baking a cake for Charlie's birthday
Tara: Okay, what's next?
Elle: It says "beat three eggs."
Tao: At what, hand-to-hand combat?
Darcy: Must be.
Nick: All of you, get out of my kitchen!
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I’m going to mention something I really liked about Heartstopper season 2. It’s partially about Isaac’s arc, and partially also about how they handled the ensemble as a whole and what I think worked about that.
So let’s talk about… the power of Friendship!
Isaac’s on an aroace self-discovery arc in Heartstopper S2 and I’m here for it. His aroace journey doesn’t look exactly like mine—I didn’t really start to adopt the label until my late 20s—but aspects of it absolutely ring true. “I don’t have any celebrity crushes.” YEAH EXACTLY ISAAC.
Naturally, friendship is important to Isaac, and I was pleased to see that Isaac’s friends were making sure to include him in the squad dynamic even when he wasn’t coupled off. This didn’t always run smoothly, and there are the parts where people assume he might have something going on with James, or when he’s frustrated to be surrounded by couples. But we’re also seeing moments where they pull him into prom photos, invite him to dance, include him in the group hugs, etc.
One of the most important things that makes this all work, however, is that the friend group is having all of these little moments of friendship independent of Isaac as well. We have Tao and Charlie and their flashback to friendship meet-cute and their lock at the bridge. There’s Elle making new friends at art school and how that’s shown to be important. There’s Tara and Nick going off to the side and having their own chats with one another, and Nick considering Imogen an important friend and working to integrate her into the group and deeming her as important to come out to. All of these moments mattered to me as a viewer, because it means that when Isaac’s friends pull him in and include him in things, it doesn’t just feel like the lip service version of supporting aroace folks. This squad is able to value Isaac’s friendship because they value friendship period. It’s subtle but it makes a world of difference in how I enjoy the story.
Queer representation is often talked about in terms of visible queer romance and sexuality, which does make sense and does need to be represented. That then gets reflected in how we go about fandom things, and how we often focus on romantic and/or sexual pairings in shipfic. I enjoy these fics and getting to marinate in these pairings that I ship, but I always find myself missing something. I always want more. I think it’s because I want to marinate in the friendships of a work as well.
I want to take moment to talk about queer friendship, and how queer friendship is so central to the queer community and how we’ve organized ourselves for survival. It can sound a little bit taboo to say that queer friendship is qualitatively different than a more cishet-normative idea of friendship. Still, I’m gonna say it. Queer friendship is absolutely important and its own beautiful thing, and we need it depicted alongside the relationships that involve kissing and wedding rings and bouquets whatever else.
Heartstopper season 2 has done something really special in showing how vital friendship is, how friendship exists and lives and breathes in these queer spaces. They do it in a way that feels 100% organic and real. I hope other creatives—whether that’s people making the art for our books and television and movie screens, or whether that’s us in fandom writing our fanfics and drawing our fan art—take note of how this can be done.
Friendship forever. And ever, and ever, and ever.
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Heartstopper season two is amazing, but do you know what made happy,
THEY PUT FRENCH MUSIC FOR THE PARIS TRIP !!! They put Louane song!!!
Also Nick finding confidence to be with Charlie in the neighbourhood of Le Marais made me so happy.
Like sorry just a frenchie that loves heartstopper and that is happy to see a bit her beautiful country in it .
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