#archie writers fucked-up moments

[d0d0-b0i]

archie sonic issue 114; what

#currently speedreading all of the main archie sonic comic #and #um….??? #he just disintegrates?? fades away??.? #DEAD?.???… #for months….. #if i was sonic i’d straight up be dying inside like wtf #he just saw his brother die yet not really #archie writers fucked-up moments #sorry i’m just reading and i have to tell SOMETHING lest i go mad

[khruschevshoe]

Jim and Oluwande got the worst end of the deal. I'd even say they regressed as both characters and partners and anything they had built up in s1 was almost completely stripped away from them. The way they're portrayed together and apart in s2 is not only unlike the characters we saw in s1, but their rich storyline was reduced to extreme side characters used only as plot devices in a way they absolutely did not have to be used. I LOVED them in s1, and I was so disappointed by what s2 did to them and their potential growth, which I think applies to pretty much everything in s2, not only them.

Mind if I piggyback of this ask to go into all my critiques of the handling of Jim/Olu in Season 2? Thanks!

OFMD Critique: Tealoranges, Dropped Storylines, and Wasted Potential

God, the issues I have with the writing of Season 2 extend in so many directions. Jim's character, I felt, was well-handled for at least the first two episodes but then slowly starts skewing wrong as early as episode 3 (I am still chewing glass over the way their reunion scene with Oluwande was written- or, rather, NOT written). Episode 4 was good, but everything after that? Someone said that Jim in the back half of the season feels more like Vico than Jim, and though I do love and appreciate Vico, it's completely true. Jim doesn't feel like the same character we've come to know, whether from Season 1 or even what is set up in early season 2.

And yet, I STILL feel like they're written better than Olu, if you can believe it? So, I haven't talked about this much, but I feel like Olu is done dirty from almost the moment he is introduced in Season 2. At least Jim (through editing alone, but hey, we'll give the show the smallest benefit of the doubt) gets an acknowledgement that they miss Olu during that flashback sequences while they talk to Archie- Olu doesn't even get that. I read about a deleted scene that would have had Pete and Olu desperate to reunite with Lucius and Jim in episode 1 and I feel like that was DESPERATELY needed to make the Season 1 finale -> Season 2 jump make any sort of sense. I like Zheng, but for the love of God, her romance with Olu (which I had my own issues with for the disservice it does both their characters) is not worth destroying the tealoranges build up from Season 1. Just cut something from the first episode or one of the Zheng/Olu scenes from the second episode to make it make sense.

Then, moving onto later in the season- I've posted about how Olu and Jim deserved the grand, epic reunion otherwise 1x10 and everything set up with them in Season 1 doesn't make sense. Could the writers of the show have possibly redistributed some of the glorious cinematography from Ed and Stede over to Jim and Olu? All I need is one shot of their reunion (a proper, emotional one, not played for laughs or friendship or whatever) framed by the sun to parallel Ed and Stede's being framed by the moon and I would have been happy on that front.

And then later in the season...I was down for the poly elements if they could have been executed better. Fanfics have shown that the Archie plot could have been executed well. But the fact that Zheng is straight up NOT MENTIONED until 2x7 by Olu? And then Jim says that he's been pining for her the whole time? I'm sorry, but it doesn't compute. Show, don't tell. There's a reason why I'm down for Jim/Archie/Olu (if executed well), but can't see Zheng/Olu at all.

But of course, 2x7 comes along and we get the "family who fucked" line. And the implication that Olu could have ever left the Revenge without Jim, when in Season 1 he became a wreck because Jim left for A FEW DAYS, much less was FORCEFULLY SEPARATED from him for MONTHS. Then in the finale, at the lupete wedding, they were separated out, him with Zheng and them with Archie, and, well, at that point...I was tired. I'm not gonna lie. Because this wasn't questionable or problematic writing, it just fundamentally DIDN'T MAKE SENSE.

And this is just on a romantic relationship POV. I hated seeing Olu lose his leadership arc from Season 1 and his loyalty to Jim and his nuanced emotional level-headedness/sense of logic. Season 1 really felt like it was slowly building up the idea that the ideal Captain was neither Stede nor Blackbeard but someone a bit more rational, a bit more grounded, a bit more communicative with his crew- someone like Olu. And he gets shoved into the back in Season 2 and reduced to the guy who can't sort scrolls or know that the BOATS ON A MAP MATTER. He gets no influence on plot or major decisions when he was often the voice of reason in Season 1 (we all remember Lucius being a romantic voice of reason in Season 1, but rarely remember that Olu was a major supporting deciding factor in a number of decisions made on the Revenge).

And as for Jim, I wanted more exploration or even just acknowledgement of their trauma post episode-4. I wanted an actual organic continuation of their character arc post-vengeance quest and post-Blackbeard, not just them getting defined by "funny knife thrower with a girlfriend and an ex-boyfriend who they want to get with his crush." They were so much more than that, and it killed me to see the two people who were basically main character 3 and 4 in Season 1 get shoved aside for unneeded subplots about Ricky and Zheng or Gentlebeard's three separate breakups when Jim and Olu's plotline had so much more potential than any of that. They weren't just star-crossed lovers- they were a slow burn ship built of absolutely interesting, complicated, and well-developed characters who brought out the best in each other with a DEVASTATING midpoint to their arc and it honestly would have made a better season not just for them as characters, but for the show overall if someone had just realized that the parallels between a couple that fights and claws to stay together no matter what (tealoranges) and a main ship that was still figuring itself out (Gentlebeard) would have SLAPPED.

(I am now picturing a version of this season where instead of the Izzy fakeout death/Gentlebeard reunion in the beginning of the first episode, we get an Olu/Jim reunion in episode 3 to parallel whatever reunion the writers wanted to slap together for Stede/Ed. I would have actively cried over the Olu/Jim reunion and it would have drastically improved the season.)

#oluwande boodhari #jim jimenez #tealoranges #my asks #ofmd critical #ofmd season 2 #meta #analysis #jim x oluwande #jim x archie x oluwande #rant #just in case #garlicule rides again

[maddytheintrovert]

Ok so OFMD S2 Ep8 spoilers, you’ve been warned.

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So…

What the everloving fuck was that. I just. I am devastated. Ok well I’m happy for Ed and Stede because of course I fucking am. But. What THE EVERLOVING FUCK.

Thoughts:

1- I refuse to let it sink in that a certain someone was gut stabbed and is now buried under a lovely cross (the unicorn leg, the scarf with the ring, get out stop). I will be anxiously awaiting the fanfic writers to fix this. Plz. I’m going to go on Ao3 immediately after I post this.

2- is that dream sequence of Stede’s actually foreshadowing? Because while Izzy does not die at his hand, Izzy dies due to Stede’s plan. Idk.

3- if Izzy doesn’t fucking haunt someone on the crew I’m done. He better show up like the Badmintons to call everyone cocksuckers or I sue.

4-Lucius and Pete got married and that brings me joy (in this pit of despair)

5- aw Ed. ED. I was cackling when he sucked at fishing and Pop pop was ready to fucking beat the shit out of him. Iconic. Also him just staring at the burning ships and being like “stede”. Stop. Also the I love you and the like I saw u do all that “cool” pirate stuff. And BABE. And THE LETTER.

6- Ed pt.2 IZZY AND ED. THAT SCENE STOP. While I don’t feel like Izzy should have died I think he was awesome this episode and definitely like came full character arc this season (the talk with our least favourite pirate wannabe and final words with Ed - I.e., Ed has so much family now. He can just be Ed)

7- Spanish Jackie being awesome and the bit about poison tolerance amongst the hubbies. I love her and the Swede and the Swede is finally getting some fucking respect and love and aw.

8- the seagull on Izzy’s grave. Hey buttons, love u

9- and the quad lives (shoutout to my lovely 4 Jim, Archie, Oluwande and Zheng Yi Sao). Also that moment between Zheng Yi and Auntie. Also Jim patching Auntie up.

10- ok gotta circle back to Izzy and the pirate wannabes chat and how much I love Izzy

11- how are we feeling about ep 8 Bonnet. I personally think he still needs some humbling. Idk because I’m happy about the progress he’s made re being made out to be a failure his whole life and coming to terms with that and becoming this more confident version of himself (I mean he had confidence from Day 1 but he was mighty plagued by all the Shit he went through in his youth). I enjoyed him “trying to protect” Zheng Yi when she wouldn’t run away when the navy because she was mighty fucked over losing Auntie and her crew (which my poor baby). Also I like Zheng Yi calling him out on his bullshit 24/7. But also idk I wanted him to like apologize or smtg because he was being a right dickhead the previous night. Also idk so happy Ed told Stede he loves him but like life’s a dick but so were u Stede… basically I love that Stede is unapologetically himself this season but also sometimes u do need to say ur sorry for being a dickhead.

12- the crew when Izzy died. The look on Jim’s face. Stop. I need to rewatch and look at Al their reactions but Jim’s caught my eye of the pain and sorrow because WE ALL LOVE IZZY NOW.

13- once again, Izzy better haunt someone or I sue

Ok I’m going to go try to not thing about the fact they killed Izzy now. What I don’t believe can’t hurt me or some shit.

#ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 #ofmd spoilers #ofmd #ofmd stede #ofmd izzy #blackbeard ofmd #ofmd 2 #our flag means death #our flag means love #ed x stede #izzy hands #stede fucking bonnet #stede bonnet #jim jimenez #oluwande boodhari #jim x oluwande #zheng yi sao #zheng x oluwande #archie ofmd #archie x jim #lucius spriggs #lucius x black pete #ofmd lucius #izzy hands ofmd #blackbeard #i need therapy #black pete #edward teach #ed teach

[pinkpeccary]

i'm SO SAD because i just wrote a fucking essay about this scene and it just deleted itself. i'm going to attempt to rewrite it. but. very upset.

this is from The Boost Job (season 3, episode 8). Parker screwed up the con by tipping off the mark when she warned Josie, because she didn't want Josie to go down with the rest of the carjackers.

the thing i think is interesting here is Sophie's comment about this being "huge for Parker." she's right, but she's also wrong. she's delayed. there are two other moments this season i want to highlight that are focused on "Parker trying to do the right thing."

the first is in episode 3, The Inside Job: Parker is the one to make the call that they stay and finish the robbery, to prevent the mark from intentionally starting a famine. the focus here is on her choosing Nate's method (helping people) over Archie's (don't get involved).

why is this different? why is it "huge" for Parker to think about the right thing when it comes to helping Josie, but not earlier when it came to stopping a famine?

well, it's been well-established at this point that Parker does care about helping people in context of their work as a team. it's why all of them are there, at least in part. here she is going out of her way to do good, outside of (and in fact, counteractive to) the overall plan.

the second is in the episode right before actually, The Gone Fishin' Job. that's when we get this scene.

there's a version of that post i can't find right now (edit: found it, disregard) pointing out the significance of that moment for Parker's character. that it used to be she wouldn't notice because in order to protect herself she had to drastically narrow who and what she allowed herself to care about. that now she is in a place where she can care.

why isn't this moment factored into Sophie's comment? because Sophie doesn't know. none of them do. while Parker is deleting strangers' medical debt, the others are all busy on other parts of the con, and she wouldn't tell any of them about it because (to her) it's not noteworthy enough to mention. as far as Sophie knows, helping Josie might actually be the first time something like this has happened.

so Sophie's comment makes perfect sense in context, even though we the viewer know it's not necessarily accurate. and i think this is very cool of the writers for a couple reasons:

first, it highlights that no matter how perceptive they are (and Sophie is hands-down the best at reading people) they can still miss things about each other. we know about the medical debt. Sophie doesn't. we only know because the viewer gets to be omniscient in a way the characters can't be. this is really good foreshadowing for Parker's arc in season 5- i have a draft from two years ago i never posted about how her ending up as leader at the end is something that is well-foreshadowed from the beginning (regardless of when the writers officially decided) but Nate doesn't figure it out until the very end, despite being the mastermind. this is a key part of that.

second is that it makes sense for this to be the first time the team realizes this about Parker because it's the first time it affects them. but it's important that it's not the first time we see it because in this case a) it causes problems for the team, and b) it's specifically someone she relates to.

if the first time we saw Parker doing good outside the team was a time when it backfired, even though it all worked out in the end, that would undercut the significance. she's trying to do the right thing, but she's not very good at it yet. instead we know that she's been trying, and it's been working. this time didn't go smoothly, but the other time did. there may have been more examples offscreen.

as for it being someone she relates to, we already know Parker cares about people she sees herself in. we saw it back in The Stork Job in season 1, with the orphans in Serbia. having the scene with medical debt come first is a big deal because she doesn't know anyone involved, doesn't have any specific reason to relate to them. she just helps them because she's there and she can and it's the right thing to do.

which means what happens with Josie actually demonstrates a different type of growth, as compared to The Stork Job- then, when confronted with a reflection of her past trauma, Parker freaked out. she panicked, and she tried to convince Hardison they couldn't do anything to help the rest of the kids and shouldn't try, and then she snuck away to break them out on her own without a plan.

now, with Josie, she doesn't panic. she has a support system and feels safe enough that when she's reminded of past trauma- even though the trauma in question is being abandoned by someone trusted- she doesn't fall back on old survival strategies of cut and run. she approaches the situation with a level head, and while it doesn't quite go as planned, it's a lot less haphazard and chaotic than two years ago.

this is less a sign of Parker growing and changing (though that is a part of it) and more her environment. the fact that she notices and tries to help strangers first, that shows she is allowing herself to care more than she used to. once we know that, the question this episode answers is "but what if the strangers remind her of herself? will her trauma get in the way?"

and the answer is yes, a little bit! it's definitely a factor, and without the personal stake she probably could have handled it better. but also, while it factors into the execution, it doesn't stop her from trying. because she knows that she's not alone anymore.

#ollie talks #leverage #long post #fun fact i learned how to make/edit gifs for this

[harrylovesspaezle]

i love the polycule crew so much

I saw someone say that they hated Jim and Olu's arc in s2 and that it was not 'in character' so i just wanted to put my two cents in.

Yes, in s1 Jim and Olu were very very close, best friends but also dating after a while. They completely trusted each other and it was impossible for anything to get in between that. Until it did. They got separated for a long ass time! Within the time they were apart, they changed. I love how the show portrayed their relationship, and the fact that they went through things separately and still loved each other, just in different ways.

It is so fucking logical and real for them to gravitate towards other people while they were away. Yes O and J had been together previously, but none of them knew if the other was even alive, so they bonded with the people they had at that moment. Jim with the kraken crew and Archie, Olu with the red flag crew and Zheng.

People act as if Jim and Olu's relationship was destroyed and that their s1 personalities did not match up but i disagree! They had to deal with to much shit, of course they changed and maybe grew apart in some ways. I'm just glad they all live in harmony now and that the writers didn't turn it into a love triangle square. I personally loved them and their little polycule arc, I especially liked how they supported Olu to go get himself a girlfriend, that was adorable :)

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd meta #jim jimenez #archie ofmd #oluwande boodhari #zheng yi sao #jim x archie x oluwande #jim x archie x oluwande x zheng #polycule crew

[jaskierx]

I’m so sorry this is going to be a long one!

I watched season 2 all by myself, without dipping my toes in fandom spaces before I was done. It gets overwhelming, so I only look for fans perception after I’m done watching the whole thing because I don’t want to be swayed in my opinions. Can I say I was a bit shocked by the fan reaction to Izzy?

As someone who was distanced from it, this was my take on him.

I consider myself neutral-positive when it comes to him, I don’t hate him at all but he’s not my fav, and I appreciate him because I’ve always liked the unique energy he brought to the show. He was a fantastic antagonist in season 1, and whilst I like his redemption arc in season 2 as a narrative, I wasn’t 100% sold on it on screen because it felt a little too forced on the writers’ part and frankly felt a little too much like sweeping his past behavior under the rug.

Don’t get me wrong, it made complete sense that Ed’s erratic behavior was more of an immediate concern for the crew, but the lack of acknowledgement from Izzy, after things calmed down, of what he himself did to the crew and to Stede left me a little unsatisfied. He let Ed take the brunt of everything although he played a hand in it. He was aware of how he had facilitated Ed’s spiraling though, which I can appreciate, even if the apology came only at his very last scene. The crew didn’t realize what was happening between Ed and Izzy (Jim saying Izzy was Ed’s friend made me roll my eyes, I get it, but I didn’t like them talking about things they don’t see the whole picture of, but it does illustrate their obliviousness about the situation), and they didn’t know Izzy was pushing Ed’s buttons constantly prior to him snapping. They couldn’t have known at all. I guess Izzy decided to make amends through his actions rather than his words, which is great and commendable (although it felt a little like they glossed over said actions), but the lack of acknowledgment is still there.  

Apart from this main gripe, I still liked his arc this season, he made me laugh, I felt for him at times, and I was bummed that he died. But most of all, I didn’t linger too much on Izzy when watching the season because his presence didn’t feel that big to me. He was nicer, had some great and funny moments but still very much felt like a supporting character popping up here and there.

So, you can imagine how surprised I was when I started seeing so many posts about him, what these were about, and certain things have since then kind of stuck with me.

The one I’ll talk about here is how bizarrely nerfed (as in blander) AND buffed Izzy is in a lot of takes I’ve seen. Like… Izzy is manipulative and twist things around a lot to make himself look better (we’ve seen him do that with Stede so many times). Like when he mentioned Ed cutting his leg off because he said he loved him. I don’t remember those things happening as he told them but go off Izzy. Interesting how Ed pulled the trigger but is considered to have cut Izzy’s leg off himself (when we know Jim and Archie did) but Izzy triggering Ed constantly until he snapped to the point of trying to take his own life multiple times is nothing at all in the mind of some fans, don’t you think?

It’s not a bad thing for Izzy to be manipulative at all, I genuinely think it’s great that he has this trait as a character, but takes after takes willfully ignore that and take his words as face value (but in the same breath ignore when Izzy used the shark metaphor to recognize that he fucked up and deserved to be confronted with just how much he fucked up). It’s such a disservice to Izzy. Let him be manipulative! Stop making him out to be this great guy who does nothing wrong! Is it this much to bear to acknowledge that he does shady things? He’s a pirate! Not a precious angel. That’s one of the best part of his character!

As for the buffing part… I can’t lie, I’m bothered that the show planted the seed that Izzy was the brain behind Blackbeard and taught him everything he knew, especially now that I see fan reactions to it. I don’t think this was what they meant to do at all, but it felt like a way to make Izzy this selfless hero which he never was. I think Stede was trying to butter Izzy up so he would help him, and about Izzy being the brain of the operation, who gives a fuck what Rick thinks? Izzy certainly didn’t take the bait and didn’t give a shit, but some Izzy fans took it very seriously apparently.

If anything, it reeks of racism because in his mind of course a brown man can’t think for himself and needs his white first mate to come up with plans for him. It’s really insulting, and I’m really annoyed when I see that some fans ran with it, rewriting Izzy has this badass pirate when his ego and condescending attitude actually exposed him to be the opposite (being outplayed by Stede in 102, losing the duel on a technicality, but still losing it in 106, being such a terrible captain that he gets mutinied right away in 110). It’s been established very early on that Ed is an amazing sailor and a really competent one at that! His instincts are top notch and he’s a great fighter! I don’t know, this rubs me the wrong way. Seeing his accomplishments brushed aside in favor of making Izzy look better is not it. Let Izzy's ego and rage be an obstacle to his growth!

I don’t know, I feel bad for on-screen Izzy. He’s an interesting character but the way people overinflate his importance in the story and turn him into something he’s not, is sad to see.

I’ll stop there because this ask is way too long already and I’m sorry about that. All this to say, I think the writing on Izzy was a little dissonant in some parts, with some attempts at making him more likeable that were successful, and others that could’ve been less shoehorned. For a supporting character though? I’m happy with what they did with him, just bummed out that his fans don’t really want to see him as he is.

don't apologise for sending long asks. i love getting a lil essay in my askbox have no fear

i agree entirely about s1 izzy vs s2 izzy. in s1 he's a great antagonist. he's in the wrong genre of show, he's incredibly repressed, he gets off on being forcefed his own toe, he has bad middle manager energy, he is the human incarnation of wile e coyote, his entire life goal is to split ed and stede up but he's absolutely incapable of stopping himself from accidentally helping them get together. he fascinates me. terrible person. i hate him. great antagonist

and your perspective as someone who did not spend significant amounts of time reading the worst takes you've ever seen during the hiatus is really interesting! like it confirms stuff that has been brought up before about how for example the season feels incredibly izzy-heavy if you're e.g. me but feels a lot more balanced if you're watching without any kind of fandom-related brainrot.

he's an unreliable narrator. we know this and we've known this from day one. the show makes a point to show us that when he's telling ed that stede didn't want to meet him and he misrepresents what he told stede. and yet the lengths some people in this fandom will go to to insist that everything that comes out of his mouth is gospel. like people just accepting at face value that 'izzy has always managed ed's erratic moods' etc when the only evidence for this is [checks notes] izzy himself making that claim. people will go as far as to handwave and assume that things must have happened off screen in a way that backs up izzy's account.

and your point about how all of izzy's flaws and harmful actions get dialled down while he also gets credit for all of ed's successes is spot on. everything harmful that izzy does is handwaved away as 'oh he was acting in ed's best interests' 'he thought he was doing the right thing' 'it doesn't matter that he threatened ed bc what ed did in response was way worse' etc. and then everything that ed achieves is attributed to izzy having taught him all he knows, having been the brains behind the idea of the blackbeard character. and these are inextricably linked - because in this wild fanon version of the show, izzy is fully responsible for all of blackbeard's intelligence and skill, and he and the crew's ability to earn a living completely relies on ed continuing to be blackbeard, so as long as izzy is supposedly acting with the goal of ed continuing to be blackbeard, he's actually being benevolent and looking out for the crew. even if he's selling them out to the navy. even if he's telling ed that he's better off dead than pining for stede.

btw the way folks go on about the duel in s1e6 is the funniest fucking thing. 'but stede cheated 😤 here's a 20 page essay on why izzy actually won' bestie it's a pirate ship not the supreme court, the winner is whoever the crew decides is the winner. (also stede won based on duel rules so. go off i guess)

but yeah i completely get what you mean. and it's a very common feeling. there are plenty of people who liked canon izzy and really want to be able to enjoy him but that enjoyment gets overshadowed by the amount of shite that comes out of the canyon that completely woobifies him and restructures the entire story to fit around their idea that izzy is the protagonist and a longsuffering victim

anyway. if you agreed with this post please send takes to @canonizzyhours 🌻

#asks #anon #ofmd #izzy hands #fandom critical #izzy critical

[ourladyofmaplemurder]

And the award for "Worst Mother in Riverdale" goes to...

I've already spoken before on the similarities between Betty and Cheryl. Their murderous fathers. Their superhuman abilities within the narrative. Their dead siblings.

But today I want to talk about their mothers.

Alice Cooper (Smith) & Penelope Blossom

There are quite a few similarities between Alice and Penelope. (Certainly plenty of sexual tension as well.)

They're both controlling and abusive with their daughters. Over and over they torture their daughters with expectations and cruel lies.

In the end though, only one daughter come out on top.

Sure, Penelope Blossom is a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for poison, but Alice is truly the greater monster, I feel.

Penelope is all aggression and thus, Cheryl is able to respond in kind.

Fuck you, mom! Go live in the barn.

By the time we reach the end of the original timeline, Cheryl is independent of her mother. She proves that she is not taking her shit and, because of this, they're able to have a moment of genuine connection before Penelope goes off to the OG Sisters of Quiet Mercy in the Himalayas.

(Though, the veracity of this is in question considering Penelope doesn't do the sign of the cross properly, but that's speculation for another day.)

Alice, on the other hand, is much more insidious. She exerts her control on Betty, but as soon as Betty bites back, Alice plays the victim. She cries. She makes Betty out to be the villain...and Betty falls for it time and time again.

By the time they reach the end of their arc in Season 6, they're still trapped in that endless cycle of lies and tears. At the end of Season 6, Betty is ready to give up on herself and become Archie's little wife. This wouldn't be the worst end for her, but only because Archie is a good guy. The reality of her existence in this timeline would ultimately keep her in Riverdale under the thumb of her mother, settling for a life she actively fought against. Truly, she would become her mother. She would become 'The Mom Next Door'.

I don't see this happening to Cheryl. Sure, she never leaves Thornhill, but she's herself. She possesses her own destiny. Barring the unrelenting obsession with Toni, Cheryl was really starting to move on and grow.

Betty, if anything, was regressing. She is trapped endlessly.

Now, examining their relationships to their mothers in Season 7 is also worth mentioning. What I can say is that Betty and Alice are very much repeating the same cycle. Cheryl and Penelope still have an openly antagonistic relationship, but Penelope is taken off the board before their relationship can really go anywhere.

We can assume things would play out the same way. After all, Riverdale is about cycles, after all.

Alice lied about the body under the table, as revealed in Season 5. This body's existence proves that she at least had reason to suspect Hal as the Black Hood. Yet, she says nothing. We can only assume this was to preserve her "perfect nuclear family" picture as long as possible. Ultimately fruitless, but also deeply selfish.

(Yes, I am well aware that the writers were making things up as they went along and thus, Alice likely had no idea there was a body under her dining room floor back in season 2, but we must examine the facts as we know them now.)

Alice also lied to go under cover for the FBI, never once letting Betty in on the truth to soothe her worries. This pushed her into the arms of her father.

The death of Polly. Ultimately, Alice blamed Betty for this and said it aloud. Even if it was said in a moment of emotion, it was still unbelievably cruel.

So, in the end, I do think that Alice is worse than Penelope and the reason is simple. Penelope's singular aggression allows Cheryl to break away and stand on her own. Alice's cruelty combined with her neediness never allows Betty to breathe long enough to realize that her mother is a monster. She is so deeply selfish.

Cheryl can go toe to toe with Penelope and ultimately grow up. Alice's wounded bird routine breaks Betty's heart and ultimately, keeps her trapped forever.

And thus, the award for "Worst Mom in Riverdale" goes to....ALICE SMITH.

Not really a dissertation, but it is a post. <3

@reclusivedouche @storkmuffin

This one is for you. <3

#Riverdale #RiverMoms #I think Alice is so fucking evil #I still love her tho

[mahoutoons]

you know what, i'm gonna say it. the sonic fandom is sexist as fuck. as someone who's been here for years, i've seen the way y'all treat male characters vs female characters.

when male characters like knuckles and shadow are written in an unflattering way- such as shadow beinf unnecessarily edgy and knuckles being a complete dimwit - y'all are so quick to say "blame the writers, not the character!!" but when female characters like amy are written in an unflattering, suddenly that logic goes out the window and amy has always been a selfish bitch who only cares about sonic.

and speaking of amy, y'all are too comfortable acting like her character revolves around sonamy and nothing else. i'll never forget when the sonic frontiers trailer came out and amy was confirmed as the voice, y'all scrambled for evidence that the voice wasn't actually her but some ghost girl from some 4chan leaks, even going so far as to accuse the official social media team of lying when they confirmed it was her. all because y'all didn't want a ship you hate to become canon. shipping has rotten y'alls brains.

lets also talk about the new imposter syndrome issue. people were upset about how easily metal sonic was defeated. which yeah, i can understand, i know what its likw to have your favourite character be done dirty. but on the other hand, i never saw all of this complaining when scourge was easily able to overpower sonic and friends. no one talked about how op he was.

i recently saw a tweet praising surge saying that she's a female rival with sonic's potential and people immediately started bringing up blaze and saying she "did it better". sonic has had multiple male rivals who could keep up with him and no one compared them. i've never seen anyone say knuckles "did it better" than shadow or bice versa. but the moment he has more than one female rival you have to make it a competition.

everything about the sonic girls has to be a competition, and not even in just a shipping sense. you've got amy vs sally, amy vs blaze, surge vs blaze. you never see competitions like this for the male characters.

and ever notice how its always the female characters being hated on in shipping wars? applies to every fandom honestly.

i can't forget the slut shaming sally and rouge received. some people STILL see rouge as just "boobs the bat" when she's so much more than that. as for sally, i can't remember people complaining about the male sonic characters not wearing clothes. why does sally get hated on for it?

i'm talking about the fandom here but honestly the franchise kinda plays a part in all this sexism. the way i can only think of four major recurring female characters - amy, blaze, rouge, and cream - compared to the amount of male characters this franchise has. and those four are not even treated well. i have an entire essay on how amy rose is probably one of the most mistreated characters in this franchise. and the other three aren't treated any better.

also ever notice how every time amy's role of reminding shadow of his true purpose is taken from her, it was a male character who replaced her (chris in x, sonic in archie)? it shows that sega sees their female characters' roles as expendable, unless they serve as a love interest. and yes, i'm blaming sega because they allowed this shit to happen.

if i can say anything positive, at least the sexism isn't as bad as it was before. but its still there. people may want to deny it, but this fandom does have a sexism problem.

#sonic the hedgehog #amy rose #cream the rabbit #rouge the bat #blaze the cat #sally acorn #surge the tenrec #rebecca talks

[alaffy]

Riverdale, Ep. 7x05 - Tales in a Jugular Vain (spoilers)

Like last week, I had to take a break before I wrote this. Unlike last week, it's for a good reason. I'm going to be honest, the first fifteen minutes of this episode...I thought I was going to hate it. But this might be the best episode of Riverdale in a long time. And I think it should be mentioned, this episode literally ends with a to be continued; so the ending of the episode isn't the ending at all. Far from it.

So, I'm going to do this a little bit differently. I'm not really going to go into the four stories Jughead wrote (rather I'm not going to spend time writing about what they were about). They're clearly going for a Tales From the Crypt Vibe (although John Water's seems to get mixed in by story three). I didn't like the first two stories. I thought the third was pretty good. And I loved the fourth one.

Riverdale finally did the classic Archie story. Betty and Veronica fight over Archie as he strings them along. Then, they see him with another woman. But do they let him sting them along like in the comics? Fuck no. They dug his coffee and cut him in two (and it is the best scene ever. Betty and Veronica are just so happy). And, yes, there is some misogynistic tones in this story (ok a lot and in three of the stories). This is something I will get to in a minute. Just...I've always hated the love triangle and, to me, this was the best way it could end. So, just let me have my happy moment.

So there are two things going on in this episode which, and I cannot express this enough, ends with a cliffhanger. The first is the very real history of comics in the 1950s; how they we're seen a threat to the "very decency" of the American way. That their stories are corrupting the youth; even though, as Jughead says, many of them were morality tales. But, even if they weren't, it's the age old story of blaming something for the issues in society instead of dealing with the issues of society (Or in this case, the psychologist says that comics are to blame for the death of Ethel's parents and they should be focusing on punishing the writers instead of, you know, actually finding the killer). And so, the psychologist is going to go on a crusade against the writers. And who's name is about to pop up on a list...well, one Mr. Jughead Jones. I wondered if he would end up in the Sister's and I have a feeling that may be the case. So, let's be clear, this episode touched on the whole Comics Code and the complicated history...but the point wasn't to deal with it in this episode; it's to set up for whatever happens to Jughead next. And, as strange as it is to write, I actually do have a feeling this might be the one topic Roberto may actually have a bit of knowledge on.

What the episode mostly focuses on, or the parts between the stories, is Jughead and Veronica. Veronica comes over and is hoping for a date with Jughead. However, she finds out he has a deadline to write four short stories. But, she's very supportive and asks him to tell her the stories. As he goes on, and as it becomes clear that he has used the people he knows in these stories, Veronica finds herself less enamored with him. She even points out that, the way he writes his female characters, is...gross. It is misogynistic. And so she leaves and that's the end of Jeronica. And, at first, it seems like we have another moment were we have the writers using the characters to call out the things that the fans have been complaining that the writers do (kind of like the Pussycat episode in season 5). Here's the thing...that's not completely inaccurate; but it's not what's completely happening here. When Jughead is confronted by Veronica about the way he has portrayed the people he knows as these...well, they're very unflattering views; Jughead gets defensive. He says their just stories. Later, Jughead tells his publisher that Veronica just didn't get his vision. And the thing is...this isn't new (well, the misogyny is new, but not the complaints). We have seen this since season 2. Jughead decides to use Toni's grandfather's story without his permission. He uses Betty's trauma as a way to keep a book contract. Apparently he really mischaracterizes the Serpents in his book (although we don't know exactly how). Hell, it can't be denied that Jessica might actually have stolen his story because she's afraid of what he's written (he does have a history). That fact is that Jughead Jones has never learned two things about writing. While it is true writers write what they know; good writers know not to mischaracterize their friends and, most importantly, good writers know that just because they are a part of a story, that doesn't automatically mean that it's their fucking story to tell. The writers have touched on this for years and never really dealt with it.

It seems like that writers are setting up for a really interesting juxtaposition here (if they can pull it off. Big if). On the one hand, we are dealing with this fascist belief that anything outside of what people considered the norm must be condemned and punished. On the other hand, we have a writer (Jughead) that doesn't understand that, while everyone should have the freedom to write without punishment, that doesn't mean that...how to put this, people have a right to be upset. Not everybody's going to like you write. And people have the right to be upset when you use them in an unfairly flattering light or use their story without their permission (or go off on tangents that make no fucking sense. Oh, and straight up lie). Now, whatever is about to happen to Jughead will far exceed what Jughead deserves (again, he doesn't deserve punishment; just needs someone to hit him with the brick of truth and tell him exactly how his writing has been hurting others). IF this is where there going (and IF they can pull this off...I really don't know if they can); this is an interesting debate. How do we make a society where writers are not punished for holding beliefs or writing things that others may considered outside the "norm," but still holding writers accountable for when their writings do harm others? And to what degree? (Because there's different levels of harm. There's what Jughead has done in the past and then there's JK Rowling). Look, the rest of the 1950s plots can jump off a cliff. But if the writers actually are dealing with censorship and Jughead's lack of self-censorship; I may not end up hating this season after all.

#riverdale #riverdale spoilers #jughead jones #veronica lodge #betty cooper #cheryl blossom #archie andrews

[greenyvertekins]

Honestly, I could make the argument that her first appearances in both Archie and IDW actually summarise what the writers are gonna do wrong in every appearance she has.

Archie introduces her in an underwhelming adaptation of Rush with bad art where she gets misgendered by fucking robots for 2 pages, knocked out by one and kidnapped. She actually gets the glory of breaking herself out for a moment, only for Sonic to beat her in their fight by taking away her oxygen and leaving her struggling to breathe. A "wonderful" start to a bunch of the aforementioned trends that make their appearance in every later issue, culminating in the shitshow that is Pirate Plunder Panic, which also decided to drag poor Marine down with her.

IDW introduces her in the same issue as Tangle, who already had a pretty good introduction to her character and skill set and was also EXPLICITLY MADE because thinks the other girls besides Blaze aren't worth shit and Blaze's situation makes it hard for her to be in Sonic's world without good reason. The second reason makes sense at least, but then she shows up anyway out of nowhere to destroy the badniks that were cornering Sonic and Tangle, even though they were already beating them and didn't her help for that. She and Sonic get launched into the air while holding hands and destroy the ship, then Blaze decides to stay because apparently the Sol Emeralds said she need to for "something". It becomes obvious in later issues that she's not actually needed for anything and she's purely there for fanservice, which is further proven by Flynn giving bullshit reasons for her not to use her instant win Burning form on Neo Metal. This tracks with her next story appearance at the end of the MV arc, where she is clearly only there for fanservice again and turns her into a plot device for a subplot that went nowhere and wasn't even needed. Cue later stories including her when she isn't needed, solely to look cool (or for another shippy hand holding thing with Sonic). She's about as needed in these storylines as she was in 06's. The only thing going for her in IDW is the art looking nice, which is also literally the only reason she's there. To look nice. Oh, and Marine was also there that one time. Remember? No? Fair enough.

Long story short, she's bad in both comics and I never want spinoff media to touch her again.

I'm guessing you are thankful that neither Boom nor Prime ever laid a hand on her?

Personally, I couldn't stand the way Yardley drew her with wrongly-shaped eyes (Which goes against the way she carries herself.), large boobs and in Burning form, marking on her "ponytail." The expressions are just as bad. Because Blaze is not an exuberant character in terms of expression - She's reserved.

#Verte's asks #opinion #Blaze the Cat

[maya-matlin]

Happy holidays! I would love to read your thoughts on how Lucas, Jughead, Jess Mariano and Dan Humphrey are all similar and also different? Like they definitely have the indie introverted Holden Caufield hipster thing lol, but they all have some differences too! And I am sooo with you on hating when Riverdale made Jughead this allegedly badass gang leader lol, but that whole show was on crack :)

Thank you so much! Happy holidays to you too! ❄️🎄❄️🎄 Oh wow, okay. I never thought to think about the similarities and differences of these characters, but I'll try.

Obviously, all four of these guys are intellectual and eventually became published authors. They're all presented to us as outsiders and underdogs of sorts. This is the least believable in the case of Lucas, but it is what it is. Lucas, Jughead, Jess and Dan are supposed to be the "poor" characters of their respective shows, but it's actually hilarious to think about what that means based on the way each show is written. Dan is poor, but he lives in a big loft apartment with his family and is able to attend a prestigious private school. While he isn't originally one of the elite, he's given opportunities and connections that none of the other three could ever dream of. Lucas is supposed to be poor, but this is more told to us than shown. His mother was able to buy a house based solely on what she made from a cafe that wasn't supposed to be particularly successful. Keith set up a college fund for Lucas prior to his death, meaning Lucas never had to struggle to pay for university. During the adult years, Lucas is supposedly still poor because he published only one book and works as a high school basketball coach. But the moments where he's called poor are basically played for laughs, and he later lives with both of his fiancees in a presumably fully paid off home. Jess and especially Jughead were probably legitimately poor. We don't find out very much about Jess's life prior to moving to Stars Hollow, but I'm pretty sure it's implied things were pretty bleak with Liz and that she was an addict with a revolving door of bad boyfriends. His dad abandoned them, never contributing financially or emotionally to raising Jess. Jughead grew up in a trailer park on the disadvantaged side of Riverdale. He was homeless multiple times. His father struggled to hold down a job. Depending on the show's current narrative, his dad, his mom, both, or neither, were criminals at any given time.

None of these characters came from successful marriages or relationships. Lucas and Jess were abandoned by their fathers. Although, Lucas had a much closer relationship with Karen (and Keith) than Jess did with Liz. Dan's parents divorced when he was a teenager. Jughead's parents had a very on again/off again marriage with him mainly having his dad around during seasons 1-the pre-time jump episodes of season 5. Then, his entire family just fucked off somewhere, because Skeet Ulrich understandably wanted out. 3/4 of these guys (Dan, Lucas, Jughead) have righteous indignation, feeling the need to call out hypocrisy and unfair treatment. Jess isn't this guy, preferring to judge silently unless this relates to someone he genuinely cares about such as Rory or Luke. All of the guys have a strong connection and affection for their first love interest. Lucas and Dan fell for Peyton and Serena based on superficial reasons and felt as though they knew them based on minimal interaction. Jess fell for Rory at first sight, though he at least got to know her first. Jughead.. well, Riverdale doesn't tell us much of anything about when Jughead first fell for Betty or what their relationship was like prior to season 1. Based on the way the writers were so obsessed with Betty and Archie being childhood friends and that symbolizing something over stuff that actually took place during the show's present, you'd think Betty and Jughead never spoke until they started writing for the Blue and Gold together. But anyways, the Dan/Serena, Lucas/Peyton, Jess/Rory and Jughead/Betty connections all lingered into adulthood. Though unlike Jess and Jughead who still seemed to be pining for their first loves, Dan and Lucas were happily falling in love with these girls' best friends (Jughead and Veronica do not count because that happened in the bizarre 50's and by that point the show had stopped caring about developing relationships) and seemed content to have a revolving door of love interests as Peyton and Serena were the ones mainly doing the pining. I guess they're all insecure? Is Dan insecure? If he is and felt weird about his initial financial situation (even though his father was a literal rockstar), I don't think it was that big of a deal and followed him through life the way it did Jughead, Jess and Lucas. Also, Jughead and Jess are not cheaters. Lucas and Dan are, with Lucas Eugene Scott being THE cheater. Out of all these guys, Jess is the only one I'd describe as a bad boy. Lucas and Dan were both pretty straitlaced. Jughead isn't a bad boy. He's just a nerd in a leather jacket. And YES. Serpent King Jughead was the fucking worst. Cole Sprouse couldn't pull that off, and his character improved so much once they sent him to Stonewall Prep and then when his life basically fell apart after high school. That sounded bad, but anything was an improvement as far as Jughead plots went after they glorified Jughead being a teenage gang leader. In the end, both Lucas and Dan were romantics who wanted to settle down with someone. If they couldn't have Brooke and Blair, Peyton and Serena would do. Jess legitimately never seemed to let Rory go. Jughead is complicated because Riverdale, but it was always implied he loved Betty far more than he did Tabitha and that his feelings for Betty prior to season 7 remained a mostly unspoken thing because of the weirdness both in real life and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa having no idea what he wanted to do.

#Anonymous

[swanimagines]

hi jenni! thank you so much for all of your writing, it's so good! i would love it if i could please get a romantic self ship for a drabble or oneshot, whatever your preference, with cato from the hunger games?

my name is lisa and i go by she/her pronouns! i have medium brown hair that goes a little bit past my shoulders, light brown eyes, and dark eyelashes. i am an entj because i get very focused on school/making sure i put 100% into any task in front of me. i paint, draw, spend a lot of time outdoors, write, and am social on varying degrees- i talk too much with people i know but not a whole lot with strangers. i think i'd consider myself to be ambitious, too. i pride myself on getting to know people well enough that i know how to phrase the smallest sentence so that it'll make them laugh.

a few things i cannot stand: people who send me writing requests with literally nothing to go off of (your remark about people sometimes treating writers like a machine is so on point!), slow walkers, people who litter, and arugula. why is it in salads there's no point??

ok i think that was a little too much lol but i can't wait!! thank you again! 🥰

(Ships are closed and it's unlikely I will ever do them again especially now when I'm no longer a Tumblr writer, this event was held only for my friends in December 2021)

I read this over a few times during writing (SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG ARGH, I'm finally doing these as I'm preparing to wrap things up) and ALWAYS read "arugula" as "tarantula" and I was where the fuck do you live if tarantula salads are a common thing 😅 But I've heard many people don't like it, there's this 50's American diner styled restaurant in our northern neighboring city, and they put aragula in a lot of dishes, like on top of a nacho platter if you order it as a main course, I don't mind it but I understand why many do. Our cook here often puts nettle leaves in salads during summers, some of my Tumblr friends have been horrified by it before 😂

Also, I wanted to spend a moment to tell you how you're one of those people who kept me standing when I felt like I want to quit because of trolls and hate I got, or when things first started going south. You're an amazing person Lisa, and I'm sad to know that my time in the community might start to be up because it means I have to leave so many amazing people behind, like you. I have felt like this for a long time, over a year already, with some moments where I feel like I don't want to leave because accepting that I have to leave people behind hurts so much, to get rid of bad leaves I have to cut out some good leaves too. But during the time when I was part of the community, you were one of those people who grew to be important to me, whose comments I cherished, who I loved interacting with. I miss that time and I know I will miss it 5 years from now, when everything was still well. You will stay in my memories as one of those who supported me when I was feeling grim or like I can't write. Your comments were often simple and you didn't even say anything about the quality of my writing, like you commented "when will this be me? that's the goal babes." into one of my Kaz fics, and they still made me smile and feel good about myself and my writing/my effort to make people smile with my content. I do miss the interaction and the little community we had all that time ago, every time I publish something in AO3.

I hope you will stay in this community for a long time or if you ever decide to leave, you won't deactivate. I will surely visit your blog time to time, just to remember you, even if I won't be logged in. Reading our old asks and remembering how fun I had interacting with you. Or maybe someday I'll log back in and hit you with a message, who knows. I'll definitely pop by to tell you about meeting Freddy (+ Kit, Amita, Jessie, Archie and Dean) at least when I've come back from London in March and maybe send you pictures and videos from there.

But I want to thank you for being there and being such a good friend, the community is lucky to have you <3

Whoever first thought that the Hunger Games were a good idea to cope with lack of entertainment was a psychopath. Or no, anyone who thought it's good entertainment was a psychopath. Or a sociopath. To have bloodthirsty teenagers run across the forest killing each other was something Lisa had never understood - yet here she was, fighting off a girl who had found the little nest Lisa had built for an hour. She thought she had been good at camouflaging it, and she had maybe been too confident in herself as now she had a spear sticking through the side of her adobmen and a girl straddling her, trying to shove a knife into her throat.

Lisa flailed pathetically and the girl laughed. "You know, it's a pity to kill you. You could have become a famous author."

Splendid, one of Lisa's readers was about to kill her.

"It's a pity you will never read them once I do," Lisa hissed back and managed to kick the girl before scrambling backward, jerking her own knife out of her bag and throwing the cover aside. The girl rolled back before locking eyes with Lisa again. She eyed her own knife for a moment, and then at Lisa's knife. They both stood there for a moment, ready to fight, but then the girl lowered her knife. She clenched her jaw.

"You're lucky my knife isn't sharp enough to kill you at one go. I was unlucky when picking weapons. I mean, you'd think they provided us with new, sharpened ones," she said quietly and her eyes flickered at the spear sticking out on Lisa's side. "But if I'm lucky, that will kill you. Maybe maggots will nest there and you die by infection."

She took some steps backward, and then turned away, running into the night. Lisa groaned as the adrenaline started to fade and pain started to kick in.

"Motherfucker..." Lisa mumbled, looking at the spear. It hadn't gone through her, which made her curse even more. She definitely wouldn't be able to push the spear all the way through her body so she'd be able to snap it and pull it out to bandage it. She could try, and risk getting paralyzed in the process. Leaving it there, on the other hand, would lead to an infection. Either way, her game was over.

Lisa scoffed - authors rarely got killed by their readers. Lisa knew it wasn't personal, that girl had likely forced herself to be cold towards others for survival. She likely had a loving family, friends who prayed she'd make it home, that she'd win the Games. She did it for them. But the spear still didn't hurt any less.

Then, Lisa heard steps approaching her little tent. Rustle as a pair of feet hit the leaf-covered forest floor. She didn't even try to hide, if it was someone, they would likely be able to kill her in a heartbeat. So she waited, a moment, two. A shadow appeared to the doorway, and a figure crouched.

"Well, well, well. Someone else got the cutie before I could?" a voice said, that arrogant voice belonging to a guy Lisa had sparred with before the Games. They had had a flirting session, which felt kind of awkward now - she had called him cute too, and he had gotten visibly flustered.

"Cato," Lisa greeted the boy, rolling her eyes as he invited himself to step into Lisa's space. "Please, come in."

Cato's eyes flickered from her to her makeshift bed, to a few weapons Lisa had acquired. "Nice place. Nicer than mine, at least."

Lisa cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you formed a gang of some kind, where did you leave them?"

Cato sighed and scoffed. "Sleeping. I heard a noise coming from here and wanted to come and see what's happening and if I can join the fun."

Lisa looked at her wound and shrugged. "Well, my game is over. So, if you want to put me out of my misery..."

Cato scoffed, taking a hold of the spear and Lisa hissed at the feeling. "I did say that I wouldn't want a cutie like you dying among the first ones."

Then, a sickening crunch was heard and Lisa cried out, feeling blood gushing out of her backside. She felt some pressure a moment longer, before she saw Cato holding some bloody stick in his hand. It took her a moment to realise that the spear had disappeared, but blood was now gushing out of her adobmen. She quickly took a roll of bandage and started unwrapping it and wrapped it around herself and securing it with a pin.

She then looked up at Cato, searching his face. "You saved me."

Cato smirked, tucking a strand of Lisa's hair behind her ear. "Hunger Games is about dying in a fight. Someone has to see the life disappearing from your eyes as they twist a knife into your heart. It isn't entertainment if we all die by infections."

Lisa narrowed her eyes at him, trying to ignore the fact how tenderly he just touched her. "So you accept it as a form of entertainment?"

Cato hummed. "It's not like we have a choice. We are their entertainment, whether we want it or not. They're watching us right now, speculating if we'll be the tragic love story this season."

Lisa almost choked in her spit. "Love story? Us?"

Cato licked his lips, his smirk still on his face. "I just saved your life. We sit here peacefully, we aren't threatening each other. They probably think we're about to marry each other by now."

Lisa raised her eyebrows at him again, but then scooted away from him. "Well, when we meet the next time, those speculations will die."

Cato shrugged, standing up and started to back away towards the doorway. "Or then they won't. See, I'm not planning to be the one who kills you, unless you try to kill me."

With that, he disappeared into the night, leaving Lisa wondering what would happen within the next days - if Cato really meant what he said or if he just tried to manipulate her. If he was just trying to get close to strike when she least expected it.

But, a voice in her head said, maybe he was being genuine. Did Lisa's little flirting with him really do that, him going almost soft? What would happen if only the two of them would be left standing, would he kill her then? Or did he think she gets killed without it being him?

Lisa reclined on her makeshift bed, staring at the roof for a moment longer before letting herself to have a moment of rest before the next day - maybe she'd attempt to find Cato and manage to clear things some more.

#jen's 2k ships #2k celebration

[crusherthedoctor]

3, 5, 6, 13

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

No. I would only unfollow someone if they're being extremely unreasonable, and their asshole behaviour is escalating.

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

*looks over at Sonamy*

I was always indifferent to it, but the sheer spectacle made over it has made me beyond sick of it. In fanworks, Sonic is often made OoC for the sake of the ship, or his side of the matter in general is an afterthought at best, because it's said that Amy deserves his love because "she's earned it". They'll waste valuable question time on the Twitter Takeovers over Sonamy stuff. If Sonic and Amy are onscreen together for even a moment, no matter what it is they're actually doing, everyone will hail it as proof of Sonamy. And of course, they'll go crazy when they actually do tease it, using it to shut everyone else up because "Sonamy is Canon, deal with it", even if that teasing is incredibly minor and fated to never go anywhere.

It's a weird feeling looking at all the Sonamy VS Sonally wars over the decades, and not giving a solitary fuck about either of them. And yes, this was already the case long before a certain cardinal sin was initiated on my end. *coughs over horse noises in the background*

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

Can't think of any.

Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

Sonic: I'm sick of people going one extreme or the other with him. He's not Mr. Principles, nor is he completely selfish to the point of only helping others for his own enjoyment. And I especially dislike when fans misinterpret his role in Black Knight and use it to claim that he's a full on anti-hero. No, he's a legit hero and good person who just so happens to enjoy what he does rather than adopting the usual superhero mantra, and has to make the occasional tough decision for the good of the long run for everyone. What's hard to get about that?

Tails: "I'm wildly inconsistent" does not count as fixing him. Neither does repeating the exact thing that Forces!Tails got slack for to an even more inexcusable extent.

Knuckles: The idea that he tries to see the good in people despite his standoffish nature is fascinating to me, and it's a shame that it's only been brought up for the sake of making him look stupid when he falls for another one of Eggman's tricks. It'd be nice if this got delved into more, in a way where it doesn't screw him over for once… Just don't turn him into Principles the Echidna.

Amy: Like @colony-drop-program, I recognize the… importance(?) of Amy's crush on Sonic, but I find all her other traits infinitely more intriguing.

I also wish people would remember Tails was the one who actually blasted his way through Prison Island. It's become common for fans to give Amy all the credit for that one.

Bean and Bark: Not that I'm super invested in them or anything, but I suppose it'd be nice if they got more opportunities to be the good guys they were intended to be rather than always being pigeonholed with Fang as the Hooligans thanks to Archie. Fang strikes me as a loner type anyway.

Shadow: I don't think I'll ever be on-board with him officially joining G.U.N. I'm fine with him forgiving them, and maybe having a connection of some sort with them afterward, but being a full-on agent himself? I dunno man. After his long life as Gerald and Black Doom's tool, I'd rather he carve out a future where he can be truly free, without needing to answer to any superior.

Rouge: She's not a villain. She's not a villain. She's not a villain. She's. Not. A. Villain.

The entire point of her role in SA2 is that, oh shit, she was only pretending to be on the bad guys' side, and ever since SA2, she's been a loyal ally to Shadow and helped out the other heroes with little hesitance on multiple occasions. She may be a jewel thief, she may have her rivalry with Knuckles, but she's proven time and time again that she's a far better person than most people and comic writers give her credit for.

Cream: I've seen some Amy fans hate on her for supposedly stealing some of Amy's traits, but that's a disservice to her. You can have more than one character in a franchise with similar traits, since they can be explored from different angles. Compare this to a character like Eggman Nega, who really is nothing more than a leech who requires the real Eggman to be split in half in order to seem more impressive.

Silver: Of the many reasons why I'm not interested in him, one is that his schtick gets old very quickly. There's always something to turn his future into yet another Bad Future, and after a while it becomes comical how often his efforts to avert one catastrophe and make a Good Future get revoked by the following catastrophe. Combine that with how he has actual friends in the present, and he might as well just stay in the present full-time and kill two birds with one stone… but then fans would complain about him losing something special to him. Cue frustration.

Also, fans can insist all they want that Silver trusting Mephiles was due to sheer desperation, but until they release the Snyder Cut of '06 where this is actually shown, it's nothing more than a headcanon. You can explain writing fumbles with headcanons, but you can't defend them with headcanons.

Elise: She's not a bad character. Underdeveloped, yes, but the hate she receives is largely exaggerated.

Marine: Her accent annoys me far less than Bunnie's. *mic drop*

Eggman: This notion that he needs to be softened up in order to be fleshed out is ironically a shallow one. He was fine the way he was. There's more than one way to expand on a villain.

Also, he shouldn't be underestimated just because he's a human instead of a god, a demon, an alien, etc. Bowser is an overgrown turtle who can breathe fire when all is said and done, and he still came close to conquering the universe on two occasions. If Bowser can do great things, so can Eggman.

Metal Sonic: It's possible to explore his identity crisis without making him turn traitor. If anything, him staying devoted to the guy who is the real Sonic's arch-nemesis adds an extra compelling layer to his insanity.

Lyric: I actually like his design? Yeah, he's still a crap villain and another one to throw onto the Fucks Eggman Over pile, but his design is at least more interesting than Mephiles the Druggie and Dark "Waiter, There's An Eyeball In My Taco" Gaia.

Infinite: Even if he was meant to be played completely seriously, and the idea of him being parodic to at least some degree isn't actually true, he's still a better maybe-parody of tryhard villains than either Scourge or Surge.

Sage: While Eggman using her for his own ends is preferable to him genuinely caring for her, the mere idea and circumstances of her character is something I'm very opposed to. I just don't like anything that could even vaguely be fitted into the role of Eggman's Bowser Jr, because no matter how it's presented in canon, fans will reduce Eggman to little more than Sage's father regardless. And I'm forced to see a shitton of "wholesome" family bonding regardless.

It doesn't help that beyond her relationship with Eggman, she doesn't have a whole lot of character anyway. The Heavies had more character in Mania, and they had no dialogue whatsoever. Black Doom arguably had more character, because at least with him, I can remember that he doesn't know what lightning is.

The Egg Bosses: They don't work. There is no reason why Eggman would forgo his robots in favor of anthros who, despite his ways of keeping them under his control, still talk back at him, something that the doctor has consistently been known to hate. Eggman having one organic right-hand as the Lefou to his Gaston is fine (like Starline or Agent Stone), but anything more than that just feels wrong IMO.

Tangle: Out of all the IDW-exclusive characters bar pre-Flynned Starline, Tangle is the one I'd be willing to give a chance if she were in something where her characterization wasn't exaggerated to the point of having room temperature IQ. I like the basic concept going on with Tangle, with her being well-intentioned but just a tad overeager for her own good, so I feel kinda sorry for how hard she got flanderized. Compare that to many other characters exclusive to this comic, who I instead wish would just fuck off and never return.

Starline: YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE. IT WAS SAID YOU'D SIMP FOR THE DOCTOR, NOT USURP HIM. CAST ASIDE THIS TIRED CLICHE, NOT FOLLOW IT TO THE LETTER. *cries like Ewan McGregor*

Surge: If a character has been shoved in my face relentlessly as the central focus of a character study for over a year, yet I feel as though I know nothing about who they really are by the time it's concluded, I'm gonna say that character might not be very good.

Mario: I cheered when he appeared at the end of the second movie, but why Chris Pratt?

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E12 (Chapter 129) After The Fall

Jughead is back to narrating. He says things about Archie and Reggie which in some ways could have applied to himself in earlier seasons but also not because Jughead did not have as much in common with Archie as Reggie evidently does. 

Jughead really is making up a story here- he says things like "they think about the same things" when in every instance we've seen from Reggie and Archie it is clear they most certainly do NOT do that.  This is a bit of sour grapes and/or anti sports bias from Jughead towards Reggie, which is nteresting because he and 50s Reggie have more in common with each other than either do with Archie.  And Reggie was spot-on to not bother learning Soup Can's name because Jughead is wrong to say Reggie thinks mostly about "cars and girls." He escapes his real thoughts using cars and girls actually. 

Perhaps Jughead is cranky because Reggie and Archie are jointly THAT kind of morning person - the kind to go running before dawn and then commit to a day's activities. Reggie focuses on "his true love," basketball, Jughead says, "while Archie gets some writing done."

Is this why Archie and Jughead can’t spend time together in this au?  That is, can they not both be writers at the same time??

Julian, who had been driving, crashed the car into the river and himself into a coma. Archie sits next to the shell shocked looking Reggie in the hospital hallway while the other boys stare blankly at the TRAUMA sign on the door to Julian’s hospital room.   “All the Bulldogs most likely would have drowned if not for Reggie,” is what Jughead says. 

Ok but I’m confused because that was an open top car that Reggie got into.  In any case, Julian looks very corpselike and his father wants someone to blame.  The easy person is apparently Reggie.

This is very entertaining because the show pointedly added a black extra to play one of the Bulldogs that got saved from drowning in an open top car (but really, how??) in a river without sustaining any visible injuries (?!!?) by Reggie, which means Clifford Blossom's prejudices operate as one of the follows: (a) he only hates Koreans in particular (b) he only hates Asian minorities or (c) he only hates poor people (so if you're middle class, race doesn't matter to Clifford).  

In any case, Clifford wants to foist blame for all this right on Reggie.  Maybe because he is in a hospital, Clifford chooses his words carefully - he calls Reggie Punk and Thug rather than some more choice words. Uncle Fucking Frank states a truth- that it was Julian who was driving  - but completely fails to stick up for Reggie or directly defend him.  This struck me as very true to life. 

Reggie and Archie hear this whole exchange, including Clifford demanding that Reggie be kicked off the team altogether, but Reggie still doesn't have a reaction.

Jughead says that the Bulldogs' brush with death was a tragedy and so was the whole sequence of events leading to Ethel killing the Milkman.  Jughead also friendzones Ethel hardcore at this particular moment too, in his narration:  "My BUD Ethel.”  S7 narrator Jughead has an unplesant sneery side which I don’t know what to do with.  At the moment, the two of them also look very shell shocked.  Jughead is sitting just like the rescued-by-Reggie Bulldogs were, while Ethel, with a halting, affectless voice, tells the very useless Sheriff Keller what happened:  “It was the same milkman that I saw leaving my house. after he killed my parents.”

Ethel is a goddamn hero, and oh to be a big strong girl like her, to be able to overpower a crazed knife wielding asshole.  Good for you Ethel. 

When Ethel basically confesses to killing the man, Jughead comes out of his shock to interrogate the oddly silent Sheriff. “It was self defense!” he says.   

But then Keller says a series of weird things.   All his questions are answered, he says. He doesn’t want Ethel to make any sort of statement at the station, he says. This whole situation - a teenage girl runaway from a home for troubled kids stabbing a man dressed up in a milkman’s outfit in the abandoned apartment of a man possibly murdered by te same milkman is… “an open and shut case.”  

Jughead gets very annoyed - as he always does with Kevin’s dad in every universe, because that man sucks - and wants some answers.  “Who is he? Who is the milkman?!”

Keller doesn’t even pretend to have any sort of respectable answer, instead stammering about “fingerprints on a file” and so on as Ethel finally starts to feel the gravity of what she just faced and begins to weep.  

So rather than do any sort of crime solving this American cop’s priority is to take the unjustly incarcerated girl with no one in the world back to the site of incarceration.  Jughead and Ethel vociferously disagree with this plan.  I guess because he is faced with incontrovertible evidence that Ethel is capable of killing a man when she needs to, Keller doesn’t insist, other than to say that he needs an adult to be involved in the care of Ethel.

But why not Jughead?  Why doesn’t JUGHEAD need to be in the care of an adult?

Anyway, the person that Jughead decides is a worthwhile bet in this town is Mary Andrews.  She really must have some sort of allergic reaction to there being too many men in her house, because now that all three are gone she can suddenly occupy her kitchen.  She is wearing a robe, with her hair up in a net.  For some reason Betty and Alice are in the kitchen with her, also in very elaborate robes.  

This culture is very strange to me, this business of wearing printed robes. It looks nice but like, if you have time to find the thing and tie it on, wouldn’t it take just as much or little time to change into shorts and a blouse?  Anyway, the three women are very startled that it is Jughead calling about Ethel and not Frank or Archie calling about Julian or Reggie. 

Mary must’ve given Jughead permission to come to the house with Ethel because the next time we see them Jughead and Betty are sitting either side of Ethel, who is holding onto her knees with all her might.  Honestly who can blame her?  I would be in total hysterics in her shoes.   Jughead is back to looking shocked, and Betty is calmly checking out the blood stains on Ethel’s coat. Ethel is always covered in blood.  

Mary doesn’t want Ethel and Alice is willing to take her on.  When Ethel objects, Alice says that it wasn’t her idea to ditch Ethel at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. She’s being evil and creepy, is Alice, but Ethel has no other viable choices, poor thing.  Betty is very skeptical of what her mother is up to.

Later that night, Archie and Reggie are trying to get to sleep in their shared room.  Archie tries his best - he calls Reggie a hero for saving everyone.  Reggie is very, very realistic.  He says that he did what he did - repeatedly dive into the raging(??) river to haul out boys he doesn’t like and one who was particularly hateful to him because he knew that if any one of them died - “especially Blossom” - he would have been “locked up for the rest of his life” or worse than locked up.  Archie doesn’t know what to say to that, but because Reggie performed the Very Useful Minority function of opening his eyes for him, Archie at least knows not to say any Pollyanna shit in response.

The next morning, Betty comes down to see Alice serving a very uncomfortable Ethel some breakfast.  (When she rejected Betty as a daughter, she enacted that by telling her to make her own breakfast.)  These two not very nice women start fighting over Ethel.  Betty invites Ethel to walk with her to school, to which Alice ups the stakes and says she’ll be DRIVING Ethel to school that day.  Ethel really wants to get away from Alice, but dares not. 

As soon as she’s at school, Betty vents to Veronica about how phony her mother is.  She wants to run away from home now.  Veronica unburdens herself too, finally admitting that she has been locked out of her own apartment.  

The post has already been made about how Veronica is sort of living Jughead’s S1 storyline except better - instead of a bunk bed in a rundown building at the drive in, she’s living in a well appointed office attached to her movie palace.  Veronica still feels like “a common squatter,” however.  Betty gets a very shiny look in her eye as she asks Veronica if she has tried “breaking back into” her home. 

We’re in English class now, where the teacher thinks that the solution to their current town doldrums - a boy in a coma, several traumatized from a car accident involving a submerged vehicle, ETHEL KNIFING A MAN TO DEATH IN SELF DEFENSE AFTER RUNNING AWAY FROM ASYLUM -is … a poem written by a classmate.

Phantom. 

They tell me I’m solid

They pat me on the back 

They see a son

A student

A Team Player

They see a boy like any other

But I look in the mirror

And there’s no one there

Just smoke and mirrors

And I do not know how to be solid.

…. This is Archie’s poem.  He is mortified by this public reading.  Ethel says this poem, which uhhh I am not a poet so I don’t know but it doesnt seem … all that great?  But anyway  - Ethel says it’s Beautiful but also she just stabbed a man to death in self defense literally last night and then had Alice Cooper practically spoon feed her breakfast fruits this morning before driving her to school so Ethel cannot be trusted.

Kevin is the most cringe anyone has ever been on this show, this show with the infamous I’m A Weird Weirdo Speech. He assumes Clay wrote it, turns around all googley eyed in his chair to tell him thati it was “incredible.” Clay has caught all the smug from Kevin though and smoothly says back that he didn’t write it. Kevin is this close to sucking off his boyfriend in class like right now.

Then the teacher outs him - Archie wrote it. She thinks he has a lot to say. Everyone - but especially Reggie - is more perturbed than impressed that it was Archie.

This is a good day that doesn't feel great for Archie because the next thing that happens is that he is named interim captain of the basketball team by his uncle. Both Reggie and Archie thought it should’ve been Reggie. Archie isn’t happy.

The crazy aged boyfriends that run the school are interrogating Ethel and Jughead again, but pretending to do it all friendly-like. The child psychologist says the most insane thing ever: He says that Ethel has proven her sanity BY KILLING THE MILKMAN. He could have literally said anything else - like, You were telling the truth after all! or something but no. Silencing that weird milkman outfit wearing person by KILLING him was the way she got to prove her sanity.

The psychologist insists on calling the milkman ‘a drifter’ because Keller said so, then he launches into a whole speech about how comic books (not murderers, not cops unable to solve murders) were the problem all along. Jughead and Ethel wearing matching forest greens, put on their innocent faces to ask if drifters don’t in fact just ‘drift’? So how to explain the fixation on killing all these people in this particular zip code?

The principal looks more and more disturbed as the psychologist waxes on, but doesn’t say a word in agreement nor disagreement when his boyfriend says "We have told you exactly what happened.” He’s a single issue crusader, and his target is still comic books.

Archie goes to visit Frank to try to get out of being captain. “But shouldn’t it be Reggie?” he says. Frank says that it wasn’t his call because Clifford wanted the only other red haired boy to be captain of the basketball team. Instead of addressing the weird redhead religion, Archie points out that Clifford Blossom has been giving Reggie a hard time from the start. Frank knuckles him down into silence, then brings out the kryptonite - a relic of Saint Fred. “Your Dad’s Captain’s Patch.” So that completely bowls Archie over. His fetishization of his father is astonishing.

Betty has packed up to run away, politely announcing to her mother where she’ll be staying. Alice doesn’t try to stop her.

Lickety split, Betty breaks into the apartment. A skill she learned from Tracey True books! Veronica is elated, telling her that they can be as loud as they want inside the apartment but can't be too careful when using the back stairs to get in or out. Then she says that she has invited “the boys” who are most definitely not Reggie or Archie because she “actually wants to have some fun.”

This is possibly the most callous thing that Veronica has ever said. lololol I mean! Reggie is not ‘fun’ because he’s just been through a terrifying ordeal of a car accident, and Archie is not fun because he’s taking over as captain from Jason when he thinks it should be Reggie. I mean, I think what she means is that they’re not fun for her because they both rejected her as being too much for each of them and then both got fixated on Betty, but that’s not any better right? And then things really go sideways because it turnso ut who she has called are her employees: Clay and Kevin.

These are the two least fun people in Riverdale. Clay is stultifyingly boring, pompous and self absorbed. He’s a bit too comfortable lapping up his boyfriend’s slavering adoration in public for my liking. And Kevin should not be let anywhere near Betty. His coming out as gay DOES NOT ERASE all that hateful truly misogynist shit he said and did to her while he was using her as an unknowing beard. This is so sad for Veronica too - she is still so lonely, but the only people she can find to keep her company are the girl who needs to get away from her psycho mom and her two gay employees.

Meanwhile, at the Blossom house, Cheryl is furious that the basketball season is to continue. Though initially at the hospital Clifford was angry enough to want blood for blood, now that he’s had time to think about his real priorites (uh the possibility of the basketball team having an actual winning streak), he’s decided that his moderately capable son being in a coma may not be such a bad thing. When Cheryl says she will not be cheering on this team while her “brother languishes between life and death” her father gets physically violent and verbally abusive: He threatens to put her in a coma (or I guess kill her) if she doesn’t perform to expectation. Cheryl runs away, upset.

Now we’re back at the Pembroke, where the Beronica and the Icky Gays are putting on some sort of show to some sort of unknown audience. Things get very surreal very fast. Is this music diagetic or not? Why do they keep looking at different corners of the room? Are they aware of the camera somehow? Is this fourth wall bursting but only implicitly? Did they rehearse this?

I kind of wish the show had made a clean break of it for this number, you know, like Bollywood. Where you’re in the market putting bangles on the girl and then the music starts and suddenly you’re 2 kms apart in front of the pyramids at Giza and running towards each other singing.

In any case, the boyfriends help the two girls sing about washing some man right out of their hair.

Then they all settle down in front of the fireplace to do some underage drinking. Betty says to Kevin that this is “more of a kick than when” they were going steady.

The misogynist gaslighting he put her through has permanently damaged Betty’s brain, I swear to god.

The thing is this line of questioning that Kevin starts makes me hate him even more. As I’ve said, Veronica went after and got rejected by both Archie and Reggie, and now, WHILE UNDER HER ROOF, you ask Betty how her threesome date with those two exact men went? C’mere, Kev, there’s something right at the crotch of your pants, let me kick it off for you with the steel toe of my boot.

Veronica even looks a bit bereft when Betty says that she and Archie did kiss after “percolating” on Halloween night.

Unsurprisingly, Veronica changes the subject. She wants to know who has the biggest dick in Riverdale. For a virgin she has a weird amount of confidence about what happens in the boys’ locker room - “having a steam” and “snapping towels.” Kevin - of course Kevin - coughts it up immediately: Both Reggie and Archie are sizable. Then we go down the roster - Jason and Fangs both have small penises, but the true event is that Dilton Doiley is superhung.

The girls scream about it. I’m - skeptical. If the dude is very narrowly built, normal size junk can look more substantial. Trompe l’oeil if you like.

At the basketball game the next day, the hungover bad girls are wearing dark sunglasses indoors for the starting line up presentation. Cheryl looks extremely unhappy to be introducing Archie as the new team captain. Her mother is wearing the most extravagant ribbons. Cheryl looks so unhappy that Archie asks her how she’s doing. She says she’s fine but then tosses him to the wolves, making him give a speech.

Fortunately, we are not subjected to the speech, which apparently was merely ‘nice’ according to Mrs. Thornton, the English teacher. She comes to find him to tell him that he writes better than he speaks. She hopes that Archie will put as much energy into his writing as he does into his sport.

Fieldstone, the shady publisher of disreputable comic books, is the only adult with the correct take on Ethel. Oh! It just occurred to me that Fieldstone and Werthers might be exes. And that’s why the fixation on comic books in particular as the source of all evil! She “survived those crazy nuns, took out a killer and cleared your name!”

Yeah! ETHEL IS AWESOME.

Immediately, he offers her employment and something else to think about, both of which she needs very much. He coassigns Jughead and Ethel to a project. “I am looking at the dream team!” he says.

Ethelhead are nuts. Jughead has picked up some of the sleaziness and says that he thinks it's a good idea to capitalize on the media attention the milkman case has gotten by working on the sequel to the original comic. Greater commercial considerations must take precedent - there is too much "heat" around the milkman comics and killings so they are not to touch the milkman topic at all. Ethelhead seem disappointed.

Betty and Veronica are shopping at Mary Andrew's dress shop. She's being a bad saleswoman- eavesdropping on their conversation before interrupting, not offering any assistance and then being super nosy about where to send the clothes to. Betty tells her that Alice is copacetic with Betty staying with Veronica but I guess Mary still hasn't forgiven Veronica for setting up that beauty contest between the boys because she is suddenly determined to do something about their situation. I mean . . . Mary, you yeet out of existence altogether because Frank is in the house. Don't poke your nose into these girls' business please. But more than the idea of Betty spending a lot of time with Veronica, it’s really her use of the word Copacetic that really sticks in Mary’s craw. She doesn’t approve when children use big words I guess?

We cut to a bronze looking statue of a bulldog seated in a car in front of Riverdale HS. Fangs screams out that the thing’s name is Peppy, and Archie also supplies the fact that this statute is “our mascot.” The villain of this scene is of course Bret Weston Wallis. He calls Archie “Red” (and ignores Fangs altogether, which - he is so right for this!) before he baits Reggie by calling him “a choker” which sounded very sexual to me until he added that he meant that Reggie cracks under pressure. Archie and Bret almost come to blows over Reggie’’s honor.

In the main timeline, of course, Archie and Bret came to fisticuffs over sports too, but the the time when Archie successfully physically assaulted Bret was over the alleged death of Jughead.

Jughead in this universe is completely split away from Archie, where Archie probably has no idea whatsoever what Jughead is doing and they barely interact, which means Reggie is firmly in Jughead’s previous role vis a vis Archie.

One of the difficulties that the narrative keeps having to contend with in Riverdale - which I’ve tracked in my retreads of earlier seasons - is that while the narrative is certain that Archie is The Lead and furthermore is backed up by Jughead the narrator thinking Archie is The Lead, in fact this show has two leads (and it’s not any of the girls, awesome as they are). Jughead is the other lead of this show, which sometimes he wants and other times he doesn’t. When Jughead interacts too closely with Archie, he inevitably tends to push Archie closer to the villains, to become the anti-hero. This is why, in this timeline, with minimal interaction with Jughead, Archie is so wholesome and bouncy and innocent.

End of sidebar.

In any case, Archie threatens violence on Bret, but Reggie stops him. Before they drive off cackling like mustache twirling villains, Bret gets a last dig in about Reggie’s poverty He’d bet a wager with the Bulldogs, he says, but he doesn’t “play for food stamps.”

Reggie was never implied to be poor in the og timeline, but because he’s Jughead in this one, he has also inherited Jughead’s poverty.

At the Andrew’s house, Reggie is talking his teammates through a game plan about how to handle each of the Stonewall Prep players. Reggie has really pretty, clean handwriting. He’s being very commander-in–chief, giving encouraging, bite-size instructions. He’s also hyper observant, so Reggie reads all of Archie’s microexpressions accurately. He knows something is off.

Later, doing dishes side by side at the sink - the exact kind of activity that Jughead would’ve loved to do by the way - Reggie asks his boyfriend, I mean, Archie, why he’s upset. Archie is upset because Reggie should be captain of this team. Reggie says having a title is not that important - he wants to keep winning games “until I can go pro. Archie says he only plays basketball so he can feel close to his dad.

Reggie, looking lean and sexy as fuck with a very thick belt tight around his hips, asks him “So what’s your passion? Cars? Girls?” as they two of them stand shoulder to beefy shoulder. These are the two that he can think of Archie exhibiting some sort of interest in from their time together, but Archie doesn’t say yes to either. He instead puts a hand on Reggie’s shoulder (does he mean to say, YOU?) then gives him a very intense look deep into his eyes before he says “You wouldn’t belief it even if I told you.” This is the Archie that only learned through his Uncle of the sexual pervert mustache what gayness was, so I think he thinks Reggie would also find gayness unbelievable. (The show wants me to think Archie is this passionate about ‘poetry’ but I just don’t believe it).

At Jughead’s train car, Ethel is sketching away.

Ok but seriously, there’s not gonna be any sort of publicity or trial or anything about the fact that she straight up stabbed a man to death? Riverdale is such a scary town. Keller is a man who will force a prostitute to rape his teenage son, so I’m not surprised or anything, but a whole person DIED at the hands of a teenage asylum runaway and nobody bats an eye in Riverdale. Don’t ever go there. Holy shit.

She is almost done with a scary sketch of  a menacing milkman.  When Jughead asks her to be mindful of what the publisher said, that there was to be no Milkman reference anywhere, she says that it’s really important to her to keep a hold of what she knows to be true because “everyone is still trying to tell me what happened and how it happened.”   She says, through her tears that she wants to tell her story, “even if it’s just in a comic book.”  Jughead is in full support, so he wants to find a solution, to have their cake and eat it “without a glass of milk, of course heh.”  He’s so sweet, but I’m annoyed that this doesn’t seem to be leading to Ethelhead.  It should.  She’s a (literally) tortured artist with a dark past and resilient spirit and he’s her understanding squire and helpmeet and THEY SHOULD KISS.  Give me Ethelhead, Roberto!   Support women artists, goddamn you!

Over at the Pembroke, Betty and Veronica have dressed up in sheer nightgown type things for each other (Veronica in periwinkle and Betty in pink).  They’re sitting in front of the fire as Veronica paints Betty’s nails.   The one bonding activity Veronica remembers with her mother is a manicure at bedtime.  Betty says Alice stopped interacting with her in any sort of tender way as soon as her period started.  

Then Veronica says something that startles me by reminding me that these girls are supposed to be “sixteen years old, living without our mothers.”  Right. Sixteen. 

And then Veronica and Betty have an intensely Bughead moment, which sent me reeling.   Alienation from (Betty) and abandonment by (Jughead) their families of origin, as well as the reassurance stated as a prayer (from Jughead to Betty) to not be like either of their parents was a major note in the Bughead relationship. Now that beat is given over to Beronica, with Betty taking the lead to break away from the previous generation.   They link their pinkies on this promise then seal it with a kiss on their own thumbs.

There’s a sudden swerve, where Betty terrifyingly says that she finds Kevin and Clay to be a “happy, healthy couple” and Veronica even more terrifyingly agrees that they are “the dreamiest.

I’m about to get racial so hold on to your hats.

The degree to which white American women are never allowed to get angry at white men is very terrifying to watch from the sidelines.  The exact way when Kim Ilsung died and North Korean television kept showing people coming out of the subway pretending to bawl their eyes out as they hurried to work the next morning?  That’s the level of alarm (so vast it brings on disassociation) that I feel when when Betty says that she finds this ex boyfriend’s very unbalanced, very fetishize and bizarrely obsequious relationship with his first boyfriend “happy and healthy.”  It’s so sick.  Betty being raised in an insane environment where white girls like her are simply not allowed to feel anger at white men (hating the woman who created her and birthed her is fine, by the way, she just can’t be angry at MEN) means that she has to simp for this misogynist (before he’s anything else to me, gay Kevin is a man who hates women)  who called her a sexual pervert for being horny and didn’t bother to hide how much he wanted to throw up in his mouth whenever he had to touch her boob and was moreover fully willing to sexually assault a woman for pay so he wouldn’t lose face in front of other men.  

Veronica though is so eager to get into Betty’s pants that she (without being able to maintain eye contact with Betty) pretends to go along with this bit of crazy (because we all do that, when we have the hots for someone and we’re 16) (....or 26 ahem), before she quickly changes the topic.

“It mus be easier for two boys to date than a boy and a girl.  None of that battle of the sexes stuff to navigate.”

This is the ultimate statement on Yaoi.  Yup. Yes. This is what girls who get off on eroticized/ exoticized depictions of gay relationships assume. 

Betty picks up on where Veronica is going with this immediately, chiming in with the “fun fact” that 81% of girls experiment with other girls before they turn 18.   Veronica says she’s kissed a famous girl before.   Betty says that she’s thought about kissing Veronica before.  And then they play a really pretty version of the theme song - the Riverdale theme song  as the two girls lean in for a kiss.

Only to be interrupted by Mary Andrews, wielding Smithers.  She wants to know everything.

We’re supposed to hate Mary, but guess what Roberto - I still hate Kevin more. 

Meanwhile, Cheryl is weeping at Julian’s bedside.  She says - and this is partially a lie - that she misses Julian and loves him.  I think it’s true that she misses him. She’s seen that her life is going to descend to a new circle of hell without Julians’ mediating male presence in her misogynist household. The combined force of her parents’ insanity is too  much for her to shoulder alone.  Julian wakes up at her plea.

Mary Andrews is having a very presumptuous evening, taking a seat at the head of the table at the Pembroke to express outrage about “a parent disowning their own child” and “evicting” their own child.   Except in the OG timeline, Mary Andrews completely abandoned Archie for long stretches before selling him a bombed out house for actual money.  If her outrage at how other women are doing something she did to her own in another timeline is supposed to be her redemption arc, I am not buying it.

Same time that night, Cheryl somehow knows to go creeping to her father’s study just in time to overhear that Featherhead has been tasked with bringing in a replacement for Reggie - K.O. Kelly from Boston - at her father’s instruction. After his great Yellow experiment, Clifford has had it and wants “a real” American boy so he can “send that Mantle packing.”

He wouldn’t call him Mantle in private like that. I don’t ever want or need hatespeech against Asians on American TV but this is getting ridiculous.

The next morning, Mary is yelling at Alice about being “no good” and “rotten” to which Alice reacts like a teenaged 'bad girl’ getting told off by an irate nun. She’s already had a go at Hermione Lodge, and now is demanding that Alice tap into her sense of ‘sacrifice’ to “regain your moral footing.” Veronica made out ok - she got her key to her home back - but Betty is right back in Alice’s clutches, which I’m not sure is a solution. The way Alice’s compliance is shown is by her doing Betty’s laundry and delivering to her while the daughter sits cross legged on the bed. It’s not at all clear to me why Mary Andrews yelling is going to change anything for Alice, but Alice forewarns about future battles. She tells Betty that Ethel is as much her daughter to her now as Betty.

Cheryl tells Archie, who tells Reggie, about the plan to cut Reggie from the team. Reggie hears it, and then says “How much you wanna bet the new ringer is a few shades lighter than me?” which is very funny in a bad way because a) the actor playing Reggie is mixed race so he’s not particularly dark skinned and b) the actor playing KO Kelly was very tan with black hair and so side by side COLORING wise they are identical. Archie is freaking out, and pushes Reggie to say what he really wants which is to be captain after all, at least for what might be his final game. Archie is going to help with that.

So. This is where I must speak up for Cheryl. Archie is doing an exceptional thing - he was given white insider privilege (being named captain because he is white with red hair) which he wants to give up for the meritorious candidate who isn’t those things. Cheryl on the other hand is given the third degree for something she can’t do anything about (not having any not white writers on the high school syllabus) plus being put through the ringer just because she wanted to see what her girlfriend’s club was. What the hell.

At Pep Comics, Ethelhead of my heart are presenting Ethel’s latest work to Fieldstone. They’ve made the milkman a mailman. The panel shows the deranged mailman holding a decapitated woman's head by the hair while Ethel in the foreground screams in horror. Is… is this how Ethel’s parents died?? By decapitation?

Fieldstone loves it! He thinks it’s brilliant. He does warn them though that “a storm is coming, like the wrath of God.” Jughead, wearing a very strange shirt with repeats of a six sailed ship in a bottle, pedantically tells him that since sticking their head in the sand won’t help, they “run headlong into the thunder and thumb our noses at it.” But the real talent of the pair is Ethel, who earns the sobriquet “girl genius” from the publisher. They decide to publish!

Archie, Reggie and the team all show up to see Clifford Blossom. Archie really has a thing about organizing people - into white supremacist vigilante gangs (Toni Topaz wording, not mine), labor unions and now whatever this is. The entire team will walk (stage a strike) if Clifford won’t name Reggie captain and also promise not to replace him. Clifford is furious, but it looks like the boys will win!

Betty can’t sleep but just then, Veronica calls! Just to say that she loves Betty, who says it back to her. They’re gonna go to the basketball game tomorrow.

Poof and now it’s tomorrow and Uncle Frank yields the floor to Reggie to give his speech as Captain. Reggie thanks them, and tells them that his parents are in the audience. Do we get to see Reggie’s folks at last? As the last two to leave the changing room, Reggie and Archie have this very manly exchange: “Don’t even give them a second to breathe.” “Count on that.”

Then they have a slow-mo walk out to the court. Reggie faces off with Bret, as a narrator takes over because the show understands (I hope) that nobody cares about the actual game. The Bulldogs dominated all the way to a victory. Montage shows - patrons of Pop’s glued to the radio, Julian & Cheryl listening in, Clifford bitter and drinking, the changing room in a disarray, the bulldog statue returned! Archie rounds us off letting us know that Reggie is MVP and record breaker. he also apparently saw the Parents of Reggie Mantle who can never be shown to the audience.

It was a huge mistake to give his parents a specific Asian ethnicity and to pick Korean at that. I suppose the actor or twitter may have objected, but in the historical context, making Reggie Japanese American or Chinese American would’ve made so much more sense, and been much easier to deal with.

Archie pins Reggie as they sit in their underwear in their shared bedroom. I mean. That’s what giving the captain’s patch to Reggie means, right? After all that fuss made over what Kevin did with Betty?

Reggie reveals that he knows fully well what Archie’s secret passion might be: Poetry. But with Reggie now in his rightful place as captain, Archie wants to stick aroundf or basketball.

All of a sudden, Jughead narration comes back, specifically to deny the intense homosexual emotion that the Reggie and Archie pairing are exhibiting. They are ‘wrestling’ after doings some very intimate conversation, after Archie has pinned Reggie using a totemic item symbolizing his FATHER, so Jughead insists they are “friends, PRACTICALLY BROTHERS.” Jughead is so jealous that when Reggie picks Archie off the floor to hoist him onto his shoulders (and rubs a hand up his thigh) to literally spin him out of our view (onto an awaiting bed, because there is literally nowhere else to go), he makes it thunder, then starts shouting about “the wrath of god” that was coming. “All of us would be smashed to pieces by it” could’ve sounded prophetic, but, actually it has all the bitterness of the whole “if I can’t have her nobody shall!” cry of rejected lovers.

#Riverdale #Riverdale season 7 #riverdale 7.12 #riverdale 129 #riverdale s7 recap #riverdale s7 #riverdale episode recap

[rahnekat]

OFMD and Love

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

"I loved you best I could."

Spoilers for S1 and the first 3 eps of S2, along with triggers in those episodes.

I'm sure there will be a lot of deep and insightful metas about the themes of OFMD from people who are far better writers than I. (For example, I think we're very clearly seeing the effects of toxic masculinity in Ed. Ed's inability to healthily process emotion becoming violence towards himself and others is often the conclusion that toxic masculinity barrels towards.)

However, what's really stuck out to me on this first watch is love or possibly the inability to love. Another way to look at it is that I'm having feelings about stupid fucking Izzy Hands.

Season 2 starts with Izzy getting what he wanted. Ed loves him. Ed even admits it in the second ep. The problem comes when you realize that Ed loves Izzy as an extension of himself. Izzy is possibly the part of himself that Ed identifies as Blackbeard. I think Izzy even starts to see it since he asks Ed what he is to him, tells Ed he has love for him, and gets nothing in response.

Since Ed sees Izzy as part of himself, Izzy becomes victim of Ed's self-image. Purgatory!Ed didn't have to say that he thinks he's unlovable when he shows it every moment. He repeatedly maims Izzy in order to torture himself. He lets Izzy rot for an indeterminate amount of time with his infected leg wound before giving him an out.

Even the fact that Ed tries to push Izzy into killing him shows that Ed sees Izzy as part of himself. (I'm about to start reaching so stick with me please.) Ed seems to still have his hang up around killing. The only murder we personally witness him do this season is a guy who has a sword through his chest and will die anyway. He can explain that away as putting him out of his misery. Now, you might think his killing ~*thing*~ is why he didn't just commit suicide but I think it's more than that. I think its because Ed thinks he's unlovable and also doesn't love himself. He's in so much emotional pain that death would be a mercy, in his mind. The problem is that mercy and grace are forms of love. Ed doesn't think he deserves that or is even capable of having it. I think Izzy confessing his love is the tipping point and the reason Ed is finally ready to end it. If Izzy is telling the truth, that's enough love for Ed to get his peace. When that doesn't work, it's not long before he uses Jim and Archie's relationship to try for his mercy.

This is all a big long way of saying that Jenkins & Co. seem to really believe in the idea that "you can't love anyone until you love yourself." Since Ed cannot currently love himself, the love others have around him becomes poisoned like an infected wound. I personally think you can love while still learning to love yourself, but for the purposes of the story, I think they are right about Ed. He needs to reach a point of self-tolerance at the very least if not self-love. He can't rely on a fantasy to save him. (It doesn't matter how adorable merStede is.) This all leads me to believe that the love story for this season will be Ed/self. Stede's in it for the long haul; he'll wait around until Ed figures himself out.

Note: This didn't come out quite the way I hoped, though that's gonna be because I haven't completely figured out what I want to say. I have thoughts brewing under the surface about several other themes though I doubt I'll end up writing anything about them. So, um, fix-it fic writers got their brief with "warmth, good food, and orgasms," huh?

#ofmd s2 #spoilers #ofmd spoilers #meta #our flag means death s2

[un-pearable]

wait hold on another one. top 5 Infamous Archie Sonic Moments.

1. achievement get! child endangerment via radiation! x20 modifier “for the greater good”. an oldie but a goodie (absolutely terrible)

2. underrated and technically not infamous but should be imo: everything about the xorda. i mean come on look at this shit. the real tragedy of no one actually reading archie is the fact that it isn’t widely known that THIS is canon. er. was canon. my point stands

fiddlesticks

3. you know him and you love to hate him (bc i stole it directly from the gc): the return of fishbowl man. he’s here bc he’s terrible and heralds my favorite way to fuck up knuckles. hell yeah

4. hm. am i allowed to put the stupid sonic vs. tails monarchism arc here? i am going to put the desecration of everything sonic stands for here. not bc i don’t like ian but it’s a painful, remarkably perfect example of the growing pains of a newbie writer who has both too little agency and too much executive oversight demanding a shittier version of marvel’s civil war. it really does feel like a good ol archie sonic fanfic that tries way too hard. respect it as much as i hate it.

5. gruckles. ‘nuff said

#the knuckles bias is painful im sorry #there’s so many Certified Archie Sonic Moments they’re all so so funny and horrible this are just my personal favorites #text✨ #ask game