THG fic: "Spin Control" [18/24]

[trovia]

Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing

Comments

[roguedemon]

Your reference to Gloss having bulimia did not escape me -- and yeah, I can imagine that the thought of throwing up your food would be repulsive to people who were more attuned to the starvation many suffer in the districts, as well as someone like Finnick who has had to be at too many parties with vomitoriums. It makes sense that Finnick would use exercise instead and frame it in his mind as a way of training himself to be more dangerous -- I liked how you put that. But I digress. I imagine that Gloss' ED comes rom a somewhat different place than Finnick's. I have this idea that the victors from D1 were groomed to be pretty and entertain the Capitol in whatever capacity necessary, which leads to mor of their self-esteem to be tied up in looking good and remaining appealing to patrons. A whole different sort of mind fuck. That's one possible take, anyway.

That leads me to the last bit of meta I was thinking of. Finnick has a whole other relationship to his looks, which I don't think he fully understands. He would rather not be attractive to the Capitol, but he doesn't know how to get to that point, as he thinks more than once in this fic. He would just as soon be invisible, but obviously following Cherry's diet plan and exercising compulsively has the opposite effect. I was thinking about the whole question of why he doesn't make that connection. Of course, on one hand he feels safer if he is in shape and ready to fight, it gives him a sense of control he needs. On the other hand, I think there is a lot of other stuff tangled up in there. It occurred to me that his looks are the only power he has, or the only power he thinks he has. It's the only thing the Capitol values in him. His looks trapped him in the Capitol's gilded cage, but now that he is trapped in there and can't see a way out (I bet that if he did try to mar his appearance, Snow would crack down on him immediately, which would be even more humiliating) his looks and his physical abilities are the only things that have allowed him to exert any small measure of control over the situation, at least in his mind. I don't think he sees himself as being very smart, when it gets right down to it -- I remember the scene early on where he thinks that his role is going to be to sit there and be beautiful while other people use the big words -- he probably can't help absorbing some of the Capitol's feedback.

So, that's all my ED meta. Thoughts? ;)

[trovia]

I imagine that Gloss' ED comes rom a somewhat different place than Finnick's. I have this idea that the victors from D1 were groomed to be pretty and entertain the Capitol in whatever capacity necessary, which leads to mor of their self-esteem to be tied up in looking good and remaining appealing to patrons. A whole different sort of mind fuck.

That's pretty much exactly where I was coming from. I couldn't tell you much about Gloss, and I didn't want to use Cashmere here because I didn't want to put canon!Cashmere bitching about Kat's wedding dress in a context of pathological self-image issues - her bitching is perfectly justified without that. :p Plus I dig the gender role switch. So I used Gloss. Since Ralda and Finnick's eating issues are both pretty rare versions of ED, I thought it would be a good thing to allude to more of a textbook case of bulimia here.

Hmm, Finnick's relationship to his looks. The way I picture it, it all started with the fact that he was originally a young, handsome man who was told that all his family would be killed if he didn't stay a handsome man available to the Capitol. Now, Snow has that way of giving very vague orders. "Make people stop rebelling" he says to Kat, then can tell her at any time that his expectations weren't met. "Haymitch shall be sober and entertaining" he says to Finnick in SC, and two years later, Finnick is waiting on Reaping Day to find out if Gale will be reaped for punishment because Snow decided that starting a Games training class isn't what he meant. "You'll give the Capitol exactly what it expects" he tells fourteen-year-old Finnick, whose stylist makes up a diet plan the first time she sees him eat candy. And even all without that massive, terrible threat looming over his family where he can't afford taking the wrong step, Finnick tends to overperform. He doesn't know how to not do things perfectly. At one point in the fic, there's this line, "Give him a set of rules, and he'll play." So he's supposed to stay attractive, and he's supposed to diet. Plus, he'd think "better safe than sorry" when in doubt. Add to that the fact that he used to work out even before the Games. It's a hobby. It makes him feel good about himself. He's good at it and it got him a lot of praise in (Games) school. He associates it with Games preparation, which means he associates it with being safer / more likely to survive. So for the longest time, those two things had no connection with his looks. It was only when he started internalizing the fact that he keeps being hurt because he's beautiful that he started struggling with the way he looks.

But yeah, in his head, there's being "strong" and "powerful" and "able to defend yourself" which has to do with muscle and strength and workouts. And there's being "beautiful" and "desirable" but it's in a different category in his head. A dominant part of him doesn't want to make the connection between those two things. He doesn't want to lose the positive experience of sport. It's a very important part of his life. It makes him feel good, it gives him something to do and it gives him a routine to follow.

What you're saying about his looks being a way of regaining control and absorbing the Capitol's feedback is all great observations. I tend to look at those aspects as recent developments that started becoming real issues at around the time of MOTR, a year or two before SC. That was a point when he suddenly hit a wall in how he looks, what it all means, whether he's a slut and a bad person. He only started growing really aware of how he can wield his fame as a tool of power during the 73rd Games, just before this chapter, when he threatened Chaff to tell the media that Chaff is a drunk. His developing eating issues right afterwards is probably not a coincidence. He's struggling for control and a sense of power in ways that are different from that particular power. It's probably good that he hasn't figured out how all these things are connected, or he'd just start feeling very helpless.

Enough thoughts? ;) Tell me what you think. :)