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Well now that it's summer who wants to fall in love

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it’s okay to say ‘this isn’t for me’ or ‘I’m not happy here’ and leave… you don’t have to wait for things to be really bad

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a haunted aura only the eldest sister can carry

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the hunger games / sunrise on the reaping

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THE HUNGER GAMES APPRECIATION WEEK - Day 3: Favorite Mentor/Mentee

Mags and Finnick

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I just realized that mags said she wanted to die protecting her district partner then died in cf protecting her district partner.

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do you know how miserable and tragic your life has to be to say that katniss everdeen is luckier than you and be correct

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I adore my district 12 girlies

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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.

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the thing about sotr that really hits home is the cyclical nature of violence and oppression. we see it with the parallels between haymitch and katniss of course, both the eldest children of coalminer fathers with rebel sympathies, both relying on illegal means to ensure their families' survival, both willing to give their lives to protect the people they love, both doomed to lose their beloved younger sibling at the hands of a tyrant.

but that's just the tip of the iceberg. sotr instils this message over and over again, showing us how many generations of people have suffered and continue to suffer on account of systemic violence that is built into every facet of panem's society. the games just happen to be the most overt representation of this cycle.

mags explicitly says that she never intended to survive her games - her first priority was to protect her district partner, a boy she couldn't save and then goes on to live the rest of her life trying to protect children that she cannot save, even the ones she brings home alive are beyond her protection.

beetee's son is reaped and he is forced to mentor him, knowing that he will die a terrible death, all as retaliation for conspiring to take down the capitol's communications system. meanwhile his wife is pregnant with another child, a child he might very well lose the same way as ampert, another child that could be taken by the games as a punishment.

but what struck me most was how clerk carmine and tam amber react to lenore dove's death:

"Then the uncles are there. Clerk Carmine ripping her from my arms, trying to restart her heart while he calls her name. Tam Amber standing stiffly over them, his head shaking as he mumbles, "Not again. Oh not again." - sotr, pg366

suzanne collins shows exactly how much has been taken from this family. they have been here before with a doomed girl's name on their lips and her blood on their hands. how many times did they call lucy gray's name into the woods, trying to find her, desperate to bring her home, even though snow had made sure that she never could? how long did they spend trying to restart maude ivory's heart when her labour went wrong and their district didn't have the expertise or the medicine to help her - a direct result of snow's determination to keep the outer districts impoverished and on the brink of starvation. and now lenore dove, the only covey child of her generation (that we know of) to carry on their naming tradition, this girl that they've raised with care and devotion has been taken from them - just as their music, their colour, their culture has been taken from them - as a punishment.

katniss is the end of this cycle - it's her actions both in the arena and as the mockingjay that finally ends the games and enables the people of panem to reshape their society - but what sotr does is show us how long this process actually takes, how it can take multiple generations to get to a point where change is possible, how many false starts, failures, and set backs we will face in the course of creating meaningful and lasting societal change.

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just finished sunrise on the reaping 🙃

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Haymitch every reaping

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haymitch's birthday is reaping day. what if i killed myself

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Percy with a cap that says women and men want me, fish respect me

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citationless behavior

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Reblog if you too write fanfictions in your head but can't put them on paper because your brain is way too far in advance for your hands to ever catch up.