What Heartstopper Can’t Stop
The Violence Against Kit Connor and What It Says About Queer Fandom
April of 2022 saw the release of the much-anticipated Netflix series Heartstopper based on the webcomic series of the same name by artist and writer Alice Oseman. The cute webcomic series was beautifully translated into live-action with atmospheric lighting and cinematography along with an apt score and lovely acting which allowed it to be green-lighted for at least two more seasons with Netflix. Actors Joe Locke and Kit Conner play the two central characters of Charlie and Nick respectively, their unique journeys among the hang ups of high school dating and the discovery of oneself and sexuality a nice little low-stakes series to curl up with and binge with comfort. Despite all that Heartstopper has going for it, none of these things can make up for poor media literacy among teenagers and young adults who are watching.
The entire premise of Heartstopper is based on how difficult the reality of discovery is and how identity and human complexity mesh together sometimes imperfectly in a world that is insistent upon having things neat and orderly. The difficulties of “coming out” to friends, family, or even yourself are addressed as Charlie has to grapple with the mess of having been previously “outed” and Nick has to navigate the uncharted waters of self-discovery and eventual acceptance. One would think that such a straight forward (haha) and comfortable show would be able to teach its moral lessons easily to teens and young adults who might be grappling with the same kinds of complex feelings and scenarios but that is not taking into account that shows and webcomics like this are oftentimes plagued by plain old mean-spirited teenagers only content when they have ruined something nice (and sometimes not even then).
Since the series’ release, 18 year-old Kit Connor (Nick) has faced an intense amount of social media interaction due to his appearance in the show, fans engaging with him on an intensely personal level which of course gives rise to bad actors. Despite that Heartstopper’s source material directly addresses the subject of the speculation of another’s sexuality, fans of the show have called for Kit’s ousting from the show simply due to the vague nature of his sexuality, some fans believing that he is straight and thus undeserving of a role on a queer show. This mentality flies directly into the face of the whole moral premise of both the show and the webcomic, the concept of forcibly outing someone based on harassment, pressure, and vitriol something that the show would ideally seek to reduce with its messaging.
Though this harassment against Kit was occurring before, it heightened to a fever pitch when he was photographed hanging out with Argentinian-American actress Maia Reficco with anti-fans absolutely rabid over the concept of a straight actor playing a queer character on the show they (allegedly) love. Two blurry photos raced around Twitter pages and timelines with the hashtag #kitconnorgoawayfromheartstopper from pages with less than 200 tweets, some with (unrelated?) disturbingly antisemitic tweets prominently displayed and some even pinned to the tops of their profiles. These bizarre burner accounts still have not stopped and even ramped up their harassment and vitriol when Kit decided he’d had enough, tweeting his reluctant coming out.
Fortunately it seems, hopefully, that Kit Connor is in a good place in his life for this coming out but still it has not stopped the hoards as they take no blame for having forced him, claiming that he chose to out himself for media publicity and Twitter followers. They’ve even claimed that because they’ve never seen him with a man, he’s a “fake” bisexual and have also turned to alleging that Maia Reficco is “sus” for having “dated” (there is no evidence that they are dating, only two photos of them spending time outside of work) a recent 18 year old. For Kit, this is a hell of a lot of mental and emotional abuse occurring in a short expanse of time, for others, this kind of violence even on a smaller scale could be devastating to the journey of self-discovery and their own emotional and mental well-being. These accounts have taken to harassing not only Kit but also any of his friends or coworkers who have tweeted in support of him, their actions and words a direct and utter contradiction to the messaging of Oseman’s webcomic and show even while they tag Oseman in their disturbed tweets, begging her to “cut” Kit from production. One can only imagine Oseman’s horror at seeing just how poorly teenagers have taken her work, their intentions toward her production that of performative, destructive outrage rather than furthering the wholesome, human message of her story.
The fact that there are so many of these accounts spreading discord, chaos, bad takes, and honest-to-god lateral violence among queer communities is interesting, especially when one takes into account the antisemitic tweets, likes, and retweets coming from some of those accounts as well. Part of it is likely some kind of organized “raid” from 4chan, but one also has to examine that these tweets are resonating with actual real queer teens who have come to believe that their identity is everything they have because it is a tool they utilize online for internet points and arguments. This is the natural progression of identity politics as it has manifested in the online sphere—when one’s identity is key to the ability to remain in an in-group, one will naturally seek often to identify the out-group as an enemy or trespasser. That bad actors can take advantage of identity politics among green queer groups who have nothing but rage and hormones driving them is honestly a bigger problem that is going to need to get addressed (and soon) if we don’t want larger incidents of violence against queer actors, individuals, and bystanders to occur.
Obviously making a whole ass Netflix show about it isn’t helping. So much for fiction affecting reality.