#texts:m

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Like the biggest thing about Lucy Gray (besides that he loved her) that haunts Coryo is that she represented the ability to have a strong and steadfast survival instinct (being happy he killed Mayfair 💀, surviving in the games and strongly valuing her survival despite the ways the Capitol had traumatized her by making her go through that) while still being the kind of person who genuinely believes that people aren't so bad but it's the world and the cycle that twists them.

Like she's proof that you can value survival like Coryo did at the start of the book, but still believe better for humanity than the fascism of the Capitol.

(that Coryo himself even feared/hated—

—even though he wouldn't admit the Capitol was specifically the problem because he was afraid of what would happen if he did that and opened up that box. Then it would be harder to suppress any guilt because of what happens to his loved ones for his inaction, or worse, his actual actions).

Like he wants to believe that the Capitol's 'order' is the way to make him feel safe and in control and he values that safety and control more than anything else because he's so afraid. Lucy Gray is the opposite of that fear; fiery and willing to kill if she has to. She's a performer, so people would assume she's just weak and frail but in reality she uses her charisma like a weapon and she's bold and brave in ways Coryo could never dream of being. He's able to admire aspects of that because he values/cherishes it, but then simultaneously fears it whenever she's outside of his control because of it.

She's proof that you can believe the best in humanity and not bow down to fascism while still both surviving and highly valuing survival. She doesn't need to control and she doesn't want to be controlled. She's the embodiment of free spirit while he's (what he thinks) is order and control.

By the time he bends completely to Gaul's ideology, he tries to stamp out her memory because any hint of it is the faintest reminder that he and Gaul are wrong and breaking free of the system doesn't mean you have to be just some fool who doesn't care about your survival or 'the betterment of humanity' (what Gaul thought of Sejanus and tried to teach Coryo to completely think of Sejanus, because she saw him teetering dangerously on the fence and caring about Sejanus).

The thing is, Lucy Gray cares very much about her personal survival, is incredibly strong when people think she isn't ("nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping"), has a backbone, will kill when she has to (and without regret), but still despite that is NOT a heartless, moral-less killing machine like Gaul tries to say everyone in the arena is. She's still kind and she still believes in inherent good nature. She's just unwilling to bow down to the cycle of abuse, or ANYONE at all pushing a hint of it, and that terrifies them because they're wrong about everything

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I actually think about this a lot, as well as everything we don’t know about the Gemini coven’s relationship to siphons. Like, Mary Louise mentions the coven literally hung her upside down in their slaughterhouse with the cows because they found out she was a siphon, which to me suggests there’s heavy discrimination against them just deeply rooted in their history.

With Kai, we know that he felt isolated and ‘like a freak’, but we weren’t explicitly told he was physically harmed like Mary Louise was, so it makes me wonder if things changed over time. It might be one of those things where they became less barbaric after the 1800s and people became more accepting the further away from the coven’s ‘origin’ they were.

Like, my personal headcanon is that the reason why siphons originate from the Gemini line is because they have something to do with the curse that was placed on them. Or rather, they’re a side effect of the curse and a constant reminder of it.

Canon refers to it as ‘the curse on the Gemini twins’ and in TVD the way it worked was basically like this: a set of twins merges to become the leader > the coven has to repeat that process to pass on the leadership baton before the current leader dies, because if the leader dies then the entire coven is also cursed to die.

Since TVD never went into specifics about the curse, we kind of just assumed that the only issue with not merging is that the coven would die when Joshua did, so they sort of had to. But then in Legacies we were told that despite there not being a coven to die anymore (and no clear leader, since Josie and Lizzie are not merged), they still do have to merge anyway. Presumably the curse just carried on to Josie and Lizzie by blood and they would have to merge by 22 or else both of them would die, and then after they’re merged anyone who joins their coven is also bound by the life-linking part curse (seems like a hard sell to join the coven but then again, Josie and Lizzie are super powerful so it would be interesting to see how that would go). Like, imagine Josie and Lizzie in their merged form starting another Gemini coven. There might be witches who would risk their lives being linked to Josie or Lizzie, as long as they get that amount of power.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. 😭 But yeah, I think since they didn’t specify that Kai was physically harmed and instead just felt like a freak, the stigma around siphons is still there but maybe they just don’t kill them like they used to.

I’m always going to wonder about the curse and the way it caused their coven to produce witches without magic. Maybe it was another way to foil their process, especially since one would initially assume that a witch ‘without magic’ would be less powerful (except the opposite wound up being true), or the curse just intended for the siphons to steal magic from their covenmates and scare them (or even put them in pain, since siphoning can be painful in some contexts).

They clearly did not want Kai to be a leader and it’s never explicitly shown or said, but I think even if he weren’t unstable, they still wouldn’t have wanted him in the leadership role because the coven just doesn’t like siphons.

So if they’d known Josie and Lizzie were siphons, I dunno… I think maybe they might’ve(?) still saved them since the alternative would be their complete extinction. I think Joshua might have, anyway. I mean, the Parker family had Christmas photos of Kai and Jo so to me it suggests they were at least somewhat civil to him as a family on the surface, even if there was emotional neglect and abuse underneath. They probably didn’t respect him or love him like they did the other witches, but Joshua didn’t even want to kill Kai, so he put him in the prison world. He might have kept an innocent siphon alive (i.e, Josie and Lizzie) if it meant saving the coven, but that’s just my take on his character.

But some other members of the coven might’ve hated siphons so much that they wouldn’t have wanted to. It seems to vary

This is probably a question I shouldn't ask: Would the dying Gemini coven still bothered saving Lizzie and Josie in the womb if they had - somehow, theoretically - discovered they could both be siphoners?

The thought came to me in the midst of fanfiction planning (and one of my OCs having beef with the twins before their relationship gets better) and it dawned on me that while most can agree the Saltzmans easily took things for granted, considering how Alaric and Jo planned to run and hide from the coven during her pregnancy, I felt that maybe the Geminis overall deaths might have been an unexpected boon. Like fine, everyone loves Kai as a great Villain, but I never forget that he didn't get to that point alone. The Geminis had a history of discriminating against the Siphoners born into their community and the Heretics pretty much confirmed that running away and hiding was necessary because torture and death (and death threats) was all that waited them once their Siphoner statuses were discovered. Why Kai was kept around growing up, only the untold past of the Gemini Coven knows, but if Siphoners and turned Siphoner/vampire hybrids were big No No's to the coven, imagine what would have happened if they knew "the future of the coven" were born the very things they hated?

Don't get me wrong, I wanna have good faith in Josette that her trauma with her twin wouldn't affect her ability to raise the girls...but given TVD's track record, I have to get on the realistic side that having children with the same ability as the twin that tormented you and following the order of canon that they might end up over-siphoning & almost killing you - so the band of hybrid Siphoners have to use their power to save you?

(Alright, that last bit might be the thing to heal her trauma with siphoners, but you never know! Plus if you follow the narrative, outside of Tyler Lockwood, notice how Caroline never bothered with werewolves willingly yet lets them come into Salvatore, where she had better relationships with the vampire and witch species throughout the entire show? Food for thought in that.)

So, back to topic: Think the Geminis would have saved the twins if they knew they were Siphoners beforehand?

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This scene is so interesting to me because there's more than one reason why Hope said this:

like I think part of it is that Hope is still protecting them even with her humanity off. She's pushing MG, trying to get him to actually fight her so that she knows he'll be 'strong' enough to do whatever he needs to do to protect them while she's gone.

But the other part of it is almost a cry for help. Hope put that sword through Landon because she didn't want anyone else to die, including their friends. She has crippling abandonment issues and has always struggled with feeling alone, so killing Landon is even harder for her than it would be for the average person. And that's already pretty hard as is, because someone killing their boyfriend is insane, so. That would actually break people and traumatize them beyond repair, but she did it to save everyone else. This is the big issue that's always talked about in superhero genres-- do you save the lives of many, or the life of one (the person you love)?

She even has regrets and guilt about doing it, which haunts her when she's struggling with her humanity. But more than anything, she felt alone when she did it. No one was there to support her while she was killing Landon. People around her don't seem to acknowledge how specifically difficult it was for her to kill Landon and what that pain is like, so she's pointing it out right now to MG by reminding him that that's why she's here. That's why her humanity is off. She couldn't take it anymore when she had to do that. It was the final straw on the camel's back when she'd had the weight of the world on her shoulders for her entire life already.

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do u ever remember how like. coryo THOUGHT lucy gray intended to poison him with a snake bite so after that he killed all of his enemies with poison OHHHH fuck

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thoughts on posie? if penelope came back, could you see them getting back together near the end and it making sense for both of their arcs? (this is assuming the writers stuck to hosie= sisters lol)

I'm gonna answer this, now that I'm past the episode where Penelope is gone (on my rewatch).

There was never any angle where hosie were sisters at all, since season 1's arc between Hope, Josie and Lizzie all revolves completely around Josie's crush on Hope. But I'm gonna just assume you meant if we lived in an alternate universe where the show was written without any romantic feelings and somehow the twins and Hope actually did get along and act like sisters.

Although imo, even if Josie didn't have feelings for Hope and Hope didn't also crush on her, it still wouldn't have ever been like sisters... Hope's relationship with Ric is very odd and never fully feels parental to me, even though she does say he's the closest thing she has to a father in season 2. It almost feels like they're co-workers or like he's grooming her (he is, unfortunately. I don't even mean sexually/romantically, I just mean that there's an episode in season 4 that reveals in a flashback that Ric is only being nice to Hope because he's afraid of her and wants to make sure she protects his daughters. Which is probably also why he kept trying to encourage them to get along). Obviously Hope should not be operating like Ric's co-worker because she's a teenager, but y'know... that's part of why the relationship is so fucked up to me.

Anyway, this is a tangent and several rabbit holes and not what you asked.

I don't particularly ship posie myself just because... I dunno, I just don't ship it, lol. I don't even have any good reasons for that, it's just not my cup of tea. I don't usually like the exes trope with my ships, but on top of that I hate how it feels like Josie doesn't really like Penelope or admire her in any kind of way that shows she has respect for her.

Penelope very clearly has deep feelings for Josie and you can see it just on her face several times through their scenes. She's glowing when she sees Josie smiling when they descend the stairs for Miss Mystic Falls because she thinks for one moment that Josie is going to listen to her and just do what she wants to do. The chemistry on Penelope's side, even just during the dance rehearsal, makes it so obvious how much warmth Pen has for Josie.

I also think there's like a hint of depth to Penelope that people often overlook because they just say she was mean to Lizzie. Which, she was, lol, but people forget (and honestly I forgot it too, because the fandom kind of gaslit me by just saying Lizzie was the one being treated poorly all season 1 and some people even said Pen was ableist. anyway) Lizzie was also really cruel to people. I'm always gonna point to the talent show episode for this, because we see examples of Lizzie calling the other witches fat, berating/borderline yelling at Josie for voicing her thoughts on the talent they're performing and wanting to do something else, etc. I mean, that was an example of what happens when Josie says blatantly what she wants to Lizzie. We even see Penelope still suited up in the uniform Lizzie wants her in, despite her not liking Lizzie. Lizzie is still kind of queen bee, even if the other witches don't like her, presumably because her parents run the school. And then in the AU episode, the jinni points this out too by saying that in public school, the students aren't as careful with Lizzie and aren't afraid to tread on her feelings. That, to me, also further strengthens the narrative that the students at the boarding school did hold back to some extent.

The other seasons, from what I remember (I'm only on season 1 of my rewatch) do show the students being mean to Lizzie in retaliation, but I don't think it's to the extent of how Lizzie was treated at Mystic Falls High in the AU. Though, they do laugh at her funeral, which is??? Wild. And there is another conversation to be had about how the showrunners treated Lizzie on a zoomed out scale because, like... I do think it's weird they chose to make her have bipolar disorder and then they picked the storyline where she's the one who's mean and self-centered. That by itself is a bit weird, just because they intermix the two topics completely irresponsibly sometimes. That issue spreads out into the fandom and how people talk about pretty much everything involving Lizzie and there's so much that's just problematic. I think that's also why people think Penelope's line "you're a black hole of time, love, etc" is ableist. But I tend to think it was more just that like... the ableism of Julie was seeping in and interweaving itself with an attempt at showing that Lizzie actually is ALSO just mean to people and inconsiderate, which is not because she has bipolar disorder. The two are separate and because of incompetence from Julie, the two mix themselves and it turns into a mess of bad representation. Does that make sense 😭 I also think that's why she thought certain things would be okay to go unaddressed. So. Ultimately, I think Lizzie was not written cohesively when it came to her mental illness, some of the ableism of the showrunners came through and then sometimes the other unrelated parts of Lizzie's character that just suck (her being kind of mean) get completely erased by the fandom because of their frustration with the other things. And I think in the new narrative by the fandom, Penelope tends to suffer a large brunt of alllll of that. So people just blanket say she was ableist and that's it, when I think there's just way more going on for that conversation.

Anyway, another tangent. What I mean to say is I think some of Pen's meanness is because she doesn't like that Lizzie herself is mean to the other witches, including Josie. It would help if we saw more of it on screen, but the bones/implication of that are still present if you watch the show. Penelope also has a friendly rapport with other characters, so she's not just mean all the time. She wants to help MG and genuinely smiles when she sees him dancing with Lizzie, she helps Raf with a cloaking spell and disguises it as making fun of Lizzie but I honestly think she just likes the boys, she basically gives Landon therapy and tells him the secret about his mom... etc. I think Penelope is pretty well liked at the school, so I think Lizzie broadly fits the mean girl trope more than Pen. It's just that Pen was traumatized when she learned about the Merge and the girl she loved maybe being absorbed, so she started lashing out at Lizzie because she was upset. Not a great way to go about it, which is why I think Hope and Josie's dynamic is more interesting/beautiful, but anyway.

I think the fandom puts too much on Penelope, even if she's not my favorite character. And I think she genuinely probably was a good girlfriend to Josie, but despite that Josie doesn't seem to like her. I assume their breakup was pretty ugly and maybe Penelope said some nasty things, but idk. Josie is also, understandably, very defensive of Lizzie and is upset/angry that Penelope doesn't like her. Because at the end of the day, Lizzie was her first best friend and she's her twin sister.

But moments like where Josie tells her "you and I only make out when slugs are possessing our brains" or when, after their kiss, Josie says "I hate you" just... jgrkhj turn me off from the dynamic. I don't really like that kind of dynamic in a ship? I prefer it when it feels like both characters are like unreasonably obsessed with the other to the point of it being almost reverent. I love when ships almost elevate the other person to being worshipped in their mind. Like with hosie, I love how Hope was coveted by Josie for years and years and she saw her as someone who was strong/good/beautiful. I love "Of course I did. who wouldn't?" and the implication that she thinks Hope is just the most perfect thing to ever exist and she just pines after her even when she tries to ignore it or squash it. I also love how, in return, Hope trusts and is drawn to Josie even when she has no real 'reason' to be and she's nice to Josie for things she never would be for anyone else. It's very hard for Hope to be angry with Josie and it pretty much just... doesn't happen? She has this soft spot for her that's bordering on completely unreasonable and I think it's incredibly romantic. In that way, they both return each other's energy. In contrast, with Penelope, Josie harbors all of these complicated feelings. She clearly still likes Penelope and misses her when she leaves, so there are unresolved romantic feelings present, but yeah.

It just doesn't feel as big a deal as the ones she has for Hope, so the ship just never hit for me. There's also no build up and we have no idea how they started dating or... any of that.

So I get why people love posie, but for me I just don't care about it, I guess.

Trying to put aside my biases, do I think they could get back together at the end? Well, for starters, both of their arcs are incomplete. Penelope was written off and we knew almost nothing about her. Josie's arc was absolutely butchered, had no real climax or conclusion and her write off made zero sense.

So it's hard to say, like, would it make 'sense' for the characters when they weren't fully formed like they deserved. I think it's plausible that they could date again, especially since Josie decided to separate herself from Lizzie and we're supposed to assume the Merge issue is resolved now. So.. maybe? That being said, the writers and showrunner made it extremely vague if Josie was going to be near Penelope in Belgium.

When asked, Brett basically dodged it and wouldn't confirm if it's the same school/if she's with Penelope. Which... I guess I'm okay with, since I'm not a posie shipper. I can see how, if you care about sapphic rep, this might be kind of a cop out answer, especially after how poorly posie was treated to begin with. But at the same time I think that might be the best way he can answer it, because making it official that she's with Penelope would be almost sloppy too, since her character never came back and we never had more of that arc develop, y'know? Like just in a writing quality kind of way, it might make more sense for it to be open ended I suppose.

But basically, to answer the original question, I do think it's plausible they could date again with all those obstacles cleared. It's just not my personal choice for Josie

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This is an interesting topic to me because I see this side but also I think about how a lot of her martyrdom comes from the fact she spent years thinking her dad didn't love her anymore because, in her head, she wasn't worth the sacrifice they all made of taking the hollow and being apart. I think that moment where they all took the Hollow and left (and then she didn't see her dad in person after that for years, and then shortly after he stopped calling and writing too) really fucked her up because she was at just the right age to remember and internalize the pain of that. She was old enough and smart enough to have bonded with her family and she felt their loss and also blamed herself for it because it was always talked about how they made that sacrifice for her. Like she's just a kid and she's been told the Mikaelson bond is unbreakable and family is all they have and then she also knows that she's the only newcomer to be born so far and she's indirectly the reason why 'always and forever' was broken up

But I think where they fucked up is that in Legacies, it would've been a lot messier than what they showed. Not this clean, straight forward martyrdom but much more conflicted and interwoven with her doing fucked up shit like when she kidnapped Hayley. They did a good job of showing all of it in Season 5 of the Originals but then they just completely stopped that momentum in Legacies. And as much as I love what I do get of Hope in season 1 of Legacies, this is what I noticed about all of her side plots that didn't have to do with the monster of the week (like most of the main characters had side stories and these were Hope's, which were all about Landon). Here's a piece of a post in my drafts about it, lol:

You’re telling me Hayley “set up the deaths of 12 people to get information on a family she thinks abandoned her” Marshall and Freya “has sacrificed children for a family she’s known for a year” Mikaelson raised Hope and she became a martyr?! I don’t believe it sorry 😭

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I feel like so much of the theme of TBOSAS for Coriolanus and even Lucy Gray is choice. Like do you choose to humanize and have empathy for the people suffering on the other side, or do you become fearful and choose yourself always?

I think the burden of interpreting Lucy Gray that’s left on the shoulders of the reader is partly a test in and of itself. Like do you believe Billy Taupe’s accusations about her character, who was as fearful as Coryo and wanted Lucy Gray to die along with him (just the same as Coryo did in the end when he shot at her after he thought he was poisoned by the snake)? Or do you take Tigris’s interpretation where she thinks Lucy Gray is someone trying her best and doing what she has to in traumatic circumstances that are trying to get her killed?

Coryo also favored Tigris’s interpretation closer to the beginning of the book— he even joined Tigris and stood up for Lucy Gray’s character in the face of the Grandma’am’s bigotry. And he really did believe it, too. But then as the book goes on and he’s groomed and then put into situations where he has to choose between his own fear and being more empathetic, he lets fear win. He starts questioning if Lucy Gray is just using everyone (in that case, men) around her, which also mirrors how Billy Taupe spoke of her.

In the end, both men did choose that they would rather have her dead than not have her at all. Which, to me, when you compare that with the things Lucy Gray has actually actively done so far, is a pretty strong indicator that Tigris’s views are the ones that are more ‘correct’.

No, we can’t see into her head. Yes, she probably started out flirting and using her charm to try and get a shot at surving the games (which is one of the most appealing things about her character). But how do you as the reader interpret that? Do you think it’s someone doing what they have to to survive, or do you think of it more negatively and see her as a liar or someone you just can’t trust? In good faith and conscience, you would look at it and say that using one’s charms on the people of the Capitol to try to escape being killed by the Capitol is absolutely 100% fair game and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, it’s what people should be doing. In some respects, like with all performing, it becomes genuine connection and it moves people to understand you even if it started out ‘fake’. No one criticized or took issue with it when Peeta did it. And in the exact same way, it didn’t make Peeta less empathetic and kind to people of the Capitol who weren’t directly involved in what was happening to him. You as the reader can choose to believe that of Lucy Gray, just like you did with Peeta (even if, in Peeta’s case, you saw actual evidence of it since you weren’t reading from an unreliable narrator with limited perspective).

Whether Tigris is ‘right’ about Lucy Gray is almost irrelevant. What is relevant is the decision, as the reader, to assume the best in her and treat your opinion of her with empathy and the benefit of the doubt. That’s what Coryo should have done at the end of the book, but he didn’t. That’s part of the over arching theme about treating other people better and not dehumanizing them or assuming the worst in fear and paranoia.

Regardless of the fact we don’t get much time with her and we can’t see her inner monologue, what we do see Lucy Gray do isn’t anywhere in the ball park of what Snow ends up doing at the end and then after. Lucy Gray puts a snake down Mayfair’s dress to freak her out, but even that wasn’t something fatal. Mayfair was fine and she lived up until she was killed by Coryo. Lucy Gray stood up for herself against Billy Taupe (not to say there aren’t nuances to how their relationship probably became rocky off the page, before we’ve met either of them. I’m sure there are, even if we’ll never know them), but there’s no indication his claims are true. All we have is Lucy Gray’s word. She claims that she flirted a little as part of the job, but that’s all it was. She says she didn’t do sex work to survive, but openly admits she would if it meant keeping Maude Ivory alive. And that’s without including the other nuances of that conversation, which would be that she was 16 (and younger) and ‘sex work’ here would really be rape because it would likely involve men. So? Assuming anything less than savory because of Billy Taupe’s implications there just seems pretty dark/fucked up.

But back on track, my point: as the reader, do you choose to believe her, or are you paranoid? Do you choose to look at all of the situations she’s in and think she’s a survivalist using her charms and wit, or do you think she’s malicious in some way? How you think of her with little information is important and just kind of feels like its own test and thought exercise.

Even if she set the snake on Coryo, it wasn’t a poisonous one so it was little more than a distraction and maybe a way to get him to worry about that instead of chasing her. Even when she had suspicions he could kill her, she chose to use her smarts to flee and (maybe) survive. But in contrast, Coryo chose to try and finish her off because he didn’t like how his heart broke at the thought of her not ‘caring enough’ about what they have to even have a goodbye before he left. He hated the loss of control of the situation. It was part of the reason why he ended up involved in the rebel plot and killing Mayfair— he was obsessive over Sejanus and needed to feel like he was in control of him in some way. He needed to know what he was doing. And in some ways that was out of genuine love and care, but in some it was fear. And the fear is what made him choose betrayal when he got himself in that situation where he was surrounded by jabberjays and Sejanus was openly talking about a rebel plot that could get them both executed. He chose betrayal to save his own skin because he was scared. He wanted control and then he didn’t have the guts to go as far as he needed to, so he chose his own life. Same thing with Lucy Gray when he fired that gun. He was scared of the unknown factors. Started worrying about her killing him or telling on him and all sorts of things because he was scared and he chose not to believe in her.

Will we ever know if Lucy Gray actually cheated on Billy Taupe? No. Will we ever have more than her word? No. Will we ever know if she was truly attracted to Coryo at the start of their flirtation or if that was 100% a tactic until she caught feelings later? No. Will we ever know if she set the snake on purpose or even if she knew it was venomless? No, not really. But that’s not the point. The point is, do you look at her actions laid out in front of us and choose to believe the best in her? Do you choose to be empathetic and see the situation from her perspective despite being directly in the head of the main character who was groomed (and scared) until he descended into madness?

Someone once said that the difference between everlark and snowbaird’s dynamic is Katniss and Peeta were willing to die for each other before they even knew if the other had definitive feelings for them that they could control. They loved each other even when they didn’t know the other’s exact feelings or their perspective. They were even directly posed to kill each other in the games because originally only one could survive, so they actually had every reason to choose paranoia and didn’t.

This ability to choose good faith seemed to persist even after Peeta was hijacked. But with snowbaird, Coryo had to ask Lucy Gray if it was real before he saved her life (in the movie, at least. In the book it was less cut and dry and he wondered if it was one sided in the midst of his feelings unfolding and far before he cheated to save her). Coryo even says himself to Lucy Gray that he knows his jealousy and the way he wanted her to be thinking about him (and be into him), is stupid. Because it is— she’s in a life or death situation fearing for her life and it would be a miracle for her to have time to figure out or even have a crush on someone when she’s about to die and every ounce of energy is put into both that and the fact she’s locked in an actual cage. It is actually stupid for him to be jealous over that.

But again, as the reader, (to flip the script for a second and talk about Coryo’s side) do you interpret this as Coryo being a complete piece of shit who doesn’t care about her at all and is ‘sociopathic’ for worrying about how she feels about him in this situation? Do you think them having feelings at all is just completely trivial in the face of a life and death situation where she has more to worry about? Or do you choose to believe that Coryo is a teenager here who has grown up living in situations where his life hasn’t been safe and he’s been starving, so that’s just the norm for him at this point, and it’s actually beautiful that he was able to feel something like a crush or love in the midst of something actually traumatic? Even though the tributes have it much worse, the Academy kids have been groomed into this worldview and have been dying (and just generally being hurt and traumatized) during this program that the adults devised in order to test/‘perfect’ their own war crimes and fascism.

But to circle back to the snowbaird and everlark point, there’s a huge difference in perspective that the ships had here and the outcomes/results were completely different. Snow didn’t find peace. He was paranoid and bitter and awful. Katniss and Peeta had to work at it but they could find moments of peace because they chose to believe.

I’m a snowbaird shipper and not an everlark shipper (soz, they just don’t give me buzz 😔) because I personally find alllll of these things about Coryo and Lucy Gray to be really fascinating and I think they have insane chemistry. I also think it’s sort of like a Greek tragedy, in a way. It feels like they had a lot stacked against them, even their very personalities, but despite that they did feel real love. And I think that’s beautiful.

But I wanted to talk about all of this because people discuss Lucy Gray a lot in terms of if she was ‘manipulative’ and sometimes people even just flat out put blame on her, which… I don’t even know how to address that because it’s very hard for me to understand how they could read the book and come to that conclusion in any way. But yeah, these are my thoughts on it and just generally the technique Suzanne used for Lucy Gray’s character and how readers engage with that.

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The way Coryo was only thinking about his grades when he got into the truck with Lucy Gray but then (to the Capitol) he unintentionally ended up looking sympathetic to the tributes and like he thought they were on the same level, which was only furthered by his performance where he ‘owned it’. Which, for both Coryo and Lucy Gray, was an attempt to gain control of the situation and make themselves look better, strategically. And in that moment Coryo felt safer because of her. Because they’re both just as smart and charismatic and in a way, she was looking out for both of them by grounding him and reminding him to own the situation.

But then, just like with how their love story goes, that performance turned into human connection and he held her hand in the arena not to perform but just because he wanted to comfort her and he had feelings for her. Unlikely love in the midst of death and opposition… Just peak to me

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The amount of hizzie subtext in the first few episodes alone is actually a bit crazy and I don't even remember these tiny details, I'm ngl. I think rewatching the show while knowing how the dynamics end up unfolding is useful because you actually know to look out for it more

Like, most of Lizzie's scenes/development so far hinge around Hope. A lot of screentime has been placed on MG's crush on her, yeah, but Lizzie isn't returning it and all of her struggles and even her dialogue have something to do with Hope.

Just in 1x04 alone, she spends the entire episode trying to 'play hero' and then admits at the end that she was only doing it because that's how Ric and everyone else perceives Hope. So despite her teasing and jabs (which honestly in and of themselves sound almost begrudgingly affectionate in a way and you can tell they're not 'genuine' but instead almost give off this vibe of Lizzie being kind of obsessed with her, lol), she really clearly does admire Hope. Even the "Hope, you try not to deliberately alienate the entire student body" felt like it was Lizzie jabbing at her because her feelings were hurt because she felt like Hope rejected her.

She looks personally offended when Josie takes Hope's side before the community service, and even before that the only way she would agree to forgive Josie for sabotaging the football game win is if Josie promised not to do secret spells with Hope anymore. Which just screams that the twins are both coveting her...

The soft look Lizzie gets when MG is compelling Sasha and Hope opens up about her grief. The way every competitive thing Lizzie has been doing and all of her struggles so far have just been centered around Hope is insane, idk

Like yeah, it's also wrapped up in teen girl jealousy because (and this is true for Josie too) their dad is spending too much time with Hope. But it's also this bitter resentment that Hope came off like she didn't want to be their friend when they were kids. And you could read this as platonic, but to me there's just this heavy sapphic vibe to the whole jealousy thing going on between Hope and both twins. Which only deepens with the "I had a crush on you" scene where Josie says she was afraid Lizzie would go for Hope

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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.)

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It really fucks me up so bad how Hayley was the biggest person who was able to change Hope's life (and just its entire trajectory) for the better. That scene in 3x16 where she explains to Klaus that the reason why they're on the run is because he won't stop being a dick 😭, and when she says "There is a very good chance that one day our daughter will be dealing with the same thing that Kayla is dealing with. And if that day comes, I hope that someone makes it their business to help her, too". It kind of makes me so emotional because this is maybe the first time Klaus has taken such flat out advice on his overall character in stride and I think it speaks to how they end up bonding as parents, after everything.

But it also makes me emotional because the twins end up helping Hope when they're older and they keep helping her after. And that relationship started because Klaus started being nicer to Caroline and her loved ones (minus Tyler, I'm so sorry, but). Like, that relationship was forged earlier on and kept growing and then by the time The Originals is ending, Caroline believes in his ability to be a father and the twins help them out.

Then after he's gone, the twins keep helping Hope because they all love each other so much. Hayley is the first voice that really champions for building that kind of life for Hope and she does it again with the "I'm not gonna teach my daughter that it's okay to leave the ones you love to die". And then we get Hope's "Josie, I'm not going to leave you behind"... Oh

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Hii, where is that gemini coven page you found? Like where did you find it

Hey, sorry, I meant to post this but hadn't gotten a chance yet.

The page is shown in 1x10 of Legacies, at the very end. It's just a set prop so (idk if you've noticed this but this is the case for newspapers in TVDU too) a lot of the passages are just repeating/looping text that the viewer isn't intended to scrutinize too much to notice that it's repeating itself. The first paragraph on the left page is the same paragraph as the one on the right page, at the top. So it's cut off, but you can still read the whole thing.

So basically, just start reading under the first blue line and you will get all of the info:

To make things easier, here's the entire complete passage, transcribed:

For the latter centuries, the Geminis have been rooted in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The lack of humidity and the preponderance of farmers markers undoubtedly figure in to the region's appeal. Before detailing the specifics of the Gemini Coven, one must first have a firm understanding of what a Coven is. Which is to say, a gathering of witches, typically twelve or more, who meet under terms of fellowship or family, in order to engage in particular rituals, celebrate the sacred and magic holidays (as well the occasional Galentine's Day), and generally confer on the topic of witchcraft. It is typical for covens to follow a single leader, however the means of determining the leader varies. Additionally, some covens specialize in particular forms of magic. For example, the community of the Nine Covens practices Ancestral Magic. One would need to be inclined to travel to the swampy nethers of the country to engage in such magic. Nay, that is not for the Geminis, who generally decline to travel by fan boat. The Gemini Coven is so named for the preponderance of twins among its descendants, as well as their unusual practice for determining succession. The name Gemini is a plural noun, genitive geminorum (di|m Y>nTrYm)?, used in astronomy to designate the zodiacal constellation between Taurus and Cancer; that which contains bright stars Castor and Pollux. In astrology, Gemini is the mutable air sign. In a tertiary bit of interest, Gemini is also the title of a two-person US spacecraft of the 1960s. The aforementioned means of determining succession is a ritual known as The Merge, whereby twins, once twenty-two years of age, observe a ceremony in which the more powerful of the two claims the magic and life of the other. The more powerful twin emerges the new leader of the coven, twice as strong for having absorbed their twin's power. The leadership of the Gemini Coven is closely interwoven into the success of their spells. The coven's major spells, including their signature Prison Worlds, are bound to the leader. Should the leader die, the spells are unbound. The first instance of Prison World magic comes from the Gemini Coven's 1903 discovery of ripper vampire Lillian Salvatore. Lillian Salvatore herself had a hand in the origins of The Heretics, a group of six Gemini Siphoners who were rejected by the Geminis. Whether the Gemini fixation on Siphoners as less-than is problematic is beyond the pay grade of this historian, but let it be known that it never ends well. Case in point, the Heretics, who desiccated in the Prison World. Perhaps more upsetting than the spells' dependence on the leader's continued existence is the dependence on the leader for the survival of the coven. Should the leader pass on, all members of the Coven shall die.

and then the text just loops after that, over and over.

Some other things to note, if one hasn't watched TVD:

-It's established officially in Legacies that there is specifically a 'curse on the Gemini twins', which means that the Gemini coven only operates this way specifically because their line was cursed at some point. That's why Lizzie and Josie have to merge and create a new coven/leader— it's presumed that the curse will kill them if they don't. It's never explicitly explained, but since Jo says in Legacies S1 that they HAVE to do it, it's implied that yeah, it will kill them if they don't.

-Before we knew that, in TVD, all we knew was that the coven's survival depended on having a leader that's alive and in good health. The coven was able to pass up on having Kai and Jo merge because Joshua Parker was still young and healthy, so he wasn't in danger of dying and killing the coven. They were able to crank out Liv and Luke and then try to get them to merge instead of Jo and Kai. This also suggests that the bias against siphoners is so strong that maybe the coven had already planned to skip Jo and Kai merging just because they didn't want a siphoner to become the leader. This is backed up by how the Heretics talk about their own treatment when the coven found out they were siphoners. Mary Louise says the Gemini coven strung her up in the slaughterhouse and tortured her for being a siphoner, which is presumably why she left and joined the Heretics after.

-Because Kai, the coven leader at the time after merging with Luke and taking Jo's magic, killed himself in TVD, it killed the entire coven. Josie and Lizzie were a loophole since they weren't born yet. One would think that might mean they don't count in the curse, but I guess somehow it still persisted or there was some Gemini coven lore that suggested that in the event of this happening, the curse would still be a thing. I mean, the Gemini had the spell to transfer the babies to a womb for a reason. It was in case of weird emergency situations like the one they were in. This also suggests some element of religion here, because the way Joshua regarded the coven was almost... past just self interest. Like he repeats that the coven comes before family in TVD, which we also see is true for him because he was about to kill Jo to protect the coven from Kai and we know he definitely did not want to kill Jo (he avoided hurting her at all, which is why she was able to leave the coven and go live her life for so long). I think the fact the coven has lore (and a spell) for keeping their legacy even if the worst happens and they all die suggests to me that there's some cult-like vibe to the whole thing. I think siphoners are probably seen as some kind of reminder of the curse placed on them, or maybe some punishment (or nature balancing out how much power the coven has, idk). Either way, it definitely has cult vibes in certain aspects.

-Following up on that, something also not mentioned in Legacies, is that the Gemini seem to see the merge as spiritual, too. When Liv and Luke are upset about killing each other, Joshua reminds them that the merge is a literal merging of souls. Like it's not just one twin killing the other and taking their power alone. Joshua explains that they literally mix souls and become a new person/being. So in a sense, yes, the old person they were is still dying because they end up being something new. But it's seen as like a soul thing and not just a power thing, for them. In that sense, neither twin can truly 'win' the merge. But I think it's seen as winning because the winning twin retains the memories of their life before that, so in a way they are still kind of the same person to an extent and just take on emotions, wants and traits of the twin they absorbed. For example, Kai was able to feel empathy for others because of Luke. Merging with Luke didn't make him care specifically about Bonnie because Luke didn't gaf about Bonnie, lol. So that part was all him. But it did presumably make Kai care about Liv, preventing him from killing her because the part of him that was Luke did not want to do that. In the end though, the showrunners decided to write Kai and the coven off and make Caroline pregnant, so I guess it's also canon that those influences of the absorbed twin can go away. If Luke's influence was still there then I doubt Kai would have killed the coven.

We still don't know who or what put the curse on the Gemini twins on the coven, but yeah. Here's what we do know (nobody asked but)

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Do you guys ever think about how hollow and isolating certain things about Hope’s life must feel? When she was a little girl she was promised to be protected by her dad and treated like a princess and she had this image in her head of growing up and being a powerful witch and doing all of these things. And then she gets older, her parents + family members die/split off, ‘always and forever’ is dead in a way, most of the supernatural community either thought or still thinks she’s a danger to them, and then by Legacies we know that she also is faced with having to become immortal in order to stop something that’s going to kill what few friends she does have. She doesn’t want to be immortal. She’s been kind of an introvert and a loner and for all intents and purposes, her existence has been a huge disappointment. She doesn’t see being a vampire as some cool thing, she sees it as something that will at worst, make her more isolated because everyone thinks she’s a monster like her dad. And then that’s before you dig into what the trauma of Greta and Roman did to her. She was told that who she is is wrong and is going to hurt people. She’s been trying not to live up to all these horrible expectations everyone has of her because one of the things her family (propogated by Elijah and even Klaus when he tried to keep her from falling asleep to the Hollow) seemed to believe is that her existence would somehow fix everything and she would miraculously be a good person. So not only is becoming a vampire scary because she doesn’t want to become the worst version of herself and prove everyone right (therefore also reliving all of this trauma she has from other peoples’ expectations of her) but she also has to be alive forever in this sort of lonely state. She doesn’t have ‘normal’ things to look forward to that normal kids do. She’s been told her entire existence will suck for her and everyone else, actually. We even have the firstborn Mikaelson witch thing that posits she will suffer from the strength and uncontrollable quality of her magic. Idk… it’s just crazy how miserable and depressed she must be sometimes

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my fave thing about TO s5 was how hope was just... a freak she really is her parents daughter. her kidnapping her own mother had me gagged fr it was so funny and even KLAUS (klaus of all people) thought that was unhinged like sir whose daughter is she

YEAH!! 5x02 is so good, omg? I'm eating this up, like??? There's so much food here, oh god

I literally don't know what to eat first, I feel like that pancake meme that's like

Because??? She's so sweet and funny and she gets all stuttery and blushy around her crush (I want Roman dead ❤️). She's so adorable, she's like a little bunny </3 She wants to fit in so much and she's so cute 😭 But she's also lowkey so fucked up because she really just had Henry pay her for his own suicide and now he's being hunted by entire factions of grown adults. And now he's being sealed in the garden for his crimes and Hope is acting like this is totally normal and it's sending me to the mooooon, like?

Then she's having her teen angst era and she's just...? Been coping with Klaus being a serial killer and her life being off the rails and missing her family... And then she's juggling the firstborn witch magic, too. Like Freya was telling Keelin she did some atrocities at this age too, which is so funny 😭 I love the juxtaposition of Hope being so sensitive/sweet/broody but also being like kind of a freak (affectionate). She's just used to stuff like Aurora's body in the parlor and her adopted brother sealing people in the garden and her dad ripping peoples' hearts out 💀 She WROTE A SLEEPING SPELL to use on Hayley in the coffin, likeeee. Oh my god, I love her

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Making a new post in response to this because I had a lot to say. @uncleasad

I actually am writing about this topic right now and all the feelings Josie is having and it's so interesting because it kind of comes back around to self hatred in a sense? We saw that spelled out more when Dark Josie literally told Josie she hated her, but a lot of this is self sabotaging behavior. By lying to Lizzie she fucked over both Lizzie and Hope, but also severed any chance she had at finding that happiness she wanted... She would rather hurt herself than lose it or be rejected, which to me points to the fact Josie has low self esteem under it all and doesn't think she's worthy of being what she thinks is 'loud' and pursuing things she wants. She's deeply afraid of people thinking the same of her as she does herself and then leaving or thinking she's not worth it, so she cut Hope off before Hope even had the chance and made sure that there wasn't an opportunity for that crush to go anywhere. Maybe she did it with Hope because that's the biggest crush she's ever had, too (and I headcanon that it persists in the background)

Her destructive reaction to her fear of abandonment is deeply hurtful to herself and those around her. It's not like Hope where Hope is self-sacrificing in the face of her abandonment anxieties. It's more that Josie is like a ticking time bomb and destructs and hurts herself and everyone else because of her own fears about whether or not people will love her. I think that's also why she lets Lizzie be "the one they hate" as Lizzie put it. Because Josie knows that she has undesirable traits and a penchant for destruction and she genuinely doesn't think she deserves to be front and center because of that. But the kicker is that I think she DOES actually think Lizzie is deserving. Like I think the part where she tells Raf that Lizzie is the best person she knows, the part where she takes the bullet for her and all of her other positive dialogue about her twin is actually truthful every time she says it. I think she knows Lizzie is actually quite soft and just overcompensates on the surface because she's a bit of a perfectionist about her own image, kind of in the way Caroline is. She thinks perfecting that image will then perfect the turmoil/problems she feels underneath. This is something Josie notices, but she also notices that Lizzie is genuinely kind beneath it. Lizzie's not perfect and she actually does have moments of self-centeredness, but for the most part she has good intentions and is more of a gentle soul. Whereas Josie knows she's not— she has a darkness in her and she's afraid of it overtaking her, so she pushes everything down. Even the things she thinks will make her happy. I think part of her is deeply pessimistic and thinks she'll just hurt others and then hurt herself too. And she herself is not worth that trouble, in her eyes. So she tries to make up for it by focusing on others and she wants to help Lizzie get everything she wants because she deserves it. This conflicts with the angsty part of her that does want to let herself out of that cage and love and be loved

I think she was guilty about what she did and you can see it on her face when she tears up as Lizzie and Hope are arguing in the car about who started the rumor. I think she hates herself for it. I also kind of headcanon (and it's in this fic) that she did start dating Penelope because she wanted to force herself to move on from Hope because she knew she had no chance now and she didn't think she deserved it anyway because of what she'd done both to Lizzie and to Hope (by slandering her and burning up her room).

But then the most beautiful thing about this is despite ALL of that and the fact Josie did fuck up, Hope sees past it and is overjoyed that Josie had a crush on her. Because she felt the same way when she was younger and also because she can see that all of the destruction around Josie stems from this passionate admiration she has inside of her. Like Josie did all of that for a crush. The magnitude of her feelings surprised Hope because she'd been so worried for so long that the twins hated her.

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Saw someone say that Hope would be the more jealous one in the relationship (over Josie) and to that I raise them two things:

-Hope was actually pretty understanding when she was jealous of Josie and Landon. She was able to push everything down and force herself to try and move on. I don’t think she’s a very jealous partner overall. Even with H*ndon, Landon was the one who was more jealous (with Roman) and Hope was kind of down to earth about it all. To the point he even got angry with her when he got his memories back and thought she was a little too okay with him being with someone else

-I know this one is partly dark magic’s fault, but Josie was extremely jealous in a relationship with Landon. And that was our first example of her in a relationship, since with Penelope we didn’t get to see their dating life. I feel like Josie was also more unhinged about Landon because she could subconsciously feel his relevance to Hope. She wasn’t jealous when we saw her with Finch later, but that whole relationship lacked any buzz or fire

So yeah, I just think Josie would be the more jealous one if they dated