After the second season of Heartstopper came out, fans of the show and another popular Boys’ Love novel,Tian Guan Ci Fu (or TGCF), engaged into a “war” on Twitter —as called by themselves — based on deciding which work was better.
Heartstopper, written by Alice Oseman, a queer British author, focuses mainly on the teenage experience of falling in love in your 15s, especially as apart of the LGBTQIA+ community. Both main characters, Nicholas Nelson and Charlie Spring, are British, and this is one of the main reasons as to why many fans consider that it’s an unfair comparison, since the work itself has a “white privilege” for being an European novel.
On the other hand,TGCF, written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, a Chinese author, has a completely different plot and a deeper writing. Its plot is based in the life of Xie Lian, who was once a human and crown prince of the Kingdom of Xianle, but ascended to the skies to become a god at seventeen. While Xie Lian faces some misfortunes and gets banned back to the mortal world, in his third try to ascend again, he encounters Hua Cheng, one of the four ghost kings and future lover.
Basically, as the discussion started, TGCF fans were upset by the way some Heartstopper fans were saying Alice’s novel was better. They said it was because it comes from a world where anti LGBTQ+ are rampant and it’s still a relevant and famous piece, while Asian pieces are “not as relevant” and most Asian authors that write queer novels usually don’t show up at Pride Parades and show their support to the community.
Twitter’s TGCF community said that this type of argument was unfair to Asian productions, specially in China, which is the case for Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and where same gender couples are unable to legally marry or adopt. Some users say:
But, as with every discussion, there’s another point of view. Many TGCF fans also claim that Heartstopper is not as deep as the Chinese novel and it doesn’t look like a “real queer experience”, because the main couple is always happy and they don’t face the challenges most LGBTQIA+ teenagers have to face throughout their lives.
In response, Heartstopper fans talk about how the piece treats many important issues, such as mental health, LGBTQIA+phobia, family issues and others, but also shows that not every queer kid has to go through a lot just because they’re queer. Every queer person goes through a different experience in life and this, besides love, is what Alice Oseman’s novel is about. Here’s one of those comments:
With all that, it came to the conclusion that the discussion is unfair on both sides: while one side is involved in politics and culture, the other is based on the differences among queer experiences and coming of age. But, also, it’s important that the discussion embraces especially the readers’ experiences while being part of the LGBTQIA+ community and what they think it’s important to show in the media.