregnant. Loved his Roxie Hart in prison moment. Feels pretty brutal how Cinna is treated so that Katniss can watch. And Finnick and the other tributes all seem to know it's a lie that Katniss is pregnant.
Joshua Smith
2024-01-13 23:26:10 +0000 UTCI'm fully expecting an extravagant celebration of my birthday (March 20th) to fulfill the March holiday need. You're welcome (for my being born)
Allison
2024-01-13 19:21:46 +0000 UTCIm realising easter eve and day are Saturday and Sunday. Still, we always get good friday and second easter day off here in sweden, and then ascension day a month later
Frejo
2024-01-13 19:10:29 +0000 UTCDo you not get easter off??? Americans work on Easter?
Frejo
2024-01-13 19:05:48 +0000 UTCTrident beats bread every time
A sudden absence of bees
2024-01-13 18:41:54 +0000 UTCAlso the Hunger Games subreddit seems just like the Capitol-Citizens constantly rediscovering the cruelty of the Hunger Games for the first time. Real Thread-Title was something like: "I can't believe, they were planning to send children into this dangerous Waterworld-Jungle-Arena before they made it an all-star-season"
ZiggyWSB .
2024-01-13 18:23:08 +0000 UTCAs for the Capitl-Metapher, I think it's just trying to say that "The Hierarchy"(Sounds like a good YA-Title) is a spectrum and not a binary. So even at the Top, there is a Top and Bottom within that Top. So you have the 11-12th District who are poor, powerless and have to die, the careero-Districts, who are rich, but still powerless and have to die, then the capitol-citizens who are rich and safe, but still powerless against President Snow and the game makers. Or District 12 is the third world, the capitol citizens are first world citizens and Snow and his Game Makers are their government. And the capitol-citizens don't think outside established norms and are only shocked at what seems like new terror, they haven't seen before. I also think it's nice that these two chapters show off the limitation of symbols after symbols were a bit overstated in their importance before. Cinna makes a dress, he gets bloody. Peeta makes up pregnancy, it doesn't stop the Hunger Games, The Tributes hold hands at the show, they still kill each other in the Arena.
ZiggyWSB .
2024-01-13 18:21:05 +0000 UTCFrom your reaction to these chapters I think you guys are gonna love Mockingjay and the prequel, lol.
Zachary Coleman
2024-01-13 18:08:10 +0000 UTC
