Warren Whip [Gamemaker] [Done!]

I swear to God, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life when I wasn’t working my ass off. Now that I’m considerably older and a tad more realistic, I understand that my parents (who are likely rotting in Hell at this very moment, bless their souls) couldn’t give me the attention that I fucking deserved. I pushed myself to impress them, until they died and I got a bit older and finally got everything. I stopped caring, stopped judging myself through the praise and comments from others. My self-worth became mine and only mine. I don’t care for first impressions or social graces. Still, when I stopped giving a damn about what others said to me or about me, even the positive shit, it wasn’t about feeling decent. It became about improving, moving forward with precision, and calculating the what and the how and the when, which I have developed a talent for. And I love it. I can sense the paths I need to take and I don’t sit on my ass – I take the fucking paths and work to improve my skills and be better simply for the sake of it. My work is my life. Call it an obsession if you want, but what else is there? People tell me that working so much is a bad habit, that I should focus on living, but they don’t understand. What would I do if I weren’t watching the Games? Analyzing alliances? Predicting the future? There is no other life.

As much as I love the aspects of the human mind, I hate people. I take pride in having the ability to understand the Games and how the tributes think, but they’re so simple. Most people are, and I’m no exception. The thing is, they try to make it out to seem like they’re so complicated and mysterious and alluring. They aren’t, and neither am I. It’s no mystery, and I think that might be how I’ve achieved the success I have today. Simplicity is key, and I can see behind all the bullshit. Beyond that, I’m not.. great with people. I’m perfectly fine being by myself or with a few close friends. Lavish parties line the streets night after night, but hell will freeze over before I go to one for any sort of enjoyment. Drunken people strutting around while their voices slur, disgusting guys flirting and chasing after girls while looking “sophisticated” and “classy,” and everyone pretending like they’re oh-so-fancy in their black tie suits and slinky dresses and Ripred-only-knows what horrible accessories? If I party, I do everything in my will to spite them. So what if I look pretentious? Oh, I’m sure I look a bit funny in my plain suit and my sunglasses and unpolished shoes with scuff marks on the toes, but the glances people throw at me are so fantastic. I am him, the odd man, the Gamemaker who prefers solitude and simplicity over the parties and pearls of the Capitol.

While the rest of the Capitol slobs like to paint me as some sort of mystery, I’m the simplest of them all. I do what I want when I feel like it, I say what I feel, and temptation pulls me this way and that until the sky is the earth and the earth is the sky and there isn’t any way to tell if I’m going to Hell or not. The point is that I am prone to acting selfishly and with little consideration for other people, to holding my head up and scoffing and looking at others like they’re bugs to crush beneath my unpolished shoes. I love taking the small chances, the ones that don’t matter – like a nasty comment here and there, a bit of money on a lucky tribute. The big chances tempt me too. I’ve made my way to the top by sheer luck, and Ripred knows you can’t get anywhere without being a little bold.


But you abide and smile wide cause
I want to remember this for sure

I was an unusual child, right in the middle of a family packed with ten people. Families can do that, in the Capitol. With so many nurses and nannies and dollars falling out of everybody’s noses, children are like accessories. A woman might carry her son around in her arms for a few weeks and show him off to all her friends, saying things like, ”Oh, look at my lovely baby boy!” and ”Isn’t he just adorable? but one day that boy is lost among the faces of eight children, and he turns sad, then rebellious, and bets every stolen penny on a single tribute.

And he wins.

But that’s not me, no.

In truth, I was never sad. I was just missing something, a spark, a feeling of importance that I desired so strongly. I knew I was important, but the entire Capitol seemed to think otherwise. Boring clothes, worn-out shoes, and hair all ruffled, I wanted to have the attention and the praise that all the famous ones got. I envied the tributes for their fifteen minutes, and I watched them. For fourteen years, I studied them, both horrified by the blood and the gore and mystified by how much I understood. At fifteen years old, I stole some cash from my parents and bet it all on one tribute. That part is true. A few weeks later, I was a very wealthy fifteen-year-old. The funny thing was, I didn’t want to do anything with the money. I just knew that I was right, that my predictions were correct, and that I was holding thousands of dollars in my hands with absolutely nothing to spend it on.

For several years, I bet secretly. I decided to just keep the money for future bets, and it multiplied. During the part of the year when the Games weren’t running, I resorted to buying recordings with my winnings. I could afford a lot of them, and my parents still didn’t know. I could have told them, but I wasn’t sure if they would be proud or simply ignore me as they always had. Out of all their children, I was the odd one out, hardly glamorous. Even when I did well in school, they didn’t value my achievements. I hated them, and I tried so hard, only to have them die a little while after I turned nineteen. My mother’s face was already grotesque from all the surgeries, but she wanted to change her body in some way that was dramatic and she didn’t tell us what it was. She was going to look spectacular (she loved that word – everything was spectacular and glamorous, but apparently it wasn’t so spectacular, because she died in surgery.) When my dad found out, he threw himself from a building, and suddenly my family of ten was reduced to eight. I don’t know what I was thinking after they died. Perhaps it was grief, but I had a hundred questions that I couldn’t solve, one in particular:

What am I going to do now?

I must admit, I still had those seven siblings. They weren’t gone, but I never got along with them. We were all so close in age that I think we all felt the same pressure to succeed, all lost in our own worlds. We weren’t a family; we weren’t a community. I forget their birthdays even though I try, and attend weddings, and dress up in fancy clothes just to be a part of something for a little while. It’s so fake though. So simple.

I’m not sure when I stopped caring, but it happened. Perhaps I was heartbroken, or had simply been detached my entire life and couldn’t find the nerve to impress people anymore. Personally, I think I just wanted to be happy. My childhood was defined by living under the shadow of others and being afraid of what they might think, so terrified that I pushed myself to do well in school and shine in every way possible. I shaped my life around everyone else, and I realized that.

From then on, my life would be different.

It wasn’t long after that when the Gamemakers started to take notice of me. Part of it was my age, and how much money I had truly won. I’d lost track. I never even spent any of it, save for living expenses. Thankfully, I was able to stay in my parents’ house even after their deaths. They left some money to me, but it wasn’t nearly as much as I had gained through gambling. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. I didn’t need a job, but I was lost. Honestly, if the Gamemakers hadn’t contacted me, I would still be in that same old house, watching Games reruns and obsessing.

Not that the obsession has disappeared. Now, I’m just.. obsessed and employed. The time of year when the Games aren’t running are slower, but I still find things to do. I try sometimes to care about the people around me, to meet a new face, to observe and stay active and be a proper Capitolite. I always was the odd boy out though, and people don’t exactly like being around a guy who only ever opens his mouth to spew a sarcastic insult. I’ve never had great friends, and my current situation isn’t any different. I can’t say I’m lonely – just alone – and there isn’t anyone in the world that could convince me to be otherwise.

You can give me guns and politics and
I'll just make a mess of it, you know

I moved out of the house I grew up in I got my new job, and out of necessity I hired a personal stylist. I was told that I had to fit an image – the kind of guy who plans the deaths of children for fun, I suppose – and my messy hair and boring clothing wasn’t up to par. Liana is the bubbly, obnoxious stylist who cuts my hair and does her best to force me to wear interesting Capitol styles. I’m required to let her try to make me look decent, but I’m spiteful. If she does my hair, I mess it up after she leaves. If she gives me something godawful to wear, I change into something more comfortable. Nobody tries to stop me, because what are they going to do? My appearance is hardly the worst of me. My hair itself is short, and sometimes gelled back (if Liana has anything to say about the matter) but I’ll do my best keep it untamed.

My eyes are a light green. The whole face situation doesn’t help my boring image. I look simple, with a straight, short nose and thin lips. Someone once told me that my eyebrows look bizarre because one is slightly different than the other, but what do I care? Nor do I care about facial hair. I try to shave, I swear, but if I’m not reminded I’ll forget, and stubble will be sprinkled over my jaw.

I stand at 5’11” but I’m not domineering in the slightest. Aside from holding my head too high and watching people unflinchingly, there’s nothing intimidating about me. I am lanky, a little strong, but nothing special. The clothes that Liana hands me are sleek and simple nowadays, and I think she’s given up on trying to make me look like everybody else. I am perfectly fine with simplicity, and the day I fall prey to Capitol fashions is the day they prepare my corpse for burial, when I won’t have the life to speak my mind against it.

odair