#oh btw if someone notices any private information in the screen shots please let know so i can replace the pictures

[ifbrd]

Who should know their secret identities: A Huggy and WordGirl Relationship Analysis

Let’s take a moment to discuss WordGirl/Becky and Huggy/Bob’s relationship. To label it, it seems to be an interesting mix of friendship, mentor/mentee, and parent/child. Today I want to specifically talk about the parent/child aspect of their relationship. I want to talk about a rule of Huggy’s that may not be best for Becky.

Like any decent parent, Bob obviously just wants what’s best for Becky. But sometimes what a parent or guardian thinks is best for the child, is not what is really best for them. For our favorite heroine and her sidekick/mentor, I think this is the case with their secret identities. Bob seems to be very strict on this subject, while Becky has shown a desire to share her secret with a select few people. Of course, Becky is protective of her identity too, but on more than one, on-screen, occasion she has wanted to share this secret with her best friends and family, while Bob continues to object to the idea. And there’s reason to believe this conversation comes up a lot more off-screen than we may have realized, which further brings into the question whether or not Bob’s perspective on the matter is the right one.

Let's take a look at some secret identity sharing (or almost sharing) moments, shall we?

The first incident was in WordGirl Makes a Mistake. Whilst feeling self-conscious about her mistake, Becky decides to confide in her dad and brother. Notice Bob’s reactions to this.

He abandons pizza. Bob. Abandons. Food. He never does that, even during the most crucial moments. At best he takes the food with him or scarfs it down before leaving. But he feels so strongly about this that he completely abandons his food.

Then he tries to discredit her in a panic. When she shares her secret with her family, he can’t look and once it’s all said and done, he looks very annoyed and disapproving. He doesn’t let up on this until he realizes neither Tim or Tj believe her.

Now let’s turn to Becky to see her perspective on the subject. Aside from the fact she was willing to tell her family, she states that she’s been “Holding this back for a long time…” clearly showing that she truly does want to tell them she’s WordGirl.

Next, we’ll examine The Good, the Bad and the Chucky, when Becky seriously considered telling Violet, and almost went through with it.

When the idea is brought up, Huggy immediately protests and is grumpy the rest of the episode. When Becky starts to tell Violet, Bob makes one last attempt to convince her not to. Becky doesn’t pay any attention to him and keeps talking, and Bob goes into full-blown panic. He even faints.

Again, compare this to Becky, who truly wanted—yearned — to tell Violet. Remember this episode defined yearn as being something stronger and deeper than a want.  Not to mention her reasoning says a lot about how much she wants this. “She’s my best friend, I tell her everything, and it would be such a relief to totally be myself around her.”

This episode also gives us some insight into how often this conversation comes up and how it usually plays out. When WordGirl first brings up the idea of telling Violet and Huggy objects to the idea, she frowns and rolls her eyes. She does this as though she’s heard this a thousand times and is tired of hearing it.

An even better episode to help us realize how this conversation goes is The Invasion of the Bunny Lovers. This is the episode where Scoops finds out Becky is WordGirl. Bob is under mind control the entire episode, and doesn’t find out about the incident until the end when Scoops calls Bob “Huggy.” The screen immediately shows WordGirl who looks extremely nervous and signals Scoops not to bring it up. 

Scoops doesn’t get the message and WordGirl then gives Bob a very nervous smile. This is similar to how a child acts when they are in huge trouble and want to either get on their parents’ good side or not even tell them to stay out of trouble. 

The next thing she does is fly away from Bob, again much like a child trying to avoid trouble.

After Huggy finds her, her expression quickly changes to a look of dread, like she’s about to get the lecture of a lifetime. Meanwhile, if we examine Huggy’s body language, he’s clearly mad and she certainly is getting the lecture of a lifetime.

Going back to my point about this being like a child in trouble with her parent, and how this shows us how the secret identity topic usually plays out, I see this whole interaction as being similar to family’s putting an emphasis on grades. Of course, the child wants good grades, but perhaps the parents are very strict about them, and when the child gets a less than satisfactory grade, she might try to hide it or wait for the right time to tell her parents, because she dreads the reaction they will inevitably have. The secret identity rule is such a strict one with little to no room for debate that Becky acted like a child with a bad grade when the secret got out.

And of course, this makes perfect sense. Becky was so young when she discovered her powers, she was at an age when most children want to show their parents every cool thing they can do. And at age 9-11, Becky has been shown to be very open with her parents, so of course she too would have wanted to share her abilities with her parents. But she clearly didn’t because…ya know, they don’t know about them. What would have stopped a censor-less toddler with not yet the brain capacity to think “maybe I shouldn’t tell mommy and daddy what I can do”? It was Bob.

Bob told her not to tell anyone from a very young age, and Becky listened to him because he was someone who loved her, took care of her and someone she trusted. But now she’s getting older and starting to think for herself and questioning whether Bob is right when he says “you can’t tell anybody you’re WordGirl.”

And maybe she’s right to question it.  There’s no doubt in my mind he’s just telling her she can’t tell because he believes it’s what’s best for her, but is it really what’s best for her? Granted, Bob probably has this rule so strict because the more people who know, the greater the odds a slip up could happen that lets the secret out to the world, which would undoubtedly be terrible. That and anyone who knows her secret would be worried about her in battles.

But is telling a few people worth the risk of all this happening? First, let’s look at how bad Becky wants this. “I’ve been holding this back for a long time” “I yearn to tell Violet I’m WordGirl.” Second, let’s remember why she wanted to tell the people she did. With Violet, it was because she was feeling guilty for not having told her and craved the ease for not having to hide herself from her best friend. And she told her family because she was having a hard time as WordGirl and her family started to notice.

Which leads me to my next point my most important point because this isn’t about what Becky wants. It’s about what she needs. In the case of her family, she needs to be able to go to the people who care about her and want to help her most. As much as Bob loves her and will do whatever he can to help her, he can’t solve every problem she has. Not to mention sometimes it’s not even that she needs their help and advice all the time, sometimes she might just need an ear to vent to that’s not Bob’s. And her family deserves to know what’s going on with their daughter. They deserve to know she’s worked up because she made a word mistake in battle, or that she’s acting rude because she’s been spending one on one time with Ms. Power. Her parents want to help her, but they obviously can’t if they’re not aware of that part of her life. And wouldn’t Becky’s life and crime fighting be easier if she didn’t have to lie to her parents to go do her job? Wouldn’t it be easier for her to say “I missed family dinner because I was fighting Two-Brains and the Energy Monster,” then to get punished for doing her job? I won’t even get into the fact that keeping secrets—that dictate a huge portion of your life—from your loving family is probably emotionally unhealthy.

As for her friendship with Violet: that had many problems that were because of the WordGirl secret. I won’t get too much into this here because one day I want to do a whole analysis on it, but in many episodes leading up to Rhyme and Reason, Becky and Violet were starting to have a rift wedged between them. And it always was because Becky had to leave to fight crime when Violet needed her. I’m not sure when these issues started, but if Becky had told Violet when she wanted to in The Good, the Bad and the Chucky, it likely would have gone differently than in Rhyme and Reason. This not only would have fixed a lot of problems in their friendship either before they started or before the problems had gotten bad, but also would have resulted in less drama. Most of Violet’s betrayed feelings were from the fact that Becky never told her, and she found out by accidentally photographing it. This would have saved Becky a lot of unnecessary heartbreak. Maybe not all of it, but a lot of it.

These are all fine reasons to tell the closest people in Becky’s life, but Bob’s perspective on this subject is still important too. More people knowing means the secret could get out easier, everyone who knows will be worried about her in battles and probably other things I’m not thinking of. The question is: Is it worth risking all that for the benefits of Becky’s friends and family knowing? There is not a definite, crystal clear right answer, it all depends on Becky and what’s right for her and her life, and I think as she gets older, she’ll start to question what the right answer for her is. Bob, however, is stubborn and I can’t see him changing his views on this subject very easily. I don’t want him to suddenly change is mind and let her tell whoever she wants, but I do think it’s important that he considers his perspective on the topic, might just be the wrong one. But I don’t know what it would take for him to consider that idea. I feel like it would have to be something extreme, like Becky having a mental breakdown from not being able to tell her parents things.

None the less I do think this conversation has been coming up more and more lately and will continue to be brought up more and more as Becky gets older and starts thinking more for herself.