Brutus & Sexual Frustration
With het forbidden, most kids in the Centre have a gay phase. Brutus tries, but some people just ain't cut out for it.
(Warnings for weird consent -- he agrees but he doesn't like it, and he's not very nice about it -- and for later mentions of blood lust/sexy lust conflations.)
( Click for Brutus having a bad day )
(Warnings for weird consent -- he agrees but he doesn't like it, and he's not very nice about it -- and for later mentions of blood lust/sexy lust conflations.)
( Click for Brutus having a bad day )
Well, you know I'm always interested in how the cultures of the Panem districts, and the Capitol, fuck people up psychologically, and sexually is one facet of that. This is definitely an interesting take on it, and bloodlust/sexual lust is definitely something I see being a risk. Well done.
FWIW I tend to write that het isn't forbidden because honestly, in making something forbidden (especially to a teenager) it can actually become a huge enticement to the point of fixating on it. For me, the Academy trains them to think of it as nothing more than another physical need. They provide condoms and the like and probably even assign each other sexual partners for the first couple encounters to keep it uebercasual and say "Go at it," until the cadet figures out themselves that, lacking emotional intimacy, there's "nothing special" about it. It feels good, but so does a good fight. They'll fuck if they feel horny, just like they'll eat if they're hungry. But they'll be punished if they start attaching any emotional significance to that sex because their training, and the Capitol, come first (no pun intended). So in making sex of any stripe so very mundane and exposing them to it as part of their training, it actually takes all the mystery and allure out of it that a teenager would normally obsess over.
So yeah, for me, Twos have their own sexual hangups because to them, thinking of it as anything but "scratching an itch" is uncomfortable. For my headcanon, I think that's part of why Brutus and Lyme didn't end up getting married (that plus their feelings of inadequacy as victors); the whole thing just challenged their emotions and perceptions of things too much and they always kept some part of themselves walled off. Haymitch doesn't quite understand the entire situation with them.
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Basically the Program in mine is not actually about building Volunteers exclusively, to the extent that it'll screw over the other kids. That's not practical. They SAY it is, but it ain't. They're also building strategists, trainers, and -- actually -- politicians, doctors, police, etc.
YAY DIFFERENT HEADCANONS :D
(There's also the whole sparring culture thing which I have feelings about but don't want to, like, go crazy.)
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It definitely works in yours, and it feeds into the characters you've created for Lyme and Brutus and Enobaria and makes sense in that context (especially since your Twos are sold, and if they're taught to divorce sex from intimacy then it would make sense how that would work).
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Random aside: even as Peacekeepers, though, I have potential for specializations--one char I write in AFAF took her specialty as a medic because hey, when you're in the outer six districts who have only an apothecary, you pretty much need to have your own medical personnel. (Another became a legalist/detective, another was just a general jack-of-all-trades, etc.)
Well, I only have Enobaria sold off, really. The sexual interest just isn't there for most Twos. But oddly, they'd probably handle the sex slavery with less additional trauma than most of those who actually endure it, because they've already been "numbed".
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Our headcanons differ on the selling thing (I have Two exempt from selling as part of the Capitol's initiative to keep Two separated from/hated by the other districts, particularly One) but that makes sense with yours at least? :D
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No, I think we're a bit more simpatico than you think--I have that being part of the issue.
At first they weren't sold off (in the pre-Snow days where selling a victor was used as a method of further vengeance) as their "reward" for their loyalty during the Dark Days. By the time they got to the emerging "Games as pageantry" in image-conscious Snow era, I think it was in the Capitol consciousness that a.) Twos are proud and emotionally aloof warriors and b.) you don't buy them. So it just kind of continued that way.
Also, to a Capitol opinion, most Two victors are somewhat "cookie cutter", whereas the Ones (and Fours) are seen as more individualized in the personas they present. Enobaria is the exception to that, with how "exceptional" her final fight and victory were to the Capitol mind, it made her an object of interest.
Twos have been deliberately "packaged" as the aloof warriors, and also the default bet in the Games, for long enough that when they win, there's not really the interest in buying them. It's kind of a "chicken and egg"--part of it is that it keeps Two isolated, especially from One where they're basically always whored out, but part of is that they're just not seen as that novel.
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Efficiency in the system. ;)
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Plus sparring culture, which in mine is a huuuuuuge part of how Twos ... show feelings? Romantic or not. Mentor sparring and friend sparring and lover sparring, and it helps the kids channel all kinds of feelings into ways that make sense and aren't out of tune with learning to kill people.
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a-like so:
"I love you," Rowan says, and maybe it is just because of the kill, maybe neither of them would have said it if they were normal kids having normal lives but they're not, after this kill will be another and another and if it means Blake gets to say I love you and hear it back then that doesn't make it better but he thinks he can survive.
That night they kiss and touch and say those three words over and over like a mantra until the lights come on in the morning. Blake spends the entire day in a daze and whenever they have a free minute they're back together. For the first time they sneak away during mealtimes, find a closet and don't come out until both are shaking and bruised anew. A trainer catches them as they stumble their way back to the cafeteria, but she looks at Blake's wrist, at the one bead that's shiny while the rest have started to lose their patina and she says nothing.
"I love you," Rowan says in Blake's ear every time they're separated for training.
"I love you," Blake says into Rowan's shoulder when they meet up again at the end of the day.
I love you, Blake thinks the day he earns his second red bead, and drives the blade in deep.
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I like that I vacillate between very serious portrayals of Career life and Brutus/Lyme platonic bromancing and mentor feelings and, like, baby Careers being adorable failboats. My life, what is it.
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