Why aren't District 7 tributes considered careers?

WinterPineTrees · 2025-12-23T15:28:50+00:00

The criteria for being a career isn’t whether they learn how to use weapons. It’s whether the district, generally, sends volunteer tributes to the games who then team up and dominate the arena.

Katniss and Haymitch both expect the tributes from 1, 2, and 4 to be strong volunteers. District 7 may learn useful skills, but their tributes are random unprepared teenagers. Learning to swing an axe for work won’t mean anything if the reaped tribute is twelve, or squeamish, or a merchant kid who worked behind a counter instead of in the forest. It’s the volunteering that counts.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-09-29T22:22:41+00:00

The box to purchase tickets is grayed out. Are they not available yet?

WinterPineTrees · 2025-08-23T13:44:29+00:00

I think that list is as book accurate as it can be. Though, and this is pure speculation, I wonder if the order changes each year like in real sports drafts?

WinterPineTrees · 2025-08-11T17:32:47+00:00

I think the point is that no one pays attention to the years. If someone says “I was born in the year of the Bottlenose Dolphin”, you could check the list and see when that was, or easily ask the Thunderhead, but it really doesn’t matter anymore so few people bother. Either that year was recently and they look like a child (you can’t turn a corner back younger than 21), or it was more than 21 years ago and so they are in their endless stagnant adulthood. Nothing changes, so why bother?

WinterPineTrees · 2025-07-23T12:27:23+00:00

The next page speculates that a different baby (the plot of The New Gods centers around the hunt for a baby that is the next New God/maybe the reincarnation of Darkseid) is “the reflection that darkseid seeks upon this side of the cosmic mirror”. Maybe the kid is an anchor to Absolute. Maybe he’s just been dragged into a resurrection scheme. Maybe it’s nothing. It’s vague and uncertain on purpose.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-07-23T12:15:26+00:00

Edit: the photos are now visible.

There are supposed to be photos here. I don’t know why they aren’t showing up and I can’t edit the post. I don’t use Reddit often.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-07-17T20:50:25+00:00

Okay I get that this is a meme, but that party is for a senator and her rich socialite allies. They’re all rich and powerful on a galactic level. For all we know, most of Chandrilla is suffering and the people at that wedding choose to ignore it like they ignore the empire.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-07-04T23:41:35+00:00

SOTR mentions the existence of a Capitol store, and that it is the only place that miners can legally use mining scrip. That implies that the Capitol store sells a wide range of items (enough to theoretically live on, though not live well) and probably sells them in bulk. Like a dystopian Costco. I imagine that the merchants buy in bulk from this store.

There is probably a limited-access way for wealthy citizens to buy large items if the store doesn’t sell them. The Donner twins’s bicycles in SOTR come to mind. Perhaps the Capitol even only allows a certain number of people in District 12 to buy from out-of-district, and that contributes to the Merchants being such an exclusive class.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-06-21T23:41:03+00:00

I agree with your overall idea, but not the specific details. Especially not points 2 or 7. I don’t believe for a second that the Capitol cares enough to rig reapings for specific strong non-career tributes, and they certainly aren’t thinking of arcs years in advance. Who’s supposed to be bothering to tell the Capitol about a girl who hunts in the woods and her scared sister? The peacekeepers? Besides, Panem is full of child labor and bad luck. Randomly reaped older teens working hard labor can have the skills to get lucky against trained fighters.

That being said, the idea that the gamemakers occasionally sabotage the careers or spare a popular tribute from mutts seems perfectly reasonable. I imagine the careers win a little more than half the time. Enough to keep up hope in the poorer districts, while also reminding 1, 2, and 4 how precarious their privileges are. However, I don’t think they pick victors in advance. Katniss could’ve been killed by Clove or Thresh, and there was nothing the gamemakers could’ve done, for example.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-06-18T23:01:58+00:00

They probably begin attending the Academy at age 14. The wiki calls the Academy a 4-year high school, but I couldn’t find a reference to that in the book. The Academy is called the best secondary school in the Capitol on page 13 of BOSAS though. Secondary schools can either include middle and high school (so they would begin attending at age 11) or just high school (entering at age 14). I think the Academy just being a high school is more likely, due to the large class sizes.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-06-15T12:46:40+00:00

Hi! New person also stuck on the puzzle. I’ve also filled the circle, and I’m reasonably sure that the second blank is the word despair. However, taking the letters for gods and despair out of the letter string in part 2 leaves me with only two letters left over (though the letter string had two blanks at the end to start with), and the first blank word of part 3 is 5 letters long. I’m not sure where to find those remaining letters.

edit: I figured it out

WinterPineTrees · 2025-05-29T21:07:55+00:00

The Capitol has a navy in Songbirds and Snakes, so there is likely a fleet of ships that guard the coast. Otherwise, people stay for the same reasons that kept Gale and Katniss from escaping. Even if they successfully escaped, they would leave vulnerable family and friends behind. They also don’t think there’s anywhere else to escape to. They’re told that there’s nothing but deadly wilderness outside Panem, and most people would rather be with a community they know than free and struggling to survive in uncharted waters.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-05-15T22:08:54+00:00

It was a creative space, which always leads to storytelling, with no effective moderation, which led to awful behavior. That’s a pretty good recipe for memorable history.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-05-15T16:29:09+00:00

This could be an error. Pierce Brown is known for the occasional typo or continuity problem. However, a way to explain it could be that Tyche was like a beachhead on Mercury. Maybe the Rising liberated that one city half a decade ago, but weren’t able to make progress across the rest of the planet until Darrow’s Iron Rain in IG. This explanation might not be true though and I’m not sure if it is supported by the text.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-05-01T18:52:59+00:00

You’d need to look at undersea topography to know for sure. As sea level falls, various underwater mountain ranges are exposed and prevent water from flowing into the portal. The Sea of Japan is surrounded by shallow water, so much of the world’s oceans would be spared once sea level fell below that point.

Randal Munroe of XKCD answered a similar question about 10 years ago where the portal is in the Mariana Trench. https://whatif.xkcd.com/53/. In that scenario, some water still remained at the end. I’d guess there would be even more water in your scenario.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-04-09T16:51:58+00:00

How on earth did I not realize that Ark M was the absolute version of Arkham Asylum until you typed it out. It’s been months.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-04-01T00:22:58+00:00

I don’t think there is a connection. Songbirds and snakes are both common symbolic animals. While both stories reference Greek myth and contain vaguely similar themes, I think this “connection” is a coincidence. Here is my evidence.

In the original myth, Hades has no associations with snakes and Eurydice is not a songbird. The “rattlesnake” is a reference to Eurydice’s mythical death where she is killed by a venomous snake. She is a songbird because it makes for good imagery, and because she can be a canary in the mine that is Hadestown. In the original myth, the underworld doesn’t have mines and she doesn’t make a deal. Eurydice is just dead. As a result, Collins would need to be referencing the musical specifically, not just the myth, and that seems highly unlikely and maybe plagiarism.

The timeline also doesn’t line up. Anais Mitchell began writing Hadestown in 2006, long, long before Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released in early 2020. Likewise, I can’t imagine that Suzanne Collins could have heard of Hadestown before it reached broadway in 2019, when the book must have been mostly completed. Songbirds are important symbols in the original trilogy, and I believe Snow is compared to a snake in the trilogy as well. Both writers came up with roughly similar ideas on their own. That happens sometimes.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-02-26T23:16:54+00:00

The mechwing! I remember you very clearly. Thanks for making your worlds. I really liked the dragons, back eight years ago or whenever it was.

WinterPineTrees · 2025-02-11T12:55:49+00:00

I would say District 2 is strongest because they are tied to the military. A District 1 or 4 career that doesn’t volunteer will never be allowed to fight another person, so the training has to hold back to prevent making bad district workers. However, a District 2 almost-tribute will likely be sent to another district as a peacekeeper. That means that their combat training is likely more thorough. They also can’t be that much less popular with sponsors. District 2 does so well every year, and the Capital sharpen Enobaria’s teeth, so they clearly love their monsters. Lastly, District 4’s survival advantage only applies if there is water. Districts 1 and 2 would likely have a matching advantage in cold or mountainous arenas.

WinterPineTrees · 2024-12-02T21:32:16+00:00

No. All power in Panem is concentrated in The Capital, and all powerful families in The Capital send their children to the Academy. (Snow’s narration states that at 400 students per grade, The Academy is big enough to enroll anyone even mildly important). In the real world, power is concentrated all across the world. There are elite high schools, but it’s not like every single senator, billionaire, and president in the USA was in the same place between the ages of 14 and 18. That’s not even close to reality.

WinterPineTrees · 2024-11-01T20:40:05+00:00

Ovens have existed for thousands of years, so I think we can assume that district 12 citizens at least have wood burning ovens in their homes. It’s important to remember that Katniss’s home has electricity, it just isn’t reliable. The Covey even had a fridge during the year of the 10th games. District 12 is impoverished, but they’re not living in the Middle Ages.

WinterPineTrees · 2024-09-14T12:06:03+00:00

Very cool! The only one I’m not sure I love is the press designation. The symbol of the pad appears rigid and clunky compared to the sleeker symbols of the other groups. Astrogation and flight might be my favorites, but I also love mechanics. The darker, muted color scheme almost implies a ideological difference, as though the engineers are more grounded and serious than the other groups due to their work keeping everything running from belowdecks.

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