Hey, congrats on first place! This is excellent.

I really like your Cearda. He reminded me of Beetee until the drug/alcohol/murder parts. You fleshed him out nicely - he's a pretty damaged victor, but also a genius. I love his characterization as much as your ending. :D

Small nitpicks:

If hands are calloused, they are also hardened. (referring to the line 'he finds his hands, pale and hard and scarred instead of calloused and nimble')

Cearda can't have a nephew that isn't one of his tributes since the districts aren't allowed to intermingle.

Hijacking the train was awesome, but it's surprising how far he went before he was finally caught. Not really a nitpick, but just something I noticed.

The title is great, and I have to say that it really suits this piece. I started reading this expecting a great story, and you did not disappoint!

I really like the imagery you employ in this fic, all the offhand little hints about how Cearda won the Games, the oblique way that you referred to Cearda killing all those Capitol citizens, his (inevitable?) descent into madness... I'm hard pressed to find a scene that I didn't like or that I feel like you could have improved upon in this.

I think what makes this most tragic is that Cearda is (seems to be, anyway) a genius, yet because of his circumstances and the things that he's been forced to endure, no one cares or recognizes that.

What really struck me was the lack of recognition from the rich Capitol citizens when he went to get sponsors for his tributes. I have this idea in my mind that the Capitol remembers all of its victors, at least for a couple of years, but it makes so much sense that boring or unremarkable victors would be discarded from the Capitol consciousness immediately after.

But I also found myself rooting for him, even though (given the prompt) it seemed impossible that Cearda would 'win'.

I guess the only criticism that I can possibly think of is that this fic's relation to the prompt itself is a little... murky? The Games were inescapable for Cearda, as was the Capitol's reach, but it's all implied rather than explicitly stated, if that makes sense.

Thank you for entering, I really enjoyed reading your fic!

~Taywen

oh my god okay i read this a while ago but never reviewed it but holy. shit. it's so fantastically creepy and dark and beautiful and asdfghjkl; i can't. i love this so much. the scene on the train particularly struck me because it almost seemed kind of...unrealistic? i don't know how to explain it, it was just like...i didn't really believe that he could kill all those peacekeepers and hijack a train but then he /did/, and instead of making the whole story seem unrealistic, it almost just added to the whole craziness of the story? i don't think that makes sense, but the effect was fantastic. like, it was unrealistic but in such a way that i almost felt like it was just another part of his descent into madness? uh. i don't know. but this was just so beautiful and dark and lovely.

i'm adding this to the caesar's palace archives of underreviewed fics because i really love this. (:

Hola, I recently followed you on tumblr and thought Id check out your fanfiction since the link was there.

I'm glad I did because this is brilliant, and probably worth a favourite to make up for my shitty reviewing skills.

wow, this was just amazing.

thank you for this beautiful piece of writing :)

I really liked this. It was good. There's just one little thing that's kind of a pet peeve of mine: the title isn't capitalized and it's not properly written. I'm not sure if you mean Your Hearing Damage or You're Hearing Damaged. Title misspellings and the fact it isn't capitalized might turn off readers, so I'd suggest fixing it. And maybe making the summary longer would attract more readers. Just a little advice. Good story, though.

~Cloudy

wow i love this so much alsjdf;sdkf seriously this is just about perfect. like i said, i absolutely love that he's from district 3 because you expect career victors to be violent, but i honestly think that the victors have it worse than the tributes who died and anyone could turn violent in that situation. :/ i love the constant references to the district's industry, the fire, and when his boy tribute died i seriously felt like someone punched me in the stomach. :((((

i love the ending but i hate it at the same time, i just think it's so interesting to think about what life was like for the victors, and obviously some of them who refused to be used-like johanna-and ugh this is just so painful to read but i love it. i love your oc and the whole idea and just everything 3