History FanFic / TheVictorsProject

* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: The final thought of Priam, the District 2 boy and penultimate tribute of the 54th Games, is, "As a last insult, they play the trumpets before I'm even dead."

* LukeIMightBeYourFather: Ben Cooper's "secret" is that he ''might'' be Abram's biological father. It's never confirmed whether or not he is, and ultimately it doesn't seem to matter because Ben ended up becoming a father figure to Abram anyway.

* MorallyBankruptBanker: One of the corrupt Capitol citizens exposed during the revenge of Finnick Odair is Marcus Aerius, Vice-President of the bank of Pompey, and a backer of a drug cartel. Finnick says that he's put out hits on two hundred people in the last twenty years and then starts reciting names. [[TorchesAndPitchforks A few paragraphs later, it's mentioned that the Bank of Pompey is under siege by a vengeful crowd... and losing.]]

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Luster tells of how the members of District 1 descended from white supremacists, and he adopts similar practices of racial superiority and selection as the Nazis.
* NeverFoundTheBody: No one ever finds the remains of Marina Grey, a Capitolian who Finnick reveals killed her maid when she [[InterruptedIntimacy walked in on the two of them together]]. Though at least the maid's body has now been found.
* NeverSuicide: The DAEYD GirlPosse makes Esther's death look like a suicide, but Jade immediately recognizes it as a fake and knows the posse [[KlingonPromotion killed her to take her spot]].

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Roan's Anasazi district partner shows him where a hidden spring is, and he returns the favor by brutally killing her. It being the Hunger Games, the betrayal is to be expected but the brutality is unnecessary.

* OffTheWagon: The mother of Jenna Dunne (D6- Second Quarter Quell) stayed clean for sixteen years until her daughter was reaped.

* TheScapegoat: A sadly unintentional example was when District 5's female tribute for the First Quarter Quell was voted in because of a fatal industrial accident she caused while working double shifts to help keep her family clothed. [[ItsAllMyFault Her supervisor admitted he was at fault for failing to instruct her on how to use the equipment properly]], but it happened just a week after the Quell announcement, so plenty of people were familiar with her name and role in the accident but not that she'd been cleared of wrongdoing.

* SerendipitousSurvival[=/=]VictoryByEndurance: Several Victors win because the Career pack turns on each other, through in-universe ExecutiveMeddling, or just by being in the right place at the right time.

* SiblingTriangle: One of the socialites Finnick Odair exposes during his airing of secrets only married his wife because he's having an affair with her married sister and wanted a pretext to spend more time with her.

* StealingFromTheTill: The second former john who Finnick names during his airing of secrets paid for a night with Finnick by embezzling 100,000 sesterces from his employers. Once Finnick exposes his theft, the Peacekeepers come to arrest him, and he chooses SuicideByCop.

* TakingYouWithMe: In ''The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf'', [[spoiler:Charlie drags Romani, the District 4 boy, off the Ferris wheel with her to their deaths.]]

* TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup[=/=]GambitPileUp: PlayedForDrama in ''Arrow''. The opening paragraphs reveal the very meticulous plans for a relatively restrained coup by the District 1 rebels, but as soon as Katniss shoots the force field, multiple factions seize the opportunity, resulting in a chaotic free-for-all, which ultimately gives [[spoiler:Luster the opportunity to fake his death and escape]].

* TookALevelInBadass: Tutti Marble, who went from being "the bubbling, oblivious escort" of District 7 for twenty years [[DefectorFromDecadence to one of the district's fiercest warriors during the Rebellion]].
* ToxicFriendInfluence: The boy from District 7 is voted into the First Quarter Quell, because he's part of bad gang of kids. He's not the worst of the group, but he's the only one of reaping age.

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: The Speaker, a Reaver driven out of the Capitol and the Districts who tortures Enobaria and kills her friends, turns out to be [[spoiler:Tanni Romero, seeking revenge for the punishment he got for knocking up Cecelia]].

* WinYourFreedom: The original mentors were former rebels who received their freedom once their mentees won a Hunger Games and replaced them as mentors. Wheaton became the first Volunteer in order to win his father's freedom. Wheaton won, and his father was pardoned [[spoiler:but then immediately executed for other crimes.]]

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: '''''Luster'''''. '''''Lancaster'''''. After he won his Games, he wrested control of the DAEYD away from Gleam and turned District 1 into [[IOwnThisTown his personal dictatorship]]. Not only did he forcibly take the best-looking children away to be trained as future tributes and high-priced escorts, it was him that suggested to Snow the idea of [[SexSlave making Victors prostitutes for the Capitol]] in the first place. Ultimately, he was so hated that [[CreateYourOwnHero he turned the previously loyalist District 1 into another hotbed of rebel activity]], because they were that desperate to get rid of him.

* AlternativeCalendar: Post-Mockingjay Revolution Panem begins its calendar when Katniss and Peeta put the nightlock berries in their mouths. All subsequent dates are P.B. (Post Baccis- After the Berries).

* BrickJoke: Silk, while still a trainee, says to Gleam that etiquette classes are a waste of time, since "I'm not going to be thrown into the arena in an evening gown anyway". [[TimeSkip Nearly fifty years later]], this is exactly what happens to the female tributes of the 62nd Games.

* CombatSadomasochist: The Careers often become this, because it appeals to the Capitol crowds and helps their chances of getting more sponsors.

* DeadGuyJunior: Cecelia names her son by Brutus after Brutus's brother, Aaron, who died in the quarry a week before Brutus's Games.

* EntitledToHaveYou: Tanni Romero, one of Cecelia's johns from when she was a {{streetwalker}} and later one of her sponsors during the 57th Hunger Games, has this badly. It doesn't end well for him.

* EyeScream[=/=]{{Fingore}}: Donovan Haye, a District 9 rebel, loses an eye and two fingers in the Battle of the Golden Field.

** TheLancer: Perry, District 4 male tribute who [[DefectorFromDecadence betrays the Career alliance]].

** TheBigGuy: The District 12 male tribute, NoNameGiven.

* ForegoneConclusion: Often due to the chapter titles being the names of the victor who wins that year but sometimes other tributes receive a lot of focus. Most notably Wiress's chapter begins with Nolan talking about how sure he is that one of his tributes will make it back this year.

* GuiltByAssociation: The District 7 boy for the first Quarter Quell was a member of a rowdy local gang, and it's noted, "He's not the worst of them, not by far, but he's the only one still of reaping age, barely".

* IconicSequelCharacter: ''The Victor's Project'' is technically both a prequel and sequel to the earlier written and several particularly notable [=OC=] Victors from ''TVP'' (such as Abram, Orchus, Granyte, Cotton, Gates, Luxe, Luster, Honorious, Justus, Bovina, and Boudicca) are never even mentioned in ''The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf''.

* IncomingHam: Both Madame Lucia (stylist of Blight, Enobaria, Jade, Brutus, Cora, Silk, Nolan and several others) and Hector (stylist of Cecelia and Circe), although Hector's is also a {{Jerkass}} EstablishingCharacterMoment.
-->'''Madame Lucia:''' Madame Lucia has come to prepare her tribute! Madame Lucia sincerely hopes that her prep team has done an adequate job, although judging by what they're wearing themselves, she finds that to be dreadfully unlikely.
-->'''Hector:''' So this [[ItIsDehumanizing is my canvas]]. Could have been worse, could have been better. How an ''artiste'' is meant to suffer!

* JackTheRipoff: Gloss's chapter establishes that he kidnaps, drugs and tortures someone every year (with Cashmere helping him plan the abduction and making sure he never actually kills anyone) to sate his bloodlust, having been dubbed the Midtown Mincer. Finnick's chapter establishes that a woman committing an InheritanceMurder blamed it on the Midtown Mincer to avoid punishment.

[[folder:# - E]]

[[folder:F - M]]

[[folder:N - Z]]

* AlwaysABiggerFish: Right before the three cousins are about to be [[MakeAnExample made examples of]] for running away from Ahenobarbus's brutal training school, Boudicca shows up with Peacekeepers to burn it down.

''The Victors Project'' can be found '''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9966888/1/The-Victors-Project here]]''' and includes three additional one-shots/follow-ups:

* MeltingPotNomenclature: Outside of some more creative surnaming choices with little to no etymological basis, [=Oisin55=]'s rendition of Panem plays more into the canon implication that most characters are mixed-race than canon itself.[[note]]This can be seen from the surname distribution in the Districts--most notably, other than District 10 (with outright-stated UrbanSegregation between the white Settlers and the indigenous/Latine Anasazi, District 1 appears to have a significant French population, while Districts 3 and 4 are home to an East Asian diaspora.[[/note]] In the series, there are a few Districts that distinctly indicate stronger ethnic-mixing than others, and excluding those who derive their given names from Ancient Greek and Latin directly from the Panemian naming trend, there are:

* MultiEthnicName: Outside of some more creative surnaming choices with little to no etymological basis, [=Oisin55=]'s rendition of Panem plays more into the canon implication that most characters are mixed-race than canon itself.[[note]]This can be seen from the surname distribution in the Districts--most notably, other than District 10 (with outright-stated UrbanSegregation between the white Settlers and the indigenous/Latine Anasazi, District 1 appears to have a significant French population, while Districts 3 and 4 are home to an East Asian diaspora.[[/note]] In the series, there are a few Districts that distinctly indicate stronger ethnic-mixing than others, and excluding those who derive their given names from Ancient Greek and Latin directly from the Panemian naming trend, there are:
** District 1: Gloss and Cashmere Delacroix (English and English from Sanskrit, French)
** District 3: Wiress Okamoto (English-derived, Japanese), Pixelle Li (English-derived, Chinese), Dattery Nakamura (English-derived, Japanese)
** District 4: Amy Sato (English, Japanese)
** District 10: Morgan Garcia (English/French from Welsh, Spanish), Autumn Martinez (English, Spanish)

* AGoodWayToDie: The District 11 tributes for the First Quarter Quell both volunteer, because they decide that they would rather die by sticking it the Capitol than live a longer miserable life and die eventually anyway.

* DarkHorseVictory: Frequently, whenever a tribute with a low score ends up winning the Games. This mainly happens with female tributes (with Joanna, Circe, and Cotton being the cited examples), but "the dark horse to end all other dark horses" is the male tribute Abram, who scored only a ''three'' during training. Even he seemed to be astonished at his own victory, and years after he won he's still not entirely sure how he did it.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: A running theme in the story is that the Capitol's decision to establish the Hunger Games and punish the districts indiscriminately was this in the long run. While yes, they occasionally fix the reapings to eliminate the descendants of rebellious factions, they don't do it all the time, leading to numerous descendants of loyalists ending up in the Games as well. This, combined with enabling further tyranny and oppression over the years (see: Luster Lancaster and his virtual dictatorship over District 1), has caused many of their formally loyal citizens to side with the rebels when the Mockingjay Revolution begins. That eventually leads to the fall of Snow's regime and the end of the Hunger Games entirely.

* IconicSequelCharacter: ''The Victor's Project'' is technically both a prequel and sequel to the earlier written and several particularly notable [=OC=] Victors from ''TVP'' (such as Abram, Orchus, Granyte, Cotton, Gates, Luxe, Luster, Honorious, Justus, Bovina, and Boudicca) are never even mentioned in ''The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf''.* IllegalReligion:

* DemotedToExtra: Katniss and especially Gale.

* IllegalReligion:

** Finnick receives a golden MemorialStatue at the spot where he was killed. Johann found this tasteless and gaudy and went out to subvert this trope entirely with a simple grave when she died.

** Abram Mills is buried in a simple tomb, next to his mother and under the tree next to where their family chocolate shop once stood. After Coin's announcement, District 9 places an HonorGuard around the tomb so his resting place won't be disturbed, which remains in perpetuity long after Coin's own death. They eventually become known as the Chocolatiers.

* ShrineToTheFallen: Coin announces that all the "heroic Victors" would be entombed in the Capitol with full honors. It's not said whether this still happens after Katniss assassinates her, but it seems likely. Finnick receives a golden MemorialStatue at the spot where he was killed.