It Must Be Karma: Second Hunger Games Prequel Announced.

 Every once and a while, remarkable coincidences happen that just make you pause and take wonder.  I loved the Hunger Games series, and wrote both my first YA blog posts and my first published book chapter about that series, with a particular emphasis on psychology and trauma and the roles of both Pavlovian conditioning and PTSD in the series. 

I read the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, when it was published in 2020, and thought it was pretty good, but lacked the magic of the original trilogy. I think the idea of a protagonist whose morals are steadily degrading throughout the novel, as opposed to the growth we saw in Katniss and Peeta, made the story too depressing for me to fully enjoy. Though I had every intention of seeing the movie when it came out in November 2023, somehow I never found the time. 

Therefore, when I found the movie showing on my airplane flight to Puerto Rico last week, I put aside the audiobooks I had brought, and watched that film instead.  I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and it made me want to revisit the book.  I also had a thought that, given that it has been four years since the first prequel was published, that Ms. Collins was probably not planning any others. 

Thus. I was as surprised and delighted as anyone today when a second prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, was announced today, for publication in 2025. There will apparently be a 40-year time jump since The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, placing this story at the time of the second Quarter Quell.  Perhaps this novel might be more correctly called a prequell? It is certainly an interesting choice, given that we already know the outcome of these particular Games.  But it will certainly be interesting to see young Haymitch, and meet Maysilee and family. and perhaps even  Katniss's parents. 

We might even get an answer to the question of whether Lucy Gray Baird survived Snow's attack.  After seeing the movie, where she seemed to be in the midst of composing the iconic "Hanging Tree" song shortly before the catastrophic events of the end, I am thinking this is a more likely possibility.  Unless she left a written version of the tune and lyrics behind, it is hard to understand how the song survived to become an anthem of the Rebellion, if Lucy Gray didn't.  

I am going to refer you to Professor Elizabeth Baird-Hardy (no relation!), who has examined the Hunger Games franchise on a much more in-depth level than I ever could.  She has already posted a terrific blog on the subject, with some great ideas about what we can expect.  I particularly love the idea of Donald Sutherland's son Kiefer playing the middle-aged Cornelius Snow. And pay close attention to the possible significance of the dates of both the announcement and the publication!  

First Epigraph Released for The Hallmarked Man: More Sark and More Silver.

     The Hallmarked Man still does not not have a release date, but there is some news about at least one of the epigraphs from the author's tweets. 

    The quotation, in accordance with the Sark pictures and silver ship and bracelet already given as clues, comes from John Oxenham's 1910 novel, A Maid of the Silver Sea, a novel set on Sark during the 1830's, a period where the relatively isolated island was invaded by miners, many from Cornwall, seeking their fortune in silver mines. Happily for cash-strapped Strike fans, this book is free for the reading at Project Gutenberg. I downloaded it immediately and got through it in one evening, the tome being much shorter than any of the Strike books. Some interesting tidbits about the book, the author and what it might mean for The Hallmarked Man are coming up, after the jump. 

Reading Along with Prudence, Part 6: The Psychological Blueprint of the UHC.

Hassan begins Chapter Five of Combating Cult Mind Control  by stressing the same thing Prudence did: being clever does not immunize a person against cult indoctrination; in fact, cults often intentionally target bright, affluent or well-educated people. Nor is there a particular family type that is vulnerable: people like Will Edensor from stable, loving homes can be ensnared just as drifters like Jordan, or runaways like Cherie are. However, people under stress, or in the midst of major life transitions can be especially vulnerable. That's probably one reason college campuses are such fertile recruiting grounds. 

Hassan identifies ten common denominators shared by destructive cults. As TRG readers will quickly note, these form an apparent blueprint for the creation of the UHC. 

Reading along with Prudence, Part 5A: Constructing a new cult identity, and how Robin tapped into Will's old one.

The last third of Chapter Four looks at a three-step process by which a new identity is created in cult mind control.

1. Unfreezing:  Breaking a person down.
2. Changing: Indoctrination.
3. Refreezing: Building up and reinforcing a new identity. 

The unfreezing part involves disrupting the person's sense of reality, using confusion and disorientation. This can happen physiologically through sleep deprivation and enforcing a nutrient-poor diet, as seen in the UHC. Another technique is  repeatedly presenting confusing information, so as to induce a hypnotic trance. Robin certainly recognized this method, as she told Flora, "They force you to agree up's down and black's white. It's part of the way they control you." 

Group situations are also prime times for creating unbalance. 

Exercises, such as guided meditation, personal confessions, prayer sessions, vigorous calisthenics, and even group singing, can also aid in unfreezing, Typically, these activities start out quite innocuously, but gradually become more intense and directed. They are almost always conducted in a group. This enforces privacy deprivation and thwarts a person's need to be alone, think and reflect. At these stage of unfreezing, as people are weakening, most cults bombard them with the idea that they are seriously flawed. incompetent, mentally ill, or spiritually fallen... Some groups can be quite vicious on their attacks at this stage. 

The small-group lectures and chanting sessions at the UHC eventually turned into the abusive confrontations of Revelation. 

Reading along with Prudence, Part 5: Who is the only genuinely brainwashed person at Chapman Farm? The answer will surprise you.

Chapter Four of Hassan's Combating Cult Mind Control aims to explain how mind control works, and how genuine "brainwashing" differs from undue influence. Hassan states that, as a member of the Unification Church who regarded communism as the enemy, he was ultimately inspired to leave the group when he saw that they used techniques similar to those used by Communist China in the 1950's. He was advised by his deprogrammers to read another of Prudence's book recommendations, Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, and recognized that all eight techniques (milieu control, mystic manipulation, demand for purity, confession, sacred science, loading the language, doctrine over person and dispensing of existence) described in that book were part of Moon's recruiting strategy. As we will see, they were also part of Jonathan Wace's toolkit, as he disrupted the authentic identity of his followers and made them ever more dependent on the UHC. Readers of The Running Grave can certainly see this influence in characters like Will Edensor and Emily Pirbright. 

Most ominously for Robin in her undercover mission, Hassan says:

Even if the person gets along with deliberate play-acting at first, the act eventually becomes real. They take on a totalistic ideology, that, when internalized, supersedes their prior belief system. 

Hassan also speaks of children born into such organizations:

Children unfortunate enough to be born to members of a destructive cult are deprived of a healthy psychological environment in which to mature optimally. That said, children are remarkably resilient, and I have met many who described never completely buying into the crazy beliefs and practices. Most ran away or found a way to escape before they became an adult. Yet, for others, it took decades to find the strength and the courage to be true to themselves. 

Kevin Pirbright was probably the best example of such a resilient character in TRG, although we also see echoes of that trait in Linn Doherty, with her wish to run away with Qing and Emily Pirbright, who was ready to leave the group to be with her lover. 

What is true brain-washing?

Hassan cautions that using the terms "mind control" and "brainwashing" synonymously is a mistake, although many do, including Strike and Robin in this book: for instance, when Robin calls the education of the cult children, "being brainwashed."  Ironically, there is only one character who briefly can be considered "brainwashed" and that is Robin herself.  How can that be?  Find out after the jump. 

Real-Life Fantastic Beasts #19 and #20: Meet Cis occamy and Leptanilla voldemort!

One of my favorite talks to give at Potter festivals, particularly when addressing child audiences,  is on the topic of Real-Life Fantastic Beasts:  newly discovered species that have been given scientific names inspired by the wizarding world.  The last time I spoke on this topic, there were eighteen such critters, ranging from dinosaurs to tardigrades, all with amazing stories from their discoverers about why they were inspired by Harry Potter.  My pipe dream is to produce a children's natural history book about these beasties and happily, thirteen of the discoverers have so far agreed to be interviewed for it. 

The downside of this book project is that it keeps getting longer.  The last year has added two more species to the list, for a grand total of twenty.  Cis occamy, a beetle from Brazil, joins corinnid sac spider Attacobius demiguise and stink bug Graphorn bicornutus in the subset of species named for Newt Scamander's friends from the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie franchise, rather than Harry Potter series itself. Leptanilla voldemort is the first ant species to bear a Harry Potter-inspired name, joining two stink bugs, two beetles and three wasps as insects in this unique group. 

Learn more about these magical creatures after the jump. 

Reading along with Prudence, Part 4: A look at the UHC through the Lens of Modern Cult Practices.

Hassan begins Chapter Three by explaining that destructive cults do not refer only to religious organizations but to any group that uses mind control methods to exert undue influence; these can include political organizations, human trafficking groups, psychotherapist groups and even multi-level marketing companies. For example, in 2019, Hassan published a book called The Cult of Trump. What distinguishes a destructive cult from a legitimate organization is consistent and unethical use of what Hassan calls the BITE model: the group leadership maintains excessive control of the recruits' Behavior, Information, Thoughts and Emotions. Hassan makes it clear that he supports freedom of religion and peoples' rights to affiliate as they please, evoking the name of another real-life cult leader mentioned in The Running Grave as one who "differed from the UHC only in laying slightly more emphasis on murder and a lot less on generating revenue:"

If people want to believe Sun Myung Moon, or Charles Manson, or their dog is the messiah, that is their right. However, and this is the crucial point: people need to be protected from processes that make them believe Manson or Moon is the messiah... If deception, hypnosis or other mind-control techniques are being used to recruit and control followers, then peoples' rights are being infringed upon. 

Hassan reviews research on mind control that began in the 1950's. Some was conducted by the CIA; some by psychotherapist with good intentions to use the methods to empower people and get them out of "mental ruts." He describes a form of group therapy, "sensitivity training" that arose in the 1960's and morphed into something that very much resembles the UHC's "revelation." 

One technique, widely popular at that time, was the "hot seat," which was first used by the drug rehab cult, Synanon.  A member of the group sat in the center of the circle, while other members confronted them with what they considered to be the person's shortcomings or problems. Needless to say, without the supervision of an experienced therapist, and sometimes even with it, such a technique opens up considerable possibilities of abuse. 

 Continued...