the lore’s not that deep but it’s fun to dig

Hunger games sideblog of @winterpinetrees.

[summerpinetrees]

A wonderful artfight attack of my Hunger Games OCs, drawn by my friend @lokiwaffles!

[nothazellevesque]

People always focus on the horror of titus the cannibal tribute from district 6, but in focusing on that we forget the fact that he’s a child. everyone in there is just a scared, desperate child. the game makers put those babies in an arena with no food and made them kill each other. of course Titus started trying to eat the dead. there was nothing else. if he even wanted a chance to survive long enough to go home, he had to. He’s a child, locked in a hellscape with only one way out. except there is no way out, is there? like haymitch says, you never get off that train. but titus doesn’t know that. none of the tributes in that arena know that there’s no winning the games. There’s only survival. And to survive, you must kill. you must eat. there’s no time to think about the consequences of what you’re doing, because you have to stay alert. you have to stay alive. You have to go home.

So titus kills. and he eats. And he gets closer and closer to going home. But as the numbers dwindle, those consequences that he’d been avoiding come sneaking back in. he’s been eating people, eating children on live television. He’s a monster, and the whole nation knows it now. What’ll happen to him when he gets out? What will happen to his family? His friends? Would he even be allowed around his loved ones now that he’s the most hated and most recognizable boy in panem? So he snaps. Of course he does. No one exits the arena completely sane, and that’s without the trauma of having to turn to cannibalism on the inside.

And then the avalanche comes. The cannon fires. Titus, the mad cannibal, is dead. His body is loaded into that little wooden box, and he finally, finally goes home. i doubt there was a funeral for the male tribute from 6. It wouldn’t do for anyone to be seen mourning the monster. But what about the boy? Titus was a normal child before his name was pulled at the reaping that year. he had friends. Family. He probably had hobbies too. No one will remember that nervous boy taking the stage at the reaping, or his interview with caesar flickerman. he will forever be immortalized as the beast of the arena. One only whispered about in horror. They’ll call him a savage, a villain, a monster. In truth, he was just a terrified kid trying to do whatever it took to make it home from an incomprehensible nightmare.

[cassidyjaneart]

[summerpinetrees]

The future of the Hunger Games doesn’t have all the concepts that we do now. Hell, until the prequels, it seemed like they had completely forgotten religion. So in Panem, rather than use modern terminology like transgender or non-binary, I like to think people in the districts would just say someone “is only a boy/girl for the Reaping”.

[vinsel-ao3]

"Thresh was supposed to be the Mockingjay!"

No, Thresh was just a kid trying to survive and get back home to his sister and grandma.

[dont-call-me-algernon]

The fun part about headcanoning Seneca Crane as a lifelong hunger games fanatic who watched every single season since he was a kid, never missed a re-run of the 50th edition, knew all the statistics, learned the names of everyone involved in the production dreaming to join them one day, and Plutarch as getting into gamemaking later in life than most, is that by the time he’s promoted to head gamemaker Seneca is ABSOLUTELY getting starstruck at the idea of having this heavy hitter working under him, like

Plutarch, pretending to smoke a cigar even though he hates the taste because everyone else is smoking and drinking and he needs to look like he’s having a good time if he wants to blend in and overhear something interesting at some super exclusive afterparty: ahah when you graduated the academy I had already filmed a quarter quell, a victory tour, and won an award for best editing in a reality show, I find it quite amusing :)

Seneca, high off his ass on whatever substance he uses to keep himself awake 20 hours a day during games season: can… can yuo put that out on me

[summerpinetrees]

Alright. People liked my first Annie post, here's a second.

I don't necessarily think that Annie winning "because she was the best swimmer" means that she just treaded water to victory. Even if the dam burst by accident, this is happening in Year 70. The Capitol is as advanced and drama-hungry as it would ever get. The gamemakers would try to salvage a decent (if aquatic) finale, and not just wait for everyone else to drown.

[mooshire31]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAYMITCH (here’s more AU drawings)

I started drawing this before I started fleshing out the lore in my head so I lowkey wish I had given Haymitch an axe instead of a sword but I was too lazy to change it.

Also I love all of these except I lowkey dislike one of them but I will not disclose which one.

[mooshire31]

Mockingjay!Haymitch AU

I’m returning to my roots

Lenore Dove lived, Sid lived, it got complicated.

[summerpinetrees]

I don’t love the headcanon that Annie’s arena flooded because of an attempted arena break. The original theories of an earthquake or a gamemaker mistake seem just as viable. However, if there was a rebel action, I am adamant that Annie had nothing to do with it.

My ideal scenario is that Beetee or Plutarch or whoever doesn’t so much as look at Annie. She’s just another career, an obstacle with sponsors and a high training score. If a tribute is a rebel, it’ll be a random kid from a poor district. Annie’s partner is beheaded, she has her breakdown, and then somewhere an outlier sets a bomb. They die in the flood. She lives.

Obviously none of it is in the recap. Due to her instability, no one tells Annie a thing.

(needless to say, theories that Annie went “mad” because she’s actually a body double or was specially tortured, infuriate me. No. It’s from her normal trauma. She survived the Hunger Games).

[humantrainwreck03]

I personally dislike how every District 4 Tribute in the series uses a trident as their main weapon in the arena. A Career District should be competent with a variety of weapons. What happens when the arena has no tridents?

[luviuna]

About the Careers

or at least, my headcanons ദ്ദി◝⩊◜.ᐟ

Dieting

Effie: "... and I don't think they let them have dessert--and you can!"

This line from the movie is, of course, funny; it also makes me think that the Career tributes, and possibly even before they volunteer, are under strict dieting. Definitely sugar-free (or rather refined-sugar-free) and whatever athletes load up on before a competition or game.

Their escorts and mentor would probably enforce these strict meal plans too, with macros/calorie counting and the daily breakfast/dinner scene would be a lot different for Careers than what we were told in the books/saw in the movie.

"Career Academies"

Katniss: "The exceptions are the kids from the wealthier districts, the volunteers, the ones who have been fed and trained throughout their lives for this moment. The tributes from 1, 2, and 4 traditionally have this look about them. It’s technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol but it happens every year. In District 12, we call them the Career Tributes, or just the Careers"

While Katniss says that training tributes within districts for the Hunger Games/before Capitol is technically forbidden, I think these 'career academies' operate under the pretense of peacekeeper training or something like it.

Capitol knows what goes on in those buildings, but it’s a useful motivator for larger districts like District 2 to keep playing along.

And!!!! I’d imagine they’d also test for chemistry between potential tributes so they could volunteer together and work better as a team in the arena too.

If any of these are proven wrong/canon anywhere, do tell me, I wouldn't want to miss it!

Career tributes when someone offers them candy:

[thirstkanaphan]

[summerpinetrees]

I like to think that the Victor’s Villages of the most urbanized districts were built on what had previously been common greenspace. It’s an answer for how to put spacious, suburban houses close to places that otherwise don’t have a blade of grass (as Katniss says), and it’s another way to humiliate the districts.

The park where you used to relax, maybe even forage, now belongs to the Capitol. You cannot go there. They’ve walled it off and filled it with twelve identical houses. Your district will only ever produce enough victors to fill three of them.

[justafewberries]

if the community home existed back in the first quarter quell, district 12 would have voted two kids from it to be the tributes.

The boldest form of dissent they can manage is silence. They lock their doors and shutter their windows when there’s any sign of unrest.

there was no class war where the seam pulled together and voted in a merchant tribute. it’s too bold and too powerful for them. district 12 appeases. And, assuming there’s no widely-hated d12 citizen of reaping age, the best way to keep everyone happy is to vote in the person the fewest will miss. a community home child.

[mellkellyismyhero]

beetee latier came up with one singular plan ever to defeat the hunger games and canonically tried to make it work TWICE despite the fact that it literally blew up in his face the first time.

this officially makes him the world’s most accurate fictional scientist because he HAS a favorite hypothesis that he IS going to make sure works even if it fucking kills him

[ilikebooksanstuff]

i love how suzanne just gives us a little treat by mentioning the katniss plant every book. like here u go. ik u miss our girl. she's fine. enjoy lowercase katniss