howdy! i'm mediums| 20/🏳️🌈/any unlabeled| girlrotting about: persona🎭, stardew💐, birdwatching🦖 congrats to any baby birds who had their first flight today!
It's always hard reading about the violence committed to steal America, but the buffalo is always like... That's some inhuman shit. Everyone is burning in hell for that one. Wdym there were thirty to sixty MILLION buffalo in 1800, and by 1900 there were only 300 left. THREE HUNDRED. Do you know, can you fathom the amount of purposeful cruelty required to kill NINETY NINE PERCENT of a population of an animal, just to spite and murder the living Native people who existed and thrived with them? All this, for White Power and Entitlement?? Sickening.
Hey everyone, I’m aware that I’m very privileged to live in a country where the government are like, regular level shit instead of Trumpian, so I wanted to help out people living in the so-called USA however I could. Here’s my advice for what it’s worth - I don’t have experience living under an authoritarian state but I have studied history and been paying attention to what everyone has been saying in the past few weeks, so I thought I’d offer some of my suggestions for how to keep yourselves and your neighbours safe going forward. It’s hard to know what to go so far as to suggest, since it’s just so unpredictable what might happen over the next few years. But in the interests of predicting every eventuality, I hope you’ll overlook any particularly outlandish suggestions. Hopefully it won’t get as far as some of these actions imply, but it’s always better to be prepared than blindsided. You don’t have to do all these things. Just do what you can, and remember you aren’t alone
-Join a labour union, go to meetings, and be prepared to strike
-Attend protests even if you think they won’t do anything. But bear in mind you will increasingly risk arrest and police brutality. Dress unremarkably, don’t take photos at protests and DEFINITELY don’t share them online
-Call your senators, congresspeople, governors, state legislators, mayors and city councillors. Continually bother them and kick up a fuss about even the smallest thing you disagree with. It’s important to keep government busy so implementing evil legislation is harder
-Set up or volunteer with a community fridge/kitchen or homeless shelter
-Knock on your neighbours’ doors and start getting to know them. If they are safe people, build relationships of reciprocity and care with them
-Read. Expose yourself to as many ideas as you can, but especially political theory, queer storylines and other subversive texts. Some recommendations:
The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
Pirate Care by Marcell Mars, Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak
No Ordinary Men by Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern
Conspiracy of Decency by Emmy E. Werner
-Try to set up or join a local group in your community that discusses political or philosophical ideas, does consciousness-raising, builds connections between neighbours, provides stopgap services to desperate people, teaches people their legal rights, or some equivalent act of mutual aid or resistance
-Key in to existing activist networks for climate, racial, migrant or gender justice - attend their events, fund them, give your time
-Consider whether at some point you’d be willing to do things the government will tell you are forbidden, risking arrest, imprisonment and possibly more severe consequences further down the line. You will have to answer to your own conscience but it’s also important to try and keep safe. If you’re willing to hide people from ICE or the police, source ‘illegal’ HRT and other essential medication, lose or falsify records, help someone get reproductive care, spread forbidden ideas, graffiti or poster government buildings, hold sit-ins, occupations or encampments, key certain people’s cars, let people in or out at borders who you aren’t ‘supposed’ to, sabotage fossil fuel or military infrastructure, disrupt party conventions, withhold tax, film or take photos in places where it’s banned, conscientiously object should a draft come in, or other similar behaviours, do them quietly and carefully. Involve as few other people as possible and DO NOT in the coming days broadcast your willingness to do so. Also for legal reasons I’m joking 😉
-Pick a behaviour from the government which, if enacted, would result in you immediately leaving the country. Once they do this, get OUT. Don’t make it too small, but don’t wait until they’re rounding up journalists in the street, holding public executions or imposing military curfews either. (I’m not saying any of these things will happen, I’m just saying pick your line.) If you’re trans, this event might have already happened, in which case start the process of seeking work or asylum abroad. Do your due diligence - make sure the place you choose will be safe for people like you, and bear in mind that asylum seeking is a big step that will expose you to dehumanising bureaucracies and local hostility even in the most liberal countries
-Put together a go-bag
-Donate any money you can spare either to these advocacy groups or to people in need directly
-Be radically, aggressively kind and compassionate to everyone you meet
-If you have children or are responsible for them, talk to them about what is happening. Strike a balance between explaining to them that it’s important to stay true to our principles and making sure they know to be careful
-Take time to be with loved ones and experience moments of joy, whether this is group meals, days out, shared catharsis, birthdays, religious celebrations, making music, movie nights, whatever replenishes you and reminds you what the fight is for
-Pick an hour each day in which to engage with and respond to the news (broadcast channels, papers, social media). The rest of the time focus on your well-being, that of your family, friends and neighbours, on your job, on being kind, on your volunteering, on resisting in countless tiny ways. Unless something big and emergent is happening in which case respond and react in real time
-Seek out good news stories from your own country and the world. They are out there, I promise
-If you see an arrest or immigration raid, get your phone out and start filming. You have a right to record it
-Donate to bail and strike funds
-Spend time in nature, and learn the names of local trees, flowers, birds, mammals, fish and reptiles. Educate yourself about the natural history and ecology of your local area so you can replenish your mental health, defend your environment and remember that there is life beyond the fascist state’s delusions of total control
-Learn about and engage with your local indigenous tribes. Study their history, attend any events they put on that are open to the settler public, donate money and any supplies they might need, agitate for their rights, see if you have any land you could transfer to their stewardship, and learn some of their languages if they think that’s appropriate
-Make an effort to research and understand things that are happening abroad. The US empire thrives on isolationism, ignorance and poor education. Learn foreign languages, follow other countries’ politics, study their history, watch their films, expose yourself to their cultures and teach yourself to point them out on a map. The more you feel affinity with people across the globe, the more you are a citizen of the world and able to keep your heart safe from narratives of exceptionalism - because you’d best believe the propaganda will be targeting you too. You’re not immune to it. You have to work at resisting. Foreign news services can also help you keep a handle on what’s real if your national ones are lying to you
-Run for school board, union rep, a welfare or campaigning role on your college campus or in your place of worship, or some other small-scale local post where you can make a difference
-If you’re in a position to do so, see if you can help marginalised people receive cheaper services through your job, volunteering or advocacy (for instance offering discounted rates if you run your own business)
-Learn first aid, cooking, and basic clothing repair, and teach these skills to others. Use them to help people with relevant needs
-Pick your battles. Sometimes you might have to let smaller things slide in order to make a bigger difference later. Other times, the small things will be the thin end of the wedge and you’ll want or need to take a stand
-Wear a mask and try to keep up to date with your vaccinations
-Be ready to mobilise your community to protect vulnerable people or places from vigilante attacks, especially if there’s a mosque, immigration centre, lgbt venue or abortion clinic in your neighbourhood
-Download the Signal app and Element software. Get a VPN. Turn off ‘learn from this app’ in your phone’s Siri settings for every app. Leave your phone at home if you’re protesting or doing anything else spiky. Put it in the fridge or at the other end of the house if discussing things you don’t want overheard. Assume you are under surveillance most of the time
-Carry narcan
-Get a library card and take out as many books and DVDs there as you can, use the internet there, stay warm there, really make use of the public service. You can even offer to volunteer there if you have time
-See if you can access academic and scientific papers somehow, and make an effort to read at least one over a semi-regular period of time. This will help with the education mentioned above, as well as keeping you in touch with the truths which your government is so eager to suppress. Lots of downloads also helps an academic in their career, which will be very valuable now that so much of their funding has been cut
-Pick up your neighbours’ groceries or prescriptions for them, drop them off at/pick them up from medical appointments, watch their kids, bail them out and cook for them
-Quit twitter. Use BlueSky instead if you want but don’t assume you are unobserved there. Consider quitting Facebook and Instagram too if you can - Supernova offers a vaguely similar user interface to insta if you want to keep up with friends and continue sharing pictures
-It might help your sanity to start keeping a diary or journal, detailing your emotions and experiences and keeping an eyewitness record of your government’s behaviour. If you do this, though, consider keeping it in a secure hiding place or writing it in code. Perhaps send a copy securely to someone outside the country, but only if you can do so safely, and be ready to destroy it if you think you’re in danger from its discovery
-See if you can get involved with or start a movement for community green energy in your local area
-If you have any garden space, try to plant and grow a bit of your own fruit and veg
-Get trained in non-violent direct action and in self-defence
-Save as much money as you can. You never know when you or someone else might need it
-If it’s accessible to you, consider getting a therapist to talk through the difficult experiences and painful emotions that are going to come up in the next few years. But be careful - make sure you trust the professional you use and that your conversations are as private as possible. Even if both of these are the case, be considered as to how you phrase things
-Walk, cycle, or take public transit whenever possible
-Make art! Paint, draw, sing, play instruments, write stories or poetry or lyrics or plays, act, dance, collage, sculpt, whatever frees your heart and keeps it your own
-Donate individually or through orgs to sex workers, domestic violence survivors, Romani and Traveller individuals, and other people at risk of precarious housing and/or income
-Educate yourself about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Paganism, Indigenous Spiritualities and other non-Christian religions
-Carry a spare scarf to offer to a hijabi whose hijab might be torn off by vigilantes
-Offer court support to friends and neighbours
-While you still can, source and distribute as many binders, packers, breast forms and pairs of tucking underwear as possible
-As much as possible shop with small local independent businesses, and follow consumer boycotts
-Consider eating less meat. Ignoring the environmental and ethical implications of the meat industry, deregulation is likely and this means many food safety standards will be scrapped
-If you can afford it, get an air filter for your house and a water filter for your tap
-See if you can file lawsuits against government bodies or big companies for violating various laws and rights
-Make sure the disabled people in your community can access spaces, services and transit, that they have enough money for necessities and for disability aids, and that there’s an evacuation plan for them in the event of flooding/fires/a tornado/vigilante violence/government violence
Stay safe out there everyone. Look after each other, keep your head high and your heart soft, and survive.
Reblogging this in light of the invasion of Venezuela and the Minnesota shooting. Living in the imperial core doesn't mean you're powerless. There are so many ways you can still fight back.
Mine too - she was my most visited website for the first few years of my working career, and I cannot emphasise enough how much her advice helped me navigate how to behave in a work environment. You name it, she has an answer for it. Definitely a life hack.
how do you choose who to donate to? it always feels like such an awful choice, everyone needs it so badly but i can only give to a few people at a time with what i have. how does anyone choose who to help, or how much to give each person?
gazafunds.com loads a randomized fundraiser for people with this anxiety
you could also buy esims for Gazans or donate to Gaza Municipality Project
[image Description: somewhat low-poly images of apples, peaches, oranges, cherries, and pears. Some images are singular closeups while others show groups of each fruit in baskets, from farther away. End ID]
This is a transcript from the Barnes & Noble / Waterstones exclusive edition interview. To my knowledge, they are the same.
Not to be confused with interview on her website, which you can find here.
transcript below
DL: Did you always know you’d write a novel about the second Quarter Quell? If not, what compelled you to return to this particular point in the Hunger Games timeline?
SC: I always start with the underlying ideas—in this case, implicit submission, the uncertainty of inductive reasoning, propaganda, love—and they find their way to the story that supports them. But yes, I think I did want to do Haymitch’s story because I’ve always known that the version Katniss and Peeta saw on the train was very misleading. When I landed on implicit submission and its dependency on propaganda, Haymitch’s was the natural tale to tell. Just like the state of nature debate led naturally to Coriolanus’s story.
DL: The quote at the start of the book from the philosopher David Hume is a very telling one. It starts, “Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which they are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.” This feels like a key to the entire book.
SC: If all people do is read the full Hume quote and discuss it, this book has been a win for me. This quote invites so many questions. Like, “Do you think Hume is right? As human beings, do we ultimately end up being governed by a few people? Not in, say, a totalitarian state, but in a democracy?” (After thinking about it, every single person I asked about this said yes. No one seemed happy about it.) “But why have we resigned our own sentiments and passions to those rulers? Why are we implicitly submitting to this? Especially since force is on our side, as the governed.” Hume answers that for us. We’re allowing ourselves to be controlled by “opinion.” And that’s where propaganda comes in.
All right, then, “What propaganda do we all consume on a daily basis that maintains this status quo? Is it harder to maintain in an autocracy or a democracy where we pride ourselves on our intellectual or political freedom? How much propaganda does it take to make you think that implicit submission is what you want? Is it inevitable? Is there a way to protect ourselves against it? What would that entail?”
DL: Haymitch is starting at a very different place than Katniss or Coriolanus—while his life has had its sadness, it’s largely been a good life so far. How does that change the stakes within the novel?
SC: Yes, his life has been largely good. A loving family, good friends, the love of his life. A sweet part-time job that may lead to a profitable, if illegal, career. He’s happy except for the shadow of the Games that hangs over them all. So, emotionally, his loss is the greatest because he has the most to lose. And unlike Katniss and Coriolanus, who have loved ones to the end, Snow tries to strip Haymitch of everything: family, friends, lover, job, community, happiness, and the freedom to love anyone. His personal stakes couldn’t be higher.
DL: What was it like to be creating a new work that you’d already loosely outlined in Catching Fire?
SC: Actually, it helped. Younger me provided a protagonist, his arena, his overall arc, and some of the cast, including Maysilee Donner. Having to build off the recap, not having everything to decide, meant some extra challenges on the plotting side, but ultimately it was freeing. I just had to work within what was established. Of course, knowing that the narrative had been manipulated into a piece of Capitol propaganda gave me a lot of freedom as well.
DL: It’s such an interesting scenario, to have our very reliable narrator understand that he is surrounded by so many unreliable narrators — and that, in fact, unreliable narration is a powerful political tool. The “card-stacking” that helps him a little in the beginning (with Plutarch using the manipulation as an excuse to give Haymitch time with his family) ends up being existentially overwhelming when Haymitch watches the “recap” of the Games and realizes how history is truly written by the victory (and not the Victor). To me, this felt like the biggest revelation to Haymitch — the sheer degree of manipulation. Can you talk a little about how this revelation about propaganda sits within the larger scope of the series?
SC: After he watches the reaping on the train, Haymitch realizes that he’s the Gamemakers’ puppet and that they will manipulate his image and actions to serve their needs. Within the arena, he can only wonder what they’re showing the audience. But the full force of their deception doesn’t hit him until he sees how completely they’ve changed his story the night he’s crowned. Remember, too, that in order to appease Snow and protect his loved ones and, when that fails, to fulfill his promise to Lenore Dove, he has to carry the Gamemakers’ narrative forward as the absolute truth. It’s an enormous burden that he bears alone because all of his allies who lived the truth are dead. Keeping the real version straight in his own head while promoting the fabricated version would require constant vigilance. But deep down, even through his white liquor fog, he realizes it’s imperative that he do it. If he can’t distinguish between the two, the Capitol wins. This foreshadows Peeta’s hijacking in Mockingjay and reinforces the question the whole series asks about the information we’re consuming: “Real or not real?”
DL: If I could give you a time machine back to when you were writing Catching Fire, would you have asked yourself to do anything differently?
SC: No, but maybe in the Mockingjay book. I might have shortened the period between Haymitch being crowned victor and when he loses his family. It doesn’t need to be two weeks. Although it does give Snow an additional window to torment him in the Capitol. But really, he could have gone straight home after the Victor’s Ceremony.
DL: Besides Haymitch, was there any other character from the trilogy that you particularly enjoyed revisiting in Sunrise?
SC: I love doing all of them: Plutarch, Effie, Beetee, Mags, Wiress, Burdock, Asterid. Getting to share who they were and what motivated them. They didn’t arise fully formed in the trilogy. All the characters are on journeys. Beetee losing Ampert, Effie clinging to her Capitol beliefs, Asterid healing the sick in 12, Plutarch still staying in the games. Everybody has their own story.
DL: One of the most fascinating things about seeing the Games play out over time — going from the Tenth to the Fiftieth to the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth — is understanding both the evolution of the Games and the evolution of the roles within the Games. In particular, I’d love to ask you about the contrast between Drusilla and the Effie of the Trilogy. There seems to be a profound generational difference that shapes their view of their role in the Games — and, indeed, seeing the start of Effie’s relationship here made me suddenly understand the dynamic that must have governed District 12 tributes for the next twenty-five years. Can you talk about what makes Drusilla tick versus what ultimately makes Effie tick?
SC: As escorts, both Drusilla and Effie are ambassadors for the Hunger Games. Drusilla who lived through the cruelties of the Dark Days, has channeled her experience into vengeance against the districts. She’s dehumanized her enemy, referring to them as beasts and pigs, and she has no qualms about ushering the piglets into the arena. Effie, born decades after the war, has embraced the Hunger Games as her patriotic duty. She’s been raised on them as necessary evil and a reminder of a war that Panem can never afford to repeat. Unlike Drusilla, she believes all the participants have a noble role to play. That begins to wear thin over the years. Every Games it becomes harder to justify the atrocity. You can see her clinging to good manners for reassurance of humanity’s decency. But in terms of the Hunger Games, Effie being assigned as their escort was a lucky break for District 12. She might be ridiculous, but she’s not malicious.
DL: Even though Maysilee is mentioned in Catching Fire, we really get to know her for the first time in this book. In many ways, she’s not so much defined by her privilege as she is by her lack of control over her life — when we first talked about her, you said she was “indentured into a life she doesn’t want.” What do you think fuels Maysilee, both in the arena and out of it?
SC: Rage. She’s one of the angriest characters I’ve ever written. She’s mad about the injustice of the world she’s born into and not it threatens and limits her life on every level. Before she’s reaped, that just manifests as meanness. But once she’s reaped, she begins to evolve and focus that emotion on the Capitol. She remembers who the enemy is.
DL: Snow makes quite an appearance when he arrives at Plutarch’s apartment. What was it like to see him in this era, after spending so much time with his younger self when writing Ballad?
SC: When I started working on this book, for the first time Snow and I were about the same age. We’re both entering our third act. I could feel his middle-agedness in mind and body, imagine his lost and realized dreams, and sense the cost of maintaining them. He's devoted his whole life to controlling Panem. But the work will never be done. It's exhausting.
Emotionally, he's beginning to reflect back on his life. His loves and losses. His resentment at the Heavensbee library when his own childhood books were burned for warmth, his cynicism over Haymitch's romance, his fear and loathing of District 12. I enjoyed having Lucy Gray's memory rise up and disrupt his life.
DL: And poor Haymitch doesn't even know why he's setting Snow off! But that does lead me to a question about Lenore Dove, who has grown up in a very different Covey world than Lucy Gray. How do you feel her outlook is shaped by her Covey roots?
SC: Lenore Dove romanticizes the Covey's prewar days as itinerant musicians on the open road. She also knows the losses that followed, the murdered parents and orphaned Covey children. And in particular, she's haunted by the fate of Lucy Gray. She wears bright bits of Lucy Gray's dress about her person and keeps her forbidden lyrics alive in private performances for Haymitch and Burdock. The Capitol has never meant anything but oppression and pain for her people; and that fuels her desire to bring it down.
DL: And how did Poe become such a part of the book?
SC: Haymitch's love needed a name. Since she's Covey, that starts with a ballad. I knew she'd died young, as Haymitch mentions this in Mockingjay. So, love of his life - her early death + his relentless grief = Edgar Allan Poe. I’m right back at the Romantic poets again. Even then, I’ve got several poems to choose from — “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume,” “Lenore,” “To One in Paradise” — but I couldn’t resist “The Raven.”
DL: One of the things I love about Ballad and Sunrise is that they make the series much more about “the long game,” showing that the events of the trilogy don’t happen because the right girl shows up at the right time, but because of decades of planning. In many ways, Plutarch’s extremely ambiguous role is the biggest acknowledgment we have of long-game tactics. I don’t want you to try to pin him down here — I know he is ambiguous for a reason — but perhaps you could discuss his role.
SC: Plutarch’s the master of the long game. In Sunrise, we see him as a young man who’s convinced the government needs overthrowing, but he’s just taking his first baby steps. by the time we get to the trilogy, he’s masterminding the rebellion. He’s built a network in both the districts and the Capitol. He’s found an army in District 13 and allied with Coin. When Katniss shows up, he’s got a Mockingjay for his propaganda. He orchestrates the Airtime Assault that brings down the Capitol. And he manages to do all of this while convincingly playing a Gamemaker.
He doesn’t glorify humanity. At the end of the war, he tells Katniss, “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.” And when she asks what, he answers “The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race.” So, at heart, he’s an optimist. He doesn’t accept that war and self-destruction are inevitable. Plutarch believes that we’re all on a continuum. We’re all ultimately playing the long game. You may fight your whole life for a greater good and never see the fruits of your labor. Plenty of people have done that historically. And so he tells Haymitch, “You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?” I think that’s a question we all have to ask ourselves.
DL: When we first discussed the manuscript, you told me, “Books are part of Plutarch’s privilege.” In seeming contrast, there is the transmission of stories through song that we see echoing within Haymitch. I’d love for you to share more about this and the role books and songs play in the storytelling within this series.
SC: The Heavensbees have enormous wealth and privilege and, largely thanks to Trajan Heavensbee, that has allowed them to collect and protect an impressive library. The only other personal collection we’re sure exists belongs to the Covey. Much smaller, of course, but it’s apparently got some great books in it. Poetry, philosophy, literature, and at least one guide to raising poultry. The only book the Everdeens owned was the edible and medicinal plant guide they made themselves. That expands into the memorial book at the end.
District 12 doesn’t have many books, but they have plenty of songs. Why? Because a book can be burned, but you can’t burn a song. It can be passed along from person to person without a trace, no physical form required. Theoretically, you could commit a book to memory, like in Fahrenheit 451, but that’s a talent not everybody’s going to share.
By the trilogy, the songs have been discouraged as well. Under Snow, the live music in 12 devolves from the Covey performing in the Hob in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to a trio of instrumentalists in Sunrise on the Reaping to a lone fiddler (Clerk Carmine) in the trilogy. Lucy Gray’s songs, which Katniss sings unaccompanied in the trilogy, are held in memory and are passed along orally. Snow would love to stamp them out entirely, not just because he doesn’t like music, but because they’re powerful politically. A protest song like “The Goose and the Common” can articulate an injustice, stir people up, and become a rallying point.
DL: Just because you mentioned it, I’m going to ask: Are Snow and Clerk Carmine the only two people we see in Ballad, Sunrise, and the trilogy? (I won’t ask what Tigris is up to during Sunrise, but whatever it is, I know it’s good.)
SC: Yes, I think it does come down to Snow and Clerk Carmine. A handful of Snow’s classmates might still be around by the trilogy, but they’re not named characters.
DL: I’m fascinated by the surface similarity of Katniss’s, Coriolanus’s, and Haymitch’s family structures. All have dead fathers. All are being raised by a mother or grandmother. All have a single sibling or cousin in their care. But even if the structures are alike, their experiences vary. In what ways do you think they were shaped similarly by this structure and in what ways were their upbringings different?
SC: You see this a lot in books for young audiences, where the protagonist is orphaned or placed outside of parental protection, leaving them to fend for themselves. It requires them to be responsible for their own survival and choices.
Haymitch has always had at least one functional parent, which is not true of the others. I think this has allowed him to be more open-hearted and optimistic than the other two heading into the story. Coriolanus is orphaned during the war and his grandmother does an impressive job keeping him and Tigris alive, but by the time that book opens she lives in her own world and her grandchildren care for her. Katniss loses her mother to grief and depression when her father dies and becomes her family's provider and protector at age eleven. Haymitch doesn't have to take full responsibility for himself until he's reaped.
DL: The role of the sibling (and I count Tigris as a sibling) is also so important within the series, to the degree that, in this book, becoming a "found" sibling is the highest mark of trust. Can you talk about exploring that dynamic within the series?
SC: In Ballad, when Coriolanus is filling out Lucy Gray's questionnaire and there's no place to record her cousins, he thinks, "There should be a place for anyone who cared for you at all. In fact, maybe that should be the question to start with: Who cares about you? Or even better, Who can you count on?" There's the family you're born into and the family you choose. All the protagonists have trustworthy families to begin with, but they adopt "found" siblings as well and those bonds are born of experience. Maysilee for Haymitch, Finnick for Katniss, even Sejanus for Coriolanus. People who care about you that you can count on. They replicate the natural sibling bond and aren't limited by biology. All of them ultimately find siblings among people they once viewed as antagonists.
DL: With the Newcomers, we see a different angle to the presentation of alliances within the Games — and in some ways, this alliance is in conversation with the alliance that forms in Catching Fire. In many ways, alliances are the unsung hero of the series, especially when we look at the long game. What does Ampert establish with the Newcomers that echoes throughout the series?
SC: Ampert’s laying the groundwork for the rebellion later with the district alliance in the third Quarter Quell. It’s a work in progress. Even in the trilogy, we’re well into the war before the rebels finally get all the districts on board. But Ampert’s message wins out. “We don’t have to put up with living under the Capitol’s rule. We have greater numbers, more power, more strength. We can change our lives.”
DL: I love how within Sunrise we see how Mags’s and Wiress’s mentoring styles contrast — and neither one is at all like Haymitch’s mentoring style in the trilogy. I can’t believe I’ve never asked you this question before, but of all the characters we’ve seen across the five books, which one would you most want to be your mentor?
SC: Haymitch, but not until the trilogy when he pulls himself together. Before that, I think I’d go with Mags, who’s brought home several victors while retaining her humanity.
DL: How thoroughly do you outline before you start writing?
SC: Pretty thoroughly, this time more than usual. I started with Post-its and laid out everything that was established about the second Quarter Quell in the version that Katniss and Peeta watch on the train in Catching Fire. Then I added in a few things that Haymitch mentions to Katniss in Mockingjay. And finally, I overlaid that with the story of what really happened. Additionally, I had to weave in characters and events from the past and the future.
There are a lot of balls to keep in the air. Multiple versions exist of, say, the reaping: the one we live through with Haymitch, where Woodbine gets killed; a second that’s aired to the public after the delay; a third of Plutarch’s card-stacked edit that they broadcast the night of the reaping that includes footage of Ma and Sid; and a fourth version played during Haymitch’s Victor’s Ceremony, which seems quite close to the one Katniss and Peeta view, but it could have been tweaked a bit over time. It’s a lot to keep straight.
DL: In terms of the smaller connections between this book and the other books (like the use of the word sweetheart or the presence of geese in Haymitch’s early story), were these things you knew going into the book from the start, or were they things that happened when you were putting words to the page?
SC: These were things I knew about, but I didn’t know if I’d ever write Haymitch’s story and have the opportunity to lay in their history. So many things are like that when you’re building a world. But Haymitch’s decision to tend geese at the end of Mockingjay wasn’t random.
DL: And, of course, for my final question I need to ask... what do you have against gumdrops?SC: Not a thing.
We have 30 days until the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laws are rescinded. This is the 50-year bedrock of American conservation. Normally, these actions take years but the administration has provided 30 days for public comment gutting clean water and clean air. Drop what you’re doing, before you make any more calls or read any more social media posts, please populate the Federal Register with dissent.
A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations
B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .
C. Fill in your comment, and info at the bottom, and SUBMIT COMMENT.
One quiet day on the farm, the Little Red Hen found some wheat seeds and decided to make bread.
"Who will help me plant these seeds?" the Little Red Hen asked.
"I would." said the Horse "But I'm a workhorse, and I'm too busy moving carts around."
And so the Little Red Hen planted the seeds by herself. And they grew into bountiful golden crops.
"Who will help me harvest the wheat?" the Little Red Hen asked.
"I would." said the Dog "But I'm a guarddog, and I'm too busy keeping away burglars and predators."
And so the Little Red Hen harvested the wheat herself and made it into flour.
"Who will help me bake the flour?" the Little Red Hen asked.
"I would." said the Pig "But I'm a mother of 5 newborn piglets, and I'm too busy taking care of my young."
And so the Little Red Hen baked the bread herself into twenty beautiful loaves.
"Who will help me eat the bread?" the Little Red Hen asked.
"We would." said the Farm Animals. "But we're ashamed, for we didn't do anything to make the bread."
"Nonsense!" said the Little Red Hen. "You, Horse, helped move around the stones that built my oven. You, Dog, kept me safe while I worked. And you, Pig, are raising a new generation of Farm Animals, who will too contribute to our Farm one day. You've all helped me so much by simply being you."
"Besides," the Little Red Hen added. "I couldn't possibly eat all the loaves on my own, most of them would go to waste. Come, eat with me."
And so the Little Red Hen and the Farm Animals ate the bread together. And all saw their own, and each other's, worth.
