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

[roguedemon]

Being discovered roaming the Avox corridors could get all of the Odairs killed, Finnick thought again, in a detached way. He was sitting on a crate in a room in the Avox basement, and that fact alone could kill his mom and his dad. It could kill Coral or Mags. A year ago, six weeks ago, he wouldn’t even have hesitated before he said thank you, but no. He wasn’t sure he could have followed Haymitch here. Everything had always been about that. Now, he’d done it anyway, he hadn’t even thought about it; he’d just chased down all the information he needed, like raiding the Cornucopia, and then he’d reentered the Games and he’d gone to find and save the man who’d become his other family.

It didn’t quite leave him feeling as adrift as the other times before when being with Haymitch had changed all these things, but more like there was still a foothold left, like a flag on a pole flapping around in the wind.

This was one of my favorite parts because you really showed Finnick examining his own behavior and beginning to draw conclusions from it. He realizes something is radically different, he realizes just how important Haymitch is to him. He already knew that, but he made a choice here he never would have made before and it solidifies things. There's his character development right there! ;) And I love this concrete example of how he wants to put Haymitch first. He's making a decision, not just rushing into this commitment heedlessly.

They sat like that, for a moment, breathing the stale air of the slave storage room where nothing ever changed. After a while, Finnick slid off the crate, sitting on the floor and leaning against it instead. Haymitch had to inch away from him to make space, slumping onto his butt, both their legs propped up, intertwined, their ankles touching in that solid way.

Finnick reached out for one of Haymitch’s hands, playing with it.

As he always had ever since he’d dared admit his attraction to Finnick, Haymitch let him. Haymitch always let him do anything he wanted to do, even when Finnick was doing it to him, and Finnick suddenly wondered why that was.

I just love this image of them sitting there together like that, holding hands. You used that imagery of Finnick reaching out and playing with Haymitch's hand before, and it just seems very meaningful to me. It warms my hard cold cynical soul. I also love the culmination of the scenes that ran throughout this fic: that Haymitch will do things for Finnick, whenever Finnick asks. He's not someone to spout purple prose, he shows how he feels through action. He'll do things to make Finnick happy, like talk about himself, even if it's excruciating for him. ;) This shows both the reader and Finnick that Haymitch loves Finnick. And here Finnick puts that together with his own feelings and actions and decides what he really wants.

[trovia]

He's making a decision, not just rushing into this commitment heedlessly.

You know, when Millari was betaing... the chapter "Glimpse at Liberty," right after the first kiss, I believe... she pointed out to me how much she likes the fact that this story is framing love and relationships as an active choice. She said most stories frame love as this wild uncontrollable thing that just happens to you. Finnick meanwhile makes a positive, empowering choice: "This is what I want. I'm going to go get it." Of course, Finnick does a thing that is very unusual for a romantic story. He identifies his desires, then immediately goes check whether or not Haymitch shares them, and then that's that. ;)

Conscious choices are a big deal for me, though, as a writer and a person. In German fandom, I used to write these writing advice essays, and I was once asked to write something on how do you write character development. I had to sit down and think long and hard about that, because geez I had no idea. :D Eventually, after looking at other writer's advice and such, I realized that it's really simple. You can only have character development if your characters make active choices. And then all you have to do is make sure that in every chapter, your character makes a decision that they wouldn't have been able to make in the previous chapter. I think that's the biggest realization I've ever had about writing, and I cling to it whenever I write anything. Finnick gets the ball rolling when he decides to go to Twelve. And then everything is so different and new that he just has to stay on his toes. If Twelve won't cooperate with him, he'll have to look at Twelve like an arena. If he needs Haymitch to be healthy but Haymitch doesn't want to be healthy, he needs to consider Haymitch his opponent until that's settled. Of course, there's also pay-off - once Haymitch regains his equilibrium, he's in turn able to support Finnick when Finnick is the one who struggles. And that gives Finnick new strength for new realizations and actions. ANYWAY, that makes it fairly easy to use a climactic chapter like this one to reflect on that whole development and to point out how things have changed.

(at the same time, I find character development to be one of the most difficult things to do in fanfic, because fanfic is about characters we know and love the way they are, so we don't want them to change drastically... I guess that's why most of my fanfic in any fandom can be summed up with, "Let's see how I can repair the canon mess and help character X feel better about himself." After doing that with Sirius Black for five years, I went on to do it with Battlestar Galactica's Felix Gaeta, I detoured quickly to do it with E.R.'s Ray, and now I'm doing it with Finnick and Haymitch. :p)

[trovia]

It warms my hard cold cynical soul.

*snickers*

Hand holding. I'm fond of hand holding. Hand holding is one of the few kinds of touch that I have no negative associations with at all. I guess I'm projecting on that front. But then, there's no reason why it shouldn't also be trigger free for Finnick and Haymitch. It's non-intrusive, you can just let go at any time, it's not sexual, and then it's a positive action, a choice, and a commitment. I really like the visual of it, never mind it has a bit of a cutesy connotation since it's such a textbook primary school move. ;) It helps that Haymitch and Finnick both in their own way are such manly men.

He'll do things to make Finnick happy, like talk about himself, even if it's excruciating for him. ;)

Hee! He does! He does it again and again. The set of chapters that I found trickiest to write was chapters 9, 10 and 11, which cover the development of Haymitch's return to mental stability and his growing feelings for Finnick in fast motion. However, Finnick isn't noticing Haymitch's feelings for him at all, so almost all that happens behind the scenes. It's like there's an entire second story unraveling that I only got to hint at. Honestly I thought I fucked it up a little and it was too subtle, but then nobody ever complained so apparently I need to let it go? Ah, whatever. There are those three big key moments in those chapters. Chapter 9 has the Victory Tour stop in Twelve, and I wanted to show Haymitch pulling himself together and making an effort to take the new victor under his wing. I wanted to show that he has regained an amount of balance where he can be himself and make an effort in his interactions with other people-- and as Bunita points out to Finnick in that scene, Haymitch being himself means Haymitch looking out for people he perceives as more helpless. He has a big hard, love or not. That's a thing Finnick feels drawn to whether he knows it or not. (Haymitch was also looking out for Finnick in the prologue, before the story got going) Then in chapter 10, the Wintermas chapter, Finnick is feeling really shitty, and Haymitch makes this move that is very monumental for him. When Finnick returned from the Capitol, he found that Haymitch had been over to make him feel welcome - heating up his house, leaving a joke gift of a cake for him to cheer him up, having really gone out of his way. But then, he'd retreated, not waiting for Finnick, just letting him find these things. However Finnick is back and it's clear that he's struggling. So not only does Haymitch go and actively seek Finnick out to offer support ("So is this where we exchange roles and I'm the one who stops the crazy?"), entering his bedroom to do so (Haymitch's reluctance to enter rooms is another image that I've tried to use as a theme), but then he offers insights into his own struggles. Not even because Finnick has asks. But just as an invitation so that Finnick will start talking. When Finnick eventually does ask, Haymitch just delivers. And then, he shares the lake with him, which is, like, going one step further than just talking about a memory, it's actually physically sharing a memory. And it's all to make Finnick feel better. Finnick recognizes this for what it is - a gift. However, that's also one of the biggest steps Haymitch makes in the story. It's partly because he's discovering his feelings for Finnick, but it's also because he has such a big heart, and deep empathy, and tremendous insight into other people's minds. The other way around, that is one reason why mentoring damaged him so much, because he feels so very responsible for the children in his care.

[trovia]

(and it's quite ironic that it's Haymitch, of all people, who puts so much value into the healing powers of communication. In the Wintermas chapter, when he seeks Finnick out to help him, almost the first thing he says is, "Talk to me." His reluctance to talk about his own problems and to explore communication to make himself feel better has a lot to do with his low self-esteem, how he doesn't feel worthy of exploring his own needs and feelings better and being listened to)

So after that comes chapter 11 which includes a number of pay-offs that are all corner stones of both their character development: Finnick finally writes a letter to Mags. Haymitch confronts his demons when they discuss mentoring. And then Finnick realizes that he has feelings for Haymitch while they talk about Lyra Ingram, although he can't quite identify what those feelings are at that point, and at the end of the chapter, there's this one clear hint that says Haymitch has feelings for Finnick, although Finnick doesn't know to read that cue either. And then there was chapter 12 with the kiss and I was just crossing my fingers and praying to the writing gods that the set-up had worked. :p