the ace of spades

yessss that defo answers my questions! ur thoughts on compassion & community intertwined w rebellion definitely show up in ur art lol. something more specific i have been curious abt is ur version of the endings of each specific hunger games & ur characterization/portrayal of the victors at those points! if u have any more thoughts abt any of those characters or their games id love to hear.... im also very not neurotypical abt hunger games

For sure!! But this is a novel and a half so I apologize in advance (also most of this is from memory so anyone can correct me if I'm getting any details wrong)

((TW: For visual depictions of Blood, Gore, and Wounds))

I realized I'd seen barely any art showing what the victors would have looked like when they won their games. They were all just kids and I feel like it can be easy to forget that sometimes

For all of them, I made the background one of their main "weapons" but tried to make it look like its turning back on them instead since there are no victors as Haymitch said.

I'll try to explain them all more in depth individually going in the order I drew them:

Finnick Odair, 65th Games:

His main weapons were his trident and nets that he made with vines. His background is one of the nets ready to trap him.

Finnick was the youngest victor ever at only 14. I really really wanted to emphasize just how little that is. (Especially since we know exactly why the Capitol loved him from the start…) Once I actually drew him looking that little I had to step away for a bit because I made myself too sad…

Outside of just how horrific his age is as a concept, I tried to think about what circumstances would lead to him actually winning when surrounded by older tributes. I think he would have had to avoid any kind of fight he didn't have the upper hand in. We know that he got the most expensive sponsor gifts in the history of the games (a trident), so he probably got plenty of sponsors outside of that as well. Because of that I doubt he needed to go looking for supplies much if ever so it was easy to avoid people there. He was also probably in a career pack, despite his age, due to his training and his popularity, and they would have hunted other tributes down together much like the one we saw in the first book (safer in numbers). Once it was narrowing down and the pack broke is when I think he started catching people in nets. All of that is a long winded way of saying that's why, unlike the other victors I drew, I only show him with minor cuts and bruises.

Originally I was going to draw him with a kind of strained smile like he was acting for an audience from the start. But I decided I actually think its sadder if he believed he was popular because of his skill and strategy as a fighter and only learned the whole truth after he won and that's when he started acting more for the camera. Instead I gave him a more muted despair kind of look, like his world is crashing down. One of my favorite parts about the movies, mainly THG and ABOSAS, is when they give the career tributes at the end a moment of realization about what they've done, and I wanted to give Finnick his. I'm a person that believes Finnick had to have volunteered for his games. I think he would have legitimately believed in the propaganda the career districts were fed and had a bit of a (very middle school boy) ego about his abilities. (I was NOT expecting to write so much about his lmao)

Enobaria, 62nd Games

She's most well known for ripping someones throat out with her teeth. (Her background is her sharpened teeth getting ready to eat her.) This is treated by The Capitol, and by Katniss, as grotesque and terrifying blood lust (Which obviously the Capitol loves her for). However, and I'm not at all the first to say it, that sounds more like a terrified and desperate attempt to survive a fight she was losing and an example of hysterical strength. We know that Career packs have had bloody betrayals in the past and I can see Enobaria being a part of one of them. Enobaria doesn't have a canonical age, but I decided to put her on the younger side (15 or 16.) I can imagine some of the older, bigger tributes deciding she was the weakest link towards the end and that was the result. I tried to make the blood around her mouth and down her shirt look more faded, like she tried desperately to wipe it off (Also I had to step away from drawing again after I drew her little tooth gap)

I think she probably leaned into the bloodthirsty image afterwards as a way to protect herself and (maybe even started to believe it too)

Annie Cresta, 70th Games

Annie's known for losing her mind after seeing her district partner decapitated in front of her. After that, she ran off and hid until the game makers started an earth quake, which made the large dam in the arena break and cause a huge flood. Annie was the only survivor because she was the strongest swimmer. So I decided to make her background dark water that's churning up and over her head. I also think it can work well as a way to show her mental state in the moment (and afterwards) Annie is actually one of my favorite characters in the series and I've been writing out a plan for a possible comic series about her that'll go more in depth about my headcanons for her. (when I say comic series, I mean sketches and oneshots, not a full thing lmao) It wouldn't take place during her games (outside of a few flashbacks when I need more context), instead it would start at her Victory Tour and go into her first (and last) year as a mentor for the 71st Games. Which is a perfect segue to-

Johanna Mason, 71st Games

Johanna is actually first mentioned early on in the first book when Katniss is wondering if the reason Peeta is crying is because he plans to act weak and helpless as a strategy in the games. (Katniss, he just found out he has to fight in a murder tournament with his crush. He's just Sad.) She bases her theory on Johanna, who pretended she was a "sniveling, cowardly fool" in the arena until the final stretch of the games when she proved to be deadly with an axe.

OR….. Katniss is an unreliable narrator and Johanna was actually a terrified kid from a district with so few victors that she was the only name in the bowl for the Quarter Quell… This is totally just a personal headcanon of mine tho lol. I think there would have been a point in her games where she realized she actually had a chance and that's when she seemingly had a huge character turn around. Maybe there was a infighting with the careers that ended in multiple deaths and there was only a few left along with any other tributes hiding away like her. Maybe she poked around what was left of their camp, found the axe, and felt strength from her district.

Her background was a little harder for me. Just slapping a big axe behind her felt cheesy. But them I remembered her saying there was no one left that she loved. So instead I put trees that could represent her loved ones (Two fully grown trees, a younger "teenage" tree, and a sapling) that are in the process of being cut down.

Haymitch Abernathy, 50th Games

Don't worry, I'm almost done. I don't have as much to say about Haymitch since we know SO much about what happened in his games. But his background was probably the hardest for me. His main weapon was invisible after all. I thought maybe the axe that was used, but again, That would look cheesy. I tried (and kinda failed imo) to draw the cliff side the force field was on instead. But the main thing I did was split the three panels I had on the previous drawings into six for two reasons. 1: Because he had to face twice as many tributes in order to win and 2: Being the only victor of a district that's tributes are seen as fodder for the blood bath means he had to meet and watch the death of twice as many kids every year.

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

Romey ^_^ What is he drinking?

When you’ve had a limp since early childhood and you lived in the slums of the lowest part of the undercity and have been poor all your life and your condition only got worse as you grew older and even though you finally got accepted as the professor’s assistant in piltover the professor in question is a dog elf thing and now this young scientist your age just blew up his room and you have to arrest him then you find out hey he has cool ideas and prevent him from jumping off a ledge and partner with him but as the years go by your health worsens and he just keeps taking the spotlight and its fine you dont like the spotlight you’ve always preferred being lonely no you don’t and you eventually go from a cane to a crutch and you begin getting weaker while he gets stronger its fine youre still partners working together it’s cool then you start coughing up blood and don’t know how to explain it to him or the professor and then the dog elf professor says maybe it should take 10 years for hextech to be fully stabilized but you know full fucking well you can’t live that long and as you wait for your bestie to make his awesome speech about how smart and cool he is (because he is!) you start coughing up blood and eventually you do it right in front of him and you just excuse yourself and go back to your lab to do work on the cool hexcore because you just had a sickness induced vision of it changing color based on your blood but then you begin coughing up blood again and eventually wake up in a hospital bed and your bestie is there trying not to burst into tears as he explains your condition is terminal even though you’ve always kinda known because of the horrible pollution you had to live with in the undercity and while you’re ruminating in your steel oasis the fucking dog elf pops up again and says sorry but then says some stuff about the brightest burning away the fastest as if his weird species doesn’t live like a thousand years and as you experiment further with the hexcore you start to lose yourself and eventually you go back to an “old friend” in the undercity who’s been making illegal drugs and you agree to take the drugs if you think it will cure you but you have to take them in private oh and your bestie just said something classist while you were trying to return back to piltover and he didn’t even apologize not even when a motolov cocktail was thrown at your feet and later your bestie brings his girlfriend over and they start talking about making hextech weapons while you’re trying to defuse a fucking bomb and you nearly set it off in front of them because the concept of you and your bestie’s inventions being used to kill people pisses you off but you don’t do it and then you start injecting the illegal drug in your leg (which by the way is carved with runes you just cut into yourself great job) and it hurts so bad but it fucking works and your leg is now weird and purple but it works yet you want a little more so you make a big cut on your hand and show it to the hexcore which absorbs it and fucks you up but you’re ok and your leg and hand are now a weird purple mess but guess what you can finally run after so long you can finally outrun those boats and it feels so good and you just scream but of course that isn’t enough for you you have to cure your illness somehow so you get even more desperate and eventually you just run out of the illegal drug and don’t want to go back to get more and get in trouble so what do you do you carve runes all over your goddamn body and let the hexcore accept your sacrifice and so it does start sucking out all your blood then your assistant you’ve known since you were a child catches you in the act and tries to save you from being destroyed by the hexcore’s power but in the process she actually gets disintegrated right in front of you as she yells your name and all that’s left of her is ash and you find her diary where she wrote about how much you inspired her and everything and you have a complete mental breakdown over it and want to destroy the hexcore but you just cant meanwhile your health gets worse and you seriously consider jumping off a ledge but your bestie stops you

its not perfect but this was the best i could do

Jayce: You’re ignoring all your problems

Viktor: I know

Jayce: You know it’s an unhealthy coping mechanism right?

Viktor: I’m ignoring that fact as well

it’s okay babe I know ur doomed by the narrative

i am OBSESSED with this man

ARCANE APPRECIATION WEEK ➪ Day 7: Free Space

ARCANE WEEK: day 4 | favorite act | ACT III

We lost ourselves. Lost our dream. In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.

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Arcane Characters as Reductress Headlines (Part 1?)

Kiss me like it's the last time

Jennifer's Body (2009) // Arcane (2021-, 01x07) // Fredrik Backman, Us Against You // Arcane (2021-, 01x07) // boymiffy