‘Heated Rivalry’ Scores Big With Hockey and Sex (The New York Times)
Stupid NYT API is not letting me insert the link, so fuck it, here’s the article outside of paywall!
By Erik Piepenberg
Check out the list of the most popular shows on HBO Max right now, and you will see some expected titles. There is “It: Welcome to Derry,” inspired by a Stephen King novel, and “Mad Men,” the acclaimed period drama that landed on the platform earlier this month.
But hovering near the top is a new series that until about a month ago almost nobody in the United States had heard of: “Heated Rivalry,” a drama about the hot-and-heavy romance between two closeted male professional hockey players, made for the Canadian streaming service Crave.
Buzz has been mounting since at least September, when images of its leading beefcakes — Connor Storrie, 25, and Hudson Williams, 24 — flooded social media. Romance readers were on it, too: The series is mostly adapted from the novel of the same name in “Game Changers,” the author Rachel Reid’s wildly popular male-male hockey-themed romance series.
The frenzy kicked into overdrive on Black Friday, when the first two episodes premiered. It has since been at or near the top of the most-watched series list on HBO Max, which has already renewed it for another season. Bars that have been packed for hosting parties are on tap for a very busy Friday, when the first season finale premieres.
The attention showered on “Heated Rivalry” has been “quite extraordinary,” said Williams, who joined Storrie and the show’s creator, Jacob Tierney, in a recent video interview.
“The pitch was a small Canadian show, emphasis on small and Canadian,” said Williams, who grew up in British Columbia. “I never really imagined this.”
A big reason the show caught fire is the abundance of furtive and enthusiastic hookups between its leading characters: the cocky, Russian-born Ilya (Storrie) and the collected Canadian Shane (Williams). The scenes might be considered too hot for streaming TV, were it not for the carefully positioned thighs.
Just as steamy for many fans is the men’s passion outside the bedroom, expressed through fervid sexts and lingering stares.
The slow burn is that they have feelings for each other, not that they are attracted to each other,” said Tierney, who wrote and directed the series.
When the actors were asked if they identified under the L.G.B.T.Q. umbrella, Tierney answered first.
“I don’t think we need to get into anything about the actors and their personal lives,” he said. “It’s so much more important to have what is clearly a fantasy play out in the terms of the characters and their stakes in the show.”
Williams jumped in. “Connor and I want to keep our private lives private, with all due respect,” he said. “But if it’s not clear, we have the most love and care for the L.G.B.T. community.
Storrie said he and Williams had an immediate rapport but called on a cadre of coaches to help them ease into the physical demands of their roles. The hockey player Cam Fergus helped with athletics; the intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter got them acclimated to each others’ bodies.
Storrie also needed a dialect coach (Kate Yablunovsky, who also translated dialogue into Russian), which may come as a surprise: He is from Odessa but the one in West Texas, not Ukraine. Storrie said he had loved playing with accents since he was a child, when he used Google Translate to write and rehearse monologues in a variety of languages.
“I was always obsessed with Eastern European stoicism and how the accent affects behavior,” he said. “I pocketed those traits.”
“Heated Rivalry” is a life-changing break for the actors. Williams, the son of a Korean mother and British-Dutch father, had supporting film and television roles under his belt. Storrie, a performing arts school kid, was best known for a pivotal role in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
The incognito days are over. Earlier this month, Storrie and Williams walked the red carpet at an event for the Actor Awards, formerly the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
This level of fame is also new for Tierney, who is best known as a developer of the beloved Canadian sitcom “Letterkenny” — he also wrote, directed and played a barely closeted pastor — and its hockey-themed spinoff, “Shoresy.” Tierney, who is gay, said he was introduced to “Heated Rivalry” during the pandemic, when he listened to the audio version of the novel. In adapting it, he looked to “Letterkenny,” a rural absurdist comedy that was a hit for Crave and Hulu, for a lesson.
“The more personal you make something, the more intimate you make it, the more chance you have of reaching a larger amount of people,” he said.
It worked. Casey Bloys, the chief executive and chairman of HBO and HBO Max Content, said acquiring the show was “an easy yes” that had “far exceeded our expectations.” He said early data showed the viewership was split between men, likely gay, and women, a majority of the romance readership.
“We’ve done a lot of shows with racy sex scenes, so I thought it would make some noise,” he said.
The author Reid, who is based in Halifax, said her life has been “nuts” since the “Heated Rivalry” trailer premiered in October. It is a turn of events she never would have predicted when “Game Changer,” the first novel in the series, debuted as an e-book in 2018. Harlequin has since released the entire “Game Changer” series in paperback editions, and “Heated Rivalry” is on best-seller lists. What’s the draw?
“The rivalry element helps,” said Reid, who is married to a man but said she keeps her sexual orientation private. “That forbidden romance thing is always appealing, the opposites attract thing.”
“I like to think they’re interesting characters,” she added. “Enough that people really want to read more and more.”
The show isn’t for all gay tastes. The “I Love L.A.” actor Jordan Firstman said in a recent interview with Vulture that he found the show’s sex scenes inauthentic. He also took the actors to task for not coming out, if they are gay.
“I don’t respect you, because you care too much about your career and what’s going to happen if people think you’re gay,” he said. The feud seems to have cooled: Last week Williams posted a selfie with Firstman on Instagram, adding a heart emoji.
Joey Marcacci isn’t worried about all that. A board member of the New York City Pride Hockey Alliance, an organization for queer ice hockey players and fans, he said the show tapped into what many hockey fans struggle with: How to love and play a sport that comes with a culture that is a “very toxic environment for any queer person.
To date, the N.H.L. doesn’t have an active player out and never has.
That a hot romance can blossom under those circumstances, even a closeted and fictional one, Marcacci added, “is exactly what I want to see.”
Teodora Jeremić spoke with Connor Storrie about what it feels like to become famous overnight and why you shouldn’t take yourself too seriou
In the days when the collective euphoria surrounding the series “Heated Rivalry” is reaching its peak, Teodora Jeremić spoke with Connor Storrie about what it feels like to become famous overnight, why you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously, and how the role of art manifests today.
At its core, life is unpredictable. That is both the best and the worst thing one could ever say about it. More often than not, despite all our attempts to plan it, control it, anticipate it, we have absolutely no idea what will happen next. The tools we rely on—those we even practice and perfect—often prove insufficient in preparing us for what lies ahead. In truth, we can never be absolutely certain of anything, because unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), nothing depends solely on us. Milan Kundera was right: the lightness of our being truly is unbearable. To perform a play without rehearsal is a complicated endeavor, and yet, in most situations, we endure—if not even succeed. Still, the fact that life can always surprise us again is the one reliable twist we can count on to alter the entire plot.
Heated Rivalry is a seven-year-old novel by Rachel Reid that belongs to that particular category of books not everyone stumbles upon. So niche—tailored for devoted romance readers with a very specific sub-genre—that while it could certainly have become a hit on BookTok within a defined demographic, its chances of reaching a truly massive global audience seemed slim. The series adaptation was filmed in under forty days for a Canadian streaming platform most of the global population had never heard of. The same could be said for Connor Storrie or his co-star Hudson Williams, who cast as two impossibly charismatic, self-assured professional hockey players who, beyond their passion for the sport, share another, far more intimate one. Each other.
If we were to follow the “standard parameters” of global success, Heated Rivalry would hardly seem like a guaranteed triumph. And yet, what happened instead transported us somewhere entirely different. It turned a page in the sacred book of popular culture, carving out new space for how we perceive success and collective fandom. Over the past few months, conversations about this series have reverberated across all meridians and in all the fields – from memes to podcasts and everything in between. And it is easy to understand why. Beautiful people. An amalgam of longing, love, and rivalry. Charged dynamics. Tension. Women existing beyond standard heteronormative roles. A niche experience with a happy ending. In short, almost everything we wish would surround us—on screen and in life.
In the thirty-second pause between a charming “Ćao, kako si?” delivered in flawless Serbian with the softest Russian inflection, and a casual “I will be back in no time,” I found myself contemplating the dizzying speed with which Heated Rivalry fever swept the world—launching Connor and Hudson into the stratosphere of not only film stardom but fashion as well. I mentally recount the months between the start of filming and the global hype. Not too much. At that moment, Connor returned to his armchair, coffee in hand. In Los Angeles, the day has only just begun, and after an all-day shoot for the Vogue Adria cover, he appears rested, enthusiastic, almost untouched by exhaustion. There is an honesty about him—rare, necessary, and impossible to manufacture.
A once-in-a-generation talent like Connor Storrie, photographed at Sable Movie Ranch—the legendary backdrop to more than 10,000 feature films, television series, and music videos including Oppenheimer, Top Gun: Maverick, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Iron Man, Twilight, Modern Family, Miracle Workers, and iconic videos by Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, and Sabrina Carpenter—feels like a quiet prophecy of enduring relevance. We are only at the beginning of his career, and these first chapters deserve to be savored.
“How insane does everything that’s happened over the past few months feel?”
“It feels great,” he laughs. “But honestly, I haven’t even had enough time to think about any of it. I always have a little emotional delay. When something happens, it takes me weeks to process and connect with it. And in this case, maybe that’s not a bad thing. If I had sat down and really thought about everything, I have a feeling it would have become overwhelming.”
Overwhelming. The very word I had in mind. Also the word I use most often to describe our contemporary moment. It is difficult—sometimes impossible—to respond to every demand the world places on us, to the manic speed at which news cycles refresh, to the relentless flood of information, faces, opinions, actions. It becomes nearly impossible to discern what is truly relevant, what is worth fighting for, which direction to move in, whom to listen to. Perhaps the greatest challenge of modern existence is remaining present and devoted within it all.
“I don’t even know the answer,” Connor admits. “But I consciously try to be present and aware of what’s happening, because it’s very easy to forget when you’re constantly on the treadmill. There’s so much going on. I put a lot of energy into staying grounded in where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m speaking to. I also limit my time online, how much I expose myself to both positive and negative commentary. We often forget—especially because of social media—that just because everyone has a public platform for their opinion doesn’t mean it is really important. It comes and goes. Someone being loud doesn’t make them right. I’ve also realized I need a creative outlet. After a few weeks of not writing, creating, thinking, planning, I feel lost. I need tactile things to ground me. Making music, writing, planning films. That brings me back to my center. That’s where I have control. Where I’m not just playing a role.”
Does that mean that, unlike Rozanov—whom we might describe as a hedonist in constant pursuit of the new, the thrilling, the different—Connor might instead carry the label of a perfectionist?
“When I was younger, I did gymnastics,” he says. “And honestly, I’ve never been great at team sports, because I love collaboration, but I don’t like my success depending entirely on others. So yes, that’s where the perfectionism comes from,” he laughs. “I’m competitive. I like control, precision, nuance, dedication, hard work. I believe in those things. You need them if you want to be an actor. On the other hand, my family moved a lot—I changed 13 schools,” he laughs again, “and that gave me flexibility. I’m comfortable with new people and starting over.”
A perfect balance of opposites. But how difficult is it to reconcile those extremes in everyday life?
“In acting, it’s easier to calm the perfectionism because I come in with the attitude that I will do my absolute best, and I truly trust the director to guide me. When I write or direct my own projects, it’s harder. I know exactly what I want. For a long time, that held me back from writing and directing because I was convinced my ideas could only be realized with a huge team and a massive budget. From a very early age, I loved watching films and knew I wanted to act—but I also knew I wanted to create my own work. Over time, I’ve gotten better at adapting to circumstances, and now limitations actually attract me. The film I’m finishing now, my directorial debut Transaction Planet, was shot on an iPhone, on locations around LA, with almost no budget. I find that limitation inspiring. I think it forces you to focus on what is important rather than get lost in production value or aesthetic. It makes you focus on the story—on what people say, what they do, and finding creative ways to make it happen. Being forced to adapt stretches you in such a cool way, and that brings a new form of creativity.”
A shift in perspective may well be the fundamental premise that makes Heated Rivalry a meeting point for the most unexpected fandoms. It brings us all to the same place, orbiting one essential theme: love. I will never forget the first time I watched Eat Pray Love. By the standards of high cinema, it might not rank among the most refined works, but its opening—when the author reflects on her friend working at a refugee center where, despite all tragedy, people speak most often about love—remains a lesson worth remembering forever. It’s all about love. For a long time, love was out of fashion. And yet, we missed it desperately.
“When it comes to film, I’ve always been drawn to darker, more brutal, moody things, like work of Yorgos Lanthimos. I don’t always gravitate toward feel-good movies. That is also funny because the things I write are darker too, but they always end up as love stories. I love absurd sensations, films that make you feel something—but I also love human relationships. As a teenager, I had that idea that only art films mattered, that commercial films had no soul. And then you watch a romantic comedy and you’re like, ‘Oh. I get why everyone talks about this. It’s actually good.’”
So we agree—love is what gathers us?
“I really like that theory. And I think it’s true. For as long as I’ve been aware of popular culture, longing, devotion, love—the whole package—felt deeply uncool. It didn’t matter. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to explain why Heated Rivalry resonated the way it did, because I see it from the inside. What I find important might not be what audiences see. But one theme always comes up: the chemistry between Hudson and me. We genuinely love and understand each other, and I think that shows. And there was so much enthusiasm poured into this project. That energy radiates outward. Also, individually, the characters are compelling. That’s why I fell in love with Ilya. When Jacob sent me the full script, I gave myself completely to it. I cried, I laughed, I cared about every dynamic. He goes through so much—with his mother, his father dementia, his awful brother. He carries the immigrant experience. The accent that sets him apart. All of that makes him fascinating. People fell in love with the characters, and Hudson and I brought a love story with a happy ending. So yes, I like that theory. It feels like we’re back on the page where love is cool again. People want to connect.”
In a time of profound alienation, connection may be the most natural act available to us—and the most valuable gift we can offer one another. To recognize, support, create space, build safety, and through that shared vulnerability, connect in the essence of human experience. Not unlike the central entity in Connor’s Transaction Planet, where an alien spirit inhabits a human body simply to experience this hyperbolic, strange sensation we call reality. To learn what it means to have a body. To connect. To desire. To obtain. That is why popular culture is powerful and perhaps louder today than ever. If nothing else, the success of this series and the explosive performance of Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl reminded us just how political it can be—both platform and instrument in representing communities that need visibility and representation. In that sense, Heated Rivalry opened an essential conversation about vulnerability and queerness in sport—an arena traditionally perceived as hostile to both.
“I think that’s beautiful,” Connor says. “It’s a subtext, a purpose of creation. Rachel Reid wrote this story in a very specific genre, consciously and intentionally. She’s said herself she wanted to address homophobia in hockey and spark conversation. And Jacob was very vocal about wanting to create a gay love story that wasn’t tragic. Not about people being torn apart, about lives destroyed without a happy ending. It’s important to return to Rachel’s intention and how Jacob translated it to screen. They’re brilliant. And it makes me so happy that it resonated. I receive so many messages, especially from queer people, who feel seen through Ilya. Who feel validated as bisexual. Who genuinely connect to that narrative. This could have remained just a sweet love story with a twist. But it’s incredibly moving how deeply it echoed, how many people globally saw themselves in it.”
Art, in any form, has always carried a potential for social change—even when it arrives late, after our patience has worn thin. Time spent in collective struggle, connection, questioning, and even micro-shifts in consciousness always counts. “I think the role of art is to present an experience, and the conversation we have around it is what creates change. It’s a delicate line. Art that tries to be didactic can backfire. Heated Rivalry wasn’t created as a pretentious lecturing. It simply shared an experience so people could understand a different position. That honesty is what drew people in. You can connect to a story on a human level. That’s why it matters. Not because it’s over-intellectualized or academic. It’s about specific human experiences you can witness and understand, even if you don’t identify with them, and that make you think. I’ve heard conversations about hockey, sport, sexuality from people who played sports and realized, statistically, at least one person they knew probably went through something similar. That’s the most you can hope for—that you’re part of something strong enough to make people reflect on their own experience.”
And speaking of reflection—how often does he fall into that all-too-familiar spiral of self-sabotage and fear of future expectations, real or imagined? How does he define success?
“I’ve had enough minor disappointments that I’ve become disillusioned with expectations and chasing specific outcomes. You can’t put that much weight on anything. Let’s say I do a movie and it’s not good and people don’t like it. That hurts, of course. But if I have faith in my vision, in my creativity, and there are people out there who see me as an artist, then it’s like—okay, we did that, let’s move on. Some of the most brilliant actors have been part of things that weren’t great. Projects can take a sour turn. We never know. And that’s okay. It can be scary. But that’s not proof of quality. Even with Heated Rivalry, I was fully aware it could have been cringe. It could have gone wrong. That doesn’t mean someone did bad work. Reception is partly out of your hands. Some great films fail commercially and become classics 25 years later. I try to remind myself of that constantly. All you can do is your best, go for it. Time keeps moving. So just go big and don’t get too lost in it.”
Piping hot take: I don't give a shit if straight actors play queer characters as long as they do so with empathy and authenticity. When you say shit like "only queer actors should play queer characters" what you're actually saying is only OUT queer actors should play queer characters. If you're assuming an actor (or anyone else, for that matter) who hasn't declared their sexuality is straight, you are participating in heteronormativity.
"I don't want to see anyone blaming abstaining voters for this!"
Of course you don't. The entire idea of abstaining was that you could pretend this didn't involve you. Not getting blamed was more important to you than doing any kind of damage control, more important than protecting any of the people you said you wanted to protect. And in this moment, I don't really care what you want. Of course, this isn't entirely your fault. Of course other people made this worse. But if you're going to pretend you had nothing to do with this, forgive me if I ignore you.
I worked the busiest early voting center in my city with record turnout. You know who had no problem coming out to vote? Trump supporters. Loud, proud, Trump supporters. They came out to vote by any means necessary. In wheelchairs, with walkers and canes and crutches, with help from friends and family and us. When there was an issue with the mail-in ballots this year they dragged their asses out to vote in person. They would not let anything stop them from voting.
So yeah, I have no sympathy for the people who COULD have easily voted with no barriers and CHOSE not to because while they certainly don't support Trump, they don't 100% agree with Kamala on every single thing. If this is you, you've lost your right to complain about anything he does. Because you chose not to do anything about it.
I feel like 4 episodes is just right. Now actual Halloween is Thursday & there is nothing to post for it. If they had another episode then it would be perfectly spaced out IMO. But I think they were probably spooked by last year's drop off for the 4th episode.
I saw the screenshots and honestly just kind of...sighed really loudly. I get that she wants to defend herself and everyone else but like, doing this just gives them more ammo to go after you and inevitably (as is what always happens) Colby.
So why bother? Just leave the gc, block the little fuckers if they won't stop trying to add you, and ignore them.
And for God's sakes, don't speak Beetlejuice back into existence.
as an ml, do you believe acab and why? honest question, just seeking to understand, I’m aware of messed up things cops have done but idk if I can accept that every cop is inherently morally compromised or that policing is inherently evil
acab is not about every single cop being individually or interpersonally 'evil'. it is about the role of police in society and the role of police as an institution. the police in a bourgeoisie state exist to enforce the power of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat--this means, first and foremost, protecting private property rights and suppressing resistance to the bourgeoisie state.
however, to be clear, almost all cops are corrupt violent racist pieces of shit. this is not because of some magic Cop Curse that turns them evil, but because the institutions of policing are designed to filter out anyone who has any genuinely good intentions. ''good cops'' flunk out of police training, quit, or get killed by the rest of them. cops are taught to be violent, racist, and escalatory and are rewarded professionally for doing so and bullied and driven out of the force if they refuse to be.
under a socialist state, the role of the police is no longer to protect the interests of a bourgeoisie class. however, there still exists a very real danger of them still becoming an oppressive force in their role as 'special bodies of armed men' as lenin puts it, existing in a role in society that inherently separates them from the rest of the proletarian class rather than allowing them to exist within it as 'self-arming autonomous organizations' (lenin goes over this distintction in the first part of state & revolution)
I saw your posts on BF, my favorite and what calms me down is their insight into the love they had and how it was reflected in the story. But I was curious about what you think and the feeling you feel in New York Sense, for me this post of Eiji BF is beautiful, real and with so much nostalgia and gratitude to be with Ash for the brief time they had with each other. It's another letter to Ash, saying he'll wait until they meet again!
Anon, first of all, thank you for sending this ask. It’s one of the most unique questions I’ve received so far :) And I’m glad you liked reading my posts, hope I was able to express what I wanted to in a coherent manner.
I discovered New York Sense soon after finishing with the manga and Garden of Light. I remember I was frantically searching for all related works or info, and I stumbled upon a few scans on a website.
The feeling I felt when I first went through the pictures of NYS, was - loneliness. That’s the one word that’d fit my thoughts at that point perfectly.
It seemed to me, that each of Eiji’s pictures were like an observation of life around him from the outside, as if he was removing himself from it, and simply capturing the essence of what he saw through his lens. There were so many pictures of the lives of others - his friends and acquaintances. There was Sing, Max, Michael, even Jenkins and his daughters.
And then there was just Ash. Pages and pages of his memories with Ash in those two years Eiji knew him.
It felt like Eiji was documenting the life around him moving on, flowing ahead in years – people growing up, getting older, getting married…. while his time had halted at 1987 forever.
Eiji’s pictures of Ash feel like a carefully preserved bundle of precious memories. He painted Ash just as he was - an ordinary 17 year old boy - sleepy in the mornings, having a coke, taking a dip in the river, enjoying a meal in their apartment. In his pictures, Ash looked happy. More than a goodbye, it felt like Eiji was showing us a fragment of all that Ash Lynx was to him - bright, joyous, and eternally unforgettable. It’s this feeling of longing that struck me most.
The dedication was even more heartbreaking to read :
You summed it up very nicely– Eiji’s photos were ‘beautiful, real and with so much nostalgia and gratitude to be with Ash for the brief time they had with each other’
Eiji’s photography was already critically acclaimed. His work was full of an “indescribable tenderness”, which Eiji attributes to him viewing life as comprising of both light and darkness, and embracing both sides of it. Eiji was a compassionate person by nature, and he, probably more than anyone in Banana Fish, underwent the most radical of changes in the entire duration of the manga’s events. He overcame his dark phase of an athlete’s failed career, formed unlikely friendships, witnessed deaths, found love, and then lost it forever. He was probably the one person who saw all of life’s most cruel darks and the happiest lights all in the space of a meager two years.
The preface to NYS speculates, “Perhaps Ash Lynx is the man most benefited by Okumura’s ‘indescribable tenderness’” and that, in the current series of photographs, “the New York street scene could be the ‘darkness’ Okumura talked of, and Ash Lynx the ‘light’”
And I think it’s a pretty significant comment. The streets of a concrete city were seen by most people as unfamiliar, a violent place in those times, unkind and unforgiving. But Eiji paints them through an eye of tenderness. He did the same for Ash, even all those years back. He didn’t see Ash as a violent gang leader, or a killer, but instead, a kindred spirit, as someone to understand and care for and love. And that emotion spills over into all his photos of Ash.
You’re right, it does feel like a letter to Ash – a memoir of their time together, a document of Eiji’s personal growth as a person, of how much he has lived on, despite all the heartache and irreversible loss that was Ash’s death. It was nostalgic, and bittersweet to see. In some ways, New York Sense made Banana Fish even more real to me. It felt like witnessing the fates of real people, of their lives, and looking at real places through Eiji’s lens. It’s strangely fitting, I think. The author gave us Eiji, as a character, as a person, and told us his stories right from the beginning of his life in Fly Boy, until the conclusion of his career. And that’s one more reason I got attached to him more than the others I’m afraid :’)
I won’t drag this on any longer, I feel like I’ve rambled on more than what you asked for, but well….this is how it was to me :)
( PS - all scans from the lovely T! @ash-callenreese )
Do you think Eiji ever got over Ash's death? I often see people saying he'll mourn him forever, will never be truly happy again and continues to run after people who look like Ash. Idk, in GoL he indeed still tries to cope with it but at the end and especially that last photo of him in NYS tells me he'll be fine for some reason. Of course he'll never forget Ash but I still like to think he won't be depressed forever and while remembering him, he's still able to find some sort of happiness.
Hello Anon! Sorry it took me so long to answer this :“(
GoL happens around 1994, about eight years after the end of Banana Fish, and NYS a few years later, around early 1999.
Call me overly optimistic, but I really do believe that Eiji got over Ash’s death at some point of his life, and the healing process had already begun by the end of GoL.
GoL’s whole plot centered around Eiji and Sing, the two people who were arguably the most affected by Ash’s death. As Sing mentions here :
Eiji changed completely after that incident, and we can all imagine why. It’s not easy to pack up a whole lifetime’s worth of memories you experience in the space of two years into a neat little package and store it away, and we see how Eiji and Sing both are coping with the same issue, but in different ways.
After the harsh confrontation and tense conversation that they have at the end in Cape Cod about Ash’s death, about the guilt they both are harbouring about the whole thing, I think Eiji realised what was holding him back : his wish to never let Ash go, to never share Ash’s memories with the rest of the world, in a way, to keep Ash all to himself
.
Ironically, it’s the same thing Sing accuses Ash (addressing his computer as a remnant of Ash’s memories) :
.
Eiji finally takes a step forward by showcasing Ash’s single photo at the end of his exhibition. I think that fact alone is symbolic of him letting go of his pain, of him trying to organise his life around things other than the grief that was his sole anchor point for eight long years.
And as you said, anon, I do think he’ll be able to find peace, even happiness and contentment. And Eiji believes that he will too
In NYS, the last photograph is his self portrait, with his dog, Buddy. And in it, Eiji is smiling. He is shown with short hair, and as I talked about it before, I think he really is trying to get his life back from all the pieces that were left behind.
New York and all the events of Banana Fish left an indelible mark on Eiji, which is constantly reflected on his style of photography, his relationships with his friends and family, and most of all, on himself, as a person.
The dedication to NYS was especially nostalgic to me :
But I think it was a way of Eiji acknowledging his memories, and admitting that while the longing would never really vanish, he’d learn to be okay. Eventually.
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