....... 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.
Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Third
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.