THG fic: "Spin Control" [19/24]

[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]

Well OF COURSE it does. That's what Finnick Odair fandom is all about, sweet, sweet romance. :D Gah, I've just looked at this fandom enough to make me want to stab myself

[trovia]

Gah, I've just looked at this fandom enough to make me want to stab myself.

Hee! Tumblr breaks the best man's faith.

So, I have too many thoughts hereLike Finnick! :D Bring them all on

[roguedemon]

I checked out AO3 and was surprised that you didn't get more comments. I think you finally did it...You broke the fandom. ;) Seriously, I think that this chapter was really crucial -- it was a beautiful payoff from all the conflict Finnick has been struggling with since the very first chapter. A comment from AO3 comparing Finnnick to a child seeking comfort clarified something I was thinking abut here. A part of Finnick was frozen at 14, and in this chapter his traumatized inner child is finally breaking through. It was very telling that Haymitch reverted to calling him "kid" at that moment, and Finnick got that on some level.

Something weird had happened inside of him, breaking open some kind of dam that he hadn’t known was there. Hearing himself say those obvious words - of course, I cry, they hurt me - had unlocked something that maybe didn’t even have to do with the dreams and the sex. Or maybe it had everything to do with it, and he couldn’t even attach a specific feeling to it. It just made tears pouring out. He threatened to

[trovia]

Yeah, I was a little sad that the chapter didn't get a lot of comments. It might have gotten a little too complex to write commentary on it easily. :-/

I picture that first encounter with a client as really brain-breaking and traumatizing for poor Finnick, who wouldn't have had the first idea how to handle it, just feeling overpowered by the entire situation, never mind that woman. (I doubt he had a lot of time to mentally prepare himself. I really don't think even Mags saw it coming that early.) And then, he immediately got the mixed signals of "this is hurting me" and "everybody is nice to me." He would have developed this idea of himself as a powerful killer being complicit in the abuse as a coping mechanism. I think it was awful and terrible in the first year and he couldn't cope with that feeling. The thing that gets him crying is this idea of "of course I cry in my dreams, because they hurt me" because he's understood that he is being hurt and therefore he should be crying. He'd very much prefer at this point actually being

[roguedemon]

I think that just that first client would be enough to break someone for life, much less an endless string of abuse heaped on top of that. I'm trying to imagine Mags coming up with a way to really talk to him about it and failing. She must have been feeling some heavy guilt herself.

And then, he immediately got the mixed signals of "this is hurting me" and "everybody is nice to me." He would have developed this idea of himself as a powerful killer being complicit in the abuse as a coping mechanism. I like that because I think many people don't understand that even someone's screwed-up schemas are coping mechanisms in cases like this. In general, the brain is always scrambling to make sense of everything and develop coping strategies. It's pretty common for your mind to settle on the wrong thing. One thing I really respect about his character is that he's hung in there and kept fighting for his own life and mental health even when he was going about it the wrong way. But leaving D4, pursuing a relationship with Haymitch, trying to

[roguedemon]

The last thing I wanted to mention is that it has not escaped my notice that Haymitch still won't talk about what he really wants. :) Finnick has good reason to be worried about that: he's a rape victim in a relationship with another rape victim, and he has no previous experience with relationship, so of course he feel like he doesn't know what he's doing. He's so aware of his own triggers, of course he doesn't want to hurt Haymitch in any way. And I liked what you wrote about the difficulty with wanting things -- for these guys wanting things has been a minefield. I've always been really touched by how hard Finnick is trying to do good things for Haymitch.

If Finnick kept making the calls when they had sex, maybe that even meant he could decide to make it about Haymitch, too. He could make it about Haymitch all he wanted. It was Finnick who made the decisions, but it was Haymitch he was focusing on. And now you're starting to make the D/s dynamic more explicit. ;) Of course it would squick the hell out of both of them if you called

[trovia]

The last thing I wanted to mention is that it has not escaped my notice that Haymitch still won't talk about what he really wants. :)

Hah. He doesn't! :D He has a pretty good idea of what he wants at this point but he won't share. I think the reasons for that will become apparent once we learn what it is. However, we still have some chapters to go and it would be very boring if everything was already resolved. ;)

and Haymitch insists that he isn't a submissive *pets him**snickers* My beta commented on that paragraph by saying "Welcome to life as a dom, Finnick

[trovia]

I'm trying to imagine Mags coming up with a way to really talk to him about it and failing. She must have been feeling some heavy guilt herself.

Ugh, yeah, that must have been very awful. I've addressed before in my other fic Moss on the Ruins how the massive age gap makes it very hard for Finnick to talk about this with Mags. Mags would have that problem too, and she would also feel guilty. Add to that the fact that she has her own coping mechanisms that she's clinging to, like Finnick learned when he last talked to Caramel. Considering Mags must have been informed that this was about to happen, on short notice, and considering she must have been present somewhere in the same building in District Eight knowing what was happening to that boy in another room, must have been awful in its own terrifying way.

I find that whenever I read comments on a fanfic or pairing I see people trying to figure out who the stronger member of the pairing is.Oh god, yes. Just recently, there was an explosion of that kind of discussion regarding