Let's take a look at the Neflix adaptation of Heartstopper, a teen romance of two boys who meet, become friends, and fall in love. This series, and the graphic novels they are pulled from, subverts tropes and cliches left and right in order to give us a straightforward and powerful message about the beauty of self-discovery.
(Also, there are at least 2 different ways to say the name Tara, and I apparently use them interchangeably. *shrug)
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. I am on a mission to abolish the idea of the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and just life in general, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have this steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18 months.
And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.
[00:01:00] Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House. My goodness, friends. It is the final episode that I have for you in this very special month of June. I don't know about you, but this Pride month has been a huge roller coaster for me. There has been a lot to do. There has been a lot to celebrate. And I wanted to carry on with this for one final episode, but I promise it applies directly to creative writing, but we are going to delve in to a Netflix series and a comic coincidentally enough that has made its way into my heart and into the hearts of millions of people around the world. we are going to be talking about heart stopper, which is a Netflix series taken from the comic of the same name, which is created by a woman named Alice Oseman. Heart stopper came to Netflix just over two months ago [00:02:00] and it has been received with incredible positivity and a huge fandom already. I don't think that the people who created heart stopper could have ever imagined the success that it would get in just two months. And it has been astounding. Some of the things that I have seen on the internet, heart stopper has encouraged so many people to share in such safe spaces, their own stories of coming out, their own stories of struggling with this or that. And it has created wonderful communities of engagement for people to share these stories.
And I personally believe that one of the most important things that we can do to heal one another is to listen to each other's stories. So today on Writing in the Tiny House, we are going to pick apart Episode three of heart stopper. And yeah, this is going to have spoilers. And so if you want to go ahead and hop on the [00:03:00] bandwagon and join the fandom of heart stopper, please do that.
And if you don't want to hear these spoilers, then go ahead and pause this episode and take four hours out of your life to watch Season One of heart stopper on Netflix, and then come back and listen to what I have to say about it. This is not a critique of the show, and this is not a review of the show.
I'm not going to pretend that everything about the show is perfect. But what we are going to do is talk about subverted tropes and subverted cliches, and the power that comes with keeping a storyline simple. I mean, sometimes a complicated storyline is absolutely what you need. If you are writing thrillers, if you are reading thrillers, then that's kind of what comes along with the genre.
However, if you have a very simple message about a situation that is oftentimes misunderstood, sometimes keeping it simple is the [00:04:00] most powerful thing to do. As I go through episode three of heart stopper, I'm going to share with you what happens in the episode and then share with you the different cliches that come about in teen romances and in some of these other LGBTQ plus related movies and other series that heart stopper avoided.
And what consequences it would have had had they played into that. So hard stopper is a very basic storyline and I love that. I mean, in the tagline for heart stopper, Alice Oseman says, boy meets boy, boys become friends, boys fall in love. And it's as simple as that. our main characters are Charlie and Nick.
Charlie is an openly gay kid and Nick is a rugby player, a popular one too. And they attend the same. [00:05:00] All boys, school of Tru um, grammar school. And they are a grade apart and due to reassignments and stuff, they're in the same form and this is how they meet each other. Through this series, we see Charlie coming to grips with self-esteem and his role of how he gets to have some of the happiness that other people can give him.
He has a history of being bullied and his coming out was not taken. Perfectly his coming out story was not easily accepted in an all boys school. On the other side of the coin or on the other half of this relationship, we have Nick who has, it seems never had a moment to explore or think about his sexual preferences or his sexual identity until he meets Charlie.
And. This first [00:06:00] season of heart stopper covers his coming to terms with his bisexuality. He comes to realize that he likes both boys and girls, and this is him coming to feel that out and to embrace what that actually is. So in seat, let's see, in episode three, The main part that I wish to talk about is the birthday party.
So this is a privileged kid's birthday party. He comes from a rich background and they rented an entire venue for him to celebrate his birthday. So the really like the ballroom, the really high ceilings. And of course, if you follow the staircases, there are empty rooms. all around. This is a very big building and they rented the whole thing to celebrate this kid's 16th birthday. During this party, it seems that everybody showed up and there are two other characters that become very, very [00:07:00] important.
I feel at this point in time. So Nick is. Brought face to face with a girl that he kissed three years ago. Her name is Tara and. While they're talking to each other. they have a private moment for a second in kind of a quiet hallway or a corridor or whatever. Tara gets the courage to confide in Nick that she is dating a girl and that she is gay and yay.
And Nick appears to be really appreciative of this and through their little conversation. We realized that Tara is very new to this scene, but she and her girlfriend Darcy are deciding to be more brave and less conservative about how they are. Dealing with their relationship. So they have decided to become a little bit more brave and to be a little bit more public with how they are showing their affection to one another.
[00:08:00] And Nick seems to admire this a few moments later, everybody is on the dance floor and the camera zooms in on Tara and Darcy. and they're dancing. They're having a great time. There are the fluorescent lights everywhere. There's the really loud, really exciting dance music. And the two of them share a kiss and it is one of the funnest.
beautiful moments in a teen romance that I have witnessed in a long time. And not only is it just a beautiful moment, but everything that comes afterward. So they are in a crowded dance floor and they have the courage to kiss each other potentially in front of all of these peers. and then immediately after the kiss, they get to celebrate by dancing.
And so they're holding each other's hands. They're doing the spinning in circles thing because the age group of this crowd is about 15 and 16 years old. And so they're [00:09:00] celebrating as teenagers would, this was a big milestone for them. And it seems that even though it is a crowded room, Nobody really saw them do it except Nick and Nick stands there and it is obvious. With the way it is portrayed. And with the way it is filmed that Nick finds this to be a very special moment and a big gift for him to explore his own feelings and a few moments later, he and Charlie go to one of the empty rooms up upstairs.
Now they're not bedrooms. This is a venue. This is like a smaller ballroom upstairs, or a smaller meeting room upstairs. And they're alone in this other room and they find the moments to very adorably share with each other that they have feelings for each other. And they, Nick and Charlie share their first kiss [00:10:00] immediately after that, because Nick is Venturing into uncharted waters. He hears some of his friends call his name. So he runs out of this smaller room to go talk to them because he's just worried. He doesn't want them barging in to see him and Charlie kissing and Charlie who is dealing with some of his past trauma and some of his distrust and his own self-esteem issues.
Cause his dad. Completely heartbroken to come pick him up and he leaves the venue and goes home. And you expect this to be probably the worst thing in the whole world, as far as the way the series goes. However, at the end of episode, three, Nick shows up in the rain and you know, that they are going to make things right.
And that is how episode three ends. So. Let's go through this again and talk about all of the tropes and cliches that heart stopper [00:11:00] chose to avoid in this. And I'm not, I'm probably not going to be able to touch on all of them, but I am going to mention some really big ones that show up in teen romance.
And I'm going to say right now that some of the things that show up with the LGBTQ representation or the one or two LGBTQ characters, oftentimes those characters are there to be funny. it seems the male character is there to be snappy and witty and sassy and.
Oftentimes, that is just kind of the role that they play, the stereotype that they get to be in with heart stopper. The entire thing is based on same gender, or there is one relationship that is transgender. And so representation is all over the place. But in this series, everything is treated as completely normal and that is already a huge.
Step that is [00:12:00] already a very big point to be made here, but let's get to episode three again, to this birthday party, it's already kind of a trope that there is a rich kid who can rent out an entire venue for his 16th birthday. I was raised in very small town USA, and I don't remember really anybody celebrating their 16th that big.
I mean, perhaps we could have rented out like, the front room of the days in or something. I mean, there were nice places in the city I grew up in, but these really big 16th birthday things, weren't something that we saw much where I was raised. I do know however that they do happen immediately. we see the absence of things that come up in a lot of teen romance or teen drama And the first thing that we get to not see is the presence of a lot of heavy drinking. So in almost I, in so many American. Teen dramas or teen romance series [00:13:00] and movies. If there is a party, it is going to be unsupervised and there's going to be buckets of underage drinking.
I know that underage drinking is a thing, but it seems that it shows up everywhere in cinema. I also know that this does not take place in America and underage drinking as far younger over there. And so that's fine. But this is actually the important thing. Nobody was drunk at the party.
there might have been something that I missed. I mean, there was one character kind of acting silly, but there wasn't drinking there wasn't drugs. There wasn't even talk of any of those things. And the reason why that's important is because these super tender moments that happen while at the party in.
Their own private ways. That first conversation between Nick and Tara, if Nick or Tara had been drunk or on something that conversation couldn't have been so intimate and so full of trust immediately, [00:14:00] it was because everybody was level headed that Tara decided to open up to Nick and tell him that she was a lesbian and was dating Darcy also.
On the dance floor when Tara and Darcy share in their kiss in front of all of their peers, the energy of that would've been entirely different. Had anybody been impaired, if that had not been a completely level headed kiss filled with love and joy and excitement and a huge moment of celebration, it wouldn't have carried the same weight and it would've not affected Nick in the same way.
Did. then later with the first kiss that Nick and Charlie share, we have all seen the movie where that first kiss or that first. moment or that first vulnerable moment, one of the people in the relationship is drunk and does something by mistake. It would've completely ruined the storyline of this season, or it would've just created a [00:15:00] problem that would've had to be resolved later and probably wouldn't have been resolved very well.
When when Tara and Darcy were on the floor and they have their kiss, they get a moment to celebrate and a moment to be excited about it. And Nick was there to see, there is always in a team drama. It seems that there is somebody looking out to stab somebody in the back. If that kiss would've been immediately ruined.
It's possible that Nick would've not had the courage to share his affection for Charlie. If somebody would've stepped in and made fun of Tara, of Tara and Darcy for kissing on the dance floor, the entire tone of the party and the entire tone of the events that could have come later, would've changed.
And it would've been more about throwing a wrench in the plot of the story, rather than showing [00:16:00] us the beautiful innocence and the beautiful transformation of these fun relationships. It also could have discouraged Nick from being brave and exploring his feelings for Charlie one last cliche, and then we'll wrap it up.
in episode three, Nick and Charlie have their kiss. and then Nick hears his friends calling out his name and because he's scared for whatever personal reasons. It doesn't really say what perhaps he was worried of them. Worried that they would walk in and find this and he wasn't ready for that. He immediately stands up and runs out of the room to go talk with them.
And who knows how long they were actually talking So a cliche that was avoided in this situation was actually having somebody walk in or having somebody listen in or having somebody a fly on the wall.
[00:17:00] Invade the privacy and the tender moment of these two boys sharing their, a admitting their affection for one another. And then that person holding it over their head as a form of black male. We've all seen that before. We've seen people kissing people and somebody seeing that who shouldn't have seen it and then holds it over their heads as a way to get what they wanted or as a way to ruin a reputation or just ruin something a way to exact revenge or a way to. Pull negative attention away from themselves or whatever that didn't happen here.
And I believe that had it happened that way. It also would've ruined the plot of the story. That was not the point of this. That was not the PO like that stuff is not the point of heart stopper. It's not how heart stopper works. in many of the current teen romances that [00:18:00] involve gay characters. It seems that many of the gay characters are very sex forward. And so to admit your feelings for somebody automatically leads to sex in those stories, that didn't happen with heart stopper either. In fact, there's no sex in hot in heart stopper, at least not in season one.
and that's nice. So the reason why we are talking about subverting tropes and subverting cliches is because hard stopper is all about exploring and inviting the viewer or the reader. If you are reading the comics, because you remember this is a Netflix adaptation of the comics that share the same name.
It allows the viewer or the reader to witness this beautiful blooming, this beautiful blossoming of something new. when it does that, the, [00:19:00] the reader or the viewer gets to see this happen and it allows them to feel, and it allows them to experience. The honesty of these situations and the honesty of these emotions, the thing is subverting all of these tropes and all of these cliches allows the entire emotion of.
Heart stopper to be 100% honest feeling. I mean, it's a work of fiction. None of this is real, but it allows it to feel authentic and because it feels authentic, there's something to learn about it. We get to see in Charlie, a person struggling and overcoming the effects of bullying and The hard times and the hard job that it is to overcome all of that and still remain happy.
He still struggles with it throughout the thing. And he's not 100% arrived at being better. at the end of the first season, And spoiler alert. The effects of [00:20:00] bullying actually gave him an unhealthy relationship with food, which is set up throughout all of season one. All of this completely makes sense also with Nick with him just being a simple rugby player.
Popular doing his best, but not living life in a very deep way. And coming to this awakening that he is bisexual, that he likes both men and women. And right now he really likes Charlie. And so he's going to pursue a relationship with Charlie and coming to the realization. Oh my goodness.
I am different. and, oh my goodness. What does this actually mean? Keeping everything honest and authentic pulls the reader in. So a lot of times the little tricks that I mentioned that heart stopper avoided, we throw those things in as a way to build tension in the storyline so that people will continue reading.
But the thing is one of the [00:21:00] biggest things that I have learned about writing is. That people continue to read because there is a reason to continue reading. They continue reading because they want to. So regardless of if it is tension, if it is a thick plot twist, or if it is the threat of blackmail or if it is a big mistake, because someone was drunk, sometimes it is more of a simple.
Honest heartfelt thing that will keep a reader hooked and a watcher in this case, because this is a TV show too. It will keep someone hooked to continue witnessing what comes next. So with heart stopper, we are watching the gradual budding and blooming of this beautiful same sex relationship. Actually, a couple of them.
[00:22:00] Tara and Darcy's relationship was a little bit further along the path. It started out further along the path at the beginning of heart stopper, but everything ends in a more beautiful place. And we see the very beginnings of a relationship between a trans girl and a straight boy. because this is only season one and there is already a huge cannon of comics. It, it makes us immediately want to go read all the comics. We do that because we know That unless we read more, unless we see more, unless we continue with all of this, we are not going to see the roses that are inevitably going to be at the end.
So that's the thing, friends, these little tricks, the little trophy things, the little cliches. Sometimes they do succeed in building tension, but sometimes. like in the case of heart stopper, they can [00:23:00] really pull us away from a deeper, more beautiful and more simple form of storytelling.
And it can prevent that from conveying a very beautiful message. So one of the biggest takeaways That has formulated in my mind is that all of this, the same sex relationships love can look any way that it wants to. And here is a beautiful example of how, and to be gay, a person can understand that they are gay from the very get go.
there are still other people who don't know. If they're attracted to men, women, or whomever in between until they are given the chance to decide, just because in Nick's case, it's possible that he never considered it. He never considered what all of that looked like for him until.
he was met with a boy who [00:24:00] peaked his interest and they became friends first before they became boyfriends. So that is the take home for today. If you are a writer or a creator of some form of content, where you have a lesson about a topic that is largely misunderstood.
And it can be about anything Sometimes keeping the story simple. Is a way to keep it powerful so that's all I have for you today. I hope that you have had a wonderful pride month. This has. One of the biggest months, probably in my adult life that I will remember. And I love the reason we celebrate pride. I am going to be celebrating pride in a very big way from here on out. So thank you for being with me all throughout this.
Thing. It has been a huge journey and I appreciate the support of each and every single one of my listeners. And [00:25:00] so go out and have fun writing. We will see you next week. On another episode of writing in the tiny house.
And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:26:00]
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