bestnoncannonship

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Hey look at @kneelbeforeclefairy and me as Effie and Femme! Haymitch at the book release party:

Now just look at how adorable my Effie is:

Hayffie rights:

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Nancy .

In Oliver Twist.

fuck it, i'm curious. reblog and tag with the first fictional death to ever rewrite your brain chemistry and/or make you cry like a baby. mine was ares from the underland chronicles (who, for context, was a giant bat.) to this day i will weep if i think too hard about it. okay, go.

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Tending Embers

A post-Sunrise on the Reaping fic where Haymitch actually gets to heal and have family.

RIP to you and your epilogue Suzanne. But I'm different.

You guys all gave me so much love for chapter one that you get chapter two already!! Look at you!!

This one has Mags. And his first tributes.

Here, Chapter 2:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64021165/chapters/164563132#workskin

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Ok. But I have thoughts about it. It's one of @kneelbeforeclefairy and my straight (gag) ships too, but there's a reason.

The power dynamic is fuuuuucked.

It's not a traditional power dynamic and that plays in dialogue with their genders. Effie, for all the traditional femininity of her styling, is in a position of authority and privilege over Haymitch. She's Capitol. She's in charge. Yes he has the physical advantage but she has the social advantage. That levels the playing field between them. Haymitch almost occupies a third space, devoid of the masculinity and femininity standards of both capitol or district. He's a victor. Both perceived as a brute and a victim. And that's a tasty tasty little social gender to have!

Do you know how embarrassing it is as a Queer, Trans person to admit that your favourite ship is the Small Posh Feminine Girl and the Grumpy Rugged Drunk Asshole. Like what am I, STRAIGHT?

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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.

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Fucking slain in my tracks by this postcard on my friend’s dresser

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All SOTR taught me is that Effie fell first, Haymitch fell harder, send tweet

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Just finished Captive Prince. Had to get them outta my system SOME how

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Watching NBC's Hannibal as someone who's not even remotely attracted to men is like.....a totally different experience??

There's like.....a whole plot outside of Will Graham's pretty eyelashes, you thirsty fucking whores. (Affectionate)

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so you’re telling me that after what happened to louella/lou lou haymitch had to watch peeta come back from the capitol as a “mutt version of himself” and question whether the shell of a human with peeta’s face was even peeta at all

and he had to do all that SOBER???

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I don't give two shits about Kabru. But this is THE REALEST FUCKING DESCRIPTION OF MY LIFE EVER.

autistic kabru real he told me. he told me

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there isn't enough art of 80s lestat as a trad goth for my liking. the man would have rocked the big fluffy hair and winklepicker boots and black lipstick

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Happy birthday, Captain Kirk.

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What I think is most different and most striking about Sunrise on the Reaping is how CYNICAL it is. To some extent we knew it was going to be. This is a midquel. That the reapings go on and the Hunger Games only ends 25 years later is a forgeon conclusion. We know nothing that happens here is going to work.

The book is about implicit submission, and why, with numbers on their side, the many submit to the few, even when the few are unjust. And it's because, the book seems to say, numbers aren't ENOUGH. the Newcomers alliance is much bigger than the Careers. They should be able to team up and defeat them easily. But they don't. Eighteen of them are killed outright, because the Careers have the strength, the skill and the training. And that's just that.

Plutarch asks why the tributes don't overwhelm the Peacekeepers during training, and Haymitch is rightfully outraged at the privilege of this question. Why don't they? Because they probably couldn't kill them all, and even if they could, what good would it do? It wouldn't stop the Hunger Games. It wouldn't change a thing. No one would even know about it outside that room, because the Capitol would change the narrative. Just like Katniss and the Star Squad can't REALLY take on the Capitol single handed and assassinate the president, the scrappy alliance of kids can't really do any real damage to the system the Capitol has in place. All they can do is choose if they want to die now or later. So why don't they, if there's no difference to them, as Plutarch asks. Because, as Snow puts it. Hope. The slight chance that one of them will come out of it. And, more cynically, the hope that if they are good tributes and obey, their families will be left alone. If they choose to rebel and choose to die now they guarantee retaliation against their families and perhaps their entire district. We see that even in the tributes that attack the Gamemakers in the arena. They rise up, they break that bond of implicit submission--and they die bloody for it.

Why don't they rebel? Because they don't have the privilege to lose.

Even Lenore Dove, the Joan of Arc of Twelve, fails to do any real damage or have any real effect. All she does is get herself a reputation for being a trouble maker, and eventually get herself killed. Was she killed as part of the retaliation against Haymitch, or was her punishment because she's a rebel, and that's what happens to rebels? (and Snow hates covey girls.) but she fails because she IS alone. She focuses on small, symbolic acts that do nothing, but that she hopes will rally the people to action.Unfortunately, the people of Twelve don't want their lives to get any worse, and they don't have the privilege of spending time and energy on revolution the way a teenager girl whose family doesn't need her income to survive does--sadly, Twelve will remain this way, in an uncanny valley where they're beaten down enough to need change, but not enough to have NOTHING to lose. They are not one of the districts that rise up. So acting alone does nothing, teaming up does nothing. How does one fight an enemy with better technology, better weapons, and better organization? Beetee's plan doesn't work out. Of course it doesn't. Could it ever? Was it just borne out of grief for his son? And even if it had, then what? What was the plan? Haymitch's poster gets edited away. The Newcomers fail. Lenore Dove dies. The most you can say is Haymitch himself becomes too important to kill, like Beetee, and Snow let him live to fight another day, but so destroyed that he no longer WANTS to.

So, then, what WORKS?

The answer is, quite cynically, Plutarch's version of the world. Numbers mean something, there are more of US than there are of THEM , but that isn't enough. You need weapons, you can't bring a knife to a gun fight, you need EVERYONE on your side. You need organization, not just a series of disconnected rebellions, and you need an Army, provided by Thirteen, as problematic as they are. The timing just needs to be right. And most crucially, what I think Plutarch and everyone involved here learned is that victory belongs to those who control the narrative. Those who control the flow of information and tell their story. And it's not Plutarch, for all his cameras and his propos and his idea behind The Mockingjay, who eventually does that well.

It's Haymitch.

Who learned to tell a story and sell a narrative with himself and the Newcomers. Who tried to paint his poster in the arena only to see it rewritten in front of him. Who won't make that mistake again. When it's time for the deciding factor in the revolution, it's Haymitch who creates the Mockingjay-- and is he also using Katniss and her image? Yes. but he at least sees Katniss and the human she is inside it, unlike Plutarch who hasn't changed much from the man who makes a grieving family do reshoots over and over so he can get his footage, while congratulating himself for letting Haymitch have his goodbye.

When Katniss sets off the spark twenty five years later, the world is ready. The work is in place. Plutarch, Haymitch, Beetee, everyone can say GO , and this time it'll work. So buckle in, and wait for the Long Game, even though only Plutarch really has the privilege to wait, the rest of them don't have a choice. It's cynical. It's awful. People die. The lone rebels and the plucky girls and the alliance depending on its numbers all fail. Plutarch motherfucking Heavensbee, the richest of the rich the privilegedest of the privileged, pulls off the revolution, takes the credit, and lives to see the end of it, without ever once examining his own privilege, and unpacking the fact that despite his head being on the right side of history, he's never managed to see the Districts as PEOPLE . (and you could argue, ANYONE as people. ) But it's just the only way.

But this book isn't the middle of the series. It's the end. How awful would it be to read if we didn't know that Katniss and the Mockingjay rebellion would eventually succeed. We know that despite the cynism of a failed revolution and all its players, that one day it WILL work out. This book is called sunrise on the Reaping....the sun rises on a world where this is inevitable. But one day it won't be.

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Anyone else love Sunrise on the Reaping and DESPISE the epilogue??

I'm making fic about it. About the 25 years between his games and Katniss's. About how the revolution evolves and grows. And about how HAYMITCH EVOLVES AND GROWS cause HES ALLOWED TO HEAL SUZANNE. He gets found family and a purpose and a life outside of the ghosts even if it's only for one month a year. If you want people to care about Haymitch and love him, you're in the right place. If you want damaged people being damaged together you're in the right place. That epilogue was the Bad Place.

(There is eventual Hayffie. I know who I am and I ain't ashamed.)

Anyway.

Fic.

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effie was the last person he saw before entering the games and the first person he really saw upon getting out. and then he had to see her. on his birthday. as they sent kids to die. every. single. year. how much he must have hated how much he liked her

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Please this generation, Learn to heal.

You guys deal with so much more death than my generation. There are those among you who've lost people far too young. Don't look at this as romantic. Look at it for the horror it is.

i won’t ever be unhappy with sunrise on the reaping, but the new people wishing Haymitch to remain alone for the rest of his life, because of a love he had when he was fucking sixteen was not a good addition

Katniss was the living proof of how love can help you to heal and live your life. She was fucking addicted to morphing and wishing she was dead before Peeta was back and saved her from this nightmare. And you all will look me in the eyes and say you fucking wish him to be in that condition for the rest of his life, because he loved someone really hard once????????

You fucking wish him to never learn how to heal and move on from a deep wound that he got when he was barely a teenager? You fucking wish him to be alone at his home, watching Katniss and Peeta loving each other, building their families and moving on, despite everything they’ve lost, and doing nothing more than drinking himself to death so he can stay with his dead teenage girlfriend? You guys hate him?