inej ghafa stan club

when ao3 is back up i want all of you to leave comments on the fics you were interrupted from reading, the fics you were looking to find, the fics you were thinking about re-reading, and the fics left open in your tabs for months now.

when ao3 is back up, i want you all to show some love to your favourite writers, favourite fics, or even just the 600 word one-shot that brought a smile to your face that tuesday three weeks ago.

when ao3 is back up i want you all to remember that comments and explicitly voiced appreciation are what keep writers going.

something about katniss looking back to what her parents were like to know how to act in love with peeta, something about her noting how her mother almost stopped living when her father died, something about her losing the will to live when the capitol captured peeta, something about sally oliver saying that "mourning is a final version of love" and how it is an "act of rebellion against the world, ignoring all calls to be healthy, sane, responsible."

i have often imagined what snow would be thinking during the forcefield scene in catching fire where katniss finally convinces him of her love for peeta. thinking about how snow eventually uses peeta as a weapon against katniss, i always thought that snow looked at the scene and was already thinking of strategies to use katniss's love against her. 

but, the more i think about it, that doesn't make sense. at the time, snow did not know anything about plans to rescue the victors. so, why would there be any need to use katniss's love as a weapon? there wouldn't be. as far as he was concerned, he had full control of katniss's fate and her death was a matter of when, not if.

so, i think that snow, wherever he was, was having one of his classic coryo moral crises. because the task that he gave katniss– to prove that she was actually in love with the person that she used for survival– was supposed to be impossible. of course, it would be impossible. right? because lucy gray never loved him and only used him, right? of course, coryo… 

so, i think that seeing that katniss was actually in love with peeta freaked snow out more than anything and sent him into full crisis mode as he works to find another way to justify his victimhood.

but this crisis would not fully be resolved until he finally had the boy who somehow miraculously won the heart of a survivor trapped in his control. and now that snow had him, he would do anything in his power to prove that katniss, when it came down to it, would betray peeta for her own survival. and so, he turned the boy she loves into a mutt set on killing her. 

and i like to think snow's last glimpse before the mob of citizens rushed him at the end of mockingjay was of peeta, a boy who was programmed to kill his love, running to prevent katniss from dying. and snow finally understood that, after everything, katniss could never really kill peeta. because they truly loved each other.

and i like to think that his last thought was of lucy gray and sejenus, finally coming to the irrefutable, horrifying (to him) conclusion that relationships based on survival weren't destined to fall apart. that they could be real, interwoven with pure love. that he was not the victim of nature, but rather the gamemaker of his own hell.

and then i start cackling.

i swear if tom blythe doesn’t properly portray the mania in his face when he goes to shoot lucy grey i am going to riot. it is the climax of the movie, he needs to be bloodthirsty, nasty even. we need the girlies on insta and pinterest to make edits of him killing lucy grey like we do miguel o’hera slamming down miles.

it is no surprise that debt and owing are strong themes throughout the hunger games series. katniss "hates owing people" (thg, 32). because, for katniss and the rest of the people in the seam, relationships are transactional. 

when katniss first meets gale, their entire relationship becomes transactional as katniss offers him "a bow if he had something to trade" (thg, 111). knowledge and goods do not come freely in the seam, and everything must be met with a trade, even relationships. 

so, owing suggests a debt that will have to be repaid, something that can constantly loom over a person who is already pressed to use all of their resources for their immediate needs. this uncomfort with debt is not limited to district 12, but spans across the entire country. this is made clear when thresh spares katniss because of the love and protection she gave rue, making it so that they were "even then. no more owed" (thg, 288). 

it is even ingrained into the rhetoric about the games. the games are put in place because of what the districts "owe the capitol" because of the rebellion (thg, 42). the games are meant (at least in concept) to be an indemnity, a repayment.

so it is not a coincidence that our favorite boy with the bread doesn't live that way. katniss doesn't expect peeta to understand the disdain the people have for debt because he has "always had enough" (thg, 292). and, despite peeta getting annoyed that she thinks he's "too dim to get it," he doesn't get it (thg, 292).

for peeta, he doesn't get why thresh would spare katniss just to get even. and he especially doesn't understand why katniss owes him for the bread. because he gave katniss the bread without any expectation that katniss needs to do anything for him. because he did it because he cared about her, not because of what she could do for him in return. 

and i think that it is interesting that, in the second book, peeta tries to persuade haymitch to save katniss using the rhetoric of debt. 

and i can totally imagine how it must go on in his head. that he remembers how katniss mentioned that people from the seam hate feeling indebted to others. so, he is going to use this against haymitch to get what he wants (cf, 49). and the funny thing is that peeta still shows that he doesn't get it.  he still doesn't understand how these transactions are supposed to work. because he doesn't use haymitch's debt to benefit himself. rather, he invokes haymitch's debt to him to perform another selfless action (cf, 50). to save the girl he loves. and leave it to peeta to take a transactional relationship and still center it around his unconditional love.

and that is what makes peeta's second invocation of debt so heartbreaking. in mockingjay, when hijacked! peeta considers finnick saving his life, he says that it didn't count because it was "for her" and that he didn't owe him anything (mj, 208). this is just another way that hijacked! peeta seems to have changed who peeta was. peeta no longer considers acts that protect and care for katniss as good enough to justify his indebtedness (and that is pretty constant throughout katniss and peeta's feelings about each other).

 so yeah, he finally gets it. he gets how debt is supposed to repayed and how relationships are supposed to be transactional, and it destroys katniss (mj, 208).

but that is what makes peeta's return with the primroses even more precious. because he "went to the woods [that] morning and dug these up. for her" (mj, 325). he did it for prim. for a dead girl who couldn't possibly repay him. because she needs to be remembered in a world that refused to acknowledge her. a world that thought she was disposable. and it signals that katniss's peeta has returned. and now, he understands how debt is supposed to work, but he doesn't invoke it. he does not subscribe to a system centered on transactional relationships.

because, although snow tried so hard to convince him of it, that is not who peeta is. he loves unconditionally. he memorializes children that were deemed disposable. he refuses to forget. and that is why katniss loved him from the start.

So you're telling me Peeta practically ran to 12 the moment he was discharged by that therapist guy, and the first thing he did upon his arrival was to look for primroses, to plant them by the windows of Everdeen's house so Katniss could not only, even though metaphorically, finally bury her baby sister and mourn in peace, but also have a tiny piece of Prim living nearby every time the flowers bloomed. Thus, comforting her was on his mind throughout the entirety of his recovery, and by heart, he always knew what to do to help her?

Thinking about how incredibly brave it was of Suzanne to make the main love interest a kind, sensitive, emotionally intelligent, disabled, stocky blond in 2008 when the trend at the time was skinny, tall, lanky, sarcastic, hates-everyone-but-main character, rageboy. And how absolutely genius it was to have BOTH of those types in the same series and have Katniss choose Peeta. Groundbreaking.

Suzanne literally does not care about trends. She cares about characters and themes and anything in her work that meets trends is a coincidence. She's always coming at these coincidental trends from the unexpected angle, too. And it's why 15 years later her work is still impactful and relevant.

live laugh lucy gray

i do like the hunger games movies — like, as far as book adaptations go, things were relatively good — but they were WRONG for not including the little bit of haymitch’s backstory in the catching fire movie. the pieces of haymitch’s backstory that the books gave us offered a LOT of insight into his motivations and the way he trusts & understands katniss irrevocably. haymitch’s games were a quarter quell, too. he lost an ally, too. and more importantly, he was the first person to realize that the force fields that surround the arenas are deadly, and he used that to his advantage and won the games as a result. his actions were seen as an act of rebellion by the capitol, and so snow had his family killed. the next, and only other person to ever do this — to use the force field as a weapon — was katniss. she didn’t come up with the idea on her own. she got it from witnessing clips of haymitch’s games. and she knew what it could cost, and she did it anyway. and that was what officially set the wheels of the rebellion into motion. it was a flame that haymitch had sparked years ago, even if it wasn’t a conscious intention. at the time of his own games, the people weren’t ready to unify and rebel as a cohesive unit, but once katniss used his same method, they were. the parallels between haymitch and katniss run deep, and he trusts her irrevocably. he knew exactly what she was about to do when she said “yes” in the tributes meeting, and he stood behind her immediately. haymitch is arguably the one and only person who understands katniss in her entirety. he has felt the same grief, undergone the same tragedies, and held the same passion that begged for a better world.

the reason Tolkien pulls off “magic is leaving the world” without it being depressing or disappointing is that the whole story is about how this loss is sad, yes, but also right for the time, and moreover that the magic—the elves, the dragons, the dark lords with magic rings and returned kings with legendary swords—were never the important thing. “Returned king with legendary sword” is literally a ploy the heroes use to hide the real hero, Frodo Baggins of the Shire. The end of the story isn’t the ship leaving for the West, it’s Sam coming home to Bag End. The wonderful thing in Middle Earth isn’t what is lost, it’s what remains, what is saved.

i saw this tiktok where someone was saying that katniss ended the games with severe ptsd, and how every dystopian novel to come after completely ignored the ptsd aspect in favor of a happily ever after

i that’s why the epilogue is so important, people look at it as “they lived happily ever after” but it’s not that, it’s “we have seen and done horrible things, one day I’ll have to explain these things to my daughter, we are still haunted by nightmares, we will never truly get over what we’ve been through” but through it all, with time, she’s able to develop a sort of contentment, allow themselves to hope again, to believe the world will be okay, cautiously

there are things you’ll never truly get over in life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find contentment or happiness in spite of it and I think suzanne collins did a really good job of showing that

I’ll lay flowers on your gravestone

the commodification of friendship is the most annoying thing to come out of the internet in ages. like actually i love to break this to you but you're supposed to help your friends move even if it's hard work. or stay up with them when they're sad even if you're gonna lose sleep. you're supposed to listen to their fears and sorrows even if it means your own mind takes on a little bit of that weight. that's how you know that you care. they will drive you to the airport and then you will make them soup when they're sick. you're supposed to make small sacrifices for them and they are supposed to do that for you. and there's actually gonna be rough patches for both of you where the balance will be uneven and you will still be friends and it will not be unhealthy and they will not be abusive. life is not meant to be an endless prioritization of our own comfort if it was we would literally never get anywhere ever. jesus.

this book is so good I cannot stop thinking about it I love them

GONCHAROV (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese

[template by @bitchronan]

Aemond: Put the girl down

Aegon: Tf u mean put her down cant a father hold his daughter???

- Queens -

the clock scene is overhyped as hell and film bros ignore the importance of the apple scene bc they're afraid of the homoerotic undertones and i WILL die on this hill!