alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.

Katniss and Peeta will die together in their nineties “The Notebook” style (minus the dementia and the preliminary heart attack). Roughly seventy-six years after the last chapter. A marriage that will last longer than the games they dismantled together. I will not be believing or hearing anything else ✌🏻

Another wholesome, comical, and low-stakes head-canon of mine. As soon as Peeta’s bakery got established enough to have reliable employees, he started volunteering to teach art at the district school in the afternoons. He also eventually coaches wrestling for his son and his friends. The students all adore him, and he tries not to embarrass his own children too much when they reach the age to take his class. Plus, apart from the one warning to not get too handsy with the volunteer archery instructor during school hours, he’s never had one infraction!

Everlark’s separation at the end of cf hurts me so fucking bad. Everything about it just feels so horrible, the way the air turns cold around them, these people who should be their allies with this strange conviction they have to go along with, even if they don’t understand. I’ve always hated that scene specifically because it just… feels deeply uncomfortable? Especially considering, ofc, that they’re the only underaged victors in the arena. Yes finnick and johanna are young, but nevertheless, at least they have a modicum of perspective and power over them. They’re kids. They want to stay together because they’re scared. Because that’s what kids do. (This is a huge flaw for the movies, in which they are visibly and obviously adults in every way, so the power dynamic feels less significant.) But of course, they’re not being thought of as kids in that moment—they’re tools. Weapons. They have to be separated so that a single strike wouldn’t take them both down, even if it would be preferable to both of them than either going it alone. Everyone around them knows this because they’ve seen it happen already. Katniss and peeta will self immolate side by side before they willingly become a part of anyone’s games. This is what makes them dangerous and valuable, but also what makes them need to be broken apart to be just “valuable”, and not “dangerous”. It breaks my heart, because it reveals the sheer depth to which their lives and even their care for one another are appropriated for what it provides as propaganda fodder, and not for what it tells us about them as human beings. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of the idea that the rebellion ultimately commits many of the same categorical mistakes and cruelties as the capitol does, but masked by good intentions. The ends justifying the means. Protesting children who are ripped apart from their families by ripping children apart from one another so at least one of them can be marketed to the public as a mascot for an initiative that they had no idea they were representing. Heartbreaking, and narratively devastating.

it’s very important to me that we acknowledge Haymitch’s failures as a mentor without excusing them because of his trauma or alcoholism … it’s important to me that we acknowledge that he lashes out both physically and verbally at Katniss and Peeta when they meet … it’s important to me that we acknowledge that he decided to step up for Katniss and Peeta because they showed him a fighting spirit and because they had a workable media angle, not because he’s a wellspring of compassion … he could have stepped up for any of his “less exciting” tributes and he chose not to … now, does he change? does he try and save both of them? does he learn to love them like his own children? absolutely, but those actions are more meaningful if we acknowledge where he started

Peeta absolutely had a fantasy growing up of Katniss coming to his house with her bow and rescuing him from his mother, maybe taking him to live in the woods together. If he ever admits this to her it is only through extreme cajoling, and when he does it his entire face is so red she thinks he’s about to pass out.

I definitely believe this daydream of his came from his witnessing of her relationship with Prim over the years, and wondering how warm it would feel if someone protected and loved and cherished him like that.