james. capitol fin

I'm not your average Capitolite, you see? I actually enjoy the outdoors. Bugs, sunburns, humidity. I get a thrill out of enjoying nature as the world was created for, not the poofy pink dresses and waists thinner than a penny. It's unfortunate to me that so many people waste their time on getting their hair as tall as it can be, or the heels of their feet as high of the ground as possible. There's a joy, I find, when the sounds of modern cars, music, and hums of electricity disappear. A sense of calmness, where the only thing to be heard is the wind, the buzz of bugs, and a sense of liveliness in the screeching of cicadas. I remember Mom was horrified the first time she saw me come home with a frog. The pristine, new clothes that she bought for me the week previously all covered in dirt and grime. She was horrified that I would put 'such fabric to waste', and the shrill scream that left her throat at the sight of the hopper in my hands was astronomical! "Where in the heavens did you get a mutt?" It was not, in fact, a mutt. It was simply a frog! The darndest little thing. He won't hurt you. Might jump all over the place, but he's no harm! I think the Games, while entertaining, might have brainwashed the Capitol citizens to believe that anything that isn't a fluffy poodle or a naked cat is some sort of animal designed to harm. How disappointing!

Anyways, I remember mom trying to tell me that it wasn't normal for boys my age to be playing with mud and sticks and dirt. I remember even she thought I was weird. Dad was a drop-beat who spent most of his time trying to get all up in the business of anyone who tried walking into his nightclubs, so he never was present enough to care. Mom told me to stop acting that way because boys my age, boys in the Capitol don't do the outside. That we're so generously lucky that we get to have all of the things that the Districts don't.

Like air conditioning, or fizzy sodas that make your stomach bubble up. Or being able to live life however you wanted, because you didn't need to worry about dying young.

People used to bully me for not liking the indoors. They thought I was weird. I remember when I was twelve the girls in school would call me tree frog. Because I liked trees and frogs, or something. They said it was weird that I liked getting my neck burnt red and that my socks were too high. The girls in my year thought that I was too weird to ever date. The boys thought I was just gay.

They weren't wrong, but still.

I was happy living a life with nature. It made me feel like the world hadn't been totally thrown to waste, ya know? So much of the time in the Capitol is spent basking in the glory of what technological access we have. How we can so easily go anywhere in the damn streets and find anything you could want. Need a pet tiger? Take a five-minute walk out of our tall ass apartment building and then a few flights of stairs and you’re there. Want to get immersed in an experience that shows you what it’s like living in Twelve? Got that too. But let me tell ya, from our class field trips, I don’t think that everyone there is a walking skeleton. And I don’t think everyone has bats hanging from their roofs. And I don’t think-

You get the picture. The Capitol likes to glamourize itself to us, show us how good we have it because we can have a consistent roof over our heads and constant access to our needs. Though I don’t like that roof. I don’t like feeling like I’m catered to. I don’t make life do the work for me, I do the work for my life.

For a long time, I had nowhere to go. As a child, as an adult. I never had anywhere that fully welcomed my naturistic, tree-hugger, “tree frog” like self that found joy in the things that my peers often didn’t. I started to feel like the young, weak panda, who too did not have the wiring to fit in the world that has been predestined for them. I was the young panda abandoned by my mother for being too weak for the world. I was the young cuckoo, whose mother tricked another into raising their young. But then the tricked mother died. Because I never had a mother who cared.

There was a long time that I considered running away. Trying to go to the forest and start my own life. But I knew that was silly. That it was unrealistic to believe that a little 15-year-old boy from the Capitol, who only went into the forest on weekends to hunt for frogs, would make it on his own in the wild. So, whenever I wasn’t spending time in the forest; hunting frogs, looking at pretty flowers, swatting at mosquitoes, I was in my room. Locked away. Mom still thought I was weird. I often hear her talking about me to her friends. ”Has James gotten over that bug thing yet?” She’d give a scoff at the thought of it. ”No! He’s completely obsessed. I don’t understand it. Why can’t he just be like other boys?” I can imagine the sympathetic nods she’d get from her girl group. ”Normal?” Her hands, I imagine, fly up at that. ”Yes, exactly! Just be normal for once. You know, I hoped that once he told me that he was gay that he’d take off those weird socks!”

Why can’t I just be like other boys. Why can’t I be normal. Why can’t you be like the other gay boys and men in the Capitol and take an eye to fashion, or an eye to the indoors. Why can’t I blend in?

I spent a lot of time in my room. I spent a lot of time crying. A lot of time nursing the plants that I was able to house because that was the most normal thing I wanted to do, and Mom didn’t want my sketches of frogs and lakes and fish to line the walls. So I took the plants. A lot of them. I watered them, I cared for them. I talked to them as if they were my friends. I know they can’t talk to me back, but for my sheltered world, they were the voice I needed. I remember wondering if tears could keep plants alive, because I would be able to house a forest if so.


I started as a tour guide for one of the local zoos that hold the mutts from the Games. I liked it enough, at least, because it had me working with animals. It had me outside and showing my love for at least some sort of nature, even if genetically mutated. I got to talk about how the swarm mechanic worked. The sun got to beat on my face and I got to get the joyous smell of sunscreen to become a part of my persona. I grew immune to the smells and coughs. But it wasn’t enough for me. Behind these massive exhibits with grassy plains and frozen blocks of ice were just buildings doing all the work. None of it was real.

I wanted my world to be real. But, in a world where everything that feels nonfiction is simply realistic fiction - mutts, hairs, legs, feet, eyes that all feel real - where can I find the nonfiction? The reality? The truth of the world. I felt this calling to try and work in a world that was real. I remember reading books about people camping. Setting up tents, spending the night under the stars, and enjoying the whistle of crickets and cicadae. Hear the crackle of the fire and the rushing of a flowing river. I remember wanting that. Needing it - but the only Camp that exists in the capitol is a bunch of outfits that act like the female peacock as she trains’ their feathers to entice a mate.

So I complied. I was complicit because I had to be. The best I could do was educate the young children that would look at these genetically modified animals in awe, show them that animals are beautiful. Let them pet the feathers of the 84th Hunger Games’ Macaws or see up close how the Armored Sloths moved. Feed the 83rd’s designed Duowolfs. Show the young children that there’s more to them than being designed to kill or hurt, that nature was beautiful. I was able to get my feet dirty in the swamps that they built.

Show them the life that we built, not the life that we invaded.

To no surprise, the 88th Hunger Games was an arena that filled me with hope. With excitement. This arena was the embodiment of the books that I read about camping. The cabins, the dock, the lake of water where people can go canoeing and swim in. The hot and sweaty atmosphere left marks on your arms if not covered or protected. Where a fireplace held the heart of the camp with a fierce, warm grip. Cabins where campers would get stuffed in like sardines and create a community amongst themselves where once entered strangers, left as brother and sister.

I wanted to be in that arena. I wanted that arena to be my life. But how?

The moment the arena was revealed, I found myself spending late nights with bloodshot eyes from staring at the paper to figure out how I could get my hands on this camp. I needed it. It was everything I was. Treefrog. Not normal. Treehugger. Weird. It was where my sunscreen-painted arms would have a spot. Where I could wear my knee-high socks because the grass wasn’t always well-kept. And then it hit me.

Who else wants to be in a Hunger Games arena? Careers. Those little fuckers who train as soon as they can wield a sword and throw a knife. They train their entire life to prepare for the arena. It can be a camp for careers. A one to two-week vacation where they spend their energy on training in a real-life scenario. A place where people actually died, and where someone actually won. Where there were live mutts and traps. It can bring careers together to form competition because let’s face it, careers are born competitors first and killers second. Split them up into teams based on the origins of career tributes - where Terra Montague was once forced to train them and bred a culture of fighters. Provide them classes on mutt defense, self-defense, close combat, ranged combat. Swimming. Where I could be able to provide them a place where they could be themselves; fighters, competitors. Camp CAREER was where Treefrog could be at home.

Where I could be average.