#hiramaissance

SECOND CHOICE FOR EVERYONE. like literally it is so hard to evaluate reggie (especially w/r/t the lodges) without bringing in The Tragedy Of The Side Character Rival-Foil who exists in the narrative to experience B-plot versions of the A-plot in miniature

riverdale-the-metanarrative is so blatantly full of guys who are different versions of archie and where his character could go in the story if he didn't have to be the protagonist-hero - munroe as the jaded star fighter with the same nickname hiram originally used on archie as an endearment, who could get out of this damn town if he commits to sports. eric jackson as the disabled vet with unmanaged ptsd who betrayed his unit for a manipulative man in authority who just gets to be a respectable figure in society while his groomed victims suffer (and he could speak up and get justice if he's willing to handle the social impacts of being labeled a survivor). kevin as the openly-gay damagingly-impulsive, validation-seeking, people-pleasing, insecure joiner with a nice-but-emotionally-distant dad who keeps trying to find happiness through in-group conformism. julian s7 as literal understudy, and the guy who died in war (also got targeted and negged by s7 reboot hiram lodge in the s7 reboot version of wrestling. dramatic monologues).

reggie is like. the most powerful and tragic of all of these archie analogs bc he's sometimes a rival, too. so his jealousy and inferiority complex towards archie exists both inside and outside of the narrative! all of those other archie reflections aren't also competing with him and comparing themselves to him and constantly getting handed his leftovers and cast-offs and feeling that that is what's happening. but reggie is :\

oh anon, you’re too sweet. you do spoil me so ♡

so, my take on hirarchie?

look. as a feminist, my first thought in the archie-ronnie-hiram subplot/relationship triangle will always be veronica. as such, my thoughts on hirarchie come from the angle of thinking about veronica, who is a very interesting figure in the case of the Jughead-Narrated Riverdale Universe.

first of all - veronica is a legacy outsider to Riverdale. i’ve mentioned this before, but out of s1’s protagonist cast, ronnie was the only one to not be white. not only this, but hiram’s history itself starts outside of riverdale. unlike betty | alice, archie | fred, cheryl | penelope, jughead | fp, veronica | hiram do not have history here. in fact, archie, betty, jughead, and cheryl all have direct ancestors who landed in riverdale in 1580 - i.e. as per colonial “american” practice, the town was “built” by them and their descendants.

so what role do the lodges play in all of this? the blossoms are rich, the andrews’ are good, the coopers are cunning and the joneses write the history, so what role do the lodges play in the existence of riverdale? are they even necessary for that existence? my point is this - nothing happens in riverdale until a lodge shows up.

think about it! we’ve seen riverdale prime start up twice - once in season 1, once in season 7. a lot of people pin jughead’s narration from s1 on jason blossom’s death (“little miss inciting incident”) but my take on this is that the starting point of any riverdale story is the entrance of a lodge. one of my main riverdale theories is that while the events of s1-4 are narrated by jughead, s5-7 are original written pieces by jughead within the meta of the river-verse. as given in the canon, jughead is not a very good writer - so to keep riverdale afloat from s5-7, the stories he tells are essentially ripped off from the first four of seasons, remixed and then re-presented: hence, when s7 starts in the 50s, it starts on the day when veronica comes to town, just like s1, except there is no murder; jason blossom doesn’t exist.

what does this have to do with archie? good question. i’m getting there (i promise. i hope).

this post by @/wallbeatjournal talks about how just because archie and hiram aren’t related, it doesn’t make it any less incestuous. that is what got me thinking about the riverdale citizens’ roles in their society. as the town pares down in terms of citizens, season by season, and the “following in. families’ footsteps” themes become more and more in-your-face, one must question the cycles and where they came from. interestingly enough, the modern-day riverdalians are 1-to-1 copies of their ancestors, with a specific focus on gender. the farthest ancestors shown are not patriarchal heads of houses— instead you have: asher andrews, blessing cooper, james jones, charity blossom. obviously, we do not know if these are “true”; as per my personal theory, this is all jughead making filler backstory for s6 bc he’s alone and trapped in an empty bunker trying to power a dead universe for himself. however, the genders and the naming conventions match our current protagonists. moving forward in time and referencing the parents of the riverdale citizens, all of them who have a historical colonial ancestor become one of their parents, usually looking like one of them as well, despite the end goal being to break out of their cycles of perpetual violence; usually, the parent they become is the one they share a gender with:

betty is the “gang leader’s girlfriend/perfect small-town girl/thrill-seeking investigator” -> all roles alice has occupied, in that order. notice how despite hal’s attempted influence on her, she does not become a serial killer.

jughead is the “writer/gang leader/scholarship kid/alcoholic” -> roles both F.P and his grandfather occupied. he is incapable of leaving riverdale permanently, like F.P., but unlike gladys who left prior to any inciting incident.

cheryl is the “alive half of a pair/center of tragedy/repressed rich kid/witch” -> roles occupied by penelope blossom as more of the story is unveiled, reflecting cheryl’s life? or cheryl reflecting penelope? (remember, clifford blossom dies before s1 is up, so in this way, jason and clifford match in that they are the Dead ones.)

(remember, this is all through the jughead lens, so it’s all subjective. anyway)*

so where does that leave archiekins and veronica?

veronica is interesting, like i said before. she has no colonial ancestor; her ties to riverdale do not extend beyond hiram’s own. in fact, you could say that veronica and hiram have no ties to riverdale at all, since it was jaime luna that came to riverdale, and hiram lodge who left to manhattan after he married hermione.

veronica is also interesting in that she’s the only one out of the main cast to not be the same gender as her primary-complex-relationship parent. although hiram is not present for season 1, most of veronica’s conflict still stems from his existence as her father. veronica is a girl, yet she does not resemble hermione in her riverdale role**; she is her father’s daughter, constantly actively fighting him while mirroring his own traits. the owning of businesses, the murderous intent, the guns for hire (reggie, circa s3?) thé illegal activity? the mob interactions? she is not a gangster’s moll like hermione ends up as; she is the gangster. remember that episode when they all got sent to therapy in the guise of “college counseling” in their senior year? it’s openly stated that one interpretation of hiram and veronica’s relationship is combative, and that hiram doesn’t see her as an extension of himself, but rather an outside agent who might take his place (hence veronica has to “beat” him to win.)

all this to say that the lodges are, on a narrative level, instigators. (the party don’t start till i walk in! - veronica lodge, 2017) not the blossoms. veronica comes to town, and the story starts. hiram comes to town, and veronica and hiram start fighting on various battlegrounds, for some unnamed, constantly shifting purpose. the lodges do not belong in riverdale, and the story is aware of this, but the story/the town also knows that it cannot exist in reality without the lodges jumpstarting it’s existence. only one lodge can bring back the other (veronica in riverdale brings hiram to riverdale; hiram’s nefarious plans for sunnydale truly bring veronica back to riverdale); only one lodge can get rid of the other (hiram attempts to send veronica to harvard, veronica chases him out of town with the shotgun AND orders a hit on him), and yet - the town needs one lodge to keep things moving (the juvenile prison, the speakeasy under pops. the sunnydale development project, the babylonium) the lodges are the only access to growth and change the town has. otherwise, it sits on its haunches, repeatedly producing people who are named like their ancestors and look&behave like their parents.

all except for one person; the one person who becomes the rope in the lodges’ metaphorical game of tug-of-war.

see, archie, through the jughead lens, is special. archie is complex. where everyone else has to be bent to fit a stereotype (girl next door, rich girl, tragic victim, mindless jock, gay best friend), jughead’s narration expands to fill in the gaps about archie (he was a victim? he was clout-chasing football star? a musician? a folk hero?every government service? he fought a bear???) archie, i think, is the only one he allows free will/choices—archie is his protagonist, so he must have a story, but also is the object of his affection. hence, archie “tries” to be like his perception of his father (“good” “kind”, “strong”, male) but often ends up behaving like his mother (leaves people, bisexual***, protective, desperate for the american dream****, redheaded) while also making other choices - presumably, those choices were based in the reality that jughead is recording from s1-s4, and everyone’s actions around archie’s choices are folded into their characters to the fit the stereotypes and story arcs they inhabit.

so what happens when an instigator meets the only other person in their path who has free will? when veronica comes into contact with archie, she jumpstarts the betty/archie thing that supposedly has been simmering for years. when hiram comes into contact with archie, archie unlocks a new ability to take matters into his own hands. veronica consistently enables the choices that archie makes, whether good or bad, and hiram constantly unlocks new levels of action in archie, whether good or bad.

hiram’s influence on archie is obviously paralleled with hiram’s own story, but instead of inflicting it on his daughter who he comes into conflict with, he tries to instigate new levels of action from archie. i think if hiram had had a son, riverdale as a story would cease to exist because the point of lodges, (and i do mean lodges, not lunas) is to be different, even to each other - hence them creating change. riverdale’s near-all-white population in hiram’s years? he moves there, and now the town has someone new and different to them in poverty. his daughter comes to riverdale, and all of a sudden the entire social balance and relationship structures of the town’s youth are upended, because she’s new and different to them and rich. he becomes a lodge; she becomes a luna. he pushes archie to take action (i.e, red circle); she takes actions for archie (raising money for the community center). if veronica had been a son, chances are he would’ve followed so completely in hiram’s steps that he wouldn’t have come to riverdale at all.

why else would they fight as equals? only one of them can be in riverdale at a time. otherwise, they cancel out - hiram puts archie in prison, ronnie gets him out. hiram buys pop’s? ronnie buys pop’s back. and so on and so forth.

hirarchie exists and functions because hiram is one of the only two factors the town can rely on for any kind of change, and archie is jughead’s clumsy (remember he’s a bad writer!) projection of the town’s soul onto his best friend; thus archie is at the mercy of the lodges because the town wishes to express itself through a story, and a story requires conflict, something that cannot be produced without the presence of an outsider.

*the jughead lens is both misogynistic and apathetic but most importantly it’s simplistic. jughead himself does not make it as a writer in nyc beyond his one book - this is because he is unable to write characters that cannot eventually be folded into one-dimensional tropes that are very obviously props for his own opinions and desires.

**side note: while hermione does not have any ancestors mentioned in historical riverdale, someone matching a younger version of her/teenage veronica does exist in rivervale. this, along with teenage hermione’s description of her mother’s job cleaning houses in the “midnight club” episode, establishes that hermione may have been here longer than hiram — and yet, veronica only follows hiram’s patterns, not hermione or her unnamed grandmothers’.

***bisexuality is presumed on account of the interest-in-reggie-and-jughead sub?text and the absence-is-presence of jarchie in the polycule from s7.

i love this. what does this mean. my favourite traumas?? the most impactful ones on the characters and their stories?? the ones that just live rent free in my mind?? im just gonna go with. yes. all of the above.

Archie:

Hiram Lodge. I couldn't decide between getting framed for murder, or the attempts on his life in juvie, or Hiram nearly beating him to death in the ring, or the three hundred other things Hiram does to him. So Hiram gets his own bullet.

War. Because I love the football war scene. Also because I love the choice to have Archie fight in what is aesthetically clearly the trenches of WWI except its in Uzbekistan in 2020.

Bear. It is so important to me that Archie goes to Canada and gets mauled by a bear. This could technically fall under the Hiram bullet but it's so special to me that it gets its own.

Veronica:

Can I just say Hiram Lodge again? Yeah I think I'm just gonna say Hiram Lodge again.

Marrying a guy exactly like Hiram Lodge. And then killing him.

Also Killing Hiram Lodge. And then her blood turning to poison about it and killing some guy she was trying to hook up with. Haven't we all been there. I realize this is basically just Hiram Lodge three times but please consider: Hiram is Hiram forever. Especially if you're his daughter.

Jughead:

Being abandoned and neglected by his parents and experiencing homelessness as a teen.

Rat King. Getting lost in the NYC sewers and becoming the rat king and getting rabies. Happened to my guy Jughead.

S4 attempted murder because I'm forever a s4 defender and without it we don't have the iconic "I GUESS DEATH JUST CHANGES A PERSON" line leading into exquisite corpse

Betty:

The attempted lobotomy. Betty's only remaining non-serial killer family trying to indoctrinate her into an organ-stealing cult and then her best friend dragging her by her ankles to get a lobotomy. Season three is so special to me.

TBK holding her captive and making her carve up a body with him. I don't care that the trash bag killer is the world's silliest serial killer name I love everything that comes out of this plot. I love you silence of the lambs references, I love you betty cooper doing violence, I love you autoshop interrogation scene.

on one hand i am a lesbian, but on the other, hiram is wildly hot and canonically good in bed. i would have to have sex with the both of them, just to see how good it is. the 2 realest dangers here are:

It becomes so violent i end up dead

they are so busy fucking/beating up each other that they forget about me entirely

YES THEY WERE

both of them were single and ready to mingle, looking for some casual light fun, so they hooked up on the dl and were each others' dates to the pussycats show

while singing "it's never too late / to visit a new place", josie gently strokes archie's face, giving her blessing to his fling with her stepbrother.

not convinced yet? well, clay is. I mean look at his face.