#i understand that in alice oseman's older works they might have felt like they didn't have the skills to write an arc involving race

[blossoms-and-petrichor]

as much as i love heartstopper, I really wish they had kept in Elle's line about wanting to visit her extended family in Egypt but being worried to because because of the the transphobia she might experience there. While heartstopper does an amazing job capturing the nuances of queer existence (joys, struggles, community, self-expression) and mental health issues (charlie's struggle with an ed, ocd, and self-harm is one of the best representations of those issues i can think of) i always feel like racism and xenophobia are basically absent for characters in the show in a way that feels a little uncanny. Especially when queerphobia is given so much texture.

Many of these experiences are very intersectional, and I know Alice Oseman is capable of writing this (loveless, i was born for this). I also think its awesome there's more media where poc characters are just free to just be and have fun, but just like with the representations of queer joy in the show, it's also possible to show the joy of the poc characters without defaulting to an optimistically colorblind environment. Its just a weird contrast with all the nuanced relevant social commentary on queerness, family, and mental health