The fanfic series, as with canon, is set in a tyrannical dystopia where a Deadly Game is held annually to kill children from the populace. There's bound to be scary moments in a series like that.
open/close all folders
Multiple Stories
- Capitol Dreams, a social program that is essentially a state-sponsored brainwashing cult that uses drugs, heavy peer pressure, and Psycho Psychologists to make Capitol residents of all ages remain callous, hedonistic, and convinced that any sympathy they feel for people from the districts is some kind of mental disorder. Their presence and actions are first mentioned in The Hanging Tree, where they mold dedicated Rebel Plutarch into one of their people so thoroughly that he takes a decade to snap out of it. And then, at the end of These are the Names, their methods are shown through a first-person POV after they get Effie in their clutches.
- The Reign of Terror Head Peacekeeper Beckett inflicts on District 12 to break them after the 2nd Quarter Quell makes even sadistic brute Romulus Thread and his actions twenty-four years later look almost merciful. She whips over thirty people and hangs four more (some for very minor offenses) in about a week, openly murders Haymitch's loved ones in brutal manners, forces teenaged boys to have sex with her, puts people in the stocks long enough to cause permanent health problems, and uses sadly successful Divide and Conquer psychological warfare.
- The frequent glimpse of the Capitol's over-sexualization and sexual coercion toward the Victors is played very creepily, with one pervert even disguising as a hospital worker to grope Finnick before he has even recovered from his Games. It isn't all of the Capitol doing it, and it is a gradual process, but none of that makes it less disturbing.
The End of the World
- Snow blowing up the Abernathy home while Mrs. Abernathy and Lacklen are inside and live streams to Haymitch to rub in what is about to happen by mockingly recalling how Haymitch told Maysilee the story of The Three Little Pigs and quoting the wolf before triggering the explosives.
The Hanging Tree
- Everything about District 12 escort Ausonius Glass. He is a hideously scarred District-hating bigot who relishes giving brutal Death Notifications to the families of District 12 tributes. He raped the first District 12 victor and drove her to suicide over decades (culminating when he rigged a reaping to send her 12-year-old grandson — who was also probably his grandson — to die in the arena). He tries to attack Haymitch with brass knuckles one night after feeling insulted by him. He once has to be pulled away from trying to rape a 16-year-old tribute and then uses his media connections to make it look like Haymitch was the one who attacked her. And the scariest thing of all is that he has Ultimate Job Security due to acting with the full knowledge and approval of the president of a police state.
- Haymitch watching a tribute be torn apart by a lion mutt designed by a woman he refused to let rape him.
These Are the Names
- Tributes dying of the plague carried by vicious rats in the "natural arena" of the 69th Hunger Games is uglier than almost anything the Gamemakers have done before then.Haymitch: Mother Nature makes the Gamemakers look like amateurs.
- Blight makes a deal with tribes of runaways living outside of the districts to attack the tribute trains and liberate the tributes in an effort to stop the Games. However, the raiders are bandits instead of dissidents and try to kill the tributes and rape Effie before Haymitch intervenes, which leads to hours of the District 12 party hiding in a baggage car as bullets fly near them and Haymitch tries to instruct the kids on how to fight back with Improvised Weapons if the raiders breach the car. And five other trains go through essentially the same thing.
The Golden Mean
- Haymitch's perspective of Thread's actions as the new Head Peacekeeper doesn't get too much attention but can feel nerve-wracking. He reflects on the horrible actions of Lucretia Beckett almost 25 years earlier and realizes that Thread may actually be worse, given how he isn't prone to sadistic mind-games like Beckett, but will just shoot or burn out anyone he feels like hurting without any delay. When Hob denizens Greasy Sae, Wenna, and Claude ask him what advice he has as a survivor of Beckett's reign of terror, Haymitch is helpless to suggest anything besides the Captain Obvious suggestion that they keep their heads down.
- The reveal that "the beast", the unseen 3rd Quarter Quell mutt who ripped a tribute into several pieces, is a dragon.
- Haymitch watches a video of the bombing of District 12 and sees his best friend running through the streets while burning alive (with it being revealed in House of Cards that all that was left of him was his jawbone).
The Narrow Path
- Haymitch discovers that Coin is keeping dozens of people who disagree with her methods or orders (including Bonnie and Twill from the original trilogy) in custody in the medical ward under the guise of treating them for insanity.
- Papers from Coin's desk show a long-time obsession with the Hunger Games (even though they weren't mandatory viewing in her district) and how the Capitol Games were a long-term plan that she invested hours of thought into while planning to keep the Capitol tributes shackled and subjected to worse pre-arena treatment than any other tributes since the 1st Hunger Games.
- District 9 suffers some ugly fighting in both rebellions that hardens its people in ways that give an eerie vibe throughout the war during the few (usually brief) times it is brought up. A Torches and Pitchforks mob kills the district's long-despised remaining Victors for largely imaginary acts of collaboration with the enemy, and District 9 is the only district whose general populace seems to enthusiastically approve of Coin's bloodthirsty executions and punitive actions against the Capitol and keep rallying to "finish the war once and for all" well after Coin has died and the Capitol has surrendered.
Other Stories
- One of the missing LiveJournal stories describes the post-war life of Pollux the Avox. It is mostly an Earn Your Happy Ending story, but it is mentioned that right after the war, he and other Avoxes volunteered for a failed medical experiment to implant new tongues into their bodies so they could talk and taste again. At the time, Pollux was told that his tongue came from a fallen Rebel soldier, but he later learned that it came from a prep team member Coin had executed, and the man may not have been dead yet when they cut his tongue out.
- In one of the currently unavailable LiveJournal stories, Beckett and Cray casually mention that Romulus Thread and his men weren't evacuated from District 12 before Snow firebombed it, and burned alive with the rest of the District. While Thread and most if not all of his subordinates are major Asshole Victims, Snow sacrificed dozens if not hundreds of his most fanatically loyal shock troops to such horrible deaths just to avoid giving the district residents a few minutes of warning about his Disproportionate Retribution to the Quell escape. Even more chilling is how thousands more Peacekeepers treat the event so casually and continue to serve the man who had their comrades killed that way.
- Beckett and Cray's deaths in the bombing of the Nut are a long time coming after the atrocities and cruelties they spent years subjecting District 12 to, but Cray's first-person POV as they are possibly Buried Alive by a collapsing ceiling can be unnerving.
- One missing LiveJournal story is from the POV of a doomed District 3 tribute in the 1st Hunger Games, with the amount of hate from the Capitol (who have the tributes in chains throughout the preliminaries), and the way this got sprung on the terrified kids out of nowhere are both haunting.
