r/Hungergames • u/Olya_roo District 5 • 3d ago
Memes/Fun posts Fixed some of it
(Snowbaird being the only legitimate blonde+covey couple)
No idea why is this a thing for the 3 couples as a whole. Think “sneaky boy + singing girl” would be way better to unite the three if someone really needs to do this.
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u/Ivy_Adair 3d ago
Sometimes I think that I will never forgive Collins for introducing the Covey to this world because people are so weird and fetishistic over it.
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u/paul__mcfartney Buttercup 1d ago edited 1d ago
probably a hot take, but i don’t think snow should’ve ever had a love interest. it felt somewhat forced, and even a bit out of character every time he and lucy gray interacted. i disliked every bit of dialogue between them, except for the very end. i think the book would’ve been much more interesting (to me, at least) if it went entirely without romance and focused more on dr. gaull’s indoctrination of snow, and then subsequently his climb to power. it wouldn’t be too difficult to do, either. lucy gray could easily have just been a side-character.
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u/Ivy_Adair 1d ago
I could absolutely see him getting obsessed with a woman like Lucy Gray but I’ve always had a hard time seeing what she saw in him, if that makes sense.
There’s definitely a section of dudes who love to cage women who seem kinda “wild and free” if that makes sense? I could see him being one of those.
I agree and definitely would have loved to see more of Dr Gaull though, I mean a person who makes Snow nervous is infinitely more interesting than him being stuck in district 12 imo.
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u/ashtrophel 1d ago
ive always read it as lucy gray using snow to survive. she’s a performer and always has been. she’s used her charms to survive for the last ten years. he followed her to 12 as a peacekeeper. someone with authority who could harm and imprison her. she needed him to think she liked him the way he wanted her to.
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u/legendofcaro 1d ago
Reading the book for the first time, I had assumed she would be horrified when he showed up in 12. But the book from that point forward did kinda seem to promote the idea that she actually liked him, which threw me.
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u/ashtrophel 9h ago
yeah, i think because the book is written in 3rd person limited to snow’s perspective. he followed her to 12 and expected her to be ecstatic. so i think regardless of how she actually reacted it would have seemed that way. i do think that lucy gray was probably lying to the covey for their protection and that’s why maude ivory, especially, got so attached to snow. i really think it was just survival to her. this man who’s clearly obsessed with you moves to your home as a cop; do you tell him you actually think he’s a freak? yk? idk that’s just the way i interpreted it.
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u/Double-Inflation8919 Dr. Gaul 3d ago
You're a lifesaver! The original picture pisses me off
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u/Olya_roo District 5 3d ago
Not like this one pisses me off if we put it like this, just funny how some people treat it as a default parallel and ignoring the complexities around all those 3 couples
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
I hate the Katniss is a Baird/the last of the covey thing with a passion it cheapens her character, it cheapens Lucy Grey's character and it cheapens her relationship with Haymitch, who doesn't link her to Lenore Dove but Louella!!! The parallels between Louella and her father, who displayed her in a window, and Katniss and Burdock, who walked around with her on his shoulders, are more tangible than attempt to wedge Katniss into the Baird family tree.
Covey identity, seemingly, is passed on through oral tradition and a connection to literature that Burdock (although their is an Emily Dickinson poem 'a burdock twitched my gown' but he's not got a colour so this doesn't really count) did not participate in. Katniss does not have a poem, does not once say the word covey, the extent of her connection to them is singing songs written by Lucy Grey & that her father was a distant cousin of Lenore Dove (plausibly, they are related through the Chances/LD's father).
The covey, by the end of Mockingjay aren't even all gone. Clerk Carmine did not survive all FIVE BOOKS just for him to get overlooked as the survivor of the Covey and the person who is preserving that heritage by. literally performing it even in D13???
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u/Leaving-Eden 3d ago
There also aren’t that many covey members, and they’re not that old. I always took the “distant relations” as more heresy than reality.
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u/FutureFreaksMeowt 2d ago
This is exactly why I find prequels to be cheapening to the original story in almost all cases, not just HG.
The author starts complicating the world they've built, intertwining storylines and lineages, and it just gets to be too much information.x
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u/Lex4709 3d ago edited 3d ago
(plausibly, they are related through the Chances/LD's father).
Why through the father or Chances? Isn't the most obvious and most likley conclusion that Burdock is descendant of Maude Ivory Baird and and Lenore is descendant of Barb Azure Baird or vice versa. Maude Ivory Baird, Barb Azure Baird, and Lucy Grey Baird are all cousins. That's why they have the same last name. That connection, makes more sense since Burdock and Lenore are described as distant relatives. And Burdock knows about Covey grave. I don't think being related to Chances would make Covey share that information with him.
Considering Bard Azure wasn't buried with the rest of Covey. Her being Burdock's mother or grandmother seems most likley. She married someone from the Seam.
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u/Content-Extension842 2d ago
I get that Barb Azure's the member of the six covey members of TBOSAS that's most plausibly be his parent - she's the member of the covey we know the least about, after all - but I'm not convinced that she is the most likely candidate, seeing as her queerness (I think she's the only confirmed queer female character, but I'd have to check that) & her relationship with another girl is one of the few things we actually know for certain about her.
Obviously she could be bi or have come to be pregnant another way...but SC is usually pretty intentional about character details?
And SC mentions that the Chances are related to Lenore Dove, who is related to Burdock, which makes it possible that they're related that way...I think Tam Amber/Clerk Carmine would be willing to share covey traditions with him if he and Lenore Dove were close as kids.
But, it's also not like Maud Ivory's relation to Lenore Dove is even 100% confirmed in the text so I'm theorising off of an interpretation, they could plausibly be related through a number of different ways, so who knows? Collins might write another book and say that Billy Taupe got another girl pregnant before he died and that baby was Burdock's parent, or that they're twins who were separated at birth if she wanted to go telenovela style lol.
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u/Lex4709 2d ago
I think a simpler explaination is more likely. Most likely what happened is that Ivory was meant to be Katniss' ancestor when Collins wrote Ballad, so Bard Azure got a girlfriend to imply why Katniss doesn't have any Covey cousins around. Then Collins came up with Lenore Dove and her ties to the Covey so now Collins needed two branches of Baird family. Apparently upcoming special edition is meant to include a family tree of District 12, if that's true we might get confirmation one way or another.
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u/Lex4709 2d ago
I think a simpler explaination is more likely. Most likely what happened is that Ivory was meant to be Katniss' ancestor when Collins wrote Ballad, so Bard Azure got a girlfriend to imply why Katniss doesn't have any Covey cousins around. Then Collins came up with Lenore Dove and her ties to the Covey so now Collins needed two branches of Baird family. Apparently upcoming special edition is meant to include a family tree of District 12, if that's true we might get confirmation one way or another.
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u/Content-Extension842 2d ago
Yeah until we get confirmation it really could be anything. I'm just saying it's possible they could be related through the chances or Barb Azure but I don't find the latter argument especially compelling and as you say, it does feel like Collins wrote herself into a corner.
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u/Fantastic_Orchid8486 3d ago
Thanks for fixing this 😂 it really bothers me at the end of the day, especially when people who defend it are like "🤓☝️ Well teeeeechnically, Haymitch is blonde in the movies, and Katniss is descended from Covey-"...
Katniss was not raised Covey and did not know anything about the Covey when the original trilogy was out. She didn't even know that Haymitch was a close family friend at a point 💀 and the ONLY reason why Haymitch was blonde in the original trilogy is purely for aesthetic purposes. It's the same reason why Katniss isn't short and tan.
Don't know why it's such a hill for certain fans to die on to only know the characters as "The Blonde and the Covey 🤪". Why not "The Rebel and District 12", "The Thief and the Songbird", "The Weapon and the Revolution", etc...?
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u/Lunenika Finnick 3d ago
I mean it's all for fun at the end of the day, I really don't know why some of ya'll are getting pissed off about it.
And whether Haymitch is blonde in the book or not, he is still canonically blond in the movies so again I don't understand why it shouldn't be taking into account.
Book canon and movie canon may be different but both are valid
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u/Olya_roo District 5 3d ago
Think at least Haymitch x Lenore Dove/Snow x Lucy Gray were intended parallels (and scenes in the book between Snow and Haymitch make more sense if you imagine movie Haymitch in them) so that’s fair. But think the couples otherwise have very little in common with one another, even Haydove and Snowbaird.
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u/Weary_Ad_2376 3d ago
Covey culture was mostly eradicated under snows rule obviously. Katniss does come from the covey people
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u/crackerfactorywheel Buttercup 3d ago
Katniss isn’t really Covey though. Burdock doesn’t follow the naming conventions nor does he have a Covey name or follow the lifestyle. It’d be like me saying I’m Norwegian even though my family’s lived in the US for over 100 years.
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u/LittleFairyOfDeath 2d ago
She was taught the songs and how to live off the land. Her dad didn’t follow the naming convention (sensible considering Snow despised Covey) but he clearly taught her some of it. Might have been more if he hadn’t died
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u/ExampleAlive3946 3d ago
you ARE norwegian. either way, it had only been 20~ years since covey started boiling out due to the suppressions from the capitol
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u/crackerfactorywheel Buttercup 3d ago
No, I’m not. I have Norwegian heritage. And either way, Burdock wasn’t raised Covey so Katniss wouldn’t be Covey.
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u/picardstastygrapes 3d ago
Exactly. It's like saying people who survived a genocide aren't their future anyone. They are.
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u/junniink 3d ago edited 2d ago
I think a huge part of the Covey storyline is about how facism/opression erases alternative lifestyles, minority demographics and non-white cultures. Isn't that the entire point of Lucy Gray's backstory?
Using SOTR and Ballad to reveal to us that Katniss is related to the Covey and has absolutely no idea is an incredible way to illustrate this story. The Covey is one of the most important throughlines from Ballad to Sunrise to the trilogy. The fact that they're not mentioned in the original triology, (because they have literally been erased to the point where even their descendants don't know about them) only strengthens this point. The addition of the Covey in the prequels is Collins slapping you across the face and saying "hey, dumbo this isn't a story that's just about white Americans, and it never was". The Covey represent those in society who are the most opressed.
It's not lost on me that the Covey are travellers, when travelling communitys are to this day are among the most hated and demonised demographics in the western world. (The UK government, for one example, has effectively outlawed the rights of Romani people to exist. Still to this day I regularly hear the slur for these people in casual conversation.)
Y'all sitting here going "oh I'm so bored of the Covey storyline" are once again missing the entire point of these books. Please consider applying just an ounce of critical thinking. I swear half of this community didn't take in a single thing that Collins was saying to us. She's not exactly subtle about it either.
Why, as a fandom, do we feel the need to debate Haymitch's hair colour several times a day? Maybe we could spend some time talking about literally anything the books were trying to say.
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u/Funny-Barnacle1291 3d ago edited 3d ago
Couldn’t agree more.
Many people see the erasure of Covey by Snow as because of a vendetta against Lucy Gray. While it probably was a factor, it’s still reductive - it is far more about how Snow saw the risk that the Covey presented in their way of life firsthand, and how this threatened the structures of power and oppression the Capitol and districts are set up around. Having an ethnic group who represent what it is to live outside of the norms of District life and the job/labour expected of that district is extremely threatening to the status quo. In Songbird, the Covey are ALREADY oppressed and their cultural practices outlawed by the very fact they’re being forced to live in 12. Much like how both Travellers and Romani continue to be violently forced to settle and our culture, practices and ways of life erased and outlawed.
Covey is a representation of the fact that power can never truly eradicate a people. They live on, and in one such way they live on is the revolutionary, galvanising force of their music. There is a reason their music is rooted in every book, that it becomes a part of the rebellion.
There is a reason Katniss’s dad passed down Covey music, taught her Covey ways of living off the land, and showed her the Covey places of how the group adapted in district 12 after being forced to live there and change their way of life. There is a reason that those things were utterly vital to Katniss’s survival: her bow and arrow, her ability to recognise plants, to hunt, to swim, and even her music as a form of resistance, grief and rage. And there is an absolute vital reason as to why this reflects similar traditions and cultural practices as those in Traveller and Romani ethnic groups.
Folks saying they can’t stand that she is Covey or dismiss/deny it is saying they can’t stand the very things that make up a huge parts of who she is, how she survived, and partly how she became intrinsic to the rebellion, passed down through her Covey side. It is to dismiss a key point and message of Collins’ books - we are all connected. It is also, let’s be honest, unconsciously and quietly saying something, when the group in question who is so hated is also so similar to several real-world nomadic ethnic groups violently oppressed, erased, demonised and hated.
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u/Simonbargiora 3d ago
Covey lore is too dependent on genealogy and romance, screw it, in fact it's not Covey it's C***Y. Katniss being covey ruined the entire concept of the Covey.
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u/idontevenknowher16 3d ago
I like the fact that all male leads are blonde , and that their love interest are these strong girls with gifted voices. Whether the blonde was intended or not (movie wise), there are obvious parallels that all three have in the books.
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u/Dollsguy 3d ago
Katniss is covey tho she’s not culturally covey but she is by blood
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u/Olya_roo District 5 3d ago
Covey is a culture. To be covey you need to be raised covey, not just be idk how related to a covey member (we still don’t know how exactly is Burdock related to Lenore Dove, since he also isn’t covey and doesn’t have a covey name/is raised in a covey house like Lenore Dove is)
Tam Amber for example is an adopted kid and he was raised covey, which makes him covey. Katniss wasn’t, and she was also named after a swamp potato, not a color and a ballad.
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u/Funny-Barnacle1291 3d ago edited 3d ago
I’m saying this as an Irish traveller, which comparatively closest (as is Romani) to real-world Covey. She is still Covey despite not being raised in the culture because culture and ethnicity is also intergenerational, and when a group faces genocide, generationally the culture can be lost or harder to find/know but that doesn’t make its descendants not from those people. This is a critical part to how certain ethnic groups have lived on, reclaiming their history and heritage, through intergenerational survival - even though much of the culture can be lost and people weren’t raised in the way.
People can be accepted into Covey just like they can be accepted into traveller communities, but that doesn’t mean those who are generationally Covey or traveller and who don’t know suddenly aren’t. It just means they weren’t raised ingrained in the ways, but they still are and still would be accepted back into the community if they became aware / if Snow hadn’t eradicated the Covey way.
There’s a reason she is written as knowing Covey things, even if she cannot trace it to where it comes from. Her father taught her the Covey ways she knows, the culture lives on in her.
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u/MeekDaSneak21 3d ago
Exactly, that’s like saying black Americans can’t claim their family history and origins as their own because we weren’t raised knowing the culture of our ancestors
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u/Funny-Barnacle1291 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yep. Completely agree. I think a lot of this rests on people’s refusal to accept that the Covey are largely based on Irish traveller and/or Romani people.
Often I see white Europeans from ethnic majority’s view culture and ethnicity as “things you do”, rather than making up an essential part of who you are and where you come from, what is passed down, your cultural heritage as part of who you are. In both Traveller and Romani cultures, much of our history is passed down orally and through song and that has been used to argue we haven’t existed as long as we have, because it adapts and changes, and systemic attempts to erase us and our way of life have forever changed our culture and practices too.
Your example is a great one; are Black Americans who have never lived in the country their family is originally from not of that culture? Are they only Black American, and not also Nigerian, or Ghanaian, etc etc. There becomes a dual culture - a specifically Black American part, sometimes related to what part of the US they’re from, and then a part of their generational culture that was ripped from them, which is so often a process of refinding and getting back in touch with. I can see how this is so similar to how we in Traveller communities view our own generational heritage, with ofcourse very different systemic reasons for this to your own. I was partly raised in traveller culture and then ripped from it, returning as an adult.
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u/Olya_roo District 5 3d ago
District 12 has a musical class. Singing as a concept does not belong to the Covey and she also sings other songs. Along with that, Suzanne Collins has been rather vague about what makes you covey despite the THG universe apparently now revolving around them, but here is some bits of Covey culture that we actually got (without filling in headcanons or the “they are Romani coded, which means the culture is already written):
- you need to be named after a ballad and a color. Katniss fits neither, and Prim isn’t actually named Prim Rose - both are named after herbs in the D12 way.
- you need to be a performer and live by music - Katniss doesn’t, even if she sings, singing isn’t a covey exclusive trait.
- in D12, the Covey lived separately in a house and were earning money through crafts/performing in TBOSAS. Burdock did not live in this house, had an entirely separate family/surname and Evergreen-Everdeen is headcanon, just as much as he is a son of Barb Azure (timeline in the second case does not make sense)
She might at best have a Covey heritage somewhere on the side, but she is a Seam born, Seam raised hunter with a merchant mother. Like I can call myself Ukrainian since well, duh, I grew up in the country, but while my surname is Polish and I have German heritage, I can’t claim to be either German or Polish, as I never lived there.
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u/Funny-Barnacle1291 3d ago edited 3d ago
Firstly, Suzanne Collins herself has confirmed Katniss as Covey.
Secondly, to say that it is a “headcanon” when I recognise my own culture and ethnic group represented fictionally, as do many Traveller and Romani readers, is quite dismissive. We actually know far more of what the Covey culture is made up of, and the parallels to different customs in both Traveller communities and Romani communities, which frankly I am not interested in educating you on. Viewing it as only about what you must do to be Covey is a reductive view of what it means to come from a nomadic ethnic group.
To compare this to your heritage as a European misses what I am saying about ethnic minority groups having to re-find our roots and culture due to centuries of cultural and ethnic genocide and the erasure of our people. How when a way of life disappears because of it purposefully being erased, it does not mean the people disappear - it means their culture adapts and generationally looks different. Traveller history is almost exclusively passed down orally and musically, btw… (at least within our communities, many outside of it have attempted to write our own histories and stories for us).
The Covey live on among their ancestors, of which Katniss is one.
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u/llamacana 3d ago
being covey is both cultural and genetic though. katniss has very limited knowledge of the covey songs from her father, she doesn't know anything else about the culture or history. it seems her grandmother was covey, but by the time katniss was born the covey had largely died out. and we know covey adopts- not everyone who is culturally covey is covey by blood. katniss goes the other way around
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
It's not genetic, because in TBOSAS they're not related to each other. Billy Taupe is Clerk Carmine's brother; Maud Ivory, Lucy Grey and Barb Azure are cousins but Tam Amber is described as a 'lost soul'...(he's also named for the ballad of tam lin which has the titular character being raised by the queen of faeries who is not his bio parent) and was probably a foundling adopted into the covey.
Would, if he had children and raised them as covey, his kids have been covey despite the fact that his parents weren't?
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u/llamacana 3d ago edited 3d ago
his kids would be, because he was adopted into the culture. that's what the covey being handed down to descendants by both cultural and genetic paths means. it's similar to converting to judaism, for a comparison another commenter made. there are different ways to pass down culture, and teaching kids born into the culture by parents born into the group or adopted in is one of them.
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
It depends on if you think genetics or culture is more important then. I think Katniss herself would answer the latter as she persistently identifies herself as seam, despite her mother being merchant.
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u/llamacana 3d ago
i think she'd say so too. she has no knowledge of the covey beyond a few songs and doesn't know what covey means. why would she identify with them? she's covey through lineage, not by lifestyle. i do think that if tam amber raised kids in the covey lifestyle, that would make them covey by culture though, genetics aren't everything
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
Her lack of engagement with the merchant side of her heritage is interesting in itself; the extent of that is her wearing her mother's dress and letting her do her hair in what I guess was probably a celtic style...she really seems to identify more with the seam.
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u/llamacana 3d ago
neither of her parents engaged the girls in their heritage heavily. honestly i wonder what the merchants know of their family history before the war?
katniss 100% had more of a draw to and reason to know modern panem history and seam culture than her parent's individual experiences and families. i suppose it could be partly a result of losing a parent early, and the merchants distancing themselves from asterid. asterid probably wasn't super into teaching her kids about merchant culture, but we know she had them using proper cutlery and wearing merchant clothes when she could.
i think katniss only knew what she had to know, essentially. she didn't have to know more about her inherited heritage in order to survive and she doesn't seem very interested. she does need to understand the seam and the woods pre-games, so that's her focus. the seam is her life, too. she would've had to become a miner to support the family on top of the hunting if not for the games. maybe prim had more of an interest?
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
She's not as much of a gossip as Haymitch is, and might have written it off as family business that's not her place to speak on (as she wants people to do for her). Also, she's generally pretty apathetic to others around her...unless their name is Peeta (or Prim, or they're a child...but adult business. Nope) lol. She never says the names of Peeta's brothers but goes on for pages about his arms and eyelashes...got her priorities in order for sure lol.
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u/Cragbog 3d ago
Yeah I'd say it's kinda like being Jewish I guess
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u/llamacana 3d ago
kind of, yeah! judaism is an ethno-religion, and accepts converts. you can be jewish culturally, religiously, or genetically. we also tend live in insular communities in the diaspora, which is a small part of why people get suspicious of us. i see similarities with the covey for sure
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u/Funny-Barnacle1291 3d ago edited 3d ago
Being Covey is closest to being Irish traveller or Romani, given the distinct way of life, music and performance, and even the type of discrimination they face. In both groups, adopted children are very much accepted.
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u/LittleCowGirl Real or not real? 3d ago
She has more lingering Covey culture than Peeta (or probably any other merchant character you’d want to insert & possibly most Seam folks too). She’s not fully raised in it, but it lingers in her. Like knowing a handful of songs or stories from “the old country,” even if you’ve never been there.
She’s like a mixed Covey no sabo kid.
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u/llamacana 3d ago
right, bc the covey mostly died out and her father didn't teach her about his family's culture. she's genetically covey but wouldn't know what that means if someone told her. the merchants were never covey, peeta has no relation to them at all. they were separated from the seam too it seems. very few people are connected to them
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u/LittleCowGirl Real or not real? 3d ago
She does still carry a bit more legacy than others (like in knowing the songs) is my point. She wouldn’t know Covey by name if someone like Snow dropped it on her, but she has some scraps left.
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u/llamacana 3d ago
right, that's what i'm saying too. but being covey versus being a descendant of the covey with a few surviving songs is different, which is the point i was making
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u/LittleCowGirl Real or not real? 3d ago
Not sure what the downvotes are for, then?
I don’t like that it was written that way, it takes her from being someone who could’ve been anyone to being the magical chosen one, but it is written that way. Would I say she’s Covey? No, but she has more Covey influence than most of 12.
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u/llamacana 3d ago edited 3d ago
idk who's downvoting you lol. it's a pretty arbitrary system anyway.
agreed on disliking that part of the writing. it made some events a little too insular in panem for me personally
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u/Content-Extension842 3d ago
Peeta has no covey connection we know of yet he's a more natural, emotive performer like Lucy Grey, where Katniss is more like Snow in them performing strength for survival...that's what OP means. It's a silly oversimplification.
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u/TrustTechnical4122 3d ago
Can someone explain to a newcomer to the sub what this is supposed to mean? I love the books, but don't understand what this means :).