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[goldenslumberowo]

the biased way that katniss reacts to peeta and gale is so funny to me.

katniss, when gale throws her a dirty look: 🙄 classic annoying angry gale 🙄

katniss, when peeta literally throws a vase across the room in frustration: 🥺 how uncharacteristic of my precious dandelion in the spring 🥺

[goldenslumberowo]

[goldenslumberowo]

At a time like this?? 😭

My husband (ao3) has gone to war (it's down and we don't know why) and I don't know when I will see him again (I don't really know guys 😭😭)

[goldenslumberowo]

I think the most radical thing the hunger games does is tell young people that the most revolutionary thing you can do is have unconditional love for humanity. Katniss throughout the entire series is guided by a deep sense of compassion for the people around her. It is what causes her to volunteer, to bury rue, to mercy kill cato, its why she tries to save peeta, why finnick telling her to remember who the real enemy is works, and even though her compassion for the larger world falters when peeta is kidnapped, it comes back when she visits hospitals and asks for mercy for other victors and ultimately, it is love and belief in a better humanity that makes her kill coin. Through it all, she maintains an unfaltering belief in the fundemental goodness of humanity, which is diametrically opposed to dr gaul's and snow's worldview. Peeta is even more unwaveringly compassionate

So the series tells young people that the most revolutionary thing you can be is compassionate. Let compassion drive your politics. Let yourself believe in the fundemental goodness of people. And i think that's deeply important in a world that touts the superiority of pure reason or logic, to allow yourself to be guided by something as emotional as compassion. Katniss everdeen tells us that your politics should be rooted in compassion in a world that thinks detatchment or cynicism is intelligence and i think thats v cool

[goldenslumberowo]

I do love how Suzanne Collins gives us a critique of American glut and consumerism and military industrial complex and desensitization to violence and yet a love song to the good parts of America too, and particularly a nod to Appalachia, I think: the inherent power of communal music and tradition, the variety of people and the mixing of cultures, the scrappy resilience of the workaday folk, even the flora and fauna of Katniss’s beloved woods. She’s just that good.

[goldenslumberowo]

Peeta Mellark

Katniss Everdeen

Calahan Skogman as Peeta Mellark Amita Suman as Katniss Everdeen

So I know they've already been in a show based on a YA novel and are too old, but I guess this is more of a modern au fancast lol. I saw the top pic of Calahan on Instagram a while ago and got Peeta vibes. And then saw the one below of them together and got Peeta/Katniss modern au vibes, like they're in a band, hanging in a hotel room or at a bar after a show, friends to lovers. lmao

[goldenslumberowo]

Maladaptation

ATLA x Hunger Games Crossover

The sun is just rising. The dawn is gray and foggy. I wait out in the woods for my best friend – my only friend – Gale Hawthorne.

It is not like him to be late and it’s not often that I reach our meeting place before he does.

I wonder what may have stalled him.

Peacekeepers? A sick sibling? Errands for his mother?

Or is it nothing?

Perhaps he has decided to sleep in. It is, after all, reaping day, and the reaping does not start until two. Most will try to sleep in. If they can.

I move to edge of the tree-line, peering through the chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire, and watch as the Meadow grasses sway in the early morning breeze. Beyond the Meadow is the Seam.

At this hour, the Seam is usually crawling with earthbenders heading out to their morning shift at the coal mines. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles. Many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails or the lines of their sunken faces. But not today.

The dawn is just ending when I spot Gale, hurrying out of the Seam and into the Meadow. He does not bother to shimmy under the lifted part of the fence, like I had. He merely bends the earth underneath himself and propels himself over the barded-wire loops. He lands a little clumsily. He is not as adapt at earthbending as he likes to think.

Out in the woods with me is one of the few places that he gets to practice without the scrutiny of the Peacekeepers. If the people of the Seam are seen using their bending for something other than for the mining of coal, they can expect to be reprimanded. Or if the authorities thought you intended to use your bending to fight back, to use it against them, or the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol… you will be executed.

Gale flashes something at me from underneath his coat. A loaf of bread. Still steaming, fresh from the bakery. Real bread, nothing like the flat dense disks of bread we make from our grain rations. He passes it to me and it almost burns my hands.

“Still so warm,” I say. “What did it cost you?”

“Just a frog-squirrel,” says Gale. “I think that old man was feeling sentimental this morning. Even wished me luck.” He pauses to take his bow from me and shoulders it. “Coming from a firebender, I guess I should be grateful.”

The undertow of resentment in his tone is unmistakable. While there are benders of all kinds in District 12, earthbenders make up the majority of the Seam and firebenders run the Town. Long before the Dark Days, before there even was District 12 proper, those firebenders came to this land and colonized it. Even with the Capitol now overseeing us, there are still long-standing prejudices between the descendants of those firebenders and earthbenders. Gale, comprised of great pride of his origins, holds fast to such feelings.

My father was an earthbender – before he got blown to bits in the coal mines – and my mother is a waterbender and my little sister, Primrose, is a waterbender, too… and while I take after my father, and I can bend earth – I never thought of myself as someone who could afford the luxury of discriminating against the Townspeople. I need them to trade with. My greatest enemy since my father’s death has always been starvation – which has no ties to any type of bending.

Gale and I trek to our favorite spot, surrounded by berry bushes and shrouded from prying eyes. He slices the bread. I offer up the bit of goat-gorilla cheese Prim had given me that morning. Gale places basil leaves onto the cheese. We munch on the blackberries. Our own little reaping feast.

“Have you seen the newest imposter?” asks Gale, as we hike to the lake for fishing.

I glance over. He is smoldering with anger underneath his stony expression.

“I haven’t,” I admit. “Is this one more believable than the last ‘Avatar’?”

“It’s worse,” says Gale. “Since the death of the last Avatar sixteen years ago, there have been countless pretenders, or Capitol puppets, or imposters – whatever we should call them… you’d think they would get better at pretending.”

“We should be grateful,” I say. “The Capitol stopped trying to scourer the districts after a decade of…” I stop myself. I do not need to say it. Gale knows of the horrors. Every baby examined. Every birth attended by a Capitol envoy. The schools putting every child through rigorous testing and scrutiny. Parents, neighbors, strangers all interviewed, interrogated, and encouraged to spy and to betray each other.

“I’m glad they never found the new Avatar,” says Gale. “The Capitol would have raised them to be worse than the last. Someone who promotes the Hunger Games in the name of balance, who is Capitol fed and pampered, who betrays the rest of the world for greed.”

President Snow had indeed grieved when his pet Avatar died, after sixty long years of having them as his puppet. Since then, there have been whispers… fears… hopes… things that the Capitol would not want in the districts.

But they are just that. No one seems to know who or where this new Avatar is. Worse, they would still be a child – just sixteen. And if they are living in hiding, then they likely have not trained enough. Not enough to fulfill the hopes of overthrowing the Capitol and restoring true balance to the world.

I choose not to engage in such fantasies.

Life is hard enough without clinging onto impossible hopes.

We take the fish we catch down to the Hob, where we are able to trade them for a decent amount. The strawberries we picked are sold to Mayor Undersee. When we arrive, it is his daughter, Madge Undersee, who answers the door. She’s in white. A lovely reaping dress. There are rubies on the cuffs of her sleeves. Symbols of her wealth – and a touch of red, some subtle firebender pride. All of it makes Gale look sick with hate.

While it is true that those rubies could keep a family from starving for months, I do not hate her. For being the mayor’s daughter, she is surprisingly demure and kind. I have spent many days sharing quiet school lunches with her, or teaming up together in gym. Madge wishes Gale and I luck in the reaping.

Back home, my mother and Primrose are waiting for me. Prim jumps up and greets me. She shows me the reaping outfit she is wearing. Deep green earthbender garbs. My mother had painstakingly taken it in, since it used to be mine; but it is still a bit big on her. And she isn’t even an earthbender. I motion her to me.

“Tuck that tail in, little turtle-duck,” I tell her, securing the fabric of her shirt into the back of her skirt.

“Quack!” says Prim.

“Quack yourself,” I say.

My mother gives me a dress from when she was a teenager; back when she lived in Town with her waterbender family that owned the apothecary. It is waterbender blue and embellished and when I put it on, it feels wrong, but it fits and it is beautiful, so I thank her.

[goldenslumberowo]

I was wondering where you went!! So happy for you ❤️

Congrats!!

Hey! Just dropping by to say I've missed you and hope you're doing okay 💜💜💜💜

I'm doing good! I've just been super busy with work and family. Also I had another kid lol 😆

Idk when I will have the time to write again but I am going to try and chat on tumblr more

[goldenslumberowo]

“If only one of us can be a parent, anyone can see it should be Peeta. As I drift off, I try to imagine that world… A place like the meadow in the song I sang... Where Peeta’s child could be safe.”

Catching Fire, page 354

[goldenslumberowo]

my desi rapunzel designs (cuz she is) ☀️☀️

[goldenslumberowo]

i can't read anything that isn't purely HEAVY everlark. even though they are endgame, but she kiss gale at some point? pass! peeta from the past having a girlfriend? i won't read! threesome? never in a million years!!!!!!! i get physically sick, i'm NOT exaggerating

[goldenslumberowo]

only if it werent for the baby! id in alt.

[goldenslumberowo]

[goldenslumberowo]

Gale: i have no chance with katniss if peeta is hurt she literally only cares about fixing people it's like she doesn't even love me

Peeta: do i like breathing i think i do

Katniss: i need to kill the president

[goldenslumberowo]

carlay & mariona

[goldenslumberowo]

[goldenslumberowo]

A Midnight Hanging

Her father is hanged at midnight.

Only minutes before it happens, three Peacekeepers slam through their front door. Her mother is already a pile on the floor; the tears and the despair pouring out of her in a long keening scream. Her mother does not resist them, when they pull her through the Seam. The Peacekeepers drag all of them out of their home as the moon crests in the sky; forcing them to witness his execution.

She had known, of course. Her father had been given the papers that morning, condemning him. No trial, no deliberation. He was hand delivered his own death sentence. And what did he do? He thanked the messenger, gathered his two small daughters into his arms and he sang them a song.

She remembers his song as she stands there in the rain. It is pouring down. The ground is sandy and gritty underneath her worn soles. Prim has her face pressed, hard, into her side. Eyes screwed shut. Her breath coming hard and hot from her nose. Katniss has her hand centered onto the back of Prim’s head, holding her there, safe, tucked away. Like a bird under a wing.

The executioner is tying the noose. Her father stands with a hood over his head; but his body is tall and unwavering; demanding to be seen. And she cannot look away. Even if she should.

She wants to hate the executioner in that moment. And the messenger. And her father, himself. For allowing it. For going through with it. But even so young, from the corner of her eye, she can see the real authority here. It is not any of them. It is not anyone from District 12 to blame. At all. It is those Peacekeepers. And their guns. And behind them, the Capitol.

All the same, it is the executioner who puts the noose around her father’s neck. It is his hand that pulls the lever. It is the sound of her mother, that horrible keening sound, that pours out of her, and all the anger, sadness, and grief – her soul – that pours out of her along with that sound, that sets her alight. The anger in that moment is so close. All consuming. But she is just a girl. The fire tastes like blood in her mouth. She wants to open it, to scream along with her mother, but it remains trapped shut.

And when it is done, when her father is nothing more than a swinging corpse, the Peacekeepers lower their guns, and they are free. But free to do what? Her mother is slathered in mud, clawing at the ground. She is not going anywhere. Prim is rigid and frozen under her wing. There is no freedom in this. No release. Even when the executioner cuts the rope and his body falls, there is no finality to this.

Each crest of grief almost pulls her to her knees, but she remains standing, as he had. She follows his body with her eyes. She watches how the executioner handles him. Like he is nothing more than a sack of flour. She watches him hand her father off to his young son, who is the one that disposes of the corpses. She watches this boy, who is no older than her, as he pulls her father onto a tarp, and he take the ropes tied to it and drags him away, into the trees.

She has never watched an execution. Especially not one that has occurred at midnight. Those are only reserved for the most heinous of Capitol-offenders. She has never wanted to watch. She has never wondered what happens to their bodies. But as soon as that boy and the body of her father disappears from sight, something in her clenches. She cannot not know.

But Prim is anchored into her. Holding her to sanity. If she lets go of Prim, she risks letting go of any remaining piece of composure she has left. Her mind torments her with the worst.

Will they throw him into some mass grave, reserved for those most hated of criminals? Will they have him burned? Will they butcher him and feed him to pigs? Will he be discarded in the wilderness for wild beasts to scourge for scraps?

___

It is twenty past midnight.

Her mother reaches for them, and Prim bursts forward, disappearing into the muddy folds of their mother’s arms. Katniss looks towards the trees and before she can stop herself, she follows the executioner’s son, and the horrible muddy path the tarp has carved into the grass.

She finds him easily. He is laboring with a shovel, digging into the damp earth. Her father lays across the tarp, the white hood still wrapped around his face. The boy digs and digs and digs. It seems like eons that she stands there, the wind twisting through the trees, the cold rain clawing at her skin, the shovel and earth scraping again and again and again with some type of finality that makes her want to vomit.

The boy is panting and soaked. His blonde curls are slathered to his forehead with sweat. His hands are raw and red. Once the grave is deep enough, he pauses. He sighs. Then he walks off into some trees. Katniss stays where she is, afraid to be seen. She watches from the shelter of a blackberry bush and oak tree. Has he given up?

Minutes later, the boy returns. He is carrying a large rock. He places it down with effort. At the head of the grave. He wipes mud from the top of the stone. He frowns, then on his knees, he approaches the tarp with her father.

“Easy now,” says the boy, as he pulls the corpse over to the grave. He treats her father with much more care than she has expected. Once her father is situated there, the boy takes a moment and sits back, looking up at the sky.

“Let’s take off the hood,” the boy says suddenly, turning back to her father.

With far more respect than she thought anyone would have for him, the boy removes the offending white hood, marking her father as a criminal. Underneath, his face is not a pretty sight, and Katniss winces, turning her back, pressing herself up against the oak tree so she does not see.

She can only hear. As the boy picks up his shovel and the dirt scrapes again and again and again; only in a different way this time. There is a different kind of finality in this sound, she decides. He is getting further and further underneath the earth. Further and further from her.

She knows it is over when the boy tosses the shovel aside.

She turns back. The boy gets onto his hands and knees and smooths the earthly grave. Molding the mud into a mound. In the wetness, she sees; his fingers draw out his name. It is temporary. It is not official. Her father will never be allowed a real funeral or grave; but even in this way, the boy has given him something back, that was taken from them. His name; in sloping, sloppy letters.

The boy gathers his things and starts to drag the tarp back towards the gallows. Katniss waits, listening to the boy’s heavy steps fade into the distance. She rushes out towards the grave.

She touches the mud, as if her father can feel her there. Beseeching. Head hanging.

She does not know how she will do this. How she can go on. Without him, what will they do? Starve? Why? Why has he done this? Why has he allowed this? Doesn’t he know what happens in this world, when there are no strong backs and calloused hands and sacrifice? There is only hunger and death and despair. She is not strong enough to do this. Prim is too little. Her mother is too fragile. She hates his song in that moment. How foolish. How pointless. Why not spend his last moments together giving her advice? Why not tell her what to do? Those lyrics and notes are meaningless now, faced with the noose and the earth and the storm and the Capitol’s anger.

She wants to hate him for leaving.

And then, the footsteps are coming back. Katniss springs back to her feet and disappears.

Peculiarly, the boy is back. He is tired and covered in muck, and his hands are red raw, but also in those hands, are flowers. Dandelions. Freshly plucked. The boy walks over to the grave, marked only by the large rock and his temporary handwriting, and places the yellow blossoms, delicately, lightly, at its head.

The boy places three fingers to his lip, from his left hand, and then lifts them, towards the sky.

And this is what breaks her.

The tears, that she has been holding back, overcome her. The anger dissipates, melts, and her chest burns with the desire to gasp for breath, to sob, to mourn. The boy did not have to do that. He did not have to mark the grave. He did not have to remove the hood, or be gentle with his limbs. He did not have to bring those flowers back. But he had. Those actions he took – they were his own. They were not puppeteered, like the Peacekeeper’s actions, or the messenger’s words, or the boy’s own father’s hands pulling that lever and tying the noose.

And maybe the boy could be condemned for this. He could be reprimanded for the wasting of time. For showing respect to a criminal. For the frivolousness of mourning a stranger.

But even she knows, that is not the point.

There is no point.

It is just kindness.

There is no ulterior motive here. No reason. No plot. No gain. No defiance. No anger.

Just goodness.

___

It is an hour past midnight.

She is hugging the large rock in her arms. The rain has softened, but the storm inside of her has not let up. There are bees inside of her, buzzing for action; but something quells the flames. It is the flowers. Her eyes are fixated on the dandelions. She remembers something; something her father has taught her. Everything he has taught her comes tumbling in. He has not left her with nothing. There are the dandelions, and those other plants, that they can forage for and eat; and there is where he keeps his hunting bow. There are things that can be done. He is not gone. Not entirely.

There is hope.

______________________________________________

Hello! This is just some practice writing to get back into it. I've been gone for awhile. I hope to return soon. Life has been hard.

This piece was inspired by Mollywog (and @mollywog) and the prompt she introduced to me about the Executioner AU. Go read her series, called "The Hanging Tree".

(And anything she writes. She is one of my favorite Everlark writers!)

Hope you enjoyed. What story should I update first?