YMMV / The Victors Project

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • It is stated that the escort who sent Elena's children into the same Games didn't even pretend it wasn't a fix. Evil Gloating or Brutal Honesty?
  • Whether or not Granyte ever knew or suspected his niece was a mole or was just fooled by her isn't clear.
  • In Secrets it's said Lyme had a friend, a patriot, who died in the Hunger Games. Whether by patriot she meant loyal to the Capitol or loyal to the rebellion is unclear.
  • Dido's chapter mentions that she used stray cats for target practice. Bad People Abuse Animals, or a risk taker going out after dangerous animals (given how the stray dogs of the district are feral mutations which attack isolated kids and the cats could be the same)?
  • After Finnick exposes a Capitol married couple as being "biological father and daughter" it's mentioned that the daughter/wife is hanging from a closet ten minutes later while the father/husband is stalking into the night to murder the person who told Finnick and everyone else he confided in. This raises the question of whether he killed her to cover up his secret, or she committed suicide out of either shame at the scandal that would follow or (if she hadn't known beforehand) horror and disgust, and he's going to murder the people he confided in out of grief and vengeance over her suicide.
• Ass Pull:
  • Boudicca and Luster being among the surviving victors and behind the attacks on Katniss can feel this way. While Luster was a case of Never Found the Body, his alleged death had been described in detail and there's no indication of how he faked it. Boudicca surviving comes even more out of nowhere, considering Beetee's confident statement that Bovina was the only surviving victor from the first 25 Hunger Games, with there being no explanation for why he was wrong about that, and fans having spent years trusting that statement before chapter 76 came out.
  • The epilogue of Fall into the River abruptly reveals that Rich Bitch Larissa Farrar is a dedicated rebel. Larissa only revealed her true loyalties to the POV characters off-screen, during the Time Skip. During the main story, her loyalties received no significant Foreshadowing. This arguably doubles as They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Nolan and his Rebellious Rebel shtick (and leading an effective Alliance against the careers) is either one of the best outlier victors or too hot-headed not to feel annoyed with.
  • Phoebus is either a Nice Guy career with some good Hidden Depths who suffers a Break the Cutie moment, or a bland carbon copy of Brutus who is a little too self-righteous and who Blight is right to hate.
  • Boudicca. Some see her as a Tragic Villain whose doing what's necessary to find stability for her people, has a valid reason to feel grateful to the Capitol and goes through one of the most thorough and emotionally powerful story arcs of the stories. Others consider her a self-righteous Jerkass whose a little too comfortable with putting people through Training from Hell and pushing the outer districts down.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Luster Lancaster is responsible for turning the DAEYD into an Academy of Evil, forcibly taking attractive children from their parents to become tributes and high-priced escorts, starting the victors' prostitution ring, and kidnapping Katniss Everdeen. Mrs. Everdeen killing him during the rescue arc is one of the most satisfying and karmic deaths in the series. However, the death his Body Double suffered in his place would have been even more cathartic.

  • Roan Tully is hated even among the people of his home District for his staunch loyalty to the Capitol and and violent contempt towards the Anasazi, which includes outright torturing a handful of his employees^note examples of his cruelty include breaking the ribs of an Anasazi labourer purely for the hell of it, at least one heavily-implied rape of a labourer's daughter, and forcing the 74th Games' male tribute to groom an unbroken stallion, resulting in him having his foot permanently maimed at the tender age of ten. It's noted that even the Settlers—the semi-Token Evil Teammates of District Ten who Roan was born into—don't like discussing him. His Quell reaping and Bovina's refusal to bail him out (coupled with his Villainous Breakdown just before he's shredded by "The Beast") is very much deserved and incredibly cathartic after a chapter of him being a Hate Sink.
  • Romulus Thread is a sadistic Peacekeeper captain behind Gale's whipping and orders for a tenth of the reaping-aged children in District Five to be executed as punishment for the District's rebellion. It's hard to feel bad for him when the Peacekeepers turn on him and quite literally blow him to shreds.
  • His smarter and more sadistic brother Domitius' death is similarly well-deserved: having forced the entirety of District 10 on a death march and put much of the district to the torch after the rebellion begins, few tears are shed when he and his fellow Peacekeepers are ambushed and hacked to pieces by the Anasazi.
• Creator's Favorite: Blight and Jason, the protagonists of Oisin55's first story show up quite a bit after the conclusion of their arc, and the author pretty clearly enjoys writing about Blight's witticism and the impact the two have on people.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Judging by the reviews of Fall into the River, there are those who like Tanni Romero, the Peacekeeper with an obsessive crush on Cecelia.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Has its own page.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The fates of several popular victors can inspire this, but the one that practically everyone tries to ignore is Johanna's chapter revealing that she died at a fairly young age in a freak accident about a decade after the events of the story.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Oisin55 and many of his readers frequently read and reviewed Lorata, Anla'Shok and FernWithy, three other Hunger Games fanfiction authors (whose works mainly feature District 2, District 4 and Haymitch respectively) who were posting stuff at the same time and often had Shout Outs to each others work.
    • Oisin55 based the sense of community among the District 2 Victors on Lorata's We Must Be Killers stories.
    • Oisin55 once stated that he decided to scrap a planned storyline because it was similar to something FernWithy ended up doing in The End of the World series (having raiders attack the trains on the way to the Hunger Games to try and stop them), because he liked that scene and didn't want to feel like a copycat.
    • According to an Author's Note from the story Checkmate (Anla'Shok), Anla'Shok once requested (and received) permission to "Rip off" a speech Jason makes about the impact parcel day has on the Outer Districts from Fall Into the River, and have Blight tell it to Mags as an implicit appeal to scale back on the consecutive career victories.
  • His works were also read and reviewed by Kiliflower (author of Champion) and mintjellyfish, other THG fanfic authors currently working on their own versions of his premise (an epic story about Panem with a chapter for every victor), with Oisin55's approval.
  • Silent Nights in the Victors Village is written by a fan of the Victors (created by Oisin55) and shows their reactions to the Quarter Quell, with reviewers who read TVP approving so far despite some minor story differences.
  • So far, fans of the story are appreciative of the Recursive Fanfiction story 74th Hunger Games: A Fanfic Tribute.
  • Cheating Death: Those That Lived is one of the first Spiritual Successor fics of The Victors Project to be successfully completed, and has an interesting cast of victors and plenty of well-received Shout Outs to The Victors Project.
  • Speaking of spiritual successors, fans of Tales of the Hunger Games also appreciate Victors Project as it also covers the Victors before Katniss and Peeta.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In Fall Into the River, Cecelia's stepmother Spindella repeatedly insists that Cecelia wasn't deliberately reaped to punish Spindella for her role in the Rebellion. She argues that if that were the case, they would have waited a few years, then reaped her biological daughter, Kerry, when she came of age. Five years later, in The Bonds of Blood, Kerry is deliberately reaped the first year she's eligible to be a tribute, although for completely different reasons than Spindella's activities.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • The popularity of Cotton, her death being in a big explosion, and the fact that the last words of her chapter could signify something other than death have some fans hoping that she might have survived and just decided to stay out of sight after the war.
  • Luster slipping through the cracks of the District One rebellion after being assumed dead causes some fans to wonder if Gleam could have survived the destruction of the DAEYD.
  • The Crazy Is Cool antics of Dido can make it possible to hope that just maybe she somehow survived the viewing center massacre. It helps that her death isn't specifically described and Enobaria mentions going through the security footage to find out what happened to her, suggesting a case of Never Found the Body.
  • Not everyone is convinced that Berenice really died in the destruction of The Nut, given how chaotic the event was and how easily Boudicca could have been mistaken about her fate.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this story, the original mentors were rebel prisoners, and the District 12 one was a drunken cook. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the original mentors are Capitol students doing a project and the first District 12 mentor is Coriolanus Snow.
  • In this story Caesar Flickerman was the Beleaguered Assistant of the original host while in Collins' prequel it's implied he inherited the job, as the first host was also a Flickerman.
  • In this story the victor of the 38th Hunger Games was a male career and the victor of the 67th Hunger Games was a female outlier (specifically Johanna) while additional tie-in materials to the books released later on made the victor of the 38th Hunger Games a female outlier and the victor of the 67th Hunger Games a male career.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Ben Cooper is the son of a Hunter Trapper from District 9 and aides his father in protecting the District and making a good living for themselves. When Ben is reaped, he ignore the advice of his mentors, kills a Career and replaces his victim in the Career alliance. He proves his loyalty to the Careers by helping them track down and kill his district partner and four others, then poisons them during a meal. Ben then kills five wolves sent by the gamemakers, despite being injured in the process, and goes on to mercilessly hunt and kill the remaining outliers. When the last of them cuts off two of his fingers, Ben fakes being helpless before finishing her off. As a victor, Ben becomes an influential celebrity and a good mentor until he retires in favor of the first tribute he saved. Ben comes out of retirement to successfully mentor Abram Mills, who might be his son from a one night stand. Ben sides with the rebellion and dies on a mission that helps save several of his fellow victors in the Capitol.
  • Jade Boleyn grows up as a Blue Blood in a toxic environment, indirectly maims a childhood enemy and is sent to the [DAEYD]. She uses a Sherlock Scan to deduce that a murder took place and helps Ermine violently avenge her dead friend at least partially to amuse herself. In the arena, she achieves many impressive archery kills, plays the members of her alliance against each other and kills them all singlehandedly. While Jade expresses little remorse for that part of her life, she becomes a rebel, and aids in intricate plans to win District 1's freedom. Jade does an expert job of avoiding suspicion and treats her fellow victors aloofly, but shows occasional warmth and helpfulness even to people who dislike her, and mourns for dead friends. Jade uses her knowledge of Panem's legal code to take back some control during her Kangaroo Court trial after the new regime turns on her, buying time for a Character Witness to arrive. Jade sacrifices a chance to kill Coin—who nevertheless tries to kill Jade—to ensure the safety of a friend, having one vowed not to let anymore people die when she can save them and later takes part in the mission to rescue Katniss.
  • Halibut "Hal" Shore is feared both inside and outside of the arena for his ruthless, detached attitude toward killing. He poisons his closest ally in the arena, Copper, both to avoid a fight, and so that Copper's girlfriend won't be any more upset by his death than she has to be—which earlier caused Hal to assume the role of executioner for himself rather than have her watch Copper drown a helpless tribute. He defeats the rest of his alliance with additional Combat Pragmatist methods and a jagged harpoon he receives as a sponsor gift. Hal is viewed as a frightening and unstable person, but he can show a friendlier side around victors like Berenice and Ares. When his son dies in the arena, Hal is devastated, but continues to mentor future tributes to the best of his ability, while showing protectiveness toward his son's district partner Annie. During the rebellion, He kills half-a-dozen peacekeepers while protecting Annie, before dying form thirty stab wounds, with his death inspiring the district to fight harder.
  • Cashmere Delacroix attends the DAEYD with her brother to keep from being separated once their family decides one of them needs to be a victor to save the family from bankruptcy. Cashmere has to be forced into volunteering for the games. She becomes a broker of information and favors who is capable of having her tributes perform Mercy Kills or sabotaging an arena. Cashmere helps her brother control his growing bloodlust by drugging, kidnapping, and torturing Capitolians but keeps him from killing his victims. Cashmere threatens to arrange the deaths of fifty people in a blackmailer's district to make her leave Gloss alone. Upon finding out about the Rebellion's plan to save Katniss and Peeta, Cashmere audaciously forces her way into the rebellion to get revenge on Snow and end his reign of evil. When asked to play the role of a villain rather than openly aide the rebellion, she agrees and reluctantly asks for a list of expendable victor-tributes who can be killed without jeopardizing the plan before requesting that the rebels kill her and Gloss to sell the charade and keep her brother from completely losing his humanity.
• Moe
  • Elena's Star-Crossed Lovers romance, her Good Parents moments, her reluctance to kill in the arena, and the affection and closeness she shows many of her tributes make her a very endearing character who is easy to care about in every way possible.
  • Dido is a trainer killer and Hard-Drinking Party Girl, but her delightfully immature nature can still inspire this. Notable moments include when she spray paints her new mansion Cheery Pink, engages in bungled Just Like Robin Hood efforts as a child, and acts as The Prankster during training rather than prepare for the Games.
  • Mitt's status as an endearing practical joker who avoids intentionally hurting anyone in the arena and then suffers from devastating PTSD afterward makes it easy to feel sympathetic toward him.
  • Berenice's sense of unease at her victory tour, the way Ares treats her like a daughter, and the way she sings a song about their relationship make her surprisingly cute for a career victor.
  • Abram, for being a shy, kind Momma's Boy who is more upset than most about having to kill in the arena and becomes both friendlier and a better fighter at the same time during his Character Development.
• One-Scene Wonder: There's quite a few of them, given how plenty of games feature multiple tributes in depth but there can only be one victor, not to mention all of the memorable characters outside of the area, and some of the lesser-appearing victors. There are a few standouts though.
  • The District 3 Girl from the 45th Hunger Games Games (one of the only chapters to show every tribute, from the perceptive of the mentors) is well-regarded for being an Academic Athlete who makes all the right decisions at the bloodbath and is targeted specifically by the careers for being "too clever".
  • The girl from District 6 in the 56th Hunger Games, who only appears in one, three sentence paragraph which describes how she was snatched up by a giant eagle mutt that she managed to kill with a split piece of a stick, earning her a loaf of bread as a sponsor gift.
  • The half-crazed District 3 boy from the 69th Hunger Games who stayed alive for weeks in the desert arena drinking lizard blood and fights Abram.
  • Berenice is one of the least appearing victors (appearing in little outside of a continuous scene in her introductory chapter) but wins some fans in that scene for being a knife-throwing guitar player who comes across as a bit bashful following her victory.
  • Briseis only appears three or four times in the series and only gets dialogue or significant focus in one of those scenes, where she comes across as tough, plain spoken, not afraid to throw Sarcasm Mode at a slimy reporter and a bit tensed up (foreshadowing the later mention that she suffers a mental break and kills several members of her abusive family).
  • Just about all of the 2nd Quarter Quell tributes in some regard. Notable ones include Birch McCallan (for mooning the entire nation on the reaping stage as an act of defiance), Petrum Steel (an aspiring pilot who is allowed to help fly the hovercraft to the arena as a last wish), Tyke Bomb Camaro Jorgins, Amazonian Beauty Cornflower Buckley, Dempsey Drake (who employs some Distracted by the Sexy at the Cornucopia), Watts Jafowsky (who volunteers for his brother), Dazzle Brooks (for being a somewhat tragic figure due to volunteering by accident), Adam Stone (who meekly wears a dress for his Interview), Terry De Luca (a career who bequeathed his porn collection to the younger trainees), Aeria Whitaker (who uses her interview to do a dance number), and Pint-Sized Powerhouse Yarna Smethers.
  • Minnow Carr the Mama Bear head of District 4's community home.
  • Ben's last two opponents; the girl from 3 who tries to drop rocks on him and ABAC District 7 girl Alanna Mallon.
  • Adonis Silvertree, Allana Corwesh and Sabinus Snick attract some interest for being leaders of the Capitol rebels with great influence but mysterious reasons for joining the Rebellion. Adonis apparently being the father of canon character Lavinia helps.
  • Eamon's rival tributes Rondo (who sees killing tributes as no different than butchering live stock at first but also shows a bit of a softer side in the final showdown) and Percussive Pickpocket Beth (both only mentioned briefly at the beginning of the chapter as possible contenders and then having their deaths covered in short sentences later on).
  • Dinoysius, Mags' Large Ham, Big Fun, Ambiguously Bi friend and regular sponsor.
  • Mesa and his father Maxx, the leaders of District 2's rebel village of Redfern, and major players behind Lyme's mole gambit (with Maxx being willing to die for it during an If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten! scene).
  • Halibut's allies provide a decent look into the mentality of career packs and their Inevitable Mutual Betrayal through the eyes of the erstwhile allies themselves right before they get killed.
• Older than You Think: This fic spawned several Follow the Leader similar stories, but a similar work, 75 Games, 75 Victors, 75 Oneshots, wrapped up a couple of months before the first chapter of The Victors Project came out, although its worldbuilding, variety of perspectives, and intense arena scenes haven't attracted the same degree of respect and admiration as TVP.
• Signature Scene: Several scenes are unanimously loved, but a few stand out.
  • The perspective flip of Finnick exposing the Capitol's secrets.
  • Beetee and Cashmere's Battle of Wits and the romantic dynamics involved.
  • Boudicca's first conversation with the three cousins, and the way she plants the seeds for the mentality behind her academy.
  • From the spinoff one-shot Quell, the POV scenes of the District 11 volunteers, and their Inspirational Martyr achievements are quite notable.
• Spiritual Successor: The success of Victors Project has also popularized the "75 Victors" subgenre of Hunger Games fanfiction. A few of the notable ones are Tales of the Hunger Games by Christian Blanco, The Moment of Victory by Mauradercat, and Cheating Death: Those That Lived (which has its own shoutouts to Victors Project) by CragmiteBlaster.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Oisin55's fans felt this way about a lot of Victors who were sparsely used, or killed under objectionable circumstances. Abram and Cotton might be the two biggest examples; both being sympathetic, well-written and flat-out cool outlier Victors from the tail end of the games who are needlessly (albeit dramatically) killed in their debut chapters and would have been great additions to the Rescue Arc of the surviving Victors.
  • The District 4 victors in general besides Mags, Annie, and Finnick. While generally viewed as fairly interesting in their debuts, they rarely get to be the main focus or POV character of their own chapters, and rarely get to reappear in any substantial capacity afterward. Multiple reviewers outright complained that the author should have just given District 3, 6, or 11 another victor due to so many of 4's victors having a negligible effect on the plot.
  • Gleam just falling into line and "begging for scraps" after Luster takes over the DAEYD feels like a betrayal of his earlier characterization, especially when there was so much potential for him to join the resistance along with Luxe and Platinum out of anger and atonement at seeing Luster take over his vision to protect the District's children and turn it into a true Academy of Evil.
  • Johanna given her death, which has no plot impact, and feels anticlimactic for such a strong and important character, especially given how young she was, and how there'd been hints that she was building a new post-war life.
  • Non-victor examples include Carla Lourdes and Jason's extended family from The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf and Kerry Rheys from Fall Into the River who get killed off in either epilogues or later stories, to the detriment of many fans, despite some decent development and emotional investment. Jason's family especially feel this when they could have met with the main characters during Blight's Chapter of TVP and added something to that, rather than just have their absence commented on. Apparently, the author felt this way about Carla Lourdes in retrospect to, as she resurfaces in Arrow having not died after all.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Using the name of each Games' Victor as a chapter title (something which Follow the Leader works to this fic also tend to do) is good for chapter organization, but also steals a lot of suspense that could have come from trying to spot actual Victors vs. Decoy Protagonists in some chapters.
  • It is revealed in Gloss and Cashmere's chapter how they arranged for the dam to blow up during the 70th Hunger Games, allowing Annie to win, but how they did and who got them to do it are never revealed even in Annie's chapter.
  • Fall Into the River shows a Rebel meeting where the victors and Capitol rebels discuss how much progress they're making and how they feel about potentially recruiting any of the remaining tributes into the rebellion after the Games are over. Unfortunately, this scene doesn't get a reprise to show what they said during Katniss and Peeta's Games, with such groundbreaking potential and a new crop of victors to interact there.
  • Brilliance won his Games despite crow mutations pecking out his eyes but Oisin55 never describes whether his was a Victory by Endurance, or he fought and defeated his final opponent/s while blind, either of which could have been the subject of an interesting paragraph or two (considering that the main focus of the chapter was on the Rebellion and not the Games).
  • Arrow never reveals how Ermine and Brilliance escaped the Torches and Pitchforks mob that targeted Gleam, Song and Luster.
  • Arrow chooses not to go into District 8 when Katniss fires the arrow (aside from minor speculation about what Cecilia's family are doing), instead giving readers a look into Victoria's mindset when the quarter quell begins up to Cecelia's ultimate death.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mack's position as Blight's friend and protector in The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf is undermined by the fact that he could have stopped the abuse of Blight by his family years earlier by just revealing the truth about what happened to Blight's mother. His reasons for not doing so are fairly weak, and even after Blight Got Volunteered for the Games he still doesn't reveal the truth for several days until a Rage Breaking Point moment.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Berenice's name is more conventionally pronounced "bur-NEES", "behr-uh-NIGH-see", or "behr-uh-NEE-see" by English speaker, but based on her nickname, it may be pronounced like the original Ancient Greek pronunciation with the hard-C sound and vocalized ending 'e'.
• The Woobie: Has its own page.

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