Katniss insisting on calling Peeta her friend is infinitely funnier when you consider the existence of Gale. Like, we have a control group, we know how she actually treats a male friend and this is not the same thing
along these same lines, i have always thought that one of the best things about sunrise on the reaping is that it shows us what district partners turned friends looks like. two people brought together under a mutual need to survive.
and it makes it even clearer that is not what everlark is.
I’m never going to forget that am I?! 😆
(I’m loving these headcanons!)
No matter what I do, he won’t go. He circles me, just out of reach, as wave after wave of sobs racks my body, until eventually I fall unconscious. But he must understand. He must know that the unthinkable has happened and to survive will require previously unthinkable acts. Because hours later, when I come to in my bed, he’s there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, yellow eyes alert, guarding me from the night.
While I was never the biggest fan of him, this cat has sort of crept up on me, too. So have a little end of Mockingjay drawing of Katniss and Buttercup <3
This is so good!! 🥹
Haymitch wanted Snow dead more than most; the President had taken his family, his girl and any chance of a joyful life away from him, leaving him to drown his sorrows in moonshine, filth and utter loneliness.
Yet, when asked in Mockingjay if there should be a symbolic Hunger Games with Capitol children, he looked to Katniss. He saw her gazing at the rose, the symbol of the Snow dynasty, and he understood.
He understood what she saw in the rose; that Snow’s legacy would live on through Coin if nothing was done. He understood that Katniss rightfully blamed District 13 for Prim’s death.
When Katniss voted “yes… for Prim”, Haymitch perceived Katniss’s thoughts with absolute precision, as always. He did NOT vote “yes” - he voted “with the Mockingjay”.
Haymitch was giving Katniss permission to kill Coin, relinquishing the just retribution the old man deserved in order to prevent Snow’s replica, Coin, from rising from the ashes of the Capitol. After 25 years of agony caused by Snow’s direct interference, Haymitch put aside his personal vendetta against the former to place Katniss in the position where she could kill Coin instead.
When Katniss’s arrow found its target that day, Haymitch had seen it coming, because she was just like him.
Do you think the book shows a lot of examples of Peeta being more like the old Peeta in the end?
oh 100%. i think a lot of people believe in the misconception that peeta has been "brainwashed" or something when that is simply not the case. he's essentially been conditioned using negative reinforcement and psychedelics to view katniss as a threat and fear her, and even then they were only able to alter his perception of certain memories; they didn't wipe his identity and replace everything he's ever known.
i think a lot of this characterisation is shown through his interactions with other characters, not necessarily katniss herself, however, and that's where a lot of people start to spiral that he'll never be his old self again.
during the weird scene in the cafeteria when he lowk threatens finnick about annie, that's him trying. he's trying to be funny whilst also being protective over his friend. problem is, cf and the quell era in particular are probably where snow got a vast majority of their content for the hijacking, and guess who's a part of a vast majority of that time period? oh, that's right. myshayla, finnick. so peeta's weird tone? his joke not coming off quite right? his generally uncomfortable behaviour? yeah, that's cos he was probably tripping balls ab finnick and katniss—two live triggers sitting directly in front of him. but what i read as the bottom line of that interaction (as awkward as the situation is) is that he genuinely means well for annie. and that's the old peeta shining through, even if it's poorly executed by his recovering self.
he's good with delly too, as long as the conversation isn't about katniss, even when he's very freshly hijacked. and in the capitol, he's so damn charming he makes pollux smile in the place of his imprisonment and makes tigris blush in spite of the fact they're on a mission to assassinate her cousin🥹 (yes, ik snow is awful and evil. but there was a time when he was coryo to her. i don't think she had any second guesses ab the fact he needed to die, but that doesn't mean it was easy.)
his return to katniss is more gradual. remembering her favourite colour is green. her favourite food is lamb stew. even the nights on the train line—it's delivered in a completely unhinged way, that's still him remembering intimacy with her that remained out of reach for snow.
and then there's bigger stuff. i see a lot of people overlook the fact that he's the one who lifts her to the ladder in the sewers and forces her to climb the ladder to safety. this is a very direct parallel to their first games: fleeing from mutts in a gamemaker-manufactured scenario, peeta ushering her to climb, worrying about her and her safety before even considering his own.
if that's not his old self, idk what is.
granted, he does have a hijacking-induced freak out afterwards, but as soon as he does, he tries to do his age-old strategy of pleading with her to leave him and let him die if it means she can get away. and when she doesn't, when she instead kisses him shows him the first real glimpse of affection since his torture, he gains back even more of himself—he remembers his promise of always.
i'm also a firm believer in the idea that peeta rescued katniss from the firebombs. if he was far enough back to escape the pod where the street caved in (mind you, katniss and gale barely made it and they're extremely fast and have their two original legs—i reckon peeta had to have evaded it entirely), he would've been far enough out of range to escape the worst of the explosion from the bombs. but instead, he's a "fire mutt" like katniss, covered in burns. the likelihood of him receiving those burns from several hundred metres back is insanely low. but if he walked into the flames himself? different story. just saying.
and all of that is right before he stops her from killing herself because no matter what, he can't let her go.
even katniss phrases it as peeta coming back to her when they grow back together. not rebuilding his personality. returning to himself.
i think it's stupid to say he's the same person he was before the war. that's not true for any of them. BUT i mean that as in he—and everyone else—has been through a major trauma, not that he is irreparably damaged by the hijacking. i'm so fucking tired of hearing that he "falls in love with her twice" or that "he'll never love her the same" like please bffr. he doesn't forget his feelings. that's the whole problem. that's why he's so damn confused.
anyways, i'm moving away from my point here, but basically, yes, peeta returns to his old self, at least for the most part. just with a dash more of ptsd.
thinking about haymitch watching peeta pick the nightlock berries and not being able to do anything about it. watching from the other side of a screen, hoping he didn’t choose to eat any before katniss got back. trying to figure out if it would even be possible to warn him somehow, wondering if he’d be able to convince anyone to sponsor a parachute to protect one half of their starcrossed lovers from district 12 (if he could get it past the gamemakers in the first place).
waiting for katniss to get back, hoping she would recognize the berries for what they were and not eat them too. hoping he wouldn’t have to helplessly watch as his two tributes died so similarly to how his girl did.
the dread he would’ve been feeling thinking he was about to lose them both when he’d just allowed himself to start hoping again, to start caring about them. when he’d just started imagining a world with two winners, a world where he was actually able to save his tributes for once — the boy with the bread and burdock everdeen’s little girl. a world where he finally did it right. but now it could all be taken away with a handful of berries in a twisted play on his own worst memory.
😭😭😭😭
And that was probably the farthest district 12 tributes had EVER gotten in the games since Haymitch won!!!
"peeta...can you stay with me?"
first full proper canon fanart that isn't just still headshots and its ANGSTTTT lawl....
i think about how just sleeping side by side is beyond intimacy for them a wholeeeee lot . just the action of closeness and all it implies transcends everything forever okay i need to be LOCKED UP
😭 my heart!!! I absolutely love them!!
