Okay so. Ara asked me to share my Hunger Games story (little did she know, or maybe she did, that part of it was going to be me fangirling over her blog). I’ll try to keep it short (ha yeah right) because I’ve shared some of this before.
(and then she put it under a read more because it was too long)
My mom gave me the first book when she caught wind of a movie being made (like really early preproduction). I distinctly remember sitting on the stairs and her going “I think you’ll like that.” I devoured it in one day and went and begged for the rest. I just had to know what happened to the spunky archer and the sweet baker because?? what characters?? like they were so interesting! and unusual! and gentle! like how?? (though I spent the first few chapters going “these are such stupid names”)
I immediately felt a kinship with Katniss. My family had just undergone a big change a couple of years before. We’d left my childhood home and moved across the country and I was unbelievably homesick. To this day I remember (and I could almost cry) arriving at our new house and seeing that because no one had mowed the lawn (it was big yard and sort of in the woods) in a while, it was overrun with sunny yellow dandelions, dancing in the wind. I remember getting out of the car and just staring agape in delight and feeling my homesickness melt. So I think you can see why I fell for Katniss so quickly.
That said, I did put the books down for a while (the Harry Potter movies were finishing up and I was into that), and didn’t come back to them until when Catching Fire was coming out and my sister (my own Prim, but with a Johanna personality, in the best way) asked me to read the books to her. The second read through it was like the characters just went “hey remember us? yeah we own your heart now.”
After that I was hooked. I read and reread and watched. I wrote lots of fanfic and poems 😳 that’ll never see the light of day now. And then I realized there was this whole community out there! @everlarkedalways became my main news source for movie stuff, not even kidding (see Ara I told you I was gonna fangirl). Definitely saw some of y’all as celebrities. Kinda still do. Lost it over the set photos. Listened to the fan-made songs. Watched the parodies. The usual.
I got my hands on the incredible art and stories (When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun, as I’ve said way too many times, was my introduction and my safe place because my Lord the tenderness? the reverence? the sensuality? the food? someone hold me) and I was breath-taken and sort of fell even more in love? via other people’s stories. I just gobbled everything up ... whew big nostalgia wave writing that.
And then when I was in college I had a revelation like: wait a second. I could be a part of that. And OH MY HEAVENS I did not expect the warm welcome I got and have continued to feel over the years!
It’s funny to come in in a kind of sunset hour of the fandom (but isn’t sunset our favorite?) and have memories of all this old stuff that I was just lurking around for and be able to engage new things and retread old paths. And gosh don’t even get me started on y’all. You’re all too much. I can’t deal. 🥰
This is I think the longest I’ve ever been in a fandom and I hope I like? mature with it? and don’t end up cringing away from it as I get older? I feel like it’s what Lewis says. One day we get old enough for fairytales again. And I think any good, heart moving story falls in that category too.
But in any case I’ll always be a girl who has a very very special place in her heart for pearls, primroses, little birds, and most especially, dandelions. 😉
^picture: Rue in this gif is me always, just creepin’ on ma OTP, hoping they smile back at me