the want is animal but indulgence makes me human

7. Chad. Undeniably the worst but might be my favourite because of how he essential he was to making Veronica snap and just start killing people openly. I hate him so much. Imagine you get free of your shitty family and shitty high school and shitty boyfriend and you're like OK time for something completely different and you find a nice guy and you think you're actually going to make it and then. He turns out to be a weaker version of your father. An even worse version because as well as all the financial and emotional abuse, the violently controlling and possessive aspects don't just stay with hurting anyone else you get close with to punish you. He's also capable of crashing your vehicle on purpose when he thinks you're planning on leaving him, so that you're too physically injured to stop him from controlling your life and making you a small weak housewife dependent on him. Flat out physical, life threatening abuse on top of Everything Else earns him the last place spot. He was so bad he made Riverdale seem like the better option I'm so glad she killed him with no remorse it could never have ended any other way. There is no world for her outside Riverdale she's trapped in the narrative and Chad is proof she will never escape the cycle no matter how far she runs. But at least when she accepts it she gets to shoot Chad dead about it.

6. Hiram. The original saw trap! She was doomed from the second she was born. She can fight, flee, fawn, nothing is going to save her from him. The most layered fucked up saw trap on the entire show and so compelling but also horrifying to watch. She cannot escape him no matter what tactic she tries or where she runs. He is the rich powerful patriarch and unlike the other kids he hurts, the sweet wholesome small town kids like Archie, you were born to him. You belong to him. The town sees you as an extension of him you will find no sympathy for the abuse you suffer and you know better than to try. There is no one who will save you from him or tell you it wasn't your fault, that you were a victim too. You have to be the one to do it even though you know they will hate and judge you even more. Damned either way. And even when you do kill him there's no escape. The poison lives on inside you it hurts everyone you get close to. The world will end and you will be there alone, a drink in hand staring at the portrait of the man you had to kill, had to become. Hiram is Hiram forever.

5. Archie. In universe Hiram is the original saw trap on a meta level Archie is the original saw trap. He is perhaps the most emotionally devastating in universe saw trap because he gives Veronica so much hope that maybe she's not doomed. Sure she can't be Good she gets it the narrative has shoved her into a specific archetype. But Archie is Good and Archie likes her and cares about her so maybe if she devotes everything to him, channels all her good actions and kindness through him, maybe... She can escape? She can be part of Good Riverdale instead of Evil Crime Riverdale? And then well. She can't. Archie is assigned Good by the narrative but he's just an average boy he'll cheat on her and use her and none of it is malicious or cruel most of it is just ignorant or childish mistakes but maybe that makes it even worse. He's never going to love her the way she loves him he's never going to free her from the narrative. And then on a more meta level she's even MORE trapped because this is the Betty and Archie show and her role is to be a prop, a point of conflict for them to overcome on their journey to perfect white picket fence happiness. While her counterparts Jughead and Cheryl get to eventually free themselves from this and find their own lovers to support them Veronica is too deeply tied to the original love triangle she can't be free of it ever when when she truly doesn't care anymore. S6 she's doing her own thing and not getting involved with the Good side and the narrative gets sooo mad at her it makes her venomous so that she can never have any intimacy with anyone who isn't immune aka Archie. If she gives up, if she doesn't want him, the universe will find a new way to keep her trapped and tied to him and it takes a full six seasons for her to get free but she does it eventually! It involves replacing Archie with a lesbian as the main hero of the narrative and then kissing them and it's glorious.

4. Hermione. Hey what if your mom saw that your dad loved you more than her. But your dad was abusive and evil and being the center of his attention was Not A Good Thing but she was jealous anyways. No one in this house will save you. That scene where Hermione admits she was jealous and Veronica could hypothetically point out how fucked it was that her mother resented her instead of trying to save her, a literal child, from her father. But she knows how this goes she knows her mother's limits and so she apologises for not being a good daughter. For being more focused on her father even though she was a child and he was a controlling manipulative adult and Hermione should have been the one helping Veronica get free instead of using her and resenting her and trapping her further. But literally none of that matters Veronica can never be acknowledged as a victim and it's been six seasons she knows that now. So she apologises for letting her father control her and get her attention and her mother smiles and asks her if they could sanitise the whole discussion and then repeat it again for the cameras. And that's it. You are never going to get actual closure you just have to take the warped love your mother has to give because the other option is Nothing.

3. Reggie. If you were to ask Veronica she'd say Reggie is her favourite saw trap <3 He's not Good so there's no hope to be crushed, she's not deeply in love with him so he can never break her heart, and he's not competent enough to be a threat to her whenever he turns on her. He sells her soul to the devil and she negotiates a new deal and sells his instead and doesn't feel bad about it for a single second. That scene where he talks about wanting her to love him fully and she's just full of bitter disbelief because how does he not get it? It's been six seasons. They're not the good guys Reggie they don't get the white picket fence happy endings they get a shit hand and have to make the most of it! He's her favourite saw trap and she thinks this is an incredible compliment and he's hurt because he wants to be in genuine sweet love. Sorry Reggie. Wrong show wrong character.

2. Jughead. Jughead is a weird one because every other man on this list is a version of Hiram which means they're also a version of Archie. But Jughead isn't an Archie he's a Veronica. The best way I can describe it is that he's in the saw trap with her but he's also the one controlling it and he's given himself a bunch of pillows so the spikes don't hurt him as much. He's also kind of a key player in cracking Archie's control over the narrative and taking his place as Protagonist Boy, which in turn frees Veronica a tiny bit from the "Archie and Betty most important in the universe" heirarchy. Of course he's not doing any of this for her, they're too alike to even tolerate each other for a full six seasons. But it does help her nonetheless. Also he introduces Tabitha who becomes his cowriter for s7 and actually let's Veronica have nice things so yeah I think he deserves second place.

and this has created the funniest neocash chat board ever

My gut reaction to this was "I wouldn't, fuck him", but then I realised that I do actually have thoughts about this.

Open with a white-text-on-black-screen intro that explains that dialogue in this film has been taken wherever possible from historic recordings. Where it couldn't be, it has been constructed from records of the relevant parliament/private discussions that are on record, even if not word for word. Add that all events depicted are real. And, to reinforce this, a huge load-bearing pillar of the marketing for the film would emphasise that this is extremely limited in artistic interpretation, it's all things the man actually said and did. This, the marketing would stress, is the REAL Churchill, in all his complexity. This is the nuanced and complex and very human guy we don't see in the history books, strengths and flaws and all of it.

The first... half, maybe even two thirds of the film would be pre-WW2. A full account of all his actions in power, painting the picture of the man he was. His belligerence disguised as wit, sending in the army against striking Welsh miners, his initial admiration for fascism and eugenics, all of it. All reproduced from things he actually said and did.

Then, the realisation that Hitler included Britain in his fascist plans. The U-turn into hating the guy, all while believing in the same underlying points.

Then, most of the WW2 section would be in montage form. And at this point, the audience sees why he was actually fairly well suited to the task of opposing Hitler, because all those flaws meant he was ego-driven to resist the Nazis or die trying, and that was what was needed at the time. We've set up that ego, that belligerence, that eloquence. Here it is, in context, actually being useful.

But, this would be juxtaposed with all the things we're carefully not told, that are nonetheless historic record. The starving of India to get food to Britain. The lack of bomb shelters in London, and then claiming credit for sending people into the Underground when they thought to do it. The use and abuse of non-British Commonwealth troops in roles kept from the white soldiers. All of that goes in.

And then, once the war was done, the fallout. The rest of the film would cover his fall from power, first of all - the fuck up at the Potsdam Conference, then his continued use of lurid and hyperbolic war rhetoric in the general election campaign that basically made Clement Atlee and let Labour win.

Labour's creation of the NHS, and national parks, and other such things. Churchill's opposition. The fallout to places like India, the Suez, etc.

And then his return for a final term as Prime Minister in which he was unpopular, unsuccessful, and also very unwell; he was 77 and had multiple strokes, which were hidden from the public. He was against the dissolution of the empire, but Labour had already pulled the trigger on it, so his final years were basically a lot of war crimes and whining as countries declared independence; which won't be a surprise to the audience, because we've literally heard his views on eugenics and imperialism already. Of course those didn't go away with WW2. All that congealed ego and imperialist drive, so useful against Hitler while keeping the worst costs away from the UK, made him a fossil unsuited to the role of peacetime leadership in a post-war recovering nation beginning to decolonise.

And finish on how, at the end, he supported the UK's application to join the EEC - the precursor to the EU.

The whole thing would make the Churchill cultists so fucking angry. They'd 100% claim liberal bias and piss themselves. But that's why you'd have to go so hard on stressing in the marketing that all of it is true; he literally said this. He literally did this. It's all real. Even the EU bit. Yeah, you voted against Churchill.

But I am enjoying how the responses to it are falling neatly into three interrelated categories:

Hey, a Winston Churchill movie I would actually watch!

We should also include (personal anti-Churchill bugbear of the commenter; so far, no two have even been alike, which speaks volumes)

is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?

why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?

core concept: what is gender essentialism?

is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?

look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?