#and I would pay for an encyclopedia about panem and district history

[julietasgf]

Ma's parents sensing that something was off with Strabo just like how Ma could sense that Coriolanus was bad news, the generational bad taste in men is just :(( I don't know what a carcará is but hunting, killing, not starving sounds just like Strabo (and kinda Coriolanus) and I am so eager to see what goes on in the mind of that questionable man! Also I was literally just thinking about how Ma thought Strabo was a better man than her father, but just like her father, Strabo doesn't actually take Ma seriously (the line about how Strabo would never give up his ambitions for Ma's dreams because he never took her seriously in that way!). To me, it seems like Ma's parents didn't have the healthiest relationship so Ma didn't grow up knowing what's truly a good, loving relationship, and then she meets Strabo and thinks he's the one but she never really saw a healthy relationship she could model hers after :( NOT STRABO'S SIBLINGS BEING 8 YEARS OLD WHEN HE WENT OFF ON THEM, THAT'S JUST SO—They were literally children who probably didn't really understand what was happening, just that their big brother and mom are fighting and their dad is also dead, and then BAM, at the end of it all they're left with no father, no older brother, no main source of income (I'm assuming the factory was their main source of income?) But omg did Strabo just up and leave and left his siblings high and dry?? He didn't leave them with any money or anything? Like sure, maybe it's not really his legal responsibility to care for his siblings when they still have their mom who can work and support them, but are you for real?? They loved him so much and probably were dependent on his income and now he's just gone. Now I'm thinking about his siblings going to him for comfort when they're hurt or scared (like running to his room during a thunderstorm and wanting comforting cuddles) and thinking they could always rely on him but then he just crushes them with his words and basically abandons them :( Strabo Plinth watch your back because karma (is a cat purring in my lap cuz it loves me, flexing like a goddamn acrobat) is gonna get you!! Also not Strabo preferring being shot to going back and apologizing to his siblings. This man is so unreal, like he was absolutely in the wrong for going off on two CHILDREN but he won't even try talking to them afterwards... Not the 18 year old niece/nephew almost making it out of the reaping only to be chosen for the 25th one...you know what, I believe they can win it! Them being 18 already gives them a little bit of an advantage over the younger kids, and I believe they can win it out of rage and spite! (after winning they can pull up to Strabo's house and be like PULL UP UNCLE, WE HAVE SOME "TALKING" TO DO, but seriously if I were those kids, I'd be so PISSED at this uncle I've never met but is somehow ruining my life and my family's life for ETERNITY) It would be so interesting to see who the tributes were for the 25th hunger games and why they were voted in! I wonder if some districts were thinking to vote in older kids so that they'd have better chances of winning? It's so cruel to pit 12 year olds against 18 year olds because no duh a 12 year old has almost no chance against the older kids D2 continuing to associate Strabo's brothers with him even if they don't agree with what Strabo did is so :((( But omg the part about even if they changed their surname, D2 can still recognize the resemblance between them and the guy on capitol propaganda...what if the niece/nephew chosen for the 25th hunger games has a strong physical resemblance to Sejanus and Ma and Strabo see that and do a double take at this 18 year old Plinth who looks so much like their Sejanus...and they are likely facing certain death just like their Sejanus (idk if cousins can look that similar? but that would be something...but also who knows if the blond demon would even allow Strabo to live that long because the blond devil just be poisoning everyone)

hello anon!! as usual I'm going to answer everything in one post!! hope that's okay :))

the generational bad taste is crazy, and the worst is that generations would pass and the same thing keeps going on again and again and again. atp, they know how to recognize the signs, how to recognize these kind of men, but it's still not enough (also, I imagine her sisters to have married better people, or not married at all; imagine her own mom being relieved thinking the cycle finally came to an end, now just the baby sister being left to get married, and then ma marries strabo of all ppl. how similar it is when ma was relieved that sejanus fell for a boy that was good, that was gentle and nice and good, just for years later for it to repeat again.)

OKAY SO there's just one thing I love more than religious symbolism and it's animal symbolism, so let me tell you a bit abt the carcará (you can skip this if you want anon, it's just me getting too excited and being a nerd): I'll always associate characters with animals, and a carcará is this bird who looks like an eagle, but isn't an eagle. it can live almost everywhere because it'll ALWAYS find a way to survive and eat, but they are also found in places that are hard to live, with few water, few food, just very harsh life conditions. they are particularly famous because some farmers would do slash and burn agriculture, and when the farmers burn the lands, the carcarás fly down to hunt snakes and other animals in the smoke. very wild guys who are willing to do anything to survive and are associated with the idea of survival at all costs. very much strabo (and coriolanus too!!!!!) imo.

yes!!!! in the practice, strabo isn't that different from her own pa. it's just that he's more gentle about, somewhat more subtle, and she took it for some form of kindness. AND YES her only example of relationships were... her parents. I imagine her father to be more harsh than strabo, at least regarding her, so when strabo is much less rude (at least with her, he's not; he doesn't make jokes regarding her, he thinks she's capable of protecting herself, he's not nice but he isn't straight up a dick), she thinks "oh, okay, this is what a healthy relationship looks like", when it's not, really. ma deserves so, so, so much better than him. (and to think that it repeats when her son also doesn't have a good relationship to model after and goes for someone who, if anything, tolerates him </3)

THESE KIDS REALLY WEREN'T UNDERSTANDING, bro, it's heartbreaking. strabo's baby siblings are so sweet, and they look up to him so much. their parents were barely at home, so he was their reference. (fun fact, they called him bo. literally the only ppl to ever call him that. not even ma called him that.) the family had two incomes: the family factory (at the time strabo's father was responsible for it, it was a MESS, it had more debt than anything, so it was barely enough to survive) and his stepmother worked at a tile painting factory. strabo paid all the factory debts, cleaned everything, and started making money that was enough for his stepmother to stop working and just stay at home taking care of his sick father, but now that he left, she comes back to working in the same way before in a very harsh schedule. but even if he didn't leave them without any money, it was still a low blow, because, again, THESE KIDS LOVED HIM SO MUCH, THEY TRUSTED HIM, and they for sure will have to start working early because the factory helped a lot. I think strabo is the kind of person who thinks "if I had to suffer, then I don't care if other will have to go through the same". he wouldn't really be bothered by them having to leave school to work because it was the same thing he had to go through (which is a fucked up way of thinking) :/ he's very much some sort of anti-katniss regarding how he treats his baby siblings. karma is gonna track him down, that's for sure (step by step from district to district), the only bad thing is that it also affects ma and sejanus who REALLY don't deserve any of the consequences of his actions (but still have to pay for it)

oh for sure they could win it, specially being from D2 (let's assume that in the 25th games, the careers were still not a thing, but the D2 tributes DID have more advantage bc of being better fed and overall it seems like a district with a lot of tall ppl lmao every single person we have met from D2 in the books is described as tall). that kid winning out of pure RAGE? just to come back home and be able to yell that they're more district than anything, they're not their stupid capitol uncle? I KNOW THAT'S RIGHT!! (ALSO LMAO I would totally see it during the victory tour that kid seeing strabo by accidentally and being ready to THROW HANDS. I would be ready to be at that man's throat for ruining my life and pretty much the life of almost all the family)

yessssss like, how brutal these games were??? bc I'm assuming most (if not all) tributes were 18, maybe some 17, exactly bc one of the first things I think people at the districts would come to the conclusion is that it's too cruel to put kids who are 12 there. were these kids voted for being troublemakers? were they voted because of stuff their parents did? were they voted because the people came to the conclusion they would have the best chances to come back alive? were they voted because they were an outcast? there's SO many possibilities for different storylines. I'm not very fond of the idea of a lot of books about different games, but THIS one is one I would want to see, specially because I think it was the beggining of the propaganda that stripped some districts from their identity (putting these people against each other and destroying the sense of community; if your neighbour can vote in your child, can you really trust them? imagine the fights that followed it?)

I CAN TOTALLY SEE THIS HAPPENING, and not only with this kid, but with a lot of D2 kids after sejanus' death. a particular headcanon of mine is that since the districts are very isolated, there are some traits that are more common in certain districts; for example, katniss saying in thg that her and gale look a lot alike. so imagine strabo, probably now closer than ever to politics bc of coriolanus, watching every year the hunger games and every year having to see a child that resembles his boy, his poor boy, going to death. it's torture. he would invest so much and sponsor a D2 kid every single year, and people would think it's just him holding on district pride, but it's not; it's him trying to make up for the guilt that he wasn't able to save sejanus. at least this other D2 kid he can save. (also you calling coriolanus blond demon was so real, I'm screaming 😭 but I think he wouldn't kill strabo until he reached the presidency, which would definitely take a few more years)

I think so! probably not in the same grade, but sejanus is so curious and he questions everything, he for sure would notice that there's another plinth on school and try to ask his pa about it, but strabo would try to say that it's common for more than one family to have the same surname (which is not a lie; he knows more than one molina, and more than one valestone, and more than one rocha) and sejanus accepts it (besides, his pa would lie to him... right?). and definitely 😭 that's for sure his biggest frustration, that he wants a loving family, but he's too much of a dick to bond with his son without hurting him. I imagine him walking near his old house, seeing his siblings reuniting for a holiday with a happy family, and him feeling bitter over it. but, well. it's the consequences of his choices.

I imagine baby sejanus to be so bullied by his maternal cousins lmao 😭 I think the other cousins are closer in age and older, so let's say sejanus is 6 and the cousins are like 12, 13, 14. ma would try to get him to pass some time with his cousins, but they scare him and tease him and he comes back home in tears bc they don't want to play with him. I think sejanus was too shy as a kid, the type of child who got anxiety by having to go out of home; basically, the type of child who needs to get adopted by an extroverted child as a friend, and if there's no extroverted to do so, he just ends up alone. I think he got it from strabo (not the shyness, the being introverted thing)! until his teenage years, strabo was pretty much alone lmao it just changed when he was running the industry, and then he had to adapt and learn how to perform. (if sejanus got to live long enough, who knows if he would also be able to learn how to perform, even if just a little, for the sake of his life? we'll never know)

I was going to say "nah, I think this is too extreme even for strabo", but then I remembered. yk. the whole marcus thing. and I stopped and stared at the wall and got "oh...". so it's absolutely a possibilty ☠️ even as some sort of revenge getting one of the molinas' grandkids on the games, oh god (specially because he IS jealous of the molinas).

strabo ruining ppl's lives even when he's NOT THERE ANYMORE. and they don't even talk anymore!!!! it's been so long, they probably even struggle to recognize how he sounded like, because it's been so much time, and district 2 is BIG, they don't see each other constantly. it makes me sick to my stomach, because they REALLY didn't choose any of this, and if they got to choose, they or sure would choose kindness, or at least for things to end up differently. AND YES, I WAS THINKING ABT THESE PARALLELS, rip sejanus, you would've loved to learn that one of your uncles got to be a doctor </3 (also, imagine strabo listening to sejanus telling him that he wants to be a doctor, and strabo having war flashbacks because he knows that's what one of his siblings got to be lmao)

I searched up in english just to be sure and D2, besides mining stones, is said to be responsible for masonry; now, this is a bit of a hc: I imagine that one of the reasons D2 is so wealthy is bc they not only mine stones, but bc they pretty much were responsible for projecting buildings and cities. I can see that before the war, it was full of architects and engineers who would send their projects to the capitol, and pretty much built the city (now, imagine D2 rebels having their hands on the floor plan of important places and buildings). this changed a lot after the rebellion, as the ppl from the capitol got scared from letting district people knowing how their city works. I said all of this just to say that I imagine one of the twins to be a doctor (thanks to your hc!!!) and the other one to be an architect lmao 😭

PANEM IS SO INTERESTING like, miss collins, I love creating hcs, BUT I WOULD LOVE EVEN MORE TO HEAR YOUR CANON THOUGHTS. tell me about the wedding traditions!!! their religion!!! how things were before snow and his propaganda clearly changed a lot (not only in D2, but we can see it in D12 as well)!!! what was the last straw for the rebels to start the first rebellion??? does panem have diplomatic relations with other countries, if there's other countries?? mockingjays are important in D12, but are there animals who are important in other districts??? how many things of the old usa was left, and what other cultural heritage was also left from other places, as the usa is a country multicultural and diverse??? the choice she made of showing us in tbosas that D2 have a funeral tradition pretty much related to some form of religious manifestation (the idea of crumbling bread over someone dead's body for their afterlife journey) drives me INSANE because 1. I'm an overthinker, and 2. there's so many fun possibilities because these districts clearly have different cultures and habits and maybe even celebrations!!! I really hope one day she makes a guide or something about it, because I would eat it up