barchie would've 100% happened already if Cole was still playing Archie bc the only reason bughead is the main teen favoured ship is the fact that everyone vicariously lives thru betty,,, Cole is an all round favourite with the younger girls in this fandom and u Know they wanna be betty so whichever ship he's originally in plays out the fantasy
this doesn't work with jeronica as much as veronica isn't a typical girl like betty meaning less can relate to her and her situation. I mean the main backbone of bettys character is the girl next door but one with the attitude of a child burn out, stressing over grades and wearing cutsie clothes. like obviously forgetting daddy's killer tendencies and mommies breakdowns, a lot of kids can relate to her.
kids cannot relate as easily to veronica. unless they're all rich and Latino and wear Β£100 dresses to school everyday with a snappy tongue and a character that draws in every popular guy in school. that's not the main audience of riverdale. so relationships with her in are less favoured bc they're less relatable therefore making them less easy to live through
and then i think the writers did it initially bc u have famous cutie patootie Disney star who was the most well known at the start of the show and what better move is there than pairing him up with a blonde hair blue eyed fairy??? putting him in a main couple in a series does wonders for sales as it is; putting him in a couple with a character they anticipate the majority will love is like a power move. and then yanno there's the added bonus that 13 year olds just seem to fuckin Adore 'bad boy with random ass white girl' tropes bc a lot of them are right there in that edgy stage and this is the perfect tv couple they can fantasize through. bc they worked so well, what would be the point in even thinking about trying out another ship??? when the money is being raked in from the absolute blatant fan service
now listen, this is just psychological inference. OBVIOUSLY not everyone who watches riverdale lives through one of the characters and in turn not everyone who loves through a character lives through one they can relate to, but more often than not it's usually characters they wish to be more like as well == which again usually leads to betty, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. i mean shes pretty, not overly popular but comfortable, with a bunch of friends and everyone seems to love her. I'm just pointing out that the blonde white girl is usually loved more bc people are like her or wanna be like her. we all know they usually get the guy anyway, so why wouldn't people wanna watch a show imagining themselves in her position. I'm just showing the correlation between that and how the ships seem to work out in order to keep the majority of fans the happiest
