Penfold_X's Fandom Journal

I didn't forget your prompts from the Excessively Detailed Headcanons meme, it just arrived at a particularly busy time for me. I have been thinking about the questions (some of which needed quite a bit of consideration, since the particular issue had never come up in the stories I've told myself). But I have at least addressed the Lumina prompts. Hoping to get to Beetee and Wiress, too (... er, I've really done this backwards, oops).

I can't explain it, but I really love hearing about the little details of characters' lives. I'd love to read about your favorite characters' typical day. What does their bedroom look like? Do they eat breakfast? Work out? Have a chore routine?

For THG, if really like Divergence AU, or any other post-MJ happyworld. What is Finnick and Annie's home like? Does Haymitch secretly love his geese?

*lonely otter look*

*paws at your fic/meta pocket*

lorataprose sent me a link to a fan's sorting of the Hunger Games characters into the Hogwarts houses. She didn't like a lot of the author's picks, and I definitely agreed (Gale as a Slytherin? The man who turned down his One True Love's offer to run off into the woods in order to fight a seemingly hopeless battle for justice? Just because you don't like a character doesn't mean s/he is a Slytherin). That said, I tried to do better myself, but found to be challenging. What do you think?

Gryffindor
Katniss: Sometimes I have difficulty 'getting' Katniss (we meet her when she already has a mild case of PTSD, which only gets worse as the books go on, so she's unreliable, even about herself), but I think she's predominantly Gryffindor. She's very brave and daring (most people in Twelve don't dare to go beyond the fence, but she does it routinely from a young age, and if we trust her POV, she's the only or one of an extremely small number of non-Career volunteers). She's independent (doesn't need anyone to sit by her at school, is able to take on being head of her house at a very young age). She wears her heart on her sleeve ("Everyone knows my secrets before I do") and can get passionate when she feels something is the 'right' thing to do (eg, keeping Peeta out of/alive during the 75th). She's driven by her emotions a lot of the time, to the point she takes risks that others might think foolish (the shot at the Gamemakers, the play with the berries, walking out into the square in Two to try to make peace). Her protective nature (eg, toward Rue) could be interpreted as a chivalrous streak. She's loyal to her friends, expects loyalty in return from them, and heaven help you if you break faith with her, even for a good reason (eg, Mrs. Everdeen). And, well, she's not evinced any love of learning and she isn't terribly cunning.

Gale: I think this is really clear. Gale is brave, to the point of recklessness sometimes. Gale keenly feels the injustice of their world and has always wanted to do something about it, and is only held back by the need to take care of his immediate family. Like Katniss, he's brave enough to hunt in the woods when most of Twelve won't walk out past the meadow. When Gale shouts during the planning of the assault on the Nut that he'd gladly give his life if he were a spy, Katniss says she has no doubt he's being honest. But Gale probably couldn't be a spy because, like Katniss, everyone knows exactly what he's thinking all the time.

Cinna: Idealism. A seemingly inborn sense of justice. Courage to take certain stands, even though he knows he will likely die for them. He's clever about it, so he may have some snake or claw in him (especially given his creativity, which speaks to both those houses), but I think, overall, given his ability to tap into and bring out a sense of nobility, he's predominantly Gryffindor.

Johanna: I'm less sure about this sort. A girl who wins her games by pretending to be a frightened weakling sounds Slytherin-ish, but her cunning seems to have left her by the time we meet her in Catching Fire, where she's pretty blunt and brutal with everyone (her interview in the movie, in particular, is classic Gryffindor). It's implied that she's lost all of her family, probably as the result of resisting Snow on some point of principle. In Mockingjay, she's relentless (and very brave) about pushing herself to try to get over fears. Though she's burnt out and battered when we meet her, I think there's a hero under the damage.

Ravenclaw
Wiress: Almost stereotypically Raveclaw--the absent-minded professor, so lost in her own thoughts that she sometimes trails off in the middle of her sentences. Loves learning and is extremely creative.

Beetee: Very much like Wiress, but you could make an argument that there's a lot of cunning in a teenager who created what must have been a meticulous and deliberate trap that killed six tributes simultaneously. However, Beetee also seems to be perfectly happy to be off stage; he's got a central role in much of the work of the rebellion, but never evidences any desire to be the one calling the shots or to move himself into a political position in the new government. He may have a streak of Slytherin in his make-up (it's definitely part of my headcanon for him), but he seems to be mostly driven by his intellect and curiosity.

Plutarch: For all they're about a revolution, there isn't a lot of political theory in Collins' books. Plutarch comes closer than any other character to seeming to have some sense of the abstract concepts beyond 'I'm rebelling because the Capitol is starving/working me to death.' He also seems to be very cerebral (especially in the movie presentation), and for all his understanding of human emotion, can appear to not care as much as he should, or not have so much of a sense of the human cost of the rebellion.

Annie: This is something of a WAG, since we don't get to know Annie very well, but when lorataprose and I were talking about this many moons ago, we both had the sense that she belonged in Ravenclaw. It could be the way she seems to live primarily in her head, coupled with her quiet demeanor. I get the impression that, for all she's a career, Annie's reaction to her districtmate's beheading was partly due to her being less ready than a more practically oriented career would be for the reality of violence.

Hufflepuff
Prim: Animal-loving healer. Gentle, friendly, desiring to help others. Practical (e.g., in the Catching Fire film, takes over from Mrs. Everdeen when her hands are shaking too much to get the morphling into the syringe).

Brutus: There isn't a lot to work with in canon, but I think there are two types of kids who go into a career program: reckless daredevils (Clove) and true believers (Cato). If Enobaria is the daredevil of the 75th pairing, Brutus is the true-believing workhorse. Brutus isn't flamboyant (especially in the movie presentation). He's there to do the job that needs doing.

Mags: We don't get an awful lot about Mags in canon, so I may be overly influenced by fanon here, but I get the sense she's very community-oriented (she volunteers for Annie, probably thinking that it's worth sacrificing herself for someone who still has her whole life ahead of her) and practical (she does what she can in the arena to help out, plugging away steadily at what she can do instead of getting frustrated/emotional).

Peeta: I'm not 100% sold on any house for Peeta. As a sixteen year old, he decided that he loved a girl he almost never spoke to so much he was willing to die for her. I'm not sure if that's anything other than crazy, but maybe it's Hufflepuff? He's also warm, friendly, and likable. He seems to have a good sense of what works with a group. He's comfortable being the supporting player; he doesn't seem to have any desire to be the star.

Slytherin
Haymitch: It takes a lot of skill to be as impaired as Haymitch is (no doubt he's a genuine alcoholic) and still plot a revolution. He's great at determining what arena strategies are best for Katniss and Peeta, and even talks Seneca Crane into bending the rules to allow for a dual-victor scenario. Haymitch is more loyal to the plan/system then to individuals, but he does know how to strike alliances to protect himself and those he's taken on as his.

Finnick: A 14-year-old Career tribute? Ambitious. Certainly thought he was destined for greatness. More than his clever, showy arena strategy (where the others didn't realize 'he was the one to beat until it was too late'), I think his successful career as a spy points to Finnick as a snake. He's the anti-Katniss, able to conceal his true motives and use his beguiling charm to get Capitol citizens to reveal to him the dirtiest of laundry.

Rue: "Where's Peeta?" "Oh, he's down by the river..." Rue is one clever girl, using her size and her abilities well to her advantage in the arena. But her biggest triumph is making her alliance with Katniss, which might well have saved her (she could probably guess that Katniss would think of her as a substitute Prim and have a great deal of difficulty killing her, if it came down to it). She makes it oblivious to Katniss that she'd be a valuable teammate (with the trackerjackers and the leaves), and is cunning enough to neglect to mention to Katniss the one fact that might have caused her to pull away from Rue to go be with Peeta (who's down by the river alright, bleeding to death). And, if you take the movies for canon, during training, she stole a favorite knife from the biggest threat in the tribute pool, just to watch what he'd do (and enjoy how it played out).

Was just about to post a comment to kawuli's great post on District 9, which is chock full of details about modern agriculture and her headcanon, when I realized that I had a long digression that I should probably put somewhere I can find again.

kawuli noted, "Which means that District 9 probably has a few scattered crop-production centers with something like 10 people responsible for growing hundreds of square miles/kilometers of row crops, probably with zones for various (rotations of) cereals/legume field crops and some seed-production and research areas (with visiting scientists/geneticists from 3)." I definitely agree with the idea that there are some scientists from Three who get to travel occasionally as a part of their work, and think this can actually have some funny wrinkles in culture among D3's scientist class.

In my hc, I figure that all higher education in Panem takes place at the University of Panem, because all other colleges and universities were subsumed into the state university or shut down when the Capitol came to power, in the aftermath of the Dark Days, if not before. The UofP has satellite campuses around the Capitol and in certain of the inner districts. All students in Three identified in testing the 'alpha' strata (generally, the top 2-3%) are tracked for training at the Three campus of the UofP (commonly referred to as the National Science Academy).

I figure that, like a lot of the industries we see in Panem, STEM research and manufacture are controlled by the Capitol. They pick which firms get contracts (probably with plenty of within-Capitol graft), what to manufacture, and what areas of research (pure and practical) should be funded. There's very little independent industry left in Three (the Capitol can't risk Three becoming an economic power in its own right).

Because of these limitations there's limited opportunity for even the best and brightest, so when you show up for your first day at the academy, your classmates are also your competition for the plum firms and assignments. I think, to the degree that a student wants to see what lies beyond Three's fenced-in city, the student should think carefully about what specialty s/he wants to try for. Some of this is out of the student's control; there are a certain number of geopetrolium engineers that are going to be needed, and it doesn't matter that you don't want to be sent to freeze your *#$% off in Five for a few weeks in the dead of winter. But working hard to be at the top of your class in, say, computer engineering, lessens the likelihood of that happening.

As with a lot of other things in Panem, I think the Capitol privileges control over efficiency in the matter of Threes working outside of their district, and so visits are probably much less frequent than they should be, which ends up with a lot of frustrated scientists and engineers not being allowed to know all of the context of a problem that they're working on, as well as frustrated factory workers, miners, etc. who have to make do with what arrives from Three, even if it's not optimally suited to their needs, or wasn't sufficiently empirically tested before it was deployed. There are also security issues with travel, so scientists whose rebellious leanings are exposed, or have family members who commit serious offenses are not going to be allowed to travel at all.

( cross training, it's not just for jocks )

I'm up near National Cathedral today, and noticed this restaurant (nope, no photoshop involved).

Title: Predator
Characters: Claudius, Eibhlin, Lyme (Gen)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violent imagery, a wee bit of foul language
Summary: Claudius doesn't know if he was born a killer or just trained to it, but he has no doubt what he is.
A/N: The ficlet is set in the chemistry 'verse, and as such cribs extensively from the work of lorataprose, especially Fixed to a Star and the forthcoming Divergence, Part II. No actions, thoughts, or other elements of this story are binding on lorataprose's 'verse.

( predator )

*uncontrollable flailing*