Nightmare Fuel / The Victors Project

Beware of any unmarked spoilers!

Main Story

• Like Collins, Oisin55 doesn't skimp on the terrifying deaths shown throughout the fic.
• Ahenobarbus goes berserker mode and kills sixteen other tributes in less than forty minutes. Afterward, the narrative refers to him as The Butcher.
• The Domestic Abuse in Woof's household is quite ugly, as is how Woof and his sisters end up on the street after he accidentally kills their father.
• The 21st Hunger Games arena after a week into the Games. It transforms from a beautiful paradise to a Garden of Evil full of horrific mutts and dark-looking terrain that makes many of the remaining tributes (including the Victor) go into hysterics.
• The Black Banquet Massacre that kills ninety-seven people. To quantify it: if this was a real-life event and it was indeed Coriolanus Snow who was behind it, he would have one of the highest known victim counts as a serial killer at the very beginning of his bloody career.
• When Virtus befriends a pregnant stray dog, as soon as the puppies are born, Boudicca forces him to kill and eat them and their mother.
• Justus transforms into a vicious killer in the arena, parroting the Capitol's Sins of Our Fathers rhetoric with each kill and calling it "justice".
• Nellie Mills' death during the 25th Hunger Games, where she's hacked to death by the District Two boy, sending bits of bone, blood, and organ spattering across the shield between the tributes and the Capitol crowd.
• The first Quell in general. Some of the tributes were chosen for the sins of their families, some because no one would miss them, others because the district had to send someone in and they had a chance of surviving. But others were genuinely bad people, particularly the District 6 and 8 boys, a parricidal drug lord and a Serial Rapist, respectively. And as the Chevy J., the aforementioned drug lord, notes in Quell, someone always comes back, with the power and status of a victor and a grudge.
• The DAEYD after Luster Lancaster takes control of it. Attendance is mandatory for those who pass certain evaluations, where they're trained to become sex slaves, Ax-Crazy sociopaths, or a mix of both.
  • The genuine worries from some pregnant mothers, where they drink and smoke in hopes of their child(ren) having birth defects so their child(ren) fail the evaluation.
  • Once you become a Victor, you get to escape the DAEYD without anyone there bothering you, right? Not a chance. Luster would still try to control you (and is good at doing so), as seen with Wonder following his Hunger Games and Ermine when she's assigned Song as a mentee. As much as she likes her, Jade is uncomfortable interacting with Song due to the attention she would attract from Luster.
  • It's also mentioned that cadets are encouraged to maim and murder their peers. Can you imagine being a top-ranking DAEYD student, where your peers are nice to your face but will backstab you for a shot at competing in the Hunger Games? Esther wouldn't, as seen in Ermine's chapter. Same with the main rival who Jade incapacitated.
• Scipio's dismembering at the hands of Luster, after he and Wonder unsuccessfully try to flee the district. One can imagine how it would look (and smell) like inside the box that Luster would eventually give to Wonder.
• Barty's games feature a terrifying assortment of carnivorous and/or toxic plants that eat people alive or melt their faces off.
• The rabid dog attack that almost claims the life of Viola is a creepy bit of Realism-Induced Horror.
• The Realism-Induced Horror of the high-stakes tribute betting system. Nothing about children killing children; just the horrible effects of how it can ruin someone's life over the wrong tribute: loss of fortune, addiction, debt, and suicide (as seen with one unlucky gambler following Beetee's victory).
• President Snow's conversation with Spartacus Brandybane about the purpose of Career tributes and how disposable he is as a Head Gamemaker. Even though Brandybane complies with Snow's orders to make a point to the Career districts, it's unsettling to listen to.
• The 44th Hunger Games arena is a jungle with the usual Cornucopia in the centre. Except at the start, a chasm swallows everyone within the area, taking advantage of the Careers' usual strategy to capture the Cornucopia.
  • The chasm doesn't swallow all six of the Careers (the people that Snow wanted to target), but also six other outliers just to make a point to Luster, Boudicca, and Mags as a collective.
  • Later in the 44th Hunger Games, one boy is eaten alive by fire ants in his sleep and a girl is driven insane by lizards stalking her in the dark.
• The pedophilic sex parties Justinian hosts and attends are described in nauseating detail. While the majority of the more explicit details are thankfully omitted, Finnick notes that Justinian raped at least one District One girl who couldn't have been more than nine or ten, and definitely did so to numerous others.
• Several kills the District 4 boy makes in the 45th Hunger Games feel like something from a Torture Porn flick. Highlights include him slowly hanging the boy from 9 (whose death is described in excruciatingly realistic detail as he slowly strangles to death), burning the District 10 boy alive while poking at him with a red-hot metal poker, and doing something nasty enough to Cora's tribute that only the aftermath is shown. If all this wasn't enough, the horrific death of the District 9 boy does nothing but sexually arouse him and drive him to masturbate out of sight of the pack.
  • His death is pretty nasty as well, with Chaff half-strangling him before smashing the Career's head to pulp against a sharpened splinter of steel sticking out from one of the arena's garbage piles.
• Matty's habit of skinning animals and how he employs this against a wounded Career tribute in the arena are ugly reading.
• Arachnophobes might be advised to avoid the scene where Brutus is nearly eaten by giant spider mutations.
• Coin executing many of the remaining Career Victors in a Kangaroo Court for being Career Victors. It doesn't help that most of their views of the Games were hammered into them at either the DAEYD or the Institute, and that most of them are at least Tragic Villains of one stripe or another when they aren't outright allied to the Rebellion.
  • Granyte and Brilliance's deaths hit particularly hard. Doesn't matter if you're a wheelchair-bound seventy-four-year-old and reliant on an oxygen tank to breathe, it won't save you from the firing squad. Act Defiant to the End by refusing to pledge your loyalty to the new President Evil, and you get deliberately shot in the gut and left to bleed out, with the implication being that your family will also be targeted.
• Jade, from the perspective of her peers at DAEYD. She manages to help Ermine kill two other people and "ruin" one, is implied to have killed or maimed anyone who gets into her way (without it being traced to her), and manages to incapacitate her main rival before the 49th Hunger Games. The fact that it wasn't firmly traced back to her till recently makes it more creepy.
• Jade's casual mention to Caesar following her Hunger Games about killing eight people in the arena. Even if she's faking it, it's very chilling to hear as an outlying district citizen.
• The Capitol doesn't mind reaping pregnant girls into the Hunger Games. Just ask Miriam Murray, one of the District Seven female tributes for the 50th Hunger Games.
• District 2's tribute Trials, where the tributes have to survive in the wild, are subjected to brutal Mind Rape, and then forced to commit a cold-blooded murder (with the victims sometimes being people they personally know, or the children of traitors).
• Mitt's Body Horror and mental trauma after leaving the arctic arena are enough to startle even the head gamemaker.
• Roan's racist murder of his district partner when she tries to help him. Almost everything about Roan might count, really.
• The District Five girl's death at the hands of Crystal during the 61st Hunger Games, in which she's essentially vivisected by the victorious career.
• Titus's descent into cannibalism, which begins when he kills his ally in a fight over a sponsor gift. And then there's how Song and her ally spend three days chasing Titus, while only getting the occasional glimpse of "bloody teeth and wild eyes" before he vanishes again. The memories of what he did are enough to give Johanna a genuine Freak Out during her reaping a year later.
• Mick Cahill's death at the hands of Lupus, where it's mentioned that his head was squashed open easily like some overripe fruit.
• Lupus's father Malchus raises his kids to be Victors, burns Lupus's hand when he's six for hesitating, and is eager to send his younger children into the 3rd Quarter Quell together even while knowing that doing so means at least one of them will die... even when he already had one son who was already a Victor.
  • Lupus himself is pretty damn scary when enraged. He's frothing at the mouth from sheer hatred and fury by the time his Games end, beating the bodies of the District One tributes to the point where they have to be literally scraped off the ground; despite being drugged to the gills with morphling after he's lifted out, he still wakes up several times and smashes everything in sight to splinters in the throes of his rage.

The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf

• The Career tributes, save for Plautia. They're happy to torture another tribute for seven hours before killing him, which includes flaying him alive in front of his ally, and killed Plautia for trying to spare them from being tortured. The duration would make both Citrine and Enobaria's two-hour-long kills look like a Mercy Kill, and is also their arguably their official Moral Event Horizon.
• While it's definitely far quicker than the above, the ways the some of the Careers die are pretty horrific (if well-deserved):
  • Alabaster gets kicked down and has her throat graphically torn out by one of the horse muttations that Blight calls to the pack, with the horse at least partly eating her remains (possibly before she dies).
  • Tara is caught between two pony mutts, which manage to bite into and grip her wrists. She has just enough time for to look utterly terrified as she realises what's about to happen before the mutts run in opposite directions, pulling her apart like a wishbone.
  • Quintus is left to die by his allies, and the mutts toy with him as they kill him.
  • Romani pushes another tribute off the top of a Ferris wheel, only to be dragged down with her, screaming in terror for several seconds before hitting the ground in a merciful Gory Discretion Shot.
• The Bleeding Blight outbreak in the epilogue. Snow infects District 7 with a lab-created plague, killing several major characters, just to see if it will work before he unleashes it on District 13.

The Bonds of Blood

• Enobaraia and her friends being captured by the reavers, tortured, and forced to fight each other or vicious animals. Then Enobaria gets free and goes on a bloody Roaring Rampage of Revenge. She's half-crazy when rescuers find her.
• Rob's torture via electric shocks is bad enough for him to require a Mercy Kill.

Arrow

• The description that many District One tributes attempt Suicide by Cop. Imagine thinking that an early death is more desirable than becoming a Sex Slave either after your victory or graduation (if you weren't the first person to touch the reaping bowl).
  • Even more so when the reader realized they've read about many of these suicides in The Victors Project.
• The rebellion of District One in itself is a great example of how brutal The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized can be. While the rebellion proper (having been planning ahead for years) is fairly restrained, the mobs that swiftly erupt are far less so, quite literally tearing the Peacekeepers of the District limb from limb before leaving the bits to rot on the streets in the days after, lynching Song and her husband despite their relative lack of connection to the Capitol (save for Song acting as The Quisling to void her husband's Peacekeeper contract), and dragging Les Collaborateurs (along with their families) out into the streets before gunning them down as they beg for mercy.
  • Gleam and the DAEYD instructors get locked inside their academy, which is promptly set on fire by the cadets. Karmic Death or not, it's a pretty nasty way to go, particularly considering that Gleam is effectively an old man with minimal influence over the horrors of the DAEYD.
  • What happens when a live human is thrown into the graphite compressor is thankfully not shown, though it's mentioned that the victim's (Luster's body double) scream turns to that of an "animalistic wail", followed by a sudden silence and a heavily-flawed diamond dropping down the chute.
• District 3 wipes out their Peacekeepers by recreating every piece of technology and every muttation ever used in the Games, then unleashing them all at once. The result is a pure Mook Horror Show described in loving detail; Peacekeepers are ripped apart by explosions, shredded by blade traps, dissolved by acid, caught in nets of barbed wire, eaten by whatever kind of hellish muttation Wiress had stored in her house, or suffer various other horrific fates.
  Peacekeepers die. They die impaled on whirling shards of steel. They die with their eyeballs melting from their faces. They die half devoured or dissolved. They die screaming, and they die in silence. They die defiantly, or they die begging for their lives. But they die.
  • Just to emphasise the sheer Mook Horror Show that the battle turned into, the chapter ends by revealing District 3's losses.
    During the Dark Days, District 3 lost half their citizens. In the Mockingjay Rebellion, they are the only district to win without firing a single shot, or losing a single life.
• District 5's rebellion is mostly fought by children, with appropriately horrific results — the Capitol is shown to have absolutely no qualms about ordering at least one pair of children hanged in the main square as an example to others, and orders Romulus Thread to perform decimation on the entirety of the district's Reaping-age population while forcing the parents to watch.
• What passes for a rebellion in District 6 is bloodthirsty gangs taking victors' relatives as hostages while trying to claim the district for themselves, the Capitol gunning down anyone who tries to find shelter with them while the Rebellion bombs at least one train trying to leave, and the district's in-fighting starting massive urban fires. Then the fires hit the petrol refineries, and half of District 6 simply vanishes.
• While the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax and Big Damn Heroes moment is more of an awesome moment, it can be genuinely spooky on the first read when it looks as if the vengeful ghosts of District 7's tributes have come back to life for revenge in a story that hasn't shown any signs of the supernatural beforehand.
  They're still alive, and he knows each of them is heart-hammeringly grateful for that fact, but in District 7, every child knows that when gods and ghosts walk, you get the hell out of their way.
• Chapter 9 mentions that the Capitol relied on reaping-aged Institute kids as soldiers. How many unlucky cadets had the front lines of the Second Rebellion as one of their first assignments?
• The fighting in District 9 causes a grassfire that endangers even those who remain neutral in the Mockingjay Rebellion. One girl describes how her family ran for miles before the fire caught up to them and burned everyone but her and her baby brother.

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