Characters / The Victors Project: Districts Three to Eight

The Victors Project Character Index
Career Districts | Districts 3–8 | Districts 9–12 and the Capitol | Fallen Tributes and District Citizens

"You're right, you know. We are pathetic. We're self-pitying, sniveling cowards. Until one day we're not."

— Blight to Phoebus

District 3

"But when a Victor from District 3 entered the room, the level of respect they received was absolute. The Career Victors would nod their heads and fall silent when one of them spoke. … Because when District 3 won the Hunger Games, they won big."

Districtwide Tropes

• Absent-Minded Professor: Though known for their technological genius, Evelyn's trip there also shows them being very forgetful. Evelyn's escort remarks that they sometimes forget the names of their own tributes. However, based on the prowess they show during the Mockingjay Rebellion, they are likely Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Their scientists and thinkers have spent decades learning what they can from the Games in order to prepare for a second rebellion.
  One of the worst decisions the Capitol ever made was to broadcast the Games in District 3. The scientists watched Beetee lay his traps, and Wiress build her dam. They analyzed Emrys and his fireball launchers even as the boy from 5 burned the arena down around his ears. They studied Cotton and Cora and Cecelia. They debated over the tactics of Eamon and Nolan and Enobaria. They sat in attentive silence as Circe painted fruits with poison and Johanna wept and sobbed and whimpered.
• Badass Bookworm/Gadgeteer Genius: It's pretty much a prerequisite for any District 3 Victor to be highly intelligent and good with machines.
• Crazy-Prepared: They've been digging tunnels, making weapons, and preparing for the inevitable second rebellion almost since the first one ended, with a lot of leadership from Gates and Beetee.
• Crushing the Populace: In what Jon Undersee refers to as "the Rape of Three", the Capitol brutally crushed the Dark Days Rebellion in District 3, because the district is most vital to the Capitol's survival and prosperity. The Capitol adopted a combination of Salt the Earth tactics, mass reprisal executions, and crowds of them being used as Unwitting Test Subject's for the Capitol's bioweapons. District 3 lost half its population and had still not returned its pre-Dark Days numbers by the time of the Third Quarter Quell. This is a large motivating factor behind their strategy during the Mockingjay Rebellion of using overwhelming force to win quickly and brutally without taking casualties themselves.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When the Mockingjay Rebellion starts, the District retreats into underground bunkers, then unleashes their Death Traps and experiments. The district Peacekeeping force is wiped out within days without killing a single citizen of District 3.
• Disproportionate Retribution: After Gates's epic and unconventional victory, the government responds this way to both Gates and District 3.
  The tributes from District 3 did not survive the first day for seven years after Gates won. They wouldn't be allowed such easy access to technology for decades after. The district was put under quarantine and locked down until the starving, beaten, broken people were thoroughly reminded of the strong arm of their benevolent Capitol.
• Eldritch Abomination: When the Peackeepers comes to Wiress's mansion, "what comes out of Wiress's house is too horrible to name, but it's blind and black and hair and very, very hungry".
• Playing Possum: This is District 3's strategy from the end of the Darks Days Rebellion until the night Katniss destroys the Quell arena. Even that night, District 3 citizens act as though they're still compliant and complacent, but then Peacekeepers start disappearing. By the next morning, ten percent of all District 3 Peacekeepers have disappeared.
• Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: Fitting for the technology district, District 3 has a victor named 'Gates' (as in Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft) and fallen tributes named Chip, Dattery, Pixelle, and Sonara.
• Worthy Opponent: As the quote above states, District 3 Victors and tributes are viewed with respect and fear by the Careers. But this also means they are often targeted early.
  Dido: The Three tributes are cannon fodder ninety percent of the time, but when they're good, they're almost unstoppable.

Gates Gramdan (16th Games Victor)

• Awful Wedded Life: His "secret" is he marries a very beautiful woman, who in turn marries him for his money. This quickly devolves into an unhappy marriage, so that when Gates dies, he leaves her nothing in the will.
• Child Prodigy/Gadgeteer Genius: Uses discarded tech from his arena to create Some Kind of Force Field to keep the other tributes at bay and then a Weather Manipulation machine to control weather in his arena.
• Children Forced to Kill: Fifteen when he enters his Games.
• Crazy-Prepared: His father helped build the arenas before going blind, and he spent years telling Gates everything he'd need to know about them, fearing that his son would be reaped due to taking tesserae for his parents, grandparents, sisters, niece, and nephew.
• Deadly Bath: Has a seizure while taking a bath and drowns.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe. The Gamemakers release an electromagnetic pulse to destroy his force field, so he wouldn't win by doing nothing. But Gates has other plans…
• Genius Cripple: Despite his epilepsy, he is still quite smart. His father Teslo also counts, having become blind due to an industrial accident, but still smart enough to teach his son all about how Hunger Games arenas operate.
• A Hero to His Hometown: Treated as a hero in District 3 after his amazing win. This extends to the Capitol fans and his fellow Victors, especially Ahenobarbus. Unfortunately, it does not include President Lucius, the Gamemakers, or his wife.
  • Even before his Games, he is "immensely loved" by his family and most of his classmates, who crowd into the Justice Building to say goodbye to him.
• Heroic BSoD: Has one after the District 7 tributes kill his mentee in the 45th Games. Seeing the horrified look in the Seven boy's eyes after he kills Gates's mentee causes Gates himself to have an epilectic seizure and then a full-on stroke.
• Kill Tally: Seven tributes, though none of the districts are specified.
• MacGyvering: Builds both a force field and a weather machine from junk he finds in his arena.
• Odd Friendship: With Ahenobarbus, who is greatly offended by the Capitol's Post-Game Retaliation against Gates. Ahenobarbus even sits in the hospital with him after he has a stroke and is there when he wakes up.
• Post-Game Retaliation: The Gamemakers and President Lucius himself are very angry about his ingenuity and afraid that it would encourage others to believe they can outwit Capitol plans and technology. His train therefore suffers a terrible "accident" during his Victory tour, and he suffers injuries such that he develops epilepsy. District 3 is also put under quarantine and starved in order to discourage any further dangerous creativity.
• Urban Ruins: His is the first arena set in an ancient American city. This proves critical in giving Gates access to all the materials he would need.
• Weather Manipulation: Creates a weather drone that takes control of the other weather drones in the arena, giving him full control of the arena weather. He uses this to create a heatwave, then a blizzard, then a thunder snowstorm, and finally a hailstorm of burning ice. When it was all over, he is the only tribute left standing.

Beetee Latier (35th Games Victor)

• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Immediately downs an entire pitcher of water after the Anasazi serve him grilled rattlesnake with fire sauce.
• Catapult Nightmare: After having a nightmare about his Games, Beetee does this and then vomits.
• Caught in a Snare: Kills the entire Career alliance by catching them in a copper Inescapable Net that is attached to a battery and then electrifying it.
• Chessmaster Sidekick: Is this to Mags among rebel Victors for much of the story, being responsible for strategy as well as inventions. This is best emphasized in Cashmere's chapter as he discusses how they need to have "villains" among the other tributes to distract attention and has to address the issue of which rebels the conspiracy to escape the arena could afford to lose.
• Children Forced to Kill: Fourteen when he enters his Games.^note Which means he's fifty-four during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: One of only three known Victors (along with Chaff and Ben) to personally kill all six Careers and the only one to do it in one fell swoop.
• Gadgeteer Genius: As portrayed in the original series. He provides all the anti-bugging and sound-muting technology that allows La Résistance to organize over the years. He also provides Hollywood Hacking as needed.
  Mags: Oh, let's just say I know a little boy who can practically walk through firewalls.
• Honorary Uncle: Has a close relationship with Cecelia's daughter, who also has Hollywood Hacking skills.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — the District 1 boy, District 1 girl, District 2 boy (Janus), District 2 girl, District 4 boy, and District 4 girl.
• La Résistance: Serves as The Smart Guy to Mags's Rebel Leader for the rebel Victors. Cashmere reveals that Beetee also helps fugitives get out of Districts 9 and 11 and gives them new identities in District 3.
• One Hit Poly Kill: Kills all the Careers with one trap.
• The Pawns Go First: Tells Cashmere which tributes to target during the Third Quarter Quell based on their unimportance in getting Katniss and Peeta out of the arena. This includes Wiress, who is already showing Sanity Slippage.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Sociopathic Hero: His "secret" is that he believes himself to be this, because he feels no guilt for the six tributes he kills. But given his nightmares about their deaths and Cashmere's, this seems unlikely. This may confirm his deeper secret — he may just be evil.
• Sole Survivor: The last remaining District 3 Victor by story's end.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Pretends to cry and be scared in order to draw the Career pack to his hidden Inescapable Net.

Wiress Okamoto (53rd Games Victor)

• Big Brother Instinct: Downplayed, but her brother was the one who figured out what she was trying to build and called Beetee to tell him what tools she'd need.
• Big Dam Plot: Her strategy involves building a dam that first allows her to flood the Cornucopia and, using a tarp, float to the Cornucopia to steal all the weapons the Careers haven't taken, including napalm. Wiress then uses the dam as a fort to fend off the attacking Careers. When the District 1 boy throws a grenade at Wiress and the District 2 boy, this destroys the dam, drowning all the remaining tributes except Wiress.
• Child Prodigy: Fixed a broken TV in her grandfather's shop when she was seven, won the district-wide junior science fair twice by the time she was eleven, and when she was eleven, recognized a design flaw for the safety mechanisms on a new reactor during her class field trip. (The first time she met Beetee was when he sat on the committee investigating the disaster after the plant officials ignored her warning about the flaw).
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when she enters her Games.^note Which means she's thirty-eight during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Dangerous 17th Birthday: Wins her Games on her seventeenth birthday.
• Doting Grandparent: Close to her grandfather and was with him when he died.
• Drinking Contest: Her "secret" is she does these with Capitol wine connoisseurs in order to win sponsors. She keeps this a secret to avoid Beetee's inevitable lecture.
• Good Is Not Soft:
  • Tells Codey, tribute of the 62nd Games, that the bloodthirsty Capitolitians would give him more sponsor gifts if he managed to torture a Career to death.
  • When District 3 unleashes their various hidden weapons against the peacekeepers, an Eldritch Abomination comes out of her house (though it's not said whether she was the one to create it).
• I Did What I Had to Do: Response to killing the District 6 boy, who was making a lot of noise as he starved to death.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — the District 6 boy, District 1 girl, District 1 boy, District 2 girl, District 4 girl, and District 2 boy.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 3's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. By then she has gone much further into Sanity Slippage and is ultimately killed by Gloss.
• Present Absence: As Beetee works in his lab trying to figure out the identity of Katniss's failed assassin, he continually imagines Wiress's presence.
• Sanity Slippage: According to Beetee, going back into the Games is taking its toll on her, and we get to see that up close in the books.
• Siege Engines: Builds a trebuchet, which she uses to toss jars of napalm.
• Slashed Throat: Gloss does this to her during the Third Quarter Quell, killing her.

District 5

"Like their three Victors, they hide and wait. Windows are shuttered, streets abandoned. They hope they can wait it out. That they can survive without lifting a finger, without endangering their lives."

Districtwide Tropes

• Adults Are Useless: The vast majority of District 5's adults don't lift a finger in the rebellion and remain behind boarded up doors while their children do the fighting. They finally fight against the Capitol when new Peacekeepers come, round up all the citizens, and announce they will kill each tenth child. The parents join the local Peacekeepers in fighting and defeating the new Peacekeepers.
• Fan of Underdog: The Fighting Fives, who are counterparts and rivals to the Sixatrons.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The strategy the District 5 rebels initially adopt against the Peacekeepers.
• Playing with Fire: Using fire as a weapon is critical to both Emrys and Circe's victories.
• Rebel Leader: Miles Donovan, Foxface's brother, leads a gang known as "the Nightfoxes", that launch physical and cyber attacks against the Peacekeepers.
• Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: A few fallen tributes follow naming patterns based on their district's industry of electricity, including Aeria (air, and by extension, wind power), Solaris (solar power), and Watts.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • As soon as Circe is killed in the Quell, the Campers disappear to a an ancient American city, its infrastructure intact, beyond the reach of Panem.
  • Many of the young people who defended District 5 against the Capitol Peacekeepers leave the district following the rebellion.
• Suddenly Significant City: Following the Rebellion, District 5 becomes the home for many young people from the Capitol and District 13 and "almost doubles in industries, population, and wealth".
• Total Party Kill: None of the District 5 Victors are alive by the story's end.
  • Emrys is killed during the rescue mission for Katniss.
  • Matthias and Circe are killed in the Third Quarter Quell.

Emrys Avery (26th Games Victor)

• Battle Amongst the Flames: Emrys set much of his arena on fire, turning his Games into this.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: First District 5 Victor after so many losses, including a near-win in the 23rd Games.
• Chekhov's Geyser: It's mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that the only source of water in the arena is from a series of hot springs. Emrys uses these springs to kill the District 1 girl.
• Children Forced to Kill: Fifteen when he enters his Games.
• Dark Horse Victory: Spartacus lists all the tributes he sees as potential winners of the 26th Games, including an attractive, competent Career pack and promising tributes from 7, 9, 10, and even 12. Yet, it's the boy from District 5, sent here as punishment for being a pyromaniac who ends up winning.
• Dramatic Shattering: During the Victors' meeting following President Lucius's death, he smashes his wine glass on the floor out of frustration and to get everyone's attention. See Voice of Reason below.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe.
  • Capitol meddling saves him from being in the Quarter Quell (since they prefer a rebellious Rabble Rouser enter instead), but his pyromaniac ways cause the Capitol officials to reconsider and make sure he is reaped for the following Games.
  • Exploited this during his Games by asking the Gamemakers to give him wind to help his fire against the female Careers. Once he proves to be a fighter, the Gamemakers do a lot more to help him win.
• Fingore: The District 10 female tribute breaks the fingers in one of his hands, but it doesn't stop him from killing her.
• Kill Tally: Seven tributes (the most of the District 5 Victors) — the District 2 girl, District 4 girl, District 8 girl, District 4 boy, District 10 girl, District 1 girl, and District 1 boy.
• Killed Offscreen: Killed in the explosion that happens offscreen that rocks the room where Luster is holding Katniss. This explosion distracts Luster enough to allow the Victors to turn the tables on him.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Shows shades of this by Circe's Games, like so many other Victors.
• Made of Incendium: His arena, though justified because he spent days strategically covering trees with cooking oil and making balls of wood filled with oil, so that at the proper time he could light them all on fire, and then supported by winds from the Gamemakers.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: His chapter is told from the perspective of Spartacus Brandybane, the new Head Gamemaker.
• Pyromaniac:
  • Why he is elected for the Quarter Quell and then reaped for the 26th Games. Fire-starting, however, proves to be Chekhov's Skill, as he creates fire bombs that set his arena ablaze and give him a distinctive advantage.
  • Provides the pyrotechnics for Cotton, which she uses against the Peacekeepers to allow Haymitch and Plutarch to escape, and for the Victors, which they use to break into Enobaria's arena and rescue Katniss.
  • His "secret" is that setting fires gives him a sexual high.
• The Quiet One: Barely speaks, either in his interviews or during the Games.
• Recovered Addict: After his Games, drug abuse becomes his "hatch" as a replacement for setting fires, so much so that he has a drug overdose during Circe's Games. But he has kicked his drug habit by the Third Quarter Quell, though he suffers a major relapse during the Mockingjay Rebellion.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: He spends a large part of the Mockingjay Rebellion drunk or high, hiding out in safehouses and back alleys.
• Stress Vomit: Fills four buckets with vomit over 18 hours during the 45th Hunger Games as he watches his tribute die of sepsis.
• Voice of Reason: It is Emrys, the lone lowly District 5 Victor, who provides the vital support for Ahenobarbus's plan to tacitly support Snow for President instead of Juliana Carew, the radical candidate who wants to abolish the Hunger Games.
  Emrys: What will happen if we all throw our support to the one candidate arguing for what the rest consider treason? … We will burn, our families, our districts, all of us. And I've seen enough fire to last me a lifetime, thank you.
  Ahenobarbus: You're smarter than you look, kid.
  Emrys: I'm not your kid. My name is Emrys.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Hisses when his last opponent, in a show of Villain Respect, comments that he should have been born in District 1.

Matthias Fletcher (46th Games Victor)

• Abhorrent Admirer: Likes to claim that Johanna's victory was based on his own strategy, and then try to kiss her "which usually ended in violence".
• The Alcoholic: A lightweight compared to Chaff and Haymitch, but a major consumer of fine wines, whose sellers are among his most loyal sponsors.
• Animal Motif: Greatly resembles a rat, both physically and personality-wise. His dying words (about Finnick) were, "You... rat...."
• Anti-Climax: The penultimate tribute of his original Games, the District 2 girl, falls thirty feet while searching for Matty, breaking her neck. He therefore wins without a final fight, contributing to his poor reputation following his Games.
• The Cassandra: Very few Victors, including Circe, will listen to his plan to target Katniss and hopefully end the Quell early. Though for the rebel Victors, it is less that they don't believe him and more that they want the Quell to continue for their own purposes. Finnick serves as The Mole to stop any plans of killing Katniss.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his first Games.^note Which means he is forty-five during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cynical Mentor: Cares nothing for most of the kids he has to mentor, though he's glad to receive attention for Foxface's success in the 74th Games.
• Deserted Island: His arena is "a barren, rocky island with little food and even less fresh water."
• Doomed by Canon: Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Finnick's trident at the Third Quarter Quell Cornucopia, per the book.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Because of his Serendipitous Survival with an anti-climactic ending and a generally unimpressive nature, he is largely disregarded by the general public and even his fellow Victors (except Connor and Brutus and occasional drinking buddies with Chaff and Haymitch). He hopes killing Katniss in the Third Quarter Quell will finally gain him respect and recognition, but then Finnick betrays him.
• Everyone Has Standards: He wears a mask when visiting underground sex clubs so that none of the people he encounters there will be inspired to sponsor District 5 tributes, knowing that they wouldn't want to make it out of the arena at the cost of being indebted to people like that.
• Friendless Background: Bullied and ignored as a kid by both his parents and classmates, and always an outsider among the Victors afterwards.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: His addictions give him trouble with mentoring, and he rarely feels much investment in his tributes, but he enjoys the media attention from things like Foxface making it to the Final 4 and Circe being crowned.
• In-Universe Nickname: He's often referred to as "Matty" throughout his chapter.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 3 girl and District 2 boy.
• Masochism: His "secret" is that he visits "the most underground and depraved clubs in the Capitol" each year after his tribute is killed.
• Middle Victor Syndrome: Referenced at the beginning of his chapter. Emrys' victory is remembered as District 5's first, and Circe's was recent enough and somewhat spectacular to be fresh in the memory of District 5. Matty's, however, was too long ago and far less iconic than either of theirs.
• O.C. Stand-in:
  • First introduced in Catching Fire as District 5's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell, though in the books No Name Given. He is only referenced as the tribute Finnick kills at the Cornucopia protecting Katniss. His chapter provides a Perspective Flip, in which Matthias develops a plan to kill Katniss early on, correctly believing Snow would reward him by helping him win the Games. Finnick pretends to go along with this plan, but then, right before Matthias is going to hit Katniss with a mace from behind, Finnick tells her to duck, and Finnick spears him with the trident.
  • According to his chapter, he is also the mentor assigned to "Foxface" of the 74th Games.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: His birth results from this, and his parents always treated him poorly because of it. He therefore doesn't invite them to live with him in the Victor's Village.
• Refusal of the Call: Laughs in Mags's face when she tries to recruit him for the plot to save Katniss and Peeta (though she presumably does not tell him the plan to break everyone out). Ironically, had he participated, he might have finally gotten some of the admiration and respect that he so desperately craved.
• Sadist: Tells Connor he enjoys pain, both giving it and getting it. As a child, he would skin rats, flies, and even a dog until he was arrested by a Peacekeeper. During his Games, he skins the wounded District 2 male tribute before killing him.
• Sarcastic Clapping: Gives a sarcastic cheer at Circe's reaping when Carpathia Flickerman pronounces, "The Capitol and District Five, today, tomorrow, and always!"
• Serendipitous Survival: Kills the District 2 boy (who was caught in a trap laid by the District 7 girl) and the District 3 girl, but otherwise sits out much of his Games. Wins because the final other tribute, the District 2 girl, after killing several other tributes, slips on wet stone while hunting for Matty, falls thirty feet, and breaks her neck.
• Smarter Than They Look: His demeanor doesn't show it, but he is perhaps one of the smartest Victors outside District 3 (and Cashmere).
  • The few from District 5 who remember him remember he was constantly reading.
  • Builds a desalination device during his Games, which helps him survive the near four weeks on a Deserted Island.
  • The only Victor to figure out that Snow wants Katniss dead so badly that he'll either cancel the Quell if she dies fast enough or ensure that whoever kills her is crowned the Victor.
  • Given these, his decision to trust Finnick may be an example of holding the Idiot Ball, likely due to his own longing for attention and acceptance.

Circe Montoya (59th Games Victor)

• Arcadia: Her arena is described as "a quaint little farm with a wooden house, barns, a stable, a silo, just like in the storybooks".
• Bee Afraid: Gets stung by a tracker jacker, which knocks her unconscious for over a day.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when she enters her first Games.^note Which means she is thirty-three during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Dark Horse Victory: She only scored a 5 during training, and caused serious betters to lose a lot of money.
• Doomed by Canon: Killed by a massive wave in the Quell arena.
• Great Escape: Her "secret" is she develops an escape plan for her fellow Campers should war break out. Though she dies in the arena, her plan works perfectly, as the Campers successfully vanish into the woods right after Katniss shoots her fatal arrow.
• Heroic BSoD: As the fire she set kills the District 11 boy, she watches with "dead, emotionless eyes" and later has terrible nightmares following her Games, requiring medication. She, however, seems largely recovered by the train ride back to District 5.
• Kill Tally: Five tributes — the District 4 girl, District 6 girl, District 10 boy, District 1 girl, and the District 11 boy.
• La Résistance: Defied. She's aware of the rebel plot, but stays out of it due to fears that Snow will slaughter the Campers as punishment if he catches her moving against him.
• Magical Romani: Becomes known as "The Witch of the Woods" in the Capitol because of the powders she uses to make her camp fire explode and become blue. She uses these to burn the Career pack and kill the District 4 girl.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her chapter is told from the perspective of Carpathia Flickerman, the Capitol escort for District 5.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 5's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell, though in the books No Name Given.
• Odd Friendship: Develops one with her escort Carpathia (who had fixed the reaping to call Camper children), who is responsible for the sponsor gifts that save her life.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Squeezes the juice from nightlock berries and paints them on the edible plants throughout the arena forest. This kills several of tributes and causes the Career pack to fight among themselves over the limited food supplies, which results in them taking each other out.
• Vote Early, Vote Often: Romani, who are here called Campers, are specifically targeted for reaping by direct orders from President Snow himself, though for reasons never stated. Both Circe and her district partner Lazarus are Campers.

District 6

"In District 6 they are afraid. … Because all the banners and garlands and cameras that are crammed into the square can't hide the fact that District 6 looks like the Dark Days never ended."

Districtwide Tropes

• Anarcho-Tyranny: The Capitol allows the district to be dominated by druglord gang wars as a way of maintaining control. During the Mockingjay Rebellion, this descends into Anarchy Is Chaos, as the district Peacekeepers withdraw to the city center, allowing the drug gangs to fight each other for control of the rest of the district, with a series of different leaders rising and falling.
• Crapsack World: Even by the standards of Panem, District 6 is a terrible place to live. The only place considered worse is District 12, where half the population is reportedly starving on the streets, but even then they don't have the rampant crime and drug abuse that District 6 suffers. It's arguably the reason why District 6 was the last District to have a Victor, as many of the tributes tend to be morphling addicts, gang members, or just flat-out weak.
• Depopulation Bomb: Downplayed, but by the rebellion's end, every family in the District has been touched by death, and the survivors are surprised that more than half of the population actually survived.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Almost none of the other Victors respect the District 6 Victors. Two of them are horrible drug addicts, and of the three only Maeve won her Games by any actual merit.^note The entire Career Pack was deliberately eliminated at the start of her Games by a Gamemaker-created sinkhole to punish the Career Districts for taking their privileged status for granted. Everything after that, however, was all Maeve. Chevy won thanks to In-Universe Executive Meddling, while Mitt lucked out (relatively speaking) with a terribly-designed tundra arena that froze almost all the other tributes to death.
• Fan of Underdog: The Sixatrons! So much so that after a particularly bad riot following the 26th Games, Snow orders the Gamemakers to make sure the Victor of the next Hunger Games is from District 6, so they'll finally calm down. This leads to Chevy's victory at the 28th Games, which itself leads to a two-week mass celebration in the Capitol.
• Fire-Forged Friends: In a literal sense. The fires that spread through the district as a result of the fighting cause everyone to abandon their in-fighting to focus on surviving together. Once the petrol plant explosion incinerates the remaining Peacekeepers, there is nothing left to fight over.
• Gambit Pileup: Rival gangs who care nothing about rebellion jockey for power in increasingly bloodthirsty ways before the citizens rise up against them.
• Ghost Town: The scars of the Rebellion cause the entire surviving population to abandon the district for as long as possible, with District 12 being resettled before anyone comes back to manufacture cars again.
• Icon of Rebellion: The emblem of the District 6 rebels who fight in the Capitol is a red flag with two M's, standing for Maeve and Mitt.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The rebellion in District 6 is an ugly affair that is almost never spoken about afterwards, except briefly to children coming of age.
• Made of Incendium/Ridiculously Potent Explosive: Fire spreads throughout much of the district, until it reaches the petrol refinery, which causes such a massive explosion that it incinerates much of the city center and all the remaining Peacekeepers.
• My Greatest Second Chance: The post-war district becomes this, as it's mentioned that "the new tenements are large and warm. The factories are safe." They branch out into farming, and there is no mention of the drug cartels experiencing a comeback.
• Rage Breaking Point: The citizens of District 6 finally rise up against both the gangs and the Peacekeepers after Chevy's granddaughter is murdered and hung at an intersection. This marks the transition of District 6's uprising from Anarchy Is Chaos to The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized.
• Shrine to the Fallen: Each of the Victors are given special honors in post-rebellion memorials:
  • Chevy's house becomes a memorial to the district's Victors and fallen tributes.
  • An eternal flame is placed to in the city center to honor those who died in the district fire and for Mitt, the Victor "who could never get warm".
  • One area of the district is left untouched during the rebuilding and becomes an artist's corner called "the Garden of Maeve".
• Succession Crisis: The death of all the Victors, who were highly revered in District 6, creates this type of situation, with Chevy's extended family becoming prizes for different gangs to "bolster their legitimacy and stake their claim in the divided city."
• Total Party Kill: None of the District 6 Victors are alive by the story's end.
  • Mitt and Maeve are killed in the Third Quarter Quell.
  • Chevy is killed hours after the Third Quarter Quell ends as part of the Victor's Purge.

Chevy Anderson (28th Games Victor)

• All of the Other Reindeer: None of the other Victors respect him, because they know the Gamemakers rigged his Games for him to win and because he never had to kill anyone face to face.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: In-universe. The Sixatrons hold a two-week festival that blocks all activity in the City Centre in celebration of his victory.
• Big Brother Instinct: His "secret" is that he still watches over his drug addicted younger brother, though he does kick his brother out of his home for introducing his son to drugs.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: First District 6 Victor, the last district to get a Victor.
• Chekhov's Skill: Exploited by Gamemakers, who learn from his interviews that he likes to leap from trains to trains. They then design the arena to include a lot of trains to make sure he wins.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his Games.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Often thrust into this role for Maeve and Mitt, as well as the occasional drug-addled tribute.
• Cynical Mentor: The year after Maeve's victory he doesn't really put much heart into preparing his tribute, knowing how low the odds are of back-to-back victories for anyone besides Career districts (and even that only happened twice). This causes a painful Heroic BSoD after seeing his tribute die from drinking tainted water, asking himself how he could have forgotten to warn the boy that he'd need to boil it first. He was so upset that he needed to be physically helped from his chair and led out of the room by Seeder.
• Death Seeker: Once Katniss shoots the fateful arrow, he rejects an offer by the rebels to hide him, having been exhausted by all that has happened to him and wanting to "rest". When the Peacekeepers come to execute him, he does not protest.
• Due to the Dead: Made portraits of his tributes (in addition to his family) and hung them in his home. These portraits, and his home in general, are later turned into a memorial for Chevy himself.invoked
• Fixing the Game: The Gamemakers, on Snow's orders, specifically construct the 28th Games arena to favor him.
• Happily Married/Family Man: Comes from loving family (a rarity for District 6), and is one of the only Victors to have a happy marriage with kids and eventually grandchildren, with none reportedly targeted by the Capitol. Sadly, once Chevy dies, the morphling gangs take much if not all of his family hostage to serve as signs of legitimacy. His oldest granddaughter and several nephews are explicitly stated as being collateral damage of the chaos that follows.
• Heroic BSoD: Has one after watching his tribute in the 45th Games die from drinking contaminated water. He blames himself for not warning his tribute to boil his water several times and treat it with iodine before drinking it.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Spends his entire life shunning any kind of drugs and alcohol, until Katniss shoots her arrow and the rebellion begins, at which point he knows he's a marked man and it doesn't matter. The Peacekeepers who come to kill him find some half empty bourbon on his counter.
• Kill Tally: Five tributes (the most of the District 6 Victors) — the District 1 boy, District 2 boy, District 2 girl, District 4 boy, and District 1 girl.
• One of Us: In-universe. Many in the Capitol are excited to learn he is a fan of the popular movie, Jumper, about jumping trains.
• The Purge: Killed by the Capitol mere minutes after Katniss shoots the arrow to destroy the Quell arena. This in a way is Suicide by Cop, as Chevy could have gone to a safe house set up by Madame Lucia, but chooses to go back to District 6, knowing he will likely be killed but preferring to have rest from the nightmares of his life.
• Shell-Shocked Victor: For the rest of his life, he cannot eat the type of rich food he eats in the Games. He also has to be sedated every time he takes a train, because whenever he rides one, he relives his Games and believes he will die in a train crash unless he jumps off.
• Team Dad: Looked after Maeve and Mitt and helped them survive through their addictions, knowing "he was the thin line between his Victors and total insanity".
• The Teetotaler: A rarity for District 6, which allows him to avoid the Descent into Addiction that afflicted Maeve and Mitt and to take care of them and his family. Breaks his own rule, though, right before the Peacekeepers come to execute him.^note Expecting this to happen, Chevy probably grabbed the bottle from either the train back from the Capitol or from one of the other Victor mansions.
• These Hands Have Killed: Constantly re-watches the deaths of the Careers he causes by rigging the trains to attack them during the feast.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: His ultimate fate is never stated in the original story, although it is resolved several years later in Arrow.

Maeve Collins (44th Games Victor)

• Addled Addict: Since at least she was a child. She may have been born addicted, since her parents were morphling addicts.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when she enters her first Games.^note Which means she is forty-eight during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Choke Holds: Garrotes the District 12 male tribute with a vine to win her Games.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her default mode, especially when she's high (although she does have some Beware the Silly Ones accomplishments). During her first year as a mentor, she sends her tribute red balloons as a sponsor gift, after she's already been killed, because they remind her of the blood pouring out of the tributes body, and doesn't quite understand that the girl is already dead, or why Chevy seems upset with her about this.
• Cursed with Awesome: Isn't too affected by the poison from the Gamemakers' feast, because her body has adapted to morphling's toxicity.
• Kill Tally: Just one tribute — the District 12 boy.
• Literal Cliff Hanger: The Gamemakers collapse the entire Cornucopia and surrounding areas, immediately killing 12 tributes, including the entire Career pack. Maeve, however, survives by barely hanging on the edge of the chasm.
• Meaningful Name: Maeve's name is of Irish origin and may mean "she who intoxicates". Though the name itself refers to drinking mead, Maeve Collins certainly is intoxicated by morphling.
• Minor Kidroduction: First appears as the morphling-addicted child of two morphling addicts/dealers who are arrested. Maeve is then sent to the Community Home and is reintroduced years later when she is reaped.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her story — from her Minor Kidroduction to her death in the Third Quarter Quell — is told from the perspective of Justinian Trinket, a Capitolian and Sixatron who makes a fortune betting on her to win.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 6's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. Though in the books No Name Given, she saves Peeta's life from the mutt-baboon, and Peeta consoles her as she dies.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents, Ralph and Mercedes, were arrested for illegal morphling production when she was about 7, so Maeve was raised in a Community Home for a significant part of her childhood.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: Played with. Maeve was already unbalanced due to her drug addiction and being in the Hunger Games, but it's implied that being raped by Justinian further damages her sanity.
• La Résistance: Her "secret" is that she uses her network of drug dealers to send messages through different rebel factions throughout the country.
• Stealth Expert: Paints herself in mud and leaves. This protects her from the mutts in her arena and allows her to follow the District 12 male tribute to find the antidote after the Gamemakers poison the feast. This skill was previously demonstrated in Catching Fire.

Mitt Compton (55th Games Victor)

• Ambiguous Ending: Along with Evelyn, he is the only Third Quarter Quell tribute whose death is neither shown in the book (though his death is announced on the first night) nor described in any way in these stories.
• Break the Cutie: Transforms from a smiling Class Clown to an incoherent junkie haunted by memories of the cold once he comes out of his games, which are set in Antarctica.
• Class Clown: Known to be this at school, and during training he paints mustaches on the dummies.
• Descent into Addiction: It's not stated whether Mitt is a morphling addict prior to his Games (he says the morphing will make him warmer in his hospital bed but it is unclear if he knows this from experience or just being from District 6), but he is definitely one afterwards.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When Cecelia gets a glimpse of him on the Quell pedestal, she speculates that he got shot up on morphling right before entering his second arena.
• Kill Tally: None in reality, but the Head Gamemaker attributes to him the accidental deaths of three Careers who were chasing him and then collapsed into an ice shelf—the District 2 boy, District 2 girl, and District 4 boy.invoked
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: His Games are shown from the perspective of Illythia Bitter, the new Head Gamemaker.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 6's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell, though in the books No Name Given.
• Prefers Rocks to Pillows: His "secret" is that never sleeps in his large bed in his Victory Village mansion, but instead sleeps on the floor next to the heater.
• Serendipitous Survival: Half the Career pack dies while chasing him when the fragile ice gives out under them. Mitt luckily is just beyond the fragile ice when the Careers fall into an abyss, and the final Career (the District 4 girl) opts not to chase him. Illythia, in order to claim some game play occurred, attributes their deaths to Mitt's clever trap, but he really does nothing to win but survive the cold. From there, most of the tributes simply freeze to death, and Mitt simply outlasts them all.
• Shell-Shocked Victor: In spades. Two years after his victory, when he sees video feed for Cecelia's arena showing that the area around the Cornucopia is frozen, he leans over and throws up.
• Winter Warfare: His games are set in Antarctica, which proves to be a terrible choice, as all the tributes are too cold to significantly engage each other.

District 7

"They fight bravely. Sevens never do anything less."

Districtwide Tropes

• Climactic Battle Resurrection: A stampede of horses comes to the rescue of the final District 7 rebels, led by Blight Gavin and Jason Mellark and including all the dead tributes of District 7. But upon closer inspection, it turns out to be Blight's nephew, Blane and Connor's nephew, Mitch, respectively.
• Henotheistic Society: Implied. Quell mentions that District Seven believes in the unnamed "old gods" and they have a shrine dedicated to them.
• Mighty Lumberjack: The main industry of the district is logging, so many of its tributes are this, with an ax being their standard weapon.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: They don't care much for gay people, at least up until Blight's Games.
• Unwitting Test Subject: President Snow tests the biological plague he's developing to launch at District 13 on them. Much of the District dies (including Vera, Jason Mellark, and the previous mayor), and the survivors become more hardened against the Capitol.
• Worthy Opponent: Along with District 3, Careers seem to respect District 7 tributes the most. And with reason: with the exception of Eamon, each District 7 Victor kills at least one Career, and Blight, Connor, and Johanna only killed Careers.
  One of the first things Brutus told Phoebus was to take down Districts 7 and 9 at the bloodbath because the Capitol loves a maverick and the Sevens especially play that part well.

Jules Elmer (7th Games Victor)

• Blood Knight: His "secret" is that after his Games he would pick fights with drunks, until one day he permanently cripples one, an act for which he never forgives himself.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his Games.^note Which means he is eighty-four when he is killed in the Control Center during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cool Old Guy: The oldest living Victor until The Purge of Victors following the Third Quarter Quell and the outbreak of the Mockingjay Revolution. When the Peacekeepers come to round up the Victors, he kills one with a chair, despite being 84 years old.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: In-Universe. His slaying of Vesta, the District 2 female tribute, by perfectly throwing an axe at her chest is frequently rated as one of the top ten Hunger Games moments. The image is made more powerful by by being reflected in all the arena's mirror.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center, sacrificing himself to allow Haymitch, Cotton, and Abram time to escape.
  Enobaria: He died well. He died a Victor.
• Hall of Mirrors: His arena is covered in mirrors, including the ground, which is one big mirror.
• I Was Quite a Looker: When watching Jules's Games, Johanna admits that he was quite good-looking in his youth.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes — the District 6 boy, the District 8 girl, and the District 2 girl (Vesta).
• Retired Badass: By the 52nd Games, he has retired, so Blight is forced to accept Eamon as his mentor, who was part of the conspiracy that forced Blight to volunteer. However, once it is clear Eamon is a Sabotutor, he steps up and serves as Blight's mentor.
• Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: Masters this in his old age in order to avoid having to endure the heartbreak and spectacle of the reaping every year.
• Team Dad: To the District 7 Victors, and to many of the other Victors as well. He is such a Nice Guy that even Johanna has only nice things to say about him.
  Beetee: I've known him for what seems like my whole life. Always brought me a jar of syrup. A good man. Decent.
  Peeta: Katniss once said that no one decent ever won the Games.
  Johanna: Well[,] she never met Jules, so she can't really talk.

Vera O'Rourke (15th Games Victor)

• Back Stab: Kills Patronia, the District 2 girl, this way to win her Games.
• Cathartic Scream/Percussive Therapy: Gives "an unearthly shriek of rage and bitterness" after her tribute is killed in the 45th Games and attempts to smash a chair to the ground, but its high quality prevents it from breaking.
• Cynical Mentor: Generally averted, with her caring deeply for her tributes and struggling to save them, but played straight when she mentors Johanna (ironically, the only Victor she ever mentors), whose act of being helpless was so good that even Vera fell for it.
• Doomed by Canon: It was mentioned in Catching Fire that Johanna was the only living female Victor in District 7.
• Hanging by the Fingers: Survives her arena being flooded by hanging onto a tree. When she is next seen, all her fingernails are gone.
• I Hate Past Me: Her "secret" is that the reason she alters her appearance through plastic surgery is because she wants to change her face from the killer who won the Hunger Games.
• I Owe You My Life: Won't resist the Capitol because they used medicine to save her sick brother's life as part of her Victor's privileges.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes (the highest tally of the District 7 Victors) — the District 2 boy (Achilles), District 4 girl, three unnamed tributes, and District 2 girl (Patronia).
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her chapter is told from the perspective of Marty, a Capitol teenager who sponsors her.
• Shell-Shocked Victor: Cries hysterically when the hovercraft lifts her from the arena and then again during the Victory banquet when she meets Marty.
• Stealth Expert: Her dad is a mutt-hunter who taught her how to track and hunt using camouflage. She uses these skills to take out several tributes, including the presumed front-runner, Achilles, the male tribute from District 2, by cutting his throat. She foreshadows her strategy during her pre-Games interview.
  Augustine: Can you tell me what your strategy is going to be in the Games?
  Vera: I don't know if that's the smartest thing to do. But one thing I will say. I intend to blend in.
• Synthetic Plague: Dies in a plague the Capitol releases in District 7 in order to test a viral weapon they plan to use against District 13.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Jules is about to explain her strategy to Marty, but Marty's dad cuts Jules off. Only during the Games does her Stealth Expert strategy become apparent.

Eamon Sullivan (42nd Games Victor)

• Ambiguous Ending: After Katniss kills his final owner, his fate is left unknown with Multiple Endings suggested.
• Beneath Notice: Played with in his two encounters with Katniss as an Avox:
  • He is assigned to the District 12 suite for the 74th Games, where no one seems to recognize him, but after Katniss recognizes Lavinia and Haymitch covers for her, Haymitch locks eyes with Eamon, showing he recognizes him.
  • When Katniss's squad breaks into a Capitolian's apartment and kills the owner, Eamon stands perfectly still and blends into the background. But Pollux, himself a former Avox, recognizes him and mouths his name.
• Best Served Cold: President Snow was waiting for an excuse to punish him for his overall arrogant attitude. Eamon's attempt at game-fixing finally gives him the opportunity.
• Call-Forward: During his training time, he pretends to be an Avox and sneaks into the Gamemakers' box. After trying to fix the Games to make Blight lose, Snow has Eamon turned into a real Avox, and he's serving the Gamemakers during Blight's Victory ceremony.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his Games.
• Contrived Coincidence: Happens to be one of the Avoxes assigned to Katniss and Peeta during the 74th Games. He is later the Avox assigned to the Capitolian that Katniss kills when the rebels sneak into the Capitol and take refuge in an apartment.
• Disappeared Dad: His "secret" is his hatred for gay people is because his father left his mother for another man.
• The Dog Bites Back: Or more accurately, the Morality Pet Bites Back. When he travels to Maisy's district,^note  The Victors Project gives her district as Five, but The Victors Chronicles gives it as Six. they tell him that Maisy had a pet cat named Pebbles. He becomes haunted by that fact from then on.
• Enemy Civil War: The Career alliance of the 42nd Games turns on each other earlier than normal and wipes each other out, opening the door for an outer district tribute to win.
• Forced to Watch: His eyelids are taped open, so he could watch as his tongue is surgically removed, even as he begs for mercy.
• The Hedonist: Engages in Capitol luxuries, to the point where he's buried in debt within a decade of his Games. During the 45th Hunger Games he actually seems irritated that his tribute lasts so long and keeps him busy in the mentor room when he wants to be partying at Samson's.
• Homophobic Hate Crime: Part of the reason he initiates the plot against Blight is because he hates gay people.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Allies with Maisy, the District 5 tribute, and convinces her to walk across a precarious plank to retrieve a pack of food. Once she gets it, he lets her fall into the furnace below.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 4 boy and District 10 boy (Rando). Three if you count his Murder by Inaction of the District 5 girl (Maisy).^note Following The Victors Project's original designation.
• Like Father, Like Son: Like his father, he abandons his mother, though in his case it was because of their strained relationship following his Games victory.
• Murder by Inaction: Leaves Maisy to plummet to her death into a fiery furnace once she has retrieved a bag of supplies for him. He later cannot clearly remember if he left to her to die or shoved her in.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The gifts he sends to Blight as a joke — the razor and the white liquor — allow Blight, respectively, to get free after the Careers tie him up and to create a firebomb.
• Only in It for the Money: Eamon's other reason for selling Blight out; he needs the money to pay off his gambling debt.
• Pet the Dog: Holds Nolan back when he tried to attack Career mentors during the 45th Games after their tributes lynched his tribute and had sex while watching him die. He also buys Blight's dad a drink and acts as his sounding board when they first meet, although this is a much more toxic and sinister example given where it leads.
• Pick a Card: Does card tricks during his interview with Caesar.
• Refuge in Audacity: Sneaks into the Gamemakers box in the Training Center dressed as an Avox during the time allotted for skills demonstration. He then brags to Spartacus Brandybane about how he did it and suggests the Gamemakers score him an 8, so as to gain him sponsors but not tip off the Careers.
  Eamon: This is the Hunger Games. Risk is the part of the deal. … Big stakes, big moves.
• Sabotutor: Cooks up the plan to force Blight to volunteer and then bet on his demise. Given that, he does everything he can to make sure Blight loses, but unfortunately for Eamon, Underdogs Never Lose.
• The Sociopath:
  • Plays on Maisy's trust and Rando's sympathies and then kills them both without any sense of sorrow, remorse, or struggle. Spartacus Brandybane even notes to himself that "the Games hadn't seemed to affect Eamon at all".
  • Subverted, though, when it's later revealed in The Victors Chronicles that Maisy's death haunts him for the rest of his life. Further subverted when he cries after learning that Lavinia was tortured to death; even he is surprised by his reaction.
• Take a Third Option: After Blight won, his gambling debts and criminal actions in rigging the Games were too much for even his Victor status to protect him from. He was presented a choice between going to debtors prison or joining the peacekeepers. Instead he made a run for it but, like Wonder Spicer fourteen years earlier, was caught and harshly punished.
• Too Clever by Half: A great manipulator, but his hedonism catches up to him, and he resorts to sending Blight to his death in the Games so he can win a massive payout by betting on it and split it with his other conspirators in District 7, including Blight's family, to pay off his debts. Unfortunately, not only is Blight more clever and capable than he thought, but he forgot one fundamental aspect about the Games: they exist to punish the districts, not profit them. Had Blight actually died, all of District 7, Eamon included, would've burned for it.
• Villain with Good Publicity: At the beginning of The Lumberjack and the Tree Elf, he's a darling of the Capitol and respected back in District 7.

Blight Gavin (52nd Games Victor)

• Abusive Parents: His father Burgen believes Blight is the result of his wife's alleged affair with the Head Peacekeeper, so after she leaves, Burgen treats Blight terribly and ultimately forces him to volunteer for the Hunger Games… so that he can gamble on Blight's death.
• All Hail the Great God Mickey!: Discovers a Starbucks in the Urban Ruins of Chicago and believes that it is a temple because of the woman on the logo. Blight attributes winning his Games to the goddess Starbucks watching over him.
  Beetee: I never had the heart to tell him that Starbucks was a coffee house nearly eight hundred years ago.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Treated terribly by his family and all their friends, to the point that they cheer when he is forced to volunteer for the Games.
• Appropriated Appellation: "Tree-Elf" is a homophobic slur in District 7 that Blight has spent his whole life hearing. Then, it becomes the Victor moniker he becomes known by and he turns it into an iconic one he wears with pride.
• The Beastmaster: Manages to tame a carnivorous mutt-horse, which he rides around on for the rest of the Games, which increases his popularity, but results in several executions for the scientists who made the mutts.
• Berserk Button: Being compared to Eamon utterly infuriates him.
• Big Brother Bully: He has two, one of whom, Abel, is of the Barbaric Bully type (and takes a major role in selling him into the Hunger Games), while the other, Jonnel is more indifferent, albeit guilty of Betrayal by Inaction. When Blight returns to District 7, Jonnel is begging for his forgiveness, while an unrepentant Abel has joined the peacekeepers to pay off his gambling debts and/or avoid Blight's wrath, and later dies fighting for the Capitol during the Mockingjay Revolution.
• Break the Cutie: Wears down Phoebus's "gee-golly-whiz pretty boy face" until Phoebus reaches the Rage Breaking Point when Blight winks at him after Johanna kills Creon, his surrogate little brother, in the 67th Games.
  Phoebus: What, this some sort of fucking game to you. Trying to make me crack?
  Blight: Oh no, but I admit it's rather enjoyable to drag the monster out into the sunlight.
• Category Traitor: Averted. He spends decades refusing to lift a finger to help the Rebellion or oppose Snow (although this eventually ends), but both his District and most of the Rebel leaders don't hold this against him due to being aware of how little reason he has to do anything for his District, after everything they put him through before and during the 52nd Hunger Games.
• Chekhov's Skill: His gift at horse-whispering allows him to first tame the horse who is spooked during his parade and then the mutt-stallions released in his arena.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his first Games.^note Which means he is thirty-nine during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Closet Key: He is this for Jason.
• Cool Uncle: Gets along far better with his brother Jonnel's kids than he ever did with Jonnel.
• Crisis of Faith: His "secret" is that he loses his faith (in Starbucks) when Jason dies of the Capitol plague, but regains it when he enters the Third Quarter Quell, determined to save Jason's cousin, Peeta.
• The Dead Have Names: He remembers all the names of his fellow Tributes in his Games.
• Dead Man Writing: Believing he will likely die during the Third Quarter Quell, he writes letters to several people beforehand, including Peeta, who is kin to his dead love, Jason.
• Dies Wide Open: His eyes are said to be wide open when the coroner collects the bodies for the Third Quarter Quell.
• Forgiveness: Finally does this to his father, in the last days before he enters the arena for the 75th Hunger Games, writing him a letter. It's implied he may have already reached some understanding with his middle brother Jonnel (who he had less reason to hate than his father), given that he writes letters to Jonnel's children asking them to look after his horses, rather than to Jonnel himself.
• Genocide Backfire: Jason's death from the Capitol plague causes Blight to join La Résistance.
• Hero of Another Story: Blight's chapter recaps what happens in the story, The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf, also written by Oisin55. This is lampshaded with Self-Deprecation.
  Connor: There's actually a book that was just published about the Fifty-Second Games. I can get you a copy if you want to read more.
  Johanna: Yeah. The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf. Corny, melodramatic, overwrought rubbish if you ask me.
  Connor: And you have three signed copies.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: His district initially cheers when he is reaped because of the rampant homophobia. They change their tune and start hoping for his survival once he gets to the Final 8, after seeing everything he's endured and accomplished.
• I Have No Son!/That Man Is Dead: Says this in response to Jonnel's attempted apologies once he comes home.
  Blight: You got what you wanted, didn't you? Your brother didn't come back from the Capitol.
• Irony: Connell Murphy is one of his biggest bullies growing up and is one of the people who helped set Blight up for the 52nd Hunger Games. Four years later, Blight mentors Connell's younger brother Connor to victory, and Connor ends up becoming his best friend.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the District 1 girl (Alabaster), District 4 girl (Tara), District 2 boy (Quintus), and District 1 boy (Link).
  • Blight says to Phoebus that he only killed one person — Link — and doesn't count the other three. He assumes that Alabaster, Tara, and Quintus are given to him because he summoned the mutts that ultimately did them in.
• Mercy Kill: Planned to do this to his district partner Charlie after seeing that she had gone feral. The announcement of the feast sent her scurrying away before he could finish her off, though.
• Missing Mom: His mother runs off with the district's Head Peacekeeper, and Blight later finds out that she has become an Avox Sex Slave in President Snow's harem. Mack reveals that she didn't voluntarily run away, but rather the Peacekeeper threatened to kill her family if she didn't leave with him. Blight tries to bring her back to District 7, but she says she has too many responsibilities in the Capitol (likely working with La Résistance) and instead suggests he take back the mayor's wife, who suffered the same fate as she.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 7's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. He is Killed Offscreen, and Katniss even notes that he barely came to training. This is explained here as due to Peeta's strong resemblance to Jason, and Blight wanting to avoid the pain.
• Odd Friendship: Like Katniss and Peeta with Effie Trinket, he eventually befriends the shallow Capitol escort assigned to his district, Tutti Marble, to the point where she refuses to participate in the Third Quarter Quell and District 9's escort has to be reassigned to handle the District 7 reaping.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Blight's original given name is Levi, but very few people know that and even fewer call him that.
• Parental Substitute: For Johanna.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Not him, but he asks Cecelia to kill Luckie, the District 7 male tribute, even though Luckie is from his district, because Luckie is a rapist who stabbed a young Johanna when she discovered him raping a woman.
• Sand In My Eyes: Happens to Blight when Connor, having just survived his Games, tells Blight that he loves him.
• The Snark Knight: So much so that other Victors wish they could kill him. Gloss heads straight for him at the Quell bloodbath (but is blocked by Cecelia), and Phoebus almost wishes he had been reaped for the Quell so he could kill Blight on live television.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Even before he tames one of the stallion mutts, he manages to summon them to attack the Careers holding him prisoner by screaming.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Quickly realizes that his mentor Eamon in cahoots with his father, brother and the others who sent him into the Games. He tries to request Jules as a mentor instead and correctly fears the worst once Jules declines, and he is left with Eamon as his sole lifeline to the outside world.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Even before he starts to attract popularity and do well in the Games, he receives some kindness from his district partner, stylist, and Merrill Mason, who Blight replaces as tribute.
• Together in Death: The night before entering the Quell, he writes a letter to Jason, which simply says, "You know I'll see you soon."
• Urban Ruins: His arena was located in the ruins of Chicago.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Does this, combined with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech aimed at his brother Abel, after taming the carnivorous horse.
  Blight: Your name is Abel. For you tried to destroy me but you could not succeed.
• We Win, Because You Didn't: Is an ABAC –- Anyone But a Career -– meaning he will support any outer district tribute, as long as a Career doesn't win. This is because the Career pack in his Games viciously tortured his friend and ally Devon, the District 10 male tribute, for seven horrific hours, and would've done the same to him if he hadn't called the mutt-stallions to attack the Careers. He does, however, seem to be on relatively good terms with those Careers that are secretly rebels, like Finnick and Jade; and he even somewhat befriended the female District 2 tribute of his year, Plautia, who was the Token Good Teammate of the Career Pack and was killed for trying to advocate mercy for Blight and Devon when they were captured.

Connor Murphy (56th Games Victor)

• Bash Brothers: With Abram Mills from District 9, although they only fight alongside each other once, while Connor is barely sober enough to stand.
• Battle Discretion Shot: His duel with the District 2 boy isn't described, and ends with Connor taunting him as the two lunge at each other.
• Best Friend: Most specifically with Blight after Blight successfully mentors him through the Games. But Connor is known to be close friends with several Victors outside his district: Abram, Matthias, Brutus, Lyme, and even Phoebus, despite Blight's hatred for him. Ares notes Connor's uncommon congeniality (though it comes with a warning).
  Ares: (to Berenice) Those over there are the Sevens. ... Keep away from Blight and Johanna, you'll get nothing but grief from that lot. Connor's an alright sort, but district loyalties run deep. Never make a formal alliance with that one.
• Boulder Bludgeon: Kills the District 4 male tribute by throwing a large rock at his head.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his Games.
• Darkest Hour: During his Games, he's cornered, bruised all over, has his leg in a splint, and is armed only with a rock when the District 2 boy comes after him. Then Blight sends him a double-headed battle axe as a sponsor gift.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After Blight dies during the Third Quarter Quell, Jules sends him to Samson's to do this. He therefore misses the Peacekeepers' assault on the Control Center, and Abram has to fetch him and get him on the transport back to District 7. Connor cries on his shoulder the whole time.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Blight, who he initially viewed with somewhat hostile mistrust.
• Flipping the Bird: Makes a "very obscene gesture he learned from his mentor" at the Careers as he escapes up the mountain after killing the boy from District 4 in the bloodbath.
• Handicapped Badass: Arrow reveals that after he lost his arm, he simply learned to shoot a rifle one-handed.
• Kill Tally: At least three tributes — the District 4 boy, District 2 boy, and District 1 boy.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: He cut off his own arm after it was trapped in the rubble of a burning paper mill.
• Loose Lips: Reveals to Lyme an alliance between Districts 7 and 9 for the 62nd Games (which gets them targeted during the bloodbath), and later tells Cashmere about the plan to break Katniss and Peeta out of the 3rd Quarter Quell arena.
  Cashmere: (to Beetee) [Y]ou might want to tell Connor Murphy that he shouldn't take secret calls until he's sure I've left his apartment after a casual romp.
• Love Letter Lunacy: His "secret" is that he writes obnoxious, anonymous love letters to Lyme.
• Mighty Lumberjack: Often called "Big Con Murphy", he is the biggest Victor of his generation, even bigger than Brutus or Phoebus.
• No Man Left Behind: Pulled six trapped people out of the burning paper mill during the rebellion before losing his arm when we went back in one time too many.
• Out of Focus: He's the most recent Victor during Fall Into the River, and is mentoring the boy that year but barely appears and has no plot relevance, not even being mentioned when Jason explains to the other rebels why none of District 7's Victors are willing to join the Rebellion (yet).
• Pre-Climax Climax: Has sex with the prettiest girl at the Tavern the night before his final reaping.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner/Badass Boast: Delivers one to the boy from District 2, who calls him a filthy little tree-elf and vows to put him down like a dog.
  Connor: Haven't you heard the story? Tree-elves have teeth.
• Really Gets Around: According to Crystal, a night with him will likely require a trip to the local clinic. (It's not clear if she's speaking from experience.)
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Johanna is surprised to see he is still alive (though missing his left arm), since Coin had told the Victors who escaped to District 13 and survived the Civil War that they were the only surviving Victors.
  Connor: What Coin didn't know didn't hurt her. Or me.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Serendipitous Survival:
  • Would have died two weeks into the Games after being cornered by the Careers if the District 1 boy had stabbed him instead of impulsively shoving him off of a cliff (something even the third person narration describes as stupid). Connor broke a leg in the fall, but he survived and managed to crawl away into the fog before they could get down after him.
  • During the Third Quarter Quell, he escapes the battle at the Control Center, because Jules sent him away to get drunk and console himself over Blight's death.
• Sins of Our Brothers: Initially fears that Blight won't be a supportive mentor, since Connor's brother Connell was among those who set up Blight to be sent into the 52nd Games. Connell, however, begs Blight's forgiveness, and Blight honors his mentor duties.

Johanna Mason (67th Games Victor)

• Alliterative Family: Her brothers are named Merrill, Merritt, and Maddox Mason.
• Ax-Crazy: Enjoyed feigning this to a minor extent, in order to both intimidate and entertain those around her, particularly Capitolians.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when she enters her first Games.^note Which means she is twenty-five during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Delivers a string of obscenities as she swims from her opening pod for the Third Quarter Quell to the Cornucopia.
• Crazy-Prepared: Trained herself for the Games despite not having any reason to believe that she'd be reaped, just in case. It turned out to be a smart precaution.
• Family Extermination: Her entire family is killed, because she refuses to be Snow's Sex Slave. Snow forces her to watch it all on a high-definition TV while he mocks her.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: Despises having to deal with Capitolite sponsors who relish the blood and gore of the Games, and frequently dreams of tearing their world down. But despite this, she enjoys the sense of frightened awe that they display towards her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Tries to convince herself that she hates Jason Mellark, but was devoted to him just as she was devoted to Blight. When Haymitch asks the Victor-tributes to protect Peeta in the Third Quarter Quell arena, she is the first to volunteer, because Peeta is Jason's distant cousin.
  • Acts exasperated when Peeta has a panic attack after watching Tiberius' Games, but she knows the right words to say to him to calm him down, and she tells him to go see Katniss afterwards. She later tells Katniss to show more concern for Peeta's needs.
  • Dies saving a little boy in District 6 from a falling crane.
• Kill Tally:
  • For her original Games, four tributes — the District 1 girl (Sapphire), District 2 boy (Creon), District 1 boy, and District 2 girl (Sylvia).
  • For the Quell, two tributes (the most of any of the rebel Victors) — Nolan and Cashmere.
• Little Miss Badass: As a three-year-old, she slaps Blight's face and tells him to win when he's wavering after he Got Volunteered for her older brother, and later trained for the Games after her run-in with Luckie.
• Lonely Funeral: Insists that she would never want to be celebrated the way Finnick was in death, so when she dies protecting a boy in District 6 from a falling crane, she is buried in an unmarked grave, and the surviving Victors hold a small, private funeral.
• Maybe Ever After: Has an ambiguous romantic relationship with Gale, but we never find out if they settled down together before her death.
• Minor Kidroduction: Appears in The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf as the little sister of the boy who was reaped for the 52nd Games before Blight was forced to volunteer and take his place.
• The Nicknamer: Rarely refers to anyone by their actual names, instead calling the surviving Victors: Bread-Boy (Peeta), the Edible Root (Katniss), Dental Hygeine (Enobaria), the Bar on Two Legs (Haymitch), and Volts (Beetee). The last one is from canon.
• Painless Death for a Price: Has an arrangement with Cashmere that Cashmere's tributes would kill Johanna's tributes early, quickly and with very little pain. The "price" Johanna pays is unstated in the series.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She hides it by snarking, but it's made painfully clear that she's become this after the Rebellion (although it is slightly Played for Laughs due to the Mood Whiplash of her being ordered to go on a vacation to District 4 immediately afterwards).
  Mayor Mack Murray: Twelve complaints of traumatized children. Two dead cats you claim you thought were tributes. A stampede in the stables. And old Mr. Hinkley claiming you burst out of his privy screaming "Death to District 13."
• Ship Tease: Gets into a relationship with Gale Hawthorne sometime after the end of the war.
• The Snark Knight: As per canon, Johanna is inordinately sarcastic, and still fights as a Rebel.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: To Creon, the District 2 male tribute.
  She pulls the hatchet out of Creon's chest, letting the gore drip onto her boots. … She gives a shriek and the hatchet buries itself in his knee. Then the other. Then his throat. Then his groin. Then his chest, again and again.
• Torture Always Works: Reveals all the details of the rebels' plans and leadership while under torture… because the Mockingjay Revolution had already begun, so there is nothing the Capitol could do with her intel.
• Trauma Button: Water reminds her of her torture, so Peeta needs to console her after watching the Fifth Games, which includes a lot of water.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: As per canon, she pulls this on the Career pack to the shock of both them and their mentors.
  • Although one of her Dark Secrets is that she wasn't faking right away, and really did have a Freak Out when her name was called, due to being haunted by memories of the cannibalistic Titus from the previous year.

District 8

"It rained while I was in the Red, as it does nearly every day in District 8, and the streets are rivers of mud that seep into the seams of my worn shoes as I slosh through the mess. The tenements rise above on both sides, gloomy and gray in the fading light. I can hear the roars and hissing from the textile mills behind me as they pour out the smoke that gives Fog Town its name."

— Cecelia Rheys

Districtwide Tropes

• Alliterative Family: All three female Victors' names start with a "C": Cora, Cecelia, and Cotton.
• City Noir: Downplayed in comparison to places like the Capitol and District 6, but its a gloomy, industrialized place with plenty of seediness.
• Decapitation Strike: Arrow implies that the District rebels launched a suicide bombing at the Justice Building to kill all of the Capitol leaders and disorganize their men before the fighting started.
• Total Party Kill: None of the District 8 Victors survive by the story's end.
  • Cora is killed while trying to escape from prison.
  • Woof and Cecelia are killed in the Third Quarter Quell.
  • Cotton is blown up while holding Peacekeepers back, so Haymitch and Plutarch can escape.
• World of Action Girls: District 8 has the highest female-to-male ratio of Victors (and the only district besides District 10 in which female Victors outnumber male). Cotton and Cecelia have the highest recorded body counts of all female outlier Victors and among the highest of outlier Victors in general, and Cora takes on the entire "criminal gang" of her Games all by herself, killing three and severely wounding one. Cotton goes on to take down a squad of Peacekeepers in a heroic Murder-Suicide at the very beginning of the Mockingjay Rebellion. Paylor is the Rebel Leader of District 8, the first district to openly rebel since the Dark Days, and becomes the first post-HG president of Panem.

Woof Barton (13th Games Victor)

• Berserk Button: Kills a local bully and the tribute from District 4, in both cases because they stole his food.
• Bully Hunter: His father's physical abuse of his mother causes him to hate bullies and pick fights with them.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his first Games.^note Which means he is eighty during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Dies Wide Open: Cecelia describes a dead Woof "sprawled on the beach, his eyes staring upwards toward nothing".
• Get It Over With: Ends his interview with Augustine Pine by saying, "Just give me a knife and put me in the damn arena already!"
• I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: Arc Words throughout Woof's chapter.
• Kick the Dog: His poor greyhound is one of many Victor relatives killed as part of the Capitol's evil pettiness.
• Kill Tally: Only one tribute confirmed — the District 4 boy, which ends up being the Final Battle of the Games.
• Like a Son to Me: Averted, which is his "secret". He longs for a male Victor with which he can have this type of relationship.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-universe. His interview with Augustine Pine consists of a Cluster F-Bomb directed at Pine and the Capitol crowds, but the crowds eat it up, because they "love a bad boy". Woof is personally perplexed when he ends a receiving several parachutes of support.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kills a tribute for stealing the hot soup that was parachuted for him, but he is horrified when he sees that it's the District 4 boy, whom he had befriended in training.
• Nothing Personal: Brutus tells him this after spearing him to death in the Third Quarter Quell.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 8's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell, but very little is said about him besides that he is old and near senile.
• The One Guy: District 8's only male Victor.
• Patricide: Kills his father by pushing him down the stairs to stop his father from attacking his mother.
• Promoted to Parent: After he kills his father and his mother goes insane, Woof becomes this for his sisters, Mara and Adella. He looks after them in the Community Home and makes sure they have enough food. He kills the bully at the bridge for the stealing the food intended for them.
• Reading Lips: Despite being largely deaf by the time he is 79 years old, Woof can read lips and therefore knows more what people are saying around him than he lets on.
• Snow Means Death: The arena for the 13th Games was covered in snow.
• These Hands Have Killed: Refuses to lose his temper again after killing the District 4 boy. This holds for sixty years, until he sees Brutus making jokes about the Careers killing the District 8 girl in the 74th Games. This leads Woof to lose his temper for the first time in all those years and attack Brutus.
• Troll Bridge: Encountered one when he was eleven in the form of some bullies who wouldn't let him cross without giving up the food he'd gathered for himself and his sisters. He retaliated by pushing one of them off it.

Cora Shutter (First Quarter Quell Victor)

• Ambiguously Brown: Her district partner describes her to be dark-skinned, but her ethnic background isn't disclosed in the fic.
• Celebrity Endorsement: Becomes an endorser of several products following her victory.
• The Dead Have Names: When Snow tortures her and orders her to give the names of rebel leaders, Cora instead shouts out the names of the mostly-dead tributes she mentored (with Cecelia being the exception at the time).
• Defiant to the End: Cora dies trying to escape from the Catacombs, the prison in the Capitol where she is held for interrogation.
• Disappeared Dad: After she was voted into the Quell, her father wouldn't come to say goodbye to her (likely out of fear or shame), and didn't try to be part of her life after she returned to District 8. He finally comes to see her three years after her victory, because he is dying and he needs her to buy expensive, life-saving medicine.
• Doomed by Canon: When Katniss and Peeta are watching the tapes of living past Victors in preparation for the 3rd Quarter Quell, they note the absence of the 1st Quarter Quell Victor.
• Electric Torture: Done to Cora as Snow interrogates her. She refuses to give any information about the leaders or plans of District 8's rebels, but does give the name of a Capitolian supporter.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Her opal necklace is her signature.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Exploited Trope. At one point, she kisses Mags in order to covertly pass her information.
• Healing Potion: Her stomach wound is largely healed when she attacks Jon Parsons, the District 10 male tribute, suggesting she received one from her sponsors.
• Heroic Seductress: Enjoys an active sex life (including with Ahenobarbus) and uses her sexual charisma to help Mags out.
  Mags: Listen, Cora, I need a favor, and not one I can repay any time soon.
  Cora: Say the word, Mags. Anything you need.
  Mags: Well, to start, I need you to seduce someone.
  Cora: My dear Mags Baxter-Dupont. I thought you'd never ask.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: Expecting that she will be elected as tribute, Cora approaches the toughs at her school to teach her both how to fight and how to withstand a beating.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — the District 6 boy (Chevy Jameson), District 9 girl, District 8 boy, District 10 boy (Jon Parsons), and two other unnamed tributes.
• May–December Romance: Her relationship with Ahenobarbus, who is at least 24 years older than she is.
• Missing Mom: Her mother is said to have ran off with a Capitol citizen, though given how the same thing was said to be true about Blight's mother, she might not have left voluntarily either.
• Miss Kitty: Runs "The Red", a whorehouse where Cecelia works and where Cora collects intelligence from Peacekeeper clients.
• Mutual Kill: Subverted. Both Cora and her district partner stab each other — she is stabbed in the stomach, he in the groin and then the neck — but only he dies.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her Games are told from the point of view of Rick McNulty, a District 10 citizen who votes for and then sponsors his district's male tribute.
• Odd Friendship: With Cecelia's stepmother Spindella, the sister of the girl Cora's father killed, and the only person who voted for Cora and was brave enough to face her once she came back.
• One-Man Army: Takes down the entire "Criminal" pack — the District 5, 6, and 8 boys and the District 9 girl — all by herself. The District 5 boy is the only one to survive, but with a broken arm.
• Rebel Leader: The Red is the largest intel gathering institution for the La Résistance in Panem. It's one of the main reasons the rebellion begins in District 8.
• Sins of the Father: Elected as tribute because her father, a tax collector, killed the daughter of a man who couldn't pay his taxes.
• You Owe Me: Gets Caesar to avoid discussing Cecelia's life as a prostitute during the interviews (despite it being a juicy potential topic) by calling him and reminding him that he'd promised her a favor for pulling some strings to get his niece to play her in a reenactment of her Games.

Cecelia Rheys (57th Games Victor)

• Action Mom: After she's reaped for the Quell.
• Affectionate Nickname: Her sister Kerry and the Peacekeeper Tanni (also one of her patrons in the Red) call her "Celia".
• Bad Date: Her chapter focuses on a date with Brutus during the 65th Games that starts out badly, because Cecelia is greatly offended that a fellow Victor would pay for her services. But she warms up when she realizes he is doing this to give her a night off from "Victor's appointments". Her split personality, Victoria, ends up sleeping with Brutus in order to get pregnant.
• Big "NO!": Gives two in a row when being told about how the Victors are sold as Sex Slave's right after she's won the games and thought she'd never have to go back to selling her body.
• Big Sister Instinct: Became a prostitute at the age of fourteen to buy medicine for Kerry, and generally cares about her a lot.
• A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: Has a daughter (Cardella), a son (Aaron), and a baby boy (Milo).
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She was portrayed as a heartless schemer by the recaps of her Games, but in truth it was zigzagged.
  • Betrayed both her allies, but one was The Load who was panicking and screaming while she and her other ally were in the midst of trying to cause a landslide to take out the Careers. Her other ally then left her for dead after she got caught and was entombed by the landslide, causing her split personality Victoria to hunt her down once she was finally freed.
  • Had no intentions whatsoever of betraying and killing her district partner, the simple-minded Loomer, especially after he saved her life by freeing her from the rocks serving as her would-be tomb, even calling him her hero. Then mutts attacked them and ripped off Loomer's arm, forcing Cecelia to Mercy Kill him so he wouldn't painfully bleed to death.
  • Played straight with Gillard, who she deliberately seduced with the intention of killing him, and his district partner Andromache, who she betrayed by breaking the ceasefire they agreed upon to decapitate her and finally win the Games.
• Choke Holds: Garrotes Ferrus, the District 2 boy, with her opal necklace, and then crushes his skull with a rock for good measure.
• Cool Aunt: While it's mostly offscreen, she is already one when she goes into the arena, as her older brother has a son with an Uptown Girl who left the baby on their doorstep and hasn't had anything to do with the family since. Cecelia tells Andromache that if she wins, she'll fill her nephew's room with so many toys he won't be able to turn around.
• Cool Big Sis: To her sister Kerry.
• Cursed with Awesome: While working as a prostitute, she develops the ability to disassociate – or "fall into the river" – that develops into a Split Personality that is much more comfortable with killing and helps her endure being a Sex Slave for President Snow.
• Daddy's Girl: Has a very close relationship with her father, and she is devastated to learn that he dies while she is in the arena.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us:
  • Kills Luckie, the District 7 boy, and the District 6 girl on their launching platforms before the Games officially begin.
  • Kills Andromache, the District 4 girl, during a truce period to win the Hunger Games.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: After being reaped, in her goodbye conversation with her younger sister, she tells her a fairytale of a magical land (implied to be The Chronicles of Narnia), stressing how it was in the aftermath of a war, and under a spell of ice and Snow, and that at the end "they got rid of all the snow, forever and ever and ever." Given how common it is for President Snow's name to be used in the place of God in the Capitol and the districts alike, it's unlikely that was a coincidence.
• Dying as Yourself: Cecelia is able to overcome Victoria right before Brutus kills her, and she tells him to find Peeta.
• Enemy Mine: Saves Andromache's life and forms an alliance with her, because she realizes she can't defeat Ferrus alone.
• Happily Married: Ultimately marries Bert, who is introduced as a bit of a goofball but proves to be a truly Nice Guy.
• Hero of Another Story: Cecelia's chapter focuses on her date with Brutus, which results in her getting pregnant. Her Games are described in full in another Fan Fic story by Oisin55, Fall Into the River.
• Heroic BSoD: She falls into this after learning about her father's death at the Victory Ceremony. It took Jason describing Parcel Day as how life as a Victor would gradually become better to snap her out of it.
• Honey Trap: Seduces Gillard, the District 4 boy, which causes him to lowers his guard and allows her to get the jump on him.
• Kill Tally: Nine tributes — the District 7 boy (Luckie), the District 6 girl (Violet), the District 12 boy (Shade), the District 12 girl (Lil), the District 8 boy (Loomer), the District 7 girl (Rowenna), the District 4 boy (Gillard), the District 2 boy (Ferrus), and the District 4 girl (Andromache).
• Kill the Ones You Love: Kills all the tributes who ally with her or help her:
  • Slits the throat of Lil, the District 12 girl, because she becomes The Load, screaming and grabbing as the Career pack closes in.
  • Smothers Loomer, her district partner, with a pillow after a lizard-mutt bites off his hand, and she fears he is too wounded and simple to make it any further.
  • Kills Rowenna, her initial ally, but only after Rowenna is about to stab her. (And this is even after Rowenna had previously abandoned her to die.)
  • Sneaks up and kills Andromache during a truce period before their Final Battle to decide the Victor.
• Lady in Red: Invoked by Hector, her stylist, to exacerbate her "reputation" as a streetwalker (as Luckie previously revealed). Cora is so appalled (partially due to how revealing the dress was implied to be) that she calls in a favour to Caesar Flickerman to direct Cecelia's Interview away from that 'rumour'.
• Laxative Prank: Does this to Minister Darkenshire, in order to sabotage their "appointment".
• Lonely Funeral: Her "secret" is the burial place of her father and her sister Kerry, who is reaped for and killed in the 62nd Games.
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Victoria tells Cecelia prior to the Quell that Spindella is safe, when in fact Della is planning on launching a suicide bomber attack against the District 8 Justice Building.
• Motivational Lie: In order to motivate Cecelia, Della lies to her and tells her that her father is dying, but if she wins, she will receive enough money to afford the medicine to save him. Ironically, her Da ends up actually dying anyway, drinking himself to death after Cecelia gets trapped in the cave.
• Murder by Inaction: Cecelia ends up being on the receiving end of this when Rowenna leaves her hanging off a cliff, providing a Shout-Out to Batman Begins as she explains her decision to abandon Cecelia.
  Rowenna: I'm sorry, Cecelia. But I want to go home. It's better this way. I don't have to kill you. I just don't have to save you.
• My Nayme Is: As per canon, Cecelia's name is spelt with an 'e' and not like the more "conventional" variant of 'Cecilia'. Even the author Oisin55 misspelled her name sometimes in the first chapters of Fall Into the River before settling with the canon spelling.
• No-One Could Have Survived That: Gets trapped in a cave by a rock avalanche, and everyone (except Cora) leaves her for dead. No one expected her to survive all those days… or for Loomer to rescue her.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 8's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. Effie expresses great sorrow when Cecelia's name is called at the reaping, and Cecelia is shown being pulled away from her children.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Invokes this with Brutus in order to get a reprieve from Sex Slave appointments. This is the same reason she gets pregnant by Tanni, though it's not clear if she got pregnant the first time they had unprotected sex.
• Sherlock Scan: Shows a lot of this in general, especially observing the reaping for her games.
  She's walking on the balls of her feet, like she's used to moving around or dodging very quickly. Her shoulders and back are also more developed, knife throwers have stronger biceps than shoulders... The girls prefers spears, and she's left handed. she's been trained but didn't expect to be reaped..... She's not rich, she's a thief. Her reaping dress isn't entirely clean of coal dust, which means she walked to the square from near the mines where it accumulated on the journey. she's well-fed but one of the poor.
• Shoot the Dog: Being forced to kill Loomer, who she considered her hero after he saved her from the landslide that buried her under a mountain of rocks. The action devastates Cecelia so much that it causes her to develop a Split Personality that essentially finishes the rest of the Games for her.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man:
  • A platonic example — she grew genuinely fond of her district partner Loomer, who was kind to her and saved her life, and was utterly devastated when she had to kill him.
  • Mothered children with the entitled Tanni and fellow Victor Brutus, but ultimately married Bert, who was kind and oafish like Loomer (though nowhere near as simple-minded).
• Split Personality: After killing Loomer, Cecelia goes crazy and develops a separate personality — who ultimately names herself "Victoria" –- who is much more comfortable doing what needs to be done to win the Hunger Games. Victoria also emerges in order to sleep with Brutus and get herself pregnant.
• Streetwalker: Works as a prostitute for Cora until she is reaped.
• Tempting Fate: The morning before the reaping, she comments that there are nearly two thousand other girls who might be reaped instead of her, and her name is only in the reaping ball twenty times, so she likes her odds.

Cotton Rivers (71st Games Victor)

• Ambiguously Brown: Cotton is described to be "dark-skinned" in her chapter, but her ethnicity is never stated.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Because she was an Elective Mute for six months after her Games, most assume she is a Broken Bird, including President Snow. But then she fights off a whole squad of Peacekeepers alone.
• Big Sister Instinct: To her four younger sisters who she took care of after their parents died. When she was reaped, she was unsurprised due to having taken out a large amount of tesserae to feed all five of them. Later, with the rebellion about to start, she takes precautions to keep them safe.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when she enters her first Games.
• Crazy Survivalist: Her "secret" is that only she knows where all the booby traps are that surround her Victor's mansion.
• Heroic BSoD: Watching the tape of her Games and seeing how the victims of her traps died caused her to become an Elective Mute for the next six months.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sets a trap for the Peacekeepers chasing her and Haymitch using pyrotechnics provided by Emrys, but it requires she stay behind to set them off.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Her Arc Words throughout her chapter are about her being the prey. But by the end, she is the one who takes out her hunters.
• Industrial Ghetto: Her arena is described as "an industrial wasteland of abandoned factories and warehouses and smelting plants."
• Kill Tally: Nine tributes, none of whom are identified except the District 2 boy.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Subverted. Cotton calls that notion "bull crap" as "she's lost count of the times she's felt death's hot breath of her back. Prey doesn't have time for wishes or regrets. Prey moves. Prey reacts. Prey lives."
• Oh, Crap!: Goes into full defensive mode when Abram races in yelling that Ben is dead and the Gamemakers know what they're up to.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Is described to be "little" and a "slip", but manages to win the Hunger Games. Somewhat justified in that she didn't win from fighting head-on, but by setting traps.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: Cotton notes in her chapter that her skill with traps started with her building switch traps to catch rats for food in District 8.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Evident in throughout her chapter.
• Stealth Expert: Kills nine tributes through traps she set throughout her arena (proving she is more of hunter than she originally believes), but she never sees any of the actual kills until her Victor's recap.
• Trap Master: Won her Games using various Death Traps.
• Underestimating Badassery: Shortly before the Quell, Snow dismisses her as a "little slip" who "can't go a night without soiling her bedsheets". Cotton makes him eat those words.

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