Awesome / The End of the World (FernWithy)

Multiple Stories

• That scene in Catching Fire where Katniss marvels about Haymitch knowing his way around the private spots of a building so well despite only ever visiting it once, 25 years ago? In this story, he knows those spots because he has regularly visited that building incognito. The various rebels have a clever Underground Railroad that lets them temporarily sneak outside their districts for the occasional strategy meeting or moral support visit, with things like body doubles, fake illnesses, and voice recordings covering their absences, and get away with it for years without any signs that Snow even suspects them.
• The scene from the end of The End of the World and about 1/3rd of the way through The Rites of Fall, where Haymitch snaps out of his suicide attempt and instead burns down the hanging tree, while also interrupting a flogging in the process and shooting such a venomous Implied Death Threat at the smug and murderous Head Peacekeeper Beckett that she is genuinely scared for once.
• Finnick slugs a reporter who is insensitive enough to remind Annie about how her arena flooded.
• Winnow Robinson (Thresh's sister)'s Hero of Another Story actions in The Golden Mean and The Narrow Path. Smuggling herself from District 11, to 8, to 4 in rapid succession, participating or witnessing acts of sabotage and rebellion before becoming a naval commander who helps liberate District 4.
• There are some scattered hints that most of the District 3 Capitol team are active rebels or sympathizers who share the sympathy Effie has for the tributes but go further than she did and have been working with Beetee for years. In The Golden Mean, the District 3 stylist attends a meeting of the Rebel mentors and is described as a longtime ally by Plutarch. In The Narrow Path, Beetee implicitly helps that woman, the other stylist, and the district escort go into hiding when Coin starts executing Games workers. It is mentioned that at least one of the District 3 prep team members died fighting for the Rebellion.
• The Narrow Path and the missing LiveJournal story "Mother Myrrh" describe Gloss and Cashmere's parents leading the District 1 Rebellion in a way that makes people understand how two of their children were able to survive the arena, with the latter story (which also says they have other children who are frontline soldiers) even saying that their mother pretended to complacently give an anti-Rebellion memorial speech for the two, only to turn mid-speech, pull out a gun, and shoot the local collaborators while motioning for the crowd of mourners to attack the Peacekeepers.

The End of the World

• Plutarch Heavensbee is still in high school at this point but has made a docudrama series about himself helping people that is considered the best show on TV (even people in District 12 have heard of it) and subtly emphasizes the anti-Games message that one kid can make a difference.
• Haymitch scores a 10 as a training score by challenging four combat trainers wearing armor to come at him at once. He then snatches a knife from the Gamemakers' dinner table and, in two minutes, he has inflicted blows on all of them that would have been fatal if not for their armor and avoided getting hit himself.
• Gia, the current District 12 escort, makes Beckett back away from whipping Haymitch with just a slightly raised voice, a stern look, and a bluff that falsely implies she has official backing to oppose that decision.

The Rites of Fall

• Katniss and Gale's fathers lead a mob of young miners from the Seam to tackle Beckett and her Peacekeepers in the cliamx of The Rites of Fall as they try to hold people at gunpoint and keep them from putting out a fire the Peacekeepers set.
• Kay Donner tells Beckett to her face that the collapse of the Capitol is inevitable and, after being sentenced to four hours of hard labor building a gallows, accepts a harsher punishment rather than perform the work due to how the gallows will be used to hang miners.
• In response to the whippings, executions, and Divide and Conquer tactics of the Peacekeepers, a miner named Yarrow Crockett somehow smuggles a bomb into their barracks (a high-security location he has no known legitimate reason to visit). Regrettably, the timer fails, and the Peacekeepers survive to make Yarrow join those he tried to avenge, but it was an ok effort.

The Hanging Tree

• Glass made such a bad impression when he was District 1's escort the previous year that the Victors unanimously petitioned to have him reassigned, with one of their youngest victors, Miracle Brea, threatening to kill and dismember him if Snow kept him in their proximity. This does have the regrettable effect of getting Glass sent back to District 12, and District 1 does have more power and privileges than many districts, but outright threatening a Games worker, even a Hated by All Hate Sink one, took a lot of guts.
• Both of Wiress's kills in the 51st Hunger Games, even if they do traumatize her.
  • First, she uses a magnet device (that Haymitch and Beetee send her as a clever coded message to tell her that her last ally is as untrustworthy as the classmate who stole the invention from her) to move a knife into the path of her treacherous ally's throat, causing him to impale himself as he lunges at her.
  • The second kill, a Career, comes when Wires traps a mutt, builds a hidden cage over it, then expands the cage, uses herself as bait, and tricks her last opponent into jumping onto the trap and falling through to be eaten.
• Every time the victors stand up and refuse to let themselves be used as sex objects by Snow's cronies throughout the 51st Hunger Games, eventually presenting a strong enough front and drawing enough media attention to retaliatory actions against their tributes to put a damper on that racket for about a decade.
• Nehemiah Blythe, an early tribute of Haymitch's, wins fights against hostile mutts and the District 4 career tributes to make it to 5th place, only losing due to being in the wrong place during an earthquake.
• After Glass tries to sexually assault a tribute named Bluet and then accuses Haymitch of being the one to abuse her, she determinedly sets the record straight during the interviews even though speaking ill of a Games worker will get her time to win over sponsors cut short.
• Near the end of The Hanging Tree, both Districts 10 and 6 manage to pull in two victors in the same decade, which is especially meaningful for District 6 since they have never gotten a victor before then. Their first, Berenice, wins in style, Addled Addict or not, by killing spider mutts and using the venom from their pincers as a weapon.

These Are the Names

• After decades of torturing the tributes and Victors in his care (mostly mentally but sometimes physically), Ausonius Glass is impaled by Gia Pepper, who carves a taunting message to Snow into his corpse.
• Nell and Babra kill a crocodile mutt through teamwork and boldly charge at it in a way the creature didn't expect, with Babra jumping on its back and blinding it with her shirt while Nell lunges to stab the distracted creature.
• Harris Greaves wins the 59th Hunger Games without taking a single injury, even though he is targeted for a vicious mutt attack by the gamemakers every day and has to fight two human opponents at once when their alliance splinters.
• Fifteen-year-old Cecelia wins her last fight in the 60th Hunger Games by climbing a tree with a backpack of rocks, throwing them down at her pursuer below, then finishing him off after knocking him out (although, like with many of the others, her These Hands Have Killed trauma undermines some of the awesomeness).
• District 12 tribute Nasseh Rutledge gets or inspires several impressive moments, befitting someone Effie describes as the best tribute the district has had since she started working there.
  • He wins a fight against two knife-wielding opponents by using rocks in his shirt as homemade bolas.
  • He interprets several implicit messages in the sponsor gifts Haymitch sends him (much like Katniss in canon) to understand what food is safe to eat and form an alliance.
  • It is mainly played for tragedy when Nasseh and his ally from District 5 lose a hopeless battle against all six Careers due to misinterpreting the message in Haymitch's final gift. That being said, they manage to take out half of the Career pack first, a seemingly unprecedented feat for outliers engaging in close-quarters combat.
• Plenty about Philo Dillard's victory during the 66th Hunger Games. He kills all three of his remaining "allies" in ten minutes after they turn on him and the trio mock another of their allies for dying while saving Philo's life. When he loses his weapon, he request a blowgun as a weapon to take on his final Ax-Crazy opponent from a distance, but still narrowly beats her in a knife fight (despite being badly scarred in the struggle) after getting a bladed weapon instead.
• The rebellious Butterfly Skaggs insists on wearing a Mockingjay feather during the tribute parade for the 69th Hunger Games as a subtle sign of defiance against the Capitol.
• River Bloodwood mentions that Peeta's oldest brother Jonadab is already the best wrestler in their school at the age of fourteen (two years younger than River) and, between that and his sense of charisma, would have a better chance of winning the Hunger Games than River himself.
• Butterfly Skaggs becomes the first District 12 tribute to score a 9 in a long time after defeating two unarmed combat trainers at once for her training session.
• When a group of bandits attack six trains on the way to the 70th Hunger Games and try to kill the tributes and rape Effie, Haymitch stabs one of them, grabs a gun, and spends half an hour fighting the group before arriving Peacekeepers take over the fighting and send a wounded Haymitch to hide with Effie and the tributes for the rest of the battle, which lasts two hours.
• Haymitch figures out that the Gamemakers may be planning to flood Annie's arena within minutes of getting a good view of the arena, making Awesome by Analysis arguments comparing the set-up to the area caught in the Johnstown Flood.
• Effie foils an attempt to catch the Rebel mentors plotting by buying a bunch of tourist props for them and having them hurry to a couple of sights while taking pictures so it looks like they have only been up to harmless stuff for the whole day.
• While characters constantly dismiss District 9 as having not produced any promising tributes lately, they do have some impressive tributes in the final 12 years of the Games.
  • Their girl in the 63rd Hunger Games spends her time stalking the alliance that killed her district partner, and does well enough in her quest for revenge to become the audience favorite and make it to the final eight.
  • One of their tributes in the 65th Hunger Games (Chester) makes it to the final five without making a kill on an island that requires resourceful scavenging to get food.
  • In the 69th Hunger Games, both District 9 tributes (Dottie and Mayfield) make it to the final 3 without being too ruthless after finding a shelter, setting up defensible positions, and killing or recruiting anyone who finds them to keep their position secret. They only lose due to their last opponent being Johanna, who has given everyone reason to underestimate her.
  • Their girl in the 70th Hunger Games gets a higher training score than any of the Careers.
  • Their boy in the 72nd Hunger Games outlives all but one of the Careers and makes it to the final battle.

The Final Eight

• Madge reads a seemingly innocent and heartfelt poem she wrote to the Capitol reporters. Then, Delly and Cressida notice that words from each line of the poem form the sentence "If Katniss dies, the Capitol burns", when read diagonally.
• As Claudius replays an out-of-context clip from the Games that makes Peeta look like a cold-blooded killer, Ed Mellark unplugs the TV and insincerely laments the "blackout" that is making them miss mandatory viewing.
• Many of Madge's classmates follow up on her act of defiance by drawing Mockingjay pictures on chalkboards that the Capitol camera crews will be walking by as they film the school.

Cressida snaps at another Capitolite for demanding that Delly pay more attention to his shoes order than her friends being in the arena.

• Mrs. Everdeen nearly decks a reporter who shows No Sympathy about the gruesome way Cato is dying.
• Delly gathers twenty of Peeta's friends (his ex Jemima, tesserae coalition distribution organizer and Peeta Hero-Worshipper Cyprian, the wrestling team, etc.) to build him up for reporters, and later, when she sees how Katniss needs to get medicine for Peeta from the feast but he is afraid to let her go, she immediately thinks of the sleep syrup, grabs all the money she can, and races toward the sponsor station.
• After killing Clove, Thresh escapes from Cato with a series of booby traps that slow Cato down but fail to stop him. Eventually he sets a fire between them, and while it does work, Cato charges through it for a few feet before having to retreat.
• Gale, Madge, Ed, and various others riot in plain view of the Capitol crowd and cameras after Snow revokes the rule change to try and make Katniss and Peeta kill each other, with it taking both wrestling champion Mellark brothers to hold Madge back from attacking a pair of Peacekeepers, and she still scratches one of them (although this is tempered by the scratched Peacekeeper being Punch-Clock Villain Darius).
• Despite not being entirely sure what is going on, Ed and Delly launch into a quick and clever Seamless Spontaneous Lie to make Peacekeepers who are looking for recent defectors Cressida and Messalla end up searching hundreds of miles away from the direction the duo is really heading.

The Last Tribute

• Haymitch's awesome Establishing Character Moment from the books of yelling at the Capitol after Katniss volunteers becomes even more impressive in this story, since, despite his intoxication, he does it as part of a calculating effort to draw attention away from Katniss being on the verge of a Heroic BSoD, as the cameras catching that would weaken the impressive image she is building and needs to survive.
• Despite only scoring a 3 in training, the girl from District 7 manages to kill a high-scoring Career (albeit one who is younger and slightly less skilled than normal).
• Peeta holds Blade Enthusiast Clove at bay during their knife fight at the Cornucopia bloodbath, then takes her hostage to make the Careers let him join the pack.
• Haymitch engineers the rule twist in grand chess master fashion and kicks it off by arranging for the perfect messenger (Aquila Grant, the head of the Capitol version of the DAR) to first make the suggestion. The old lady plays her part smoothly and enthusiastically, lamenting about what a shame it is that the rules keep them from having two victors in a way meant to tempt and infuriate everyone who believes in the power of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!.
• After Katniss and Peeta's double victory, Snow mentions that this inspired "hooliganism" in the districts, most notably the Head Peacekeeper in District 5 being pelted with nightlock berries.
• Aquila Grant's last meeting with Haymitch in the story shows her to be a very rare Capitol character who both understands the need to bring down the Snow regime and (unlike Plutarch) recognizes that rebellion is a risky business that poses dangers of a Full-Circle Revolution, War Is Hell, or The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized.
  Aquila: This isn't the city we founded. This isn't what we were meant to be.
  Haymitch: I'm sorry.
  Aquila: You have nothing to be sorry for. There are other people I intend to make sorry.
  Haymitch: Will you be all right?
  Aquila: I will. You be safe. And don't be foolish.
  Haymitch: What do you mean?"
  Aquila: There are a lot of roads to take to… to a place we'd rather be. To Panem as it should be. A lot of those roads look open. Easy. Some might even look fun, or at least just, after everything. But the map of history shows that most of the roads only lead to terror. Bloodshed. The destruction of everything that matters. So be careful, Mr. Abernathy. Be careful which road you choose. Make sure it leads to a better place than the one we're leaving.

The Golden Mean

• Some of the brief descriptions of past Games are grimly impressive.
  • Mags uses a slingshot and fire trap to kill the boys who raped and killed her ally.
  • Saffron Abatty defeats her fellow Careers and then several remaining outliers singlehandedly despite suffering from pneumonia.
  • Blight sets a fire that destroys the Career encampment so fast that the Gamemakers don’t have enough time to put out the fire with artificial rain despite how quickly they can exercise control over the arena environment.
• During the 3rd Quarter Quell bloodbath, Cecelia takes on three Career tributes at the same time with thrown rocks and sand and the first weapons she can grab (injuring Gloss and knocking Brutus and Enobaria off their feet) in a vain effort to save an injured Woof. After that, despite being injured, she and Seeder are Back-to-Back Badasses fighting to reach more weapons that their allies need.
• The battle of the viewing center in The Golden Mean, where a couple of dozen mentors, both Rebels and non-Rebels, fight back when the Peacekeepers show up looking to arrest people. Whether they are unarmed (first blood goes to Mindwell from District 10 when she knees and headbutts a Peacekeeper) or use Improvised Weapons, many of them do a lot of damage, even if most of them are tragically killed in the process. Of special note is how Jack Anderson garrotes a few opponents with his necktie, after having won his Games by default after only making one accidental kill.
  Cornering Victors is a universally bad idea.
• Plutarch comments that District 9 Victors Will Norton and Darla Grimes survived the battle by hovering on the sidelines without taking sides, but Haymitch earlier commented on seeing the mentors from Districts 9 and 1 swarming Peacekeepers and taking their guns as the fight began. This implies that they did take part in the fight but were covert enough about it to be able to fool the Capitol into thinking they were only bystanders afterward (although it's also possible that it was just their district's youngest victor, Etta Bossard, who Haymitch saw mixed in with the District 1 mentors, or that Darla and Will acted reflexively at first but then stepped out of the fight).

House of Cards

• It doubles as a tearjerker, but Charlie Flynn tells Peeta that, before the 1st Quarter Quell, District 8 either refused to play the divide and conquer game or didn't have anyone they actually wanted to send into the arena, so they conducted their own unofficial reaping to select two kids to vote for by random chance, like any other year.
• Charlie Flynn describes winning the 1st Quarter Quell after his ally performed a Heroic Sacrifice to save him from a mutt attack, and he managed to drop a boulder on the two Career tributes who'd just gleefully killed his alliance members.

The Narrow Path

• The rescue of Peeta, Johanna, and Annie is shown in great detail.
  • Messalla the Rebel propagandist and two Junior gamemakers who have been spying for Plutarch put themselves at risk while participating in the raid and being genuinely useful.
  • The Leeg twins arm themselves with melee weapons from the training center to quietly kill any guards they will encounter.
  • Seconds after being rescued from her torture chamber, Johanna grabs a gun to shoot a Peacekeeper who was Playing Possum and asks to keep it until they are safe.
• Peeta's stylist Portia is Defiant to the End during her execution by firing squad, repeatedly interrupting Snow's recital of her death sentence to yell out insults at him and his allies, as well as support and esteem for her Rebel allies.
  Snow: She passed messages for the Rebellion-
  Portia: I'm passing one now. Keep fighting.
• Plutarch mentions that well before Haymitch's games, District 9 once managed to pull in two victors in back-to-back years.
• A quick line during a hospital visit reveals that despite Katniss's pessimism about the state of their supplies and wilderness skills, Bonnie and Twill, the District runaways Katniss helped in Catching Fire, really did make it to District 13 and are determined to return back to their district to liberate it (although Coin won't let them go).
• Katniss's trial for killing Coin, where Haymitch and his allies (especially Beetee and Plutarch-in a Be All My Sins Remembered manner-, on the witness stand) expose Coin's crimes, and let the nation understand exactly how victimized Katniss has been, causing there to be almost no opposition at all to her acquittal.
• After Coin's death, the very first piece of legislation that the new government passes is outlawing the Hunger Games or any successor program, forever ending the twisted and vengeful Death Game that both Snow and Coin advocated.
• On the first reaping day after the rebellion, Effie arrives in District 12 with the reaping bowls that held the slips of paper dooming children to the Hunger Games. She also brings a sledgehammer for Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta to use to smash the hated objects to pieces.

Other Stories

• In one of the currently unavailable LiveJournal stories, most of Lyme's family flees District 2 but hides in an out-district camp close enough to District 2 for her to visit at times, with both Lyme's ability to sneak out of the Peacekeeper district to visit them and their ability to stay incognito so close to the said district being impressive.

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