Merrilee Donner (a Sunrise On The Reaping rant)

I want to talk about this, because I haven't seen anyone else talk about it yet, or maybe I'm just not on my phone much- who knows 🤷‍♀️ ‼️🚨Spoilers ahead for Sunrise On The Reaping🚨‼️ Merrilee Donner is so underrated to me, mainly because she doesn't appear a lot in the books. But she is still worth mentioning because she's an example of how The Hunger Games can ruin/change people, even if they themselves haven't been selected to fight in the arena. It's the fact that Haymitch and Merrilee will be forever be reminded to each other about losing Maysilee. For Merrilee, Haymitch won the 50th games, the same one in which her sister got reaped in. She will constantly be reminded of losing her twin, because to her, Haymitch is the reason why Maysilee will never come back. For Haymitch, Merrilee and Maysilee are identical twins. Whenever Haymitch looks at Merrilee, all he can see is Maysilee, which just adds more baggage to the already unbearable emotional damage he's suffering since the aftermath of the 2nd Quarter Quell. Speaking of identical twins, what makes this worse for Merrilee is the fact that she'll always see Maysilee in herself. (I've mentioned this in a previous rant lmao) That just adds more fuel to the fire and is understandably the whole reason why Merrilee just shut out the whole world. She never fully got the closure she needed because she was surrounded by constant reminders of losing her twin sister to the Hunger Games. Both Merrilee and Haymitch had a strong bond with Maysilee, as they both called her their sister, which makes this loss a lot more deep and personal to the both of them. Even if Merrilee was never reaped into the Hunger Games herself, the after events of the 2nd Quarter Quell have created such a tremendous change in her that caused her to become completely bedridden by the time she is mentioned again, 24 years later, in the first book. Merrilee Donner, for me, is one of the perfect examples as to how people outside of the games can be just as affected as the tributes and victors themselves.