TikTok renaming Gale as The Prim Reaper is the best thing to happen in 2023

this era of the internet is fascinating

it’s past midnight and i need to sleep but more importantly 

I need to talk about Mags Flanagan from the Hunger Games

Listen. Listen. She might be a minor character who dies halfway through the book she arrives in. But her story is fucking fascinating. 

First of all, since she’s 80 years old during the 75th Annual Hunger Games, she would have been 5 when they started. That means that she’s the only victor we know of that’s guaranteed to have memories of the beginning of the games, not to mention the rebellion itself.

Second, there’s a promotional poster that has a photo of her Victory Tour and the Implications it accidentally has are staggering

her expression and the fact that they dressed her in a military uniform with medals is captivating in its own right but. She’s the victor of the 11th Hunger Games. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but it is.

The 10th Games, featured in The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes, took place in a literal arena. They were the first Games to feature sponsorships and betting, which meant they were the first Games where a tribute’s ability to play to the camera mattered. Lucy Gray, their victor, did not have a victory tour.

Mags Flanagan having the 11th games means that she was the first tribute to know that winning over the audience was a factor from the minute she was Reaped. She was the first tribute with a Victory Tour. It’s likely they she also may have been the first tribute to fight in an arena of the kind that’s shown in the actual Hunger Games trilogy.

So she goes from a witness to the fall of the rebellion and the Capitol’s new horror, to a record-breaking and possibly crowd-favorite Victor. That’s already a lot and we’re only 20% through her life.

She then went on to be a seasoned mentor for Four, possibly shaping it into a Career District. She played the Capitol’s games, while eventually becoming a rebel conspirator.

Speaking of the rebellion-Her district’s victors were far more onboard with fighting against the Capitol than any other Career District. If not for Lyme from District Two (shoutout to Lyme from District Two), Four’s victors would be the only career district victors that actively plotted against the Capitol. Why? When did this start? What was Mags’ hand in it?

I have a million questions about her. Mags Flanagan appreciation please

katniss and peeta sharing cheese buns after a hunting trip?

Finnick 🔱 Katniss 🏹 Peeta 🤜 AKA

✨ The Golden Alliance ✨

You know what? Fuck that whole "Katniss needed Peeta's calm and peace not Gale's anger and war" shit because nobody is gonna make me believe for a solid second that Katniss was not absolutely in love with Peeta since book two

Its always been funny to me how Katniss gets interested in Peeta’s interview only when asked about a girlfriend 🙃

Rereading The Hunger Games trilogy due to the whole THG Renaissance going on over on Tiktok and I'm a quarter of the way through Mockingjay and my god, Katniss does not give herself enough credit!

And not in the usual YA "oh I'm so plain and average" protagonist way, either. For Katniss, it's that she's completely convinced she's a terrible, ruthless person who uses people and thinks of them like they're game pieces and doesn't feel for other people the way she should.

But she's lived her entire life in deprivation and constant danger, nearly starving to death before she was thirteen years old and then being forced to risk her life daily to be the primary provider for her family afterward. Not to mention the yearly horror of the reapings and the games, always knowing the children dying could be her. Or her sister.

And then her worst nightmare comes true, and she's thrust into a fight to the death where she's forced to playact being in love to survive.

And yet, throughout all this, the thing that most consistently drives Katniss's actions is compassion.

Volunteering for Prim obviously, but also the way she acts towards Rue. Partnering with her, sharing food with her, singing her to rest and burying her in flowers. Then there's the way she worries throughout the series over how her every decision will affect others: her family and friends, but also people she's never even met. Her entire friendship with Finnick in District 13.

Her bonding with the Morphlings over fingerpainting. Her guilt and sorrow over her failure to help the redheaded Avox girl, despite the fact that Katniss was herself a child in a dangerous position and could have died in the attempt. The way she later helps Bonnie and Twill, giving them her bread and showing them how to forage. Her going to bat for the other tributes when District 13 wanted them executed.

Her horror and disgust at the weapons Gale and Beatty were building, weapons that preyed on human terror and compassion to maximize casualties.

Even killing Cato, who she hated and feared, wasn't about vengeance or even survival in the end. It was an act of pure mercy.

Throughout the whole series, Katniss inner-monologues about how awful she is, often comparing herself unfavorably to Peeta and Prim, who she sees as deeply good and kind in a way she isn't. But if Katniss was truly as ruthless and unfeeling as she thinks she is, the Capitol would have actually had far less power to hurt her. It was her compassion that Snow attacked, every time. Her worry for and love of her family, her district, her friends, Peeta...even her fellow tributes. Even people she'd never met. It was her greatest strength and her biggest weakness.

snowbaird aesthetic! lucy gray baird x coriolanus snow like or reblog if you save/use ♡

Marvel: Who's more clingy?

Clove: *sitting in Cato's lap with her hands wrapped around his neck peppering his face with kisses* Cato obviously.

just jen and josh being the best platonic soulmates ever.

✺THG Series Exploration: The Hunger Games✺

21: What's ONE THING you would change about The Hunger Games (First book only)? There are so many good options!

Comment or create your own post and tag me or #explorethg.

i know people have talked about how it’s disappointing that we didn’t see age accurate casting for the hunger games series because it makes us more desensitized to the fact that katniss and peeta were children in the games, but i feel like no one touches on how that plays into how fans, adult fans, thirst over peeta. i read the books as a preteen and of course i loved peeta, and i still do at 18, but i can’t pretend i feel unfazed by the way adults thirst over him and forget that he was a child, and, although i love josh hutcherson and think he did a phenomenal job as an actor, i can’t help but feel it is in part due to that casting choice. throughout the series we are reminded frequently that the characters are children, but it becomes easy to overlook when the person you see and picture doesn’t look like a child. people often bring up that katniss was just a traumatized and exploited child, but i feel people often forget that about peeta as well, especially in the way the sexualize and romanticize him. and i know by the end of the series (pre epilogue) he is probably an adult (timeline is unclear bc katniss is an unreliable narrator) but still for the majority of the series we know him as a teenager. an incredibly endearing and lovable teenager, yes, but still a teenager. so i’m not trying to call anyone who has ever thirsted after him evil or a pedophile that is absurd but idk i cant help but find it remarkable how a main detail of the series, that they are children, is so easily overlooked because of the combination of a casting choice and the likability of his character. it’s reminiscent of the way capitol citizens watch the hunger games and are desensitized to children being forced to murder each other because it’s painted as a spectacle and entertainment rather than what it really is. it becomes easy to forget that peeta is a traumatized child when he a) wasn’t cast as one and b) the majority of fans don’t focus on the fact that he IS one because it’s easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable to be distracted by his personality+appearance and romanticize/sexualize him. people always talk about how much they love, adore, or want him which distracts from the fact that he is a child, and because it does that, people forget he is a child and only focus on how much they love him rather than seeing and understanding his character and his significance in the narrative. it’s like an echo chamber kinda or a cycle.

visual for those previous two sentences because i feel like i can’t explain it well verbally.

i wanna make it clear though that i am in no way trying to tell anyone to stop being in love with peeta mellark or that they are evil for doing so/talking abt it or some other nonsense. this is just some food for thought.

also please smo interact i really j wanna talk abt this w smo but i don’t wanna annoy my friends who aren’t into media/societal analysis

why is the odesta tag literally dead 🧍‍♀️ i feel like if i post about them i’m just gonna be speaking into a void

Katniss is really out here like “this vicious killer who i absolutely do not like at all is trying to manipulate my feelings I’m gonna kiss him on the cheek to show him who’s boss” like ok girl you do that

I know that this is not an original thought but I am here to talk into a void on tumblr dot com this evening.

So like most pjo fans agree the Luke crushing on Annabeth was weird as hell- Rick, why? Anyway, I remember reading the words "corporate love triangle" (this was referring to thg) and I have thoughts.

Maybe this was to convey that Luke had feelings for Annabeth in a way that makes a weird as fuck love triangle. Maybe ot was to provide additional grief and some characterization to Luke and his death.

However, as I have be rereading thg and pjo, i recognized a bit of a parallel between Luke and Gale that I have been turning over in my head. Both of these men have close, mostly familial, connections to the female protagonist, with the running away (pjo) and hunting (thg) being experiences that develop their relationship and strong connection to one another. And these experiences exist outside what is 'acceptable'.

Both of these characters are disenfranchised and angry about it- Luke turns his daddy issues (and valid issues about the gods and how they interact with their kids) into working with the titans and helping to create the conditions for a war on olympus and recruiting other demigods (while also kinda possessed?)

And in thg, Gale takes on a more definitive type of justice in the rebellion- the train and the bombing of the capitol as examples of how he pushes for action. There is a sense of war(Gale)/peace(Peeta) that I have seen from folks analyzing the og trilogy and I have also seen critiques of people's gut reactions to hate Gale. I think that requires a lot of nuance to seeing Gale's character, a kid who has grown uo in this environment, taking care of his family and seeing the ways the capitol has taken from him, as well as Katniss and district 12 as a whole.

Both Gale and Luke share a sort of righteous anger about the systems of opression they face- in thg the capitol contols all and straight up murders the children in the hunger games. In pjo, demigods are not always claimed, many lack recognition as children of minor gods, and face monster attacks and potential death because of their parentage and sometimes it is those parents sending them on dangerous quests.

Both of them had valid points and anger, but I think the way both fandoms jump to immediately seeing them as irredeemable irks me a bit. Especially in our world today, when opressed groups do rise up and try to change the system and are labeled as violent/threats/etc.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. I might come back to this if i have more.