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onceuponamirror · 7 years

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Hi Sarah! Hope you are having a day as lovely as you are as a person

lmao well let’s not be so sacrilegious as to suggest i change my username!! i think no matter what i will always be onceuponamirror. i kind of backed myself into a corner (in the best way) with this url and icon, though i will say riverdale has thus far been the only show to come closest in terms of level of interest. so

anyway—aw, thank you!

did you want my opinion on them as a ship, or as individuals? i’ll just answer both, lol

i like them as a ship for sure, if not just for the pure sake of being people who are very much two sides of the same coin. both are incredibly quick, were raised with immense privilege, have a tendency towards manipulation by means of defense, but ultimately belying a desire for deep love and connection. very much two slytherin girls.

in some ways i think they’re too alike to ever be a long term successful relationship, but there’s part of me that would really enjoy that tension and a really beautiful story that explores compatibility outside of love. like, you can have a lot of chemistry with a person and love them so much but not be able to overcome personality differences, and i think they would be a good opportunity why that could or could not work. the other, baser part of me just likes them together and that’s it.

i digress. while pre-bankruptcy veronica was clearly even nastier than cheryl, veronica was also always surrounded by love, manipulative and tenuous as it was in hindsight.

but even that was more than what cheryl got. it’s clear that the only positive attention and affection she received from anyone in her family was her brother. when veronica lost everything, she still had someone looking out for her. cheryl lost the only thing that mattered to her, and now struggles with attachment.

so while i like cheryl x veronica in a lot of ways, i also don’t think any time soon would be the time for it even if the writers eventually chose that path—because cheryl doesn’t understand how to relate to people and is pretty far from being ready for any relationship, as of when i write this.

even jason, it seems, she doesn’t really understand. she seems to struggle with his choice to run away with polly because while it’s obvious she wanted him to be happy, i think she also hasn’t processed it as an abandonment or betrayal.

her relationship with him honestly reads as paternal in a lot of ways; jason protected her from their parents and when he left, kind of regardless of whether his death was faked or not, he would be exposing her to blame and likely abuse. but i don’t think she realized that until he was actually dead and this partnership she’d lived her whole life in was suddenly a void.

so, in the last episode, when she tries to replace that partnership with archie, she’s sort of slapped in the face with the reminder that jason didn’t put her first either. so she turns on polly as well as a result; she feels jason chose polly over her, but probably loves his memory too much to blame him for that.

tl;dr, so despite a real yearning for a meaningful connection, cheryl is very unstable because she has no support system.

she pushes people away because she has trouble with empathy and doesn’t understand giving to get. beyond her brother (though arguably not) she only views relationships as extensions of herself and her desires, but she also is incredibly self-loathing, which basically translates into hating everyone.

in my own reading of her, and i don’t know if the writers are aware of the way they’ve written her and have done it deliberately or just engaged tropes of gothic heroines born out of the era of the “hysterical woman,” she appears to be bipolar.

she has very high-highs and very low-lows, simplifies complex situations, looks at the world in black and white terms, and has visible sudden mood swings.

(disclaimer: i’m no professional but my mother is bipolar and i know the diagnosis very, very well)

i think madelaine is doing a great job living in these nuances (she’s particularly good at intonation and voice) and fleshing out a chaotic character; cheryl is very engaging and i’m interested in her story/seeing where this goes.

anyway. veronica. i’ve kind of already spoken to my interpretation of her character here, but i’ll add that i’m really intrigued by her self-awareness and conscious effort to kindness out of genuine desire to be a better person.

like, one of the things i always struggled with liking regina’s character on ouat was that i can’t stand lack of accountability. when a character isn’t self-aware and/or isn’t on the path towards it, i just can’t really relate to them. so i feel like i’m getting that instead from veronica and i really like it!

i sort of feel like we’re not at the tip of the iceberg with her yet though. i think we’re like, 20 proverbial feet away. and i kind of exhausted myself talking about cheryl…if you have a more specific veronica question, just ask!

also wow this was so rambling and unfocused but i hope it answered your question! please feel free to send me more riverdale questions, it’s been really fun meta’ing some new characters.

#cheryl blossom #veronica lodge #riverdale #cheronica #that's what this ship is called ya?#cheryl x veronica #riverdale analysis #riverdale meta #Anonymous

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