#but it’s katniss saving him

[spideyhexx]

i love your tags about thg switching gender roles and stuff because it KILLS me. in the best way.

like lucy gray being the parallel to peeta and sejanus being the parallel to katniss….whew

YEA I get the comparisons between Lucy gray and katniss, but Sejanus???? Idk I love the Sejanus and katniss parallels and it isn’t a complete parallel but I think Sejanus haunts Coryo just as much as Lucy Gray does

also idk I think there’s smth so much more interesting at points in the book at least (from what I’ve read) about Sejanus and Coriolanus’ relationship because Coryo honestly admires Sejanus SO much yet can’t allow himself to ever be like him because of his own prejudices and feelings

Like Coryo is just an insecure man with mental issues and a product of his environment at the end of the day lmao and he envies that Sejanus can be so passionate openly without caring what others may think of him, cause then to Coryo that makes him weak, he’s showing his weaknesses. But then when Katniss comes along, I think she does the same, but in a way that doesn’t come off as weak. Which scares him!

[grandtear]

"if it weren't for the baby" peeta says with his big puppy dog brown eyes....

[gutfaced]

and here's the meat of it really: cinna cared about katniss, in his fashions to change and accentuate her beauty and flair, in his kindness and friendship, but when it came down to it, he — like every other adult in her life who wasn't someone like plutarch, boggs or haymitch (and previously her late father) ultimately, continued to fail her.

cinna's from capitol roots. he's a young man whose muse may of came from the beauty of the arena and looking at the heritage of each district and their ways. while he is against the way the capitol works, it's way of churning out child fighters to vie for the crown in an annual massacre which garners country-wide entertainment, he is complict in then turning katniss into a child soldier.

not only that, but in the scene where katniss is unconscious and is barely able to listen to a man's voice yelling in the ‘rougher cadences of home,’ how did cinna de-escalate? was he the one to try and wedge in a compromise? haymitch was the protector there; many mentors could see their tributes as a pawn in the games for the sake of their own reputation, but haymitch is able to humanise and care deeply for his kids. so much so, that he challenges the gamemakers head on, not just complaining, but yelling, fighting back in disagreement. giving his tribute her rightful autonomy even while unconcious. that is rebellion. what cinna says to katniss as they're putting on the child-like dress (which already feels sexualizing enough with the accentuated features paired with this teen that both looks so young and younger still,) he doesn't seem like he was involved. haymitch ‘got into a huge fight with them about it.’ not cinna. and while he's not a mentor, it seems bystander-ish for a man who was lowkey in the rebellion all along. the compromise was still sexualization through padding and cinching and so, and while the capitol's powers are hard-pressing, saying no to that would've been the right way to rebel.

when it came to the wedding dress stunt, yes, it was a good touch of rebellion on his part. but this could've put katniss’ life in so much more danger. snow could've easily punished her for his deeds (and while he was ultimately tortured and killed,) who's to say that he couldn't turn around and harm ms. everdeen and prim on behalf of cinna's traitorous workings?

something else about cinna. he creates a label for katniss (‘the girl on fire,’) as a weapon for the rebellion. he'd been stagecoaching the idea of a figurehead long before the war. and by putting in the suicide pill, designing her battle outfit, he knew what she would become. he did not stop her from becoming utilized as a means to an end, he encouraged it, knowing that she would be hurt eventually. that doesn't mean that he wanted what happened to the prep team to occur, per say — but cinna isn't the greatest person that many attempt to make him out to be. there's something morally grey about stylists attempting to fuel their careers with the idea of dressing up tributes for the butcher's as it is, and while cinna doesn't inherently do that, he does things of a slightly worse nature.

[sanjarka]

no but peeta was being a dick after the first games. yes it's understandable why he overreacted but it doesn't change the fact that he did overreact, and that it was him who created the distance between himself and katniss. which is exactly why he was the one to apologize (and another reason why the movies suck because his line if i stop acting like i'm wounded is changed into if you stop acting like i'm wounded).

[zukkaoru]

sorry i'm thinking abt megumi's incessant desire to be the first to die vs. the narrative keeping him alive despite and how the most tragic ending for him is not actually dying, but being left behind. for megumi, the worst fate is living a long life

[anniecrestalover]

”finnick is dead, he’ll never meet his child or see annie agai-“ get a load of this guy am i right ?? these movie watchers be crazy 💀💀

[hearty-an0n]

once again thinking about how young gale hawthorne was and how many people he was responsible for. like of course he gets swept up into district 13. this is the first time he’s the one being taken care of since his father died

[s0undsinmyhead]

I decided to reread The Hunger Games trilogy and I gotta say this trend of absolutely hating Gale and calling him a war criminal and selfish is such a miss.

Gale is by no means a perfect person. But none of the characters are. They all do bad or questionable things. They’re literally in the middle of a war. Even before it’s officially a war.

Yes Gale was jealous of Peeta and Katniss. Yes, there were significantly more important things going on. Gale knew that, he acknowledged that. But end of the day he’s still a teenager with emotions. Just like Peeta and Katniss who both also describe being jealous of Gale - Madge - Joanna. They also know it’s dumb given all the danger and death surrounding them. But surprisingly people still have emotions like love and jealousy during wartime - including teenagers.

As for the war criminal comments that’s a whole long discussion but let’s remember this is a world in which the government has been slaughtering children for entertainment and forcing all the districts that send their kids to watch them be murdered for the entirety of the main trios lives and long before them - it is all they have ever known.

Additionally, year round the capital treats the citizens like slaves and makes them produce whatever is necessary for the capital and then let’s them live in squalor starving to death. This is how Gale grew up. He was the oldest of 4 kids. His dad died when he was a kid and he was responsible for taking care of his mom and all his siblings. He had his name in the bowl for the reaping probably more than almost any boy in 12.

He watched his district and the men women and children he knew his whole life be burned alive while he had to lead as many to safety as he could. He watched his best friend be shoved into the hunger games twice knowing not only that he might lose her forever but that he would have 2 more people to care for and soon he would be forced into the mines full time with little opportunity to hunt.

So when a war breaks out to finally stop the abuses and murders by the capital of course Gale jumps in. Of course he plans to kill. It’s a war. And it’s nice to try and be a pacifist and say give peace a chance but how can you say that to your oppressors and expect anything to change. There had to be a war and there had to be death. Gale fought in the front lines and was willing to die to save his family and free the districts. It’s curious we never hear anyone call Beetee a war criminal when he made more weapons than anyone. Almost like it’s not the fact the Gale made weapons during a war, but that it was Gale.

[tiffany-smith]

Is it just me or does Katniss always saying she can't do without the "boy with the bread" just... a trauma response?

Like I totally agree that she also loves him, that it's thematically relevant to the message Suzanne Collins was trying to convey, and so on... it's a good match...

But I definitely read there being at least a little trauma response in her NEEDING him like that.

She almost starved to death and he rescued her. She even has a permanent connection between him and the idea to go hunting to sustain her family.

In her psyche, Peeta is her savior. Of course she needs him. Of course she clings to him in life-and-death situations, when she's afraid, etc. Of course "it was always going to happen."

Gale said once, "the only thing I had going for me was that'd I could protect your family." (Paraphrased)

But Peeta, indirectly, at least in Katniss's view, has done all that and more. Katniss would never even have MET Gale if it wasn't for Peeta.

Perhaps it's just the canon explanation for an IRL predetermined outcome, but the role of trauma in Katniss' psyche deserves to be talked about.

[bunnyb34r]

I finally got my roku to work... through my phone 😅 apparently my backup remote wont work with the one I have so I'll still need to find my stupid real remote... but for now I can watch tv again! Yay

[whisperofthewaves]

peeta will lie with the straightest face on the national tv about his unrequited love's pregnancy not consulting it with a single person in his PR, damage management team, and the love interest beforehand, and I love him for that. this is the ideal I want to aspire to.

[plenaurum]

katniss was real for attacking haymitch as soon as she found out peeta was in the capitol

[autismmydearwatson]

There are some characters who only make sense when you remember that they are mentally disabled/a parent/an older sibling

[beldaroot]

it's so funny to me that even though it was so intentional in the ballad of songbirds and snakes to show how snow parallels katniss, snow himself most definitely thinks he's peeta in the situation lol

[metallicabirder]

Not that I necessarily buy into the theory that tributes are preselected for every hunger games or, subsequently, that Prim was selected as a punishment for Katniss’ hunting but! There are some really interesting implications for the arena if the capital had intended for Katniss to watch her sister (+ maybe Peeta?) die there.

In the Hunger Games, Katniss mentions multiple times how much the arena reminds her of the woods back home. There are references to how lucky she is that the vegetation is so familiar that she knows what is safe to eat, that she knows how to prepare the different meats so that they are safe. Which then begs the question: how much of that would Prim have known?

Prim in the later books is training to be a healer but I’m not sure how much experience she’d had at the start of the series. If we give her the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that she’d be familiar with some edible plant species and medicinal herbs. Would she recognize nightlock? We can’t be sure. And we know she lacks Katniss’ hunting prowess.

Katniss would have had to have watched the person she loved most in the world struggle to survive in an arena she would have thrived in. If you buy in to the preselection of tributes and the fitting of arenas to different batches of tributes (which I’m not sure I do), that would be a very tailored kind of torture for a girl, like Katniss, that had spent most of her young life fighting to keep her sister alive.

Point being: if prim’s selection was a punishment for katniss, the arena would have made it a very poignant one.

[dykesbat]

the only reason katniss gets a happy ending is that she's able to break that cycle btw. if you even care.