A short final prologue, concerning blogs!
Octavius Cairns had all the juiciest gossip in the Capitol, yet he still wanted more information. It was an addiction of his, perhaps- the drama, the secrets, the salacious whispers. And, of course, as host of the Hunger Games, he was invested in Games gossip most of all.
His guilty pleasure was the betting sites, where Games enthusiasts would track down information about the tributes before the Reapings recaps even aired nationally. They would make blogs with all the tributes' photos and statistics- even Octavius didn't know how they sourced their information, but it always seemed to be correct. Potential sponsors and hardcore Games watchers would flock to the sites for their first impressions of the yearly crop. Many decisions were made, perhaps foolhardily, on those first impressions.
Octavius, as an interviewer, knew that first impressions were rarely precise or accurate, but he loved the blogs just the same. At noon on Reaping Day, he curled up in his luxury silk pajamas on his sofa, tapping away on his holo-screen to access his favorite website. He didn't have to go to the studio for two more hours for recaps, so it was perfect time to make his own snap judgments about the tributes.
He grinned when he saw that the blog had updated. The tributes had been chosen! He gasped to himself when he remembered that the fillers that Scelestiber was so proud of would be present in the batch of tributes.
"How exciting! I'll have to figure out who is who before I meet any of these little darlings in person!" Octavius chirped to himself.
He scrolled through the tributes, briefly glancing at the images before reading any of the information. Stunning! he thought. Of course the tributes would look their best on a betting blog- the creators would want the children to look their best, even though they came from poor District lives. Images were undoubtedly edited for best effect.
Octavius sighed. They never did look quite so pretty when they finally arrived for their interview with him.
Some of the names stood out immediately to the host. He tapped on the profile for the boy from Three. Neon Tesla? What kind of a name was that? He grimaced, and then looked closer at the statistics.
"That must be one of Scelestiber's creations!" He chortled at the recognition. The boy was clearly made to be one of those nerdy types from Three. There was nothing that appeared to the contrary- yes, young Mr. Tesla was definitely a stereotype. "Eugh, that one, too. It has to be, with a name like that." Octavius referred to the boy from Four, who had been dubbed Shark Mason. Didn't Scelestiber do any quality control on the names? Octavius wondered.
He spent a moment skimming through the information to see if any other fillers jumped out at him. The girl from Seven was a clear candidate, since her weaknesses were purely physical and offered no insight to her personality. The name was also mediocre at best.
"I'm here to learn about yooou, why are you not helping me with that!" he fretted to the picture of the girl.
The boy from Ten caught his attention as well. "I don't even know what a wakizashi is!" cried Octavius, "Why would this lowly tribute know how to use it as a weapon?"
When he finally scrolled down to Twelve after giggling about the wakizashi for a bit, he immediately knew the girl was one of the Gamemakers' creations. There was no denying it, even by her appearance. Octavius had seen at least five girls who looked just like her go into the Games before. She was eerily familiar.
He started to go through the tributes more thoroughly. The girl from Six, maybe, who seemed even younger than twelve years old. Her district partner as well, who looked completely unhinged. His name was Syko, after all! Maybe the Nine girl also, who didn't seem to have much of a personality?
Octavius made up his mind to ask Head Gamemaker Scelestiber who the fillers were before the Reaping recaps. He wanted to be sure he had figured them out correctly, so he could better prepare for the interviews.
The host grinned. This Games would surely be incredibly fun this year. And his guilty-pleasure tribute blogs would entertain him endlessly until the Games events kicked into high gear.
TRIBUTE LIST:
District One Female: Eliana Schaefer, 18
District One Male: Andros Valier, 18
District Two Female: Caelle Lovage, 18
District Two Male: Cyrus Augustin, 18
District Three Female: Althea Biachi, 18
District Three Male: Neon Tesla, 14 (FILLER)
District Four Female: Shelby Leone, 18
District Four Male: Shark Mason, 18 (FILLER)
District Five Female: Loren Asou, 15
District Five Male: Kepler Mallis, 17
District Six Female: Everlyn Maude, 12 (FILLER)
District Six Male: Syko Le Heisenberg, 16 (FILLER)
District Seven Female: Aviva Nightshade, 17 (FILLER)
District Seven Male: Malek Trevelian, 18
District Eight Female: Inaya Stratton, 16
District Eight Male: Sharif Nafti, 18
District Nine Female: Rhea Greer, 16 (FILLER)
District Nine Male: Timoleon Cabrera, 17
District Ten Female: Valerie Wang, 18
District Ten Male: Aspen McKinley, 17 (FILLER)
District Eleven Female: Calandra Belmont, 15
District Eleven Male: Redmond Alderidge, 13
District Twelve Female: Mary Sue Jamison, 16 (FILLER)
District Twelve Male: Gareth Abrell, 15
Congratulations to the accepted tributes, and apologies again to those who were rejected. Thank you so much to all who submitted- I'm pleased to say that you made the task of choosing tributes extremely difficult!
The blog can be found at tributehandbook21 . blog spot .com. Link will also be put on my profile. Check it out and leave a blog review if you so choose! Should be fun to hear what y'all's first impressions of the tributes (especially the fillers) are!
Personally, I have Feelings about tribute blogs- namely, that choosing faceclaims to represent tribute appearances discourages diversity in appearance for SYOT characters. When most readily available FC's are models/actors/performers, it makes it harder to come up with characters that don't fit mainstream beauty standards and that can sometimes be limiting. I'm not just talking about race- this applies to size, physical disability, any visibly distinguishing features, etc! (As a community we have gotten better about racial diversity over time. People of color don't only exist in District Eleven! Although, white tributes in D11 will probably always be a pet peeve of mine.) I've tried to address this in-story and in-blog with the idea that the Capitol would run blogs and would totally photoshop the images anyway!
So, hopefully we've all learned a little about making characters, creating useful and detailed forms, and exploring blogs! Lots to continue talking about, but these prologues provide a good foundation of making characters. I'll be going into more detail about creating specific types of tributes and actually writing an SYOT in upcoming chapters!
Here's what to expect from the pre-Games chapters: There will be 9 chapters before we hit the bloodbath, and each 'real' tribute will receive 3 POVs. Updates will ideally be every 4-5 days.
Also, there are some great writers out there with SYOTS currently open, including: Ollie 'District11-Olive', Padraig 'tear that cherry out', and Kevin 'bobothebear'. Please submit to their stories!
Thanks y'all!