27th Throw - [ written - private from Cato ]

[shenevermisses]

[The arguing with Cato has been... difficult. So has trying to get her head on right. The last draft reminded her what she's good at, but it also reminded her that she's only good at that.

Doing a bit of cleaning and organizing? Meant she found a stuffed bear and picture she'd hidden a long time ago. A picture from the world in which she and Cato won the Games and were crowned co-Victors.

Where she had a baby girl.]

I always wanted kids.

That was my plan at the Academy, actually. Before the Reaping.

I was going to graduate, take over my dad's job as foreman of the marble quarry near our village, get married, and have kids. I always wanted at least two. A boy and a girl.

A couple shifts here gave me part of that.

I hadn't died in my world, and I had a daughter.

[A pause, and she writes a correction.]

We hadn't died. We had a daughter.

Just before I left my District, my mom found out she was pregnant. I went home that weekend to see my parents, and they were getting along better than ever. They actually seemed to like being around each other.

Maybe kids help.

[Maybe kids would help.]

Comments

[layersoflies]

If your...district...isn't oppressed, then why can't you choose the basis of marriage. It sounds like you are limited by a bracket of qualities for a specific reason.

Sounds like it.

[shenevermisses]

I've met couples in Two who marry for love. They're just not common. Usually they're the ones who are either so poor it doesn't matter or so rich it doesn't matter. The rest of us [said as a firmly upper middle class, if not lower high class] look for the partners who can provide for us best and who have qualities we want our children to have. No one makes us marry anyone else.

But marriage is marriage. It's a bond for the rest of your life. So basing it on something like emotions? That change all the time? Is pretty stupid.

[layersoflies]

I know cultures where people marry first and then love follows in time, I don't necessarily care what the reasons are personally. They can be as shallow or as sentimental as you like as long as babies aren't being used as a means to an end.

So a marriage based around a child fixing whatever problems are going on within that marriage is pretty stupid too...or very telling. At least it says something about the ability of the parents to solve problems without a mediator.

[shenevermisses]

You don't care. Yeah. Sure. Except, you know, for you considering a culture that doesn't marry for love "oppressive." That's a lot of not caring, huh?

[layersoflies]

You're taking what I said out of context. Just because I live in a society that has certain values and priorities doesn't mean I share them. There's a difference.

[shenevermisses]

You said that you valued love because you didn't live in an oppressive society. And that because I didn't, you decided mine was.

[layersoflies]

I never said I value love because I don't live in an oppressive society, I said I live in a society that isn't oppressive and therefore love is a or one of the priorities for marriage. Do I see things through the lens of my society in relation to other societies? I do, and so do you, that's how human beings are.

[shenevermisses]

Well, you know, if you don't want people to take what you say as what you think, maybe you shouldn't just offer an opinion based on your society. Funny thing, when you just spout those kind of things? People tend to assume you agree with what you're saying. Especially when it's, you know, something you're saying is important.

Funny how that works, huh?

[layersoflies]

You know what is also a funny thing? The false-consensus effect, overestimating the extent of a person's beliefs and opinions and assuming that they should be typical of your own. Should I have offered my opinion based on the views of your society, I think that might be tricky to do considering I've never been to your District Twelve. So I can only base my opinions and thoughts on my own environment.

I also didn't take what I said out of context and turn it into something it wasn't.