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

[seta_suzume]

Hey, nice to see them again! ...Which I sort of feel like is a weird thing to say, all things considered, but I always enjoy the updates.

Beetee had quite a wild-sounding past, huh? :)

...and a tangent of interest to me:

"of how everybody had thought District Eight would turn into a powerhouse in the early days of the Games" <- this is an interesting tidbit!

I know you had the first victor from Eight too, which also interests me- just what you see the first victor and her circumstances as being like in general...

[trovia]

Definitely nice to see you comment again, too. ;) :)

Beetee ... hah, Beetee is not actually my Beetee, I must admit. He's the young adult Beetee written by millarific in her Haymitch Victory Tour fic and he's a bit of a younger version of Tony Stark / Iron Man. I betaed that fic, and I was so fascinated by the idea that he might have been such a different person but that he just changed over time, because of the experience of mentoring for so long. I mean, sometimes people just do and I enjoyed getting to point out those differences in my fic. :) It gave Haymitch a bit of backstory and it was just really amusing to me

[seta_suzume]

^_^

Yeah, I thought you'd mentioned there was some influence at least from Millari there. It's definitely true that he could've changed and I think it's pretty amusing too.

That seems like plenty of information to me! That's very interesting. Thanks for telling me about it! I was writing a bit about Woof and his relationship with my first victor from Eight recently so I guess I have a lot of Eight in-the-old-days(?) thoughts swirling around in my head.

[trovia]

Oh, interesting. I really need to get around to read your fic.

[roguedemon]

Gah, I can't believe that on the one day I forget to check LJ you give us an update! I'll have to check back in with comments tomorrow because I just have to sleep. This chapter...they are both really getting into the nitty-gritty of it now, confronting all the stuff they have buried. I love how you bookended the chapter with Finnick's most closely-hidden demon, progressing from absolute meltdown to the vague idea that he might be able to talk about it....As for the next chapter, I'll be over here under the table.

Awesome stuff! Well worth the wait, as always.

[trovia]

Well, you know I'll always look forward to your comments, but take your time. :)

I'll be over here, working on Finnick talking about it, trying to not reach into the fic and shake him and ask him to please start listening to himself.

[roguedemon]

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, eyes on the sugar pot so that he wouldn’t have to look at Haymitch.

He still remained aware of him in the corner of his eye though, of the way Haymitch was hardening his jaw in hesitation. He looked a little helpless, and it tore at Finnick.

“Yeah, you do,” Haymitch said. “I mean, sure, I don’t know where exactly this is coming from right now. I don’t know what’s different about this Wintermas. But this is getting out of hand. You can’t start doing that once a year, or one day, you won’t be able to stop anymore.” I wanted to comment and meta on this part a little. I love how Haymitch brings this up even though he's having a hard time figuring out how to do it -- it's a great portrayal of the way people struggle when they see someone they love engaging in self-destructive behavior. It's a fine line between helping and coming on so strong you have the opposite effect. What really struck me is that Haymitch really knows what he's talking about when he says that one day Finnick won't

[trovia]

Your comments will always just make me happy.

I agree on so many things you said, I could basically just nod along.

it's a great portrayal of the way people struggle when they see someone they love engaging in self-destructive behavior.

Hell yeah. I wrote another fic in another fandom once where character A discovered that character B was planning suicide, and all he could come up with was a falsely casual, "So how's readjustment (to losing a leg) going?" Haymitch is doing comparatively well. ;) He doesn't have the perfect solution at hand either, so he makes this careful suggestion here that could break the circle. But he doesn't know enough and he's not sure if it would work like that.

I see it as having three parts: the issues causing the painful feelings, the feelings themselves (anxiety, depression, whatever), and the behaviors you use to self-medicate those feelings.Yeah, and the bad feelings about self-medicating if you know that you shouldn't be doing it like that, which starts everything all over again

[roguedemon]

He sounded hesitant and concerned when he said, “So how about… how about if three spoonfuls of sugar is okay and four isn’t anymore, you stick with three and don’t run yourself into the ground the next day. That alright?”

“Okay,” Finnick agreed in a quiet voice, hanging his head and admitting defeat.

Haymitch paused.

“You know that if there’s anything you need to get out, anything you need to talk about…”

“Okay,” Finnick whispered and Haymitch reached out, muttering, “C’mere” with a lost sigh and drawing him close, hand cupping the back of his neck. “You know you’re not doing anything wrong, right? That’s not what I’m saying.”

Finnick buried his face in the crook of Haymitch’s neck. I loved this part, my heart grew three sizes again ( and yes, that's a Grinch reference. ;)). Just the way Haymitch tells him that he isn't doing anything wrong, implicitly saying that he emphasizes with the struggle going on in Finnick's head -- that's so important. And the way he comforts him, which leads Finnick to realize that it feels good, and

[trovia]

I ended up commenting on the Ralda thing above, for some reason, so the rest here:

The moment when Haymitch says to Finnick that he isn't doing anything wrong was so important to me. It would be so very easy for Finnick to use this whole eating issue as a basis for beating himself up all over again, and while Haymitch still isn't privy to a lot of issues Finnick has, at this point, he already knows that Finnick tends to do that. I just love him to pieces for having the ability to say that.

I see Finnick's problems as developing very gradually, and really jumping to a whole new level when he came to 12. He's feeling more overwhelmed than ever, he's isolated, he's in unfamiliar surroundings...and the food tastes all wrong. As you point out during the fic, he's used to lighter, spicier foods and then he ends up stuck eating meat and potatoes instead of fish and rice (for instance). Yes, to everything you said here. I've occasionally talked to people who wrote in their comments that they'd never considered Finnick might have an eating

[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

[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