#lopaz

i'm gonna be honest, my entire top tier is just veronica with different women. i really really think she's gay and i really really think she could've been happy if she just got to be with a woman instead of a long line of men who either only wanted her for her dad, only wanted to control her, or went into dating her knowing about the situation with her dad and still judged her for, uh, being born to him and his wife and then having to grow up with their shit. (sorry, archie, i know that was less about her than it was about you)

beronica. upend the betty-or-veronica dichotomy. no more wicked brunette temptresses and wholesome winsome blondes. archie needs to go to therapy (they all need to go to therapy) and veronica and betty deserve to have hot weird universe-breaking sex, even if they only break the universe in very subtle ways

cheronica. you're gonna tell me the former mean girl with a toxic crime family that made her feel alone and gave her no healthy tools with which to handle that loneliness and the current mean girl with a toxic crime family that made her feel alone and gave her no healthy tools with which to handle that loneliness WOULDN'T be an incredibly compelling hookup, bare minimum? sure, archie's the one who punched through the ice to get cheryl out, but veronica's the one who brought him there and took care of her once she got out, just like she'd been taking care of her all season and continued to try to do even when her own personal life was in shambles. cheryl would be obsessed with that and veronica would love getting to feel needed and wanted and helpful for doing something necessary and worthwhile and positive.

toni/veronica. were all right with the world, they would've hooked up when the serpents came to riverdale high, no question about it. they sang call your girlfriend by robyn together. they have enough experiences in common to build a strong foundation and enough differences to actually have to communicate healthily and choose to treat each other well, and i think they could've killed it. also, the only other people of color they get to date are toni's baby daddy she ditches for cheryl and reggie, who veronica ditches for archie (if you want to count heraldo that's fine but he did die the first time they ever kissed and i don't think that meets the definition of dating) so i think it would be a nice break for them both to date another woman of color. also, again, crazy nonstop chemistry from season TWO. i've said it before and i'll say it again, they should've been hooking up while archie was on the run.

yes i think you could also put them in a weird threeway situation. i think you could put them in that situation like bugs in a jar in a centrifuge and either they come out a mess or better than ever and the duality is fascinating.

veronica and drake should've had a weird toxic thing where veronica was hoping it was just about betty and not about drake being a hybristophile who got off on experimenting sexually with antivenin and the daughter of a guy she tried to arrest and drake was hoping it was just about betty and not about experimenting with women on the whole. it would make them both worse but it would've been a delightful little addition to s6

also i think a lot about cheryl and heather because i, too, had a formative homoerotic middle school friendship that ended spectacularly badly and the fantasy of reconciling as adults and being able to heal through that reconnection to the point of being able to have a stable romantic relationship as adults is compelling to me. i also offered to let my homoerotic middle school best friend punch me in the nose until it bled so we could do a spell to turn into mermaids (this was pre-middle school, but still), so the homoerotic witchcraft angle is personally salient in a way that it may not be for the broader I Survived It: Eighth Grade Hundred-Footer Baby Gay! audience.

also also i think a lot about that nameless gum-popping pretty poison that toni was going to have her dead girl walking threeway with. what's her deal. why doesn't SHE get a girlfriend. or dialogue. or a name. (was her name peaches? i duck duck went looking for answers and her name was in fact peaches. it's fine when i have to research the names of annoying men betty kills but it's NOT fine when i have to research the names of ostensibly bisexual women! she should've gotten to talk more and suck face with other women more, too!)

after that point you get into ships that are less, for me, about shipping in the modern colloquial sense where you think they're pretty and/or narratively compelling in romantic adjacency with each other and they should smush their faces together because a) or b) or c) all of the above, and more in an older colloquial sense where those two characters have some fucked up shit going on, and exploring how they would express it through the filter of a toxic and seemingly romantic or sexual relationship is compelling.

Season 3. Episode 12 - Chapter 47: Bizarrodale