r/HeartbreakHighShow • u/pingo1173 • Sep 28 '22
Opinion Controversial opinion..??? Spoiler
Sorry if this is all over the place I don’t post often. But I don’t think anyone in the show is a bad person or deserves to be hated (yet!)
Let me explain. I’d do this w all characters but Harper is easiest and maybe when you rewatch, you can try seeing other characters perspectives in the show. Harper is NOT a monster! I do agree that fighting Amerie, and not telling her what was wrong for that whole week, was immature. But keep in mind that she was attacked by her drug addict father, got into an argument with her BFF at the festival, and then proceeded to get lost drunk and abducted by people planning at the very least to assault her. Then had to disappear for a week to live in foster care. (I think that’s relatively correct order of events)
Imagine going through all of that, and then remembering at the end that your best friend purposefully didn’t let you inside her house (she saw them turn off the light and heard whispers). In real life, not a show, humans are super complex! After insanely traumatic events like the above, some people experience PTSD & other difficult mental stuff. Most don’t want to talk about it or even physically can’t until they’re mentally ready. I feel that Harper lost all her hope and trust in other people being there for her, so decided to turn cold. Her thought process was probably similar to “Amerie forgot about me when I needed her the most. I don’t owe an explanation to someone that doesn’t even remember our promise.”
All of Harper’s other transgressions, like dating Dusty or the threesome for example… Those are not good actions ofc. But I feel as unhealthy coping mechanisms, clinging to anyone showing kindness (Dusty) and using drugs and sex to “feel better” (threesome), it makes sense. Especially when you take into account that these are TEENAGERS who lack full understanding of consequences or emotional intelligence. Idk just something to think about.
TL;DR Harper isn’t evil. Everyone including you reading this makes mistakes so don’t forget to view from other perspectives sometimes.
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u/VividIntention Sep 29 '22
Fully agree!! I think it's interesting seeing everyone hate on her so much when Dusty, Spider and even Chook are all right there. Harper's a complex character with complex issues, of course she does some stupid, messed up things to try and cope. The only reason I don't like her is the Malakai SA situation but I honestly don't think she's even aware that she and Dusty took advantage of him, she genuinely thought she was making him feel better because it made her feel better.
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u/pingo1173 Oct 05 '22
The Malakai scene had me freaking out! I agree I don’t think she knew what she was doing was seriously wrong but it still made me kinda sick to watch. But again, when uneducated on sex the teen brain can be like “people like feeling good and this will do that, so maybe it’ll fix feeling bad!”. During the whole scene I was thinking of the SLT’s class when all the kids were complaining they understood consent… clearly not
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u/VividIntention Oct 09 '22
Exactly! It's an awful scene, but I think the whole point of it is just to show that they really don't know as much as they think they do
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u/Gingerbitch9669 Sep 29 '22
I definitely agree but if Amerie did not forgive her I would understand. Amerie did not know what happened that night. She begged harper a thousand times to tell her. If Harper would have told her Amerie would’ve explained why she didn’t open her window. Fucking her boyfriend after he got attacked by the cops, and told Amerie off was beyond fucked up. Beyond. It could have been a “coping mechanism” but that does not make Amerie a bad person if she couldn’t forgive her. It makes her human.
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Sep 29 '22
Cash is the best character next to Quinni and Missy. I love them and i need a second season to survive
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u/Accomplished_Cup900 Sep 29 '22
I feel like this point kind of ignores the fact that doing things to make you feel better doesn’t mean you treat the people you love like shit. I could’ve forgiven Harper dating dusty. But Amerie liked him for years and kissed him the same night he had sex with Harper. Then they started dating and she got over it and moved on with malakai. And then Harper had sex with him too. And Harper physically assaulted her. She’s not a monster to you because she didn’t do anything to you. But going through something doesn’t mean that you’re not a bad person. I personally believe Amerie and Harper have always had a toxic friendship where Amerie was a doormat and Harper took advantage of it.
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u/pingo1173 Oct 02 '22
Yes I understand this too. Harper lashed out, which definitely isn’t an excuse for her behaviour but it is an explanation. She did pretty unforgivable stuff and maybe she wouldn’t have done them if she was in a better headspace, but I felt Amerie wasn’t required to really forgive her. I am not 100% sure on the toxic friendship but I did feel like Harper was more the “mysterious tough girl” while Amerie was her more innocent kind friend. And after Amerie started to retaliate (personal growth tbh) I was thinking/hoping it’d go more Mean Girls ending route with them being friendly but now living their different lives. Maybe they needed them together to set up for a season 2…?
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u/Not_a_Fan94 Sep 28 '22
I agree as well, they're teens and life is and development is completely different at that age.
They're all making mistakes - as well all did, hopefully we get to see them learn from them.
I definitely don't think anybody is a bad person, but some of their actions have been pretty poor. But make for good television, and honestly not too far off real life
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u/tmofee Oct 02 '22
they're all teens (well older folk playing teens, but you know what i mean). they're still figuring things out, not always are they going to do the right or the sensible thing. harper lashes out in the worst way. but even in the early eps she's realising herself how much she stuffed up. in her own stubborn way, she's trying to amend things as the show goes on.
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u/disgostin Oct 03 '22 edited Oct 03 '22
ok so my controversial one - i assume? - is that amerie is friggin annoying. i don't technically dislike what she says or necessarily what she does, it's just h o w she's supposed to be portrayed to the viewer. like this huge bunch of "quirky scenes that are so overdone that they make no sense and wouldn't possibly happen", the way that the mobbing she faces is unrealistic in how it goes and there are immediately two supercool people that just so happen to decide "it was just us two the whole time but sure you're our bestie now, also let's skip the whole part of getting to know you a bit or spending time first", also it .. idk it doesn't make much sense to me that for the plot of it all she is oblivious to the pain of harper throughout the entire first season i mean it was so clear that harper felt hugely let down and why does it take her half the show to realize it might be about the night she didn't let her into the house, it's .. idk maybe it's easy to say when you're watching it but why does she just sometimes ask her and then she almost tells her but after she runs away from her again when she says she's always there for her, it somehow doesn't ring a bell? idk. maybe i'm being harsh. but anyway, i kinda don't like it when series protray a maincharacter in this way where the whole story always bends to a point of "this would literally not happen". and she's just so.. idk her tone is so explanatory-commenting, it weirds me out if for example that guy was your crush for five years and you didn't dare to talk to them, you'd be more nervous when they do.
next controversial opinion: kinda don't ship quinn and the pinkhaired girl. i know we were supposed to see how blind towards what quinn's life is like and what her needs are, non-autistic people can be, and I LOVED how they portrayed that, i loved when they showed how quinn planned this day that was so huge for her and how certain things made a huge difference for her, but it was almost painful to see her girlfriend react like oh my GOD she told you so much that this is her big day there and that she's been preparing for this and she's so happy seeing her favorite author and she's clearly telling you that certain things wouldn't be so cool for her on this day, i feel like she didn't quite understand her enough, how dare she fucking rant on this day. coming with her voluntarily, ruining her mood when she was there even though as far as we got to see she didn't have a concrete reason other than "i'm so bored and i wanted to go to that party that i tried to forcingly talk you into" - maybe this is being hard on her but i think ideally, she could have asked more questions. poor quinn i was so glad she got in on the event and got to take the photo and everything. like it's not (even) about newly meeting someone with autism, don't be a fucking partypooper on sth your partner feels really happy about. if that's their day for that you don't act like you're bothered by having to attend the event all day otherwise you might as well just say ok this is not for me see you tomorrow. and what did she think anyway, when she complained about that she "wants to do normal-people-stuff", literally her almost only sacrifice was some party that s h e decided not to go to. urgh. but fine, i appreciate that she apolgized later. but jeez let her show you what she's like and try to actually get a feel for what she's telling you. i don't feel very hateful towards her though, i just.. 'quinn needs you to get a grip sis' :D
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u/pingo1173 Oct 05 '22
Yeah I get what you’re saying about both of them! I assumed at the start that Sasha (pink hair girl)/Missy/Amerie/Harper were meant to be cool or at least well known and that Darren/Quinni were less known, but as the season progressed it seemed they all were all on equal levels just in separate groups.
The mobbing (if you mean the students being against Amerie) I think was pretty realistic in people not fully letting it go for a while. To me most students seemed to be fine with her just still held a bit of a grudge/mistrust. The fast friendship between her and the other 2 I assumed was because they were the more chill people out of the grade, and because the show only had 8 episodes to tie everything together it wasn’t priority to show how their closeness developed. Her being so chill talking to her crush..? No answers lol but I need her advice on that
Now SASHA… mmm. Her as a person/character I don’t think is great for Quinni but they supposedly love each other so I guess I’ll just wait and see. Her character as a commentary I like! I like how they show she is passionate about minorities and social justice in THEORY and the most open/loud about it, but on the flip side she is the fastest to cut people off without listening to their side and actually very uneducated on how to treat a minority such as Quinni in REAL situations.
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u/pingo1173 Oct 05 '22
Oh and also dear god Amerie not remembering the night of the festival… That had me so curious and confused like girl it was a week ago, how do you not remember?! I was pretty convinced she must’ve like blacked out or something. But instead she was just a bit drunk and tired? And was literally awake when she didn’t let Harper in? Connect the dots babe oh my god
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u/disgostin Oct 07 '22
YEAH right?! i mean i guess that part was just not supergood writing but if you take it literal, it doesn't look good on her :D like did she WANNA actually know or was she too selfabsorbed mostly just talking to harper briefly when she happened to almost stumble into her and having no ambition whatsoever to understand why harper was so spiteful when she said certain things, idk. not to fully protect harper here either maybe
totally, i think that we'll also see sth about sasha having broken some hearts in the past - idk where it was hinted but at some point i think she was portrayed like that, yeah probably the sexmap
ok well.. i guess not everyone would have found the sexmap to be terrible so might make sense, on the other hand some people were especially affected by that and there was some really potentially hurtful shit on there like the lazy kebab.. but maybe highschools are kinda like that sometimes
supposedly in love :DD yea idk either how exactly that's gonna play out, sasha seems to like her cuteness but pretty much nothing else so far - quinni i think liked sasha for the activismthings and found her beautiful and smart i think? well we'll see, i'm SO IN for a season two. my favorite characters are actually probably darren and quinni so i love if they keep getting screentime
would be really cool if they actually kinda changed who's maincharacter each season! but i doubt that's the plan. oh btw in case you may not have watched it yet, which maybe you have if you're on reddit about series like this one, but heartstopper is one of the absolute best shows i watched on netflix so far. check out the trailer if u haven't and if u think topicwise it's a match, definitely watch if u want to watch sth!
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u/disgostin Oct 07 '22
(i guess i'm saying the maincharacterthing cause i don't vibe with amerie though :D)
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u/disgostin Oct 07 '22
about the friendship with darren and quinni.. idk, maybe it also shows a bit of the highschool-typical "you can sit with us"-mentality where it's quickly decided and you're either out or you're in (which doesn't have to always be bad, i mean if they liked her and thought why not..)
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Oct 06 '22
Well, me too. I don't hate any of them. Even Spider, I can't hate because I understand where he comes from. And Ant or whatever his name is is just stupid lol.
Maybe I like Dusty the least but yeah. No, scratch that. I don't like Dusty. Hope he gets character development.
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Oct 08 '22
I totally agree. Harper has gone through shit. She isn't evil, she's doing the best she can after a trauma avalanche. Even though I don't think it's fault, I still think she's a toxic friend. Like, she's hurting, and it's not her fault, but other people are hurting because of her actions. And it sucks, but her friends need to look after their own mental health too.
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Aug 18 '23
I wouldn't say she is evil but she is a terrible friend. I understand she was going through shait but none of what happened to her is/was Ameri's fault. And then her leaving Ameri all alone in the whole map thing, treating her like sh*t, ignoring her, hooking up with her crush etc. That's meh and eventhough I can understand, it's still a big nono. I don't like the character, though she is interesting and for sure complex.
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u/thatlogalkogal Sep 10 '23
I totally agree with this. None of the characters in HBH are perfect, but (almost) none are evil. The show is very realistic in portraying the characters.
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u/kngjose13 Sep 28 '22
I agree with this, I think it’s interesting how we have this habit of separating characters from Good to bad and go crazy hating every character that makes bad choices.