Renée

@TheBestWall FOR REAL I need to get my priorities straight. 1: Abby. 2: Odesta. 3: Boyfriend

@PhoenixHiraeth Renee when she gets a boyfriend and he encroaches on her writing time

@PhoenixHiraeth OMG THAT'S AMAZING!!!! TAKE AS LONG AS YOU NEED

@PhoenixHiraeth YESSSSSSSSSSS

@PhoenixHiraeth OMGOMG THATS SO AWESOME SAUCE

@PhoenixHiraeth got it, heading out now to jump off the nearest bridge 

@_5stargirl … you probably should be

if you’re excited, then i’m scared. like, out of my mind scared lol

So I can pay for all the therapy you’ll need? XD

Yeah, I always imagined that there are peacekeepers patrolling the water around district 4 on their own boats. There’s that one story of Bay and Wade when they were teenagers and they sailed out onto the ocean as far as they could go until they ran into peacekeeper patrol boats. But even if they got past the peacekeeper patrols, I’m not sure where they’d go. I can’t imagine the district boats are made to endure the waves and weather conditions of the deeper ocean, so people in district 4 pretty much consider it a death sentence to try and escape that way. I’m sure sailors have tried it before though

@PhoenixHiraeth this is so unbelievably real

@tragedy_odesta yeah, I always imagined that there’d still be some sort of religious beliefs, even if any organized religion has been outlawed by the Capitol, since humans in just about any culture tend to have some sense of the supernatural and look for something bigger than themselves. In a place like District 4, I think those religious beliefs would again be based in nature, with some people seeing the forces of the sea and storms and stars as god-like entities. I really haven’t gone into much detail on that, because I think it’s more of folk tales and legends than any real religious practices. They certainly have a sense of an afterlife, and in one of the one shots, Kai tells Finnick that his mom says people who die go to a place above the stars and keep on living, so again, not exactly “heaven” but still a sense of the afterlife that’s more based around nature.

@PhoenixHiraeth I looked into the Upwelling when I first started obsessing over D4 worldbuilding, but I hadn't thought of it as their harvest day. That makes a lot of sense though! 
            
            The Capitol probably banned religion because the idea of these people worshipping anything/anyone other than them was not an idea they could stomach. Although in DITW Odesta still say Gods, so is there some lingering smatterings of religion or..?

Oooh such a good question. I would imagine most holidays are specific to the district - partly because they’re kept so separate from each other and partly because the Capitol doesn’t want to encourage any sort of unity between them. FOR SURE there are no holidays still celebrated that had any religious connection - Christmas, Easter, even Halloween - because we know that our current religions seem to have been pretty much banned  and forgotten in Panem. Days like the Reaping are the only national holidays, and I suppose you can’t keep people from celebrating the new year because they didn’t change the calendar.
            
            As for district 4… their holidays revolve around ocean/fishing events. In late April, there’s the Upwelling - the time of year when changes in temperature and increases in nutrients in the oceans improves coastal fishing and the productive fishing season begins. That marks the end of the school year in district 4 too, and kids who will be 16 before the start of the next school year go to work at the docks. Then there’s the Downwelling in late October, the opposite time of year when the productive season ends and kids go back to school. I think that would also be their version of Harvest Day. 
            
            I could also see them having some holidays that revolve around migration events? Like Gray Whales migrating south along the coast in mid January, or something like that, though I don’t have a particular name or celebration for that.