#texts:m

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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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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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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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So we know that Bonnie was able to overcome her trauma from siphoning enough to treat the twins with love and care, even to the point of teaching them that siphoning isn’t a bad thing. Which is a huge amount of growth and shows just how much love and compassion her character is capable of

But I often wonder if Jo would’ve immediately been the same. I think she would’ve been eventually, just based on how insanely loving her interactions with Josie and Lizzie are, but I also think she might’ve struggled more than Bonnie to overcome that siphon based trauma just because Kai was her twin and she was raised on the anti-siphon beliefs the Gemini coven held. Like she was probably taught the lore of the curse just as a way of life, and even if the Gemini coven no longer hangs siphons in slaughterhouses, they still have clear prejudice against them. She would have to work harder to unlearn all of that wiring that was only ‘reinforced’ by what Kai did to their siblings. She loves her babies enough that I think she would, but if the coven was hypothetically still alive I think she would’ve had stand offs with them over their attitude towards Josie and Lizzie. It would be a lot to unlearn, but luckily Jo had also already fled the coven and abandoned it partially because she knew how fucked up it was. So I think she’d already started the work of unlearning things. I’m sure she talked about a lot of this with Sheila, too

And we’re never gonna see any of this, which is my roman empire

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I have a renewed appreciation for just how much Hope understood what Josie was going through with the darkness infecting her head. Hope had the hollow in her mind and the way Klaus describes it, just having it there causes suffering. She was never going to give up on Josie because she felt like they were the same

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I lied, put your clothes back on, we're going to talk about how Josie gave her dark side a kiss while she was defeating her all because Hope taught her that having dark parts of you doesn't erase your ability/potential to be good. Both showing that through her own example and by the love she showed to all of Josie's sides

And then later on Josie repeated the same sentiment in the therapy box when she told Ted that if he gives up on Hope (i.e, if everyone gives up on no humanity Hope), he's giving up on all the people she would've saved

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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

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Personally I've always though that it was unintentional on Lizzie's part, mostly. Like we obviously don't know because the show was all tell and no show, which is one of the biggest issues with the twins' dynamic unfortunately, but I've always interpreted Lizzie's social butterfly tendencies as sort of like... masking, almost? Like Lizzie wants to prove to herself that her disorder doesn't hinder her and she can be just like her mom, so she throws herself out there and puts on this persona (to an extent) to kind of make that wish a reality. And she has slip ups, like MG would explain it, but for the most part it's just done with the intention of connecting to others and being popular/well-liked.

So I think she would just go for a lot of people, romantically, for the same reason. And since Josie is always with Lizzie, they probably interact with the same people for the most part, which is bound to cause conflict when Josie quietly pines over someone but is too afraid to say anything about it. Lizzie just quickly goes for what she wants, so in this case it just happens to be someone Josie likes... That's how I interpreted it, at least. I'm sure there could also be a degree of going for the new shiny thing and one-upping your sister, because as a sibling I know how petty being a sibling can get. 😭 But I think for the most part Lizzie's intentions were good and Josie just never communicated with her on it so she made herself frustrated. And then it goes back to that issue where, like, Josie herself spends an insane amount of time obsessing over Lizzie and how she's thinking/feeling, so when she feels like Lizzie doesn't notice something that should be obvious about how she's feeling, she feels disappointed and upset. I guess it's like Josie expects the same 'energy' from Lizzie that she gives Lizzie, but then tells herself it's not a big deal if she doesn't get it because Lizzie means well and is her sister that she loves.

But yeah, all of that obviously made Josie more possessive over the crush on Hope... And Josie is just a character who's used to people not staying or returning interest to any degree that really matters? Like she doesn't get grand gestures and the one time she did, from Penelope, she lost her not long after. I think that's another reason why Hope is so special to her. Hope gave her what she wanted from Lizzie, in a sense. Hope gifting her the talisman of sound was proof that she saw Josie and noticed her intimately enough to be able to see her one weakness that was dragging her down and gift her something to help with that. That's so thoughtful and just speaks to how much Hope was paying close attention to her, which is literally what Josie wanted from Lizzie. And then you tack on that Josie had a crush on her that didn't ever get to come out... She has a mountain of unresolved feelings for Hope and then she was the person who physically jolted when Hope fell into Malivore. So, to me, it just felt like she was unnerved by Hope when she started showing up and Josie couldn't remember who she was but could tell she was someone to her. A lot of her jealousy about Landon evaporated when she remembered Hope. I mean, the second Landon left the school, Josie was already taking Hope's hand and asking her to stay. It's like the alternate universe where she was using Connor to pour her affections into (in this case Landon) but then the second she laid eyes on Hope, she forgot all about wanting to tell Connor she loved him. Because she didn't, really. She feels this immediate and magnetic connection to Hope and then realizes that's what she really wants. And in the real timeline, she was just glad to have Hope, even if Landon left. Ughhh, I can't

This has nothing to do with anything anymore and now I'm in a hosie spiral, so

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