#everlark meta
i’m thinking about the hunger games, and i see that everything that happens, it’s really isn’t an either or. as a reader, you can completely hold the belief that revolution (violent, bloody, intense) is necessary and the consequences that come with it are a fact of said revolution while also understanding the importance of advocating and fighting for peace and love. the only way that we can get such an epilogue for katniss and peeta is because of the revolution happening, because of these terrible things giving them even more conviction to love and hold onto each other. they will not lose the other person. peace and violence, they don’t just cancel out the other. it’s multifaceted.
katniss and “where peeta’s children can be safe” is so wonderful because she stayed with him through the games, through the quell, through his hijacking and the psychological suffering that followed, stayed with him for twenty years into the epilogue. she loves and loved him that much for not only his children being safe became a reality, but also her children being safe. she lets herself have this wish. she lets herself accept what she wants. she finally feels safe enough in the world to carry children inside of her, to birth them, to watch them grow. her greatest desire is fulfilled and is expanded. finally, a world where their children can be safe. always.
what needs to be understood is that the toastbabies aren’t a bandaid. they aren’t bandaid babies that put a healing swab or gauze over their parents’ wounds and trauma. they are a continuation of the hope that their parents already have.
real or not real has some pretty strong implications from a mental illness standpoint. there is not doubt that katniss and peeta suffered and will have to manage mental illness for the rest of their lives (depression, anxiety, even complex-ptsd).
when you are in that space, when it feels like the world has dropped dead, you know nothing else. for them to have the other person look beyond that. to try and focus to open their mouth and ask.
it makes their love that much stronger and their illnesses easier to cope with and develop coping mechanisms. they will never be “normal” people. they will always have to take care of themselves and each other, but to face that, it’s probably their greatest victory.
thinking about the effects of psychological torture in katniss and peeta’s dynamic because they were each other’s only true allies in not only one, but two of the games. they were constantlythere for each other through such horrible circumstances, and the fact that katniss was more than likely the image peeta held onto in the early stages of torture and how katniss is then twisted and turned into something of danger and fear-
it reminds me in 1984 how room 101 is “the thing you fear the most”. well, that might just be it for peeta: katniss being taken from him. and she is. the girl that he loves and trusts more than anything is turned into a mutt, turned into something not even human, someone that is no longer his. she no longer belongs to him, because she is not who she says she is. she’s a shadow. an illusion. not real.
