#armetty

[suleo]

" quiero que me jure que usted solo es mía "

[dominikadecember]

if i could gif, i'd gif every single time armando puts his hands on betty's neck because holy shit does that do something to me

[cutiepatotie1407]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Yo soy Betty la fea (Colombia TV 1999) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Armando Mendoza/Beatriz "Betty" Pinzón Characters: Armando Mendoza, Beatriz "Betty" Pinzón Additional Tags: Fluff and Humor Summary:

El noviazgo con Beatriz es de las cosas más naturales y placenteras que Armando haya vivido. No tiene quejas, no tiene dudas. Todo es felicidad y todo anda bien. Justo hasta el momento que no.

[armando-triplepapito]

Ngl this scene was so cute! I can just imagine all the emojis and all the cringe stuff they would send to each other during their marriage 😭❤️

The fact that Betty wanted to send him the same emoji is such a bittersweet moment. Be strong Betty!🤧

[metamorfose334]

Minha opinião é que: Armando flertou mais com Alejandra do que Betty com Michel. Se Betty tivesse recebido Michel como Armando recebeu Alejandra, Armando teria se jogado do prédio na frente de Wilson. Ou talvez eu seja muito ciumenta pela Betty. Tanto faz.😗

[iwanttobeliv]

Yo soy Betty, la fea (Now and then)

Man, I’ve been meaning to write something ever since I finished watching the very first episode of Betty la fea, la historia continua but there were too many thoughts and feelings and too little coherence to make it happen, and yet, here I am trying it anyway.

Even in Brazil, a country that culturally embraces telenovelas, every now and then when I said Betty, a feia was my favorite, people would look at me funny. And it’s kind of difficult to explain or make people understand that there is just so much more behind Betty’s fringe, braces, and very peculiar laughter. Yes, Armando did yell a lot. And there were perhaps too many episodes focused on Sofia and Efrain's drama or those final ones with Inesita’s ex-husband, and when I managed to rewatch the whole thing, boy was I glad to be able to fast-forward these parts. Some of the sets, like Betty’s room were very clearly low-budget and full of strange choices that I could never quite figure out, and yet, none of this really mattered because the writing was phenomenal. The characters were engaging. The actors were brilliant. And the love story, that was just the best.

So I watched and rewatched. I managed to come across friends who were happy to talk about it and dissect all the things that made it work so well, and so subtle is the distinction that despite the many many adaptations worldwide, to me, none have ever been better than the original Betty.

When Betty was first aired in Brazil, I was about 15 and I can’t begin to explain how seeing a young woman who never belonged anywhere due to her looks resonated with me. Someone who was made fun of for being different and used a sense of humor to keep going. Someone who had hopes and dreams and felt none of them were within reach. And someone who managed to survive all the terrible things life would throw her way in pursuit of her happy ending.

And I guess this feels like something that needs to be said first.

As far as I'm concerned, what makes Betty so fundamentally brilliant is the fact that in YSBLF, when it comes to the love story, the guy falls in love with her being exactly who she is. No more or less. There are so many stories about the ugly duckling who manages to be seen after becoming a swan, and yet there it was, a story that showed that the duckling didn’t have to be anything else to be deserving of love and happiness.

Watching her we went through all ranges of emotion. I remember closing my eyes as I tried to watch her going through her first ‘transformation’ and the disaster it was. I remember feeling joy for her, for having such a good friend in Nicolas and such loving parents. I remember watching Armando as he was, having his feelings change little by little, all while she became an essential part of his life and work. And then, watching expectantly as we had to go through the awful plan he and Mario came up with and all the repercussions that would come of it. I remember thinking that JEA had to be a pretty great actor and that Armando had to be very well-written otherwise it would be impossible to feel anything but disgust for him and what he did. And then watching him fall for Betty utterly and completely. I remember sharing her fury and thirst for revenge when she found the letter. And then drinking up on every interaction between the two of them, knowing what she knew and waiting for the bomb to go off. And then to watch Armando go through hell and lose everything that meant something to him, and Betty trying to pick up the pieces of herself and survive the worst of times. And finally her triumphal return and what would soon enough lead her to a happy ending.

Last year, when we got the news of the remake and the OG was made available on streaming, I watched it once again and felt all those things all over again. But now, almost two decades later, with a very different understanding. I still loved every minute of it, but there were things I would have liked to be different.

Like many soaps, as soon as the main couple manages to patch things up it’s a quick jump to the expected happy ending, and while I fully expected Betty to get one, I couldn’t help but wonder, how a relationship could ever work after such a thing. Sure we knew Armando’s feelings were real and there, and all of that way before Betty, the ugly was made beautiful. But she didn’t. How could she truly forgive and trust someone who managed to betray her trust and make her go through hell as a result of deliberate actions? I would have liked to see more of it. It’s the one thing I don’t particularly enjoy in so many love stories and most soaps. How they are always in such a hurry to end the story as if by being together there was nothing else to be told about these characters and their relationship. Oh the potential wasted by their need of getting to the wedding and a baby on the finish line.

And then, much to my surprise, they decide that there’s more to tell. That the story didn’t have to finish there. [Yes, I’m aware of ‘Ecomoda’ just as I’m aware of the universal consent that it never managed to do justice to the characters we loved and cared for. Which is why, I think, the sequel now also made the choice of ignoring it.]

So now I’ve watched the first four episodes. And I have thoughts I would very much like to share and discuss. Things that I don’t particularly like, but understand. Things I wish had been done differently. Things I absolutely love. But this post feels already much too long. For now, I just want to say, I never expected the sequel to be perfect or to perfectly preserve what the OG managed to perform. But I’m genuinely happy we get to see Betty again. And to be able to laugh and cry with her, with all of them. 

It takes me back and it fills me with expectation for what’s yet to come.

Is it Friday yet?

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey Yo Soy Betty, la Fea

In anticipation of the long awaited Betty la Fea, La historia continua, and a vague desire to rewatch something, I decided to watch Yo Soy Betty La Fea, on Peacock. While there are episodes that I’ve watched repeatedly, I technically had not watched the whole series from start to finish. I had previously watched it in short video clips illegally uploaded to YouTube. They made it easy to skip over subplots and sections I mistakenly thought would be boring to someone of my limited Spanish skills. I still haven’t seen the whole thing. The Peacock version I am watching edited it down to about half as many episodes as the original run. At first I didn’t mind, because I barely noticed it and I was distracted by how much later in the novela things like Aura Maria being kicked out by her parents were than I remember. And as I got to the parts of the series I am most familiar with, I was very bothered by it. But another part of me has to admit that I’m much further along than I would be otherwise, and as I can’t finish the whole thing before the new one this will have to be good enough. 

On earlier views I justified my mostly skipping the first part by my impression that Betty wasn’t that active in the first part of the novel. I thought Patricia carried more of the story and that it included a lot of subs plots that don’t really lead anywhere. Now that I’ve seen more of it, I can say that’s not entirely true. Betty is more active than my impression. She might not be driving the plot, but keeps it running. She is proving herself as invaluable to the running of Ecomoda, and Armando’s ability to lead. She also overhears Armando defend her a lot and works with him through being sabotaged, which make falling in love with him more understandable. Also those subplots do color things through the various parallels and deviations from the main plot. Not all of the parallels work, but they make for a more richly colorful world. 

Before this watch, I didn’t appreciate how much Patricia’s relationship with Mario sets up lot of the contrast with Beth and Armando, so that we know how into Betty Armando really is, long before he can say it. While Mario seduces Patricia early on, he has no motive other than she’s sexy. But soon it becomes apparent that she’s working two jobs, as Armando’s secretary and as his saboteur on behalf of Daniel Valencia. But when Armando suggest that Mario continue to play Patricia boyfriend to better understand what she’s really up to, he moves on to Aura Maria, trying to keep both women without committing, despite the fact that Patricia is very interested in him. This contrasts with how Armando is reluctant to pursue Betty romantically, but keeps going for it even as she repeatedly tries to break things off. The way this says subconsciously Armando really wants her doesn’t come through without the contrast to Mario’s disregard for Patricia earlier. 

Peacock cut out some shockingly large sections and some seem really carelessly done. The flashback to Sofia and Efrain’s first encounter with Jenny was missing. I thought this was something that appeared later than I thought, but eventually had to admit it was just gone. The cuartel’s arrival at Betty’s house for her birthday is chopped making it more abrupt, hiding how much of the cuartel’s life is not approved by Betty’s father, Don Hermes. But worst of all they cut out a large section of the first time Betty and Armando have sex. One episode ends after they decide to leave the disco with Betty saying that they should go somewhere else and the next starts with her approaching him in a hotel room. There so much of the anticipation and tension, and Armando’s calls with Mario are as important to setting up how he explains things the next day. It’s making me not feel like finishing the series.

But for now I am going to first give my take on a couple of subplots and then the thing that makes revisiting it irresistible, (because it is so uncomfortable to think about.) 

I have this vaguely defined theory that there are actually into sadomasochism, but can’t just admit it, and that is what drives their plot. The key is the masochist needing to stay the center of people’s attention. Jenny is a sadist. Efrain is a masochist. It’s the one way I found to make sense of that relationship. Sofia can be mean but she isn’t really a sadist. She doesn’t glory in it and she’s trying to balance multiple things at once. Jenny keeps Efrain the center of attention and keeps him doing things that are bad for him. His financial security, his relationship with his family, and she ensure Sofia keeps punishing him. On some level he must love it. On a more obvious one, Jenny is possibly more turned on my torturing Sofia than she is by doing baby talk with Efrain. She combines the activities a lot.

There are several plot lines that I think are darker than intended. The first and most obvious is Daniel Valencia’s sexual harassment and abuse. There has been a lot of talk lately, some courtesy of Luis Mensi talking about what was originally pitched to him, about him becoming a rival to Armando for Betty’s affection. And I have to think that Fernando Gaitan and the various other people working behind the scenes were shocked to realize just how dark this was when it played out. I think it was originally mostly to show how differently Daniel saw Betty than other women. But it really came off so much worse than that. It also makes Marcela look worse, as Daniel does some of that sexual harassment of Patricia in front of her. Also I only recently appreciated that Patricia gives up on Mario when he retells one of Daniel’s crude jokes about her. Mario and Daniel are the same level of bad. Mario is charming in a way Daniel is aggressively not, which makes Mario more dangerous to most characters in the novela. With men like these around it’s no wonder that Patricia ends up transferring her affections to her car. When she looses it, she does a variation of the Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga’s House of Gucci character) quote “better to cry in a Mercedes than be happy on a bicycle”. (Reggiani said Rolls Royce instead of Mercedes.) 

I also think everything about Aura Maria’s back story is darker than anything they would put on screen. She’s a single mother, who became a mother when she was a teenager. She starts out living with her son and her parents while always actively avoiding going home, even when threatened with eviction by her parents. She never wants to spend time with her son, though she says she loves him. And her taste in men… she wants all the attention, but most of all she want to feel like she’s being chosen over someone else. Her interest in Mario is heightened by knowing he’s also with Patricia. Her interest in Freddy becomes more solid when he indulges in a flirtation with Jenny. The has various out of town boyfriends who call her up when they’re around. When I try and imagine her as the main character of a story, all the signs point to something depressing. Also living with her parents but also rebelling from them is an interesting parallel with Betty. It’s not really explored, but I think it’s one of the reasons they have such an easy connection. They get each other deep down, despite a lot of surface level differences. 

Now time to talk about the ways in which the original Betty/Armando dynamic is so compelling, because is it is also so messed up. There has been a fair amount of talk about how there are things in the novela that could not be done today, including from the original cast. Armando does things that are abusive, but mostly played for laughs, and there are moments like when Armando gets physical with Patricia that are inexcusable. But other things like Armando’s tendency to scream at people and how Betty is turned on by it is something that is really lost when later adaptations try and soften those edges. (Even though I also hope it’s something they grow out of/or at least relegate to some roll play.) And Armando is so awful to women, especially Marcela. It’s easy to see why so many viewers want to see her break up with him, even though he has to explicitly choose Betty over her to make the love story work.  But their relationship is also so important to understanding how starved for tenderness he is, how he can barely recognize it when he finds it in Betty, and also how he knows of love as mostly being possessive. While watching the whole thing it’s more clear to me that Armando during the gaslighting arc is turning into the women he’s been involved with such as Karina Larson and Claudia Bosch, and he despised for acting clingy when he wanted a clean break. As parallels, I still don’t think it works. Armando has more power than Karina or Claudia, he effectively makes them disappear by refusing to have Ecomoda rehire them as models, something Betty can’t do. Also physically he’s more powerful, beating Nicolas, drunkenly stalking Betty in his car. He’s dangerous in a way they never were. It’s easy to see wanting to tone this done and also why in interviews Jorge Enrique Abello highlights how politically incorrect Armando is (was?) as a character. But there is something about how these compliment Betty’s own insecurities from being repeatedly rejected by her peers, and loved, but isolated by her parents that is uniquely compelling.  It’s hard to reproduce, but needs to be constantly revised. 

[kainamendozasolano]

Esto se acabó.

Esto se acabó. (Armetty)

"Un silencio sepulcral la rodeaba, como el presagio de un final próximo. Las palabras no pronunciadas cortaban como un...

Sólo paso por aquí para compartir este pequeño proyecto en el que estuve trabajando desde hace unas semanas.

Espero que lo disfruten.😘