#thg asterid

[ravenaohridska]

Sunrise on the reaping (faceclaim):

Edit: I made a The Hunger Games faceclaim too!

[dove-like-the-bird]

Genuinely I'm so bad at writing romance 😭

I write 4000 words of angst and then tack on a "then they kissed 👍" at the end

[isolde-illustrates]

Sotr Thoughts Pages 21 and 23-24

"In the girls' pen, Maysilee's gripping Asterid's hand while weeping Merrilee embraces her, their three blond heads pressed in a tight knot" (Collins 21).

Asterid was best friends with one of the tributes who died. Considering that they were both part of the merchant class, she could have been distantly related to Maysilee, too, although that's more of a theory.

I wonder if Asterid ever had an argument with Burdock and mentioned that his best friend survived the Hunger Games while hers died. It's hard to know whether Maysilee would have pushed Asterid away like Haymitch did to Burdock, but that's an interesting parallel that Burdock's friend survived, only for Haymitch to forcefully ruin the relationship by throwing rocks at them. I wonder if Asterid looked at Haymitch's face in absolute disgust because here he was literally throwing a stone at her head when her best friend should have lived instead.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I see almost everybody around me follow suit, but Otho Mellark, a big lug of a guy whose folks own the bakery, seems bewildered. His meaty hands dangle loosely at his sides and his feet shuffle back and forth, and then I notice his blond hair's splattered with someone's blood. Burdock punches him hard in the back of his knee and it's enough to get him down on the ground and out of the line of fire" (Collins 23-24).

Having grown up with his parents owning the bakery, Otho has always been well fed and probably knew that he would inherit the bakery. That upbringing explains why he would consider resistance to be more futile than implicit submission. In this moment, he is given a direct view at the dangers of rebelling, which reinforces his ideas, but is also much closer to him than normal. Being from the Seam and having Lenore Dove as a girlfriend explains why Haymitch and most of the kids around him like Burdock know the real danger of this.

For Otho, that blood on his hair was probably the first close call, the first person killed right in front of him. That was the first moment that he was directly impacted by the dangers of rebelling, which explains why he was so shocked and bewildered. These events also provide reasoning for why he taught Peeta to find the middle ground, helping build the character that was able to smile when he saw the Capitol citizens. That directly contrasts with Burdock's upbringing of Katniss, which was that Panem had major problems, but that looking out for yourself and your family were the primary goals. Burdock taught Katniss to hate the Capitol but to visibly tolerate them; Otho taught Peeta to see the wrong in the Capitol but to visibly accept their ways, two forms of implicit submission.

Another interesting point is how Burdock, Katniss's dad, literally saves Otho, Peeta's dad. I wonder if that's one of the reasons that Otho showed up with those cookies for Katniss. He likely remembered when her father got him down on the ground to keep him out of the Peacekeeper's spray of bullets. Otho did the best he could as a form of comfort to Burdock's kid, since there was no way he could protect her.

Also, page 26: Plutarch is literally trying so hard to keep Haymitch from getting himself killed.

"Don't be stupid, kid. She'll kill you with a snap if you mess up again" (Collins 26).

Haymitch really just heard that and ignored it for the rest of his games, causing everyone else to get killed for his actions. Obviously, those deaths were not his fault, but he really just seemed to forget how Plutarch's warning basically the entirety of the Hunger Games.

[dove-like-the-bird]

SOTR themed bracelets :)))))