This new Netflix original is a huge part of the LGBTQ community, but I have been a fan of it for years. I usually am on Netflix every day, either watching or listening to a show; however, this show is one that I sat down intensely to watch due to the amazing storyline and characters. Let’s just say this show is one that you will be hooked on immediately the moment you start the first episode!! Along with the amazing plot of the storyline, it can also help you possibly find who you truly are as a person.

Heartstopper was originally a Webcomic, which was uploaded and updated multiple times through a popular comic platform, Webtoon. The comic, story, and characters were created by Alice Oseman. Alice Oseman is an award-winning author, illustrator, and screenwriter; her birthplace was Kent, England in the year 1994. She has always been interested in writing and storytelling, which she started doing in her teen years. Once she turned 19, she published her first novel, Solitaire. The main character, Tori Spring, soon will be used for her most famous and popular graphic novel in the future of her career.

Alice figured out how to draw and was inspired by Webcomics. She was so drawn to the form of storytelling through pictures and chat bubbles. She immediately knew what her comic would be about. Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring were originally secondary characters for her debut novel, but she didn’t end up using them. Later on, in September of 2016, she published Heartstopper to Webtoon, the comic being a coming of age, romance, and an amazing representation of the LGBTQ community. A few months later, the comic blew up, and with the popularity growing over millions, merch and even a hardcopy of the graphic novel made it to sleeves in bookstores.

The comic is still popular and gaining millions of readers day by day. People noticed that the popularity of the comic was overwhelming and soon announced that the comic would be turned into a show on Netflix.

Hearing this news, I was thrilled and excited! I was already reading the comic back in 2017, a year after it was released, so I wasn’t even expecting it to be a show. So I sat down on my couch with my coffee and breakfast. It was around 9 am when it got released, so I was ready to binge the whole series in one go…which was not a surprise. Right away when I clicked on the first episode, it was all I imagined! The music started the first episode. It was a perfect start to the first episode of a coming of age show! It reminded me of high school. The story follows the main character Charlie Spring, an openly gay male at a male school, trying to meet up with his “boyfriend” before the first day of classes. Of course, they don’t meet due to “his boyfriend” Ben and there is a reason I’m putting quotations by the word boyfriend. Anyways, Charlie started his way to his class, being seated in a new seat next to a boy named Nick Nelson, who being a year older than Charlie. It was like love at first sight for Charlie.

Let’s just say the whole episode I was fangirling/fanboying over all the adorable scenes happening on the screen. The characters of the show are Elle, Tao, James, Charlie, Nick, Ben, Harry and many more! The whole show was going through love, accepting yourself for who you are attracted to, and just coming of age. In the first episode, conflict was already happening, with Charlie catching his “boyfriend” Ben with a girl at the school’s gates. This is where the story starts. His interest in Nick starting to grow more and more as the episodes go on. Nick’s interest in Charlie starts as well as the episodes go on, with Nick even saving Charlie a couple of times from trouble. The love between them grows so much that you can feel it through the screen. The show perfectly shows the way how being part of a wide community of the LGBTQ is and how young love is.

Please watch it on Netflix…you won’t regret it, and take that time to read the webcomic on Webtoon as well!!