venic bitch by lana is sooo post game haymitch in a world where sunshine didnt get reaped (but still got together)
okay yes 😭 i’m so grateful i get to talk about this scenario for a second time this week.
like i mentioned in this ask, haymitch and sunshine would have a very contentious dynamic in the immediate post games years. even in a world where they’re both victors, those first couple of years aren’t exactly easy on their relationship. in this case, from haymitch’s pov, most of their conflict would come from a place of wanting to keep her safe—ergo pushing her away—but also desperately needing to be near her.
i think venice bitch captures some of that while also highlighting a softer aspect, especially past those “growing pain” years. sunshine is about the only loving and consistently safe person he allows himself to have in his life. it’s not so much that she heals or “fixes” him; rather, by allowing love into his life, and subsequently choosing to believe he still deserves it, haymitch begins to mend some of his broken pieces, even as his trauma persists. which is exactly his arc with katniss and peeta in both canon and itsdr—it’s just a different kind of love ofc.
the post chorus emphasizes that to me. even as “summer fades,” as haymitch is painfully aware of how temporary things are in life and in panem, he stops expecting that of their relationship. also “oh god, miss you on my lips” is him every time he’s in the capitol. the only thing getting him by (aside the alcohol and the friends he does have in his fellow victors) is the hope of getting back to her.
and speaking of lana songs, cherry is absolutely to sunshine as venice bitch is to haymitch 🥰
If I remember corectly Plutarch tried to „turn” Sunshine into a symbol of rebelion (like the mockingjay) or smth like that (correct me if im wrong). If she would survive her games with Haymitch, what would happend to her when Peeta and Katniss come into the picture?? Would there be 2 mockingjays or something like that? Sorry if it doesnt have any sense 😗
it makes complete sense, don’t worry!! plutarch does want to turn sunshine into a symbol for the revolution, but haymitch is also a contender like in canon—there are layers to it.
most of the answers are found in his conversations with haymitch in ch19: beetee took an interest in haymitch as an asset to the rebellion, not necessarily as a symbol. plutarch thought similarly; haymitch was very much set up to be the sacrificial lamb while sunshine was the one he banked on getting out of the games. she ultimately would’ve been the face (and spectacle) of the revolution, past this single rebellion, had things played out how plutarch wanted.
in this scenario, haymitch would’ve been made out as a martyr, and there would’ve been other rebel leaders hailed in some way. but with haymitch dead, sunshine wouldn’t be a willing symbol AT ALL 💀
although katniss is the mockingjay, other rebels are featured in propos and made into symbols of sorts through them, although less front-facing. finnick and gale, for instance, play important roles in the public eye at points. the entire star squad is selected with the purpose of appeasing to the spectacle of the war to in turn draw support for the revolution (like haymitch says in the book, they wanted as many young and attractive victors on the squad as possible).
katniss, as the mockingjay, is used to unify the districts and represent the people they claim to fight for. she’s the most important symbol of the revolution, but she’s not the only person who plays a role in it on camera or off. sunshine would’ve occupied the same purpose—as plutarch says, she isn’t the first or last intended symbol.
by the time katniss and peeta are in the picture, sunshine is more than likely portrayed as the ideal victor to the districts. sunshine finds subtle ways to rebel, and she certainly has a foot in the budding revolution prior to their games. but to the public eye, she’s been subdued. once the revolution is fully underway, katniss remains the only mockingjay.
i think having two mockingjays would take away from katniss’s role, how she basically fell was forced into it, and it’d weaken the point of how many trials there’s been to find the right face. sunshine does likely participate in some propos, due to her being a popular public figure, and mostly works behind the scenes. they’d probably bond over the similar ways they’ve been used as spectacles though 😕
I just know if Wyatt survived longer and ended up teaming up with Haymitch/Maysilee/Sunshine again after panache is killed, his ass would be making odds about the probability of Haymitch and Sunshine confessing to each other 💀
LMFAO by that point, he’d be more concerned (and fed up) by their tiptoeing around each other than the careers 💀
i mentioned in an ask the other day that wyatt and sunshine would’ve likely bonded more one-on-one if he lived longer, and he SO would’ve filled burdock’s shoes in prompting/teasing her about it. with more awareness of the fact that she has feelings for him of course.
he and maysilee would be over it after having already spent days in the apartment with them. it isn’t long before he starts spewing things out (he already kinda calculates odds on their obliviousness in the bonus chapter “won’t say i’m in love” 😭)
maysilee: there’s a better chance of silka growing a brain than those two finally doing something.
wyatt after analyzing every longing look between them in the last hour: they will by midnight, and she’s making the first move.
i just finished most of the series and cried so hard, i did NOT see that coming (i did but denied it) they are soo cute 😭😭
despite writing it, i was also in denial about sunshine’s fate for a long time 😭 i heavily debated keeping her alive, but i set up sunshine’s death from the beginning, and i knew it would’ve been personally and narratively dissatisfying not to follow through after building it up so much. that’s why i have the sunshine lives!au planned though!!
i really appreciate seeing all the love for the story and sunshine/haymitch!! and i hope you’ve enjoyed the last chapters <33
not sure if this has already been said but ‘damned’ by miguel is so sickly sunshine and haymitch
it has not been said so thank you for making the comparison!! it suits them too well 😭😭
my mind immediately goes to haymitch’s perspective while listening to the song, especially after sunshine’s death. there’s the sentiment that he’s damned to love (and grieve) her forever, and at the same time, her love for him is what damned him to that fate. in haymitch’s perspective, it’s mostly a punishment.
yet, despite the negative connotation of “damned,” the song also conveys a sort of acceptance of the potential consequences or pain that comes from love. their connection outweighs whatever fear or hopeless they might feel, and it isn’t really damnation at all.
i also think parts of the song fit sunshine’s perspective, and overall describes the deep pull they have towards each other.
I imagine this was hay when he saw Peeta caress Katniss’s braid at the end of their first games right before 🫐🫐🫐
he was in that mentor center fighting the urge not to end it then and there—mags and beetee are watching him with the suicide center on speed dial 💀 obviously that whole sequence gives him flashbacks, but i can see him fixating on that detail most of all and thinking specifically about that last night in the trees with sunshine, caressing her hair while they fell asleep…
and you know that in the seconds before the gamemakers announced their victory, haymitch probably thought it a good thing that at least they were dying together :/ (he also hated himself a little more for one, losing them both, and two, not thinking to do that back then with sunshine)
Was listening to Sienna by The Marías and thought of Sunshine + Haymitch 🥲
The song is about “Sienna,” the singer and her ex’s hypothetical daughter if they had stayed together and had a future.
Obviously Sunshine + Haymitch wouldn’t be “exes,” but it plays with the idea of “what could’ve been” or their potential future had sunshine survived. (if they had normal lives)
I like to think that the song switches POV’s based on different lyrics, which is somehow 10x more heartbreaking 💔
Love hearing your perspective on music and lyrics relating to Hay+Sun🫶
first of all, i absolutely agree that the pov switches during certain lyrics. at some points, it also feels like both of their perspectives at once. “I live under your eyelids / I’ll always be yours” = sunshine and her assurances that haymitch will never truly be without her, even though they don’t get to spend a life together.
“I’ll watch the sunset wearing all your clothes / I can feel you with me like I did before” = haymitch’s acceptance and continuous longing for a future with sunshine. and then the whole bridge is them simply talking to each other, envisioning what their future and children might be like 😕 how they picture them embodying all they find endearing in each other, all they admire…
honorable mention of the last line: “see her face in the forest, then it disappears” is absolutely haymitch in that alleyway initially thinking katniss is a hallucination of their daughter. i HAVE to mention it again bc what the hell possessed me when i wrote that 😭 i am not immune from the pain i cause y’all…
omg im re reading and loving the bond between sunshine and effie and now im wondering how effie felt when katniss volunteered for prim.
(like did she remember sunshine off the bat? or did it take a little while to remember where she knew the last name everdeen from? i would THINK she would remember her first hunger games because she wasn’t even a stylist then, so you would think she would remember it even more)
AND how she felt when katniss had to go up through the tubes BOTH hunger games…
i know she was sick to her stomach (the second time the most) having to watch the niece of a girl she once knew
oooh thank you for giving me the chance to think and talk about effie and sunshine! they’re fascinating in the sense that they know each other for less than twenty-four hours, but that brief period has a deep narrative and individual impact on them both.
sunshine doesn’t fully trust effie, but she recognizes her heart isn’t malicious and certainly trusts her enough to directly talk about haymitch with her and inadvertently ask that she look after her. past her distrust and dislike for effie’s insensitivity and ignorance, sunshine does appreciate her. would she have lived, i think they’d develop a sibling dynamic almost similar to johanna and katniss’s.
on the flip side, effie does remember sunshine, but i think she primarily does so through the lens of that ask/promise to take care of haymitch. i imagine the referenced memory in ch20 (of haymitch snapping at effie for mentioning sunshine) probably happened like eight years down the line. so sunshine definitely didn’t fade into the backdrop of tributes for her so easily, and that is in part due to what you said (how could she not remember her first hunger games as a stylist turned escort?).
also, i love elizabeth banks’s portrayal of effie, but effie in the og trilogy is simply not likable 😭 which is fine. she’s not meant to be, and yet, you also understand/empathize with her the same way katniss does. sotr recontextualizes her character, but it doesn’t absolve the awful things she says to the tributes or her wilful compliance.
this to say, effie’s development from sotr to the og series makes sense when read as her spiraling further into the propaganda machine through her firsthand involvement in the games over the years. bringing this back to sunshine, i’d say that’s part of why she mostly only remembers her in relation to haymitch. somewhere down the line, effie clearly stops seeing the tributes as people. which is easy for someone who’s been taught not to view them as more than war spoils anyways.
katniss and peeta wake her up to that, and in this case, katniss specifically forces her to recall sunshine as the fully realized person she was. it does take effie a minute to connect the dots—both because she remembers sunshine through haymitch and really only by her first name. the resemblance between them is what puts it into perspective.
from the second quell onward, effie most definitely has to reconcile with the games for what they are, and having to witness the repetition of fate through sunshine and her niece(s)
I wonder If Haymitch ever realized that Maysilee had feelings for Sunshine 🤔 Also whad do you think about Sunshine/Maysilee/Wyatt as a trio?? 😗😗 The fanfic is bomb btw thanks for your work dear great kind author 😛💕
oh i love these questions so much!!!
short answer: he did pick up on maysilee’s feelings. long answer: haymitch lowkey has an inkling all along. besides oliver, maysilee is the only other person we see haymitch express outright jealousy of in regards to her dynamic with sunshine. that’s cause he subconsciously suspects some more than platonic vibes there. he clearly doesn’t give it much in depth thought, but his mindset is “i know why i’m staring at her and committed to knowing everything about her, but why are you? 🤨”
i think much further down the line after the games, during a moment of reminiscence or something, it probably clicks more obviously to him. it’s interesting to think about how the dynamic between the three may have shifted had haymitch known more outright. but i truly doubt it’d change much. though he would be jealous, i think his personal care/love for maysilee would’ve outweighed any ill will. he wants maysilee to be safe and alive, and that matters more than her having feelings for sunshine too.
as for the trio of maysilee/wyatt/sunshine, they’re very dear to me even though we hardly get time with all three of them together. even though sunshine was hesitant to ally with them for all of five minutes, they don’t play about being on the same team, and they really do have each other’s backs
wyatt and sunshine’s friendship is a much subtler development, but i think the morning right before the games shows how their dynamic (and the trio as a whole) would’ve unraveled had he lived longer. they likely would’ve bonded more had he lived longer 😭
I don’t know if you’ve gotten this song rec before but Without You by Oh Wonder is so haymitch and his loneliness after sunshine
i have not gotten this rec before but i love it!! on top of encompassing his loneliness, it also puts into perspective just how long haymitch is left in his state of isolation and grief and longing 😕 and play on light/darkness is sooo good
“so you know / that I've been closing my eyes / love me slow, hallucinating / swinging me all of your light” = both his literal hallucinations (+ attempts to hallucinate her) and how he feels like a zombie going through life without sunshine’s light
“GUYS SHES ALIVE” I say as they drag me into a padded room
But seriously imagine if sunshine did survive but was hidden away in the capital and is exploited similarly to Finnick. Then haymitch and sunshine reunite after the events of the 75th games.
Yes this is the biggest stretch and very unrealistic but IMAGINE the angsty reunion 🥲
Really adore your writing btw! 🫶
do y’all enjoy causing me distress (this is a two way street and i love seeing your sinister ideas)
it might be unrealistic for the current canon, but that’s what we have au’s for! let’s pretend for a second that sunshine still stabs herself with the poisoned glass, and it’s slow to reach her heart. she passes out, and isn’t breathing noticeably, and in haymitch’s panicked eyes, has died.
or more likely, haymitch stops her from using the poison, but she’s bleeding out same as him, and they decide to blow up the arena together. haymitch wakes up to the news that she died in the explosion and it’s played off as a result of her wound from maritte. whatever the case, she’s “dead.”
now, there are so many excruciatingly tragic possibilities with your route. snow clearly projects lucy gray onto sunshine. more than that, his pov reveals that he vaguely considers sunshine to be a potential “do-over” lucy gray. he’d absolutely take advantage of her potential in such a way. even better that the world thinks she’s dead so it makes it all the easier to break her. not to mention, she’d serve as a great secret weapon over haymitch, who is crippled and subdued by her supposed death. but should his family’s not be enough to keep him in check, he can always take sunshine out of her cage.
and that leads to so many questions: would sunshine and finnick ever cross paths in their “line of work”? where exactly is she hidden and does plutarch know? how would she have changed over twenty-five years of this? and exactly what struggles would she and haymitch have to work through when they reunite?
off the top of my head, their exact reunion happens when peeta, johanna, and annie are rescued. she was taken to the center and kept there with the intent of her eventual execution being broadcast, specifically to mess with haymitch. after he secures katniss and peeta, plutarch pulls him aside and tells him that while the rescue team was there, they found something else. someone. he takes haymitch to a hospital room, and when he finds sunshine there, well…
someone also mentioned a while back that they hoped sunshine would be rescued by plutarch and taken into thirteen after the quell. and that’s probably a much less painful possibility but equally angsty for her and haymitch. I’d be so down to write about either of these scenarios though, so let me know your thoughts :)
i recently saw the odyssey, and while i have critiques, i ultimately enjoyed it. but the relevance of bringing it up is that it got me thinking of this au again and how insanely odysseus and penelope coded haymitch and sunshine would be!! “would you fall in love with me?” from epic has been the background to many an edit of this reunion scenario 😭
long story short, i’m very tempted to develop this idea into a oneshot eventually if it’s of any interest to y’all
obviously burdocks death haunts most everybody in the series and he deserved to finish raising his family
But at the same time I’m glad he didn’t have to relive that trauma of losing another one of his girls when katniss volunteers for prim
and also he’s with his other half again so 🫠🫠
(imagining that reunion 😭)
it’s a blessing as much as it is a curse… he already lost his twin to the games, his cousin to the capitol’s tyranny, seeing one of his daughters follow similar footsteps—the one who resembles said twin to a painful degree—would be a torture he shouldn’t have to endure.
it’s also very bittersweet to think about how burdock describes having a piece of his soul waiting for him earth-side when he was born, and how that same piece is waiting for him in death too 😕 as for that reunion, i imagine it going something like this:
Burdock feels the heat on his skin, but he isn’t burning anymore. The sun isn’t sweltering like the fire, which lasted a handful of seconds before the darkness took him. So fast, he barely had time to notice his insides splintering from every gap left in him.
He’s whole again, under the spring sky peeking from behind the evergreen trees he taught his oldest girl to pick apart from others. Like his papa taught him and you in these very woods.
But the longer the sky remains stagnant, the more Burdock realizes he isn’t in the woods surrounding Twelve. The instantaneous fire, the explosion, the moments leading up to it weren’t tricks of the mind or a dream gone bad. And where Katniss should be, asking him to sing a tune or carry her on his shoulders, your voice finds him instead.
“Burdie.”
When did Burdock last hear that out of you firsthand? The morning of the reaping? The seconds before your separation? The last night home as he braided your hair? Over time, he lost the ability to pinpoint the memory. But it doesn’t matter much now, in the reality of your presence.
His stubborn, bright twin, who could never be taken. Who is here, whole and in front of him. Waiting for him to gain his bearings. Ready as you always were for him to catch up.
When he does, pushing up from the dirt on knees that were aged and cracking just the other night, he barrels into you.
The second he reaches you, your arms wrapped tightly around each other, Burdock thinks of all the joys of his life, from childhood to fatherhood. Of the days where you were just a room away and those you existed only in the missing piece of his soul. Those years spent mourning you fade until they’re a blip in time. Nothing when held beside the joy.
You pull back, flicking the upside of his head. He feels no pain but winces for the sake of your intended point. “You couldn’t have held out another few years?”
Burdock can’t take your scolding seriously when you’re crying buckets of relief. “You think I’m happy to see you?” His voice catches. He moves to shove you and ends up pulling you into another hug. Your hair tickles his nose. It’s the same length it was before those Games, and he notices then that his is as long as right before he joined the mines. “Twenty years is longer than twelve minutes.”
You nod against his shoulder, and Burdock translates the gesture of your smile when you part. You know full well.
“C’mon.” You nudge your head in the direction of a mossy pathway, leaving your face teary. “Mama and Papa wanna see you. You can tell me all about those twenty years in the meantime.”
Guilt mingles with the image of his little ones and his love. Though it doesn’t budge, Burdock knows he isn’t leaving them alone forever. “All right.” He walks in stride with you on pure instinct. “Then maybe you can explain you and Haymitch to me.”
Burdock laughs until the memory of sore ribs overcomes your glare and his sides.
“Maybe,” you chime, looping your arm through his. Two missing pieces finding each other again. “But you first this time.”
Okay so let’s say in a “perfect” world that sunshine doesn’t get reaped into the games. How would her life play out?
- haymitch’s return and completely shutting everyone out of his life (would she even get through to him?)
- Lenore Dove’s death
- her becoming an adult and having aspirations
- becoming an aunt and navigating her brother’s death, THEN having her niece be reaped
Don’t feel like you have to answer all of these points!! I absolutely love hearing your vision for the different scenarios involving sunshine 🫶
UGHH I LOVE ANSWERING THESE HYPOTHETICALS SM YOU DONT UNDERSTAND
okay i have toyed with this possibility primarily through the lens of “what if sunshine and oliver got together and had a kid haymitch had to mentor?” my musings on that au are somewhere on m page. and i do plan to write more on that. but let’s say this is a world where that doesn’t happen. sunshine and haymitch still have the same “awkwardly yearning, sorta friends” dynamic before the games, she’s more aggressive in trying to protect lenore dove at the reaping, but most everything else in canon plays out as is.
i think sunshine would feel similarly culpable as she does in itsdr for his reaping, and she’d probably sneak through between haymitch saying goodbye to his family and plutarch wrapping up on his footage. mostly to apologize and say goodbye (and maybe gift him one of her charms 👀).
if sunshine is arrested alongside lenore dove, she might get out earlier. if she isn’t, she’s probably punished differently. i do think she’d wind up on snow’s radar. and if you’ll recall, the candies haymitch buys are half gumdrops, half maple creams. snow would likely be satisfied killing either sunshine or lenore dove, preferably both, alongside haymitch’s family.
sunshine would be absolutely wrecked by lenore dove dying, and i can see her similarly isolating herself in the immediate aftermath. but when she snaps out of it, she doesn’t leave haymitch alone 😭 basically ever. they fight more than anything for months.
there probably is a short period, after haymitch says something particularly heinous to her, that sunshine stops seeking him out but still looks after him. i can see that being a point in which he sort of caves. aside her importance to him, she’s also annoyingly insistent. their dynamic while they’re still in youth would also be contentious bc sunshine actively commits acts of rebellion. which adds to haymitch’s frustration of trying to protect her while she seemingly doesn’t care to preserve her life.
as for sunshine in adulthood, i could see her aspiring to become a teacher. or she hunts and trades at the hob. maybe takes over the sewing/fabrics trading booth too. picks up the occasional singing job with tam amber and clerk carmine while they’re both still around. the only world in which she’d willingly choose to be a performer, despite her established liveliness on stage, is one without the games at all. anyway, she likely moves in with them after her parents die and burdock marries asterid.
she and haymitch don’t really establish what they are, but they’re also basically covertly married. whatever their relationship, it’s treated like an open secret in twelve.
when katniss is born, she’s the light of sunshine’s life. she loves her nieces and loves being an aunt to them. i can see them having a deeper connection to their covey roots bc of sunshine. she would become deeply depressed when burdock dies, no surprise there, but i think she’d throw herself into caring for katniss and prim to offset that grief. but prim still gets reaped, katniss still volunteers, and sunshine would lowkey be fighting all urges to burn all capitol property in twelve 💀
sorry this was insanely long!! i meant it when i said i love thinking through these hypotheticals 😭
Damn I just thought of something ouchie I was listening to talking to the moon by Bruno mars and for some reason it made me think of haymitch and sunshine. Like we know Lenore dove used to teach Sid about constellations and astronomy and sunshine was probably a part of that and ooh what if the moon makes haymitch think of sunshine (even tho she’s his sun) and they both look at the moon from different parts of both d12 and the arena and wonder if they’re both looking at the same moon at the same time oh I’m gonna be sick I can FEEL the yearning ughh I’m in pain. Maybe if you feel up to it you could write something about sunshine and haymitch inspired by talking to the moon cuz it fits them so well imo. I’m just thinking that they both had feelings for each other before the games but never wanted to admit it to themselves/each other and it’s like they’re both looking at the same moon at the same time thinking about each other but refuse to just talk to each other??? Like sweethearts you can save yourselves from this pain if you just talk to each other pls😭😭
thank you for reminding me how much i love this song 😭 also i’m so sorry it’s taken me forever to get to this request! i’m finishing up one that came before yours and then focusing on this oneshot—it has not gone forgotten!!
first, i appreciate how this request gives me the opportunity to write more pre-games scenes and district twelve lore. ofc we don’t get to see much of them in the twelve since we jump straight into the games, so it’s nice getting to explore their roles and relationships with their community. sid and sunshine (and lenore dove) are another dynamic that’s fun to include tidbits of in these bonus chapters.
regarding the song, the lyric that most encompasses your point imo is “when the sun goes down, someone’s talking back.” sunshine is haymitch’s light and his guiding point, even when the literal sun is absent. she takes its place and embodies all it represents to him (both the good and the bad). also the moon does reflect light from the sun, so it’s not far-fetched that it’d make him think of her.
to that point, the idea of the moon acting as a kind of middle point/mediator between them is sooo good. they’re both expressing their emotions under the moon bc it feels less scary and is almost a filtered version of just talking to each other…lord someone get them in a room together
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