Heartstopper is Making Gay Twitter Reflect on the Queer Media of Our Youth

Today, the landscape of LGBTQ+ coming of age shows and films is so lush that it’s easy to forget that just a decade ago, teenage gays were still forced to search for crumbs of queer-coded behavior in their favorite media. Steven Universe brought us the queerest children’s cartoon possibly ever; for older kids, there’s everything from the “bro comedy but make it lesbian” instant classic Booksmart to the imminent release of the final season of Love, Victor. Last month’s premiere of Heartstopper, Netflix’s original queer coming-of-age series, only adds fuel to the fire — and its success is prompting Gay Twitter™ to reminisce upon the queer media that made us.

Heartstopper began life as a Tumblr webcomic of the same name, penned by Alice Oseman, who also adapted the series for screen. The series follows Charlie Spring (Joe Locke), a gay student at an all-boys British grammar school, who falls for classmate Nick Nelson (Kit Connor). They’re not the only LGBTQ+ teens that the series features either; there’s also Elle (Yasmin Finney), a classmate of Charlie and Nick’s who transfers schools after coming out as a trans girl, as well as Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell), two out and proud teen lesbians in a relationship.

In posts captioned “this was my heartstopper,” hundreds of users shared screenshots, gifs, and short clips from the media of their youth, humorously reflecting on the stark difference between the LGBTQ+ media landscape of today and their own. One Twitter user offered the classic Early Root, Cadet Kelly, the strangely sapphic Disney Channel original movie starring Hilary Duff and Christy Carlson Romano.

Another user posted a picture of YouTube-era Tyler Oakley and Troye Sivan, with all the grain of an iPhone 4 camera. To think that these babies would one day be an international pop star and actor and a former landlord!

The embrace between Star Wars’ Poe Dameron and Finn was highlighted, a romance that was encouraged by literally everyone, including the actors, only for Disney to give us the literal smallest crumbs possible by including a “blink and you’ll miss it” kiss between two female Resistance fighters. Some things never change.

People also named decidedly more adult-oriented films as their Heartstopper, such as Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. The movie is a loose adaptation of the novel Fingersmith by lesbian writer Sarah Waters, and it truly pulls no punches when it comes to sex scenes.

Then of course, there’s Brokeback Mountain, which I would also count as my own personal Heartstopper. If you weren’t watching this movie on your high school girlfriend’s bed and sobbing in her arms, were you really a teen lesbian/closeted transmasc in the 2010s? 

One user used the meme to make a tongue-in-cheek comment about early 2000s queer representation, via the queer cinema classic Eating Out.

And Canada’s Drag Race star Eve 6000 joined in on the fun with a screenshot from gay-for-pay porn company Beefcake Hunter.

All in all, the show is a story that would have been unimaginable to see on our screens back in the Tumblr days, which is perhaps why its release has spurred the “this was my heartstopper” meme. It’s equal parts earnest reflection and snark, which is also a perfect summation of Gay Twitter as a whole.

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