January's Author of the Month: Pineapple Fetish

Hello, everyone! Amata's back, bringing you January's Author of the Month--a lovely and talented individual by the name of Pineapple Fetish!


Taywen (as she likes to be called) is the author of a few multichapter stories and several one-shots, totaling 13 THG stories on ff.net. One trait that immediately strikes me in her writing is her creativity: be it detailing the very first two games in the form of patched-together Capitol transcripts (inception) or re-imagining the "refined" version of the Games 323 years after their creation (Refinement), Taywen knows how to twist the THG universe just enough to be wholly original and yet completely believable. Another stunning thing is her realistic-yet-sympathetic portrayal of Careers, especially Cashmere and Gloss. So many fics that I've seen either make the Careers the ultimate, monstrous, unforgivable enemy or complete heroes with an amount of purity that competes with Primrose Everdeen (okay, that was an exaggeration), but this author manages to capture the brutality of the lifestyle (from training to victory and beyond) and yet the underlying humanity of the characters. To show what I mean, here's an excerpt from brittle smiles & pretty, useless things, a Cashmere-centric fic:

The only person who celebrates Cashmere's birthday is Gloss. Oh, sure, she gets lavish gifts every year – gleaming jewellery and expensive clothes and other beautiful things – but, you know, she's not interested in those things. Gloss buys her gifts that she actually wants. He's the only one who even bothers to find out what she likes, instead of assuming she wants useless, pretty things. 

Not to mention, her birthday is always overshadowed by the kick-off of the latest victor's Tour.  

This year is different, though – this year, it's Gloss' Victory Tour. Cashmere has no one to celebrate her birthday with.  

Instead, she spends her birthday alone in Gloss' empty house, surrounded by her latest gifts, useless, beautiful things like always. She watches Gloss spend a day in District Twelve, his now-brittle smile strained even thinner than it was when he first returned (broken) from his arena.  

It's a sham: the people of Panem's most downtrodden District pretending to celebrate the man who returned alive at the cost of two of their own.  

(But then, the same scene plays out in every District; mockeries of celebration and false smiles shining from her television.)