some things about sunrise on the reaping/the hunger games universe i’m thinking about today
haymitch was close friends with katniss’s father when they were teenagers… how many times did haymitch see her at the hob or around town and do a double take?
burdock everdeen is lenore dove baird’s distant cousin, meaning katniss is connected to lucy gray’s bloodline… literally snow’s worst nightmare come back to haunt him, down to genetics
reaping day is on the fourth of july. idk what else to say about this one i think we’re all on the same page about this
katniss wanting wiress, beetee, and mags as allies despite over half of the victor tributes wanting to pair up with her… the three victors who helped haymitch win his games
haymitch, the victor of a games with twice as many tributes, bringing two victors home as a mentor in the 74th games
despite having the most tributes and therefore the most deadly, with the least odds of survival per tribute, the 50th hunger games had the most alliances out of any other games
beetee’s son being a tribute in the quell- i know we’re all there already and it’s been talked about endlessly but i’d like us to recall in catching fire when katniss tells the reader that the children of victors are reaped at a disproportionate amount… ampert was not the first nor was he the last. how many tributes were reaped to punish previous victors? “you tried to take away control from the capitol… look what we can take from you”
the circumstances of ampert’s death: mutts that were engineered just for him, just for beetee, designed to literally strip him of anything that made him recognizable while they killed him. beetee and his family didn’t even have a body to bury, just a pile of bones
we also know that at the end of sotr, beetee’s wife is pregnant, but when beetee comes to district 13 in mockingjay his is alone. was his family killed in the uprising, or was yet another one of his children sent to the games as punishment for beetee’s actions before and during the 2nd quarter quell?
effie was the last person haymitch saw before the games began. she came into his launch room before he went into the tube… she was the last face he saw, the last person he touched, before the games changed him forever. she was the last person to know the “old” haymitch
maysilee didn’t even like the mockingjay pin- it wasn’t a beloved token that had a deep meaning to generations before katniss. it meant nothing until katniss made it mean something- until madge, maysilee’s niece, made it mean something
gale mocking madge for wearing an especially nice dress and trying to present herself well on reaping day, and her defending herself by saying “i want to look nice if they send me to the capital” - maysilee being scorned by haymitch for her nice clothes and her necklaces until he realizes it’s her own way of rebelling against the capitol… “i am going to make you see me as human too if it kills me” (they all try to dress their best for reaping day but gale & haymitch were bothered by madge & maysilee’s clothes as a status symbol)
haymitch mentions that hattie used to tell him “fire is catching”, which later became one of the slogans of the rebellion via katniss’s propos with plutarch
haymitch’s token being a flint striker, and katniss being the girl on fire. katniss inciting the rebellion by succeeding at the exact task at which haymitch failed- destroying the force field. she wasn’t special, she was just in the right place at the right time and got enough support
we’ve always seen the quarter quell as a way of snow getting back at katniss for her rebellion in the 74th games, but after sotr we know she is hardly the first victor to rebel against the capitol. beetee was already a rebel in his own right, wiress and mags were instrumental in haymitch’s victory in the 50th games, we can infer from johanna’s characterization as loud and outspoken and certainly less than palatable to the capital’s propoganda that she may have had a less than ideal (to the capitol) history… how many victor tributes were reaped on purpose? how many of them won their games through an act of defiance that was covered up?
similary, we know plutarch’s plan with katniss was similar to his plan with haymitch… but surely they weren’t the only two. how many other tributes, district 12 or otherwise, did plutarch and co. try to use as weapons, simply by being victims of circumstance? how many families of rebellious tributes, whether they were victors or not, were punished, because they went along with plutarch’s plan thinking they had nothing left to lose seeing as they were probably going to die anyway? so much of haymitch’s games was covered up and rewritten to hide his defiance of the capitol,,, how many other games were significantly or almost entirely fabricated by the capitol because of “unruly” tributes? was any of it real?
anyway i may be reaching with some of these but suzanne collins just gave us so much to think about with sotr!!! i’ve seen some dissent about how some of sotr disrupts the canon of thg but i think that’s entirely the point… none of what katniss knew about haymitch’s games was real to begin with, it’s just what was fed to her by the capitol.
don’t let media literacy die friends there are too many stupid people in the world already!!! mwah
Just a reminder that we don’t know all the good things Katniss does/did for her community, because Katniss wouldn’t tell us unless it was relevant to what was going on.
In Catching fire, she doesn’t tell us that she’s being going around and bringing food to poor children in the seam until she needs to explain why she had a bag of food and why her mother wouldn’t find that odd.
In the first book, when she’s telling Peeta about the story of how she got Prims goat, she refuses to admit that this wasn’t a selfish move so she could get money out of that goat. (You could also argue that this is her refusing to be vulnerable in front of Peeta and all of Pamen though. I think it’s both, because she doesn’t even admit that she did this purely for her sister in her internal dialogue.)
And in Mockingjay, she never tells us that she’s the one that got Haymitch the goose eggs to help him heal after the games. All she says in the epilogue is that Haymitch raises geese when the liquor runs out. And we would never know otherwise if Haymitch didn’t mention that SHE was the one who got him the geese in sotr.
Peeta Mellarkis an integral member of the four D12 victors. He is literally the sunset on the reaping! How is this not clear? I’ve never wanted to report people for bad literary analysis more and I’m only half joking. It has forced me to commit a cardinal sin: analyze in anger!
1. Him being chosen by absolute accident is the point.Not only does he represent every single other tribute who simply gets chosen because they live in a messed up country but he represents how even with some odds being in your favor (older siblings, merchant family, being white, being popular, etc.) you are still very likely to be victimized by the oppressive structure of Panem.
2. When Haymitch says,“But she was smarter than me, or luckier”- the luck is all the people around Katniss who created the circumstances for her to lead a successful revolution (her father teaching her to hunt, the arena having woods, Rue healing her with leaves, Thresh not killing her, Haymitch consistently giving her support, her mother teaching her aspects of medicine, on and on and on) and Peeta is the number one, most important part of her luck in the first book. She has someone in the games actively putting her life before his… are you kidding? There is legitimately no better luck than that.
3. Even if we take Katniss out of it, Peeta is so impactful as a victor because most of his scenes would not be cut/doctored. What’s there to edit out? Instead, the viewers get a full view of him loving a girl so selflessly, using trickery and strategy instead of violence, keeping himself alive through art, joking on literal death’s door, and sharing so much of himself with the audience it becomes harder for them not to see him as a real human boy. How rare do you think that is for the games? Haymitch and LGB are caricatures of themselves in the games, playing roles that flatten them down. Even Katniss becomes one dimensional on screen without Peeta (and Rue, of course). It is also heavily implied that he does not kill anyone during the games (in a straightforward way) and even if you count Cato or the girl from 8 or even foxface, it’s never him hunting them or seeking out a kill - again how rare do you think that is to see on screen for Games viewers?
4. I didn’t think this needed to be said but: Katniss dies without Peeta in the first games. a) she goes for the bow and dies in the bloodbath; b) she is hunted and killed by Careers; c) she is killed by game makers because there’s no love story angle to keep them from just burning her entirely; d) she dies from tracker jacker stings or Cato because Peeta doesn’t defend her or tell her to run… I could go on…
5. But even if she does win and wins alone - the victory means as much (I would argue less than) any other rebellious victor winning, certainly less than Haymitch’s win. The biggest rebellion for their games is that two of them win! This is legit the only thing that distinguishes them from any other sympathetic, kind child who would have won the games. Like if Haymitch or Finnick or Wiress winning isn’t jarring enough for the Games to end… why do you think Katniss killing Peeta and winning solo would be? It would not.
6. And finally, I cannot stress this enough: There is no peaceful end to the rebellion or the trilogy without Peeta.“Peeta’s a whiz with fires” (HG) for a reason! Collins, over and over, shows us how fire can get out of control and destroy even those who are innocent and who you love (Gale, Beete, Peeta’s family, Haymitch’s family). If everyone really burns, there’s no one to clean the ashes. The reason not everyone burns is because of people like Peeta who can coax the flames in a way that is nurturing and consistent. I mean…. “Peeta fashioned some kind of incubator” is such an obvious detail. Those goslings don’t hatch without Peeta, life does not go on in peace and joy without Peeta.
It is no coincidence that when Maysilee says Lenore Dove got the “jump on us all” (in being a rebel), she is referring to LD using orange paint to make protest art!
We must stop pushing Peeta Mellark out of the narrative! He is literally the sunset on the reaping!
Once you become a certain age, it is your responsibility to unlearn behaviors that hinder your growth as a person.
Man I cannot stress this enough. The “this is how I am, take it or leave it” attitude is an act of immaturity. We all have toxic traits that we need to work on and as an adult it’s our responsibility to recognize the damage that they can do to the ones we love. We all need to put in more effort in becoming better individuals.
i can’t be the only one who’s just straight-up … bored with women hating themselves. my mom keeps lamenting to me how upset she is about her gray hair. my friend stares at her laugh lines every day in agony. my sister loses sleep over the horrible unbearable thought of looking fat. and every time these women i love open up to me, i can’t help but think … then stop staring at yourself? stop drowning yourself, narcissus, and just fucking live your life instead of sitting in front of a mirror obeying cosmetic corporations’ lies. just stop it. this is getting ridiculous. you’re too smart to be falling for this bullshit. “oh no but these men who hate women told me that if i’m ugly i’m worthless!” girl if you actually believe that then good luck. but i am getting worse at being supportive of people whose nonsense worldviews keep them trapped in pain. stop looking at yourself start fucking living i am pleading you deserve to be happy and it is stupid that you disagree
Someone in the comments said “you really said just stop being insecure” and yes :) make an effort to stop spiralling about your looks, challenge insecure thoughts and stop doing things that lead to you feeling insecure.
I always come back to this: Do your insecurities match your morals?
Do you truly believe that having belly fat makes people disgusting? That the media should have final say on how you feel about yourself? If you don’t believe it and there is a mismatch between your moral beliefs and your gut reaction to your appearance…
Then yeah. Stop being insecure. It’s work but it’s worth it.
Promoting @sarkywoman ’s tags as that’s a perfectly distilled mantra:
