Tempest at Best

an admirer of shakespeare’s big dick energy | you can also find me on my carry on blog: @bazcallshimsnow |

[freenowrightnow]

shane: since our rookie season

ilya: i didn’t set up an ad campaign with the two of us together, call you pretty, tease you in the shower, and then almost get caught by your mom in the elevator for you to get our anniversary wrong. since summer before, shane

[my-2nd-account]

The difference is that jealous Ilya looks homicidal while jealous Shane looks suicidal

[no-lovelorn-hazard]

@raccoonboywrites coming correct as always

[my-2nd-account]

The thing is that Ilya has no fucking clue what autism is. He probably read the word when some twitter user called Shane autistic and wanted to look it up but got distracted by a post about Shane's tits or smth.

What he does know though is that Shane folds his clothes before sex. And he smiles at him with adoration when he does it and doesn't rush him or make fun of him for it. He knows Shane doesn't always pick up on his jokes and sarcasm "That's French, Ilya" but he doesn't mind it and would never make Shane feel bad about it or dismiss his response "Yeah I know, Shane". He knows Shane has a PhD in The Arts of Overthinking "Now the bed's all dirty" so he playfully chases his worries away and closes all those open tabs in Shane's brain "What? Shut up". He knows Shane will not rest until he has everything in his life under control so he grumbles when Shane wakes him up in the middle of the night to tell him how they can make it all work but still listens intently to his plan. He knows Shane feels overwhelmed and anxious when stuff doesn't go down as planned "This is my actual fucking nightmare, Ilya" "I'm okay I'm just freaking out I'll be okay in a second" so he softly comforts him and supports him through it "Then maybe it's time to wake up, yes?" "We're good here, your family's here, you're boyfriend's here, we're good here, ok?" He knows Shane has to hear it to believe it "My boyfriend?" so he gently goes "I mean yes, I think so, probably".

He doesn't know Shane is autistic but he knows Shane and he loves Shane and Shane happens to be autistic

[thememedaddy]

[softestaries]

big fan of how hudson williams hit hollywood like a canonball. he runs around like a little chaos gremlin pushing all the made up rules off the windowsill with his paw then stands by connor storrie like that makes him untouchable and it does.

[shakesmypeare]

today was my first proper day at work after the holidays (aka heated rivalry induced psychotic delirium) and I was hanging by a thread already as if it wasn't enough that the Golden Globes were last night and my feed was filled with hot and ripe HudCon content but THEN in a meeting I had a girl tell me she was from Vancouver and that she studied at Montreal and I felt like winter soldier hearing the code words that made him feral like I am sure I vibrated on a frequency so high to prevent myself from asking her anything about heated rivalry and hudson that I think I jumped out of my skin and had to crawl back all the while trying to continue a normal human conversation without mentioning them

[eastofshane]

do you ever think about ilya and just go a little insane? I mean, that's the guy who won the stanley cup for his dead mother. he wears his mother's necklace. he keeps ginger ale in his fridge for shane. he play fights with svetlana. he got nervous when shane kissed him on the forehead after they had sex. he tried to combe back his hair back before opening the door for shane. he asked shane to stay. he made shane a tuna melt. he played with kids in the pool. he gets scared of loon noises. he cried when he told shane he loved him. he confessed his love in russian first. he checked the meaning of compatible to make sure he understood what it meant. he wanted to hold shane's hand at the beach. he devoured those spaghetti. he loves being shane's boyfriend. he loves being part of a family that actually loves him. he is so full of love!

[hazmesentir-archive]

actually do you know what I’m glad this season only has six episodes. I cannot keep logging onto my silly little corporate teams meetings while thinking about shane riding that d like it was his job. I am 33 years old. I have a mortgage. I have not opened this app in ten years. I have spent the last 3 evenings madly writing fan fiction. I am NOT DOING WELL but equally I have never felt so ALIVE

[meatdiaz]

i want to take a moment to express genuine gratitude towards heated rivalry the tv show and everyone involved with making it happen because. i kind of almost didn’t know we could have this? a beautiful and intense and intimate queer love story with a happy ending that doesn’t try to sell us something else and doesn’t try to be sexless to seem more palatable for straight people and doesn’t feel forced and where nobody’s acting like they’re doing us a huuuge big favor for letting it exist. it means a lot

[nyxlyx]

just when i thought i was calming down about this show, i find out shane was protecting his man from the wolf bird in actual fluent bird

[tuesdaygray]

we've reached levels of fan service i never thought possible because what do you mean the guys from heated rivalry are narrating romantasy fairy smut together and it's actually insanely good

[heymacy]

HEATED RIVALRY SEASON ONE + hall of fame text posts

[shakesmypeare]

beginning of 2025 I had a big shift in my life, it was a positive one, but a mentally demanding one nonetheless

in this time I wanted to read the only thing that is able to make me fully escape and be light and carefree, and that is what we call spicy romance books

among thousands of them, I pick heated rivalry and I read it, really like it, and think this was exactly what I needed, I'll save the long game for another time like this

fast-forward to november 2025, and this time, heated rivalry makes a big shift in the world

and I'm just so happy to have randomly read it beforehand and now to be watching it unfold WITH MY OWN EYES and also to witness such a project being born from pure passion, care and talent

of course, I am also sucked into this vortex of watching and re-watching the episodes, following fan pages and press tours, and my socials filling up with only HR content and I am able to think nothing but the show and also they decide to pull the greatest pr move on earth and do quinn (and it being the holiday season doesn't help one bit, it's literally 4am rn)

and in moments of real bittersweet sadness of witnessing something great that probably won't come again, and thinking there won't be another season for at least a year, I remember THERE IS STILL THE LONG GAME!!!!

tldr: I love HR and what it has done to the people online, I love the people who worked on it, and I love romance books!!! (especially when there are GOOD sequels)

[nevcolleil]

In case you weren't sure, "Ember & Ice" was legit written post-Heated Rivalry specifically for Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams. It's not just the rivalry and secret romance - there is dialogue that calls back to Heated Rivalry. HR fans, they came for us specifically.

[shakesmypeare]

I KNEW IT

[shakesmypeare]

to this date, the sexiest thing a man has ever done was tom holland's lip sync battle

..and whatever those freaks from heated rivalry are doing in literally any press tour content or magazine shoot

[alittlefrenchtree]

The precedent Hudson and Connor are setting in terms of press tour is absolutely insane. Marketing teams everywhere are going to look at their two random leads who barely tolerate each other and say "we want you do that" and "that" starts with a mating dance all over the floor of a wrap party and ends with moaning in each other ears for 3 hours 😭 The least crazy thing they did is a matching tattoo that say sex sells can you imagine?? 💀

[livingasaghost]

genuinely i do think it's crazy how this show hit every single mark for no reason other than pure love of the game. like this wasn't a money grab and it didn't think it would be a big success, jacob just read a book he enjoyed and thought huh i think that would be a cool thing to make into a tv show. and then he brought on hudson and connor and they're fresh and passionate and not bogged down by the industry yet and they instantly became best friends and wanted to just have fun bringing these characters to life. and they didn't have a huge budget but they did the most with what they had and everybody took the show seriously and everybody took the book seriously. the cinematographer worked his magic. the music supervisor managed to snag a well-known queer hit and an up and coming new release and old school gems that have been around since the 2000s. it's canadian to the core, built from the ground up. it takes russians and the russian language seriously. it uses sex in such a specific, meaningful way that almost no other show has done thus far, and especially not in a queer context like this. they interlaced every episode with callbacks and parallelism and self-references. they didn't take themselves too seriously. they took everything so seriously. there is love and care baked into the core of this show and it's deeply queer and it doesn't shy away from the horrors of toxic masculinity and hockey culture but it is also, always, a story of joy and love and happiness. and on top of everything, it's almost word for word, the original source material from the book.

like damn it's no wonder this thing has made us all insufferable and become a huge fucking success! so few productions in hollywood are doing it like this!!!