On to R, Once More

Him: *fails the level again*

Me: this orchy is a struggle huh

Him: yeah I'm not doing well. It's because I'm too impatient

This is a good question and I'm honestly not sure, but I can throw a few theories out there.

First, this is a quarter quell and the Capitol will have some expectations regarding the brutality of the Games. If Plutarch took it easy on the tributes, that would have looked really suspicious. Also, he is not the only Gamemaker, so maybe the jabberjays in particular were somebody else's suggestion and Plutarch just had to go along with it? In the movies he's shown working closely with Snow so it could also be that he needs to impress Snow to keep up appearances.

This also makes me wonder how the Games were even planned. Did they know from the beginning that it would be victors in the arena? Or did Plutarch make these traps not knowing it would be victors? Not that it really makes a difference because the arena is terrible no matter who's in it.

I think the victors have a strong survival instinct and would have just been focused on making it through day by day and hour by hour. Then maybe after they were safe they would've been like "wtf Plutarch"

However, this anon has got me thinking: the Quell did indeed have a SUPER deadly arena. This makes sense if it was designed to be an efficient way of disposing of one of Snow's greatest nuisances--the Victors--but less sense if it was supposed to be... well, anything else? But the arena was clearly at least conceptually finished by the Victory Tour, when Plutarch drops that hint to Katniss, and if Plutarch is to be believed (not a given, since he's a shady old bastard) he and the other GMs had gotten that far without knowing about the Quell's special, Victor-flavoured sauce. Were they perhaps preparing to make it not quite so deadly, and then at the last minute Snow was like "BTW I want these traps all set to kill" so they had to work overtime to make it so?

I've thought about the decisions behind the Quell a lot, as part of my alternate Quell fic where I dialed down a lot of the traps to make them less deadly. My rationale in doing so was that if the Quell Tributes were anyone other than Victors, Snow wouldn't want it over too quickly, because that would risk disappointing his Captiol viewers at a time when he really wants them gobbling down the propaganda and being distracted from the unrest in the rest of the country. This is a Quell, after all. He would want these Games to be so action-packed that people start forgetting about last year's Games and the Star-Crossed Lovers who became such a pain in his ass. So he wouldn't want the Games to be short, because that doesn't make them a good distraction. He needs to find a happy middle ground of action to keep the entertainment level as high as possible.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

The case for katniss cold/peeta hot: peeta’s “warmth” is what katniss loves about him, she gets extremely cold in winter and doesn’t say anything but peeta’s arms always find their way around her and keep her toasty (haha toast), but she Also would not protest him doing that in the summer bc he’s warm and that means he’s alive and she’s happy :)

The case for both hot: they both get very gross and sticky in bed and they don’t care bc they’re together and that’s what matters also it just means they have to dress extra light for bed if they’re planning on cuddling ;)

Katniss hot/peeta cold: Katniss would be more used to sleeping cold than Peeta, having grown up in a house that was likely not as well-insulated, and with less money for warmer bedding (plus she spent much more time outdoors in the cold too). Being used to the cold means her body may have adapted, while Peeta, used to being warm enough without needing his body to work for it, may still need all the blankets.

Katniss cold/Peeta warm: he big, she little. Body fat insulates, and Peeta would have more than Katniss (I say especially as a Thick!Peeta susbcriber). Katniss may also be used to relying on sharing her bed with Prim for warmth, plus, generally speaking, women do tend to run a little bit colder than men.

Both hot: a combination of Katniss's survivor body fighting to always be warm and Peeta's better-insulated body being better at staying warm, plus the fact that post-Games they both have the money they need to put on a better layer of body fat that will further protect them from the cold.

1. canonically female (no variation)

2. canonically the protagonist of her story (if it’s an ensemble cast you have to say you can legitimately see her as The main character)

3. your personal #1 favorite character in that story (ties are acceptable)