#ive ended up talking about fred more than who i wrote this post about

[mbat]

why are daphne and velma kinda so irritating in this show though

like i think ive already mentioned velma being shitty to shaggy and how its just so hard to watch no matter the reason lol

but also daphne chasing after fred so hard even though she can barely stand the things he likes and acts like he needs to stop liking it so much instead of her... like girl stop shitting on the mans fixation. he can love both of you AND HE DOES?

like the guys are just trying to vibe

id like to say this is me criticising the people who wrote this show more than anything

[robertogreco]

The Redirect: Technology after Capitalism

Here are a few thoughts from Public Knowledge’s “The Redirect: Technology after Capitalism” event at SFMOMA with Xiaowei Wang, Andrea Steves, Kim Stanley Robinson, Finn Brunton, and Caitlin Zaloom, which I very much enjoyed. [These notes were shared on Twitter the day after the event, but I am just now piecing them together here with a few corrections.]

That description of late capitalism (finance-driven capitalism, neoliberalism, what have you) keeping us stuck in very short-term thinking reminds me of Stewart Brand’s “pace layering.” We need to zoom in and out. We need to inhabit various orbits.

That notion of the potential of art (in the broadest of terms) as a mechanism for thinking… in a way, it keeps us from doing (making messes, consuming more, etc.) by slowing us down through a process of considering, playing out possibilities and subsequently making less mess, which together with the Fred Jameson quote that came up (“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”) reminds of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

The, again, Fred Jameson (pretty sure, but I could be remembering wrong) thought that Kim Stanley Robinson shared about the need for everyone to be a technocrat/bureaucrat because commons have always been dependent on keepers/minders/custodians enforcing them, even if not visible.

But how to bring back commons if capitalism keeps up racing along and the capitalist always find a way to root out socialism? I think about a Fred Moten quote I saw earlier today:

I don't think that scale is our friend, it's our enemy. how to get together on small scale with patience, ethical regard for one another... maybe this renewal of our habits of assembly happens on a small scale." —Fred Moten #tinylife

… and the notion of pockets (small!) of resistance (some collected quotes and ideas), with a nod to John Berger for language and for the sense of urgency, which has only expanded since he wrote.

And then back to the struggle to imagine a post-capitalist world, to break free from systems we no longer recognize as human inventions nor anything short of laws of physics, even if they aren’t, we need “the third loop” (Open thread, see above and below.)

Essentially I understand the third loop to be the ability to question a system itself and clearly see it’s contours, while 1st and 2nd loops are working within that dominant system

See also notions of (1) “cultural dark matter” and (2) “transcontextualism” and the “double bind.”

So much more to chew on: Xiaowei Wang’s visit to Alibaba towns and the “rural revitalization” initiatives in China, KSR’s re-terraforming and/or terra-harnessing (my feeble attempts at naming) of California’s Central Valley, using existing geology as “French drains,” and Aldo Leopold’s land ethic (more or less, “What’s good is good for the land.”), and “Capitalism is a fear of the other, a prisoner’s dilemma.” And “You get Theranos because there are not enough places for money to go [in capitalism].” Etc, etc. Brain food.

FIN

Update 1:

Because it relates to many parts of the thread above (especially the imagining of alternatives to our systems and the practice of art), here is some bell hooks, who of course has said:

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is. It’s to imagine what is possible.

Update 2: From an exchange with Xiaowei Wang, whose prompts are in quotes, the rest of the words mine:

love this Fred Moten quote: so, so true. sometimes I get really excited about being part of a community/organizing + then get heartsick when we start using same vocabularies that capitalism has taught us since birth."whats the most efficient and productive political strategy" etc

yes! with sprinklings of “value” and “worth” and “human capital” and “achievement” not to mention all the hierarchy and war words… “merit” and “deserve” and “dominate” and “lead” and “win” and and

I am curious, especially wrt the "it's easier to imagine end of world than end of capitalism" quote. if capitalism did end, would our brains be able to handle it? i think of many friends who say if they could stop working, they're not sure what they would do instead!

I am curious too. I think we have so much of our identity wrapped up in our work (“What do yo do?” as one of the first questions we ask people new to us) and most of our education points to work, not life and leisure (largely discouraged beyond vacation, “idle hands…”) that even when people retire, many don’t know what to do with themselves. (If I recall correctly, there is some research about retirees and those without hobbies have greater health consequences.) But I think the answer lies in recreation and creativity. If our education emphasized creativity and recreation as part of a balanced life, then it would be easier to imagine days gardening, birding, walking/hiking, sports playing, making of all sorts (art, carpentry, writing, painting, filmmaking, etc.), care and maintenance (of children, homes, machines, etc.).

… reading, chatting, cooking, sewing, cleaning. But so many of those care and maintenance tasks today are paid poorly (when paid at all) and thus seen as something to aspire to remove from our lives (often with an app!, no less).

(Some disclosure.)

PS: Jenny Odell has some good answers to all this notion in How to Do Nothing (the text of a talk, the video of the talk, and the book).

Here’s Jia Tolentino referencing Jenny Odell in “What It Takes to Put Your Phone Away”:

It involves rejecting the sort of progress that centers on isolated striving, and emphasizing, instead, caregiving, maintenance, and the interdependence of things.

[…]

She locates the potential for change in individual acts of refusal, which, she argues, make space for others to follow.

[serpent-jugheadjones]

Dog Days - Part 1

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Pairing: Jughead Jones x Doctor!Reader

Description: Riverdale is facing dark times. Jughead has to choose between two paths. Will Y/N affect his decision?

Warnings: Fred’s current situation in the season finale and alcohol. Spoiler alert if you haven’t watched season 2 trailers yet.

Word count: 3038

A/N: These trailers are killing me with anticipation. I know Archie was the one to take Fred to the hospital, but that doesn’t make sense to me, so I wrote as if he arrived in an ambulance. Had to make the reader sort of a genius since I wanted it to be legal and not to big of an age gap.

GSW stands for Gun Shot Wound, BPR for Beats Per Minute and Breaths Per Minute, BP for Blood Pressure, OR for Operating Room, Y/L/C/H for Your Length and Color Hair, Y/B/M/D for Your Birth Date and Month. My EMS report may be completely wrong for a real one so if you are a doctor feel free to correct me.

I know I was supposed to post a new part for the Partner Revealed, but I couldn’t help write this one. Hope you forgive me!

Five seconds is as much time as the doctors have to breath in and out to clear their minds before the EMT pulls out the gurney and behind it comes a ginger boy, with a red stained cast and varsity jacket. “Robbery gone wrong at Pop’s. Patient Fred Andrews, male, GSW to the abdomen, no exit wound, patient is unconscious, pulse 66 bpr, BP 140 over 80, respirations at 19 bpm. ETA 6 minutes after call, we have an 18 gauge IV and controlled bleeding.” In 30 seconds the paramedic gives them the report already taking the man to the closest trauma room available. “Is my dad gonna be ok?”, the boy asks desperately standing at the edge of the door where his father lays motionless. “We’ll do everything we can.”, Y/N answers him calmly. “Nurse. Take ...” She looks at the boy waiting for his name. “Archie.”, he replies. “Archie to the waiting room please.” She rushes in to check Fred’s wound. “I need an X-ray and two bags of O-. Page Dr. Stone and book OR 2.”, the ER doctor instructs Y/N.

Jughead, Betty and Veronica arrive at the hospital not too long after Fred is taken into surgery. They spot Archie in a chair at the reception, looking helpless and unbalanced. His expression softens at the sight of his friends running to hug him all at once. Jug’s arms around them all, staying like that for a short while before they rest. “What happened?”, Jughead asks tenderly, sitting down next to his friend. “We were at Pop’s. I was in the bathroom and heard noises, when I came out, there was this man, wearing this hood, with a gun at Pop Tate and then he pointed it at my dad and fired. Then he ... “, an incredibly distressed Archie answers. “Then he what?” His girlfriend looks hopeless. “He ran.”, he finishes his sentence distractedly. Jug reckons Arch could be keeping something from them by the way he spoke.

This is the worst possible time for Jughead to be worrying about his relationship with Betty. However, so much has happened in less than 24 hours that he barely had time to process it. They left the Jubilee in awe, ready to show how much they love each other. Instead, what could have been a perfect night was spent arguing over a family issue. It drove him mad how much of a hypocrite his girlfriend can be. He almost wanted to take back what he confessed to her earlier.

When Jug got the call from Archie, he was still wearing the source of the problem. Betty had to remind him that showing up at the hospital with a Serpents’ jacket right after his best friend’s dad had just been shot wasn’t a smart idea. He knew that. Nevertheless, he was being torn apart. That snake embroidery was always a reason for confrontations with his father. In spite of that, the second his fingers touched the cold material and he first slid it on, Jughead felt at peace, safe. Like he finally belonged and ultimately understood his dad.

His girlfriend, if he can still call her that, is accommodated next to an incredibly tense Veronica, not even looking at his direction. Right now there’s nothing he can do to fix that, and, quite honestly, he doesn’t know if it’s worth trying. What he can and wants to do is help his ‘brother’ in any and every way he can. “Arch. Can we talk privately?” He points at the empty hallway and the red-haired boy follows him. “What is it, Jug?”, he asks, still looking at the reception, just in case someone comes out with some information. “For a moment, it looked like you were about to say something, about the hood guy, and reconsidered.”, Jughead states. “Really?” Archie fails at sounding convincing, certainly because he’s too tired to properly pretend. “Part of what makes you so endearing is your utter lack of a poker face.”, Jughead tells him in a sensible way. Archie stares at him wonderingly. “You have to stop taking the weight of the world by yourself, pal. You are not alone, Archie.” He shows himself with both hands from top to bottom in a very dramatic way, then the waiting room full of his friends and their parents. Jug knows he’s not one to say, as he for months lived inside the school’s storage closet instead of asking for help. Though, after his father was wrongfully arrested, it was all of them together who made it right and he started to rethink his ways. There’s nothing he wants more than to make that happen for his friend.

Archie takes his time to answer. “What if this wasn’t just a random thief? I know Clifford wasn’t happy with my dad working at the Drive-In land. He did everything in his power to stop the construction. What if Mr. Blossom ACTUALLY did everything to terminate it?”, he blurts out without barely breathing between words, releasing some of his build up stress as he tells out loud the theory that’s been keeping his mind unsettled. “He was a powerful man, no denying that. Still, I doubt Cliff could be doing anything from the grave. Although, if you’re telling me it looked staged, then it’s paramount we find out who’s pulling the strings.” Jughead assures him that he has his back, no matter what. Before they can elaborate an opinion, Sheriff Keller arrives to question Archibald. They all give them privacy. Jug figured this would be a good time to talk to Betty, yet she ignores him calling out for her and leaves to the cafeteria with Ronnie.

After long tedious, yet uneasy waiting hours, the surgeon and nurses come out of the hallway. Archie immediately stands up and the man signs with his hand he’ll soon speak to them. First he stops at the reception desk in the waiting room, giving Fred’s chart and further instructions to a girl who looks too young to be in scrubs, in Jug’s opinion. She removes her bouffant cap to reveal a Y/L/H/C and makes eye contact with Jughead, who looks away quickly, embarrassed, feeling his face get warm and red. Reason tells him it’s immoral to blush from looking at a girl he doesn’t even know while having a girlfriend - and being at the hospital with his best friend’s dad just out of surgery makes it ten times worse. Truth is he just can’t help it.

The man introduces himself as Dr. Stone, the general surgeon who operated on Mr. Andrews. He calmly and rationally explains they managed to remove the bullet and cease the bleeding. Then he tells Archie his dad is being taken to the ICU and he’ll soon be able to see him. Despite that, Fred’s still intubated and they don’t know how long it will be until he wakes up, considering the bullet hit a vital organ. In his opinion, though, it could’ve been a lot worse. All they heard was ‘He’s alive’. Arch releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding in. “I’m gonna stay with my dad. Can you let Ronnie know she can go home?”, the ginger boy covered in his own father’s blood cries out. “Sure. Listen, he’s gonna be fine, Archie. I’ll be back tomorrow morning so you can change and rest.” Jughead hugs his friend once more, tighter this time. He’s not big on PDA or physical contact in general, although he truly wants to express how much he cares.

Jughead walks out of the hospital, feeling the icy air cool his face. He closes his eyes, but that doesn’t stop his mind from going a thousand miles per hour. The beanie-clad boy is immensely solaced that Fred is in his way to recovery. Regardless, there is still a long way to go until it’s all put right and the dog days end. After all the hours awake, caffeine is needed. Unfortunately, his usual place for a hit is not an option. He spots a small food truck next to the parking lot. The largest cup they had still doesn’t fit his needs, but it will do. While he’s waiting for his drink, he texts Veronica as Archie asked. Jug recognises the girl sitting in one of the benches. Tiny droplets of water from the drizzle glow red and blue on top of her noteworthy hair when the ambulance lights shine.

He can’t help gazing at the girl who may have just saved Fred’s life. Something about her attracts Jughead like a magnet. “People complain about hospital food. But the coffee... is to die for.”, she remarks ironically, taking a sip from her large travel cup of coffee. Jughead takes a few seconds to realize she spoke to him, as he was standing behind her, confident he was safe from being spotted. He realizes she’s very aware of him staring. “Considering the work hours, that’s essential. Mind if I sit?”, he asks. She shakes her head in agreement and scoots over to give him more space. “Jughead Jones the Third.” He extends her a hand. “Y/N Y/L/N... the first.” She firmly and steadily shakes it.

She doesn’t look mad about him glaring. Intrigued is more like it. “You’re part of the surgical team who operated on Fred Andrews, right?”, he asks. “Technically, I’m not supposed to disclose it to non-family members. But you did see me with Dr. Stone.” She doesn’t break eye contact, and even in the low lighting he can see her beautiful Y/E/C iris, deep like a galaxy, as if a whole universe resided in it. “I just wanted to thank you. You’re part of the reason he’s still alive.” Jughead bites the inside of his cheeks trying to remain composed. “I’m just an intern.” Her words contradict her smile, as if no one has ever appreciated all the effort she puts into saving people’s lives. Y/N’s pager beeps. “Duty calls.” The girl gets up and swallows the rest of her coffee in one sip. “Is that for Fred?”, Jug asks anguished, wondering if something could’ve gone wrong. “I do have other patients, Mr. Jones.”, she replies. “Please. Call me Jughead.”, he says. “See you around, Jughead.”, Y/N speaks louder as she’s already walking away.

“Juggy?” He hears Betty calling out for him seconds after Y/N left, exactly the same way she did back at the trailer. For the first time, that annoys him. Jughead feels he’s being treated like a child and a possession. None of them have the energy to deal with their situation at the moment. She offers him a ride home, which he denies saying he needs to clear his mind. The blonde girl tried to peck his lips but he turns his face and she lands a soft kiss on his cheek. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”, he guarantees and leaves.

He still has the spare key Fred gave him when he moved in. Entering the empty house feels weird. Jughead climbs the stairs to the room he used to share with Archie to pack him some clean clothes and essentials. Practicality dictates he should spend the night there, as he has to talk to Betty before going to the hospital the next morning. On second thought, the place doesn’t feel like home anymore and the silence is driving him mad.

Jug crosses Riverdale’s train tracks towards the south, carrying the northside mess with him inside Archie’s Bulldog football bag. Sunnyside’s sign gives him comfort for the first time in a really long while. He gets inside his dad’s trailer, rests the bag on the kitchen table and throws himself at the couch, dog-tired. Still his brain doesn’t want to fall asleep. He stares at the leather jacket carefully placed at the back of the chair. It has a strong effect on him, like it’s seducing him. He gives in to temptation and puts it on again. Just as the first time, he feels sheltered and powerful. That can only lead him one place at this hour.

The red doors loosely remind him of the ones at Pop’s. If not for the bikes parked in front, he could trick himself. Not that he needs to. Somehow, the Whyte Wyrm feels a lot safer in relation to the chock’lit shoppe now. Usually, he'd feel like a pray walking in the bar filled with snakes to retrieve his drunken father. Now he feels nested, welcomed and comfortable. “Glad to see you again, kid”, the man who gave him the jacket pats his back respectfully. “Truth be told we weren’t sure you would.”, the young guy who held Hot Dog’s leash the previous night confesses, preparing to shoot the pool ball. He pockets the 8, ending the game and retrieving the bet money. “Come on, I’ll buy you your first beer.” Jughead just walks with him to the counter, still silent, taking in every detail of the bar he missed the previous times. The pictures on the wall, neon signs shading the dark room, people having fun, the snakes inside the glass tanks, but most surprising of all, Y/N Y/L/N sitting at the counter.

“Aren’t you a little young to be in a bar?” He’s amazed and a little scared as once again she addresses him facing the other way. “Do you have eyes in your back?” He sits down on the empty stool next to her and the young serpent winks at him with a smirk. Jughead widens his eyes to him, wordlessly telling him to scram. “Surgeon skills, I have to be aware of at least 5 other people in the OR while keeping my eyes on the patient.”, she explains, shifting her stool towards him. “Impressive. And I am.”, he says, sipping his cold beer, still not sure the glory everyone sees in it. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” She shows him her driver's license, Y/B/M/D 2000. “How are you a doctor if you’re still 17?”, he asks. “Skipped high school. I have an eidetic memory, didn’t wanna waste four perfectly good years of a very short life in hell, so I just got my GED and got into Med school.”, she says like it’s not a big deal. “Doctor Strange much?” He wonders if she’ll even get the reference. “Wouldn’t that be awesome?” Y/N bumps the rim of her bottle to Jughead’s.

A couple of beers in and Jughead is already tipsy, although unable to forget the messed-up things that have been happening in a row. “What do you think happened?”, he asks Y/N in relation to the Pop’s shooting. “Robbery gone wrong. I haven’t given it much thought to be honest.” Y/N stands up and grabs Jughead’s hand making him come with her. “How could you not have thought about it?”, he asks, simply letting her guide him. “I’m a doctor, Jughead. I have to think about charts and keeping my patients alive. I leave detecting to the Sheriff.” Y/N rests her beer bottle in the corner of the pool table. “Pardon me if I don’t trust the police.”, he says, still confused as to why they got up. “You’re one of the kids who solved the Jason Blossom murder case, wouldn’t expect anything else.” She starts setting the balls inside the triangle. “Not in the least. Found it quite impressive actually. I’m all for justice. It’s just that I left a 16-hour shift, the only thing I want to do is drink and play.” She grabs two cue sticks and hands one out to Jughead. “Come on. If I win, you buy me a drink; if you win, you buy me a drink.”, she says playfully. “Fair game you got going, huh?” Jug starts chalking his stick to start the game.

Surprisingly, he’s pretty good at it. Not only for his first time playing, but being drunk while doing it. “Dr. Y/N/N. You’re not going easy on our boy here, are you?”, one of the serpents says, leaning on the table. “Are you accusing me of cheating, Franky?”, she tells him. “Maybe you could let him win so we can get out of here.”, the young southsider suggests. The boy places his hands on either side of her, pinning her to the table. Jughead watches furiously but unable to act. He wants to punch him but he’s one of them now and can’t just go around hitting the guys.“In your dreams.” She pushes him away and grabs Jug’s hand once more taking control. As they leave the bar, he realizes how dizzy he is. But Y/N is steady enough to hold him upright.

They walk past the gates of Sunnyside trailer park. Jughead is leaning in Y/N for support. She leads him and herself towards his trailer according to Jug’s direction. After they walk around the same place twice, she declares them lost and Jughead unfit to guide. Half an hour of that wandering through the trailer park passes until they finally arrive at the improvised porch of Y/N’s trailer. She drops an almost unconscious Jughead on her bed, pulling his jacket off with a lot of difficulty, as he wanted to keep it on, covering him with a blanket after untying his shoes. Y/N fills a glass of water and takes some ibuprofen to her bedside desk along with a note instructing Jughead to close the trailer door when he leaves and drop the key in the plant at the bottom of the porch stairs. Y/N watches the boy sleeping in her bed. He looks serene, unlike when he’s awake. She grabs a blanket for herself to sleep in the couch.

[cooperjones2020]

What’s Past is Prologue, What to Come, pt. 6

Summary: He wanted to hit whoever made Betty cry. He wanted to hit Betty so she’d keep crying. Interrelated vignettes from Jughead Jones’s obsession with Betty Cooper. Dark!Jug, Creepy!Jug, Stalker!Jug, generally Sociopathic!Jug.

A/N: Complete :) There’ll be one more one-shot to tie-off the series posted on Friday. But it will be more along the lines of Marked than of this fic. Prepare yourselves, because Dark!Betty comes out to play.

TW: implied violence (for this chapter specifically, check the other tags on ao3)

(parts one / two / three / four / five)

ao3—> http://archiveofourown.org/works/11394858/chapters/26675151

Every town has one. The house on the haunted hill all the kids avoid. Now that Jason was buried in the earth, it would only be a matter of time until something poisonous bloomed in that long, cold shadow cast by his death. Whatever grew in the rich black soil of the Blossoms’ garden always found its way to the town. Whether it was murder or love or secrets or lies.

He loved the murder board. He loved that Betty had touched every single piece of it. Earlier, when he was in the Blue and Gold office alone, he had run his fingers over every photograph, every scrap of paper, every tangled strand of red string, willing his fingertips to absorb the oils from her skin.

After the memorial, after Betty cornered her father about his conversation with Clifford Blossom, they returned to the office to regroup. He leaned back against a desk and watched her a few feet away from him as she grappled with the splintered fragments of her family.

“Juggie, I feel like I don’t even know who my mom and dad are anymore.”

“Betty,” he stood and moved toward the murder board. “If your parents lied about Jason and Polly, there’s probably more that they lied about.” He turned back to look at her.

“What do you mean?” She moved to follow him. He’d dealt with Trev, but now he wanted something from her. Some sign that they were in this together.

“Your dad said he would do anything to protect Polly. So the next logical question is, how far would he go to protect her?” He turned to the table in front of the board and grabbed an index card.

“Jughead, whoever broke into Sheriff Keller’s house and stole all his evidence wasn’t at the drive-in.” She looked at him with her big green eyes shining. He could imagine the look of the tears he knew she was holding back. “My dad wasn’t at the drive-in.” He handed her the index card and watched to see what she would do. With just a moment of hesitation, she pinned it right smack dab in the center, below Jason’s yearbook picture. God, he was proud of her. He pushed her over that barrier and she let him. He wanted to scoop her up in a hug and to devour her.

Instead, he said, “We need to talk to Polly.” Betty took a deep breath and gave him a wobbly nod. His heart slowed and beat thickly, as if submerged in maple syrup, as he watched her. The string between her and her parents was pulled taut. It would be easy to snip. It would be one more string he could hoard for himself.

On the first night he spent in the janitor’s closet at school, after the drive-in closed, the third thing he did was seek out Betty’s locker. He’d stolen a set of maintenance keys a few weeks ago and had a copy to the school’s front doors made, just in case. The drive-in had a cot, but it didn’t have a shower. And they’d stopped running water to the bathrooms at the campground when it had closed for the season on the first of September.

So the first thing he did was take a shower. The second thing he did was break into the cafeteria kitchen and scrounge up some dinner. Then he headed down the hallway with the science classrooms.

She’d had the same combination since sixth grade: Polly’s birthday. He rummaged through her locker for anything new, anything that could add to the store of Betty Cooper trivia he kept locked inside him.

He already knew about the Neosporin in the pink pencil box on the top shelf. But when he opened it, the tube was almost empty. It might have been that way for a while. There’s no way she’d used that much this early into the school year—she probably brought an old half-used tube from home anyway.  But still. He wanted to slice the scars off her palms.

He replaced the pencil box and reached for the stack of notes besides it. He unfolded their intricate shapes and pressed them flat before scanning each one. All from Veronica and Kevin. All useless.

“No one cares you can’t get dick, Kev,” he whispered under his breath as he struggled to re-fold the notes.

Then, he reached over her school books and slid his hand down the back wall of the locker to see if anything had fallen. But rather than the detritus of further notes and to-do lists he expected, he found two slim books. One, the worn copy of The Story of O he’d caught her reading a few weeks ago. He hadn’t believed the story she fed Cheryl about writing an exposé on book banning. So he pocketed it to look at later, in the luxury of his closet. The other, the small pink book he recognized as her diary. Jackpot.

It was only about a two-thirds full but the last entry seemed to be from a few days before — a description of her showdown with Archie outside Pop’s. Odd. She normally wrote in it every day. He flipped back to the first entry, the day she arrived in LA, and began to scan, until his own name grabbed his attention.

I finally got Jug to talk to me. He’s been avoiding me since I got back. I don’t know what happened with him and Arch over the summer — though it seems to be better now — but he better get it through his thick skull that Archie has no business in our relationship. Whatever Archie did to him doesn’t affect him and me. He looks skinnier. Last night at Pop’s, I convinced him I was full so he’d eat the rest of my fries. I wonder if he’d be offended if I offered to pack him a lunch. A lump formed in his throat that he didn’t understand. But when he turned the page, the rest of the entry devolved into a description of cheerleading routines.

A few pages later something else caught his eye:

I think some of my clothes have gone missing. If Polly were here, I’d swear she’d stolen them, but she’s not so that can’t be it.

Sometime around early September, mentions of Archie, and especially her feelings for Archie, had dropped off sharply. Simultaneously, her mentions of him had grown. He tried not to read anything into it. It was probably just because of the paper. He was around her more so of course she would think about him more. Write about him more.

But then,

Dear Diary,

It happened again. I’m losing time. I remember talking to Chuck at Pop’s and making the plan with Veronica and Ethel. But I don’t remember showing up at Ethel’s house. I don’t remember calling him Jason. And I don’t know where I got the black wig.

This hasn’t happened since I was in LA. I had hoped it was some freaky coincidence brought on by not enough humidity and too much green juice. I don’t know what to do or who I can even tell.

Who will I be if I let go?

Sometimes Jughead looks at me as if he knows.

That was it. She ended the entry and then the next one was about Archie and Grundy. Fuck.

Channeling all his darkness into his obsession with Betty Cooper allowed Jughead to maintain a thin veneer of normalcy. That she might be doing the same to him…

The needy beast of a thing in his chest roared to life.

Most days, he does a pretty good job at seeming normal. Well, not normal. Reggie likes to call him things like Donnie Darko and Wednesday Adams, but, still, he manages to keep most of his darkness on the inside.

But all of these days from the past swirl in Jughead’s mind as he lets himself into the Andrews’ garage and commandeers Fred’s ladder. The day he met Betty. The day Betty burned her arm making him cookies. The day she got grounded for losing her American Girl doll. The day he set Nancy Drew on fire. The first day he saw her topless. The day she drove away from Riverdale in a wood-panelled station wagon. The day she asked him to join her on the Blue and Gold. The day the drive-in closed. The day he found her diary. The day she went on a “date” with Trev Brown.

Polly had accidentally scratched Betty’s cheek when the orderlies were dragging her out of their hug earlier. Jughead spent the car ride home fighting the urge to lick the blood off her face.

She would pine after Archie. She would “date” Trev. She would kiss Veronica. But her darkness is his. Today, she will pick him. He has a plan.

She sits at her vanity, fingering her necklace and staring at the floor when Jughead gets to the top of the ladder beneath her window. He wraps gently on the closed glass and her head turns, ponytail whipping behind her. He can tell she’s surprised, but her face quickly gives way to a smile as she rushes over to open the window.

“Hey there, Juliet. Nurse off duty?” She steps back so he can climb in. “You haven’t gone full ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ on me yet, have you?”

Betty’s voice is rough, as if she’s been crying. “They’re crazy. My parents are crazy.”

“They’re parents. They’re all crazy.”

“No, but what if—what if Polly is too?” Betty stammers. “The way she was talking to me, the way she looked at me. And now all I can think is, maybe I’m crazy like they are.” She’s spiralling. Jughead puts a hand on shoulder and he feels some of the tension drain out as she sighs, as his touch does that to her.

“Hey. We’re all crazy.” He looks into her eyes, willing her to know what he knows. To know they’re alike. She smiles at him and looks at the floor.

When he speaks, her eyes drift back up. “We’re not our parents, Betty. We’re not our families.” He might be imagining it, but he thinks her eyes pause on his lips on their journey back to the floor. “Also—”

“What?” she whispers. She stares into his eyes again as he flicks his gaze all over her face. “What?” she asks again, louder. She smiles at him with half of her mouth and raises one eyebrow.

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her. When she doesn’t pull back right away, the monster inside him cheers. Then when she kisses him back, he sighs and it settles into a contented purr.

She breaks the kiss, “The car!”

He smiles at her and raises his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s what you were thinking about in the middle of our moment?” If he hadn’t just felt the insistent pressure of her lips against his own, he’d be more upset. But he knows, better than anyone now, how Betty’s mind works.

“No. Polly talked about a car Jason had stashed for them down Route 40. Near some sign? If we can find it, we can confirm Polly’s story.”

“Well, one way or another.”

“I need to know, Juggie.” Then she leans forward and presses another soft kiss against his lips. He’d do anything for her. He’d kill for her. Of course he’ll go looking for the damn car with her. Because now, he’s got her. He’s finally got the real life Betty doll.