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chronoxtreme · 2 months

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The Cage: Chapters 2-5 Author's Notes

So, I'll be honest - one of the biggest weaknesses of this fic for me, personally, is that these 3 chapters don't really need to be here, but they do at the same time. They're important to Astarion actually getting to know Nanne, but at the same time they don't really move the story along in terms of the main thesis, i.e. "they met 10 years ago and now they're back together oopsies."

I've also been trying to break the habit of relying on canon dialogue/scenes to convey relationships. It's something that I notice I do a lot in my other fics that aren't AUs, so this fic is trying to get out of that niche.

As well, Nanne giving the tent to Astarion is something I kind of stumbled into and ended up loving. I think it's a nice way to establish Nanne's personality in context. That sort of generosity mixed with envy because you really want it for yourself but you know that it's the right thing to do to give it to this poor nobleman who's clearly never had a day of hardship in his life. The selflessness that isn't quite selfless because it's been engrained into you from a young age and is it really a choice? (Don't worry, we'll get into more of that later)

Some funny headcanons/canon events that I shoved into this fic:

Literally all of Astarion's camp gear is stolen from the crypt/the tiefling refugees/the druids at the grove. I refuse to believe that he obtained all of those trinkets by gainful means when it's repeatedly emphasized that this dude owned literally nothing under Cazador.

Astarion's burial shroud (inspired by the rags you can see in his various camp sites, especially in Last Light Inn). This is something that was almost 100% pulled out of my ass. I don't think the vampiric resting place rule applies to spawn, but I do like the thought of Astarion's sole possession being a reminder of his trauma. We'll do stuff with that later, don't worry.

Astarion thinks Wyll is hot because he's exactly his type of "innocent charming younger man who is selfless and slightly awkward but good at heart." Also Wyll is just hot.

Astarion making fun of Shadowheart's goth name is a thing that happens in game if you happen to recruit Astarion first before her and it's VERY funny

The sheer, utter frustration Astarion has watching everyone in camp target his seduction mark and try and pull the moves on them

I do also believe that Astarion's compatible with every single party member (except for Minsc and Jaheira for obv reasons), so while he does tick them off the list of "seduce for protection" candidates for various reasons, it's mainly because this is a Tav x Astarion story. Likewise, I love all the party members, no matter how much Astarion may shit on them lol

So, let's talk a little about Chapter 5 and what's going on here. A lot of the events are based on my second-first playthrough as Nanne (my first playthrough was on my old PC that died and the saves got corrupted, so I had to start over). Looking back, I do think it's pretty self indulgent to have everyone hit on my OC, but considering it happened in game just by playing a nice character who naturally wanted to get to know everyone and was a compulsive peacemaker, I can't say it's, like, over the top outrageous. (They literally ALL cockblocked Astarion's romance scene except for Wyll. Literally all of them)

If I were to go back and rewrite this section, though, I'd probably stretch out the timeline a lot more, moving Shadowheart's date later back, Gale's magic lessons, etc. One of the issues that I have with writing is the timeline, and nowhere has it been more obvious than with this fic, where I'll describe a week's worth of events happening in literally four days, then skip ahead two months and go "Hey guys, take my word for it that x time has passed." It's something I definitely need to work on lol. At the same time, this is very much a self indulgent fic for funsies.

Now SPOILERS FOR NANNE'S CHARACTER ARC: In case anyone's curious, no, Nanne had no clue that Shadowheart's little date was supposed to be a date. This is a person who has never been approached for anything romantic except from their sketchy employer. Astarion is exasperated that they didn't see the signs, but Nanne has no experience with "hooking up", dating, whatever you wanna call it.

They do feel bad about accidentally leading Shadowheart on, but honestly, they're torn because on the one hand, someone did find them attractive! Wowee! On the other hand, this is moving awfully fast and they're scared about being exposed. They have had it repeatedly bashed into their head that their body is disgusting, unnatural, a deviation that must be fixed, and so relationships are this thing that they can't ever have, but desperately crave. It is a deeply painful position to be in. They do a good job of hiding it and not coming across as clingy, but Nanne is a very lonely person who craves connection and intimacy (physical, sexual, emotional, any of it). At the same time, they can't risk being rejected again.

END SPOILERS

The boar scene is one of my favorite early on scenes because this is the moment when Nanne clocks that Astarion is actually a vampire. A lot of people make fun of the game for waiting like, five in game days before exposing the elephant in the room, but considering that everyone knows vampires can't stand in sunlight, it's reasonable to assume that Astarion's just an incredibly pampered noble who's got delicate skin and maybe some drow ancestry.

But then he starts acting VERY suspicious and guilty and, well, the boar is literally right there.

Nanne's comment of "You're protecting us from the vampire, aren't you?" is meant to be a very subtle way of thanking Astarion from not eating anyone yet, which considering what happens in the next chapter is, uh, lol. Lmao, even.

#nannestarion #the cage bg3 fanfic #the cage authors notes #bg3 fanfiction #astarion x tav #oc lore

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w1tchsoup · 6 months

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Tumblr's drafts ate my ask meme reply, so it's going in here instead! @piipaw

🌇 for a headcanon about morning- or evening ritual:

His morning ritual is the one that changes the least between when he lives in a camp or indoors. He rises with the sun, meditating before all else, preferably in the dawn's light. That's easy in a camp. He shuffles outside his tent with his eyes still screwed shut, his voluminous hair a rat's nest, drool caked to his chin, and he kneels, taking in the glorious potential of the day.

The hair is getting addressed as soon as he's out of the zone. I cannot stress how uncomfortable it can get having long hair tangled in horns from restless sleep. Gale's usually kind enough to give him a hand if he's not in a hurry because he overslept. Hoshi resquest no magic be used. If someone's helping, it's now a ritual of sorts. It's social grooming for the sake of establishing bonds now.

If there's anyone else around to be awake at that point, he's going to try to rope them into stretching with him. He doesn't care what their skill level is. In his opinion, loosening up can make a huge difference in people's quality of life and he knows much about how to properly do it. Don't asking him what the names of any of the muscles are anywhere unless it's the glutes and the tongue. He will have no idea. Point to an area that's tight and he'll be able to tell you where you actually need to be stretching.

Next is breakfast. Leave that "monks can go many days without food" stuff on the ground. Litereally, anyone can go days without food. It's not even a flex. Save it for emergencies or when he's on a spiritual journey of some sort, alright? He's a big tiefling who likes big meals with people he loves so he can save cats from trees or whatever heroing needs doing. Now that I've painted him like a brute, he's actually a very neat eater. He takes him time to appreciate the meal that's before him, wherever it came from.

This is where it differs by setting; if Hoshi is living a stationary life, this is when he would go bathe. He prefers to start the day feeling fresh and it gives his hair time to dry. If he is out adventuring, he does it at the end of the day out of necessity. Crawling onto his bedroll covered in Gods knows what filth he has on him must be avoided, if the luxury presents itself. It prevents all sorts of illnesses. Unfortunately, that leaves the task of drying all that hair or going to bed with it wet. I've got a drabble I'm writing on this actually, so stay tuned.

Anyhow, clothing and accessories come next. Adventuring makes things so easy. His outfit is picked out for him. It's done. Otherwise, he basically has to lay his clothing out to stare at it until an outfit idea jumps out at him. Since he can't wear rings thanks to the force of his punches, he goes for necklaces instead. Bonus points if they're long enough to compliment his big honkers.

If he's around anyone else who does makeup, he wants to do it alongside them. Otherwise, he'll just take a looking glass to wherever other people are to do it. He's a flexible morning person. If there's talking, he's talking. If the vibe is 'everyone's groggy everyone shut the fuck up," he's happy to put on his contour in comfortable silence.

So, basically, everyone else is praying that Gale doesn't decide he wants to be included that morning. He'll show up asking Hoshi to do just a smidge of bottom liner for him and now there are two very loud individuals chattering away.

🧼 for a hygiene-themed headcanon:

Cue tiefling headcanons don't @ me. Listen. Game mechanics and how characters work outside battle are two different things. It happens all the time in character interactions.

Keeping the scalier parts of tiefling anatomy exfoliated is a chore. If they're strictly in the company of their own kind, it's not much of an issue. If they're literally rubbing elbows with softer races, it becomes important if they don't want to cause chafing. He'll rub at his joints with a river stone if he has to to smooth out the abrasive edges when he's bathing out in the wilderness.

The claws are a similar issue. Hoshi had already been clipping the ones on his hands since he was a young child in the interest of punching things without stabbing his own hands. The ones on his toes eventually had to go as well. If he goes a few nights without filing them for whatever reason, Gale is going to wake him in the middle of the night to tell him that he's sleeping in the other room. Gale's not angry. He adores him etc etc. There's only so many scrapes on his legs in one night that he can sleep through.

#Hoshi #Tav #sure we'll tag it why not?#failmonk

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wuekka · 10 months

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@neiti-kassiopeia tagged me for rambling about 10 characters from 10 fandoms, thank you and okay, lets do this...These are not in favourite order, I don't want to make a puzzle for myself. :'D

Majima from Yakuza/Like a dragon. One of the biggest twists for me getting into the series was that Majima wasn't Joker-type insane recurring villain! He's actually smart who fakes being dumber/crazier than he is (character type I love when it's done right) and actually cares about people, another surprise was that he was in the same family as Kiryu, that he's his aniki. I just love you can see his fooling that he doesn't care/understand, then turns back being like "shit.". He's the smartest playable character Yakuza has, others are himbos.

Vincent from Final Fantasy VII. I love his tragic backstory with his lover Lucrecia and tying to Sephiroth's backstory 👌.+Vampire aesthetic and turning into a monster he can't control is just more tragedy on top of that.

Gale from Baldurs gate 3. I'm sorry Astarion, who is little too self-contradictory at times (You don't like saving other slaves Astarion?!) but Gale's just so adorably nice with really funny lines.

Percy from Critical role/Legend of vox machina. There's a reason I have a tag of "badass percy lines", he's so awesome with those. Tortured man with a secret demon he isn't aware of with vampire arc-nemesis, just beautiful. Taliesin plays him so well, he fits into the worlds talking style perfectly. Even his "life needs things to live." I feel is made fun of a little too much, like it's basically "you need stuff in able to keep going."

Jianzhu from Rise of Kyoshi. Reason why rise of kyoshi is the best avatar novel. He gets good motivation, pov chapters and is shown very well to be not fully manically evil.

Enji Endeavour from my hero academia. I'm not in this fandom anymore at all, except for the ship of endhawks. Turning Enji's character from cartoon evil jerk villain to a regretting, flawed man who tries to become better and focusing on it was the best writing decision Hori made. Sadly Hori stopped and decided Bakugo is ultra gary stu more important than main character. -_-

Ashe from Final Fantasy XII. Real main character of the story, awesome literal queen with revenge plot. Only minus is her hot pink way-mini skirt.

Nanami from Jujutsu kaisen. Again, fandom I dropped but this man was such a brainrot for a good while, he and Gojo got me trying to write again.

Amaterasu from Okami. Snarky by body language, a wolf who doesn't say a word, but she's badass and adorable. What other game lets you play with a character that paints with their tail creating a better world and poops exploding stuff at their enemies.

Terra from Kingdom hearts. ...I don't like the joke of calling him stupid or himbo, because he's not. He goes along with some villains, not because he's trusting them but because he has no other choice or wants to see how things play out without intervening ("no meddling! -Donald) Terra's also the strongest character, "man too angry to die." The angst of being Xehanort/Xemnas and getting moments of losing identity is just angst factory gold.

Tagging @homo666 @vampiricfruitcake but no pressure doing this. :D

#tag game #random ramble

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fictionadventurer · 5 years

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I like your post about the Hunger Games and agree with most of it, but I still think the love triangle was unnecessary and people are right to criticize it. Collins could have very easily written Gale as the best friend and Peeta as her main love (based on endgame choices) or vice versa I don't even care since I'm not a big shipper of either. But she did introduce the unnecessary drama that overall did not add much to the plot, and it only took away focus. So I think I understand that crit.

Once upon a time, I might have agreed with you. These are good books, important books, and we don’t need to defile this war epic by shoving in teenage-hormone love-triangle dramatics. Then I reread the series, and I was astonished at how, for the most part, the love story is inextricably intertwined with the action-adventure elements. You can’t take out the love-triangle elements without creating a very different book with a very different message. That love-triangle, far from defiling the war story, elevates it into something better.

It starts almost immediately in the first book. We see how Katniss has a deep friendship with Gale, something that could turn into romance, except that she doesn’t dare to go down that path. There’s no place for marriage, and definitely not for new children, in their broken world. She only has energy for day-to-day survival. And once Katniss goes into the Hunger Games, romance is definitely off the table. She needs to harden her heart and make no human connections with the people around her if she wants to have even the slimmest chance of making it back home to her family. In a lesser book, she’d be right–there’d be no goopy romance to distract us from the hard-bitten survival epic that the Hunger Games is supposed to be.

But then Peeta declares his love for her. Suddenly, she’s part of an epic romance on national television. She wants nothing to do with this strategy–love makes you look weak. (And doesn’t that sound a lot like people who criticize the YA love triangle?) But Haymitch counters that it makes her desirable to the audience, and suddenly the thing that had seemed so burdensome becomes necessary to her survival. She needs to play the game–and once they’re in the arena, she needs to figure out if it is a game to Peeta. Peeta has already shown himself capable of manipulating the emotions of all of Panem–is it possible that he’s manipulating her?

This is the real brilliance of the first book’s romance. It doesn’t distract from the main conflict–it is the main conflict. Like so many other teenage girls, Katniss asks herself, “Does this teenage boy like me?”, but in this case the answer is literally a matter of life and death. If he loves her, she can trust him to help her survive. If he doesn’t, he could kill her at any time.

By the time she finds out that his love is real, she has to fake romantic feelings toward him to draw in sponsors. Now she’s manipulating his emotions to survive, and she can’t hope to untangle what’s real and what’s fake in this manufactured mess of a reality show. But Peeta’s influence has shown her that love isn’t pointless in the Hunger Games–it’s the only way for them to truly fight back. She chooses love for Peeta–whether romantic or not–over her own life, and that’s the only reason that, for the first time in history, two victors manage to beat the Capitol at their own game. Katniss won not by being the best warrior, but by showing love. The love story wasn’t a distraction–it was the solution.

It’s only in Catching Fire that she has to deal with the consequences of that. She was willing to die for Peeta, but she’s not sure she wants to live with him, especially since their relationship started under such unreal circumstances. She’d much rather leave the Games–and Peeta–behind and return to the life she knew before. That life included Gale, and Katniss is, for the first time, willing to consider him as a romantic partner. If her romance with Peeta was fake, is it possible that she could have real romance with her best friend?

This is the point where the love triangle comes into full swing, and I’ll admit this is the book where it’s integrated most clumsily. It seems like Katniss is taking some unnecessary risks in pursuing a relationship with Gale, and the plot sometimes comes to a screeching halt so Katniss can think about her emotions. But even if the plot integration isn’t as smooth as it was in the first book, the thematic relevance of the love triangle is still spot-on. Katniss has to think about what she wants–cling to her old life or dive into this new post-Hunger Games world? Does love have a place in this world at war? And when we think about the question in that way, the sloppy integration of the love story into the main action plot is kind of the point. Katniss may be instigating a war, but she’s still a teenage girl. She still has emotions, but she’s being forced to hide or fake so many of them that she doesn’t know who she is, what she wants, or who she wants to be. How can she discover her identity, hold onto her humanity, in the middle of a war?

Mockingjay is where we get the answer to those questions. With Peeta imprisoned in the Capitol and the war underway, Katniss is saved from having to make an immediate decision about her romance. She echoes every romance-hating fan’s thoughts when she says:

The very notion that I’m devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning.

There’s a war going on! There’s no time for love triangles! But it’s only when she’s not being forced to pursue romance with Peeta that she can really evaluate her relationship with Gale–and she’s finding that it’s not as strong as she thought. When she needs advice, she gets it from Prim, not Gale. When she needs someone who understands the trauma of killing, she goes to Finnick or Johanna. Now that Katniss and Gale don’t have the shared bond of having to care for their families–who are kept safe and fed by District 13–they’re finding that they don’t have much else in common. Katniss is mistrustful of Coin, while Gale is part of her inner circle. Katniss kills only when she has to during the war, while Gale treats weapon design as a fun challenge. This exploration of their relationship isn’t a distraction from the main plot. They’re what make the main plot mean something. This is the lens through which Katniss considers her views on violence, on war, on life, on what the point of their fight is. She and Gale literally have arguments about utilitarian principles! It’s only by exploring and then severing this leg of the love triangle that Katniss finds out who she is and what she really believes.

Collins couldn’t explore these issues in the same way if either Gale or Peeta wasn’t presented as a romantic interest. The nature of eros is desire, and the whole point of the Peeta vs. Gale question is Katniss figuring out what she wants out of life. She needs to be drawn to both of them, in the same kind of relationship, if the question and answer are to mean anything. Does Katniss want her old life, with Gale as the most important person, with his anger driving her to fight for survival by any means necessary? Or does she want a new life with Peeta, where they live for something beyond mere survival? Which man, which philosophy, does she want to devote her life to? If Peeta was the love interest and Gale was only the best friend, she could have both in her life. But you can’t resolve the trilogy’s central question by having Katniss compromise. Choosing one side means she can’t choose the other–and the only relationship that requires such an exclusive choice is a love triangle. Far from distracting from the main plot, the love triangle is what elevates it, takes it beyond a war story where the only question is how the characters will survive, and makes it into a story that tells us how the characters are going to live.

#the hunger games #suzanne collins #catching fire #mockingjay #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #gale hawthorne #katniss/peeta #books #answered asks #this is long and rambling and i apologize but it's the best i can do #i already spent too long on it #but it does feel really good to finally have this written

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fursasaida · 4 years

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Would love to hear about all of the ways ppl misunderstand HG (if you feel like it)

i’m doing this as bullets bc i don’t have the oomph to like write it out properly

they think the socioeconomic specialization of the 12(+1) districts is the typical thing of like, “i will construct a wholly implausible society that’s about putting people in totalitarian versions of thinly disguised hogwarts houses so i can show how my heroine is Special and Unique” instead of like, a specifically elaborated form of oppression by the capitol that shows how aestheticized the political economy is. it’s not that most people in panem really believe everyone from District 4 (? IIRC) is suited as a person to fishing, or whatever. it’s that the capitol said “you produce this and only this for us, how much we value that commodity category determines your value, and that is all you are” and this is completely interwoven with the spectacle of control that is the Games. (the Games are basically a dramatization of territorial control but wah wah wah “battle royale ripoff” wah wah shut up.) it’s actually a very interesting political economy concept which i could go on about at length but i value my life

due to the above they think Katniss is supposed to go on the usual character arc of Doesn’t Fit In --> Discontent --> Dismantle the System and Be Happy

this causes them to complain both that she doesn’t change enough (first of all, she does change, just not in the way they expect; and second, the ways she doesn’t change are part of the POINT! this isn’t a story of personal transformation! it’s about political change!) and that she’s too like sad or limp or whatever later on. IT’S A VERY GOOD DEPICTION OF TRAUMA, SHUT UP.

they complain that the ending is “unsatisfying.”

of course the ending is “unsatisfying,” because the political change that occurred is incomplete and nuanced, and also, she still has all that trauma, there is a cost, the whole thematic backbone of the series is “internalize the externalities/make the invisible costs visible.” it’s the interplay between the hypervisibility of spectacle and the extraction of people’s time, bodies, wealth, relationships--their lives--that it both relies on and hides.

relatedly, people think katniss shooting whatsername at the end is some kind of unjustified twist. i don’t know what to say about this. i throw up my hands. WERE YOU PAYING ATTENTION AT ALL.

does anyone think about what the story is actually about? they do not. ("no one” is an exaggeration, i just mean the people i’m mad at)

the love triangle. oh my god. again people just take this as a “typical YA” thing of like, let me show how desirable and special my heroine is by having both the boys want her!! it is not that at all. Gale and Peeta stand in for different sides of her personality and respectively bring those sides out in her. her being torn between them is in fact where the “personal change” aspect of the story happens.

both of them are very strategic thinkers but in entirely different registers, and they value different things. she has much more in common with Gale at the beginning (on the surface), and her choice to see the value in Peeta’s way of thinking and do the very hard work of developing those capacities and responses in herself is her choice about who she wants to be and whether she values a reversal of power (Gale) or actually improving society (Peeta). whether being a ~rebellious hunter~ or being a caretaker (the reason, remember, she did the illegal hunting in the first place!) is more important to her.

they are both from her home district and people she’d known before the games because, again, these are qualities/tendencies she already possessed; choosing which to turn toward and develop in herself is the personal aspect of the political story.

and it is not a coincidence that it’s after the total dissociation and alienation she experiences in being made an aesthetic spectacle qua ~rebel by District 13 that she does the incredibly difficult, steadfast, further-traumatizing work of helping bring Peeta back to himself and so to her. the ending doesn’t happen without her whole process of negotiating her relationships with those two characters.

but these people don’t understand the ending anyway so i don’t know what i was expecting

this is called good writing and it’s an extremely valid way to develop and use supporting characters

god i could scream

Suzanne Collins’ origin story for this series, about channel-flipping between reality TV and coverage of the Iraq War, really just puts it all out there for you and these people ignore this! if they even know about it they just take it as like, “what if i put this thing on this other thing.” but she is getting at something very real with that! she is saying that both war and entertainment are spectacle-generating machines, fueled by inequality and the bodies of young people, that maintain power structures. (the big thing THG is really missing here is how this works internationally because there just aren’t any other countries in its world.)

[redacted: extremely over the top musing about race and class intersections in re: the unequal distribution of exposure to premature death and how intentional Collins was or wasn’t in getting what she got right right and what she got wrong wrong]

a few years back i was watching The Voice (leave me alone) and they had this whole ~storyline about a girl (i think 19 tops?) from a tiny, tiny rural Southern town, who was too stage-fright-y to perform to her potential. every week the judges would tell her she disappointed and every week her coach would save her because, he kept saying, he still had faith she could deliver. (she was fine but they had a Narrative to construct.) and then one week magically they changed up her makeup and clothes to make her much more overtly sexy, but in this like fucked-up babydoll innocent way, and lo and behold she discovered her confidence and wowed everyone. who could have predicted!!

I remember another contestant on The Voice who was literally there to try to get to a point where he would be able to get his family back into housing after flooding destroyed their home in i can’t even remember which (socio)natural disaster.

like that is just literally how the hunger games work. the promise is that this is a rare route to economic mobility. it requires a dramatic makeover, patronage, all of it. the makeover involves being essentialized as a citizen-type, a national subject that fits into a particular box (rural/urban, gendered, raced, etc--all of them are just entertaining backstories and narrative handles for the audience). this is a violent process, however visual and symbolic it may be via reality TV. it remains a process on which your odds as a contestant depend completely. and of course no one has heard from either of these people i mentioned since, because there can only be one winner; and even if you win, you can still lose the game of being a winner. no one asks what happens to them when it’s over, much like many people don’t really think about military veterans. if you think about the post-games life of the winners in THG, they are literally what you get if you imagine a military veteran and a D-list celebrity being the same person. reality TV already IS a gladiators’ arena where people ARE fighting for their lives. the violence is just sublimated. like i said. internalize and visibilize the costs.

(there is something here too, in the overlap of spectacle, about how the contemporary US treats its soldiers more as signifiers, high priests of civic nationalism, and/or sin-eaters than as people. similarly reality TV contestants come to stand for certain archetypes of the nation.)

#anonymous #2 #3 #4 #5 #books #YA #SFF #the hunger games

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shesasurvivor · 4 years

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My Hunger Games Story

I debated whether or not I wanted to do this. I wasn’t asked to share this, but my Hunger Games story is important to me. My story began during a dark period in my life. Those of you who have been following me for a while are probably already familiar with it. I’ve come a long ways since then. But The Hunger Games dramatically changed my life, and who I am, and with the new story out there in the world, maybe it’s time to tell it again.

Five months after my oldest sister passed away from a horrorific battle against cancer, I was alone in a city, trying to figure out who I was now that my old world had ended, and things would never be the same. Who was I now? What kind of a person was I? The illusion of safety was gone forever. The naivete of childhood was gone, and replaced with an existential crisis. This was in March 2012, and in the backdrop of my life, as I dealt with this, the media was abuzz with the news of the film adaptation of The Hunger Games. I knew nothing about it, aside seeing the books on Best Seller displays frequently at bookstores. I had liked Harry Potter, but skipped the Twilight craze, and figured it would be the same thing with this new pop culture fixation. I literally remember walking past a display window at Barnes and Noble that promoted the books and upcoming movie, and thinking, “Now there’s a movie I’ll never see.”

A couple weeks later, my cousin, who was also my coworker and only real friend near me, physically, at the time, was reading something on her break from her work. I asked her what she was reading, and she told me it was The Hunger Games. I was a little surprised, and asked her if she liked it. She summarized the story, and said all though it was “a little bit teenybopper” it was good. When she explained it was a dystopian tale, my interest was finally piqued. Dystopian had alwasy been a favorite genre of mine. Reading 1984 in my teens scarred me for life.

That same night, my (other, living) sister posted on Facebook that she had just finished the first book. I was surprised that she and my cousin were both reading this book, and seemed to like it. Then, the next day, my mom calls me, and says, “ I just finished reading The Hunger Games; you HAVE to read this book!” I went home and bought the Kindle version that night.

Not going to lie, it took me a little bit to get into it. But I knew I already liked it. I was looking up fanfiction before I was even done with part 1. I’m ashamed to admit that I started out looking for Gale, but when the rule change occured, and Peeta told Katniss to, “Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kill me any time you feel like it,” I threw my head back in laughter. That was the moment I fell in love with Peeta, and that was the moment that turned me into an Everlark shipper.

By the time I finished the first book, it was Easter, and my mom had flown out to spend the holiday with me. The Saturday before, we went to see the movie. I hated it from the first viewing. I remember having to fight the urge to stand up and yell at the screen, I was so disappointed in it. After the movie, we visited the local Target, and I bought Catching Fire and Mockingjay, where I started reading immediately.

Catching Fire was even better than the first book, and made the shipper in me so happy. Mockingjay, on the other hand, changed me. It was so moving, and heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. When I finished the series at last, I remember hugging the books to me, and wondering if I could somehow find a way to convince Suzanne Collins to write more books. Which was why, when she announced she was writing a new book, I felt like my one greatest wish had finally come true.

The series stuck with me, and I was obsessed. I began reading as much analysis on the series as I could find. I began reading about trauma and PTSD, and their role in the series.

And that’s when I realized I had symptoms of PTSD.

It was another year before I got help. During that time, my mental health declined significantly. On top of the horror I went through watching my sister slowly waste away, I also had an abusive boss who only aggravated things for me. Even after I started getting therapy, it took a while to climb my way out. I started drinking to deal with the massive hyperarousal I was dealing with. I started having dissociative episodes, that terrified me. I had no idea what they were at the time, and truly thought my mind had broken completely. I finally realized I was at a point where I either needed to check myself into a mental hospital, or quit my job and move back in with my parents while I put myself back together. I chose the latter.

It wasn’t fun living with my parents again, but it provided the sanctuary I needed. Slowly, I began to heal. I found a new job in my new city. I met a guy there, and one of our first exchanges was when he told me he loved the books so much, he was upset at what the movies had done to them. I thought I had found a Peeta, but unfortunately, neither of us were really in a place where we could be in a healthy relationship. Still, the experience helped me heal, and it was because The Hunger Games had brought us together.

At some point, I was finally put on medication to handle my PTSD symptoms, and my life changed signficantly for the better. It’s been (mostly) uphill ever since, and today, you would have no idea that I have PTSD, save for the occasional jump at a sudden loud noise. But The Hunger Games... it started that change in me. It gave me an outlet for the heavy emotions of grief. Reading Mockingjay was the only time I could truly get myself to cry after losing my sister, because I’m not very outwardly emotional.

The exploration of ethics, morals, and philosophy in The Hunger Games really helped cement my own values as well. I feel like that could be a whole other post, though. But just as Katniss learned to be more compassionate, and that kindness and humanity mattered more than basic survival, I learned this as well.

The very first thing my mom told me when she finished Catching Fire, was, “I just finished Catching Fire; you are SO Katniss!!” I think I grabbed onto this a little too much back in 2012-2013, because it helped me work things out. But the similaries were definitely there, almost to a scary degree. I’m still protective of this series, and Katniss, because it feels so much like it’s a part of me. It’s a part of my soul. I can’t begin to describe how important these books are to me. It transcends a normal fandom love. Even with as much as I love Star Wars, it’ll never be what The Hunger Games is to me. THG is deeper, and far more profound in my life. That’s why I get a little miffed sometimes, when I feel like I’m, I don’t know, being overlooked in the fandom? This is so deeply important to me, and I just want a voice to make it known that it is so. I think, as I’ve gotten older, I’m not exactly lke Katniss anymore, but the similarity is still there, and these books will always be with me.

Oh! And before I wrap this up, I should probably mention that it’s because of The Hunger Games that I met my best friend, @triplebigday! We live in two different states at the moment, but we’re still practically inseperable. She is family at this point.

I also met another friend, who was active here arouuund 2012-2013 (parachutesfromhaymitch). She’s long since left the fandom, but she’s brought out some of the best in me. Her influence is another reason I am where I am today.

Nothing has ever impacted me the way this world has, and I suspect nothing ever will again.

#THG #THGstory #I feel like I left a lot out but honestly #thinking too much about how I used to be #can trigger some bad stuff #and I've already been backsliding a bit this week #so here we are

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a-duck-with-a-book · 3 years

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REVIEW // Seven Blades in Black (The Grave of Empires #1) by Sam Sykes

★☆☆☆☆

Disclaimer: while I was reading this book, I found out that Sam Sykes has been accused by numerous women of sexual harassment. You can find more information about it below: - a post listing several accusations of misconduct - twitter post responding to the situation - one of the accusations against Sam Sykes - his quickly-deleted apology Suffice to say, I have no intention of continuing this series or reading any more of his books.

I have a lot to say about this novel, so I’ll begin by making a quick bullet point list outlining what I liked and disliked:

Liked:

Cavric <3

Lisette deserved better

Some interesting concepts in the world building

Disliked:

Sal as a narrator

Sal as an antihero

Sal as a person in general

Writing style

Constant interruptions

Meandering narrative

The “narrator knows something but the writer avoids revealing it until the end for the drama” trope

This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy

Lesbians written by a man who harasses women

Unnecessarily long

// image: official cover art Jeremy Wilson //

Let’s begin with the full review by starting with the (few) positives, shall we?

First and foremost, I genuinely enjoyed Cavric and Lisette. It is unfortunate that they had to deal with Sal for the entirety of the novel, but we’ll get to her later. If this book had been a buddy adventure with these two, in which Cavric slowly shows Lisette that she is in a toxic relationships and deserves to move on and find someone better for herself, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. Secondly (and finally), Sykes introduced some genuinely interesting world building. The background of the Empire and the Scar was fascinating to read, but unfortunately did not save the rest of this mess.

Alright now let’s rant.

I have 35 notes and 52 highlights from this book, so this might get block quote heavy. (Go check out my notes if you want to see me slowly lose my sanity)

Sal is awful. I know she’s meant to be awful, but she’s not flawed in the way that I think Sykes was trying to write her. I believe she was intended to be a scruffy, lovable antihero who fought her way through a dangerous landscape with her sharp blade and even sharper tongue. A girl who had wrongs committed against her in the past, who did terrible things but is now on the road to an epic redemption arc. She shoots bad guys, she says f*ck and a*s a lot, and she is morally complex. That’s the character that Sykes was trying to make. The one he created, however, is a genuinely terrible person who I had no desire to see come out on top. I have a myriad of issues with her, but let’s outline a couple below: (1) She is incredibly toxic for Lisette. Am I getting a bit too heated about a fictional relationship? Sure. Was I happy to read a toxic lesbian romance written by a man who sexually harasses women? Nope. It kind of grossed me out, actually. Anyway, let me give you a run down of their relationship. Sal arrives. Sal and Lisette sleep together. Sal asks Lisette to give her weapons and or fix things for her. Sal sneaks away, telling herself no good will come of this relationship and they will only cause each other pain. Sal needs something. Sal comes back. Repeat over and over. She constantly says, throughout the book, that it would be better if they just left each other, but then again Sal is the one who goes back to Lisette over and over, causing her renewed heartbreak. I don’t know if Sykes thought that simply making Sal aware of how terrible this behavior was was enough, but it just made me incredibly frustrated. At one point Sal says:

”Intellect like hers is a curse. The more you understand of the world, the less of it you trust.”

Yes, Sal, that’s what’s giving her trust issues. Her intelligence. Nice. By the end of the book, it seems that they are on the mend-I’m getting end-game vibes from these two. But honestly, I spent the entire time thinking that Lisette deserved so much better than Sal. Like literally a chicken would have provided healthier companionship. I’ll end with this quote, in which Lisette outlines perfectly why Sal does not deserve her:

“What am I doing wrong that you’d choose this over me?”

(2) Sal is annoying. Really, really annoying. I kid you not, half of this book is made up of Sal’s snarky comments. She is badass. She has a gun. She is an outlaw. And she will never, EVER shut up about it. Imagine a quirky line after an otherwise dark or action-packed sequence. Funny, right? Might break the tension, make the narrator more endearing, etc. Now imagine one such line after every. Single. Paragraph. Picture a violent battle scene where the protagonist is fighting for their lives against a ruthless opponent. Now insert a snarky comment after every other paragraph and watch the entire flow of the scene fall apart with constant interruptions. That’s what this book is-which brings me to my next point.

The writing isn’t great. There are constant interruptions, meandering narratives, and the trope that haunts me in nearly every dark fantasy novel I read-This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy-is shoved repeatedly in your face. Let’s start with the interruptions, returning to my previous point (ie. Sal never shuts up), by looking at this sequence:

I followed the shrieking wind. I had come here prepared for something bad. But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it was. I rounded the corner of the hall, came out atop a battlement. The wind struck me with a screaming gale, forcing me to shield my face and cling to the stone for purchase. My eyes squinted against the harshness of the light, the kind of offensive pale you only see in your nightmares. And through them, I could see the bowed shapes of towers sagging, the flayed flesh of banners whipping in a wind that wouldn’t cease, the shadows of figures frozen in a death that had brought no peace. And I knew where I was. There was nothing that had ever made Fort Dogsjaw special. It had never been crucial for defense, never a hub for trade, it hadn’t even been named for anything special—the commander just liked the sound of it. It lived its whole life a regular, boring Imperial fort on the edge of the Husks. It only got important at the time of its death. Over three hundred mages and a few thousand regulars had assembled here in one day—some to receive assignments, some to man the garrison, some to head back to Cathama on leave. They had been laughing, cursing, drinking when the news came that the new Emperor of Cathama was a nul, born with no magic. And then there had been a moment of silence.

I’ve bolded for emphasis, but do you see what I’m talking about? The paragraph-line-paragraph-line format is so annoying to read, I had to put the book down at certain points because of how frustrated I got. It interrupted the forward movement of the story, making the novel drag on and on.

You know what else makes this feel like the nightmare version of the Never-ending Story? The page count. I don’t mind long books-The Priory of the Orange Tree is one of my favorite reads so far this year, and it’s longer than this one-but they have to have a reason for being so hefty. As I mentioned earlier, a considerable chunk of Seven Blades of Black is Sal making her awful, awful, AWFUL asides. I literally cannot express how much I despise those comments. Okay, let’s move on before I get hung up on THOSE STUPID COM-*cough*

This novel is marred by unnecessary lines and a meandering plot that drag out the story. One instance is the amount of times that Sal is a second away from killing someone and, for some reason (usually not a good one), fails in her goal. She places a gun at someone’s head and goes through a whole monologue in her head until the person miraculously escapes. This type of subversion of expectations is fine every once in a while, but if you are going to build up to a crucial moment and then take away the satisfaction of the defeat of some villain (or mini-boss, as many of the antagonists in this book feel like), then you need to have a good reason for doing it upwards of twenty times in ONE BOOK. Secondly, if you spend almost the entire novel setting up more and more villains and stressing how hard they are to kill and how dangerous their powers are (and presenting them separately and isolated), then when you have them all in one place at the end, at which point the protagonists starts going through them like a plate of french fries at a seagull convention, then you’re kind of taking away the satisfaction of the death. Somehow, this book manages to do both. We are constantly teased with almost-kills, then at the end Sal just blows through everyone in five seconds, easy-peasy.

I’m almost done, I swear-just two more gripes.

So much of the tension of this book rests on the fact that Sal, our narrator and our main viewpoint into the story, knows something that we don’t. I’ll be upfront with you-I hate this trope. If our POV character, the one whose mind we are in constantly, is entirely aware of something that happened before the beginning of the novel, and the author keeps from revealing that something for the entirety of the story solely to add drama, then I will not be a happy reader. Where is the logic. We are in this person’s mind. Just show us already and add tension ELSEWHERE.

And FINALLY (as painful as it was for you to read this, it was worse for me to write it), another issue I have with a lot of dark fantasy (see my review of Nevernight) is that the author really, really wants us to know that this is an incredibly dangerous and dark world by filling it to the brim with edge lord narrators, Big Guns, and, usually, women being harrased-because why not force all your female readers to constantly have to read about women getting assaulted? Apart from Sal’s 300,000 comments explaining to us that she is an asshole, that the Scar is Dangerous, and that she has Killed A Lot of People, we as readers must sit through hundreds of lines of dialogue and exposition that beat us over the head with the fact that this is DARK fantasy. This isn’t your nice little fairy adventure-no sir. Here we have Swear Words and Violence and Men writing Queer Women. To emphasize just how blatant Sykes is with the dark part of dark fantasy, let me tell you about an exchange Sal has with three old ladies who run a criminal empire. In the 2-3 pages that these women appear in, we are told, in some form or other, that they are grandmas who kill people, a grand total of, I kid you not, ELEVEN TIMES. Here are some excerpts from that whole situation:

”“Now, now.” Yoc, old and white haired and sweet as a grandmother—if that grandmother also had people killed on the regular—smiled at me. “I’m sure she has a good reason for being here.” She raised the hand that had signed the contracts that had killed a thousand men and women and took up her whiskey glass. “After all, I’m sure she knows how much we don’t like having our game interrupted.”” *I counted this as one since it’s in the same exchange but technically he mentions it TWICE

”…one didn’t waste the Three’s time if one didn’t want to end up with their teeth pried out.”

”How often do you meet the three old ladies who have people killed for money?”

”I said we should kill her on principle.”

”“But you know how many orphans I’ve made, don’t you, dear?””

”“He’s not so unlike us, is he? A murderer, yes. A monster to some. But, at his heart, a businessman.”

”Theirs were the hands that signed a thousand death contracts a year.”

”When they could be bothered to look up from their game, they decided who lived and died with a stroke of their pen.”

”At a word, they could have me stripped, tied, tortured, and cut up…”

”the Three don’t lie. Their assassins do. Their thieves do. But they don’t.”

”I had already wasted their time and I knew the Three were being generous just letting me fuck off instead of having me killed for the effort.”

TL;DR - Sal is annoying, Sykes is a bad writer, and Someone should have stopped me from reading this book

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hockeysweetheart · 4 years

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My point of this is literally anything Romantic with Gale Peeta’s name isn’t far behind... I mean who can blame her ....

Catching Fire Chapter 2

Then I looked up and there he was, ten feet away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking, and crying. He was holding me so tightly that I couldn't see his face, but it was a really long time before he let me go and then he didn't have much choice, because I'd gotten this unbelievably loud case of the hiccups and had to get a drink. We did what we always did that day. Ate breakfast. Hunted and fished and gathered. Talked about people in town. But not about us, his new life in the mines, my time in the arena. Just about other things. By the time we were at the hole in the fence that's nearest the Hob, I think I really believed that things could be the same. That we could go on as we always had. I'd given all the game to Gale to trade since we had so much food now. I told him I'd skip the Hob, even though I was looking forward to going there, because my mother and sister didn't even know I'd gone hunting and they'd be wondering where I was. Then suddenly, as I was suggesting I take over the daily snare run, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. I was completely unprepared. You would think that after all the hours I'd spent with Gale - watching him talk and laugh and frown - that I would know all there was to know about his lips. But I hadn't imagined how warm they would feel pressed against my own. Or how those hands, which could set the most intricate of snares, could as easily entrap me. I think I made some sort of noise in the back of my throat, and I vaguely remember my fingers, curled tightly closed, resting on his chest. Then he let go and said, "I had to do that. At least once." And he was gone. Despite the fact that the sun was setting and my family would be worried, I sat by a tree next to the fence. I tried to decide how I felt about the kiss, if I had liked it or resented it, but all I really remembered was the pressure of Gale's lips and the scent of the oranges that still lingered on his skin. It was pointless comparing it with the many kisses I'd exchanged with Peeta. I still hadn't figured out if any of those counted. Finally I went home. That week I managed the snares and dropped off the meat with Hazelle. But I didn't see Gale until Sunday. I had this whole speech worked out, about how I didn't want a boyfriend and never planned on marrying, but I didn't end up using it. Gale acted as if the kiss had never happened. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something. Or kiss him back. Instead I just pretended it had never happened, either. But it had. Gale had shattered some invisible barrier between us and, with it, any hope I had of resuming our old, uncomplicated friendship. Whatever I pretended, I could never look at his lips in quite the same way.

Chapter 7 Catching Fire

"I've heard enough for the moment. Let's skip ahead to this plan of yours," he says. I take a deep breath. "We run away." "What?" he asks. This has actually caught him off guard. "We take to the woods and make a run for it," I say. His face is impossible to read. Will he laugh at me, dismiss this as foolishness? I rise in agitation, preparing for an argument. "You said yourself you thought that we could do it! That morning of the reaping. You said - " He steps in and I feel myself lifted off the ground. The room spins, and I have to lock my arms around Gale's neck to brace myself. He's laughing, happy. "Hey!" I protest, but I'm laughing, too. Gale sets me down but doesn't release his hold on me. "Okay, let's run away," he says. "Really? You don't think I'm mad? You'll go with me?" Some of the crushing weight begins to lift as it transfers to Gale's shoulders. "I do think you're mad and I'll still go with you," he says. He means it. Not only means it but welcomes it. "We can do it. I know we can. Let's get out of here and never come back!" "You're sure?" I say. "Because it's going to be hard, with the kids and all. I don't want to get five miles into the woods and have you - " "I'm sure. I'm completely, entirely, one hundred percent sure." He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. His skin, his whole being, radiates heat from being so near the fire, and I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. I breathe in the smell of snow-dampened leather and smoke and apples, the smell of all those wintry days we shared before the Games. I don't try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. "I love you." That's why. I never see these things coming. They happen too fast. One second you're proposing an escape plan and the next... you're expected to deal with something like this. I come up with what must be the worst possible response. "I know." It sounds terrible. Like I assume he couldn't help loving me but that I don't feel anything in return. Gale starts to draw away, but I grab hold of him. "I know! And you... you know what you are to me." It's not enough. He breaks my grip. "Gale, I can't think about anyone that way now. All I can think about, every day, every waking minute since they drew Prim's name at the reaping, is how afraid I am. And there doesn't seem to be room for anything else. If we could get somewhere safe, maybe I could be different. I don't know." I can see him swallowing his disappointment. "So, we'll go. We'll find out." He turns back to the fire, where the chestnuts are beginning to burn. He flips them out onto the hearth. "My mother's going to take some convincing." I guess he's still going, anyway. But the happiness has fled, leaving an all-too-familiar strain in its place. "Mine, too. I'll just have to make her see reason. Take her for a long walk. Make sure she understands we won't survive the alternative." "She'll understand. I watched a lot of the Games with her and Prim. She won't say no to you," says Gale. "I hope not." The temperature in the house seems to have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. "Haymitch will be the real challenge." "Haymitch?" Gale abandons the chestnuts. "You're not asking him to come with us?" "I have to, Gale. I can't leave him and Peeta because they'd - " His scowl cuts me off. "What?" "I'm sorry. I didn't realize how large our party was," he snaps at me.

"They'd torture them to death, trying to find out where I was," I say.

"What about Peeta's family? They'll never come. In fact, they probably couldn't wait to inform on us. Which I'm sure he's smart enough to realize. What if he decides to stay?" he asks.

I try to sound indifferent, but my voice cracks. "Then he stays."

"You'd leave him behind?" Gale asks.

"To save Prim and my mother, yes," I answer. "I mean, no! I'll get him to come."

"And me, would you leave me?" Gale's expression is rock hard now. "Just if, for instance, I can't convince my mother to drag three young kids into the wilderness in winter."

"Hazelle won't refuse. She'll see sense," I say.

"Suppose she doesn't, Katniss. What then?" he demands.

"Then you have to force her, Gale. Do you think I'm making this stuff up?" My voice is rising in anger as well.

"No. I don't know. Maybe the president's just manipulating you. I mean, he's throwing your wedding. You saw how the Capitol crowd reacted. I don't think he can afford to kill you. Or Peeta. How's he going to get out of that one?" says Gale.

"Well, with an uprising in District Eight, I doubt he's spending much time choosing my wedding cake!" I shout.

The instant the words are out of my mouth I want to reclaim them. Their effect on Gale is immediate - the flush on his cheeks, the brightness of his gray eyes. "There's an uprising in Eight?" he says in a hushed voice. I try to backpedal. To defuse him, as I tried to defuse the districts. "I don't know if it's really an uprising. There's unrest. People in the streets - " I say. Gale grabs my shoulders. "What did you see?" "Nothing! In person. I just heard something." As usual, it's too little, too late. I give up and tell him. "I saw something on the mayor's television. I wasn't supposed to. There was a crowd, and fires, and the Peacekeepers were gunning people down but they were fighting back. ..." I bite my lip and struggle to continue describing the scene. Instead I say aloud the words that have been eating me up inside. "And it's my fault, Gale. Because of what I did in the arena. If I had just killed myself with those berries, none of this would've happened. Peeta could have come home and lived, and everyone else would have been safe, too." "Safe to do what?" he says in a gentler tone. "Starve? Work like slaves? Send their kids to the reaping? You haven't hurt people - you've given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it. There's already been talk in the mines. People who want to fight. Don't you see? It's happening! It's finally happening! If there's an uprising in District Eight, why not here? Why not everywhere? This could be it, the thing we've been - " "Stop it! You don't know what you're saying. The Peacekeepers outside of Twelve, they're not like Darius, or even Cray! The lives of district people - they mean less than nothing to them!" I say. "That's why we have to join the fight!" he answers harshly. "No! We have to leave here before they kill us and a lot of other people, too!" I'm yelling again, but I can't understand why he's doing this. Why doesn't he see what's so undeniable? Gale pushes me roughly away from him. "You leave, then. I'd never go in a million years." "You were happy enough to go before. I don't see how an uprising in District Eight does anything but make it more important that we leave. You're just mad about - " No, I can't throw Peeta in his face. "What about your family?" "What about the other families, Katniss? The ones who can't run away? Don't you see? It can't be about just saving us anymore. Not if the rebellion's begun!" Gale shakes his head, not hiding his disgust with me. "You could do so much." He throws Cinna's gloves at my feet. "I changed my mind. I don't want anything they made in the Capitol." And he's gone.

Chapter 8 Catching Fire

Does everyone look younger asleep? Because right now he could be the boy I ran into in the woods years ago, the one who accused me of stealing from his traps. What a pair we were - fatherless, frightened, but fiercely committed, too, to keeping our families alive. Desperate, yet no longer alone after that day, because we'd found each other. I think of a hundred moments in the woods, lazy afternoons fishing, the day I taught him to swim, that time I twisted my knee and he carried me home. Mutually counting on each other, watching each other's backs, forcing each other to be brave. For the first time, I reverse our positions in my head. I imagine watching Gale volunteering to save Rory in the reaping, having him torn from my life, becoming some strange girl's lover to stay alive, and then coming home with her. Living next to her. Promising to marry her. The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate that it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it? Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die. This is the girl Gale met in the woods today. No wonder I won the Games. No decent person ever does. You saved Peeta, I think weakly. But now I question even that. I knew good and well that my life back in District 12 would be unlivable if I let that boy die. I rest my head forward on the edge of the table, overcome with loathing for myself. Wishing I had died in the arena. Wishing Seneca Crane had blown me to bits the way President Snow said he should have when I held out the berries. The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful of poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. The trouble is, I don't know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment. Could it be the people in the districts are right? That it was an act of rebellion, even if it was an unconscious one? Because, deep down, I must know it isn't enough to keep myself, or my family, or my friends alive by running away. Even if I could. It wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't stop people from being hurt the way Gale was today. Life in District 12 isn't really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it. Well, it's not hard for Gale. He was born a rebel. I'm the one making an escape plan. "I'm so sorry," I whisper. I lean forward and kiss him. His eyelashes flutter and he looks at me through a haze of opiates. "Hey, Catnip." "Hey, Gale," I say. "Thought you'd be gone by now," he says. My choices are simple. I can die like quarry in the woods or I can die here beside Gale. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble." "Me, too," Gale says. He just manages a smile before the drugs pull him back under.

Chapter 9 Mockingjay

By the time we reach the town square, afternoon's sinking into evening. I take Cressida to the rubble of the bakery and ask her to film something. The only emotion I can muster is exhaustion. "Peeta, this is your home. None of your family has been heard of since the bombing. Twelve is gone. And you're calling for a cease-fire?" I look across the emptiness. "There's no one left to hear you." As we stand before the lump of metal that was the gallows, Cressida asks if either of us has ever been tortured. In answer, Gale pulls off his shirt and turns his back to the camera. I stare at the lash marks, and again hear the whistling of the whip, see his bloody figure hanging unconscious by his wrists. "I'm done," I announce. "I'll meet you at the Victor's Village. Something for...my mother." I guess I walked here, but the next thing I'm conscious of is sitting on the floor in front of the kitchen cabinets of our house in the Victor's Village. Meticulously lining ceramic jars and glass bottles into a box. Placing clean cotton bandages between them to prevent breaking. Wrapping bunches of dried flowers. Suddenly, I remember the rose on my dresser. Was it real? If so, is it still up there? I have to resist the temptation to check. If it's there, it will only frighten me all over again. I hurry with my packing. When the cabinets are empty, I rise to find that Gale has materialized in my kitchen. It's disturbing how soundlessly he can appear. He's leaning on the table, his fingers spread wide against the wood grain. I set the box between us. "Remember?" he asks. "This is where you kissed me." So the heavy dose of morphling administered after the whipping wasn't enough to erase that from his consciousness. "I didn't think you'd remember that," I say. "Have to be dead to forget. Maybe even not then," he tells me. "Maybe I'll be like that man in 'The Hanging Tree.' Still waiting for an answer." Gale, who I have never seen cry, has tears in his eyes. To keep them from spilling over, I reach forward and press my lips against his. We taste of heat, ashes, and misery. It's a surprising flavor for such a gentle kiss. He pulls away first and gives me a wry smile. "I knew you'd kiss me." "How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself. "Because I'm in pain," he says. "That's the only way I get your attention." He picks up the box. "Don't worry, Katniss. It'll pass." He leaves before I can answer.

Chapter 14 Mockingjay

Gale makes a sound of exasperation. Nonetheless, after we've dropped off the birds and volunteered to go back to the woods to gather kindling for the evening fire, I find myself wrapped in his arms. His lips brushing the faded bruises on my neck, working their way to my mouth. Despite what I feel for Peeta, this is when I accept deep down that he'll never come back to me. Or I'll never go back to him. I'll stay in 2 until it falls, go to the Capitol and kill Snow, and then die for my trouble. And he'll die insane and hating me. So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I've withheld, and because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it. Gale's touch and taste and heat remind me that at least my body's still alive, and for the moment it's a welcome feeling. I empty my mind and let the sensations run through my flesh, happy to lose myself. When Gale pulls away slightly, I move forward to close the gap, but I feel his hand under my chin. "Katniss," he says. The instant I open my eyes, the world seems disjointed. This is not our woods or our mountains or our way. My hand automatically goes to the scar on my left temple, which I associate with confusion. "Now kiss me." Bewildered, unblinking, I stand there while he leans in and presses his lips to mine briefly. He examines my face closely. "What's going on in your head?" "I don't know," I whisper back. "Then it's like kissing someone who's drunk. It doesn't count," he says with a weak attempt at a laugh. He scoops up a pile of kindling and drops it in my empty arms, returning me to myself. "How do you know?" I say, mostly to cover my embarrassment. "Have you kissed someone who's drunk?" I guess Gale could've been kissing girls right and left back in 12. He certainly had enough takers. I never thought about it much before. He just shakes his head. "No. But it's not hard to imagine." "So, you never kissed any other girls?" I ask. "I didn't say that. You know, you were only twelve when we met. And a real pain besides. I did have a life outside of hunting with you," he says, loading up with firewood. Suddenly, I'm genuinely curious. "Who did you kiss? And where?" "Too many to remember. Behind the school, on the slag heap, you name it," he says. I roll my eyes. "So when did I become so special? When they carted me off to the Capitol?" "No. About six months before that. Right after New Year's. We were in the Hob, eating some slop of Greasy Sae's. And Darius was teasing you about trading a rabbit for one of his kisses. And I realized...I minded," he tells me

I remember that day. Bitter cold and dark by four in the afternoon. We'd been hunting, but a heavy snow had driven us back into town. The Hob was crowded with people looking for refuge from the weather. Greasy Sae's soup, made with stock from the bones of a wild dog we'd shot a week earlier, was below her usual standards. Still, it was hot, and I was starving as I scooped it up, sitting cross-legged on her counter. Darius was leaning on the post of the stall, tickling my cheek with the end of my braid, while I smacked his hand away. He was explaining why one of his kisses merited a rabbit, or possibly two, since everyone knows redheaded men are the most virile. And Greasy Sae and I were laughing because he was so ridiculous and persistent and kept pointing out women around the Hob who he said had paid far more than a rabbit to enjoy his lips. "See? The one in the green muffler? Go ahead and ask her.If you need a reference." A million miles from here, a billion days ago, this happened. "Darius was just joking around," I say.

"Probably. Although you'd be the last to figure out if he wasn't," Gale tells me. "Take Peeta. Take me. Or even Finnick. I was starting to worry he had his eye on you, but he seems back on track now."

"You don't know Finnick if you think he'd love me," I say.Gale shrugs. "I know he was desperate. That makes people do all kinds of crazy things."I can't help thinking that's directed at me.

#THG #The Hunger Games #catching fire #CatchingFire #mockingjay #katniss everdeen #Katniss #gale hawthorne #gale #Peeta #Peeta Mellark #Hunger Games

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theastrophilearchitect · 4 years

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February 2021 wrap-up.

Every book, audiobook, tv show and movie I consumed in February.

The phrase ‘wrap-up’ is so boring. I want to talk about books, TV shows and movies, so I can’t even call it a ‘reading wrap-up’, however pleasingly alliterative that sounds despite the fact that ‘wrap’ actually begins with a W. One of my favourite YouTubers, polandbananasBOOKS (that capitalisation is loud) calls her wrap-ups ‘Stories I Ate This Month’ which I love, but using exactly that seems wrong. I genuinely debated calling this ‘My Media Diet’, but the word ‘diet’ has so many negative connotations to me, so I dropped that. Besides ‘wrap-up’ all in lowercase followed by a full stop is aesthetically pleasing.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (audiobook) I’ve read this series countless times. I read the series first time through six years ago, and, after finishing it, I just kept rereading it during silent reading time at school, so God only knows how many times I’ve read it at this point. This is actually the second time I’ve listened to this audiobook, and I still, of course, love it. When I first read it, this book stuck with me. It was the first teen book I ever read and, most unfortunately, put me into a dystopian phase. However, we got over that. I’m good now. I promise.

You know what this is about, but here it is anyway: in a dystopian future (of literally just North America, it never mentions what’s happening anywhere else), a country called Panem (literally the whole of North America) is divided into the luxurious, utopian Capitol, and thirteen districts, all of which gather or produce something for the Capitol. Some of the districts live in poverty, while others are afforded some luxuries but nowhere near those of the Capitol. It never really explains how this system came to be, but then there was a rebellion against the Capitol in which District Thirteen was destroyed, and every year two teenagers from each district are chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, where twenty-four tributes are put in an arena together to fight to the death, and the last person standing emerges victorious. It feels so strange to talk about the basic premise of this book without going into the rest of the trilogy, but I’ll leave it here.

I hate how the media washes this book out and plays it off as just another love triangle, which it barely even is. It has such an important message about society, and the fact that the media does that just proves how accurate it is. I can’t believe when I first read it I was actually Team Gale, but in truth I think that was just because I liked Liam Hemsworth better than Josh Hutcherson, which I still do, but not the point. Anyway, the narrator is excellent.

I’m not giving these booksa rating, both because it’s a reread and I like to base ratings off my initial opinion, and because the first time I read this book I was literally a small child, and part of my love is the nostalgia.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab

This was the first book I read with my eyes this month, and I ended up getting the ebook because it was just so much cheaper than getting a physical copy - I may have invested if I loved the UK cover as much as the US, I’m ashamed to say (above is UK). It was not what I was expecting.

This book was much more contemplation-heavy than I was expecting and actually very light on plot. In 1714, Adeline LaRue runs away from her wedding and prays to Gods, wishing to be free, and is answered by the darkness, who makes her a deal: he grants her immortality, and she promises him her soul when she doesn’t want it anymore. He, wanting her soul, twistedly grants her freedom by cursing her to be forgotten by everyone she ever meets. Three hundred years later, she meets someone who remembers her.

It’s really about life, freedom and time - there’s no direct message or moral, at least not that I picked up on, but it really makes you think. I do enjoy that in a book, but not as much as one where i just love the story. I generally prefer books where I’m rooting for the characters, and it’s full of ships - the kind of stories you would write fanfiction about, but this is the kind of book that I think will stick with me. I take issue with how cliché the ending was, though.

Anyway, I’m not actually sure how I want to rate this. As a British teenager, I’m not actually that familiar with lettered ratings, and I don’t really want to use stars, but I think I’m going to suck it up. Maybe I’ll think of something else eventually.

Rating: 4.5 stars - books that get five stars from me are generally based on the enjoyment factor, but this book deserved more than four.

Arrow Season 1

I’ve been semi-interested in the Arrowverse/DC TV universe for a while, and finally took the opportunity to delve in. This show is so insanely CW - everyone has that look, it has that tone and it takes itself way too seriously. By the 23rd time you’re hearing it, the recap becomes painful to listen to.

This was the first show in DC’s saga - the show picks up as Oliver Queen returns home from being stranded on an island for five years after a cruise ship sank. When the ship went down, his billionaire father sacrificed himself to save Oliver, and left him with a list of ‘the people poisoning [his] city’. Upon returning home, Oliver becomes the vigilante who will eventually become known as ‘Arrow’ or ‘Green Arrow’ (currently unclear; I’m not a comic book person) but is currently dubbed just ‘the Hood’ or ‘the vigilante’, with the goal of taking down the people on the list. It’s very intense.

It took me about ten episodes to actually get invested - which is nearly seven hours watch time - but, ultimately, I’m glad that I did. Aside from the excessive CW-ness of this show, I love the characters and I want to see what happens.

Still, why is everyone so obsesses with Laurel? What’s so great about Laurel? I don’t get it. Felicity is 10000% the best character - she’s relatable, cute, and I high-key ship her with Oliver.

This little rant of mine was unintelligible.

Rating: 4 stars

Guardians of the Galaxy

I’m not explaining what this movie is about. Honestly. This was just a rewatch: I’m currently rewatching every MCU movie in chronological order (as in, starting with Captain America: The First Avenger instead of Iron Man). For every TV season I finish, I watch a a movie, and I alternate between movie series, one of which is, at the moment, MCU films. It’s hard for me to briefly explain my weird watching patterns.

I love this movie so much. It was the first really upbeat MCU movie, and I love the characters.

I don’t really have much to say about this, but if you haven’t watched MCU movies, please watch them. Even if you don’t want to, this movie is absolutely worth watching and you don’t need to watch any other MCU movies for context.

I Am Not Okay With This Season 1

I’m reeling from this show. I literally can’t tell whether or not this is getting a second season; it seems like it was meant to, but then got cancelled, and now I can’t tell.

This show follows a high school student named Sydney. She’s your typical outcast, and isn’t interested in getting ‘in’ - she’s best friends with a girl named Dina; they both came to their school around the same time and ended up friends, though Dina is your typical pretty girl. Then Syd discovers she has powers that operate based on her emotions, and I really don’t want to say anything else. But it does star Sophia Lillis and Wyatt Oleff, who you likely know as two of the kids in IT (the clown movie, not like computing).

Honestly, episodes 1-6 were very chill, more focused on teenage life than her powers, then episode 7 brought it. Up until the end of episode 7, I enjoyed the show and would be happy to watch a second season, but I wasn’t particularly invested or excited by it. Then episode 7. I would love a second season of this show. I have to at least know where the writers were going with it.

This show came out last year, and I only just got to it, but I can’t believe I haven’t heard anybody talking about it. It’s intense, it’s entertaining, and the first season will only take up about two and a half hours of your time (it’s seven 19-28 minute episodes).

Rating: 4 stars

Blue Lily, Lily Blue and The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

I listened to The Raven Cycle audiobooks in 2019, and I’m not sure why because I didn’t even enjoy them that much. I did, however, decide I wanted to read Call Down the Hawk, the first book in the spin-off series, and that meant I had to reread The Raven Cycle since I had paid so little attention to the audiobooks, which I started in January and I love this series. Not what I expected from a reread of a series I paid virtually no attention to, but here we are.

This is book 3 in The Raven Cycle series, book 1 being The Raven Boys, which is a paranormal book in which the protagonist Blue, is the only non-psychic in a family of psychics, and has been told her whole life that if she kisses her true love, she will kill him. Then, on St Somebody’s Eve (Mark’s? I want to say Mark’s but I��m not sure), when she goes with her aunt to see the spirits of the people who will die in the next year, she sees one of the spirits, a boy from Aglionby Academy, the local private school, meaning he is either her true love, or she is the one who kills him, which in her case, could very much be both. Then that boy schedules a reading with her psychic family to help him find an old Welsh king, and there is so much more than that to this glorious series, but I’ll stop here.

I think my main thing in books and general media is the characters. They have to follow some kind of sensible plot, but if I’m not invested in the characters, I can’t get invested in the story. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been so in love with a cast of characters, not even in Six of Crows - this story is so character-driven, and I can’t get enough. This was an excellent continuation, and so much happened, but it did feel like its purpose was just to set up the final book, so I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as the previous two.

Rating: 4 stars

As for The Raven King - this was the last book I read this month, finishing it on the morning of the 27th because I knew I would have very little reading time from mid-afternoon until twenty-four hours later.

In complete honesty, I found the climax of this book to be a little rushed - we spend the whole series aware that Gansey’s looking for Glendower, but it never seems to be more prevalent than just their general investigations as to what the hell is happening. As a result, when it came to that in this book, it felt a little out of the blue (no pun intended).

Regardless, this series so well balances strong characters and strong plot where so many others fail, and I love it.

Rating: 5 stars

Fate: The Winx Saga Season 1

This show is a live-action rated-15 Netflix adaptation of one of my favourite childhood shows, Winx Club. And, honestly, you can tell.

I tried to watch this objectively, instead of complaining about how they cut some of my favourite characters and changed so many (Tecna, Riven, Beatrix, Stella, Brandon etc.). While I was upset about some of the cuts, I can agree that they were best for the story. Where in the original, every fairy had their own unique powers, this adaptation splits it into five elements: fire (Bloom), water (Aisha - on another note, screw Aisha, honestly), air (Beatrix), earth (Terra) and mind (Musa), though Stella still has light powers? Which is never explained?

Anyway, this follows teenage Bloom as she discovers she’s a fairy and goes through her first year at a fairy school called Alfea.

I’m not going to go too deep into this because I have so much to say about this show that i think I’m going to make a whole separate review rather than bore you with it now.

Quality-wise, this show was mediocre, but enjoyment and nostalgia raise its rating for me because I’m biased.

Rating: 4 stars

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

This is both Bardugo’s first adult novel and her first novel not set in the Grishaverse. I read the Grisha trilogy for the first time years ago and didn’t like it that much, but followed that right up with the Six of Crows duology which I loved. I read King of Scars in 2019 when it came out, and started listening to the King of Scars audiobook just before I started reading this in preparation for Rule of Wolves at the end of March.

I loved this. I don’t think I have anything to criticise quality-wise - the characters had depth, there were plot twists and strong subplots, the world was incredibly well built, and the only thing that got me to put this book down was taking a week to start working on my own writing project (post coming soon). Because I took that week completely off reading, this book took me about two weeks total from start to finish, but it was so worth it.

This novel follows Alex Stern, a twenty-year-old whose friends have all been murdered. She was found beside one of them who died of a overdose, with the same drug in her system. But Alex can see ghosts, and, soon after her friends’ deaths, is consequently offered a scholarship to Yale University, on the condition that she works for the ninth House of the Veil to monitor the activities of Yale’s secret societies.

In complete candour, I found this book somewhat convoluted, though most of that was probably mainly my own poor reading comprehension. Regardless, I loved the plot, and am very highly anticipating the eventual release of its as-of-yet unnamed sequel.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

So I actually finished this audiobook briefly after finishing Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but I’m tacking it on here because I forgot to add it to the list and already explained my Grishaverse experience in my Ninth House comments.

So, yes, I love this duology, and it really opened a new compartment in my writing brain, even though I haven’t really taken advantage of that writing brain until now (again, post coming soon).

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

I am realising I’ve read eight books this month, and nearly half of them were by Leigh Bardugo. Which makes sense, considering how much I enjoy her books.

This book is slower-paced than most of hers, but it does follow two (one of which splits again) completely separate storylines, and is still excellent and entertaining.

I listened to this for a recap before Rule of Wolves is released on March 30th.

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dregstrash · 5 years

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Alina Starkov and Katniss Everdeen

Alright, I mentioned earlier that I wanted to make a post about the parallels between Alina Starkov and Katniss Everdeen. My intention with this is to not say one character is better than the other in any way. My main point in writing this is to explain my thoughts in relation to how Alina and Katniss fall under the category of “character being thrown into a situation/conflict that is not their own but have been forced to participate in it,” and why I think Alina Starkov falls flat in my opinion

I would also like to mention, I’m not making anymore parallels with any more of the characters. You won’t find me trying to turn Mal into a Peeta character. Or Gale as a Darkling or Nikolai character. I think romance functions differently in both of these books, and it’s not integral to making my point.

Anyway, I’m gonna get rambly so it’ll be under the cut.

Okay, first thing’s first I’m going to give context.

I read The Hunger Games when I was like thirteen. This was a point in my life where character arc, good story pacing, and realistic problems being portrayed didn’t matter. When I was thirteen, I literally was in it to see Katniss end up with Peeta and also kick the Capitol’s ass. It was a simplistic mindset, but I also thought deep side bangs were always going to be cool, so obviously things change.

As the movies came out and I reread The Hunger Games in high school, the very terrifying situation and setting of Panem really hit me. This is a world where children are being televised to murder each other so that power, wealth, and control are solely in the hands of one district. In the midst of that conflict we have a character that has one singular motivation: protect her sister. Katniss never wanted anything more than that. She wanted to protect her sister and try to scrape by with the life she’s always known.

But then she volunteers as tribute and her whole life gets flipped on its head. Suddenly she’s thrown into a political and real war that no one ever lets her back down from. This is a teenager girl who had to survive two horrific games and has to smile in front of adults who treat her like she’s won a beauty contest.

Let’s bring it to Alina. A girl with a singular motivation: protect her best friend. Her life was simple at that point. She watched his back. He watched hers. Up until he almost dies and her world gets flipped. Now she’s thrown into a political and real war that no one lets her back down from. Everyone treat her like a spectacle and a savior.

Now, here’s where I think Katniss brings to life this particular character trope better than Alina. Katniss throughout the three books manages to make me care about her growth and her problems. I see her inner struggles. They are clear cut, they are realistic, and they develop. Her need to protect her sister evolves to protecting Gale and then further evolves to also protecting Peeta.

We see the mental toll all of this is taking on her. We see the utter confusion having two boys trying to be with her in her mind especially on top of everything else. We see her start to emerge out of her own shell and become a strong leader that is able to stand up for herself and speak her mind despite the people who were trying to lead her steps. We see her character blossom and come to fruition at the end of the third book. And in my opinion, her starting a family with Peeta is one of the best ways for the books to end. Not because it fulfills the thought of “oh what she saved the world and starts a family ugh why can’t women do anything else” ideology. It makes sense for a character who has clung to her family her whole life to find healing in that way with a person who she knows will not leave her side. Ever. (but hey I’ve always been a romantic).

Now to Alina.

I did not see any of those things throughout the three books of The Grisha Trilogy. What I mainly saw was her struggling with her feelings for Mal and then struggling with her feelings for the Darkling. I saw her powers being secondary to the plot and used more as an obstacle rather than an empowerment. Granted, she does develop more of an appreciation of her powers throughout the first and second book, but it wasn’t enough to make me care about them.

For me, Alina wasn’t a sympathetic character. She struggled with loneliness and isolation (which are important), but the way she decided to deal with that was to go back to the psycho who had managed to convince her she was special. And that to me is not a signal for a developing character. Up until the final moments of the Darkling in the third book, she throws sympathy his way because he was “just a boy who was misunderstood.” I didn’t see any growth in her character outside of her learning that being a Grisha was nothing to be ashamed of.

Her motivations got murkier throughout the three books instead of developing. It started off with protecting Mal, then it became about helping the Darkling, then it became about finding the amplifiers, then it became about rallying the people of Ravka to her and Nikolai’s side instead of the Darkling, then it became about being the Sun Summoner, and-- I just-- It was all too confusing, all over the place, and messy.

I finished the series with the thought that Alina was half baked but at least the ending was somewhat satisfying (another controversial opinion. I am an advocate for Mal--pls don’t attack me). The main reason for this is, I never really cared about Alina as a character. Her story arc didn’t make me sympathetic to her issues or problems solely for the fact I couldn’t grasp her ultimate motivations. And for a writer, character motivation is everything.

So basically my last thought is, for this character trope, I think what makes it work is making sure character’s have clear motivations that either stay true or develop throughout a series. Intentions or goals shouldn’t be collected like rocks or else the character looks weighed down and scrambled and stretched thin.

#alina starkov #katniss everdeen #The Grisha Trilogy #dang if you read this whole thing i applaud you #im not saying that i think alina is a weak character #im just saying she wasnt my favorite heroine #tgt

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edmundofgloucester · 4 years

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6, 10, 18!

6: What point of view do you tend to write in? Do all of your pieces use the same POV? Do you have strong opinions on the POV used in novels?

My default POV is probably 3rd person past tense, but I’ve been really trying to expand my horizons when it comes to POV lately. I think POV is a really important element of a story that needs to be used consciously, and there are a million different things you can do with it. Shaelinwrites on youtube has made a lot of really informative videos that opened up my eyes to the possibility of POVs. I try to vary my POVs based on what the work needs-- Prevent is in first person past because it’s a very narrowly focused story, Red Ink will be in third person past because it has a million different POVs and I do not need to complicate the timeline more than necessary, and I’ll probably do something really weird with No Pilgrimage-- I want to do omniscient, but I also kind of want to do first person from Daniel’s POV, so I may try to combine those? Who knows. My only strong opinion on POV is that you shouldn’t limit yourself, and there are no good or bad POVs, or easy or hard POVs, just what’s right for a story.

10. What scene was the most fun to write for you and why?

I’ve just recently gotten back into seriously drafting, so I haven’t made very much progress on actually writing most of my novels. I have made really good progress on a couple short stories, though. “Question Game,” a short story about the simultaneously intense and shallow relationship between two high school students, had a really fun scene at the crux of the piece, where the main character Jamie sees a ghost and essentially decides that she’d rather become a ghost herself than Live In Society. That scene was really intense and flowed really well, which made it fun. The short story I’m currently working on is called Solipsism, and it’s about a 10 year old named Orla who gets chained in a field during a famine. I’ve been really struggling with it because Nothing Happens, like literally she stays in the field the entire story and doesn’t talk to anyone, but I loved writing the flashback scene when Orla gets arrested, because I got to make her clash with the community and their ideology and show how feral this child is.

18: What writers have inspired you with their use of language? What are some of your favorite quotes?

I’ve recently realized how important strong language is to me in a piece. I tend to like writing that’s very deliberate, voicey, and somewhat intricate, but not necessarily flowery. Some books that really inspire me in their use of writing:

-If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio (”You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough”)

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt (I love the first paragraph of this “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”)

-Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (”The habit of narration, of crafting somehting miraculous out of the commonplace, is hard to break”)

-The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

-Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu (”Inside was another universe, and maybe if she figured out the right way to ask, someone would let her in.”)

-The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

-In the Woods by Tana French

-The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (”Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it." “But the sparrow still falls.”) (”the sparrow still falls” is also the title of my Leo playlist I love that quote SO much)

-City of Thieves by David Benioff (the inspiration for my Leningrad oneshot!)

I haven’t actually read the book this is from but one of my all time favorite quotes is something you sent me on tumblr actually and I deeply love it. “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!I have a duty!”- Terry Pratchett

List of questions here they’re all very good

#thank you for asking rowan ily #beauregayd

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londonlanded · 7 years

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Week 29

Alright, it’s time for one last hurrah - aka, this week I went on my last trip before the regularity of a Monday to Friday schedule rears its predictable head.

Monday was a typical workday that ended with a fabulous surprise in the form of my second free Four Seasons massage, courtesy of my lovely friend Pau who wanted to give me a leaving gift in the form of 90 minutes of care that my muscles more than needed. He also passed along the information that ours was the only 5 star hotel that boasts a 5 star spa in Europe, and he encouraged me to take advantage of the other facilities while I was there.

It was one of the few times I was grateful for London’s early evenings, since it meant the end of my massage coincided with a beautiful sunset that just happened to be best viewed from the sauna. I headed home a happy girl.

Tuesday took a turn for the strange when I fell quite ill quite quickly, managed to rally enough to meet my friend Giulia at Heathrow but not before questioning calling the whole trip off. No better way to test the limits of my own stubbornness than to give me a stomach bug on my first day of a planned trip. Regardless of my state and pace (bad and slow), I made it to the airport and through our short journey to Belfast City Airport. Waiting for us with open arms (and driving the same car he had the last time I saw him a decade ago, lefthand drive and all), was Keith, one of my dad’s ex-trainees who was born and raised in Northern Ireland before the stint in Toronto that brought him and his young family into our lives. We quickly popped home so I could see his family, and I found myself face to face with two boys, taller than me, both with the goal of following in their father’s medical footsteps. Last time I saw them, my siblings and I were forcing the youngest one to repeatedly say the word “eight” in his adorable accent because we thought it was the funniest thing we had ever heard. Time has one hell of a way of changing, aging people. Keith brought us home and we settled into our hostel for the evening, but not before meeting two Canadians who we realized would also be two of the people that would be sharing our day tour the next day.

Wednesday morning, met Paul our tour guide right beside the Europa hotel, which Keith had pointed out as being the number one most bombed hotel in Europe thanks to the IRA choosing it as its main target. We found out later that it was the number one location for journalists to stay while in Belfast documenting the conflict in Northern Irerland, so any time the IRA wanted to make sure an attack got international attention, it made (contextual) sense to bomb the very place those documenting everything were sleeping.

We set off, and as we left Belfast proper, the weather changed more drastically than I had almost ever seen. The world went gradually, peacefully grey, before turning black all at once. It was the kind of sky you looked up at and realized you were literally looking at your day’s luck changing. Behind us, bright blue, ahead of us was a Northern Irish storm. Still, we ploughed on, and in spite of Paul’s initial warnings that we’d have to skip our first stop due to the weather, we arrived at the Dark Hedges right on time after he decided we could pull it off after all.

The Dark Hedges are simply someone’s driveway - the property owner decided to line his drive with arching birch trees and what came of his agricultural endeavours are what are now frequently used as a set for a number of Game of Thrones episodes. The car and foot traffic has damaged a ton of the trees, so the road is now pedestrian only though some locals still drive on it illegally.

As we approached the mouth of the road, the wind picked up and a murder of crows leapt up from the grassy cornfield to our right, they swarmed and shouted above us as our little group walked under the first of the massive, arching trees. A few seconds later, massive wet snowflakes began to fall on us, and I remember thinking the place had a darkness about it regardless of the Game of Thrones association.

Up next, Bushmills distillery, the oldest Whiskey distillery in Northern Ireland (note, Whiskey is Irish, Whisky is Scottish). It’s a company that’s managed to weave itself in to the fabric of the country, but it also plays an integral role in the local community. In years where tourism was slow, it kept locals employed, even during times where the entire country’s economy was suffering. This distillery is so important to the people of NI that it’s even on their five pound notes, which I only noticed on our last day in the country while Giulia was paying for lunch.

On our way out of town, we stopped at Dunluce castle for a photo op, just as the sun began to shine again. Dare I say, I was getting hopeful about the weather?

15 minutes down the road, Paul let us off at the top of the walkway down to the Giant’s Causeway. You can take a shuttle down for 1 pound, but we felt brave in the newfound almost-sunshine. Ten minutes walking, and you make it down to NI’s number one most well-known tourist attraction, and just as we made it to the bottom, the weather welcomed us enthusiastically.

Through sideways rain and flying seafoam, G and I clambered all over the hexagonal basalt columns that make the causeway so famous. They were truly one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen, geologists theorize that they’re left over from a volcanic eruption but Paul offered a skeptical ‘well no one’s ever showed me no volcano,’ as his thoughts on that. Amusingly, clambering on top of slippery rocks brought some life back into me that I had forgotten I had, I wound up scaling the stones while G sort of watched me dance with my own demise, armed of course with her camera.

I’ve genuinely never felt more stupid than I did while standing atop some of those stones, with the wind, rain, and foam flying at me from every direction, I thought I was about to meet my end. Thankfully, the local guards stepped in and pulled us all off the rocks before anyone got too carried away, but they let us have more than a satisfactory amount of adventure before pulling the plug.

Giulia actually had to pay for the shuttle back to the top of the cliff face since my hands were too numb to sort out my change, we wound up in a local cafe where G ate and I used their fireplace as a personal full-body dryer. While I can’t comment on the food, the ambiance of The Nook more than made up for my inability to feel my extremities.

With the main event over, I was sort of skeptical I’d get much out of the rest of our day, but I was more than pleasantly surprised with how the rest of our adventure transpired. An hour later, unfazed by the weather at our last stop, we made it to the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, which marked the end of a 1km pathway from the park entrance. Paul parked and set us free once more, we paid for tickets to cross the 60 foot bridge waiting for us at the end of our walk, and we set off once again.

The walk actually wound up being the most beautiful part of the day, at least in my opinion, in spite of the weather descending beyond even what it was at the causeway.

There were literally gale force winds coming at us in every direction, there were hailstones collecting in the rain puddles we were dodging on the unpaved path, we were trying to hold onto railings that weren’t completely anchored into the muddy earth that framed our glistening, stony walkway.

Having feeling in my hands became a thing of the past, forget being dextrous enough to bother refastening my hood, it’s not like my hair was salvageable anyway.

Regardless, we were met with some of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen, Giulia’s little pink raincoat made for an easy subject.

The rope bridge was initially built so that fisherman could make it from one little island over to the mainland, with their fishing gear in tow. A few months ago, the bridge was redone to be made safer and steadier, but before those refurbishments it was actually much more similar to how it was when it was built however many years ago when it was still being used for its initial purpose. The bridge only had a railing on one side so that fisherman could stabilize themselves without having to hoist their fishing gear above shoulder height and out of the way of where a second railing would have been. The modern version of course has two railings, and none of the boards are missing from the footpath either, much to tourguide Paul’s chagrin.

Unfortunately, once we made it to the bridge, they (expectedly) told us they’d closed the walkway due to the rain, but we still were glad to have made it far enough to see it. On the way back, my Canadian companions caught up to us, one of them was bloodied and the other was sort of confused looking, but her expression was also blended in with a bit of pride. The bloody one announced to us she had just saved a local farmer’s sheep from being tangled in a broken fence, and I’ll admit that there have been few moments where I’ve been prouder to be Canadian than at the moment I was told my countrywoman was playing sheep Jesus.

A few hours back to the city, G and I braved local NI trains and made it to Keith’s neighbourhood of Holywood (pronounced like the California version oddly enough), where he fed us and took care of us, and ensured the two of us were warmer than we’d been all day.

Thursday morning while G slept in, I headed downstairs for a tea and wound up chatting to Brett at our hostel's reception, who recommended that we do a Black Taxi tour of the city that morning. For £35, you can take a tour of the city from a local who's lived through its recent past, including the years of tumult that lead up to things being as they are. I'll admit I was quite naive to the state of Northern Ireland before arriving in it, but a quick google got G and up to date before Walter, our driver arrived.

He started by showing us the area we were in, pointing out Queen's University Belfast as the main landmark nearby. He told us the story of its construction, and said that an identical but smaller version was built in nearby Glasgow. Apparently the smaller one was actually supposed to be built in Belfast, but the plans got swapped by 'accident' and the larger building wound up being put up. It's a beautiful building, and its responsible for attracting most of the people that reside in the area near the hostel, South Belfast.

From there, the real tour started, and we were shown a side of Belfast we were definitely not expecting. Though the conflict between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Ireland can be traced back hundreds of years, back to when the Protestants were first invited to live in England by the British, the modern cause stems back from a Protestant government in 1969 that was viewed as treating Catholic and Protestant communities unfairly. This government favoured the middle class, and did not allow for many reforms that would have made life easier for those not in it. That in itself might not have been a standalone issue, but the problem was that most of the Protestant population was included in the middle class, so they did not feel the unfairness as heavily as the Catholic, working-class population did. The closest thing the government did to reforming anything was when they put up what are called 'kitchen houses' throughout Belfast, they were called this because while these strings of connected houses had kitchens, they lacked bathrooms entirely. These were built externally, which meant you had to walk across the driveway to make use of communal restrooms. Modern modifications of those kitchen houses can be identified by the fact that they're a long rectangular stretch of conjoined buildings, but moreso by the addition of single small bathrooms at the back of each house in light of the progress that's been observed since they were first put up.

In any case, the reason this government was deemed unfair seems to be that the Protestant population felt as though everyone was being treated unfairly due to their mostly-middle class view of the state of things, while the Catholic population saw that the government was being much harder on the working-class in light of the fact that they made up the majority of it. This disagreement led to the conflict that still polarizes West Belfast today. This was what inspired the beginning of what's known as 'The Troubles' in 1969.

Soon after they began, the British stepped in to try and ensure that peace reigned between the two sides. To try and do that, they proposed building a 'peace wall' between the two warring sides, with the intent of leaving it up for 6 months while the conflict settled (spoiler alert, the wall is still up today). It was built on Cooper Street which naturally bisected the two communities. Protestants move slightly north, Catholics slightly south of their newfound border. The British remained involved until 1971, when the Irish Republican Army became hostile, and attacked some of the British soldiers there, at which point they removed themselves from the area as the conflict began to escalate. At the heart of the conflict was a Catholic desire to leave Britain, and a Protestant desire to remain a part of it.

We started our tour by driving into the Eastern, Catholic side of West Belfast, where we began seeing the first signs that not all was as idyllic as our initial impressions of Belfast led us to believe. Black cabs, identical to those in London, whizzed past us on the street. Walter told us how, during the peak time of conflict, public transport was both unreliable and frankly dangerous. Busses were being burned in protest, and so the IRA responded by purchasing a host of London's black cabs and driving them up and down the main roads themselves. This served a dual purpose, both as a transport system for the citizens that had been left without transport, but also as a way for the IRA to remain informed about everyone's movement throughout the city. Walter said that there's nothing going on that the IRA doesn't know, and that to this day, ex-IRA members drive the cabs on the Catholic side of the wall, even though busses now safely run.

The two sides of the wall are drastically different in ambiance and aesthetic. On both sides of the wall, local artists have turned to artwork to express their political inclinations. Walter intimated that while there were aspects of their statements he didn't agree with, the art and murals themselves were quite tastefully done. He explained a ton of them but I can't pretend I know every detail, but in brief, the polarization of both sides was palatable in the artwork. It's amazing how close two communities could live to each other while sharing such radically different ideals. The Catholic side had portraits of everyone from Fidel Castro to Che Guevara, there were pro-palestine signs and Irish flags painted beside portraits of hunger strikers who had died, text in Irish language and statements that peace is harder than war when it's not real resolution. The Protestant side was the blunt opposite, there were pro-Israel pieces beside pro-Britain murals, paintings of their lost hunger strikers and statements made by Protestant politicians acknowledging the wrongs of the government and addressing the conflict.

The loudest contrast, at least in my mind, was illustrated by two gardens with identical commemorative purposes, but for people on opposite sides of the same war. On the Catholic side, a garden commemorating lost members of the IRA stands tall near one of the four gates in the wall. On the Protestant side, a garden commemorating people killed by the IRA stands clearly on the main street of that side, they were identical in purpose but completely opposite in content.

The gate itself spans the entirety of West Belfast and still closes every single night, which Walter says is indicative of the mistrust between both communities. There are four gates, and each one of them is controlled by members of government from each side. One closes at 4PM, 7PM, 8PM and and the final one closes at 10PM. You can still cross from one side to the other after 10PM, but you need to pass through central Belfast in order to do so. It's an inconvenience that's one of the clearest signs that the peace we observed at the time has nothing to do with having reached a resolution, and only to do with having become exhausted with constant and persistent conflict.

Another element of that stark contrast was that while the Catholic side of the wall was incorporated into people's backyards, made up their fences and was generally undecorated and unmarked both by government and by citizens, the Protestant side was the complete opposite. Perhaps it has more to do with the way the wall was built, but the fact that the Catholic side of the wall is right up against a ton of houses and a factory somewhat limits it in terms of its function as a potential canvas.

That same limitation does not exist on the Protestant side, in that the wall is built on the far side of Cooper Street away from most of the buildings on that side of the divide. That distance perhaps led to artwork being justified, but regardless of the reasoning, Walter had come prepared with towels to dry the painted wall, and sharpies for us to sign it ourselves. Apparently it's painted over every year, and adding artwork is actually encouraged. Messages of peace, patriotism, hope and everything in between blanketed the blue base coat of paint, G and I added our own two cents to the nearly-covered wall.

We were dropped off at our hostel to pick up our stuff, and after a moments rest we were up again and off to find a final adventure before g caught her airport bus. We found ourselves at the towns city hall, which actually had a pretty excellent self guided tour, and was stunning enough just in terms of its construction.

Turns out there’s a lot more to know about Northern Ireland than I imagined. Of note, the entirety of Belfast’s governing body is currently female, and it isn’t even the first time it’s happened as it occurred once before back in 2014. There are still some words that are native Irish in origin that are used colloquially today (for some reason I didn’t take note of any though, not my finest journalism). There are also some remnants of Shakespeare’s English due to the fact that, well, England and its neighbours are an island and therefore somewhat separated from mainland linguistic dilution. I can hardly understand some Irish at the best of moments though, perhaps that’s why?

There’s also strong desire (or stated desire at least) for peace between the two still-warring sides of the troubles conflict. Like I said, it’s not that peace reigns at the moment because a problem has been solved, it’s more about the maintenance of a ceasefire than it is about having found a solution to what ails both sides.

Inside city hall was an entire room dedicated to statements from those who had lost people on both sides of the conflict, profound and acute is the desire for peace, the universality of human loss the clear undertone of what we read.

I know most of you are probably wondering where the titanic stuff is going to come in, hate to disappoint but we elected to skip that part of the city. We did learn a bit while at the city hall, most notably that the titanic sunk only 12 days after leaving port, but beyond that t and I were mostly interested in everybody else the town had to offer. We left city hall and meandered to whites tavern, the second oldest tavern in Belfast.

G caught her bus but I found one more adventure in the form of the linen hall library, which was dedicated to documenting the political comedy that surrounded the troubles themselves.

The whole four story affair is decorated with tapestries depicting artistic interpretations of both sides of the conflict, and while I had to leave the members area I still managed to find somewhere to sit and enjoy a national geographic while waiting for my turn to set off.

My flight was a mere 45 minutes long, and before I knew it I was aboard the bus to Edinburgh after having landed in cold and clear Scotland. No borders, no problem, I was with my friend Rachel in the centre of the city within an hour of landing. The next morning, our grand foot tour of the city began, but only after a tea and a coffee at Rach's favourite cafe. From there, we hiked up Arthur's seat, which is probably what Edinburgh is most famous for if not for it being the place Harry Potter was conceptualized and partly written.

It was a fairly painless hike and the reward was one of the most beautiful views I've seen on any of my travels, especially of a bustling city.

Rach and I weren't exactly in tip top shape (she was coming down with a cold, I was still running on nearly 0 fuel thanks to my protesting organs) so we took it slow, but we still managed to somehow tally almost 30000 steps worth of exploration that day. We headed down through town to see the gorgeous centre.

Basically, the entire city looked like the photo below in different sized versions. The whole place is just a connected series of spires, stained glass, and time-stained stone. I wound up taking so many photos Rach started to make fun of me, so here’s just one of them.

From there, we headed to Dean village, which is pretty much the cutest little area I could ever imagine, and was worth every bit of trespassing we did to snap our photos.

From there, Rach took me to the Elephant House cafe, which became famous thanks to JK Rowling having penned her first book from the comfort of its cozy back room. Out front, there's actually a metal plaque outlining that JK had been there.

The vibe inside was actually something I would have dug myself had I had more time to appreciate it - there was even a sign that said something along the lines of "we have no WiFi, talk to each other, pretend it's 1995" which made me smile. When you look out the back window of the place, Edinburgh's castle looms above you, and apparently that was the view that JK saw when she thought of Hogwarts. After seeing the town she used as inspiration for her novel, it all sort of makes sense how Harry's world came to be.

Rach and I ended the day at a Jazz bar with a couple of her friends, and though I didn't know it at the time, we were at one of the most popular Jazz spots in the city. I suppose that's the magic of a small town though, it's really not hard to hit the best places when everything's so perfectly close together.

Saturday morning, my last day with Rach, we woke up and stopped at two farmer's markets on the way to the Surgeon's Museum which was beyond incredible if not a little draining considering its jarringly painful-looking content, combined with the fact that it was the most cognitively engaging thing I had done since arriving in London I think. I couldn't take photos because the specimens were human, but I strongly recommend that place to anyone who's in Edinburgh with a few hours and £7 to kill.

Last but not least, Rachel made sure I had the ultimate taste of Scotland. This dish is called haggis, nips and tatties, and that's short for haggis, turnips, and mashed potatoes. It's served with gravy, and this little trifecta is a delicious, hearty, and earthy meal if I've ever seen one. The haggis takes a second to wrap your head around, but I promise it's at least worth the try. We cleaned the whole plate off of course, I'm not sure how my stomach felt about my first real meal consisting of a combination of oats, sheep organs and suet, but my mouth was pretty happy regardless.

With two minutes to spare, Rach walked me to my bus and before I knew it, I was back at the airport with years of time to kill (typical me). I was reminded later that evening that no matter the weather on the ground, the world above the clouds can be more glorious than words can convey.

After landing that evening, I had a quiet shift on Sunday with none other than my little Giulia, who made my return to real life about as palatable as it could have been.

Next week, a really out of the ordinary dose of luxury I never in a million years imagined I'd be getting!

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igsy-blog · 7 years

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reTHG: The Hunger Games - Chapter Three: Many partings

(Last week I forgot to respond to one of the more interesting prompts: how many times would my name have been in the reaping at age 16. I’m the oldest of six siblings, so my number is pretty impressive. I started to do the math on it then realized it was complicated because I had two siblings born during the ages of 12 and 15, so my numbers changed. Also, my birthday is July 30, so I would have just missed the reaping the year I turned 12; I had to factor my younger siblings into that equation, too (both siblings born in the latter half of the year, after the reapings). Anyway, I would have had 7 family members for the first three years of my reapings and 8 for the last four. By age 16, that would have meant (with tesserae) 8+8+8+9+9 ... 42.)

I’ve spent the first half of the week taking care of a sick hubby and the second half down with one of the most hellish colds I’ve ever had, so this might be a bit scattershot. I read the chapters in bed, trying to dictate notes on my ipad. LOL. My ipad understood me perfectly every time I called it a POS, but the rest is near gibberish. Let’s see what I can piece back together:

General musings on Chapter 3 - Why don’t more tributes try to escape? Interesting contrast between Prim, who can’t learn how to hunt and Madge, whom Katniss actually teaches to shoot, later.

I think that, because we were talking about how Katniss describes things - or not - her lingering over the velvet of the couch in the Justice Building stood out to me. Velvet is both a bit luxurious and, to contemporary readers, a bit old-fashioned, especially in terms of furnishings. But here it is not just an interesting tactile fabric - and comforting to her, because of its texture - but a reminder that Katniss’ impoverished life has meant she just doesn’t have the vocabulary for everything. Velvet - a remnant of her mother’s more prosperous past - is one of the only fabrics she knows by name. In Catching Fire, it’s also the first fabric she can call to mind when trying to converse with Johanna (CF Chapter 15). And then in Mockingjay there is a surprisingly similar scene (I hadn’t noticed the similarity before), in which Peeta bites down on a velvet pillow to manage stress (MJ Chapter 23).

Katniss’ feelings about her mother and depression is really better explored in more depth, but I always feel so much for them both here. Hits home.

It’s funny how both Peeta and his father sort of silently express unrequited love through carbohydrates. Though, if he’s carrying cookies around anyway … maybe to give to one of his sons in case they get reaped? (Or perhaps he had time to grab a few and run back over to the Justice Building? - although, no, presumably he said good-bye to Peeta first.)

Madge and Gale. These are the really interesting farewells from this chapter. With Madge’s good-bye and insistent gift of the pin, you get maybe the strongest hint that there is an existing rebellion and that the mockingjay is a pre-existing symbol for it, and that Madge has some knowledge of it. You can explain this away by saying that perhaps Madge just really wanted to honor the memory of her aunt, who died at the same age. But Rue’s response to it later (“That’s how I decided I could trust you.” THG Chapter 16), and the swift adoption of it by both the district and Capitol rebels hint at a deeper history. (Also, if I recall correctly, there actually isn’t any mention of Maysilee wearing the pin when Katniss and Peeta watch the video of the 2nd Quell.) But Katniss - reflecting on the anti-Capitol symbolism of the bird later - reminds us of the previous rebellion and the mockingjay being the literal child of this one failure of the Capitol during the war.

I love this part of the story, which touches quickly on a lot of different things that are going to be so important and/or meaningful later. We learn here about muttations, the genetic engineering of living creatures into weapons, and how the rebellion turned one of these creatures - the jabberjay, a distortion of the mockingbird - back against them. This is, in so many ways, what the Capitol keeps on doing to the district children in the Games - turning them into weapons against each other, and tools of oppression over their own homes. In turn, the Rebellion now takes the disfigured remnants - the Victors - and builds a resistance movement with them. It is without exaggeration that, eventually, Katniss and Peeta will recognize each other as tools for the warring sides and label each other mutts - and that they will both finally call themselves mutts.

I love the description we get here of her father and the lesson of the mockingjay - the resiliency of nature and the beauty of song. It is so sweet - knowing that Katniss figuratively becomes the Mockingjay - learning how fond he was of them, and in turn of their respect, reverence for them. At this moment, she conflates her father with the mockingjay, a protector … and the pin itself, against the dark green fabric, reminds her of the woods - the place both of safety and defiance; the place to feed oneself (to not succumb to prescribed hunger) and to shout about the Capitol. Katniss becomes the image of the pin that she initially imagines as her father and this is - not a hint - but another suggestion about the pre-existing rebellion and that Katniss may also be a child of it. (On more important matters, this sets up why Katniss is able to believe Peeta’s story, later, of how he came to have a crush on her.)

Briefly back to Madge - mentioned in another thread - whether or not she has an actual role in the current version of the rebellion, she fills an important role in the story as the carrier of the rebels’ symbol from one generation to the next.

Now to Gale. Here we can see the immediate effect of his introduction of a sexual component in their relationship (even if the suggestion is just in her head). She says that maybe there is nothing romantic between them, BUT … she steps into his arms and she describes him in sensual terms (in a similar scene in Mockingjay, this storyline will close). There are two small, equally important, separations that occur here. First, she separates from him bodily, even as she steps into his embrace - from thinking of him as her other half, as being one person with her in the woods - and this causes her to look at him differently. His body was familiar to her down to the sound of his heartbeat. Now that they are parting, she actually feels his heartbeat, lean and hard-muscled.

So, there is potential between them here; it’s been sparked into being on the very last day of her normal life. What happens with this awakening is that it becomes an early point of comparison between him and Peeta in her head. Long before she allies with him and plays her part of the star-crossed lovers strategy, she sees Peeta through eyes that have been opened up by her new understanding of Gale: “... I push the whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts.” (THG Chapter 15) That’s the moment she understands (on some level) that they are sexual rivals.

The other separation is the small crack that is now revealed between Gale’s and Katniss’ feelings about the arena (as she will later put it, theory that must be translated into actions). Gale encourages her to embrace her ability to win the Games, citing her prowess as a hunter. In a conversation that will become more weighted in MJ, he asks her how different it will really be to kill people instead of animals? She admits that it won’t be - if she could forget that they are people. Her “problem” is that she will not be able to do this. And this argument will widen into a gulf between them later.

Just a quick aside for a line I never really noticed before, but grabbed me this time: “We have to stand for a few minutes in the doorway of the train while the cameras gobble up our images.”

Headcanon about Haymitch. Before diving into Chapter Four … what is my favorite headcanon about Haymitch? Well … I think he was a very reluctant rebel. Not that he wasn’t loyal to it when it came to him, but he’s not naturally a rabble-rouser, nor one who would necessarily choose to work in teams. A drunk is a horrible liability to a secret organization; so much so, that sometimes I’ve contemplated that he really wasn’t. But there is too much evidence to the contrary. I do think that, having lost what he lost, he would have been perfectly content to drink himself into oblivion. I think the prior winner from District 12 was probably a fairly early winner of the Games and died within a few years of Haymitch winning. I think Haymitch made some game attempts to mentor his tributes for the first few years, but gave up when he sensed that he would never get a winner (and I think he was somewhat disgusted at never getting tributes who, like him, were “fighters”). I like to think of Chaff as the person who saved Haymitch from full-on, disastrous carousing in the Capitol after his tributes were dead.

#reTHG

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