r i s s

h2o just add water blog | I go through phases where I think about the hyper details of my favorite childhood shows

[moonstonetide]

my stranger things side blog is @byersbright I may have accidentally rbed some stuff on the wrong blog lmao

[deafchild2000]

So, I guess it's safe to say we all know Bella Hartley was underdeveloped as a character, also namely in hobbies. So, I decided to list what we do know about her hobbies vs what I think her hobbies could be if expanded.

Canon

Singing

Songwriting

Swimming*

Deep sea exploring*

Traveling

Expanded Headcanons

Photography

Scrapbooking

Yoga

Learning new languages

(International) sign language

Journaling

Moon-Watching**

Thrifting

Volunteer work

Collecting postcards

Hiking

Puzzles

Studying sea myths***

* = More in line with

** = Basically tracks lunar cycles and phases of the moon, including full moons

*** = She was turned into a mermaid as a child and traveling, hard to believe she didn't look into the mythology sea creatures.

[nicemices]

yeah i remember why i loved this show as a kid i wish i was a mermaid

[motherearthlovesus]

this might be too niche but - if h2o was obx

sydney to hawaii in an afternoon

[h2ojustaddmako]

I mishmashed the couples, pick the best one

which is the least cursed pairing

ash + rikki

zane + bella

will + cleo

lewis + emma

byron + charlotte

Voting ended onDec 22, 2024

[bellaheartly]

h2o: just add water  ✧  favorite ships ↳  cleo/lewis | season three.

a little gift for @clewis!! i wanted to get the hang of photoshop on my new laptop before i made this so it would (hopefully) look a little nicer than my first few gifsets. hope you enjoy clewis being married af pal!! smooch smooch

[cadygroves]

she's so me

[h2ojustaddmako]

She's unreal

[oceancoresunset]

Who up playing mermaids

[deafchild2000]

So, I'm rewatching S1 of H2O for ideas for my fanfiction and something about The Siren Effect had me going to Google this and I realized:

Unless it ended up sounding like her realistic bad singing, radio stations actually keep recording of callers when they're on the radio. So does that mean a radio station has a legit record of Cleo's siren call to this very day? Or is it just possible the record of her singing swapped into Cleo's average screeching voice when the moon spell ended?

Honestly, I wanna think that if such a recording did exist, it kept the exact sound of the Siren call because that's something that could've really come back to bite them at any moment.

[cleo-serotonin]

season one parallels my beloved <3

[deafchild2000]

Alright, given that it's universally accepted that the moon crystals from H2O are what make up the moon rings in Mako Minutes, someone has got me thinking:

Since H2O had the girls clearly disinterested in going through the mystic side of being a mermaid and there were magic gemstones to help them grow or enhance their powers in plain sight - and who knows if Lewis would've figured it out if given the chance before S3 - what do you think would've happened if the girls found the crystals and learned how to harness their powers through it?

[caats]

[2000sgurl]

[lewislovescleo]

you don’t know how desperately I wish we got to know Bella the way we knew Emma. Emma was a mermaid and a girl outside of her love interests, she had hobbies and a strong personality tied to her powers. But Bella falls short in so many aspects because she’s just written around Will. I want one off episodes centered around Bella where her love interest never even makes an appearance, I want an episode where Bella is moon struck, where she has really evident flaws. I want to see her fight and make up with Cleo and Rikki over mermaid drama, not boys. I want her to know Zane and Lewis one on one. I want her to interact with Cleo’s family. Sigh.

[themakomoonpool]

Bella could have been so much more than just a third mermaid to complete the idea of the trio.

I want her to be seen as an important mermaid not just because she’s the third one but because she knows about mermaid lore or abilities from her almost lifelong experience of being a mermaid. For her to have had a story and life and experiences before season 3.

I wish we’d seen her relationship with her family. I like to imagine where the show could have gone if her family had known about the secret and supported her. I think logically a child couldn’t have hid something like this from her family, but they never make an appearance. She literally only existed when standing next to Cleo, Rikki, or Will.

The show treated her like all the character had to offer was a third placeholder, sex appeal (they seriously spent so much screen time on her being sexualized and sexually harassed), and Will’s love interest.

[lewislovescleo]

Okay fellow h2o fans help me puzzle this one out because it ALWAYS pisses me off. In Season 2 when Cleo runs away from home and Lewis goes to Max to ask for help, Max's answer is that Cleo is like Gracie and had a hard time coping with being a mermaid and a human, and that's why she ran away. Which I GUESS you could say is because she didn't want to do the dishes, but isn't having a hard time coping with both worlds been an EMMA problem this whole time? Even back in Season 1, she definitely had the hardest adjustment. Especially in Season 2 when she's constantly talking about how she can't tell Ash, she just isn't a normal person anymore and doesn't deserve normal relationships. Cleo doesn't want to wash one dish and suddenly she's the one that can't cope with the divide between mermaid and human?? Make it make sense. Especially because it seems like the catalyst for her running away was mostly Charlotte bullying her and Lewis turning his phone off. She seems a lot more upset with that drama than she is that she's a mermaid.

[moonstonetide]

I think the difference lies in their emotional responses. emma is a very task driven, strict and straightforward girl. she thrives in order and desperately wants control. becoming a mermaid for her was difficult for two reasons, 1) she had to give up her life passion. personally I think this should’ve been further explored by the show, in the first episode and in the sleepover episode, it seemed like emma was Really good. like potential olympics good. so having to give that up should’ve had a greater toll. and 2) because she had to give up control. that’s the element the show shows her struggling with. she didn’t want to start her relationship with ash because she wasn’t sure she could control his reaction and felt scared, which she then tries to rationalize her emotions by saying it’s unsafe for her to accept him. because of emma’s personality, even though she struggles with her new reality of becoming a mermaid, she immediately tries to understand it and rationalize it (testing how long it takes before tails pop, getting stories straight).

cleo on the other hand is emotionally driven. she lets her emotions guide her. it wasn’t just about the dishes. for her the dishes were a culmination of all the emotions she’s been feeling so far, the breaking point. her not being able to do what she considers normal — beach days with her friends, doing household chores, family activities. and this is currently magnified because of lewis. she broke up with lewis (at least the reason she told herself and the girls) because she needed to focus on being a mermaid and getting a handle on it. and then lewis starts dating someone else, and together they go fishing and have beach dates and do all the things she could never do with him. this is the tipping point of where she feels she’ll never be normal living this double life and because she is emotionally driven her instinct is to run away. that is what makes her similar to gracie. it’s not the struggle itself, all three of the girls (not really including bella here because her struggle wasn’t shown nearly as much as the others, maybe do to lack of priority from the writers, or because she’s been a mermaid since she was a kid so it’s kinda been there done that) struggle with the transition in their life but they each handle it a different way depending on who they are.

[cleo-serotonin]

sometimes life is just you and your h2o locket against the world