GAY TIMES Magazine

15 April 2022

For this issue of GAY TIMES Magazine we wanted to shine a light on the more positive aspects of being young and queer in 2022. Case in point is our cover story, focusing on the long-awaited Netflix adaptation of Heartstopper; a popular webcomic series turned graphic novel by Alice Oseman. The show is brimming with young queer love, following a coming of age story unlike we’ve ever seen in a British drama before. Across eight episodes viewers will see the blossoming romance between openly gay overthinker Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) and buoyant rugby player Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) as they navigate first love while at school. The show also stars Corinna Brown as Tara Jones and Kizzy Edgell as Darcy Olsson, who play a queer teen couple facing the ups and downs all teen couples do. What’s most refreshing is that the tired ‘queer trauma’ tropes that usually fuel LGBTQ+ coming of age stories are nowhere to be seen, and instead we are given an optimistic view of what it means to be young and queer. “It's such a realistic view of queer youth because there's no perfect way of being queer, there's no perfect way of being you, you just have to be an authentic human,” says Joe. And that right there is the crux of it all: these are human experiences.