#50x74

📢📢📢 FINNICK’S ANNIE??? WHAT ABOUT ANNIE’S FINNICK??? 📢📢📢

in all sincerity that’s the crux of it to me. that’s the fucking crux of it right there. everyone needs to move past Annie’s stated mental health issues and look at the canon evidence in front of you. one of them is so codependent on the other that the other person being out of reach means that they immediately threaten suicide. one of them is so fixated on the other that they are completely unable to function when the other person is in danger, to the point of spending most of the day sedated out of necessity. one of them is so clingy that they will not physically let go of the other person once they are back within reach. and guess who that’s not!!!!! It’s not Annie!!!

Annie is by Katniss’s own admission, “less mad than unstable” (mj, 225). Katniss, who has almost certainly never met anyone like Annie before, and who is operating entirely off of stereotypes, preconceived notions, and Capitol propaganda, realizes wait. Annie’s maybe not as crazy as everyone says she is. from one meeting with her. and then we see that newly widowed newly pregnant max 23 year old Annie is talking, coherent, and making incredibly difficult decisions by herself AND being as manipulative as she can while she does that, throwing Finnick’s name behind her decision to give it more weight and give herself credibility that she knows she otherwise doesn’t have.

I’m not saying that Finnick’s not smart or calculating, because even in his worst moments he is, but what he is not is functional when Annie’s not there. he could never in a million years take her place at the end of mj if their roles were reversed. he loves her and she’s important to him but additionally, because of all that trauma, he has wrapped up a good chunk of his sense of self and his entire feeling of safety in her. when she is not safe, his entire world fully and completely shatters. she has to be safe, because if she is not, then neither is he. his entire ability for emotional regulation rests on her continued presence. that is an incredibly heavy burden for him to put on her (even though he is not emotionally mature enough to control that) and there is absolutely no way that doesn’t wreak absolute havoc on their relationship.

i think it's particularly evident when he returns from the rehabilitation facility and immediately shits on her acting ability in mockingjay. you just scraped past death and somehow have time to harp on the fact that the same kid whose trust you subsequently lost cannot do something that is clearly out of her ability? i think haymitch has this sort of mindset due to his own trauma and his premature aging which then determines this ideology that he places onto her.

the idea that because katniss has grown up so fast, she is able to make herself amicable to adult situations, which is often not true of her! it's why i don't like people woobifying haymitch, and why i hate SOTR for doing it vehemently. haymitch is an asshole. he is as much of a shitty person due to trauma & combined age as he is a good person. and we see the assholeisms first. his cruelty and quick jump to immediate shaming is something that stunts him considerably. there is immaturity in his inability to face things with the seriousness it deserves, rather than being cynical! it shows up in their relationship all the time! (see my ceo moment in real time)

ABSOLUTELY and I think crucially (bc I want to go on the record saying this) Haymitch being an asshole is a) a fundamental part of his character and b) doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have the capacity to be a good person. both of those things can and do coexist. and we have to remember as well that Haymitch lost his whole family at 16! he’s relating to Katniss in a way that makes sense for him. he also was adultified as a teenager because there was literally no one else to care for him. that experience is what he knows and the shared commonalities there do bring him and Katniss together, but he doesn’t know how to be a healthy adult for her, at all. his support of her is firmly conditional and he views her as a peer and places borderline unachievable expectations on her, and then is an asshole when she can’t meet them (as you said).

This is the only thing that feels right to her, as awful as it is.

did you read sepulcher. I can’t remember. anyway I got this and said ooh reverse pov of That One Scene. bon appetite everyone

This is the only thing that feels right to her, as awful as it is.

Annie’s a mother. She’s a widow. She’s supposed to be grieving, she’s supposed to be strong but not strong enough to abrade, still delicate and elegant and poised, the face of all the dead victors from Four, the face of the Odair legacy, and above all, take the yawning cavern of loss gracefully.

Instead, she’s getting fucked on her husband’s empty grave by his best friend in the dead of night, hard enough to bleed, and when the thought surfaces, she welcomes it.

this got so so fucking long. I wrote this instead of the essay. kill me

the mechanics...the machinations...beloved AO3 user Jajajaja left a brief comment that has had me thinking about this even more

the dichotomy present here between Eric vs Finnick is very simple. Eric is secure in himself, and Finnick is not. obviously there's reasons for this, but Eric (who at this point is married with three children and a fourth on the way – a fun fact I like to throw in whenever I can because I think it slaps) is so secure in himself, his marriage, his sexuality, and mostly, his close friendship with Annie, that he enthusiastically agrees to fuck her while her boyfriend watches, because he is so confident and settled that his approach to this? he and Annie always have a good time together, it'll be a neat new experience, he's really thrilled about the chance to needle Finnick as well, everyone wins.

yeah…yeah. I have read work by incredibly talented writers that I loved and had to dnf because of the sheer offensiveness of their work, born not out of anything they’d done that was actively malicious but just coming from complete ignorance around a complex issue such as mental health issues or addiction or sex trafficking. this is not just fanfic btw, published books are even more guilty of this and I am far less forgiving of a published work because so many eyes were on it pre publication than a fanfic. but I can firmly attest to you that if I did not commit to researching the things I portray and constantly learning and growing as a person and a writer, I could be one of those authors. we all can be.

you can always do whatever you want creatively and I will always support that but you cannot ever escape people’s judgments and decisions around your art, and if you do not do research about these topics a) I will most likely see it in the writing. and b) I will then stop reading it. now I am neither that well known nor frankly all that popular, but I am also not the only person who thinks like this. people are obsessed with getting readers (fair!) and the way to get readers in my opinion is to write from the heart and write with knowledge. you don’t have to be perfect but you also I do think need to try a little. if you want to write a story about sex trafficking, go read some survivor testimonials about sex trafficking. if you want to write a story about addiction, go on Reddit and read people’s addiction stories there. there’s lots of resource lists that educate about both of those issues. there’s lots of people willing to educate. the internet is free. there are so many tools at your fingertips!

20. What is something you wish more people noticed about this fic?

so definitely for this one its existence. it’s far and away some of my best smut. obviously it’s beyond unhinged, totally makes sense it gets passed over, but for those who do read it, I think the quality of the work really makes it worthwhile.

outside of that, I think there’s a very, very palpable tension between Finnick and Annie that’s not sexual tension or romantic tension, but the tension of their relationship slowly crumbling and disintegrating. beloved guest commenter yumyum absolutely nailed it when they noted that Annie’s desire in this fic is simply to be close to Finnick. he’s completely closed off to her, and their reality has become so warped that when he allows her that closeness, she is so fully overwhelmed by it that she ignores the reality of it being an incredibly violent and damaging intimacy that physically and emotionally harms both of them. in that verse, I don’t think their relationship lasts. it’s gotten too twisted.