If You’re Like Me And You Have The Debilitating Habit Of Beating Yourself Up Over Things, Look Yourself

this is beautiful, everyone at Sydney n2 should feel so lucky

For a healthier option, Lover will be out August 23.

katniss usually reserves the term beautiful for things of the capitol (or the capitol-esque districts). whether that be cinna's beautiful costumes (thg, 139; cf, 20) or the district one tributes (thg, 69, 192; cf, 54). the role of katniss's prep team is to make her beautiful (mj, 54). 

and because of this association with the capitol, katniss prides herself on not taking pleasure in it. she is eager to "scrub the scent of beauty from her body" when she is in the capitol (thg, 139). and she jokingly teases peeta for being susceptible to the capitol's beauty unlike her (cf, 60). even as prim compliments her on her beauty before the first reaping, katniss is quick to counter that she is nothing like herself (thg, 15).

because while she might describe her woods and the nature around her as beautiful, katniss does not directly call anyone in her close circle beautiful. she will imply that prim is beautiful like how her mother once was (thg, 3). or point out gale's beautiful hands as they assemble the snares (cf, 28). she will allude to the beauty of these people. but never directly coin them as beautiful. except for one person.

because in her overwhelming relief, the peeta that she eagerly rushes to embrace for the first time after the games is clean and healthy and beautiful (thg, 360). it is almost like her mind lets it slip in at the last second. that he is beautiful. and afterward, all of the items that peeta produces are labeled beautiful. his cakes (thg, 95), his cookies (cf, 8), and his pearl (107). it seems like everything that his hands touch become beautiful from association.

and for all of the talk katniss gives about not having an eye for beauty, she relies on it in what she thinks are her final moments. after katniss gives peeta the life-saving medicine and collapses in front of him, her eyes fall on a beautiful green-and-silver moth (thg, 189). and she eagerly searches for a final piece of beauty before the quell arena explodes. but she can't find peeta (cf, 108). she can't find his pearl (cf, 108). so, her eyes eventually settle on a star to give her comfort (cf, 108).

and so it is even more tragic that the one person she allowed herself to deem beautiful was morphed into something else. just like in haymitch's games, where all of the beauty of the eden-esque arena turned into a deadly facade (cf, 56). only now snow has turned katniss's beautiful boy with the bread into a personal weapon against her. and it is so demoralizing to katniss that she vows vengeance and then hopes for a quick death in the process.

but then that makes it even sweeter that peeta is the only person that truly comes back for katniss in the end. because the war was almost successful in taking away everything beautiful from katniss. gale's beautiful snare-constructing hands became the means of senseless violence. prim's face was no longer there to be reminiscent of katniss's mother's beauty.

but there he was. and although burns licked his forehead and scars were scattered throughout his body, no amount of fire could ever burn away the beautiful blue of his eyes. slowly, her beautiful boy came back to her. a long glance across the breakfast table. an awful joke directed towards him that was quickly rewarded with a smile that not even the games could take away (thg, 360). his embrace that hints of cinnamon and dill still there after all this time. because while the war may have convinced katniss that she was unworthy of beautiful things, her dandelion in the spring reminded her that she always was.

hyperfixation sucks I think just a little too hard about a guy who isn't even real and I could start crying any second

Tumblr is the only place where I can execute an anonymous rein of terror and I'm here for it

bonus points if you add in the tags who you’d want to feature on it!

I CANT ADD I’D LIE YOU WOULD ALL VOTE FOR IT THATS NOT FAIR

also i don’t count i heart ? as unreleased, it’s on the beautiful eyes EP

how did I get past my writer’s block for a specific scene I was rewriting?

i tried rewriting the same scene in the same way with different words

i tried changing character povs

i tried cutting out the first part of the scene

i tried cutting out / significantly changing the second part of the scene

i basically just wrote a hundred false starts and hated all of them.

but all these false starts helped me build context. I learned more about the characters, and I learned about what the scene did and did not need to do to be successful.

i took a step back and looked what was important - primarily introducing the main conflict and giving the reader a sense of the main character’s personality, but on a subtler level I also need to set up the important relationship that the entire story hinges upon. And this last part turned out to be the missing key - I needed to make the inciting incident tell us more about the relationship between the two characters.

So I did a bit of everything in the end. I cut out the initial writing-myself-into-the-story bits but kept the first bits of action, and just did a better job of weaving character development into that. I moved the inciting incident a little further back to allow for more character development time, and also to make the character introduction feel more natural and meaningful.

and yeah, it still needs line edits and some fleshing out (it is still only draft two), but I finally don’t hate this scene and it makes way more sense for what I want out of an opening scene for this story

I SWEAR TO GOD IF WE DON'T GET 1989TV

also the fact that on ttpd she's a huge mess of a person is great. i don't love everything about that album but i love the messiness of her public persona on it. she's too big to be knowable, yes yes, and she's the tamest of all the pop stars we have, of course. but by her own standards of decorum, she let it rip on this album for once. she said "I get myself off to people i'm not dating sometimes and i hate a chunk of my fans more than sometimes. i have terrible judgement. i kind of am a stalker lowkey. i drink way more than you think (and i should). and was fucking miserable for about half of that tour btw." among other things and then she hit post. good for her.