arne selberg d5 | fin
Feb 3, 2017 21:39:26 GMT -5
Post by Lyn𝛿is on Feb 3, 2017 21:39:26 GMT -5
[Googlefont="Kalam:400"]
Arne Edvard Selberg eighteen. district five. male |
Five things you received from your parents:
i. Your mother's maintenance manuals
As a young child, you voraciously read everything you could get your hands on. You would trace your fingers over the diagrammed gears and recite lists of parts to the impressed adults, who predicted long before you thought of careers that you would follow in your mother's footsteps. They're more keepsakes now than of any practical use, the information outdated years ago, but you can still touch the pages and recall those memories.
(It was the District Five oil boom that had brought prosperity to your family, that had given your parents the opportunity to go from lowly workers to purchasing a house practically a mansion compared to their childhood homes. There are far richer in the district - the businessmen, the leaders - but Anders and Malene Selberg were proof that knowledge is all that is necessary to succeed.)
ii. A Patricia Valfierno figurine
You've had a bit of a love-hate relationship about the district's newest celebrity. You admired her resourcefulness, her fire, her genuineness, and you begged and begged your parents for the figure as a Ratmas present the year of the 68th Games. They didn't have the heart to explain to you that Games here meant something different from childhood make-believe and rounds of Peacekeepers-and-robbers.
(You know what they mean now, of course, but despite that there's still a small part of you that thinks throwing a petrol bomb in the middle of a Feast is hella cool. It's the same part that felt cheated when her words came out a little too smooth, her actions a little too compliant, and you wonder if the Capitol had managed to crush even a spirit as rebellious as hers.)
iii. A desire for truth
Falsehoods have no place here, your mother tells you as variables enter formulas and turn into parts and blueprints. You like working with machines because you know exactly what they want in their cold but fair equations. They can't be fooled; it would be like trying to lie to yourself. Even a carelessly misplaced decimal point could be disastrous.
But life isn't fair, the teachers tell you. Life isn't fair, the bullies say to get their way. It doesn't stop you from wanting it to be, though, wanting straightforward explanations and universal truths.
(Yet falsehoods have no place only because truth is more powerful and damaging. People rally against liars when they are found out, but speak the truth from the right point of view and the world opens. The angle is more important than the reality, after all, but it's not an angle you can calculate in radians, however hard you wish it to be so.)
iv. Business sense
Inefficiency is your industry's greatest enemy. The higher-ups are always talking of how to produce the most power for the most customers, and they teach you to calculate dice and turn human lives into charts and pretty graphs. The hard lesson is that sometimes in the interests of overall prosperity, the insignificant must be chosen to bear the sacrifice. It's neither justice nor fairness - not the formula you'd ideally like - but it's better this way.
(Or is it? The question niggles at the back of your mind, but you've spent too long trying to fit in to let your doubts endanger that. You think too hard and decide too little, and they call you responsible because of that. But you are not a puzzle piece, and not everything you seek to learn can be found in a book.)
v. Their stories
You grew up on your parents' tales of wide grasslands and roaming livestock. The occasional "shucky darn" still punctuates their speech, incongruous with their formal, well-dressed appearances, as their excited voices tell of how your father jumped in the river again and again until he knew how to swim. Of how with grandma's shrug of blessing he ran away just as the city was springing up and stole kisses from your mother in the library. Of penny candies made with sticky molasses as a treat from the corner store, until it got bought by a new guy who made fancier, brightly colored candies that just happened to contain toxic refinery byproducts.
(That's all gone now. The river runs polluted, and the grasslands replaced by the rows of rigs and factories that allowed you to grow up so comfortably, never worrying about taking tesserae or fighting with your sister for food or having to work long hours instead of being in class. So maybe it's pure entitlement when you romanticize the open fields your parents spent their childhoods in. When you imagine what living such a simpler life would be like, without the technology you've devoted your career to studying. When you think about their classic rags-to-riches stories, and wonder if you can still be a hero if you were granted everything you wanted. When you wonder how the district's oil-gained prosperity didn't seem to make anyone any happier.)
i. Your mother's maintenance manuals
As a young child, you voraciously read everything you could get your hands on. You would trace your fingers over the diagrammed gears and recite lists of parts to the impressed adults, who predicted long before you thought of careers that you would follow in your mother's footsteps. They're more keepsakes now than of any practical use, the information outdated years ago, but you can still touch the pages and recall those memories.
(It was the District Five oil boom that had brought prosperity to your family, that had given your parents the opportunity to go from lowly workers to purchasing a house practically a mansion compared to their childhood homes. There are far richer in the district - the businessmen, the leaders - but Anders and Malene Selberg were proof that knowledge is all that is necessary to succeed.)
ii. A Patricia Valfierno figurine
You've had a bit of a love-hate relationship about the district's newest celebrity. You admired her resourcefulness, her fire, her genuineness, and you begged and begged your parents for the figure as a Ratmas present the year of the 68th Games. They didn't have the heart to explain to you that Games here meant something different from childhood make-believe and rounds of Peacekeepers-and-robbers.
(You know what they mean now, of course, but despite that there's still a small part of you that thinks throwing a petrol bomb in the middle of a Feast is hella cool. It's the same part that felt cheated when her words came out a little too smooth, her actions a little too compliant, and you wonder if the Capitol had managed to crush even a spirit as rebellious as hers.)
iii. A desire for truth
Falsehoods have no place here, your mother tells you as variables enter formulas and turn into parts and blueprints. You like working with machines because you know exactly what they want in their cold but fair equations. They can't be fooled; it would be like trying to lie to yourself. Even a carelessly misplaced decimal point could be disastrous.
But life isn't fair, the teachers tell you. Life isn't fair, the bullies say to get their way. It doesn't stop you from wanting it to be, though, wanting straightforward explanations and universal truths.
(Yet falsehoods have no place only because truth is more powerful and damaging. People rally against liars when they are found out, but speak the truth from the right point of view and the world opens. The angle is more important than the reality, after all, but it's not an angle you can calculate in radians, however hard you wish it to be so.)
iv. Business sense
Inefficiency is your industry's greatest enemy. The higher-ups are always talking of how to produce the most power for the most customers, and they teach you to calculate dice and turn human lives into charts and pretty graphs. The hard lesson is that sometimes in the interests of overall prosperity, the insignificant must be chosen to bear the sacrifice. It's neither justice nor fairness - not the formula you'd ideally like - but it's better this way.
(Or is it? The question niggles at the back of your mind, but you've spent too long trying to fit in to let your doubts endanger that. You think too hard and decide too little, and they call you responsible because of that. But you are not a puzzle piece, and not everything you seek to learn can be found in a book.)
v. Their stories
You grew up on your parents' tales of wide grasslands and roaming livestock. The occasional "shucky darn" still punctuates their speech, incongruous with their formal, well-dressed appearances, as their excited voices tell of how your father jumped in the river again and again until he knew how to swim. Of how with grandma's shrug of blessing he ran away just as the city was springing up and stole kisses from your mother in the library. Of penny candies made with sticky molasses as a treat from the corner store, until it got bought by a new guy who made fancier, brightly colored candies that just happened to contain toxic refinery byproducts.
(That's all gone now. The river runs polluted, and the grasslands replaced by the rows of rigs and factories that allowed you to grow up so comfortably, never worrying about taking tesserae or fighting with your sister for food or having to work long hours instead of being in class. So maybe it's pure entitlement when you romanticize the open fields your parents spent their childhoods in. When you imagine what living such a simpler life would be like, without the technology you've devoted your career to studying. When you think about their classic rags-to-riches stories, and wonder if you can still be a hero if you were granted everything you wanted. When you wonder how the district's oil-gained prosperity didn't seem to make anyone any happier.)
