Yeah Katniss Is Lucy Gray’s Greatest Revenge On Snow

I cannot overstate how significant the theme of “the garden” is to The Hunger Games series.

Of course, for many people, alluding to “the garden” puts them in mind of the biblical Eden, and I believe this is entirely intentional. Eden is a place of dignity and of peace. Adam and Eve are expected to do two important tasks: care for the garden, and be fruitful themselves. Many a Christian theologian has therefore proposed that humanity’s original vocation was to be gardeners: and not only in the literal weeding and planting sense, but in sense of cultivating life and beauty. The narrative goes on to describe how humans reject that original calling (re: “great gift for self destruction”) and are exiled from Eden — but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the garden imagery doesn’t go away. Throughout the rest of the Bible, garden imagery is now used in anticipation of a future restoration of human dignity and peace. So what does this have to do with The Hunger Games? Well, let’s take a stroll through Panem’s gardens, shall we?

We’re going to start in the Everdeen home. I confess, I’m going to begin by stretching the metaphor a little, but stay with me. When Katniss wakes up, the other side of her bed is cold, because Prim is missing. But usually, we would assume, they sleep together: two girls with flower names clustered together in the same bed. How appropriate: Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen have created a miniature garden in their two daughters. Is it any wonder that restoration comes, in many ways, from this garden bed?

But there are more obvious examples of “flower power.” Peeta recognizes Katniss’s dignity and gives her new dignity and hope by giving her bread. His generosity gives her the push she needs to find yet another garden and maintain her own dignity in the face of poverty: this time, in the wild expanses of dandelions she and Prim gather for sustenance. And like Katniss herself, Peeta is now identified, from that point forward, with flowers. Both katniss and dandelion are flowers that can grow rampant if left unchecked once they lay down roots.

This is precisely what Katniss and Peeta do, like invasive weeds: only their invasion forces radical dignity onto Snow’s manicured, artificial rose lawn. Katniss explicitly states the beautifully dangerous nature of kind people and uses the metaphor of “rooting.”

Katniss’s burial of Rue (another botanical name) in flowers is a striking example of this radical compassion. It is not so much that Rue’s death is shocking to the people watching: it is Katniss’s reaction, stubbornly insisting upon Rue’s dignity in the face of evil, that sparks rebellion. And how does she do it? With a handmade garden cradling Rue’s body. The impact of Katniss’s garden blossoms beyond the forest where Rue died: to Thresh, and to all of Panem.

Other images in the first book include Katniss, on the verge of death in the arena, finding water among the yellow lilies, and Peeta picking flowers (well, wild onion tops) for her along the train tracks. The first image is one of restoration, but the second is an inversion of what we expect. We expect Peeta’s offering to signal a peace in their relationship, and it is jarring when the opposite occurs.

If garden imagery in The Hunger Games is most concerned with human dignity, in Catching Fire, we most clearly see the garden as a place of peace. Katniss and Peeta are most at peace when they work together on the plant book, that sunlit bedroom a small Eden unto itself. On the rooftop, in the garden, as Katniss toys with a flower chain, Peeta wishes he could stop time, and live in their fragile peace forever. Peeta also gets his own “Rue” moment with the morphling. Now, it’s not the morphling’s death scene that gives us flower imagery, but the scene that prefigures it does: when Peeta and the morphling paint (yellow, again) flowers on Katniss. Joined together with this stranger by the act of “tending a garden” as it were, Peeta is able to give her a sense of peace in her final moments.

In Mockingjay, the garden is an image of restoration. One of the very few beautiful images we see in 13 is the image of the green bird sipping nectar from an orange blossom in the meadow room. I’ll leave it up to you to read into those particular colors. Quite literally, the bird is engaging in restoration of its energy, but the picture restores Katniss’s spirits, even if for only a moment. Appropriately, the story concludes with a garden as well: Peeta once again taking on the mantle of gardener to make a memory garden for Katniss. Seeing the primroses gives her the spark to destroy Snow’s unnatural rose and reclaim her dignity and her peace yet again. It is only fitting that the last image we see of Katniss and her family is in the meadow. Despite their fears, our protagonists have been fruitful: the children are more than “a happy ending.” They are a reclamation of the original garden purpose. To be sure, it is not a true idyll. Katniss is keenly aware of the bones on which it grows, but that is not where she takes comfort. She takes comfort—though her children take it for granted—in the book, and in the words of the song that speak of a “soft green pillow” and “daisies” guarding from harm. In a way, imperfectly, “Eden” has been regained.

Anne With an E Masterlist

Gilbert Blythe

Imagines coming soon

Billy Andrews

Imagines coming soon

Charlie Sloane

Imagines coming soon

Moody Spurgeon

Awae Rewrite

You are new to Avonlea, but what would it be like if you weren’t the target like Anne was in the first 2 season?

Pairing : Gilbert x Reader, Billy x Reader

Seasons: 3

Coming fall 2022!

In Anticipation of the "New Girl" Cast Reunion Panel, A Nick/Jess Fic Smutfest

Hot damn, the connection between Nick Miller and Jessica Day is something (says me, Captain Obvious, reporting for duty.)

Having entered the New Girl fandom in earnest only this year (I am the stupidest of all the stupid girls), I'm very late to the party. But from The Hallway Kiss That Changed Everything to The Furiously Hot Dining-Room Table Almost-Fuck, I've become shamelessly devoted to reading & writing Nick/Jess fanfic that gets, um, explicit.

These two clowns — with their sexiness and stupidity; their electric chemistry; their self-defeating stubbornness; their underlying, overarching, ever-present love for each other — just rev my dang engine.

So... to mark & celebrate the upcoming New Girl cast reunion panel, I figured: why not collect some smutty Nick/Jess goodness all in one place (especially for those who, like me, came to this show in earnest after its on-air run, and initially missed all the spectacular stories written during its early years) — and also put out a call for additional recommended reading?

The first seven entries listed below are recommendations of others' work, followed by links to a few of my own stories.

If there are hot Nick/Jess stories you love and want to highlight, reblog or comment with titles & links, and maybe this post/thread can become a repository of smutty Nick/Jess fic recs? (Or maybe it will just remain me, thirstily talking to myself, but you never know until you try...)

OK, here we go! All of these stories are explicit, for adults only, and published on A03:

At the Edges, by @blithers

Because let's be real here: she is totally flirting with him, too. There's no question about it. She's flirting back hard, her hand wrapped around the stem of her wineglass and her laugh getting throatier and lower into Jessica Day sexy land.

A ridiculously hot one-shot in which Nick and Jess's first time takes place at the bar. Come for the glorious hotness; stay for the perfect channeling of Jess's inner voice.

Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, by @kyrafic

Inappropriate laundry room activities, etcetera.

A magnificent fic that starts with a wildly hot encounter in the laundry room and then somehow, impossibly, just keeps getting sexier from there.

Just What Humans Do, by yolandawinston

But logic and past precedent and the truth gnawing at her gut aside, she must have been drunk. Because there's no way that sober Jessica Day would have had sex with her roommate, whom she previously had kissed a grand total of once, in the place where her other roommates brush their teeth in the morning.

A story that includes both gorgeous characterization and crazy-hot first-time sex in the loft bathroom? Sign. Me. Up.

Lay My Head on the Hood of Your Car, by arbitrarily

Jess moves on. And gets it on with her roommate. Normal stuff. Nothing to see here.

Written way back at the start of the show. Hilarious and hot and somehow perfectly true to character -- even though it was written when only a few episodes had aired.

Tonight Will Be a Memory Too (or, Jessica Day's First Sex Dream About Nick Miller), by @ghostcat3000

A night alone in front of the TV used to be very different in #4D.

If you happen to have read, well, pretty much anything of mine, you'll know that I love writing Nick/Jess sex dreams. I love reading them, too — especially this one.

This Must Be the Place, by innie

Nick and Jess both said yes.

An absolutely beautiful story that starts where season two ends, with the hottest reference to Nick's nose ever made.

Another One by @actualbabe

“C’mon birthday girl,” Nick whispers into her ear, his voice pitched low. “I think you’ve got one more in ya.”

Hot hot hotness, in which Nick Miller's great big hands play a starring role.

And up next, here are a few of my own contributions:

And This Is the Morning (WIP)

In retrospect, maybe asking Nick to go with her to The Crafters’ Castle the day after he almost nailed her on the dining room table wasn’t Jess’s brightest idea ever.

Or: What happened in the 24 hours after the fishtank broke.

(Canon-divergent. Set after 2x19, “Quick-Hardening Caulk.”)

1,893.2 Miles

Nick Miller is shit at lying to other people. He’s pretty good at lying to himself.

(Set after the S5 finale. Nick is in New Orleans with Reagan and in denial about his intense and lingering feelings for Jess — until a series of events happens that he can’t ignore. Jess, in LA, embarks on what she's calling her Summer of Eventually Discerning The Right Nick-Related Next Steps; things don't go exactly as planned. A three-part, alternating-POV story in which Nick and Jess fumble their way back towards each other over the course of one summer filled with realizations, recollections, a sex dream or two — and then, at last, a reunion. Canon-adjacent and then divergent.)

Designs on You

She could have sworn that earlier this week, Nick looked at her with a hint of That Night’s same dark fire in his eyes. She had asked him to help her with a stubborn bracelet clasp; after he sprung the mechanism, his fingers curled briefly and unnecessarily around her wrist.

“There ya go, Jess,” he said quietly, swallowing once, his eyes on hers, before he let go and left the room.

(She’d be lying if she said she’d forgotten that asking him for help with things turned him on.)

(Set in 4x22, “Clean Break," a year after Jess & Nick’s breakup and an hour after their so-much-left-unsaid Sex Mug conversation in his room. Canon divergence ahead.)

***

If you're of age and Miller and Day get you going, thanks so much for chiming in with your own sexy Nick/Jess fic recs or your own sexy Nick/Jess stories (and for considering reading mine). There's so much incredibly great stuff from so many wonderful writers out there.

Thirst on, fellow Nick/Jess thirsters, thirst on... and fingers crossed for some questions about The Kiss and The Chemistry at the reunion panel June 8!

Ron fell in love with the first girl he met from the muggle world and Harry fell in love with the first girl he met from the wizarding world. 

The most iconic cats snaps of 2018

i beg you to love me, say that i'm enough, but you tell me— why are you like this? i think there's something wrong with you.

for @shestrying

thanks to @acelania for finding the unknowns!

in image / desperation sits heavy on my tongue, tumblr user tullipsink / mary oliver, ‘north country’ / virginia woolf, letter to violet dickinson / in image / blythe baird, from if my body could speak / Alice in Bed: A Play' by Susan Sontag (link in comment) / lynee rae perkins, criss cross / elena ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay' (trans. Ann Goldstein) / rainer maria rilke, from rilke’s book of hours / in image/ in image

— Fredrik Backman, Anxious people

A warm little cup of Downton now that the week is almost over! ☕️🍽🍴

I haven’t seen the new movie yet, have you?

More characters to come soon ☺️

Happy Thursday! 👑

6 quotes that never fail to fuck! me! up!

1. “he’s more myself than i am. whatever our souls are mad of, his and mine are the same.” — emily brontë, wuthering heights

2. “love knows life has been hard enough” — poem by rupi kaur

3. “i will love you if i never see you again, and i will love you if i see you every tuesday.” — lemony snicket (the beatrice letters)

4. “i love you so much. so, so much, and i probably always will. i just don't like you anymore. i’m sorry.” — one day, 2011

5. “if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more.” — jane austen, emma

6. “i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; i would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. i would know him in death, at the end of the world.” — madeline miller, song of achilles

Two braids instead of one, I think, recalling Peeta’s first memory of me, when we were in kindergarten. I comb out my hair and plait it in a quick pair of braids, each tied with red ribbon. Our courtship is over, but these are staying.

Peeta wraps his arms around me from behind and kisses my cheek. I smile at our reflection. Both of us barefoot on the hardwood, rumpled and happy. Held in amber.

I am beyond blown away by this absolutely breathtaking commission @little-lynx was so kind to accept from my story (read: self indulgent fic-baby) Hearthsong! I can’t thank you enough for this piece, darling! I can’t get over how many details you included! The bittersweet vine and the red candles!And the sweetheart ribbons! And Katniss and Peeta’s newlywed happiness … it just radiates comfort! I adore it so so so so much!