#reggie mantle au

[wxckedwxrld]

𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴

PSA: these writings ARE NOT MINE. This is a list of fanfiction I have read during october and November. All credit goes to the original and rightful writers.

𝙰𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚎 𝙰𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚜

𝙹𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝙹𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜

𝚁𝚎𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚕𝚎

#riverdale #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale fic #riverdale masterlist #riverdale imagines #riverdale au #riverdale Archie #archie andrews #archie andrews riverdale #riverdale x reader #riverdale x y/n #riverdale x you #riverdale x female reader #reggie mantle #reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle smut #Reggie mantle x you #jughead x you #Jughead x reader #jughead x y/n #Jughead smut #Jughead angst #Jughead fluff #archie andrews smut #archie andrews fluff #archie andrews imagine #jughead jones imagine #Reggie mantle imagine #Reggie mantle fluff #Reggie mantle angst

[bughead-in-the-comics]

From The Fairy Tale Terror, Life with Archie #62 (1967).

#bughead #jughead jones #betty cooper #archie andrews #veronica lodge #reggie mantle #old comics #digest comics #life with archie #the man from r.i.v.e.r.d.a.l.e #bughead high school #bughead au #bughead fairytale #bughead food #bughead accident #bughead eating #bughead worried #bughead excited #the fairy tale terror

[statticscribbles]

Reggie Mantle/ Dilton Doiley!twin sister 🐻 AU scene for flashcard challenge please !

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🐻-Soulmate AU Scene

Doiley.

Reggie had never understood why the universe apparently wanted him and Dilton to be together; he knew the handwriting on his wrist wasn’t Dilton’s and Dilton even had Mason as his soulmates last name.

Dilton calls you when the murder happens; when Jason is found shot; he knows you’ll be able to help; or he hopes you will. He mentions the name on your wrist Mantle and laughs when you scold him about it the second you get into town.

“Maybe Reggie will finally get off my back.”

“Why would I be on your back Dilton?”

“My twin sister; Y/N.”

“Y/N Doiley..”

“Oh do you dot the i’s in your writing with hearts?” He grins and you nod.

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Flash Challenge Rules!

#reggie mantle #reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle imagine #reggie mantle x you #riverdale imagine #riverdale #riverdale reader insert #riverdale headcanon #stattic #flash challenge #soulmate au

[jmrothwell]

Oooh I got Vampire Slayer AU + Family AU xD

 No lie, I read this and my immediate thought was Buffy?? But let’s see if we can do something a little different. 

Also, this got kinda long so I have put it below the cut:

So instead of the Slayer being a random chosen one from anywhere in the world it’s a bloodline thing. Sort of…like the potential is in the bloodline but not every member gets to be a Slayer, the previous Slayer has to pass the mantle down. 

Rose was the prior slayer, however things had significantly slowed down since her grandmother and great great grandmother had the mantles. Victoria and her parents insisted it was because the Slayers were winning (There a few dozen slayer families around the world) and that Rose should live her life. 

Rose tries, she really does but she can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. She starts working at nightclubs and bars to try and get a casual peak into the nightlife and she does hear some interesting rumors and urban legends but they all turn out to be that, urban legends. 

She meets Ray and they begin dating and eventually he manages to convince her she should focus on living. It doesn’t help that she’s witnessed some deaths that aren’t paranormally related and it sort of cements everything everyone has been telling her. Life is too short, and it will pass her by entirely if she isn’t careful. She and Ray settle down and they have Julie and Carlos and Rose wonders if since the world has gotten safer if she should just let the mantle die with her. 

Cut to (or open here and we learn all of that as back story later, not sure yet) 17 year old Julie is dealing with the recent sudden death of her mother, just like the rest of her family. It’s become this massively speculated rumor mill of an incident. She fell off a building at a height that should have killed her instantly but it didn’t, it was a slow and agonizing night for her and her family. Many speculate she was attempting suicide. Rose insists she was not, insisting she was thrown and that they were all wrong, it’s so much worse than they realized. 

Julie doesn’t know what to believe in the months leading up to her Mother’s death her mother had turned into an entirely different person. Even got into some fights with Victoria and her Dad. 

Mostly Julie just wishes the incident would stop haunting her dreams. Tired and guilty for feeling tired of hearing her mother’s final words repeating over and over. “I’m sorry Julie, I should have prepared you better. You deserve better and I hope you can do what I couldn’t.”

It’s not even been a month since the funeral, Julie hasn’t even has time to process all of her grief when one night she’s home alone and she hears rummaging in the garage. She knows what she should do, the sensible thing, duck her head, get inside, don't mess with the things that go bump in the night. Even if she’s sure it’s just a stray cat or raccoon.  It’s her entire thought process even as her feet move of their own accord. 

Inside she finds three boys and during hers (and theirs panicked screaming) she instinctively grabs one of them and rather sloppily gets him pinned to the ground. It’s Reggie, after the initial panicking dies down and while Julie tries to process what the hell she just did he tries a cheesy line about their positions. 

This immediately knocks Julie back to the fact that she’s found three strange teenage boys in her garage and demands to know who they are and what they’re doing. They introduce themselves as Luke, Reggie, and Alex and say they were looking for Rose. Which just angers Julie thinking of course they have to be trying to prank her because who hasn’t heard about what happened to her mom by this point. 

The guys genuinely didn’t know. They’re kind of cut off from many news sources at the moment. 

It takes a bit of back and forth before Alex straight up just asks if that makes Julie the new Slayer now. Julie is confused and doesn’t know who to be mad or upset with anymore as they finish telling her about how her mom was one of the last remaining Slayers, as many other Slayer families had allowed themselves to die out in the extended time of peace. 

The guys (who refuse to tell Julie how they know everything they are telling her) say it’s all one big plot led by a vampire who gained a lot of power in the late 1920’s. (Again, not sure of this would be revealed up front or discovered through the story)

Julie decides they are pranking her, and tells them to leave her alone. Her dreams only get weirder from here on out. 

The next day at school she tells Flynn all about it. Flynn does some digging on her own during school, while Julie has the world’s weirdest school day (think all the stereotypical I’ve got powers now type scenes only Julie is in major denial) By the end of the school day Flynn is fully convinced Julie is this Slayer figure and Julie just wants to drop out of school and sleep for a year straight. 

Though Julie does get incredibly intrigued by the fact that one of the pieces of evidence Flynn found was a series of missing persons reports throughout the years. Particularly the article about a band from the 90’s named Sunset Curve. 

After school as Julie gets home she can see that all the garage windows have been boarded up and goes to confront the guys. Who all of course panic when she throws the garage doors open. They admit they’re vampires, but don’t know why or how their turning got botched, but they know it did because they do not act like a good 90% of the other vampires they know. 

They managed to evade Caleb and had been getting updates from their friend Willie who went missing. Worried and more than a little desperate they turned to Rose for help. Which just immediately sours their relationship with Julie more because now she has someone to blame for her mother’s death. 

The guys help defend Julie as she now has a giant target on her back as an untrained Slayer. Still a dangerous threat but one Caleb thinks he can take out. Flynn thinks Julie should talk to her dad or Aunt about it but Julie doesn’t want to cause her Dad more grief and is kind of mad at both of them for keeping something like this from her. 

Flynn, Julie and the guys, slowly learn the whole Slayer thing together. Albeit begrudgingly on Julie’s part especially as far as the guys are concerned but there is no denying they make a good team and seems to be their way of trying to make amends. 

Eventually Julie does confront her family about things. Mostly because, thanks to Carlos, the rest of her family discover her Slayer thing and try to get upset with her first about not telling them. Which of course leads to a huge fight about them keeping it from her in the first place. 

Victoria and Ray absolutely do not like the fact Julie has teamed up with a trio of vampires. But Ray quickly changes his mind when the three start helping out around the house. Victoria also trains Julie what she remembers from her training with Rose when they were younger, she may not have been the one chosen for the mantle but that didn’t mean she didn’t need the training. 

It all builds up to a showdown with Caleb, who initially tries to just do the vampiric seduce Julie to be a vampire thing. But then he makes the mistake of letting it slip that he was the one who killed Rose and Julie sees red. Just before she manages to kill him Caleb drops the “you kill me then your friends are going to die too” which does cause Julie to hesitate for a bit but she does what she knows must be done for ‘the greater good’ and kills Caleb.

In the aftermath of that, and the vampires Caleb sired dying as well, the world a whole have to recover from the sheer number of people who’d actually been vampires hiding in plain sight. 

Fortunately for Julie and the guys(including Willie) Caleb wasn’t the one who turned them. Unfortunately that does leave them all to contemplate what it is they should do. In the meantime, they all just let themselves enjoy life for a bit.

#Writing Game #AUs are awesome

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E8 Hoop Dreams

I kid you not, this thing is 20 pages. Enter at your own risk. (ILY for reading even part of this.)

Jughead Jones tells us that while “some towns are football towns,” Riverdale isn’t. My longing for OG Tabitha, the angel of chronokinesis and savior of FailAdult Jughead Jones, is such that I pondered if this is Tabitha’s touch - to make a town that for six seasons has been all about football (insert the immortal “Highs and Lows of High School Football” quote gif here if you’re able, which I am not, so you’ll just have to imagine it for this summary) stop caring about that sport altogether and switch over to basketball, which might be her favorite.

Please come back, chronokinetic angel Tabitha, God of Time Loop Manipulation!

The funny thing is, even though Jughead says with what sounds like regret that Riverdale has but a “so-so football team” there’s a banner over the in progress basketball game that says 1942 RIVERDALE HIGH FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS. Granted, it doesn’t say WHAT they were champions of, but I suspect Jughead might be wrong about everything he’s saying, because the other banners say things like Riverdale High Field Hockey Champions 1944, Riverdale High Boys Basketball Champions 1945 and Division II State Champions Field Hockey 1952. Jughead insists that kids only play hockey on the river in winter, implying that they only do that because there’s nothing else to do. Granted, field hockey isn’t ice hockey, but it’s still hockey, and they were champions of this twice across eight years, so - basically, Jughead currently only thinks basketball is cool because (a) his girlfriend-god that he’s been (tw: Harry Potter reference) obliviated into forgetting wants him to think that and (b) Archie in the 1950s AU that we’re in plays basketball not football.

I wondered if the reason, say, that the one and only time the Riverdale football team was the champion was because of WWII or if that war had something to do with this spotty history of performances from the high school of at town that is completely obsessed with sports in every iteration, but I don’t think it quite lines up. WWII was between 1939 and 1945, and the US entry into that war was in 1941.

One more irrelevant point - in OG Riverdale True Timeline of previous seasons, SWEET PEA played basketball. So did Reggie Mantle. And now - now that the tallest boy Riverdale ever had is gone for good, NOW is when they make basketball a thing. O Riverdale Why Are You Like This?! (All Hail the Members of the Cult of Sweet Pea of which there are about five at any given time). I only say this because they actually cut to Fangs, playing basketball, which spiked my stress levels.

Basically, every time I see Fangs I’m enraged because that actor - while beautiful in the face and body - makes for a very terribly unintimidating Serpent and a very terribly unintimidating US Civil War warlock, and a deeply inappropriate basketball player because everything about him says gymnast weightlifter.

Anyways! Even though Fred Andrews, who is basically a saint now in Riverdale because Luke Perry was apparently a very kind man as well as valuable actor who died tragically young during the production of this show, led the team to become champions of the state three years IN A ROW, there are no signs to actually commemorate this achievement in the current halls Riverdale High where his son, Archie Andrews, plays basketball. Granted, doing some rough math, if Archie is 17 in 1955, his dad’s high school career would’ve been in the mid thirties, so the basketball glory days of Riverdale High would’ve been between like, 1934 and ‘37 (assuming Fred was born in 1918 and had Archie at age 20 in 1938 - omg this makes this Archie so old to me - 1938?!?!). Do they only put up banners for wins from the last 10 years? (But then why the 1942 win?)

I tried really hard to see what team kicked the Riverdale basketball team’s butt so hard they lose 63 to 32 (with the announcer saying “that’s another big loss for Riverdale” while all the worthies - the evil vile boyfriends the HS principal and shrink, Hal Cooper, the Blossoms, Betty and Veronica, all mourn the loss) but they had very small print on red jerseys and I could not make it out. Uncle Fucking Frank reacts with violence against innocent paper cups that Dilton Doiley with literally Long Duk Dong hair (ARE THEY SERIOUS?) cringes beside him.

I always wonder about actors who get hired for roles that essentially play a hateful racist stereotype based on their racialized phenotype. Is the actor’s ‘cringing’ reaction portrayed here so awkward because he’s a bad actor, or because the scene is bad, or is he ‘resisting’ the Asian Dweeb stereotype he’s being forced to portray by being very unnatural? (There was a black and white film from the 1940s I watched for a college class whose title escapes me where white people go do things in “China” - a set - that had as its plot device and local color provider character a “Chinese” girl who spoke surreal pidgin English, and the obviously California born-and-raised Asian actress insisted on delivering these “Me Help For You Go Get!” type of stupid lines with the most So-Cal Accent of all time). Anyway, Dilton cringes because the awful white man beats up his paper cups because he sucks as a coach.

Choni, looking amazing in those cream turtleneck sweaters (I really want a cream turtleneck sweater with something navy emblazoned on it because of this), are so very upset about this loss. They find it unspeakable. Further, Toni is discomfited by the fact that Lizzo the Lesbian who dresses in proto Tom of Finland outfits and looks very hot came to sneer at her and only her for being a cheerleader.

In the locker room, Archie, because 1950s Archie is adorkably wholesome and a natural leader, is trying to give his discouraged teammates a pep talk. He sounds so decent and sweet. The other redhead, because really, there is room for only one redhead to be supreme in this town, the Julian who isn’t Jason, interrupts him with a generic sort of homophobic slur against them all - “Not if we keep playing like pansies!” before launching into a shouting rant that Archie cuts off. Nostrils flaring, Julian invokes St. Fred’s sainted “legacy” of having gifted Riverdale with a streak of wins at Archie, who is very very peeved. Julian makes sure to mention the fact that his parents sponsor the team, to which Archie fights back with a very pointed pronunciation of the title, “Captain.”

After the game, Uncle Fucking Frank is begging Clifford Blossom for something. When Archie asks him in his 1955 voice (which I now realize is a very creditable impression of the tenor husky tone of Luke Perry actually) what Blossom wanted, Uncle Fucking Frank says that he’s been permitted to bring in an outside player.

And here we come to it.

This is another Very Special Episode of Riverdale S7 - subtitle, The Thorny Question of Race in America.

Uncle Fucking Frank has many many MANY MANY flaws but he is a middle aged white man in 1955 who is entirely free from not just racism but any sort of prejudice or racial awareness whatsoever. Which - what? How? Does Uncle Fucking Frank have prosopagnosia or something? I mean, he called with evident, drooling joy, Betty Cooper in her underwear that he happened to see without her permission in her skivvies “a ripe peach of a girl” to Archie his nephew, but this is what he has to say about Reggie Mantle, about whom the first thing literally everyone other than him notices is his Not Whiteness:

- Farm kid out of Duck Creek

- Kid who knows how to win games

- 6ft 3, 220 pounds, pure muscle, fast.

- Nickname: ‘The Blur - cause you never see him coming.”

Zero mention of Reggie not being white, of being Asian (or as he may more likely have said, Oriental), or Korean. Zippo, nothing, nada. Just the barest locational and socioeconomic background, no mention of immigrant status, and only what needs to be known for his credentials as an ace basketball player to be communicate to Archie.

Do I - must I - stop hating Uncle Fucking Frank quite as much? I mean I’ll always hate him, but I might have to downgrade from Despise to just Hate. Frank, Sir, you are coming up in the world.

Wait no, I figured it out. I still can still hate Uncle Fucking Frank despite the fact that he manages to talk about Reggie Mantle purely limited to his traits as an ace basketball player with zero mention of his race, ethnicity, being oriental, what kind of Asian etc etc. During the past few years I have seen and heard in passing analyses about how pro and college football will populate their winning teams with not-white athletes, build out hugely profitable merchandising using these same athletes but not pay them their due share. I’m sure coaches that recruit students for this sort of enterprise also don’t really go into what color their skin is or their facial phenotype: they only want to know if they have the physique to render them profitable for the team. Same with Uncle Fucking Frank. He’s not enlightened, just desperate.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Toni are working off the stress of cheering for a losing team (and in Toni’s case, whatever that meaningful look was between her and Lizzo at the end of the game.) Cheryl, who manages to not have her siren red lipstick all over her face after this make out session looks very fetching in her red neckerchief (omg the clavicles on this chick are to die for) proposes that she and Toni “go steady, just for us." Toni, looking equally fetching in with her thick bangs and leopard print scarf (do they wear these to hide the hickeys or are they too sophisticated for that?) is not nice about it. She points out that they can’t walk down the hall at school holding hands nor can they ‘pin’ each other.

Uh. That’s struck me as quite nasty, and a weirdly underhanded blow at that. 1955 is only five years after the founding of Mattachine Society which moreover was just white men, and it’s not clear to me that those dudes would’ve necessarily welcomed either of these girls. Why is Toni pointing out that they are living in a homophobic society to blame Cheryl for it?

When Cheryl finally gets the hint (“Unless you don’t want to!”), Toni finally says that monogamy is too ‘square’ for her. (What the hell is happening with her and Lizzo?) Cheryl though is nothing if not obnoxiously persistent, so she works her way around Toni’s refusal, which was I will note once again, not at all gentle, by concluding that “it’s kind of like we’re already secretly going steady if you think about it.” Way to be suffocating, Cheryl. Toni is annoyed.

We are now finally going to meet 1955 Reggie Mantle. A very dusty blue pick up truck drives down a road to turn into a yard with lots of goats. It turns out to be Archie Andrews’ ride. The farm house looks pretty huge, though not particularly fancy. Reggie is moving bales of hay from one truck to the other. His hair is all glossy and shiny looking as he does this. Archie asks apparently for the second or third time if he can’t give Reggie a hand, to which Reggie who is very Eyeore in 1955 says no.

The second thing that Archie says to Reggie is to ask if Reggie is “from Korea.” Which means at some point Frank told him he was Korean.

Maybe American and European awareness of Korea existing waxes and wanes, but this question surprised me, as in, it struck me as very unrealistic. It’s only in literally the past seven or so years (i.e. since BTS hit it big in America in 2017) that an Asian looking person is going to be asked if they are Korean first and foremost. My, how we’ve come up in the world, I guess? (Except this more like that one nutty Englishman who plastic surgeried himself into ‘being Korean’ for a bit before deciding that he wasn’t Korean after all.)

Reggie gives a very, like, 1990s answer to this “Where are you from” question, politely answering with his genealogy - Mom is “Korean.” Then he goes on to say his dad “was born here,” before adding “I was born here.” This convoluted writing is necessary because the show doesn’t want to say if Reggie’s father is ethnically Korean or not. If Reggie was born in 1938 like I’ve calculated already for Archie, and let’s just say for the sake of argument they’re all the same age, Reggie’s father was born in 1918 in the US and his mother managed to enter the US (that’s what “from Korea” or “Korean” here is supposed to mean) before the 1924 Oriental Exclusion act banning all Asian immigration to the US, which stayed in place until 1952 (My head hurts. Why did they have to make his being KOREAN a thing on this show?). This makes her the wrong age to have come to America as a picture bride (1905-1924). Also what the heck does Reggie mean by “here”? Most of the initial immigration by Koreans to the US were to Hawaii (prior to annexation) and to California because those land masses are closer to Korea (Koreans moved east to America).

Reggie looks very hot in his baggy jeans and brown belt and work gloves that match his tan boots. Of course this is a bit of a call back to the Jarchie Run Away from Hiram Together moments where Archie takes his shirt off and moves bales of hay as Jughead watches peevishly because he gets annoyed whenever Archie does things that are likely to get him laid.

Apparently, Reggie used to play basketball for Stonewall Prep, but then dropped out. While he’s willing to be polite about explaining his ethnic background (kind of - we know his mother’s ethnicity and his father’s immigration status, to be accurate), Reggie gets testy when asked this question about his history as a Stony. He says he dropped out, as Archie smiles ruefully at the rebuff (“You writing a book?”) which seems very harsh because OG Archie of course has difficulties learning things from books.

I was wrong- it wasn’t Archie’s truck, it was Frank’s. Frank has come out of the farm house to tell Reggie that things are “squared away with your folks” and that Reggie should “say his see you laters.” I don’t think this is intentional, but it’s actually accurate. Certain types of Americans do lay it on super heavy with the colloquialisms when they are speaking to someone they didn’t expect would have an American accent.

When Reggie walks past Archie towards the house, Archie looks exactly like I would if a panther just casually walked by me in the street. He’s so amazed by Reggie that he gives Uncle Fucking Frank a ‘Oh My Golly Gosh Did YOU See That Too?’ look to which Frank gives him an understanding nod. Frank apparently doesn’t find this reaction ‘bent’ at all.

So now we’re at the dinner table at the Andrews home with Mary politely trying to make conversation.

I’m gonna have to break the summation again once more to note the huge problems that trying to be ethnically accurate about Charles Melton the actor (his mom is ethnically Korean and his father is not) for this season that they’ve set in 1955 causes the show. In S2-6, they gave Reggie a Tiger Dad type father who looked Asian (or part Asian) and his mother was cast with an Asian (or part Asian) actress. But in 1955 we’re having to go with the idea that Reggie was a mixed race kid born in 1938, without actually going into anti- miscegenation and laws associated therewith (I am not going to research this ok? I just know Loving v Virginia was decided in 1967. FML. I hate history so much and here I am having to do this for my RIVERDALE HOBBY - , like wtf is my life rn).

The thing is, THE THING IS, the set up they have for “dad born here, I’m born here, I speak fluent English with an American accent” Reggie is that of an exchange student far from home, an alien guest in an All American Caucasian Household.

Long Duk Dong set up (from Sixteen Candles, which is a movie Molly Ringwald was in, who now plays Archie’s Mom) ONCE AGAIN. There’s a classic Margaret Cho quote from decades ago about how Asian Americans aren’t allowed to just, like, EXIST in American shows and movies. There’s always got to be some reason that justifies their existence - foreign exchange student being one of the most benign go-tos. Riverdale is reproducing the Explain Your Existence, O Surprising Oriental trope even as they pretend to actually engage with Asian American identity.

Friends, I have written five pages, single spaced and so far I’ve covered literally FOUR MINUTES of the show. Let’s move faster.

Mary Andrews has heard that Reggie grew up on a farm, and wants to know all about it. Uncle Fucking Frank is seated at the head of the table like somehow he has a right to be there. Anyway, Reggie is bouncy and discreetly proud of himself when he says that his dad was injured in the Korean War (“Came home with shrapnel in his shoulder”) so he has to step up, because it’s his family’s legacy.

These are all words designed to ping every string in Archie’s heart - Dad, Korean War, Family Legacy, Stepping Up.

Times are hard, is what Reggie is telling them, so Archie asks why they couldn’t get assistance from the GI Bill. “We’re not considered eligible” is what Reggie tells Archie. So… is Reggie’s Dad a Not Korean But Asian person? Who was born in America in 1918 and got drafted into the Korean War while Asian? I mean, I have no idea how many that might be actually, and the Korean War was an international police action that had battlefield participation from, like, Ethiopia, Turkey and South Africa, so there were bunches of not Korean men fighting that war. (Oh and uh, if you bring up MASH to me I will curse your bloodline and block you because NO.) So where the US government refused to do right by its veterans of color, Clifford Blossom's need to have his pet basketball team win something will provide the assistance the Mantle farm apparently needs and should’ve received from the US government.

Reggie is going to be roommates with Archie. He gets a bunk, lots of blankets, and a dresser drawer. Reggie looks very glum about this, though the adorable clueless 1955 Archie whom I do like so much is being very sincere in his efforts to be a good host. Reggie happens to glance out the window to see Betty Cooper, very fetching in green and white polka dots, settle on her bed

“Who’s that?” he wants to know. He says everything in this dour, serious tone, which I guess is meant to convey that the weight of the world is on this Reggie, as opposed to the one that lived in the permanent year 2020. Archie tellingly refuses to say her actual name, describing Betty as “his neighbor” that Reggie will “get to meet at school tomorrow.” Then, just to make things extra weird, he firmly notes that they’re both supposed to keep their window curtains shut from now on - no further explanation. Reggie clearly has a ton of questions but decides not to ask any.

Hal comes to give Betty a visit. Werthers has advised Hal that Betty might be better off burning off her excess energy by becoming a cheerleader. The fact that her school shrink is talking about Betty's sexuality with her dad is supposed to give me the heebie jeebies but it doesn't. When this town's adults don't like something about their kids they straight up shove them into a mental institution run by a pseudo Catholic cult (both in the OG Universe and 1955 AU) so what Betty is getting is cosseting. What's more interesting is the very All American conviction that repeatedly keeps getting voiced that Sports Will Fix Sexual Problems In The Young. Kevin's unacceptable homosexuality was supposed to be cured by participation in homosocial team sports. Betty's unacceptable sexuality in general (because God forbid women do anything) is also supposed to be cured by participation in a homosocial team sport. Nobody sees the contradiction in any of this. When told that she must join the Vixens - AND without auditioning! Join through back channels! - Betty looks completely disgusted. And yeah there's a very Rivderdalean triple pun here, of a sexualized virgin being forced to join the most objectfied female activity in American high school AND acquire the title VIXEN into the bargain! I wonder if this is the show advocating for teen girls to send nudes to boys - because that's what Betty would've done had she had the technology, right?

The next morning Lizzo the Lezzie is waiting for Toni at the school. I thought Lizzo dropped out? Is she just an incorrigible morning person? This is a disturbing level of stalking of Toni is it not? To come super early to the grounds of the school you dropped out of to provide sneering commentary on someone else's relationship is a LOT. And Lizzo is so carefully dressed too : Tom of Finland leathers hat and jacket, maroon pants, belt with a big interesting buckle that is the same color as her huge hoop earrings. She tells Toni she's "figured out a good hustle." She picks put "ripe" closeted girls, brings them out and uh deflowers them, then ditches them.

Oooh is this Toni Topaz having a toxic trait? Because her relentless pursuit of Cheryl, who was all manner of unwilling (plus the usual lack of sexual frisson between these two performers- also sidebar rant WHY WONT THEY GIVE VERONICA A GIRLFRIEND) was in truth a little icky right?

Toni looks shifty and avoidant when she spots Tabitha Tate and simply leaves Lizzo in the lurch.

Tabitha says that Mrs. Till was all the things that sound exhausting to have to be ("so strong, so inspiring") but that the tour trying to voice the racial injustice of America took a personal toll on her. This is the start of a severely, comically fucked up race related discussion vis a vis African Americans on this episode. First of all, you have two African American women explaining white racism to each other, very calmly, without expressing anger or fatigue and even managing to experience some surprise. That is so weird. Second, Toni says she "can only imagine" the hatred and racial injustice that Tabitha just got through encountering up close and personal. Excuse me? Why can she only imagine? Wouldn't Toni actually KNOW? Because anti black racism doesn't exist at all in Riverdale 1955?? (But she was one who pointed out exactly what some of the more obvious ones were to Featherhead!) When Toni confesses to Tabitha that she's now a cheerleader, she prefaces by saying "Don't laugh" and doesn't say the BS she tried to push on Lizzo at the start of her River Vixen career - that being the first black cheerleader is somehow meaningful. Tabitha evidently doesn't feel anything other than horror at the idea of being a cheerleader so she instead asks about whether Toni is still writing think pieces for the Blue and Gold. She isn't. Tabitha completely runs out of things to say. OK so thus far, 1955 Toni is a bit of a predatory lesbian lothario who will get sanctimonious about race only when she thinks she can get away with it, and Tabitha is a judgmental prig. I suppose this could be considered a sort of progress for characters who used to be all about their “race,” each with the designated role of being the only one with the braincell because that’s clumsy representation but it’s better than a hateful depiction, but the dark sides shown here are still a simplistic flip of the equally nuance-free ‘light’ sides that were dominant for both.

In the student lounge, Betty, Veronica and Cheryl (who really would be an ultimate throuple - with Veronica as the hinge person, if only, well, if only all of them didn’t have the various issues they’ve always had) allow Kevin to sit with them, which I simply do not understand. Betty is too good for her own good, to coin a phrase. Veronica is deeply amused by Betty being a “RiverVixen” to which Cheryl makes it clear that she did not want this to happen - for Betty to join the cheerleading squad NOR the nepotistic way she joined it. Veronica now owns the Babylonium - complete with “paperwork.”

Why. Do they do. This. with the Contract Mentions. [fists clenched, vibrating with rage] Finalized by who? Which paperwork? Is Veronica an emancipated minor too like Jughead probably possibly is or has she been lying all this time about being the same age as everyone else purportedly is in this universe?

In any case, Betty, who has developed a new oral fixation with lollipops, finds Veronica’s penchant for business as adorable as Veronica finds the thought of Betty in a cheerleader uniform. Veronica is wearing a very un-1950s Veronica outfit - the collar goes right up to the collarbone, the sleeves are puffy, the color subdued. Now that she’s recovered some element of her OG Universe self (compulsive entrepreneur), she is now speaking of herself in the third person and archly. The camp is dialed up so high the knob breaks off. (“Veronica Lodge likes to burn rubber” which is, what, three layers of pun? Burn Rubber = goes fast. Rubber = slang for condom. But Veronica is a virgin, etc). Betty and (Sighhhhh) Kevin think so too, because they give each other a look.

Or it could be because their 17 year old friend suddenly talking like she’s a 1940s screen diva at a waning stage of her career AND talking about herself in the third person using her full name is just fully very strange.

To make matters worse, Archie brings in Reggie Mantle to this little group, trying to do his best to integrate this valuable new teammate (and roommate, and all round amazing looking cool handsome guy that he thinks is just the tops on first sight) to his coterie. Veronica fully falls into an erotic fugue at the sight of Reggie, and starts to speak in tongues - “Are you gonna introduce us to your strapping flutter bum of a new pal?” 1950s Archie smiles nicely at her while not answering, which is the usual thing that he does when he just doesn’t understand wtf the other person is saying but doesn’t feel safe asking them to explain in case everyone else understands and they all wind up finding out that he’s dumb.

Reggie apparently expects Riverdale people to be completely insane because he doesn’t even do a double take at this exceptional sentence from this girl he’s meeting for the first time. He just soberly introduces himself. I mean, given that he has first met Uncle Fucking Frank on a mission from Clifford Blossom of all people, and then had Archie say what he said about the curtains and Betty, he’s not wrong.

Veronica is laying it on an inch thick - “I suspected a tall drink of water like you was a sportsman!”

She’s taking all her behavioral cues from an earlier era of movie diva, I think. This is like, Marlene Dietrich (“Marriage? [scoff] I never found a man good enough for that.”) or Greta Garbo (“But I vaaunt to be aloonnne”) with a certain brassy kind of young Joan Crawford making movie after movie with Clark Gable.

The original high-camp archly-haute queen of Riverdale, Cheryl, fights for her crown. She interrupts whatever next thing Veronica was going to say by snapping that Veronica “might get a ticket for speeding.” This doesn’t just mean that Cheryl really dislikes it when people are very heterosexual around her (though she does feel that too). Veronica first of all is intensely wlw-coded, which is why it irks (the closeted) Cheryl that Veronica is laying it on so thick with the attraction to big handsome man’s-man Reggie (which of course goes all the way over the maximum virility level to loop all the way around to being gay!). (In a way that Toni never actually appeared to like or interact with other women, OG Veronica absolutely LOVED other women and made the personal political in a very principled way). And it shows that Cheryl not only closely listens to everything Veronica says but also really thought the whole ‘burn rubber’ triple pun was great, which is why she references it in her attempted put down.

She tries to demonstrate how she thinks not-straight girls should react to someone with Reggie’s glossy hair and sculptural face. Cheryl puts on the most anodyne professional face to tell Reggie what “professional” (ahem) connections they have, and makes sure to say that the two of them “will be working closely together.” She does this very well. But the thing is, she looks even more insane than before because the flip of the switch from her sniping at Veronica (an explosion of genuine feeling) and this ‘groomed professional’ self is so abrupt!

Reggie is like, okay so hot girl 1 is nuts and so is hot girl 2, but maybe hot girl 3 (and neighbor) is not insane, so he asks Betty if she’s a cheerleader. Kevin makes a face like he knows exactly Reggie’s thought process (but honestly, fuck you Kevin. Die in a ditch.). Betty does give the most sane reaction out of the three. When Reggie calls her ‘neighbor’ though, Veronica AND Betty AND Kevin all have a reaction. (Cheryl already knew and possibly doesn’t care so she doesn’t say anything). Kevin and Veronica look over at Archie, while Betty scrunches her forehead at Reggie.

Archie is still looking at Reggie like made of solid gold. “He’s gonna help turn things around for the Bulldogs.”

Veronica is so bored by Riverdale. She must be. Why else is she acting like this? She immediately tries to monopolize Reggie’s attention, calling him “Reginald” and interviewing him like she’s a celebrity journalist trying to win some sort of tabloid spirit award. Reggie continually gives her looks that blatantly say, Are you really like this - like, really?? Yet Veronica is utterly undeterred. What she reminds me of is Samantha from Sex and the City. No woman talks like that - that was a ‘woman’ written by gay men who thought THEY would talk like that and behave like that if THEY were women (which no, they would not. There are reasons why actual women can’t talk or behave that way). Veronica tries to lay out all her best cards (she thinks) on the table, concluding with “I own my own business, yes” and calls her movie theater a “movie palace.”

Oh Veronica. Being a entrepreneurial girl in a heterosexist world is exactly like being a logical confrontational girl or a scientifically rigorous girl. Being these things is surely a strength, to be aspired to and will fuel you to achieve self actualization, but no straight boy ever found these things hot. They like us in spite of these strengths, not because. Sad, but true.

Reggie clearly just doesn’t believe her, possibly adding ‘mythomania’ to his assessment that already includes ‘speaks strangely’ and ‘incomprehensible’ about Veronica.

When showing off her fabulous gift of the gab, her perfect face, and her entrepreneur skills fails to make an impact on Reggie, Veronica gets annoyed. In response to his saying his town just did not have a movie theater AND his parents never owned a TV (possibly, never made enough to buy one), she offers Reggie a job, which will come with a side order of sexual harassment from a very attractive female boss.

Cheryl Blossom, who knows all about Reggie’s financial dependence on her father, finds the mention of money horrible (Cheryl Old Money vs. Veronica New Money dynamic). She calls Veronica uncouth (“Raised by wolves!”). Reggie has had more than enough. He used to go to Stonewall with rich WASPs so can tell when things are about to go sideways. He literally backs away from everyone, asking to be shown the gym.

Veronica AND Kevin leap at the chance to get near Reggie and a shower stall at the same time, so Archie comes to his rescue to show him the way. Reggie gives Kevin a Et Tu Brute?!? look, not because he’s homophobic, but I think because he thought a big muscled fit person like Kevin might conduct himself with better comportment. Archie gives Kevin a look before leaving.

Tabitha approaches Jughead in the hall. They are wearing perfectly matched outfits. She’s wearing a fabric with a pink-and-green checkerboard pattern, while Jughead is wearing a vest with shades of green in a grid over a pink shirt. His locker door is very interesting. He’s got a big cover of the Super Duck comic issue taped in the honored central location, which I take to mean that not only is he actually really working on the Super Duck comics but he actually is proud of and excited by the work (Unless this is some super tightly thought out trickery against Werthers and Featherhead). There’s also that month’s calendar with each day crossed out - is this him working on his personal writing ‘every day’? To be true to himself, there’s also some sort of movie postcard about SPIDERS and another one about TOMB. I wish I could make out more of what’s on there but I can’t.

Anyway - Jughead apparently has NOT been doing anything to help Tabitha keep abreast of her schoolwork like he promised her a few episodes ago. Tabitha smilingly takes him to task for it, and he’s full of stammering apologies. Tabitha says that she didn’t actually have difficulties keeping up with school, so Jughead is “hereby absolved.” She even wants to know why Jughead was so preoccupied, like he tried to explain during his apology.

The way Tabitha and Jughead keep echoing each other in this little scene is just so cute. Their outfits exactly match, as I’ve said. Jughead says that he “got a job” writing a “broad range” of comic books and that he’s also working for Bradberry. Tabitha has read Bradberry because she “reads across all genres, including science fiction.” The cuteness of these super attractive nerds with their pretty faces just moisturizes my dry little heart. Their twitchy little body language tells of excitement and shy liking also match - they both shake their heads a little when they suggest something, to indicate Please Don’t Say No, and bounce on their heels and do minute little up down motions with their shoulders. Whereas 1955 Archie is wholesome in a slightly clueless way but also because he’s trying to be perfect as a way to grieve the loss of his father, these two, memory-wiped Jughead and 1955 Tabitha, are genuinely wholesome. When Tabitha takes her leave, Jughead looks at her with slight disbelief at his own good fortune.

At the ‘movie palace,’ Kevin, who like Cheryl pays very close attention to everything Veronica says I guess, asks Veronica for a job. He’s also obsessively watched Singing In the Rain so many times that he’s gotten it memorized end to end. (This is yet another way Kevin is not friendshaped to me - I’ve always been a Fred Astaire girl.) One of the (spoken) prerequisites of getting a job at this theater is to love movies. One of the half-spoken prerequisites, however, is a willingness to get involved, either directly or not, in Veronica’s attempt at having a sex life in Riverdale. Veronica really thought that becoming a sort of mogul would help her land straight guys.

Oh honey.

Veronica (sort of like Toni, actually) is sexually predatory and also desperate in a way I find curious. She’s been hitting on Clay for a while, apparently, but even though hes just NOT RESPONDING (which is very woman-coded of him) she refuses to take the fucking hint. She makes it blatantly clear that she only hired Kevin because he is friends with Clay AND will help her “suss him out.”

Oh honey!

We finally get to the reveal of Reggie The Blur Mantle's basketball skills! Uncle Fucking Frank calls his players "turkeys." Waterboy Dilton is there wearing an especially unflattering rotten greenish Grey color sweatshirt while everyone is in either a blue or a yellow jersey. I guess gold was too expensive? I can comfortably hate Frank again because a teammate tosses a used paper cup right at Dilton and another gives him a fist bump for it in a very visible act of denigration and Frank neither notices nor cares. Maybe it's this inability to see detail and perceive reality by this coach that is the cause of this team sucking so badly?

Reggie’s purpose in being brought on is made crystal clear to everyone. He's either to be an unwelcome alien element that provokes the existing property team members to hitherto impossible levels of competence and, if that doesn't work, use his own proven excellence to drag them over the edge. Frank has no interest in Reggie’s quality of life or smooth integration into the team, accordingly. I've been hired a part of a reform and upgrade effort like this one and lemme tell you - the push back from the existing people who are told We Are Bringing Them In Cuz You Suck is insidious, nasty, brutish and persistent. People don't like being insulted nor shown that they are replaceable.

So Fucking Frank makes Julian the captain of one team and Reggie the captain of the other. The only two that initially join Reggie’s group are Archie and Fangs. Archie thinks it's a no brainer - he dislikes Julian, this is his uncle's big gambit, and he thinks Reggie is just tops. Fangs joins, I assume, because Reggie has black hair like him. When everyone else joins Team Julian, Fangs objects (3:7 is unfeasible).

Reggie invites Dilton to join. Dilton lights up as that fucker Frank looks back at him as he's seeing him for the first time. Maybe he has. I've had white teachers "forget" wholesale that I was in their class when the class had only 6 other students when assigning roles for a semester length project. (Riverdale got this right, is what I'm saying.)

The thing is, I HAD TO be in that class.

Why Dilton puts up with this especially when he had no ability in it is confusing to me.

Archie is worried about this decision but he does nicely ask Dilton if he's up for it, then prompts him to get on the court.

This is by the way fascinating kingly behavior on Reggie’s part. The easier choice when you're bullied is to avoid the people who are the same type as you.

The Vixens filter in. I didn't realize the cheerleaders were obliged to sit and watch team practice. That is truly terrible. No wonder Betty was so annoyed.

And we're off!

I do not care about sports and therefore have zero knowledge or reference but is this sort of angle normal for basketball??

Reggie scores a point immediately. I'm assuming that what he does here - a sort of demi tourne en-l'air as he scores- is awesome because they show it a) in slow motion and b) most of the Vixens clap and all react like they saw something amazing. Cheryl especially looks shocked.

I am again so enamored of their outfits this season. An extra wears a beautiful pinstripe skirt with stripes of color mixed in - white, red, and mustard - with a grapefruit cardigan over a white shirt. I covet this outfit. Betty is fetching dressed only in pink and white. I LOVE IT when they put Cheryl in navy, like they do here, because it makes her look like three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Midge looks extremely not pregnant in her cinched-tight skirt. Toni is trying to dyke it up while matching Cheryl in navy tones - tight blue jeans and a matching sweater.

Julian makes like he's going to smash Dilton's glasses (or face) with the basketball in his hands. Dilton cringes, costing his side however many points Julian immediately scores. He's crushed. Reggie comes up from behind to reassure him with pats to the stomach, maintaining eye contact with Dilton to make sure he is OK.

The fucker Frank seems worried at this show of solidarity that Reggie feels with other Asians.

Reggie scores every time he attempts to. He looks right at Betty as soon as he scores the first one, and Betty is getting into it with every score Reggie uh, scores. (I am bored and I also know very few sports words.)

Julian fully elbows Dilton right in the chest, knocking him over, before scoring too. Abusing Dilton seems to be what helps him achieve excellence. I'm wondering what exactly was wrong with this team to begin with because Julian at least seems as good as Reggie at scoring, albeit in less aerodynamic ways.

Muscles rippling, Reggie lifts Dilton up off the ground. I feel a grim obligation to look up a Dilton/Reggie tag for s7 on Ao3. (Grim because I much prefer the other Dilton, the feral one that eventually grows his hair long and has that secret close friendship with Jughead).

Oh and when Julian scores the banner behind him says Victory Is Ours! whereas when Reggie is helping Dilton out the banner behind the two of them says Go Team Go!

Frank shouts something about game point, and Dilton, whose dusty skills are irrigated by one instance of skin on skin contact by Reggie, actually manages to score. Frank looks pleased but I think he's not proud of Dilton so much as pleased for himself that Reggie’s excellence transfers to other people.

Reggie, Fangs and Archie hoist Dilton into the air to celebrate his single solitary winning moment in life so far in the 50s alternate universe. The two Asian boys helped each other win against Julian Blue-Blood Blossom and to make sure you got it, Riverdale gave the Asian Boy Team members yellow jerseys. Guess what color Julian's jersey is. Later, Julian is so pissed he kicks a basketball.

In the locker room afterwards Dilton is shown collecting laundry to haul off somewhere. Just like I didn't know that cheerleaders were forced to attend the practice and training sessions of the players, I didn’t know that to be a water boy was to be an unpaid maid for the other players. Remind me once again why Dilton wants to participate on these terms?? (Also, an Asian boy with laundry duties is actually worse than Long Duk Dong. Having the less stereotypical Reggie (though at this point, the Super Asian Who is Good At All the Things is ripening into almost a fully fledged stereotype) doesn’t counteract Dilton’s portrayal. That’s not how this works.

Everyone other than Dilton is pretty glum, because the player that was brought in because they suck has proven himself to be superior to them. Archie suggests that they all take him out for burgers at Pop’s. Possibly for the first time in his life, Archie is met with silent treatment from a bunch of people. He wants to know “what gives?” Reggie gets it immediately, so he tries to recuse himself. Ominously, Julian suddenly says he wants to go, and that’s because when Julian is down in the dumps the immediate next thing he alights on is to use his money to squash someone. Knowing that Reggie doesn’t have a car, he sets up a race - “Last one to Pop’s treats!” knowing it’s gonna be Reggie. Archie didn’t think of that, so he feels alarmed. Dilton is permitted to come by Julian. The four of them - Fangs, Archie, Dilton and Reggie - awkwardly stare at each other.

In the extremely constricting looking cheerleader practice outfits - the button down shirts with tightly belted blue shorts - the Vixens are assigned their ‘designated’ player by Cheryl. Cheryl thank the lord gets Julian (which she doesn’t mind and is great for everyone). She describes this duty as “personalized support, baking him cookies” and “helping with his homework.” Neither Veronica nor Betty have ever heard of this. Cheryl assigns Archie to Toni, and Reggie to Betty. Toni is full of questions and suspicions about this choice, but Betty seems more than pleased.

Meanwhile, Tabitha and Jughead (him wearing the felt crown, which unlike the beanie I can’t ‘unsee’ and her in a pink bandeau headband) are visiting Apartment 407 which belongs to Bradberry. The author is not responsive to Jughead’s knocking. Tabitha suggests leaving him a note, and Jughead, while scribbling, asks if Tabitha wants to go see a movie. lOoh, sort of like how Jabitha started - with her asking him to hang out!! “I would love to go to the movies with you” is what she says, in her melting sweet voice and her huge soft eyes which can’t be fully obscured by those huge glasses frames. It’s a completely unromantic movie, about being attacked by a giant octopus, yet Jughead gets starry-eyed when she says Yes without hesitation. Having written his note, Jughead takes out a piece of gum from his mouth that he hadn’t been chewing this entire time to attach it to the door. Jughead and Tabitha giggle cutely at each other as they head off to the movies.

In the changing room back at school, Toni is changed into her Hot Beatnik Chick outfit. Cheryl asks what’s wrong, to which Toni ominously replies, “We need to get real, Cheryl.” So, this emotional rollercoaster that Toni keeps dragging Cheryl on - is this supposed to serve as some sort of corrective to the way Choni ultimately worked out in the OG timeline? Lizzo’s critiques about how Toni’s predatorily self-serving ways being correct doesn’t really do anything for me until they do more with Lizzo as a character. Toni, though, is not wrong when she says, “Baking for my own personal meathead is not really want I want my life to be about.” Hear hear. Plus, I don’t think that it was general knowledge that this level of handmaidenhood was what was required of cheerleading, so this probably is far beyond what Toni is willing to put up with for a girlfriend. Cheryl seems infinitely sad at the dismissive way Toni says “cheerleader” when she says that isn’t what she wants to be. Then she asks a really scary question, so scary that she closes her eyes the entire time she is asking. Cheryl wants to know if this whole rejection of everything square and cheerleader and so forth is because Cheryl asked to go steady. Toni says no, at first, but then says that she needs to “figure herself out” plus she “needs space.” Again, I must reiterate my question about what making Toni not just a bohemian but such a toxic one supposed to show me. Cheryl is left alone with two sets of paper shakers lying like dead animals on the bench. Poor Cheryl.

At the movie theater, Jughead is ordering a LOT of food because he is flush with cash from his writing gigs I guess - popcorn, large cola with ice, two packs of ‘Senior Mints,’ a ‘Butterflinger’ with a hard emphasis on the G, Mint BoGos, Buccaneers and a Skit-Skat.

I happen to love KitKats and calling them SKAT is hurtful to me in a personal way. The official ‘joke’ of this little bit is that all of this is entirely for Jughead’s solitary consumption. Tabitha, who is grossed out by this collection of foodstuffs, has no appetite. There’s an inflation joke too, because Veronica says all of this is 75 cents. The thing that’s truly an insider level of joke about this bit, of course, is that Jughead seems to have entirely forgotten that he and Veronica had a pretty long term flirtation where they dated and she fixed up his residence and he read her his first drafts.

Veronica tells Clay that she founds it “interesting” that Tabitha and Jughead are at the movies together. Clay does not care about straight people’s shenanigans, plus it’s apparent that Veronica will not stop bringing up the topic of sex to him, so he deflects as politely as possible.

Veronica however has not forgotten their entanglement, which she describes as lasting as long as a “New York minute.” Now Clay has no choice but to show interest. Clay thinks Jughead is “plenty handsome” to which Veronica rolls her eyes before saying a very lukewarm, “I suppose.” Veronica says that Jughead is an oddball, which she makes sound like a bad thing, before trying to butter up Clay by telling him that she prefers her men to be “continental” and “worldly” and with an “air of mystery.” Cut to Kevin’s POV (Kevin is sweeping up the front hall of the theater while Veronica has Clay trapped in close proximity with her behind the concession counter. The signs on the wall immediately behind Clay read:

Refreshments

Hot Buttered (much small writing: Popcorn)

FRISKY (sandals - is this a movie?)

FLESH (eating spiders).

Clay gives Kevin a helpless look before deciding to beat a swift retreat. He’s got reel changing duties to attend to. Before he can fully get away, however, Veronica turns it up a notch to fully sexually harass her employee: “Just think about picking up what I’m putting down” she says, placing pointy manicured fingernails against his hand. Clay gives Kevin yet another Oh Help Me look (unseen by Veronica). Kevin is trying to figure how to rescue his boyfriend.

At the student lounge, Betty is trying to provide support for Reggie. She asks him what he got for a certain question, to which Reggie says she doesn’t have to do this. Betty tells him straight out that this is part of her job as a Vixen. She also wants to know what his favorite cookie is because she’s obliged to bake him some. Reggie doesn’t want her to do that either. Reggie is either some sort of paragon (Uhhh Model Minority?) or sexually repressed (Sigh) or gay because he seems ultra unreactive to Betty, being gorgeous and friendly. Betty is repressing a lot of anger about being made to participate in any of this, so it comes out in this arch, sarcastic way. I also think that she’s defensive about her ‘reputation’ so she pretends she doesn’t care as she tells him how her innocent sexual exploration (“A peep show, in our windows, if you can even call it that”) was violently taken out of the realm of privacy and ruined her reputation in town, leading her to flash her underwear on live television.

Reggie has fully had enough. He looks very concerned for her sanity as well as his own safety. Betty belatedly realizes how insane how she said what she said makes her sound but her panic makes her unable to order her thoughts. (“We didn’t— No, we’re not— I’m completely–! [dissolves into adorable mouthsounds of incoherent reassurance]). He decides he should just go. This is very reminiscent of the “Am I the only one here who hasn’t gotten rid of a dead body” moment from Killing Mr. Honey, except a bit less funny because Reggie’s personality is so tamped down for 1955. Overwhelmed by this girl mentioning “peep show” and “flashing panties” in her first real conversation with him, he tells her that she’s hereby “relieved of your, uh, Vixen duties, okay?” As he takes off, Betty puts a hand to shield her face. She is just the cutest.

Reggie is practicing basketball when Archie finds him at the gym. Archie invites him to lunch, but Reggie refuses. Archie insists that it’s not with the team (shitty people) but instead his other friends (hypersexual crazy people) so Reggie politely declines double.

Then we come to a comical bit that I don’t know the show knows is comical. Clay, Tabitha and Toni are sitting together to discuss Toni’s idea of starting a literary society at Riverdale High for black students because of …Emmett Till. That’s a really weird jump to me, but OK. Clay and Tabitha seem excited. This isn’t what I find comical. What I find comical is that this is an oblique discussion about anti-black racism by three black students who are all dating white people in an episode that decided to focus on Reggie’s Korean ethnicity.

Toni wants to highlight Black voices and writing. Clay is a prolific writer off screen - he writes poetry, literary criticism and short fiction. He wants a forum and probably deserves it -except he did spoken word that one time at the coffee house, and it’s not clear to me why he had to wait for Toni to get bored with her jaunt to Caucasian Squaretown to do this. Tabitha really hates cheerleading. Does she know about the baking and the helping with the homework and being assigned a personal meathead and all of that? It’s strongly implied Tabitha really wants Toni to give it up for an idea that she approves of as much more worthy. Toni says she gave up cheerleading because she was gay for Cheryl Blossom. Neither Tabitha nor Clay have a reaction to this at first. Tabitha enthusiastically agrees when, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from her personal life, Toni says her ‘journal’ would make a big difference to (just) the black students. The fact that Tabitha and Toni take it as a given that absolutely no white students would read this journal is an interesting commentary.

Clay wants to know what happened to which Toni gives a toxic significant other answer: ”We’re just so different.” I say it’s toxic because all the things she names about Cheryl - family background, race, financial status - were fully upfront and known and contributed to why she pursued Cheryl in the first place (according to Lizzo). Clay calls bullshit on it immediately - that it’s not ‘impossible’ to date someone who is very different (i.e. white, if you’re black) from you. Toni really needs writers for her upcoming journal so she graciously concedes his point about how “everything is a conversation” (when what she has been doing to Cheryl this whole time is making demands, ignoring refusals, and now, issuing unilateral decisions), but then needles him back with the fact that both Kevin and Clay are preppies. “I guess it depends on how much you like the person,” is Clay’s retort.

They’re actually fighting while making really sweet faces at each other. Clay is very interesting.

Tabitha, who is dating the show’s officially strange person, and the one that freaked everyone out weeks ago in this universe with his nutty theory about comets and the future and the internet etc, says absolutely nothing. Did she know both Clay and Toni were gay? I can’t tell if she’s just mulling over what they said or she’s in over her head and this is stunned silence.

At the theater, Veronica is stalking Clay, who isn’t there. She asks Kevin where Clay is, so Kevin has had enough. He calls her a slut first (because of course he would - “You’re coming on really strong”) but then Kevin says a correct thing: “Is that really appropriate [given that he works for you]?” Veronica thinks there is “nothing wrong with a little workplace flirtation.” Um. So Kevin (???!??! wtf wtf??) is like, literally decades ahead of his time (the COINAGE of the phrase sexual harassment wasn’t until the late 70s by the very great legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon who is a personal hero of mine and in a direct connection - not really- to this episode visited S. Korea in 2019 where I got to meet her at a talk she gave). All because he wants to safeguard his boyfriend. Anyway, not only is this the They Say the Word Korean Too Many Times For My Comfort episode, this is also the episode where all the gay people come out to someone. Kevin outs Clay first (without asking, and in a fit of pique, which is so shitty) and then himself, to Veronica.

Oh but not before he’s hateful to a beautiful woman first. When Veronica dejectedly notes that Clay “isn’t remotely interested” he answers in the most swinish way possible: “He’s not. I know that for a fact.” Have I mentioned enough times that I hate Kevin? I do. I hate Kevin.

Veronica does a huge about face to say that “she knew” both Clay and Kevin were gay. I think she’s lying. I might give her the point that she knew Kevin was gay (from all the obsessive Singing in the Rain watching, which is really about looking at Gene Kelly’s ass) but Clay? She didn’t.

Anyway she adjusts to reality really fast, thinking swiftly on her feet when Kevin confronts her with, “If you knew that, why would you make a play for Clay?” to retort that it was all to test her hypothesis, “of course.” She can’t sustain the lie, however, because her bored horniness takes over. The immediately next thing she does is to ask if Clay could possibly ever be bisexual. I really doubt Kevin has ever asked Clay this, but he states that “he doesn’t” before presuming to answer a question that Veronica did not ask - he includes himself when he says “we” don’t swing both ways. Veronica lies again and says that she was only ‘double checking.’

Her disappointment is so crushing that she turns into Mae West. She makes up some gibberish - that it’s better to have “hunky friends who are boys” than a hunky boyfriend. I’m not at all this type of woman (the old skool term for this is a double whammy of homophobic misogyny so I won’t use that word here) so maybe I’m missing something, but if Betty Cooper’s experience in this universe is anything to go by, Kevin is no friend to any woman because he hates women. Being homosexual doesn’t do anything to ameliorate his misogyny - in fact, it makes it much, much worse. He’s disgusted by female human bodies. Stay the hell away, Veronica!

Veronica in her disassociated Mae West persona is too much for Kevin to handle at this moment. She claims to have had more fun with the “Toni and Tab” types than Dennis Hopper and Steve McQueen which can’t possibly be true if you’re a woman attracted to men. Like COME ON (Tab is Tab Hunter, and I guess Anthony Perkins is Toni?). I Have got to hand it to Veronica for having a can-do spirit about everything. “This hick down is finally starting to feel like home,” she says, in the immediately aftermath of being told that the guy she’s been panting after for weeks and weeks will never be interested. Kevin seems moved, but since I hate Kevin, I don’t care.

At basketball practice, Julian has an announcement: Tomorrow is the “Bulldog Booster Basketball Mixer.” We know that it couldn’t possibly have been Julian who came up with this mouthful of a title - it has Cheryl stamped all over it. It’s a fundraiser to build a new gym, girls will be there, and everyone has to “dress spiffy.” Coach Fucking Frank forces Julian to issue a nastily worded invitation for Reggie in particular. All the boys are wearing the identical Chuck Taylor high-rise sneakers - is this part of the Blossom sponsorship?

Reggie I guess always stays later than everyone else to practice a bit more (and to avoid Julian), because when he heads into the locker room the only one there is Archie. Archie tries to get Reggie to commit to coming to the mixer (“They’re always a gas and a half!”). Reggie shuts him down forthwith.

In an echo of Mad Dog Munroe from the OG timeline, Reggie of 1955 wants to get a scholarship for college through his sports skills. Archie is wearing yellow to show his, uh, solidarity I guess with Reggie. (I rarely recall Archie in yellow, but also I am cranky now from all this unprecedented history research I’m being made to do.) Archie really, really, truly, desperately, like a WHOLE LOT wants to be friends with Reggie, not just roommate and host. He wants to know why Reggie can’t “cut loose a little.” He even tries to gloss the turd that Julian laid with his reluctant invitation, upgrading what Julian said (“We’ll be welcoming our newest Bulldog to the family, I suppose”) to “you’re the guest of honor.” Reggie refuses to go along to get along. In response to being called “naive,” Archie calls Reggie “a killjoy.” He wants Reggie to meet Riverdale’s Bulldogs “halfway.” This turns out to be a trigger for Reggie to tell his story.

Oh, before he tells his story he correctly points out that outside of Archie, who is tone deaf and determined to not see any unpleasantness even as it’s right in his face, nobody else has taken any sort of step towards him.

Bret (who is also alive - yay! - and a basketball player in this universe) of Stonewall Prep put up a hugely labor intensive prank of getting a really big bag of rice into Reggie’s locker, tearing it halfway open and then wedging it so that as soon as Reggie opens the door an avalanche of cascades from it all over the floor. He also concocted some sort of mean line (“You guys like rice” and “Enough to take back to the farm” and also “Yellow belly” which is kind of funny actually - if someone called me Yellow Belly I’d laugh, but I suppose any of the actually on-point racist epithets aren’t allowed on American television). The sheer amount of effort that something like this takes marks people who are bullies to be absolutely psychotic. Bret and Co. basically ran Reggie out of the school. Reggie in the OG universe felt safe telling Archie his most painful secrets (back then they were about his father who was openly abusive to the passive observation of everyone else in town, which is also a sort of racist reaction - “Those people are just like that” - which, no we are not). Reggie is so hurt. He’s determined to not “give anyone a chance to humiliate” him “ever again.”

OK so this is a great character moment for Reggie, but of course, people of color having to relive their most wounding moments of racist trauma in a way that feels sufficiently authentic, and/or literally bare their broken bodies (i.e. the open casket photo of Emmet Till which started this season) for the edification of single special white persons is a racist trope which keeps getting regurgitated as being meaningful in American popular culture. This time, Archie is the special white person. Plus, instead of just being ashamed of their appalling ignorance, the white person always gets to have their say according to the trope, which Archie does here as well. (“We’re not like that here.”) Reggie though gets the final word, which is very nice; “Aren't you?”

Wounded Reggie is wearing the navy jersey top. Wounded Cheryl is wearing a violet-navy long coat, with red accents (gloves, collar, shoes, file folder, patent leather shoulder bag) as she descends the steps of the school. Can we just talk about how hard it is to get the exact same shade of anything for an outfit like this, nevermind red, and across so many different articles of dress? I covet the coat and the bag, especially.

Toni is waiting for her. The way she says “hello” like a scared little cat filled me with tenderness. This season’s highlight of Cheryl’s essential softness has been wonderful for me. Cheryl says she’s being “stoic and strong for the sake of” the Vixens. Toni doesn’t really pretend to care about that. Instead she directly asks for money. Toni sells the journal idea to Cheryl as “a way to express ourselves on our own terms.” Cheryl indicates that she’s all for it, but that Featherhead might nix it.

Because Toni is doing this social justice type thing but the only three black students with actually speaking parts are all dating white people and there is a statistically anomalous over representation of not-straights, the show has a black extra stand on the steps of the school to show that there are indeed other black students. His legs stay in view the entire time Toni and Cheryl are talking .

Cheryl even volunteers to bake for a fundraising bake sale, if it comes to it.

Cheryl then asks if she was dumped for being white. Toni says yes, which is very brutal. I have no idea what the hell this is supposed to indicate because um, what is wrong with Toni? Did she somehow discover that she is more black than she thought? But she’s dated not-black women before, no? Her and Lizzo are exes, right?

At the fundraiser mixer thing at the Blossoms, a mixed race couple (a white man and a black woman) pointedly walk across the screen. Fangs is posing for Midge, which Cheryl intercepts by hauling Midge off screen as the camera moves on in one long take towards ARchie, who is hanging out at the food spread. The Blossoms own what looks like an enormous oil painting based off of an Audubon print. Why that bird and why this shot I don’t know. Betty approaches him for a chat.

When asked how being a Vixen is going, Betty says that she’s been forced into it by Werther, who thought it would “burn off excess energy.” They both agree that adults are really stupid about the fact that becoming more cardio-fit doesn’t actually make you LESS horny. Plus the outfits and all the looking at boys in short shorts? How exactly would this make Betty not think about getting naked with boys? Betty tries to tell Archie that there’s a weird system of “taking care” of basketball players on the cheerleading squad but Archie is not listening at all. Oh- by the by - now that Toni is off the squad, does this mean Archie is the one boy without an assigned cheerleader?

Anyway, drawn by the power of recessive genes, Archie has made eye contact with Clifford Blossom. He is summoned to the circle of people of the inner sanctum at this party - the Blossom parents, Julian, Uncle Fucking Frank and one more dude whom I don’t know named Dennis. Penelope is wearing the most extraordinarily unflattering terrible dress of all time. I am so fascinated. It’s a long dress with sewn on details all down both sides from the waist to ankle mimicking the effect of a hoop skirt, making the extremely narrow and petite Penelope look as wide as a barn door.

Clifford Blossom wants to discuss Reggie, his “secret weapon.” Clifford, with Julian behind him, says that being forced to share a room with Reggie is a “sacrifice” that he appreciates Archie for being willing to take on. Archie is “cranked” to do it. Dennis says he wouldn’t be able to tolerate such a thing, having to “bunk with a…..” [Korean yellow belly? Lol why does that sound like a species of bird or fish?] Penelope chimes in saying that having Reggie around is “a necessary evil.” Clifford Blossom is obsessed with winning. Oh and he was also a former Bulldog basketball player. He then turns to Frank to say that he was initially skeptical of bringing on a “Korean prodigy.” Clifford is offended by Reggie’s absence, even though he finds what he’s seen of Reggie’s basketball skills very impressive. Archie, possibly because he had that talk with Reggie earlier or maybe because the recessive gene holders communicate better with each other, realizes that he needs to say the right things to Clifford Blossom and tries to appease him, by saying that Reggie “doesn’t want to fall behind on his schoolwork,” which is why he’s not here at this party kissing Clifford’s ass. Clifford, intending that this message be conveyed by Archie, threatens Reggie that if he doesn’t keep smiling while bringing home the championship trophy, there will be “trouble for his family.”

Why? Why will there be trouble for his family? What is Reggie’s father? Are both his parents illegal immigrants? (But how was his father able to enlist for the army?) Is this something to do with his mother’s status? Did they break anti miscegenation laws? WHAT?

Dennis smiles evilly at this threat, but it has no teeth because I have no idea why it’s threatening. Archie is perturbed enough to take his leave right then. We scan to Cheryl, having overheard this entire exchange, also look quite upset.

At the movie theater, Veronica is very pleased to see Reggie. She needles him right away, and he banters right back - I thought you didn’t like movies vs I didn’t say that, I just said my town didn’t have a movie theater. Why oh why is Veronica so desperate though? She hits on Reggie in the most nakedly fishing-for-compliments way. And why oh why are these dudes so brutal to her? Reggie bluntly says he didn’t even remember he might run into Veronica at this theater. Forgot all about her. What the hell.

Veronica rewards his churlishness with free popcorn. 1955 Veronica being overly generous to whatever boy she is interested in is upsetting to me the way 2020 Adult Veronica was never not drinking liquor. When Kevin points out that what Reggie just said was quite rude (as though he himself did any better? Hypocrite.) Veronica says this about Reggie:

“Take a powder, Herman Melville, because that is the real Moby Dick.”

I’ve already made the post about how this is a joke about Asian Dick Size. But also, a second layer of this is that she called an Asian guy a Great White Whale.

Meanwhile, Jughead has taken Tabitha all the way back to his home that Veronica has fixed up for him for free.

Actually the line progression is very hilarious:

“... that is the real Moby dick.”

[pinging music]

Tabitha’s voice: “Wow this is like the Orient Express!”

So they managed to work the word “Orient” in here I guess. Well done. Tabitha has brought Jughead a book gift. “Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by WEB Du Bois.” Jughead pronounces it Du-Bwah, which Tabitha corrects as Du-Boyz. We’re not allowed to make a pun about Du Bois I guess, like call him Trois Bois. Jughead is impressed with the title, so Tabitha tells him to read “The Comet” first since he likes science fiction. She describes the actual real story written by Du Bois, which is “one of the first times an interracial relationship has been depicted in science fiction.” She wants to read it aloud together with her new white boyfriend. Jughead looks entranced by the twitchy cuteness of Tabitha as she suggests this activity.

Archie has come back home to find Reggie reading Super Duck(written by Jughead??) on his bed. Reggie wants to know if the cheerleaders looked pretty at the mixer, but Archie is too burdened by the choice of whether to convey Clifford Blossom’s threat to Reggie, and opts the path of least resistance. He doesn't convey the message, and skips out on further discussion about the event with Reggie. Reggie seems to take this as a dismissal of his overture which is intended as an apology and a gesture of friendship.

The next day, Julian is being obnoxious at the basketball practice. Uncle Fucking Frank is ‘in a meeting’ so Julian runs warm up, to bully the shit out of Reggie. At some point he calls Reggie “Banana Boy” which is another ridiculous epithet. I kind of wish they would either not address the fact that hate speech exists or just use the actual examples because this and Yellow Belly just aren’t cutting enough. In any case, Reggie reacts like he’s been called a proper slur. Reggie refuses to pass the ball to Julian, instead giving it to Archie. Archie, however, decides to um, White Knight the situation. He punches Julian so hard he knocks him flat on the ground.

I mean, it can’t be that hard, because Jughead Jones managed to do this on behalf of Ethel Muggs. But the violence startles Fangs and Dilton on the bench, and Reggie grimaces because he just wants to get his NCAA scholarship and get out of this general area.

Archie gives an anti-racism speech to his teammates about Reggie, based on Reggie’s merits. Merits based arguments in service of anti-racism only feed the racism, so I’m not sure this is better for Reggie’s life than just not saying anything. Moreover, in a very strange move, whoever directed this decided to have a black extra stand next to a white one as the main 2 people that Archie appears to be directing his speech at (Julian is still flat on the ground). Um. The look that the black student gives Archie can only be described as disassociated. Archie says that if any player can’t get on board with being true teammates and supporting Reggie be his excellent self, they are free to leave. He even tells Julian “that includes you, too, captain.”

Meanwhile, at the offices of the Blue and Gold, with the world “Gold” in huge font right behind her head, Cheryl hands Toni a check. It sounds like she’s committed a form of embezzlement, diverting funds that were originally intended for something else, on her own cognizance, without Featherhead final approval. Even though Cheryl took a huge personal risk, her toxic ex girlfriend Toni does not give a shit. She even shittily helps herself to a ‘plausible deniability’ option (“Well I won’t ask any more questions.”). Cheryl is so disappointed.

Toni stops her just as she’s about to step out the door, to ask what her plans are after cheerleading practice. Oh Cheryl. She’s twisting her hands, almost breaking them off the stem, when she tells Toni she doesn’t have plans, because she is so hopeful. Toni asks her out on another date. “About what it would mean if we tried again.” Cheryl is so happy her eyes are tearing up, but I hate this. It reads to me just like Toni has realized she has more ways she can use Cheryl than just for the power trip of bringing someone out and taking their virginity.

Meanwhile, Reggie and Archie are sitting together in the boys’ locker room. “I didn’t sock Julian for you,” he says, confirming that that is indeed what he was doing. He’s had a realization, he seems to say, that Riverdale is “just as messed up as any other place.” Then he says the pivotal thing, the only true thing he can say with any conviction: “I don’t know.”

In a weird reward for his outburst of violence, Reggie accepts the friendship overture at last, asking of Archie wants to grab a burger “on the way home.” This is as sour to me as Toni wanting to restart things with Cheryl only after she has the check in hand. Archie says sure.

Jughead has stayed up all night reading the “Comet” story (about a comet hitting NYC and only two people surviving) and talking about it with Tabitha. Why can’t we at least get a montage of this? Why do all the important Tabitha things have to happen OFF screen?

In any case, because the experience was so “swell” he runs immediately to his adopted daddy to tell him all about it. When he gets to Rayberry’s apartment, however, he is told by Sheriff Keller that Rayberry has killed himself. (They are just now covering the body on the gurney with a sheet). “I can no longer continue living this way.” Jughead is deeply upset. Keller is kind enough to say he is sorry because he knows Jughead was friends with Rayberry.

#riverdale #riverdale recap #riverdale opinion #too many thoughts about riverdale #but this time I've gone too far #riverdale ep 7.8 #if you say the word Korean in your show once too many times you summon a korean reaction which is a whole LOT of reaction

[ao3feed--bughead]

Will we be always? (I wanna be yours)

by MistyHills

Pop star Betty Cooper and rockstar Jughead Jones fell head over heels in love three and half years ago. Fast forward to the present day, and they’ve been broken up for two years ago after she turned down his marriage proposal. Jughead spiralled out of control after she left him and Betty regrets the decision she was forced to make every day. Now their mutual friend, Archie, wants their two bands (The Serpents and The Vixens) to collaborate on an album and embark on a year long world tour together. Resentment, anger, hope and (most importantly) love bubbles between them as they’re drawn again into each other’s orbits as the entire world looks on. As the two grow closer, the mystery surrounding Betty’s rejection threaten to comes to light. What will happen to them when it does? A Bughead Famous Musicians AU.

Words: 5807, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Riverdale (TV 2017), Archie Comics & Related Fandoms

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F, F/M

Characters: Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones, Sweet Pea (Riverdale), Reggie Mantle, Fangs Fogarty, Toni Topaz, Cheryl Blossom

Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz, Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews & Jughead Jones, Jughead Jones & Sweet Pea

Additional Tags: Angst, Friends to Lovers, Exes, Post-Break Up, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks

https://archiveofourown.org/works/53222980

#ao3feed #fanfic #bughead #bughead fanfiction #riverdale fanfiction #jughead x betty #betty x jughead

[innytoes]

For the nice anon who had a bad week and wanted some more Caleb/Ray/Reggie ABO AU. This snippet has been floating in my brain for weeks so I’m using this as an excuse to write it. Hope your weekend is better!

(Trigger warning for some internalised fatphobia and unhealthy thoughts.)

Halloween was Reggie’s absolute favourite holiday. It always had been. It was about dressing up and candy and running around with your friends, not being forced into a tie or pretending to be the perfect family or your parents shouting because everything costs money. An old sheet and a pair of scissors for two eye-holes and you were ready to go.

When Ray and Caleb learned Halloween was his favourite holiday, they went all out. Ray dragged out all his Halloween decor even though it was still summer, so they could go over what he had and what they could add to it. Caleb made sure to schedule his big show for the afternoon, so he could slip out during the after party for their clients and be home with Ray and Reggie in the evening.

And okay, they did talk Reggie down from going Full Spooky as soon as October 1 came around. Instead, he added a little bit every day. A wreath on the door. Some pumpkins on the table. A spooky lawn flamingo in the yard. Some cute ghost-shaped lights on the mantle. An autumn leaf garland on the banister. 

And if Ray maybe came home one day to find his entire porch railing covered in tiny plastic pumpkins, all evenly spaced out (with exactly enough room for Pockets to sit between them, because she loved to sit on the porch railing and judge passers-by), all he did was laugh and press a kiss to Reggie’s cheek and ask him if he had a productive day.

They didn’t just indulge him in the decor. Caleb surprised them both with a visit to a real life pumpkin patch, and they spent a day picking out Real Pumpkins (Reggie) taking a million pictures (Ray) and drinking apple cider (Caleb). They watched all the scary (and not so scary) Halloween movies Reggie wanted to, since he was usually vetoed at the shelter. And okay, sometimes even Reggie had to hide his face in Ray’s sweater, but hearing Caleb mutter under his breath about what bad choices the characters on screen were making made the whole thing a lot less scary and a lot more fun.

Caleb had also impressed upon him that Reggie was in charge of the candy. He did that a lot, making something sound like it was a job or a favour when it was really something fun. Still, with the extra encouragement, he kind of went all out. Full. Sized. Candy. Bars. Baby! As well as a separate bowl with cool stuff like erasers, fake moustaches, light-up bouncy balls, fake spiders, fidget spinners, and other cool stuff, for the kids with allergies.

And if maybe he grabbed a bunch of bags of the tiny little fun-sized candy bars for them to snack on, well, Caleb said he was in charge of candy.

Except he’d made one big mistake. Since he’d never really done Halloween as an adult before, he hadn’t realised how tempting all that candy in the house would be. Not the stuff for the kids, of course. Reggie was fully committed to not touching those, so they had enough to hand out to ever single kid that came over.

But those bags with the tiny little bite-sized candy bars? They were calling him, okay? So, on October 29th, he may or may not have gotten out a bag. Just to grab a few of his favourites while he was finishing up decorating. So he grabbed a bunch after he finished putting up the fake spiderwebs outside. And he grabbed some when he added the spooky fake candles on the tables. And after he was completely done for the day, with both decorating and laundry and the dishes and prepping for dinner, well, he deserved to sit down and have a treat, okay? And then Pockets came to sit on his lap, so it wasn’t like he could go anywhere or do anything but eat candy, right?

By the time he heard the front door, Caleb chuckling at the skulls he’d added to the wreath, he’d pretty much finished the bag. And there was no way to hide the evidence before Caleb reached the family room. Tiny wrappers were all over the salon table, and gathering them all up together kind of just made it look worse.

“Well now,” Caleb said, surveying the scene. God, there were candy wrappers on the floor as well.

“Um, hi.” He tried to smile as Caleb pressed a kiss to his temple.

“Hello, pet,” Caleb said. “Did you... did you eat almost that entire bag by yourself?” He sounded kind of incredulous.

Reggie flushed. Of course Caleb was shocked. “I’ll run a few extra miles tomorrow,” he defended, shrinking in on himself a little.

Maybe Reggie did let himself get carried away. Paul had always said he ate more than his fair share, that he was greedy, and here Reggie was proving him right.

The shelter had always warned that they should do their best to look good, so they’d be picked sooner. They’d always grimaced a little when they said it in front of Reggie, because no amount of deep conditioner and squats was going to hide the massive scar on his face. But still, Reggie knew that Caleb and Ray had picked him, at least in part, because of how he looked. They both took really good care of themselves, and here Reggie was, eating an entire bag of candy in one go.

Caleb looked at him, surprised and a little upset. “Kitten, I’m not concerned about your waistline, I’m concerned about you getting a stomach ache,” he soothed.

Oh.

“And a little bit about you throwing up chocolate on my priceless antique rug,” he said, nodding at the floor. Reggie giggled.

“I promise I won’t get sick on your rug,” he said, leaning into a hug when Caleb offered, tucking his head under Caleb’s chin.

“You know that you’re allowed to eat whatever you want, right?” Caleb asked, rubbing his back gently. Reggie nodded. He did know that. Of course he did. It was just that sometimes the stuff Paul said, or worse, the stuff they drilled into all the Omegas at the shelter, got the better of him. “And that we love you no matter what?”

Reggie took a breath. That one was still a little hard to remember sometimes, on his bad days, or when panic set in. Still, he didn’t want to make Caleb sad, so he nodded again.

Caleb hummed, and they sat there for a moment, just curled up together. Then, Caleb pulled away. “Are there any tootsie rolls left in that bag?”

#calebxrayxreggie #the caleb/ray/reggie ABO AU #fanfic #I wrote a thing #julie and the phantoms #I want you to know that I looked up halloween candy and then I got very angry so I stopped #AMERICA WHY IS THERE CARAMEL IN YOUR MILKY WAY BARS WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU #I gave up and asked the rarepair fest discord to tell me the most evil halloween candy bar for Caleb #(in the Dutch version of this fic Reggie's eating Celebrations and Caleb asked for a bounty okay?) #anon I hope you feel better

[veetlegeuse]

OC PRIDE CHALLENGE ✽ Week Four: AUs

↳ Mabel & Reggie Stardew Valley AU

The six hour bus ride had killed him. Reggie was sure of it, because as he stared at the woman tending to the garden in front of his deceased grandfather’s house, he was certain he had died and gone to heaven.

Clad in a pair of cutoff overalls, trowel in her bare hand and bangs stuck to her forehead with sweat, the woman was clearly hard at work, because she didn’t even spare him a glance as he clumsily stumbled across the gravel drive.

“Quit your starin’, you’re creepin’ me out.”

Reggie nearly jumped out of his skin. “I’m sorry, I—“

The woman narrowed her eyes, and whether she was having a hard time seeing him in the sun or she was giving him the once-over, he didn’t know.

“A little far from home, aren’t ya, pretty boy?” The woman quipped, standing up and wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm, “You look as lost as last year’s Easter egg.”

Reggie’s eyebrows shot up in confusion, and the woman only laughed at him.

“Confused,” She clarified, “You look confused.”

“I just wasn’t expecting someone to be here,” Reggie answered, “I thought this place was abandoned.”

“It was,” The woman nodded slowly, rubbing her hands together to rid herself of excess dirt, before wiping them on her overalls, “Didn’t feel right. Old man Mantle’s done a lot for this town. Didn’t feel right to let this place go to shit.”

“Well, that’s nice of you,” Reggie started, “But I’m here now, so... No need to worry about that anymore.”

Now Reggie was sure she was giving him the once-over, watching her eyes rake over him before letting out a snort.

“Sure, pretty boy.”

→ taglist: @waterloou @sunlitscrib @hiddenqveendom @akabluekat @arrthurpendragon @asirensrage @decennia @eleanorstulip @darth-caillic @kbeescreams @raith-way @eddiemunscns

#opc2022 #oc: mabel harlow #ship: meggie #honeyvee

[bonniebird]

Reggie Mantle x fem!reader : Soulmates AU tattoos. With the prompt : "Most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling, the rest of my whole life, the way I feel when I'm with you."

Tattoos: you have a black imprint where your soulmate should touch you for the first time. And when she/he/they does, that imprint blooms in colors.

Reggie is the last of his comrade who didnt find his soulmate yet. His tattoo is in the middle of his back and doesnt look like anything else he have seen yet (not fingerprints like Midge one, not like an arm push like Kevin or toes print like Moose one). To add chances of... contact with the one, Reggie goes shirtless every chance he gets. And he checks every night in the mirroir if the tattoo did bloom.

He is at Pops when it arrives, shirtless because of jogging ?. Where a clumpsy reader stumbles and colides with him, cheek first onto his back. Knowing his thunderous temper reader apologize quickly and tries to run away without looking. But Reggie grips her just in time. His fingers enrolling around her wrist just like her tattoo. Shes shocked. He doesn't want to let it go to verify if its blooming under his fingers or onto his back. He doesn't want to be disappointed again. So Reggie ramble and ramble to the reader like if he needs to convince the bond to work. Until reader is not shocked/scared anymore. And he untwist his fingers.

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[powderblueblood]

(same anon as the last Hollywood au anon lol) were you inspired to watch may December by the last BKR video about Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore??? if so same and please if you haven't you should check out the video on melodramas and may December by broeydeshanel

WELCOME BACK FRIEND

i'll be so honest with you, i was inspired to watch may december because i am a todd haynes stan first (all my i'm not there (multi-actor bob dylan biopic) girlies say amen), riverdale stan second (all my reggie mantle girlies say amen) and a human third. and i had been putting it off for AGES so i figured hey it's a saturday afternoon and why not

and i loved it! i thought it was horrifying and disturbing and a psychohorror through the lens of a lifetime movie and i do actually remember the broey deschanel brouhaha on twitter at that time. i definitely agree that it's a melodrama (in another life i could have seen someone like late-career joan crawford play julianne moore's role which, if you know anything about crawford and i'm sure you do, wouldn't that have been WILD!!!) and i think it's fair to classify it as camp too.

also, i don't know where people are pulling this misread of camp that it's another subset of irony when camp is camp because it wholeheartedly believes in itself and i think may december wholeheartedly believes in itself.

from that insane musical sting when gracie is like, "i don't think we have enough hot dogs" that fucking movie is grabbing you by the throat and is like you're not going nowhere, bitch. sit down. strap in.

i could write a full thesis on why the poisonous deus ex machina of ummm so that just happened! humor has left a lot of audiences incapable of dealing with humor beats in weird, uncomfortable places like in a story like may december. and, understandable! i think i'm still trying to grow out of it in my writing sometimes.

but it reminded me a lot of husbands and a woman under the influence by john cassavetes actually, in the way the humor was so effortlessly dropped in in the maelstrom of weirdness and sadness and trauma.

anon i'm sorry for writing a full essay here and i WILL actually go back and watch that broey vid on your recommendation. and the BKR one too actually it's stuck somewhere in my watch later

#powder room talk #Anonymous

[wxckedwxrld]

headcannons

• harry potter

• law & order: svu

• marvel

• narcos

• narnia

• peaky blinders

• riverdale

• 7ds

• Star Wars

• supernatural

#din djarin smut #draco malfoy smut #pedro pascal x you #din djarin x you #draco malfoy soulmate au #reggie mantle smut #draco x reader #draco x y/n #draco fanfiction #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy #draco smut #draco malfoy x you #Thomas Shelby #peaky blinder headcanon #obi wan #obi wan star wars #obi wan fanfiction #obi wan series #obi wan kenobi

[bughead-in-the-comics]

From Phantom of the Bopera, Laugh Comics #21 (1990).

#bughead #jughead jones #betty cooper #archie andrews #reggie mantle #rocky's rockers #the mighty archie art players #old comics #digest comics #laugh comics #bughead au #bughead stage #bughead play #bughead music #bughead accident #bughead drums #bughead singing #bughead worried #phantom of the bopera #christine betty #jojo jughead

[statticscribbles]

Reggie Mantle/fem reader 🌙 jealousy Au

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Reggie Mantle/Reader 🌙 Jealous AU

Reggie is glaring and you just smirk at him and lean forward more; closer to Jughead.

“So I heard you and Betty broke up?” You swear you can see the steam from Reggie’s ears.

“Yeah, I know everyone things we’ll be back together by the end of the week; Betty is already throwing sorry glances towards me in class.”

“Oh? That’s a shame; here I thought you’d be single with me still..” You pout and can feel the heat from Reggie’s glare.

“Single? You and Reggie broke up?” Jughead looks over and you can see when he catches Reggie’s eye.

“Nah; just like to rile him up while he’s at practice; since he has to wait till he gets home to do anything about it; thanks for playing along Jones.” You wink at him and turn back to Reggie walking over and sitting in his lap, Reggie automatically wraps an arm around you and glares at Jughead again.

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Flash Challenge Details

#reggie mantle #reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle imagine #reggie mantle x you #reggie mantle x y/n #riverdale reader insert #riverdale imagine #riverdale #written #stattic #flash challenge

[just-another-ficwriter]

More Than A Bet

Pairing: Jock!Reggie x Nerd!Reader x Sweet Pea

Words: 600ish

Warnings: Mild violence, actions that could be seen as bullying.

Summary: It breaks Sweet Pea’s heart to see Y/N upset over someone like Reggie Mantle when he knows she’s worth so much more.

Notes: Filling the Nerd/Jock square on my @riverdalebingo card. I originally had a whole other idea for this prompt but couldn’t find the inspo to write it, so went for this little to twist on a classic clique instead!

Sweet Pea can still remember the look on her face.

He’s sure he’d never seen her so happy, so excited, like a kid on Christmas morning.

Personally he didn’t see the appeal in prom, or in Reggie Mantle for that matter, but he’d deal with anything just to see her smile.

Sweet Pea also remembers the look on her face when she’d found out it was all just a bet, and how many tears she cried into his leather jacket that night.

She’d been nothing more than a joke, the bulldogs had placed money on how far Reggie could play along with it before he caved.

She says she should have known better to think that the captain of the football team would even notice a sad nerdy girl like her, let alone ask them to senior prom.

She asks him if she’s pathetic, in between sobs, and his heart breaks as he tells her she’s anything but.

He still smirks at the way he almost broke his hand on Mantles nose that night.

-

6 years later they find themselves back in Riverdale after they’d taken some time away.

Their lives had gone in opposite directions, different colleges, different towns, different opportunities.

They still spoke on the phone as much as they could, texting each other every week.

Sweet Pea couldn’t bare the thought of not knowing her.

She teased him for it, but she felt the same.

He didn’t have to think twice when she asked him to be her date to Betty and Jug’s wedding. In fact he said yes so quick even he was surprised.

Their first milkshake at Pop’s turned into a late night at La Bonne Nuit with old friends but it isn’t until she’s standing in front of him in a little red dress that he realises just how much she’s changed.

She smiles at him in a way that leaves him breathless, bright y/e/c eyes meeting his. He can feel his heart rate accelerating with every inch of exposed skin and he almost loses it when she fixes his tie, the smell of her old perfume flooding his senses.

She looks beautiful.

And it doesn’t take Reggie Mantle long to notice it too.

Her name falls from his lips and Sweet Pea isn’t sure how she can stomach even saying hello.

Neither of them are surprised to find out he’s there alone.

They’re thankful that they don’t see him again until the reception.

He follows them from the bar, two champagne flutes in his hands, one for him, one for her, as he insists they dance.

Sweet Pea doesn’t know who’s more shocked when she says yes, him or Reggie.

He watches them find a place in the crowd, jaw already clenched. He hates how Reggie’s looking at her, hates how low his hands seem to be, hates how they’ve danced to three songs already.

He hates how close their faces are like they’re about too... kiss?

Reggie’s leaning in, Y/N’s smiling, Sweet Pea feels like someone’s crushing his chest.

And just when he’s sure it’s about to happen, she pushes him away. One hard shove to the shoulders followed by a swift knee to groin, he thinks he hears her say something about being worth more than a bet.

Sweet Pea’s never been more proud of his best friend.

He’s still laughing when she finds her way back to him, about to tell her how satisfying it was to see when she interrupts him with her lips on his.

It’s a kiss he wasn’t expecting. And one he certainly won’t forget.

“What was that for?” He asks breathless, one hand on her cheek. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you?” He kisses her again to show he agrees.

Riverdale Winter Bingo Masterlist

Forever Taglist: @p-marie-sp

Sweet Pea Taglist: @80sand90simagine @wildberryyyy @hopelesslylosttheway

#riverdale #riverdale winter bingo #riverdale bingo #riverdale au #riverdale reggie mantle #riverdale sweet pea #riverdale imagine #riverdale one shot #sweet pea #riverdale fanficton #sweet pea x reader #sweet pea au #sweet pea fanfiction #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea one shot #reggie mantle #reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle au

[riverdale-retread]

I posted 57 times in 2022

30 posts created (53%)

27 posts reblogged (47%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mothmanchronicler

@storkmuffin

@imreallytryinghelp

@taratantsi

@theultimatewildcard

I tagged 38 of my posts in 2022

Only 33% of my posts had no tags

#riverdale opinion - 18 posts

#riverdale season 6 - 15 posts

#riverdale episode recap - 10 posts

#jughead jones - 8 posts

#riverdale recap - 7 posts

#tabitha tate - 6 posts

#reggie mantle - 6 posts

#veronica lodge - 4 posts

#anti fangs fogarty - 4 posts

#jabitha - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i've had notes on this forever and the airing of the season 6b promos in the us finally gave me the kick in the pants i needed to write this

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

what would the other riverdale characters' heaven be if they had died in the plague of the first borns?

the show picked the easier characters to construct heaven for. polly died after a miserable destitute single motherhood so her heaven would obviously be being mistress of a thriving thornhill with five babies. jughead suffered childhood food insecurity and career failure plus all his childhood intimate relationships betrayed him without exception so his heaven is as a successful aroace writer permanently residing in his favorite diner. we saw alice’s heaven when polly died - her three kids stepford-perfect while crowding ecstatically next to her as she plays mozart on the piano in a world where hal doesn't exist. kevin's heaven was shown in Vale to be as a Broadway star with Fangs as his manager boyfriend subservient.

but what is Veronica’s heaven? Betty's? Reggie’s? Cheryl’s? Tabitha’s?

15 notes - Posted August 7, 2022

#4

Riverdale S6 E2 (Rivervale Ch 2)

Happy New Year (this is being drafted Wk 1,  2022).  My ‘reading’ Rivervale as a fanfic of Riverdale continues!

Alternate Universes that fic writers come up with can be completely hypnotizing if you the reader are on the same wavelength. By the same token, fanfic using alternative universes can be utterly alienating if it’s not a thing you’re into.  For this installment, I must say that I was on the Read, Regret and Move On side of the dividing line for this AU that is Rivervale. Horror is not a favorite genre and because I find the myth of La Llorona as presented here kind of retrograde and boring. But! As a deliberate exploration of misogynist tropes that bind women characters in fiction this installment was very fascinating to analyze. 

16 notes - Posted January 3, 2022

#3

Riverdale S6B, Ep #101 (“Unbelievable”)

Hello people I am back. Spoilers and gratuitous longing for Sweet Pea follow. 

A bomb blew up the Andrews house to smithereens but the Cooper house is completely unscathed.  I don’t know why that strikes me as less creepy than the fact that Alice Cooper is wearing her hair exactly like her surviving daughter’s.

See the full post

19 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

#2

Riverdale Episode 6.5 (Rivervale Finale)

In the final chapter of this fanfic-within-the-canon that has been the ride through Rivervale, there’s a truly Herculian effort to resolve the in-AU storylines that have received varying levels of development, and an attempt to tie it all back to Riverdale, to which we will return. And a lot of it is very witty and so much of this episode encapsulates what I so love about Riverdale the show as a piece of entertainment. 

See the full post

19 notes - Posted February 23, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Riverdale S6B, Ep #102 (“Death at a Funeral”)

See the full post

22 notes - Posted April 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[n0-eyedtaissa]

Lethal Charm: Chapter Two (Serial Killer!Reggie Mantle AU)

Disclaimer: This story is in no way intended to romanticize Bundy or his crimes, all details about victims and their death have been tweaked and changed out of respect for the deceased + as a loose attempt to follow canon.

Warnings: Mentions of drinking/smoking, blood, depictions of violence/death.

Word Count: 6,634

A police siren rings out in high-pitched bleats that are long and loud enough to make people in the surrounding areas press their palms flat against their ears to muffle the sound. Blue and red lights cast over the front of the building, illuminating the circle of squad cars clustered together as they waited for the coroner’s van to pull up to the scene. There usually wasn’t all that much excitement around the UW campus; school security officials held their police scanner radios close to their chests and wished for better circumstances. 

There’s blood on her bed — Midge Klump’s bed. Her pink silk sheets are dried and stuck together from where the blood soaked through the fabric. The dorm room is thick with the smell of it. One of the officers was wondering if the girl bled to death, another said that if the victim bled out, “You’d know. This ain’t nothin’” There’s a white nightgown hung up over one of the drain-pipes, bobbing and weaving on the man-made breeze that came with so many people bounding in and out of the basement bedroom. The fabric is old and weathered, a hole worn into the side seam, a browning ring of dried blood around the neck. A crime scene photographer flits around the room, taking pictures of any and all little inconsistencies, anything that could be used as evidence eventually. 

There’s pictures of the nightgown in the newspaper that week; the dried blood, the broken lock on the basement door. Midge’s pillowcase was gone. So was her backpack and a handful of clothes. Her body was not at the scene of the crime. 

“You listen to me, and you listen good now: The same bastard who attacked that little girl at the beginning of last month has now taken Midge Klump. People saw him. He was outside of both houses.” The city had started up a help line, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for University students and surrounding people of the neighborhood to call in case they remembered something, or came across any other shady behavior. There was a few crank calls, some kids are just bored and downright twisted, but it was mostly helpful information. Suspect was an Asian male, 26 to 28. Little over 6 foot. Muscular build. A few of the neighbors had seen the perp lurking around the area in a little VW Beetle. 

Midge Klump was the textbook definition of a “Nice Girl”. She was bread and butter, had a small but tight-knit family that mattered to her more than anything. Never having been the girl in the spotlight, Midge flourished in college, no longer kept at bay by fruitless fake friends turned home-town enemies. She let her hair down, found her voice; when she got to the University of Washington she decided to do things that would challenge her comfort zone. The first week of school she got her hair cut short by a student beautician in the lounge of the girl’s dormitory, the next week she found herself writing her name and phone number down on the sign-up sheet for the university’s theatre program, and after smoking a little bit of pot, Midge actually had the guts to audition. She’s first understudy in the Spring Musical…it hits a little too close to home, but she’s always appreciative that she’s even able to be apart of the action. 

She was diligent and hard working; never all that much of partier, always made sure she got a recommended eight hours of sleep, always was looking bright-eyed at her professors as she sat in the front row for their early morning lectures. Midge was full of promise and life, something that was agreed upon by anyone who encountered her, regardless of their relation to her. She was a pillar in the inner-workings of the UW theater troupe, helped with the outreach program in place at the local elementary school; Midge liked helping the kids out so much that on Monday she bounded into the admin building asking for the paperwork to fill out to declare her major in Child & Adolescent Development Studies. Midge thought she was gonna be an actress…and a teacher…and a Mother. She would have been great at anything she set her sights on. She could have been, but that was taken from her. 

After it happened, the police made a comprehensive timeline of Midge’s whereabouts leading up to her disappearance. The cops were trying to cover all of their bases, talking to all of Midge’s friends and housemates, her shift supervisor, her store manager, her professor; anyone who had seen her in the hours before her disappearance. The officers were aggressive, trying to leave no stone unturned as they grilled on about Midge’s life, asking if there was anyone who would want to hurt Midge. Each person that was questioned swore up and down that Midge didn’t have any enemies, that she wasn’t that kind of girl. Whether their statements were a correct testimony to the circumstances behind the girl’s disappearance was a different story though, because the police pressed on further. There was a big suspect board tacked up on the bulletin board down at the station, though it was looking a little blank. Midge’s senior portrait from high school was posted up in the middle of it all, blue string connecting to the crime scene photos; the bloodied nightgown swaying eerily from where it was hooked onto the drain pipe, the Midge-shaped indent in a vacant bed, the broken lock — Sheriff said it looked like the perp cut the pad-lock with bolt cutters. Besides the old portrait of the missing girl and the sparse number of crime scene photos, the only other solidified evidence the police were working with was an outline of the victim’s confirmed whereabouts:

[1:35 PM] KLUMP leaves place of residence to commence her walk to campus; roommate confirms that victim was running late. [1:50 PM] Victim sets foot on the University of Washington campus, due east towards the Humanities building. [2:00 PM] University Professor MARY ANDREWS confirms that KLUMP was present for attendance and through the class period. [4:45 PM] KLUMP exits building, heads north towards the Student Union [4:50] KLUMP sits down for coffee with KEVIN KELLER, the two started discussions about the upcoming musical theatre production 

—

Midge slung her schoolbag over her shoulder, taking in a deep breath between her teeth as she quickened her pace. A brief glance at her watch was enough to alert her that she was late, officially having left Kevin hanging for approximately three minutes and forty-five seconds. Kevin Keller was a theater major and it was obvious, but despite his grand talents and his ability to match pitch, he saw something in Midge from the first day she walked into the  auditions for Guys & Dolls. He didn’t give her the part of Sarah Brown, but she ended up being the understudy. After one of the dormitory buildings goes under quarantine for mono, Midge ended up in the spotlight for the closing night of the musical; her rendition of "I've Never Been In Love Before” garnered a full standing ovation. Kevin sure had his clipboard handed to him, not casting Midge in the first place. He was determined to rectify that this semester, even if he was doing it for somewhat of a selfish reason: The department head said that if the musical pulled good numbers this season, he'd work with Kevin on a plan for expanding the budget and allotting more funds to be applied to costume and set design for future productions. Kevin hated to say it out loud, but he needed Midge. He sees her hobbling towards him across the quad and sends a polite, tight-lipped smile her way as he waited for her to approach. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Midge apologizes, fluttering into the area on a gust of wind. She huffs and reaches a frazzled hand up to pet down the loose hairs of her bangs, flinging her book bag onto the wooden table, “My Professor decided that the perfect time to hand back midterm papers was the last five minutes of a three hour class and demanded to talk to everybody about the grade that they got”. Midge rolled her eyes before smoothing down the back of her skirt in order to sit across from Kevin. He finds her personality to be endearing but this was more of a business meeting than a friendly gathering and Kevin meant business. 

“That’s not a problem,” Kevin brushes off her tardiness with a homegrown smile and a small sip of his cappuccino. “I actually had something that I had been meaning to discuss with you…about the upcoming musical.” 

Midge’s eyebrow raised in inquisition, “Did you and Fogarty decide on what production’s gonna be put on?” It’d been a point of tension for the small troupe of students for a few months now, since people started hearing whispers about casting rumors. 

Kevin sat up a little straighter and cleared his throat, “On behalf of the entire theater department, I’d like to —informally— announce that this spring we’ll be putting on a production of,” Kevin does a mock drumroll against the table, “Bye Bye Birdie!” His megawatt smile beams over at Midge as she clapped her hands excitedly. 

“Oh that’s so exciting!” She tittered, the toes of her sandals tapping excitedly against the pavement. Midge was quite pleased, two weeks ago when the little paper ballots were handed out, she checked the little box besides the classic show before folding it neatly in half and handing it to Kevin. The group was an uneven split and Midge was sure that the co-director’s choice was going to win the draw, but she was in luck! 

The initial excitement wore off pretty fast, and as the two college sophomores knew virtually nothing about each other besides a shared joy for acting, things quickly grew awkward. Kevin looked across the table at Midge, who’s smile had faded to more of a grimace. “And!” He clapped his hands together like one of the excited tour guides that led groups of potential students around the school grounds. 

“And?” Midge questions, eyebrow raising with inquisition. 

“I wanted to talk to you about casting,” Kevin started earnestly. “I know that with the last production you were a little upset by the fact that we stuck you with the role of first understudy, but you came through when we needed you to the most and absolutely blew the house down, so I was wondering…” He paused for emphasis and took a quick glance over at Midge to gauge her reaction, “Would you do us all the honors of being our Kim?” 

Part of Midge wanted to refuse the offer, to rub it in Kevin’s face a little more now after all of the times that Kevin took advantage of her. But she knew that she had talent, no matter how many times she wasn’t the one in the spotlight; now she had had the chance to show everyone the skills she had been working so hard on since the winter musical. “I’d love nothing more!” She sighs, feeling dreamy before giving Kevin a quick embrace. The two make idle chatter about auditions and rehearsal schedules before Kevin excuses himself and lets Midge get on with the rest of her day. 

__

[5:40 PM] KLUMP exits school grounds and begins her walk back to place of residence. [5:50 PM] Victim is offered a ride home from roommate, GINGER LOPEZ, approximately six blocks away from their shared house at 5823 Healy Avenue. LOPEZ and KLUMP commence their drive and arrive back on Healy Ave around [6:00PM]. [6:10 PM] KLUMP retreats to her bedroom, located in the basement of the residence. [8:00PM] Both KLUMP and LOPEZ exit the premises, with LOPEZ driving the two the local college bar, The Maple Club. 

—

The sound of the gravel crunching under the car’s tires is enough to make Midge wince and grit her teeth, her knuckles having gone white after holding on for dear life as her housemate sped along the main road as the two girls made their way to the old college bar for an after-school pint. 

“Remind me to never drive with you when you’re angry” Midge huffed, flipping down the sun visor to check her hair in the small mirror. She pulls her tube of lipstick out from her pocket and purses her lips as she applies the shimmery pink tint. 

Ginger wasn’t listening, which didn’t come as a surprise to Midge as she hoisted herself up and out of the vehicle, pausing to smooth down the back of her skirt and check out her reflection in the window. The short-haired girl watches as Ginger stomps out her cigarette, and soon the two girls are locking their arms together and preparing to take the nightlife by storm. 

When the two girls cross over the bar’s threshold, their senses are accosted by the bitter smell of smoke and the static boom of voices as they tried to overpower the loud, smooth rock music that was playing over the blown-out speakers. 

“Look who it is” Ginger leans down to whisper-yell into Midge’s ear, gesturing to a handsome young man sipping frothy beer from a frosted glass. 

—

 [8:30] LOPEZ confirms that the victim was spotted with long-time suitor, MARMADUKE, “MOOSE” MASON, no history of violence, harassment, or foul play. 

—

Moose Mason was a nice boy. Homegrown, the kind of man that most girls would dream of bringing home to their mother and father. He was a pressed linen shirt and a white picket fence, an old beat-up Ford truck that he spent the summer after high school fixing with his father. He was meat and potatoes. Moose Mason was good. He met Midge when he was recruiting potential new brothers from his fraternity; asked her if she wasn’t a part of any school sororities because they’d all be competing to have a pretty girl like her. Moose Mason was clumsy, heartfelt, not good with words but never shying away from expressing his hopes and dreams. It took him over a month to ask Midge out on a date: The two went dancing at the Maple Club and he was a perfect gentlemen. Moose didn’t drink anything because he wanted to make sure he’d be able to get Midge home safe. Didn’t smoke, didn’t try to make a move on her (though he did give Midge a goodnight kiss on the cheek after walking her back to her front door). His Christian methods of courtship were proving to be lackluster to Midge. She was waiting for someone to take her breath away, someone to sweep her off her feet and break her out of her suburban comfort zone. Moose Mason wasn’t quite there yet, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop trying. 

“You look real pretty tonight, Midgie” Moose says as he walks up to the pair of girls, drunk on confidence and Coors Lite as he teetered, slinging a heavy arm around the short-haired girl’s shoulders.

“You don’t look too bad yourself, Mason” Ginger scoffs, rolling her eyes as she pulls out a cigarette. Moose laughs at the pinch-faced girl but can’t help but waft the air around him to clear the thick stream of smoke. "Find me when you’re ready to spend some time with more exciting people” 

Midge nods, silently preparing herself for the damage control she would have to face with the backlash of her roommate’s harsh words. But like always, Moose Mason is there standing tall, with his puppyish brown eyes and his sad smile.

“I’m sorry about her, must be her time of the month” She fibs, biting at her painted lips. 

Moose chuckles, “No, I think she’s always that unpleasant”

Midge is taken aback by the young man’s sudden bout of unabashed honesty, so much so that her gut reaction is to laugh loudly and without regard for who may hear her. She shuts up quickly and claps a hand over her mouth. Moose has a wry look on his face and it confuses Midge because she didn’t think he had a mean bone in his body. It didn’t suit him, but maybe that’s what made it so much more enticing. She lets Moose buy her a beer, lets herself be led onto the dance floor, lets him rest his hands on her backside as they swayed to the in-house band. 

—

[9:45PM] LOPEZ confirms seeing MARMADUKE MASON exit the MAPLE CLUB, sans KLUMP. LOPEZ claims that KLUMP was spotted in a darker corner of the bar with an unknown man: Handsome, over 6-foot, dark hair & eyes. NAME UNKNOWN]

—

Midge dangles her feet off of the tall barstool as she watches Ginger flirt unabashedly with the fraternity meatheads that were always regulars at the Maple Club. She watches how the guys leaned into Ginger when she spoke, a protective hand covering the small of her back. It’s not that Midge needed the attention, or that she wanted it even, just that it seemed to come so easy to her roommate. Watching Ginger tote one of her suitors to the back corner of the bar to feel her up, Midge can’t help but sigh.  When Moose Mason left the Maple Club early that evening, he barely gave Midge a kiss goodbye. She got a half-hearted peck on the cheek and a side-hug. Knowing how old-fashioned the boy was, this behavior made sense, but Moose treated her less like someone he wanted to date, and more like a sister or a cousin. All Midge wanted was to feel desirable, to feel beautiful and confident after all of her adolescent years spent in the shadows of her so called “friends” from grade school. Her head hands low and woeful as she watches the couples dancing under the red lights to the music of the surprisingly good in-house band. 

“Is this seat taken?” A smooth voice knocks Midge out of her self-deprecating trance. When she looks up, she’s surprised to see a tall, handsome man smiling down at her. 

“It’s yours now” She smiles politely, glancing away from the man and assuming that he was most likely waiting for some beautiful girl he was on a date with.  

“You come here often?” The man asks again, with more intent, shifting his weight towards Midge as he sits atop the rickety barstool. 

“Sometimes, yeah” Midge answers honestly, “Though I’m not usually alone” She gestures broadly to her roommate Ginger at the other side of the bar, who was letting her suitor feel her up over her turtleneck sweater. 

“Well, you’re not alone now, are you?”  The handsome man smirks at Midge and she finds herself leaning in closer and opening herself up for conversation. She looks up at the stranger dreamily and takes in his appearance: Statuesque build, broad shoulders, clean-cut with his shirt tucked in and his hair slicked back. Pretty, pursed lips that would make the cosmetology students jealous, a smirk that made Midge weak in the knees. 

“I guess not” She giggled in response, toying with a lock of her cropped hair. 

“I’m Reginald” He skips over his last name but Midge doesn’t think anything of it, moving forward with introductions to give the man her name and to talk about college-related things, like choice of major and prospective carer paths. 

Reginald was a photography student, though his father wished that he would have chosen to study law like the rest of the men in his family. The way Reginald spoke about his father, it was clear that there was some resentment there, but it wasn’t anything Midge felt comfortable pushing as she knew it wasn’t her business. 

“I bet you have a really good artistic eye!” She pipes up, trying to ease some of the tension. “I’d love to see some of your work someday…” She hopes that the prospect of seeing each other another time doesn’t come on too strong for Reginald, the last thing she wanted to do was seem desperate and pushy, especially with someone as handsome and charming as he was. 

“I’d quite like that” There was a twinkle in Reginald’s eye that she couldn’t seem to place, but it made her feel hopeful nonetheless. 

The two carried on conversation for the better part of a few hours, laughing and talking casually while exchanging freshman year horror stories and hometown gems. When Reginald asked if he could buy her a drink, she wanted to be coquettish and refuse, but she didn’t, not wanting to run the risk of offending the man and scaring him. That one pint turned into a whole pitcher, and Midge was feeling loose and bubbly, not even ashamed to say that she was playing in to Reginald’s relentless flirting. 

Every so often Midge would cast her gaze towards Ginger, in part just to check in, but because she wanted to brag about being courted by a looker like Reginald. "Find me when you’re ready to spend some time with more exciting people” Ginger told Midge when the two girls split ways, and that was exactly what she did. 

“So you said you were an actress?” Reginald cocks a curious eyebrow at Midge, leaning in closer to hear her over the music. He seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, which was refreshing to her. 

Midge laughs at the notion. “You’re looking at the University Theater Department’s favorite first understudy.” She shrugs and takes a hearty swig of her beer.

“Wow, I’m honored to be with such esteemed company” Reginald jokes, giving a megawatt smile. 

“If you must know,” She starts, laughter bubbling up in her throat as she continued, “Opening night of the Spring Musical, I came to the rescue when the leading lady came down with a bad case of mono. Blew the house down and received the only standing ovation!” Midge gives a comical bow when Reginald starts clapping.

“Thank you for gracing us with your presence tonight, Miss Big-Shot Actress” Reginald laughs, lacing his fingers with hers as their hands sat on top of the sticky covered bar. “You know, all the big time actresses have really nice headshots. Glamour shots, they’re called — It’s what you send to casting directors when you audition for the movies” His thumb massages the back of Midge’s hand as he explained.

“They’d never put me in the movies” Midge looked down at her feet to avoid Reginald’s eyes when she felt the heat creep up her neck as she blushed. 

He hooks a finger under Midge’s chin, tilting her face towards him and forcing her to maintain eye contact with him, like he wanted to make sure that his words would mean something and be remembered. “You’re beautiful, Midge. Don’t deny it to yourself.” She doesn’t refute it, shy away from it, or say thank you; Midge nods to herself, like she was trying her best to process it and take his words to heart. 

The conversation flows easier as Midge continued to emerge from her shell, but as soon as she was feeling more confident, there was Ginger waving wildly at her from the other side of the bar. The girl gestured towards the exit, hoping that she was good enough at playing charades to convert her message to Midge. It worked of course, because Ginger was flapping her arms very obviously so it was impossible for Midge not to notice. Reginald was talking animately about a debate that sparked up in his psychology intro course, but Midge was only really half-listening, as she was more concerned with how she was supposed to interject and remove herself from the conversation. 

“A-are you…?” Reggie breaks from his long-winded monologue and picks up on Midge’s hesitation, turning over his shoulder just as Ginger whips around as to not be noticed. Midge feels her face heat up with embarrassment, but Reginald acts cooly. “Duty calls?” He questions with a chuckle and another knee-buckling smirk.

“Something like that…” Midge bites at her lip as she stands up and smooths down the back of her skirt. Folding her jacket over her arm, she grabs a dry napkin from the bar and writes down her phone number with her brown eyeliner pencil. “You should call me sometime…” Midge blushes as she looks up at the tall man standing in front of her. 

He raises his eyebrows in surprise, not having been used to this kind of confidence radiating from the young woman. For most of their conversation it had been Reginald who had been putting in the extra effort, asking Midge questions about school and about the theater program. “I’d like that.” He quips as the short-haired girl gazes up at him hungrily. “Maybe I can help you out with those headshots.” he gestures to the camera bag at his side. 

A blush raised to Midge’s cheeks when he hands her over his ballpoint pen, prompting her to grab one of the square, white bar-napkins to write down her phone number. “You promise you’re gonna call?” She pulls her hand away a little.

“Scout’s honor” Reginald smirks, holding up the three-finger salute. “Hell, I’ll even call you right when I get home just so you know I’m the real deal.”  

“I’ll hold you to that, Reginald!” Midge quips with a coy smile, leaning to give the young man a final kiss on the cheek before retrieving Ginger and retreating to the car. 

—

[11:30PM] KLUMP and LOPEZ exit tavern, return to residence at approximately [11:40] Fellow resident of the home, MELODY VALENTINE, confirms talking to both KLUMP and LOPEZ in the kitchen following their return. Both women recount KLUMP taking an unknown phone call.

—

The ride back to the small house on the Healy Avenue was quiet, with Ginger gabbing on incessantly about the boys she was getting on with that evening, about how some showboat boy with a football scholarship was going to escort her to her sorority formal. Midge nodded along politely, knowing when to appease her friend with quiet affirmations though she wasn’t really listening. She nabs a sleek, long cigarette from the pack in Ginger’s purse and lights it up, ignoring the curious stare she receives, never really having been a smoker. Exhaling a dainty plume of smoke out the car window, Midge can’t help but ruminate on the events of her day: First Kevin gets over his own pride and offers her the lead in the musical, and then at the bar that same evening she was lucky enough to catch the attention of a person as grand as Reginald. Midge couldn’t help but feel as if something was different this time, it was like he saw her, saw her for what she truly was. She pulls a little too hard on the cigarette and sputters out a cough. It humbles her a little bit, pulls her back to the reality where she was just a small-town understudy and he was another good looking boy who only chatted her up because he was too drunk to know better. Midge tosses the butt out the window of the moving car and focuses her gaze on the grid-work of light poles and electrical towers, fully convincing herself that she would never hear from Reginald again. 

When the two girls pull up in front of the household, they exit the car quietly and stumble inside through the side door of the house, which led through Midge’s basement bedroom. The two girls are in a fit of giggles as they make their way to the main floor of the house, both in dire neat of some carbs to soak up the alcohol. Midge peeks around the corner stealthily, not wanting to disturb or wake up one of her other three housemates in case they had called in an early night. Things were going all fine and good until Ginger’s heel gets the best of her and her ankle rolls, twisted up in the carpet. She lets out a small yelp as she falls to the side and grabs the wall for support to recover. Midge claps a hand over her mouth when she hears a doorknob turning from down the hall.

“What kind of trouble are you two getting in now?” Another housemate, Melody Valentine asked, clearly irritated at the disturbance. Pulling her tortoiseshell glasses from their resting place on the tip of her nose, Melody takes in the sight of Midge: the pink tint to her cheeks, the glimmer in her eye, “What’re you all smilin’ about?” She questions again with no detectable malice laced in her tone like before. 

“Our girl Midge met a boy tonight and he was a real looker, definitely puts Moose to shame,” Ginger hiccuped. 

Her comment is received with a pointed look from Midge, leading Ginger to grimace as she limped back up the hallway to get herself a glass of water. The phone rings suddenly and the intake of Midge’s breath is audible. It wasn’t him, it couldn’t be. She had convinced herself that she was just another girl that Reggie would forget by morning. The phone lets out three more sharp bleats before Midge hesitantly reaches her hand for the receiver;

“Hello?” She whispers, her throat feeling dry from anxiety of it all. 

“Scout’s Honor,” It takes Midge a minute to put the pieces together, but she knows it’s Reginald, the same smooth-talking boy she had met a few hours earlier. He promised to call her and he did. “I’m a man of my word, what can I say?” 

“Reginald” She’s beaming as she wraps the red plastic chord between her fingers as she presses the receiver even closer to her ear, wanting to be even closer to him. “I didn’t think you were gonna call…” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Reggie mutters like it was ludicrous that Midge would think otherwise.“You were the prettiest in the whole room tonight…The Actress. You’ve got it.”

“Got what?” Midge pinches herself because at that point, she can’t help but think that she was dreaming. 

“Star power.”

There’s a beat of silence as Midge tries to regain her breath, heart swelling in her chest as she pressed the phone receiver even closer to her ear. “I don’t have star power” She denies it adamantly, not because she believed it, but so he would say it again. 

“Yes, you do, Midge. You do.” Reggie’s breath is heavy through the phone receiver and it gives Midge chills down her spine. “You should take me up on that offer, I think I could capture you well” 

“Your offer?” The beer and the anxiety have her thoughts swimming.

“Headshots, I’m a photographer. You were telling me all about how excited you are about the upcoming musical, imagine how great it would feel for you to open the programs and see a fresh, new picture of your pretty face” Reggie hums contently on the other line, like he too was picturing it, dreaming of it.

“It’s a nice offer and all, but if you’re half as good of a photographer as you say, there’s no way I could pay you” Midge can’t help but feel guilty, like she was waiting the time of the gorgeous man that she met earlier that evening. She was expecting the conversation to come to a halt after this, that Reggie would make some excuse as to why he needed to go, and it would be mutually understood that the longevity of their relationship was over as soon as the dial tone hit. 

“If it means I get to see you again, Midge, I’ll do it for free” Reginald lays the charm on thick but Midge can’t help but happily lap it up. Something about the way he talked to her — about her— made her feel more confident, sultry even. It made her think that she was successful in reinventing herself. The old Midge wouldn’t let some stranger get her in front of a camera, she tells herself, pushing away her anxieties in hopes of a romantic new beginning. 

“You want to see me again?” Midge questions, chastising herself immediately for her lapse in self-confidence. 

“Definitely” Reginald promises. 

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Midge stutters over the line. “If you’re free maybe we can get a bite to eat — or something? If you’re busy that’s okay too, I understand.” The minute she asks the question she backtracks immediately, somehow still under the assumption that Reginald would refuse. 

“I’m free” Reginald replies cooly. “What’s your address, I’ll come and pick you up. What d’you say, 4 o’clock?” 

“5823 Healy” Midge says too quickly before recovering, “I’ll see you at four o’clock sharp, Reginald” She tries to sound flirtatious but isn’t sure if it’s working for her. The man on the other end of the line laughs, low and even, sending a wave of nervous butterflies taking flight. 

“I’ll be there, Midge” He promises 

“Scout’s Honor?” She posits, calling back to their little joke from earlier. 

“Exactly”

—

Witnesses LOPEZ and VALENTINE confirm that after taking her phone call, KLUMP retreated to her basement bedroom of the residence, approx. [12:25 AM]. This is KLUMP’s last known whereabouts. 

—

He only lived three blocks away. He liked it better that way, it gave him easier access to Midge, made it easier to watch the girl from afar. If this was going to work, he needed to stick to his comfort zone. This wouldn’t be like last time. It’s what he tells himself as he sits three rows behind her in the lecture hall, when he trails the girl as she walks across the University campus to meet up with her theater friend. He passes Midge casually and walks to deposit his check from work, but the girl was gone once he circled back. 

Running into her at the Maple Club was a complete coincidence; or maybe by some stoke of luck it was fate. He knew that Midge would be receptive to his advances, though he figured he would have to work a lot harder. 

He almost felt bad, that there would be no date for the two of them to go on. 

When Reginald hung up the telephone, there was a sick sort of excitement pulsing deep through his veins. Adrenaline and anxiety were a deadly mixture. Well, not for Reginald…

He flits around the dimly lit garage as he gathers his materials. The black duffle bag was filled with everything Reggie thought he would need in this situation: wool ski mask, leather gloves, nylon stockings, bolt cutters, and red handled ice pick. A crowbar in case she tried to fight back. White clothesline rope, an orange electrical cord, strips of thinly torn bedsheets, and a pair of handcuffs as methods of restraining her. Trash bags and a small bottle of bleach for the clean-up process. Slinging the back over his shoulder, Reggie opens the garage door as quietly as possible. He starts the engine of the old VW Beetle and sits in silence as he made the quick drive three blocks over to the house on Healy Avenue. He kills the headlights when he turns into the courtyard. Parks three houses down as to not garner any suspicion. Before he exits the vehicle, Reggie pulls down the sun-visor and checks his reflection in the small mirror. He runs a hand through his hair and he smiles. 

He pulls the ski mask over his head and everything changes and suddenly he is angry and he is invincible. 

His footfalls are trained and quiet as he approaches 5823. He knows he’ll have to jump the gate. He knows that there’s a side door to Midge’s basement bedroom. When he hoists himself over the cherrywood fence he tries to be as quiet as possible, waiting an achingly long moment before making his next move, just in case a neighbor’s unsuspecting ear perked up at the noise. The bolt cutters work quickly and quietly through the metal padlock on the basement door, but again he waits to make his next move, trying his best to not wake up Midge (who he assumed was sleeping close by). Reggie moves at an agonizingly slow pace as he tries to open the basement door. Inch by inch he twists the rusty knob, the excitement bubbling now that he knew his favorite part was starting.

Who can be the quietest? It used to be Reggie’s favorite game to play as a child; taught to him by his mother as she held him close to her chest, the two of them sitting on the floor of the closet while his father went on another one of his drunken rampages. 

It was a skill that proved to be helpful to many situations such as this, because by some grace of good luck he was inside the basement with the door closed behind him and somehow Midge hadn’t even moved a muscle. Reggie paused again, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He takes in the appearance of the room: the cold cement walls and the water heater, the bedsheets she hung over the grey in order to give the place a little more life. Christmas lights, the good kind, the ones that popped and cracked like glass when you threw them. Midge had pictures and posters, a stack of records that was collecting dust.

And then there was Midge. 

She slept on her stomach with her long arms wrapped around her pillow, and Reggie can see her nightgown from where the duvet pulled up around her legs. He watches her worry-free features and feels a deep sort of pleasure knowing that she would never see this coming. He sets his duffle bag on the ground with a thump and Reggie’s heart drops to his stomach, thinking this would be the moment that he blew his cover. Heavy sleeper, Reggie noted as he heard nothing but a snore from Midge. He picks up a stray pillow from the floor and looks at it in his hands. 

It was like she was making this too easy… 

Reggie moved suddenly, shoving her sleeping body to flip her over onto her stomach; he wanted things to get a little bit more interesting. In wake of the movement Midge had become more alert now, eyes snapping open at the sudden weight present on top of her. With a quick movement, Reggie presses the feather pillow over her face before Midge could do so much as take a breath, not giving her a chance to scream. Her arms and legs flail wildly, trying to make contact with Reggie as her fight or flight instincts kicked in. One hand came down to grasp at her throat, the other still holding firm over the pillow. Midge’s nails claw at the old pillowcase, sharp enough to leave runs in the fabric. She manages to get a few good kicks in, and that made him angry. Reggie pulls his ice pick out of his back pocket and there’s a sick sound of skin splitting and blood gushing as he drives it deep into the flesh of her stomach. He repeats the motion again and again until he feels the languidness of her movements, can tell that the flight is almost over. Because when the fight was over, that’s when the real fun began…

#fic: lethal charm #reggie mantle au #midge klump au #reggie mantle fic #riverdale au #serial killer au #riverdale veggie fic #reggie mantle #midge klump #kevin keller #melody valentine #ginger lopez