thoughts on Heartstopper (both the comics and the tv series)
I'd like to preface this by saying I absolutely loved reading and watching Heartstopper! It was very beautifully written and the characters were portrayed in a very tangible way that speaks volumes about the authenticity of the author and the casts of the show.
Heartstopper is about a budding romance between two school friends. Heartstopper’s 15-year-olds don’t take drugs, don't drink alcohol, don't have sex, don't swear or even argue with their parents! Instead, they go out for milkshakes, perform dutifully in school music concerts, and have chaste movie nights. They are sweet, chronically polite and partial to an early night. It is quietly radical. It is a gay love story aimed at young viewers. Sensitive, incessantly apologetic, sweet Charlie meets charming rugby star Nick in class, and the spark between them slowly blossoms into love. It’s a flirtation punctuated by much classically British romcom awkwardness, reams of Instagram messages, and plenty of panicked Googling. It's a good book and television series!
However, I do feel sort of bad for the younger queer generations discovering the series because they're going through this right now.
It's every queer person's dream but realistically, in this society, it's not a lot of people's kind of reality, and this is not to invalidate the experiences of the lucky few who got to go through what is being portrayed in the series.
It's just depressing because I know a lot of young people will be reading and watching the books and the TV series and they would be wondering why it isn't happening to them. I know I would have.
It is such a cute story and it makes me so happy to see queer representations on TV with an actual happy ending, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't fill me with pure jealousy and I bet it did a lot to others, too, and I think that that's completely normal.
I know it's wrong to be jealous of other people's successful relationships, but I don't want other people to think that it's a problem innate to only them.
That kind of love isn't necessarily real to all people, and I know that it's comforting to cling to the idea that that kind of love might happen to you, but most times, it will just tear you apart as you go on living and continuously putting yourself out there only to be judged and hurt and disappointed because of your expectations, which were never high, to begin with, but are just too unrealistic, and will only end up with you feeling lonelier.
To be honest, I keep on rereading and rewatching the whole series because I know that that's the only way I'll be able to experience anything like it.