Okay so I think the aponi conflict has lowkey been brewing under the surface for many many years. Aspen was always the ‘princess’ of the southside and we all know how badly toni wanted to be in charge of the serpents (but even though aspen didn’t really care to take over, a lot of the serpents, certainly the younger ones, looked to her for guidance etc) and she was continually turned down for the role in favour of either jughead or aspen. When asp goes away for college, she doesn’t come back to riverdale for a really long time besides for the occasional family visit, her affiliation with the serpents is still there but she certainly isn’t as involved as she used to be. She’s working in a high profile law firm where she is regularly defending criminal cases, she can’t be seen to be involved in any sort of ‘gangs’ because it would bring up corruption and bribery lawsuits that she doesn’t need to be fighting off. So in the time that aspen is gone, toni really steps up to the plate and she does earn her serpent leadership badge in her own right, aspen never disputes that. What aspen isn’t happy with is the renaming of La Bonne Nuit as the Whyte Wyrm, because if you’ve been following asp’s story from the beginning you’ll know that her parents owned the original whyte wyrm and that is where she grew up. When Hiram took the original wyrm bar from her family she was homeless, it was always her intention to get it back for her parents, and to return their family home and their family business to it’s previous glory. But toni doesn’t think about aspen’s family connections, or the sentimental value all she is thinking about it bringing back the power of the southside serpents... so it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth for aspen really, that someone who is supposedly her best friend didn’t even stop to consider her feelings, or think to tell aspen about her plans so they could discuss beforehand. When aspen does finally come back toni is lowkey scared that the serpents will go back to their old ways of looking to aspen for leadership, that fear manifests itself a sort of stand offish attitude towards aspen, she is snarky and snaps under the belt comments at her friend because she is marking her territory - it’s quite sad really when you think about it but I like to think the girls can move past it fairly quickly!
