Hi everyone! I know I haven't been around for a while. Moving and changing jobs took up much more of my time than I thought! I'll try Blaugust again next year ;D
I'll be slowly making a series of posts to catch up about topics that I've missed/gotten behind on. But today, I wanted to talk about Heated Rivalry since I watched it this month along with everyone else it seems!
I've read the book it's based on, and I want to discuss the differences between them and how I think the show made changes in an impactful way. I also think some of the popularity of the show is a bit of luck/the right climate. Like I think we all needed a happy story that focused on joy/queer joy this year, and this one really delivered in a special way. It's also been really interesting watching the cast and crew be catapulted from like ordinary people to superstars over the course of a month. That's insane!
Anyway, the next part is spoilered in case you haven't seen it yet!
Read spoilersThese are my thoughts on the novel: At first glance, it reminded me so much of Until My Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches by Reiya on Ao3, which, if any of your are familiar with the Yuri on Ice fandom, is the highest kudosed fic in that fandom and has been for years. Anyway, the timeline, circumstances and ages of the characters are very similar. However, the characters of Heated Rivalry definitely stand on their own, and the story is absolutely not about figure skating unfortunately :( But I couldn't help comparing the two as I read it, and remembered having many more emotions about umfbamha, so HR kind of let me down in that regard.
However, it's overall a good story, with strong characters, and I would argue well written for the romance genre. You can tell that it's been professionally published and edited in that the plot maintains momentum and focus throughout the story. I think the characters are Rachel Reid's strong point, which is important to develop a fandom. As many people have noticed, Ilya is a fantastic/standout character. All his different and sometimes conflicting traits give him a lot of depth. He's also very funny! And I think that's another one of Reid's strong points. The novel is genuinely funny at times, and that can be really difficult to pull off.
I see the novel getting a lot of criticism for not focusing on many details outside of the main plot, but, I'd argue that's pretty typical for romance genre or any contained genre to begin with. It's not trying to be high literature. Although I haven't read any other books/romance about hockey to compare it to.
It actually surprises me that most of the main crew didn't seem to know about the hockey fiction/hockey rpf fandom's existence before the show took off?? Like I mean I'm not interested in hockey at all, but I've known for at least the last 10 years that hockey rpf is basically this giant sleeper fandom that seems to attract really high quality fanfic writers. Rachel Reid obviously knew this, but I feel like someone else on the team had to have known.
Anyway these are my thoughts on the show: Jacob Tierney put a huge amount of thought into this and managed to create a faithful adaptation of the novel that also transcends its source material.
One of the things that I noticed is that he took what seems like every opportunity to increase the tension in the story. I'll give a few examples.
The most obvious one is that Yuna becomes Shane's manager. This change not only expands the dialogue on Shane being an Asian player in the NHL but also increases the tension between him and his mom, him and his identity, and him and his professional image. This is reinforced by all the advertisements we see of him throughout the series.
Second, is the way that Ilya's relationship with his home country is more explicitely stated/addressed. It's clear in the show in a way that's not really shown in the novel that Ilya wants to go home even after his father's death despite having a terrible family, and that it will hurt him deeply to never be able to go back.
Third is how Shane is explicitely played as autistic. This does not come out as strongly in the novel but is very evident in the show. It's shown how hard it really is for him to communicate with anyone at all including Ilya.
Last is the timeline. In the novel, Shane and Ilya are hooking up with each other and other people pretty regularly. In the show, there's much larger time gaps, and at least a 2 year period where Ilya keeps pursuing Shane by texting/etc.
And this isn't even addressing the use of music and lighting/framing to increase tension as well. All this buildup makes the payoff at then end/the feeling of joy so much deeper. This same kind of framing is also used in the Skip storyline, which is so incredibly sweet and uplifting. I was actually surprised how much I like Skip in the show since I normally find coffee shop AUs boring.
Also I have to give a shotout to the actors/intimacy team for really selling the relationships and making the sex scenes what they are, since the ones in the novel are kind of underwhelming tbh. The likes of Bridgerton has nothing on this
I'm glad the show got renewed for a 2nd and 3rd season. Although I'm concerned that neither will be able to top the first one. For me, the theme of this season was "it's worth it to allow yourself to love and be loved in the way that you desire." I think continuing to frame things around queer joy and internal struggle can make the other seasons special as well. Perhaps themes like "it's worth it to allow yourself to be happy" or "it's worth it to share your love with others" could be other worthy themes?
Anyway, if you've watched the show or read the novels, let me know what you thought. I'd love to hear!
Not that I expect to have any of them filled, but I wanted to participate!!
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