since you're a district 2 lover, what are your thoughts/feels on sejanus and marcus from tbosas?
"*plays Britney Spears’ Toxic*
there is SO MUCH going on there
I actually love early D2 in TBOSAS having such a distinct from-Capitol identity, since later on it gets … muddled … by having so much privilege. they’re still clinging to a very distinct idea of district pride that is alllllmost dangerous (or is downright treason, depending where you look). later on they still have a very real sense of pride but they have to balance it with loyalty to the hand that feeds them. D2 at the start of TBOSAS hasn’t figured that out yet
which is fun, because you have Sejanus and Marcus being loyal to their district and traitors to the Capitol, BUT ALSO on opposing sides, because Sejanus has accumulated privilege that Marcus sees as assimilationist and will never break bread with him
I think Sejanus sees the commonality and desperately wants Marcus to see it too, but Marcus can’t/won’t and that’s the tragedy. it makes them awful foils for each other and honestly, there’s no way either of them was ever going to live. Marcus defies the Capitol and dies. Sejanus defies the Capitol and dies.
it doesn’t matter how much Marcus thinks he assimilated, how disgusted Marcus is at his accent or his clothes or his wealth, how much his parents bow and scrape and play into the hands of the authorities for the sake of giving their son a better life, Sejanus was never going to be Capitol, at the end of the day he’s district and he’s a traitor and he’s disposable and it was all pretend. Sejanus knows this and he fights anyway. Marcus is too angry, and then too dead, to understand.
in the end Coriolanus defies the Capitol and gets a promotion. Sejanus defies the Capitol and hangs from a tree.
(there are a few metaphors here)
(I do not ship Marcus/Sejanus, people can write what they want and that’s chill but in my head it dilutes the power of the dynamic if Sejanus has a childhood crush and not, like, an obsession with redemption and justice and a drive to get through to Marcus that drives his third eye wide open and ultimately gets him killed)