meme time
Well. I'm home from America. Which means my inner clock and I are having a little disagreement. It's ten in the morning. My brain is informing me that it should be the middle of the night instead.
Need to stay awake through the day, though, or I'll be fucked at work tomorrow.
Give me a scene from a fic that I wrote, and I'll meta?(also ( Read more... )
Need to stay awake through the day, though, or I'll be fucked at work tomorrow.
Give me a scene from a fic that I wrote, and I'll meta?(also ( Read more... )
Looking at the bigger picture, there's one thing that Haymitch and Finnick have in common, which is that in a part of their heads, they think there's something wrong with them. They aren't good enough. In Finnick, it's a very dominant issue and it expresses itself in this self-hatred that he carries around. It's all in his fucked-up self image, how he's a killer and a slut and he's gone native in the Capitol, and the sex dreams have given him a specific point of focus for that. In Haymitch, it's more subdued and more of a level of creeping doubt. For years, he's kept losing people. His family died for no other reason but because he'd done a thing to keep himself alive. His girl died because she'd been with him. Lyra went away because she'd wanted another boy more. His tributes kept dying on him, every year. Maybe he's doing something wrong. Add to that the lack of social feedback for so many years and the fact that his only friends are victors, people who never see him in his regular life. Chaff thought the whole escort thing was awesome, but Chaff never knew what Haymitch had done. What if he did? What if the victors knew how miserable his exists in Twelve is, what if they saw him every day instead once a year? He's a drunk, after all, he's pretty pathetic and he's a terrible mentor. What he did with the escort, it might or might not be proof that he's a bad man. Like Finnick, he has a concern that it means there's something wrong with him intrinsically.
Being Haymitch, he's spent most years since then just avoiding to think about it. He's gotten some perspective over the years - he's aware of that thing you pointed out, how he has this "Capitol / perpetrators" category in his head and Catriona is in it. Capitol people are the ones who give you orders. So this is nowhere near as dramatic an issue as Finnick has with his sex dreams. But it's a thing Haymitch has always felt kind of shitty about. Now that he's starting to feel safer, not just because he trusts Finnick but also because Finnick is giving him a lot of new self-confidence, he can choose to say, "Oh what the fuck, alright, here's the story." In the upcoming Games chapters when he'll also take the lead with the tributes and the star-crossed-lovers angle, that'll also be an expression of how he feels safe and self-confident enough to take command, rather than being an expression of desperation like in canon.
Thoughts? :)
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I think you have a very good point about trust. I do think that a lot of psychological/emotional development simply comes from practice and exposure. If you spend enough time talking to someone about scary/personal things and having them respond positively to you, you just start habituating to the situation and your fight or flight reaction slowly fades. I liked what you wrote below about how Haymitch procrastinates and avoids thinking about things. That makes perfect sense, and I think it's pretty common in addicts because chemicals are an excellent way to avoid nasty thoughts and emotions. I think all of this is part of Haymitch getting sober -- not just dry, sober. One of the best books I read about recovery said something to the effect that when you get sober, you need to learn to walk through your emotions a rather than avoiding them. Addiction prevents you from dealing with problems because you continually avoid feeling and thinking about them -- you stop developing in many ways. In chapter 18 you showed Haymitch confronting memories and old grief when he deals with Mitchy (there is a whole story behind Aleese and Mitchy that I must hear someday). He wants a. Drink, because he is used to avoiding that pain, but by just sitting with the feelings he can start to heal a little. In this fic Haymitch reminds me a lot of some Veterans with PTSD I worked with in an an Addiction Recovery program. Once you stop burying your emotions, suddenly they start catching you by surprise and you have to work out a whole new system for coping with life. You're doing a great job showing his development here. And Finnick has been doing a great job giving Haymitch what he needs, impressively so considering he is just groping his way through the whole process.
Also, the fact that Finnick is the only person that has ever seen what Haymitch's life has truly become in D12 is really important. You mentioned previously that when Haymitch was falling for Finnick he was kicking himself, thinking that he was doing the same thing he did with Lyra. While there are superficial similarities, the two situations are actually dramatically different. I'm thinking that maybe Haymitch has figured that out now? Well, more later -- I'm getting kicked out of yet another coffee shop...
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Seriously though, the trick is in writing these comments instead of doing all the other things that need doing more. :D Like currently I should be making food, but I'm just too lazy to get up. I get lazier the hungrier I get, too, but the hungrier I get, the less I can get actual work done. I don't even want to know how many days a year I lose to eating hours after I should have. It's so stupid though, being controlled by hunger. It annoys me. ;)
...yeah, totally off-topic, I know.
The more time I spend on Tumblr, the more I miss LJ. It's just such a shame that THG fandom isn't happening on LJ. :-/ And ugh, the Hayffie fans. I don't know if you've ever seen my only ever Effie & Haymitch fic, which is pretty much the exact opposite of all of the Hayffie fandom. But nobody seems to be interested in tackling Effie's ignorance, although that's what makes her so entertaining. To me, anyway.
All those things you said about Haymitch procrastinating and addiction are so interesting. I've definitely thought about how his process of dealing with his various traumas would have been on hold during the drinking, how he would have a lot of catching up to do if he suddenly had to handle all those feelings and thoughts again. But I'd never thought to make a direct connection between that habit and the addiction. Huh. Awesome.
And Finnick has been doing a great job giving Haymitch what he needs, impressively so considering he is just groping his way through the whole process.
Heh. Finnick (and Haymitch) takes such a fatalist behaviorist approach to the addiction issue. He hits on a good way of handling it almost by accident. The way he deals with it is originally motivated by this giant fear that people will die if Haymitch has one more drink. But Finnick knows he can't "cure" Haymitch, Haymitch won't start healing. I think a part of him thinks that recovery is this magic process that's not available to them. I'm sure, in other circumstances, he'd nurse the idea that addicts can drink a glass or two every now and then, and that they should do it too to test out their limits, and that it's a sign of progress if they can. But they don't have that luxury. So he clears the path for Haymitch, taking away all alcohol, being there the second Haymitch starts swaying, keeping him from drinking. While he also very much wants to help Haymitch, he makes it his business in a way that he wouldn't dare, if he wasn't so motivated by fear.
I'm thinking that maybe Haymitch has figured that out now?
I don't know that Haymitch has figured out that his reasons for falling for Lyra were different than his reasons for falling for Finnick. But I definitely think he's realized that what he has with Finnick at this point is a very different kind of emotion than the one he had for Lyra. Also their relationship is very different, and much better, than any relationship he could ever have had with Lyra. He's probably more prone to comparing the relationship to the one he had with his girl though, since Lyra had always been unavailable anyway. He might have struggled a little with the idea that the relationship with Finnick was growing beyond what he'd had with Alsey, being more mature and real. It was "just" a teen romance without the emotional depth of a longterm adult relationship, but he'd have filed it under "perfect, flawless relationship" in his head, a category which he would now have to reevaluate.
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Yeah, tumblr kind of depresses me and makes me feel old. Sometime I will have to devote a post to making fun of the whole thing. I did go read your Effie fic and it's the only fic I have seen that really captures her character (and poor Haymitch :(). I have to admit that Effie just really annoys me, she just hits some of my buttons and makes me grind my teeth. Honestly, I always just want to smack people that are that perky and twee. And the cheerfully participating in genocide thing really matters to me. She would need to go through a major growth process for me to see her in a relationship with anyone, she has a long way to go. The fact that she was able to finally see Katniss and Peeta as human being does not excuse years of looking at D12 tributes as disappointing cannon fodder.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about Addiction and Dual Diagnosis (substance abuse + mental illness; self-medication for mental illness). When I was getting sick, I was angling for a permanent position at one of the VA Hospitals around here, working in the Addiction programs. But alas, I just got too sick to follow through, you can't take care of other people when you can't manage to get out of bed. Now I just apply all these thoughts to fic analysis. ;)
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I think that Finnick did manage to stumble into a recovery program that has been working for Haymitch. Not just the structure, but the way he has supported him emotionally and started making him feel like he is worthwhile for the first time in many years. And the way they both work to figure out what the other needs at significant moments in the fic makes me happy.
This is also the only fic I have read that really deals with Haymitch's alcoholism in a realistic way. The way his drinking is described in canon is indicative of end-stage alcholism. It's called "end stage" for a reason. You are quite right that he was bound to have some sort of catastrophe, choke on his own vomit, something. As you have Haymitch admit in the fic, if he had relapsed at that time he would have died sooner rather than later. I don't think Collins really grasped that. Honestly, I don't know how all his internal organs are still functioning (including his brain) considering the amount of that foul white liquor he was drinking. And I hate seeing it be played for laughs in fic. You were also very wise in having Haymitch get sober before any relationship could take place. And for what it's worth, I don't think Haymitch could ever go back to drinking casually. With alcoholism, once you pass a certain point it's very dangerous to try to go back to drinking "normally".
I found your list of things that Finnick doesn't know about Haymitch, which made me happy. :) I thought that it was very telling in Chapter 18 that all the positive sexual encounters Haymitch has had were with men; the one time with the escort seemed to be driven by something besides actual desire. Haymitch being on the gay side of bi makes perfect sense. And of course PSiVS is covering the way his ideas about sexy nd realtionship developed -- D12 is very heteronormative, so he would naturally try to form attachments to women. You can, of course, love someone without being hot to take their clothes off....obviously you would know much more than I do about getting your the sexuality sorted out in a world that pushes people to be straight. That's the long way of saying that his feelings toward Asley and Lyra make perfect sense. And I love the idea that Haymitch started being attracted to Finnick a couple years before any of this even started, sort of how Finnick felt comfortable with Haymitch in certain ways before he ended up in 12. Also, with Haymitch being gay, lonely, and deprived of touch, let alone sex, he would probably have to be dead not to notice Finnick. I wonder how many of the other victors have thought the same thing and felt awful about lusting after someone who is being objectified and violated constantly.
And then of course, Haymitch is in 12 with Finnick, he's getting healthier and pulling out of his depression a bit...when people get sober their libido often starts to perk up. And he's spending all this time with Finnick, and forming a real friendship with him -- it must have been a bit of torture for him to be confronted with all that beauty every day. And I'm sure Finnick gave him the shock of his life when he kissed him. ;)
I find it interesting that Haymitch would now possibly be re-evaluating his past relationships, and yeah, I hope he doesn't torture himself over it. Sometimes it can be good to let your sleeping dogs lie.
Well, I must go. Hopefully next time I will be able to move on to their sex life, I have thoughts. :)
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They have an understanding of how small things can be hard that most average people don't have to develop. ♥
And I hate seeing it be played for laughs in fic.
Ugh, yes.
(a person once told me in an SC comment that she didn't think Haymitch had ever been sold, "because he's a a drunk, a silly drunk" :p)
It was really important to me that Haymitch should sober up before he enters a relationship. Otherwise, it would have been just an emotional mess for everybody involved. That's a major reason why the story turned into such a long one.
Like you said, Collins' depiction doesn't make all that much sense. I know another Haymitch writer, deathmallow, who supposes that his alcoholism just isn't that out of proportion, it just peaks during the Games. Otherwise you have such a hard time, as a writer, getting him through withdrawal. I went for the extreme interpretation partly because the other one had already been done by another writer, partly because it allowed me to point out the holes in Collins' logic. ;) Plus, this way I was really sure that he'd need to be hospitalized to sober up. I could send him to Capitol rehab for the medical side of things without having to worry about getting any details about that wrong, then focus on his psychological recovery, a topic I feel more knowledgable and comfortable about. (they would have taken care of his liver damage etc. there, too. They had Peeta walking two weeks after a leg amputation, they've probably got the means)
I thought that it was very telling in Chapter 18 that all the positive sexual encounters Haymitch has had were with men; the one time with the escort seemed to be driven by something besides actual desire.
Yeah, absolutely. (What does PSiVS stand for?)
Also, with Haymitch being gay, lonely, and deprived of touch, let alone sex, he would probably have to be dead not to notice Finnick.
Very true. Even Kat reacted quite strongly to the way he looks. Her refusal to feel attracted to him happened on more of a cerebral level, a refusal to find attractive people attractive. (understandably - he comes across as such a creep in the sugar cube scene) Add to that, Finnick is a sweet, funny and gentle young man and it's very hard to not like him once you get to know him. I just bet he made any number of victors uncomfortable in that way. In D12, I'm sure Haymitch kept telling himself that his attraction to Finnick was this automatic thing that couldn't be helped. Until he had to admit that no, it's real feelings and it's about who Finnick is, not just a physical attraction anymore.
I'm quite interested in the period before the first kiss and Haymitch's rediscovery of his libido. I think I might like to put that in my Haymitch POV fic. I imagine the drinking had pretty much killed his libido dead, and it remained so through his depressive phase afterwards. But as he started recovering, it would have come back. I imagine he mostly had a "Huh. How about that" reaction to it, sort of, a faint curiosity about this thing he hasn't had to deal with in a while, but not wasting much thought on what's basically a normal physical function. However, he'd be growing aware of this physical attraction towards Finnick - confronted with his beauty everyday, as you said :) - and he'd struggle much harder with that part. It's a very unwanted desire. He knows that Finnick isn't available, it makes him feel bad because of what Finnick is going through, and also he really doesn't want to lose Finnick as a friend. He lost Lyra too when he told her how he felt. (never mind that's not how it logically went down) He definitely got the shock of his life when Finnick kissed him. :)
Tell me all the thoughts on the sex! :))
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Heh. I get your feelings on Effie, although I find her quite entertaining myself - much like Kat, I tend to look at her like at a pet, somebody you occasionally pat on the head but don't take very seriously. Her perkiness just comes with the limited thinking. We have a saying here - it doesn't quite translate but basically says, only intellectually limited people can find serenity.
I like that you're applying your knowledge to fic analysis. ;) There can never be enough fic analysis! It's such a giant shame that you had to cancel your plans like that.
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