look i know the hunger games fandom is entrenched in songbirds and snakes brainrot right now but i just wanna mention how horribly genius the tesserae system is
like. it's designed to keep the poorest districts from ever winning the games, by keeping the population of those districts on the verge of starvation without ever tipping the line too far. the poorer you are, the more you need your children to take tesserae. the more tesserae your children take, the more times their name is added to the reaping pool. the more times a name appears in the reaping pool, the more likely they are to be drawn over a person who doesn't need to take tesserae. a kid who's been surviving off of tesserae grain and oil is exponentially more likely to die early on in the games due to the effects of malnutrition (low muscle mass and body fat, not to mention the mental consequences).
pretty much the only reason katniss was physically capable of surviving the games was because she'd been able to catch meat in the forest. surviving on just the tesserae she was taking for her mother and prim, there's no way she would've had the physical strength to make it out alive.
say what you want about the realism of the hunger games but the tesserae system is horrifyingly well-designed to do exactly what it's supposed to do.
Edit: guys I wrote a fic that's meant to dissect all these horribly genius systems involved in the functioning of Panem, check it out
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