#really good examples are vipsania and hilarius

[spinninglightning]

whenever i read fics i always end up thinkin of a song for the fic or like, th chapter and then i canr stop associating the fic w/ those songs

[moreespressoformydepresso]

I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking that the outrage over Lucy Gray not magically curing Snow’s unwillingness to stop being a heartless dick is a massive ick. This guy felt sympathy for Billy fucking Taupe because he was pissy about something Lucy Gray did as if the guy didn’t cheat on his girlfriend and indirectly got her sent to her death. Fucking ew.

Oh the Dovecotes would absolutely be shitting bricks the entire time Reaper’s there, because he’s intimidating enough as it is. Imagine what he’d be like if he actually dislikes you lol. Since I’m erasing Clemensia’s mean streak I think they could bond, but it’s probably only gonna happen if Clemmie actively does things to help Dill. And it would take a while. Reaper’s a perfect example of a completely valid and understandable opinion/reaction not being the most helpful one for the bigger picture. I love stories where the thing that could solve everything isn’t being done for reasons that can’t really be blamed on the characters. Would Reaper being nice and friendly and the bestest guest ever make it more likely that the games are stopped because this big important family is vouching for the cancellation? Yes! But can we really expect Reaper to behave that way? Absolutely not, because why the fuck would he? He has every reason to wish to snap their necks because they’re implicitly responsible for a lot of suffering and a lot of deaths. It’s far more interesting to me than someone actively screwing everyone over for no reason.

Wovey… Wovey’s a treasure and everything you said I stand behind 100% she’d be the most adorable ray of sunshine ever until she melts even the coldest of hearts. Hilarius is the privileged kid who desperately wants to be oppressed so yeah him behaving like a little bitch until he has a breakdown over how horrible of a person he really is sounds like something he’d do.

The difficult thing about Vipsania is that we know she’s very competitive. In the books, she leaves angrily after Treech dies, and in the movie she asks what’s wrong with him when he gets poisoned and then leaves once he’s dead while looking upset. Clearly, his death upset here, but there’s no way of knowing why. It could be that she’s unhappy she lost, or it could be that she genuinely started to care for him and is grieving. Anger is a stage of grief, after all. I’m leaning towards her starting off only caring about winning but slowly starting to actually care about Treech because I’m a sap who loves her happy feels (and also I love smashing the hearts of everyone around me to smithereens, as the one person who I spoiled both of my active writing projects can attest to I’m sure). Especially because Snow is an unreliable narrator, and probably wouldn’t pick up on other people’s feelings unless it impacts him specifically. The guy kinda strikes me as a psychopath tbh, because he genuinely seems incapable of placing himself in other people's shoes. I repeat: HE SYMPATHIZED WITH BILLY TAUPE FUCKING CLADE.

The older tributes are all fantastic older siblings and it accidentally reveals some of the horrible realities of living in the districts. Like dead parents or having to work all the time because pay is so low the parents need the extra paycheck or the peacekeepers being so shit that if there wasn’t a big sibling many more kids would have died.

I’m looking at Festus and remembering that like about Coral almost breaking his wrist. She would not hesitate for a second and we love her for that, if anyone would be his wakeup call it’s her verbally destroying his dipshit ass for being a prejudiced little bitch. As for his friendship with Snow… we gotta remember there’s a massive gap between how Snow thinks and how Snow acts. Like- he behaves like a good friend to Sejanus in the books (which people have twisted into Sejanus being naïve, completely missing the point that Snow hid how horrible of a person he chose to be) but thinks some really horrible things. Being friends with him doesn’t say much about Festus, and Snow himself says Festus was someone who liked Sejanus more than their other classmates (the other person mentioned being Lysistrata because of course. She’s a sweetie). But I’m not saying he’s a good person. There’s a lot about him that’s fucked up and rotten, but he’s not a monster. The point I was trying (poorly) to make with this all is that Festus is a good person to those who are part of his in-group. He’s the scariest kind of bad person that also exists in real life. A darkly chilling kind of bad person. Someone who does and says and thinks horrible, disgusting, vile things, but genuinely believes they’re a good person. Festus cried over Arachne’s death, because he was part of his group. She was part of his circle, so he was a good person to her. Snow’s part of his circle, so he’s a good person to him. He was nicer to Sejanus than most capitol people, which was considered to be a very kind thing to do because Sejanus is district. He laid a hand on Coral’s shoulder, probably with good intentions, he does nice things. But he’s not a good person, no matter what he might think of himself. Because of this, I think that it’ll take a verbal beating for him to understand that his delusion of himself as a good person is smoke and mirrors with everyone who isn’t part of his circle, but once that’s over he’ll genuinely try to help the tributes. And he may even be the last push necessary to get Snow his much-needed therapy. Uhm yeah that’s all I have.

Something cute popped into my head, btw. The tributes are gonna get to a point where they get to wash up and get fresh clothes while their dirty old ones get washed. Imagine if Pup and Vipsania decided to give some of their clothes to Treech and Lamina, but swapping tributes. So Treech gets Pup’s clothing and Lamina gets Vipsania’s because it would fit better. Both literally and style-wise. But the tributes are all starved so at some point the Tributes have good fun joking about how stupidly loose their clothing is and how it’s the most comfortable thing they’ve ever worn. An accident slap in the face to every capitol citizen who can hear (they’re doing this in public somewhere) because they have wardrobes full of nice fitted clothing and these kids are casually talking about only having two old shirts that have been stitched up and worn out so much they agitate the skin. And maybe some of the kids share their tips on dealing with open wounds under clothing and everyone listening is like “what the fuck is going on in the districts?!”

Okay that ended less cutely but to finish on a happy note: Lamina and Treech showing their new fits to each other (at one of the two mentors’ houses, with said mentor’s family in the room for “safety reasons”) and mocking each other in a very sibling-y way. It’s cute, they laugh, they’re absolute kids something something moral crisis.

More TBOSAS fix-it food!! Instead of bombing the arena, the rebels bomb the capitol zoo while the tour is happening. Because throwing kids in a zoo enclosure is kind of fucked up actually, and it’s just as much a symbol of the capitol’s rampant dehumanization of the districts as the arena where the yearly underage death match takes place. Thanks to this, the kids obviously can’t be placed back in the zoo because, you know, it was destroyed. So what now? Well…

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I’m convinced the mentor program was an attempt at stopping the games in the long run that backfired horribly. Seeing that not enough progress is being made, dean Highbottom decides that the tributes should stay with their mentors. Peacekeepers will be around to make sure no funny business occurs, of course, but despite the outrage of some mentors (cough Livia cough) and all the mentors’ families the plan goes through. As much as I think the tributes dying was necessary to truly drive home the horror of the games for the mentors, it clearly didn’t work and the kids deserve to live so this is the next best thing.

At first, the tributes don’t have a good time, because the families they’re forced to stay with treat them like animals. Worse, actually, because most people don’t go out of their way to make things as unpleasant as possible for animals. However, it doesn’t take long for at least parts of the families to warm up to the tributes. Who stay jumpy and mistrustful and scared out of their damn minds because one wrong move means death, but hey they’ll live. The peacekeepers got a free hand to dish out whatever punishment they wanted so long as the family the kid’s staying with approves, which turns out to be in Highbottom’s plan’s favor because now capitol citizens get to see firsthand just how cruel and inhumane capitol punishment is in the districts. These families have private doctors too, so while at first the veterinarian responsible for the tributes is working overtime her work slowly diminishes. The mentors’ families are so influential that the initial denial of medical care is quickly retracted.

By the time the games are supposed to happen, the president has grown such a soft spot for Dill that he makes up an excuse to postpone them, and when the new date rolls around the tributes have spent enough time with people even outside of their mentor’s family that they’ve endeared themselves to all the important people in the capitol. The games weren’t popular anyways, so the president doesn’t feel a risk to his career when he cancels them.

I may post little tidbits of plot ideas I have floating in my head for this AU, but for now imagine Felix sitting in one of the massive living rooms in the presidential mansion, showing Dill some cool capitol stuff as she looks on with doe-eyes full of curiosity, while the president loses his mind in the background as he suffers a severe moral crisis.