#and in that way there are these parallels between johanna and peeta that are so fun for me

[diddlesnap]

joniss for the soul

[certainmaybe]

Painting the Poster, or why Peeta Mellark is the reason it finally worked

Spoilers for SOTR as well as the rest of the hunger game franchise up to this point

This post is just my personal interpretation / subjective opinion. If you disagree that's 100% valid, and I'd be more than happy to discuss

So, I finished SORT today, and I think it's pretty obvious how a lot of the characters parallel each other. We have the theme of free-spirited covey girls, of victors driven by their need to protect the innocent, of careers regretting their role, etc. Almost every character seems at least mirrored somehow in the narrative, expect one that seems to stick out - Peeta Mellark. While I see a lot of similarity between him and young Haymitch in the way they love, it's impossible to deny that at its core, Katnisses character is way closer to Haymitch than Peeta. They are both fundamentally driven by a desire to protect, though Haymitch does it openly and with out restraint, while Katniss has already been hardened by the neglect and abandonment she faced. But when it comes down to it, they both follow the same instincts. So how does Peeta fit in?

Honestly, I just couldn't figure it out, at least not while I was thinking about the different games as individual stories. But then I thought, this isn't multiple stories. It's one story, one rebellion slowly growing until finally everything was in place, slowly collecting people and different roles until they finally had enough? So, here we go, my theory. Everything you need for the perfect poster.

1 - The Idea

This is less what we need for the poster as it's the reason we paint it. It's people like Lucy Gray Baird or Lenore Dove, people that refuse to fit into the system and force other people to admit that maybe it could or should be different. I also like to count Primrose Everdeen into this category, because even though she doesn't have the same rebellious spirit as the original covey girls, she still is somebody who values kindness and compassion in a world that wants to destroy those things, making her a rebel of her own right, at least in my book. She also serves as motivation for Katnisses fight, which will become relevant during the second point

2 - The Motive

Here we have Haymitch, Katniss, probably countless other tributes, victors and other people that were punished for their bravery. This, if everything works out, is the person you put on the poster. It can't be the idea, because they are natural rebels. People look at them and think, they must be something special, I could never be like this. While the idea gives us something to fight for, the motive is somebody we want to fight with. But because the motive isn't something 'special' on it's own, they need the right idea to make them worth painting. Or, to become a bit less metaphorical, people like Haymitch and Katniss don't just fight for no reason, they fight because they have somebody they love, somebody they fight for, somebody they are willing to break every rule and go against every norm for. This is why we need both the right idea and the right motive, on their own they just don't work.

3 - The Tools

Now we get into the practical side of things. Here we have people like Peetee, like Plutarch, possibly even Wires and very likely a ton of other people. They hardly get noticed once they are done, but they are what makes the whole thing work. The canvas, the paint brushes. It's not glamurous, it might be dirty, but with out it you won't get anywhere.

4 - The Colors

Those are the people that make the motives visible, give them their depth. Finnick, Rue, Johanna, Maysilee and Lulu, the careers, the heroes friends, families, everybody that surrounds them. With out them, we can't see the motive for what they are. We can't see them strong with out somebody to fight, we can't see them caring with somebody to care for, we can't see them as somebody to rely on with out somebody relying on them... you get the point. I could go into even more detail, but the gist is, like you need many different colors for an accurate picture, you need many different people to make a Hero visible

5 - The Artist

And here we have the big finale, the reason that with Katniss and Peeta things finally worked out. Because there are many pictures in the world, but few works of art. And to creat a work of art, you need an artist. Somebody who gets the idea, who knows how to work with all the tools, sees all the colors and most importantly, understands how to make the motive shine. And that's what Peeta did. He looked at Katniss, the way she fought and loved and cared and bled, and decided to make her shine. Other people have tried, Effi and Cinna and Coin, but with out Peeta she would just have been another Haymitch. But Peeta saw her, and understood how to show the whole world how special she was.

[7drinklimit]

My thoughts about SOTR (spoilers)

I just finished SOTR (finally) and I need to rant about things. This will be disjointed because I have A Lot of Thoughts.

First of all: Mags and Wiress. I always thought after Mockingjay that Mags' inability to speak was unlikely to actually be the result of a stroke. Katniss mentions that she thinks it's the case, but Katniss has no idea who Mags is, and no idea what the Capitol does to Victors after they "win". I thought that Mags' speech difficulties might be the result of Capitol torture AND I WAS CORRECT. Wiress was someone I didn't consider originally, but I love the way Suzanne Collins wove her in. As soon as I realised she and Wiress were Haymitch's mentors, I noticed that Wiress was speaking normally, and seemed at least mostly sane. This contrasted starkly to her portrayal in the 3rd Quarter Quell where Katniss mentioned she would trail off her sentences and forget what she was saying. Then we found out about the conspiracy to blow up the arena, and I thought "oh." Snow leaves no-one unpunished if he thinks they are a threat. Now I'm wondering - we see Mags in a wheelchair at the end of Haymitch's Games. She is held back by the Peacekeepers, so we never get to see the full extent of what they did to her. We don't hear her speak, so we don't know how badly she was tortured at that stage. We do know that she had to go on and mentor Finnick Odair, 15 years later. I wonder if she faced worse torture for trying to shield him after his Games the same way Haymitch mentions her shielding the boy from an earlier Games. It's also making me believe in the theories I've seen going around about Annie Cresta. Did she really go mad after her district partner was beheaded? Or did the Capitol get her too?

Next: Haymitch's family. We knew that they were going to die. It was heart-breaking, knowing that their end was coming, but not knowing exactly how or when. The one point when I really knew, though was when Haymitch was watching back the (heavily edited) footage of the Games, and he noticed that his family was not featured in the Reaping footage. That's when as readers we knew that they were doomed - even though we already knew objectively, that moment was incontrovertible proof that they were gone, and it was going to happen soon. What I also noticed was the parallels between Haymitch's family and Katniss' family 25 years later. In the 75th Games, Katniss is panicking that Prim and Gale and her mother are being tortured because of the Jabberjays mimicking their screams. Peeta reassures her and says that they can't possibly torture or kill Prim because they need to do the Tribute family interviews at this stage in the Games. Johanna then points out that all of Panem loves Prim, so even the Capitol citizens would riot if she were killed off by the government. Prim is well-known and well-loved by the entire Capitol at this point - she has been featured on many broadcasts about Katniss, including the wedding dress shoot, so the Capitol can't touch her without risking retaliation from even its own citizens. Haymitch's family do not have that protection. By erasing them from the Games footage, Snow is ensuring that nobody in the Capitol knows about them. If nobody knows about them, they can be killed off a lot more easily than if people did. Ma and Sid are both literally and figuratively erased from the narrative. It's also worth noting that the firebombing of D12 likely wasn't just a message to Katniss. It was a message to Haymitch too. A reminder. Look what we can do to you and the people you love. Remember what we did before.

Next up: Lenore Dove's death. We knew it was coming, of course. Like poor Ma and Sid, the end of Lenore Dove's story was written before we even knew her name. However I was kind of thrown by it at first- it seemed so random compared to all the other deaths in the story. Poisoned gumdrops? That she just randomly finds in the Meadow? Ma and Sid's deaths were meant to be dramatic and gut-wrenching. A spectacle for Haymitch's homecoming. Lenore Dove's seemed almost anticlimactic for something Snow orchestrated. Then I realised: of course. Poison. Snow's modus operandi. He wanted to make a spectacle of Haymitch's family, so he did. He didn't really care about them, only so much as he could use them to hurt Haymitch. Fire was dramatic and painful and visible enough to do the trick. With Lenore Dove, he wanted it to be personal. He always used poison to kill off his enemies and people he saw as threats. Lenore Dove was not only Haymitch's love, she was someone related to Snow's former love. He hated her for that alone, even if she hadn't been connected with Haymitch, the failed rebel. I'm sure that Snow hadn't meant for Haymitch to feed Lenore the gumdrop himself. He had no way of knowing if or when Haymitch would go to the Meadow to meet her. He [Snow] knew that she would find the gumdrops in the Meadow, and he knew that she would eat them because she loved them. He would have seen the footage of Haymitch telling Sid to give the gumdrops to Lenore Dove after the Reaping. Would have thought that perhaps Haymitch would find Lenore Dove when it was too late, and figure out what had happened, and be heartbroken anyway. How much crueller it was that Haymitch himself gave her the poison from his own hands. Imagine Snow's sadistic delight when he discovered that (because I'm sure there were cameras somewhere. They were always watching, after all). And I've seen many people mention the purposeful cruelty of Snow feeding Haymitch milk and bread for the whole 10 days of partying - he knew that that would soak up any poison that Haymitch might ingest if he tried to follow Lenore Dove by eating the gumdrops. Lenore Dove, however, had been starved in D12's prison, so there was no hope of her throwing the poison back up.

Also: art and fashion as a metaphor and a vessel for rebellion. Maysilee and Haymitch talk about "painting posters" as code for defying the Capitol. At the Second Quarter Quell tribute parade, Haymitch Abernathy places Louella McCoy's body at President Snow's feet and sarcastically applauds, holding the president responsible for what he has done to a little girl (technically not art, but metaphorically a "poster"). 25 years later, Peeta Mellark paints a portrait of Rue, dead and covered in flowers, to force the Capitol Gamemakers to own up to what they did to her. To "hold them responsible for killing that little girl". Lenore Dove sings forbidden songs in protest for Haymitch's illegal reaping. 25 years in the future, Katniss Everdeen sings The Hanging Tree - a forbidden song - which in the movies at least becomes the backing song for the revolution. In the books it is used to try and un-hijack Peeta, in itself an act of rebellion, undoing the damage that Snow did to him to try to bring him back to Katniss. Maysilee critiques people's fashion (also an art form) as her own subtle way of rebelling. Criticising the Capitol audience to their faces for their clothing, helping Effie to change Lou Lou's makeup to make her more presentable for her interview, and brutally taking down Drusilla's fashion choices when the older woman attempts to demean the D12 tributes. She wears jewellery to define herself as an individual, and unites the Newcomers alliance by helping to make their tokens wearable via her necklace weaving skills. During the 74th and 75th Games, Cinna uses fashion as his own form of rebellion. From making the D12 tributes unforgettable in the parade and their interviews, to helping Katniss "design" her own fashion line (in opposition to the Capitol's insistence that the tributes themselves develop a respectable talent), to turning Katniss' wedding dress - meant to be a humiliating spectacle orchestrated by Snow - into a literal rebel symbol, to designing Katniss' actual rebel costume.

Just - the parallels and the metaphors and the symbolism and the references... I was starting to get super annoyed with how often Nevermore was popping up between paragraphs towards the end, until I realised I was supposed to feel that way. I was being driven to distraction by the song, the same way Haymitch was. And for him it was so much worse. The ending was so bittersweet - Haymitch mentioning that he drank more out of habit than anything now, acknowledging that his liver was failing, and knowing he wouldn't be around a lot longer, but at least he would be with Lenore Dove soon. Finding out that he drove everyone away on purpose to save them from Snow, even though it nearly killed him to do it. The fact that he has had nightmares every night without fail for 25 years, about killing his girlfriend, and being hunted in the arena, and unlike Katniss and Peeta, he doesn't have anyone to comfort him when he wakes up, but saying that Lenore Dove has forgiven him now when she visits in his dreams, because he's learned to love again, and he kept his promise to her - he finally saw a day where the sun rose on his birthday and it was not the Reaping.

[thegreenthepeacetheorange]

Everlark (Catching Fire, Ch. 24-25)

katniss being angry that peeta hasn't come to help her before she realises he literally can't

peeta putting his hand up against the wall and her putting hers up to meet him. these two are so angsty romance-coded

"i just stare at his face, doing my best to hang onto my sanity"

peeta holding and rocking katniss on his lap, lifting her chin so she looks at him. husband. he loves her so much.

(as an aside, johanna and finnick basically being katniss's and peeta's older siblings is so adorable. what a cute fun brokem damaged little family)

when katniss finds out that finnick loves a "poor, mad girl back home", i can't not think of the parallels being set up between annie/finnick and peeta/katniss in the next book

ah the beach scene

"everything. that's what peeta wants me to take from him"

"i realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if peeta dies. me"

"i do. i need you"

i'm dead at this point. how can people say katniss didn't love peeta. i got the evidence right here!

So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss. I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down. This time, there is nothing but us to interrupt us. And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind. 

the idea of peeta trying to talk despite katniss kissing him and then just giving up is too much

the warmth that grows inside of her exclusively due to peeta

the line about a new kind of hunger. bars

she's so down bad for him, and i think she truly realises here, even if she doesn't let herself think about it too much.

finnick waking up and realising the way they're wrapped around eachother and being like... "um get a room? if you want?" is hilarious too

i truly wonder how far they would've gone if they hadn't been interrupted by the lightning bolt. judging by katniss saying there's nothing to stop them this time but them, i think she might've not stopped at all. and the wrapping around each other. i know they were about to cut away in the capitol feeds.

peeta again being husband and making katniss lie down and leading her to bed. "i let him lead me over to where the others are." the "i let him." this books is just a masterpiece in showing the change in their dynamics.

lol at katniss being like "fuck no" at the suggestion of having kids with gale. "for one thing, that's never been part of my plan." like how much clearer has she got to make it. contrasting this to when peeta dropped the baby bomb and she was like: it could be true by now if it wasn't for the games, right? she's so shameless

i honestly feel like crying every time katniss says she thinks of peeta's child safe in the meadows. the fact that it's just peeta's child makes me think that the unnamed, unidentified unspoken of mother, is her. like that's who she's picturing in this fantasy, in this dream.

"when i wake, i have a brief delicious feeling of happiness that is somehow connected with peeta" and she clings to it as long as she can

just something so beautiful that all this talk of love and family and peace and the future is linked with peeta and thus her own happiness. like my heart aches for her.

she can't look at peeta the next morning after their kissing the night before. i think a big part of it was because she just allowed herself to think all these thoughts involving peeta and then came back down to earth very quickly and realised that this wasn't possible for her because of the QQ

the pearl, their inside joke because of effie! the fact they remembered, the fact that they laugh together like this even with everything going on

katniss determining that peeta is her biggest enemy because their desires are the complete opposite when it comes to survival. "i promise myself i will defeat his plan." and even despite them both realising they're at odds, despite peeta not being able to look at her after, they sit together hand in hand.

the pearl and everything it comes to symbolise with these two kills me.

[michelle-ko-i]

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Coriolanus Snow vs. the Underdogs

So a new trailer for the TBOSAS just dropped when I'm writing this, and I haven't really done many Hunger Games analyses. And I just want to say how important TBOSAS is for those who are either new to the series or don't get why Suzanne Collins wrote about this time in Snow's life. So I'm going to break it down for those who may not have seen these connections, or those who just don't get it in the first place. Also, this contains spoilers for the TBOSAS book, so go read it before the movie!

So, i've met many people who don't get why TBOSAS takes place when it does. if you're not aware, it takes place around the time of the 10th Hunger Games, in which Coriolanus Snow is on the verge of graduating from the Academy, and trying to get himself into the University. This particular year of the Games is important for him, because he is assigned a tribute to mentor. He is assigned Lucy Gray Baird, of District 12. Already we are introduced to some parallel between him and Katniss.

Now many fans have made connections between Katniss and Lucy Gray, primarily on the facts that it was because they both can sing, and have a good sense of survival, but the truth is, they are very different characters, but because of Snow's growing apathy, he can't tell the two apart. Lucy Gray is a performer, contrary to Katniss. Remember in the first book how Katniss thought the acting, and the being pretty part of the Games was silly? Remember how awkward she thought pretending to be in love with Peeta was? Lucy Gray wasn't like that. She was used to many people looking at her, hoping for a show. She was extroverted, charming, and more importantly comfortable with her spotlight. Katniss, while she was certainly charming, was not trained to entertain. Katniss was introverted and awkward, and she was afraid to sing in front of Cressida and her crew later in Mockingjay. She didn't like acting for the cameras in Mockingjay and the first book. Katniss preferred to be left to her own devices, rather than rely on someone else for attention.

now you're probably asking yourself; so why would these two girls have much of an impact on Snow? Well you see, they don't have all the impact, they are just one of the very many examples of this interest Snow has.

Obviously, Snow is a vengeful character; if he doesn't get what he wants, he punishes those who won't give it to him. If you hurt him, he will hurt you back. Snow has been able to use this strategy his whole life. but there's one person he wasn't able to punish for betraying him: Lucy Gray. whether she's dead or far away, Snow wants to punish her. So what does he do instead? he punishes those who remind him of her. here are a few examples: Finnick Odair.

Finnick has a few similarities to Lucy Gray; he's charming, extroverted, and can stand out in a crowd. he was--as they say--an underdog, as he was one of the youngest in the arena during his Games, and overcame the odds by becoming the youngest winner ever. so, when Finnick won, to get back at how Lucy Gray used to charm him, Snow made Finnick prostitute himself for money, and threatened that if he didn't go as Snow ordered, someone he loved would pay the consequences. this was his way to get back at betraying Snow's affection towards Lucy Gray.

example 2: Johanna Mason.

Johanna was very much an underdog. According to Katniss's inner monologue in the first book, Johanna came into the Games, playing like she was small and weak; sort of like Lucy Gray. Lucy Gray was no fighter--or at least wouldn't be able to defend herself very well, even if she had a weapon. and because of her unwillingness to give up, and her ability to capture a crowd with her comments and "bubbly" personality, this reminded him of Lucy Gray, he punished her for it.

and finally: Katniss Everdeen. Katniss, to Snow, is the living embodiment of Lucy Gray, practically the reincarnation of her. Even if she and Lucy Gray are very different, there are two things that Katniss and Lucy Gray have in common: they are underdogs from District 12. which in the point of view of the capitol, is the lowest of the low when it comes to the tributes in the Hunger Games.

and that's what all of these characters punished by Snow share: in their games they were underdogs. Finnick--the youngest in the arena. Johanna--the weakest. Katniss and Peeta--star-crossed lovers from District 12. all examples of overcoming the odds and defeating the enemy (which is the definition of a underdog).

Lucy Gray was an underdog. She had the odds against her favour and still one with her charm and talent like all of these victors did.

Lucy Gray is the beginning of this revenge Snow feels towards underdogs. Don't believe me? let's look at the movies.

One thing that makes the movies stand out from the books is how there are multiple scenes that don't include Katniss--even if the books are in her POV. One particular scene that proves that Snow is vengeful against Lucy Gray's betrayal is when he was talking to Seneca Crane about underdogs in the first movie, after . here's the exhange:

Snow: "So you like an underdog."

Seneca: "Everyone likes an underdog." Snow: "I don't... Have you ever been out there? 10, 11, 12?"

Seneca: "Not personally, no."

Snow: "I have. There are lots of underdogs [...] And I think that if you see them, you would not root for them either."

there are lots of underdogs. that's why Snow is targeting Katniss most of all, because Snow has seen firsthand the underdogs produced from the higher districts, like Lucy Gray. Remember, this scene was written before TBOSAS was even published. and Suzanne Collins worked on the screenplay for the films. Lucy Gray was the foundation of Coriolanus Snow's character from the beginning

This revenge, this hatred for those trying to survive is what literally drives Snow to punish them. the fact that they were able to bring themselves up from his iron fist with their charm and wit, and most of all--defy the system that is meant to keep them down. something that he wasn't able to do. Snow was able to manipulate, but never actually figure out the situation for himself. he always had help, he always had someone to rely on--he was never able to do it alone, unlike those victors he punished. but it could also be the other way around. these victors always had help. People betted on Katniss, gave her gifts, she had Peeta.

that's another example of Snow's vengeful attitude towards Katniss--her relationship with Peeta. I feel in some way that Snow is resented towards Katniss's relationship with Peeta. I believe he always knew that she was trying to protect him--something he could not achieve with Lucy Gray, or she never showed towards him.

so there you have it. that is why Snow is the way that he is, and that's what makes TBOSAS so important to the Hunger Games lore as a whole. I personally think that Snow is singlehandedly the most important character to analyze in this series, because what he ultimately becomes was because of a small girl who ran away.

[underscore-jude]

whilst i think no characters in thg/tbosas are direct parallels of each other and to say so feels a bit disparaging to their indiviualities as characters, i think it is safe to say that snow considers the characters in thg to be direct echoes of the people from his past, granted the main problem is that he can't decide who's who.

if you're boiling it down to "performer forced to fight/fighter forced to perform" mentality then of course your brain is going to say oh peeta is lucy gray and katniss is sejanus, which yes, tracks, but also ignores many things but mainly the fact that katniss isn't a fighter. the entire first part of catching fire is the debacle between katniss and gale. katniss wants to run away, to save herself and her family, even if it means leaving everyone else behind, while gale wants to stay and fight and change everything in one bloody revolt. now im not saying that one idea is better than the other, but im just saying. which argument more resembles sejanus and which one more resembles coriolanus? as much as we don't like him, gale is as much a part of snow's delusions as katniss and haymitch and peeta are.

so it's easy then, right? peeta is the performer just like lucy gray, gale is the fighter just like sejanus, and katniss is the survivor just like snow, right? the argument in snow's head would boil down to that. in sunrise on the reaping he gives haymitch a whole speech about how you can't trust covey girls that's just dripping with projection issues. clearly he sees enough of himself in haymitch and enough of lucy gray in lenore dove to make that argument. he never stops to account for the fact that these people are fundamentally never going to be lucy gray or sejanus or tigris or clemensia or dr gaul or highbottom and that they won't act the same way as them.

after reading sotr i described wyatt as a "psychological deadringer for sejanus". i still think that rings true. I think he probably resembles the politics of anyone from snow's past the best and yet it appears that he was largely overlooked because he was an early out in their game, he wasn't the guy who made a scene at the reaping, he was the real male tribute from district 12 that year. it just speaks to snow's projection issues, how he tends to see himself as the one that stands out and anyone who doesn't immediately put up a red flag in his minds eye will go overlooked. pull that back in with the other characters who are the most important ones in the story that pull the sejanus parallels, katniss and gale and johanna and how none of them went the same way he did because they're not him and ya mind goes poof. we are all echoes of the past made new and snow forgot that last part

i have no idea what the fuck any of this means. im just the messenger the prophecy has been spoken leave me alone

[clatoera]

Always Remember We're Burned for Better Chapter 17: What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Want You More

Heeeeey guys. I feel like I apologize a lot for delays. Full transparency is that as we enter the final act of this fic we are also entering my application season. Things are going to be irregular until October when my apps are submitted. At the same time I expect thats when I'll be starting the sequel so! Exciting things ahead! Thank you for your patience and understanding and love. I appreciate and love every one of you.

I quite literally went on a mission to revisit every thing Jack Quaid has ever done to get an idea of how I wanted Marvel to sound. I'm posting this 26 minutes before I see oppenheimer the third time.

The title is from Cruel Summer (tswift)

AO3

Masterpost

As always, thank you to my friends. @ohhowwehavefallen who quite literally is the reason for the very last scene. IT was her. Give her credit for it existing. @kentwells for literally letting me bounce EVERY idea off them (I literally the other day said I just want people to be happy and had to be reminded I cause the suffering), and @crookedlyniceperson who keeps me going with the thought of memes.

Thank you as we enter this last segment of chapters, where we end the war and start the rest of their lives.

“Do they ever stop looking at you like you killed their dog?” Johanna is the one who asks, glancing around half heartedly at the dozens of wary stares being sent their way at any given moment. 

In perfect, offhanded unison, Cato and Glimmer give a resigned “No.”

They had grown used to it. The distrustful looks, the pitiful side glancing, but frankly there was not as much fear or respect one would think these once great victors would garner. 

Then again, they were quite a sight to behold these days. 

Johanna, with hair like a peach fuzz and various track marks from IV after IV for that Morphling hit. 

Clove, who had flayed more than one man alive on television, with skin like violets and nightlock berries from her neck down, bruises blossoming on every inch of that pale canvas. 

Cato and Glimmer, who they had long since deemed as crazy and unstable, but now less of a threat with the return of the carrot they had dangled on the stick before them. 

Really, the only one who even resembled his old self was Marvel. And what threat was he, anyway?

Finnick did not grace them with his presence, nor did Annie, as they were playing peacekeepers between Katniss and Peeta across the room after his attempt on her life not all that many weeks ago.  After all, someone had to keep Miss girl on fire’s embers glowing. Without the supervision of Finnick, Gale likely would have taken Peeta out by now just for his own opportunity to get ahead in the name of protecting Katniss. 

“We kinda did kill their dogs. Well. We killed their kids.” Glimmer reminds her, back to her earlier habits of pushing food around on a tray, slipping hard and fast into her old ways. 

She sits directly next to Clove on the opposite side of Cato, across from Johanna. Next to Johanna is Marvel who still cannot look at her for longer than a second, so far as Glimmer knows at least. 

It’s Clove, of course, who catches him looking when Glimmer is not. 

“We didn’t kill their kids, they weren’t in the games.” Clove rolls her eyes, but stabs her blunt spork into the overly-cooked but under-seasoned green beans. She couldn’t even raise her shoulder parallel to the floor, but they were still unwilling to give her (or Cato, for that matter) a knife. At least someone in this godforsaken place was still scared of her and didn’t see her like a bird with a broken wing. “The twelves mostly finished themselves off every year anyway- for fucks sake would it kill someone to get some salt down here?”

“I would commit a literal war crime for a pizza right now.” Marvel admits, and the tone of his voice sounds like maybe he’s only half joking, that maybe he really would dig a knife into the president of District 13 in exchange for extra pepperoni. 

When the eyes around them firmly land on him, and some of the armed guards tense and take a step forward he puts up a single, defeated hand. “I’m joking. I’m not here to take out the rebellion for a stuffed crust.”  When the guards step back and the weary looks turn away, he does cock an eyebrow and gives a slight nod of his head. “Extra cheese on the other hand..”

Glimmer gives a quiet giggle, though she does not look up from the swirls she makes with the potatoes before her. 

Cato actually laughs, though, in a way he had not in the many months of separation of him and Clove. It was like something in him had come back to life, and it clearly had something to do with the dark haired girl he currently had his arms draped around the shoulders of. “If you’re going to get us shot over pizza we may never have again, at least make it something good. At this point I’d lead this fucking war if it would get me back to a burger.” He gently nudges Clove, who is furiously attempting to stab at whatever they were trying to pass off as a balanced meal. “Come on. What do you miss?”

“What don’t I fucking miss? Our bed. Fabric softener. The use of my arms..” Clove starts to complain, but she looks up and catches the teasing shine in his blue eyes and can’t help but play along. “...half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the peanut butter half. And an orange. If we make it out of this, I never want to go a day without real fruit ever again.” She nudges at Glimmer’s knee with her own, before doing the same with her free shoulder. “What about you Glim Glam? What’s your death row choice here?”

How is she supposed to say, oh, nothing, I wasn’t allowed to enjoy food, the thought of eating makes me nauseous? How is she supposed to say that she isn’t quite sure there's anything out there in the world that she’s interested in these days. There’s a memory, though, of a night before Clove became victor officially, of late night snacks in a bed that was not her own but belonged to the man across from Cato. Back when there was still potential and love in her world, that little bit of good that she had had taken from her yet again. 

“...those little cake slices, not cupcakes, but the individual slices so you can try the different flavors. They have them at the parties all the time. And maybe fries?” Glimmer smiles to herself at the memory of salt between bed sheets and frosting on the tips of noses. “And there was this pasta, with like…cheese sauce and It was so so good but I can’t remember what it was called but it was just so good I’d kill to have it again–”

“...mac’n’cheese. That’s what it’s called. You like it with the toasty little breadcrumbs on top of it.” Marvel finishes for her, briefly lifting his head and giving ever so slight of a nod. “I remember it from when-”

“Yeah. I do too.” Glimmer agrees, and is the one to break eye contact as she refocuses down at the scraps of borderline dog food they’re being fed. 

A heavy, powerful silence falling over the table full of victors, a haze no one quite wants to break. Cato taps his thumb on Clove’s shoulder, and she settles into his side contently. Marvel clears his throat and looks around the room awkwardly, not quite focusing on any point or face in particular. 

“...well!” Johanna announces, finally breaking through the silence that permeated their shared space. “I don’t know about you, but the first thing I want, is a fucking drink.”

—————

“Where’s Cato? I haven’t seen you two apart…actually at all, since you got back?” Glimmer invites herself to the foot of Clove’s bed, hands full of bed sheets and thread. “Off in that silly little meeting of boys?”

“Finnick showed up and practically begged him to go.” Clove confirms, pulling herself to a more proper sitting position  and tucking her feet back to sit criss-crossed underneath her.  “I don't know if it was actually a meeting or if he was just trying to make him go get his allotted thirty minutes of fresh air.”   As she sits she tugs at the newly replaced IV in her hand, bringing forward the poll that was attached to the long bit of tubing in her hand, reminded of the inconvenience she thought she had escaped. 

Glimmer reaches out a hand to brush over the back of Clove’s, immediately calling attention to the new intrusion. “Clove! I thought you were done with these?”

“Eh. A small setback. Turns out part of my lung just like..collapsed when I was trying to throw this morning. It was filled with blood, it got pretty nasty. I guess I still have some internal bleeding and bruising.” She pulls down the top of her hospital pajamas, showing the literal tubing coming out from below her clavicle, which is filled with fresh ruby blood. “Shoved this in me, the IV is for the pain. I don’t think I need it but–”

“Your lung collapsed. You have a literal piece of plastic sewed into your skin. And you don’t think you need the pain meds?” Glimmer cocks a blonde eyebrow, before mirroring Clove’s cross legged posture. “You’re stronger than anyone else I know, Clove. Stubborn, but strong nonetheless.” 

She offers Clove a bit of thread and one of her stitching needles, along with  the upper half of some shredded fabric.  It had started off handedly– a story of how Clove used to stitch up Cato, how they had been taught in the academy and how she didn’t want to lose that skill too when people were here to baby her. Someone, Primrose Everdeen maybe, had suggested it may be a good therapeutic exercise for her to use the fine muscles and tendons in her hands, to work on stitching and maintain her fine motor skills. 

Really, though, it was more of a therapy for Glimmer, who desperately needed to feel needed, who desperately needed a friend to distract her brain for a few hours a week. 

It worked out for both of them. 

“Any other injuries you wanna admit to, Clove?” Glimmer inquires, absentmindedly beginning to run a new type of fabric stitch on the opposite end of the fabric from Clove. “You know I have no one to tell.”

“Nope. Just the usual. Broken ribs. All my major joints are useless. A lung that gave out. Oh, some internal bleeding…” Clove tries not to reveal her frustration when she cannot thread the needle, cannot keep the intrinsic muscles of her head steady enough to connect the two pieces. The shaking of her right hand betrays her as she drops the needle, grip strength so diminished she can't even keep hold of it for long enough to throw an anchoring stitch in the fabric.  Clove throws down the fabric in defeat, running her hand now over her face instead. 

“But hey. My skin is coming back together. Just ugly fucking scars for the rest of my life–” Clove reveals the skin of her thigh to Glimmer, the puckering of stitches and the greenish-yellow hue of a bruise starting to dissolve under her skin. “Just fucking great, Glimmer. I’m just great.”

Glimmer drops the fabric, and immediately pushes up the sleeves of her District Thirteen issued henley shirt. Her own scars are not as angry red or freshly bruised, but rather a raised, pink granulated tissue in rivulettes from her elbows to right where her wrist meets her hand. “We all have scars now, Clove. No more magic Capitol tricks  to take them away. I clawed my way out of handcuffs, using blood to lubricate my way out.. We all have scars now that we’re going to carry for the rest of our lives. You are alive. You have Cato. By all standards, you’re dong pretty fucking great compared with the other option here.” 

Glimmer picks up the little fallen needle and wordlessly threads it for Clove, saying nothing nor expecting any gratitude from the other woman for the act. “You have Cato. Who will not leave your side, who shoves into a twin-sized hospital bed with you somehow–”

“We slept in a twin sized bed at the academy when we were sixteen until he won. We’re used to it, is all.”

“It’s still sweet. How he is so insistent on being near you all the time, all he thought about that whole time was you Clove, I’m shocked they even got him away from you now.”

“Yeah well.. I made him go with Finnick, too. It’s not good for him to sit here and treat me like a porcelain doll all the time. For either of us.” Clove takes Glimmer’s offering with no words of thanks, as the exchange would prove too embarrassing of a hit to Clove’s fragile confidence.

Her confidence being the only truly fragile thing about her, may she add.

“He sleeps with me and he is always touching me but it’s like he’s scared to touch me, you know?” Clove explains, hoping it is not too much information for what had become her closest friend. “He thinks I'm fragile.”

“He doesn’t think you’re fragile.” She nearly scoffs, giving a half hearted laugh. “He thinks you’re anything but. He just doesn’t want to hurt you.”

It’s Clove’s turn to scoff and laugh at that. “He has never given a fuck about hurting me. He broke my collarbone the day we met. After he won, he used to push me so hard at training that I couldn’t walk the hundred steps to my room at training. One time he picked me up by the throat and slammed me against a wall until I could escape myself. Our entire lives have been hurting each other–”

“Well you’re not the one getting choked against a wall now, are you?” Glimmer deflects, and a wicked smile floods Clove’s face at the realization of the lighthearted change in topic. 

“I wish I were getting choked against a wall in a different way, you know?” Clove teases, laughing as they fall into a comfortable silence as they work on different types of stitching– human skin or low thread-count sheets. 

“You know Marvel is going to come around, right?” Clove offers out of the blue, seemingly coming from nowhere with the topic change. “You said that all Cato thought about was me, well, that was him too. We shared a wall. Lots of conversations were had through six inches of concrete and all….he’ll come around. He just needs time to remember–”

“Clove, he won’t even look at me. He won’t come around, because he remembers it all just fine. Do you know what he said to me that day? That I used him, that he was just another client to me. He said that…that..that I just picked him because he was there! He doesn’t believe that I love him, Clove. He thinks I just..faked it all.” Glimmer catches the skin of her finger in her needle, and quickly brings the blood drop to her lips to staunch the bleeding. “I didn’t fake a thing. Not with him. He is the only person it was ever real with and I just- I just…I miss him.”

“He loves you too, Glimmer. He never stopped.”

“Yeah, well, he shows it just like every other man I’ve ever met, now.”

—————

“There's my favorite cellmate!” Marvel’s voice pops out, a goofy grin on his face as he lets himself right into her room.

“Let me guess, it’s your turn to babysit me?” Clove slams shut the book she had been reading, some silly novel from long before the dark days in a language that was English but also so much more complicated. The only type of enrichment activity she got these days was mental, it seems. 

“Huh? No, no of course not, no...yeah, actually. Yeah. But! I came because I wanted to see you, not because It’s my turn to keep you supervised.”

Clove swings her legs over the side of the bed, placing her feet firmly on the ground before pushing herself to a standing position. She had quickly discovered if anyone was going to let her get away with something it was going to be Marvel– he was not going to keep her in bed with crafts or insist she not move too much at risk of re-angering an existing injury or worse, making a new one. Maybe it was because he had been there when she was at her absolute worst in the Capitol, right alongside her, but he didn’t quite treat her like her skin was made of glass. “Let me guess, another meeting of all the victors but us?”

“The privilege of being the special ones who got pulled out of the arena apparently comes with a security clearance.” Marvel shrugs, nodding his head enthusiastically towards the door. “Peeta bread down the hall is in therapy, Johanna went backwards today in terms of progress with water, and Annie is..well she’s Annie. Oh but us, we’re the big scary careers remember? We’re the little captiol plants, that's why they tried to kill you, makes it more believable you know?” 

Clove hops off the bed and practically scurries towards the door, at the chance to escape her sterile prison at any slight opportunity that arises. As she gets closer to her chaperone she notices the permanent marker writing on his arm. “Look at you, you got slave to district thirteen privilege, what are you blowing off right now?”

“History of Nuclear Defense. It’s pretty cool, but I can’t look at that guy from twelve for more than fifteen minutes-”

“Well you are the one who threatened to stab him for cheesecake, Marvel.”

“I was kidding! Mostly!” Marvel gestures to the left to turn out of the hallway, the long way away from the fellow prison (hospital) cells of their friends and fellow victors. Other than Annie, he has had the hardest time accepting what has happened to them, and even more so why he was left without the physical scars of his friends. “Apparently Cato and Glimmer have both gone after him, I think our turn is long overdue.”

They take their government mandated stroll up and down the hall, back and forth, as they do any day that Marvel gets assigned Clove duty. It’s the most exercise anyone will let Clove have, the most autonomy, even. 

“Have you heard anything about back home? Noone will tell me shit, and I don’t know if they don’t know or if they’re trying to spare my feelings like I'm a child who can’t handle the reality of war.” He half whispers, all too aware (and maybe even a little paranoid, after their time in the capitol) that someone is always listening for something even the littlest bit treasonous to slip their lips so they can be hung in the proverbial town square. 

“Glimmer knows nothing about Gloss and Cashmere. They can’t tell me anything about Enobaria. I thought asking every day would break them but-” Clove gives half a shrug, kicking her feet along the concrete floors. “Noone can tell me anything about her. We don’t know about Brutus, either. All Cato wants to know is about his sister. I don’t think anyone knows. Or if they do, they’re keeping it from all of us.”

He doesn’t respond, just gives a nod at the reality of their situation. If anyone knows anything, it is well hidden from all of them. “You know, I’m not glad you’re still in the hospital, but I’m glad Cato sleeps with you, he’s supposed to be my roommate. We have fucking roommates, what is this, war boarding school? Between this and the classes, I feel like they left some gaps in our education in the districts. Who knew we should know how to do nuclear fission by eighteen.”

“I literally don’t even know what those words mean.” She half-laughs, shaking her head in disapproval. “Other than the games and then, you know, the capitol, I have barely spent a night away from him since we were sixteen. I think you’re safe to push the beds together to make yourself one big one, because he won’t be there anytime soon.” 

Clove supposed that meant that Glimmer was meant to be her roommate when all was said and done. In another life, they probably would have switched in the dark of the night, Clove and Marvel or Glimmer and Cato, rearranging the sleeping arrangements in a way that would scandalize the upper-administration of thirteen and they would not have cared. All they would have cared about is having been together, at whatever cost. Things are different, now, though.

“You need to talk to her.”

“I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Marvel I do not know what they said to you in those last couple of days before we got out, but a week before all you wanted in the entire world was to see her again.” Clove reminds him in a voice that can only be described as lecturing. “All you have to do is talk to her, you’ll know she meant it all.”

“I just can’t get it out of my head, Clove. That all along she was just using me. Over and over and over again, I just hear them telling me that it never would have been me. Why would it be me?” His eyebrows are just slightly knit together, and there's a hesitation in his voice that Clove can recognize as doubt. 

Doubt. The strongest force in the world, like a spell that needs no more than a drop to permeate every inch of your being, to consume you. To burn you to the ground. 

“Because you’re you. And she’s her. And I’m Clove, and he’s Cato. It makes sense just because it does. Some things just…are. And this is one of them.” She has nothing better to say, because there is no stronger answer. 

Somethings are just meant to be because they simply are. 

They pace in a peaceful albeit tense silence, for about five more minutes before the overhead alarm signals to them that a change in activity will happen in exactly five minutes, and her other supervisors will return.

“...you know that Glimmer and Cato got to go to the armory, right?” Clove informs him with a heavy, heavy sigh. “Cato gets target practice and I’m barely allowed out of bed. How’s that fair? I’m going fucking crazy, Marvel.”

“You almost died, you psycho, I think they’re just being cautious. Besides, you were already crazy.”

“I’m not made of porcelain or glass or ceramics. I trained in the best training academy in the country for ten years, I won the fucking Hunger Games.” Clove slams her hand into the door, blocking their entrance back in. “Do you think I'm some little broken winged bird?”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Clove. I was there. I know what you survived. I wouldn’t have. I don’t think anyone else would have.” He gently nudges her hand out of the way so he can make sure she actually goes back to her room. “You know, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad if you had just given them the screams they wanted.”

Clove scoffs. “That's rule number one. Never show weakness. That gets you killed. And besides, I only scream for one person.” She gives him a playful nudge with her shoulder as she pushes past him. 

Who would have thought. At one time she saw him as one of the most annoying victors she had ever met, and now, he was the only person treating her like she had her own two legs to stand on.

Damn. Maybe trauma bonding is real. 

“I don’t need babysitting, you know, Marvel.”

“Trust me, I Know that. Convince everyone else.”

—————

“It’s okay, Clove, you’ll get it back–”

Clove lets out a frustrated scream, throwing the knife to the ground. Finally, finally, she had gotten a knife back in her hand in the training room, a moment she had been working toward for weeks. She had expected it to be muscle memory, truly her second nature, and come back to her as easily as it had back when she was five years old and threw for the first time. 

Apparently muscles lose their memory when they are severed. 

“No, Cato, it isn’t fucking okay!” She grabs another one of the knives– albeit not the best quality, but she cannot blame that. She could kill with a plastic butter knife, before– and as soon as she raises her arm she nearly drops the knife from the sharp pain that runs through her shoulder. “This is all I fucking have, this is all I am, and I can’t do it. I could do this when I was five.”

The couple of throws she had managed to succeed in executing failed in other ways, each three feet away from even hitting her target. A failure, by academy standards. 

“Baby, this is not all you are.”

“How would you feel? If the only thing that has ever made you remarkable was just..gone? This is all I have, yes it is. This is as close as I’ve ever felt to my mother, who chose the games over me, this is the only thing that kept my grandmother choosing to keep me alive, the hope that i’d actually win. I was tiny and frail looking then but I was good. I was the best. This is all I have, Cato. This is all I am, and now I'm not.” Clove tries, again, to bring her arm past parallel with the floor, and the pain is nearly unbearable. She does not cry. She does not show it. But god, god does it hurt deep in her bones. 

“If this is hurting you, you need to stop, Clove.” Stupid Cato. Stupid Cato and his ability to know even the slightest change in her face, to be able to notice even her slightest tells. “You just need time and that's okay.”

“And what the fuck got into YOU Cato? What the fuck is this ‘you need to stop’ shit?” Clove snaps, stepping forward to grab him by the center of his shirt, pulling him forward with a jerk of her arms. “What happened to the person who broke me, and ran me until I threw up, and never once, not a single time, took fucking pity on me? What happened to the person who wanted to make me a better tribute, who wanted to make me a better fucking victor even when we were going to kill each other? I’m not broken, Cato, don’t treat me like I am.”

Cato shakes his head, and drops his hands to his side, before very very gently grabbing her upper arms. “Clove, I don’t want to hurt you, it’s not worth it.”

“Oh since fucking when don’t you want to hurt me? Pick me up by the throat and make me fight my way out, Cato!” Clove practically begs, deep eyes searching his face in desperation, pleading for understanding, 

“That was to make you survive, Clove, not fucking kill you.” He tries, gently tightening his grip on her arms. “This isn’t all you are, Clove, not anymore. Not ever.”

“Cato, stop! Treat me like your fucking partner. Treat me like me, Treat me like you’re Cato and I’m Clove and we have spent our entire lives making each other better. I am begging you, treat me like me.” Clove sees the hesitation in his face, in the way he looks from her eyes to her nose to avoid the desperation in her eyes, and knows she has him. She grabs his right hand and pushes it up to the top of her shoulder.  “Brace my shoulder, and do NOT let it go. If I cry or scream. Do not let it go.”

Something snaps in Cato, or maybe something reawakens, but he gives a firm, hard squeeze at the junction of her arm and her shoulder, feeling the tendons separate and slip underneath his fingers.  Clove’s legs nearly give out, and it takes all she has not to whine in the true agony at the feeling of her joints sliding over each other again. He does not let go, or loosen the grip he has on her swelling shoulder joints. Cato twists her in his arms, facing her out towards the targets. “Go. Throw.” 

His other arm is wrapped around her waist, and holds her up as her legs beg to give out and bring her to the ground. As her throws hit closer and closer to the target, Cato doesn’t comment on how he can tell exactly how hard she is struggling to breathe, or how he can feel her other hand shaking at her side. 

“I have an idea.” Cato begins, finally letting go of her arm and her body and trying to ignore the soft whine that she lets out when he does. “Not that they’re letting us anywhere near a war but,” 

He reaches for the same deep silver gun he had picked up all those weeks ago, when he and Glimmer had been given free range for an hour with Beetee taking pity on them.  “Easier to hit with this.”

Cato slips it from his hands to hers, and notices the way her hand nearly falls at the weight of the weapon. Before the frustrated look can even befall her face, he has her back in front of him, with both of his hands on top of hers. He raises her hands in his, holding them out infront of her. “You’ll like it, at least until your arms are better.” 

“Easy now, baby.” Cato whispers in her ear, “You’ve got it.” He promises, and when she finally pulls the trigger, he catches her back against his chest when the kickback reverberates through her and sends her a few inches backwards. “There you go,” Cato kisses right below her ear, just before she twists in his arms to face him. 

The smile stretched across her face is worth it all in that moment, the wicked, dark energy she is so known for all but painted in her eyes. 

“I knew you’d like that.” Cato teases, only slightly off guard when the metal falls to the ground with a loud cling and he feels her pulling him back. It’s effortless when he naturally lifts her by her waist onto the armory table, in a spot between the guns and knives and various weapons of choice for the assorted victors in thirteen. 

Clove threads her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck and oh she is alive, alive alive again. As she pulls him down on top of her, she pauses only for a moment before catching his lips with hers. 

“Remember, I’m not broken.”

“I know, Clove.” 

[hungergameshyperfixation]

(Quietly posting this here from one of my HG docs lmao. This was from a bit ago but still recent enough2)

SotR/HG Music project:

My idea was to use this page as a masterdoc of all the songs/music that remind me of certain characters/scenarios. How it will work is in the following hierarchy: Broad/full list of songs, specific playlists, hyper-specific playlist, and (sometimes) a song-specific breakdown blurb as to why I associate it with a certain situation/character. 

For example: 

“War” by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble would be just straight listed in the “broad/full list” as unequivocally associated with THG. I could also choose to put it in a specific playlist, like “74th Hunger Games/The original trilogy films.” AND I could even go further to put it in an even more hyper-specific playlist, like an au playlist or something like “songs that haunt Katniss Everdeen.” 

Does this make sense? I hope it does lmao. But anyway, I could also list a blurb for the song in any one of those previous categories, if I wanted to further elaborate as to why I think “War” would ‘haunt Katniss Everdeen.’

Other things to note: Just because I write a blurb for a song and my HG associations with it in one playlist/context, it doesn’t mean that’s my only association attached to the song. Like, just because I can see and would list “Too Sweet” by Hozier in a Hayffie playlist doesn’t mean I ONLY see it as Hayffie. I hope that makes sense too. 

I think if you’re engaging with this, you’ll get the gist. 

‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊

Playlist name to listen along: “Random Hunger Games songs list V1” 

(I’ll hopefully put these songs in their own playlists, but for now I’m fighting off imperfection tendencies so this is what we’re getting lmao) 

•”Too Sweet” (Hozier) Hayffie yeah but also potentially Haydove (depending on the dynamics we get). THOUGH I still maintain that “Too Sweet” is probably reserved for older Haymitch only. Gosh I can’t believe we live in a timeline where I’m going to have to distinguish between “young Haymitch” and “older/adult Haymitch.” 

•”Happy Together” (by Gerard Way) Haydove. Yeah. Maybe I’ll explain some more, but for now all I want to say is that I feel this SO strongly. It’s the middle schooler in me who is imagining SUCH a vivid animatic to this song. ARE YOU KIDDING. The beginning starts off with young Haydove, then at the end (or throughout the song) it showcases the contrast between young Haymtich and post SotR Haymitch. UGH the happiness and tragedy of it all. Y’ALL HAVE TO SEE THE VISION RIGHT. 

•”Sweater Weather” by The Neighbourhood. The bisexuality of it all. Not directly applies to the canon storyline (the lyrics don’t really line up with any story elements that I can latch onto) BUT the vibes. I could see this attached to a Haydove / Haymitch / Lenore Dove / Maysilee / Mrs Everdeen, etc etc etc edit. Basically just a SotR / Haymitch’s generation edit; any of the characters from that era would fit an edit here imo. I’m really going back to my 2017-2019 roots with this one, I’m ngl. This song is just a staple in the editing sphere, from when I was a part of it kinda. Mrs Everdeen edit goes hard here. ALSO a Finnick, Annie, or Johanna edit too!!

•“Cupid’s Chokehold” by Gym Class Heroes. Not my favorite song tbh, but YEAH i see the “young love” parallels and the general ‘sweet puppy love’ vibes. This COULD be what we see with Lenore Dove and Haymitch. I could see the tiktokification audio being used over a quick animatic regarding Haymitch and Lenore Dove. “Take a look at my girlfriend, she’s the only one I got” THAT part specifically. 

•”Dancing in the Moonlight” au. This kinda fits an au, or just post-war life. Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch…the vibes are there. I love this song so I’m biased, but I think you could apply it in this context and it can almost have a bittersweet undercurrent to it. It’s all about framing in context. 

•”We didn’t start the fire” I’m being so deadass don’t call me cringe but I could see a broader message edit with this one. Like, “We didn’t start the fire” edit of THG, specifically the politics (yes I know how hypocritical/ironic it is to be suggesting a form of media that serves to entertain people when the source specifically criticizes that very thing in political contexts). But come on. Just for funsies. Once again, this is partially me just liking the song, but the messages/ideas in the song are so fun to play and engage with. GUYS. Especially imagine a sequential “edit” to this song that specifically focuses on the cyclical nature the stories in Panem highlight (starting from Tbosas, then SOTR, then the trilogy and culminating with Coin’s death and Katniss and all that). You see it right. 

•”End of Beginning” by Djo. Yeah I’m hitting all the very popular songs but bear with me. I’m not a huge fan of tiktok edits tbh (i’m no hater though, they’re harmless). BUT THE SOTR/HAYMITCH TIKTOK EDIT TO THIS SONG IS GOING TO GO SO HARD IN LATE 2026/2027 AFTER WE GET THE FILM. I think it’s been easily understandable throughout the songs listed, but I’m going based on vibes and messaging. This song deals with time, change, identity, location–and experiences tied to location; all things that can be universally applied to a LOT of things (especially in storytelling, that’s like some of the basic foundational concepts explored in story lmao) and I think could especially hit the mark with THG/SotR (and Haymitch specifically). 

•“Feel it Still.” Trust me on this one just trust me. 

•”Accidentally In Love” Maysilee and Haymtich, au kinda thing. I can see it. And Hayffie I guess. I’m a multi-shipper, but I won’t lie Haydove is (probably) going to be my main pairing I’m rooting for. But “accidentally in love” by title alone kinda fits the idea with Haysilee. Accidentally falling in love in the arena. “Falling in love” with your ally.

ALSO EVERLARK. Truly an Everlark ngl. 

•”Black Sheep” (Scott Pilgrim song 💀Brie Larson). I just see a Maysilee and Haymitch edit. Mostly just the beginning part. Contrasting vibes. Highlighting their differences and all that shit. Vibes mostly. 

•”After the War (Catradora song)” by Reinaeiry (on YouTube). Katniss, Peeta, and Everlark. Those are all like separate interpretations if that makes sense lmao. 

•”No Good Deed” (Wicked). Katniss and Haymitch respectively. Of course. The ideas of loss 

•”Lovely night” (La la land). Haysilee; hate to say it but it fits them so well. 

•”You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid” (The Offspring). An EXTREMELY Haymitch coded song—young Haymitch, specifically. This also applies to Katniss. Katniss and Haymitch specifically. I feel this so strongly LMAO. This song is theirs. 

•”Day ‘N’ Nite” (Kid Cudi). Haymitch.  Need I say more?

•”Bring me to life” (Evanescence) Katniss—this one’s mostly just for fun lmao. But, if you take the song seriously…the lyrics apply. 

•”Blood // Water” was taken so seriously when I first got into the editing sphere in middle school lmao, and I’m ngl if I didnt have nostalgia filter, I might think differently of this song. But. Despite the moments where I think it’s a little corny. The lyrics are kinda-sometimes adjacent to some of the ideas presented in THG. 

And the one part (you probably know the one) hits. It was a popular “editing audio” for awhile.

I actually think that if your suspension of disbelief is intact, the song is actually so fitting for THG. 

[the-126-family]

You are completely good! So glad the audiobook is coming out on the same day so you don’t get it spoiled!! Woody Harrelson being the narrator would be so cool! I would actually try and listen to the audiobook to see if it would stick. I have a horrible track record with audio books lol I always lose track or get so bored bc the voice is slow or monotone. I honestly love all of the characters but I think my favorite book would have to be Mockingjay! I once was told it was the most boring in the series (and it may be for some and that’s ok) but I love the twists and turns and the such complex emotions from Katniss and the rebuilding relationship with Peeta? Has me screaming and kicking my feet. Favorite part about Hunger Games are the emotions specifically in the book and Katniss’s relationships with everyone. You can see the way her and Peetas love grows in real time and how she loves Gale but then watches as he turns into something darker because he’s a traumatized teen who’s being taken advantage of just like everyone else and Katniss has to make the moral decisions like losing a loved one or losing an entire group of random people and her relationship with her mother and her depression? Don’t get me started I will start screaming again because it shows the complexity of knowing her mom couldn’t control her feelings and despair of losing her love but also the bitterness because Katniss was only eleven. *distant screams* ok I went on an entire ramble there- Songbirds and Snakes was so good!!! I loved the book and the tiny details revealed that just connected everything to the main stories. The movies are always so good it genuinely impresses me. Only series i actually like as well as the books besides the Maze Runner! Don’t worry about rambling, I do it all the time and it’s fun to hear your thoughts!

UGH THE COMPLEXITIES IN ALL THE RELATIONSHIPS!!! You're so right -- I loved how Katniss and Peeta's relationship grows and develops! And how she realizes she can't live without him because he represents hope even in the darkest of times. I think my favorite book and movie was the first one, but I had such a crush on Johanna Mason in the Catching Fire movie. I was obsessed with her.

Oh yeah the relationship between Katniss and her mom was so complex! And Katniss and Prim's cat Buttercup (hey, I just realized we know two pets named Buttercup now!). I remember just crying in the movie theater watching Mockingjay: Part II when Katniss broke down and screamed that Prim was never coming back. But I love the ending with her and Peeta and their kids in the meadow. Perhaps the same meadow that Lucy Gray once took Snow to!

Speaking of Lucy Gray, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes changed my life. You're so right about all the small details that connected to the original trilogy! It was so fun to find new stuff out. I vividly remember reading the first page and being like "Tigris and Snow are COUSINS?!?" -- it just boggled my mind. I was looking forward to that movie coming out for so long. I actually was going through some hard stuff when it came out and I was so glad I had that to look forward to. That movie changed my life. Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray was incredible! Her singing! Her acting! Life changing!

And the character of Reaper too?! Being the first tribute to take a stand and acknowledge the shared humanity of the tributes, say "no, actually, these are all kids and they are just like me" and gathering their bodies and pulling down the Capitol flag to cover them? It being a precursor to Katniss covering Rue with flowers and Peeta painting the portrait of Rue for the judges in Catching Fire? Like the parallels!!! I'm always all about the parallels! Like how Lucy Gray and Katniss both curtseyed! I loved that!

And omg, you like the Maze Runner too?!? Those books used to be my OBSESSION! For like two or three years I literally thought of nothing else. Newt was my favorite character and I just never got over his death. Like, never.

This got long and I apologize, but it's so much fun talking about this stuff!!

[cowboymater]

i feel like i should justify the decision to expand haymitch’s family in my full-length fic of his games (16k words up now but it’ll be ~110k when i'm done)

in mockingjay, haymitch tells katniss that snow killed his mother, brother, and girl[friend] two weeks after his games. this feels like a pretty intentional parallel to katniss, who had her mother, prim, and gale as the people she was close to pre-games

and i understand making the parallel, esp when there’s only really a passing line abt his family, but i feel that a fleshed-out narrative (mine at least) is better served by enhancing the contrast between haymitch and katniss. let me explain:

haymitch goes into his games and wins them by embarrassing the capitol. his family is killed as punishment, and he descends into alcoholism to cope

snow doesn’t really have the option to kill katniss’s family, but if he had, i think it’s unlikely she would react the same way as haymitch. more probably she’d end up like johanna: angry, with nothing left to lose. when prim eventually dies she does shut down for a while, but we still see her get back up to assassinate coin

this is because, imo, katniss has a fairly dominant fight response. the gamemakers are ignoring her during her assessment? shoot at them. peeta says he likes her during his interview? lies, clearly, shove him into a large and breakable flowerpot. in mockingjay we see her butt heads with haymitch on this front, when she tears out the earpiece bc he’s telling her to retreat and she wants to take down the bomber jets

point: katniss had to develop this specific stress response because there was nobody there to take care of her, to fight the battles for her

haymitch, however, is very big on flight. he spent his entire games ignoring the mountain, the clear focal point of the arena, and getting as far from the action as he possibly could. he still fights when it comes down to it, but it’s never his first choice. after snow kills his family, he spends the next couple decades hiding at the bottom of a liquor bottle; while avoidance is understandable, remember that johanna suffers the same fate but goes down a very different path

haymitch (in my fic) still has to take on the role of provider as the eldest sibling and the only one eligible for tesserae. but w/ the additions there’s multiple parental figures to bear the load of raising his siblings, which serves as a buffer, and gives him the ability to practice avoidance instead of having to take initiative and confront everything head on

i feel that it makes a stronger contrast, at least for my purposes. katniss has no real support system when she goes into her games, and she gains one afterward (haymitch, cinna, peeta). expanding the abernathy family roster gives haymitch a support system that disappears after his games

i will be honest and say i do not remember my rationale for adding both a father and little sister, but for the grandmother i wanted to give him someone in his immediate life who had been alive before the games. haymitch displays a sort of defiance that nobody else really has the balls for, because to them the hunger games have been a thing forever. through his grandmother he's gained the perspective that yeah, this isn’t all-encompassing, the arena has to end Somewhere

it also hammers home one of my favorite things about the hunger games, which is the message of collective action and community. katniss might have been the face of the revolution, and her role is indispensable, but so is the role of everybody else. even just to make it out of the 74th games took a village: cinna crafted an image, peeta crafted a narrative, haymitch finagled sponsors. it’s because she gained this support system that she managed to accomplish what she did, in her games and still afterwards, and it’s because haymitch had his ripped away that he was lost for so long

because this is not a fix-it fic that means i now have to write a scene where they All get executed. which actually makes me a little nauseous to think abt. but them's the breaks ig

[theroyalmisfitmess]

i rewatched the hunger games movies over the weekend and here are some takeaways:

it’s still an amazing series that people should get to read and/or watch once in their lifetime (better if read AND watch)

i’m still a big everlark shipper and i don’t know why people can’t see the love between katniss and peeta

prim is the love of katniss’ life though... not even peeta or gale could compete with katniss’ love for prim

gale was annoying at times and i didn’t agree with some of his beliefs, but i don’t hate him and he’s hated too much

haymitch only speaks facts and his banters with effie are so fun

johanna is queen

i love finnick. he’s the best

finnick and annie are the real love story of thg trilogy + katniss and peeta are a reflection/a slightly younger version of finnick and annie

finnick’s death should’ve been a bigger deal in mockingjay part 2

snow is one of the best villains ever written

why coin is worse than snow: she pretends to be better than snow (but snow is still a terrible person)

the soundtracks of all four movies are one of the best curated soundtracks ever (TAYLOR SWIFT, LORDE, COLDPLAY, AND MANY MANY MORE?!?!)

despite the lack of so many information and points from the books, thg trilogy (imo) is one of the best book-to-movie adaptations

thg is such a classic out of all the four movies it’s just so heartbreaking to see how pure and innocent katniss and peeta were

catching fire is the best out of all four movies it’s just so good even if it did lack some stuff *cough* “HE WANTED IT TO BE REAL” *cough* THE PICNIC SCENE *cough*

mockingjay pt.1 is my least favorite movie but it was okay

mockingjay pt 2 is so sad,, a bit dragging,, but sad,, but also the ending was perfect (not necessarily happy, not necessarily sad, but realistic in a way)

what the fuck did a ten year-old version of me go through to be so young and obsessed with something as violent as the hunger games (no wonder my aunt told me to stop reading it lmao)

in accordance with the last point, i either had a good comprehension at ten, was crazy for finding pleasure in a series about death and revolution, or i just didn’t care that the series was about killing children (probably the latter two which is honestly disturbing)

but yes this entire series was one of the most beautiful things i have ever witnessed. i can’t fathom two sixteen year-olds go bring home so much trauma, have repeated trauma at seventeen against older people, and be tortured and start a revolution. i kept saying “they’re only sixteen”, “she’s only seventeen” while watching. how timely too that panem parallels our world where oppression is only getting worse. i cannot express my love for this series any more.

[nadjaofstatenisland]

will you tell me some hunger games au thoughts pretty please!!!

Alice -  Katniss

Hal - Peeta

FP - Haymitch

Gladys - Gale

Penelope - Effie

Clifford - Snow

Fred - Cinna

Hiram - Finnick

Hermione - Johanna

Tom - Boggs

Sierra - Coin

Mary - Prim?

(we could also explore the parents as other tributes from the 74th games  with Penelope - Foxface, Hermione - Glimmer, Hiram - Marvel, Clifford - Cato, Gladys - Clove, Daryl as the district 3 kid who rigs the platforms to be landmines, FP as Thresh?? and honestly no one is good and pure enough to be Rue... maybe Fred is Rue i dunno)

I won’t lie Mary as Prim isn’t quite right (i think mary is more fun as coin but sierra does fit that bill better) but lets just go with it. Mary’s name is called and Alice volunteers to go in her place. Gladys pulls a screaming Mary away as Alice goes up on stage. Hal is called. They’re off.

FP as their drunk mentor with a laundry list of issues and Penelope as their frantic extra ass escort who can’t take FP very cute. I always enjoyed Effie and Haymitch sassing each other yet coming through for their children tributes and working together when they need to and it that isn’t a FP and Penelope dynamic I don’t know what is.

So much of Katniss and Peeta scream halice. Hal trying to be nice to her and not trusting him and planning his death. Alice also absolutely hating FP and convinced he’s not going to do shit to keep her alive and he’s just going to help Hal. Hal and FP keeping their entire plan away from Alice because they knew she’d fuck it up if she knew about it for real. (which on a side note is how i like to pretend the fbi plot in s3 actually went.) Alice and Hal screaming compliments at each other to FP to make the other look stronger and getting furious at each other. The time Hal told the country he’s in love with Alice and she responded by cutting his hand open with a vase. Hal already knowing he doesn’t have a chance to win (and his confession that his own mother thinks alice has a way better shot than him) and he just hopes being in there doesn’t change him and Alice all FUCK YOU WE CAN’T ALL AFFORD TO HAVE MORALS.

Clifford as Snow because really... the whole rose thing. That’s all I got but it works. Oh, and the white hair. Fred as Cinna, aka the only person Alice can really trust and in turn secretly sets her up to be this symbol of rebellion. Fred always propping his friends up...

Hal working with the careers to save Alice?? To misdirect them from her plans and not let on to what her skill is! Thinking of Hal teaming up with the career pack of Hiram, Hermione, Clifford, and Gladys is very funny to me. And Alice taking out both Hiram and Hermione whew. Nice. Alice going crazy looking for Hal when she realizes they can both live. And HOW DID I FORGOT. That drawing in Hal’s prison cell opened me up to the idea of artist Hal and that’s like Peeta’s whole thing after baking wow.

Very powerful Penelope making it to the end. And her technically dying because of Hal.. sad. He didn’t want that kill. And the finally three being halice and Clifford damn. Alice would absolutely pull some sneaking shit to win and this always ties back to Haymitch and Katniss parallels and Alice and FP ones. Kids from the seam = kids from the southside.

Alice going back and ruining everything with Hal when she realizes he was 100% genuine in everything he did in there. And her feeling like her friendship with Gladys is ruined because Gladys is jealous of Hal ooof. Yet Gladys still helps them train when they find out they’re going back in and her whole speech about how it would be so much easier to hate Hal if he wasn’t so nice... how true is that.

Alice and Hal both half taking care of FP so he doesn’t drink himself to death. Alice throwing a bucket of water on him and IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO WAKE YOU UP GENTLY CALL HAL and Hal is there with a loaf of bread to wake him up and practically stabs a piece for Alice. 

Hiram as Finnick... look it works okay he’s just as vain. And Hermione as Johanna this cold, jaded woman who refuses to love anyone works really well. Also Hiram constantly flirting with her and Hermione constantly taking her clothes off in front of her because they both get off on making Alice uncomfortable?? I love it. There was no reason for Hermione to strip and oil her breasts to practice wrestling during training but damn if she didn’t do it in front of Alice.

And then the actual games and Alice’s immediate mistrust of them but knowing FP set up some stupid plan with them for her own good. Alice having to watch helplessly as Fred is beaten and killed in front of her... Hiram and Hermione keeping Alice and Hal alive in the games and eventually separating them and therefore them getting taken separately.

Hal and Hermione being tortured in a joining cells while Alice and Hiram suffer from ptsd back in “safety.” Alice being stuff under the watchful eye of Tom while she does Sierra’s bidding and becomes this symbol she didn’t want to be,

OH WHEN ALICE THINKS THEY’RE ALL BEING TAKEN TO THE CAPITOL TO BE MURDERED SHE’S LIKE SWEET SWEET HAL... I NEED TO KILL YOU BEFORE THEY DO and she goes to murder him with an empty syringe... only to find FP and discover his plan and try to kill HIM with it. Also when she finds out what they’re doing in the capitol to Hal and FP is the only one who she’ll accept comfort from because she knows FP is the only one who remotely cares for Hal the way she does. I - 

And their whole reunion when she goes running to him before she realizes he’s been brainwashed and he winds up choking her ouch. Him having all those memories of her distorted. Not knowing what was real or not. His sad “I must have really loved you huh” and she can only nod and even then she can’t say it back because she just doesn’t know. And her fear that the way Hal sees her now is the way the whole world actually sees her that she actually is awful. And Gladys comforting words that of course she’s not that way. Oh and lol at Hal asking her “so Gladys and I were both okay with you kissing the other one? that was all just... cool between us?? umm.”

Gladys discovering she actually has a knack for fighting and makes a pretty good weapons expert/soldier. Mary’s eventual death and Alice realizing that even though they won the war, she lost her own battle and the thing that meant the most to her and she takes a shot and kills Sierra when she knows she was supposed to kill Clifford. (its okay he dies too.) Alice going into herself and giving up on life because if her sister is gone she really doesn’t feel she has anything left to live for. And it’s not for years that Hal comes back and the two of them finally realize the war really is over and while life may not be perfect it doesn’t mean they can’t try to live their lives. Even if it takes them 15 years to marry and have children... okay this was all a mess of a rant but you get the idea...

[captainswanbigbang]

CSRT Promo: spartanguard

Today’s promoted CSRT story is Once Upon a Time in Panem by @spartanguard! Read it on Tumblr, AO3, or FFnet!

When did you start writing this story, and what inspired you to write it?

I started writing this in early 2015, not long after I started writing fic in general. I love the idea of crossovers and it seemed logical to me to combine two things I loved: OUAT and The Hunger Games. Somewhere along the line, I drew a parallel between Killian and Finnick, and Emma and Johanna, and thought it would be cool to write a story that worked around CS from that angle—not as the younger tributes (Katniss and Peeta), but the people behind the scenes (and eventually in the Arena, a la Catching Fire).

What is it about this story that made you feel like it was worth rewriting?

Every now and then, I get a comment or kudos on it. And when I read back over it not long ago, I realized it wasn't as bad as I thought it was; my writing has definitely improved, but the general bones of the story were good. I just bit off way more than I could chew (considering I hadn't touched an MC yet). Now that I've got more experience writing and plotting long stories—and with building universes, even if they're inspired by preexisting ones—I thought it was time to give it another go. (That and the fact that they're FINALLY releasing a THG prequel.)

What is one detail about your story that you're almost definitely keeping? 

CS, obviously, and where they're from. Emma is still in the Johanna role, and Killian is in the Finnick position. They're still going to end up in the Games again, and I'd always intended for them to fall in love in the background of the main story events (even if this story is mostly focused on them).

What is one detail about your story that you're almost definitely throwing out or changing?

The star-crossed lovers in my original story were Aurora and Philip. Part of why I stopped writing was because they ended up being pretty boring to me. So now, that part is going to focus on Alice and Robyn, which allows me to play with them as well as the KnightRook relationship (both of which were among my favorite parts in Season 7).

What has the rewrite experience been like for you so far?

It's been fun! I'm finding I have to rewrite/add a lot more than I planned, but I know the story will be stronger for it in the end. And reworking the universe has been fun, too; in the first, I basically just dropped the OUAT characters in Panem, but this time around, I've reworked it as the United Realms of Pomem, so it's been interesting to plot that out, come up with its history, and figure out who comes from where. The hardest part, which I'm still struggling with, is figuring out who to kill—I want to save everyone!

What would you like readers to know about the original version if they decide they're going to read it? 

It's VERY unfinished and a bit bare bones. I jumped around a lot, even though only 3 chapters got published. It was a good start but definitely a juvenile effort. We've all gotta start somewhere, though, right?

[queenlawrenceskingdom]

The Hunger Games: The Tributes

I recently returned to Tumblr, and with that decision came a thirst to return to the roots of the fandom that got me here in the first place. So here I am doing a reread of the entire thg series, along with some analysis, quotes, and questions along the way! I’ve decided to make posts for each of the three sections of each book, so here goes the first one.

The Tributes

At the beginning of this book, I think it’s only right that we start with Katniss talking about Prim. The entire series always comes back to it, because Katniss time and time again is working to protect her. Whether it be from bad dreams before her first reaping or the horrors later on, Katniss’ central motivator is her little sister. At times she seems to be a little too overprotective at great cost to herself, obviously by volunteering but also by refusing to let her take out tesserae. We meet Gale, and I’ve always wondered how he learned to snare and when he started going into the woods. Were their fathers friends, or did take their children to the woods separately? Did they ever intend to work together, or did they without the kids knowing?

The word “rebellion” is first stated on page 5, which is no accident on Suzanne Collins’ part. In the first 80 pages alone it’s mentioned 6 times, which is more than the rest of the book. She talks about the punishments of rebellion, the rebellion 74 years prior, and her thoughts when Haymitch remarks about how her at Peeta holding hands on the chariot could be seen as rebellious. From the start of the series, Katniss has been instigating rebellion even when she doesn’t mean to. Poaching, refusing children, volunteering for her sister (instead of the “honor”), shooting at the Gamemakers, showing solidarity with Peeta. I’m sure President Snow approves of none of that.

Before Katniss ever goes into the Games, I already have a sense of some mental health issues with her. It would be an easy diagnosis for her, a sudden death of her father, the sequential “loss” of her mother, and the responsibility of head of the household being thrust on her small 11-year-old shoulders. She is very doubtful of people who want to help her and finds it hard to understand how people can be kind and not expect anything in return. With this, she has a soft spot for kindness so maybe that’s why she doesn’t care for it much. I’m not an expert on mental health, but it wasn’t easy for her to take this in such a short amount of time, and there’s obviously some residual trauma she has to deal with. She talks about nightmares of her father’s death, is constantly worrying about anything and everything, and describes herself in negative ways. Some quotes to support my thoughts:

"Gale says I never smile except in the woods.” 

“I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts”

“I’m not the forgiving type.”

“[Peeta] gives my hand hat I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it’s just a nervous spasm.”

“A kind Peeta Mellark is far more dangerous to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there”

“He gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me. A warning bell goes off in my head. Don’t be so stupid... He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is.”

She has closed herself off so much and never seemed to have found healthy coping mechanisms. Sure she feels better out in the woods where she used to spend time with her father, but inside the fence she hasn’t found a way to be happy in her day-to-day life. This will only exaggerate after the Games.

Katniss’ friendship with Madge has always been strange to me. As the mayor’s daughter you’d think Madge would have been a part of the popular group in school, but she “keeps to herself... [and] neither of us really has a group of friends”. They eat lunch and partner in gym class in relative silence, which just seems awkward even if they are shy people. Madge is originally wearing the mockingjay pin when Katniss and Gale go to sell strawberries which to me marked her as an important character for the rest of the series. Madge’s absence in the films was a bummer because she has such an interesting and complex connection to the story that was lost when they removed her. When she goes to visit Katniss in the Justice Building, we knows she gives Katniss the pin but we’re not entirely sure why. “There’s an urgency in her tone” when she gives it to Katniss, and doesn’t really take no for an answer when she pins it to her dress. It also may just be me wanting to find something, but I’ve always had an underlying thought that Madge has a crush on Katniss. The kiss on the cheek, the silent (nervous?) presence around Katniss, not being part of the “popular” crowd, maybe she was outcast by her peers for this reason. I would be 100% supportive of a bisexual Madge. This was a pretty short scene on paper, but there’s a lot of meaning with the pin that we’ll discuss as we get further into the books.

The reaping itself gave me a lot of questions about how the Games came to be. We learn about the Dark Days and the Capitol extinguishing a rebellion that started the Games, but what were the districts rebelling against in the Dark Days? What was going so wrong that they wanted to rebel, and how much worse did it get with the implementation of the Games and other district punishments? District 12 has a population of 8,000, but we know this is the smallest district by far. Katniss thinks about this on her Victory Tour, but how do they host reapings with larger districts that may have 8,000 kids or more? Is there a protocol if the chosen child wasn’t at the reaping due to sudden severe illness, death, or they had run off across district boundaries like Gale wanted to do? I’ve also always wondered what happens if someone volunteers but the original tribute wants to go in the Games (like in 1 or 2), who decides?

When Katniss takes the stage, this is how I see the rebellion beginning. The silence of the crowd, the district gesture, a solidarity throughout the entire district. The rebels lost the original rebellion because they could not communicate and were fighting 13 individual wars, so President Snow is probably pretty weary of any sort of unification that doesn’t outright support the Capitol. I also love the juxtaposition that she can see the hills of the woods from the platform in the square. As she’s saying goodbye to her freedom, she is also saying goodbye to her freedom in the woods and her relatively safe existence. On a fun note, when Katniss gets to the train station and overanalyzes Peeta’s appearance in front of the cameras, we get our first description of Johanna Mason and her tactics in her Games.

Throughout the train ride and the initial prep, we learn a lot about the differences between how the Capitol and districts see the Games. Effie and Katniss’ prep team are so detached from the actual horrors of the Games the same way Nazis had no issue with seeing Jewish people as less. It’s not their fault, it’s how they were raised being in the Capitol and all they know. They may not realize it, but they see the tributes as subhuman and because Katniss has never experienced this before, she immediately doesn’t like any of them. She already feels like just a piece in the Games even though she won’t realize it for a while. Cinna is her saving grace, because he actually seems to understand how terrible the Games really are. Right away I suspect he is most likely part of the underground rebellion in the Capitol, if he thinks like that yet still wants to work with tributes and subsequently their mentors. When Katniss first meets him he says “I asked for District Twelve” and just keeps going as if it were common to request working with the “least desirable district”. We never get his full story, but I can only imagine what lead him to this life path.

Finally we start to see the beginnings of Everlark!! Katniss knows more about Peeta than she realizes and if they hadn’t been reaped I want to believe they’d still find each other. I could never actually Katniss making it in the mines and they have such history going back to their parents. We get our first flirty feeling from Katniss, even if she doesn’t know what that means. When Peeta complements her after the parade and smiles “unexpected warmth rushes through me”. I’ve always laughed at that remark because she’s so unused to desire and pleasure she has no understanding of what’s happening. They train together, they talk each other up, they have no clue of what’s to come. Katniss barely has a grip on the past when she realizes “I have kept track of the boy with the bread”. Her coldness throughout their training makes sense given her history of distancing herself from pleasure, such as when Prim had to “drag [her] over to admire [the cakes at the bakery]”. If it wasn’t functional she didn’t need it, so having frivolous things for enjoyment (boys) isn’t an option. Only later does she realize she can allow herself these things without harm.

As Effie tries to sell Katniss and Peeta, it’s an interesting slip-up that she says “if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls”, especially when we know the significance of the pearl in the future. Another quote that pops out to me is when she talks about Lavinia, and says “you don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope”. She doesn’t know it now, but Katniss will be again be the face of hope for people who have nothing else to hope for. While training we see the parallels between Rue and Prim, who are both named after yellow flowers and resemble the same person to Katniss. Someone to protect.

When the interviews come, as much as she tries, Katniss isn’t going to get over her self-doubts just because Haymitch yelled at her so she isn’t very giving. She tried giving herself up, but it’s impossible when you’re talking to someone you don’t trust. When Peeta drops his bomb, we start to understand what his weapon is. While Katniss is lethal with a bow and has hunter instincts, Peeta can read people and moves a crowd with words. In his case, the pen really is more powerful than the sword.

Sassniss and other funny/interesting quotes

“District 12. Where you can starve to death in safety”

Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thank-you in there? Somehow it just won’t seem sincere if I’m trying to slit his throat.

So yes, I can handle a fork and knife. But I hate Effie’s comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers.

“Your mentor has a lot to learn about presentation. A lot about televised behavior”. Peeta unexpectedly laughs. “He was drunk,” says Peeta. “He’s drunk every year.” “Every day,” I add.

“Up, up up! It’s going to be a big, big, big day!” I try and imagine, for a moment, what it must be like inside that woman’s head.

One time, my mother told me that I always eat like I’ll never see food again. And I said “I won’t unless I bring it home.” That shut her up.

“Can you hit anything with that knife besides a table?” - Haymitch

It’s hard to hate my prep team. They’re such total idiots.

“With all that alcohol in him, it’s probably not advisable to have him around an open flame.”

Delly Cartwright is a pasty-faced, lumpy girl with yellowish hair who looks about as much like our server as a beetle does a butterfly.

You get the feeling that the knot-tying class is not the Hunger Games hot spot.

“If only you could frost someone to death”

 I try and animate my face as I recall the event, a true story, in which I’d foolishly challenged a black bear over the rights to a beehive.

“Thank you for your consideration,” I say. Then I give a slight bow and walk straight toward the exit without being dismissed.

I avoid looking at anyone as I take tiny spoonfuls of fish soup. The saltiness reminds me of my tears.

“Well, Catnip, stealing’s punishable by death, or hadn’t you heard?” he says... Gale’s eyes fastened on the bow. “Can I see that?” I hand it over. “Just remember, stealing’s punishable by death.”

“See, like this. I’m smiling at you even though you’re aggravating me.” “Yes, it feels very convincing.”

[wearethegladiators]

ANSWERING RECENT HEADCANONS AND RADOTING

Sacha using his fists to defend himself before his wand is a big ass mood

Remember when the rebels rescued Lily in the Excidium verse and she head butted one of them

Like I said they’re actually super alike!! Sacha’s the alternative version of Lily that managed to stay on the right path :’)

HE’S PROBABLY AFRAID OF BLOOD THE BBY

Gnnn now I can see a Peeta/Johanna-like relationship between him and Lily?? Like the “we’re very familiar with each other’s screams” part. I’m not ok wbu

Sacha as a cook I’m 100% here for it

Lily too started getting tattoos when she was caught for the first time and sent to the Ministry around her “registration number”!!!!! The feels

EDAN SPENT 5 YEARS IN JAIL WTH HOW IS THIS MAN STILL ALIVE GIVE HIM A MEDAL

Sacha and Lily escaping all the time always <3 The deatheaters must be so mad hihihihi

How old is actually Edan?? Wait he must have known Wyn from Hogwarts + she was a prefect as well

Sacha completing a muggle degree made me so emotional like?? It’s like he felt he didn’t completely fit in and :’( :’(

I like these plots of people not completely fitting in tho (Sacha, the Auderic, the Blackbirds, etc.) JK Rowling always made it seem like tout allait bien dans le meilleur des mondes and hm?? Not buying it you’re not even a democracy oy

Also Lily contacted the Order pretty early on so that they could help her hide her family. So she probably met with Edan wayyyy before Sacha (or like, they probably knew each other from Hogwarts, but not so much?? Lily was too busy trying to save Slytherin souls you know :’))

All Gryffindors are assertive and arrogant let’s face it (Wynona is I am EVERYONE IS)

 The whole Edan plotline is :’(((((((( I have no idea how Wyn would react to that but she’d definitely be involved. Wyn has always been independent and has never relied on anyone (before the accident at least), but I feel like Edan could have been the one she was confiding to about the shit she was struggling with. Kids and Sacha could always confide to her and count on her support; but she was the mother, the big sister, it was all one-way, except maybe with Edan. So she would care a hell lot

Also she cares so much about Sacha and this is so terrible for him like

It’s Wynona tho so she may try to confront Edan mdr, so the explosion plot wouldn’t be so unlikely hihi

Or maybe she’d be surprisingly caring?? Like that would be the thing to reactivate her soft spot

Also caring for Edan would be her awkward way of showing Sacha she still fucking cares for him

Siblings relationships will be the end of me I swear to god

  Running away!! I can totally picture a scene in which Nathan and Lily would be quiet, and it would be weird because they’re rarely just the two of them now, and one of them goes like “maybe we should just run away/maybe we should have ran when we still could”

Nathan thinking he’s too weak is a big no tho

I also have had this scene in mind FOR AGES and I need this to be canon??? Nathan and Lily. Sitting on a roof. (This was Excidium’s era yo, remember how they lived on a mf roof??? MDR) It’s all quiet. And Lily grabs Nathan’s hand. “I’m proud of you. I’m proud of us.” BIIIITCH I NEED EPISODE 2 OF THIS NATHAN NEEDS EPISODE 2 OF THIS

The frequency to which I rely on capital letters is becoming concerning

Tbh I just miss the Nathalily banter. I just want my girl to go like “you’re my family BITCH”

Remember in Excidium (sorry hihi) when they found each other after MONTHS and one of the first things she said was “yo you look like shit”??? #MyNathalily

(Also I always forget how hot Nathan actually is. Mdr and Lily is just like “oy ugly”)

(And yes!!!! How he used to FAIRE DES PUTAINS DE LABYRINTHE A LA SORTIE DE SON DORM what a bitch I love him) (I miss them as kids :’(((((()

(Most of their les Ames Mortes friends must be dead btw. Bonne ambiance)

(Once I had a dream where Kira was somehow coming back??? Which was cool because he was sort of Lily’s psychologist and that would GREATLY help rn)

Gnnn Lily would be like “You CAN’T let the McMillan run this thing” but at the same time she would not do anything about it?? Placing all the burden on his shoulders. I’m sorry Wyn and Lily are such shitty friends atm but they’re… so far gone, in a way :’(

It will get better tho!! LOVE IS MORE POWERFUL REMEMBER

Actually Lily and Nathan are facing the exact same problems mdr so they should see it eventually

Lily’s not a leader, OR at least she never meant to be one. Pls just let her be Nathan’s bras droit once again, I feel like they both need it rn

OR MAYBE THEY NEED TO RUN AWAY

Sorry

I’m just thinking so much about how Aron’s death must have affected their relationship. Like Aron was Nathan’s brother too tbh

I also thought Nathan’s connection to both fire and water was so interesting yoooo, especially because Lily is so much the incarnation of water to me (even tho she’s also very earthly and she’s, in a way, full of fire)

NATHAN ON A DRAGON’S BACK IS BOTH TERRIFYING AND SEXY AF

Remember the part where Wynona now has two fully grown dragons?? Just sayin

Nathan was actually quite dark on Les Ames Mortes mdr, I remember this whole dark mark storyline and holy shit

“He’s been TAMED and you CAN’T tame him he’s a wild animal” *slow claps even tho this may not be a very reassuring perspective*

 I feel so sorry for Nathan and Sacha!! (And Wyn and Lily mdr)

 OK I’M HAVING SO MUCH WYNONATHAN FEELS ATM

As I was writing the Blackbird scene I was like “this reminds me of something hmmm” and then I remembered Nathan’s story and!!!!

These bitches have so much in common they must laugh it off to pretend like it’s not serious business

I can so much picture Wyn bringing Nathan to the Ranch and him seeing the Thestrals and casually saying “it’s been so since [he] was a kid” “oh me too” “hahahahaha how fun”

Wyn making fun of Nathan’s patronus “hahahaha you’re so in love with me right” (bonus if Nathan does not know her last name yet and she goes “do you know who the fuck I am”)

I LOVE Ydria and you know who else would LOVE her?? Wynona. Yes. If she ever meets her tbh she’s gonna stan (poor Nathan mdr)

(Rick Yaxley already???? Wtf I didn’t know about that what a bitch wtf wtf wtf)

(btw quite canon that Wyn’s family has also been executed by deatheaters because they were becoming too much of a threat/were too out of control/were non-white so no one could understand them mdr)

Btw. The parallel between both their families in terms of integration to the pureblood scene is EVERYTHING. They were such powerful families and the others were such racist pieces of crap

The Blackbirds have never been fine politicians. When Blackbird Père figured out it would be nice to have allies on the pureblood scene he probably rushed to the Lestrange because 1) they’re scary af and 2) Corvus oculum corvi non eruit. I swear to God

When they could have been allied with the Oderikos I’M SORRY BUT

Btw chapter 3 is Wynona at one such pureblood gathering :’) and SORRY AGAIN but don’t tell me the table for discussing politics was not organized by “family importance”. The Big Seven, then the other British families, than the… non-white people :’) Also just saying that if the table is organized alphabetically that means that WYNONA’S SEAT WILL BE NEXT TO NATHAN’S MDRRRRRRR

Is this really how they’re gonna meet (cause tbh I’m here for it) (I even mention it briefly at the end hihi you’ll see) (I’m a foreshadowing queen y’know)

Just saying that if the Oderikos and the Blackbirds could have seen their resemblances… “I have a son you have a daughter we’ll join our houses…..” In a parallel universe Nathan and Wynona could be married just saying hein

Sorry but the association of these two houses sounds terrifying I like it

But do you know who are the most terrifying people of these families?? YDRIA AND THE AMERICAN BRANCH. WHAT IF THEY COME. BOTH OF THEM.

Can Wyn somehow figure out that Nathan has Native American blood pls this just needs to be addressed

Can they teach other “unorthodox magic/ways of burning things”???

(YDRIA AS DESCENDANTS OF GREEK GODS I’M DYING!!!!!!!!!)

(ODERIKOS MEN BEING CURSED!!!!!)

100% agree that Nathan and Wyn could burn the world AND each other up

Not directly related but you know my original plan was to have Wynona die in a massive suicide-bomb attack. Just like casually leaving Nathan’s bed in the middle of the night to blow herself up. I mean I don’t know what this is doing here but I just needed to say it

Omg yes they’re such soulmates but I don’t think they’re good for each other. STAR-CROSSED LOVERS MUCH omg

Pretty sure Wyn knows that but… there’s not much she can do about it mdr

Like before the war she was confiding to Edan, but in the war she found someone so much like her, that can relate to the trauma she’s been through?? She craves it, she NEEDS it and she is always going to need it

(Gnnn she just needs someone to take care of her ok)

Plus if the kids have adopted Nathan, can you imagine

People being like “he’s good for you/you’re good for each other” WELL ACTUALLY

Maybe relationships which start with fights are not meant to end so well??? Maybe that’s just too much fire??

(Also huge need for an angsty RP where she’s just yelling at him “YOU LEFT ME AT MY LOWEST” and shit. Does Nathan need that? Probably not. But I do hihihi)

Anyway je radote ptn

 Et en attendant j’ai fait d’autres playlists just as messy as this post:

·         Lily : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ0c2JClJHl10O5TcXXte7AD8K7I46ARt

·         Evans siblings: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ0c2JClJHl2GyO486p5UjsMRHot_h-on

·         A bby one but well-needed for Cassiel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ0c2JClJHl3ZNPaKs-7i56Gcsosu7xyQ

·         Nathalily: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ0c2JClJHl3RUhSkv0gTftnzcBJj7aaE (pls don’t hit me for the last one ok)

·         WYNONATHAN: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ0c2JClJHl3cyiZtCP-40U6Ze8SXYGy7

 Bye