#texts:m

[unsiredtribrid]

Lottie saying “you were always its [the wilderness’s] favorite” to Nat is my favorite because if you interpret the show as non-supernatural then it’s basically Lottie saying Nat was her favorite of the team and the most trusted to lead. And Lottie and Nat are the two characters that struggle so much with their conscience and caring about others, so Lottie seeing that in Nat too and trying to make her leader so she can try to slow down this course the Yellowjackets are on and do less damage… basically trying to get Nat to help her, because Lottie knows she’s stuck in this position because of the other girls now (cemented after Misty told them they did the hunt because of her). But she knows she can trust Nat to still have some humanity even if ultimately it doesn’t win out. It’s just a romantic notion

[unsiredtribrid]

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?

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

Imagine if they had Shauna sleep with a woman in the adult timeline and be haunted with (I was gonna say come to terms with but then I didn’t because honestly the whole point of Shauna’s character is that she refuses to come to terms with anything at all) how big of a role that repression of her sexuality played in the strife/disconnect in her relationship with Jackie

And also how she asked Jeff to tell her he loved her because pretending to be Jackie while getting fucked by the guy Jackie slept with was the closest she was going to get to having Jackie, because she wouldn’t admit her real feelings/her gayness

[unsiredtribrid]

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 😭

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

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.

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

Kai's final death didn't mean anything because by the time they become vampires they're seen as dead in the eyes of the curse and therefore exempt from everything. That's presumably why turning into a vampire saves Lizzie from the Merge, but...

Yeah, like you said, the issue is it was never specified how the curse works. We know a handful of things for certain and one of them is that there has to be a coven leader alive or the coven dies. Since Josie and Lizzie 'have' to merge still, according to Jo, that probably means the curse is forcing them to merge or else they both die. They certainly wouldn't merge for fun so I'm sure Jo and Ric somehow had that information on the constraints of the curse handy? Like it's definitely implied that they would have died if they didn't merge or else why would they do it?

To ME, (and I was thinking about this the other day) if one of the twins died (aka Lizzie, since she turned into a vampire) I don't see how that should exempt Josie from the effects of the curse. The writers implied it did, so I guess that means in canon the curse only applies if there are two Gemini twins alive. So I guess since Josie is 'no longer a twin' since Lizzie died, she doesn't have to merge anymore because the curse is placed on the two Gemini twins that are alive.

But if I were writing it, I feel like I would make it so that both twins had to turn into vampires or else they would still die without merging. Kind of like how the coven just perishes without a leader that's alive.

I think the reason why it's not 'possible' per canon to involve vampires/heretics is because the curse sees them as dead so they just don't work to fill the requirement

Thinking about some of the material presented by my esteemed colleague @unsiredtribrid, Distinguished Professor of Gemini Coven Studies, in past lectures…

As things stand right now in canon, there’s technically only one living Gemini witch, Josie, and the Gemini Coven has been in this weird limbo state since its last leader died (as did all the living members) when Kai killed himself, before the twins were born.

(Leaving aside the question of what Kai’s final death by decapitation at the hands of Alaric in 2x13 might have meant…)

What does it mean for the Coven when there’s only one Gemini witch, and there isn’t a twin to merge with on her 22nd birthday? Does the Coven cease to exist? Does Josie then die because there’s not a new leader anointed via a Merge when she turns 22?

But there hasn’t been a leader of the Coven for the past 17+ (per canon timeline, such as it is already) years. Obviously, if Lizzie had lived, they would have performed The Merge and anointed the new person their merged consciousnesses had become as leader, and presumably begun repopulating the Coven by having children.

(That also looks past the idea that the Coven that was so desperate to continue its lineage that it had a womb transfer spell on hand to use to transfer the unborn Josie and Lizzie to Caroline—a vampire! So what if, despite its inculcated hatred of siphons, as a last resort, the Coven’s magic was prepared to consider a twin who still had magic although she was dead, still a valid candidate for the Merge? [Again, there’s the odd precedent of Kai—was he still a Gemini after killing himself? The whole point of his merging and then killing himself—well, one of the points, the other being to get rid of all the others—was to wield all of the Coven’s magic as a vampire-witch hybrid.])

All of this is fine and normal musings…

But then my brain got involved…and we all know what that means 😳

I ended up with an idea where the Gemini magic forcibly rips Josie apart, into her light and dark sides, and Josie and Dark Josie are then forced to Merge, to satisfy the requirement of performance of the ritual and anointing of a new Coven leader, and to keep the Coven alive.

[Never mind the fact there was only one twin and one set of magic to begin with in this scenario, and that the Merge would effectively only reunify the power it had previously ripped apart…and I guess create a “new” Josie who was a different blend of Josie and Dark Josie than Josie herself had created after S2…but who are we to let logic get in the way of interesting plot ideas?! 😂]

But if the Coven and its Magic were willing to go to such great ends before to ensure its survival, including the continued production of twins by Joshua and his wife to allow them to bypass Kai and Jo, what’s not to say something like this is possible? 😂

[unsiredtribrid]

Suzanne putting the nickname "Coryo" into play actually feels extremely intentional to me, because this is the last time we see it typed out in the book:

The moment when that version of him, the person he could've been had he not made the wrong choices, almost completely died.

I think it's also intentional that Sejanus uses it but Lucy Gray never does. Sejanus completely trusts in him and that's one of the reasons why he ends up dying on the page, whereas Lucy Gray might've escaped because she still remained partly in fight or flight mode (both because of her trauma from the games and because she as a person was less trusting than Sejanus and more cunning/on her feet). By the end of the book, that strong trust Lucy Gray had placed in Coriolanus was broken when she found out he had lied. And she was only able to so smartly (and quickly) revoke that trust because of that cunning aspect of her character.

Not to say that Lucy Gray didn't love him (different topic, in my opinion), because I think she did, but I also think it was an intentional choice to have Sejanus use that childhood nickname and show that Lucy Gray never got to the point of using it. I don't think it's an indicator of which person was closer to Coryo at all, but more just speaks on the differences between Sejanus and Lucy Gray and how that contrasts with their respective fates at his hands. It also speaks to him specifically and where his character arc is at in this moment, the last time we see his nickname in the book.

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

so in the scene where the yellowjackets get rescued, eight people walk to the plane. in Blood Hive, during the seance, we can tell that almost all of the answers given with the pendulum are bullshit (obviously) but especially because the last unserious question asked was misty wanting to know if ben likes her. the pendulum said yes, which we know isn't true 😭

but then javi asks if they're all going to die out there and after that, the window flies open and lottie is 'possessed', speaking french. the answer to javi's question about if they all would die was for the pendulum to swing to show eight, and the girls are sitting there debating what that means, so mari suggests it's an infinity symbol, not an eight.

i wonder if that was the man in the cabin telling them ahead of time that there would only be eight survivors, since javi asked. but maybe also the infinity symbol showed that the wilderness would 'be with them forever' too

[unsiredtribrid]

The scene in the pilot where Nat explains that she thought she did drugs to numb the trauma, but in reality it was simpler and it was that she was depressed because she felt like she lost her purpose and her place. This makes so much sense to me. Like modern life is so cut off from the way we are biologically built to live. There’s less tribalism and more individualism. People live more independently and cut off from each other in a lot of ways, only made worse by the internet in modern society.

Even if it was a cult, what they had in the wilderness was still an intimate society and like a pack. They knew their role and place and everything was simple. Not so over complicated and hollow feeling like modern life can be. They were always helping the pack. They were a part of the pack. They also allowed themselves to be free, no longer held back by societal restrictions. There has to be a longing for that which pushes them to revert back to being a cult in the adult timeline

[unsiredtribrid]

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

[unsiredtribrid]

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