A Writer's Notebook

Once upon a time there was a girl, there was a boy, there was a poor woman who wanted, there was a queen who couldn’t have, there was a witch who lived under, there was a green frog at the bottom of, there was a troll, a tree, a bear, a bright-eyed bird who knew the secret of, there was a fairy who had lost, there was a child who had found, there was a wizard who had made, there was a princess who had broken, there was a story trying to be told. ~ Terri Windling

[porchwood]

I simply do not understand why did you torture Lucky like you did? You artificially kept him alive and suffering with a plethora of expensive treatment options that just prolonged.his suffering. No dog breeds live 18 years on average but 12-14 is common even the longest living dog breed a pug only lasts 16 on average. You clearly state he was suffering for like 6 years which makes sense. He was 12 why didn't you let him go peacefully?!?

Wow. At what level did you honestly think that this was an appropriate message to send? Lucky didn't even slow down until maybe the last 6 months of her life, and she was on heart meds for about a year and a half - and vibrantly, for the first 12 months. She never lost her sight, her hearing, her mobility - she never even went gray. Vets were amazed by her. After 17 years, her heart finally started to get tired.

It was ME who suffered through seven straight years of hell, but good job on your reading comprehension. You don't deserve a reply, but you caught me at just the right moment. Nobody tells me I mistreated that beautiful little soul. NOBODY. Go troll someone who isn't a grieving mother.

Also, Lucky was a girl. Check your freaking pronouns.

[porchwood]

My beloved daughter-dog Lucky Bloom passed away yesterday morning. 😔 She had just turned 18 two days before and had a sudden, rapid decline, most likely due to heart failure.

There are no words to describe the hole that this has torn in my life and my heart. 💔 I'm telling myself that she's with Jonghyun (deceased K-pop artist that I love, who was gentle and loved dogs), which is somehow more comforting than simply "she's in Heaven" or "she's with Honey and Lucy [our previous dogs]" - honestly, even "she's with Jesus" feels really hollow right now. 😣

I haven't posted/interacted here in a long time, for many reasons, but I think enough of you know of Lucky (and how awful the past six years have been to us) that I felt I should share the news here.

[porchwood]

The thing is: I need someone to come to my house to hug me for about a month. And that’s not a joke or facetious request. I need a month of limitless, lingering, unhurried hugs.

I need another human being who can just help keep an eye on Lucky so I’m not in a constant state of distress about her resting respiratory rate or weird phases of low energy - or even just watch her for a couple minutes so I can go upstairs to the bathroom without having to carry her with me. Someone who can bring me home a gallon of milk because I don’t always have time on my work commutes (for Lucky reasons, of course) and it’s getting too hot outside to bring her to the store with me (plus she barks the whole time anyway, which has twice attracted attention from busybodies, one of whom was about to call the cops on me when I got back to the car - because clearly, Lucky was being maltreated?!).

I’m so terribly, awfully, desperately LONELY and that makes all the other trials a hundred times worse. I call my sister for about an hour a day and it helps, but she’s 1700 miles away and I have no idea when I’m ever going to see her again. (When she visited in December - after a year and a half apart - I spent most of the time sleeping - not by choice but because, I think, for that brief period of time there was finally someone to help look out for things so my body realized that it COULD just sleep.)

Money stuff (expenses I’ve racked up over the past month, between Lucky vet bills and having to buy groceries/gas/Lucky pills on my credit card because work flatlines in spring) and Lucky health worries are just breaking me, and now (after hundreds of dollars in acupuncture and a little over a month with no outbursts) her separation anxiety is coming back with a vengeance - and it CAN’T, because she has a lot of diagnosed heart problems that are not helped by hours of frantic barking and howling, and we’re literally out of treatment options. (Did I mention that we’ve been treating this for almost three years with only small periods of success? Do you know what it’s like to hold your breath every single time you pull into your driveway - for almost three years - in anticipation of a howl?)

So as I said, I need someone to come to my house and hug me. For about a month. Just supply hugs, and maybe a latte. Because my espresso machine (not my “good” one, which died in the move in October - the backup one I got at Salvation Army for $10 to tide me over) died yesterday morning, and as “first-world problem” as this sounds, that was my last little comfort, and I’d bawl if I wasn’t so tired.

I’m so tired, Katniss. So tired of being beaten into the ground like a tent peg, and I Just. Want. Another. Person. To hug me. It won’t make any of this better, but at least I wouldn’t be dealing with it alone.

[titaniasfics]

APNewsBreak: 'Hunger Games' prequel novel coming in 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — A decade after seemingly wrapping up "The Hunger Games," Suzanne Collins is bringing readers back to Panem. A prequel, set 6

See y'all in 2020.

[porchwood]

Unpopular opinion: Am I the only person dreading this? :/ In my experience, it’s never a good thing when an author returns to a universe after an absence of several years - though I suppose SC could prove the rare exception - but I’m also really not interested in having seven years of work retconned. 

Plus, this is already happening, of course...

What joy is mine. 

I guess there’s a chance of a pleasant surprise (as far as the book, not the movie), but... I get the feeling that May 20, 2020 will be my “calling it quits day” in the THG fandom. :/

[porchwood]

Gray Catbird | Echo Lake Park - Mountainside, NJ | Alberto_VO5 | Flickr

We have one of these in our yard this spring (not this one - this was just the best/nearest-to-her pic that I could find), and she meows like the orneriest little juvenile cat you can imagine! I have designated her our resident Katniss bird. :)

[porchwood]

ink hair by alealgethi

“Catkin?” Peeta echoes curiously, his smile warming.

I scowl again. My childhood nickname is part of the story, but I hadn’t expected to be stopped and asked questions so soon. “It’s the furry little gray bud on a pussywillow,” I tell him. “They’re called willow catkins. You know what those are?”

To my surprise, Peeta nods.

“Well, when I was a baby, Dad called me his ‘willow catkin,’” I explain. “As I got older, it shortened to just ‘catkin.’”

“I remember that,” he says, surprising me further. “Hearing your dad call you that, when you came by the bakery on Sundays. I always thought it was a derivative of your name,” he admits, pink-cheeked. “‘Catkin,’ like ‘little Katniss.’”

~ When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun, Ch 10, “The Moon is a Huntress”

[porchwood]

Prim is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It's a bit big on her...

~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Ch 2 

Entirely serious question (that I shall proceed to approach in a ridiculous manner): HOW IS PRIM **SMALLER ** THAN KATNISS WAS AT THE SAME AGE???

At the time of Katniss’s first reaping, she was coming off about three months of severe malnutrition/starvation - almost dying from it! - followed by maybe a couple of months of rebuilding her diet on a small scale (dandelions, tessera bread, the occasional rabbit - I’m assuming she wasn’t bringing home feasts before her first reaping). And we know she's smol at 16, so she would've been a little pin at 12! (Peeta should've put her in his pocket that day in the rain and brought her home to sleep in a matchbox by his bed and eat smuggled crumbs of bread!)

Now along comes Prim, who’s been drinking goat’s milk and eating goat’s cheese (and the real bakery bread that she trades for it!) for the past two years, not to mention eating strawberries and fish and greens and everything else Katniss has been bringing home for roughly five years... But at 12, not only can Prim “[not] tip the scale at seventy pounds soaking wet,” but she’s smaller than recently starved Katniss at that age??? (And Prim’s birthday is at the end of May, so it’s not like Katniss had extra months on her at her own first reaping.)

I mean...#actualpicture of Prim, or...?? 

“I sometimes wonder if Dad found me out in the woods on one of his foraging ventures,” she says softly. “Maybe in a mossy little hollow where truffles should be, and brought me home as a plaything for Katniss.” 

(Gratuituous Strawberry Time reference there, sorry! Couldn’t resist!)

[porchwood]

The Beanie Baby Hunger Games

****

Still the best screen depiction I’ve ever seen. Hysterically funny, poignant, cute, clever - and even with only 11 minutes, they managed to fit in Madge! ;) And maybe my all-time favorite Peeta!!

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Extended Families in Twelve

[Gale] could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But we’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another in this way. (p. 8)

“I thought he was your cousin or something. You favor each other.” (p. 84)

In a district of 8,000 people, where new blood hasn’t been introduced in who knows how long (unless we’re talking about Peacekeeper-fathered children, in which case I have a whooooole can of worms we could open up), I find it inconceivable (pun somewhat intended) that everyone wouldn’t be at least distantly related to everyone else. So it’s curious but not surprising that Katniss throws in that “at least not closely” bit (though they simultaneously deny that they’re cousins in MJ, which I’d forgotten), and I’m assuming that she physically resembles Gale in more than coloring.

I’ve never understood degrees of cousin-ship (”once removed,” et al), but my personal headcanon is that Katniss and Gale have a common great-great-grandfather (Galen Greenbrier, if anyone cares), whose two daughters produce the Hawthorne-Everdeen fork. (Aisling’s daughter Wren is Hazelle’s mother, Elspeth’s daughter Ashpet is Mr. Everdeen’s mother. Or, Jack and Hazelle’s grandmothers were sisters.) I like the idea that Gale’s mom and Katniss’s dad were the hunting cohort, if you will (I actually think Hazelle was a snare-master rather than a bow-hunter, but anyway-), especially as Hazelle and Katniss seem to share some commonalities and Katniss holds Hazelle in a certain esteem.

But aside from the Hawthornes and Everdeens, other residents of Twelve must be related - especially among the smaller merchant class - and I’m curious if others have meta’ed this or what headcanons they’ve formed. Everyone must be aunt/uncle/cousin to someone. Mortality rates were obviously very high in Twelve, but I find it difficult - no, impossible - to believe that no one has living grandparents and everyone’s parent was an only child, which raises all kinds of interesting questions:

Are Mrs. Everdeen’s parents still alive? Did they have other children? Are any of her immediate family still alive - and if so, where were they when Mr. Everdeen was killed? If they were still around and simply refused to help her/the family, why doesn’t Katniss ever mention her merchant grandparents/aunts/uncles, even bitterly? She was so desperate on the day of the bread scene, she would’ve surely appealed to them if they were still living. (There’s a reference to the apothecary in CF that I believe has to be a glitch on Collins’ part, unless it’s been pared down to a basic dispensary by that point - just a place to buy bandages and rubbing alcohol.)

My headcanon: The Ebberfelds (the apothecary couple) only had one child, Alyssum (Mrs. Everdeen), as they had they best knowledge/resources to control their number of children, and they both died fairly soon after their daughter ran away to the Seam, at which point the apothecary shop went defunct.

Did Mr. Everdeen have siblings? Or aunts and uncles, giving Katniss actual Seam cousins??

My headcanon: (does anyone care who hasn’t heard this already?) Jack (Mr. Everdeen)’s father Asa and newborn sister Laurel died when Jack was eight; his mother Ashpet died just after his final reaping. Fun twist: Asa had three little sisters, one of whom married a Tolliver and fathered Micah, who became Rooba’s third husband and fathered Jude and Jenny before dying himself.

Less pressingly but equally intriguing: what about Peeta’s extended family? Grandparents, cousins, aunts/uncles?

(Does anyone actually want to hear my headcanons on this? :( Because it’s loads of interesting, in my humble opinion, but pure speculation.) Basically, Peeta has an aunt - Rooba - and four cousins on his mother’s side and a bachelor uncle, Marek, on his father’s. Peeta’s beloved paternal grandmother Lydda died when he was little, and I’m not quite sure what to do with uncanny Grandma Elske in the canonverse. I’ve assumed she’s dead but I don’t think I’ve ever said so outright, which raises possibilities...) 

In a harsh district like Twelve, I think remarriage after the death of a spouse/ blended families would be quite common, especially when it’s so difficult (maybe impossible without tesserae) to keep a family with only one working parent. I’m a little astonished that Hazelle didn’t remarry, since she’s so dang practical and had three sons (and a daughter about to arrive) at the time of her husband’s death.

Which of course, is (partly) why I headcanon Rooba with four kids and three husbands. ;)

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Does Katniss (protectively) infantilize Prim?

[I may revisit this post later in light of CF and MJ, but it’s ridiculously long already and I really want to stick with THG for the moment.]

I don’t mean this as harshly as it sounds, simply that, to my way of thinking, Katniss depicts - and likely perceives - Prim, especially early on in THG, as a much younger child. I find with older siblings (my own sister and friends that have little sisters), the younger sibling sometimes gets “stuck” in their head at a certain age/stage, and it stands to reason that Prim would be locked in Katniss’s mind by the trauma of Mr. Everdeen’s death, Mrs. Everdeen’s neglect, and the girls’ near-death by starvation as seven-year-old “sweet tiny Prim, who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason.”

When I first started reading THG fic, it bothered me that Prim always came across as so much younger than she’s supposed to be (though I found myself doing the same with her character when I first started writing THG fic). She always seemed to be about eight years old, whether Katniss was twelve or eighteen. And then I went back to THG and really looked at how Katniss presents her:

She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. 

My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. 

The community home would crush her like a bug. 

Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. [...] Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?

I reach out to Prim and she climbs on my lap, her arms around my neck, head on my shoulder, just like she did when she was a toddler. 

“She’s just twelve.” (not that age twelve isn’t still childhood, but this reads to me like “She’s just seven years old...”)

The woods terrified her... 

...Prim, who’s scared of her own shadow... 

In this way [Rue’s] exactly the opposite of Prim, for whom adventures are an ordeal. 

I’m not suggesting that any of this is negative or untrue, and as I’ll explain in just a moment, as the story goes on, Katniss paints quite a different picture of her sister between the lines. But as I revisited each of these passages (not to mention the “little duck” references on reaping day), I couldn’t help feeling that Katniss is still seeing and describing a sweet, frail, starving seven-year-old. And it’s not hard to see why.

I protect Prim in every way I can, but I’m powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she’s in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face. 

Katniss is an exemplary protective older sister - the only thing she wanted in all of this is to protect Prim :_( - and I would never find fault with her depicting Prim as a tiny frightened thing who needs shielding from the world at all times. But there’s a whole lot more to Prim that her sister eventually lets slip out (intentionally or otherwise):

Sweet tiny Prim...who brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished my father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer of coal dust that settles on everything in the Seam. (This is that same tiny vulnerable seven-year-old taking care of her adult mother and tending to her dead father’s memory - every single day, even while she’s starving to death! I can’t think of anything I did that consistently at age seven, let alone taking care of another person!)

On the table, under a wooden bowl to protect it from hungry rats and cats alike, sits a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves. Prim’s gift to me on reaping day. (As @ghtlovesthg pointed out - this means Prim must have been up before Katniss!)

“I’ll be all right, Katniss,” says Prim, clasping my face in her hands. “But you have to take care, too. You’re so fast and brave. Maybe you can win.” (Prim reassuring Katniss at the Justice Building! I’d forgotten about that one!)

...When she sells her goat cheeses at the Hob... (Prim is a businesswoman, not just a sometime-trader! Discussed a smidge more in this post.)

Prim milking her goat before school. (Again, uniquely responsible in a child, because this is an every-single-day responsibility, not something you can skip if you sleep in or rush if you’re running late. At least, not if I understand milking correctly.)

What’s funny was, Prim, who’s scared of her own shadow, stayed and helped. (With that miner’s awful leg wound)

That’s another thing about my mother and Prim. Nakedness has no effect on them, gives them no cause for embarrassment. Ironically, at this point in the Games, my little sister would be of far more use to Peeta than I am. (I’m almost 40 and I’m still squeamish about male nudity! It’s part of why I love Katniss so much! And I love Katniss’s admission of sweet, tiny, vulnerable Prim being useful to a mortally wounded Peeta.)

Something that’s only faintly nodded to (and that in CF) is that Prim has been dealing firsthand with pregnancy/labor/delivery, probably alongside her mother - I’d hazard she’s something of an apothecary apprentice at this point - but certainly with Lady, her goat. Lady was a gift for Prim’s 10th birthday (just over two years before THG begins), which means she’s been tended by Prim through at least two pregnancies, as well as the mauled shoulder. I belabored this a bit in WtM, but this also means that Prim had a small side business in goat kids, either trading them back to the Goat Man for the stud service that keeps Lady in milk, selling male kids to Rooba for meat (which would probably break Prim’s tender heart a bit), and/or selling females for a tidy sum as future dairy goats.  

What’s more, if Prim hasn’t gone through menarche herself by the start of THG, she’s surely intimately aware of it (between close living quarters, limited “sanitary supplies,” and her mother’s patients). This is something else I’ve touched on (and will belabor in the near future) in the Mooniverse, but I think menstruation was both a hopeful and a terrifying thing to the women of Twelve. (On the one hand, they would certainly experience irregular/absent periods, delayed menarche, etc due to malnutrition, so the appearance of a steady cycle would mean joy for those who dearly wanted to get pregnant, but there would also be something of Katniss’s “terror as old as life itself” at the prospect of those children who might result.) We never get a chance to see this, sadly, but I’ll bet Prim had a crush (on Peeta’s oldest brother, who was crazy about her in turn). Did she share Katniss’s fear about bringing children into the cruel world she lived in, or was she looking forward to being a mother one day? 

To wrap this up, for a little perspective, let’s take a quick peek at another example of a twelve-year-old female character. Say, an intelligent one with an ugly yellow cat...

(yes, I know Crookshanks comes along a smidge later, but I’m not crazy about movie!Hermione and this gif was too perfect!)

At the beginning of THG, give or take a few months, Prim is the same age as Hermione in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 

Please tell me this gives someone else a wee start (and I don’t mean the gif of Captain Kirk)!

Now, I’m not trying to equate these characters by any means, though there are similarities between the two (and I’ve been wondering for days now: if Prim was Hermione, Rory Hawthorne would be Ron, for so many reasons, but who would be Harry??)...The Grangers are dentists, Mrs. Everdeen is a skilled apothecary; both girls have a heritage looked down upon by some of their peers (though it’s interesting that, at least from Katniss’s perspective, Prim is universally adored rather than scorned as a “Seam brat” - and she’s got to look the tiniest bit Seam in some way!). I would hazard that Prim knows the plant book cover-to-cover at this point - and heck, Katniss even describes Prim (and their mother) as “work[ing] magic” in their healing! :)

I freely admit that Hermione had loads of advantages Prim could only dream of (relative affluence in the Muggle world, 20th-21st century conveniences, access to superior education from the get-go, not to mention real magic), but one would expect - and I think, will find - a similar emotional maturity in Prim at that age, if not more weighted to Prim's side, since she's living in a brutal post-apocalyptic dystopia where she lost her father (in terrible circumstances) at a very young age and works alongside her mother to tend sick/wounded/dying coal miners - surely a harrowing experience for even a seasoned healer.

Anyway, I found it interesting to compare the two, however briefly, and consider just how competent Prim totally is may be behind the scenes. I mean, she should have a Time-Turner by CF, at the very least. :)

[lovely-tothe-bone]

Based on fanon I was starting to think Katniss’s hair was not straight, because we know she isn’t white, but this jumped out at me. Now I know where I got my original visual from which included straight hair. I honestly got the sense that Seam folks were descendants of indigenous tribes.

[lovely-tothe-bone]

Another clue on K’s hair being straight. I didn’t picture it as being glossy pin straight but maybe that’s wrong. Why else would she describe the braids as silky?

ETA: yep, was wrong

[porchwood]

@lovely-tothe-bone - Can we collaborate on meta? :) You keep pipping me to the post (pun intended :P) on things I’ve come across awhile back and mean to bring up but just don’t have the time or energy to pounce on fast enough.

I’ve always envisioned Katniss as having straight black hair that lends silky rather than coarse, especially once she has access to Capitol products. That said, she describes the braids her mother plaits as “silky” but in the reaping prep remarks (emphasis mine): I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even wash my hair. Which implies that 

a) it’s a big deal for Katniss to wash her hair (which makes sense if fuel for heating water is scarce and her hair is long) and 

b) Katniss’s hair is silky even when she washes it for the first time in days/weeks, probably using lye soap or something equally unglamorous/stripping.

So what really splits my head open is the fact that she wears her hair in ringlets - at least TWICE!! - in Catching Fire: 

My hair is pinned back from my face and falling down my back in a shower of ringlets. (p. 58)

Creamy lace and pink roses and ringlets. (from the wedding photo shoot, p. 166)

I’ve known a few girls with straight silky hair and it won’t hold curl whatsoever - sometimes won’t even take a perm! I won’t deny the Capitol’s scientific advancements but...they can make sleek straight silky hair into RINGLETS?!?

[porchwood]

ToastedTHG: Katniss's “Charmed” Childhood

Something occurred to me on this reread that I haven’t thought of before. While I would never dream of suggesting that Katniss led a “comfortable” life before her father died, I can’t help noting that she grew up with a world of advantages not shared by her Seam neighbors (or even some of the merchants!), and it’s interesting when you start to pull it all together.

Her father was a skilled (maybe expert) hunter and forager, so she certainly ate better than the rest of the Seam (especially that all-precious protein - including fresh fish for brain and vision health - as well as fruit, wild greens, nuts). Her mother was a trained apothecary/herbalist, so she had some of the best available medical care (Since no one can afford doctors, apothecaries are our healers - p.8) under her own roof for injuries and illnesses, and her mother probably taught her good hygiene practices from the start. 

Her mother knew the herbs to use for everything and her father could and would go beyond the fence to retrieve them. However Mrs. Everdeen ended things with her parents, she still ended up with their priceless handwritten materia medica.

Aaaaaaand, now I need a Jack/Alys/Raisa Rapunzel retelling where pregnant Alys desperately wants her katniss tubers (actually, didn’t I tease that much in an aside in WtM a loooooong time ago??) and Raisa is the unloved witch with three little sons and no daughter/no hopes of having one. Jack adamantly refuses to give up their baby but desperate, miserable third-trimester Alys is willing to broker any deal (heck, maybe witch!Raisa even shows up to serve as midwife because Alys is struggling). Raisa disappears with Katniss, and Jack, assuming the worst, goes to the ends of the earth in search of his daughter, only to find her her cherished and adored by her stepmama in Milk-Daughter fashion…

Katniss’s father took her to the woods, occasionally giving her lungs a reprieve from the sooty air of Twelve, and gave her expert survival instruction that would have served her well even if she’d never gone to the Games. He taught her to swim - something I doubt anyone else in Twelve had the opportunity to learn, let alone practice (unless they were sneaking off to the woods as well) - a very beneficial form of exercise for her little body, and to climb trees. 

She mentions that both her parents sang (though we know less about her mother’s voice than her father’s). Believe it or not, there was once music in my house. Music that I helped make. My father pulled me in with that remarkable voice… (p. 234) That voice was, in my humble opinion, the nearest thing Twelve had to real magic. …whenever my father sang, all the birds in the area would fall silent and listen. His voice was that beautiful, high and clear and so filled with life it made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. (p. 43) And we know this isn’t just Katniss idealizing his memory because we get almost a verbatim account in Mr. Mellark’s “Because when he sings…even the birds stop to listen” (p.300). This may be more of a personal headcanon, but I’m willing to bet her father filled that house with breathtaking tales as well as songs. 

She knew what velvet was - granted, from a small sample on the collar of one of her mother’s dresses, but it’s a unique little snippet of luxury for a Seam child to have been exposed to. (This always brings back a fond memory from my own childhood: my mother had a “Sunday sweater” with narrow white stripes of angora every couple of inches, which I loved to trace with a fingertip when I was in her lap.) And as far as I can tell, Katniss had a (largely) stay-at-home mother, since Mrs. Everdeen was “expected to get a job” (p. 26) within a month of her husband’s death - not that she couldn’t have been running her Seam apothecary business before Mr. Everdeen died, but she definitely wasn’t on a time clock and was probably/primarily working from home, which certainly benefited the girls more than having both parents gone for up to twelve hours a day.

Those parents had a tender, loving relationship, and as Katniss remarks in the bread flashback, My parents never hit us. I couldn’t even imagine it. (p. 31) This topic is worth an entire post of its own. I suspect that hitting one’s children in Twelve was a fairly (sadly) common practice, but it’s so foreign to eleven-year-old Katniss that she can’t even imagine it. 

As I said earlier, I would never begin to describe Katniss’s childhood as luxurious, but until her father’s death, I’m inclined to think she led a much nicer life than a lot of her fellow district citizens. Thoughts?

[porchwood]

Reblogging for an edit of sorts and a couple additional thoughts:

1) @lovely-tothe-bone , you’re going to love/hate this: It was Gale who taught Katniss to fish, not her father.

He taught me snares and fishing. I showed him what plants to eat and eventually gave him one of our precious bows. (THG, p. 110) 

Now, I have a really hard time accepting that Mr. Everdeen didn’t fish, especially when it’s a relatively passive/easy/safe way to catch food - or, for that matter, that he never used snares. Maybe, as @ghtlovesthg mentioned to me in conversation, Mr. Everdeen simply didn’t have a lot of  free time due to his mining work and two little girls at home, so when he did take Katniss to the woods, they stuck to actively pursuing food through hunting and foraging (not walking a snare line/sitting by the lake with poles). Katniss also says (emphasis mine): My father knew [there’s food if you know how to find it] and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. So I would make a case for Mr. Everdeen knowing a lot more bushcraft than he managed to teach Katniss before his death.

2) @ghtlovesthg also pointed out that one of the biggest advantages Katniss had over the rest of the district was the mental benefit of getting away from Twelve and seeing that the wilderness beyond wasn’t a “Here be dragons” wasteland that the good, kind Capitol is protecting them from. Whereas Peeta’s world/knowledge was effectively defined not by the fence but by the boundaries of the square.

3) And speaking of Peeta:

...there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted. One thing about us, since I bring our food home on a daily basis, most of it is so fresh you have to make sure it isn’t going to make a run for it. (p. 310)

[lovely-tothe-bone]

Gale knows, personally knows, the other hunters 🤯🤯🤯

I’ve had my mind blown 3x tonight rereading the first four chapters while searching for clues unrelated to what I discovered

[porchwood]

@lovely-tothe-bone - That line stood out to me too, but I figured it was one of those:

Person 1: You’re the best doctor/musican/kickboxer I know.

Person 2: (indignation/eye roll/etc) I’m the ONLY doctor/musician/kickboxer you know!

Person 1: (optional, grinning) It’s still true!

Minus the joke because of the context, of course. That said, we know that Mr. Everdeen made “a few” bows that Katniss keeps hidden in the woods, and her remark “Even he had to scrap his own work sometimes” implies that bow-making is something he did with some regularity. But she also points out that “He could have made good money selling them” - does this mean that he was making them in anticipation of a rebellion (i.e., not for others to hunt with) but was killed before it came to fruition, and that’s why Katniss has her own little armory in the woods?

I really struggle with “the few of us who hunt” - like, it almost feels like a glitch on Collins’ part. If other people are sneaking under the fence, surely Katniss/Mr. Everdeen/Gale has encountered them, run across their snare lines, etc., but it feels to me like the woods is their own private domain. And if Mr. Everdeen wasn’t distributing his bows, are these people hunting with knives/makeshift spears? (We know that Gale didn’t have a bow till he got one from Katniss.)

For what it’s worth, I headcanon that Hazelle (is Mr. Everdeen’s cousin to some degree and) hunted/hunts with snares and that it was she who taught Gale, not his father. :)

[porchwood]

“The supper comes in courses. A thick carrot soup, green salad, lamb chops and mashed potatoes, cheese and fruit, a chocolate cake.”

—

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Ch 3

Everlark’s very first meal together (supper on the tribute train) was LAMB! Has anyone/everyone noticed this before??

[porchwood]

Reblogging for our little convo in the comments! Has anyone delved into Passover connections with Everlark/the Games? It seems like something Hogwarts Professor would have done long since but the closest I could find over there was an (admittedly intriguing!) guest post, A Passover Reading of Catching Fire’s Quell - albeit with nary a mention of lamb.

Alternately, does anyone want to write that delicious plot bunny for @booksmagicangels ? :)

[iliveilaughiloveiread]

“Most businesses are closed by this time on reaping day, but the black market’s still fairly busy. We easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt.”

Does good bread mean bakery bread? I’m assuming yes since she explained the difference between their typical grain ration kind and fine bakery bread a few pages earlier. If it is bakery bread does that mean someone from the bakery is regularly making deliveries to the Hob or that one of the Mellark boys sells there? I’ve totally missed that until this reread.

[lovely-tothe-bone]

Arrrrgh I reblogged with all this stuff written and it disappeared. Let’s try this again.

@porchwood @katamount @shesasurvivor @everlarkedalways ?

It’s interesting that all of us have just kinda glossed over this tidbit without wondering how. Especially since we were just discussing it the other day and it’s mentioned in @porchwood Toasting Theory. I highly doubt it would be deliveries or them selling there. My guess would be either someone has some kind of trade setup with the bakery or someone is able to make a decent bread by creating other types of flour/possibly mixing with tesserae. This has been widely fanoned in Panem AUs for Peeta.

[katamount]

I could see someone ekeing out a living as a baker with a stall in the Hob, @lovely-tothe-bone. It sounds like a lot of children took tessera rations and not everyone is a baker. (And doesn’t Katniss mention making drop biscuits with the tessera grain at some point?) With all that grain making its way into the district on a monthly basis, it’s easy to see how there’d be demand for a skilled baker (who might have a bigger/better oven at home) to turn it into something tastier, probably by mixing it with better flour. Come to think of it, measures of tessera grain probably became a de facto currency in the barter economy in the Hob. 

[porchwood]

@lovely-tothe-bone, thank you for the tag!! I haven’t been glossing over it, honest! I in fact have many thoughts on this topic, especially as concerns the beginning of THG! Bread is mentioned several times in an interesting (and ultimately puzzling) progression:

Gale holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it… It’s real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves we make from our grain rations. […] Fine bread like this is for special occasions. (p.7)

On the way home we swing by the Hob… […] We easily trade six of the fish for good bread… (p.11)

Gale and I divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each. (p.14)

Now, are you ready for your head to split?!?

The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening’s meal, to make it special, we say. Instead we drink milk from Prim’s goat, Lady, and eat the rough bread made from the tessera grain, although no one has much appetite anyway. (p. 16)

Does this mean that:

a) There was some “fine” bakery bread leftover from her breakfast with Gale and that’s what they were saving for supper?

b) The “good bread” from the Hob is true (Mellark) bakery bread (day-olds, bakery outlet, etc)? I’m thinking even stale bakery bread might be considered superior to tessera bread…

c) (suggested by @ghtlovesthg when I brought this up with her) Katniss considers any bread not made by her family/at home to be “bakery” bread, so she’s referring here to the “good” bread they bought at the Hob as “bakery bread”?

Help meeeeeeeeee!

Furthermore, if “good flour” is so tricky to get hold of, does this mean their drop biscuits (the baked good representing Twelve in the breadbasket during tribute training) are usually made of tessera flour (hence “ugly”)?? And why are they the characteristic bread for Twelve (when I can’t recall them being referenced except in this scene)? They’re typical miner lunch pail fare?

One day, Peeta empties our breadbasket and points out how they have been careful to include types from the districts along with the refined bread of the Capitol. The fish-shaped loaf tinted green with seaweed from District 4. The crescent moon roll dotted with seeds from District 11. Somehow, although it’s made of the same stuff, it looks a lot more appetizing than the ugly drop biscuits that are the standard fare at home. (p.. 97-98)

And @katamount, I agree on tessera becoming a hot commodity!  In the next chapter of Strawberry Time I need to properly introduce the Hob to the Mooniverse, so it got me thinking about what “black market” stalls might be vs “public market” ones. (I’m still perplexed by the latter - is it the “sidewalk sale” for the merchant shops? Is it regulated by the Capitol, so you apply for a booth/table permit at the Justice Building and there are only certain things you can sell there? Is it primarily for Merchant customers and the Hob is more for the Seam - and Merchants looking for stuff like white liquor/moonshine?) To my way of thinking, tessera (grain and oil) would be in particular demand by people too old to qualify for it themselves (from 19-year-old newlyweds to the “elderly,” whatever that looks like in Twelve :/), parents of children too young to qualify for tesserae, and the childless. 

[lovely-tothe-bone]

I really feel like it’s B.

What if someone once upon a time *tried* to refine current/introduce different flour/grains BUT people were starting to get too well fed or the person somehow got too much attention and the peacekeepers had to put a stop to it. That would make more sense for why it seems that Mellarks is the only bakery and also someone seems to have access to good bread.

I can’t think of any relevant point at all in the story for the drop biscuit rolls to be mentioned other than here. Maybe all these breads look better/taste better because the Capitol used proper ingredients rather than tessera or the tessera is refined. How would Katniss really know whether they are made of the same ingredients? I mean, drop biscuits require butter and milk, how much of that can 12 really have access to in order to make these on a regular basis? Both can be substituted with several things. The milk would be replaced with water and my best guess for the butter would be vegetable oil or something similar. Thus creating a far inferior version for the residents of 12. I’m not well versed in the science of baking to know which specific ingredient would have the most impact on the look. Personal opinion is Katniss is just wrong, she can’t possibly know the exact ingredients the cooks at the training center are using to make the breads.

I got the feeling that the public market is mainly merchant sidewalk sale. The original business permit probably includes an extension to this.

[lovely-tothe-bone]

@porchwood @katamount 🤯🤯🤯

@iliveilaughiloveiread I do believe you were right. It seems as if Mr. Mellark was doing some kind of trading/selling at the Hob. The real question is *how* was he able to do this without a problem from Mrs. Mellark?

[porchwood]

@lovely-tothe-bone, thanks for adding this quote! That one stood out to me too, but moreso because of Prim selling in the Hob at age twelve (where eleven-year-old Katniss had initially feared to tread without their father!). Somehow I’d always assumed that Prim’s goat milk/cheese trade was a door-to-door thing (you know, utilizing that toy wagon of hers referenced in Ch 2!), so it’s kind of startling to imagine. And “sells her goat cheeses” rather than “trades her goat cheeses” definitely makes it sound like a regular little business, not just an occasional walk-through with a tray.

(Because yes, I’m totally picturing a cigarette girl and this was the most modestly dressed one i could find - and therefore, the least disturbing to post in the midst of Prim meta!)

As far as Mrs. Mellark - as you guys surely know, I have sooooooooo many thoughts - but I think she was a sound businesswoman and would be willing to try all the avenues available to make a profit off their baked goods. Peeta reveals that the family wasn’t allowed to eat bakery product “unless it’s gone very stale,” so if merchant clientele turned up their noses at day-olds, why not sell them in the Hob at half-price rather than eating them yourself and losing all the profit? (I headcanon that Mrs. Mellark is Rooba’s younger sister - a butcher’s daughter - and has that “make use of every bit” frugality - "everything but the squeal,” if you will!)

[shesasurvivor]

The Mysterious Fourth D12 Victor

I want to know about the mysterious fourth District 12 victor that Katniss mentions in the first chapter. What was this person? Which year did they win? They’re dead, so I’m inclined to think they must have won very early on, maybe in the first few years of the Games. Did they die of old age? Or something more sinister? (Not necessarily from the Capitol, either–maybe they were overcome with PTSD and put an end to their life?) Did this person mentor Haymitch in his Games, or were they gone before even he came around?

I’d love to hear everyone’s theories on who this person was. I think most people forget there even was a fourth District 12 victor? I remember noticing that the movies left them out. Did you remember there were four victors for 12?

[xerxia31]

I’ve always thought the fourth victor must have been in the very early years, before the career districts had an opportunity to ramp up their training programs, when the playing field would have been a little more even.

[lovely-tothe-bone]

Agree with @xerxia31

When they watch Haymitchs games we never hear about or see footage of a mentor. I don’t believe The Mysterious Fourth Victor was alive anymore at that point.

[porchwood]

Oh oh oh! GUYS! What if The Mysterious Fourth Victor™, being Haymitch's mentor, was killed along with Haymitch’s girl, mother and younger brother?? Either as further punishment for Haymitch's actions in the arena or because The Mysterious Fourth Victor™ had encouraged/assisted Haymitch in those plans (in an attempt to kick-start a rebellion). A Quarter Quell with double the number of tributes and the 50th anniversary of the Games to boot; a lot of district citizens would have been very upset that year, so it would’ve been a great time to try to bust out a rebellion.

And what better way to punish that young victor than by making him mentor every single tribute from his hopeless district - all by himself - for the rest of his life (or until someone else from Twelve won the Games, half a lifetime later)? 

[porchwood]

When the Moon: Fairy tale teaser (Ch 15)

Because I’ve been thinking about mice since posting the Strawberry Time teaser, and there’s a mouse scene - or rather, a whole mouse story - over here too. 

I read a long time ago (and strangely, can’t remember where) that “if you read good books, good books will come out of you.” Well, for a goodly portion of my younger years, I read fairy tales. Indeed, for much of high school, I toted around Jack Zipes’ doorstop collection of French fairy tales: Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment.

I mention this because, after I wrote this sequence, I read it aloud to a fandom friend and felt a tangible shift when I moved from the Everlark scene into the tale that Peeta is telling Katniss. I’d reread it silently a dozen times in writing/editing and obviously knew exactly where it was going, but in reading it aloud, by the time I got to the end I was crying. (And no, the ending isn’t sad.) I can distinctly remember this happening just once before: upon rereading (aloud, for a final edit) the end of Prince Peeta and the Mockingjay-Maid.

So, for what it’s worth, I guess fairy tales come out of me.

This is just a snippet of that tale and it opens kind of clunkily because it’s unfolding from an Everlark conversation. (Sorry for any confusion. :/)

*******

The minstrel spoke with wit and wisdom in perfect balance, maintaining the king always as his superior, even as they spoke as equals, and each night, what tales he told! Full of wonder and magic they were: talking beasts and enchanted maidens, trees that ripened with jewels rather than fruit, golden fish swimming in rivers of silk and silver doves nesting in a tapestry-sky. And when the king was certain his mind could bear no further astonishment, the minstrel would sing to his harp and lute, lulling the young monarch to sweet, refreshing slumber filled with the most beautiful dreams.

The king ached to have such a man as father and counselor and friend, and the minstrel admired the king in turn. Though his life was a wandering one, he accepted the proffered fine quarters for a fortnight – time sufficient, the king was certain, to persuade the minstrel to stay on longer still: a sennight, three months, a year.

But the dreaded final eve of the minstrel’s visit arrived at last, and no present the king could offer would sway him to remain, though his refusals were all courtesy and grace. “I shall return – assuredly, my friend,” he told the king. “But the woods and wilds call me, and I must return to their paths.”

The young king wondered, not for the first time, whether the minstrel was not in fact a king in his own right, governing all the wildwoods of the world and their denizens. For the silence of the birds at his singing seemed as much homage as awe, and now and again the king had glimpsed a snout or beak peeping out of the minstrel’s pocket or collar or sleeve, to be rewarded with crumbs and a stroke of one deft finger.

“But ere I depart,” said the minstrel, “I would share with you my deepest confidence and very greatest treasure,” and from an inner pocket of his jerkin he withdrew a nubbin of downy gray fur, no bigger than the tip of the king’s thumb – surely a willow catkin, except it bore a tiny point of a snout and shining eyes like round black beads.

A mouse, so small and perfect that the king caught his breath in astonishment.

“This is mine own companion,” said the minstrel, “dearer to me than my own flesh, and the repository of my songs and tales. Shall I demonstrate?”

The king, stunned to speechlessness, could only nod, so the minstrel set the mouse upon his shoulder, where she began, in a voice sweeter than any bird’s, to tell of a shy prince trapped in a tower by a wicked magician, with three great ferocious boars as his watchdogs, and of the crafty scullery maid who freed him with the aid of a sparrow, a pint of sour milk, a head of cabbage, and two stout sticks.

The king had never heard such a tale, neither from the minstrel nor any other, and he humbly begged the mouse for another, and another, and another, and each story was new to his ears and more wondrous than the one before.

The candles guttered and the fire burned low, and at last the minstrel rose from his chair. “I must rest, ere I begin my journey,” he told the king, though he looked far more thoughtful than weary. He had spoken little as the mouse spun her tales and now he observed the king closely, as though he anticipated a question.

And it came, as inevitable as sunrise, for the minstrel knew mice and men in equal measure, and he had watched the captivation grow on both sides these past hours at the hearth. Indeed, it was at the mouse’s own request that he had shown her to the king, and she had never spun tales for any but the minstrel himself.

“Please, may I keep her with me?” asked the king, at once plaintive as a child and shamed by this unthinkable request, for he had heard enough of the oldest tales to know what befalls those who seek another’s greatest treasure, however innocently and honestly.

The minstrel regarded him steadily, and it seemed there was something of amusement in his eyes, though his face and words were grave indeed. “She was hewn from my very heart,” he replied, “like a jewel; a pearl of great price. You could sell all you own and still never possess her.”

“I do not wish to possess her,” cried the king in horror. “I wish her to be my companion – and would indeed pay any price for that honor.”

“It will cost everything you now possess,” said the minstrel carefully. “Every stone, every thread, every plank. Would you pay such a price – more than a king’s own ransom – simply to keep company with a storytelling mouse?”

“Gladly,” the king replied without hesitation, for he had learned long ago that a palace brimming with riches is nothing compared with one true friend at the fireside.

“For all her virtues, she is a common field mouse,” the minstrel reminded him. “The stories are hers alone to give, and should she trust you not, you will have nothing for your sacrifice but a small, silent wild creature taking up space in your last pocket and eating a full share of your crumbs.”

“If she trusts me not, I would not wish her to stay with me,” the king answered tenderly, bowing his golden head to the little mouse, and as such he did not witness the minstrel’s fleeting smile.

When the king raised his face once more, the minstrel’s expression was both somber and shrewd, and it seemed that firelight danced across his striking features, though the logs on the hearth were now scarcely embers. Not for the first time, the king wondered whether the minstrel might be a powerful magician, and what the storytelling mousekin might be in her turn.

“Will you sell all you own, that this mouse may belong to you?” asked the minstrel in an eerily resonant voice, like distant thunder at dusk, balancing the precious creature in the palm of one outstretched hand, as though she were indeed the rare pearl he had described.

“I will sell all I own that I may belong to her,” answered the king softly, and this time he caught the flicker of a smile on the minstrel’s lips. “Return in a fortnight, if you will, and you will find me better than my word.”

“I look forward to it,” said the minstrel, as though they spoke of breakfast or a walk in the gardens, his firelit features and the strange resonance of his voice gone as though they had never been.