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“Heated Rivalry” has a woman problem.
On the surface, it seems almost feminist in its portrayal of women. All the female characters are funny, smart, kind and forgiving of their silly gay best friends. Each of them is functional to their male best friend’s chaotic. They’re the voices of reason, they encourage their boys to actually pursue each other.
In the gay fanfiction spaces of the 2000s and 2010s, there were two distinct portrayals of women. There’s the Best Friend and the Hysterical Bitch, a sort of modern Madonna-whore complex. The Hysterical Bitch is usually one of the slash pairings’ canon love interest, who would do anything to tear our protagonists from each other’s arms. She’s mean, she’s hysterical, she’s usually homophobic. Her opposite is the Best Friend, who is funny, smart, kind and forgiving. She pushes her best friend (usually her canon love interest) to actually pursue the guy he’s being shipped with.
“Game Changer”, the first book in the book series “Heated Rivalry” is adapted from, emerged from the fanfic space of the 2010s. Even though Rachel Reid’s manuscript didn’t start out as a Stucky fanfiction, the ghost of the space she originally published it in haunts the narrative. The employee x regular trope is long established, with the most popular iteration being a Coffee Shop AU(Alternate Universe). More than that, though, its origins are the most obvious in the show’s treatment of women.
Svetlana Vetrova (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova), for instance, is the closest friend of Ilya Romanov (Connor Storrie), one of the romantic leads. The two have been friends since childhood and have had a sexually intimate relationship with each other for years. She should be one of the most pivotal members of the cast, considering how allergic to communication and emotional intimacy Ilya is. She should have an emotional storyline with Ilya, but she ends up just being a set piece, easily replaced by an emotionally mature sexy lamp.
Sophie Nélisse’s Rose Landry gets it worse, though. She appears halfway through the series to be a beard ex machina for Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), the other romantic lead, and subsequently exists in montage, cameo and the worst-written breakup scene I’ve watched in a while. Rose is introduced and we immediately see how compatible she is with Shane. The two meet in a bar and hit it off. Off-screen, the two begin to date. We learn this information in montage form and watch approximately two scenes of them together as a couple. One is a beautifully shot club scene to t.A.T.u. ‘s iconic “All the Things She Said”, where Ilya watches Shane and Rose dance. The second is a sex scene between Rose and Shane, intercut with a scene of Ilya masturbating in a shower. This whole sequence happens in episode four, and in the beginning of episode five, Rose breaks up with Shane.
As it turns out, she actually knows that he doesn’t like women and that he doesn’t like her. The audience is told, rather than shown, that the two have actually only been compatible as friends the whole time. Ever forgiving, Rose has no hurt feelings that her boyfriend doesn’t like her because most of her boyfriends have been gay anyways, so she tries to set Shane up with her other gay friend and asks him to be best friends with her. She appears one more time in the series, as a voice over a phone. If the two are actually best friends, we don’t get to see it.
Scott and Kip, who are only marginally related to the main plot, somehow get the entirety of episode three to themselves before showing back up in an unearned emotional climax in episode five. They get to take up narrative room and their plotlines are given actual weight for the story of their characters. The female characters get no such luxury. “Heated Rivalry”’s woman problem is that its female characters aren’t characters — they’re props.
I understand “Heated Rivalry”, and I don’t think it’s a bad show. The real world impact it’s had is unmatched, with closeted hockey players personally thanking the cast and crew. It beautifully explores queer themes, and the two lead actors have an unmatched chemistry. Despite its tiny budget, “Heated Rivalry” manages to look amazing. I know that, as a lesbian, it wasn’t made for me. This is not an indictment of the show as a whole.
But “Heated Rivalry”’s portrayals of women make it less compelling as a story, softening any sharp edge the main two protagonists might have. More than that, its treatment of female characters directly undermines the messages it carries about toxic masculinity and reinforces the misogyny too oftenlingering in stories about gay men, even in those written by women.
Heated Misogyny
“Heated Rivalry” has a woman problem.
On the surface, it seems almost feminist in its portrayal of women. All the female characters are funny, smart, kind and forgiving of their silly gay best friends. Each of them is functional to their male best friend’s chaotic. They’re the voices of reason, they encourage their boys to actually pursue each other.
In the gay fanfiction spaces of the 2000s and 2010s, there were two distinct portrayals of women. There’s the Best Friend and the Hysterical Bitch, a sort of modern Madonna-whore complex. The Hysterical Bitch is usually one of the slash pairings’ canon love interest, who would do anything to tear our protagonists from each other’s arms. She’s mean, she’s hysterical, she’s usually homophobic. Her opposite is the Best Friend, who is funny, smart, kind and forgiving. She pushes her best friend (usually her canon love interest) to actually pursue the guy he’s being shipped with.
“Game Changer”, the first book in the book series “Heated Rivalry” is adapted from, emerged from the fanfic space of the 2010s. Even though Rachel Reid’s manuscript didn’t start out as a Stucky fanfiction, the ghost of the space she originally published it in haunts the narrative. The employee x regular trope is long established, with the most popular iteration being a Coffee Shop AU(Alternate Universe). More than that, though, its origins are the most obvious in the show’s treatment of women.
Svetlana Vetrova (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova), for instance, is the closest friend of Ilya Romanov (Connor Storrie), one of the romantic leads. The two have been friends since childhood and have had a sexually intimate relationship with each other for years. She should be one of the most pivotal members of the cast, considering how allergic to communication and emotional intimacy Ilya is. She should have an emotional storyline with Ilya, but she ends up just being a set piece, easily replaced by an emotionally mature sexy lamp.
Sophie Nélisse’s Rose Landry gets it worse, though. She appears halfway through the series to be a beard ex machina for Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), the other romantic lead, and subsequently exists in montage, cameo and the worst-written breakup scene I’ve watched in a while. Rose is introduced and we immediately see how compatible she is with Shane. The two meet in a bar and hit it off. Off-screen, the two begin to date. We learn this information in montage form and watch approximately two scenes of them together as a couple. One is a beautifully shot club scene to t.A.T.u. ‘s iconic “All the Things She Said”, where Ilya watches Shane and Rose dance. The second is a sex scene between Rose and Shane, intercut with a scene of Ilya masturbating in a shower. This whole sequence happens in episode four, and in the beginning of episode five, Rose breaks up with Shane.
As it turns out, she actually knows that he doesn’t like women and that he doesn’t like her. The audience is told, rather than shown, that the two have actually only been compatible as friends the whole time. Ever forgiving, Rose has no hurt feelings that her boyfriend doesn’t like her because most of her boyfriends have been gay anyways, so she tries to set Shane up with her other gay friend and asks him to be best friends with her. She appears one more time in the series, as a voice over a phone. If the two are actually best friends, we don’t get to see it.
Scott and Kip, who are only marginally related to the main plot, somehow get the entirety of episode three to themselves before showing back up in an unearned emotional climax in episode five. They get to take up narrative room and their plotlines are given actual weight for the story of their characters. The female characters get no such luxury. “Heated Rivalry”’s woman problem is that its female characters aren’t characters — they’re props.
I understand “Heated Rivalry”, and I don’t think it’s a bad show. The real world impact it’s had is unmatched, with closeted hockey players personally thanking the cast and crew. It beautifully explores queer themes, and the two lead actors have an unmatched chemistry. Despite its tiny budget, “Heated Rivalry” manages to look amazing. I know that, as a lesbian, it wasn’t made for me. This is not an indictment of the show as a whole.
But “Heated Rivalry”’s portrayals of women make it less compelling as a story, softening any sharp edge the main two protagonists might have. More than that, its treatment of female characters directly undermines the messages it carries about toxic masculinity and reinforces the misogyny too oftenlingering in stories about gay men, even in those written by women.
