3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year
I HAVE LOTS OF THESE so this is less of the....overall 2017 winner and more ‘the first thing ii found when i went to my ao3 page’
but it’s the opening scene of the haymitch/katniss fic i wrote
Haymitch has hated himself for so long now that when he figures out the extent of his feelings for Katniss Everdeen, it’s just sort of another day.
He’s not a child. His heart doesn’t skip a beat. One of the geese attacks him when he goes out to feed them around midday, and the rasp of her laughter skates over the back of his neck. It’s four or five years since the debacle that was her Games and she’s laughed before, but it’s rare enough to have him jerk his head over to her in surprise.
She’s dressed the same as always, now that she bothers to get up and dressed at all. Like she’s going hunting. Like she’s ready to kill.
“You deserved that,” she calls to him. “They’re hungry.”
The echo of her laughter hangs in the air. It’s not fondness on her face as she regards him, but something like it.
“You’re more than welcome to take care of them if you’re that worried,” he calls back, snorting as she gives him a rude gesture in return.
Fuck, he thinks idly, and goes back to bed.
i love this because it never expressly has him going oh im definitely in love with her, but that’s the impression you come away with anyway.
it also makes no demands on katniss to reciprocate. the writing is very clear - this is a haymitch experience, and haymitch himself considers it a problem. but also, by the way he doesn’t....freak out and just sort of cusses and goes back to sleep, you know it’s not a problem he’s going to do something about.
i’m very into the idea of self-loathing characters who are just like ‘well i guess that happened lmao’. haymitch hates himself enough that he doesn’t think he deserves to even experience love, let alone have it reciprocated, and there’s no sense of anticipation from him that it will ever, ever come to anything.
i guess that’s sort of...opposite foreshadowing?? the fact that he’s so passive about the idea of having a romance with this woman is what sets up the fic to end in that romance, in the same quiet and unexplosive fashion as the fic starts off.
i also think that i managed to establish a scene and a relationship and a setting in a pretty short amount of time - katniss is older now, it took her a while to be able to laugh again, the two of them have a close relationship and a sense of camaraderie, katniss is back to some kind of semblance of the life she once had, haymitch is happy enough with the two of them pottering along together, he still thinks in terms of death even thirty years since his games.
NERP NERP I LOVE BREAKING DOWN MY OWN WRITING SRY
