I like you. I like you, too.
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@genlabr
I like you. I like you, too.
Because Gabriella Lascanoâs opinion piece in The New York Times made me think, I found myself returning â once again â to the question I have carried for most of my life.
Well, I have always thought about the why of me being fat, and I use that word without insult, without shame, simply as a fact. For years, that word carried enormous power over me. It entered rooms before I did. It colored conversations. Today, it no longer holds that authority.
But going back to the issue, for as long as I can remember, I was told to lose weight. Sometimes gently, sometimes harshly, often disguised as concern. For health. For beauty. For discipline. For love. For opportunity. The reasoning shifted depending on who was speaking; the message itself never did. Then Dr. Kleber looked me in the eye and said, âYou will never lose weight without help â medication or surgery â because you have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.â Instead of relief, I felt disbelief. I even laughed.
After all, no one had diagnosed me correctly in thirty years. He himself admitted uncertainty. So why such conviction? And why did that sentence unlock reflection rather than resignation?
Naturally, I went back to the beginning.
Was it because, from the age of five until twenty-one, my mother placed me on restrictive diets? Because my father feared I would be fat like him and urged her to question every doctor about how to make me lose weight? Consequently, after each failed attempt, I was left hungrier â physically, yes, yet also emotionally â and increasingly disconnected from my own hunger cues and, in time, deeply unsettled about my relationship with food?
Or did it begin when my parents removed me from the sport I loved â the one I excelled at, the one where I was even scouted to compete â simply because they did not want to drive to competitions? Because my mother felt overwhelmed by my coachâs requests? When movement disappeared from my life, something else inevitably filled that space.
I tried other sports afterward; however, each attempt was quietly discouraged, as though my effort was inconvenient, as though my commitment required too much. And little by little, the message settled in: do not take up space, do not demand support, do not want too much.
Perhaps it was the tension around clothing. The sighs before shopping trips. The irritation at having to âfind something that fits.â The subtle, persistent message that my body was not merely different, it was inconvenient.
And then there were the comments. Constant. Casual. Cutting. From strangers. From relatives. From people who felt entitled to narrate my body aloud. I remember my mother looking at a photo of me at the beach â a beach it had taken tremendous courage for me to visit â and saying she could not believe how fat I was. In that moment, something inside me contracted, even if my body did not.
So yes, I understand the argument in Lascanoâs piece, and I agree with it. Nuance matters. We should be able to discuss weight loss without collapsing into extremes. Complexity deserves space.
At the same time, I cannot discard the body positivity movement entirely, especially when the return of extreme thinness as an aspiration â almost an obsession â genuinely scares me. I have lived through what that pressure does. I know how quickly it becomes a moral language: smaller is better, thinner is worthy, discipline is virtue.
For me, acceptance was never complacency; it was foundational. Before I could even consider losing weight, I had to stop despising myself. I had to face my reflection without flinching. I had to untangle the worth from the size. In other words, I needed to believe I deserved dignity exactly as I was.
That movement gave me language when I had none. It gave me permission to exist publicly without apology. It gave me the courage to live in the present instead of postponing joy until I became smaller. I am allowed to be â even if I am fat.
And only now do I truly realize how cruel people were to me because of my size. What was framed as concern was often humiliation. What was called motivation was frequently shame. I did not see it clearly then; I had internalized too much of it. Now, with distance and truth, I can name it for what it was.
I am not seeking privileges. I buy two seats on a plane because that is what I require. I recognize the professional limitations that can accompany living in a fat body. Awareness, however, does not accelerate weight loss. Shame did not transform me. Fear did not sustain change. Self-contempt certainly did not heal me.
What gradually made a difference was acceptance. Therapy. The steady presence of friends who love me without conditions. The difficult work of asking deeper questions. The discipline of naming wounds. The humility of forgiving â my parents, who were acting from their own fears; the doctors who overlooked the signs; and, most painfully, myself.
This is not denial. It is integration.
It is acknowledging the hormonal realities, the emotional history, the relational scars â and choosing to do the work anyway. Not from self-hatred, rather from self-respect. Not from pressure, instead from readiness.
It is not easy. I will live with this â and struggle with it â for the rest of my life. Even so, it has to come from a place of truth and acceptance.
see, deep down i know that you're all talking about the gay hockey show when you shorten it to 'HR' but that does not stop my knee jerk reaction of thinking wow. what the hell is going on in that human resources department
"Being with you has opened my eyes", Ilya Rozanov & Shane Hollander [Connor Storrie & Hudson Williams], Heated Rivalry | 1.04 Rose
Feb, 2026
*Photoshop effects, image manipulation, freehand overlines, textures and colour palettes built from stock images
Heated Rivalry | From Page to Screen: Season 1, Episode 4
Persuasion (1995)
More than yesterday and less than tomorrow
(ID: sequential art image 1: Ilya Rozanov partially submerged in water with only his eyes above the water from Shaneâs point of view image 2: Shane Hollander underwater looking up from Ilyaâs point of view end ID)
I was waiting for Hudson Williams to make his runway debut when I got the news that my very gay, very effeminate friend had been fired.
No justification was given. Just âorders from above.â Later, with a bit more information, it became clear what that really meant: management didnât like his feminine voice, his mannerisms, the way he existed in the world. The very things that make him him.
So there I was, about to watch an actor who plays a bottom â unapologetic about his love for his male co-star, openly wearing femininely coded clothing to public events â being celebrated, praised, and wildly successful. And at the exact same time, I was shaking on the phone, trying to comfort my friend as his livelihood was taken away for embodying that same queerness in real life.
I remembered comments Iâd seen a while back, people saying that in this day and age we âshouldnât portray closeted gay men anymore.â And I couldnât stop thinking about how disconnected that take is from reality. Because for so many people, being openly gay â especially if youâre visibly feminine â is still dangerous. Still punished. Still something you can lose your job over.
Visibility is not a finished project. Representation doesnât mean weâre safe now. And as I cheer for Hudson, I hope â maybe in a vain attempt to hold on to hope â that things change for those of us living this reality, too.
I like you. I like you too.
I love soundtracks in general, and when one is really well thought out and carefully built, it feels like a gift. I listened to the Heated Rivalry soundtrack and I cried.
I had sworn I wouldnât rewatch the episodes until the series comes out in my country in February. And yet. Couple of songs later and suddenly I need to watch everything again. And reread the books. Immediately.
I mean â Iâm not going to. I have a life. I have work. I will be responsible. But the desire to drop everything and do it anyway is very much still there.
The Heartbeat tracks and Two Souls / One Soul are devastating in the quietest way. You can hear the evolution of what theyâre feeling â the longing, the connection, the inevitability of it all.
Anyway. The spell is broken. The emotions are loud. And now I have to return to the real worldâŠ
Actually what I love most about the sex scenes in heated rivalry is that they're not well coordinated (always) Shane's knees gets in the way, Ilya has to move him around or shuffle into a better position.
It's not slick and perfect and everything slots together perfectly and aesthetically.
It's a little awkward at times.
They knock lamps over.
They stumble.
They stop and talk and pull out and move around and go again.
It's not for the camera angle or the viewer it's for them and it's not always right first time and neither one of them makes fun of that.
Seeing gifs of Hudsonâs menâs health workout video has given me the pleasure of imagining all the straight chad and incel types out there who are currently filled to the brim with indignation. But he played a gay guy. But he pretended to get fucked in the ass. But he rubbed his face against another manâs dick. But he is so physically affectionate with another man. But he sometimes wears feminine clothing and jewelry. But his chest is hairless. But heâs not 6â2. But heâs Asian. But! But! But! Why are there so many women who would hand off their first child to the devil just to touch his bicep! Theyâre not supposed to like that! Wah wah how dare he! Cry bitch! You may not like it but this is what the platonic ideal of manhood looks like:
writer & creator of queer as folk and the original showrunner & head writer of the revival of doctor who, reviews heated rivalry. (x)
My vacation is almost over, which means the Heated Rivalry bubble Iâve been living in is about to burst. And yeah, that makes me a little sad.
I read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game at the beginning of 2025, and I loved them. They stuck with me. Still, when people started talking about an adaptation, I wasnât excited. Iâve been burned before, and I think I was already bracing myself for disappointment.
Both books are very internalâabout connection, love, longing, vulnerability, loneliness, and the hope for change. These are the things Iâm deeply interested in (as many of you are), but theyâre usually not what most showbiz producers care about. So I dismissed the adaptation as something that probably wouldnât be as good as it could be.
Then the first two episodes dropped. I saw people losing their minds on Instagram. I decided to give it a shotâand I knew Tumblr would provide the community I needed to survive the collective psychosis we all went through in November and December.
Somehow, it worked.
This show changed me. Itâs been a long time since a piece of art has had such a profound impact on me.
The main actors didnât make it easy either. They showed up as themselves and gave everything they had. They didnât mock the book or treat it as lesser because it was romance or smut (Neither did Jacob Tierneyâhe truly loved those books.). And even if theyâre scared, or overwhelmed, or still processing what the hell is happening to them, not for a moment did it feel like they werenât living their truth and chasing their dreams. How could I not be inspired by that?
Around that time, I was listening to a podcast, and Kristin Chiricoâbless her heartâsaid:
âIf I have learned nothing else from Heated Rivalry discourse, it's that women are fucking SAD. Like sad in a bone-deep, trenchfoot-of-the-heart kind of way â there is a hopelessness that has sort of been buried in the backyard of our minds for years, and it feels like the dog just dug it up, so to speak.â
âŠand I knew that was true for me too.
This show didnât just entertain me. It made me confront things Iâd been avoiding. It made me think about what I actually want out of life and about fears Iâve carried foreverâfears drilled into me by society, by my family, by friends. And at some point I caught myself thinking: why am I still living by rules that were never made with me in mind?
If a queer author from Canada can write something this meaningful. If a writer and director can believe in a source material and create something so thoughtful and original. If two young actors can work so hard at their craft and deliver performances that are this believable and beautifulâŠ
Maybe I can explore my creativity. Maybe I can believe in myself in ways I never allowed before. Maybe I can let myself want what I wantâand be brave enough to try.
That doesnât mean Iâll succeed. But at least I will have tried. And maybeâthat will be enough.
the plot of heated rivalry in a nutshell