Heartstopper, A Subversive Love Story
I keep coming back to Heartstopper, and I’ve consumed a lot of media in my life. My first watch was a “let me see what this is by watching just one episode at 10pm” pick. Then it was 2am and I had binged the whole thing. Two days later, I had binged it two more times, had gotten two other people to binge as well, and gorged on the graphic novels multiple times.
What was it that kept me (still) transfixed? It was a subversive love story. It was subversive because it was a love story that focused on the LOVE and the STORY.
Not your typical set-up
Television and film rely on tropes to move the story along. This isn’t inherently bad, especially for movies. You have a limited time to tell a story and get the good part. You can use on tropes as shortcuts to skip past the unimportant bits to get to the part of the story the screenwriter is there to tell. (As a quick example, think about a set of siblings with an alcoholic parent— a knowing look and a hug between them show you they are close because of this trauma. We don’t need to see the whole backstory to understand this if this isn’t the story we’re here to see. Now you can get to the actual plot of the story.)
For the love story, though, the tropes are so played out, they’ve become almost toxic. If we were expecting a typical love story out of heartstopper, we might have expected some of the following things to happen.
At the start of this show, Charlie is meeting for a secret tryst with an attractive boy who doesn’t want to actually talk to him, ignores him in public, and is downright toxic. In (almost) all the other shows, this is the set-up. The point of the show is for Charlie to win over the bad boy, make him realize his bad ways, have the bad boy make a public act of contrition, and they would kiss at the end. Charlie would have changed him.
Nope. And this is where we start to shift the narrative. Charlie breaks it off with him in the first half of the first episode, and he never goes back.
When you’re introduced to Nick, he is the stereotypical athletic straight guy. He becomes friends with Charlie. Again, the norm would have been Charlie falling for him and a long drawn out journey of Nick avoiding, denying, even being angry about his feelings for Charlie in return.
Nope. Instead we get someone who recognizes his feelings and takes time to understand them fully. He never once equivocates on his attraction to Charlie.
These stories are typically rife with near misses, misunderstandings, and mistrust. So much of the show depends on keeping the two love interests apart that it’s more of an origin story than love story. In this vein, you’d expect most of the show to have been about Nick ending up in compromising situations that he wouldn’t be aware that Charlie had even witnessed. Charlie would constantly doubt if Nick is even interested in him.
Nope. Nick spends the entire season expressing to Charlie that he likes him. The almost-drama clears up when Nick is honest about how he ended up agreeing to a date with Imogen and actually cancels the date. The incident brings them closer.
Even the their first kiss. Most of these stories end with a first kiss right before the final credits roll. The journey of the narrative was the will-they-won’t-they or maybe how-will-they. The audience rarely gets more than a glance at what it looks like how the two actually work in a relationship.
Nope. They kiss in episode three of eight! Not even halfway through the whole season. You actually see how Nick and Charlie work as a couple as Charlie provides positive emotional support to Nick as he goes through his journey.
But without all this drama how do you keep it interesting?
When we turn all of these typical tropes on their head, you would expect to lose the drama that keeps a person watching episode after episode, and yet… People keep watching (over and over and over). You can write a love story that focuses on the story of how two people go from attraction to love rather than from attraction to deciding to be together. We tend to believe love is simple, but Heartstopper recognizes that it’s complicated. That complication is enough drama to draw in an audience.
Nick is still on a personal journey, and that is compelling. Charlie is also on a journey to learn that he is worthy of love. For those of us who didn’t know the ending, we kept waiting for these love story tropes to come to fruition, anxiety building and building toward the inevitable breakdown that will serve as the climax of the season. And when it didn’t happen we felt … relief.
It turned out that we watched a story about two good people who treated each other well, got together early, and then got to explore the joy of falling in love. It was so enjoyable that we had to turn around and watch it again so we could enjoy it without the anxiety and bask in the glow that is the growing, healthy relationship between Nick and Charlie.
One more thing
The final thing about this subversion is shifting expectations of the younger generation of what they expect and deserve in a relationship. When someone treats you poorly, it’s not your job to accept the bad behavior or change the other person. If you like someone, it’s not too much to ask that they be able to tell you they like you, too. Passion is not the same thing as drama. After the rush of emotions that draw you together, it’s not a magical relationship that sustains without work and engagement from both partners. You’re allowed to expect all this and more even from your very first relationship.
It’s ok to want and expect warm happiness that engulfs you like a bear hug - in both a relationship and a tv show.
