New Catching Fire Trailer and Posters
Jul. 21st, 2013 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfold_xOf all the books, Catching Fire is my favorite, so I'm almost vibrating with excitement over the release of a new trailer yesterday at San Diego Comic Con, and the chance to see our named victors in their arena costumes.
Some thoughts I had watching the new trailer:
* The Victor's Village is smaller than I expected, and the houses are much grander than I imagined. Kind of a McMansion development that didn't think hard enough about green space. So, from that perspective, it probably is the Village the Capitol would build.
* The scenes of the Hob burning are very dramatic! What's just an off-screen moment in the book is going to be a very dramatic sequence. I love that the film adaptation gives us the chance to see things outside of Katniss's perspective, and I'm really looking forward to more of these moments.
* That shot of the crowd surging forward during the tour (at 0:53)... is that District 3? Oh, please, let it be so! (Alternately, I'm guessing it's District 5, which I would also not mind seeing.)
* Is it just my imagination, or do the shots of the Capitol look bigger and broader than those used in The Hunger Games? I don't expect Catching Fire has a substantially bigger budget (I think Lionsgate expected THG to be a hit and funded accordingly), so I'm not sure why that would be.
* The look between Effie and Katniss at 1:16 is exquisite.
* OMG, the interview set! Am I the only one tortured by the fact that all the victors are there, but the screen size/resolution is too small to get real detail? (Why does District 6 look like they've escaped from the Matrix?)
* The actresses playing Enobaria and Johanna look fantastic. Not quite what I imagined (I pictured Enobaria with darker skin and a buzzcut), but true threats.
* Following Katniss's lift out of the stockyard into the arena could not be more breathtaking.
The victor posters were originally distributed separately to various websites, but Empire Online has posted all of them. The casting of District 3 is particularly important to me (headcanon, I haz it). I am really pleased with the choice of accomplished character actors Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright as Wiress and Beetee. Plummer seems especially right to me, given the niche she's carved out for herself playing the tiny, soft-spoken women with the crazy eyes (if you have the opportunity, check out her Emmy-winning guest shot on The Outer Limits, "A Stitch in Time").
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 07:15 am (UTC)NO YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS TORTURED BY THE VICTOR SHOT though I managed to zoom in and laughed myself to death at Brutus wearing the same belly shirt as Enobaria. Like. Well done gender parity I guess?
Katniss' house is pretty much exactly how I saw it, since the book mentions all her servants and I was like SERVANTS??! so man idk.
(omg I didn't know you had D3 headcanon GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEEEEE)
(also hi hi I added you to general filters but if you want in on the Avenger Games AU filter lemme know)
no subject
Date: 2013-07-24 02:26 am (UTC)LOL! Precisely. Everything about D6 is just completely not what I was expecting. I'm thinking waste-oids in bright colors who get distracted by the light fixtures or Caesar's glowing teeth; they give us Neo and Trinity in a pissy mood. Huh?
NO YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS TORTURED BY THE VICTOR SHOT
Glad I'm not alone in my misery. I did finally find that high-res still at Mockingjay.net (yes, I'm slow) and had more luck with that than I had with pausing the trailer. Taking a closer look at the outfits, I'm knocked over by how universally ugly they are. D1=disco ball gone wrong. D5+9= brown sacks. I'm not going to look at Woof and Wiress too long; it's like staring into the sun. IMO, only Finnick and Beetee got relatively flattering styles.
All of the kids in The Hunger Games were wearing reasonably attractive formal wear. I'm not sure what's going on here, except that perhaps this is an intentional choice on the part of the costume designers to highlight the humiliation of trying to mash the aging victors into the tribute role.
I managed to zoom in and laughed myself to death at Brutus wearing the same belly shirt as Enobaria. Like. Well done gender parity I guess?
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY. Belly shirts. Shimmery belly shirts. I'm thinking Brutus's headspace is: "I volunteered for this. Twice. Courage and sacrifice. Bringing pride to my district. Then you do this to me. Forget you people, I'm allying with the Mockingjay."
since the book mentions all her servants and I was like SERVANTS??!
I've read CF three times and somehow missed this. Woah, my bad. Servants, in D12, though? Well, if SC says so, I guess so, but... Well, that does explain why the houses are so McMansion-y.
(omg I didn't know you had D3 headcanon GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEEEEE)
Hee! OK, I'll jot a few notes down. But, it's rough. I haven't hashed it out with anyone (none of my friends are into THG in a fannish way), so it's just random ideas that are definitely subject to revision and refinement.
(also hi hi I added you to general filters but if you want in on the Avenger Games AU filter lemme know)
Thanks!
District Three Headcanon, Part the First
Date: 2013-07-25 03:09 am (UTC)General District 3 Notions
* District 3 is the most densely populated. As I understand it, D3 is tasked with the design and manufacturing of electronics and other technology for the Capitol and the relatively high-technology districts. Presumably this involves the basic level technology that you'd expect for at least 1, 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9, plus higher-level support for 1 and 5 (which I imagine have special needs based on the relatively higher level of technology that's probably involved in power generation and luxury manufacture--though 5 may do some manufacturing), and of course, the almost-indistinguishable-from-magic level of technology required for the Capitol. While you make some gains from automation, I don't think they're as many as you get in our civilization, because I expect that a larger proportion of the demand is for relatively small batch orders of complex items for Capitol citizens or specific industries, rather than mass-manufacture items (as there are so few in the districts who can afford a lot of technology, and many of the district industries don't require it). So, I think a relatively large (compared to say, D10 or D12) population is required. I expect that the population needs to be fairly close to their places of employment, so I'm picturing a very urbanized environment where most people live within walking/bus distance of their employer, with perhaps some industrial park/storage areas mixed in or at the edges.
* District 3 is almost entirely dependent upon the other districts for their food supply. D3 has technology that can be transformed into weapons and a relatively large population smart enough to pull this off, but rebellion is difficult to sustain because, without green space, they're dependent upon supplies from the food-generating districts. The Capitol has used this vulnerability to maintain control during prior 'backups in production'. Even in relatively good times, a lot of the food in D3 is heavily processed and selected for its shelf-life rather than culinary merits. When Beetee and Wiress first visited the Capitol, they were astonished by the sheer abundance of fresh vegetables, which even as victors they can't always get their hands on in D3.
*District 3 has a class divide between researchers/engineers and factory workers. Technology manufacturing is tedious even in a society with basic labor protections. In the Hunger Games universe, I imagine it's atrocious: long hours, repetitive stress injuries, dank work environments, the potential for industrial accidents. Nothing like as dangerous as life in D12's mines or D2's quarries, but still probably pretty bad. The life of a scientist or engineer is probably greatly preferable--intellectually engaging, safer, and more remunerative. There's probably more mobility between the classes than there is in D12 (intelligence is at least to some degree heritable and so plays a role in who has a better shot of landing a research position, but the process is not so direct as inheriting D12's only bakery from your parents), but I imagine that there's also a lot of assortative mating (both as a natural function of culture and opportunity, and at the encouragement of the District authorities or even the Capitol—still working out what this looks like) that reduces potential social mobility. Related to this point...
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the First
Date: 2013-08-23 12:20 am (UTC)On-point, it makes sense to me that D3 would be dense & urban, and I think it's interesting that it's between two Career districts but not Career itself. Like D5 above, I think they would've chosen to use what privilege they're allowed for more practical purposes than channelling it into a victor culture (sorry guys).
I totally buy the food thing too, and I think that's definitely by Capitol design in a lot of districts -- I see D5 as having very low food self-sufficiency as well. Plus ha if you want to play to type, a district full of engineering nerds doesn't need fresh veggies or want anything that requires too much cooking. ;) Just give us ramen, please.
CLASS DIVIDES YES LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT, I see that the most in D1 randomly, between the ones who make the pretty things and the ones who do the mining, but I think D3 would have a pretty sharp intellectual divide on top of that. You'd have engineers who look down on the menial jobs and then a kind of anti-intellectualism from the ones who actually do the grunt-work. Not enough to be hugely divisive, but enough to stem any attempts at rebellion for a good long time.
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the First
Date: 2013-08-25 03:22 am (UTC)I buy that. Power is the most immediate and fundamental of the Capitol's needs. Food can be stockpiled, but it's a lot harder to store power. That has to buy some leverage.
if you want to play to type, a district full of engineering nerds doesn't need fresh veggies or want anything that requires too much cooking. ;) Just give us ramen, please.
I hadn't thought of that, but what the heck, that does sound about right; all D3 really needs is a healthy supply of Twizzlers and Red Bull. :D
CLASS DIVIDES YES LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT, I see that the most in D1 randomly, between the ones who make the pretty things and the ones who do the mining, but I think D3 would have a pretty sharp intellectual divide on top of that. You'd have engineers who look down on the menial jobs and then a kind of anti-intellectualism from the ones who actually do the grunt-work. Not enough to be hugely divisive, but enough to stem any attempts at rebellion for a good long time.
That's about the way I'm picturing it. I think there's some simmering resentment among the laborer class, principally based on the better wages and (apparently, though it may in some circumstances be debatable) better hours/conditions that the scientist class have. In my headcanon, after individuals have solidified their status (generally, by the time they're in college/grad school), scientist class members have a greater range of options for work, and there's actual competitive recruitment among privately and government-owned companies and academia to lure/retain them. There are also probably more people who could be doing scientific or middle management support work than there are positions to accommodate them, so for at least some portion of the population I'm thinking there's also the soul-deadening discomfort that comes with that. On the part of the scientists, I'm thinking that there's probably some hubris (and it doesn't help that many of them may be less socially skilled).
As you say, I don't think this would be enough to keep them from eventually banding together against the Capitol, but I think this system could result in a bit of distrust between the classes; they may not coordinate their efforts well, initially. I also think the system could be rough on families; I can imagine a lot of resentment where one sibling is suddenly singled out for special attention and eventually able to move up a step in quality of life, and conversely, how lost and alone a sibling who 'doesn't cut it' must feel when s/he is not able to meet expectations and suffers a diminution in prospects.
District Three Headcanon, Part the Second
Date: 2013-07-25 03:14 am (UTC)* District 3 is the anti-career district; they purposefully shield their most capable children from reaping. If D3 has a relatively large population and is directing additional resources toward developing the most gifted (to keep pace with the expectations of the Capitol), on cold calculation, it makes sense to attempt to prevent the most intellectually capable children from being reaped. There’s only a few extremely bright children in any given age group, and, while intelligence counts for something, their odds in the arena are still long: unlike D4 or D7, the main industry of D3 doesn’t provide children with quasi-fighting skills (or even a particular level of physical fitness), and given the urban nature of the district, provides no easy way to train them for the type of survival skills that could help them make it in the nature-based arenas (which I think comprise the vast majority of the arenas we’ve seen or the characters have described). In my head, D3 provides a ‘supplemental nutrition program’ to all alpha-ranked children. Ostensibly the program promotes intellectual development by ensuring the children have adequate nutrition, but it’s a thinly veiled effort to ensure the brightest children never sign up for tesserae. Although it serves the purposes of the Capitol for D3 to protect and develop the brightest children, D3 strongly suspects the Capitol has rigged drawings to punish the district after labor incidents or other failures, and to remind the intellectual elite that the privileges they enjoy at the top of D3’s hierarchy are gifts from the Capitol that can be removed at any time.
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Second
Date: 2013-08-23 12:26 am (UTC)I like the idea of class mobility being relegated to intellect/academic performance/innovation, which greater increases the kind of class/intellectual divide I mentioned in the other one. You're smarter than the others, you're rewarded for being smart, and they stay in the factories because they're not as smart as you etc. But meanwhile I assume with that kind of upward mobility the pressure to stay at the top and keep innovating would be kind of insane.
I TOTALLY agree that they would want to keep their children out of the Reaping, I mean, come on, what a darned waste, and I think the Capitol would allow that because, yeah, they want people to keep building them new shiny things. There will always be more miners and quarriers and lumberjacks, but not so many genius engineers. HOWEVER like you said, that doesn't mean that D3 has any level of security -- like any district with privilege it's a curse in its own way. At least D11 knows where they stand at all times.
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Second
Date: 2013-08-25 03:31 am (UTC)Yes, though I think there’s also just basically a ceiling of how well you’re going to be able to do in D3 (or any other district), because of how crazy-pants the organization of Panem is. Like other totalitarian states, Panem is sacrificing the economic growth (and the prosperity and human flourishing that accompany that growth) and engaging in debilitating levels of social control in order to maintain a power order. All the districts are much poorer than they need to be, and I imagine that life in D3 (like the other middle-range districts), even for those at the ‘top,’ reflects that unnecessary poverty. For example, I imagine that most factory workers can’t afford most of the technology that’s manufactured there, and even the scientists are limited in what they can afford.
Also, I imagine the Capitol exerts control over areas of research/study. For example, I imagine that the Capitol permits pretty much unlimited exploration of science and engineering, but has no interest in and significantly curtails study of the humanities (no sitting around contemplating the inalienable rights of man, or whatnot). I imagine a lot of directives from the Capitol, through state- or privately owned industry, for certain types of research projects, some of which are the bane of the scientist class (e.g., explaining the impossibility of perpetual motion machines to people who have never heard ‘no’ in their lives and have the power to ruin you). I also imagine that the Capitol maintains a rather tight control on ownership of the science and technology firms, through either nationalization of certain industries or prohibiting ownership of R/D or manufacturing firms by non-Capitol citizens, etc (which would, I think, be necessary in all the urban districts, to prevent any district from eventually becoming an economic rival).
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Second
Date: 2013-08-25 03:32 am (UTC)Yes, I think they’re somewhat similar (especially the food aid, which has to be a kind of wink-and-a-nod program similar to the Athletic and Personal Growth Center), though I also imagined the academic stratas as a factor that dominated D3 childhood but became mostly irrelevant as individuals moved from study to work. In my headcanon, I pictured the labeling a pervasive and high stakes element of schooling, up to the teen years, where at around 16 or 18, you go to your final round of testing, and you’re either selected for higher education or placed into vocational training (both of which I picture as being funded and controlled by the Capitol). Theoretically only school officials, the education bureaucracy, parents and students know their precise label, but it’s probably relatively easy to sort out from a child’s advancement through the curriculum and other circumstances (for example, I imagine science fairs are all the rage in D3, and that there are a lot of other competitions, with public results).
Children tracked for vocational training end schooling by 19 and are placed in the factories, where, once you’re in, there’s basically no ladder out: organizations presume that the government tracked you correctly and so even if you want to move up, you likely won’t be considered because you don’t have the ‘right’ educational background. Due to space constraints, Panem’s district specialization system, restrictions on ownership and general poverty, there’s not a lot of options outside the factories (you could design the equivalent of the personal computer in your spare time, but Steve Jobs without a free market and stable democracy is, unfortunately, just a guy with a hobby).
Children tracked in the upper stratas begin to receive aid from the first round of testing that indicates their status, and receive the aid so long as they maintain the status. Most children are going to proceed through typical schooling alongside children in the lower stratas, but tracked into more advanced classes and moving forward based on ability level rather than age. Eventually, they’re selected for higher education, in the form of a technical school or university. The exceptions are the alpha-ranked children; from as young as 12, they move to the National Science Academy, a college within the University of Panem’s main D3 campus.
I think the Capitol is aware of the potential threat of cultivating a crop of geniuses, but also wants the technological goodies, and so tries to mitigate the threat by controlling areas of study, access to economic capital, and, as you suggested, food instability. As you noted, I think its part of a pattern of how the Capitol maintains control: tight control on food in the urban districts, lack of technology/education in the resource-rich districts, and of course, persistently playing the districts against each other through the Games.
But meanwhile I assume with that kind of upward mobility the pressure to stay at the top and keep innovating would be kind of insane.
For the students, especially those on the cusp between one tier and another, I think it’s absolutely manic, and results in the widespread abuse of ‘study aid’ drugs (which have caused some D3 tributes to crash in the arena). For the adults, I think it’s like a professorship with a never-ending tenure review: not nearly as bad as the acute pressure of zero-sum testing, but still, a continuous drive to research, improve, meet specific goals, etc. Certainly enough for the scientists and factory workers to share a common enmity for the Capitol.
District Three Headcanon, Part the Third
Date: 2013-07-25 03:24 am (UTC)* District 3 victors have a tower rather than a village. In keeping with the dense, urban layout I imagine, I see the D3 Victor’s Village as a 12-story apartment building, with a private garden adjoining (akin to some of the older buildings in Manhattan). Though this isn’t quite the mansion other district victors enjoy, it’s still more square footage than even the mayor or most successful scientists and merchants have. In any case, it’s more space than any of the D3 victors had ever dreamed of having to themselves, to the point where the relative silence and emptiness drives them to spend a lot of time in each other’s apartments (where there’s at least some ambient noise and the sense of another’s presence). And in any case, doesn’t it just make sense to start consolidating all the lab equipment in one place? (The culture in D3 may not be big on emotional expressiveness, but if you can rationalize an emotional need as an operational efficiency, it’s perfectly acceptable.)
* District 3 is the only district where the majority of victors are female. When I attempted a breakdown of the 59 pre-Quarter Quell victors by district, I gave some consideration to how the victors might break out based on the advantages of various district industries and career programs, as well as other characteristics of the tributes. Most of the arena set-ups we’ve read about favor victors with physical strength. To my mind, this favors older tributes, tributes from career districts and, to a lesser degree, male tributes. I estimated female victors would be something between 1/3 and 3/8 of the total. Once I allocated at least one female victor to each district, and at least three to each career district, I didn’t have very many more to spread around! I decided that D3’s style of play was the least likely to implicate physical strength, and so allocated them there. Haymitch/other smartasses refers to this as ‘Beetee’s harem.’ Everyone finds this hilarious except Beetee, who expresses his displeasure in his typical manner: cleaning his glasses and ignoring the attention-seeking child.
* District 3 victors aren’t heroes in their district. I’m not sure I can adequately explain why I feel like this would be true, but I get the feeling that a lot of people in D3 think if you’re able to win the Games, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you. Perhaps this is related to my thought that each of the victors were reaped from the alpha class, which D3 associates with punishment, or because I suspect the D3 victors relied on technological traps that required lots of planning, which might strike people as particularly cold or even underhand. For whatever reason, I think victors in D3 may be respected or even feared, but I don’t think they’re celebrated.
Random Victor Quirks: The victors use small camcorders to record experiments and research notes. Wiress loves to take someone’s camcorder when they’re not looking and film weird bits (making faces, singing songs, etc), just to watch their reaction when their notes are interrupted with something ridiculous. Wiress can’t fall asleep when the lights are off (apparently, I’ve read too many fics where Wiress’s arena involved pitch dark). Beetee fanatically checks the safety of all equipment in the Victor’s Tower (self-explanatory).
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Third
Date: 2013-08-23 12:34 am (UTC)The culture in D3 may not be big on emotional expressiveness, but if you can rationalize an emotional need as an operational efficiency, it’s perfectly acceptable.
I love this, by the way. Loooooove.
....... huh I hadn't considered the gender disparity stuff but I like that! And I'm all for more ladies in the victor circles, seriously. and lololol Beetee's harem
Yeeeeeah uh I don't see D3's victors being all that celebrated either -- I don't see ANY victors being real heroes outside the Career districts, honestly, but in D3 where they prize intellectualism and all that over most things, I can definitely see how it would come off even worse. Maybe it's just that I like reading fic where the victors/mentors stick together because only they understand each other, but I can't imagine a lot of them have a good time when they go home. Many many many people would rather have a martyr than a victor I think, even if they don't realize it until the victor comes home and suddenly their friend/brother/cousin/girlfriend has blood all over their hands.
BRB CRYING OVER BEETEE FINDING WIRESS' VIDEO LOGS IN HER LAB AFTER THE REBELLION
CRYING FOREVER
FOREVER
FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
(Wiress having a dark labyrinthine Arena is my personal headcanon too)
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Third
Date: 2013-08-25 05:32 am (UTC)Hee! Thank you! :D
....... huh I hadn't considered the gender disparity stuff but I like that! And I'm all for more ladies in the victor circles, seriously. and lololol Beetee's harem
Have you, by any chance, diagramed out the 59 pre-Quell victors are distributed among the districts in your universe? I’d enjoy seeing your breakout.
Maybe it's just that I like reading fic where the victors/mentors stick together because only they understand each other, but I can't imagine a lot of them have a good time when they go home. Many many many people would rather have a martyr than a victor I think, even if they don't realize it until the victor comes home and suddenly their friend/brother/cousin/girlfriend has blood all over their hands.
I haven’t given a lot of thought to the other non-career district reactions, but I think there’s a lot to what you’re saying. Even if a non-career district were prepared to celebrate a victor as a hero, I can see a lot of them being so messed up from their arena experience that they might either actively shun the label (e.g., I think Johanna wants absolutely nothing to do with any celebration of her experience) or behave in ways that make it hard to celebrate them (e.g., the morphlings).
BRB CRYING OVER BEETEE FINDING WIRESS' VIDEO LOGS IN HER LAB AFTER THE REBELLION
Sweet, sweet revenge!
But seriously, yeah, that’s exactly where I’m going with that. In headcanon land, Beetee has sky-drived all the lab tapes. Hundreds of hours worth, which he listens to when he’s trying to fall asleep, or just needs to be with Wiress or his mentor (my D3 OV1). There are also tapes of fun times, like the surprise cake they baked to present his mentor on her 70th birthday, the time Beetee accidentally set his labcoat on fire (which, of course, was only funny for him in retrospect, when he could hear Wiress’s color commentary pompously regurgitating the standard National Science Acadmey speech about ‘the duty of the superior alpha class to use their gifts for the glory of Panem’), or the time his mentor fell asleep over an experiment and the other victors gleefully decorated her with toilet paper, spare wire and a string of LEDs.
Um, I have probably way more of this type of thing than I ought. My first read of Mockingjay, I got a little worried when Finnick was killed almost off-screen and without a lot of fanfare. When Prim died, I threw the book across the room. Eventually I hacked my way through the last couple of chapters, and was disappointed but no longer surprised when Beetee quietly announces that all but seven of the victors are dead. At that point, I can sort of understand why Haymitch wanders off to drink himself to death while Katniss nearly dies of grief, except that he moved heaven and earth to save her in the 74th Games and the Rebellion, so… yeah, I got nothing. The end of Mockingjay seems to be the ritual stripping away of any hope for Katniss beyond Peeta. Maybe that’s realistic, but, it’s just not the type of story I enjoy.
After a few months, when I found myself wanting to re-read the books but put off by the last chapters, I decided that someone who enjoys fanfic as much as I do should just re-write the ending in my head. Working backwards from that, I somehow wound up with a story that starts at Beetee’s reaping and sprawls forward from there. Oops. And, to be honest, although I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories/fic generally, the way the victors relate to each other is far and away the most interesting part of the HG universe for me, so I find myself regularly putting off plot development to imagine anecdotes of friendship/bonding between victors. But if wanting my coerced and damaged child killers to be one big happy family is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-30 07:54 pm (UTC)Comments on random bits and pieces of things:
The D3 class divide is really interesting especially if you think about the fact that you would have the equivalents of both Apple and Foxconn in the same district (which I hadn't really thought through until just now). And especially if it's based on testing from childhood it could definitely really break up families, yikes!
a larger proportion of the demand is for relatively small batch orders of complex items for Capitol citizens or specific industries, rather than mass-manufacture items (as there are so few in the districts who can afford a lot of technology, and many of the district industries don't require it)
Yes, I was thinking about this to in terms of 6 (of course) because they’d be producing for the Capitol and the Peacekeepers and a few rich people and not for the general public, so much lower volume than say Detroit at peak production.
I also imagine that the Capitol maintains a rather tight control on ownership of the science and technology firms, through either nationalization of certain industries or prohibiting ownership of R/D or manufacturing firms by non-Capitol citizens, etc
Yes I think anyone having any kind of business (from the bakery on up) has to be licensed by the Capitol and the more potentially threatening the business the more closely that's monitored.
Like other totalitarian states, Panem is sacrificing the economic growth (and the prosperity and human flourishing that accompany that growth) and engaging in debilitating levels of social control in order to maintain a power order.
YES EXACTLY. When I'm thinking "How might X work in Panem" I think about, in priority order: control, efficient use of (presumably scarer-than-currently) resources, then productivity. Control is the only way you can explain splitting off various industries geographically (especially power generation holy transmission losses, that basically cannot actually be the only place that generates power).
Wiress loves to take someone’s camcorder when they’re not looking and film weird bits (making faces, singing songs, etc), just to watch their reaction when their notes are interrupted with something ridiculous.
like the surprise cake they baked to present his mentor on her 70th birthday, the time Beetee accidentally set his labcoat on fire (which, of course, was only funny for him in retrospect, when he could hear Wiress’s color commentary pompously regurgitating the standard National Science Acadmey speech about ‘the duty of the superior alpha class to use their gifts for the glory of Panem’), or the time his mentor fell asleep over an experiment and the other victors gleefully decorated her with toilet paper, spare wire and a string of LEDs.
My favorite thing is nerdy prank stories (probably has something to do with going to engineering school and participating in nerdy pranks) and I WANT MORE OF THIS PLS
if wanting my coerced and damaged child killers to be one big happy family is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.
TRUE STORY
no subject
Date: 2014-12-01 06:43 pm (UTC)Yeah, exactly. I started on this headcanon before reading about the conditions at Foxconn, but turns out it's exactly what I was thinking of. :(
so much lower volume than say Detroit at peak production.
Yes, and there's good and bad aspects to that, I think? One problem is the lower productivity, but on the up side there's less automation, and thus more varied work? (Lack of such was apparently a big problem with assembly line production.)
Yes I think anyone having any kind of business (from the bakery on up) has to be licensed by the Capitol and the more potentially threatening the business the more closely that's monitored.
(especially power generation holy transmission losses, that basically cannot actually be the only place that generates power).
Yes, this is really difficult to explain, right? Unless there's been some massive advance in battery technology that's beyond our current understanding (e.g., the sort of leap that would make renewables practical rather than just a conscience-salving side gig).
I do think there have to be some concessions to reality at various points (eg, what if all the natural gas or shale oil isn't located in Five? Is the Capitol really not going to put a few wells in Ten just because it's supposed to be the livestock district??), but I suspect there's just extreme losses of productivity due to political control.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-01 07:27 pm (UTC)crazy taxes, regulatory restrictions, and a heavy reliance on meeting the needs of Peacekeepers.
This sounds interesting, I haven't read her fic, I'll have to look it up, any particular recs?
I do think there have to be some concessions to reality at various points (eg, what if all the natural gas or shale oil isn't located in Five? Is the Capitol really not going to put a few wells in Ten just because it's supposed to be the livestock district??)
Yes exactly. I'm sure there's lots of losses in productivity but some things are just PHYSICS and seriously, distributed power generation is necessary. I think at least the passenger trains are electric and in my head there's distributed supplementary solar generation stations along the tracks in addition to the larger scale power plants. Not sure exactly how that works but it seems more or less feasible. And re: renewables, I think they play a larger role than now because of North American isolation and increasing scarcity/extraction cost of petroleum. I think mostly electric cars fits from both an efficiency/scarcity and a control standpoint--it's easier to stockpile fuel than batteries, so you can really effectively limit transport range with electric.
Anyway, just rambling, but it's interesting stuff to think about!
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Date: 2014-12-07 11:11 pm (UTC)That's one of the areas I diverge from
This sounds interesting, I haven't read her fic, I'll have to look it up, any particular recs?
Hmmmm... Regarding her theories on how merchants stay afloat in D12, I'd recommend The Final Eight (parts of THG from Delly's POV), The End of the World (Haymitch's games), and The Rites of Fall (Twelve after Haymitch's games). Generally, I like all of her fiction, but I think The End of the World and The Golden Mean (Haymitch during CF) are my favorites.
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Date: 2014-12-10 05:25 pm (UTC)I'll definitely check out those recs, it's always good to find more quality non-"wtf-AU-Everlark-romance-love-triangle-yay!" THG stuff.
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Date: 2014-12-13 06:45 pm (UTC)That gives me a really good mental picture of what you mean. Yes, I can see that level of addiction/dysfunction.