One of the odder phenomena of modern pop culture is the prequel series. It’s doubly weird when it’s the story of a villain. Maybe Cruella was good, but why does it exist? And so now we have The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, telling how Coriolanus Snow rose to power and explaining the origins of the Games themselves. And that’s strange enough going in, but it’s even weirder knowing that the woman responsible for that particular franchise, who wrote all those books, was also the head writer for Clifford’s Puppy Days, which admittedly is not about a villain but remains a weird choice for a sequel series.

Suzanne Collins has a background in theatre and telecommunications, and she got her start writing for television. Children’s television in particular. She also wrote two episodes of Hi, Honey, I’m Home, which delights me as about the only person who remembers that show even existed. She wrote a fair amount of Little Bear and co-created Generation O! Admittedly I’ve never heard of that show, but still. Presumably The Underland Chronicles—which I’ve also never heard of—sold well enough to let her concentrate on novels full time.

And then we launched into the dystopian world of Panem. I haven’t seen the movies, but I read the original series. She says it’s inspired by Theseus and the Minotaur, presumably because of the tribute of young adults from Athens to Crete. She also says she was inspired by her father’s Air Force career and her knowledge of what war does to a population. While I’ve always found the worldbuilding of The Hunger Games to be sketchy, it’s true that it’s not difficult to draw parallels between the citizens of the assorted Districts and other oppressed peoples.

If nothing else, it’s clear that Collins was directly responsible for the Teen Dystopia trend of ten years ago. No matter your feelings on her books in particular, it’s unmistakably true that they are hugely successful. It’s one of those things where the phenomenal success led to a ton of imitators. Between The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, there was a stretch where you could barely go to the book store without seeing teens fighting some kind of corrupt system or another. Few of them were as thought-out as The Hunger Games.

Perhaps her story is not quite the same as a certain other writer of note. Working on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is not as dramatic as living on government benefits and so forth. On the other hand, I don’t know anything terrible about her, so that’s better than a dramatic backstory. You don’t always need the drama to know how a person got where they are now, which is a lesson I really wish current Hollywood would learn.

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