the sign of a true favorite ship is when you don't think about them going on dates or having sex or even kissing. they're just a intangible amalgamation of emotions and concepts and symbolism bouncing around in your brain at all times
okay maybe going a little 2 far with this take. but like. the obsession with the sexuality of the heated rivalry actors is reminding me of the rant i went on during the summer about how we have all started doing the work of the surveillance state for it under the guise of moral justice. the example i used then was the coldplay ceo cheating scandal, and how, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their actions, people's desire to hold these strangers morally accountable for their personal choices in their personal lives felt sinister 2 me. and i feel the same with people digging into the personal lives of hudson williams and connor storrie. like. what exactly do you think you're achieving by attempting to publicize who their romantic partners are? i understand the justification is queer representation, and while i think that argument is pretty weak and i just am never convinced that sexuality needs to be disclosed in professional settings, or that knowing their sexuality would in anyway alter the representation provided by the show written, directed and produced by an openly gay man, i also think if that's really what you care about you would just say it and leave it at that. like you would just say "i wish openly gay actors played gay roles" you wouldn't go "i have a right to know about the personal lives of Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie because they play gay characters and therefore I am going to make it my mission to expose as much about them as possible because i am holding them morally accountable for ... stealing the jobs of gay actors???" like ok senator McCarthy goddamn. it's just crazy to me that we are so excited to refuse ourselves the privilege of a private life or personal choices. everything everyone does must be seen by the collective as morally correct and if you attempt to hide anything from our all seeing eyes we will tear you apart. and like I KNOW im being dramatic. but yall r freaking me out 4 real. tl;dr - no one is paying u to be the sexuality police, leave those boys BE.
i think we're so used to the endless churning out of content slop, especially from production companies trying to make quick dirty money off of "booktok" and the like, that to have a project like heated rivalry that was written, directed, produced and acted by people who genuinely cared and put in thought and effort, is kind of a breath of fresh air. at least for this fluffier romantic content. it's like, you know when your mom bakes something, and she's like "the secret ingredient is love" or whatever. and sure, you could probably find a bakery that would do a better technical job, but somehow it'll never be quite as comforting as the homemade stuff? that's what i think is captivating people about heated rivalry. like the book is mediocre at best, the script is good but still light on substance, but someone loved this and they made it and you can tell, and i think that is very charming for a lot of people in this day and age of heartless media.
things some people, especially people who are new to ao3 or fandom/fanfic space as a whole, seem to not understand:
archive of our own is an archive. not a social media.
archive of our own was built with the stance that there would be no censorship, because other platforms already had censorship where some things that were taboo were reported/removed. ao3 was built with the purpose that all of these works, that were not allowed on other platforms, would be allowed on ao3.
the archive will house anything that’s considered fanworks. so no, you cannot report this fic because it portrays in explicit details taboo topics about xyz, you cannot report that fic because it romanticizes and glorifies xyz. ao3 will not remove any of those fics, because whether or not you like it, those fics do not go against ao3’s terms of service.
“but these things are not allowed on other platforms” that’s precisely why ao3 was created, to house and give a platform to these things that were censored/banned/removed from other platforms.
if you have a problem with this, you can use other platforms to post and read fanfics
but you should also know that ao3 by far has the best tagging system, meaning you won’t get anything like what ao3 provides on other platforms, meaning it may be a pain in the ass for you to find a fic with the prompts and pairing you’re looking for, meaning you may still get jump scared by things that are triggering to you half way through your reading of what you thought was an innocent fic. because other platforms don’t have tagging systems, where you can find and avoid any character/pairing/tag as you please, like ao3.
I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.
I think this is important because a lot of us forget the power of stories to make us feel things about characters who are not like us, who have experienced things that we never will. The purpose of listening to someone else's story should not necessarily be identification, but understanding.