Tumgik
#i wanted to know what would happen to clevin
askandsmile · 7 months
Note
What did you think of the series finale?
I guess I don't understand what they were trying to say with it? If they were trying to say anything at all. Like, they presented us with these characters that love each other so much but then they tell us they lost contact after they graduated high school BUT you should not be scared because they reunite in Betty's version of the afterlife. What was that about, really? 😭 I found that to be bittersweet, or just sad. And a little weird, too. There was a bit of a whiplash of the scenes of them in their senior year, being all so lovey-dovey with each other, to a future where they weren't part of each other's lives at all.
Was that supposed to be a little bit of "realism" in the very end? I don't know how to read it.
I feel neutral about it - I don't hate it, but I don't like it either. And it's not because of endgames or what. I think it was a terrible decision, to make the finale a sort of eulogy in Betty's pov about a day that she never got to live.
Because, essentially, those moments didn't include her in real life. She didn't get to live that day. And by reliving it, she doesn't really change anything either, because that's only an illusion.
I do think having Jug talk to Betty about the future while she relived that day was a smart way of presenting what happened to the characters BUT it took away what we wanted - their point of view. I wanted to know what real Archie (not dream illusion Archie), what real Veronica felt. The endgame ships (Choni and Clevin) deserved a 1x1. Other dynamics that didn't include Betty deserved more attention.
And we don't even know how things really went, because Betty wasn't there for the real deal lol and it's a disservice for people who watched this show for other characters.
And yeah, I guess the message is that people come and go from your life but that they matter and are important regardless of you growing apart. It's a bittersweet feeling, but I feel like it didn't really fit with what we knew about these characters.
HOWEVER I do give it to ras that he kind of tied the knots in an interesting way. He's given BA an emotional goodbye and at the same time stopped any hopes for their future (remember when I used to say that as soon as they were not boy/girl next door anymore, that idea would fall apart?), got VA living in the same state forever, didn't give any hints of Vs romantic future or show Archie's wife so you're left wondering if it could be V, got BH living similar single lives on NYC. I think that in the end, bugvarchie did get an open ending, while barjeronica (and beronica) were confirmed to fall apart. That was clever of him, the read between the lines of it.
But yeah, the finale wasn't good imo. RAS best writing to date remain 401 and 503. Archie's POV would've done wonders for this finale btw.
7 notes · View notes
blogwritetheworld · 7 years
Text
From My Desk to Yours  with Michael Lydon: 99 Words or Less
by Michael Lydon
Tumblr media
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Polonius tells Hamlet in a long-winded speech early in Hamlet, six plainspoken words that glitter like a diamond in the slow flow of Polonius’s pomposity. Good advice on writing always stresses the value of short-word simplicity and person-to-person directness. ‘Say what you mean and mean what you say,” my brother Johnny told me many years ago, and that’s a goal I’m still trying to reach.
And that’s why I welcomed Write the World’s latest challenging prompt: Flash Fiction, a story told in 99-words or less. “Wait a sec,” I said to myself, “What kind of story can you wild and crazy Write-the-Worlders tell in 99 words?” Brilliant stories, it turned out: once again you guys and gals have exceeded my most ambitious hopes.
Young writer Clevin paints this wry picture of a busy young woman—laundry, exam, breakfast dishes, cafeteria job—who looks up to find a young man has entered the room:
Tumbling clothes soiled with the sweat of labor and muck acquired by a day’s work, (morning coffee spills on a white blouse, afternoon bodega ketchup on a crisp jacket) made anew with the power of Borax bought in bulk. 

    
A stack of books vibrates on top of the dryer. Fingers, pruned from washing dishes, thumb through Foucault, Sartre, Balzac. Her exam starts at nine and her cafeteria shift would begin at noon. 

    
A treat to be alone with literature. 

The door jingles. Tweed and cigarette breath and square glasses. He takes a book. 


“I read that in high school.”
Despite Clevin’s telegraphic style, she expertly captures her protagonist’s instant attraction to the fellow with the square glasses—maybe he’s a know-it-all, but it’d be fun to argue with him about Balzac’s realism and Satre’s existentialism. Notice how much life and humor Clevin conveys with her 102 words: this fragment could be the beginning of a romantic novel or screenplay, one I’d love to read.
Foltz.christina from the US only needed 57 words to capture indelibly the tension between a mother and a teenage daughter:
"So…" trailed Mom. "Tell me about Marcos." 
"Why?" I can't talk to her about my boyfriend. That would be awkward and... weird. 
"He seemed really nice last night. Why didn't you tell us about your date?" 
"I didn't want you to make a fuss about it." I turn the radio on, hoping that would end the conversation.
Note how that one word, “trailed,” perfectly describes the mother’s tentative tone: she wants her daughter to talk about her feelings, but she doesn’t want the girl to raise her defenses. So she starts off softly. When I read that, I laughed aloud, touched by the scene’s quick clarity. “Aha,” I thought, “that is a true human moment!”
And that, in the beginning, middle, and the end of the subject, is the whole point and purpose of writing: to show other people all you can of what life is like for you, your high and low moments, you worries and your joys, your own self and the selves of the other people around you. You can do that by writing poems, stories, songs, prayers, and memoirs. You can create characters, give them names, hairstyles, and eye colors. You can write stories as long as War and Peace, or as short as the 99-worders we just read.
No matter what form, style, or content you choose, your goal will always be to paint life as it is, and the way to do that is to use words we all know, to arrange them in sentences whose meaning is plain, and then build those sentences into chapters or stanzas that carry along believable stories from beginning to end. Read this paragraph from Dostyevsky’s The Idiot:
…a magnificent carriage, drawn by two white horses, suddenly dashed by the prince’s house. Two gorgeous ladies were sitting in it. But after driving no more than ten paces beyond the house, the carriage stopped, one of the two ladies turned around quickly, as though she had suddenly caught sight of a friend she wanted to see.
Nothing fancy here, just picture of day-to-day life in Moscow a hundred and fifty years ago that we can see as plainly as if we had happened to be on the sidewalk the day that this glittering carriage with the two white horses and the beautiful women came dashing by. And how many words—all common everyday words, by the way—did it take to paint that picture? Fifty-seven. That’s what Shakespeare meant by writing, “Brevity is the soul of wit,” and that’s what you can learn by trying your hand at stories only 99 words long.
About Michael
Michael Lydon is a writer and musician who lives in New York City. Author of many books, among them Rock Folk, Boogie Lightning, Ray Charles: Man and Music, and Writing and Life. A founding editor of Rolling Stone, Lydon has written for many periodicals as well, the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, and Village Voice. He is also a songwriter and playwright and, with Ellen Mandel, has composed an opera, Passion in Pigskin. A Yale graduate, Lydon is a member of ASCAP, AFofM local 802, and on the faculty of St. John’s University.
1 note · View note