Guest post by Caryn aka papofglencoe on tumblr. Artwork by the talented loving-mellark
It’s an acute sort of pain, shipping the star-crossed lovers from District 12. In the world that Suzanne Collins created, literally everything conspires to prevent Katniss and Peeta from surviving, falling in love, and getting their happily ever after. They’re pitted against each other in not one but two death arenas and are thrust into the middle of a war. They are used and physically and emotionally torn apart by sadistic and warring factions. At every turn, they are encouraged by the conditions of their lives to leave each other behind, kill each other, forget each other, let each other go.
But they can’t. And they don’t. They stay with each other, protect each other. They claw their way through the depths of hell for each other. Because that’s what they do. And somehow, despite the fact that the odds are never in their favor, their love endures. It withstands every test thrown at it. It is tried by fire, and it emerges fortified.
If that’s not real love, then nothing is.
There is no question that The Hunger Games grapples with issues that have far-reaching sociological and ethical implications. It is as much a scathing critique of war as it is a commentary about child abuse, the frivolous excesses of our society, and the depths to which media will go to manipulate and warp our sense of reality. Above all, though, it is fundamentally a story about love in all its forms.
Love is the spark that starts the rebellion. Love is the shot that ends the war. Love is the fire that will burn forever.
What begins with a single act of courage to save her sister becomes a tale about how one person can save her people. With her every step of the way is the boy with with the bread. From the beginning, Peeta’s kindness and compassion give Katniss the hope to live another day. His strategy, which is nothing more than an honest effort to love and protect her, galvanizes her as a symbol. His powers of persuasion move and inspire her. His words of reason reach her when no one else can. And, when he returns to her, it is his unwavering loyalty, tenderness, and love that bring her back from the brink. Long before she is willing or able to accept what her feelings for Peeta mean, they are there, real and irrevocable.
To be star-crossed is to be simultaneously thwarted by fate but also predestined. Every hurdle thrown in Everlark’s way is only a temporary impediment to something that “would have happened anyway.” Ultimately, no matter how much Katniss may have resisted acknowledging it, she needs Peeta to survive, and he needs her. They are two magnets drawn to each other. In their unbreakable attraction and their refusal to part, they represent the “hope against hopelessness we often feel in life, brightness in the dark, and the endurance of a real, true, complicated but enduring love.” (myusernamehere)
Whereas star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet meet a tragic end and 1984’s Winston and Julia sell each other out to save their own skins, Katniss and Peeta fight against the odds for each other, stay true to each other, and win. peetasallhehasleft notes that, “They don’t know the outcome, that don’t know how it’s going to end. So by them choosing to bridge the gap, it’s them saying that, despite what’s happened, what is happening, and what will happen, I still choose to make this journey with you, regardless of how it ends.” Theirs is a hard-fought, bittersweet victory that leaves them scarred and damaged, reassembled facsimiles of their former selves. But their journey represents every great love that refuses to be ravaged and wasted by time and experience. It is their insistence on growing together and not apart that inspires hope and adoration.
It’s painful enough to have your OTP put through the ringer, continually battered and beaten. Factor in, then, the exquisite agony of being evasively told that they “grow back together.” After seeing Everlark fractured apart and warped into mutt versions of themselves, we are denied the joy of seeing them heal. At the end, the shutters are finally closed on our prying eyes. Katniss gives us, as her audience, just enough information to assure us that she and Peeta are fine, but she finally has the power to keep the sacred details for herself. And she does.
It is this unknowing that brings so many writers to the world of Everlark fanfiction. Although it is certainly not true for all of us, for many of us, the appeal of reading and writing Everlark fanfiction begins with a dissatisfaction about not knowing. How did Katniss and Peeta come to grow back together? What did their lives look like after the war, between “real” and the meadow? The questions rapidly spiral out from there.
One of the reasons The Hunger Games provides such rich soil for exploration is the limitations of its narrative- or, more specifically, of its narrator. Someone who professes to be bad with words, is disinclined to communicate with an audience she resents having, and suffers from PTSD should automatically call into question what it is we think we know about what we’ve read. What would the story look like from alternate points of view? In what ways can we not trust Katniss to know the truth, or, if she knows it, when might we expect her, as an unreliable narrator, to evade it?
Those are just in canon considerations. What happens if you remove the Games from the equation? What would happen if any one variable in their universe changed?
Or what would happen if Katniss and Peeta had met in another time and place altogether?
Fanfiction is appealing, not only for exploring questions about the text we’ve been given and for in-universe expansion, but for taking the characters we know and love and placing them in unfamiliar circumstances to push them to their limits. In what ways can you recast Katniss and Peeta and have them retain their essential qualities and love? An allure of reading and writing AU Everlark is seeing how Katniss and Peeta, in any situation, over any one of a hundred lifetimes, are actually more than deserving of each other; they are perfect for each other.
When Panem Propaganda approached me and asked me to write an article celebrating Everlark fanfiction for their 100 Days of Mockingjay countdown, I was incredibly flattered and taken aback. To put it mildly, I’m not an obvious or immediate choice. I’m so new to the world of fanfiction that you could say, accurately, I haven’t even really cut my teeth. I can’t pretend to be an expert or historian. But that’s exactly why I agreed to write the article. As I see it, I’m like the family labrador: I’m someone who greets you at the front door, welcomes you inside, and encourages you to join the pack in playing ball.
So this is my call to you: You should be here with us. You don’t know what you’ve been missing.
Click to read more ...
Wed, September 23, 2015 ;)
;)