Why-raven - The Blackest Night.

quiz: hunger games life story — yiuno.

Tribute of District 2, Victor of the 71st Hunger Games.

You were raised the oldest child in a loving family—lucky, you knew, to never fear starvation. In District 2, you had a comfortable life, but your parents told you that you must resist the violence the Capitol was teaching. That it was better to lose this safe life—better even to die—than to become a monster like the tributes who volunteered for the games and spent their childhood learning to kill… all for the chance of Capitol fame. You listened, like children always do. You believed, like children always do.

Then, when you were eight years old, your parents were drafted into the Peacekeeping Force. “A shortage of willing recruits,” said the grim-faced Peacekeepers who arrived at your door. Your parents refused—refused to fight for the Capitol. The punishment for refusing was death. Hanged in the town square, as an example to others.

They forced you to watch… with your four-year-old brother, too.

With time, he forgot. But you never did.

You decided that it was better to be strong than kind; better to be smart than foolishly idealistic. So you trained with the careers and learned to throw knives with deadly accuracy. You took over your father’s job as a stonemason, and resolved to protect your siblings, always. Nothing else mattered. You would put them first, over fantasies of a world without the Capitol’s cruelty. You would love no one else and nothing else; otherwise, it would only make you weak.

Your parents had abandoned you. You wouldn’t do the same.

When you were seventeen, your thirteen-year-old brother was reaped for the games. You weren’t surprised—you’d been waiting for this and dreading it for years. But this time, you were prepared. You’d watched every year’s games carefully, memorizing which strategies worked and which didn’t, perfected your skill with the throwing knives and the spear. You volunteered to take your brother’s place, like you always knew you would.

You didn’t cry when you said goodbye to your brother and sisters. You told your brother that he had to be strong now. You told your two younger sisters that they had to look out for each other, because no one else would. That you’d be back soon… But in case you weren’t, you loved them.

“I love you.”

I love you, I love you… I love you. You hadn’t said those words so plainly in years. They made you vulnerable, like something in you had cracked open, a part of your heart that you normally kept tightly closed and covered up.

You told your siblings not to watch the Games. You didn’t want them to see if you died, but also because you didn’t want them to see you kill. To see what you were capable of.

For them, you reminded yourself. Only for them.

For the Chariot Parade, your Stylist dressed you in a warrior’s outfit, tight black fabric with bronze armor—the weapon that symbolized District 2. You weren’t the most beautiful, but you drew the crowd’s eyes. In training, you demonstrated your skill with throwing spears to win your way into the Career pack. You spent most of your time at the knot station, something you had never learned in your district. No one else joined you there, except for a few young and timid tributes. You tried not to look at them, tried not to think about them.

The instructor taught you how to set snares for small animals, but you asked him to show you larger traps. Your real prey, after all, were the other Careers. And you needed an inventive trick to defeat them, because they were all equally skilled with weapons, and most were much stronger than you, too.

In your private session with the Gamemakers, you finally showcased your true talent: knife throwing. You awed the Gamemakers with your lethal accuracy and speed, scoring a ‘9’ in training. In your interview, you wore a simple black dress and your long hair in an elegant bun. Caesar asked you what you liked about the Capitol; you merely said that the people were lovely. A lie that burned your throat, but one that would hopefully win you sponsors. He asked whether you thought you could win, and you said no. You didn’t think so—you knew it.

You took no district token into the arena, because you needed no reminder of home. You truly believed you would return to it. You needed to believe it.

When the Games began, you raced into the Cornucopia with the other Careers. You grabbed a case of knives and killed a boy just seconds before he would have attacked you. The bloodbath seemed to be over so quickly, probably because you were filled with the rush of adrenaline. When it was over, you stood with the other Careers in the wreckage. Seven tributes were dead—one by your hand. You didn’t feel anything. Only one thought remained in your head, repeating like a heartbeat. I have to get back to my family.

The boy from District 1 gave you a sharp look. “Good job with that knife,” he said. “Oh no, it was a lucky shot,” you laughed—but you didn’t think he believed you. Trying to keep up appearances, you traded your throwing knives for a spear another boy had picked up. But you kept one knife secretly concealed in your tunic.

For a couple of days, you stayed with the Careers, hunting weaker tributes at night and guarding your supplies during the day. Whenever you killed, you tried hard to make it quick and painless. It helped you suppress the guilt. By the third day, tensions were rising and you knew it was time. While the other Careers slept, you quietly slit the throat of the girl keeping watch with you. She didn’t have time to make a sound, she probably didn’t even feel it. You killed three more sleeping Careers the same way, before one woke up and screamed a warning. Grabbing the throwing knives, you fled.

You waited out the fighting for almost a week, hidden in the woods in a corner of the arena. Constantly moving around to minimize your chances of being caught. The three remaining Careers tried to find you, but they couldn’t. There was a feast—you didn’t go. Finally, there was only the boy from District 1 left.

Then you left the edge of the arena and headed a little ways in, closer to the Cornucopia. Weaving rope from vines, you carefully set the trap you’d learned back in training. With your supplies and a staged campfire as bait, to make it seem as though this was where you’d been living. Then you hid nearby. Waited for hours. He came.

When his leg was caught tightly in the snare, you emerged. He thrashed, but it took only two knives for you to kill him, staying safely out of his reach.

His dead eyes haunted you, afterward. But you returned to your brothers and sisters—as the victor of the 71st Hunger Games.

link to quiz.

A pretty long read, yes, but with a major theme that I’m sure many of you can relate: doing whatever it takes to save your loved ones—no matter the price to pay, no matter the consequences to bear. When you have no choice but to cast your moral compass aside and give into your survival instincts, for only the strongest can live on while the others must die. Only the last one standing has the strength and power to protect another; how else can you do that if you can’t even save yourself?

Whether it’s merely a necessity to complete his job or a resignation to his immortal fate, Yiuno isn’t as apathetic as he appears to be. He does have a soft spot for very specific people—namely, those he’d consider to be family. He definitely wants to reunite with his twin sister, Yiuna, his only blood kin left in the world; that doesn’t mean he’d forsake the new family under his care now.

Yiuno was reluctant at first—babysitting wasn’t his forte, and certainly not those with personalities that rubbed him the wrong way. Sora is a child: pure and innocent, but she carries a heavy responsibility that clashes with her hot temper. Aisa, while inquisitive and hardworking, still has a very long way to go for her talents to fully bloom. Then there’s Y’shtola, the only woman in the world he’d ever regard as an equal—though he often refuses to admit it, at least not openly.

Yiuno is certainly a tough nut to crack, after being hardened by the horrors of his past—too bloody to describe, too many to count, too long to keep track of. For all the experiences he has under the belt, for all the deception he’s done over the millennia, you’d never imagine a simple line such as “I love you” could break the impassive mask on this man’s pretty face. Was it a lie? Or there might be a shadow of truth in a declaration like that? No one knows; not even the very person who said those words himself.

Yiuno thought that his eternal life would’ve turned him cold: numb to the pain of suffering, ignorant to the guilt of his choices, and forget the regrets born from his mistakes. He often lied to himself that it was for his own good, that his own needs superseded the existence of others. Yet he is afraid to be reduced to nothing more than a killing machine, a tool of destruction who succumbs and submits to his sorry destiny. He struggles to keep a semblance of conscience, a sense of self—or whatever that is left in him.

(Re-posting old quizzes to this main blog for archiving purposes.)

Won’t tag anyone, given that this quiz is extremely long. I did this on a whim—as you can see, it’s from quotev, not uquiz—and the result read like a second-person fanfiction. Kudos to the quiz maker, because the writing is actually good for something fun and casual like this. I do recommend people giving this a try and read the different result stories.

Though Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games series (THG for short), had repeatedly denied that her story idea was a rip-off of Battle Royale (or BR, by Koushun Takami, published in 1999), many critics believed that the her books were, at its core, a modern spin on the latter.

I have read both novels; I won’t go into an all-out (and probably unnecessarily) analysis of them here, but I personally prefer BR more. For anyone looking for pure entertainment factor in narratives, BR is the clear winner. It’s even more ironic that one of the major themes explored in THG was about manipulation and ethics of entertainment, but it failed to capture the adrenaline rush and wow factor where they really mattered; many times, those moments fell flat to me. Meanwhile, in BR, entertainment wasn’t even the main purpose of the novel—but it was able to ensnare us, the readers, completely into a twisted dystopian Japan far better than what THG did with the Capitol.

I absolutely love AUs—I enjoy putting characters out of their comfort zone into alternate universes with completely different rules from what they knew and used to. As a huge fan of character studies and experimental writing, I find it fun to explore my muses from a different perspective when I put them in various settings.

What type of villain are you: Oli Edition

Tagged again by the beautiful ⋆˚✿˖° @riftdancing ⋆˚✿˖° in this quiz! Which means of course, it's time to see what kinda villain Oli is!

Then Let Me Be Evil

You never wanted to hurt anyone, but the world never gave you a choice. You did the best you could with what you had, but every innocent mistake you made was held against you when it counted, every crossroads led you down the wrong path no matter which way you went. No matter what you did, the odds were stacked against you. It wasn't fair, and you are sick and tired of being told what a monster you are for things out of your control. Well, fine. They want a monster? YOU'LL GIVE THEM A MONSTER!

OK. Look, I wouldn't call it inaccurate, that's all I'm saying c': I am pretty late to getting around to this one... So... Leaving this as an

(づ๑•ᴗ•๑)づ♡ ˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ OPEN TAG SESAME!!!

For whoever would like to do it!

(Ren's result is here for those interested! c: )

Ty for all the fun tags and head canon sharing friend!! I hope you are starting to settle back in to the tumbles! c: 🌺 send this to ten blogs you think are wonderful! 🌺

You’re most welcome! I’m glad you’re enjoying and having fun with them. (Do pardon me for spamming you with more of those, because sharing is caring!)

And thank you very much for listening patiently to my headcanon rambles! English isn’t my native language; sometimes I either struggle to get my point across or misunderstand others’ comments. I’m still learning to get better!

“Play is the mediator of the invisible and visible.”

— Dora M. Kalff