Wise to it

The main takes I see are that he doesn't love her because he's too sociopathic narcissistic, sees her as a possession etc etc and generally because he is a bad guy. The association of not being able to love with villains/negative traits is rampant in fiction, and I think it's a deeply awful trope. It's one of the reasons aromantic people are often not trusted/villainised in real life and also it's just bad because it's one of the reasons people will stay in abusive situations - because the person does love them, or does things that make them feel loved sometimes, so they're just experiencing difficulties, not real abuse. The truth is that people can be in love with someone and still mistreat them, think less of them, dehumanise them, abuse them, and recognising that is important. It's important not to conflate villainous people with an inability to feel 'true love' because love is not an inherently positive trait, it is an emotion and can motivate both goodness in people and awfulness.

I'm not arguing that he loves her in a healthy way, or that people should think good things about it, but that's the main issue here I feel. Love = good to most people, so if he's a bad guy then he can't truly love her < this is stupid and awful. But what does the analysis that he doesn't truly love her even mean? What does it add to the text? All it does is make people feel better about him being a villain, in my eyes.

Probably most relevant to the text is that it's an essential part of the plot that he is in love with her. There are multiple times in the novel where he compromises his own values for her sake, and the conclusion of the novel/his descent from Coriolanus the confused poor boy to Snow the ruthless president-to-be hinges on him choosing to reject that sentimental part of himself. He has a whole monologue at the end about how he never wants to be in love again because of how it makes him act!!! He chooses to marry someone for advancement/reputation instead of love because he sees it as necessary for his own survival. One of the main themes of this novel - fuck, the main theme, is that Coriolanus Snow was not an evil unfeeling villain but in fact a relatively disadvantaged Capitol system who had every opportunity to sympathise with the districts, and even does act in rebellious ways but ultimately he chooses to reject that and choose a worldview that makes him personally feel more stable. He loved Lucy Gray, he loved Sejanus, but he was selfish and he chose his own prospects over either of them. He is devastated by Sejanus' death and the knowledge that he caused it but he rationalises it as necessary, so that he doesn't face the same fate, and he turns on Lucy Gray not because he didn't 'truly' love her but because he convinces himself that if he tried to become an officer she would betray him. Because he believes that humans aren't trustworthy, that they're inherently animals, that the hunger games are necessary because humans will turn on each other anyway and at least that is in a controlled environment.

Slightly unrelated but I fucking love the whole aspect of Lucy Gray saying that she loves Coriolanus but that it's trust that matters more to her. Fuck yeah. And like, that's the point! He loves her but he doesn't trust her. And she loves and trusts him and that trust is misplaced. I love her song Pure as the Driven Snow and the fucking irony of it because like. Everything she sings is true! She needs him and loves him and trusts him because he did protect her and he did do all those things for her and she is alive because of him but of course he is not pure as the driven snow. He has ulterior motives that she is not aware of. I love it! I love that he's such a complicated character, that they all are, that there's so much to pick apart and figure out what people are really thinking. Corionalus Snow unreliable narrator who thinks horrible things about people but never lets it show because he's so focussed on survival but then compromises his own values because he cares about people. He's fucked up.

Yes, of course her aversion to getting married/being in a romantic situation can be easily understood as being related to the traumatic circumstances in which she lives/watching her mother be destroyed by losing her husband/the knowledge that if she gets married and has children there is a chance she will lose them to the hunger games but here's the thing - these things don't stop other people from wanting/pursuing romance and Katniss herself acknowledges that she is an outlier in this and finds it strange that Gale Peeta etc could still consider such a thing given their circumstances! 

She has difficulty understanding her own feelings and identifying whether she actually is romantically interested in any of the options in the books. It takes her years to feel comfortable telling Peeta that she loves him. Yes, again, trauma, but being aromantic due to trauma does not mean someone isn't aromantic. We've all been there

She sees romance as a tool, in the arena, to make Gale feel better when he's upset, to convince Peeta not to sacrifice himself for her and yes her circumstances definitely affect this but she genuinely is hurt when Gale identifies that she only kisses him when he's in pain, as if she doesn't see the issue with this. She identifies herself as heartless and manipulative - through hijacked Peeta's eyes - and feels unlike her peers in a way that reads as queer to me. How many arospec people have been accused of not loving someone, or not loving them correctly, because of the ways they do and don't engage in romance?

She forms strong bonds with all sorts of people and values them as much as she does Peeta and Gale. Of course, her love for Prim is one of the driving forces of the series, and she has a unique friendship with Madge, adores Cinna, feels protective of her prep team, loves Rue, feels kinship with Thresh, bonds with Beetee, Wiress, Mags, Johanna, Finnick and generally has a unique relationship with other Hunger Games survivors, and a unique ability to communicate with and understand Haymitch even as there is animosity between them. And many more examples! You don't have to be aromantic to value nonromantic relationships in this way but it's definitely less common societally. Aromantic or not, these relationships are one of the reasons I love these books.

She mentions that while she never had feelings for Gale pre Hunger Games, she figured that they might end up together simply because they were close. This feels so familiar to me, as many aromantic people pick someone to have a crush on that 'makes sense' because they know it's something you're supposed to do. She is possessive of Gale, but not explicitly in a romantic way, more in the sense of not wanting to lose her friend, and she doesn't understand why Gale would be jealous of her dynamic with Finnick. 

I have a lot of aro hunger games thoughts really, all of those books have told me that Suzanne Collins writes with a distinct cynicism of romance - often identifying it in her texts as a tool of manipulation or as a distraction, while also dissecting what a healthy romantic relationship/attachment looks like AND emphasising in every book the various types of nonromantic attachments a person can have. I think this is why my aro ass has such a fondness for those books (I mean also all the political themes of the books but you know, it helps to see yourself in the protagonist in that way)