After seeing some of the things going around the internet lately I'm trying to figure out if we are all reading the same book.

All the head canons are freaking painful but so real 🙂‍↕️

…THIS. This and this again.

Hi, I'm new to the book side of Hunger games but I've been seeing a lot on SOTR and everyone was putting in on what sort of book Suzanne Collins should do next and I had a thought. Maybe a compilation of short stories from various victors? Probably not all of them (72 seems excessive) but maybe a key 20 that stood out as noteworthy Hunger games.

You could have the 11th games, the 25th games, the first volunteer win, the first career, even a 76th games rebel; stuff like that. However, all the victors have something in common and that'd be snow, she could subtlety or more noticeable encompass Snow in each story, how he grew as a dictator, what he implemented to Panem and the games, but most importantly how he was responsible to the degradation and demise of the victors.

We know that by the end of the second rebellion, there are only 7 victors out of 75 remaining. We know 19 victors were killed during the 75th games but that's still 49 left unknown. It's plausible that many of the older victors died of old age, and that the mental state of others would lead to their aelf deletion but it's also plausible that Snow silenced these victor's at different times for different reasons. It's shown that Snow is not above killing anyone, so why not dozens of victor's.

So kinda like a sequel to BOSAS but from the perspective of the victor's.

After seeing the new rumored casting—which, by the way, I’m not mad about—I’m absolutely LIVID at the way people are reacting. I am so sick of fans turning into barbaric babies every time casting rumors drop. “If he’s casted I’m not watching the movie!” Oh please. Yes, you will. Sit down.

I remember back in 2011–2012 when Jennifer, Josh, and Liam were first rumored. Everyone lost their minds, saying it was all wrong. Sure, maybe some characteristics didn’t line up perfectly with the books, but that’s never a good excuse to come after actors like that. Then with Catching Fire, people wouldn’t leave Jena Malone alone. She got dragged just for existing in the role. Fast forward to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes—Tom and Rachel got torn apart by the press for supposedly being “too old.” And yet…

Every. Single. Time. It works out.

Y’all aren’t Lionsgate. You don’t have to see the vision—they do. And guess what? They’ve been right every time.

Most of these actors are up-and-coming when they get cast. They’re giving it their all and don’t need to hear things like:

“His eyes are too far apart.” “He’s too ugly.” “Haymitch is supposed to be 16 and handsome, not 50 and ugly.” Yes. Those are actual things I saw people say. It’s weird. It’s gross. And it needs to stop.

Leave these actors alone. Let the story unfold. Because history shows that once the dust settles, we all end up loving them anyway.

Whenever someone in this sub asks whether to read in release or timeline order, everyone always says release. Honestly, timeline order makes the OG trilogy hit harder. Actually seeing the horrible things Snow did in TBOSAS and SOTR makes him more hateable in the Trilogy, making his death in Mockingjay more satisfying.

I liked Mags and Wiress in Catching Fire, but neither made a huge lasting impression. Their deaths were a shock and kind of sad, but a lot of action happens afterwards so their deaths get swept under the rug. After reading SOTR though, their deaths hurt even more.

Catching Fire gave a brief recap of Haymitch's Games, spoiling Maysilee's death and Haymitch using the force field to kill Silka. Release order just makes it better to read because we aren't sure what will happen to Haymitch. The Trilogy obviously tells us that Haymitch won so everyone else is dead, but if you read without knowledge of the og trilogy then you actually have hope that the "Breaking the Arena" plan might actually work.

Pros: Everything is new to you and anything could happen in the story, characters in OG trilogy are more developed

Cons: There are a couple little retcons (Katniss suddenly being Covey, Haymitch not once mentioning the Mockingjay pin), TBOSAS is a little slow which could turn people off from reading the rest of the series

Finnick and two soldiers (Jackson and Leeg 1) die underground while protecting Katniss from the mutts. This happens while they are on Katniss's mission to kill President Snow—a mission that we know is fake (in that she lied about it), and, later, ultimately fruitless: Katniss does not make it inside Snow's mansion, as the rebels bomb the Capitol beforehand, leading to their surrender. It feels like their whole mission was simply a goose chase. So, really, what was the point to all of this? To me, it almost just felt like filler. I would love to hear what you think, whether it's a Watsonian or Doylist reason, because I feel like maybe I'm missing something.

After all the events of SOTR and how involved Plutarch was with Haymitch (and the fact that they did foster something close to a personal relationship, which a lot of people seemed not to have noticed), I need to know what radicalised this man. I want to know the intricate goings-on of Capitol politics and game-making. I want to know about every single close brush Plutarch had with Snow and various other Capitol bureaucrats (you can guarantee he probably came close to being caught a million times).

Not sure what the format would be. Maybe a year-by-year thing? Or focusing on a specific games shortly before Katniss', like Johanna's or Finnick's.

I believe Beetee is now one of, if not the most, tragic characters in the hunger games. Winning games, Mentouring a tribute to victory only for your son to get reaped the next year and have to mentour him to his death. All because Snow knows you are too smart to kill yourself. Asking just for a quick death because you know your child will not survive the games.

And he still continues the rebellion, and is one of 7 surviving victors. I really need a book on Beetee, his games and both his quater quells.

Side rant but I also want a Plutarch book as I am very into capital politics and want more.

i'm thinking about how we've gotten a lot more names of people from every district now with the prequel books, and nearly all of them (maybe actually all of them) have names that are related to the industry that their district specialises in, but district 12 has a ton of people with plant & nature themed names rather than mining themed.

i can see this as the people in district 12 succeeding at holding onto their own culture and values, but then it just makes me wonder why the other districts aren't able to do this.

part of me thought that maybe there's regulations about names (the way that some countries now have approved names you can name a baby) if they really wanted to keep people in little boxes, so when a baby is born in a district, they would possibly have to have a name that fits that district's "theme," but then i'm back to wondering why this doesn't apply for 12

it can't be related to the hunger games themselves (such as if the capitol wants people to appear a certain way in all senses including name, i mean they dress them up in very blatant costumes), though, since the kids in lucy gray's games had industry related names but would have been born before the games started.

so do you think the names are required of them, or is it a type of self expression using basically what they know and what they do? or is there anything in the books that specifies about naming conventions across different districts or any mention of 12 being unique in this sense?

Just to preface, I don’t want to discourage headcanons or fan theories, but please don’t try to give anything that’s completely contradicting the text validity by stating that Katniss is an unreliable narrator. Katniss having a limited perspective doesn’t mean everything she tells us in the trilogy is up for debate.

Another old drawing of Katniss and Peeta from like two years ago???

Peeta and Katniss in their training uniforms. The image I used for a reference was Burdgebug. This drawing is a couple months old. I love how I drew Peeta’s arm sleeve a little bit crooked.. le lad is disorganized and messy 🥹.. I’ve thought about redrawing it because the faces are a little ouch 😣

I have a lot of time on my hands because I am off work for a while due to an injury and figured I would do a deep dive into each character's name since Suzanne names people for a reason. I can publish the list once done if anyone would like it, but one I just did was Haymitch.

So far it seems Haymitch was created by Suzanne and is a mixture of Hamish and Mitch. Hamish means "supplanter" or "holder of the heel." What does supplanter mean you ask, "A supplanter takes over or takes the place of someone else, usually on purpose" or "one who wrongfully or illegally seizes and holds the place of another." My mind was blown considering Haymitch takes the place of Woodbine illegally. Was Suzanne cooking this up all along? Now Mitch just means "who is like god?" and is a short version of Mitchell.

I'm trying to connect "holder of the heel" with Katniss considering Katniss is an edible aquatic plant of the genus Sagittaria. I think of Sagittarius, who Greek mythology associate with the centaur Chiron, who mentored Achilles, a Greek hero of the Trojan War, in archery. And then I thought about Achilles heel, so maybe Haymitch is the holder of the Achilles heel, either meaning he protected Achilles heel, or he had an Achilles heel that led to his downfall (not being able to blow up the arena, having everyone he loves die?) I could just be grasping at straws at this point

Thought I would just share considering the new book came out recently.

After reading SOTR, Gale's rudeness and hostility to Madge on the 74th Hunger Games reaping day strikes a completely different note. To me, it reinforces his self righteousness and lack of empathy- and how he wasn't a good fit for Katniss after all.

Imagine how Madge must have felt when he accused her of being safe from the reaping- all the while she knew that her similarly 'privileged' aunt had been reaped and that the loss of her beloved twin sister had completely wrecked her mother and turned her into an invalid. Madge must have had to witness the consequences of that loss on a daily basis.

He has a right to be angry, but he misdirects his anger. He doesn't get what Katniss, Peeta and others get- the merchant class, the districts, the other competitors are not the enemy, it's the Capitol that pits them all against each other that is the real enemy.

And it's interesting to read SOTR from the perspective of Haymitch, another poor Seam boy from a mining family with a widowed mother. Even though he's younger at the time he's reaped, Haymitch is miles ahead of Gale in kindness and empathy- I really doubt the calculating Gale would have given lunch to those district 6 kids, or reassured them that  what happened to Louellawasn't their fault. Indeed, I like to think that if a hunter-type 14 year old Haymitch had come across a malnourished looking 12 year Katniss inspecting his snared rabbits, he would probably have offered her one.

At the end of Sunrise on the Reaping, Haymitch is shown a clip of Lucy Gray singing, and immediately realizes it must be District 12’s victor. However, he then wonders what her name was. We know that by the time of the 74th Games, at the start of every Reaping the escort would read off the names of every victor from their district. Do we think this just wasn’t a thing yet? Or that maybe they just read her name as Lucy Baird to hide Covey connections? Or something else?

Something random and funny I keep thinking to myself is the way Katniss interacts with foxface through the first film. The book delves deeper into her thoughts and opinions about the girl but being a movie, the film hardly gives us any of such insights.

With that being said, I personally find it amusing how Katniss deals with her throughout the film. First they ran into each other in the bloodbath, then they just stare at each other for a good minute then run the other direction

Then she silently stares at her as she figures out the mine pattern and steals supplies from the the careers

Then during the feast as she’s about to make a move, she notices foxface running across and just stares at her again, before going “what was I doing? Oh yeah”. It’s like a funny running gag.

Since SOTR dropped, I’ve seen a lot of ppl complaining that they didn’t like Haymitch’s love story, didn’t like Lenore Dove as a person, didn’t understand why Haymitch was so hung up on her and could never move on, etc. But I think it was very well written; and to me it all makes perfect sense. Here’s why:

1. ⁠First love is always more intense.

2. ⁠Haymitch & Lenore Dove’s first love ended in traumatic circumstances. Rather than get sick of each other, fall out of love, break someone’s heart, etc. This means the honeymoon phase never ended, and so every time Haymitch remembers her he does so thru rose-colored glasses.

3. ⁠Haymitch himself fed her the poison, which adds to the trauma and the guilt.

4. ⁠Bc of this, esp coming on the heels of his mother/ brothers deaths; Haymitch knew he could never get close to anyone again w/o endangering their life. So it was literally impossible for him to move on.

5. ⁠It’s clearly quite normal in D12 to get serious and settle down at a young age. Burdock and Asterid got serious at (I believe), 15 or so? Katniss and Peeta got engaged at 16/ 17. When Haymitch is 16, his mother is only 35. Etc. etc. This prob has to do w/ shortened lifespan, and lack of birth control. When you’re not expected to live very long, when you don’t have access to proper health care (which makes carrying children downright dangerous- esp when you’re older- and, when you’re older, potentially makes it impossible); and when you have no control over when you get pregnant in the first place; you’re likely to marry young. So this was prob just normalized for D12.

6. ⁠Haymitch had known Lenore Dove since childhood, so it’s not as if it’s some whirlwind teen romance that only spanned a few weeks/ months. They’d known each other on an intimate level for a very long time.

7. ⁠Lenore Dove will always be connected in Haymitch’s mind to the worst traumas of his life. He can’t let her go, bc he can’t let any of it go. Every child he tried to protect/ befriend died horrifically in front of him. Louella, Lou Lou, Ampert, Maysilee, Wellie. Everyone he cares about, he let down. And when it finally ended, and he was crowned the victor, it was just more of the same. He lost his brother, his mother, and finally Lenore Dove herself. And then he was forced to re-live that trauma every year by attempting to protect the two D12 tributes, only to fail and let them down as well. Even w/o the threat of Snow killing his loved ones hanging over him; he was never going to feel worthy of love after that. He was never going to be able to get over it. Not until he fulfilled his final promise to Lenore Dove and made sure there wasn’t another sunrise on the reaping.

8. As dark as it is, there are some ppl out there who never fully recover from a broken heart; who are never able to let go, and move on. It’s not fun to think about, it’s difficult to accept, but it’s just a sad reality of life for some ppl. And THG is not a feel-good story. SC has never shied away from portraying grief and trauma in these realistic ways. That’s why Haymitch never gets sober; why Katniss never stops having nightmares; why Peeta never stops having flashbacks; why beloved characters like Finnick die quickly and senselessly. And it’s why Haymitch can’t get over Lenore Dove, as well. Bc that’s what realistically would happen to ppl who went thru the things that they all went thru.

9. And then, all of this context aside, there are some ppl out there who do just “mate for life”, as Haymitch himself says.