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[ginarbk]

firefox just started doing this too so remember kids if you want to stream things like netflix or hulu over discord without the video being blacked out you just have to disable hardware acceleration in your browser settings!

[ginarbk]

Making Cookies

Summary: Peeta tells Katniss he needs to talk, but they end up baking instead.

Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mallark

Rating: T.

AO3

“We should talk.”

Peeta’s stern, more stern than normal, but it’s better than the stilted formality that’s grown between us ever since the games.

But I don’t want to talk to Peeta.  I don’t know how to talk to Peeta anymore, if I ever did to begin with.  It doesn’t seem fair to keep up the ruse he’d created, and there’s no way to return to what we’d been before.  We hadn’t been anything before.  Just the boy with the bread and the girl he’d saved, a tentative past connection that meant everything and nothing.

But it isn’t just Peeta.  It’s impossible to return to anything the way it was before the games.  Other than Haymitch, he’s the only one who understands that.

Maybe that’s what makes this so hard.

I give him a silent nod.  It isn’t as though much else fills my days, and it isn’t though I have any excuse not to meet with him, other than simply not wanting to do so.  My eyes shift about me, taking in the empty houses around us, my own barely used with my mother and Prim, and Haymitch’s.  Sometimes, I envy his loneliness.  I do not envy his nightmares; I have my own.

“When?”

~

Peeta’s house smells strongly of bread.  It’s the same way he smells, but stronger; in the Capitol, during the games, that smell was gone, replaced with their fancy oils and powders then with dirt and blood.  By the end, he smelled like one of the rabbits Gale traps in the woods.  They have more time to be afraid.

Even now, away from the bakery, Peeta’s house smells like bread.  He bakes the way I hunt, to keep his mind off of everything else.  But no matter how much we try to go back, we can’t.  There will always be a difference between us and everyone else.  A different kind of surviving.  The scent is even stronger inside the house, overwhelming flour mixed with the sweeter scent of sugar and the sharp alcoholic tang of yeast.

I find him waiting for me in the kitchen, apron tied about his waist, flour decorating his hair like snow that doesn’t melt. “You wanted to talk?”

“Mm.  Hold on.  I’m almost done.”  Peeta pushes his hair back with one hand, leaving a trail of flour behind.  Then he sets his newest loaf on a tray, sticks it into the oven where it will be seared with fire, and leaves it be.  He offers me a smile.  “Needed a break.”

“I know.”  I sit on the stool across from him.  “You’ve got flour—”

“Everywhere.  I know.”  Peeta chuckles.  It’s a real laugh, even though it isn’t much, and the smile he wears when he makes it feels normal.  Like the way he’s supposed to be.  He lifts his apron and rubs his face with it.  “Better?”

Now there’s just as much flour on his face as there is on the counter.  “No,” I say.  “Worse.”

“Huh.”  Peeta looks confused.  He stares at his apron.  “That was supposed to help.”  He sighs and looks up at me.  “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to make you match.”

I barely get my mouth open before Peeta throws a spray of flour at me.  It coats my face, thick like the powder they force me to wear in the Capitol, and my mouth drops open as a little cloud puffs around me.  I reach over and push him.  “Hey!”

Peeta stands back, out of the way, and he smiles like he does when he’s happy, not the fake sort of thing he wears when we need to pretend for our safety.  “Now you don’t have an excuse.”

“An excuse?”

“Everything’s been so tense lately,” Peeta says, placing his hands flat on the flour-covered counter.  His smile fades as he looks down at them.  “You can’t teach me how to hunt, but I thought….”  He glances up and searches my eyes.  “I thought I could teach you to bake.  Something simple.”  He pulls a few shaped cutters from a nearby tray.  “Like cookies?”

I don’t want to stay here.  I don’t want to learn how to bake from Peeta, almost as much as I don’t want to teach him how to hunt.  Our lives are already so hopelessly entangled that this only makes everything more confusing.  It would be easier to not, easier to go back to my house and wash everything off.

But Prim will ask.  I can ignore my mother, but I can’t ignore Prim.

So I scowl and nod.  “Fine.”  I nod at the shapes.  “But only if we make one that looks like Haymitch.”

Peeta pulls out another cutter, one that looks like a wine bottle.  I don’t ask why he has one that shape or who would ever want a bottle-shaped cookie.  He offers me a smile. “Drinks and all.”

I don’t smile.  “Drinks and all.”

~

Peeta convinces me to make another batch while we wait for the first one to cook, and while we wait for the first batch to cool enough to decorate – I tell him I won’t be good at it, but he won’t let me leave the decorations up to him – he slices the freshly cooled loaf of bread, slathers it with butter, and hands it to me.  I try to tell him I’m not hungry, but he won’t listen.  Despite this, I take the slice and take a bite.

The bread melts in my mouth.  It’s sweet from the butter, a luxury that we have more than enough of now but that still feels like a luxury.  I scarf the rest of the slice down but don’t ask for another.  He smiles, assuring me that he’ll send the rest home with me.  Peeta gives us fresh bread and cookies every day, but it’s still – it’s another luxury.  One we don’t deserve.

It’s while decorating the body-shaped cookies that it happens.

My attempts at recreating Effie with her bright pink hair look nothing like her, just a puff of pink covering the whole of what should be her head.  I scowl at her and grab for another one of Peeta’s intricate decorating tools.  I want to scrape away all of the icing I’ve already laid, but that would be a waste.  Even something as simple as this, I can’t waste food.

I glance over at the cookie Peeta is decorating and stop.

The cookie, burnt a little from something beyond our control, has a much darker color than the other golden cookies we’ve been decorating.  This one, Peeta’s decorated to be a girl instead of a boy, and she looks the spitting image of Rue.

My breath catches in my throat.  “Peeta?”

Peeta doesn’t look up.  He stares at the cookie, continuing to decorate it – continuing to recreate her – as though it’s the only thing in the world.  “I won’t eat her,” he says.

I hadn’t even thought about that.  Eating Rue – biting off her legs, her arms, her head – the idea of it makes me sick to my stomach in a way that eating a fake Haymitch didn’t.  I remember her in those last moments, after she was dead, after I’d surrounded her with flowers, after I sang for her, for an audience I didn’t see and didn’t care about – and still don’t care about, although their investment saved the both of us together – and I stumble backwards.  “What are you doing?”

When Peeta finishes, he holds the cookie gentle in his hands.  “This is the only way I can save them.”

It’s a horrible explanation, and it doesn’t make any sense.  “You aren’t saving anyone—“

But Peeta lifts the carefully decorated Rue cookie.  He takes her to the freezer and sets her inside, where other cookies decorated like each of the other tributes – even Cato, who’d attacked him, who’d been left with us at the last; even Marvel, who’d killed Rue and who I’d—

“You made all of them,” I say, trying not to feel sick.  “All of them.”

“This is the only way I can save them,” Peeta repeats.  He sets Rue inside with the rest of them and then shuts the freezer door.  “I know it’s a waste, but—”

I wrap my arms around him the way I need someone to hold me during my nightmares.  “It’s not a waste.”  I stare at the closed freezer.  “It’s an honor.”

I don’t tell him that I saw myself in the freezer, too, or that I’d noticed how there wasn’t a cookie of him.

~

While Peeta is visiting with his family later, I sneak into his house.  It isn’t hard.  He doesn’t lock his door.  I don’t think I would either, if my mother and Prim didn’t live in my house.  Whatever I have can be stolen; it’ll just be replaced later, and I don’t need any of it, don’t want any of it.

Streaks of flour coat my face like claw marks.

I open the freezer and gently place another tribute inside.  The Peeta I’ve made isn’t beautiful, like the cookies he’s decorated.  It’s misshapen, and one of its legs has a lump in it.  I’m not good at baking.  Prim won’t even eat the other cookies I’ve made.

But this one wasn’t about baking.  It was about this, setting a Peeta to be protected, to be saved, with all of the others he’s made.

~

A few days later, Peeta meets my eyes and gives me a nod.  That’s how I’ve known he’s seen it.

For once, in all of this, I feel warm.

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IT'S THAT SCENE, THAT DAMN SCENE

WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES JUST TO SEE HER FOR THE LAST TIME-

IT'S DESTROYING ME

I'M SCREAMING, I CANNOT DO THIS AGAIN

[ginarbk]

The End.

[ginarbk]

I'm actually really happy they extended Armin and Eren's final conversation in the anime and think it flows infinitely better than it did in the manga, but I also liked how it highlighted a very important aspect of Eren's character that alot of people in the fandom forget.

Above all else, Eren is a slave to his own childish nature and selfishness that stems from his need to be free. Regardless of how much freedom he will take away from others.

As much as he want's to believe that he committed such atrocities for the sake of his loved ones, it doesn't change the fact that he still put them all in danger, and people he cared about still died in the process. In the end everything that happened was because he was a slave to his own nature. His own selfishness to be "free" no matter who he had to hurt.

And that's the tragedy of his character, the moment he realizes this, it absolutely destroys him.

I also love how Armin's way of comforting Eren is way better than in the manga. He doesn't try to make him feel better over his actions or make him find some comfort from the results of those action, but instead he tells him that even if he'll find eternal damnation after he dies, he won't be alone. Armin will share that burden with him and follow him into hell after he is gone. His own sins are intertwined with his best friends, and he'll make sure that even in hell they will always be connected.

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Snippet Sunday

“You’re here early.“

He startles at the gruff voice behind him.

“Been here early a lot recently. Better watch it or Thom will think you’re gunning for his C,” Haymitch says before taking a pull from his flask.

Peeta chuckles, “His letter’s safe from me.” It’s nothing short of a miracle that he can skate let alone play - He’d assumed he never would again after he lost his leg, but ‘Mellark’s play hockey’, or at least that’s the universal truth he’d grown up with. So he’d relearned to skate almost as soon as he’d mastered walking. He no longer had NHL aspirations, though his mother hadn’t quite given up that dream for him. “Would you believe me if I said I like it here?” He bends down to adjusts his laces, sneaking a look at the older man.

Haymitch grunts, “I’d be more apt to believe you if you said you liked the view,” he tilts his head towards the ice where three pairs of skaters are scattered across the rink for private lessons. He not wrong. Ever since the first day he saw her, Peeta’s been a goner for the scowling woman on the ice

[ginarbk]

To all my writers who have a tough time with smut terms and not knowing which ones to use, I have found the holy grail for us.

This reddit user took a poll of 3,500 people and went really in depth with asking their favorite terminology, along with actual pie charts on what the readers preferred to see in their smut.

Here's the direct link to the Google doc with all the info!

[ginarbk]

Please please please I know we all love Friends and Chandler was our favourite character and Matthew always put a smile on our faces and that’s all amazing but can we please please please talk about this:

“I've had a lot of ups and downs in my life. I'm still working through it personally, but the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic or drug addict comes up to me and says, 'Will you help me?' I will always say, 'Yes, I know how to do that. I will do that for you, even if I can't always do it for myself! So I do that, whenever I can. In groups, or one on one.

And I created the Perry House in Malibu, a sober-living facility for men. I also wrote my play The End of Longing, which is a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk. I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.

When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends. And I'm glad of that, happy l've done some solid work as an actor, as well as given people multiple chances to make fun of my struggles on the world wide web...

but when I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to try to help other people.

I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.”

- Matthew Langford Perry

(August 19, 1969 - October 28, 2023)

[ginarbk]

My table was empty, wtf 🙃

Fun little psychology test

[ginarbk]

Hi guys!

Just popping in to ask if you know of any everlark fics that have been published as actual books now? I just finished reading In The Pines and I’m on the hunt for more!

Thank you so much!!

Hi there!

There is a growing number of former everlark fic writers who have published original works, but some of those who have published their former everlark fics as originals that I can think of are:

Natalia Jaster (HGRomance) - Trick ("Goddess")

Christina Rose Andrews (Rose & Lark) - The Language of Flowers ("Floriography")

Lindsey Ouimet (Bleedtoloveher) - "Perdition" and "Whats a Soulmate"

Kristin Rouse (Baronesskika) - The Fix ("All the Right Friends in all the Right Places")

Sera Taíno (Titania522) - A Delicious Dilemma ("My Favorite Mistake")

Jane S Ryann (Jlalafics) - Again and Again Remix (same name).

Beth Baldwin - (Endlessnightlock) - My Home Is With You

I am sure there are more!

If anyone can think of them, please drop us a message or leave a note in the comments.

:)

[ginarbk]

My HG fancast is based solely on how I imagine the characters, not with acting in mind, as some are models (the the actors I chose can act)

Katniss Evedeen: Marina Nery

Peeta Mellark: Owen Lindburg

Gale Hawthorn: Laurence Coke

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Tumblr Code.

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Readers be like, Peeta is too good, too perfect when you read the books, it’s annoying!

But, guys, he is not! Not at all! It’s just we read what Katniss thinks and she is head over heels in love with him. He saved her life when she was 11, she always saw him like he was perfect, because he was perfect for her! She describes him like he is the most righteous man in the galaxy, because he is for her, we read her story.

But if you look at Peeta, at everything he was doing, he is one manipulative son of a bitch.

He manipulated the crowd into seeing Katniss as someone desirable, he lied a lot to get sponsors for her. He knew she had something going on with Gale (although she didn’t have anything yet, but he thought she did) and still flirted his way into her heart.

One thing certain, he did love Katniss unconditionally. He would do anything for her. And that’s why she only see how perfect her boy with a bread is, because he is perfect for her.

And come on, we all would sell our souls to have a partner as devoted as Peeta.

PS who created this art? Please tag this person! It’s amazing 😻 found somewhere on the internet and loved it !

[ginarbk]

It astounds me how much everyone working on the THG movies was biased toward Gale 💀

I was answering someone's question about how they cut off a lot of stuff from Mockingjay book and this is what I could think of:

They did cut out a lot considering one book was split into 2 movies. They erased Delly and the whole Hijacked!Peeta being rude to people storyline. They erased Johanna struggling with her fear for water because she was tortured using it when she was captured. She was supposed to train with Katniss and go to the Capitol, but she couldn't pass the test because of this and that pissed her off. They also erased Peeta's progress in 13 when he had some clarity and made a beautiful cake for Finnick and Annie's wedding. They also cut off some of Finnick's lines and gave some to other characters.

All in all, everyone lost screentime except for maybe Gale. I just don't buy it that they don't have enough time because there are TWO movies.

The only Gale scene I remember that got cut was the one he argued with Katniss because he blamed Katniss for viewing her prep team as HUMAN. That was one of the most disgusting things he did and it's the only one they cut.

They also cut the smaller part where he STOPPED Katniss from trying to save Finnick and LIED to her. Finnick could have a fighting chance if not for him.

Same with the whipping scene in Catching Fire where they changed the reason from him poaching to him defending an old guy. Like how biased can they be??? Gale is a shit guy and they tried so much to paint him in a better light.