February's Author of the Month: be-nice-to-nerds

Hey, guys! Sorry for the lateness of this post... but I do have a great author to recommend to you all, and that is the marvelous be-nice-to-nerds!

Looking over BNTN's work, the first thing that strikes me is how detailed her version of Panem is. This author knows exactly who each tribute was in the 74th Hunger Games, how many victors District Three has had and exactly how they won their Games. These details give BNTN's stories a lot of depth. Also, she is amazing at delving into characters' emotions in a subtle but touching way. To show you what I mean, here's an excerpt from Beetee and the Bomb, about the famous D3 victor after the end of Mockingjay:

They say that there are only seven Victors left. Beetee refuses to believe it. Doesn't want to. Wiress is dead, he can accept that. He saw her die. But Johan? Marchessa? The other two District Three Victors are far too smart to not find an out.
They have to be. 

…

When no one else knows what you've been through, the Victors form your family.

Wiress and he were incredibly close, in a purely platonic way. It was just the two of them for a decade before Marchessa won her Games, and something like that forms a lasting bond. She was bursting with ideas but wasn't able to express them properly. They all learned how to fill in the gaps she couldn't put to words, but Beetee better than all of them simply because he has (had) known her the longest.

Johan (is? Was? He doesn't know) the youngest of the four. He was the only one to bring a non-Victor into their little circle of houses in District Three's Victors Village. Mac fits right in with the rest of them, and while Beetee can't really judge, the two females say they can easily see what Johan sees in him. 

Not many outside of District Three know that Johan's gay. He doesn't mind telling people but doesn't bring it up unless they ask. His reasoning is that specifically stating his sexuality leaves more room for prejudice than if he just treats it as normal. None of the others go around telling people that they're straight, do they? 

Marchessa is (because really, she of all people would have found a way to stay alive) small, cynical, and chillingly intelligent. She's arrogant about her abilities to the point of alienating all those she believes beneath her because of their alleged idiocy, but the arrogance is often not without reason. Frustration with her situation grew fast on her; she is closed off and slightly distant with the others, but she is still one of them. 

Beetee knows she was spying for the Capitol. He also knows it's nothing personal – Marchessa's too jaded and bitter to believe in the ideology like the other three did, and had been through too much to let morals get in the way of self preservation. 

Seeing what Coin's been doing, he's beginning to think maybe her cynicism was right. The Capitol and District Thirteen are really only two sides of the same coin.