Uneducated Guess: Heated Rivalry

 

So I was talking to my buddy my pal Justin today and we got to the topic of hit movie "Crazy Rich Asians" of which neither of us have seen (edit: I haven’t seen it, but Justin has), and he made a good (probably satirical) question about the movie's big reputation "Do you think people just say it's good because if they say otherwise it'd be racist?". I found this extremely funny and accurate and so I was inspired to start this series, Uneducated Guess, where I will write blogs about works I do not want to see, probably won't ever see, and make up scenarios about what I think it is about and why I won't see it. I can either be completely SO off, or 1000% accurate, but overall, no one can make me start the series or movie and that's the satisfaction I get about just blindly firing into the dark here.

So the first victim is Heated Rivalry. I'm an avid consumer of yaoi, let me come out the gate and say this right now. I like a good casual read once in a while, making ships (at an appropriate level, some of you are insane), and exploring queerness in television and literature. So when Heated Rivalry came out and everyone was freaking out about it I thought eventually I should give it a try. THEN it started becoming TOO popular and I lost interest because I HAVE to be different (it's actually about how the more popular a queer piece is, the less likely it'll actually be about romance but rather fetishization but that's a whole other blogpost). 

What I saw of the series:

- The first 5 minutes (I don't like to watch the series if it takes too long to get in the action so hard pass)

- Some edits (some raunchy ones, was not appealing)

- Some information about the author on Twitter (notoriously reputable news source)

- RELENTLESS MARKETING OF HUDSON WILLIAMS WEEKS BEFORE I EVEN HEARD OF THE DAMN THING. 

Firstly, I think that Heated Rivalry follows a same old "enemies to lovers" trope, which has been written about since B.A. (Before AO3). There's a real problem here with oldheads of Wattpad having latched onto this trope and not letting go since 2012. I believe in the indomitable human spirit, but truly at one point we have to retire some of these themes. ESPECIALLY if you're not going to write it in any other different fashion. 

Guy meets guy > They hate eachother >  Hate sex > One guy has a mental breakdown, they both have hidden pains > Hate sex > Love???

So they're both humans, in the current century, who just happen to be the peakest form of human beings but somehow still realistic, literally just two top athlete dudes. That's just fanfiction writing. 

Yet another similar series is Red, White & Royal Blue (RWB). Similar to HR (Heated Rivalry), RWB was also a big deal in its early days. Enemies to lovers of the SON OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and the SON OF THE KING OF ENGLAND. Come on now, at one point you have to think about at least giving one of them horns or magic or SOMETHING?? I genuinely (unfortunately) saw the entire thing and can tell you now, no part is memorable nor is it remarkable in any way. There's really no struggle to yearn for one another, if you're two of the most important big deal characters in your universe, hence there's no tension to see where the couple goes. Badly written novels about romance tends to focus on a rushed summary of the internal monologue of characters, instead of any research on the people or any regard to the surrounding characters/environment to contribute at all, leaving a bland husk, unecessarily decorated with meaningless sex bait. 

Which brings me to my second point, lust. I saw a reel the other day, a skit about a woman's friends reassuring her dead body in a coffin that they'd deleted all of her pornography and cleared out her room. One friend mentioned she'd deleted Heated Rivalry from her devices, which made me realize that for the first time in my life, a hobby of mine is actually extremely mainstream, so much so that straight women are participating. And straight women? They treat queer art like straight men do, with the bravado of someone who has never/will never experience it, and thus applying their learned perception of what a "spicy" romance is like. With its painful lack of plot aside from the scrambled together familial trauma and stress from being the top athlete ever, the story serves as goon bait for the average heteronormative/mainstream viewers, reducing the characters to men who make love and are attractive, making it easy to flaunt as cosmetically attractive and encouraging viewers to the honestly lackluster writing. The characters are presented exactly as they are, assumptions from a straight woman about how gay men must make love, projected onto straight men. 

Maybe it's a disjointed perspective of women in the patriarchy, playing along to a set of rules that neither benefit them nor were created for them at all. Society as we know it as women, coexisting with men has always been like playing a video game with your big sibling, convinced that you’re contributing on the same level, blissfully unaware the controller has been off the entire time. This is why, straight or gay, any time I'm faced with a straight female-written gay relationship, I’ve always been a little bit more reserved to explore the type of media to straight up mentally boycotting it.

——————————————————— 3 months later (11/08/2026) ———————————-

Hi, I’m back from a while of not blogging/lowkey forgetting about the blogs i was mid-writing. 

Still haven’t watched HR, still not going to watch it, and have been vindicated by all of the stuff coming out about Hudson Williams!!!!!!!!

Life is good when things go my way. Never giving a gay life action romance a chance unless it’s between two heavily researched historical/sci-fi/supernatural mains ever again. At least with the other one it gives the incentive to do some exploring on how gay people are like/what we actually want, preventing the furthering of misunderstanding and distancing a lot of us from mainstream media.