Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - How Heated Rivalry Broke the Internet: Inside the Internet’s Biggest Breakout Fandom

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

This show created one of the fastest fandoms ever.Support my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/taylorlorenz       🗞️ Buy a paid subscription to my Substack: https://www.usermag.co   Over the past few months, a series born from a niche, self-published Canadian romance novel became one of the biggest cultural phenomenons on the internet. In this episode of Power User, I dive deep into the explosive rise of the Heated Rivalry fandom and why it has the internet in a chokehold.  Fandom expert Allegra Rosenberg and writer Katherine Dee joined me to break down how the "subculture to culture" cycle that made the show a breakout hit. From its underground roots in hockey shipping and Tumblr culture to its overnight success on mainstream platforms like Threads and TikTok, we discuss the history of slash fanfiction, the "Fall Out Boy to Blackhawks" pipeline, and the "generational trauma" of fandom privacy.We discuss the "Gateway Media" effect and how the show brought "normies" into the world of AO3 and shipping. We also discuss the clash between journalistic ethics and fandom privacy and what the show's massive success reveals about the future of media and fandom. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz                     https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0                     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

I knew it was going to be a hit in fandom, but I had no idea that it was going to go as far as it's gone. Over the past few months, heated rivalry has become an absolute phenomenon online. The fan community has exploded, producing a tidal wave of fan fiction, edits, discussion threads, and viral posts. But that exponential growth has not come without a significant amount of controversy and drama. The mainstream media has elevated parts of the fandom while bypassing others, and discussions about the show have sparked heated debates about shipping culture and boundaries. And while the show itself is having its biggest moment yet, fandom spaces online are vanishing or under threat from censorship laws and profit-driven platform

incentives. Today, we're going to dive deep and discuss how the heated rivalry fandom became so powerful nearly overnight online. We're going to dissect what made it such a breakout fandom and what its rise can tell us about the state of culture, media, and the internet today. To do that, I have Allegra Rosenberg here. She's an expert on fan studies and has a book coming out next year about the history of fandom. I also talked to Catherine D, a writer for GQ, who recently wrote about the heated rivalry fandom reaching Normies. Hi, guys. Welcome to Power User. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for having me on. So Allegra, I want to start with you before Catherine chimes in later in the episode. Can you kind of like explain the emergence of the heated rivalry

fandom. I think a lot of people might not know that it kind of predates the show itself. So from what I understand, the books have been around for a long time since before COVID at least. And they're part of a genre of like male male romance novels, self-published usually, usually not even available physically, sort of this ecosystem of self-published romance that has a very loyal but small and like kind of underground audience. There hasn't been that much over the like time that this has been happening that these books have kind of broken through. I would say like people have heard of red, white and royal blue. That was obviously traditionally published, but, you know, it's those kinds of books. Romance novels, which means certain things about how the books are structured,

marketed, and who they're read by. And then also, like, self-published, which means that there's, like, a community of people who read and recommend and write and share these books. And the writers and the readers, like, tend to overlap, and they gather in certain spaces online. And so since this like sort of cottage industry has been picking up, a lot of these books have been brought on to traditional publishers. I believe that was the case with Heated Rivalry. You know, once a self-published author is demonstrated to be having success in that niche, they'll be picked up and published more traditionally, like with paperbacks,

which are sold at like romance-specific bookstores and maybe even mainstream bookstores. And in Heated Rivalry's case, these books were optioned. Part of that has to do with the fact that it's a Canadian book by a Canadian author featuring Canadian characters. And as we know in Canada, they have this thing called CanCon, and they're always looking for more Canadian stuff to make. So I think that that is a big factor in why this got made into a show. If it was an American book featuring American characters by an American author with the exact same popularity and readership, I strongly doubt that it would have been made into a show. But because there is an investment in Canada to make more Canadian content, like this was sort of top of their list.

Yeah. So this gets turned into a show by Crave, which is a Canadian company. And then eventually picked up by HBO. And I didn't realize this. I don't know as much about traditional entertainment, but I guess they just constantly kind of do this where they'll see kind of a hit show in a specific market or see something getting traction somewhere. They'll bring it on to their bigger platform.

And this is when the show came onto my radar, obviously, because I'm an HBO consumer. And I feel like almost immediately overnight, it kind of started to take off in a way that I don't think HBO, I mean, I know certainly it's kind of come out that they certainly didn't expect. Well, they only picked it up about a week before it aired or like very shortly before it aired. It was unsure if the show would even have a American broadcast at the same time. Like the Canadian premiere was set and there was a lot of behind the scenes movement. I mean, when it comes to TV shows created in a certain market, they have a whole department that's dedicated to try and getting it in different markets.

Sometimes that can take a while. HBO like either could have in a situation where HBO is like, well, we want to see how it performs on Craig before we buy it. But I think it was Casey Blois, who is a gay man and saw the show when it was shopped and was like, I want this. There is also like a girl on TikTok who works at HBO Max who said that she was also partially responsible for making sure it went up the chain because she was a fan of the books and wanted to make sure that, you know, it had a chance. So there also that also might have been like everyone's claiming credit now. Everyone's like, yes, I forwarded the email to the phone call. Right. I mean, yes, this, this. This, this.

This show had like a base fandom, but I feel like it also amassed a fandom. And it's interesting because it happened very quickly. I started seeing a lot of chatter about the show amongst the community that I follow on my fan accounts who are all people who are into slash shipping, which is a fan activity with a long history that's shipping two male characters together, two females together. When it comes into like professional and like amateur original material, that's more often referred to as like MM. And in the Eastern fandoms, like Japanese fandom,

there's a word called Yowie, which is now being more used to describe the Western version, but it really has its roots in Japan. All those three things are sort of interchangeable, right? Slash MM, Yowie. Anyway, started seeing people talking about this show. I had never heard of the books, but people were talking about the show and retweeting like the previews. And I was like, this looks really interesting because there's a separate fan history of people

shipping hockey players together, real life hockey players together and writing fan fiction about them. I find that super interesting. So I was like, oh, wow, they're making a TV show. that's kind of like fictionalizing one of these like hockey relationships that have been having fan fiction about it for years. Yeah, I didn't actually know this until recently. I was reading an article that like hockey, ship genre, like content is actually some of the most popular fan content in terms of sports. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And then this has been the case on Tumblr for many years. I wrote briefly about how that got started. Basically, you have any sport and there will be people that ship people from it. The reason that hockey in particular gained a, foothold in this existing world of slash fandom is there's a really interesting story behind that and it has to do with people switching over from fallout boy shipping to black hawks shipping around 2010 when fallout boy went on hiatus and they all lived in chicago because that's where fallout boy was from that is what i like to say is like a fandom patient zero with any new fandom that starts there's somebody who starts it right and that person is somebody that has a lot of influence in their community so when heated rivalry was about to come out and there are previews going around. Fans that have large followings as fans, they were the ones retweeting it and saying, oh, this looks really interesting. I think I'm going to watch this.

And there's, like, you know, there's status in fandoms, just like there's status in, like, the journalist community or any kind of, like, subcommittee online where if one person with a lot of influence takes notice of it, everyone else will start to pick up on it too, right? So that's what was happening with heated rivalry before it was even out. People who have big friend groups in fandom, people who are known for being great fickle, writers or they have some kind of status where like, I think I'm going to check this out. And then that got everybody else interested in it. So before the show was even on, I knew that I was going to check out the first episode

because people were really starting to talk about it. But it hadn't filtered out to where you live online yet, right? Yeah. No, I feel like, I mean, first of all, side note, the fallout boy to hockey pivot is so funny. I love those like weird ways that the internet evolves. It's funny because like I, I feel like I like vaguely follow fandom stuff, but there are so many fandoms to keep track of that it has to bubble up to like a certain amount I guess or like it has to kind of reach a certain velocity for me to be like oh this is

something I might write about or this is something that like an editor would reach out and like ask me to like do a quick write up about and it's funny because I'm in a group chat with a bunch of internet culture providers and people are like have you heard of heated rivalry do you know any experts that can talk about he did rival I think somebody shared your information on it but I also kind of clocked it as it was something that like kind of influential smart people were talking about and like interesting people were talking about. And I, but what you're saying is like even before that,

fandom people were talking about it. And so like fandom people were paying attention to it. I mean, it's your basic sort of subculture to culture cycle. I think with heated rivalry, the formula worked because the first two episodes are some of the steamyest shit that you've ever seen and done in a way that puts together the best of like gay cinema with the best of like fan girl like fiction. And that combination was not. only explosive for the fan girls that watch it and the people who come from that world and

consume that kind of content regularly, but it was able to accomplish this really adept and graceful leap across a boundary that is very difficult for media to cross. There's so much media that, like, fans love and has their own, like, subcultures that maybe you'll never hear about. And then there's this stuff that, like, everybody's watching, like, White Lotus or, like, you know, love is blind or whatever. Like, this stuff that people talk about that gets written up on the cut and like, you know, New York Times. And for something to make that jump and have such an impact, that's what makes heated rivalry special.

I feel like part of what made it a hit or like certainly the media narrative around, it was like, wait a minute, like straight women are watching this. And I think like film critic people, media people were like, wait a minute, but it's a gay show. Why would a straight woman watch the gay show? You know, like it was just this like kind of like reductive like discussion. But I feel like the first sort of trend pieces that I started to see about heat of rivalry is like, Like, wow, like women love this representation of men. And like, how does that heated rivalry fandom evolve once the show actually comes out?

For fans, it's frustrating and it's a little crazy because it's like, yeah, we know. We've all been digging this stuff for literally 60 years. The fact that there is still so much of culture at large that is not familiar with this being a thing that women and queer people who aren't cis gay men really love, it feels to us like, why is everybody just picking up on this now. So there's been a lot of frustration in fandom from that angle. The fandom starts out being those kinds of people, the kinds of people that are interested in reading stories about hockey players that have some of these books on their Kindles already. And then what has been really interesting is I call heated rivalry gateway media, which means it's media that shows people that there is a world out there full of this kind of thing and a way to engage with it on a subculture

and community level that they might never have known was there. And this is the sort of thing that you You see at the very dawn of fandom, this kind of fandom, with Kirk and Spock, right? You get housewives and, you know, young female professionals who discover this thing called the premise, which is this underground movement of people writing stories and making art of Kirk and Spock in love. And it opens up a whole new world of creativity and community and like self-actualization and like embracing their own sexuality. All these things are made possible by these two hot guys on TV, right?

Heated rivalry probably is happening on a way bigger scale than any of the of these sort of gateway moments in the past. But I mean, you had people like Rachel Reed, the author of Heated Rivalry, she was active in the Avengers fandom and she wrote stories about Captain America and Bucky Barnes, right? That's sort of where heated rivalry comes from a little bit. Maybe I don't actually know, but there's these gateways, right, that bring people into this world and Heated Rivalry is probably the biggest gateway that we've had, maybe ever for slash fandom.

Yeah. And I think like that exploded in this way. Like you said, the media. I think the fandom people were like rolling their eyes. But like this was, I mean, I live in LA. There's like media executives like doing talks on this. Like what does this mean? Like you know, there's like very serious reporters like, you know, asking questions about it.

Who else is in this like broad coalition of heated rivalry fandom? And what does that fandom look like compared to kind of other popular major mass fandoms? It's interesting because like when we use the word fandom, it can mean a lot of different things. Sometimes we just use it to mean people who like and want to show. But then there are the deeper definitions that are like, well, a fandom is a community of people who interact with each other around this central fandom object. And they perform fandom practices, like reading, writing fan fiction, fan art, editing videos, like fan vids, and stuff like that. And so there's obviously a ton of people who like and love heated rivalry and like talking about it and thinking about it and really enjoy it and I've watched it a bunch of times. And then you sort of go down the steps and then you have like the deeper community, people who are really spending a lot of their time on this and are making friends through this.

finding community through it. So the beautiful thing about a gateway show is that it gives people a path down those steps, the steps from just liking and, I mean, unloving something to being involved in the community around it. But also what we have, because heated rivalry has so many like different audiences, we have like the male fandom, you know, particularly the gay male fandom that feel very empowered by the show in a lot of ways, you know, telling their stories. It's by a gay director. And then we have the sort of female fandom which has its roots, not only in the sort of, what I would say, transformative fandom, the people that maybe knew about the show before aired

and enjoy, like, slash shipping and reading MM novels generally. But it's like, it's gotten so big that now it's like TV fans in general will stake their claim and say, I love heated rivalry. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're writing fan fiction

or engaging with transformative fan works, which is always a much more effortful and kind of, like, deeper lifestyle commitment when it comes to being a fan. I will say people in media, oh my God, heated rivalry is the biggest thing. Most people in the country probably have not heard of it. It's not like making the top streaming charts.

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here's the most popular shows in the year and it's just like suits like CSI or whatever. You know, like my introduction to the fandom world was very much Tumblr because I came up on Tumblr and I'm a millennial. But I'm curious kind of like how that's evolved and is Tumblr still relevant for heated rivalry? Like where are these fans coalescing and what does. their like online behavior really look like? I will say that like these days Tumblr is perceived as kind of a refuge and like a safe space for specifically like millennial and like Gen Z fans who like are sick of algorithmic platforms and are sick of, you know, being sort of, you know, financially exploited by large tech

companies, by, you know, for their attention and for their money. So Tumblr, yes, decrepit, yes, crumbling, yes, like no one gives a shit, but that's why it's like a good place to be. So it's like when fandom is there, it's not necessarily having enough. on effect on the rest of this sort of attention economy. The other thing was fanfiction.net started coming down really hard on racier fiction, and they also didn't have a lot of sympathy or space for real person fic, which are fan fictions about real people. So this could be like, The Beatles was actually a really popular one, surprisingly.

Hockey is a really popular one, unsurprisingly given the popularity of heated rivalry. One Direction, of course, which is another, you know, example of a, you know, example of a fandom that created its own books and, you know, really blew up and became its own thing. I heard someone say, and this shocked me, oh, heated rivalry fandom is biggest on threads. I'm like, what? I've never opened threads. Can I tell you something? I think I got a meta press release claiming that. Somebody, I think Max Reed wrote that it's like the gas leak social network. The thing, threads is like so just like mass culture.

And that's what tells me that heated rivalry fandom has broken through to the mainstream in a way that like, I have not seen, honestly, any other fandom breakthrough in a really, like, really, really long time, like ever maybe, because it's reached, it's reached the threads, like the moms on threads. And that feels like something different. The fact that the people on threads have never necessarily been involved in a fandom like this before, they have never, like, experienced sort of life on an erotic internet before necessarily. That's the gateway that I'm talking about, right? And so the threads activity is telling us that that gateway is super wide and super active. in bringing people into this world. Yeah, I mean, I, it was, it's incredible to see the like threads Mamas get involved. I mean, I would say like, to me, my primary exposure has been through TikTok, actually. I mean, TikTok is just like where everyone goes to discuss pop culture. And like when I started watching the show, like I just went on TikTok to go see like, you know,

episode one like analysis, recap, but like I always just go to like hear what people kind of like break down their own theories. And I feel like, yes, there's hardcore fandom people on TikTok, but there's also just a lot of like smart culture. pop culture kind of analysts. And I would say that right now, heated rivalries in a moment where it's subcultural and it's cultural. What I'm really excited about with heated rivalries, the idea that people who have never connected with other fans over their shared interests,

they've never actually joined a fandom before, are discovering what that's like. Okay, so we've got the threads, people, we've got the TikTokers, we've got the YouTube video essayists, which we didn't get into, but, you know, they're doing that. Like, I feel like everybody on social media is talking about this show. It's massive. It's everywhere. It's on blogs. It's on forums. Like it's a big topic of discussion. And so of course, it's going to be on Twitter. And like Twitter has always been a place for fandom, really pop, like music fandom movie. I mean, it's a place for pop culture. But it's been so interesting to see kind of like how things have warped under Elon Musk. And I think the thing that I started to notice with Twitter, I guess in relation to heated rivals really specifically is like this New York mag story come out. And like I don't know if it's just the Twitter algorithm, but like my entire feed was like discourse about. it and like people that were upset or angry at it.

And also like a lot of really mean-spirited people, like getting involved in like hating on these fans as well. The algorithm on that site more than ever wants you to be really mad. So I've noticed that it twigs to what you are angry about right away and start showing you more of it. Twitter has always been a really important space for fandom. I think because it's so easy to find people that share your interests on there. And even like the muskification has not really changed.

the fact that people come there to find other fans and other members of other communities. Like obviously there's like a big like eating disorder community on there and like there's horrible people that find them on there too. But that's just because it's easy. And it's so it's easy for fans as well. So with the heated rivalry stuff,

the context collapse of Twitter is sort of what it does, right? It makes it so that you come across posts from people and communities that you're not in. That's sort of, you know, what it exists to do. And so with heated rivalry, the tweets that were originally coming from fans who knew about the show before it aired or were watching the first episode when it came out. They were the ones, the original hype people, because they wanted to get other fans interested in it. That's what fans want to do. They want to get other fans into

their thing. The sprinkle the magic of heated rivalry itself on there, and you get those tweets crossing borders into other communities and people taking out. Kat Tenbarge wrote this great story called why fandom discourse feels extra cringe right now. Infighting and backlash among heated rivalry fans is most pronounced on X fueled in part by censorship driven migrations from platforms like Tumblr. And she talks about how this like discourse about heated rivalry is playing out on Twitter and how differently that conversation is being shaped on Twitter than a platform like Tumblr. And, you know, she talks about kind of like the backlash again to this New York Magazine article where the New York Magazine article was essentially unpacking the series popularity

among women, as well as the Fujoshi culture of women pairing to male characters. together in steamy fan fiction. And I think a lot of people felt like this was like maybe shaming women. What Kat writes, and it's really important to note, is that most culture reporters today are not prying into fandoms to embarrass and scold women. A lot of them actually started as Tumblr fan girls. And although Vulture reporter Alex Jung wrote about whether Fujoshi culture fetishizes gay men, he ultimately concluded that women writing fan fiction are more exploring their own identities

and desires more than actual gay men. This was a paywalled article. And I don't think anybody really read it. And I think the tweet was like written in a way that really maybe like triggered fans. And it set off this like, I guess like days of like discourse like among even people in the fandom, I think about like is this fetishizing gay men? Is this toxic? I saw also, you know, a whole thread of somebody saying like, you know, is this fandom

racist? Like is it problematic? Like, you know, it's just like I feel like we're sort of like speed running through all of the, you know, cycles of kind of like discourse around like, pop media and fandom. I think at the end of the day, and this is something that I wrote about, I think it's important to consider, like, fandom as a subculture has a history, and that history has involved a lot of shaming and a lot of actions from the powers that be. So, like, authors and movie studios and copyright holders sort of against fandom. There was a period in the 90s and the 2000s where it was really common to receive cease and desists for something that you were putting on your website.

website. There were authors that issued injunctions against fan fiction. So like a lot of this is sort of like generational trauma within fandom. First of all, a lot of those people who experience that are still around. And second of all, it's been passed down as sort of like received knowledge as like legend within fandom that there are people out there who are against fans and and will shame you, you know, the drop of the hat and like want you to stop doing what you're doing. So when there is this attention from on high, which is to say like a glossy magazine, even without the content, just the attention, feels like a threat. And fans are for good reason, so protective of their spaces, of their practices, because in the world that we have, it's maybe the one

thing that brings a lot of people joy is to exist safely and without, you know, invasion in these communities. Yeah, you know, I think one thing that the writer in New York Magazine did was link directly to posts on archive of our own. So he linked out to a fan fiction, a story written by a fan on Archive of Her Own, which since 2009 has been the only fan-owned, fan-run, non-profit fan fiction archive on the internet. It's really, really important as a place for writers to gather and exchange works without the threat of, like, lawsuits or without any kind of like commercial aspect to it. He did that because it's journalistic ethics to link out to the stuff that you're talking about, but it goes against fandom ethics to put

of fan work sort of in the public I like that. So like a lot of people with one foot in each world, like me, like other fan girls that grow up to be journalists, understand that there is some stuff that's incompatible about these two worlds that can lead to missteps like this. There's this idea in fandom called The Fourth Wall, and it's sort of being misused in this, in this context. The idea is that you don't show a fan fiction to the creators or, like, particularly to like, the actors. And there was a huge scandal about this in the Sherlock Holmes fandom in 2013, I think,

where there was a convention and like one of the fan-fictions was read out loud, and the actors seemed uncomfortable, and it just made everyone uncomfortable. And that's sort of like the paradigmatic example, right? This is not really breaking the fourth wall. It's, I think, like, a conflict between when you're a journalist and you're claiming something's happened, you need to provide evidence. of this, you can't just be like, you know, I saw it, but I'm going to protect my sources. I mean, it's not like, if you're in a war zone, sure, but like this is fan fiction. And then people who feel like they're writing something and publishing something very vulnerable that's meant for a particular community, and they don't want it shared with

people outside of that community. I also think there's a very sympathetic, but not really true belief that fandom is private, untouched by commercial interests. It's untrue in like very complicated ways as well as the obvious ways. And also that like you somehow need to like earn your presence there. I understand and sympathize with that, especially for people who like grew up in fandom spaces when it was much more difficult to access them. But now, you know, like my mom knows what fan fiction is and not just because I'm her daughter because like it's just it's become more mainstream than I think anyone, even New York Magazine appreciates.

As you mentioned, like, it is completely journalistically normal to link directly to a source and I'm glad that he removed it. But I think that a lot of people also might not realize that, like, AO3, just like as a community is considered kind of a private space. Like, even though it's all happening out in public, like, it is considered kind of like more of a closed community almost.

Yeah, literally fandom has won. And we see that in so many different spaces. I think in publishing and genre publishing specifically, our bestseller. All started out in fan fiction. There's been a lot of great pieces out there about how agents are seeking out new authors on these fan fiction websites and in these communities

because they come from the communities themselves and know how high the quality of the writing is. It isn't like some outsider. It's like everybody's coming from these places. It's something that I think a lot of people naturally engage in, but not necessarily in this like formalized way. The formalized way being like, you know, sharing your fan art, sharing your fan fiction,

role playing with strangers. These are all things if you think about it, like we're doing naturally as children, preteens, even teenagers, and the actual fandom spaces opens it up to become more structured, more formalized, leave a paper trail. When you think about it, like when people log online, like particularly like children, preteens, teens, minors, just sort of in general, there's a lot of things that they might want to do, like connect with friends, you know, look things up that maybe they can't, they don't have access to in the physical world, but also share their interests. And a lot of that,

involves fandom. So I think part of the mainstreamization of fandom, one, media properties and, corporations are aware of it and have been aware and engaged with online fandom in particular since the 90s, which I think is a super underappreciated point. It also feels like fandoms have not won. I mean, I totally agree that like everything is fandom now. But in a sense, like, that seems like it's not a win for people that are part of these communities. And I think like not only are, you know, are their communities increasingly scrutinized as they blow up and like get mainstream attention? Like I just feel like a little sympathy for the OG like or like really deep kind of heated rivalry fans just because there is so much discourse and attention now driven to their small communities

that like previously didn't have a lot of scrutiny and media attention and culture reporters like pouring through, you know, like their archives to link. Oh no, I'm right there with you. It is really tough. It's I keep saying like it's a major time of transition. That's why the Vulture article, it was fairly complimentary, but just as it's existence at all, it's totally valid for fans to feel threatened. Mainly because the balance between fandom and the powers that be, so the commercial interests that produce the content that fandom is about, it's always been in this sort of balance, this very, like, tense balance. And it's that tension that produces the fun of fandom, right?

Doing your little thing with the thing that's making a lot of money, but you're not making any money and you're doing it kind of like in a punk way. I think fans have always seen themselves as kind of like resistant. And so when these interests of like media, and that's, you know, kind of bundling journalism and media producers into the same bucket, when those interests approach the shore of fandom, this sort of safe harbor, yeah, it can absolutely feel really threatening. And it shows that things are changing in a major way. The question that I have is how are fans, you know, A-O-3 was founded to pretend. fans interest and to make it a safe space and a community by fans for fans. That's why it's called archive of our own. So what is the next move? Like what is the next AO3 going to be that takes that step and sort of declares independence in a new way? I'm really interested to see that. I feel like

there's just increasingly like these norms are being obliterated. Maybe it's through like algorithms themselves kind of like charging down the barriers between these like communities online. Like with TikTok, people will be like, oh, I'm on the wrong side of TikTok. I think like, you know, with a fandom, like, heated rivalry that is so like sprawling and massive, it's like, I think even parts of the fandom feel at conflict or like, feel like they're invading maybe other parts of their own fandom. And that might be why, like, this fandom is considered so like, I don't want to say toxic, but like crazy or like intense or whatever.

Like there's so much discourse about it. It seems like a lot of like inter, like the mainstream cisgender women that are shipping like they get like there's just so many kind of like disparate groups that are like bumping into each other and an important note here and and this is something i find interesting heated rivalry part of the deliciousness of the plot and of the show is that it takes a scenario that in real life is kind of taboo like shipping to hockey players together and makes it okay to do because they're fictional characters right so similarly in the fandom for the show you have a lot of people who's main way of interfacing with culture as a fan is celebrity fandom and right

Celebrity fandom has a centuries-long existence and has always been a very dominant form of cultural reception as compared to the quite smaller and a little more secret, like, fictional character shipping and fan fiction world. Oh my God, like People magazine, tabloids, like celebrity culture is this big, huge thing. So heated rivalry becoming a staple of the pillars of celebrity culture, Dumois, the Oscars, S&L, tabloids, paparazzi. that is in conflict with some of the norms and privacy of the more sequestered transformative fan spaces that you find in A.O.3. We're just there to talk about fictional characters. It's such a good point.

And I think this even just plays out to like how the actual actors have been treated where like you see this like anger about like people just like invading their personal space or like, you know, sort of attacking them in this way that is actually quite normalized in celebrity fandom culture. but is certainly not normalized among, like, you said, this sort of, like, other, like, literary, like, more, I guess, like, niche fandom culture. I mean, it's like, this is the stuff that Harry Styles has to deal with, and he's a pop star. Like, I think that is one of the unprecedented things about it is the way in which the performers in a show that was really only ever meant for this quite niche audience, which does love it, to be fair, the performers have been catapulted into this upper echelon of celebrity, which gives every sort of fan action and reaction a different,

hinge and very much sets it against the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. And these guys are like, it's like a Canadian show. I know. Well, also, I just think it like poisons the discourse even more because it's like, you have somebody like accosting one of the, you know, stars or whatever to get a picture or whatever. And then it's like, it's being framed in the media and like places like, I don't know, TMZ or diet prod or whatever.

Like, you know, this more of like more tabloid media of like heated rivalry fans, XYZ are like, look at these rabid crazy he's your rivalry fans. Like, and it's like, well, oh, it's like, well, okay, that's actually just like a celebrity fan or like that's actually just like some crazy person that's not even representative of anything. Like, and I think like, I don't know, the media has kind of like stoked to the fires of this drama a little bit. And like, then I think that's leading to these people that are not engaged in the fandom and that are often pretty reactionary, especially on places like X where like the celebrity aspect of it is like colliding to kind of like retweet or quote or just be like, you know, like look at that like this is bad. Look at these brainrided people. And I feel bad for the fans because like I do think there are.

actually vanishingly few places where they can like really be fans. Yeah, it's a really interesting situation. I think a lot of the people who are the OG fans are so much more normal. And they like this is also like a norms thing. It's like people who've been in fandoms before. They like have seen horror stories about, you know, what happens. They like know the types of people that you run into and like, you know, these taxonomies of fans. And that's the one of the downsides of being a sort of gateway media is you get

people that are coming either fresh to fandom or from a different kind of fandom from celebrity or pop music or or even sports fandom into this world and they're bringing different norms with them. You know, it's a sort of eternal September of fandom situation, right? Where it's not like this collision of norms is really ever going to stop now. Yeah, no. And I'm curious kind of like what this means. Like it's, I mean, we're already like I said, we're seeing like all of Hollywood entertainment

now being like, whoa, wait a minute. Like how do we replicate this? because this has been very profitable. And maybe we do want to kind of like build these mass fandoms. And also like, as you know, like fandom is so profitable. It is like to have a media like franchise that that has a strong fandom around it. Like not only when you monetize the content that you're producing, you know, for that fandom like the actual show, you are going to be able to monetize so much experiences merch. I mean, Bridgerton's a good example, right?

Like they have really cultivated that fandom around it like intentionally, I think kind of almost backwards. But this, it's like there. I feel like these executives are so eager to kind of like replicate it. And I wonder what that is going to mean. Well, so we have an example for this, which is the Asian market for BL and GL series, which operates on a kind of idol system that's similar to the way music works in the East. And so in Thailand, you have like boys love TV shows where the actors kind of like I have to go on press tours and do like fan service, kind of like pretending to be a couple in real life in

order to stoke this fan fire, I really wonder if we're going to start seeing some more of that in the U.S. because it is a model that seems to be having success over there. There is a lot of American fans of those shows. That's one way. Like, I think that, you know, executives, right? So they're probably getting the wrong idea about how they're like more shows about, like, gay sports players instead of being like, we should let really interesting creators with an autur-like vision adapt books with existing fandoms and, like, compelling central pari.

and cast unknowns in the role. I don't think that's the lesson that they're taking. Exactly. And I'm sure that that will lead to like a bunch of flops as well. But it is really cool to like see this fandom kind of like break through and explore. And I do think, I mean, like, would you call this like the breakout major fandom of like 2025? Like to me, I have not seen another fandom emerge so quickly and so powerfully. And of course it existed before that.

But like, I don't know, like this is just such a huge fandom all of a sudden like overnight seeming. Yeah, I think lightning in a bottle, like, like a lot of really lucky sort of things came together for this fandom. Like the time it was released, the stars, you know, like the way that it was, you know, is a weekly drops, always better during a time when everybody's sitting at home, like holiday season. And just like, you know, great source material and a really, really great adaptation. I think honestly a lesson to take away from this is like the power of a good adaptation. I am really interested in the art of adaptation and how it can take a book, which frankly, I have no interest in reading the original book.

It's not my sort of thing at all. but I love the show. And so that is the magic of a good adaptation and somebody with a vision. Yeah, I'll be really interested what people are greenlighting right now based on heated rivalry. Because again, it's not like it was a total ratings bonanza, but it was a cultural victory, right? It was a cultural victory. I mean, I'm sure that it's like has good ratings. But I think like I was saying before too, like it's going to be profitable.

Like this is a profitable franchise. And like I think HBO specifically has not had that cultural. I think Netflix has had a little bit more of it. I mean, White Lotus and stuff like that, but that doesn't have the like fervor, right? That's the magic of genre media. So, I mean, like, look at how well the Game of Thrones show, the new one is doing.

I turn on Game of Thrones for the first time in my life because of the buzz around this new show and I loved it. So it's like genre media at the end of the day. That has always included science fiction and fantasy. You know, we saw it with superheroes and stuff like that. Now that's growing things to Bridgeton and now Heeded rivalry to include romance franchises. And I think that that's really the major thing.

that that's really the major takeaway here. Yeah, I think we're gonna see a lot more romance. I'm also slightly terrified about like the AI. I don't know if you saw like that New York Times story about the woman using AI to like write hundreds of like romance novels or whatever. Listen, Sturgeon's Law. Theodore Sturgeon was a famous science fiction writer

in the 50s and 60s. He actually wrote the episode of Star Trek, a muck time, which where spot goes into heat and that spawned the sort of slash fandom that we see today in a very roundabout way. So first of all, he's responsible for slash fandom. Second of all, Sturgeon's Law is what he's better known for. And he said about science fiction, but this applies to everything.

90% of everything is shit. It's true. It's true. And he did rivalries in that 10% the show. The book, who can say? But the beautiful thing about the book is that the spark of something powerful was seen in it by Jacob Tierney. That is the magic of a good, you know, showrunner and a good adaptation. Yeah.

I'm excited to see it kind of like, what else at birth? I'm curious if you have any sort of other thoughts just like going forward about privacy and fandom. I mean, I feel like we're losing a lot of privacy rights on the internet as well. And so much of fandom is, I feel like people are participating in fandom or doing it maybe pseudonymously or anonymously or it's sort of like their side thing. And I'm curious, kind of just like, as we move to like a less private internet, like, how do you think that will affect fan communities and like how do you see kind of these bigger changes around the internet landscape impacting like this fandom world? I think realistically what's going to happen is it's going to

become more local. People are going to follow the rules that they have, you know, no opportunity to break, right, by uploading their ID and do these things anyway. Maybe with like some more discomfort, coded language probably will become more popular as it does in sort of like any censorship regime, more group chats and things like forums, if not that actual technology coming back in popularity. I don't think this will happen, but I think it would be interesting if fandom became more grounded in the physical world, like it was sort of in the days of the early internet, where it was people sharing zines, using the internet to connect for in-person conventions. I don't think that would happen, but I think that's one potentially good thing that could come out of something pretty

terrible, which is just stripping people of, you know, what, like literally just like threads of privacy we have left. It's so interesting, you know, the original dash con, which was this like sort of famous, very ill-fated, like, Tumblr conference from like a decade ago. It went viral because it was kind of this like scam disaster. It was like the original like Tumblr's Fire Fest, basically. And they brought it back after a decade, I guess like a year or two ago. And now they're doing like DashCon 2.0. And it's, I was looking at pictures from the first one.

And it was all just like fandom people. And they were talking about kind of like how there is no space to like meet up, but there's not as many places. Like I don't know. Like I think a lot more people are. appreciating these like IRL events and like IRL sort of fandom moments. Like of course the big conventions are always going to be huge, but you're also seeing people like, I think try to bring back some of that original like Tumblr energy and like

recreated in the real world. Yeah, I think so too. And I've noticed it with like other digital subcultures to there's like more conventions, more camps, even that's like a word that I see used a lot. You know, people like picking a place to like bring a bunch of tents and like do arts and crafts and just get to know their internet friends. And I think that's like, That's actually a really great way to use the internet and kind of pushes back on this idea that like online community is in a real community. Totally. Totally. Thank you so much for joining me and chatting. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That's it for this week's episode. If you like the show, please, please support me on

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