He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. 

Andrew Sean Greer, Less 

Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs

Threatening Dialogue Prompts

- “Say that to me one more time.”

- “I told you what would happen if you disobeyed.”

- “You just made your biggest mistake.”

- “Down on your knees.”

- “Let’s see what’s left in you for me to break.”

- “Go on. Try to run.”

- “Come here. Now.”

- “I’m going to put you in your place.”

- “Looks like you’re not useful anymore.”

- “When I tell you to look me in the eye, you look me in the eye.”

- “You think you know what pain is? No. Not yet.”

- “You never learn.”

- “Start with the youngest.”

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (BILLY THE KID VERSION)

To Everyone  in “Dead” Fandoms

We see you, still drawing, writing, chatting and creating, coming up with headcannons, laughing at memes and overanalyzing screenshots. 

You are keeping fun stuff alive,

Whether it ended 2 weeks or 20 year ago.

Rock on my dudes

god. GOD. katniss just lost her dear friend finnick and the others who chose to fight by her side. she's drowning in grief and guilt and anger. and then there was peeta, asking — begging — her to just leave him to die. GOD. my poor girl.

It’s actually fascinating to me that for all the main characters in The Hunger Games (that we truly know and understand) Gale is the only one who never actually experiences his “worst case scenario” come to life.

We know right from chapter one that Katniss’ worst case scenario is losing Prim. She’s still got resentments towards her mother, she doesn’t have many friends at all because if she can help it, she won’t attach herself to people she can lose, and her father is long dead. But Prim is the one person, the one living thing that she undeniably loves without reservations or hesitation. Every single thing she does throughout the entire series can be tied back to her love for Prim.

And then Prim died at the end of the war.

Peeta’s worst case scenario was always losing himself, to the awful world they live in. He refused to just be another piece in the games, and that extended further than the arena. He believed he was destined to die in the games but he always, always tried to keep his purity of self in tact.

And then Snow hijacked him, corrupted his mind and forced him to completely forget who he was, what he stood for and who he loved.

Other important characters had their “worst case scenario” happen years before the books began. Twenty-four years prior to the start of the series Haymitch lost the three people he loved as punishment for his antics. Johanna lost everyone she ever cared for too (presumably for being rebellious or uncooperative). And in the course of the second and third book, in the background of Katniss’ story, Finnick lost Mags who practically raised him and his very vulnerable love got kidnapped and tormented. Yes, he got her back and they had a moment of happiness but then he went and bit the dust so.

But Gale never experiences this. When Katniss tells us in chapter one about Prim and her love for her, she mentions how deeply Gale loves his own family. The Hawthorne’s are sprinkled throughout all three books, more than any other family aside from Katniss’. Why would that be? We don’t know almost anything about Peeta’s family, even though his father and Mrs. Everdeen have some level of history. We know his mother is, best case scenario, sometimes temperamental (to put it lightly) and that negatively affected aspects of his development. Peeta is a much more prevalent character throughout the series, yet we know almost nothing about his family or background. Haymitch is one of the most essential people in Katniss’ life, he’s her lifeline in the games, the mirror image of what she could become in personality and trauma and her overall father figure by the end. Yet we know nothing about his family or his girl. Even though the loss of those people is likely the explanation to why Haymitch ended up the way he did. But we know the names and bits and pieces of the personalities of every single living member of Gale’s family. Why is that? Maybe because Katniss is more familiar with them? But she also went to the same school as Peeta’s brothers and she trades with his father once a week. Mr. Mellark has more of a connection to Katniss than Gale’s family does, through her mother. So, pretty apparently in my opinion, we learn more about the Hawthorne’s as a whole because it’s essential to Gale’s character. Because his family is everything to him. Because losing them would be his “worst case scenario”.

Saying this doesn’t mean Gale had it easy. His life was arguably one of the hardest we saw at the start of the series and he was put in awful positions throughout the books, he was whipped almost to death, he lost a lot that he cared deeply about along the way and he without a doubt suffered immensely. But he didn’t lose his family, in the end he landed a pretty great job, in a fancier district and presumably had his family with him.

I just find it interesting that even though his life was probably so hard, in the end of the story Gale is only main character who didn’t live through his “worst case scenario”.

Coriolanus Snow is the winner of the 10th Annual Hunger Games. // When they ask, you say you couldn't help yourself. You...you are so in love with this boy that the thought of not being with him was unthinkable. You...you'd rather die than not be with him. You understand?

The Hunger Games (2012) // The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

Idk if it is lack of reading comprehension or Katniss’s ‘convincing’ narration of the first two books, but there are actual readers who think Katniss and Peeta were just friends in CF…like babes they were sleeping in the same bed, cuddling, and then spending everyday attach to the hip back in 12… friends they were but only? give me a break

she’s distant! she’s incoherent! she’s sensitive! she uses escapism as a coping mechanism! she’s me!!!

Okay, we've all seen the villain become obsessed with the hero ("I will strip away all that you love until you have no shelter but me") but WHAT IF the hero is the obsessed one and the villain is the one who is super creeped out by the hero's behaviour, but nobody believes the villain? Because they are a villain so obviously they must be lying right?

“I’m not going to kill you,” Hero crooned, dragging a slow finger down Villain’s cheek, “death would be too good for you. You need to be punished for your crimes.”

Villain rolled their eyes, though a chill rolled down their spine regardless. “You say the same thing every day, haven’t followed through yet. My crimes continue!”

They gave a superficial tug against their chained hands just for the show of it.

The pair went over this every couple days, and it was starting to get on Villain’s nerves. It wasn’t that they didn’t want a fight- but Hero was getting a little... clingy.

One day, they found a room in Hero’s hideout absolutely covered in printed photos of Villain, as well as several pictures of other people- people that looked like them- with notes comparing all the events coinciding with Villain’s appearance.

Another day, Hero strapped them to a chair and held a blade to their throat for three hours, telling them all the while about how Hero understood Villain.

After that, Villain went home and had a panic attack in their shower.

They didn’t like the game anymore.

Hero laughed, pulling a butterfly knife out of their pocket and flipping it. “No more, Villain,” they said. “I think I’m going to take you home... somewhere no one will think to look. And then I’m going to keep you! I’m going to make you good.”

“I’m perfectly fine with my morals as they are, actually,” Villain replied, working their lockpick into the keyhole.

Hero ignored them, brushing a stray strand of hair out of their face. “My own little Villain...”

Villain swallowed hard. The lock clicked. And they ran out of the room.

Hero caught them at the end of the hallway, slamming into their back and knocking them to the ground. They pinned one of Villain’s arms down with their hand, one knee fully on Villain’s chest and the other on Villain’s other arm. “Trying to get away, are we?”

“You’re sick,” Villain spat, trying to get their legs up to throw Hero off. “You’re not some hero, you’re just a sick bastard with a savior complex.”

“Last I checked, you’re the only one that thinks that,” Hero said. Then, leaning down so their lips brushed Villain’s ear, “and see, you’re a criminal. Why would anyone ever listen to you?”

remember, folks, if you're itching to do something ill-advised in d&d/similar TTRPGs,

low wisdom: poor impulse control

low intelligence: instructions unclear

high wisdom: a necessary risk

high intelligence: it looked better on paper

low wisdom, high intelligence: forgot to get the plan peer-reviewed

high wisdom, low intelligence: the risk i took was calculated, but man am i bad at math

high wisdom, high intelligence: if someone else in the party did it first, it would've gone so much worse (and you Know they were going to do it)

the beauty of tumblr’s retrochronological dash is that when you come back online, if the first post you see is “okay im normal now” you know you’re about to witness the most spectacular meltdown a mutual has ever had in recent memory, followed by the impetus that trigger the entire event

Vivien Leigh | A Streetcar Named Desire

Still collecting the full alphabet of the “live, laugh, love” variants if anyone has some good examples.

Bonus if they can fit the “We can’t ___, _____, ____ our way out of this.”

so many things to notice here, the first of which is the beautiful and painful use of metaphor and imagery

the second is that this seems to be another one of those supernatural moments: Prim is trying to save her sister, somehow, and Katniss must tell her to let her go and move on to the next life where her loved ones soar free

the third is (and I’ll link the main meta on this point here) that I wonder if in the real world she is feeling Peeta pulling her out of the flames; it’s Prim and Katniss’s language from the reaping of the first games, but it isn’t dissimilar to the “let me go!” “I can’t!” we get a few short pages later; Peeta and Prim are determined not to let Katniss die