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This blog has weighed in before on the popularity of Heated Rivalry, the runaway hit series about Shane and Ilya, professional hockey players turned lovers, and why so many viewers are passionate fans of the show. The series has continued to be popular, with constant media coverage of stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. For fans, that coverage has been welcome, providing plenty of new content, interviews, photos and videos to nourish an active fandom. As with any other group of humans, there have been disagreements within the fandom, from intrusive theorizing about the actors’ real life relationships and identities to thoughtful discussions of racism to less in-depth arguments about abs and fashion choices. This week, however, the Heated Rivalry fandom came together over a unique opportunity and a controversial New York Magazine article.
Both caused emotional reactions in fans; one with varied opinions and one with a more uniform positive response – and both are examples of the importance of safe spaces in fandom.
From the outside, it may seem surprising that the article in New York Magazine’s “Vulture” drew so much negative response from Heated Rivalry fans. To understand why, it’s important to realize that fandom is first and foremost a community. It has a shared lexicon that includes in-jokes and rapidly evolving language that would be difficult to keep up with from the outside. Like any community, it has norms and values and standards of behavior. Fandom is also a marginalized community, perhaps less so now than twenty years ago, but still outside the mainstream and frequently ridiculed for being too passionate, too invested, too hyperfocused, too much. One of the benefits of fandom is the permission to love what you love, however much you love it, and celebrate that with a group of people who share your passion. When that is something considered frivolous – like a television show or a romance novel — too much investment in something that is not “work and family” can be looked at as subtly dangerous in a society that emphasizes constant productivity.
Fans are aware of that subtle criticism, so fandom communities have historically tended to be insular and boundaried. Within the community, because it feels protected from outside judgment, fans can express their authentic feelings, fears, creativity – and yes, desires – more openly, providing an opportunity for validation and connection. What Irvin Yalom called the “disconfirmation of uniqueness,” which is so powerful for people, can happen in any group, but only if the person is sharing their real self. For fan communities whose members are mostly women, the space to be “real” may feel like a rare and important aspect of life. This applies to the Heated Rivalry fandom, as the article made clear, though not all the show’s fans are women and certainly not all are straight women.
This week’s Heated Rivalry article, which promised to answer the question “Why are so many women losing their minds over gay smut?” put a spotlight on the community, which made it more visible to outsiders and less protected and left many fans upset. Although some were not happy that it was an article about women’s interests written by a man, more took issue with the characterization of fans’ passion for Heated Rivalry as a “mass-psychosis event,” a pathologizing description that was familiar to fans, going all the way back to descriptions of the “hysterical female fans” of the Beatles. Fans were also not pleased with their love of the series reduced to being solely about gay smut, which minimized the show’s quality, the uplifting message about queer love, and that the series is based on a book in the wildly popular Romance genre. Fans responded with accusations that once again something that appeals to women was being belittled solely because it does appeal to women, with the assumption that the content in question must somehow be frivolous.
While writer E. Alex Jung did his research, he also was not a part of the fandom he was writing about, and may not have understood the community’s norms or why those were so important. The article included examples of Heated Rivalry fanfiction and linked directly to those fanworks, making them visible to people outside the community. When fans post fanfiction to a website like Archive of Our Own, which was founded as a repository for whatever fans want to write about, the expectation is that only other fans will be reading it. Having fanfiction directly linked in a major publication was a violation of some of fandom’s most important norms. The magazine responded to fan outcry and has since de-linked the fanworks, but fans criticized the publication for shining an unwanted spotlight on one of the only safe spaces for women, who are so frequently shamed for their interests and passions.
The other mainstream media mention of Heated Rivalry this week, on the other hand, has been a universally welcome one. Yesterday, a new and exciting opportunity opened up – Airbnb announced that fans will be able to book a vacation at the Barlochan Cottage in Canada that was featured in the series.
I’ve written before here about the benefits of fan tourism and why immersing yourself in the fictional world that you love can be so much fun – fans can feel like part of the story that they have strong emotional ties to. Heated Rivalry fans are about to do just that, with even the furniture from the show remaining the same, making it easy to picture Ilya and Shane right there. Fans can leave their everyday stresses behind and just play in the familiar location, connecting them to the fictional characters they love.
For Heated Rivalry fans, sharing a trip to that iconic location can be another safe space in which to interact and share genuine feelings without fear of judgment.
Starting March 1, it seems likely that many fans will be eager to say “I’m coming to the Cottage”.
