Renée

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.

I don’t think it typically happens as a punishment. Even in sotr, it seemed like the real punishment wasn’t so much Ampert getting reaped, but Beetee being forced to mentor him. I think the victors children are typically reaped because of the drama and emotional investment that would create for the audience. And I don’t think Snow would consider that wasteful, really - he’s using it to keep interest in the games, to keep his audience invested over decades of the games, and to show the victors that even though they might be well off, he still holds all the power.
            
            I think most victors avoid having children. Sometimes out of a fear of getting reaped, but also the games leave them traumatized and isolated from the rest of their community, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them have trouble building relationships at all as victors. In my books, out of all of the district 4 victors (which has more victors than many districts) only Celeste got married and had kids

Heck yesss a tattoo question. This is my favorite D4 headcanon.
            
            If tribute is reaped and already has lots of tattoos, they would just make it part of the tributes image - using it to make them seem more intimidating, show the culture of district 4, etc. Bay, for example, already had a lot of tattoos before he was reaped at 18. They used those tattoos to play into his image of a hardened, ruthless fisherman, and by the time he won, I think that would have been one of the things that Capitol people found most attractive about him. So they didn’t ban him from getting more tattoos after that, even though he was being sold in the Capitol, because it was already part of the image they were selling.
            
            Now, Finnick, on the other hand, was only 14 when he won, which means he didn’t have any tattoos yet (you only get them after graduating school at 16). Because he’s being sold in the Capitol, he wasn’t allowed to get any tattoos after his victory, because that might change his image and his appeal to the clients. So Finnick has no tattoos. If a Victor isn’t sold in the Capitol, I don’t think the Capitol would regulate whether or not they get tattoos.

YAY more questions!
            
            I don’t think the Capitol usually stops the victors from marrying who they want, unless it messes with their narrative (like Peeta and Katniss, but I think that’s really an exception). Now, I think that they WOULD regulate how much attention they give to the wedding, depending on what story they’ve built around the victor. For some victors (like Celeste for example) they probably make a big deal about it when she gets married and has kids, because the Capitol loves their drama and love stories and news on their celebrities, AND once her kids are old enough to be reaped, the Capitol audience is already emotionally invested in these kids who will no doubt be reaped for the games. 
            
            On the other hand, for someone like Finnick, whose entire image revolves around his love life, I don’t think they would broadcast any information about the wedding if he got married. I don’t think they’d outright stop it, because Snow loves to have his people to use against the victors, but they would keep it as quiet as possible so that Finnick can maintain his image for the Capitol.
            
            Based on the info we have from sotr, I think LGBTQ+ marriages are entirely banned in the districts, so the Capitol would stop the victor from marrying in that case, just like they would any other person in the district. I saw one person online theorizing that those relationships are banned because they want people in the districts to be having more kids to keep the numbers of workers up, and I think that’s probably the case.

@PhoenixHiraeth #justiceforeric