#and thats the book!

[redux-iterum]

Burning Hearts: Epilogue

(AO3 counterpart here.)

Camp was silent, but in the purposefully hushed way, that of a Clan who’d woken up to the pained cries of a queen as she brought her litter into the world and had elected to leave her be until the night. The kits had stopped squealing, busily nursing at Goldenflower’s belly, kneading her with their shut eyes and ears. Brindleface and her kits had fallen asleep quickly after the birthing, and Frostfur was outside guarding the nursery as her own kits drifted off again.

With the sun thankfully dimmed by a cloudy sky, Goldenflower’s eyes were glued to her litter of three: two beautiful little torbie mollies, the stronger pale ginger and brown and the weaker a darker version, and a curious, rotund tabby tom. Somehow, despite everything the matriarch had learned in her studies, he had come out dark brown.  

Just like his father.

Was StarClan punishing her for something? What for? Her ignorance? Her blind trust and love?  How was this possible otherwise?

Goldenflower repressed a grieving shudder and forced her thoughts to something else—anything else.

Names. They needed names. And she was the only one here to give them.

If Fireheart were here, she could take the opportunity to teach him how to name his own kits when he had them. It could have taken her mind off of everything, to see his excitement when he met his little siblings, and his worry over Cloudkit, who had grown fatter and louder, if that was possible.

But he wasn’t here. She’d have to do this alone.

Some small part of her reminded her that Brindleface and Frostfur could help, but… no. This was for family to do. She had a feeling.

The first molly, the pale one, she regarded with no small amount of affection. She was as big as her brother—bigger, really—and her markings were paired together beautifully, a solid blend of pale ginger and a warm brown with the tabby markings streaking down her body evenly. She was mostly that ginger, though the brown wasn’t giving up its spaces without a fight.

Tawny, maybe, Goldenflower thought. Or Morning. She could be a Morning. But Tawny feels more obvious…

She could come back to that. She had better ideas for the other two.

The weakest, runty and spotted, had more mottled brown and ginger. She was the smallest and the quietest; Goldenflower’s experience warned her to be ready for the worst. She didn’t let that forbid her from naming the kit. She should have a mighty name, something to make up for her size.

Leopard. He would have called you that.

And perhaps she shouldn’t have thought of what he would have wanted, but... how could she not? They’d discussed names before she had retreated into the nursery full-time. He’d loved the idea of a Leopardkit. That had been his favorite one out of all they’d talked about.

He loved you before you were born, she thought, pressing her nose to Leopardkit, who barely twitched in response. I know that was real. No one else has to.

Now, the tom…

Curse her sentimentality, but it was impossible not to think of him. He was a spitting image of his father, big and starkly-striped. He was going to be tall and powerful, she could see already. But perhaps not brutish; even as a newborn, his claws seemed mostly tucked in, barely grazing her stomach when he pushed harder for milk. They were long, still, like his, and his paws were massive.

He wasn’t getting Tiger, obviously. But something close, something fierce and prickly… shame Thornkit had taken that name already.

A name struck her, and she couldn’t think of another. Bramble. Bramble, with long, sharp stripes and long, sharp claws.

It was perfect. She could only pray no one figured out the source.

Drowsily, she returned to the pale molly, going over Tawny and Morning, back and forth, her exhaustion creeping in and tamping down her thoughts until she drifted off, with a vague image in her head of three little kits touching noses with their father, his amber eyes shining with love and pride.

Where was his soul now, she wondered… 

---

He runs, paws scrambling for purchase on the rocky slope that borders the road. A shining silhouette blazes ahead of him and he ducks into the forest. Ferns and brush stand still as death as he races through them, mouth open, panting for air he no longer needs, amber eyes wild with fright.

Screams like roars follow him through the woods, light-figures easily keeping pace with him, creeping close to his tail as he stumbles and sprints with every bit of power he can channel to his legs. Whooping yowls and jovial caterwauls rattle his chest with horror.

How could they be chasing me? Were my intentions not noble? Didn’t I do the best for my Clan?

It wasn’t good enough.

His victims, drowned and sliced and crippled and gasping for air, flash in front of his eyes, glaring at him, nearly making him trip and fall as he tries to skid to a stop and dive to the side, away from them, away from their damning eyes.

This is a mistake. He only manages a few more steps before sun-bright figures cut off his path. He jerks sideways again, and backs away from the rounding line of Hunters encircling him. He’s surrounded on all sides by glowing warriors: some apprentices, few leaders—the best of the best, the strongest in life and most righteous in death, the ones who protect the territories from all ghostly dangers.

But…

No, this can’t be right. I’m no danger. Not like this. Not like—

The deputy flails about, scrambling for escape, some explanation, anything to get him out of this. There is none. The Hunters are stronger, larger than him. They hurt to look at, blazing as they do. They say nothing to him. Their eyes burn with rage.

Where is He?

Behind him, a searing light exiles what little darkness was left in the forest, the only sound now of a crackling fire. He is immediately pulled into gazing at the giant; it’d be sacrilege to refuse to acknowledge Him. His eyes squeeze shut—this is worse than looking at the sun—but again, he is forced to open them, eyes tearing up in agony as he looks upon the Endless Watcher.

“You disappoint Me, wraith,” the Lion rumbles, His voice shaking the ground and making the trees tremble. “Potential like yours has not been seen in a long time. You could have been the finest leader in generations, if you loved your Clan like you thought you did.”

The deputy’s mouth opens to no sound; his throat is dry as an autumn leaf.

“Destroying your Clanmates,” a Hunter adds coldly, a strangely familiar golden tom almost as sunny as Horoa Himself. “Ignoring your neighbors, wanting them to fall, though you’d never let yourself acknowledge that…”

“Leaving your own family to expose you,” another Hunter says, dark grey and small (standing taller than the deputy even so). She narrows her eyes that shine too bright for a mortal. “They will not rest easy for a long time. Is that what you wanted? Pain and grief, by your doing?”

The deputy barely manages to croak out, “My Lord, have mercy. Please—”

“Another said that, recently,” a tortoiseshell drawls. “The living didn’t heed him.” Her lip twitches as she dryly looks the deputy up and down, regarding him like the stringy remains of stale prey. “Neither did we.”

“Go peacefully,” the Lion growls, and the ground shakes under the deputy’s feet. “This we will give you. Offer your throat and fade to mist. You will not get anything else.”

The deputy trembles. He looks for any kindness, any empathy in the eyes of his undoing. There is none. Pathetically, kit-like in his huddling, he looks to Horoa again.

“By—” he swallows. “By Your teeth, then. It would be an honor, my Lord. Please…”

The Lion throws back His head with a thundering, hearty chuff. The sound is echoed by His Hunters, who shake their heads and give each other tickled looks, like they’re sharing a private joke. Horoa lowers His head again, gazing down at the deputy, His single eye blinding.

“None from ThunderClan will honor you,” He says. “Neither will I.”

The small dark grey molly bursts forward; her claws streak with light. A snap. A crash. Sparks tear open the mist of his flesh. The storm raging in his throat chokes back his words as it rends him apart.

In the heartbeat of a moment, in an eye amidst his agony, one quiet thought murmurs in her voice.

“They will never know your name, love.”

And then there is silence.

The vapor, split in two even wisps, disperses and fades, absorbed by the clean air of the forest. Horoa waves His tail, smoking at the tip, with satisfaction as His Hunters keep their eyes on the very last misty thread. It dissolves, and nothing remains. The Lion curtly nods, growls a chuff, turns and leaps into a gallop, His Titan-like feet hardly touching the ground. His followers race after Him, cheering again, searching for the next danger to protect the Clans from. Light encompasses them, like the sun is swallowing them up.

As they disappear, the forest’s natural light returns, followed by hesitant shadows. The cackle of flames dies, and birdsong carries on again, somewhat confused as to why it stopped. The woods, just for a bit, are beautifully warm with the echo of the sun’s heat. 

The world continues on as if they were never there at all.

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[beguilingcorpse]

i am glad queer representation has drastically improved in my lifetime. because now i can say that i dislike a gay book and not feel like i’m invalidating stonewall

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[vulcanette]

[queerhummingbird]

the most car ride of all time

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[vanilla-extracter]

witches !!

[suntails]

love will truly live

[kneelbeforeclefairy]

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.

[mercymornsimpathizer]

a non-exhaustive list of butch literature

a (very ad-hoc) list of butch reading and writing, (mostly) by butch authors. books I've read myself in bold; take the rest with a grain of salt. additions, addendums, and commentary welcome :)

(you can find my list of femme literature here)

general/literary fiction:

mrs s by k patrick

stone butch blues by leslie feinberg

boulder by eva baltasar

running fiercely towards a thin high sounds by judith katz

tipping the velvet by sarah waters

a crystal diary by frankie hucklenbroich

godspeed by lynn breedlove

cha-ching! by ali liebegott

the ihop papers by ali liebegott

greasepaint by hannah levene

lucy and mickey by red jordan arobateau

the bull-jean stories by sharon bridgforth

development by bryher

notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

america is not the heart by elaine castillo

the slow fix by ivan coyote

the swashbuckler by lee lynch

old dyke tales by lee lynch

sci-fi, fantasy, and horror:

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

the unspoken name by ak larkwood

vermilion by molly tanzer

metal from heaven by august clarke

scapegracers by ha clarke

the unbroken by cl clarke

fire logic by laurie marks

the seep by chana porter

these burning stars by bethany jacobs

feast while you can by mikaella clements and onjuli datta

non-fiction, memoir, and autobiography:

hijab butch blues by lamya h

gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon

fun home by allison bechdel

butch is a noun by h bear bergman

female masculinity by jack halberstam

burning butch by rb murtz

when we were outlaws by jeanne cordova

leaving isn't the hardest thing by lauren hough

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

another mother tongue by judy grahn

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky and madeline davis

the persistent desire ed joan nestle

persistence: all way butch and femme ed ivan coyote and zena sharman

dagger: on butch women ed lily burana

[doctormori]

I love this book to death, so here's some things I noticed <3

[doctorsiren]

The books reveal that Ford is actually a secret partier

(Available as a print on my Etsy Shop)

(wips under cut)

[mothgenes]

i need to psychoanalyze him fr .

[mistxmood]

this is the funniest outcome ever

[Image description: digital art of Bill Cipher, tangled up in electrical wires. He has a nervous expression, as he holds up a ripped wire and says: "Oops!" There's a glitchy effect behind him. End ID.]

[obsob]

to be loved is to be held!!! print