Silver Springs🐝

Art insta: http://instagram.com/Gio_swfs Gio. Born in 2000. Any pronouns. Italian. I love women. Some times I do art

[thelesbianluthor]

I am opening commissions! I am good to draw basically anything.

If you are interested just send me a message!

[p3rfectvelvts]

based in this post by @theballadofthesunandthestars and that leyendecker art 🫡🫡

[annietheseawitch]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Sunrise On The Reaping - Suzanne Collins Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Lenore Dove Baird/Maysilee Donner Characters: Maysilee Donner, Lenore Dove Baird, Effie Trinket, Plutarch Heavensbee, Asterid Everdeen, Sid Abernathy, Coriolanus Snow Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grief/Mourning, Complicated Relationships, Hopeful Ending, Hunger Games Victor Maysilee Donner Summary:

Maysilee Donner, victor of the 50th hunger games, has too many ghosts already. She doesn’t need Lenore Dove Baird to haunt her.

[thelesbianluthor]

Back on my maydove bullshit

I have been trying to sit down and draw for days

[theballadofthesunandthestars]

Lesbian Maysilee Donner

Inspired to post by this anon!

I need to start a masterpost for all my textual analysis/headcanon essays atp. I’ve discussed this in the past with someone over private messages, so to that person, I might paste some of my messages here! But here’s a textual analysis of SOTR through the lens of a lesbian Maysilee reading!!

As usual, a disclaimer that I’m aware this is a very personal reading of the text. I’m sure Suzanne didn’t think of Maysilee as a lesbian, and the details I’m going to talk about probably weren’t included with the intention of coding Maysilee as lesbian. I’m reading a lot of the details of the book through the lens of my own experience as a lesbian, specifically one who’s studied gender and sexuality at a university level. There are lots of ways to interpret Maysilee’s character, and my interpretation is by no means the “correct” one; it’s just one of many! Everyone has a right to their own headcanons, and I don’t take it personally in any way when I see people disagree with this headcanon (unless you’re being homophobic about it or deliberately stupid! There was one person on TikTok who claimed Maysilee couldn’t be lesbian because “she was obviously in love with Wyatt!” and that people who did claim she was lesbian were stupid. While you can 100% interpret Wysilee’s relationship as romantic, it’s never explicitly confirmed in canon, and acting like it is just to bash lesbian Maysilee truthers is homophobic. Full stop.)

Okay! Here's an analysis that took me three hours to write! I hope you enjoy!

In my previous Maydove analysis, I talked about how Maysilee represents one of the ways that implicit submission works. Maysilee’s implicit submission to the Capitol pre-reaping is because the Donners exist in a place of privilege. They’re a part of the merchant class, which means that they’re richer than the Seam folks of Twelve, and on top of this, the Donners are set to become the next in line for the mayor position in Twelve.

The crowd’s reacting again, but more in surprise than anger, because Maysilee is a purebred town girl and about as highfalutin as they come, what with the Donners being merchants and the general consensus being that her pa will be tapped to succeed Mayor Allister.

And remember the reason that Mayor Allister is said to be on the way out of the Mayor position;

The mayor tries for a neutral tone, but her voice leaks disapproval in a way that guarantees she’ll be replaced soon. The decent mayors always are.

The Town people need to stay within the peacekeeper’s good graces in order to maintain their position of privilege, and the Donners especially have to if they’re going to be the next mayoral family of Twelve. We know that Maysilee hates this; remember the interview with Suzanne Collins where she talked about how Maysilee was angry at the injustice in the world, but couldn’t express it. As such, she became the “mean girl” of Twelve. It wasn’t until she was reaped that she was able to finally express her anger at the Capitol; the tragedy of her reaping allowed her to finally turn her fury towards the real enemy. Again, this is why we don’t see any rebellious actions from her until after her reaping. Before then, the Donners likely encouraged her to keep her true feelings about the Capitol repressed, lest they lose their chance to rise into a position of power in Twelve.

So, with that in mind, let’s remember Haymitch’s quote about why Clerk Carmine keeps his boyfriend a secret.

I once told Lenore Dove I thought he just hated love. That’s when she revealed that he’d been together some thirty years with the fellow in town who replaces busted windows. They have to keep it quiet because loving differently can get you harassed by the Peacekeepers, fired from jobs, arrested even.

Haymitch makes specific mention of Peacekeepers. They are the main ones who seem to be enforcing these punishments of queer people in Twelve. That isn’t to say that there are no homophobic people outside of the Peacekeepers, but all of those challenges that Clerk Carmine is scared of facing? Those are primarily carried out by Peacekeepers. The people that the Donners have to suck up to in order to maintain their privilege.

Maysilee identifying as lesbian or falling in love with a woman would taint their image in the eyes of the Peacekeepers, and make them lose everything. This almost certainly means that along with her anger towards the Capitol, the Donners would likely want to suppress any non-hetero identity in themselves or their kids. So there, we get the blossoming of repressed-lesbian Maysilee.

This is further delved into in a few details of Maysilee’s character. First and foremost, we know that Maysilee actually doesn’t dress herself; her mother does.

“Do we have to go around dressed like triplets?” asks Maysilee. “It was bad enough being a twin.” The Donner girls have a wide selection of matching outfits. “Thought you liked that,” I say. “My mother likes that,” she corrects me. Huh. Maybe she loads up on the jewelry because it’s the only way she can be herself.

Even though she loves fashion, Maysilee was denied self-expression through her clothing by her mother, with her only avenue of self-expression being her jewelry. Note that her mother dresses her and Merrilee up in hyper-feminine clothing.

Merrilee Donner, who’s in my class, waits on me in a crisp pink dress and matching ribbons in her sandy hair.

Maysilee carefully disengages herself and smooths her dress, which is identical to her twin’s pink one, only a shade of lavender.

Whether her mother intended this or not, there is a lot at play here in the choice to dress Maysilee as hyper-feminine. To start, it deliberately softens Maysilee’s edge. It makes her look less threatening, masking her tougher nature and forcing her to look the part of an ideal “submissive woman.”

All in black, with her hair pulled from her face and her riding-crop marks, there’s something tough about her. Or maybe she’s always been tough, but the ruffles and bows just made her seem snooty. She’d look out of place behind the candy counter, which she clearly loathed.

The societal idea of the hyper-feminine woman is one heavily rooted in heteronormativity. There’s a reason why a lot of lesbians have opened up about struggling with their gender identity; the societal idea of a “woman” is so heavily tied to an attraction to men that sometimes lesbians can feel “less like a woman” because they don’t have that attraction. The connection between womanhood and an attraction to men is so strong that it’s led to the phenomenon of compulsory heterosexuality. There are a lot of really interesting essays of trans women opening up about how dating a man can feel like they’ve “accomplished” becoming a woman, and a lot of lesbian trans women have opened up about how they struggle with what it means to “be a woman” without an attraction to men. AFAB lesbians also can struggle with their gender identity and feelings of gender dysphoria while dating a woman, and there are also a lot of really interesting discussions online of “lesbian” being a gender identity in and of itself.

To be clear, you can 100% be a woman and a lesbian. But the social construct of womanhood is tied to an attraction to men. Women are seen as supporters of men, as “secondary characters” to support the growth and success of men, and while we as a society are continually growing past this, it’s still very much present. And because of this, the image of the hyper-feminized woman still carries with it a lot of heteronormative ideals. Ones that Mrs. Donner is unintentionally playing into when she dresses Maysilee and Merrilee up to match that image.

Obviously, the color lavender holds a lot of queer undertones. But it’s also worth noting that post-reaping, Maysilee never wears pastel colors ever again. She keeps her necklaces, confirming that they’re representative of who she is, but now that she’s free from her mother’s influence, she doesn’t wear those soft pastel colors anymore. Throughout her time in the Capitol, she breaks free from the heteronormative ideal of a submissive woman, both through her clothing and through her actions. Which is a VERY queer-coded narrative!!!

Of course, it's be a crime not to mention how Maysilee feels trapped in her life. Again, with the Town being so closely tied to Peacekeepers and held under such strict rules by Peacekeepers (as shown with Asterid saying the propaganda posters were forced on them by Peacekeepers) this means that Maysilee's world is very heteronormative as well. So you could interpret this as her feeling trapped in heteronormativity as well as just her life in general

"Boy, that was mean, even by my standards,” Maysilee says to me. “You can’t choose your parents.” “You could reject their business,” I point out. “I couldn’t,” says Maysilee. “I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I’m guessing you’d have been wearing miner’s overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices.”

And her first act of rebellion? It happens before the Games. It happened when she chose to keep Lenore Dove’s graffiti a secret. It’s a small act of rebellion, but it could be interpreted as the starting point of her turning her rage towards the Capitol. It confirms that she hated them from the beginning, and more than that, it’s a relationship with another woman that sets her down the path to embracing her fully rebellious nature. Which is gay as fuck, tbh.

So basically— repressed lesbian Maysilee Donner!

[alythh]

¡ PASSED ON !

oh Maysilee….you won’t be forgotten as the one who gave the pin a chance

[slaymitchabernathy]

i like that the hunger games are filled with angry women. we should all be more angry abt what’s happening in the world rn.

[candle-enthusiast111]

where Maysilee wins the 50th games and gives her condolences to Lenore Dove

click for better quality

[thelesbianluthor]

Maydove au where Maysilee survives and tries to isolate herself post games to keep her loved ones safe and because she is hurting.

She ends up in the clearing and starts beefing with Lenore Dove's geese and that's how Lenore Dove and her start to bond actually.

Lenore Dove looking unimpressed but kinda amused at this girl who survived the hunger games but is losing against a goose in a field.

They meet in the field by chance (not really because they always hope to meet lowkey)

They bond over their loss of Haymitch and their rebellious spirit.

Maysilee clinging to LD's hope for a better future so she doesn't drown in the hate for the capitol and what they have forced her to do/who they turned her into.

[thelesbianluthor]

The idea of Maysilee beefing with Lenore Dove's geese is very amusing to me

I also did a version with Haymitch bc why not

[thelesbianluthor]

Winner Maysilee Donner you are real TO ME

[thelesbianluthor]

The maydove brainworm is getting stronger each day I fear

[thelesbianluthor]

Oh Maysilee Donner you truly are that girl

[thelesbianluthor]

Maysilee Donner and Lenore Dove you are so dear to me

[daisybrekker]

I did not expect to love Maysilee as much as I did🥲

Louella’s holding her own, but Maysilee lands the insult. “I was wondering the same. It’s like someone mated a Peacekeeper and a canary and... there you are.”

“What?” says Drusilla. She rises from her chair but wobbles a bit before she finds her balance on her spiked heels.

“Careful,” says Maysilee. She drips sugar as she goes for the jugular. “Might be time to rethink those boots. Wouldn’t something closer to the ground be safer for a person your age?”

Drusilla hauls off and slaps Maysilee, who, without missing a beat, slaps her right back. A real wallop. Drusilla’s knocked off her boots and into the chair I recently vacated.

Maysilee slowly pushes herself up from the floor, using the wall for support, before she responds. “Really? How? You’re not a Gamemaker. You’re not even a stylist. You’re nothing but a low-rent escort hanging on by your fingernails to the trashiest district in Panem.” This hits a nerve. Fear flickers across Drusilla’s face before she recovers. “And you’re headed for a bloody and agonizing death.” Maysilee gives a bitter laugh. “That’s right. I am. So why should I care what you say? Unless I win, of course. But even then, who do you think will be more popular? The victor of the Quarter Quell... or you?”

“I know my grandmother had a jacket like yours, but we wouldn’t let her wear it out of the house,” says Maysilee. Drusilla tenses, but tries to make a dignified exit.

She gives Drusilla’s outfit — a red-and-white-striped jumpsuit with a matching beanie — the once-over. “You look like you jumped right off our candy counter back home. Just a peppermint-stick nightmare, you are.”

“And all the money in the world won’t buy good taste. Clearly. Some people in Twelve have a lot more than what I’m witnessing here.”

“Are you done?” Drusilla says.

“Honestly, I have barely warmed up.”

Drusilla stands at the back of the van. “All right, you lot,” she says. “Try not to embarrass me.”

Maysilee rallies one last time. “As if you needed our help.”

Drusilla slams the door shut on us.

[from-and-for-nerds]

I think Maysilee and Lenore Dove are the kind of people that couldnt get along because if they did they would be unstoppable together.

Think about Lenore Dove. She knows that the way things are is unfair, but she sees a better future. She truly believes that rebellion is the way to stop the sun from rising, she has well-thought opinions about it, arguments to support her actions, she is the heart. But she's quiet, shy, lonely. It might not seem like it cause we know that she got arrested for openly rebelling but Haymitch mentions that she doesnt perform for crowds because of stage fright ("her throat closes up"), she doesnt have many friends at school and is described as being smart but not making a big deal about it.

Think about Maysilee. She know's that the way things are is unfair, and she's angry about it. She's, perhaps, so blinded by rage that she doesnt see a world in which things change, just an eternal fight. But that doesnt mean that she isnt willing to fight it, she's loud and outspoken but she's not speaking the right words or choosing her battles. She starts doing so when she gets reaped but by then its to late for anyone other than future corpses to hear her remind them who the enemy is. Before that, her anger just shows up by being mean to whoever happens to be there.

Lenore Dove knew all the right words to say, powerful words with purpose and a target ;but she wasn't loud enough. Maysilee was loud, everyone could hear her anger; but it was too overwhelming to give it a purpose.

They didn't get along, but if they had, before Maysilee got reaped, I truly believe she would have become the Mockingjay. Plutarch would've chosen her instead of Haymitch (or maybe both of them).

Both of them had so much to say but Maysilee's throat got ripped apart and Lenore Dove's closed up.

[revslie]

„Well, your gal‘s full of surprises. Guess she got the jump on us after all.“ 🧡

Maydove for the soul!! These girlfriends!! So fun to draw I love them and I think they should kiss. Except they‘re both dead so.😭

„She doesn‘t like me, your girlfriend. And it‘s not because of any pin.“ – „But mostly because I know her secret and she hates being at my mercy.“

The way Maysilee never revealed Lenore Dove‘s secret to Haymitch in the games, even though she very well could’ve, and let him find out on his own tho owhh….