#magnesiumeternity

I took so long to answer this yikes sorry!! And okay so I guess I don’t so much have Ashley headcanons as I have conflicting Ashley-adjacent hopes and dreams and speculations

Anyway, so we have this girl who is likely more or less surprisingly self educated on Welsh history, happens to live relatively close to a dead Welsh king’s burial ground, is dating the one Aglionby student who HAPPENS to be running a black market magical objects business, who also is apparently a notorious serial dater but she ropes him in for long enough that they’re still together months later during TRK, also does not seem to give a fuck that he’s apparently very obviously cheating on her, and purposely plays up this shallow and ignorant persona in all of her interactions that we see, but also has at least some understanding of Welsh history and feminism within the Catholic Church?? so she’s probably pretty educated and intelligent

Also she can see ghosts, which is probably a plot hole because TDT describes her as not looking at Noah at all and I have to assume that that’s meant to imply that she can’t see him, but in the first book she SHAKES HIS HAND so. She had her reasons for not looking at him even if she could see him. She’s unknowable.

So, what does this all mean? I don’t know. But these are my top theories:

She has something to do with the whole magical artifacts trade thing. I don’t know WHAT exactly, but like… she’s stated to be playing Declan, so to what end? My guess is to the “spying on you and your whole black market magic business” end. Also, if she has a tie to this whole world of magic in general, then her knowing about dead Welsh kings doesn’t seem far off either. It would make sense to want to do a bit of research about the area, especially if her motivations are connected to keeping an on the Lynches, and you KNOW Gansey has to be publishing his research somewhere online. The whole scene with Ashley and Declan in TRB is kind of weird - why would he take his girlfriend to go look at his brother’s weird friends? But if Ashley nudged him into taking him with her because she wanted to go have a look at this guy who thinks there are magic kings sleeping in the ground… *shrugs* I’m just saying 

Ashley is just a fashionable nerd with a passion for history and feminism but isn’t always the best at articulating herself in an intelligent sounding way. She probably at least partially believes in magic though, because I refuse to let the seeing ghosts things go. She’s affiliated with magic SOMEHOW, even if it’s just from living in the most supernaturally town ever or from having a boyfriend who’s routinely moving magical shit around in his car.

She’s a lesbian. This is based on nothing other than her iconic lack of investment in her relationship with Declan.

Theory 1 or Theory 2 COMBINED with Theory 3. 

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ★ url aesthetic for @magnesiumeternity ★

@allyourdustturnsholy​

Honestly? Brutus went against tradition because he saw it’s what his kid needed. He took the decision seriously, this wasn’t a capricious spur of the moment thing, but Devon was sad and in the end Brutus made his choice.

Because it’s not -- actually a rule? It’s a policy that was put in place for several reasons, and one is, yes, to protect Victors from bad parents (fame-seekers and abusers), but it’s also protect the district. Everything works smoother the more separated the kids are from their parents -- the parents know their kids are well taken care of and can move on, the kids have a new life and a new family and new responsibilities and can make a clean break -- but also (this is important), unlike the Victors from other district, they don’t have family members who can be used against them as leverage.

Odin asked Heidi to step out because he follows tradition very faithfully and never once thought to consider anything different. Brutus, as a tribute, also never even considered that he might be able to reconnect. But Odin also realized that by putting herself in that interview, Heidi made herself vulnerable -- and by extension, she made Brutus vulnerable. Having that connection be public, and maintaining that connection after, would allow it to be used against them in case ... anyone ... wanted to do that.

(Odin is a loyalist. He is not an idiot.)

(tagging @allyourdustturnsholy since you changed urls)

OKAY WELL Emory really wanted to watch the Games her first year out, and Brutus explained that no, we don’t do that, nobody does that, even he didn’t do that thank you very much, but then it was a non-Volunteer year and Emory got it in her head that this was a punishment for her victory, and it was just Not Good.

Basically Brutus foresaw a lot of trouble if he left her at home in the Village surrounded by televisions she wasn’t allowed to watch, and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to distract her, so he ... well, he improvised. Emory’s Arena was indoors, so all her residual environmental trauma was about being enclosed and trapped, meaning she loves the outdoors still and (happily!) has no Arena triggers about being outside. So, Brutus got a chunk of his funding to buy up a little plot of land up in the mountains and build a little cabin.

Not a Capitol-style luxury glamping cabin, an actual one, with running water and electricity but no television or media hookup (legal because this was not a domicile or place of employment -- listen, Brutus is as Lawful Neutral as they come and he doesn’t believe in Rules Lawyering most of the time, but for the sake of his girl, absolutely). It was out by a small lake, and they brought minimal supplies and just spent the summer hunting and fishing and spending time with each other and not doing a lot of much else.

Emory knew how to swim because her parents’ house had been at the base of a lake. (Brutus had one too, his town had an old filled-in pit mine that had been converted to an artificial lake when he was a kid, but he never actually went swimming.) She went swimming every day, and Brutus would sit on the dock and watch her, and then she’d climb out and lean on him like :) all dripping.

After that they went out there any time they needed a break. If Emory was really feeling it -- if the Capitol was really getting to her, the excess and the casual disregard of poverty and people’s lives -- they’d head out into the woods for a weekend with nothing but a pocketknife and some flint and just rough it. It helped Emory centre herself, and it also helped Brutus chase away the last of his Arena demons and helped him reclaim the wilderness for himself.

I’ve sat on this one for a while because I’m trying to find a not awful way to answer it, but ..... I mean ......... it’s a dystopia where kids are put into a sadistic Arena to murder each other for the sake of entertainment, and where these kids are divided into “boys” and “girls” and identified by blood samples so there can’t be any mistakes at the Reaping, and the emotional well-being of children is not a priority of the government at any point. The Centre exists to train kids within this system. Given this setup, trans acceptance is not a thing here. And thus, any kid who finds it impossible to continue within the gender binary, or whose gender issues interfere with training, is going to get cut, the end. Lyme’s issues were definitely borderline, but her dysphoria was largely based around the issue of gender performance/conformity, not centred around her own gender identity, and so she was allowed to continue (and occasionally indulged due to her high skill level), but if she had actually been trans ...... no. 

Does that mean there were no trans kids? No, of course not! but they wouldn’t have the vocabulary or the support framework, so they’d have to figure it all out on their own. The entire Career training process would be quite horrifying, given how much of it is centred around the gender binary as necessitated by the Hunger Games framework, and so honestly even if the trainers didn’t cut them, I think they’d likely drop out themselves. They’d be much happier once they aged out of the Reaping and no longer had to deal with that yearly misgendering process -- I think they’d have the most success moving away somewhere to quietly transition on their own, start a new life and are very happy. But the teen years are going to be hell, just because of the way Panem is and the way the Reapings and thus Career training is structured.

Aw, thank you :D 

I do indeed put a ridiculous amount of thought into these murder-children (and the subsequent murder-adults). I don’t even know how this happened, I didn’t ask for this, but I’m super chuffed people are enjoying themselves!