@sadcoms | sadcoms | Lucy
What's your THG origin story?
Like many people, it was rapidly growing in popularity while I was at school, so it got recommended to me by several friends. I remember staying up late on a Friday night so I could finish the first book in one sitting, thereby being traumatised by Cato's death at some ungodly hour. The rest of the books followed pretty quickly. Even back then, I was always obsessed with Haymitch, and managed to annoy all of my friends when I declared him and his unnamed girlfriend as my OTP instead of one of the ships involved in the core love triangle.
What are your favorite things about the series?
How deftly the trilogy draws on a mix of history, the entertainment industry, and politics, while still having enough originality and fantasy to make the world feel unique and compelling. It has an ideal amount of ambiguity as well thanks to Katniss' realistically limited narration, so you can still play around with the world based on which aspects of it and its real life inspirations interest you most, whether that be exploring the celebrity culture the victors face or trying to reference Plutarch's Lives as much as possible (guilty). These strengths extend to the characters, where even the less fleshed out ones tend to still feel grounded within the world, so it feels like they could genuinely exist and aren't just there to represent a political view. It's my favourite kind of writing where there's a lot of weight to short, simple lines ("So it's starting again? Like before?") that can really get the gears in one's head turning. Each character has a lot of strengths and a lot of flaws to play with in a world where it's not always clear which one is which, or what starts as one might turn into another, and I appreciate seeing that kind of nuance. At its best, it's a very intentional and thoughtful series, and even its weaker points tend to provide opportunities for meta and fanfic as well.
What’s something about the series that’s stayed with you or become more meaningful to you over time?
I have a better appreciation for how the trilogy portrays abuse and its impact on the characters and their mental health now. Back when I first read it, I was less interested in that link between systemic and individual exploitation, and more interested in having well-paced excitement. All of these characters are incredibly damaged and, being older than a lot of them now, the tragedy of it all has properly hit me. Additionally, I'm much more aware of my own place within a corrupt and violent political system these days, so the series provides a lens through which I can analyse the world and my own beliefs. Naturally, I can relate to a lot of the grief, anger, and helplessness the characters struggle with more than I did initially. I think that mix of personal and political also invites a very broad range of interpretations based on people's lived experiences, so I love when someone else's idea can prompt some self-reflection or even just give me the chance to discover something new to research. I remember reading a lot of THG meta on tumblr in 2012 when the movies came out, so it's fitting I'm still here going through analyses and learning things.
What's something you want the fandom to know about you?
I'm trying to be better about properly getting involved in fandom and I still feel pretty new, but I'm always happy to chat to people, so feel free to slide into my inbox/DMs if you want to. Also, please know that I refrained from answering the last two questions with some variation of "Haymitch" despite it being undeniably true.
When did you begin creating? What inspired you to begin?
My first two Hunger Games fics were originally published in 2012 on ffnet, and while I don't exactly think either of them have held up very well, it's interesting to see that my focus on Haymitch and failed rebellions has persisted in the intervening years. In fact, I pretty much picked up right where I left off, still filling in the "gaps" I wanted to see in the trilogy. This time around, what inspired me was, bluntly, the dissatisfaction I felt after reading the first two chapters of Sunrise on the Reaping. I decided to revisit the trilogy and had barely even started the first book before I'd started writing. Turns out I remembered a lot more of it than I thought I did.
What is your favorite thing to depict in your work?
Any kind of political power play between Haymitch and Plutarch. I think almost all of my fics allude to some kind of animosity between them, if they don't outright show it, and my one and only meta post is a full on explanation for why I treat Haymitch's forced sobriety in District 13 as a murder attempt, which likely would have been initiated by Coin but co-signed by Plutarch. I think his connection with Plutarch is very central to Haymitch's character by the time of the trilogy, and that bleeds into his function in the rebellion and his general worldview. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the "In books" / "In history books" exchange in MJ. For me, their relationship represents the political crux of the series, where it's connected to just war theory without being an exact copy of the Gale-Peeta spectrum exploration or even the Coin-Snow parallel. From a writing-specific perspective, everything those two characters say has a double meaning, and there's this grudging level of respect that's served side by side with a deep mistrust and plain pragmatism, which makes it fun to portray. They're very (darkly) humorous characters in the books too, albeit in different ways, which I try to incorporate as well.
What’s your personal favorite of your works?
It fluctuates a lot - one day I'll think something is great and the next I'll be deeply embarrassed by it. For the sake of variety I'll say ashes, which was difficult to write, required a surprising amount of writer's block-induced research, and is one I'm still not entirely happy with (though really that's all of them), but nevertheless captured a lot of what I wanted post-war Haymitch to be. Mainly, an ongoing pain in Plutarch's arse. I've grown surprisingly fond of a game of theseus as well.
If you could recommend just one, which would it be?
fuse is probably the best distillation of my core ideas, how I write Haymitch, and his relationship with the main series cast. It's one I'm still very proud of and pleased to have put out.
What are the main characteristics of your favorite canon characters you always try to maintain in your stories?
Haymitch's cleverness and skepticism, his rebelliousness, the uniqueness of his way of thinking, his deception. Plutarch's cunning and his callousness and ambition. Katniss' complexity, passion, strength, and the various contradictions and contrasts of her relationship with Haymitch, though I'm usually trying to make sense of that myself. Cinna's recklessness and accompanying youthfulness, and where that maybe starts to falter or impact others.
Tell us about an OC of yours. What inspired them and what purpose do they serve in your works?
Marti appears in volcanic and is my attempt at portraying the first District 12 victor. Before I realised that fic was going to be 29k words long, she started off as a very thinly sketched and utilitarian character in the background, but by the time I'd finished writing it I was genuinely intrigued by her and her relationship with Haymitch. She was written to essentially be a "normal" victor, in the sense that she's not particularly rebellious or virtuous or even memorable, which was a direct response to canon arguing that all four District 12 victors are special (and, apparently, really into karaoke in some way). It's not mentioned in the fic, but she's from the merchant class and very much enjoys being a victor, or at least tries to, because of the wealth and class mobility it's granted her. She's a foil for Haymitch and an example of the kind of mentor he doesn't want to be, and they have an actively hostile and antagonistic relationship, though in many ways she's more pitiful than sinister. At the same time, I wanted to show that he starts to have more sympathy for and understanding of her as the years wear on and his own failures mount up, which is far more generous than she would ever have been towards him. I'd like to explore her complicity in the Games and its systems of exploitation more, especially as that feels somewhat under-explored when it comes to non-Career victors.
Tell us about your favorite relationship (of any kind) in the series. Why is it your favorite?
Haymitch and Katniss are, for me, the most important and central relationship in the series. Obviously, Prim is the catalyst for the whole series and its driving force, and the Everlark romance is pivotal to the plot and the just war theory messaging. But the communication between Katniss and Haymitch is critical to the construction of each book, from Katniss understanding Haymitch's messages via the sponsorship gifts in the first book and his warning about the Capitol at the end, to "remember who the enemy is", and ultimately, "I'm with the Mockingjay". They're incredibly influential on each other and the loudest voices in each other's heads, even without a head shackle. I tend to compare their relationship to two characters in the film Snowpiercer: everyone else is looking towards the front of the train, arguably even Peeta, but Katniss and Haymitch are the ones looking out the windows, seeing the world outside, observing how it's changing (or how it's not). It goes beyond recognising the Capitol for what it is and instead identifies the broader system of power, one that ultimately ends up replicated by Coin and Plutarch to some extent. Haymitch knows and Katniss learns that you need to do more than just replacing the figurehead at the top. It's why I always categorise them as still being threats at the end of the series, enough that they end up exiled from the Capitol.
Anyone you would like to shout out in the fandom?
I'm very thankful for anyone who's read my fics and even happier if they found me here on tumblr, but a special thank you to Gabbie (@districtunrest) for putting up with my rambling, catching me up on what I've missed in fandom over the intervening decade, and recc'ing me so many good fics (and Kentucky Route Zero, and Old Gods of Appalachia, and finally prompting me to read the Odyssey properly as an adult so I could make more informed Haymitch comparisons). I also have to mention @tw0jamie for suffering through many sleep deprivation-induced rants and half-formed ponderings. A lot of my fics wouldn't exist without her riffing on my impromptu, "Wait, what if?" light bulb moments, not to mention her willingness to read my rough drafts and give me feedback.