"The religion dominating the realm of political power right now isn't Christianity.
It's authoritarianism.
This religion of authoritarianism worships an unholy trinity of fear, revenge, and greed.
This religion of authoritarianism has simply hijacked Christianity to use as a costume to masquerade around in,
attempting to convince us it has been sent by God."
- Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer
Do you think Peeta’s warning about the bombs was his love for Katniss breaking through despite the hijacking having started?
Yes, and I’m so glad you brought this up. I always thought it was so telling that in this interview, he seems to be fighting something off internally. He’s not fully there and seems to be in a fog-indicating to me that the hijacking has definitely started at this point. He has to fight off his own mental delirium in order to get the message to Katniss about the bombs. To me, it reinforces that later on, when he comes back to her after the hijacking, his love for her has absolutely prevailed over all his fear conditioning, and he is able to be more or less ‘himself’ again. I just don’t buy the notion that Peeta will never be the ‘real’ Peeta again after Mockingjay.
Because if he was able to actively fight off his hijacking for Katniss while he was still experiencing torture, he was absolutely very well recovered by the time he came back to District 12 after months of treatment.
(Side note: I absolutely hate in post mockingjay/growing back together fics when Peeta in any way physically harms Katniss because of the hijacking. He would not have stayed with her if that had been the case, and it would be such a terrible message for Collins to send to young adult readers that you should stay with someone abusive because it’s ‘not the real them’ doing the abuse. I don’t think that is at all the message she was trying to send, and I definitely think that Peeta is recovered from the hijcaking. Is he traumatized from it? Yes. Is he still violent because of it? Hell no.)
Edit: finalised. Not on my son's t-shirt because he said he wanted a train on his. But I took one of my husband's old ones just to get back to practicing.
Textile markers, needing to dry then I try ironing it to stick.
So dear #joequinones I appreciate your great upcoming cover variant for The Flash #34. I humbly hijacked the idea and sketched it with altered face expressions (have to carefully consider how much to detail them on fabric) because for my son Captain Cold may be put to jail but only for a day. So he can't really be looking mean.
And for Wally, he's definitely happy to wear those glasses.
I will now outline it and put not onto a t-shirt. Contemplating if white and colouring or light blue. I guess I take white.
Do you think Peeta is able to regain the same level of kindness and charm he had before once he recovers?
I absolutely do! I said in another post recently that I’m a big believer in Peetas hijacking recovery. There will always be flashbacks and bad memories and bad days, but I think the books give us every reason to believe Peeta is otherwise fully recovered from his hijacking by the end. He gets a lot of treatment, we see him being kind and thoughtful and self sacrificing to an increasing degree during the mission in the capitol, and when he comes home at the end he is very caring and touching with Katniss!! She even mentions his eyes are clear and no longer look foggy like they once did. The “the old Peeta will never come back” propaganda was fed to us by Katniss who we know we must NEVER trust on matters of insight lol. What I think we can trust is that Katniss would not be kissing, cuddling, bed sharing, you-love-me-real-or-not-real-?-real-ing, or having children with an unkind not charming Peeta.
Gale Killed Prim, and his relationship with Katniss ended because of it. Why is Peeta different?
"Why was she able to forgive Peeta but not him? She had dismissed Gale from her life with barely a blink. Snow had twisted Peeta’s gifts and turned him into a weapon against the people he loved. Hadn’t Coin done the same thing to Gale? He loved Prim like his own sister." A quote from oakfarmer on ao3 that I actually have SO many thoughts on, though I can't remember which of their fanfics this is from. Darn me for not labelling my notes well enough.
What it boils down to, for me I think, is that the capitol has to create things to manipulate Peeta but D13 used what was already there for Gale. Gale already had a mean arrogant streak and wasn't good at taking criticism or rejection. He already had a cold callousness about killing and death. He was already a bit radicalized, and Coin did twist that into something worse. No, Gale didn't kill Prim, Coin did. BUT Gale did invent the weapon + tactic used by his ally and superior to kill her. Katniss told him it was wrong, this trap he'd made, and he condescended to her about it, how this is just how war works. Acted like she was just naive about it. His own ignorance of the reality of life and death and his complete disregard for human life on the other side of the war is what got Prim killed.
Peeta, on the other hand, is nothing like his highjacked self. They didn't take pieces of his personality, personal flaws, etc. and twist them into their perfect soldier. The capitol had to use false memories, had to inflate his insecurities, had to use chemicals and torture and mutated venom. They didn't make Peeta aggressive through hatred or vengeance, they made him aggressive through bodily fear. The venom and his body's extreme adrenaline, the fight or flight response to that. He didn't attack Katniss bc he thought he was better than her or bc she deserved it, he attacked her because the very sight of her caused his body to go into overdrive of adrenaline to protect himself from her. This is a Peeta that *hates* Katniss, and he wants to kill her, but her specifically. He only reacts negatively towards other people (other than normal trauma-induced stuff) when she is involved somehow, like him flipping out on Delly while Katniss watched behind the glass.
These characters are not equivalent. And from a meta perspective, they're not supposed to be. Katniss ends up picking Peeta. Yes, the character obviously would have picked him, but also Katniss as a narrative figure picks him. She picks what he represents. Integrity in war. That boy on the rooftop that said he was willing to kill in self defense and to do what he needed to do but wanted to stay himself. Wanted to stay a human being even in that violence. Wanted to come out the other side of it still intact. Wanted the flowers to grow again after the harsh winter; a dandelion in the spring. Not the cycle of destruction, of forever punishing those that have wronged you, that both Gale and a capitol-kids hunger game would represent.
Which brings my thoughts also to the male loneliness epidemic. (We won't even get started on the fact that when women have problems it's something they need to just get over and take a joke, but when men have problems it's an epidemic) That is Gale. Yes, he has absolutely valid reasons behind his emotions. But he then takes those emotions and becomes radicalized, become something lesser. And that is so indicative of our current political climate in a lot of ways. Men have been hurt by the patriarchy also, they have been raised and socialized and desensitized and to not forming genuine emotional connections with the men around them or the women there in a relationships with. And I do separate those specifically, because men are also taught to not see women as people, so to a lot of men you are either a. someone they are related to b. someone they are romantically interested in or c. someone they are sexually interested in. And that is all a woman can be to them, not a friend.
So every which way they turn men are not taught the skills it takes to not be lonely. Community and having a support system and a network of people doesn't just happen by accident. That is something that you build, and cultivate, and prune, and intentionally add to. Men are lonely because they want someone else to do the work for them. But the onus is on them and the system that made them that way.
And that man is the same as Gale. Someone who is rightfully hurt and wounded by the society they live in but then takes those real feelings and experiences and lets it justify all of the awfulness that follows.
Gale and Peeta are not equivalent. In dumbed down terms, Gale became bad because of what was already in him and then was fine to stay that way. Peeta became bad because of something someone else put in him, and then he did the work to not stay that way.
Oakfarmer again, to bring my rambling back to its original point: "Snow turned Peeta into a weapon, Coin turned Gale into a weapon. Both had been unleashed to destroy Katniss. They were the same, but they weren’t the same at all. The Capitol pumped venom into Peeta to create a hateful mutt. Coin only needed to provide an outlet for the hateful venom already circulating Gale’s veins. Hate and rage, he had never tried to suppress. Hate and rage, Peeta painstakingly clawed his way out of to recover his identity."
If Katniss in district 13 had to interact with Lou Lou like body doubles of her and Peeta what impact would it have on her perceptions of hijacked Peeta in the sense of Hijacked Peeta being closer to the original Peeta then the body doubles?
Side note: You think they would name him Pee Pee for Peeta in the same vein of Lou Lou for Louella?
--
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Katniss knows Peeta inside and out to recognize immediately that body-double Peeta is a body double. After brief mental breakdown where she'd try to get herself killed in active combat she would start feeling a bit better about the fact that Peeta was at least alive and they hadn't tried to pass off body-double Peeta as the real him.
I think, if they had the chance to speak about the body double's existence, they would maybe bond over it which is funny, like:
K: He doesn't even look like you
P: If they went all this trouble with me, you'd thing they'd do a better job with that.
K: It didn't even try to kill me.
P: Maybe they had him ready if they had accidentally tortured me to death.
K: Don't say that.
P: ...
K: I would never fall for it anyway. The eyelashes are all wrong.
P: the what?
--
Alternatively - inspired by Pee Pee:
P: You think his dick is the same as mine?
K: No it's not.
P: ...
K: ...
P: How do you...?
K: I HAD TO WASH YOU DURING THE FIRST GAMES
P: ...
K: and he was completely unclothed in the medical unit when they brought him in.
P: ...
K: ...
H (in Katniss' in ear): Do I even want to know?
