#jason is so flabbergasted when he finally realizes when someone likes him romantically

[undertheredhood]

one of jason’s love interests deciding to make the first move (because we all know jason wouldn’t be the one to do it because he’s a loser): hey handsome, do you come here often?

jason todd (a nerd who’s last somewhat serious romantic relationship happened before his death): get the hell out of my city

[andsmile]

do you think b/rchie is bad for betty?

I’ve been postponing answering these questions because...welp. I talk about BA too much, but you guys seem to enjoy my discourse, so.

I think I have to be clear that I don’t think that fundamentally Archie and Betty are bad to each other. They’re “good people”, they’ve been friends their whole lives, in a bubble where you have Archie and Betty growing up together with their friend Jughead or without their friend Jughead and they date other people along the way etc, Veronica shows up or doesn’t, but BA end up together, childhood friends to lovers or whatever it is that attracts the shippers, I think it’s whatever. 

It’s just another ship and it’s a valid one. Archie is fundamentally a good character, he’s not gonna hurt her or anything, and Betty is fundamentally a good character, she’s not gonna fuck his life or something. 

Even though the idea of them bores me I think that if written the right way, they can be good and interesting. If you want to write a fic about how their journey went I am pretty sure your fic will be a good, compelling story, and it might even be as in character as possible for characters we met in the pilot...in season one, if I stretch.

H o w e v e r, and my point every time I explain why I don’t like BA, 

These two characters don’t exist in their bubble. They don’t exist in the universe you created. They exist within a certain universe that is already established by four seasons of a certain canon, portrayed in a certain way, and I don’t think some people realize how this universe is established:

In the canon universe, Archie and Betty had childhood crushes on each other. Archie moved on, Betty didn’t. She confessed her feelings and dreams, that are very paralleled to becoming her sister and Jason Blossom. Then, Archie rejects Betty because he doesn’t have feelings for her and even though he says to her that it’s because she’s too perfect for him (and he says that because he feels guilty for hurting her) it’s not what he said to the girl that caught his eye before (I have never felt whatever I’m supposed to feel with Betty is a the line he says to the girl that caught his eye, and yeah okay we could play into the denial narrative but then two seasons later he tells Veronica Ronnie, when I first met you, you were it for me so I think Archie knew exactly what he was supposed to feel) and Betty got sad for a bit, but she moved on and found a connection with Jughead. Who was Archie’s best friend. And even if Archie felt jealous or not (I have said before what I think about his jealousy, and BAs have called me delusional, but anyway), that’s what happened. Betty found in Jughead both a boyfriend and a best friend and became the power couple that had nothing to do with the childhood dream. Archie got with the girl who was “it” for him from the beginning and went through hell and back for her. Every once in a while, they look over their shoulders to each other, especially when things with Jughead and Veronica are shaky -- and boy, they’re often shaky -- and are reminded, in different intensities and timings, of things they could’ve been.

This is the canon narrative, and if you support BA in canon understanding this, that’s probably fine. But most people go by some narrative created by the great majority of the BA fandom that, essentially, says that the story these four seasons of canon is telling us is a bunch of lies. That the Archie has only dated who he did (three woc) because he couldn’t get his hands on the perfect, virginal, white girl-next-door that he wasn’t ready for. That Betty’s main character traits, that have only actually flared up after she got over him, changed her and made her someone insufferable, and that she was better around Archie, even though he didn’t feel anything for her before. A narrative that reduces Betty to a girl who actually found out who she really was so she could “claim her prize”, and that reduces Archie to be “her prize”, because none of his choices matter either. He was just regretting making “the wrong choice” all the time. In the middle of the way, this fan-created narrative still says that the very deep and meaningful relationship Archie has with a latinx is just sexual. It also says that the very deep and meaningful relationship Betty has with Jughead is “rebound”, “incest”, “bland”, just because it’s not sexual enough, according to them. Even though it is. But of course, the main and the latinx woman are all about sex. Betty and Jughead act like siblings, they’re boring. Archie and Betty? The perfect combination of the main and the virginal, perfect girl who can’t do no wrong. But now the main sees that she isn’t perfect! He knows her better than anyone, even better than her boyfriend/bestfriend, even though they haven’t interacted in years. And now that she has proved herself not perfect, not virginal, she can be with him, and she won’t be oversexualized even if she is--they’ll be crazy about each other, romantic! Exciting!

If you support this made-up narrative in the bubble of Riverdale, you are invalidating all the growth and the choices these two characters have done in four seasons of content. That’s why many reviewers that aren’t up on the idea of BA stemming from the comics or in the idea that the show “needs a change”, said “this was so out of character for them”, because it was. You reduce their journey as characters and turn them into each others love interests and that’s all, they’re nothing else. And you do that in the expense of friendships (that aren’t well developed but that we are still meant to believe in), the entire character of Veronica (I will never shut up, if you think Veronica is a bump in the road for Archie you are simply an asshole), the gigantic amount of trauma Archie’s been through, the gigantic amount of change and growth Betty’s been through aaaand---

The comics! That’s an usual argument I see around to be pro-BA in the show, because they stem from the comments, and it always flabbergasts me because...the ARCHIE COMICS? REALLY? Who basically created the girl-next-door stereotype in the 1940′s and numerous Betty’s have been portrayed here and there always taking all the bullshit from their husbands who are often pursuing the “Veronicas” of the world and coming back home where they wait and suffer for them? I can mention at least 10 characters from the media that are made in Betty’s molds and the cathartic moment for all of them are when they finally get the fuck away from their “Archies” who never love them enough, but then you have, in the very AC live action, the actual Betty Cooper’s character who makes a vow with Veronica for boys not come between them, look over her shoulder and stop focusing on Archie for the first time in seven decades to focus on someone else in a cinematic moment that should go to feminism in media (I swear) with how symbolic that shit was, and you want... you really want... her to go through this so soon in her journey so she gets Archie as her prize in the end?

You cannot convince me you are a fan of Betty Cooper in any universe if that’s what you want for her.

So, yeah. I think BA is bad for Betty. I don’t think Archie is bad for Betty, I don’t think Betty is bad for Archie, but I think their ship in the canon context of Riverdale and the ~representation game they play, it’s a menace. You can all send me inboxes again saying people should be able to ship whatever they ship - and they should. And they will. I won’t change that. I am only giving out my opinion, and I stand by it.