It’s like tasting a melting chocolate, or rolling under a very soft blanket. Heartstoppingthe delicious romance for teens broadcast since April 22 on Netflix, is a series feel good, both inspiring and tenderly comforting. It tells of the budding relationship between two students at an English high school for boys, Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor). The first, a nerd musician, has been harassed in the past year because of his homosexuality; the second, a popular rugby player, is seen as heterosexual by those close to him. The two grow closer, become friends, and soon more, flirting via Instagram and blushing whenever they’re within three feet of each other.
Around them gravitate endearing young people: Elle (Yasmin Finney), who joins the girls’ high school after having made his transition, Isaac (Tobie Donovan), an introverted boy happy to be allowed to read, Tao (William Gao), their friend worried about seeing his group split up, but also Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell), a young lesbian couple who quickly become friends with Elle. Far from the current standards of teen series – no drugs, unrealistic sex or mysteries more dramatic than each other – Heartstopping is a quiet and accessible slice of life. The characters, interpreted by actors and actresses just out of high school, engage in adolescent activities: meals in the canteen, outings to the cinema, orchestra or sport… And a long hesitation before sending a message to the object of their thoughts, or a frantic Google search about their sexual orientation.
Heartstopping was eagerly awaited even before its broadcast by Netflix: it is indeed the adaptation of a popular webcomic of the same name, published from 2016 online, then in paper version the following year. Its creator, Alice Oseman, is a queer British author [elle utilise les pronoms féminin « she » et neutre « they » en anglais]. Aged 27, she already has four novels and two novellas (short novels) to her credit, in addition to Heartstopping of which she is currently writing the fifth volume. She is also the screenwriter and creator of the adaptation.
A first novel at 17
Alice Oseman has started writing her first novel, Lonely, at the age of 17. She was 19 when published by British publisher HarperCollins, who gets the rights at auction. Contracts are concluded in the process with several foreign publishers. In France, the book was translated and published the following year by Nathan under the title the lonely year.
This is the story of Tori Spring, a pessimistic teenager in first class, and her meeting with Michael Holden, an incorrigible optimist. They investigate hoaxes with increasingly serious consequences that are occurring in their school. Described by its author as a “dark” novel, Lonely already evokes themes that will become recurring in Oseman’s work: friendship, mental health issues, and LGBT+ relationships.
Because Tori is the big sister of Charlie Spring, future hero of Heartstoppingwhich crosses at the time of Lonely a difficult time psychologically. He and his boyfriend, Nick Nelson, are the focus of a novella Alice Oseman publishes the following year, Nick & Charlie, then This winter – both are published electronically by HarperCollins.
From novels to webcomic
In early 2016, Oseman released his second novel. Radio Silence (Radio silence in VF, Nathan editions) was written during his studies at the prestigious University of Durham. We follow Frances Janvier, an excellent student whose life is divided in two, between her efforts to enter Cambridge or Oxford, and her favorite podcast, Universe City. Her life changes when she meets Aled Last…
With Radio silence, Alice Oseman confirms her talent for creating endearing characters. She explores the academic pressure that weighs on some young people. She also strives to represent people of different ethnicities and sexual orientation, a work she has continued ever since.
In parallel with her life as a novelist, Alice Oseman is embarking on a graphic project: a webcomic on the meeting and the beginning of a romance between Charlie and Nick, the secondary characters of Lonely. The first episode, released on September 1, 2016 on the Tapas platform and a Tumblr blog, sign the beginning of the adventure Heartstopping.
“I cared so much for these characters. After writing [Solitaire]I kept thinking about [Nick et Charlie] and I knew I wanted to tell their story, ”explained Alice Oseman in April 2022 to BuzzFeed. From the start, she imagines this story as “very quiet”, a “slice of life” without “extreme drama”, she then wrote to an author friend. The webcomic format, and its episodic publication, seems to him to correspond – more than a novel – to this very daily story.
Quietly radical
Everyday, but quietly radical. Because Heartstopping is a tale of queer love and friendship the likes of which we still rarely see. Homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, are not absent. But discrimination is not at the center of the story. It is above all that of adolescent love, of a group of friends forming, of young people exploring their identity. Alice Oseman does not hesitate to play with scriptwriting clichés specific to romance to represent the life of young people, in the simplicity of its unfolding and the complexity of its emotions.
Quickly, the comic book gathered millions of readers online, until it aroused the interest of a publisher, Hachette, who published a first volume in 2018. Three others followed; the fifth and last, whose episodes are being published on Tapas, Webtoon and Tumblr, is due out in early 2023.
Alice Oseman has also published two other “young adult” novels: I Was Born For This, released in 2018, recounts the meeting between a young fan of The Ark, Angel Rahimi, and the leader of the group, Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Released in 2019, Loveless looks at the journey of Georgia, a student who realizes she is asexual and aromantic – like Alice Oseman herself.
“Osemanverse”
The author’s young adult publications form a coherent universe – baptized Osemanverse by her fans. Aled, one of the protagonists of Radio Silenceis a secondary character of Heartstopping (it was also removed from the series for this reason, Oseman having explained that she “could not have built her character (…) without modifying her story in Radio Silence “). I Was Born for This and Loveless contain “sneaky references” to other works.
The “Osemanverse” brings together young people from diverse backgrounds, with an active online life, often queer. “I really like to take the characters on a joyful journey of discovering their queer identity,” Alice Oseman told BuzzFeed. His stories normalize diversity, and tend to foster platonic relationships and friendships. “I don’t really know why the media prefers romantic relationships so much to friendships,” she said. at HelloGiggles webzine in 2016. I imagine people think that romantic relationships have a greater degree of closeness and exclusivity, which makes them more special. I never understood that. »
The romance at the heart of Heartstopping is different: “I’ve learned that romance isn’t exaggerated when you’re talking about a marginalized person. There are so, so many romances that are about cisgender, straight, white, able-bodied people. But other than that, there’s not a lot of variety,” she lamented. with journalist Sean Z in May 2021.
At the helm of adaptation
The author is directly inspired by her experience, and that of those close to her, to construct her authentic characters and stories. Like the characters of Heartstopping, Oseman was educated at a single-sex high school in the South East of England. But she also uses “sensitivity readers”, she explained to Sean Z., people hired to check the treatment of characters from minorities. “I also turned to the experiences of queer men to write certain aspects of the story of Nick and Charlie – books, articles, documentaries, YouTube videos, etc”, she also told in 2019 at The Reading Realm.
For the adaptation, Alice Oseman was able to stay in charge, writing the script but also supervising the sets, costumes, music and, of course, the casting. The result is extremely close to the original webcomic. So close that, as of Friday, fans had fun comparing the plans of the series with the boxes of the comic book. Above all, the adaptation quickly found a large audience, well beyond Alice Oseman’s – already substantial – readership. This one is already thinking about what’s next: “I have the freedom to decide what I want to do afterwards, she explains to Guardian, and I feel drawn to creating older characters now – because I grew up. »