the epic highs and lows of high school softball

we’re still trying to work out the specifics of time jump riverswap, just because plots obviously divert a lot more as the show goes on. this is what we roughly have so far:

ronnie leaves riverdale with her parents, because the trauma of everything that’s happened to their family becomes too much for them, and veronica has no reason to stay if her family isn’t there and betty is mia. she becomes an emt where she meets minerva (who is swapped with eric jackson) and they form a friendship, but the traumatic nature of their job forces them both to quit. upon getting a call from jughead, she returns to riverdale at age 25, minerva in tow.

betty’s senior year is marked with her killing terrible adults (stonewall teachers and sheriff honey) with the help of charles. she sticks around long enough to graduate before the two of them go on the run, having broken up with veronica after betty confessed to having a brief affair with donna while attending stonewall. betty and charles spend seven years on the round, being the murder siblings they are, before charles caves and turns himself in, taking the fall so his little sister can have somewhat of a normal life. betty returns to riverdale, where she reunites with her parents, the serpents, jughead, and eventually, veronica. but she definitely has something going on with tabitha.

jughead, wanting to do more for the community and more aware than he’s ever been of the privilege that came with his gladys marrying up, plus guilty over the misery that hal brought on the town, stays in riverdale and becomes a social worker. he becomes closer with the serpents, particularly joaquin, who’s in the same line of work, but never really enters into a serious romantic relationship because he still pines for archie. he’s the one to call them all back to town. 

archie moves away for college, marries a rich man, and becomes a trophy husband. he remains in contact with the andrews family but the distance between them and the fact he’s no longer in riverdale makes it harder for archie to continue to move away from being a lodge and all that came with it. but he’s never been able to say no to jughead, and he wants to fix the damage that his adoptive father has caused over the years.

cheryl and toni stay in a stable relationship, one far healthier than canon kangs (or canon choni, for that matter). toni works with joaquin and jughead to help try and save riverdale, while cheryl becomes a drama teacher at riverdale high and works with her parents (tom and sierra, not penelope) to do whatever they can to help the town. they may or may not be having a child thanks to sperm donor joaquin. honestly, they’re the most normal and boring (in a good way) out of everyone, and probably the happiest too.

after his split from kevin, joaquin throws himself fully back into the serpents, becoming king (with toni as his queen) and becomes a social worker. ends up having a weird friendship with jughead, and is basically the one spearheading the “save riverdale” movement. helps bring betty back into the fold, but is very adamant that she doesn’t try and have any leadership again because she’s been god knows where for a near decade, and, let’s face it, she’s fucking insane. might be a baby daddy, we have yet to decide.

when fred finds out about archie being his, there’s not a lot he can do at first - he has no solid evidence, hiram has more money/power, and trying to do anything rash would upend both archie and veronica’s lives. but fred does try to bond with archie as much as he can without raising suspicion, and when archie finds out the truth, he moves into the andrews house.

archie and veronica are just good friends, although ronnie admittedly tries to get closer to him once she hears about fred’s suspicions. ronnie knows that hiram is her bio dad because she overhears fred and hermione talking about it and tries to get to know him better (hence how she fulfils archie’s s2 plot) but hiram doesn’t find out until way later. veronica opts out of having any kind of relationship with him, and although archie embraces being an andrews, he’s not sure how to fully cut hiram out, or if he even could.

they sort of get together after betty’s disastrous sixteenth birthday party and almost make stuff official at homecoming, but then fp gets arrested and betty goes off the rails and so that kind of puts things on hold. they sleep together (in the literal sense, not the sexual sense) once the truth about jason’s murder is uncovered and betty calms down a bit, but they once again don’t get the chance to talk about it because fred gets shot. they are dating on and off throughout most of season two, but veronica spending time with hiram/the southside vs northside drama/betty’s commitment issues/ronnie not wanting betty in the serpents/hal’s homophobia via the black hood/etc means their relationship isn’t particularly stable. they openly love each other from about late s1 onwards but it’s not until s4 that they can properly get together and be Official Girlfriends.

he finds out during riot night when he breaks into hiram’s files looking for the money he got from the st. clair’s. that + veronica getting sent to juvie totally fracture his relationship with hiram for a long time (although he does sort of cave in the back half of season 3).

everyone still has the same biological parents, it’s just he marriages and divorces and adoptions and kidnappings that complicate things:

charles ran away from the brothers of quiet mercy when he was ten to find his birth parents. when he showed up at the cooper house and it was clear that he was fp’s son, hal gave alice a choice: charles, or him. alice chose charles and hal kicked her out and basically banned her from seeing baby polly. alice attempted to fix things upon finding out she was pregnant with betty, but hal filed for divorce and decided he wanted no place in betty’s life.

with nowhere else to go, alice returned to the southside with charles and started to rebuild her life there. fp was there for charles, but alice didn’t want to disturb his marriage to gladys (currently pregnant with jughead), and also had reservations given fp’s general instability. 

shortly after the births of betty and jughead, gladys finds out that fp has been having an emotional affair, and leaves him, taking jughead to toledo. fp and alice officially get together although their relationship is pretty rocky, and raise charles and betty.

gladys returns to riverdale several years later with a young jughead, and runs into fp at the whyte wyrm. fp and alice are currently broken up (their relationship is very on/off for the first few years), and so gladys and fp hook up for old times sake. gladys becomes pregnant with jellybean, but is ambivalent about fp being in her or jughead’s life (especially as he’s gone back to alice.)

annoyed that alice isn’t suffering as much as he hoped, hal tracks down gladys and is like, “hey, wanna get married just to piss off our exes?” gladys agrees, because she figures it’s the best way to build a better life for her kids. they’re more roommates who occasionally have sex than husband and wife, but together they raise polly, jughead, and jellybean.

upon finding out that hiram cheated on her repeatedly, hermione leaves him and runs away to riverdale, where she stays with mary and fred. she’s just there as a friend at first, but the three of them enter into a poly relationship, and discuss raising both mary and hermione’s unborn babies together. veronica is born.

hiram, blaming fred for his wife leaving him, returns to riverdale with the intent of raising hell. he finds out that mary is days away from giving birth and pays off the hospital staff to steal the baby and claim it was a stillborn. to hiram’s luck (and everyone else’s loss), mary dies in childbirth, making it easy for hiram to run off with baby archie and leave a distraught and heartbroken fred behind. hiram ends up raising archie (who’s trans) and hermosa, and despite the kidnapping and the mob stuff, he’s a weirdly good and supportive dad.

hermione marries fred and veronica is raised as an andrews, believing fred to be her dad.

sierra and myles have josie.

tom keller has a one night stand with veronica sawyer, and she’s kind of just like “whatever” when she finds out that she’s pregnant. she gives birth to kevin.

penelope sues clifford and the blossoms for all that they’re worth because of the whole “child bride” thing, and wins. she finds out she’s pregnant with the twins shortly after.

sierra and myles divorce, and because myles is older and richer, he manages to get primary custody of josie. tom and sierra, both single and missing their kids, get back together.

penelope gives birth to the twins, and, in an attempt to avoid the curse and “help” a couple in need, abandons cheryl on tom and sierra’s doorstep. everyone has an idea about her biological family, but nobody steps forward to claim her, and so tom and sierra raise cheryl as their own.

penelope and sawyer meet and fall in love. they get together and raise jason and kevin.

melinda gives birth to reggie, and marty leaves her soon after. she is happily a single mother.