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

[seta_suzume]

Woah, that was intense and powerful- the whole long scene with Finnick going to find Haymitch and then talking him out of the meeting with Seneca...!

Anyway, I loved it! (and I'm not surprised at all that this would've taken a long time... (though when I finished writing Your Own Kind I did think 'hey, I sped up and finished my long fic before Trovia!' which I hadn't expected months ago)) I'm looking forward to the final installment.

(poor Thresh though)

[trovia]

Thank you! Yeah, it was hard to write. I was also fearing negative feedback. ;)

Also yay for your making progress with the fic!

[seta_suzume]

You're welcome! Oh, and I think at this point I can safely say "yay for Haymitch not dying," which I was kind of scared for, ha ha.

(I was curious what other people would say myself- I always wait a day or two with this fic and then go read the comments on the AO3 and your responses to them along with the other comments here)

Ha ha, thank you! For a while it was really strange being done after working on it for so long, but then it's just "You have other stuff on hold! Get back to work, Suzume!"

[roguedemon]

I LOVE YOU AND YOUR AWESOME BRAIN. Seriously, I have read this through a few times and I'm honestly kind of speechless. I'm not shocked at how it went down because I was aware of the warnings and I knew Caramel's advice would come into play here. But actually reading the words is a whole other thing

[trovia]

Like always, you were one of the people whose comments I was looking forward to with the most excitement. :D Thank you, also as always

[roguedemon]

But then of course he decides against doing that because he recognizes he has a choice to put his happiness first, and that realization lowers the impact of that guilt too. Because it's not really catharsis, it's just lack of guilt and self-flagellation. I was thinking about the whole idea of catharsis in conjunction with this, as in, why was one of the first words that popped into my head re: this scene "catharsis"? I went and looked up the definition of catharsis and came up with "Any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration." I think that definitely describes this scene. The neat thing that you can trace the thought processes that lead to Finnick's emotional breakthrough, which lead to him being able to make the choice to ask Haymitch to stay with him, to tell him that yes, he is loved and he deserves to be happy, which leads to Haymitch's emotional breakthrough. I think of it as catharsis because in both cases they were carrying this heavy burden of guilt and shame that they had to repress to some extent

[trovia]

To get even more theoretical here, your musings on catharsis are striking to me right now because another comment I wrote over at AO3 just made me think that the resolution of this story fits the requirements of classical tragedy - Finnick and Haymitch do the logical, healthy, happy-making thing without a way of knowing that it's leading down a path that's terrible for Panem overall. Catharsis and tragedy, in literature, go hand in hand - the theory being that the reason we even like reading tragedy is the sense of catharsis that it gives us. Although the cathartic effect here is prompted by Finnick and Haymitch's in-story sense of relief more than by the knowledge that they just made a bad choice for the bigger context. So I guess it's not your typical tragedy after all. Shame, that would have been cool

[roguedemon]

I loved what you said about Thresh via Tumblr, about showing that the unlikely thing was always statistically possible. I thought that you would have to end the games in a way that wasn't totally devastating for 12, because I figured that Finnick wouldn't be able to continue games school if you didn't. I do love the whole idea of Finnick being a kind of community organizer -- it's just in this community, that needs to involve teaching children how they might survive a death match. And I do think that it's something Finnick needs because he will always want to feel like he's doing something and he genuinely wants to help. Even if these children never get reaped, games school is good because it provides some food (which could actually keep some of these kids alive longer), something constructive to do after school, a feeling of empowerment because they are learning new skills, and for some of them, a safer place to hang out than their homes. So having Katniss and Peeta do so well and Katniss taking out both Twos before sponsor-free

[trovia]

That's so interesting what you're saying about Thresh's victory being hopeful for Twelve, because it's so true, yet I've never thought about it that consciously. I decided very early on that Thresh should live just because I thought that would be pretty awesome and also the next best thing to a Twelve victory. And it makes so much more sense than a victory by Rue, which I have read more often

[roguedemon]

Hey -- I've been meaning to sit down and do more commentary, go over favorite lines, things like that. I kept getting distracted by Tumblr, and then this week I just avoided all social media altogether because I was having the worst PMS ever. Seriously, once you're well past forty it's all downhill from there. I get the kind of PMS that lasts almost a week a lot more often. How are you? I hope your health is holding up passably well. (Well, I hope you're fantastic, but I'm always cautious about saying that because I often get frustrated when people I don't know well say things that indicate that they expect my health to end up all better. They mean well, but

[trovia]

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

[roguedemon]

Been meaning to continue this, I have a few minutes

[roguedemon]

The grave look he gave Finnick had no resemblance to the iconic absentminded scientist that the Capitol’s celebrity news reporter liked to gently mock, but otherwise was ignored. This, Finnick realized with startled recognition, was the man who’d befriended Haymitch, because simple people bored him too much. This was the man who had won his Games by making even water and lightning into a weapon, possibly the most dangerous of victors in that way. I really loved the glimpse we got of the real Beetee here, I'm sure you're not surprised. It was interesting to see Finnick realize that Beetee's facade of the harmless eccentric genius is just that -- Finnick's never really met Beetee before now, in a way. And of course that made Finnick much more likely to be shocked when Haymitch told him what Beetee used to be like. :) This makes me wonder even more what these guys are really like when they're hanging out together. It also makes me wonder how many victors make the mistake of thinking that Finnick is really a shallow flirt or, well, that

[trovia]

Yeah, I imagine Beetee is a very complex person who changed a lot through the years on top of everything. I'm writing him with millari's younger version in mind, and she and I talked a lot about how he changed rather drastically when he acted as mentor to Wiress. I find him very fascinating. It surprises me a little, honestly, because frankly I think he's not much more than a stereotype in the books, and a badly written one at that, although he has so much interesting potential. I don't know where the idea of Beetee being socially inept comes from, though. Just look at the easy rapport he has with Wiress both in the books and the movies, but especially in the movies, and like you said the observations he makes about Finnick. Never mind that he immediately draws Kat in. Maybe that's the problem - Kat is drawn to the weird and useless allies and maybe that's why people assume that there must be something wrong with Beetee. He's objectively an awesome ally