Bella

skin deep by PenAndInkPrincess

Ellie giving herself a chemical burn to cover her bitemark

a half-step to the left by PenAndInkPrincess

 Ellie follows Joel and Tess around and meets them with no Fireflies involved

some things need to be said by liveandlesbian

ellie finally understands joel’s choice and they talk about feelings for fucking once

illuminate by PenAndInkPrincess

I beat it!” She says, clearly proud about whatever the hell she’s talking about.

“Beat what?” He asks.

“Curfew!” She nearly crows.

Andor: undocumented immigrants are facing sexual violence every day. left wing infighting will get everyone killed. rich people buying back things stolen by colonists is still an act of colonialism.

I've already seen some complaints about how the plot was bad and the rebellion attempt didn't make sense/was far-fetched, but honestly that was one of the things I liked best about it!

Yes, the rebellion plot was an EXTREME long shot. The end goal really wasn't clear, the plan itself was shoddy at best with about a million things that could go wrong. It's honestly amazing that Haymitch and Ampert managed to carry out any part of it "successfully." And even then, they're really just the pawns of the rebel adults around them (like Katniss and Peeta in that way, except that unlike Katniss and Peeta, Haymitch's problem is being told too much, rather than being kept in the dark.)

I think it's pretty evident that this was a last minute, thrown together rebellion attempt hastily contrived of by immensely desperate people (and almost certainly prompted by Beetee's son unexpectedly being reaped.) Beetee needed his son's death to mean something. His wife was pregnant. He was probably already foreseeing losing them, too. He needed to at least try this. He was desperate enough to try it even if it was ill-thought and highly likely to fail. Wiress (Beetee's most recent mentee) and Mags (who's basically mother teresa like oh my god maggggs <3) would of course be wiling to jump in with him. Plutarch is desperate to get something, anything, stirring in way of rebellion. And finally they pull in Ampert and Haymitch to carry the thing out, the two tributes who have already been marked as direct, personal targets of the Capitol and have seemingly no chance whatsoever of coming out of the arena alive. it's easy to see why they alone were chosen, no other kids involved. After all, Haymitch has been told from President Snow directly that he is going to be killed. He's as good as dead already. He has nothing to lose.

Trouble is, no one expects Haymitch to actually emerge as Victor, lest of all Haymitch himself, but also everyone around him. The others are all adults who know and accept what could happen to them if the plot goes south. They take on the risks willingly. They are banking entirely on Ampert and Haymitch being dead anyway. And isn't it better to go out fighting back against the true enemy? The only thing Snow can do is take it out on them in the arena, which he will be doing regardless. Unfortunately, they're forgetting just how much Snow likes to play with his food before eating it. It's pretty clear with the poisoned milk picnic basket that Snow was indeed intending to kill Haymitch right up until the very end. He was merely waiting for the right time, after the right amount of humiliation, after forcing Haymitch to watch all his closest allies die horrible, targeted deaths. Only this time Snow waits too late. And then he has no choice but to pull Haymitch out alive so that the Capitol can have their victor.

I think the fact that it all fails so colossally is the biggest point of the book. As Plutarch comments at the end, when it does happen, the timing needs to the right. There needs to be an army to rally behind the rebels. Haymitch was given none of that. He was moved around on a chess board by desperate players. The rebels had hardly anyone on the inside. They didn't have the country behind them, no soldiers. They didn't yet understand their enemy well enough. He is set up to fail on all sides, the rebel side included. And they pay for it greatly.

On the other hand Katniss, when she comes, is very significantly not some grand "chosen one." She's pretty inarguably far, far less rebellious than Haymitch is at the start (in part because they have very different motivations in their games). Breaking into the arena to attempt to shut it down, working to destroy the generator, killing gamemakers in the arena, all that is about 10x more explicitly rebellious than the berry trick. The difference is not that Katniss is smarter or stronger. Imperatively, the only difference of any great significance is that Katniss manages to ensure her acts get seen. The berry trick cannot be covered up or cut out. It's the grand finale. And that's what makes it far more of a threat than all of Haymitch's crazy, reckless schemes to tear down the arena.

(interestingly, I think Haymitch would have been way more successful if he'd had the opportunity to carry out his backup plan of bombing the cornucopia during the final confrontation of the Games. The part of the plan that he came up with entirely on his own. it has to be something the Capitol's propaganda can't wash away, something that would have been impossible for them to cut out.)

And the next day (can’t find screencaps of it from that day specifically but the icon and display name were still blacked out like above)

AND, in case that wasn’t sus enough, when you went to deltarune.com on October 31st 2018, it looked like THIS.

You were then directed to download a suspiciously large file called SURVEY_PROGRAM, which then gave you the ‘YOU ACCEPT EVERYTHING THAT WILL HAPPEN FROM NOW ON’ prompt before opening. At this point there had been not a whisper, not an inkling that this might be an actual new game, apart from the oddly large file size for a ‘survey.’