amelodyoffixations

[amelodyoffixations]

peeta : suffered an abusive childhood, low self-esteem, survived two hunger games, was willing to die multiple times throughout the series, lost his leg, was captured and tortured by the president and his men, his entire family died, lost his entire memory/sense of self, practically had nothing left to live for.

gale : lost his father at thirteen, had to risk his life every day to provide for his mother and all his younger siblings, watched the genocide of his people and was powerless to stop it, was whipped publicly until he almost bled out and died, was manipulated and exploited by a president who saw his trauma as a weapon she could use.

people who zero reading comprehension : “those boys only cared about katniss! she had a revolution to lead and they just dragged her down and focused only on kissing! the books would have been more nuanced without romance!”

[amelodyoffixations]

have katniss everdeen on the mind so. little rant.

The grossest mischaracterization I’ve seen in fanfics is the idea that Katniss hates kids and that’s why she never wanted to have any. If you think that is the case, you have WILDLY misinterpreted the entire reason why katniss foreswears having children throughout the trilogy. It’s the complete opposite; she loves kids so much that she couldn’t bear them suffering the inevitable pain that comes from living in Panem. She would rather not have children at all than have them be subjected to that. Throughout the series she consistently shows deep care and love for children (prim, rue) and that is such an integral part of her character. She is inherently maternal and she knows that’s one of her weaknesses. I’ve seen fics where katniss looks at a kid and thinks “wow what a brat kids are so smelly I never want to have any” and others where she’s pregnant and is thinking “im only really having this child for Peeta, I don’t even know if I’ll be capable of loving it as much”, just so that they can eventually have a scene where she gives birth and is like “omg I love this child so much wow I was so wrong to not want kids!”. NO!! YOU READ THE BOOKS WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED!!!

[amelodyoffixations]

Bimbo and Himbo aren't gender locked

[amelodyoffixations]

internet politics and real-world politics have gotten so separated, and pretty soon all this internet weirdness is gonna come crashing into real life and politicians are gonna start throwing around words like “SJW” and “anime communist” and “dark enlightenment” and it’s just gonna be the most ridiculous fucking thing

[amelodyoffixations]

just thinking about haymitch abernathy and burdock everdeen

burdock, who stayed by haymitch when he was deep in the clutches of depression, trauma, and alcoholism. burdock, who refused to leave his side, even when haymitch was actively trying to distance him, right up until he did something that realistically could have killed asterid. haymitch, who thought that this was the worst thing he ever did - worse than what he did in the games

haymitch, who had to watch burdock show off his daughter from a distance, rather than by his side. haymitch, who didn’t grow up to be ‘uncle hay’, but the drunk victor who falls off the stage, who katniss considers ‘disgusting’ (happy 40th)

haymitch, who had to look at this girl who so strongly resembles burdock, fight herself into the ground, nearly die over and over, and become the enemy of the most powerful man in the country, the man who destroyed his life. haymitch, who watches the only living reminder of the best friend he once had, become the face of the revolution at sixteen years old.

haymitch, who watches burdock’s bow and arrows become a symbol of the revolution, watches them end the games with a carefully calculated shot.

haymitch, who loves katniss everdeen. haymitch, who stays alive to look after his family.

sighhhh. haymitch and his everdeens

[amelodyoffixations]

currently crying over Haymitch and his kids. Katniss is his niece from another life yet she is so much like him how could he not love her like a daughter. Katniss is his righteous fury, his gruff protectiveness but Peeta is who he wanted to be. He wanted to grow old with his girl. He wanted marriage and a family. He was a lover boy forced to fight. But in Peeta he sees what his life could have been.

[amelodyoffixations]

Maysilee “she slaps back” Donner

Wyatt “sacrificed himself protecting a little girl with poor odds” Callow

Louella “sweetheart” McCoy

Lou Lou “murderers” McCoy

Woodbine “runs like greased lightning” Chance

Haymitch “im not much of a drinker” Abernathy

[amelodyoffixations]

although katniss is our protagonist and main character i think there's actually a much more fitting throughline when it comes to the presence of covey girls and their acts of rebellion.

lucy gray

lenore dove

primrose

i don't often see prim mentioned when it comes to covey lineage (most likely because her character is so aligned with their merchant mother in the original trilogy) but all three of these girls actively haunt the narrative.

lucy gray is the ghost whose songs of resistance endure in district 12 long after her name is forgotten. lenore dove paints her posters across the district and its haymitch's promise to her that forces him to keep going, keep fighting back until someone 'just like him but luckier' comes along to do what he couldn't. primrose is reason that katniss volunteers, she inspires a love so great that it defies the odds and brings her sister home.

they all have an immense strength but also an inherent gentleness - their love of animals whether this is lucy gray's snakes or lenore dove's geese or prim's refusal to hunt animals (not to mention lady and buttercup) - they are all drawn to creatures that are not widely seen as valuable or lovable.

they share a deep sense of optimism, each believe in the power of hope to transform one's circumstances. they each believe that a better world is not only possible but they are willing to take action to make it so. lucy gray uses her songs and performances, lenore dove engages in acts of sabotage and vandalises property. prim learns how to heal and chooses to enter a warzone in order to help people - in a world governed by violence, prim is first and foremost a healer.

and ultimately they are all taken from those who love them - they are girls frozen in time, forever filled with colour and light. three generations of covey girls, each doomed by their connection to the games.

[amelodyoffixations]

Not to be that person but Haymitch is now like canonically the person who keeps the Covey’s memory alive. Even if Katniss has information passed down from her father, I think it pales in comparison to what Haymitch knew intimately. Out of the remainder of 12’s population, it is Haymitch who adds their histories to the book. He tells their story. He also has seen Lucy Gray—he can give her a physical description.

And I think, out of all the things he did (in the canon story), that is the most meaningful way he honored Lenore Dove.

[amelodyoffixations]

wyatt's death took me so horribly off-guard that I near sobbed when haymitch saw his face in the stars on that first night.

it needs to be acknowledged that he was treated as no less of a main character than maysilee was. he was talked about just as often, just as present in every scene, portrayed just as important and influential as the rest of the 12 tributes were. to me, at least, there was no warning or sign for his death when it came.

i thought he would get more of a chance to live, before the inevitable. even in the end, we knew so little about him. the lack of value he held for his own life was foreshadowed, yet to die in the first battle of the first day in the area was a fate i didn't see him meeting.

we don't even know his last words.

i think he deserved a little more justice.

[amelodyoffixations]

thinking about how haymitch and lenore dove found it so important to keep their relationship THEIRS. how they didn’t want their love used as part of the game.

thinking about how katniss and peeta never had that choice. :(

[amelodyoffixations]

in light of the new book - it annoys me when people talk about the victors of district 12 and talk about lucy gray (the mockingbird, the entertainer (where the other 3 tried to stop the games she actually kept them going by introducing the entertainment factor in her efforts to survive), rigged reaping) and haymitch (the jabberjay, the flintstriker, forced into the games) and katniss (the girl on fire, the mockingjay, volunteered for love) but leave out PEETA. the boy with the bread, the dandelion in the spring, the one who is genuinely reaped and had the most chance of surviving and actually DID have the odds in his favour and yet still was made to join the games. where lucy gray and haymitch and katniss were the rebellion and the rising up of the districts - peeta is the hope for the after. he is the hope for what it takes to survive. the kindness of humanity, that we do good things purely for the rightness of those acts. dont get me wrong, he is rebellion. he can be a calculating game maker in the face of the odds moreso than haymitch or katniss or lucy gray ever was in their somewhat mostly incidental large acts of rebellion. his acts of rebellion were calculated precisely, again, in view of the future. he pushed the star struck lovers act with katniss in calculation that it would push HER in favour where she could not get it herself. so that she could have sponsors and and audience that loved her and the spotlight so that she could win and survive the games. he helped her in the 74th hunger games purely because it was right and kind and the quasi-formed love for her that he could have had for just about any other district partner he could have had - whether if it was prim or whoever. (where his love was also a crush on the surface, i believe that at the start at least, it was mostly out of goodness that he wouldve had in any odds) - peeta would have been wyatt callow again, sacrificing himself immediately for a 12 year old primrose everdeen in the bloodbath of the arena. because that is just who he is. he is goodness and the hope for a future

so, dont discredit him too fast in your pool of district 12 victors.

[amelodyoffixations]

Haymitch often referred to himself as a rascal during his games, but the actual rascal was by and large, Peeta “because she came here with me/if it weren’t for the baby” Mellark. And I think Haymitch really appreciated that and loved that about Peeta.

[amelodyoffixations]

This is something I’ve seen a lot and I’ve also joked about a lot but after SotR I just need to clarify my actual thoughts on this topic: Snow’s “twink death” and his inability to let go of, what was essentially, a month long relationship.

The thing is, it’s not Lucy Gray that he’s holding a grudge against… it’s her lifestyle. He got to experience first hand, the freedom and self-assurance that groups like the Covey generated for themselves. He saw Lucy Gray run off into the woods, swim in a lake, sing and dance with her peers, all after a game that should’ve destroyed her spirits - because that is the point of the Games. To have a sole surviving reminder of why the Capitol is in control. To send back one “victor” who every district hates because the person standing in front of them is taking their friend/child/sibling/cousin/partner’s spot. To completely dismantle that person’s ability to cope with the world the way they used to and to have them beholden to the Capitol for “awarding” them with riches. They’re supposed to serve only as a reminder, a threat, a shell of a person who is visibly hollow and tarnished, hated by many, feared by some and pitied by few.

Lucy Gray is not that shell. Lucy Gray, therefore, serves as a constant reminder to Snow of what should not be happening to those who get to leave the arena. The more he takes command of the Capitol and the Games, the more the “mistakes” of the Games stand out to him because his benchmark for measuring them is Lucy Gray.

Keep in mind that the 10th Games were also the first time he got to see from the inside out. He saw what pissed off the tributes. He saw how they were transported. He also saw how the public reacted at the home district. Lucy Gray had nightmares, sure, but her ability to re-mingle with her friends was a failure of the Capitol. He saw the need to maintain a constant difference between “victor” and “friend”. He saw the need to put them on tours so that the divide and distance grows. He saw the need to be able to broadcast every aspect of the Games without having to constantly be frantically cutting the feed or very obviously fixing the narrative, because that was yet another failure of the system the Capitol was trying to enforce.

This becomes so clear in SotR when he has his talk with Haymitch and realises that the Lucy Gray spirit he has been trying to squash is still alive. Not only that, it’s infectious. It can take someone like Haymitch, someone who is very well pressed under the Capitol thumb, and spark a fire inside him. The colours of the Covey, the singing, it doesn’t just represent Lucy Gray, it represents aspects of freedom that shouldn’t exist. Even him saying:

“You love her. And oh, how she seems to love you. Except sometimes you wonder because her plans don’t seem to include you at all.”

Is so telling because he can’t fathom that a person in the districts could have the independence of thought to do whatever they want. To him, she should be desperate to go back to the Capitol with Snow to get a chance to live the dream that they’re trying so hard to sell, but obviously failing.

So no, Lucy Gray isn’t just the girl he couldn’t get over. She’s the girl that serves as a warning, as an abomination of the purpose of the Capitol. As his personal blueprint of what should not be repeated ever again.

[amelodyoffixations]

*SUNRISE ON THE REAPING SPOILERS*

Reading through the SoTR tag and honestly, I fully disagree with a big criticism point, which is that the prequel is turning Katniss into some Chosen One.

I fully read it as the reverse! That Katniss’ life and role and victories are the sum of not only her parts, but every single person who has owed someone else, something that could not be repaid.

Haymitch being friends with Katniss’ dad is not some shoehorn??? District 12 has 10,000 people at the time of the 75th games! They had one school! Everybody knew everybody, so it’s not a surprise that two Seam boys knew each other or could be friends!

Beetee and Wiress and Mags being there wasn’t some “Avengers Assemble” moment, it was 3 Victors being punished like all Victors were (except Beetee had an even worse go of it, proving something Katniss observed in CF, which is that Victors’ children had a higher odds of being chosen or outright rigged).

Even younger Effie and Plutarch??? They were career Hunger Games staff canonically??? It made sense for them to be there??

Idk people have been talking about this book as a cash grab and not talking about the poignancy of how every action Katniss Everdeen took was influenced by the character and love of those before and around her.

[amelodyoffixations]

What I think is most different and most striking about Sunrise on the Reaping is how CYNICAL it is. To some extent we knew it was going to be. This is a midquel. That the reapings go on and the Hunger Games only ends 25 years later is a forgeon conclusion. We know nothing that happens here is going to work.

The book is about implicit submission, and why, with numbers on their side, the many submit to the few, even when the few are unjust. And it's because, the book seems to say, numbers aren't ENOUGH. the Newcomers alliance is much bigger than the Careers. They should be able to team up and defeat them easily. But they don't. Eighteen of them are killed outright, because the Careers have the strength, the skill and the training. And that's just that.

Plutarch asks why the tributes don't overwhelm the Peacekeepers during training, and Haymitch is rightfully outraged at the privilege of this question. Why don't they? Because they probably couldn't kill them all, and even if they could, what good would it do? It wouldn't stop the Hunger Games. It wouldn't change a thing. No one would even know about it outside that room, because the Capitol would change the narrative. Just like Katniss and the Star Squad can't REALLY take on the Capitol single handed and assassinate the president, the scrappy alliance of kids can't really do any real damage to the system the Capitol has in place. All they can do is choose if they want to die now or later. So why don't they, if there's no difference to them, as Plutarch asks. Because, as Snow puts it. Hope. The slight chance that one of them will come out of it. And, more cynically, the hope that if they are good tributes and obey, their families will be left alone. If they choose to rebel and choose to die now they guarantee retaliation against their families and perhaps their entire district. We see that even in the tributes that attack the Gamemakers in the arena. They rise up, they break that bond of implicit submission--and they die bloody for it.

Why don't they rebel? Because they don't have the privilege to lose.

Even Lenore Dove, the Joan of Arc of Twelve, fails to do any real damage or have any real effect. All she does is get herself a reputation for being a trouble maker, and eventually get herself killed. Was she killed as part of the retaliation against Haymitch, or was her punishment because she's a rebel, and that's what happens to rebels? (and Snow hates covey girls.) but she fails because she IS alone. She focuses on small, symbolic acts that do nothing, but that she hopes will rally the people to action.Unfortunately, the people of Twelve don't want their lives to get any worse, and they don't have the privilege of spending time and energy on revolution the way a teenager girl whose family doesn't need her income to survive does--sadly, Twelve will remain this way, in an uncanny valley where they're beaten down enough to need change, but not enough to have NOTHING to lose. They are not one of the districts that rise up. So acting alone does nothing, teaming up does nothing. How does one fight an enemy with better technology, better weapons, and better organization? Beetee's plan doesn't work out. Of course it doesn't. Could it ever? Was it just borne out of grief for his son? And even if it had, then what? What was the plan? Haymitch's poster gets edited away. The Newcomers fail. Lenore Dove dies. The most you can say is Haymitch himself becomes too important to kill, like Beetee, and Snow let him live to fight another day, but so destroyed that he no longer WANTS to.

So, then, what WORKS?

The answer is, quite cynically, Plutarch's version of the world. Numbers mean something, there are more of US than there are of THEM , but that isn't enough. You need weapons, you can't bring a knife to a gun fight, you need EVERYONE on your side. You need organization, not just a series of disconnected rebellions, and you need an Army, provided by Thirteen, as problematic as they are. The timing just needs to be right. And most crucially, what I think Plutarch and everyone involved here learned is that victory belongs to those who control the narrative. Those who control the flow of information and tell their story. And it's not Plutarch, for all his cameras and his propos and his idea behind The Mockingjay, who eventually does that well.

It's Haymitch.

Who learned to tell a story and sell a narrative with himself and the Newcomers. Who tried to paint his poster in the arena only to see it rewritten in front of him. Who won't make that mistake again. When it's time for the deciding factor in the revolution, it's Haymitch who creates the Mockingjay-- and is he also using Katniss and her image? Yes. but he at least sees Katniss and the human she is inside it, unlike Plutarch who hasn't changed much from the man who makes a grieving family do reshoots over and over so he can get his footage, while congratulating himself for letting Haymitch have his goodbye.

When Katniss sets off the spark twenty five years later, the world is ready. The work is in place. Plutarch, Haymitch, Beetee, everyone can say GO , and this time it'll work. So buckle in, and wait for the Long Game, even though only Plutarch really has the privilege to wait, the rest of them don't have a choice. It's cynical. It's awful. People die. The lone rebels and the plucky girls and the alliance depending on its numbers all fail. Plutarch motherfucking Heavensbee, the richest of the rich the privilegedest of the privileged, pulls off the revolution, takes the credit, and lives to see the end of it, without ever once examining his own privilege, and unpacking the fact that despite his head being on the right side of history, he's never managed to see the Districts as PEOPLE . (and you could argue, ANYONE as people. ) But it's just the only way.

But this book isn't the middle of the series. It's the end. How awful would it be to read if we didn't know that Katniss and the Mockingjay rebellion would eventually succeed. We know that despite the cynism of a failed revolution and all its players, that one day it WILL work out. This book is called sunrise on the Reaping....the sun rises on a world where this is inevitable. But one day it won't be.

[amelodyoffixations]

There was this horrible moment I had while reading SotR today where I realized Haymitch looked at Katniss and saw the dead little girl with dark braided hair he had to carry to Snow’s doorstep, his best friend he had to push away for his own good, and the Covey girl he couldn’t save all rolled into one more tribute he had to lead to her death wearing the meanest girl in town’s pin. I need to be sedated