#Gadge

[little-lynx]

Merry Christmas!

Hey! Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates! ♥️

We have absolutely ordinary day here but I wanted to congratulate you all with something nice ♥️ So here are main characters of my blog haha ;)

(I will come back with my annual winter Everlark illustration on a Russian Christmas Eve as always)

Have a wonderful day, sweethearts!

[askclato]

Madge: You know, Peeta gives Katniss flowers everyday. I wish you’d do that too.

Gale: Okay.

*the next day*

Gale: *gives Katniss flowers*

Katniss: ???

Gale: I don’t know, I’m confused as well.

[imasradiantasthesun]

The Kids of District Twelve – part 2

Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Gale Hawthorne, and Madge Undersee

[thesweetnessofspring]

Why do you think so many people ship Gale and Madge?

AHHHHH I am so excited you asked me this!! Forgive me but now I get to nerd out about writing!!

Ok, to understand exactly what I'm going to be talking about, I highly recommend this video about good romantic plots (it's about 20 minutes long). The video essayist uses Beauty and the Beast 1991 in comparison to the 2017 remake to as an example, showing why the original works and the remake fails despite using so much of the same storyline/dialogue. But tldw; good romance is a dance, where the characters go back and forth with one another, challenging each other and then coming together before pulling away and coming together again.

Katniss and Gale lack the push-and-pull that gets talked about in this video. Gale pushes, Katniss pushes back, and they end up further away from each other than before. It's this way through the trilogy until they're irreparably separated. Take this part of their first scene together (I'm taking just the dialogue for brevity):

"We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly. "What?" I ask. "Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale. "If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly. "I never want to have kids," I say. "I might, if I didn't live here," says Gale. "But you do," I say, irritated. "Forget it," he snaps back.

Here, Gale makes a proposal: what if we ran away to the woods? Katniss is quiet, he feels her drifting away so he tries to correct it and brings up how difficult it would be with their families. This prompts Katniss to make a definitive statement about not wanting kids, which pushes Gale away since it interferes with his desire to partner with her. Gale offers his perspective as another little push, that he would want kids, and Katniss pushes him back again by reminding him he does live in Panem with the Games and he's irritated and pushes her away. Occasionally one of them might pull the other toward them (Gale's whipping and Katniss's prep teams, for example) but that's not enough to make up for all of the times they're pushing away from each other.

We only get one scene of Gale and Madge together, but there's more of that push-and-pull dance here:

"Pretty dress," says Gale. Madge shoots him a look, trying to see if it's a genuine compliment or if he's just being ironic. It is a pretty dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. She presses her lips together and then smiles. "Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don't I?" Now it's Gale's turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she just messing with him? I'm guessing the second. "You won't be going to the Capitol," says Gale coolly. His eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in bread for months. "What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old." "That's not her fault," I say. "No, it's no one's fault. Just the way it is," says Gale. Madge's face has become closed off. She puts the money for the berries in my hand. "Good luck, Katniss."

We have Gale starting off with the first push. Rather than pushing back by snapping at him, she pulls him in with a challenge: looking nice when everyone (including potential sponsors) is important, so if it's a dig at her, she counter him. And Katniss notes Gale is confused. Madge has thrown him off! He engages in the dance by pushing again, noting how unlikely it is that she'll go to the Capitol. This has shut Madge down as Katniss notes, but this is their first interaction we see in the story, so it's only the starting point. It would be a good opportunity for Madge to get to pull him back in, especially after Prim was reaped with only one entry. We do see from this exchange that Madge can do the pull of the romantic dance with Gale while Katniss doesn't.

Adding in that Madge becoming interested in the woods and shooting after Katniss returns from the Games and then her going to give morphling to Gale after his whipping are the other hints that maybe Madge has feelings for Gale.

Gadge wouldn't happen in canon because it doesn't serve the theme of the just war theory, or Katniss's story. Gale had to maintain his romantic pursuit of Katniss as part of Katniss navigating her feelings about how to engage in war. Madge had to die to show that even a mayor and his family weren't safe from the government that they'd received some benefit from.

But in fanfiction? Their dynamic is RIFE with this potential for the romantic dance. Gale is never really able to engage in the humanity of those who had an advantage from him. Philosophically, he can see it's the Capitol pitting them against each other, but he resents Madge that she didn't have to put additional entries in the reaping ball. He doesn't appear to form bonds with anyone who has been given advantages by the Capitol, and he even grows more distant from Katniss as she can start affording nice clothes and more food (though obviously Peeta is part of this resentment, too). Gale never really understands why Katniss cares about her prep team, even though he tries to engage with them as a peace offering to her.

Pairing him with Madge makes him have to confront this and grow. If Gadge were to form a relationship, Gale would have to really put aside that resentment that holds him back. He would have to see Madge as a whole, not just the advantages she'd been given. And from the pin she gives Katniss to her family backstory to the morphling, you get the sense that Madge wants to rebel. Gale would make her confront the privilege she does have in this system and fight to change it. She would move from subtle acts of rebellion to fully participating in the fight. And seeing this play out with them challenging one another's viewpoints, sharing their life experiences, coming together to work as a team, has potential for really great character growth and exploration for both of them.

[googleincognitomode]

can’t help but think that that katniss n madge don’t talk about boys, cuz if they do, katniss would end up talking abt peeta arms and eyelashes- worshiping the ground. n madge would end up talking abt how she wants to slap gale in the face… w her lips more precisely… yh

[madlymadeleine]

I’m so normal about 74th Hunger Games era Gadge. So so normal 🌚

[withclawandvine]

literally nobody asked but i have so much lore for a like 1k-word gadge fic i wrote like 5 years ago

imagine a rural town in the picturesque virginia countryside and a nearby campus for an elite boarding school where many of the D.C. elite send their kids so they're less visible to the public — harder to harass or catch in the crossfire of dirty politics. and on weekends, the students are allowed to leave campus. there's not much in the adjacent town, but it is a change of scenery, and has a pretty good diner or two.

the local kids hate the boarding school kids. (on principal, of course, and also because they take up all the tables at said diners every saturday during the school year.)

one such local kid is gale hawthorne, who’s at a corner booth with most of his team at the diner when his buddy thom nudges him and points out the pretty blonde *insert prep school name here* girl over there. “she keeps looking at you, man!”

madge is the daughter of a political dynasty. this universe’s kennedys — right down to the fabled curse, what with her ailing mother and her aunt, who had been murdered in one of the most famous cold cases in national history. madge has no interest in politics, and while she makes good marks, she mostly just cares about orchestra, where she plays piano. she’s beautiful and perfect and gets dragged out of school for political functions and fundraisers pretty regularly. america’s sweetheart, really.

and it’s not like gale is some burnout, okay? he’s smart and unreasonably handsome and the star of his high school baseball team. (baseball is a head game, or so they say, and gale has always had a knack for getting into other people’s heads. it’s what makes him an unstoppable pitcher.) he started varsity as a freshman and now, as a junior, has a mailbox flooded with letters from universities all over the country.

but he’s not wealthy or connected, and his father is a miner. while madge’s father is a senator pushing hard for clean energy, posing a threat to the hawthorne’s livelihood.

their paths shouldn’t have crossed. gale shouldn’t want anything to do with her. madge definitely shouldn’t risk starting anything with him and getting caught. and yet.....

[hawthornewhisperer]

old habits die screaming

Gale/Madge, rated M. Chapter One.

“Ma, where are the keys?” a deep voice called, and Madge was standing up and turning, her heart in her stomach, before she even fully placed it. She hadn’t seen him in years—two years, six months, to be exact—and she’d finally gotten used to that. So for him to show up here—no. It couldn’t be. But then her blue eyes found his grey ones and her stomach finished its plummet. He froze too, utterly motionless while two slightly younger versions of him—and a teenage girl who could only be his sister—swirled around him. He must have just come from work, since his dark slacks and white button down were hardly moving clothes, but he’d taken off the tie she knew he must have worn, and his shirt was rolled up to his elbows. God, she hated him. And she wanted him. Maybe as much as she hated him.

read the rest here.

[vampirehizzies]

haysilee to gadge pipeline because haymitch is out here making jokes about gale having a thing for madge's strawberries. and i genuinely wonder if that has anything to do with him, a seam boy, also once upon a time being charmed by & growing to respect a privileged semi-annoying but otherwise well meaning girl who wasn't what he expected and was brave and good and smart and better than what he had previously thought of her

[beautifullucygray]

hey girl 👋👋

[mellarked-katnisseverdeen]

Oh I am about to light so many fires I am genueinely scared.

[little-lynx]

lovers

Can I go where you go? Can we always be this close? Forever and ever, ah *

*Lover by Taylor Swift

p.s. Gadge is the love of my life and despite the fact that it’s not canon ship (but who knows really) I will always include them in this kind of posts ♥️

[broken-everlark]

Okay okay I know I've been saying "Oh this week I'll be posting stuff."

I'm struggling with severe mental health issues. My depression and anxiety have only gotten worse and I'm trying my best. I hope to get my wips and new chapters done soon. I promise😖😖

[imasradiantasthesun]

as a christmas gift my lovely boyfriend @dscodarkness commissioned the amazing @kald-dal-art to draw Gale and Madge in their interview outfits from my fic holding bright and i'm absolutely in love with it!!!!!

[ovtsakaramel]

I love this picrew so fucking much agahdhdh

Made Johanna, odesta, everlark,gadge and hayffie. Also for the sexualities it's jus headcanons

[starrrbakerrr]

I’ve been thinking about this moment a lot and how to interpret it, so I want to see what Tumblr thinks. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section or reblogs if you would like to elaborate!

Text for reference: