@maitaitiu | maitiu | mait
What's your THG origin story?
When I was 9-10, my mum lent me her copy of the hunger games. She's a very "read and never think about again" type, and at the time I would devour any book I got my hands on that remotely interested me, and HOAH boy did book1 grab me from the get go.
I have a distinct memory of my year 5 teacher asking me if "that book is appropriate for someone your age" and me just going "well my mum gave it to me" and glaring at him. He was a nasty old bully (/srs) so I have no guilt over that.
Anyway. I don't recall when I first read catching fire or mockingjay, but chances are I was equally obsessed with those. I've always loathed the movies lmao. For a while the fixation was dormant, but in about late 2019 it just. grabbed me by the throat again and I made an oc and was hauled back in, only to then find out that a prequel was in the works. do I like bosas? hm. well. <3 sort of. I guess I like parts of it.
What are your favorite things about the series?
JOHANNA MASON!!!
but fr there is so much to love in this series.
I grew up in a very rural small, and honestly quite impoverished (though nowhere near the scale of 12) town in the north of england, and I honestly saw a lot of my own childhood in 12. I would go off to the woods to play with my friend, and we would pick blackberries and climb trees and get covered in mud and stay out way too late... so yeah. I love the natural side of it. I love the talk of plants and foraging and hunting and traditional crafting and cooking and such. things like that are a huge love of mine, and so is MUSIC!!
I'm also a folk musician, go figure, and I've always been interested in folk/oral tradition, and 12 is just swimming in it.
There's admittedly not much music in the original trilogy (thanks to Katniss' own trauma) but the little bits that were there completely captured me. Lucy Gray's selection of songs is easily my favourite part of the bosas book. the old therebefore makes me go CRAZY. I love the mix of original style stuff, and then rewritten existing pieces. It really helps it feel like a genuine folk tradition, where things are constantly evolving and changing and being spun off. Folk music lives and thrives on oral tradition, rather than sheets and staves and written down stanzas, so seeing existing songs from our real present day (such as birmingham jail/down in the valley, rewritten with the 'capitol' jail, instead of birmingham) just helps breathe life into the folk traditions that live in panem (or... 12. since we dont really see anywhere else. but I digress.)
also honestly? the food. I have health issues that limit my diet and energy, but I still love to cook when I can, and holy smokes does this series have a way of coming up with delicious food. I can't even eat lamb but god do i want a huge bowl of that lamb stew every single time katniss mentions it.
What’s something about the series that’s stayed with you or become more meaningful to you over time?
How, even though it's a YA, there's no "good side" or "bad side" the Capitol as a force is foul. 13 as a force is just as awful in different yet similar ways (2 sides of the same coin anyone..?) and everyone else is just a person with all the complexities that comes with that. and I like that not all the surviving "good" victors vote to end the games. Johanna's insistence that they should go on with Capitol kids has fascinated me for YEARS and still does. It's really good at being both about fascism and oppression on a large scale but also the very individual abuse the tributes + their loved ones go through.
And on a less... big scale. I like that Buttercup survives. He would have been an easy shock value kill for the plot. Show how cruel the Capitol (or 13) are. But no... he lives. Idk. I'm a huge lover of cats (grown up with them + currently have 2 of my own and they are my babies and i would do unspeakable things to keep them safe if necessary) so Buttercup living, and staying with Katniss... idk. It just makes me feel hopeful and warm.
What's something you want the fandom to know about you?
i lvoe my cats . they are my whole world.
But also I love OCS!!! I pretty much only write OC fic for this fandom to explore different aspects of tribute/victor/panemian life in general that I feel SC didn't cover at all (or well in a few cases. LOL). Come talk to me about your ocs. Come read about mine on my ao3. please. PLEASE!!!!!!
When did you begin creating? What inspired you to begin?
Creating in general? I guess my weird little warrior cats oc fanfictions i wrote in notebooks when i was like 7 or 8. Digitally writing? a pokemon bw novelisation on my mums laptop when i was 11(i got allll the way to castelia gym before giving up!!! and that is technically the beginning of my longterm pokemon project but... a tale thats for another time and place.)
but POSTING? geez.. I dont know. for a long time, I was writing fic but absolutely petrified to post any of it due to being. basically. bullied by "friends" at the time for the stuff I made. I posted my first fic to ao3 in 2019, when I was 17. It was a pokemon bw2 oneshot. Thankfully I'm a lot less afraid of being picked on for the things i make these days.. I'm not sure what made me want to start writing any of this stuff. The same thing as a lot of lonely kids I guess. Wanting to put myself/characters based off myself into the worlds I loved and just.. finding a place there.
What is your favorite thing to depict in your work?
Gender stuff and disability. SC never even mentioned trans people existing, and theres very little disability rep. Being both of those things, I love to yap and yammer about them til the cows come home. most- if not all- of my protag ocs for the hunger games will have some sort of gendery thing going on, and likely a disability or two (or more) as well. I'm also fascinated by just.. daily life in Panem. people hanging out. what is Normal in different parts of the country.
What’s your personal favorite of your works?
oh god. just out of hg stuff... this might be recency bias, but from the sky down. it was my piece for the SYOT verses' annual victor exchange event this year and i think i did so well with it. i loved writing lovinia so so much.
If you could recommend just one, which would it be?
my current longform wip!!! Clip My Wings and Cast Them in Gold. My protag, Dmitri, is my baby boy idiot son and GOD I love him. He's a deeply lonely rich boy from 10 who is completely ignorant about how the world really works, and basically has the rug pulled out from him when he's reaped for the Games. It's ultimately a tragedy, but there's funtimes and silly things along the way. Plus ! Because I know this'll draw some people in lol- it's a lil bit gay.
What are the main characteristics of your favorite canon characters you always try to maintain in your stories?
johanna being kind of just. mean. and not someone whod be at all likeable irl. but still having this inherent softness to her. idk . idk why i specifically latched onto her (well . i have an idea, but im not going to bare my whole soul here haha) but right from my first read of CF as a kid i was like Oh Yeah Youre My Fav. and she still is to this day! i don't write a lot of canon stuff otherwise, unless you count blight. who i dont. because he never appeared, was mentioned like twice, died off screen, and is now basically just my oc also lol
Tell us about an OC of yours. What inspired them and what purpose do they serve in your works?
Marsh I suppose is a good one for this... he's my first (proper...) HG oc since refixating on it in late 2019-early 2020.
Other than my fascination with Johanna as a character and desire for her to have a "kind of pathetic and socially inept male bestfriend" (this is how i show love to a lot of my favourite characters LMAO), I think a lot of him is borne of my own frustration with being a transman in the UK.
My version of Panemian transgender healthcare is very inspired by the UK's current state- it's very restrictive, sexist, classist, and a bunch of other stupid shit that makes it pretty much impossible to access if you can't afford to go private (which... only very few people can). I'd only recently been referred to the gender clinic waiting list when my interest on THG resurfaced, and with a 5+ waiting list ahead of me (that I'm still yet to see the end of... I've ID'd as trans for over 10 years now and still have no formal "diagnosis" of gender dysphoria. The UK is a fucking hellhole for us transgenderers.). Marsh is reaped for the Games under his birthname and legal female gender marker, he's forcibly outed upon his victory and undergoes physical reassignment surgery while he's in a coma directly after his games-- much of which was without his consent (he jokes to his stylist in the launchroom that "if i win, make sure they cut off my tits", which... they do, but they also give him a testosterone implant [idk if this exists irl but idgaf. capitol medicine innit] and even subtly tattoo his entire body to make his skin look more "appealing". that last one isnt really a gender thing but. yeah.). His post-games interview starts with Caeser forcing him to "come out" live to the world, when he wasn't even ready to come out to his immediate family yet (he only came out to his dad- only living relative- in the post-reaping goodbyes out of fear he'd be buried under the wrong name and gender, and that his dad would never know this secret... plus it'd be awkward for his friends (who knew) to talk to his dad (who didn't) if he died.)
He's the 72nd Victor in my works, though his fic is on an indefinite hiatus since I'm focusing on Clip My Wings + also want to rewrite Marsh's from the ground up.
Still... he's very important to me. While I'm still struggling with the effects of the fuckass way the UK treats us trans people, I'm not in such an immediately transphobic and hostile environment like I was when I was first writing Marsh in 2019-2022. I'm now living independently and straight up do not speak to people who treat me like shit anymore- for trans reasons or otherwise lol
Tell us about your favorite relationship (of any kind) in the series. Why is it your favorite?
Johanna + Finnick... Johanna + Blight... Haymitch and Chaff... I'm just so so interested in Victor friendships outside of Katniss + Peeta. Ofc I love those two (esp Katniss) but it's just so... cool. To see relationships exist outside of the main characters. It really makes the world feel alive.
Anyone you would like to shout out in the fandom?
Everyone in the SYOT verses server!! Nell, Goldie, Phobie, Moose, Miri, Blue, Pipes, Sav, Glory, Linds, Wiki, and so so many more... over the last few years of me being in Verses I feel like I've become not just more confident in my writing but more confident and comfortable with myself. I know I'm not the most active or chatty, but you guys have been so incredibly kind and welcoming and supportive of me, my works, and my irl endeavors (and throughout times I've been whacked with the ao3 author's curse...). I really cannot thank the people of Verses enough for simply being there. <3