The Bad In Each Other

[audreyii_fic]

Title: The Bad In Each Other
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gale, Katniss, Prim, Peeta
Genre: Angst
Warnings: None.

Summary:
Gale and Katniss face each other as Prim and Peeta face the arena. THG AU.

Comments

[audreyii_fic]

Definitely more human. Well... at least in a fanwankable sort of way, if that makes sense. If it's actually poor character development, it's easy to explain away.

People glorifying Peeta miss the point entirely. Or maybe not, depending on the degree to which the story is allegory-focused and Peeta is meant to represent peaceful resistance. (Like I said, by the end of MJ I honestly had no idea what Collins was doing anymore.) Acting as a character, though, he was extremely flawed and that was what made him appealing. (I never quite bought the end-of-THG idea that he didn't know Katniss was acting in the arena, though. He was perceptive, and he clearly understood as well as she did how important it was to play the crowds, which I always felt he was doing as well. He might have overestimated the extent to which she had come to care about him, but he had to have realized she was playing it up. That felt weird.)

I really don't think it's possible to change the status of Peeta and Katniss' relationship by the middle of CF, maybe even earlier. I think I could have gotten over her initial feeling of obligation... but it's hard to imagine.

I can't stand the epilogue. Absolutely can't stand it. The kid thing is what gets to me. The "I'm never going to get married because I don't want kids" thing through the books rubbed me the wrong way, but I was willing to accept it as a Seam mentality: the poor can't afford birth control, therefore marriage automatically equals children in Katniss' mind. But that wasn't the case by the end, and the fact that Katniss openly admits she gave in to Peeta's desire for children even when she didn't really want any of her own... no. That's an automatic personal shut down for me.

{omg blah blah blah continued...}
There is no such thing as "blah blah blah" in my comment threads ;)

Re:

[arysani]

(I never quite bought the end-of-THG idea that he didn't know Katniss was acting in the arena, though. He was perceptive, and he clearly understood as well as she did how important it was to play the crowds, which I always felt he was doing as well. He might have overestimated the extent to which she had come to care about him, but he had to have realized she was playing it up. That felt weird.)

Won't lie, I read that as hardcore self-denial. He wanted it so badly that he convinced himself it was real, and was therefore really hurt (mostly by himself) when he was forced to accept that it wasn't, faced with it in a way he couldn't imagine around, if that makes sense?

But that wasn't the case by the end, and the fact that Katniss openly admits she gave in to Peeta's desire for children even when she didn't really want any of her own... no. That's an automatic personal shut down for me.

I agree. Best explaination I could come up with was that it is mentioned it took years before she agreed - so clearly it was a discussion they had often. I'm so conflicted because I know people can change their minds - my sister was vehemently anti-baby until about a year after she got married and now she's trying to convince her partner who was in favor all along that she has decided she's ready NOW. But at the same time, Katniss isn't my sister; and these are two people with, one might infer, a whole passel of mental illnesses between them. I sort of headcanon that it was someone OUTSIDE the relationship that changed her thinking. I know I've seen some fics where its Annie - in my headcanon, it happens rather accidentally. Annie, reminiscing about Finnick while her son scampers about, and how that child is her connection, sometimes its her reason to get up in the morning, etc etc triggers the reevaluation. And Katniss, whom we all know probably won't ever get over her need to cling to things she thinks she might lose, would rationalize it to herself that she could lose Peeta (maybe remembering a particularly bad relapse where he injures himself either on purpose or on accident and doesn't tend to his injury out of shock or something), and a child would be all she would have left. She might think of her mother, for whom her children WEREN'T enough to keep her going when her husband died, and be reinforced by her desires to not be her mother, to not make her mistakes. I honestly sort of imagine she doesn't tell Peeta she wants a child, and he skirts around her pregnancy like he's walking on eggshells because he "knows" she doesn't want a child, and he doesn't want to get hopeful because maybe she just hasn't found the right answer in her mother's little herb book.

...tbc

Re:

[arysani]

Just like I imagine they never got married, I imagine pregnancy is something they stop talking about after awhile, and that neither child is planned out or talked about, and each time she gets pregnant, Peeta is actually afraid of her and for her because he doesn't know if she will harm herself to keep the child from coming to term or just harm herself because she IS pregnant and doesn't want to be. Maybe I've thought about this too much in order to make it make sense on some level. Maybe I've had too many conversations about children with mentally ill friends who think every complication out to its last possible ending from when they find out they're pregnant to when the child graduates from high school, or wants to have THEIR own children. I don't know. I don't imagine the pregnancies would have very many light and happy moments (things like Peeta wanting to hear the child in her womb, or feeling it kick, wouldn't be something he would take for granted or perhaps even ask for, at the risk of sounding too desperate and making her feel guilty, or imagining he is guilting her into staying with him because now they have this child), and that the child-rearing when they're small and helpless would be particularly stressful for both of them, when they both need space and alone time to cope with themselves and their pasts and having kids doesn't really...work with that sort of necessary selfishness, if that makes sense? (I hate calling it "necessary selfishness" but I don't know what else to call it - they need to take care of themselves and their coping mechanisms are important to their continued adjustment to their lives, for crying out loud - I hate calling that selfishness because selfishness has such poor connotations.)

But I also imagine their children to be absurdly self-sufficient, as children are, when they realize (without having epiphanies, just KNOWING) that they need to care for themselves because mommy or daddy is sick.

And I keep thinking about "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and how Siddalee describes her mother - all these traumatic experiences of her childhood which inform both the relationships she has with her parents as an adult and how she expresses herself. I imagine Peeta kept his episodes out of sight of his children better because he remembers being afraid of his mother and knows his children would be afraid of him were he to act the way he acts when he's having a bad day/moment around them, and he would desperately not want them to be afraid of him, so he would try SO HARD to make sure they weren't around. I think it would break his heart if he ever realized or felt he had frightened his children. But Katniss would instead be cold and distant sometimes and they would...work around it, just accepting that sometimes mommy needed help cooking dinner or doing laundry or whatever because she wasn't feeling well or somesuch.

I don't know - I think I rationalize it out as one more coping mechanism, in a sense, for both of them. I know it sounds harsh to call children coping mechanisms, but this complicated headcanon is the only way I could rationalize it out.

There is no such thing as "blah blah blah" in my comment threads ;)

This isn't a good policy to give me because I swear I natter on at you more than any other fic author. CLEARLY.