Okay Sia

sideblog for heartbreak high.

[r0bee]

[Ca$h // Grand Theft Autumn (Where Is Your Boy) - Fall Out Boy]

[heartbreakslow]

I finally finished s3, and I honestly really liked it and don't get why people are hating it so much? I think s2 was much, much worse whereas s3 pretty much gave me everything on my wishlist.

-I get why they had to do the timeskip and I think it was the best solution to having only one more season to wrap up

-I personally like some offbeat storytelling choices like having Darren and Cash sort out their problems offscreen, dropping some ships that were set up in s2, having Amerie with an established boyfriend who doesn't get much focus and never seems like a believable endgame boyfriend

-That said, given how much I was rooting for Darren/Cash open relationship, it would have been cool to have more details or see them negotiating it...but it's fine. I loved seeing the two of them as a background, secure, mutually supportive couple. My only complaint is the not kissing on the lips thing which contradicts how Cash was very specifically portrayed in s1-s2 as kissing-favorable but sex-repulsed. It's just an odd choice. At one point there was a fakeout where they looked like they were going to kiss and then hugged instead. Why?

-I loved Missy/Spider in s2 but I'm fine with the storyline of them breaking up. I liked how it was handled.

-I don't really care about Amerie/Malakai (blasphemy) but since it wasn't given too much focus, it was fine and cute

-I think I'm the only person who likes Taz! I didn't think they could pull off a love interest for Quinni who felt natural. I really like that they bond through fandom and Taz being a fan of Quinni's writing, but also Taz has unrelated traits and subplots and feels like a person who just happens to have things in common with Qinni, so it doesn't feel like they just shoehorned in a clone of Quinni to date her a la Vickie/Robin in Stranger Things.

-Also, I like that they show an Autistic character writing porn!

-Speedrun of previous dropped threads/flat characterization that I'm glad they addressed: humanizing Zoe and Sasha, referencing Ant's mom, focusing on Darren's insecurity/performativeness, referencing Malakai's trauma (could have been done in more depth but at least they mentioned it).

-The Darren storyline was the shape of what I wanted, but strangely vague? There's this thing where Darren's character in S1 seems (to me) to be shaped by experiences with homophobia, but in the small stylized world of the show, they don't actually depict much homophobia or will have someone say one homophobic thing but then turn around and be accepting later. So we see Darren seeming to be very reactive and defensive in s1, but we don't actually see or acknowledge any of the experiences that contribute to that. Then in s3 we get a whole subplot about Darren being afraid to be genuine and hiding behind a persona but we get no specific discussion of why this is except that at one point Darren is like "well, I have to be funny, because" and just kinda gestures to themself. So the same implication. But again, just weirdly never explicitly discussed? At least they got some focus.

-I'm happy with the Sasha storyline. I think it feels natural how the other kids could have moved toward being so mean and exclusive to her based on a lot of genuinely shitty things she did, and then ended up going too far and really upsetting her. Also, having Amerie decide to turn herself in, only to find that Sasha already had, worked perfectly for me.

-The kids mostly all hung out together instead of being in splinter groups. It may not be believable, but I just don't care because there wasn't this constant jumping between 500 different pairings/storylines like in s1 and especially s2. There was an appropriate amount of plot for the show, and we got time to actually hang out with the characters.

-Loved the ending montage of what all the kids were doing. Lots of cute choices.

[r0bee]

[season 1 Ca$h/Darren // Television Romance - Pale Waves]

[heartbreakslow]

I didn't watch s3 yet and I get the impression da$h did not get very much focus (rip) buut I also get the impression that they had a timeskip to being in a happy open relationship? I love this. Sorry haters! I knew it!

[reapedagain]

~They're Backkk~

Ughhhh everyone looks so good I can't wait for the new season

[jahodaa-deactivated20251025]

Things I'm looking forward to in HBH s3:

Cash and Darren's arc: s2 left us with two main issues to overcome in their relationship: sexual incompatibility and Cash refusing to speak about his past. I'm really interested in how both of these will be handled, especially bc I've never seen such a well written, nuanced allo-ace couple in media (don't think I've ever seen an allo-ace couple in media but moving on-)

Cash's backstory: s2e6 was a SHOCKER to most fans, with not a lot but just enough revealed about Cash's backstory - including the saddening origin of his name. What makes his backstory more interesting is his refusal to discuss it, and I'm interested to see how this is gonna turn out but also if we're gonna see perhaps a journey towards him healing (not expecting him to be fully healed and untraumatised by the end of s3, that's unrealistic, but just an arc please? Let him be happy)

The School Situation: with the school burning down, I'm really curious where the new main location of the series is going to be centred around. Maybe not the most interesting aspect of s3, but I'm interested.

Quinni's unmasking journey: halfway through s2, we saw a change in Quinni's personality, with her unmasking and not catering to those around her, putting her own needs first (and good on her!). In the final episode of s2, Quinni sadly revealed she doesn't really know who she is bc of how long she's spent her life masking. I kinda can't wait to see more of Quinni's authentic self when she focuses on herself and less on what others want her to be.

Malakai and Amerie, and the Letter: this one really kinda speaks for itself, i think most fans are really anticipating this specific plotline in s3.

The SLT classes: recently rewatched both seasons of HBH and Jojo's line in s2e8 about changing the classes so there's smth for everyone interested me. Sure, not the most exciting thing, but one of my favourite parts of s1 was the focus of the SLT class and what they got up to

[icga-blog]

Guys if I ever got to any sort of rewrite of season 2 I am scrapping so much things. Don't get me wrong, I would never write the threesome storyline and the bag storyline needs reworking, but most of the arcs are solid at least.

Season 2 in the other hand...

The Darren-Cash sex debacle could have ended in the river scene. Maybe the one back in the apartment + 1 conversation. Dusty needed to call Cash selfish for bringing Darren into the Chook business or for not telling them about their past (let's give the "Darren is worried they don't know Cash" arc an actual end please and thank you) and not because he is ace. Let's not mix both arcs just because you wanted to have an almost-cheating as an equivalent mistake or something.

Why, in all mighty hell, Malakai calls Rowan "Amerie" when he is high? 1. If the point was to break them up because Malakai was uncertain about what he wanted, you could just make him treat both relationships (Amerie and Rowan) like casual/open things. 2. If the point was to break them up in a way that made Rowan more mad about Amerie, why not *the baby*? Malakai tells Rowan Amerie is pregnant with his baby, Rowan breaks things up because "You are still figuring stuff out, which is fine, I just don't want to be collateral while you do that". I am sure we can adjust the timeline to put the pregnancy earlier (maybe in the fund-raising event thingy) and let Amerie be there in the school captain debate. Or give her some other emergency, if the point is for her to tell Quinni that she was actually having a problem that Quinni wasn't there to help because of the unmasking, there are a million other ways to do that.

Since we are talking about the unmasking: Can we do a better job at it? Just add a few scenes where they leave Quinni out or move faster than she would like after episode 1 and *not make them be assholes with her during the zoo trip to prove a point*. They bringing her to the zoo without asking her what she wanted is enough, they don't need to ignore her when they literally never ignored her before, they just lived their lives without telling her about it and tried to protect her from what was going on in the school after she literally died. We can make the discussion between Quinni and Darren feel fair and valid from both sides, without them being bad friends in such a clear way. It can be a lot of little ways of them not understanding what Quinni needed.

What exactly Harper was doing in the second half of this season, beyond being Amerie's emotional support, Ant's love interest and Cash's personal adviser? Because I fear we dropped the "She is mad and angry with the world" storyline way too fast and without a conclusion. She was dealing with the fallout of the last season for 3 episodes, and then she was fine for the rest of it, I think. That or I am remembering things wildly wrong. I don't even know what I would change about her arc, but I would do something. Probably make her figure out that Chook is still calling Cash and have a reaction to it. Damn, tie it back to her anger issues, make her see that Cash ride home with Chook and beat the shit out of him. No questions asked, just "I trusted you and you gave that man my adress??" and beat Cash up. Then she hears him telling someone else that it was a last job, and about the conversation he and Chook had. She thinks about how many times her dad treated her and did bad shit and she forgave him because he was her dad, relate it to the Chook-and-Cash situation and them calling each other family in the past, and she understands him better and realize that even when her anger looks justified it might not be and decided to get concealing for it. Ant (aka the other man she beat up) helps her along the line. Great, now she have more to do after episode 3.

Hot take: They should let Spider drop out of the campaign without trying to get brownie points from Sasha and Missy beforehand. So Missy could ask him if he did it for her, he could say yes, and the ruin of their relationship could be about him changing just for her without Sasha's interference. Cutting the bad speech, he stays a better person/character without being unrealistic good. He still has a reason to be with Voss outside (and mad enough to half-start a food fight), Missy has more reason for forgiving him for changing-but-not-actually, specially if he does something about Voss situation where she can see, but not knowing she was there, so it shows actual change that is not tied to her.

I... I am not touching the bird psycho things. I don't have the capacity to make it good.

[heartbreakslow]

I mostly agree, but I actually love Spider's arc and think it was perfect. Idk it just felt like a realistically complicated situation. I think he wanted to change because Missy showed him a different way to be and it made an impression on him that someone would not want to openly be in a relationship with him because of how he acts. It's politically correct to say that you can't fix/change a partner, but in reality, it's not that simple--of course a person or a relationship can influence you to change.

I love his shitty speech: to me, it illustrates how he falls back on misogyny to deal with the pain of rejection, because it starts as a way to make sense of his mom rejecting him. As a viewer I can see how Missy would think "Sasha was right, he never sincerely changed" and it's so frustrating but is very much the way that traumatized people can trap themselves. You can see the cycle of how he pushes/trolls women and then their (understandable) negative reactions feed into his worldview.

[magical-xirl-4]

this is fucking insane btw

[magical-xirl-4]

The scene with Darren and Cash beside the creek was so beautifully intimate and queer and I get so damn happy every time I think about it

[heartbreakslow]

someone stop me from reading the hbh subreddit

[autisticexpression2]

Get banned from there like I did.

[heartbreakslow]

I love this. What happened?

[sageandred]

It's so apparent how this fandom views characters. Spider dedicated his whole personality to bullying a young Indian woman, because she rejected him after their 1 fail night where he couldn't get it up; he lead the charge of the incel rebellion; and when he finally got a girl he still angrily shamed her on stage because his fragile male heart was broken but it's excused because his mom is the wrong kind of feminist. Malakai got assaulted, which the show never acknowledges while Harper is cuddled and coddled (when her next series fate should have been never being friends with Amerie again; she can be present and happy, but they never should have rekindled their friendship). When you bring it up, people will act like it isn't important to his own character trajectory unlike Spider's. Then, Sasha, an Asian character, is deemed as the worst of all villians because she just so happened to hurt the show's most sunshine of all characters, but she isn't even that bad in the grand scheme of things nor the worst character on the show, just ignorant that could be corrected if they actually took the time to develop her this season like they made it sound, WHICH falls in line with Spider-woman hater-who apparently was made that way because his mom hates men, but oh that's right we love Spider.

[autisticexpression2]

I don't think Spider bullied Amerie because of their failed hookup. I think he bullied her for the same reason everyone else bullied her. He checked in on her when no one was looking, so it really didn't seem like he was mad at her over that.

I don't really see why you think Amerie shouldn't forgive Harper and rekindle their friendship after all the horror she went through. The thing about Amerie is that she's a VERY forgiving person. She even forgave and risked her life for Rowan, who did MUCH worse things to her than Harper did. That's just the kind of person Amerie is. She's flawed and messy but ultimately driven by compassion.

The hate for Sasha isn't just because she hurt Quinni (though that is definitely a factor), it's because she's a massive hypocrite. She pretends to be a good and socially conscious, empathetic person, but she really isn't at all. She's even insensitive to Harper, a victim of attempted rape, for not performing victimhood optics in a way she approves of. She is a worse person than Spider, because he at least doesn't think he's better than anyone. He knows he's a shitty person. We can also laugh at what a loser he is whereas Sasha's cruelty in season one was just hard to watch. It wasn't really until season two that she was given funny things to say.

Also, saying "she just so happened to hurt the most sunshine character" decontextualizes the repeated belittling and infantalization of an autistic person by a neurotypical partner. She contributed to the systemic oppression her girlfriend experiences as an autistic person which is not only awful, but blatantly contradictory to the socially conscious views she performs. Every autistic person in the audience has encountered ostensibly progressive neurotypicals who treat neurodivergent people like shit, so it hits very close to home for us.

And that raises the very important factor that these are fictional characters, and therefore how much we like or dislike them is less determined by how much we'd like or dislike them in real life and more by how annoying they are. For example, Chook is objectively the worst person on the show, but he's not going to garner the level of hatred Sasha does because he isn't annoying. He's just a Bad Guy. Even when he's doing something truly heinous like attempted rape, he's not going to inspire the visceral rage in me that Sasha does with her callous ableism toward Quinni. I just don't expect any better from him. He's a Bad Guy doing Bad Guy things.

All that being said, I personally don't hate Sasha 100% of the time. Like I said, she was funny in season two, and she graciously accepted her surprise loss to Quinni in the student election. I'd like to see her have a redemption arc in season three. If Spider can do it, so can Sasha. Chook can die though.

[icga-blog]

So, I did this out of boredom

I know that this isn't how these things should be shared, and all, but honestly I don't think anyone cares actually so......

With the power not invest in me, I constitute these the prompts of a Da$h week, that can take place from April 17 until May 8, according to where you can fit it in your schedule. You are allowed to spread the prompts out if you want to, and while those were thought with fanfiction in mind, feel free to make any other type of fanwork you wish.

Rules:

 Be respectful, don't rude to other contributors/creators

Treat characters with respect, too! They have specific sexualities and gender identities that I expected to be respected folks

Tag your works properly! Both here on Tumblr or in any other platform you desire to share it!

If you want me to share your work:

Either:

Message me with the link of your work and allow me to post it

Use the tag #Da$h week 2025 when sharing it on Tumblr

That's it, thanks! Share if you can, I guess, but we all will know about it until the end of the day, I am sure... So, better idea: Mark someone and assigned them a day that you want them to write!

[cchaoticc]

ca$h + his chain

[m-azing]

imagining your otp doing the forehead touch is literally the most important thing in the whole world. everybody take a second and stop scrolling and imagine your otp doing the forehead touch. okay. you can move on now.

[heartbreakslow]

does anyone remember the tumblr post where an Aussie fan shared their headcanons of which universities the HBH characters would go to? I'm writing fic and I'm lazy (not necessarily going to go off that list but I want to have some in mind)

[heartbreakslow]

something I really like in HBH is how Darren being nonbinary is portrayed in such a matter of-fact way and the show never feels the need to explain it. Actually, they never even say the word nonbinary! There's one scene establishing Darren uses they/them and it's in the service of showing their worldview and their relationship with their family. We have a theme of Darren feeling like an outsider because they're visibly gender-nonconforming and queer, but not so much because of their identity.

The way that they present feels so real--not in the sense of implying that other NB presentations are not real, but in the same way that Cash's asexuality feels so real, because it feels like a very specific person's super-detailed experience. Darren seems to identify with the gay male community, when the class has to divide by gender they pick "girl," they keep their birth name, they usually wear women's cut clothes. Their presentation is not "gender-neutral"--it's more like they don't fit in either box, so from a binary perspective they're bouncing from pole to pole.

When writing fic it's interesting to think about stuff like, what terms would Darren identify with, do they experience any type of dysphoria, did they ever consider changing their name to something feminine or gender-neutral, did they ever question if they are a trans woman, etc. but I kind of like that the show doesn't grind to a halt to address this. Ymmv.

[heartbreakslow]

It's wild when people blame Darren for Cash not being honest with them in s2 because "Darren isn't easy to talk to" or "Cash sensed that Darren wouldn't be understanding so he had to lie."

Like first of all we don't know. In 2x01 Darren seemed like the only person who was really scared of breaking into Chook's house and was emphasizing how dangerous he is, so I think Cash had told them some stuff, or they had put together enough. In 1x04 I don't think they processed the implications of Cash having a black eye and being so casual about it, but they might have thought about it more after everything went down.

They tried to learn more in the jail scene and brought it up in a fairly tactful way, like, hey, I love you and I want to understand more about you. But that didn't work--and I don't blame Cash given the circumstances, I just think it's a tough position for both of them.

I get the sense that Cash doesn't talk about it because he struggles to verbalize it. He's too young and too close to the situation to really process his complicated relationship with Chook. And he probably feels ashamed and like no one could understand. Poor Cash! But to turn it around and make that Darren's fault is unfair, especially when it is somehow attributed to Darren's intrinsic Darren-ness and not their actions. Cash's secrecy is understandable but not justified (which goes for a lot of the characters' bad behavior, and I love that about HBH).