#as the riverdale fandom is bigger than the cs one

[lara635kookie]

[jugandbettsdetectiveagency]

i love the troubled confused jughead, people want perfect selfless jughead, i think he's selfless in a way that destroys him but not the prince charming kind of selfless, he is not perfect - he makes good decisions and bad decisions, i don't get why people can't accept the bad ones - bad decisions that makes him not a bad person but just human - some fans are so obsessed with their fanfics i guess they forget to see what's happening on screen, our jughead is such a good boy, let's hug him

Jughead isn’t the Sherpa wearing dark hero that some people like to believe he is. If you think about where he started he was someone who thought himself outside of the town, who was gonna expose it, not someone who was gonna rescue it. Yeah, there was always an underlying desire coming from him to ~save the town by airing its dirty laundry, coming from a place where he constantly had small town Americana perfection shoved down his throat but was never able to attain it. But that kinda just makes his motivations come from a place of bitterness, and a lil bit of jealousy.

I see a lot of posts talking about things Jughead does that are out of character (something I don’t get on board with because I’m way more of an internal than external explorer when it comes to thinking about shows and such - yeah I get bad writing is a thing but I don’t have to acknowledge that if I don’t want to, if he did it then it was in character for me because… he is the character. But that’s a whole other thing), but if we look at it climbing through Betty’s window and kissing her is the action that came from way outta left field. Where on earth did he get that surge of confidence from? For a kid that’s not used to getting things that makes him happy it was very ballsy to walk in and try his hand at getting the girl he knows has a forever crush on his best friend. So because of this we’ve kinda intrinsically linked Jughead’s confidence, motivations, and willingness to do good to Betty - his one shining light in the fog that is riverdale. “Look, he suddenly wants to save this town because he loves Betty and she loves him. Now he’s motivated by happiness and the attainable goal of a white picket life. It’s all for Betty.”

But Jughead isn’t as one track minded as this. He’s frustratingly loyal (to a fault) to his family, to Archie, to anyone that’s shown him even the smallest amount of acceptance, and he often does things to the detriment of himself and the bigger picture in order to ‘save’ them by the wayside. We don’t see him turn his back on anyone like this, even when they’ve done him a wrong. He’s not singleminded but he doesn’t always do a good job as seeing more than a few feet in front of him at any given time.

Funnily enough, I’m already on board with CS’s use of the word antagonist for describing Jughead because it’s true??? He may not have any malicious intent behind his actions, but we can’t deny the fact that a lot of the choices and decisions he’s made exacerbate things in Riverdale rather than make them better. Jughead is a fumbling mess of good intentions, shaky morals, bad outcomes, and way too much to deal with at 16, with an inability to catch a break. The fandom is beginning to put as much expectation on him as the whole town seems to be, based on one little moment of confidence.

And he deserves a hug.