retired banashee

can’t believe suzanne collins called north america “a land full of Capitols” in tbosas and set the reaping on the fourth of july and people still don’t get that the hunger games is a critique of american capitalism. how much more direct is she gonna be in sunrise on the reaping.

going insane about haymitch the rebellion’s sacrificial lamb. they saw a kid honor the dead and make a mockery of snow in a public setting and knew he’d earned himself a death sentence. so they recruit him. ask him to do something that will only increase the target on his back. maybe it’s heartless but it’s for the greater good. they can achieve their aims of rebellion and let him make his death mean something in the process. it’s the best they can make of an unbearable situation

but then it doesn’t work. the arena doesn’t break and haymitch doesn’t die and the world and the games go on. and the personal consequences are dire.

fast forward twenty four years and now haymitch is the adult and he’s got the same kind of teenager on his hands and the same heartless choices in his lap. how much do you think it killed him to feed her to the same machine, when he knows intimately exactly how high the cost of failure can be?

Lucy Gray’s reaping being rigged. Haymitch being selected illegally. Katniss volunteering to save her sister. The victors of District 12 have always been inherently wrapped in rebellion because they have all entered the games at the hands of injustice.

People are complaining about Effie being older than Haymitch but I really could not care less about it. She's older than him and she's Capitol so she probably looks younger due to having a bunch of fancy Capitol beauty regimes. Haymitch is younger than her but he's had a rough life and doesn't look after himself so he looks older than he is. And they've known each other for 25 years and spent every one of those years sending one boy and one girl off to die. And they have depressed middle-aged hookups about it.

Peeta Mellark is 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!

haymitch says himself katniss is like him, but luckier.

katniss realized the berries were nightlock before peeta ate them.

……. i cant take it.

a thing that i particularly love about the hunger games prequels is how it shows that people have been fighting against the games since their inception

when i was younger and read the original trilogy for the first time i was so bothered how it was 74 years of games, i remember thinking how could it have gone on so long without anyone doing anything

these prequels highlight that people have been fighting from the get-go: lucy gray's defiance, reaper ripping down panem's flags to cover the fallen tributes, haymitch's games and how many others shared his ideologies - the capitol just drowns them out, they rewrite their stories so their efforts are forgotten

liberation takes time and it's built upon the actions of those in the past

Effie is actually not fanservice because she is important to the theme of propaganda in SOTR

Effie is 100% brainwashed AND YET she still hasn't lost her humanity. She believes propaganda completely AND YET she doesn't use it as an excuse to abuse people. Throughout the book, the tributes are constantly dehumanised. But Effie doesn't treat Haymitch that way. She helps the team. She's there for him in the launch room- which Drusilla and so many Capitol citizens would never do.

So there really is no excuse for abusing people, not even "I was lied to" or "i thought i was in the right" or "I was fed propaganda"

You still choose how you interact with people around you and how you treat them.

Thanks for coming 2 my TED talk.

This is absolutely my thoughts!!! Her character is a perfect example of genuinely kind and empathetic people who just completely miss the real problems that those around them are suffering.

Like, she absolutely could have and should have done more to educate herself on that suffering (especially all those years when she is assigned to district 12) but she still serves as a great example of how a “good” person can be wrong and support a horrible regime.

Katniss: Haymitch would be pissed off at me for taking a 12 year old as an ally

Meanwhile Haymitch in his own games: *has honor issues with bunnies because he considers them allies and they're the same colour as his girlfriend's name*

my fav thing about sunrise on the reaping was when haymitch was like yeah caeser i'm a lone wolf 😏 i'm with the newcomers but i'm not WITH the newcomers, yknow? they call me a rascal. a rebel against the gamemasters. I scored a ONE and that is a THREAT. you do not want to mess with me 🙅

cut to him with like 20 kids following him around like ducklings, him hiding in his t-shirt, him letting a bunny guide him to safety because it reminded him of his girlfriend, and him making nightlights out of potatoes.

saw this days ago but I wasn’t there yet… just got to ampert’s death. brb losing my mind.

“and while lenore dove will forever be my true love, louella is my one and only sweetheart.”

that line hits so hard when you realize how quickly he was calling katniss sweetheart. through katniss’ eyes, it seemed insincere at first, almost like haymitch was mocking her. but now we truly know haymitch wouldn’t just throw that around. he truly cared for her from the start.

the thing i keep thinking about is how katniss, despite knowing the capitol is evil and despite seeing how they edited her games to tell a story, didn’t question haymitch’s much at all really when watching them. really drilling in the message that no one is immune to propaganda.