Michelle!

[brynnsasha191]

One thing I love about sotr is how much Haymitch and Maysilee matched each others capitol hating freak. Them deciding to paint their own posters, deciding to be loose canons and as wild as their horses, deciding to be rebellious victors, and not allowing themselves to be treated like animals

Maysilee said "jump", and Haymitch said "how high?"

[cxosmxos-deactivated20250528]

inner monologues of the hunger games characters: coriolanus snow: deranged insecure manipulative sociopath with every attachment issue ever haymitch abernathy: dork who happens to be charismatic and tends to switch between smart and stupid constantly katniss everdeen: autistic

[optmlx]

mister youngest child peeta mellark being in a team consisting of badly adjusted eldest children™ is bad enough situation hunger games aside

[fionas-frenzy]

PEOPLE. IN THE HUNGER GAMES MOVIE THERES A SHOT WHERE HAYMITCH WONT WATCH THE CHARIOTS.

IM GOING TO BE SICK BECAUSE WE KNOW WHY NOW

[enigmasandepiphanies]

I am, as the novelists say, in need of seaside air

[mournfulroses]

Simone de Beauvoir, from a diary entry featured in Diary of a Philosophy Student

[pinkbairds]

haymitch's sentiment of there being no winners, just survivors is so important to me because all of them lost what truly matters to them as a result of winning

katniss with prim, peeta with his sense of self, haymitch with his girl and family oh coriolanus snow you're sick just wait until I catch you

[strawberryfanaticccc]

haymitch is the little kid that’ll sit next you on a bench and overshare about everything going on in his life and then leave you bewildered,

while katniss is the type of little kid that sits down next to you on a bench and you feel vaguely unsettled by her presence there because she’s so quiet.

[mournfulroses]

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Milena Jesenka featured in "Letters to Milena,

[sothisispoetry]

iconic things suzanne collins did in sunrise on the reaping:

had haymitch declare himself an lgbt+ ally

confirmed snow is still habitually crashing out over lucy gray 40 years later

made me cry over the regina george of district 12

[buttercups-revenge]

The (un-fucking-hinged) conversation that Snow had with Haymitch REALLY puts Peeta’s hijacking (SPECIFICALLY against Katniss) into perspective. Snow could have hijacked him to hate the rebellion, or district 12 or even himself. But no, that old loser just HAD to finally prove to one of those district 12 boys that their girl didn’t really love them, JUST like his didn’t really love him. Was it a smart move to potentially have Peeta attack Katniss on sight? Yes. But more importantly, it allowed Snow to control Peeta in a way that let him live out his own fantasies about being unloved and having power over his girl.

[sheisoverhere]

Peeta Mellark is an integral member of the four D12 victors. He is literally the sunset on the reaping! How is this not clear? I’ve never wanted to report people for bad literary analysis more and I’m only half joking. It has forced me to commit a cardinal sin: analyze in anger!

1. Him being chosen by absolute accident is the point. Not only does he represent every single other tribute who simply gets chosen because they live in a messed up country but he represents how even with some odds being in your favor (older siblings, merchant family, being white, being popular, etc.) you are still very likely to be victimized by the oppressive structure of Panem.

2. When Haymitch says, “But she was smarter than me, or luckier” - the luck is all the people around Katniss who created the circumstances for her to lead a successful revolution (her father teaching her to hunt, the arena having woods, Rue healing her with leaves, Thresh not killing her, Haymitch consistently giving her support, her mother teaching her aspects of medicine, on and on and on) and Peeta is the number one, most important part of her luck in the first book. She has someone in the games actively putting her life before his… are you kidding? There is legitimately no better luck than that.

3. Even if we take Katniss out of it, Peeta is so impactful as a victor because most of his scenes would not be cut/doctored. What’s there to edit out? Instead, the viewers get a full view of him loving a girl so selflessly, using trickery and strategy instead of violence, keeping himself alive through art, joking on literal death’s door, and sharing so much of himself with the audience it becomes harder for them not to see him as a real human boy. How rare do you think that is for the games? Haymitch and LGB are caricatures of themselves in the games, playing roles that flatten them down. Even Katniss becomes one dimensional on screen without Peeta (and Rue, of course). It is also heavily implied that he does not kill anyone during the games (in a straightforward way) and even if you count Cato or the girl from 8 or even foxface, it’s never him hunting them or seeking out a kill - again how rare do you think that is to see on screen for Games viewers?

4. I didn’t think this needed to be said but: Katniss dies without Peeta in the first games. a) she goes for the bow and dies in the bloodbath; b) she is hunted and killed by Careers; c) she is killed by game makers because there’s no love story angle to keep them from just burning her entirely; d) she dies from tracker jacker stings or Cato because Peeta doesn’t defend her or tell her to run… I could go on…

5. But even if she does win and wins alone - the victory means as much (I would argue less than) any other rebellious victor winning, certainly less than Haymitch’s win. The biggest rebellion for their games is that two of them win! This is legit the only thing that distinguishes them from any other sympathetic, kind child who would have won the games. Like if Haymitch or Finnick or Wiress winning isn’t jarring enough for the Games to end… why do you think Katniss killing Peeta and winning solo would be? It would not.

6. And finally, I cannot stress this enough: There is no peaceful end to the rebellion or the trilogy without Peeta. “Peeta’s a whiz with fires” (HG) for a reason! Collins, over and over, shows us how fire can get out of control and destroy even those who are innocent and who you love (Gale, Beete, Peeta’s family, Haymitch’s family). If everyone really burns, there’s no one to clean the ashes. The reason not everyone burns is because of people like Peeta who can coax the flames in a way that is nurturing and consistent. I mean…. “Peeta fashioned some kind of incubator” is such an obvious detail. Those goslings don’t hatch without Peeta, life does not go on in peace and joy without Peeta.

It is no coincidence that when Maysilee says Lenore Dove got the “jump on us all” (in being a rebel), she is referring to LD using orange paint to make protest art!

We must stop pushing Peeta Mellark out of the narrative! He is literally the sunset on the reaping!

[seaglassdinosaur]

Okay but it’s fucking brilliant that one of the themes of the book was about the distortion of history.

Usually prequels are a dangerous thing to write because unless they’re planned out well in advance, they risk contradicting lore in the main series. Even still, we knew barely anything about Haymitch’s games. They were the perfect stomping ground for new information, with a rough series of events but without a close temporal connection to the main books.

But though she had this freedom and safety net, while she could have just written a story that aligned with what we knew, Collins leaned into the idea of contradicting past lore head on and made it the damn thesis of the book; that yeah, actually, it did play out entirely differently from how the characters saw it, and yes that contradicts what you were told, that’s the point.

We didn’t really know what happened in the 50th games until we read it from Haymitch’s perspective, because what little information we did have was spliced up and edited. The video evidence was processed through the Capital, and twisted to serve their purposes.

Tackling that idea of history being written by those in power with a notoriously inconsistent medium? Goddamn, writer that you are, Suzanne Collins.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Hmm actually Lucy Gray is different from Haymitch and Katniss and Peeta because her tragedy is she caused the games to continue. If the games hadn't become entertaining, they wouldn't have continued and she made it entertaining because she was an entertainer - she saved herself but she doomed dozens more because she performed too well and it allowed the Capitol to make the games a performance in the later years. Haymitch's tragedy is that he couldn't end the games, Lucy Gray's is that she continued them.

[ghostinwinterfell]

lucy gray taking a bow after her reaping song. haymitch applauding snow while presenting him with louella’s corpse. katniss twirling around in a flaming dress in front of the entire country. peeta painting a portrait of rue for the gamemakers.

district twelve really said, “you want a show? we’ll give you a show.”

[paperlit]

Katniss *thinking about the Mockingjay pin*: Wow this was Madge’s aunt’s, what a precious and valuable family heirloom, it must have been special to her, I’ll treasure it forever.

Maysilee *thinking about the Mockingjay pin*: this bird is ugly and stupid I’m literally never going to wear this.

[cryingmyeyesviolet]

Lucy Gray should be proud to know she haunted that evil man every damn day of his fucking miserable life