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]

I'd be interested to know what Caramel and Beetee thought of Haymitch deciding to go the insanely noble route, and what they thought of Finnick going to his rescue, so to speak. Particularly Caramel, since he basically predicted that Haymitch was going to do something like this in the first place. He definitely must have been banging his head against the wall when Haymitch came to him with his scheme

[trovia]

On Beetee and Caramel - see above. I can't picture them really getting between Haymitch and his crazy plan because they never got between Haymitch and the booze, either. I figure that's just the configuration of their friendship - a strong sense of "live and let live." But they'd rather Haymitch doesn't get hurt. So they're all for Finnick doing something to stop him

[trovia]

And as always, I'm much looking forward to your other thoughts. :)

Here, have a snippet from today's shockingly fluffy draft:

Haymitch cleared his voice. “I kind of do want to. Want you to fuck me, I mean. I’ve never really… I’ve done it in the Capitol, I mean, they were all about that kind of sick stuff.” It was as if he’d slipped into the mindframe of his sixteen-year-old self for that one sentence, sixteen and a district bumpkin who didn’t really know how that gay stuff worked, kind of excited about the confirmations he got from the likes of Beetee while a part of him wanted to shove all those things his Capitol clients did to him into a box and label it perverts. It showed how upset a part of him got talking about it. Finnick kept playing with his chest hair, moving his head a bit to press a kiss against the patch of skin he touched. “But I kept wondering about it. What it would feel like, if it’s done right. I knew that Beetee liked it, kind of hard to overlook, and you’re liking it too. A part of me… I kind of want to take it

[roguedemon]

I spent too much time fooling around with that personality meme on Tumblr today, leaving me with no time to comment on this lovely bit (this is an obvious sign that I should never try to be social ;)). But I just wanted to say that it is just wonderful and it is lovely that Haymitch is finally able to open up to this extent. I like the whole idea of Haymitch figuring out how he wants to reclaim things that have been stolen from him, deciding that he can actually express his own sexual desires and see if he can get them met. And he really does need someone like Finnick who is warm and giving for this to work. You make me want to mentally cuddle them and cheer them on at the same time

[roguedemon]

Hey -- I was sorry to see on tumblr that you are having such a shitty day. Or we're having such a shitty day, since it's over now. I was re-reading everything trying to come up with some coherent commentary. So, one theme I came up with is the idea of rules and we start out in one place, go through a whole presentation of the situation, the emotions and technical issues (in terms of what victors and district citizens are allowed versus the Capitol) involved, and end up with an idea of the rules and possibilities within them that wasn't present in the story before. In the beginning, Finnick is here:

There couldn’t be a rule change. Panem didn’t change. Snow had everything under perfect control. Nothing in the districts and the Capitol and the victors’ lives would ever change, and changing the rules of the Capitol was just as ludicrous as breaking them. Twelve-year-old Rue might have been allowed to. But that had been because she’d been twelve, and because she’d been as good as dead already. He's just plain terrified, and he's running

[trovia]

Games are such a fantastic metaphor. ;) I don't know if you've ever read up on Game theory? There are any number of Game theories - the most famous one the mathematical / economy one by Nash, I think, where they did the "A Beautiful Mind" movie. I learned Wittgenstein's Game theory on language in college, which is all about the idea that we should look at language and communication as a game, there are rules, you get penalized if you don't follow the rules. It's a powerful metaphor, is what I'm meaning to say, and you can learn to understand so many things by looking at them through that lens. So I was really excited and fascinated to read your analysis here

[trovia]

Since I'm unable to shut up today apparently

[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

[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

[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

[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

[roguedemon]

He thought of Haymitch leaving a bottle of booze in front of Chaff’s door, of how he himself had threatened the same man a year back that he’d do terrible things to him, expose him as an addict and exploit him as a cripple, because he’d so much needed Haymitch to be safe. He thought of Games school in Twelve. He thought of promises he’d made to Gale Hawthorne, of how he’d try everything to get Katniss home. He thought of Annie Cresta’s Games and of swimming and of how the one choice you had left if you battled it out with the ocean was returning back to the shore.

Finnick pressed his lips together.

“I want for us to be safe,” he said. I love how you show the steps he goes through in order to make this decision -- it makes the cognitive psychologist in me so happy. You showed him reasoning and solving the problem! Yay! You showed how he got from A: stuck within the Captiol's rules to B: deciding to step off the playing field in a way he never would have considered in the beginning. But at the same time, he's still being proactive.

[trovia]

Ahh, the swimming metaphor. Fun fact about the swimming metaphor: I've always alluded to it, even in MOTR, when Finnick uses breathing techniques learned from swimming to call himself down. (this is because I was writing MOTR while I was in burnout rehab, where they were a little obsessed with breathing techniques :p) When I outlined SP, I had this elaborate swimming metaphor in mind a little bit. (the idea that handling the Capitol media is like swimming in an ocean - you can't change either the forces of the media or the ocean, but you can work them) So I was writing SP, I was six chapters in, six chapters away from bringing up the swimming metaphor for the first time in a big way, and I wanted to start posting but I didn't have a title for the story. I was toying with a number of possible titles, all of which I've forgotten at this time. I had "Spin Control" but I wasn't perfectly happy with it. I knew that choosing the title "Spin Control" meant that I would have to commit to the swimming metaphor, which I hadn't even used yet.

[roguedemon]

Man, it is getting late and I am so tired - today did not turn out the way I wanted it to at ALL. I wanted to have the time to sit down and finish my comments for this chapter. You've touched on a ton of topics I that are right up my alley in the comments above and I want to talk about them at length, and I want to respond to your last email but I am determined to get through this first. Because this whole scene just made me so, so happy. I've re-reread it a lot to cheer myself up since you posted it. You really made everything pay off here, you fit all the pieces together and everything made sense. I noticed that you specifically avoided the word "love" until now and I knew that was significant. It was a big deal for Finnick to say it and an even bigger deal for Haymitch to hear it and return it, I think.

I was looking over the text and I pretty much would have to quote everything from here:

“We deserve to get things,” he said. “You deserve getting the things you want. You don’t have to risk us. You don’t have to. You don’t owe

[trovia]

Phew! I just sent off the last chapter to beta. Finally. It's like there's a weight off my chest though. It was taking so long that it started to get stressful.

Yeah, I had the "love" thing in the outline and I occasionally was tempted to write a confession of love in previous scenes, but always stopped myself. It fit too well here. Generally I think the whole "I love you" trope is overrated, but it was a nice point to make here in the scene. I still wanted it to be a part of the flow of conversation, though, a logical thing to bring up rather than highlighting it in some way and making it a thing that was said just because.