nottodaychacha

[nottodaychacha]

Guys, it’s happening!

FP: I don’t want things to get weird, but guys, me and Alice used to-

Alice: No we didn’t.

FP: Like it’s just so weird that you two are dating because *we* used to-

Alice: No we DIDN’T.

FP: I mean for a while there I thought me and Alice were going to-

Alice: WE WERE NOT.

FP: Anyway, I’m really glad you kids worked everything out.

[nottodaychacha]

[nottodaychacha]

Alice @ Betty’s striptease:

[nottodaychacha]

So Chic is definitely not Hal's kid, right? I mean, we all know Hal's a dick, but his reaction is a bit extreme.

Also, when is he going to figure out that on the hierarchy of Shit Alice Prioritizes he is the dank basement full of spiders? Don't test Alice, Hal. She is having none of your shit.

[nottodaychacha]

I desperately need an Alice and FP: The Teen Years flashback.

FP: I don’t want things to get weird, but guys, me and Alice used to-

Alice: No we didn’t.

FP: Like it’s just so weird that you two are dating because *we* used to-

Alice: No we DIDN’T.

FP: I mean for a while there I thought me and Alice were going to-

Alice: WE WERE NOT.

FP: Anyway, I’m really glad you kids worked everything out.

[nottodaychacha]

riverdale, but every time veronica lodge mentions her dad, kevin keller looks into the camera like he is on the office.

[nottodaychacha]

ironically, KJ Apa is more like comics Archie Andrews in real life than his character Archie Andrews is on Riverdale haha….clumsy and always be trippin’  xD

[nottodaychacha]

Buckle in kids, this ended up being longer than I intended.

Look, I’m a total Bughead shipper, but as soon as Toni walked in I thought “Yup, dude has the hots for her.”  But here’s the thing: so what?  So he was attracted to someone else.  I can tell you, as a married lady who has also had many past relationships, you can love someone deeply and still find yourself attracted to other people from time to time.  Attraction isn’t always a choice; action is.  A committed monogamous relationship is just two people actively choosing to be with each other and no one else day after day, despite what is happening around them or whatever chemical or intellectual blips they may feel for other people.

So, with that in mind, why can’t it be both?  Why can’t it be that Jughead was seeking comfort AND wanted Toni, specifically?  In the right moment, you can let out attractions that you would otherwise try to suppress.  And, while the wisdom of a rebound grope sesh can definitely be debated, Jughead certainly wasn’t doing anything wrong. 

Now, had Toni not rejected him, would he have still gone back to Betty?  I don’t know, but my best guess is yes given what we’ve seen of his character thus far.  And, to be honest, I wish that there had been more of a choice for Jughead there.  That Toni would have been more of a true option*, because Jughead & Betty considering their actions and then working through them to come back together is much more narratively satisfying and consistent with their characterizations.  But, as we all are well aware, the writing on Riverdale is nothing if not wildly inconsistent at times.

I think the reason why there is such a debate with the fandom between attraction vs. opportunity is that we often tend to look at motivations and characterizations in entertainment as black and white.  This or that. Right or wrong.  Fandom gets very invested in a character or a work (which, really, is every creator’s dream) and in turn becomes very invested in their particular interpretation of something.  But art (and yes, for the sake of argument, I’m classifying Riverdale as art) is subjective and how we view it is colored by our own experiences, wants, and needs.  The writer may have one idea of a character’s motivations.  The actor will have another.  And the consumer will have a third.  As is taught in literary criticism, not all works have one right interpretive answer. Intention in art only goes so far. Once it’s out in the world, how it’s interpreted often has just as much (and sometimes more) of an impact on it’s message than what the creator may have originally envisioned.  And when it comes to works that include human characters, a good writer will imbue that character with many motivations, just as actual humans have many motivations.

The echo chamber is certainly an issue when it comes to entertainment (and politics and news and just life in general), but I don’t necessarily think it’s the whole story. If you’ve ever been in a discussion with someone who thinks their interpretation of a work is the right one, that’s it, end of story, you've seen that stark beliefs without consideration outside of an echo chamber can still have just as much blind devotion as those of someone who’s never heard the other viewpoints. Allowing yourself to access other interpretations is certainly important, but it’s only half the work.  You have to be willing to consider those other interpretations, even if, in the end, you do end up rejecting them. To be a total douche and quote Aristotle, “ It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

__

*For narrative drama’s sake, not for Toni’s sake.  She’s a great, if often badly written, character who deserves a much better storyline than that of “the other woman.”

-K

- Additional aside from R:  Jughead/Toni should follow the Jughead/Betty naming protocol, and that ship should thus be called Tughead.  (Because a Bughead v. Tughead shipper battle would be epic.)

An outsider’s perspective

(don’t hate me).

My two best friends, we’ll call them L and M, from college and I live really far away from each other. But every week on Fridays, we set aside our lunch hour to do a gchat, and catch up on our lives, and sometimes we talk about what we’re reading/watching.

My girls aren’t big into the fandom (they have personal tumblrs but never use them anymore, they don’t pay attention to fandom stuff, etc.) but they love to talk about Riverdale as a group (mostly because we can just laugh about how ridiculous it is a lot of the time and how much we still love it). 

For context: They think Bughead are cute enough but L likes V*rchie more and M doesn’t really care one way or the other about the romantic aspects of the show, so I’m the resident Bughead ‘shipper. (At least we can all agree that B*rchie is 5000 shades of wrong).

Anyway, we got to talking about how everything played out in “Death Proof” and it was kinda fascinating to see how they perceived the J*paz/Bughead stuff.

We all agreed that the BH reunion was super rushed.

L said, “I YELLED at the screen when I realized we don’t even get to see them make up on screen after all that?” and M said, “If it was going to be that easy for them to solve everything why didn’t they just do it last week?”)

And then we were talking about the whole rebound thing and whether Betty is going to ask about Toni after she saw them in the diner, and M said, “I like how one minute he’s bummed that Toni doesn’t want his dick and the next he’s all mad at Betty for breaking his heart.” 

And L was like, “Yeah he’s wanted it both ways since she showed up.”

Neither of them think Jughead did anything wrong by fooling around with Toni. But to them, it was clear as day that it wasn’t like, a hurt/comfort thing, it was a “hell yes this hot girl wants me and I want her, let’s do this” kind of thing. 

And on the one hand it’s like, “Yeah, I see what they’re saying because the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way, too” but then on the other hand it still surprising that both of them came to that conclusion so definitively. Like, it wasn’t even a question in their minds. Yes, Jughead was/is into Toni, moving on.

Now I’m perusing reviews of the episode to see if other people outside the Bughead fandom came to that conclusion. And I saw this from Elle: 

After we see that Toni stayed the night at Jug’s trailer (wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts), the two grab breakfast and Toni puts an end to whatever was brewing between the two, presumably to leave room for Betty and Jughead to rekindle by the end of the episode. And let’s be honest, it wasn’t Jughead who seemed to regret what happened between them.

And yes, this is three voices out of the, what, 2 million people that watch the show? But it all just has me thinking: fandom can be a bit of a bubble and it’s easy to find comfort in confirmation bias. We study the minute details to glean meaning from every single moment to better inform our understanding of this thing we love and then other bloggers tell us they agree with us and it all starts to feel like fact.

But sometimes I think that means we can miss the big picture? None of us want Jughead to want Toni because that puts a much more sizable dent in our Bughead hopes and dreams. 

So we all start to try to get inside his head, her head, the writers’ heads to see this whole storyline in a way that could make sense. But these casual observers, who watch without looking for what they want to see, who just see what Riverdale is showing us on the screen, seem to have come to a completely different conclusion. 

I just want to be clear that I’m not discouraging deep dives and character studies and finding parallels and subtext because those things are, in so many ways, my favorite part of this fandom. In the past two weeks, I have ready so many incredible, insightful takes on Jughead and how his past is driving his decisions, and it’s helped me feel like I understand him better. 

I just am wondering how often in seeing what we want to see plays into how we interpret what’s going on on screen. Thoughts? 

[nottodaychacha]

Andy Dalton is future Archie if he would focus less on his music and vigilantism, and start focusing on football.

[nottodaychacha]

I know I’m in the minority here

But the Bughead reconciliation didn’t sit nearly as well with me as it did with a lot of y’all. YES it’s great to see them back together, and I don’t begrudge anyone the happiness they feel at their reunion. But the rekindling of their relationship felt very one-sided for me.

Yeah, they’re together but:

He’s not being honest with her about the fact that he not just kissed but hooked up with it sounds like messed around with another girl in the miniscule amount of time they were broken up. Even if he and Toni didn’t have sex, he at least owes Betty that honesty so she knows where they stand (and that he now has more experience than her) (and that her obvious low-grade insecurity about Toni was in some way justified).

Furthermore, while it’s great that we’re not going to see him with Toni in that way anymore, that still doesn’t feel settled for me. Like, we still don’t know how he feels, it’s all implied or understood that he didn’t really want her but at no point - from the beginning of their friendship to their hookup – did he draw any kind of line and say, “You know what, we’re just going to be friends.” 

Betty fought HARD for Jughead once again in 2x06, but he’s still keeping her at arm’s length, which he’s been doing for the last four episodes. I get that he’s probably skittish but he knows why she broke up with him now. He let her feel like absolute crap for breaking his heart but he wasn’t honest with her either and that’s going to break hers. And that’s not okay. 

Did they fix their communication issues at all here? It feels like the whole resolution was “Betty was really mean to Jughead but she made it up to him by showing how ride or die she is so everything can go back to normal now” when that’s not the full story. It makes me feel a little sick to my stomach if that’s where they’re going to leave it.

In Season 1, Bughead worked through their problems by being open with each other. Their chemistry, their spark, their bond was so satisfying because we knew they had a foundation to stand on. It wasn’t just Bughead-for-the-sake-of-Bughead, it was epic frickin’ Bughead. 

This feels like off brand Bughead at best. 

Thanks for listening. 

[nottodaychacha]

I need more of this.

[nottodaychacha]

After watching Thor, I want there to be a Riverdale version of the Avengers. FP would be the morally ambiguous Nick Fury (“You catch my Asgard drift, boys?”). Jughead is Agent Coulson, but brooding.

Righteous Betty is Captain America, Dark Betty is Black Widow, and Betty’s ponytail is Thor. No one else is in it because they’d just ruin it with their bad decisions.

Oh, and Cheryl is basically like Loki, only she’s just herself, in the background calling the Betty-vengers “cousin” and making snide remarks about their costumes and fighting abilities.

[nottodaychacha]

#i ship it

[nottodaychacha]

A+. All the milkshakes and puppies for this one.

[nottodaychacha]

[nottodaychacha]

Hey!

So this tumblr is just two friends talking about mysteries and mayhem, Serpents and Bulldogs, ponytails and burgers in the quaint little big town of Riverdale.

After spending every Thursday rehashing the previous night’s episode we thought, why not start a fan blog? So here we are to recap the episodes (including a re-watch of Season 1), share our metas, and re-post all the awesome things we find all about Riverdale.

K is the brains of the duo.  An avid fan of all things YA, K loves to analyze and theorize and research, and kicks some serious ass in doing so, whatever the medium may be (books, TV, movies that should have never been made).  K can best be characterized by her love of books, pop culture, and all things Betty (Betty, Dark Betty, Betty's Ponytail).   R is the brawn of the duo (which does not translate into any discernable online advantage).  Ruggedly handsome with a wit that is quick like a [something fast goes here] and also modest to a fault, R is less researcher and more bullshitter.  He is best characterized by his firm belief that strong beard games are not properly represented in Riverdale, and by his love of the Riverdale's main character of Fred Andrew's Furrowed Brow. Together, we form a snarky Wonder Twin team ever since forming an unlikely bond during our college years.   Except we don't have superpowers, unless smarmy looks and sarcastic quips count.

[nottodaychacha]

Riverdale Chapter 19: Death Proof

 In which Betty continues to be the #1 best at everything, Jughead leans hard into the gang #aesthetic, Archie doesn’t screw everything up for once, Veronica finally starts acting like the badass she is, and all the parents are terrible except, shockingly, the Lodges (sort of).

Initial Thoughts

K: I like Toni and am glad she turned down Jughead and said she prefers girls. Now I can like her without complication. And I’m so glad they kept her bisexuality.  One of the great things about the new comics are how much more diverse they’ve become and it’s good to see the show at least attempting that (even if they could definitely do better), rather than white washing and straight washing everyone.

K: And I don't think Toni was trying to steal him away or anything. I think her issues with Betty were more what she represents (the Northside vs. Southside, affluence, oppression, race) than it was about wanting to steal her boyfriend.

K: I'm torn on them getting back together. Like, I knew they would and wanted them to, but that was fast and we didn't get to see the scene where she explains what actually happened. I wanted more exploration of their emotional states while apart. I do hope they at least go into how all of this is going to affect their relationship.  I miss the Betty/Jughead emotional I'll support you no matter what scenes from the first season. I am glad they are back together for mystery solving sake, too. They are better detectives together than apart.

K: Though I do love the Betty and Veronica mystery solving duo we got briefly. Yes, let's just follow a drug dealer into his den in our cutest high heels.

R: While I severely questioned Jughead and Archie's drag racing abilities, I never once (because she is a goddamn dark angel with a ponytail of gold) questioned Betty's ability to fix a muscle car.  Because she's amazing. 

R: Let Ronnie and Archiekins hang out in bed together in the middle of the day because nobody's parents give a shit, and be like, "Oh, no, your dad was shot, we better screw in the shower."  Bughead needs to be the, "You have to win a race that your dad goaded you into to save his gang?  I'll Rosie the Riveter myself and fix up this muscle car for you."

R: So, the Mayor is the worst.  She's like, "I'm not going to unite this town.  Also, fuck these students, who cares about them.  What's that?  My daughter did some drugs?  BURN THE SOUTHSIDE TO THE GROUND!  Why?  Because I'm the mayor, that's why." 

K: Who cares about arrest laws?  Like, they just rounded up people for, like, being in school and wearing flannel? Flannel and 80s denim being the official uniform of the Serpents  .

R:Open shirts and greasy hair being the official uniform of the Ghoulies.

The Big Bad

Theory: Maybe there's the real killer and then random dude (Hal?  Hal's secret twin? Sheriff Keller, Rosewood's rival for worst police ever?) who just took the opportunity to screw with Betty/use her superior intellect and detective skills.

1. The handwriting on the two letters didn’t match.  2. Whoever it is has to know Betty pretty well to know about the Nancy Drew book. 3. Other than the Sugar Man, the people he’s going after make no sense if his aim is genuinely to “clean up Riverdale” like he told Betty.

We would like for Sheriff Keller to be like, "Oh, yes.  I know exactly what's going on!  Just let me go to my secret Sheriff only room to get my thoughts together." Then he runs to the restroom at Pop's and calls Betty on a burner phone.

Side Quest

So Dangerous Minds was the Sugar Man all along. Sure, we guess that makes sense?  Like A) if he's Stand and Delivering these kids, no one would suspect him and B) easy access to his network of dealers. Plus, like, it's a shitty school so he probably doesn't have to do too much actual work.

Is Tall Boy evil or stupid? Why did he have to get Jughead on his side? He's like, "As the son of FP, you hold a lot of weight with the teenagers."  Like all 10 of them?  What about the pool hall full of adults?  Is that not enough of a quroum to vote in a joint venture with the Ghoulies?

The dynamics of this gang continue to confuse us. Like, Tall Boy appears to be the only active adult member now and Toni is I guess the only girl, so is this just a gang of like 16 year old boys? 16 year old boys who think taking care of dogs is a good gang initiation and solve their problems via Grease themed drag races and yet are also somehow the most feared and reviled people in Riverdale?

WTF Riverdale

Jingle Jangle.  JINGLE JANGLE. We continue to be expected to believe that any self-respecting drug dealer would name his product Jingle Jangle.  We refuse to take that seriously.

Yeah, it's bad or whatever.  But it's not meth.  It's like the kids did ecstasy with a stupid name and shoved into a pixy stix, and the parents are losing their minds about it.

Moms and Pops

So the Lodges were almost not terrible! Sure, they were fine with working with the people whose son would have most definitely raped Cheryl had he not been stopped, but they didn’t hesitate to throw them under the bus (possibly literally) when they found out he tried to do the same to Veronica.  So...progress?

Penelope is a monster.  She is just the worst, all of the time, end of story. Throwing the check in the fire at the end was not enough to make up for blaming her own daughter for her assault. Just an awful human being.

Homage of the Week

I mean, Grease obvi. Just look at this.

Cha Cha just wishes she could be Cheryl.

Most Riverdale of the Week Award

Despite us being total Betty stans, the winner is Cheryl!  She totally rocked the drag race.  Her conversation with Betty in the garden was hilarious.  She confronted her mom about her abuse and she pressed charges against Nick St. Clair, both very brave moves. She found out who the Sugar Man was.  Also, this.

A little insight into Cheryl and Betty from R because it was too good to not share:

I like that both Betty and Cheryl get stuff done and get answers, but in totally different ways.  Betty is journalistic, and a go getter who will walk into a creepy abandoned house that a killer told her to go to alone, or who will "innocently" ask the Sheriff questions under the guise of writing a school article.  Whereas Cheryl is just 100% about being super snarky and acting like she doesn't care, only to later put on her flashy red duds and some ballin' lipstick, and hold her mom's breathing tube closed or threaten to destroy the hush money.  Betty is about finding her answers, but Cheryl is all about forcing them into the open, whatever it takes.

Best Lines

“Not the kind of drag race I ever imagined myself going to, but at least the guys are hot.” - Kevin is all of us.

“I beg your misogynistic pardon?” - Veronica, defending women always

“I'm a school-newspaper reporter!” - Betty, the highschool newspaper reporter who is smarter than every adult in town.

“You catch my Riverdale drift, boys?” - FP, king of the puns.

“You are an enigma, Cooper.” - Jughead “heart eyes” Jones

“Oh well. Karma’s a bitch.” Veronica, stone cold and speaking the truth

“I found out who killed Jason Blossom. I found out who the Sugarman was. You're next, Black Hood. I'm breathing down your neck. Can you feel it? Can you feel me?” - Betty, the ultimate badass

-K & R