Queer It All Began: chatting about Heartstopper with Etienne and Gil

Words by Etienne (he/him) and Gil (he/him) 

Content warning: discussions of bullying, homophobic and transphobic experiences 

What: An edited transcript of our (90-minute long) conversation about Heartstopper, a Netflix show based on Alice Oseman’s comics. Warning: contains spoilers. 

Where: In Etienne’s living room surrounded by anime posters, Heartstopper fan art, and an extensive model dinosaur collection.

Gil (he/him): So, Etienne. What do you love about Heartstopper? I thought I could do a cute introductory question 

Etienne (he/him): (laughs) Heartstopper is the show I would’ve killed for as a teenager. Alice Oseman says “people come to the story for all sorts of reasons: for the realistic romance, for the LGBT+ rep, for the art, for the drama. But I think, most of all, people have been drawn to Heartstopper because it brings them comfort. It brings me that too.” And the first time I read that, I just started crying.

Gil: This is definitely a series that has had a lot of tears shed over it.

Gil: One of the interesting things for me is how relatively apolitical it is. Coz, Britain, right? Bit of a cesspit. All of the British queer community I know talk about Section 28—

Etienne: The ‘don’t say gay’ thing?

Gil: Yup, in schools. And I think Mr. Ajayi’s the closest we get to [addressing] that. He’s taking up that space of ‘I’m a person that you can come to and talk to about this shit.’

Etienne: I think Mr. Farouk and Mr. Ayaji’s story [a potential Season 2 romance] is a foil for the almost-too-perfect romances with the kids. There is a lot of queer suffering, and it's not that Heartstopper ignores this. Heartstopper just chooses to take a (highly-needed) comforting angle.

Gil: I mean, they’re teenagers. They are complicated. They're dealing with mental health issues. Some  of the later seasons go into that more. But their queerness doesn't define them, their suffering doesn't define them. They’re just well-defined people.

Etienne: Sometimes perhaps too well-defined. Lots of people [think] Tao is less likable. But Tao is the one who doesn't solve all his problems within an episode. He isn’t someone who says some bad shit and then apologises for it, as opposed to everyone else with near-perfect communication.

Gil: Right? I still struggle to be that emotionally honest and intelligent. Definitely wasn't when I was fifteen and full of self-loathing.

Gil: I recommended [my former flatmate] watch Heartstopper and one of the things she asked was, “people don't actually behave like Harry, right?” And I was like, “oh bestie…” 

Etienne: I went to school with a bunch of them. But it’s a nice thing that Heartstopper alludes to. People are not always going to occupy the same space. People can grow.

Gil: I really liked in the books how they did that with Nick and his rugby friends.

Etienne: Yeah. And you know that coming out scene with Nick and his mum? A lot of people have been using that to come out to their parents. People have said that on Twitter, and Kit Connor (who plays Nick) was like, “this is why we did this.”

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Gil: Everyone has a different relationship to [Heartstopper], which is cool. You have millennials like, “this is the childhood we wish we had…”

Etienne: And every time we watch it, it's therapy.

Gil: And then the kind of younger queers who (fingers crossed) can actually relate that to their own lives…

Etienne: I want to talk about that. Coz I've been trying to sell the show to absolutely everyone and some people are like, “I just don't feel ready to start it yet.” Or, “I watched an episode or two and it was just too much.” It is painful watching your high-school trauma be replayed.

Gil: I was particularly aware of [how] Elle got so much shit. So, like, [Heartstopper isn’t] an ideal world. But, I mean, I didn’t even hear the word ‘trans’ until I was fourteen, and I thought it only applied to trans women. I had short hair and was very much an angry feminist, so I had other people's perceptions of my queerness projected onto me. Basically, I got told I was lesbian. And I was like, “I'm not into girls.” And they were like—

Etienne: “Sorry, that’s the only option.”

Gil: Yep. So one thing that felt foreign to me was that [the Heartstopper kids] all kind of knew who they were.

Etienne: Or figure it out relatively quickly. Queer identity can be far more amorphous than is depicted. [Although] kids these days, and the kids in Heartstopper, would have access to a lot more information than we did.

Gil: I mean, we had internet as children, we just didn’t—

Etienne: —know where on the internet to go.

Gil: Literally. And [the show] has opened up this space to go, “here are some high-school experiences. What was yours?” Which is tricky because a lot of [ours were] fucked up.

Etienne: A can of worms, isn't it?

Gil: Yeah. Do you wanna talk about it? 

Etienne: Somewhat. I definitely see it in the bits of the show that I cry through. Even being in a happy queer relationship, [I was] watching and reading Heartstopper feeling a huge sense of loss. Like, this is the high school experience [we] missed out on. I went to an all-boys school, and someone was outed as bi when I was in Year 10. That sent a very clear message of what not to do and who not to trust. I now know that a bunch of guys from my year identify as queer, and it's like, what would high school have been if we'd been able to have those conversations back then?

Etienne: [The Heartstopper] kids can just go bowling, [or] to the seaside. No-one’s working another job. The wheels are kind of greased, to be able to have maximum middle-class queerness.

Gil: Yeah. Class just isn’t looked at. [Whereas, something like Young Royals] looks at how viscerally uncomfortable it can be to occupy the wrong class space.

Etienne: And those are literally different spaces. Simon [from Young Royals] has to take a bus to get there.

Gil: It’s a reality that does have the power to separate people who care about each other.

Etienne: I’m a person of multiple ethnicities—Malaysian-Chinese and Pākehā—[and I noticed that in Heartstopper] race and ethnicity are things that, like class, didn’t really come up. It does leave me wondering about race and ethnicity in Heartstopper and in queer media going forward.

Gil: Is it like that Bridgerton thing where there are people of colour on screen, but we’re not gonna talk about it?

Etienne: I think it's definitely closer to that than I'd like it to be.

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Gil: A bit that got me teary was when [Nick’s Google search] came up with “violence against queer people”. But that flashed on screen and went away again. It wasn't even verbalised. And I just wonder how that plays into how queer kids relate to their own histories.

Etienne: Mm. Is it no longer relevant, or are kids just not gonna learn it?

Gil: Yeah. I do think history is so important to understand what your community dealt with. [I get the sense] that queer communities are not fragmenting, but are not so cohesive? 

Etienne: [But also] Heartstopper is pulling a lot of the queer community together. Lots of the queer community have seen it and have positive things to say. We may be wringing it through the dryer [now], but it is damn good.

Gil: This [chat] is literally recording a conversation that it [made room] for. I'm cynical about industries, but maybe they’re wedging open a space for more genuinely representative media.

Etienne: Yeah. And Alice was saying that they wanted to go with Netflix [because] it’s how they could get it to as many queer kids as possible, and they did have a huge say in the creative direction.

Gil: Well, should I put on the jug again? …