idk something doesn’t quite sit right with me with the common headcanon that finnick and mags overplayed annie’s condition to help protect her and discourage the capitol from focusing on her. i’m not trying to start any sort of arguments or debate rn just thinking out loud bc like. what if it isn’t being overplayed. can’t we have a very visibly mentally ill woman. annie dissociates and cries in public and laughs at strange moments and physically reacts to her flashbacks by closing her eyes and covering her ears, all in public, all even in front of people she doesn’t know personally, and i think that should just. be ok with the fandom. while it’s a sweet mentality and i can see why people believe it, there shouldn’t have to be some ulterior motive behind any of her actions or how she portrays herself.
also. we as readers learn more about the victors at the same time as katniss, essentially providing us with how victors are seen in the eyes of the audience vs how they really are without the cameras. and in that earlier perspective, there are victors who are visibly affected by their trauma: haymitch and chaff drink, and the victors from d6 use morphling, and annie is “insane.” we learn later that they’re all broken, both bc katniss gets closer to them but also bc they go through even more trauma: finnick is barely holding on in d13 before annie’s rescue, and johanna is angry not just bc that’s her personality but also bc she’s in so much pain, and she eventually turns to morphling.
and just. idk. everyone else is able to keep up a facade that the capitol is willing to put up with if not outright use, and those who can’t keep that facade up become addicted to something that keeps them docile: the morphlings may not be outright usable, but at least they’re too out of it to do anything, and chaff seems to generally be a positive presence (at least in the eyes of the capitol), with or without alcohol. and johanna, while not abusing any substances until d13, (eventually) constructed a coping mechanism that was deemed palatable: with her family gone, she became angrier and more aggressive, both bc she had nothing to lose but also as a reaction to her trauma, and in the audience’s eyes anything she says or does can be brushed off as “oh that’s just angry johanna, she used to be such a crybaby but she sure fooled us, she’s so tough and feisty!” it’s all just a part of her shtick to them.
and even wiress, who has her peculiarities and is later broken further by the blood rain, is “useful” and invents in her spare time. hell, even haymitch manages it: sure, he tends to be very aggressive and grumpy, but that’s not what the audience sees. to them, he’s comedic. he’s the bumbling fool who arrives late to the reaping, yells some drunken stuff about how he likes the new tribute, messes with the escort, then falls off the stage. caesar even brings it up during katniss’s interview, and when the cameras pan to haymitch he goodnaturedly waves it away then turns the attention back to katniss
the only one we know of who can’t manage to reign in their symptoms in a way that the capitol can use to their advantage is annie. she’s also the only one aside from maybe wiress who we see really display the mental impacts in a way that is commonly thought of as “insane.” and i don’t think that has to be a problem, at least to fans.
