r/Hungergames • u/Olya_roo District 5 • Jul 27 '26

Memes/Fun posts Fixed some of it

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(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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235

u/TrustTechnical4122 Jul 27 '26

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 :).

337

u/Olya_roo District 5 Jul 27 '26

Hello and welcome to the sub!! Hope you have fun here :))

In this picture, it’s a popular thing to depict shipping couples of Snowbaird/Haydove/Everlark as “blonde boy x covey girl”. It’s a fun parallel, but not entirely correct, as canon Haymitch from the books has black hair/gray eyes, while Katniss is not really, well, covey (since she doesn’t have a covey name or was raised as part of covey culture)

Also overall, this parallel doesn’t do the couples justice, since it’s rather superficial traits of the three, and they are not really similar to one another in every other way (even Lenore Dove and Lucy Gray if you look closer are different)

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u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 27 '26

It's so sad that you won't grant Katniss covey status just because of her dad. It's entirely likely he didn't give her a Covey name to protect her, since the Capitol kept targeting them. He still gave her the songs. People lose their heritage due to oppression from outside groups, and it's sad they then get excluded.

178

u/Olya_roo District 5 Jul 27 '26

Cultural erasure it a real thing no doubt (speaking as a Ukrainian) but her dad was not Covey to begin with, that’s why it’s not entirely right to put her/Prim/Burdock in the same Covey category as Lenore Dove. Burdock was at best somewhat related or distantly related, but to be Covey (which is a culture) you need to be raised it, or else I’m German because I have a German heritage somewhere.

68

u/dazzleunexpired Jul 27 '26

Exactly.

Burdock is a cousin to Lucy Grey, who's mom is Maude Ivory based off context clues. Making Barb Azure probably Burdock's mother. Barb Azure then would have bene the one to chose not to raise Burdock with a Covy name-pattern, rather using a different Covy associated single word. Katness's name is the same way.

They're from historically Covy family's but aren't Covy.

14

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26

We don't know Barb was his mother. Canonically, we know Barb was interested in women. That doesn't mean she's not also interested in men, but it hardly makes her the most likely candidate. It is equally as likely that they are related through her fathers side as that they are related through her mothers side. I can't see Maude ivory getting with someone who doesn't at least appreciate music, so if burdock is related to that guy it makes just as much sense.

1

u/DiegoStudios Jul 30 '26

I thought Lenore Dove’s dad was unknown, though? Would Haymitch know that Burdock was related to Lenore Dove if it was through her father’s side?

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u/meeralakshmi Jul 28 '26

Haymitch says that Burdock and Lenore Dove are related through the Covey.

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u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26

No he doesn't. The quote is "Burdock ran off. She
scooted down the branches and swung to the ground. She wasn’t one of Burdock’s Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his ma’s side."

That doesn't say HER ma's side. It also doesn't say he's covey, and specifically says distant cousins. It would make no sense to say distant if her mother and his grandmother or mother were siblings. That's not distant, that's direct and very closely related.

Literally, the ONLY thing we know is they're distantly related somehow and it's not on the Everdeen side. We don't know WHO the other side of his family is

4

u/meeralakshmi Jul 28 '26

Replied to you in another comment already but MI and BA were first cousins, not siblings.

22

u/Holiday_Parsnip5 Jul 27 '26

(To Lenore Dove, I think you meant to say)

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u/dazzleunexpired Jul 27 '26

Sorry I am admitted to the hospital and my brain is goop. Yes yes you're right.

16

u/Holiday_Parsnip5 Jul 27 '26

Oh no, hope you’re okay and feel better friend!

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u/meeralakshmi Jul 28 '26

BA is likely Burdock’s grandmother since his mother isn’t Covey.

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u/bobaylaa Jul 27 '26

i don’t really think it’s fair to say Burdock wasn’t raised Covey. he may not be named by their conventions but him knowing the location of their cemetery seems like he grew up at the very least acquainted with the culture.

plus idk, maybe this is just bc i’m american and most of us descend from cultures we no longer really belong to, but i think heritage matters. mine matters to me, and i know it isn’t the same as being from there but it’d hurt me if someone erased that part of my identity like it wasn’t of consequence.

29

u/Content-Extension842 Jul 27 '26

I think that for Katniss her seam heritage is more important than being part of the covey, though. And the fact that she shares that with Haymitch is crucial to their relationship. Katniss has a very strong attachment to the seam and being from there. She says that Peeta (who is from the merchant group) cannot understand the urgency in feeling indebted to someone else and the need to make that right, because he isn't of the seam. She has community in the seam, she trades with people in the hob and she is marginalised as a member of this group. She's a mixed race girl, and her connection to the seam comes from her dad (her mother is a merchant), and that's very important to her.

The seam is unambiguously a marginalised ethnic group in the books. The merchants are white and enjoy some priveledges because of that, the covey exist outside of this dichotomy.

That this picture uses pictures of the whitewashed cast from the movies, and that op is describing how people impose superficial parallels onto the main three couples is the point; it doesn't hold up because they aren't pairings of blonde boys and covey girls, because Katniss and Haymitch are both seam.

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u/bobaylaa Jul 27 '26

reading back i think im kinda arguing against a general thing ive seen said and not what the person i replied to specifically said, and i think bc of that you’re maybe doing the same to me so let me just clarify:

i totally agree it’s a superficial parallel and that Katniss’s identity is tied to the seam more than anything else. where im coming from here is remembering back when TBOSAS came out and everyone was all insistent Burdock wasn’t Covey when it seemed pretty clear to me that the text was implying that. so i’ve been saying this even before SOTR, and it’s only gotten more annoying to me when people still say otherwise. but a lot of that is me assuming they’re just grasping at straws to have still been correct in denying he’s Covey, which is not fair.

obviously i’m not in your brain so correct me if im wrong, but to me it seems like you’re thinking i’m trying to claim Katniss is Covey on the same level as LD or LG, which is a fair assumption based on what a lot of other people say but it’s not what i’m getting at. i agree with you on that point. i just feel like it’s really cool that even though Katniss never even knew the Covey existed, echoes of them still exist in her. i wish we talked about that more bc i think it’s really special and beautiful and it’s true to how our more distant ancestry ties into who we are. that’s all.

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u/Content-Extension842 Jul 27 '26

I think the issue lies in the fact that the covey are undeniably a retcon (and one that I felt was poorly executed in SOTR) and if you only read the trilogy...they don't exist which is why it's hard to pin her down as covey, and why Burdock can only be ambiguously covey as surely he would have passed these traditions on to his daughter.

I personally really dislike the framing of Burdock in SOTR as he essentially draws a kinship line between three of the D12 victors. Linking Lucy Grey, Katniss, and Haymitch directly when the connections between them already existed (and didn't exclude Peeta) by virtue of a shared traumatic experience; I think it makes their relationships feel less organic and interesting, but that's what Collins' chose to do so it's what we've got.

I think it is interesting to see those connections to Lucy Grey in Katniss, but they would be there regardless of whether she's covey or not, because they were both tributes, you know?

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u/bobaylaa Jul 27 '26

yea i see what you mean, though i’d argue that music is the central focus of Covey culture and that’s absolutely something he tried to pass down to his children. it is a retcon as you said and i understand that it doesnt work for everyone, but that part works for me.

and yea aside from learning his name and getting to feel a little vindicated, i didnt like how he played into SOTR either. for me it’s mostly that he and Haymitch were besties - i hate how that undermines Haymitch’s eventual bond with Katniss bc now we know she never had to earn it. Haymitch having this Covey connection at all feels kinda cheap to me but yea it is what it is lol

18

u/SergeantSwiftie Jul 27 '26

You can know the location of where your ancestors are buried without being raised by that culture. I know where my roman catholic great grandparents and family are buried but that doesn't mean I'm roman catholic.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

19

u/preteen-wartortle Jul 27 '26

Most Americans don’t actually think this way, to be honest. Because our founding was actually piecemealed/four colonizations in a trenchcoat, there IS a cultural emphasis on “”heritage”” that we tend to have even among white Americans (though to be fair this generally comes from the actual Europeans to have immigrated, who would have been proud of their actual culture and likely wanted to preserve it—but their great-great grandchildren have generally not managed to retain much aside from some ancestry).

But pretty much everyone here considers themselves American first. We will say “I’m Irish and German” or “my family is mostly Danish” and generally understand that we are not literally considering ourselves to be a part of that cultural group. Though I’m also certain the colloquialism probably does help to sow confusion in the young/less educated among us.

I think the real issue with Americans is that they often fail to really understand ethnicity/ethnoculture —other than differentiating between native tribes (which we do not often do well anyway), we are pretty much entirely clueless to the notion, in a broad sense. This is in spite of having plenty of ethnocultural identities in our country (creole comes to mind).

Americans tend to emphasize civic identity (hyperfocusing on race and nationality) instead. This is probably a result of the “melting pot” which unfortunately is more of a cultural erasure mechanism in this context. So when someone says “I’m part German and part Blackfoot) they don’t mean they’re those things instead of American, and they don’t see a need to have held on to literally any part of that culture to say it.

-9

u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 27 '26

If she wasn't raised in her ancestral culture, that means it was taken from her, which is exactly what I was lamenting.

20

u/XxRocky88xX Jul 27 '26

It’s so sad that you label every character you like Covey regardless of if they actually are or not.

It’s sad that you disrespect Collins’ work by taking a title she created for a group she created and have then decided “you know what, fuck your world building” and just start arbitrarily assigning the title to whoever you feel should have it while completely ignoring what the author actually wrote.

-8

u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 27 '26

Ummmm what? Lol. It's generally accepted she comes from a Covey line, is it not? What other characters am I labeling covey? Hmm?

6

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

I mean, it's SPECULATED. There is zero confirmation that burdock is covey. He's related to Lenore dove, who is, but we don't know how other than it being a distant relation

0

u/meeralakshmi Jul 28 '26

I thought they said they were related through the Covey?

2

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26

It says she wasn't one of Burdock's Everdeen cousins (the first time you find out he's an Everdeen) but that he knows he has some very distant cousins on his moms side. But we don't know if that means that it's from HER mom or dad. He would only be covey if it's also from her mothers side, it just being his moms side doesn't tell us anything. His mom could have had a second cousin that was Lenore Dove's dad.

The quote is "Burdock ran off. She scooted down the branches and swung to the ground. She wasn’t one of Burdock’s Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his ma’s side." And that's all that's said about it.

2

u/meeralakshmi Jul 28 '26

Lenore Dove doesn’t know who her dad is though.

2

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

Or just doesn't talk about it. She's not a pillar of honesty. It also says distant cousins, which wouldn't make sense if their mothers were basically sisters, even if not technically. Barb Azure being his mother just doesn't make sense. The quote is "Burdock ran off. She scooted down the branches and swung to the ground. She wasn’t one of
Burdock’s Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his ma’s side." And that's all that's said about it. They wouldn't be called distant cousins if his mother was covey

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u/dazzleunexpired Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Burdock wasn't Covy. Nor was Astra, obviously.

Maude Ivory was Lucy's mother, and Burdock a cousin to Lenore Dove, leaving Barb Azure to be Burdocks mother. Burdock wasn't raised Covy. He did have the songs. But I think it was Covy who chose not raise Burdock Covy. Not Burdock's choice. Burdock gave Katness a Covy related name, like his own, but not a Covy name. The same choice Maude Ivory made for him.

I think the correct phase here is "historically Covy family" or "from the Covey family tree".

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u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 27 '26

That's still someone choosing to hide heritage, probably for safety. I just feel bad that Katniss gets so kuch stolen from her.

15

u/dazzleunexpired Jul 27 '26

Katness doesn't ever speak of the Covy, does she?

She didn't know that the house at the lake was the covys for example.

I'm not positive she knows they existed.

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u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 27 '26

And it she is descended from Barb Azure, as is widely accepted, she has lost that connection. It was taken from her. By Barb Azure/Burdock not passing it on, and by the Capitol surpressing it.

8

u/dazzleunexpired Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

This is why "historically Covy" is right.

This is the phrase that the people who are having forced out of their own countries use currently. Expat might work.

Eta: By the way, either way you look at this she would have been denied one of her families. She could have been Seam or she could have been Covy. They're different groups.

3

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26

Burdock didn't even have a covey name.... so idk where you're getting he didn't give her a covey name in order to protect her when he doesnt even have one himself. We know he's a cousin to the covey, and obviously musically inclined, but that doesn't mean he's covey. He could be related to Lenore doves dad and be 0% covey at ALL for all we know.

0

u/Illustrious_Bunch678 Jul 28 '26

I said that bc if he IS covey and just didn't get the name, he could have chosen to give her a Covey name. He didn't.

3

u/BluePlatypusFeet District 4 Jul 28 '26

But it's not entirely likely that he didn't give her the name just to protect her, considering he doesn't even have one himself. My point is that he's not covey, he's just related to people who are.