me featured in a louis video??? im honored

Nobody in the fandom is ready to accept that the books are basically badly written fanfiction by a 13 year old. If the actors and the director weren't absolute geniuses, this would not have worked AT ALL ☠️

Gonna be real here....I saw this book at Target and read the first few pages, then went "bro this is literally just a smutty fanfic repackaged, I can just use AO3 for free instead."

The main problem I have with modern smut books is the covers. Why are most of the smut book covers cartoon art? To unknown parents it might look like a fun kids book, A SMUT BOOK SHOULD NOT RESEMBLE A KIDS BOOK BY ANY MEANS

definitely one of those rare cases where the show is leagues and bounds better than the book- i think mainly because while some could say there is an oversaturation of those types of books in the market, there isnt of those types of tv shows which makes it better imo

also the slitoris in the room is crazy

You can really tell which writers and readers view themselves as ‘above’ reading fanfiction, because they go and enjoy this shit

I'm just here to beg people to read Maurice by E.M Forster. A book about being gay with a happy ending and having the same theme that sex isn't bad or somehow morally superior to "pure" emotional love that was written over 100 years ago by a gay man.

Did you see the original book cover? That was a truer representation of the content, which is why they changed it.

being honest as a bi woman myself i tend to enjoy mlm stories mainly because i can enjoy the romance, story etc without relating (or not) to the female character. HOWEVER mlm content made solely by and for women makes me so uncomfortable. I think I got two pages into this book specifically and then quit

It’s crazy cause romance books often trick me by pretending they’re about plot and they’re just NOT 💀
This sounds like the perfect example of that

I read it in one day, it was light reading (meaning the grade level of vocabulary is like middle school level I'd say). I was floored by how it literally just jumped right into the sex scenes, it definitely needs to be marketed/labeled as erotica because that is what it is, I would call this "porn with a (vague) plot". I too also thought the whole slit thing was weird. I don't think this book has the worst sex scenes as I have definitely read much worse and ones where it's like does the author even know how this works, wtf.  

The TV show is much better, but it is also pretty spicy to begin with, but I do think they develop the characters more in the show. I also read the sequel to this one (not the next book in the series but the one specifically about Shane and Ilya)..... yeah no, this one (Heated Rivalry) was actually a better book. I am curious to see how much the show will follow the book when they get to season two, or if it will end up being like Dexter was with its book series.

This is one of those rare cases when the Movie (TV show in this case) is better than the book. 🤣🤣🤣

Omg as a gay man I was literally rolling my eyes and skipping scene after scene by the end of the book cause there was so much smut. It was definitely too much and not all that well written. That being said, I didn't find it offensive really. Tbh I found it refreshing to see a story about gay men that was more in line with my experiences as a Canadian. While being gay is accepted largely here, gay couples are a lot less visible than they are in the U.S. it can often feel like your the only one and that you need to keep it secret in public settings. My boyfriend and I still don't hold hands in public and the few times we have shown affection to eachother in public settings it wasn't recieved very well. I think heated rivalry handled that pretty well. The whole story has this theme of not being able to comfortably be together because of societal expectations, and I really appreciate that even though they end up together in the end, they still aren't ready to go public with their relationship, a topic which does return in the follow-up story for these characters.

Alright, as a lesbian from Russia I enjoyed the show and wanted to check out the book series - I don't think I will now lol
I did feel like the show had A LOT of fanfiction tropes but thought that that's just a romance thing
There is a lot of sex scenes, but I feel like they play a big role for the plot itself - like you can't really just cut them out, and I don't have a problem with having sex scenes in the show, especially considering that the entire relationship is purely hook ups for the first couple of years
Part of the charm is watching how this purely physical thing turns into something more tender as time goes by
With that being said, i did feel like it was A LOT - too much for me personally at times
I feel like the show handles themes of homophobia EXTREMELY well - both internal and external. Everything about that topic resonated with me personally, and now I'm honestly impressed with how the director managed to get so much out of the book. The cinematography is great, the actors do a fantastic job, characters speak actual russian and you can see that they did some great research on the culture
Also, I fucking loved this video, your frustration is extremely funny and satisfying. Keep doing what you're doing

29:04 - 29:10

Thank you! It's so frustrating that Heated Rivalry fans don't see a problem whatsoever with the lack of hockey content. They say things like, "it's not about the hockey, it's about the romance." But the hockey is supposed to add depth to the romance and the characters. Not be used as a plot device to get the tropes and plot beats you want to happen.

I've only seen one sports anime, watched/read a few BLs that revolve around sports and even from that tiny sample it becomes painfully obvious how much more interesting the characters, their relationships, and the story can be when the sports actually matter more than just being a backdrop. And it's a shame because apparently Rachel Reid is this huge hockey fan, but it doesn't come through in the work the same way it does in other sports stories where you can feel the author's passion for or interest in the sport/profession through the characters.

I also think that's what contributes to the Wattpad, fanfiction-y feel of the story. In most fanfics I read where a ship and their romance are the focus, they usually isolate the characters away from what they do in canon or show very little of it to place emphasis on the relationship. But that's understandable because those fanfics are supposed to be self-indulgent or fan service. The canon should at least also be trying to tell an interesting story.

People get weirded out when a guy writes a book about lesbian (even if it's good) but doesn't care when a woman writes a gay book (even if they're fetishizing gay ppl OMFG, the famous examples r mostly manhwas (not all of them ofcourse)  like jinx.  i would rather eat glass than continue reading it.

Tbh, I dropped Heated Rivalry when it started out almost immediately with smut 😭 and then a while later, I hear about the show and everyone saying how good it is, so I picked it back up, soldiering on, but still dropped it barely halfway in. The show seems good, but the book def wasn’t my thing

I was WAITINGGGG for someone to explain this book to me
(cause I'm lazy af but curious af)

i will say two(?) of my friends REALLY liked the show which lead them to read the book, which led them to read other books by the same author.
However, these are the only books they read and you can tell, both of then are women and i can feel the fetishisation from a mile away. Im a guy with a boyfriend and theres a lot of pressure about like "you two should kiss in front of us haha" and it makes me really uncomfortable.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I rarely read romance. But I gave it a try and .. I read like 30 pages and it was not good. I was then proceeded to be called homophobic for not liking it..