Joval

Joval is the femslash ship between Josie and Valerie from the Riverdale fandom.

Canon
Josie and Val have known each other for a while and start playing music together. One day, Josie brings cat ears from the Halloween store to rehearsal and the girls, along with Melody, officially form Josie and the Pussycats. Their sophomore year of high school, the Pussycats are well-established and known throughout the local community, with multiple performances under their belt. At the homecoming dance, the group agrees to perform a cover for Jason Blossom, who tragically died, to commemorate him.

At the Homecoming Pep Rally, also held to commemorate Jason Blossom, Josie and the Pussycats perform Sugar Sugar while the cheerleaders dance. Val and Josie dance together while Josie they sing and Val plays the keyboard. Josie is very driven and has a specific vision for the cats, which sometimes clashes with Val, who is open to ideas - even from an outsider like Archie. Josie does agree to hear his thoughts and he helps with some lyrics for one of their solo gigs, which they perform at the Taste of Riverdale event, to great applause.

Despite doing so well, one day in rehearsal Josie gets annoyed with Val and Melody and ask them to step up their game. Val protests that Josie doesn't let them inform the direction of the group and quits in frustration. Val is horrified to see that the Pussycats have let a new member take her place, but is still set on going on her own path, until she learns that Josie's Dad is in town, knowing the fraught history Josie has with him. Before they are set to perform at the Riverdale Talent Show, Val visits Josie in her dressing room. She reveals she knows that Myles McCoy is in town and asks why Josie didn't tell her. Josie softens and lets her guard down as her friend supports her and the girls make up, Josie asking Val to come back to the group, to which Val agrees. They perform a cover of "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer and are a huge success.

The girls stay together and perform at various times throughout the semester. They both attend a party where they do jingle jangle, and later perform at the SoDale opening gala, where the girls save Cheryl from a rapist. Josie gets grounded for taking drugs and then Cheryl, stalking Josie, breaks up the Pussycats by setting Josie up with a solo gig and telling Valerie and Melody. Furious, they end their partnership with Josie.

Now in their mid-twenties, Josie and Val never reconnected the close relationship they had had a decade prior. Josie has become a world-famous mega-star, while Valerie and Melody stayed a close unit and live together. When Josie's dad passes away suddenly, Josie is heartbroken and returns to Riverdale for anonymity, but finds it hard to come by. The ghost of her close relationships haunt her as she walks the halls of her old high school and she imagines reuniting and singing with the girls once again. Working on new material, Josie decides to reach out to Valerie and Melody to ask if they would want to record one of her new works with her.
 * 9 YEARS LATER

Fanon
A rarepair in the fandom, mostly due to the characters' lack of screen time and storylines, and the fact that Val and Melody disappeared after Season 2A without explanation, followed by Josie's departure in Season 3. The ship took off pretty immediately after Josie and the Pussycats homecoming performance, where Josie and Val dance together as they're singing and playing. Their fight in Season 1 and especially their reunion was filled with shipping material and cemented the ship. Works and edits about the pairing are often canon-divergent, so the girls get to remain a group (along with Melody) or fix-it fics where they never became estranged. The ship had a popular hero/lance dynamic in Season 1, which deepened the girls as characters as their dreams and aspirations were reflected in one another in different ways.

Fandom

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