{ gamemaker hera levelwright | capitol | @lalia }

[attr="id","hSpeech"]Gamemaker Hera Levelwright
seventy-four
capitol

Forty-nine years spent turning desolate wastelands into literal magic, and do you think she ever got so much as a single thank you?

No, of course not.

And why should she? It wasn't as if she were a gamemaker, no, Hera Levelwright was the mere chief arena architect. All the hard work was done by the dreamers, the ones with pizzazz and showmanship. Bah. Clearly it was much harder to conceive of a multi-level arena corrected by a river that flowed both uphill and downhill simultaneously than it was to build the damn thing.

That certainly wasn't a feat worthy of invitation to the post-Finale Gamemakers' brunch. Apparently it didn't deserve so much as a fruit basket from that dreadful Glamour Kinkade. And here she thought flamboyance was supposed to be offset by class.

Honestly, it's a miracle her eyes haven't rolled all the way back into her head after decades and decades of this bullshit.

It's just so exhausting to be surrounded by idiots.

Someone had the gall to call her boring once. Hera would never hear such slander and stand for it — she is a woman of sophistication and class; the Capitol, it seems, no longer appreciates the understated elegance of subtlety. She is the first to admit that she doesn't have the capacity for the shallow flamboyance that marks Gamemakers like that dreadfully ostentatious Kinkade — but what she lacks in superficial flash, she makes in substance.

It shouldn't automatically disqualify her — after all, her prodigy, the most prolific Gamemaker of the last half-century, was very much the same way — even more so. Of course, Dom Copperview is certainly held against her now, considering her open defiance of President Snow and rumored subsequent execution. (Rather, her flight from the Capitol, if the vein bulging out of Coriolanus's forehead any time the renegade Gamemaker or District Eleven were brought up was anything to go by — but that was a theory Hera kept close to her chest, lest she take her disgraced former mentee's place in the guillotine.)

In truth, it was her old flame that was holding her back far worse than any alleged defects of personality — which, for the record, Hera does not profess to have. In her youth, Hera had courted then scorned a hot-headed young man. He'd been much too serious a boy, an up-and-coming politician with a calculating mind that was like a steel trap for holding grudges. Unfortunately. It was her misfortune that Coriolanus Snow had slithered his way into the office that he still held — considering the President personally appointed each and every Head Gamemaker to their post.

Year after year, she put in her bids to run future Games — and as it became obvious that she would never be given the honor, she doubled down and refused to stop submitting her name and her best ideas. Hera Levelwright would never give any man — much less a petty pointy-haired politician like Coriolanus — the satisfaction of thinking he'd worn down her spitfire spirit.

And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that giving her the 75th Games was the buttercream fuck-you icing on the triple-decker fuck-you cake:

She'd received the news that she'd been selected to head up the 75th Quell on the way to her retirement party. The affair was hastily repurposed into a congratulatory soiree, one which Hera could scarcely enjoy, she was seething so hard.

She'd received the news that she'd been paired with Cricket Antoinette, of all people during her birthday brunch two weeks later, and wound up needing three stitches in the palm of her hand from the champagne flute she'd squeezed like a stress ball until it shattered.

Hera Levelwright was a clever woman. She knew when she was being set up to fail.

And there was nothing good that could come out of running a Games with the District Two. Barring her one-week stint spent in them, of course, but that was over a decade ago, the young woman had no experience with the Hunger Games whatsoever. She hadn't even proven herself to be a capable mentor. How hard could it possibly be to make a victor out of a single tribute from a career district? Plenty of her charges had been capable — and yet there hadn't been one. Not a Hammerfell, not a Lyon, not Muto, Shaw, or Corléon. Not even that Chautin girl, the acrobatic one — the one tribute you'd think the victor would know how to mentor.

Clearly somebody had something against Cricket Antoinette if her tributes were never permitted to make it back. Yes, permitted — Hera couldn't have lasted in the business for half a century if she didn't have the nose to sniff out meddling. And then there was the matter of that sister of hers... reaped twice in the last half-decade?

No, Madam Levelwright did not have high hopes for her cohort's political standing. Which, of course, did not bode well for the veteran herself.

And with that twist...

What perplexed Hera was the matter of why. Such a perfectly crafted cocktail for career-ruining was utterly wasted on a woman who'd already meant to retire that year. Frankly, it was more insulting to be a mere casualty of further schemes against the victor they'd placed her with — especially considering how indifferent Antoinette seemed to be to the whole thing.

Hera decided that she wasn't going to dwell on it, either. As she'd learned over her decades of being shafted, the most satisfying revenge was continually doing a better job than expected.

Coriolanus could keep up his petty plotting, and that ingrate Kinkade could stick his double-ended river somewhere even the Krigel boy hasn't found yet — the 75th Arena was Hera Levelwright's magnum opus.