THG Fic: "More Than the Sum" (Haymitch/Annie, PG-13, MJ spoilers)
Another Wicked Winter fill here, for trovia
Chars: Haymitch/Annie (yes, I bring you another rare pairing...)
Title: More Than the Sum
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Char death, mentions of murder and sexual slavery.
Spoilers: Post-MJ AU, so CF/MJ spoilers abound.
( More Than the Sum )
Chars: Haymitch/Annie (yes, I bring you another rare pairing...)
Title: More Than the Sum
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Char death, mentions of murder and sexual slavery.
Spoilers: Post-MJ AU, so CF/MJ spoilers abound.
( More Than the Sum )
I'm not opposed to char death if it serves an actual purpose. As for Annie, Finnick's kind of the fandom bicycle: he gets shipped with pretty much everyone. But aside from one or two A/J fics I've seen, Annie is always put with Finnick, which is my preferred ship for them both, but dammit, I'm being equal opportunity here. ;)
LOL. My mind just went to, "Make it an OT4 because Johanna really needs some love too." H/J/F/A FTW. XD
As for threesomes/foursomes/polyamory, I'd see that possibly fitting with the dynamics of Six (which I have not written yet but I have headcanon. Also, geographically I have them as the Pacific Northwest, Washington and Oregon, which is pretty much considered hippie and very liberal even now.) I think you saw my industry post where I've kind of pegged Six as transportation (and less publicly, steelmaking/ore mining) and I have the suspicion their implied widespread morphling abuse shows something ain't exactly right there.
I imagine there's a high death rate, and thus households where a couple take in the widowed spouse of a sibling or close friend have become not unusual. Perhaps they've formed some close bonds, to the point where ad hoc "multiple marriages" have sprung up. This is as opposed to Twelve where the community may help a widow or widower out, but not quite in the same way.
I do think Annie gets something from being there for people, and I think she probably does find being needed like that helps keep her in reality better. And yes, lots of patience. ;) As for Haymitch, he may not be nearly as open about it, but he can be selfless and caring, so she'd probably be able to see the value of that more easily than some.
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Just comes to show that I have no concept of geography in relation to the THG universe. I don't know any of the states well enough. I've been to Massachusetts. I know that Connecticut is where trees fall onto the highway at random intervals (attempt to drive from MA to an NYC airport during a storm). That's it for personal experience. But sure, it's not impossible for some district to have developed into a polyamorous direction for any number of reasons.
I definitely see Haymitch as a selfless and caring person, which is likely why he takes his mentoring duties so badly. Just look at how quickly he jumped at helping Kat and Peeta the moment they offered something he could work with. That is not a person who has decided to say, "Fuck it, I don't care" and to stick firmly to that notion. Just the fact that he got Kat out of trouble in MJ and brought her back to 12 when she didn't even care is telling.
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OT4 could possibly work, so long as they all acknowledge Annie's probably the most stable of them and use that fact to their advantage. XD The idea intrigues me even as I'm pretty sure I could never write it.
Massachusetts and Connecticut? Meh. Two of our less attractive states, I'd say. ;) One of these days I'll probably sketch out my headcanon district locations on a North America map (since parts of Canada and Mexico come into play also). But where you were in MA/CT would probably be part of District Thirteen.
Someone who doesn't give a shit generally doesn't break down as hard as Haymitch does. Your point on him jumping in to help is a good one. They gave him something to work with, in comparison to the other kids mutely accepting their fates and Haymitch knowing from experience the Capitol sponsors won't bother.
I've said before I think it's unfortunate that few people seem to appreciate what a huge risk he decided to take in deliberately manipulating the Gamemakers into that "two victor" rule change, and this is coming from a man who lost everyone he loved by meddling with the Gamemakers once before. For him to decide Katniss and Peeta were worth it what it might cost, he must have cared profoundly.
So he may be a sarcastic, brusque, cynical bastard on the surface, but he's got a gooey marshmallow center in there somewhere.
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Well, I for one would much appreciate a map like that because it would be a HUGE help if I ever decided to write plotty THG fic. As I said, I'm pretty much in the dark when it comes to the districts and I'm probably missing a lot of pointers given in the books.
I don't get how one couldn't not appreciate all the things Haymitch did. He took a huge risk with the rule change. He started a frigging rebellion to save Kat yet again when all Kat and Peeta were thinking of were each other. Finally, and almost most strikingly, he bailed Kat out of jail after she had killed the woman who, for all we know, he planned to see as the next President, gave up all his life to play babysitter to a depressed Kat who wouldn't look at him, and handed over his vote to her in the Capitol Games debate. That last one always struck me as a final gesture of depressed defeat in regards to his own personal life, because otherwise it makes no sense. He of all people should know not to confuse Kat's ability to spontaneously provide the right gesture with wisdom.
It's also telling that he's amongst the victors who clearly have the hardest time dealing. That would not be the case if he wouldn't give a shit about anything.
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It won't be an "official" map, just my best guess of course, but I pretty much had to sit down and do it to make AFAF work given all the districts. But I tried to use what few canon hints we had coupled with logic about natural resources and the like for some probable locations.
One can not appreciate them if one is Katniss Everdeen, or if one is so focused on her char they don't bother to think about things past her view. ;) But seriously, it's depressing how many writers in fandom portray him as either the Comic Drunk (PTSD alcoholism is hilarious!) or else just a convenient plot device whose sole reason for existing is to make sure Katniss and Peeta are happy together. Ugh.
That last one always struck me as a final gesture of depressed defeat in regards to his own personal life, because otherwise it makes no sense
You may be giving SC too much credit there, I'm not sure that was her mindset. ;) It may just be "Of course he'll follow what Katniss does, everyone else does, because she's THE MOCKINGJAY!" But I like your explanation better to help actually make sense of things, and I've wondered about it myself. I think his depression at that point was far worse than even before as all his losses in the arena and during the war finally have a chance to hit home. And yet he still scrapes himself together enough to volunteer to care for an oblivious Katniss because he sees she has no one and of all people out there he knows how much damage being isolated and rejected can cause.
(Argh. I just want to hug the poor guy.)
Oh, agreed. It's not the ones who don't care that have breakdowns. Of course, his caring personality coupled with his being the sole living Twelve victor and being totally without support or someone understanding for the vast majority of the year probably only hastened things.
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Definitely. I think he hit rock bottom when he got so drunk in the Capitol after the war.
I've been having an interesting conversation with my woman, millari who is currently reading CF and has pointed out to me that scene when Kat gets drunk with Haymitch and hates it. She pointed out to me that the scenes seems to be rooted in requirements of the YA genre to portray alcohol consumption as all-out negative. I've been wondering about Haymitch ever since, whether we're supposed to regard him an object lesson. Don't do drugs or you'll end up alone and miserable and with geese. Nothing good can ever come out of it. Booze is Bad.
It won't be an "official" map, just my best guess of course, but I pretty much had to sit down and do it to make AFAF work given all the districts.
Yeah but still, I'd steal it and use it for my own fic shamelessly. ;)
But seriously, it's depressing how many writers in fandom portray him as either the Comic Drunk (PTSD alcoholism is hilarious!) or else just a convenient plot device whose sole reason for existing is to make sure Katniss and Peeta are happy together. Ugh.
*shudders* I hated that dynamic in the Harry Potter fandom. Alastor Moody the funny old paranoiac and Sirius Black WHO WOULD NEVER KILL HIMSELF because he wouldn't do that to Harry and HE IS BETTER THAN THAT. (I'm really glad right now that I'm not doing THG in German. Suffering through fans all sharing Kat's prejudice about mental illness? Might just kill me.)
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Agreed. He's gone without drinking for months at that point after being totally dried out. To drink again, and to that point of being totally loaded, wasn't obviously just him missing the booze. His nasty "What is it, more boy trouble?" remark when Katniss wakes him up? With throwing cold water on him again, as I remember, which to me is a very asshole move on her part and I hate when people use her doing that as a comedy moment in their fics ignoring that right in the books it was used on Johanna as part of a method of torture. Ugh.
Anyway, that remark to Katniss and how cutting it is also seems to concur with that being a real dark night of the soul for him: Haymitch can be snarky for sure, and impatient with Katniss, but he's not been genuinely mean spirited, even when drunk. So it's not just the alcohol that prompts him to say that, and the moment he sees how badly it hurt her, he's already trying to take it back.
I've been wondering about Haymitch ever since, whether we're supposed to regard him an object lesson. Don't do drugs or you'll end up alone and miserable and with geese. Nothing good can ever come out of it. Booze is Bad.
millari seems a perceptive gal to pick up on that and I might have to add her to the f-list. I agree with you there also. Alcoholism is portrayed in a totally negative light in THG. I mean, not that it's a good thing physically or psychologically to be alcoholic.
But the way it's written, once you give in to an addiction, you're a worthless, broken human being who can never recover or hope to have anything of value for your own sake. You'll be lucky to have geese you barely care for and to center your life around the occasional bone of attention and affection being thrown to you by two kids who are too utterly wrapped up in their romance to really care that you're back to living alone and drinking yourself to death. Wow. What a great life!
Because, you know, in that situation Haymitch would never contemplate suicide or anything, now that he's no longer held captive by the demands of mentoring in the Games and not leaving Twelve tributes totally to the mercy of the Capitol even more so than they are now by them having no native district mentor who actually gives a shit about them. Katniss might need him for five minutes of advice every few months or something. :P
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Here's where I'm thinking of Haymitch/Finnick/Annie again. ;)
millari is the best and I'm trying to bring her into the THG fold. She might be an even bigger fan of Haymitch than you are. ;)
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Exactly. He can be rude and abrasive to help cut through Katniss' standoffish pride, but he's really not a deliberate asshole.
or he drank to celebrate and then crashed emotionally when he realized that he couldn't stop, because he's still a drunk, and nothing has changed.
I'm not sure he was celebrating? The fact that, as I remember, he was sleeping in Snow's mansion, with a knife, and even Katniss remarks something like "Apparently the reign of terror isn't over for Haymitch even with Snow gone." I think he was drinking because he realized Snow was dead, the war is over, and nothing has changed. He's still alone and shunned, once again mourning the loss of pretty much everyone significant in his life, and realizing that even Snow's death won't be an end to his damages. He's drunk again and sleeping with a knife because he's started believing even in this new world, it can never change for him.
It's a new world and here he is, hungover and woken up by the person closest to him in a way as if she doesn't have the slightest interest in his dignity. Which she doesn't, of course.
Granted, she's pretty much Katniss!Zombie herself, but it's still such a gratuitously cruel thing to do to him and I really have a hard time forgiving her for how she treats him in general. She's impatient and a teenager, but Jesus. She just won't let up on her judgmental attitude towards him. The fact that he's very possibly grieving and trying to process things himself never even crosses her mind. She needs him at that moment so she's going to make him pay attention to her by whatever method is necessary and that's it.
Somehow I could see a fairly fucked up canon-esque H/J scene with them drinking together and grieving Finnick (without openly admitting it) and both of them being upset they weren't there to protect him and that's how he ends up so plastered.
She might be an even bigger fan of Haymitch than you are. ;)
Not possible. ;) But if she happens to read HID/AFAF, be interested in her thoughts, and if she's a Haymitch fan, girl needs to write fic. We need more thoughtful writers willing to take on a rich subject like Haymitch to counter all the treacly K/P fic out there. Marblesharp and I are about the only two Haymitch writers out there, unfortunately.
Granted, I don't count as genuine "Haymitch writers" the many Haymitch/Effie writers out there who generally write ridiculously OOC frothy love-hate romcom stuff between them rather than the reality of him being very psychologically fucked up and the reality of their years of association being where she's been a willing part of the system that's oppressed and terrified him and damaged since childhood. That's really a stumbling block that even post-MJ where she's been associated with the rebellion, can't just be quickly overlooked or put aside in favor of "They don't actually dislike each other, it's really sexual tension!" bickering banter.
Effie's another char I liked better in the movie. In the books she obviously sees Twelve people as subhuman savages and is ashamed to be associated with them. In the movie she's still insanely oblivious to reality, but seems actually kinder.
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I liked Effie because she's creepy. She's dumb and oblivious and creepy, although she isn't cruel intentionally, she just doesn't know better. Though it was interesting that Haymitch worked so hard on saving her. I guess she might have worked with the rebellion after all, and Kat just didn't know. But I've always rather taken it as another hint at Haymitch's desperately protective nature. If he tries to save Effie, just because he doesn't want another person from his life to die, that's pretty desperate to me.
And, nah, I'm saying Haymitch might have tried celebrating and it failed, or he might have gotten drunk out of depression in the first place. We just don't know. But whatever it was, he's a mess when Kat finds him, that's all that counts. We don't really know why exactly he started drinking originally. It might be so that he would be less sad. But seeing as how he was drinking buddies with happy Chaff, it could as well have been an attempt at making rare moments of joy last. Starting to drink all the time and discovering all the advantages of being drunk would have come later in any case. So who knows, maybe he did try to celebrate in the Capitol. From a writing POV, I've finding that one a little more intriguing because it's the less obvious path to take.
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To my mind to write Haymitch/Effie properly, it's more like what would be associated with trying to write a Jewish or Romany Holocaust survivor and the daughter of a Nazi family who was formerly enthusiastically "culturally" Nazi (joining the BDM, agreeing that "undesirables" shouldn't have the same rights, etc.) Oblivious and prejudiced, but not actively cruel. I don't pull Holocaust comparisons lightly and it's not a fully analogous comparison, clearly. But compared to how fluffy most people take Haymitch/Effie, for me it gives some sense of the weight behind what successfully writing that pairing would entail.
She's dumb and oblivious and creepy, although she isn't cruel intentionally, she just doesn't know better.
Which, in comparison to Cinna's being aware, makes her coming around an interesting story. But she is oblivious. For as much as she bonded to Katniss and Peeta to help her start to see the light, there were however many other District Twelve tributes she watched die before that, who clearly didn't affect her enough to change her mind or her heart.
On "dumb", I saw some comment from Elizabeth Banks--who is apparently a huge Haymitch/Effie shipper who thought that Effie and Haymitch is a "great romantic comedy"--and they have "a meeting of two great minds". I kind of tried to not laugh. I don't think Effie's insanely stupid, she's probably average intelligence but low on common sense. But I'm sorry, there are very few people who play on Haymitch's mental level. And of people in THG, Effie falls lower on the "intelligence and cunning" list than many. I do think her intelligence might cause an issue in the relationship too. He'd probably be more comfortable, and frankly less bored, with someone who can be more of a companion to him intellectually.
But I've always rather taken it as another hint at Haymitch's desperately protective nature. If he tries to save Effie, just because he doesn't want another person from his life to die, that's pretty desperate to me.
I doubt she was deeply involved in it. But to me it speaks to his protective nature too that even Effie who was involved minorly in the rebellion, he will fight like hell to save her, along with Plutarch. Maybe it also gets at a sense of fair play in him--she helped us out somewhat, she doesn't deserve to die.
From a writing POV, I've finding that one a little more intriguing because it's the less obvious path to take.
I hear you. I've taken the tack that he didn't suddenly turn fully alcoholic at sixteen which is the less obvious path also. As you saw, I have him slowly going there over the next twenty years and losing his grip a bit more each year with more prostitution and two more dead tributes until he finally just goes that little bit too far and becomes what we see in THG.
I do also think the fact that a lot of victors probably shoved booze at him (as in the victor-whores' "night out" in NTS) and other mentors as a coping mechanism for things didn't help. Most of them use it in conjunction with having support at home, etc., so they don't have his unique vulnerability of both total solitude and a fairly protective nature that takes losses deeply. So they don't fully realize that for Haymitch's situation, encouraging him to drink may not be the brightest idea because that's going to become his only coping mechanism.
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What I can see is them hooking up once or twice during canon, him because he's desperately lonely and she's prety much the only person beside the victors he ever interacts with at all. She's the closest he has to family, and he'd be craving a connection to somebody. (this must also have played a part in helping her later) She's more open to interpretation and it's quite likely that she might be looking for a distraction to prevent herself from becoming consciously aware of the part she is playing in the Games, and what it all means. She might also frankly remember his public image from his days of sobriety, and regard him a celebrity, and feel attracted to that. That, however, would not be a romantic or even a pretty story. Then again, that's basically what happens in that fic I pointed out to you.
I think you're making an excellent point about the other victors' not fully realizing how their situation is different from Haymitch's. They have so many conflicts in common, it might be easy to forget that his situation is unique in that one specific way. Especially since they don't get to see the situation in Twelve, he probably doesn't talk about it, and it might not occur to most of them that his relationship with the rest of the District might be that destroyed. If you ever wanted to make that the focus of a fic? I'd be really interested in reading that. I imagine the dynamics between the victors are not always as healthy and productive as fanfic will have us believe. Mental issues like they all have them just don't make you a more perceptive or understanding person (I keep thinking of something Ruth Klüger, a Holocaust survivor once said on how Holocaust survivors aren't "better people": The camps weren't schools I'd be the last to compare the Holocaust with the Games, but - the Games aren't schools, either).
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As for in-canon hookups I've remarked I could see a dark fic where a younger Haymitch, still considered desirable, basically ends up sleeping with a starstruck Effie who's in love with that Capitol image of him as the dangerously seductive type. It would be kind of his veiled "Fuck you" to her, and to the Capitol, because to seduce a Capitol woman and see her submissive like that would fit with the notion that sexual domination really is the only power he can have with her. Terrible way to deal with his frustrations and helplessness, but I could see a situation where it could happen, probably after the tributes are dead and he's at his lowest and she's probably making stupidly oblivious remarks.
It could definitely take on a less dark edge too. That was just me taking it to extremes. I think he'd end up feeling too much like an asshole, though.
he probably doesn't talk about it, and it might not occur to most of them that his relationship with the rest of the District might be that destroyed.
He's certainly unusual. The only similar situation I've come up with is Johanna, who seems to have been cast in the role of the villainess (as the Capitol chose to portray her as sly, deceptive, vicious, etc.) and her attitude tends to imply she's isolated as well from the people of her district. I doubt many victors are typecast as villains--Titus the cannibal certainly would have been one had the Capitol let him win--as I imagine the Capitol likes to see the "hero" win.
Granted, at least Johanna had Blight and (in my headcanon) Cedrus there. Not emotionally available to her per se to be helpful there, but certainly concerned about her to the point where they would have tried to look out for her, as opposed to Haymitch who basically has nobody who cares if he lives or dies, and some who'd probably say "Good riddance" if he did die.
I imagine the dynamics between the victors are not always as healthy and productive as fanfic will have us believe.
Probably so. I could easily see how they could egg each other on to excesses in terms of sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, etc. And I'm sure some of them just don't much like each other. I certainly don't believe it's one huge circle of friends. Haymitch probably has goodwill among more fellow victors than most, but that's probably because of an awareness among them about his protective nature and looking out for others, and also frankly because he focuses all his social efforts there so they get the best parts of him. I'm sure he still has victors who either mock him or dislike him.
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There are many, many different ways of dealing with trauma, and not just on a level where some would have nightmares and some wouldn't (I'm somewhat amused at how THG fandom seems to work on the premise that every victor would have nightmares, period. I'm not excepting myself from that rule, it's just such an easy device). It's perfectly reasonable to assume that people's ways of dealing might jar. I tried to get into that a little in that tiny ficlet I wrote about Finnick and Gloss going on an assignment together, the way Finnick's behavior seemed like almost a personal afront to Gloss.
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