THG fic: "Spin Control" [23/24]

[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

[trovia]

Gah, sorry to hear that your week sucked. It's not like you need PMS problems on top of everything. :-/

I'm okay. I'm slipping a little into my first bout of actual depression in a while (as opposed to burnout depression... the latter makes me hate work and the former makes me desperately over-focus on work to keep my mind off things, so I sort of bounce between those two states a lot. And recently it's always been burnout, or as I like to call it, the work-sucks-disease. :p It's not terrible right now though, just mild. It has the positive effect that I'm getting shit done.

That said, your comments always cheer me up. :))

I really liked bringing Caramel and Beetee into this chapter; it seemed right that Finnick should get this glimpse at the friendship of the Fabulous Four, just this little flash at what they're like. Next chapter, there's gonna be Chaff and the circle will be complete.

I think any victor in a situation like Caramel or Finnick would have a lot of connections. Finnick uses his in this fic too, it's just not about information gathering, more about sponsors. Caramel has this in in the poll department and other victors probably have others. Anyway, I'm mentally playing SC off MOTR, and from how I set the secret gathering up in MOTR as a thing Finnick would have started doing because of the rebellion, I didn't want to have him rediscover it here. He'd definitely be picking up all manner of things, it's just not important to the fic.

It's fairly easy to write anxiety as a physical experience IF YOU FEEL IT ALL THE TIME. :p :D Thanks for telling me that you noticed.

[roguedemon]

Been meaning to continue this, I have a few minutes...

I hope you are continuing to avoid burnout depression -- I hope the actual depression continues to be mild. I always find discussion of the different kinds of depression fascinating, because I tend to think that "clinical depression" is a blanket term for a cluster of disorders with overlapping symptoms. People experience depression in a variety of ways, and different types of antidepressants are effective for different people.

With bipolar disorder I always seem to have depression that involves burnout, lack of ability to work or concentrate or do anything, with flat affect. I think it stems from the fact that hypomanic/manic states burn out your brain, and then you crash and wallow in the hole while your brain recovers. At least, that is what it feels like to me, and it seems to be mirrored in other people and in things I've read. Since I've been ill I have some dysthymia pretty much all the time unless I'm actually full out hypomanic. The illness changed my patterns, I used to be slightly hypomanic most of the time (once I got on good meds), I would get depressed if I really burned myself out. But since bodily inflammation seems to be linked to depression, I guess it makes sense that I would end up being on the depressive spectrum most of the time.

So, um regarding the actual fic and your comment, it makes sense that you'd want to focus on different things here, of course. I was thinking about the gathering secrets thing because of a discussion we had earlier about Finnick's need to feel in control and how he would probably watch the Captiol gossip channels in order to try to get a grip on what's happening so he knows what's coming for his during his next Capitol visit. And I was thinking about the progression of his realization that what is happening to him is actually rape, in terms of how in some ways it's going to be much harder for him to deal and keep his reactions contained moment to moment. He has more of a sense of his powerlessness now and while it will hopefully help him hate himself less, he needs to develop new ways of getting through each assault (Gah, that is so fucked up I just can't). So, to wrap this up I do wonder if the whole gathering secrets thing was helpful to him on that front in canon, because I'm assuming that Annie helped him realize that no, he's not actually a slut, he's being raped. Since he is at the point where he's made that connection in this AU and he's struggling more not to freak out at the wrong moment (or, you know, exactly the right one) I was thinking that the whole secret gathering thing could give him a new focus. Not in the same way as canon, obviously, since there is no rebellion, but just as a private way of getting a tiny bit of revenge, a way to force himself through each moment. And I totally think that Finnick hated having people give him jewelry and money, and came up with the secrets thing on his own, like you showed in MOTR. Sooo, those are my thoughts on that. And like I said, I get why you'd want it to be different for this universe, but I am wondering how Finnick is going to try to cope going on from here.

I totally feel you on the anxiety thing. My anxiety always goes straight to all my muscles, and everytime Finnick struggles to breath or feels his chest tightening, I'm right there with him. It's one of the first things that leapt out at me about your writing, honestly -- the physical experience of emotions. Much better than saying x is anxious/depressed/aroused/whatever.