#talking and conversing and engaging like gale would is so new and novel.

[recitedemise]

There are so many personalities, perhaps a number flirting closer to a million or several. In that end, to grasp them all, one has better start learning, devouring all manner of manual and tomes. However, never one to be bested, Miraak trudges on admirably, and to credit, discreet as ever, Gale had hardly noticed.

But then, in all fairness, they, sat together, had technically just met. He hadn't known Miraak before, the man he'd grown to be when battered with solitude. Gale hadn't flavored his distrust or the quality of those men that had come here before him, and so, Miraak plunging longly in that study of biology? To Gale, it all seemed part and parcel with his hunger to learn. Surely, he little meant to suss him, learning how to treat this wizard in his tailored-fine velvets. Even Gale, half a peacock, wouldn't dare to assume a thought so flattering, but gods preserve him, Gale, unlike Miraak, isn't anywhere near as subtle. Even more so, Gale, unlike Miraak, is gleefully talkative.

After all, some studies, he would happily wager, are better learned beyond the pages of leather-clad books. This is where they differ, a stark chasm in their beings that would rival a ravine. Even after his isolation, Gale would jump oh so willingly into bartering words. He's a...fondness in him still, a sort of honeyed-up soul his rot couldn't conquer. It makes him honestly kind, stubbornly affable regardless if the day would strike him harder, and -- well, he's a mortal thing, too, simple with his wants and his vulnerable heart. Scholars long for knowledge in their hours with their books, but to his core, it was connection that Gale felt starved of the most.

It's a secret. And so, perhaps they've a pretense that they both will nurse.

Stirring, Gale looks to the page that Miraak thumbs on open. He looks to it, seeing little beyond words and a half-scrabbled image of some drawing of Atmora. It's conjecture a best, so shrouded in uncertainty and mystery as it is. It's a bygone era, and sadder still, an echo of a time with whom but one soul can hear. Gale listens to Miraak, their gazes locking as his host, his friend, shares a little of himself. Gale's heart folds a little, that emeralding glow freckling soft in his eyes. Like earth and moss and leaves upon the peat... Loneliness. Not for the first time, he thinks there's not a man more lonely.

"I hale from Waterdeep," he offers, "not so ancestral admittedly, but no less the hotbed for culture and aspiring innovations." He conjures up an image. "I live at her docks, surrounded always with waters as she winks with the sunrise. In the morning, I would smell the stirring of the bakeries preparing for the early birds, and at night, I would watch the stars where they would glimmer the proudest and brightest." Full and alive. There and present. The mirage before them twinkles like an ocean with a breeze, and Gale, looking up, gauges his companion.

Miraak... "How long have you been here?" / @bendwill, continued from here.

[peetamymuse]

Honestly, I never agreed with Gary Ross or Francis Lawrence about how The Hunger Games wasn’t about “romance.” They were so worried about any comparison between Twilight and The Hunger Games, that they did everything in their power to limit the relationship between Katniss and Peeta.

(Of course, at the same time, the marketers and execs were trying to lure in fans of Twilight with the Katniss, Peeta, and Gale love triangle--something that was so minor and one-sided in the book.)

Did Peeta and Katniss have sex during the scene above? Maybe. Maybe not. Only Suzanne Collins knows if that’s what she meant to convey. However, the “hunger” Katniss felt during the beach scene was definitely desire (not grief or a need to be comforted):

The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was some kind of expert on hunger, but this is entirely new.

One thing I am just now noticing in the text, but Katniss says that she also felt “that thing” during the first Games when she kissed Peeta in the cave. It’s such as interesting phrase: “that thing” It shows how disconnected Katniss is from her emotions that she can’t identify “that thing” as desire and love.

So, we have two instances of “that thing” where Katniss and Peeta are kissing. Therefore, we can assume that if she’s feeling “that thing” again at the end of the novel, they must be engaged in some kind of romantic activity, at the very least another kiss.   (The more X-rated among us might have other ideas about exactly what “that thing” Katniss is feeling might be.)

Collins never spends a ton of time on the play-by-play “mechanics” of their kisses the way some authors might. These are not exactly “closed door” scenes, but the writing is always about the emotions evoked rather than the actions involved. It makes sense to me why some people would read something more than a kiss into that final scene. 

Plus, whether it happened then or later, we do know that they had at least two children together, so it had to happen at some time...

Anyway, Francis Lawrence is right about one thing: if they’d included a sex scene at the end of Mockingjay Part II, it would have come out of NOWHERE (for people who only saw the movies) because they cut the scenes that would have built up to it--the conversations in the cave, the rooftop picnic, their talks in bed on the train. 

As it was, my sister, (who only saw the movies) asked me when/why did Peeta suddenly get to be so important or why Katniss cared so much that he got kidnapped. And she wasn’t the only one. I feel like Cinema Sins on YouTube also mentions something similar in his video.

Personally, I don’t care about them having or not having sex; it’s the emotion of the scene that was lacking for me. All along, the movies never felt invested in the relationship between Katniss and Peeta, and the last two movies suffered for that.

UNPOPULAR option

I've seen a lot on the Growing back together in Mockingjay a lot "where is the sex scene. " "They ruined the movies for not putting it in " or " I'll never forgive Francis Lawrence for not added it in" ect. ( and so much more things).

To me there was no sex scene to begin with. I've read the book and the part countless times and never thought they were doing it then... it's not an exactly confirmed thing done. And I do know what part.

But this is Francis Lawrence response to it below according to the Los Angeles post.

I agree with him. I never thought it would fit the movies.