kawuli | Christmas offer

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I am super busy with work again, in the Netherlands after my wonderful-but-busy vacation in North America. So my fic output is basically nonexistent because I don't have the brainpower for planning.

However, Christmas is coming, despite the fact that it is currently 12 degrees CELSIUS and drizzly (low 50s F). Tis the season for giving, so if there's a fic you want (things on my mind lately include D9 in the war, the Giant Killer Octopus thing, postwar divergence as always, and, randomly, Johanna Mason), or a question you'd like me to ramble about (cephalopods and their amazingness, District 9 in the Dark Days, what the hell I actually do all day with this "work" stuff, etc etc etc) post in the comments and I will attempt to answer.

Also, the new Star Wars is wonderful and you should all see it.

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OK, dropping the "Octopus shenanigans" into the fic-hopper to see what comes out.

Meanwhile, some rambling thoughts on Johanna Mason because why not crush your soul on a Saturday morning?

Johanna has always been one of those characters I like a lot but can't really figure out. And then as I was trying to sleep the other night I was randomly thinking about this and now I sort of have an idea...which includes descriptions of forced prostitution, drug use and other shitty coping mechanisms because UGH PANEM so fair warning.

Johanna's games were "exciting" enough for a specific type of scumbag that she would probably have been fairly attractive. And I like the idea (which I got from

deathmallow) that the weakling thing at least started off as her actual reaction--where I take it after that is that she was acutely embarrassed by that reaction, because great, fucking everyone in Panem saw her sobbing on television. And then her mentor (who was a not-Blight 7 Victor) said "hey, kid, we can use that," once he realized she was actually a sharp, tough, pissed off kid, who sucks at hiding her emotions when she's ambushed.

And she wins, and at the end of her Tour she gets told about what happens to good-looking Victors who are exciting enough to be interesting, and that she's not allowed to say no. And she tries, she really does, but she can't be submissive enough and when she gets told to play the dominatrix she takes it way too far.

And eventually takes it so much too far that there's a "mysterious" fire that takes out her family, and she's told she clearly can't hack it so they're not going to send her any more clients. Which is a relief for about five seconds until the voice in her head starts up with "you couldn't even do that right, and you got your family killed because of it." Which is a hell of a mindfuck.

So Johanna adopts this "Yeah, I'm a complete fuckup. So what?" attitude. Which is believable unless you know her well, which basically no one does. Blight is near enough to her in age that he's a drinking buddy and occasional drunken-confession receiver, but that is about as close as it gets.

In the Capitol, she figures out that it can be "fun," in a soul crushingly horrible kind of way, to show off as the hot Victor folks in the Capitol can't just buy. So she'll go out to clubs, get out of her mind on whatever's around, have rough half-public sex or take someone home to fuck, kick him out when she's done. Because it's the only kind of fun she knows how to have anymore, and she's going to have as much of it as possible.

She's a little less out-of-control back in Seven. But since she's half-convinced herself she likes her wild times in the Capitol she accepts a lot of invitations. The other Seven Victors have basically given up trying to talk to her about any of it, because they've tried and they get mocked, insulted, and ignored.

She runs into Finnick a lot in the Capitol, and he understands her a lot better than he'll let on, so on his rare free nights he'll take her out, try to get her home alone and in one piece, let her fall apart on him on the comedown if that's what she needs. And sometimes after he has a really bad night he'll come to her place and she'll let him do what he needs to do to get back to baseline. It's a completely dysfunctional friendship, but it's theirs, and they do care about each other.

And Finnick brings her into the rebellion because she hates Snow as much as anyone, and when he tells her she basically goes "well, we're probably all going to get killed, but fuck it, why not go down swinging?"

SO THAT'S ALL HORRIBLE. But she lives, so there's that? I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to fix things for her post-war but mayyyybe I will work on that one at some point? Probably Finnick (or maybe Annie in Canon but fuck canon) is like "look, come to Four, learn how to swim, there's an empty house with your name on it and I swear we won't smother you" and she does, and it slowly gets less awful until she looks around and realizes she actually doesn't hate everything? And she went swimming yesterday and picked up seashells and ate lunch with Finnick and Annie and laughed at the baby smearing peas all over itself, and things might not all be terrible.