#study:legacies

[unsiredtribrid]

I kind of want to talk about my micro-feelings/thoughts on hosie vs hizzie, just for my own sake and if anyone else finds it enlightening (because idk, I think a lot of people wonder why I like hosie so much. There are a lot of people who don't get it, or they misunderstand my opinions on both ships in some way or the other).

So far I do like the way hizzie is set up and the potential subtext here regarding, like. Lizzie's jealousy being interwoven with a desire to be friends with Hope, and how the twins were clearly almost territorial over who got her attention. I talk about that some here.

Howeverrr. As much as I think it's really fun as like a fanon concept that Lizzie is into Hope (and the fic I was thinking of posting that has almost 4k words so far is basically supposed to be a multi-chapter rewrite of Legacies centered on Lizzie realizing she has feelings for Hope and exploring the lesbian headcanon people have in fanon, because I think it's fun/neat to explore. So I get it. I get why people like it, because same, in fanfic)--

--I also don't actually feel any longing on Lizzie's end in a romantic sense, in canon. I think there is longing in like a connection/friend way, which is a huge part of their dynamic. I'm going to start expanding on why I think this, so please keep reading if this hasn't already upset you.

For some reason there's this big thing in fandom nowadays where people can't enjoy things in fanon without thinking they're canon, or like... idk, people can't have nuanced opinions in general about what they're watching, but I'm tired of conforming to that box, so I'm just sharing my thoughts as they are.

In the "I had a crush on you" scene, Lizzie's tears (at least to me) come off more like she's upset that Josie lied to her and felt like she had to hide something that long. I think that to an extent, Lizzie doesn't fully realize that her behavior is a constantly oppressive feeling for Josie (and that situation is also somewhat self-fulfilling, it's not entirely Lizzie's fault), to the point Josie feels the need to intentionally hide things to that extreme, I guess.

Like, the school talent show episode shows that Lizzie is aware of their toxic dynamic and what role she plays (and she is somewhat accepting/fine with it), which I talk about here, but I don't think she realizes 100% how constant and all-encompassing it is to the point that Josie kind of plots things. Like Josie planted a lie just to protect her crush on Hope-- I don't think Lizzie anticipated that level of dedication or even strife, lol. I could go on a tangent about the twins' dynamic, but I already have several posts talking about that and the problems on both sides, so I won't right now.

So, anyway. All that to say, I read her tears as feelings of betrayal, hurt and confusion. I think if she was jealous of the crush interaction specifically, or how Josie and Hope smiled at each other, it probably would've come up because Lizzie isn't someone that's very subtle about those kinds of feelings.

And then the season 1 cherry on top of the "it feels like she's not canonically into Hope that way, even though it's fun in fanon" is the moment she starts joking to Hope (in 1x14) about how hooking up with Roman would be a 'strenuous activity' to help her stress. Like yeah, it's a joke, but that's just the thing. It reads as two actual friends. It reads like Lizzie is advising Hope to jump on this opportunity to get with someone she thinks is more attractive (in a teasing way) because she thinks Landon is kinda lame. And she's right, lmao. I mean, not about Roman, he's a loser and he's not attractive. But I mean, she's right that Landon is lame and Hope should try to do better. The whole episode, she's being a good friend to Hope and then still trying to be somewhat charitable to Landon, despite being annoyed about Landon causing trouble during the pageant (because she knows he's important to Hope). She tells Hope that she'll help her get Landon back, as long as she helps her get Josie back.

And then this brings the hosie of it back around, too. Lizzie knows that Hope has an effect on Josie and with either Hope's thoughts or actions, or both, it could help smooth things over. Because she knows that Josie is soft on Hope and vice versa. The first half of season 1, Hope and Josie are sneaking around doing magic together. Hope tells Josie about what's going on with Landon and Raf before Ric tells the school or his daughters. All of hosie's behavior was flying in the face of Lizzie telling Josie to stop keeping secrets with Hope (because of the twins being kind of terretorial of that relationship, for obvious reasons already established). But they kept doing it, presumably because they kind of keep coming back to each other like magnets. Hope could trust Josie to help her with dark magic without judgment and without ratting her out and then vice versa.

Anyway, back to Hope helping Lizzie get Josie 'back'. When Hope goes to talk to Josie, Josie gets visibly jealous and snappishly refers to Hope and Lizzie being best friends. This is like... active interest on Josie's part. With the context of the crush, it just backs up this romantic tension that's underlying there. Josie never tries to be Hope's wingman. Even later on when Lizzie is suggesting it's their duty to help Hope get a rebound, Josie is staunchly kind of avoiding it. She's also the one that voices dissent about h*ndon's relationship in the cult episode, being the actual mouth piece for pointing out that Hope and Landon just fundamentally don't work (and she's right). Everything about hosie feels romantic, while in canon, hizzie feels pretty platonic thus far.

[unsiredtribrid]

Well, I wasn't trying to say the wikis are infallible, but I personally believe their claim on the timeline because in my rewatch it seems to mostly make sense. I'm gonna try to address this as best I can but like you said, it's hard to find things in the actual show that directly point towards the time it's set in unless you have a really good memory of all the events and how they link together. I didn't pay much attention to the passage of time when taking notes and unfortunately I couldn't find a source of Julie talking about it being set in February, but I do still think that's correct.

Regarding football - I think the simplest explanation is that they don't care to think about the date and they just wanted to do some football. I mean, the kind of football they're playing to begin with is flag football, which is not standard for American schools in my experience (flag football is something we did for fun in elementary, but never played on a competitive level with other schools). Usually for that, it's just classic football with an all boys team. But I'm assuming Julie was taking the jump forward to 2029 as permission to do whatever she wanted there. Miss Mystic Falls is not held on a consistent date, either, between either shows:

I'm not going to go and dig for how they know the exact dates but I think they sound accurate. I know for certain that Miss Mystic Falls was not consistent in TVD, date wise.

To me, the wardrobe is amibigious at best. Sometimes the characters wear short sleeves and sometimes they wear long sleeves, but considering this is Virginia and it's in February (allegedly), that makes sense because that's how the weather goes.

For the rest, we have contextual clues based on the plot.

For instance, yeah, Josie figures out that Pen was spying on her diary (she said part of her diary out loud to her during an argument about the pageant) and she says out loud that she was using the pen from Penelope to write in her diary and she siphoned the magic out of it. She told Penelope she caught her and Penelope confessed to using the pens to spy. Josie has been pretty hostile to Penelope and I just don't think she would have taken any gift from her, even a pen, in the state their relationship is in. She barely even took the note. I think it's safe to say that they might've been together in December, or on the verge of breaking up and maybe at that point Penelope wanted more eyes around the school because she was feeling pettier. And yes, Josie says that Penelope gifted the pens to a bunch of people. Idk, though. I can see her just using the pen without thinking because she already had it from when she and Penelope were cool, but it seems pretty weird to give your ex girlfriend who you are actively fighting with a pen.

Furthermore, (obviously), there's no mention of Christmas at all. The major holidays usually call for themed episodes, especially in TVDU, but that wasn't here and I think Julie would've definitely taken advantage of Halloween and Christmas. Especially since in Season 1 they were sprinkling in parties (like the bonfire).

Here's what I've gathered about the events, time-wise, per episode.

1x01 - All we know at this point is that it's roughly (there are continuity errors that make this hard to pin down) 2029 and Hope is supposed to be 17 right now. Her birthday is in May. Landon and Raf come to the school. Landon steals the knife and flees.

1x02 - This takes place the next day, because Ric and Hope are on the hunt for Landon, who was last seen on Route 29 and is still in the forest after the bus exploded. At the end of the episode, Landon and Raf flee. They're gone for at least a few days but no more than that.

1x03 - This is the community service episode, so it can't be more than a week (or a few days) after the fight at the football game. Jeremy brings Landon and Raf back to the school.

1x04 - Not long after that football incident, Sasha and Dana go to the Salvatore School for a prank in retaliation. In this episode, Landon and Raf talk about how they don't know if Landon is going to be allowed to stay, so it can't have been but 1-2 days? Like Landon is still getting used to the clothes they gave him. They defeated the spider in this episode.

This is a good time to mention that it seems like it doesn't take the monsters much time to show up, once the previous one is killed. In the episode near the end of the season when Landon activates an artifact, a monster shows up literally immediately (and both Landon and Clarke count on this, so it's obvious they both know the monsters are sent pretty quickly each time).

1x05 - By now this is the next monster, a dryad. Last episode, Dorian took the knife and went to put it inside a barrier spell and wait for the next monster to show up, which is how he trapped the dryad. This seems to be within a short time span (like just a 1-3 days?), from what I can tell. Because Dorian is at that house until the dryad shows up while he's on the phone with Ric.

1x06 - this episode is the twins' sweet sixteen, which is canonically on March 15.

There's also the storyline of Raf sleeping with Lizzie and then agreeing to take her to her birthday dance because of it, which takes place over 1x05 and 1x06.

There are some time jumps after this I think, which I can look into if you have interest in that, but this already is a pretty clear indicator to me that the season so far has been set in February and March. And then the fact we get the summer while Hope is in Malivore/the start of Season 2...

Is my understanding correct that Penelope only learned about The Merge after Christmas (whenever the hell that was in S1? Between 1x04 and 1x06?), after she gave out the spelled pens?

And only then once Alaric wrote something about it with the pen (presumably after 1x10, when he’s reading the book about the Gemini Coven)?

I think in all the fog of time and general uproar over Penelope’s treatment of Lizzie in attempts to get Josie to stand up for herself, my brain had thought Penelope had known for a while and that was part of why they broke up and she was behaving that way, when in reality she’d only known for a few weeks?

It makes no sense with Penelope’s character for her to sit on a secret like that for so long—although she did wait until 1x14 when she left to finally tell Josie (but she gave Josie the letter in 1x11, so she was hoping to talk to Josie sooner, I guess?).

Related: we also have no idea

when Josie and Penelope started dating,

how long they dated, and

how long before 1x01 (when Josie said she was still nursing a wounded soul) they broke up, right?

(The Merge question is actually relevant for a fic I’m writing, and the others are tangentially informative, so lumping them all together here.)