HI!!!! IM YELLING AT YOU!!!! I LOVE YOUR FIC AND IVE BINGE READ IT SO MUCH!!!
Ive been rereading this like crazy, and im so curiois about everything and i wanted to ask a few questions (if thats okay with you ofc)
did the audience/people watching the hunger games know there were clones? I know some of the tributes in the arena did (like etho), but i was wondering.. what about the audience? Did the clone reveal come kind of like a twist like it did with us the readers?(kinda, since the clone thing was very hinted at and its in the tags too - but just generally if it also came as a surprise and a big reveal like "woaaaw your favorite tributes are actually not dead!" To the folks at home, and if so, could you tell maybe more or less how was the reveal?
And also, since the clones are like a very well made copy of the tributes, to what extent does that include memories? Just asking to see if theoretically you could confirm someone was a clone or not by asking them about memories - do they remember old memories or just remember the most important ones? Hypothetically lets say two people came up with a memory to confirm if they are real when theyre in the games, would the clones also have that memory or not?
anyway thats all, i just love the clone mechanic in ths fic a lot and i yearn to know more!! If any of those questions are somehow a spoiler dw about answering them!
hello hello! i'd be more than happy to answer. i'll try to be vague if it gets to spoiler-y content, but it should be fine.
yes - the audience did know about the clone mechanic, but only when the games first started (because of the three cornucopias thing, it got told pretty early on to make sure nobody was confused). however, i don't think i ever really touch on it much in my boatem mentor team pov's because it wasn't really necessary to the plot at the time.
the most explicit mention to it was in impulse's pov in the recent chapter, "A clone – signified to the audience by a faint glow around their hands; green, yellow or red depending on how many were left," but thats about all i said because my other non-tribute pov (mumbo) was before grian found out about the clone twist got revealed and i didn't want to spoil.
this was the closest quote from mumbo's pov as to how it would have been revealed to the audience: "He rewound the program again, watching the same moment on loop just so he could try and make sense of it. Orion had explained the fresh mechanic for this year’s Games early on, but it did nothing to quell the sheer dread Mumbo felt watching Ren and Martyn sneak up behind Scar."
but how it would have went was a brief explanation from orion at the beginning and then spliced footage of all of the different cornucopia bloodbaths. like i mentioned earlier, the clones are shown to the audience with a faint glow, and so they'd be able to tell who was a clone in each of the bloodbaths.
sorry if this one is a bit more vague. they are well-made copies of the tributes, yes, but all the memories they have are from what footage/information the gamemakers managed to get before the games (i.e things shared in interviews, training skills, evaluations, a few of the interactions from the training rooms, etc.)
whatever is public knowledge (or obvious enough based off footage) is what the clones know. hence, etho turned off the cameras during the strange interaction in chapter 10 so that he could have a memory to tell who were clones based off.
anything, say, on the roof or in the tribute apartments isn't surveilled properly, so anything that happens there the clones don't know about.
people who knew each other beforehand, or became good friends before the start of the games have a decent amount to go off, so they'd be able to work out decently quickly who is real or not.
hope this helps! i'm so glad you're enjoying <3
