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An Argument for Helga/Lila from a Hardcore Shortaki Shipper: A Hey Arnold! Meta

So… Is Shortaki Week over?  *looks at calendar* Okay.  Whew. *Ahem* So. Everybody strap in ‘cause I’ve got something to say.

I love Lila Sawyer… like… a lot.

Lila has gotten a bad reputation in the fandom since her introduction of being Arnold’s replacement romantic interest in the middle of Season 3 way back in 1998. Everywhere you look, shippers claim that she is the “Little Miss Perfect” Mary Sue that gets in the way of the Shortaki pairing, that she is a thorn in the side of most people who don’t look at her character but look at her as an obstacle. 

As a multishipper myself, I am here to bid good riddance to the notion that Shortaki is the only viable and epic option for Helga Pataki’s love life. Even though I ship them more than any other pairing on the show, my next OTP for Helga after Shortaki is Helga/Lila. (Then Helga x Brainy. I want good things for him, what can I say?) 

My reasons are my own, and boy are they juicy. So, it is time for another one of my Tumblr-famous Hey Arnold! metas. I will detail my argument in three parts: why Lila is great, Helga and Lila’s relationship, and how their tension could be romantically and beautifully resolved. 

So. With an inordinate amount of time on my hands because of the pandemic and my ungodly talent of talking about nothing but Hey Arnold! for days and weeks on end, I would like to say my peace. But before we get any further, see this post.

https://leskuh.tumblr.com/post/166549006157

And then I will explain myself…

Part 1: Why I Love Lila as a Character… 

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She is just so nice. She’s just so great y’all. But there is one thing that I have to get off my chest. I hate that she has a reputation of being a Mary Sue in most writing circles because of this when she is in fact, a clever subversion of the Mary Sue trope when looking at her with a microscope. 

Most Mary Sues are depicted as perfect little angels that have everything and get everything they want and are creator self inserts. They tend to be one dimensional and tend to be the insufferable sweethearts that Nickelodeon has been trying to push for years. See Carly Shay, Tori Vega, or (shudder) Chloe Carmichael from The Failry Oddparents… 

The subversion comes into play with her debut episode “Ms. Perfect” when Lila is perfect in just about everything. She makes her own clothes that are like the stylish Rhonda, she’s as smart as Phoebe and raises her hand in class, she’s funny, dang she can do everything, but she isn’t handed everything on a silver platter. In “Arnold Likes Lila” Rhonda admits that she is better dressed than Lila, and Phoebe still has the highest grades. She’s good, but not the best. 

She is intensely self-aware of what she wants, not only in her relationships, but the people in her life. She is not totally controlled by the feelings of her peers. I will expand upon this in Part 2, but her rejection of Arnold has logical and realistic reasoning behind it, and she lets him down gently, but also being firm in saying that what Arnold is doing in that moment is making her uncomfortable. 

Lila doing this in “Weird Cousin”: “Thank you oh so very much for comforting me Arnold. Now could I ask you a favor? Could you please take your hand off my shoulder? As I’ve told you over and over, I don’t like you like you, I just like you.” 

Honestly? Queen. I need that kind of confidence in myself like that. “Weird Cousin” even takes place after “Love and Cheese” and that failure of a date. We feel bad and slightly annoyed as an audience because it hurts Arnold, not because Lila is a bad person. Check yourself if you think that she is because she isn’t. It’s just the “Die for our Ship” fanon goggles talking to you. 

There is a little footing to the argument against Lila having everything go her way in the end, like when her dad magically gets a job at the end of the “Ms. Perfect” episode, and telling Arnold that there is hope that she may like him like him back and leading him on in “Love and Cheese” that counteracts these points. But I’m willing to jot those down as episode only writing faux pas than a detriment to her character in general. The latter point even more so since it was supposed to mirror the consequences of Helga’s actions in “Love and Cheese” to “Operation Ruthless”. 

Which brings me to…

Part 2: Helga Vs. Lila

Art by Rei-Hikaru

Now here is where it gets interesting. Lila and Helga are basically baby’s first foil characters. A Foil is defined by TVTropes is a character that highlights someone else’s trait, usually by contrast. Let’s look at the many ways that they are foils of each other. Helga is rich, Lila is poor. Lila has a father who loves her, Helga is mostly ignored by her father. Helga, according to her schoolmates and herself, is not conventionally attractive, while Lila is, etc. etc.… The list kind of goes on. 

Another way they are foils of each other is how they deal with their emotions. As illustrated by the song by Jim Lang, Lila holds a veneer of kindness to hide the sadness that she truly has inside of herself. Helga hides behind her anger, Lila behind her kindness. The sadness she possesses is even clear in the episode “Big Sister” when she asks Olga of all people on tips on how to be less sad. Ouch. 

Dig a little deeper though and they are very similar characters from very different situations. Helga has everything that Lila wishes she had like a big sister, or clothes that she doesn’t have to make herself, and Helga is jealous of all the things Lila has that won Arnold’s heart. Those things including, but not limited to, looks, charm, and the complete ability to tell Arnold how she feels no matter what. 

Lila’s also a good replacement for Ruth because of this. We can sympathize and root for Helga, while also knowing that Lila is a good person uninterested in Arnold and becomes a character with more personality and dimension. She is self-aware enough to know what she wants, and Helga does too. Helga may dream about drowning her and make her into a criminal mastermind, but that is because the writers want the audience to root for Helga to get what she wants in life. In a sick and twisted sort of way. That is what makes Lila and Helga work as characters in Hey Arnold!. Helga’s karma of never telling Arnold how she feels and being a bad person, is the way the narrative constantly beats her down to tell her to stop. What a better way to visualize this than an actual person made of flesh and bone being a constant reminder of what Helga may never have. Dang.

Also… um… Arnold liking Lila is completely Helga’s fault. In the episode “Arnold likes Lila” Lila realized a little too late that anything she had felt for him was forced by the situation she was in and really, Arnold and Lila don’t work. Arnold is genuinely attracted to kindness, from falling for Ruth over giving up her bus seat to a woman carrying a watermelon (“Arnold’s Valentine”), Lila over random memories of their first date (“Arnold Likes Lila”), and Hilda, Helga’s doppelganger, in Arnold’s fever dream in “Arnold Visits Arnie”.  Other than being nice, Arnold and Lila have no other traits that they share. Even on their date in “Love and Cheese” proved that anything that Arnold was interested in doing, like the bumper cars or the tilt a whirl, Lila didn’t want to do. Even though Arnold saved her in the Tunnel of Love, feelings still had never changed, and she tells him this. 

Look how Lila was able to give up on her interests into not seeing a scary movie with Arnie in “Weird Cousin”, she was able to be vulnerable in trying new things with someone that isn’t Arnold. Helga in “Helga’s Masquerade” and “Helga and the Nanny” and “It Girl” and etc. when she peels back her anger, Arnold sees a nice and likable person underneath. In Arnold’s dream (“Arnold Visits Arnie”), we see Arnold instantly fall for Helga when she is reciting poetry, being calm, and doing everything Helga is scared to show in front of Arnold and their classmates.

Helga and Lila are Arnold’s magnets; turn one side over to the other and Arnold is pulled another direction. It is in Helga and Lila’s character flaws of not being open and vulnerable that their mistakes lead Arnold on. Lila’s kindness pulls him in, Helga’s anger pushes him away. Helga’s hidden depths make Arnold interested while Lila’s leaves Arnold confused distressed and irritated…

Part 3: …NOW KISS

Me, Crystal, late into the night reading the above post and the tags:  You know what @leskuh, your right, why don’t they kiss?

Art by pellistario

Ya know, Helga may like Lila a lot when Arnold’s magnet is pulled away… Her rhetoric when talking about Lila in “Ms. Perfect” is a great example. She hates Lila for being so perfect, but she, like everyone else, can’t help but like her… She must have liked her to be comfortable enough to tell her feelings to Lila in “School Play”, so the possibility of Helga and Lila being sociable to each other is not out of the question… Lila really likes to see her happy when Arnold is spending more time with Helga in “Weird Cousin”… That’s cute of Helga to give Lila her favorite baseball position centerfield in “Arnold Visits Arnie”… Wow, Helga is being so honest and straightforward to Lila about how she thinks Lila is impressive as a person in “Helga’s Masquerade” and then makes a soliloquy to herself about how she could be just like her. “What a sap, what a stooge…” (Wait, that sounds familiar…) In Married, Helga has nothing but nice words to say about Lila, talking about how she’s funny … and popular… and pretty … and wow, what is straight about that?… Maybe Arnold is the obstacle and not Lila after all…

Shortaki works, in my opinion, because of the handling of Helga’s feelings for him, their connection through balanced personalities, and the tragic story of Helga’s inability to be complete adult and vulnerable with herself to make Arnold see her internal motivations. It is visually and emotionally compelling from a storytelling standpoint and has been so successful that Arnold x Helga has become the most popular and influential pairing in the Hey Arnold! fandom.

Helga/Lila would also work because of their issues, not in spite of them.  Their balance would come in understanding and working out their problems with each other. Because of their utter magnetism as people it would be a beautiful relationship we could see unfold, and honestly good LGBT rep. Two girls who would learn, grow, and be better people together? One-sided enemies to unlikely friends to confidants to lovers? Hell yeah. I’m in.

(Aside: Helga x Brainy would probably break up from being too similar. Obsessive types who just want so much attention from significant others… The weight of their relationship and Brainy’s expectations would probably make them self-destruct.)

Craig Bartlett himself in his many interviews about The Patakis said he would have made Helga and Lila great friends without the speedbumps of Arnold being in the situation. At every turn when Helga hangs out with Lila or gets to know her better, Helga softens up.  Helga has only broken down and cried two times in the series, to Arnold in a dream after he rejects her (”Monkey Business”), and openly weeping to the rest of the girls about Lila at her home life(”Ms. Perfect”). I’m sure if “Helga’s Masquerade” was 15 minutes longer, we would have had a Phoebe x Gerald subplot of why Helga was hanging out with Lila so much and ignoring Phoebe and expand on H/L relationship further.

In a perfect world where The Patakis is a show that exists and that I write for, (the dream) and Helga travels through life dealing with her functionally dysfunctional family, there would be a three-way shipping war I would die to see. It would be between a large fandom that would debate about whether Shortaki should be endgame even with Arnold gone from Hillwood, shippers supporting a healthy and canon Helga x Brainy relationship, with an immensely large amount of people clinging onto Helga/Lila that would send today’s modern LGBTQ+ shippers reeling, or even explore the possibility outright if it was on MTV or Netflix.

Thanks to me being a sucker for shipping drama, I’d like to imagine that…

At least you know which side I would be on..

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[Blood]

Some weird au inspired by Joji lol

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livin in wonderland

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