Haymitch Does Not Get Enough Fucking Credit

Haymitch does not get enough fucking credit

Reminder that Haymitch was the one who took care of Katniss after the final battle of the Capitol. It was Haymitch who made sure that Katniss ate, and took her medicine and and got sleep and that she wasn't alone. When the guards stop her at Snow's greenhouse, it's Haymitch they consider getting to come help her. It's Haymitch who sits and talks to her about the war or just pointless talk, even though she never responds.

It's Haymitch who does all these things.

Not any of the other adults in her life, not any of the people who put her through all the suffering, not her friends

Not her own fucking mother

No, It was Haymitch.

Haymitch who genuinely cares for her so much, both her and Peeta, and who did all of this weeks ago for Peeta as well, when he was highjacked.

I swear that I'll fight the next person who say that he didn't care about her and Peeta, cause that's simply not true

He poured his heart and soul into those kids, protected them as much as he possibly could in the circumstances he was given

Was he perfect? No

Did he make mistakes? Yes

Did he so anything in his power to try and protect them? Absolutely

Hannibal in a nutshell:

I unironically love the character names in the Hunger Games series.

Haymitch, Peeta, Hazelle, Leevy, Maysilee, Finnick and Greasy Sae look bizarre when you first see them written down, but then if you think about how they look and/or sound it's pretty clear that they're meant to be modern names, only modern names that have changed spelling and pronounciation over time— as you would have expected them to have done so over how ever many hundreds of years it's been since our modern day.

(Remember, though The Hunger Games themselves have only been going on for 75 years, the universe they're in is canonically post-apocalyptic— the reason nobody ever mentions what's happening in the rest of the world is that everywhere except America was destroyed in a nuclear war. We're not given much of an indication how long it's been since then.)

Peeta is Peter, Haymitch is Hamish, and Hazelle is Hazel, Maysilee is Maisie— the changes in pronunciation are slight (Peeta and Peter are already virtually identical in my accent), and the spelling has changed to match.

Leevy is either a corruption of Lily, or more likely I suspect 'Livvy', a common nickname for Olivia; Finnick is probably from Finnegan (shorten in to 'Finneg' and then say it over and over very fast); Sae could be short for Sarah, or Sally or even Susan— it's not uncommon for nicknames to become real names in their own right (look at Harry or Molly as examples).

I also love the trend of having District 1 parents give their kids names relating to the luxury items their district produces— Glimmer, Marvel, Gloss, Cashmere, Velvereen (presumably a corruption of 'velveteen'), Facet— because those things are all a) objectively pretty/nice (like naming a kid 'Diamond' or 'Star' today) and presumably status symbols in their district.

Meanwhile District 3 does the same thing, but all the pronunciations are corrupted. You've got technical names to do with the manufacture of electronics— Wiress (wireless), Circ (circuit)— but you've also got what I'm pretty sure are meant to be corruptions of modern brand names— Beetee (BT), Teslee (Tesla).

To me this kind of suggests that District 3 is less conscious of this influence than District 1. Like, parents in 1 are more likely to deliberately think "I'll name my kid Glimmer, because things that glimmer are pretty" whereas 3 as a culture might have genuinely forgotten that those names used to mean something, in the same way that most of us don't think much about how the name 'Arthur' comes from the old word for 'Bear'.

And of course, then you've got the Capitol leaning hard into those ancient Roman vibes with names like Fulvia, Plutarch, Seneca, Tigris… but still using the European/American personal name+family name format, which the Romans didn't really do. Like it's very clear that this is a future society fetishising the classical era, rather than an actual resurgence of Roman culture.

It's just such a cool world-building detail. So many dystopian novels just go for modern names (and there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're only looking a couple of hundred years into the future) but thinking about how names might have evolved over the centuries and the different naming traditions that might have developed in different areas really adds a whole new dimension to the culture of Panem.

Heartstopper -> Young Royals

OFMD -> Black Sails

WWDITS -> IWTV

For every queer fun show, there is the upside down version, a queer serious show. It is in balance