THE HUNGER GAMES Lucy Gray Baird & Katniss Everdeen (inspired By X)

THE HUNGER GAMES Lucy Gray Baird & Katniss Everdeen (inspired by x)

The Saga of Bonesborough Alador

Notice how Odalia did not get redeemed. It seems she is no longer in the picture when it comes to the Blight kids' lives nor Alador's. And it seems like the show hinted at Alador moving on to someone else. This is so important. Abusive parents and spouses are not worthy of redemption and I'm so proud of The Owl House for showing that.

have you heard of alador x darius and what are your thoughts on them

aladarius is such an interesting pair! i’m honestly such a fan of them both. i’m planning on making this a two part (maybe even three part) series—this will focus on what they were like at hexside before they fell out. ALSO I LITERALLY FORGOT THAT THE FINALE CAME OUT YESTERDAY-

i absolutely have to bring up the fact that they were very close during their time in hexside.

however, i'd like to think that alador and darius knew of the other even earlier on. their parents knew each other through the boiling isles social circles, coming from considerable wealth. the blight family does have a mansion and darius just oozes high-class. they're the same age, so they're forced to make conversation at parties for some semblance of entertainment.

what a surprise it is when darius walks into abominations 101, his first day at hexside, and sees alador already dozing off on his desk the corner. it's weird seeing him in uniform because he's only come to recognize the blight boy dressed to the nines. they could only hold conversation for a minute, yet he feels the need to wake him up.

"aren't you supposed to be at glandus right about now?" alador opens one of his eyes, scaring the living daylights out of darius. darius doesn't let his face betray his assumed confidence. "aren't you supposed to be asleep right about now?" "answer me first." "that was rhetorical anyways."

long story short, the deamonnes managed to get kicked off of the glandus pta. they took it as an affront to their family's name and pulled darius out. hexside seemed decent enough; it was either that or enroll in st. epiderm and be confined to high-class fraternization.

alador thinks that's absolutely hilarious, outright admitting approval of his deliquency to darius' face. darius remains appalled by the witch, even when alador “adopts” him from that point onwards.

he tells him the best shortcuts for traversing the hallways and what food to avoid in the cafeteria. they eat lunch at the very end of the long tables. darius usually pours over a book in the silence of alador people-watching through the windows.

alador loves messing around with darius during class. darius takes learning way too seriously—he needs to have some fun with it. he doodles on all of darius’ papers, usually smilies and stick figures in darius’ likeness. there isn’t a single paper without an “alador was here” scrawled onto it. alador makes funny faces when the teacher isn’t looking to get a laugh out of him. he likes seeing him smile, even if it comes with a scoff.

darius studies with alador at the blight mansion when he doesn't want to go home to his parents—nothing exciting happens back at his house. there’s not a lot of studying that happens on alador’s part, but when darius falls in love with the old weathered books in his library, he spends their time together reading.

it’s only then that darius realizes that studying by rereading passages and textbooks doesn’t click for alador. when asked, alador says that they’ve never worked. darius is curious as to why he would go back to it now, however, they try to find better study methods. darius knows that alador is smart; he just needs an outlet that’ll retain his attention.

turns out that alador is more of a doer. darius turns to to debating as a form of active recall. they’re fine with fighting over books and the true intentions of authors, but fighting over small things is much better. apple blood or ghoul ade? they’ll never truly know.

however, they stand at their very best when they are paired together. group projects become a breeze and they’ve aced every test that’s came their way. at this point, they share the title of top student.

they seem like the type to have a long and complicated secret handshake. not to publicly flaunt it, though. it’s only for their eyes to witness.

sometimes they trek out to the bonesbourough playground after school, on the swings until the street lamps light up. darius summons an abomination one time and it pushes him so hard that he goes all the way around. they burst into shambles laughing and it becomes a battle to see who can go around the most times. darius holds the top score of 3.

speaking of battles, darius is there the day that alador wins the bonesborough brawl. alador has competed in it for years, but it’s only when darius is out there supporting him that he finds the will to pour his heart out into success.

“you won!” alador is met with darius’ cheers. the music pumping in celebration of his victory seems to drown everyone else out. “you did it!” alador rolls his eyes, indulging in a hug. “couldn’t have done it without you here.” “yeah, yeah,” he smiles. darius suddenly breaks their embrace, and punches him in the chest. “what was that for?” “you could’ve gotten yourself killed! i don’t know what you were thinking.”

they’ve got their whole lives planned out already. darius and alador have vowed to join the abomination coven together when it comes time. they’ll take over the boiling isles later on. these idiotic geniuses are too much for the world to handle, so they’re sticking together for their own good.

I think that more fanfiction should be written with the aim to tackle the original meaning of hanahaki. Because when the concept of hanahaki disease was originally created, it was intended to be a metaphor for suppressing one’s feelings.

Your feelings are this beautiful garden of flora inside of your chest. When you express how you feel honestly, you allow for it to grow freely. But when you hide how you feel out of fear of rejection, and try to make it smaller and smaller, the flowers become cramped inside of you, until you choke on your own feelings. Every flower you cough up is something you’ve felt, but refused to say.

The whole “dying” thing is intended to be more symbolic especially. You’re killing off bits and pieces of yourself and how you feel, because you’re afraid to express yourself.

It’s not really supposed to be, “The one I love doesn’t love me back, and I’m dying from it.” Rather, it’s more along the lines of, “Repressing your emotions is bad for you, and it’s better and healthier to express them freely, even when it’s scary.”

Which is to say that, one, the cure for the disease should be telling the person that you are in love with how you feel. How the other person feels about the person afflicted should have nothing to do with it, as the trope is meant to be about feeling your emotions unapologetically.

And that, two, it’s not an inherently romantic trope. Obviously, it has romantic applications, but it can be written for any situation where a character is hiding how they truly feel. This can include a refusal to address a specific trauma, a desire to indulge in something that they’re ashamed of, and even really practical things, like wanting to ask one’s boss for a higher position.

Although (as an aromantic person myself) I don’t agree with this conclusion about the trope, this application would also avoid people calling it arophobic. When the thing killing the character is a refusal to be honest with themselves, rather than an unrequited love, it’s on nobody’s hands but their own to save their life.

There are a ton of ways that this interpretation of the hanahaki disease could be applied in new and interesting ways in fanfiction, and I’d love to read what things people could come up with!

Okay so I was thinking about that poll about how many published Ao3 words you have, but I am a gremlin with lots of unpublished work so I wanna know -

For these purposes I'm counting anything not published on any fanfic platform - stuff that's in your WIP folders, or abandoned works, or stuff you just threw at your pals.

It can't just be me with gobs of unpublished work??