Fanfic / The Hunger Games Prequel Collection

"It's easier to die as a tribute than to live as a victor."

— Mags Flanagan

The Hunger Games Prequel Collection is a series of Hunger Games fanfics by Callidora Medea, which take place in the years before Katniss and Peeta's first Games and are written in the same first person present tense style as the original trilogy. However, unlike the trilogy, the stories in the Collection are narrated from multiple viewpoints, meaning the reader is kept guessing as to which tribute will emerge as victor.

The stories in the Collection are, in chronological order:

• Phoenix Rising: The story of the First Hunger Games as seen through the eyes of three of the tributes. Silver from District 1 is a Capitol loyalist. Cass from District 4 is part of a close-knit family. Oak from District 7 is the daughter of rebels. A canonically accurate (as of the publication of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) portrayal of the early Hunger Games.

• The Most Dangerous Game: Follows four tributes as they struggle to survive the Thirty-sixth Hunger Games. Dexsia from District 2 has spent her childhood preparing for the arena. Dove from District 6 has been reaped alongside her brother. Terra from District 8 wants to win for the sake of her sister. Catalina from District 9 is one of the youngest tributes in the Games.

• More Than Chance: A sequel to The Most Dangerous Game set during the Forty-first Hunger Games. Astrid's life in District 3 has been plagued by rumours about her parentage. Shore from District 4 is determined to get back to his fiancee. Iry from District 8 may not have been reaped by chance. Nell from District 11 plans to give the Capitol something to remember her by. The victor from Game returns as a mentor.

As of June 1 2022, both The Most Dangerous Game and More Than Chance have been completed. Phoenix Rising is still a work in progress, having been put on hold while the author worked on Chance.

The author has also written three other Hunger Games fanfics which are not part of the Collection, though two are set in the same continuity:

• Twelve Tidings of Panem: A collection of winter-themed one shots which feature characters from the Collection in the years before they entered the arena.

• Carol of the Allies: Another collection of one-shots about winter in the districts as seen through the eyes of characters from the Collection.

• The First Annual Hunger Games: The author's original take on the First Hunger Games, in which the Games are portrayed as though they were always the spectacle they eventually became. When The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes revealed that many elements of the Games were not introduced until the Tenth Games or later, the author embarked on a new story featuring the same characters but with the plot altered to reflect changes to canon.

Note: These fanfics are based on a series of novels about a televised fight to the death. Beware of unmarked spoilers, some of which are death-related.

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The Hunger Games Prequel Collection contains examples of:

• All of the Other Reindeer: Astrid is an outcast in District 3, rejected by everyone except her mother and younger brother, Axel. The reason? Rumour has it that her father was a Peacekeeper and, to make matters worse, she has inherited his red hair which makes her stand out among the citizens of 3. When she returns home as a victor, things only get worse for her and she is even accused of winning because the Games were rigged to make sure "a Capitol girl" didn't die in the arena.
• An Arm and a Leg: After her Games, Terra has to have both her legs amputated below her knees due to her feet being severely frostbitten ^note The arena in the Thirty-sixth Games starts out as a desert, but is later changed to a snowy tundra for which the tributes are not adequately dressed., meaning she will have to use prosthetic legs for the rest of her life. She also loses two fingers for the same reason she loses her legs.
• Angry, Angry Hippos: A particularly gruesome example in Game. Summer, the female tribute from District 3, gets attacked by a hippo mutt which bites her in two - with Dexsia and the other Careers watching.
• Anyone Can Die: Since these are the Hunger Games, no-one is 100% guaranteed to survive apart from the characters who appear in the original novels. Even the viewpoint characters are not safe as each story features multiple narrators, most of whom are followed up to and including their deaths.
• Break the Believer: Silver starts out believing in everything the Capitol stands for and even thinks the Games are an appropriate punishment for the rebels. However, during the journey to the Capitol, she comes to realise that she and the other tributes are just "collateral damage" in the Capitol's war against the districts and starts to question her beliefs. By the time the tributes arrive in the Capitol, she has switched over to the rebels' side.
• Break the Cutie: During her time in the arena, Iry goes from a happy-go-lucky girl to one who is emotionally damaged by what she has been through, in particular having to kill a fellow tribute to ensure her own survival. Terra, watching her from the Capitol, notices a hardness in her eyes that wasn't there before, but is determined to get her out of the arena alive no matter how much the Games have changed her. However, it ends up becoming a case of Kill the Cutie.
• Brother–Sister Team: Dove and Cabel are siblings who are both reaped in the same year and team up in a bid to become the first joint victors in the history of the Games. However, neither of them gets out of the arena alive.
• Child by Rape: Astrid is implied to be the result of non-consensual sex. All her life, she has been dogged by rumours that her father was a Peacekeeper; her mother eventually confirms it, but will only say that she never knew who the Peacekeeper in question was and "never wanted to know him."
• Christmas Episode:
  • Twelve Tidings of Panem was written over Christmas 2020. Each chapter is set against the backdrop of the winter festivals celebrated in each of the twelve districts and is narrated by a child ^note District 4's chapter has two stories, one narrated by Cass, the other by Shore. who went on to represent their district in one of the Games featured in the Collection.
  • Carol of the Allies (originally started Christmas 2021) is another collection of winter-themed one-shots featuring characters from the Collection. This time, however, all the stories take place during the winter immediately before the Games in which these characters become tributes.
• Continuity Cameo: Astrid makes a brief appearance in the third chapter of Carol of the Allies (narrated by Summer) though she is only referred to as "the girl everyone hates."
• Cope by Creating: Terra's fellow District 8 victors help her to come to terms with losing Iry by encouraging her to take up painting in order to give her something else to think about.
• Death by Adaptation: In The First Annual Hunger Games, Oak's mother is still alive. In Phoenix, however, both Oak's parents were executed for their part in the rebellion.
• Delicate and Sickly: Like Dill from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Aldera (District 12's female tribute in Phoenix) has consumption. She's also the narrator of her district's chapter in Tidings, which reveals that she was born prematurely and is consequently prone to becoming ill.
• Disney Death: Chapter 48 of Chance ends with Astrid, who has a leg wound which has become infected, apparently being killed by her ally, Elowyn. A few chapters later, it is revealed that Elowyn actually injected some medicine sent to the arena via parachute into Astrid, curing her infection and saving her life.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • Canonically, Finnick Odair was one of the youngest victors, if not the youngest, when he won the Sixty-fifth Games at the age of fourteen. Therefore, neither twelve-year-old Catalina nor thirteen-year-old Iry have any chance of getting out of their respective arenas alive. Indeed, Catalina doesn't even make it past the bloodbath. Iry makes it to the final eight with the help of Terra and the other District 8 victors, but they are ultimately unable to save her.
  • As of the publication of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, all four of District 12's victors are accounted for in canon. Which means none of the District 12 tributes featured in the Collection can win their Games.
  • The attempt by siblings Dove and Cabel to both win the Thirty-sixth Games is never going to work because Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark from the Seventy-fourth Games were the first, and only, joint victors in the history of the Games.
• Dramatic Irony: When Astrid wins the Forty-first Games, she believes she will be the last District 3 victor for many years. However, anyone who's read the original trilogy will be able to work out that Wiress would have won her first Games a year or two either side of the second Quarter Quell, a gap of around eleven years at most. ^note Wiress is estimated to be around the same age as Katniss's mother, who we know is close to Haymitch's age since she was behind the ropes at the reaping for the Fiftieth Games.
• Elsewhere Fic: Each story in the Collection focuses on non-canonical tributes competing in Hunger Games not covered in the books. The only canon characters to appear are Presidents Ravinstill and Snow, as well as Beetee, Mags, the Morphlings, Woof and Seeder. Porter, who appeared as a past victor on a defunct Hunger Games website, is also present, but her status as a canon character is debatable.
• Five Stages of Grief: Terra goes through all five stages after Iry is swept away by a tidal wave generated by the Gamemakers. At first, she refuses to believe her sister isn't going to resurface and tries to send her something to help her (denial). However, District 8's viewing station shuts down before she can do so ^note Iry's district partner, Azlon, predeceased her., confirming that it is already too late. In the next few chapters narrated by Terra, her mood alternates between anger at the Capitol for killing her sister, bargaining that she would do things differently if she could have Iry back and depression at the thought of never seeing Iry again. Eventually, with the help of her fellow victors, she starts to reach acceptance.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • When President Snow asks Astrid to become one of his sex slaves, she declines, telling him she's "not his whore". Given that Mockingjay establishes that Snow has the families of victors who refuse to prostitute themselves killed, it should come as no surprise that Astrid later comes home to find her mother and Axel dead.
  • Beetee is still alive at the time of the third Quarter Quell and is one of the seven victors who survive the second rebellion. Therefore, Astrid's plan to kill him because she thinks he chose Circuit over her is never going come to anything.
• Hollywood Genetics: Astrid having red hair when none of the other citizens of District 3, including her mother and Axel, have this colouring. She is said to have inherited her hair colour from her Peacekeeper father, but the gene for red hair is recessive and therefore shouldn't be expressed in someone who only has one copy of the gene. So Astrid would be more likely to have her mother's dark hair and be a carrier of the gene for red hair.
• If I Do Not Return: On the night before she goes into the arena, Iry asks Terra to, if she dies in the Games, look after Ribbons the cat and to give the sisters' friend, Deecey, and her family her love. Terra replies that this won't be necessary as Iry will be able to do these things herself, or so Terra believes.
• Kill the Cutie: This being a series of Hunger Games fanfics, several cute characters inevitably end up dying.
  • Catalina is a sweet kid who loves flowers. She becomes the first viewpoint character to die in Game when Dexsia stabs her to death at the Cornucopia.
  • Summer, who's described as one of the most adorable tributes in the Thirty-sixth Games, gets bitten in half by a hippo mutt.
  • Kelpie, despite being from a Career district, is a timid girl who clearly isn't cut out for the arena. She drowns herself rather than face death at the hands of her fellow tributes.
  • Iry, a cute kid with a loving nature, is drowned when a tidal wave engulfs her campsite. She tries to outrun the wave, but is unsuccessful.
  • Axel, Astrid's adorable little brother, is murdered along with the siblings' mother to punish Astrid for refusing to become one of President Snow's sex slaves, before he'd even reached reaping age.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Iry. She's a very loving girl who dotes on Ribbons, the cat which she and Terra adopt after the latter returns to District 8 as the victor of the Thirty-sixth Games.
• The Load: Tilling from District 9 is one of the weaker tributes in the Forty-first Games and has no discernable skills that might be useful in the arena. Unsurprisingly, no-one is willing to form an alliance with her during training and, though Astrid and Elowyn team up with her in the arena, they only do so because they know she will keep on following them otherwise.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Dexsia kills Catalina on the opening day of the Thirty-sixth Games because she knows the younger girl doesn't stand a chance in the arena and feels it would be better to take her out quickly.
  • Mags, knowing Kelpie isn't cut out for the Games, advises Shore to make certain his partner dies as quickly and painlessly as possible. Shore doesn't think he will be able to kill Kelpie, but in the end he doesn't have to as Kelpie chooses her own exit from the Games.
• Personal Effects Reveal: Some time after returning from the Forty-first Games, Terra enters Iry's room for the first time since the reaping, but is so overwhelmed by the sight of her sister's belongings that she has to leave. Afterwards, she tearfully tells her former mentor, Shuttle, that she can't ever go back home because the reminders of Iry are too strong; Shuttle tells Terra that, in that case, she can come and live with her.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Nell prefers to go barefoot even in the Capitol, much to the consternation of her escort. However, she does wear sandals for her interview. Deconstructed when, on the first night in the arena, she loses the boots she was issued as part of her tribute outfit which results in her feet getting badly cut on the jungle floor; this makes her realise there are times when wearing shoes is better than going without, though she still prefers the latter.
• Promotion to Parent: Terra's backstory involves her having become Iry's guardian after their widowed father was killed in a factory accident. Consequently, she is very protective of her sister and knows she has to win her Games for Iry's sake as the younger girl will otherwise be sent to District 8's Community Home. When Iry becomes a tribute herself, Terra tries to get her out of the arena alive, but is unsuccessful.
• Sanity Slippage: Astrid, despite constantly trying to prove otherwise, is clearly losing her grip on things in her post-victory chapters, as reflected in the disjointed narration. Finding the bodies of her mother and Axel pushes her over the edge completely and, by the penultimate chapter of Chance, she has turned to morphling to help her cope.
• Sassy Black Woman: Implied with Nell. She's not explicitly described as black, but she is from District 11, most of whose citizens are canonically dark skinned. However, she definitely fits the "sassy" part, being unafraid to speak her mind; during the tribute parade, she's even reckless enough to taunt President Snow. Seeder, however, warns Nell that her sass will get her into trouble.
• Spear Counterpart: Astrid's district partner, Circuit, is a male version of Johanna Mason. He uses the same strategy of pretending to be weak and helpless so that the other tributes will overlook him, then revealing himself to be a deadly killer. However, unlike Johanna, he doesn't get out of the arena alive.
• The Stoic: After she becomes a victor, Astrid tries to be unemotional about what she has been through as she believes the Career victors (whom she is trying to emulate) would be, constantly telling herself not to show any weakness and trying not to let anyone know how badly damaged physically and mentally she is.
• Suicide by Sea: Shore's district partner, Kelpie, who only ended up in the arena because Aria (the District 4 girl who was supposed to volunteer for the Forty-first Games) backed out at the last minute, kills herself by swimming out to sea and drowning.
• Threatening Shark: On the opening day of the Forty-first Games, Cloak (District 1's male tribute) is attacked and killed by a shark while attempting to swim to the mainland of the ocean- and jungle-based arena. Whether the shark is a mutt or an ordinary shark is unspecified.
• You Can't Go Home Again:
  • After losing Iry to the Games, Terra finds that both her old home from before she became a victor and her house in District 8's Victors' Village are too full of painful memories, meaning she can no longer bring herself to set foot in either of them. She moves in with her former mentor, Shuttle.
  • After finding the bodies of her mother and Axel, Astrid can no longer face living in the house in District 3's Victors' Village she was given after she became a victor. Moving back to her family's old apartment isn't an option either, since it has already been allocated to someone else, so she takes to spending the nights in the empty Victors' Village houses, believing most of them will never have victors living in them.
• You Mean "Xmas": The winter festivals described in Tidings and Carol are clearly rooted in Christmas celebrations - indeed, there are references to some of these festivals dating back to the time before Panem - but are known by different names in each district. The citizens of District 1 celebrate Yuletide, District 2 has New Year, District 3 has Lighting, District 4's winter festival is called the Seabreeze Times, District 5 has the Returning of the Light, District 7 celebrates Wintertide and District 8 has Bobbin Day. The names of the winter festivals celebrated in Districts 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are not mentioned.

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