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alwaysspeakshermind · 5 years

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Top 5 Anti-Varchie Arguments & Why They Make No Sense

#3: “Varchie breaks up every other day/they’re so toxic.”

Yeah, so...to quote both Hamlet 3.3.87 and that one Bugs Bunny meme—NO.

[Quick but serious question: is this whole “they break up all the time” thing a trying-to-be-cleverly-snarky exaggeration, or are people really just that unobservant? I want to believe it’s the first, but I see it so often now that I’m becoming horribly afraid it’s the latter.]

Over the course of three seasons and 57 episodes, Archie and Veronica break up three times—three!—and each of those times, the breakup is precipitated by outside events, no one is happy to be breaking up, and both parties make a concerted effort to remain friends while neither ever actually quits caring about the other.

Regarding the toxic argument: no they are quite obviously a safe and non-toxic ship. (Although they do appear to present the occasional choking hazard for children under the age of 13 who cannot seem to swallow Varchie’s happiness).

“Toxic” is, however, a term I refuse to unpack and dissect at the length it deserves right now because I’m so incredibly sick of the misconceptions Tumblr and the rest of the internet perpetuates regarding toxic/abusive relationships that my exhausted frustration with this subject alone can fill pages and it’ll drag me off topic. So instead, I’m just going to point out that while none of Riverdale’s main ships is toxic (everyone’s just young; there is an actual difference), Varchie is the ship with the fewest elements the internet typically likes to designate as such (antagonism/aggression toward each other, childish/petty behavior designed to get under the other’s skin, resentment/bitterness directed at the other person following a breakup, etc.), so the frequency with which this argument is thrown around is extra-laughable.

Especially considering how demonstrably willing both Archie and Veronica are to overcome their unfamiliarity with each other’s world, share each other’s concerns, support each other’s interests, and essentially serve as each other’s partner because they both consider all those things fundamental parts of being in a relationship (which they are).

**IMPORTANT NOTE: if you struggle to discern the difference between:

(1) a healthy real-life relationship (which, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, will in fact include arguments because people are people and no human being who possesses a mind of their own agrees with another human being all the time)

(2) a toxic real-life relationship (which can include arguments but doesn’t have to)

(3) healthy and toxic fictional relationships (which are entirely different beasts, particularly in book or TV series as plot requirements frequently dictate that characters react in ways that no actual person would, because the narrative needs conflict or drama to function and publishers/networks still over-rely on relationships to provide that conflict or drama)

then you probably will believe Varchie is toxic, and you definitely need to do some research that goes a little deeper than Wikipedia/that one post with a bunch of notes that was written by a person who came out of their first college psychology class feeling like Sigmund Freud. Toxic relationships are no joke, and it’s a little frightening to see how many people on the internet are so confused as to what constitutes one in reality that they frequently interpret normal, healthy relationships portrayed in fiction as toxic, and borderline-toxic relationships in fiction as healthy. (Also, it doesn’t help that people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to paint their dislike of a certain pairing in homilectic terms, are in the habit of taking scenes that check off a few of the “toxic relationship” boxes and twisting them out of context so that they can pretend there’s an element of moral superiority to their prejudice.)

But, important reminder! Fiction and real life are not the same thing, so if you want to measure fiction by reality’s standards, you have to apply liberal amounts of common sense to your assessments of the goings-on in a fictional world and recognize that many developments are necessitated by things like plot advancement, network executives, deadlines, and your basic this-actor-got-sick or that-actor-is-going-leave-soon randomness. Playing judge, jury, and executioner on the toxicity of TV relationships is, if possible, even more complex than just judging the toxicity of real-life relationships because by arbitrary unwritten law, TV relationships must include some onscreen friction.

In fact, one of the first things you’re taught about writing fiction is that no one wants to read/watch/hear about the thing that almost happened, so don’t waste valuable narrative time portraying that—yes, everyone likes to joke about how they would love to watch a show where the kids went to class everyday and everything happened normally, but it’s a joke. It’s not true. No one who’s done with high school really wants to go back again and listen to an hour of boring lectures week after week, and no one who’s still in school wants to come home and watch a show that’s a repeat of their entire day. TV shows (or books, or movies) expect you to understand that each episode/scene/chapter/whatever is a story they’re telling you about the time something did happen, and that expectation also extends to fictional relationships. Just because you happen to witness a couple’s every fight/argument/disagreement onscreen does not mean you’re expected to conclude that “OMG, this couple is so toxic! All they ever do is fight!”

No.

That would be like concluding the only holidays in the town of Riverdale are Christmas and Labor Day because we haven’t seen them have Halloween or New Year’s yet. You’re expected to put two and two together and assume they’ve celebrated those holidays that logically must have preceded and followed Christmas, just like you’re expected to grasp the underlying implication that after weeks/months of happiness and fun and peace, these two characters who love each other are now squabbling/experiencing tension over something important that they disagree on. Archie and Veronica are shown working together, being happy, enjoying one another’s company etc. multiple times before conflict ever arises between them, and them figuring out how to navigate through that conflict is intended as a facet of the story’s plot and a developmental point in their character arcs, not a red flag denoting an unhealthy relationship.

But anyways.

Back to the “they break up all the time” argument and why its fallaciousness is so obvious that it needs to be retired with all possible speed. (And as a bonus, also back to its close relatives “they break up for stupid reasons and get back together in five minutes.”

The “Shouldn’t-Be-Necessary-But-Apparently-Is”Quick Guide To Varchie Breakups:

Breakup #1: The end of episode 2x08

Duration of breakup: Almost one whole episode (that spans the course of at least a couple days)

What leads to breakup: Archie, the comfortable-with-feelings person, drops the L-word and desperately wants to hear it back. Veronica, the uncomfortable-with-feelings person, isn’t sure she can say it back and doesn’t want to go on acting like it’s not a big deal when she can see how important it is to Archie.

The outcome: Neither Archie nor Veronica’s actual feelings change at all from the time of the breakup to the time of the reunion. (No, not even when Betty kisses Archie.) Veronica just finally realizes that what she feels for Archie is love, so she goes to see him and tells him face-to-face. Archie is happy to get back together right then and there, and they resume where they left off.

“Breakup” #2: The end of episode 3x06

Duration of “breakup”: three +/- episodes (end of 3x06-beginning of 3x10)

What leads to “breakup”: Archie believes Hiram’s vendetta against him endangers everyone close to him, not just him, and decides running away is his only option.

The outcome: Once again, neither Archie nor Veronica’s actual feelings change. They both attempt to move on/forget (Archie with Farm Girl Whose Name Escapes Me, Veronica with Reggie), but don’t exactly succeed as evidenced by Veronica’s anger, Archie’s remorse, and how quickly they want to get back together when he returns to town.

NOTE: This is the one I sarcastically refer to as “the breakup” because it was over the phone (which, as everyone who’s ever utilized this dodge knows, is the easiest way to keep yourself from going back on a hard decision you don’t want to make. It should be obvious to those with functioning sensibilities that Archie does it that way because he knows if he goes the in-person route he’ll have to see Veronica cry and won’t be able to handle it). Besides that, Archie tells Veronica that he loves her and she was “it” for him from the day he met her, and it clearly kills both them to say goodbye. So again, as any viewer with common sense can see, it’s a breakup in name only—their heads are forced to accept what their hearts can’t, and everything they think is resolved is really only postponed.

Breakup #3: The end(ish) of episode 3x10

Duration of breakup: ALMOST TWELVE WHOLE EFFING EPISODES (end of 3x10-middleish of 3x22). COUNT THEM.

What leads to breakup: Archie has in no way recovered from his rough experiences over the past months, and is behaving erratically. Veronica observes his out-of-character behavior with a lot of concern, and Reggie (whether accidentally or on purpose) fuels the idea that Archie is no longer Archie, so when Hiram ends up shot the day of the PSATs, Veronica knee-jerk reacts due to all the stress, worries that Archie might be responsible for it, and doesn’t contradict Archie when he asks if they’re done.

The outcome: Once again (surprise, surprise!) neither Archie nor Veronica’s feelings for one another change. They again try to move on/forget each other by dating other people (Josie and Reggie), but it doesn’t work. They remain close, continue to look to each other for comfort/support, and as soon as they’re faced with a life-or-death scenario, they throw caution to the wind and tell each other the truth (“I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you”/“My heart ached for you. Because I felt the same way.”)

To recap: what do these breakups have in common?

(1) Each breakup is due to a legitimate concern involving the other person, i.e., they are breakups for mature reasons, not breakups for “How dare you not text me back within five minutes” or “I’m a free range pony that can’t be tamed” reasons (with all due respect to Fat Amy)

(2) Neither Archie nor Veronica wanted to break up

(3) Both Archie and Veronica continued to love each other

When you’re young, the un-fun truth is that you frequently make really bad decisions in love. (You also do it sometimes when you’re older, too.) Archie and Veronica breaking up because they mistakenly perceive certain issues as insurmountable, trying to move on with other people and then going back to each other to make things right and reaffirm the love they couldn’t pretend away the instant the opportunity arises isn’t them being fickle, or toxic—it’s just them being young and clueless and trying to recover from young and clueless mistakes as maturely as possible.

And believe it or not, their relationship has been handled very well by Riverdale. There are few other TV couples who’ve been as steady as A&V, and none of them are teen couples (in fact, the only ones that even come to mind out of all the shows I’ve ever seen are married and/or background couples, not main couples, because main characters’ relationships are always put through more drama). It is basically unheard of for a teen show’s protagonist and their primary love interest (who, incidentally, is also another main character) to only go through three breakups in three seasons. It is rarer still for each of those breakups to have a justifiable concern at its core, and rarest of all for the characters to take the mature and difficult let’s-be-friends approach rather than the easy and childish let’s-personally-attack-the-other approach.

That is not a back-and-forth and/or toxic relationship. That is a fictional teenage relationship handled more maturely than many a fictional adult relationship, and that is good.

Postscript to the rant:

Veronica does not break up with Archie in 1x01, because they are not yet together.

Veronica does not break up with Archie in 1x11, because they are not yet together.

Archie does not break up with Veronica in 2x01; he’s telling her he wants her to leave because he’s upset and lashing out.

Archie does not break up with Veronica in 3x01, he just tries to soldier-heading-off-to-war her because he loves her too much to want her to waste her time waiting on him and Veronica refuses to agree to it because she loves him too much to back out because the going looks like it might get tough.

I don’t know why all of these scenes are forever being cited as breakup scenes, but they are, and it’s so bafflingly incorrect that it makes me shudder. They’re not breakup scenes. End of story.

#varchie #archie x veronica #riverdale opinion #rant #my opinion #my post #three times #they broke up three times #on a teen show #on the CW #do people seriously not get how unicorn-like a concept that is?

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lothricshopsathottopic · 6 years

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Black Mirror is not about technology.

Just hear me out, please.

I get a little frustrated when I hear someone (and that is a lot of people) say that Black Mirror is "a warning about the evils of technology," especially when they say that Charlie Brooker is an anti-technology fanatic, because to me that completely ignores the message the show is trying to get across. And I may be overanalyzing it, but please take a second to think about the things you normally see in a Black Mirror episode.

Black Mirror is, primarily, a show about human nature and society. It uses technology as a tool to tell stories about people, relevant stories, which reflects how we live today. Not how it could be tomorrow, but how the world IS. Please be aware that from this point on, this is going to be pretty full of spoilers for more than one episode.

Take The Entire History of You, for example. It's not yelling "LOOK AT WHAT TECHNOLOGY COULD DO, LOOK AT HOW IT COULD INVADE YOUR PRIVACY," but rather asking, "if you could have this kind of technology, what would you do with it?" In this episode, our main character becomes completely obsessed with the idea that his wife might have cheated on him. So he spends literal hours overanalyzing footage of his memories to see any discrepancy in anything she might have said to him. It grows to a point where he physically assaults the guy he suspects his wife cheated on him with, and forces him to erase every memory he has of her. While this is happening, the victim's girlfriend/fling calls the police and reports the assault, but because she doesn't have a memory grain (the device which records an individual's memories,) the police *hang up on her.* While she's reporting a crime. Just because she doesn't have a grain. They straight up ignore their duty to the law because the woman reporting a crime can't record visual evidence.

In the end, the main character finds out that his wife was indeed cheating on him, and forces her to admit it. She does, and ends up leaving him. But they had an infant daughter (which might not even be his.) So he got the truth, but at what cost? He's now alone, his daughter will have to grow up without a father. Who was more in the wrong here? She was obviously wrong to cheat on him, but did he take his obsession too far?

How about Hated in the Nation? In it, people are deliberately using a hashtag which they know will kill people, even as punishment for very minor mishaps. In the end, it's revealed to be a plan to get every single person who ever used the hashtag killed, as the killer behind it all orchestrated it to get back at people who spew hate online to the point of making someone try to commit suicide. This is clearly a story about how people find it easy to throw around insults and death threats online, because when you're online you stop seeing people as people and see them as an username. No face, no life, therefore my words have no consequences, right? On the other hand, isn't it equally as petty and immoral to wish death upon someone who was cruel on the internet, no matter how cruel their words might have been? The message is clear: people on the internet forget that their words *do* have consequences, and become desensitized to their own awful words, words they wouldn't dare say in public, to someone's face. This creates more anger from the wounded party, and it turns into a vicious circle of hatred. As our main character Karin herself says, people on the internet rarely ever really mean what they say. But that doesn't mean what they say won't affect someone. At which point does it stop being "just the internet"? Where do we draw the line? This isn't about the internet, it's about how people use it, how they behave in it.

The list goes on. The National Anthem is about alienation, Be Right Back is about death and denial, Fifteen Million Merits is about consummerism and the media, Playtest is about being estranged from your family, San Junipero is about love and the idea of an afterlife, White Bear is about mob mentality, Archangel is about helicopter parenting, Nosedive is about our obsession with our image in social media, I could go on, and on, and on.

"Wow, Nosedive could happen in the near future!" No. Nosedive is *already happening.* Not in such a literal sense, of course, but Black Mirror is all about symbolism and exaggeration for the sake of metaphors. We live in an era where people pretend everything is happy and perfect all the time, where people take the same picture dozens of times to get the perfect one to post on Instagram or Facebook to keep pretending everything is flawless and joyful and beautiful every single day. Because if they don't, they might disappoint their followers. If they vent about something, or admit they're unhappy, or going through a rough time and they feel down and hopeless about it, a lot of people will criticize them for being a "killjoy." This fake perfection on social media is something we live every single day. You either play along, or you are ostracized, isolated and thrown with the people who, like you, have grown tired of pretending. Or you ignore social media entirely, perhaps only checking in once ina while. Which in a way can be seen as isolating yourself.

You can criticize Black Mirror for its writing, or its pacing, for the story that an episode is telling. But criticizing it because it's "trying to get people scared of technology and that's stupid" is to miss the point by a thousand fucking miles in my opinion.

And honestly? The fact that people can watch something like White Bear or The National Anthem and come out of it thinking the point it was trying to get across is how technology is evil and dangerous, to me, says more about how blind we as a society are to our own shortcomings than words ever could. Because it shows that people can't see these problems even when they're shown to them crystal clear. It shows how in denial we are about the things we do wrong, because when someone writes a story around these things, we get a completely different idea from what it was trying so desperately to say.

And that saddens me.

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blackwoolncrown · 6 years

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there's tons of studies on how too much internet/social media use is bad for you mentally and socially, and people shouldn't just laugh that off; but as kind of a tangent off that, I'm convinced that we're experiencing mass trauma because widespread internet and social media usage means we basically get a live feed of human atrocity which is especially detrimental if you're part of a vulnerable minority and you get to see a running counter of how many People Like You are getting brutalized :/

You’re not alone, I share this conviction as well. Best example? We live in some of the safest times ever but people are more anxious, paranoid and panic-ridden.

We really need to step back from the idea that knowing about EVERYONE’S suffering makes us better people. It’s honestly giving people a vastly inflated idea of how at risk they are, which is compounded by the fact that in general the mind over-exaggerates the amount to which a negative incident can cause displeasure, and the likelihood of bad things to occur. This tendency keeps us safe but I think we’ve crossed a threshold.

Similarly they’ve studied how black people are likelier to die early than their counterparts if they’re college educated, and how just the *knowledge* that you are in a group victimized by racism or any form of bigotry has a negative effect on one’s health– it really begins to show a pattern of how knowing isn’t always best. I know for me I’ve taken 2017 as a sign that despite the odds, anything is possible, and while I know how the world works I’ve let go of internalizing it and limiting my expectations of life according to *social* expectations about me.

I think overall we’re experiencing mass trauma like you said, for sure. Its bad enough for us and I have to wonder what the epigenetic suggestions are as well.

I need to branch off here because this ties into how I’m realizing that the tendency to prioritize negative info over positive is not limited to just the normal psycho-ego function of self-preservation. I think we as a society do this. Bad news is more valuable than good news because threat modeling is more important than positive emotion. Like that’s not TRUE but that’s how we behave. And so people care more about knowing the bad things that are happening and see all bad facets of a thing as being more powerful than any of the good facets. It creates a weird binary in which most things/people default to 0 if they have a downside and I have to wonder what that says people also believe about themselves and others.

Tangential but yeah.

Stepping back is good and necessary. We’re not here to know everything, we’re here to enjoy and not everything is relevant to us. At the end of the day you’ve got to have more interests and motivations than running from tigers or your life feels dismal (because you’re ignoring literally everything else for the sake of being In The Know even though it feels so bad).

#Anonymous

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tellmeyourstory-art-blog · 7 years

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Red Wine

Why if history repeats itself do we not stop it?

When you put it that way, it seems like common sense. You eat ice cream too fast and you get a headache. So next time you slow down a little. Clearly. But if history is full of warnings, we haven't always been very good at heeding them. The past is bursting with people who made mistakes similar to those of their predecessors, and, lo and behold, they suffered similar consequences. These tragedies are especially sad because they are so preventable.

about the remarkable similarities between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

While some of those claims have been debunked (it is the Internet after all), some are true. Yep, both presidents were shot on Friday with a fatal bullet to the head after being warned not to go out. Their successors were both named Johnson; Andrew was born in 1808 and Lyndon in 1908. Both assassins — John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald — have 15 letters in their names. And, most peculiarly, Booth escaped from a theater and was captured in a warehouse (well, a tobacco shed), and Oswald fled a warehouse and was caught in a theater

So did all of history's disasters happen because some poor sap dropped the ball? Not really. Sometimes bad things happen that no one can control. And sometimes they happen over and over again to the same people. It's simply bad luck.

Simply down to the fact of our influences Children who are raised in families where one or both parents are alcoholics have a greater chance of becoming addicted to alcohol themselves at some time in their life.

IS it simply human nature to look for patterns even if there really aren't any ?Both died on december 17

THrough history wine has been a symbol. Religious of Christ’s blood as he mad his deciples drink from a goblet of cast aside bodily fluids, a tradition we still creepily participate in today in sunday chapel or we have the more mundane influence of using it in our pasta dishes for richer sauces.

We have entire rituals for sipping wine properly, in order to ‘open it up’ to taste the weather and gumboots of the farmers who picked the grape before it was turned into something passed eagerly throw up -ight lips. o

Those who argue that wine is mystic food for the soul are exaggerating only slightly. Our tendency today to see it as a mundane industrial product, one beverage among others, is the aberration. Few worldly things have borne the symbolic weight of wine through history. A normal thing in unormal circumstances

Red wine a literary metaphor used for centuries to refer to everything from love to blood to prosperity and now to me and a rotting liver.

My Grandma and her 40 year old guitar shop owning boyfriend came to visit while I was 8.

I thought the world of my grandma ‘Oma’ she was this special thing that would visit from the far away place America with gifts.

the next time she’d visit would be when my mom was dying in the hospital.

As usual my mom had gone out to drink, either at gallery shows or at a friends house, it was a pretty normal thing for her to make my sister and I dinner, lock the house tell us not to leave and stumble in at 3am in the morning at some point of the night and pass out on the floor in a pile of her on vomit on the floor. I didn’t know this wasn’t normal.

My Grandma was visiting and staying in the guest room, it was nice to have someone home while mom was out for once, I was able to sleep as I would always stay up sitting in the lounge room waiting for my mom to stumble in the door.

This time mom stummbled in it was 2am. I heard her and ran down stairs to help her from knocking into anything as she had many times before, a few times smashing her head on the door handle while attempting to climb the stairs. I put my moms arm around me and helped her make her way to her room.

In the commotion my grandma must have heard, and in her fear ran out of the room and looked at me and my mom in what I can only describe as absolute horror.

My mom slurring and unable to make anything comprehensible my oma looking at us says ‘are you ok’

being the 8-year-old child I replied ‘It’s ok I do this all the time”

I remember saying this specifically. The reason why this memory stands out to me so loudly is because the next day my mom lost it at me.

“All the time!, YOU DO THIS ALL THE TIME! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT HOW DARE YOU”

I was so ashamed of myself, I was only trying to help my mom. She was always really scary when she yelled, but I guess my grandma was so appalled at her behaviour she took that embarassment out on me. I didn’t know though.. I thought I had betrayed my mom, it truly felt like it. In fact I grew up feeling a lot of guilt.

she’d often threatened to call the police on me resulting in me runnnign away with all the phones in the house

she who often threatened to call the police on me if i didn’t behave and i beieved her. I desperation id steal the home phone and run inhid in one of my hiding spots.. a few times she caught me nd would scratch at my hands even when i had passed the phone on. she allways seemed to faour my sister, who later her and i agreed to keep us safe she would side with my mother to keep her from attacking me.

which later turned to her ‘kicking my sister and i out of the house’ passingout in the middle of winter and having us climb to stories to sleep on the varrander under the curtain.

the next day to wake up go to work get us to school and pretend nothing happened

if only my oma had seen it. The history of the red wine she’d been drinking. Clues other than abuse rittled our lives. WIne was everywhere. Our pet dog would be named after a famous city Italy called ‘tuscany’ who’s fame was in its vineyards and the and those italian cook books would be what i immersed myself in the following years in the hopes of escaping. Desperatly trying to find food in the house when my mom was to drunk to cook, i dig through the cook books trying to learn how to make something barable to eat. I started to dream again and painting in the cook books pictures of my life. That one day I would live far away in a house in italy, aging rendering with vines growing where thegrout of brick once were, the warmth of the sun on my face and the laughter of friend sin an overgrown unurtured garden not far from the water only to be reawoken of the harsh reality of wine again.

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