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Romance Me
187 Plays18 days ago
HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!! In this episode, we're joined by a couple guests to talk about romance novels!!!! We're a bunch of readers, but what is it about romance novels that we love so much? Do we see more adaptations in the future? Who is the intended audience, and who is the realized audience? Where does Heated Rivalry fit into this genre? Tune in to find out our thoughts!!!! Thanks for listening!!!!
Sources & References:
How Bridgerton Lost Its Way by Jayashree Kamble
Also, in case people are interested, here’s a free/easily accessible Thai BL Rec. The series is fully available from GMMTV on YouTube and was helpfully organized into a playlist here: Not Me (2021).
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Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Since Rookie Season. Well, the summer before. a heated rivalry fan companion podcast where your hosts, Amanda, Lau, and Lauren, break down episodes from the Crave Canada television series, the Game Changers novels, and various media surrounding this fan phenomenon.
00:00:17
Speaker
Today we're looking at the genre that started it all. We have two guests here to discuss the realm of romance novels, so stay tuned to learn a thing of or two.
Recap and Introduction of Guests
00:00:36
Speaker
Hi y'all, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed our conversation about feminism and the women of heated rivalry. Last week, we love the women in heated rivalry. This week we're taking a little bit of a different direction. I feel like we almost maybe should have had this conversation like way long ago, but it's fine. We're we're just placing it at the end of this, at the end of the season. Which is totally great! This week we have two very close scholar friends of mine on the show, Brie and Katie, and we're going to talk romance novels. So I'll let them introduce themselves.
00:01:07
Speaker
Hey y'all, my name is Brie. I am Lauren's friend and go by she, her pronouns. I research all things media, both digital and I guess traditional, and i'm a big romance fan. And Lauren got me into fetal rivalry, but we'll we'll keep talking about that later.
00:01:27
Speaker
Mostly I research blackness and digital fandom. So right on time. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Thank you for that little introduction, Katie, if you'd like to.
00:01:39
Speaker
Hey, I'm Katie Morrissey. I am an assistant professor at Arizona State University, and I focus on romance across media in my research. Yes. No, I'm so excited to have both of these people on because Katie is like the one of the people that got me into like looking at romance and fandom.
00:01:58
Speaker
And then Brie is also just my romance friend. We I send her Rex all of the time. And she sends me Rex. And we we it's very
Why 'Heated Rivalry' is Captivating
00:02:08
Speaker
cyclical. We love it. So I want to ask both of you one Well, I guess Katie just said how you got into heated rivalry. But um the other question I want to know is, like, why do you think it's addictive? Because that's what we're trying to figure out this season. Like, what is so addictive about it? And like, do you think the fact that it like started as a romance novel has like any implications on its addictiveness? So like, yeah, take that away.
00:02:33
Speaker
ah Yeah, I'll go ahead and start. Yeah, so first of all, as Lauren just said, they introduced me to of Rivalry, mainly through other hockey series, the Pucking Around series. thought um I haven't finished it yet, but we have shared a lot of love over that series. A lot of something. Yeah. So when Heat of Rivalry came out,
00:03:00
Speaker
Lauren was like, yo there's a ah ah show coming out about the romance novel and I'm all the way down for that. But I hadn't gotten to reading it yet and watching it, although it had been on my like pleasure, you know, like I really want to get into this. I think it's addictive for a few reasons. The first thing I text Lauren was like, it's hot. This is hot. It is hot.
00:03:22
Speaker
so Your chemistry, like, I don't know if I've seen fictional portrayal of anything romance related in a while. It's not as hot as heat of robbery is.
00:03:33
Speaker
And you mean the TV show, right? Like you're talking about that. Yes, the TV show. The chemistry in the book is great too, but like the physical kind of representation of that chemistry is off the charts. It's pretty, like it's shot so beautifully. love the cinematography, gorgeous. The kind of storytelling behind the storytelling is amazing. And then, you know, Katie, I'm sure we'll get into it. has the tropes.
00:03:59
Speaker
It has the things. Like there's several things that are comforting in terms of the romance genre that are present. And that's what's addicting to me. And then, of course, like in these days and times that we are living in um knowing that it's working towards like the happy ending, of course.
00:04:17
Speaker
I mean, but we'll talk about that, I'm sure. But yeah, it has all the in the book and the this show yeah for sure so for me it's funny i had I knew about the romance novels but I've been avoiding them I'm not a sports romance person at all um and so I and I'm not a contemporary romance person either we'll talk about this I'm sure later but I tend to avoid contemporary romances for the most part I tend to avoid sports romances completely and so I knew the books were popular but I ignored them how however I'm very interested in queer romance in general
00:04:53
Speaker
And I've been paying a lot of attention to the different queer romance dramas that are coming out of Asia right now. And so i saw all of sudden this trailer pop up for this new kind of short series coming out of Canada. And I was like, huh, I wonder if they're paying attention to what's going on in Asia and how many English speaking fans are watching these Asian dramas right now, like, like, and consuming them like popcorn.
00:05:20
Speaker
And so I was really interested in the in the in the series. And that's kind of from there, once I watched the series, I went and I read the books and kind of have i've kind of absorbed all of it. But my starting point was really kind of being curious about what was going on with television and and how this series... and we' It's not like...
00:05:37
Speaker
Heated Rivalry exists in a vacuum. It's not like Queer as Folk didn't exist or
Personal Connections to Romance Novels
00:05:40
Speaker
The L Word didn't exist or these other kinds of queer dramas haven't existed in American, North American television before, but we've had a lull for a while. And Heated Rivalry kind of burst in and was this really kind of exciting kind of...
00:05:54
Speaker
seemingly new thing, at least new in terms of the past couple of years. So i think I think that's kind of how I came to Hedded Rivalry. And then in terms of its addictiveness, i think so I think it's really interesting to talk about the book and the TV show on their own, but I also think collectively they're doing something. I think that each of them has their own strengths and they're each...
00:06:16
Speaker
kind of doing different things very well. But collectively, i think that one of the reasons why the story itself is addictive is because there's so many gaps in the narrative. There's so much time jumping. And if you think about fans and what fans thrive on is speculation and filling in gaps and figuring out what's going on. um And so I think in terms of like addictiveness and fueling a kind of fan response and fueling rewatching and rereading, there's this way in which the kind of narrative structure of the books and the TV show and the way it jumps in time and you have these kind of gaps in the narrative, I think that really fuels a lot of consumption of these stories. that's That's one kind of take on the addictiveness. I also think just from a romance perspective, like the thing that always works with genre is you're looking for something that's familiar, but also different. And I think both of them very successfully give us things that are familiar, but give us new twists on them. So that would be my take on its addictiveness.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I love your take, Katie. Yeah, I haven't thought about that before. as as As someone who studied literary studies for a long, long time, this is like my favorite kind of take. And I i hope my students, if they're listening, they take that and...
00:07:33
Speaker
and remember like how much we love to fill in this the the blanks and how to speculate and how that is one of the best parts about reading and consuming narrative yeah and if you think about how how the they end right even in the most recent book that we have they they always end with a little bit of an a lack of resolution right so you Even the endings kind of fuel further rereading, further the speculation about the future. Like, there's this way in this, they just constantly kind of drive more from the audience. yeah yeah Yeah, no, I love that. And I like, I've seen so many, like, really, like, we talked about the fan fiction on this, on the pod, and like,
00:08:17
Speaker
We love the like social media AU fix where people write as though they are on hockey Twitter and being like, I think these two guys are dating in the entire time. Like, and being like writing these complete AUs that are just being like, I am a holed off shipper in 2013. Like love hockey. Yeah. And so I like I love that kind of stuff. And I think that really like I think that like speaks to what you were just saying. But also i want to like I think your point that you said about like, we crave something familiar is like, you know, but something that's different. I think that's a great segue. And I kind of just talking about like romance novels in genre or like romance novels in general. So like, have we all before we encountered this, have we all read romance novels? Like I specifically, Bri and I went through like a period of like in like 2023 2024 where I read like 150 hockey romance novels, like both straight and like gay. And I was like, I literally kept like a recording of like, this one was good. This one was bad. This one was good. And like also started going to the physical games. Let just it out there. Yes. No. And it like got me into hockey. Like, it's like crazy. So, but like, I mean, I definitely read romance novels when I was like younger because like they were smutty and like, it wasn't as like serious as going online to like Pornhub. It was like... I can read my smuts and nobody will know what it's about, you know? So, but I read like the Dear John, fit like all the Nicholas Sparks stuff. Cause I felt like that was really popular when I was like growing up. So that was kind of like my introduction to romance novels. And then it kind of just spiraled from there. So I think now I definitely read a lot of fan fiction that has a lot of similarities to romance novels, but
00:10:15
Speaker
not so much romance novels themselves as much anymore but i also go through phases too katie brie whatever of y'all want to jump in about romance novels i would say i just grew up surrounded by them my grandmother was a huge romance novel reader got them in the mail on the regular um and because that's how you got them back in the day like you mail ordered your romance levels you they'd showed up one a month right um and so i kind of grew up around them um i when I was in grad school, of the reason I started studying romance is because I was trying to understand why my mother, myself, and i had such different tastes in romance. We were all clearly interested in it, but we were all clearly interested in very different things.
00:10:58
Speaker
And so I definitely have been surrounded by them, but I've always had a very love-hate relationship with conventional commercial romance novels. i They didn't work for me. Fan fiction worked for me. Queer romance worked for me, but straight romance, I always struggled with. And so in terms of my, and it's very subjective, right? Why this happens, how people come to different kinds of romance, I think is a very personal thing. But for me, i often kind of can't connect to the female protagonists. And so I find myself wanting to kind of read something that doesn't often have a female protagonist because I just, it's easier for me to enjoy it. But so in that sense, I've i've always been surrounded by romance, but my romance tastes, I feel like are are always kind of weird and capricious.
Historical and Cultural Context of Romance Novels
00:11:43
Speaker
And like, and i'll I'll suddenly like a romantic comedy then I'll hate five others or I'll read a contemporary heterosexual romance and love it. And then I'll read 20 others and not like them. So I think my taste is just weird in general when it comes to romance, but I've definitely grown up very exposed to it.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Same. That's so interesting. i as As I was listening to both of you, I was thinking about how the Anglophone versus the Hispanophone publishing industry works. I i don't think we're so that exposed. like I think now, with globalization, with all of these novels being adapted into movies or series, now we're getting more.
00:12:26
Speaker
But it was not as common for people around me to be reading romance novels. we were like People will usually scratch that itch with telenovelas.
00:12:38
Speaker
And yeah I grew up in this family who was like really into literature and I went into literature studies in college. And so, ah of course, we will never like the program will never unless it's like 19th century canonical.
00:12:55
Speaker
novel that one could could argue is a romance novel in a different disguise, you know. And I think the way I ended up reading romance was through my quest to find queer stories. And I don't read straight romance. I have no interest in it. um As everyone, like I did grow up with rom-coms and straight rom-coms. But as a reader, if it doesn't have queer people in it, I i couldn't care less. But it is it is quite interesting to see how the presence of romance novels has become more evident in like libraries and bookstores. here in Colombia in the last decade, whereas before it was not as... yeah, it was not there as much.
00:13:48
Speaker
I think the first time like someone around me even brought up like something smutty and just love, it was Fifty Shades of Grey because it became That's what was say....tobble phenomenon. But before that...
00:14:02
Speaker
Unless it was a 19th century thing it was not it was not yeah and on my radar. So that's actually very interesting. i I've never thought about that before.
00:14:15
Speaker
Well, it's funny because part of what you're getting at too is the way that what we call a romance novel, we talk about that as if it's a universal thing that exists across the globe. And what we're called we're talking mostly, you know, at least for myself, like I'm an American, right? What I know of as a romance novel is something that's a very North American and to some extent UK phenomenon. um We're talking about something that was really codified by Harlequin and by Mills and Boone. yeah And it's spread out to other publishers and it's spread out globally, but there's a certain kind of specific specificity and location to the genre too, that we don't always um pay as much attention to.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah. To the point that to me, I still struggle when I say romance novels, because what I'm thinking is novels written in romance languages. That is what where my brain is taking me. And once I was talking to my partner in Spanish and I was saying like, we were going to do this episode. And I said like, novelas de romance or something like that. and And he was like, you know that romance is a genre in itself. and And I was like...
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, I have no idea how to translate this. And it took me a while to get to like, oh, of course, it's just like Novelas de Amor and that's it. But it wasn't even on my vocabulary outside of my anglophone persona yeah to talk about this genre. So that's fascinating.
00:15:36
Speaker
Right, and then you get into like the romantics of like British literature, which is like a whole nother thing, which is romance with a capital R, which is what we're talking about right now. Exactly, exactly. so so so So there you are, like a scholar in Spanish trying to like explain to people what we five of us are talking about today. And I have to translate that nightmare.
00:16:01
Speaker
like For sure. Okay, Amanda, Brie, romance novel reading. so my name is from a romance novel because my mom was a fan.
00:16:12
Speaker
She added an extra N and E on it. So I guess the twins were Irish and one was O'Brien and the other one was Breanne, O'Brien, or, you know, like, spelled differently. and So she added an N and an E on it, and then that's how she got my name. And then ironically, or maybe tragically, or traumatically, i don't know, but that's how I started to read as well.
00:16:34
Speaker
So my mom would read out loud her romance novels to me. And then she said that I recognized I, a the, like my sight words, romance novels.
00:16:46
Speaker
I feel like I'm not new to this. I'm true to this. Okay. That's amazing. like You know, couldn't wait to tell that story. And so I think from there, by the time, you know, I started to get into the genre myself, my aunt had this book called ah Fly Girl by Omar Tyree. Also positionality wise, i'm I'm Black. and a millennial. And there's a very specific time of urban fiction for me once I became a teenager where Fly Girl, which is this kind of adult kind of coming of age, not really a romance novel, was being circulated around in high school. So people would share them kind of like drugs almost, I guess, where you're trying to
00:17:29
Speaker
learn about it and read it like the the next best thing. Sister Soldiers Coldest Winter Ever is also a cult classic as well as for those of us who were queer or queerish or just was gobbling up everything. Elin Harris had some romance novels of like DL or closeted gay men that also circulated around with these black girls that all came out in like the 90s. But then this kind of trajectory of us when we got to like the late 90s started really circulating this. And that was a part of how I came to romance novels and then went back to historical straight novels with the kind of like very much so Harlequin-esque genre specific tropey things, but also like a lot of Black history. So I learned about indigo. So like the Met Gala, what is her name? She just had a, like a nod to the indigo plantations. Anyway, I learned about that.
00:18:29
Speaker
in this Black historical historical romance novel. So even being a student of Black studies, the romance novels were also a part of that. um And then of course, I think being in literature and then reading a lot of the Victorian stuff and Jane Austen and all of that was a part of like the more scholarly stuff. But definitely there was an ecosystem. There's jokes about it on on social media now. of if you're a certain age, you just circulated these kind of urban works by straight men even, and other romance novels or urban fiction novels that had not romance novels, but um works with romance and um smart sex, right? And as opposed to like what I then discovered on my own were traditional romance novels that I would pick up from Walmart for $5. And that would be my like entertainment for the weekend, every every weekend a new romance novel or go to the library. I love that. love that. That's so fun. I feel like so different because i'm I'm a Zoomer, I'm Gen Z, and so y'all are millennials, I feel like we have different experiences with this. My family were not readers. I was the reader in my family. I didn't grow up. or my My mom watched like Hallmark and like whatever, so I had like basically the televised version of what I feel like romance novels were. But to me, growing up, I feel like romance novels were like the stereotypical like Fabio on the cover, like that whole... like
00:19:55
Speaker
oh Like that was my understanding of like romance. I did not know they were smutty until like i was like a teenager or older or something.
Subgenres and Evolution of Romance Novels
00:20:01
Speaker
But I for me growing up, it was like the coming of age like you were saying, brey but also like, I am just at heart such a fantasy person that I like romantic is kind of my gym. Like when I was a teenager, i was reading like, if there was romance, it was romantic. Like it was like,
00:20:17
Speaker
Vampire Academy or God, some other, there's just so many that circulate in my head. I'm like, did I dream that up? Or was that like a book I swallowed at like 13 in the middle of the night? You know, like that kind of stuff. Or was it like supernatural fan fiction? So, but for me, it's also like, if it is more like romance, it has to be queer. There were some, or like over the pandemic, straight romances I read, like when Icebreaker was big, when hockey romances and like that kind of stuff, like Icebreaker was huge. I read that.
00:20:47
Speaker
But for me, it's like, although I will say Ally Hazelwood, i I have liked her stuff. I've read a few of her books. I think those are are fun and light. But Katie, what you said earlier about them being just like, not like predictable, but like we know there's the happy ending, like they're just like almost comforting in a way. I do find them very comforting and that the stakes are low. um Like no one's going to die. They don't have to save the world. And so I enjoy them.
00:21:08
Speaker
that way and the way that like oh like for me it's like a beach read like it's it's casual and fun and light and there's like some angst but it's not crazy uh whereas like fantasy is where i really can get like i get so lost in that and i get i'm so like they're writing dragons or they're wielding magic and it's or it's persabeth and it's it's all of this persabeth mentioned one and At least once per episode. But yeah, for me, I feel romanticcy is a preference. If there's going be romance, I prefer it to be queer romanticcy, which is sometimes hard to come by good queer romanticcy because I've been reading a lot of romanticcy and I'm like, it's good, but it's just so like... There's so many tropes where I'm like, you can't have all of the tropes. Like she can't be a fighter and a healer and pretty and all of these things. And it's so i have gripes, but and then she got killed, whatever. beef with these authors right now. yeah, it's hard to find good queer romanticy. So I will take Rex if you have them. But yeah, romanticy, if we're talking sub genres and such, that's that's my love. So you hate a Mary Sue is basically what you're saying. Yeah.
00:22:11
Speaker
You don't know what a Mary Sue is. No. Mary Sue's are like, they were like, in fan fiction, they're like, they're almost like author self inserts, kind of, but it's like the character that has no flaws and like she's yeah gorgeous and thin and has straight blonde hair and like can do all of the things and... Yeah, I think kind the chosen one, but when you make her so perfect, I'm like, I appreciate her and I love how down to earth she is, but then the main character, or like the love interest, because I feel like they've moved away from the love interest as like a knight in shining armor to the dark, like daring, like I'm a devil and blah, blah, blah, like a very like menacing, but then he's got such a soft spot for her. and like
00:22:52
Speaker
and like, I get it, but also like you guys, I was like, I feel like I can predict what you're going say and how you're going to act where you're going kill for her and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, no, literally, this I can tell what this author's next book is going to be because it's literally, she's about to put him through the hero's journey. He has to go into the underworld to, like, rescue the soul of his, like, their souls are twined from the face. And I'm like, I literally, I've already written the book in my head. It's not fun anymore. I've predicted it.
00:23:17
Speaker
I just haven't told anyone about this book. So I need to tell you all who understand that I'm experiencing this now. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I guess that's like, you know, kind of what makes you DNF or do not finish. I would say, yeah, bad writing. Like at one point I was doing like the Kindle Unlimited where you like pay the price and then you just read every shitty book under Kindle Unlimited. And that's why 150 novels in a year. um because I was just like oh every book that has hockey in it I was up to 89 by the time yeah you're ended it yeah yes and then I was like I need to stop giving Jeff Bezos my money so here here we are with that but yeah i would say like a do not finish is like one time I read like this fic where the main the like FMC was it had ADHD but it was like every bad stereotype about ADHD and I was like
00:24:11
Speaker
Girl, please. SMC is feminine main character a female main character. Yes, if you're if you're not if you're not aware. But yeah, I would say like I definitely am a little pickier than I thought. And honestly, like we talked about it on the pod before, but I didn't like the heated rivalry books.
00:24:27
Speaker
you Because I don't think they're good. ah um i am Rachel Reed's number one hater. if i If she has no haters, it's because I'm dead, basically. You're the fandom hate club like the Yeah, you're yes the top of that.
00:24:48
Speaker
I'm the anti-fan. I am the anti-fan. And I'm the anti-fan for also all of the racism. But... um ah So, yeah, I would say there's definitely things that if I come across it, I'm like, I'm not going read this book anymore. I will, ah like... Bad grammar, like a boring plot line. I've started, honestly, I don't know if this is a trend that you all have noticed, but they've been doing like fandom tags before the book starts. And it'll be like, this is what you can find in this book, like enemies to lovers and like all of these things. And I'm like, okay, that's great.
00:25:24
Speaker
Thanks for letting me know. But I like, that's not what I'm doing when I'm reading a romance book. Like, that's what I'm doing when I'm reading fan fiction. And like, I don't want you to tell me all the spoilers before I start a romance book. Like, I get it there for a trigger warning. Like, I understand if there's going to be like gore or like non-consensual stuff, like whatever. I appreciate that. Or like family death. But when it's, you're tagging it like it's AO3. I'm a little like, what are, no, that's part of the plot.
00:25:47
Speaker
The thing that's tricky about that, though, that's a longstanding tradition in romance. That's not new. It is? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you you typically, like, you kind of have... This is part of the the kind of thing with romance novels is you kind of know what your lane is, and you know which which publications, which series, which imprints are going to be kind of publishing in your your... your lane and then the the language on the back covers is very coded so that romance readers know what's going to be kind of going on and they're they're signaling that the terminology is merging as online platforms kind of merge those audiences but those traditions it's they're not stealing it from fandom it it predates fandom in a lot of ways okay so I thought they were stealing it from fandom and so that's why I've been pissed off at it but I guess it's the other way around but Well, it's not, I think it's more complicated. Like, I think there's a way in which the language is merging because everyone's using Goodreads. Everyone's kind of using the same social media platforms. They're being marketed in particular ways on on the same platform. So that kind of terminology is starting to kind of collapse, whereas it used to be more separated.
00:26:49
Speaker
But RoboSavos have always kind of signaled their contents to their readers. mean Interesting. Yeah, no, that's super interesting. Actually, i we would love if you like could give us a romance novel history little background ditty. if you if If you would like to. I could give you a very, very rough and crude romance history with with the caveat that I will probably forget something and leave something out.
00:27:15
Speaker
um But I think the thing is, well, first, romance has existed since the dawn of time, right? So there's that. But if we're thinking about what we call a romance novel in North America today, um it really starts to kind of codify in the 1900s when we start to see publishing taking off. When you start to see, particularly in the 70s and 80s, the paper but um paperback market boom um kind of exploding. Now, romance novels existed before that, for sure. But the paperback boom of the 1970s and 80s huge here. That's when we start to see a huge uptick in science fiction. That's when we start to see huge uptick in fantasy. That's when we start to see a huge uptick in genre in general, in publishing. That's when the paperback stores like Walden Books come to your local shopping malls, all that stuff.
00:28:02
Speaker
and So that's when a lot of what we think about as romance novels today really gets kind of solidified. But they existed before that. So I'm really shortcutting some of the older history. But, you know, the commercial romance novel, the idea that you have different kinds, some are steamy and some are sweet, and that you have like these different types. And Harlequin has their different lanes for whether you want contemporary or historical. A lot of that starts to emerge in the 70s and the 80s.
00:28:29
Speaker
There are huge publishing wars during that time. Massive infighting is going on between Harlequin and other publishers. That's also a big influence here. That's when you start to see more and more American romance novels getting produced before a lot of them were British and being republished in America. And that's when you start to see romance getting a little, a little more diverse. I say that with some caveats. so things start happening in the industry during that time. And then you kind of c chug along for a while. I guess I sure I should, the thing I should say that I didn't say is that sex comes to romance in the nineteen seventy s right? Sex starts to appear on the page.
00:29:07
Speaker
in romance and the night sims which is a really big deal at the time harlequin was not into that at all it was coming from rival publisher avon that was really kind pushing the sex on the page that's part of the wars that were going on in the 80s were partly about who was publishing sex on the page versus who wasn't and that was influencing where readers were going and what they were buying So there's all kinds of fascinating stuff going on during that period. But the next big shift happens with e-publishing, right, in the in the early 2000s. And that's when you really start to see, again, another big kind of explosion in, again, a bit more diversity. The three start to see more queer romance coming out and things kind of really shifting with with online publishing. It's kind of where we've been, what we've been kind of building on over the past 20-ish years is kind of
00:29:53
Speaker
really kind of reshaping, you know, what used to be a very, very heterosexual kind of commercial genre into something that's much more about niche markets and much more about e-publishing and different kinds of readers and different kinds of audiences. all kinds of finding their lane and sticking with it.
00:30:09
Speaker
I'm not sure that's a great history, but that's my great history if you put me on the spot. No, and we love, that was a great history. That was ah exactly what I wanted to know. No, and I think that's super interesting because I think we definitely see like, especially when we look at like the age and fandom and like the people who are fans of this show, like it is a lot of people who were, are like older millennials or even into like Gen Xers. Like not to say that there isn't Gen Z or Gen Alpha folks in the fandom, but like on threads, it's mostly millennials and Gen X like and people who grew up with reading like romance novels at home, you know, have been longtime purveyors of the material.
00:30:52
Speaker
And I would just add to that in terms of the, for Black romance romance in particular, some some of what I was talking about were books with like romantic longing rather than the romance genre. So it wasn't until like those houses that Katie mentioned started to try try to publish Black authors that you got more traditional romance novels in the 90s. So even what my mother was reading to me were white authors. And then now, again, just to say that I would say now there's been an influx of different genres of Black romance, queer, urban, or not because of the digital, right? Being able to go around those publishing houses. So that's even more so when you add in other factors like race. Yeah, for sure. And there's, i was gonna say, there's also a really long history in romance publishing, but also things like romance movies, things like that, where you'll see this differentiation where things that are labeled romance tend to be the stories about white couples, and things that are labeled romance. urban or um urban is a kind of big kind of catch-all term often romances about black people will get kind of segregated out into things like urban comedy instead of romantic comedy and it's the same with publishing too you know you'll have stories that are essentially romances but they won't necessarily be packaged and sold as romances so a lot of it's about kind of marketing language too
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And like, I even think about like with romances and when we're talking about disability, like how disability is like perceived as something that is in the like way of the happily ever after. And that like, you have to either like the disabled person feels like they're not worthy of love because of their disability, or they feel like they need to like heal their disability in order to be loved, which I guess is kind of the same thing. Like,
00:32:49
Speaker
how that is continually something that is like overwritten throughout all of these novels and like now I am starting to see kind of and like a little bit more of inclusion of disability and like talked about in ways that isn't like disgusting and like we need to get rid of all disabled folks but like I think it is like something that still has a really long way to go within romance novels itself and Like when I'm reading, you know, when I was reading those 150 hockey romance novels, like none of them were about black people, which I mean, hockey doesn't have black people in it.
00:33:23
Speaker
But like Brie was like specifically recommending like black hockey romance to me. And it was often that stuff was more paywalled than the like free Kindle unlimited stuff about white people. all of the time so it's just like also looking at the availability on the market and like what whose stories are written and not written i mean that's something we talk about all the time too so so thinking about like romance novels in general I mean we talked about mostly heterosexual but I want to talk more about like queer romance so like who do we think like these things are marketed towards like who do we think heated rivalry is marketed towards like or traditional romance novels in general, like straight women. straight women Okay. So like, why do we think that? ah
00:34:12
Speaker
I think there's a slight fetishizing aspect as well, but also like said, I think we've said before, like the emotionally intelligent men and being vulnerable with their feelings and like being exposed. And there's a touch of like, yeah it's so complicated. I feel like, like,
00:34:27
Speaker
seeing um a man take a woman's position quote-unquote in these romance novels I think has something to do with it as well especially like like mm romance like seeing them do to each other perhaps what is usually being done to them or maybe on the other side like seeing someone do to something else what is being done to them but in like a because I was thinking like I was like a bottom but if you think about it like a top point of view there's like I that was it provides me like all right let's talk about sex immediately but like but But also in terms of like dynamics and like who has power and who doesn't and who is in control. And I think that and then romance is by kind of flipping a script can provide different insights into a different dynamic and these different experiences that women might may or or may not have. I think that that's part of it as well.
00:35:13
Speaker
so And also, women as i think we've I forget who, someone said before that like women don't do wrong things in these books, typically. like There is no woman to be blamed for whatever, maybe maybe depending on the book. But like Heat Arrivalry specifically in Game Changers, there's like the women are like supportive figures and they're not being like trashed, basically. Yeah.
00:35:32
Speaker
I think one of the things that's interesting about heated rivalry though, is it complicates our idea that these books and these shows are only for women and only for straight women. yeah Because I think I, so I'm, a I'm a really, i have very conflicted feelings about the argument that MM romance is quote unquote only for straight women. And I think my my conflict is this. Clearly, a lot of women are reading these books and watching different kinds of queer romance. But it's not all straight women. A lot of those women are not straight. But then on top of that, the the complication is, I think we're also, we exist in a culture that has a very hard time with the idea that these things could be for anyone but women, right? I think we really struggle with the idea of a male reader or the idea of a male viewer that would like this. I think that's a cultural problem. And so I don't i don't know that I, I don't know how I feel about the argument that that they're quote unquote only for straight women because i I really want to resist it. I think it's i think it's something that we're trapped in that is yeah problematic, but I also think that heated rivalry in and out of itself complicates it, right? Because first of all, if you look at the fans of the TV show, if you look at social media, it's way more diverse than just women. There are a lot of women. But um it's way more diverse than that. If you think about Jacob Tierney as a showrunner, right? Like, here's this guy who explicitly wants to make this show and kind of complicate our ideas of who the audiences for these things are. So I don't know. I feel like there's truth to the argument that a lot of women are into this. I'm not disagreeing with that. But I also just wonder how much we're trapped in thinking about that because of our own ideas about femininity, about romance, because the stigmas about romance. yes I don't know. Like, I just wonder how much of it is us kind of being brainwashed and to only see that as much as it is also in some part also true, right? that There's, i I don't know how to kind of reconcile my complicated feelings about this.
00:37:34
Speaker
I don't necessarily like agree with what I said either. I'm just saying that I feel like from the like abstract perspective of the like people who are... feel like traditionally like that has been the argument of the, like oh, who reads the like the Fabio books and the whatever, and who is into like put up these M&M things. Historically, it's been like, oh, usually it is straight women because like like there hasn't always been like a mainstream market for queer people. And so now that we do have people like Jacob Tierney who say like, okay, let's put these queer experiences out there. I think we can be like, actually not rainbow washing, but we can have queer people as a market in a normal way. Yeah. What what I wanted to say was that ah maybe the way to see this is the difference between what was the public in mind for the marketing, you know, like marketing definitely was thinking straight women and and ah probably white women. Right. So they had a very specific public in mind. And then how it ends up being received by the public. It's what's is what makes this such an interesting phenomenon.
00:38:38
Speaker
it''s It's how it like it it it really bridge containment in a way that I don't think the. the publishers were anticipating before. not I don't even think creek Crave Canada was anticipating that when they agreed to do an adaptation. And I think in general, there's like there's the marketing that is like selling us this idea that Katie was explaining. about uh who who reads this who's interested in this and how we have been socialized to gender this idea of of the type of literature we should be interested in uh how like more feminine feminine eyes quote unquote Genres tend to be like guilty pleasures because like women are less intelligent than men blah blah blah. But at the same time I think there's also the marketing invisibilization not just like queer people but of lesbians. You know like we know that lesbians consume a lot of mm romans.
00:39:47
Speaker
Especially because it it like you get a better chance of having a happy ending than if you read lesbian romans. So you have that as well. And and and I think it's like what what makes me so proud about what is happening with Hidden Rivalry is how we basically taught the publishing industry a lesson about underestimating queer stories.
00:40:11
Speaker
communities as potential readers and not just like assuming that this was going to be like the mothers of One Direction fandom, you know, or or or like Fifty Shades that were as again like targeting stay-at-home moms that were like quite bored in their marriage like that there's this idea first that the the that straight people hate their partners and they're bored and that they have awful sex so there there was like trying to leave some sort of fantasy through the books and there is this idea of like who likes men straight women like men so if i put two
00:40:51
Speaker
coar male torsos in my cover of the book, I'm definitely gonna catch that yeah And i can I can picture a lot of gay men besides Jacob Tierney seeing that cover and being like, mine, thank you. know No, literally. And like, yeah, I mean, like Jacob Tierney was the one who approached Rachel Reed and was like, I want to make a show out of this, you know? And I do want to say like the, there is a caveat that like, I think the fandom has been negative towards gay men. And we've seen that kind of over and over again, where like gay men have been complaining that women in the heated rivalry fandom are kicking them out of like spaces where they're watching the show or like, shunning them away from a like interacting with the media but I think like I mean Lauren also that infamous comment that oh Bowers brought up in our fan mail of someone like yeah yeah it was like this person being like somebody was saying how a heated rivalry like that it really was like something they connected with because it was like their own story of like why they were afraid to come out. And this other person, and they were like, I can feel for shame because I've also dated women because I've been afraid to like be queer. And somebody like commented on it and was like, you shouldn't do that to straight women. Like you shouldn't lie to them about that.
00:42:16
Speaker
And we were like, oh oh okay so this is a totally different group of people that we're talking to actually I think this person didn't even say I have dedicated dated women in the past yes yeah but that person was just like I'm figuring out my sexuality I've been scared I'm in the closet I hope my mom is gonna react the way Shane's mom reacts but I don't think she will And someone, unprompted, just goes and comments like, just please don't use straight women as like a beard and don't lie to them because it's traumatic. And everyone was like, wait, what is on? Who's talking about dating? Yeah, yeah. So, and I think it's like, I did like a survey on archive of our own demographics. And because I think like romance and fan fiction have so many intersections, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a few minutes, Something that we kind of like came across in our survey data was that fandom is getting queerer and it is getting like more gender diverse, not racial racially diverse, but more gender diverse. And so the like straight women who don't like white straight women who dominate fandom are less
00:43:28
Speaker
less dominating. Like it's now mostly bisexual people. It's now people who are non-binary, you know? And so, yeah, I think this is, I think it's a complicated issue, but I think marketing definitely plays into it for sure. I think Katie, to go back to the kind of how you're trying to complicate this is I had wrote an article trying to get to this in this small way about Swarm, which was like this meta, I don't know, attempt at analysis of ah Beyonce fandom. And within it though, i want to turn it into an academic article, but to give me more space, I guess. um But a part of it is also that the the societally, the who gets too long, who gets to have romantic feelings is also feminized. So then that kind of thread goes through with the romance novel trope. And so society and marketing and all that wise, is showing this in this way, although for the evidence of this podcast, right? And you know what you all are seeing, the the people who are listening as well, that is not 100% true. But then also what is then respected as well in terms of who gets to long is also feminized and we know that
Themes and Representation in 'Heated Rivalry'
00:44:42
Speaker
femininity or feminization generally is also not like a good thing um in the western kind of context right so that i' i'm wrestling with that same question with you katie but i'm just thinking about like just the affect of like who gets too long which is part of
00:45:00
Speaker
a part of the genre of romance and i think that that's also what heated rivalry in particular makes it addictive that's what i wanted to go back to that too because they long for a long ass time right like their longing is like who like this is this is some longing okay i'm hear that is going on and so since they're longing for so long it's like another level to the longing of romance. And that's what makes it fiery and like, I'm rooting for you. Can y'all get y'all shit together? Can society get your shit together? Can you please communicate? Can you communicate please? And then like, okay, when was it, you know, when did the shit go to the Supreme Court and you know, like all this stuff. So yeah, it's that longing part of it is like,
00:45:47
Speaker
so central to the novel itself and then obviously in the show but it's also disrespected as like a you know as a feminized affective trait um which complicates the whole conversation that we're having to go back right actually brie i i really love what you're saying because i i think the last years have brought that a lot like It's either feminized or infantilized. Of course with romance novels that have a lot of smut, it's less infantilized, so it's more feminized, but I'm thinking as well of like Heartstopper and this phenomenon of Heartstopper that started like five years ago and how it was like- Could you break it down? Yeah. I don't know if Brie's seen Heartstopper. She is not.
00:46:33
Speaker
Where is Amanda? Allow one live once an episode, at least. Amanda? After all this time. amanda after all this time Okay, it's a graphic novel and it's readied by a non-binary person and it was adapted by Netflix.
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, by Seesaw Film and bought by now Netflix and it it it keeps like the whimsy of like Young Love. It's very cute. It's very pastel because it's aimed at like young queers but of course this this was like huge among adult queers as well because we were like oh a love story that ends well and that is not traumatic and that doesn't depend on violence to tell the story where do i get this but it was there was also like a lot of discourse making adults feel bad about enjoying hard supper because it's like it's you know? Disregarding completely like all the very complex psychological reasons why as a person who grew up in the closet or had like a very difficult queer youth You want to see new generations get different stories. And you want to know stories because you didn't have it at the age that you should have. And it's actually like super good storytelling. And Alice Osman draws that. The the graphic novel ended like a month ago. and i just I just love it.
00:48:12
Speaker
Everything is amazing. ah it's It's like my beloved. I have a tattoo. of the hard supper leaves on my body like I love it and I think that yeah that that's that's what you get like you're either told like oh that's for girls as like little girls that like like uh pastel and like cute stuff and no boy or macho or adult woman is allowed to enjoy that Or that is just like for the silly women that laugh in the bathroom together talking about boys, you know? Yeah.
00:48:48
Speaker
and and And that's why like I appreciate phenomenons like Heartstopper because there was a lot preaching about it from the adult perspective and how it healed some people, how it made a lot of people feel like able to come out at like 27, 40 years old, you know? Like...
00:49:07
Speaker
it It really shook more than just the target public. And another example of of this that I really enjoyed that kind of like breaks out of this expectation that we put into this genre is all the Casey McQuiston's books. um Yeah. Because, that yeah, you start with red, white and royal blue, and that is like the most mainstream one. One last stop, my beloved.
00:49:34
Speaker
But then you have one last stop, our beloved. Then you have a YA novel, Suddenly, Kissed Our Wheeler, that is kind of like a murder mystery, but not. And then you have the master masterpiece that is the pairing that came out two years ago. that ah You would say, like when you started, you say, like oh, is this a straight couple? And then you start going into gender and into like queer queerness beyond like the traditional lesbians or gays or straights, you know, like you go beyond the binary and it's magnificent. It's about food and wine and Europe. And there's a lot of queer sex of queering of how to have intimacy. And I think nobody expected that because the three previous books were like, like one last stop. I love it. It's like a ghost story with science fiction, with a queer romance all in one.
00:50:36
Speaker
But McQuinson had like stayed in a lane of like, it's either a lesbian or or, lesbian with bisexual women and gay with bisexual men love story. But the pairing is, it, For me, it was like mind-blowing. I want to reread it a couple more times because it it really plays with gender. It plays with stuff that I don't think people are expecting when they start reading it. And you don't get that from the cover of the book. And you don't get that from the argument of the book when you read the summary online. So it really is...
00:51:12
Speaker
not ah The marketing is not targeting queer people besides the fact that queer people know that Casey McQuinnston is going to write a queer story. So I love to see how we have evolved to the point where we're opening the space to different type of stories and to like a more mix in terms of gender and sexual identity fandoms of this. And that we can say like heated rivalry is a masterpiece and you don't have to be like, oh, it's my, it's my guilty pleasure to be watching players.
00:51:49
Speaker
But I think there's a long way to go still. Yeah. Katie, I know we've maybe diverged from your points earlier, but what were you going to jump in when we all jumped in? Oh, I was just thinking about what Brie had said about affect. I think, I think there's something to like, I,
00:52:06
Speaker
this This might be too like in the weeds, but like there's this thing in film and media studies where there's been a lot of analysis of melodrama as a genre and who gets to kind of feel the melodrama. And and melodrama is like traditionally being these these like kind of women's films that were made in the nineteen fifty s that were... often somewhat tragic and involved you going to the movies and crying a lot and it being very cathartic and I was thinking we talk a lot about that as a women's genre and and how like there's a lot of scholarship on how that kind of emotions only allow it to women but I think what Brie was getting at was a different kind of emotion like that that fluttery kind of squee to use the fan term feeling that you you get from a lot of romance that's more comedic that's more upbeat right And who's allowed to feel that feeling? right we We have guilty pleasures around that feeling. We're not supposed to feel that feeling. Sorry, my cat's making a cameo right now. um havelet um totally fine But that happy, warm, oh my God, my heart is fluttering. Oh my God, I'm so immersed in this moment. Or oh my God, this moment's so sexy. like That's really policed in our culture. And I think that's partly why I get so conflicted about
00:53:17
Speaker
this kind of insistence that these that say MM romance is only for straight women, because I feel like part of that insistence is a policing as much as there are parts of it that are true. i just don't think it's universally 100% true. And I think we really need to kind of complicate that because partly in in insisting that it's true we're just enhancing the policing even more I don't know if I'm making sense but that's just it it frustrates me that that more audiences aren't acknowledged in that mix because I think a lot of different readers and watchers enjoy those feelings too
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah, that also really makes me also think about like, Katie, I know you were saying kind of at the beginning, but you do a lot of research into like Yaoi and BL and looking at like how like Chinese and like, is it mostly like Chinese?
00:54:06
Speaker
like It's mostly, well, the the big hub for BL dramas is Thailand. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So like, how does that like BL stands for boys love? We've talked about it a little bit before, but like, how does that differ from like the like North American romance novel? And like, are there similar? Because like, if we think about it, key to rivalry is technically BL, like, course, it could be concerned, or like, it could be assumed to be BL. But like, how is that different? And like, what kind of genre, like what kind of people does that attract? And, you know, things like that, like how we're trying to break this down.
00:54:41
Speaker
Well, I think it's complicated again. and I'm, I'm not like, you know, the, the go-to expert here. There's, there's other folks who've, who've written a lot about this, but I think that, you know, for example, there's a really good book by Thomas Baudinette. That's all about boys love media. And one of the things that he talks about, he particularly is looking at the Thai dramas. And one of the things he talks about is how for the industry in Thailand,
00:55:08
Speaker
it's often seen as a medium for advertising to younger Thai women. However, in research on the audiences for these dramas, Baudinette finds that there there's a much more diverse audience. There's a very queer audience and that um a lot of different people across Asia are watching these Thai dramas. A lot of queer people across Asia are watching these Thai dramas because they speak to a queer Asian perspective in a way that say Western media content is not addressing. So it's it's kind of complicated to kind of compare and contrast them with Western content because
00:55:45
Speaker
It's like, you know, they're all cross influencing each other. But at the same time, one of the things Bonnet finds is that there is something kind of important about having representation coming directly out of Asian countries for Asian audiences. He finds that important across different kind of countries in Asia. these These genres are kind of circulating. But yes, in terms of, again, we're back to the marketing problem in terms of, you know, the companies that are producing these dramas, the advertisements that appear in the dramas, the ways that the products are being sold around them, a lot of it is assumed to be for a female audience in Thailand um or in other countries. But the reality that Baudnette finds is that it's more complicated than that. Yeah, and then, I mean, to get into, like, to start to compare the different ones, that's where it gets tricky, right? Because Thailand has its approach to BL dramas, Japan has its approach, Korea its approach.
00:56:35
Speaker
China has censorship, and it gets way more complicated. But there's still all these cross flows across that region. And then, of course, there's all these cross flows outside of Asia into Western markets, too. So there's tons of cross influences here.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. i think also something that I just remembered that I wanted to like talk about a little bit is that in the fandom right now, we're seeing kind of like a lot of discourse that like Rachel Reed never included things like about racism. in her romance novel because she views it as just a silly little romance novel that like has no extenuating circumstances like beyond its current readers and it's just supposed to be out about smut and like I've been having fights with people on the internet which I know I shouldn't be doing but anyways um about trying to be like hey like media does not exist in a vacuum and like
00:57:31
Speaker
we kind of have to talk about racism in these stories, especially if your main character is going to be a person of color, because like that, like informs so many other things. And then people just being like, well, it's my fan object. I don't want to think about racism. It's like a silly little romance novel. I just want to read about these hockey players, like fucking each other. So like, I don't know, like if we're talking and we're saying like, these are not just silly little romance novels. They are not, you know, like the, we shouldn't treat the audience of these as like something that is just, you know, a silly little romance novel or whatever. Like, how do we How do we contend with that, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask.
00:58:08
Speaker
And that's for anybody. i mean, hasn't this always been this way since the dawn of time? i just remember fans in the nineteen ninety s complaining when some fans would criticize something as being racist and other fans would say, oh, how dare you bring your your political discourse into my happy place? It's like, isn't it convenient that you can ah ignore these things and other people can't, right? This is this kind of endless problem with this kind of media. Yeah, it's what it's it's what I've been saying these last few weeks. like What does that mean? when when you When you stop and actually think about it, what you're asking is for like a white utopia where you don't have to think about racism because you don't have to think about it? Or are you asking for escapism utopia where racism is not a thing? Because I think...
00:59:02
Speaker
When people tell us like tell quote unquote minorities to not bring that into their happy places, they're usually asking for a narrative that is devoid of anything that is not white and the norm.
00:59:18
Speaker
And I don't think they know that a lot of the times. I don't think people understand that that's what they're asking. But i i do I do think like when you start asking them questions about like, okay, so what would be for you like the ideal situation here? How would you deal with this in a way that it doesn't like disturb your peace?
00:59:40
Speaker
The answer that you get to is like, they basically don't want to deal with it because they don't like they don't care. And with this, I don't want to like erase all the POC queer people that are like, I just have to think about this every single day that so I want to escape it. But they're usually not the people getting super mad at Lauren on threads because Lauren is pointing out the racism. They're just like, I'm not going to engage in this on social media because I have to do this every single day and defend my identity every single day. But I don't think like the those are the people that are like, oh, please don't don't go after Rachel Reed because of the microaggressions that we have seen her display when continue to do outside in professional capacities and all the time basically yeah i think like yeah i mean this is obviously like a conversation that we've had in fandom like kitty was saying like you know there is constant like with the anti-fan thing like you oftentimes are labeled an anti-fan because you're like hey i'm calling out racism and you guys are saying i just don't like this object you know And I think that like definitely is something that I think the fandom contends with. I guess what we can do now, we've kind of talked romance novels a little bit. um Let's talk about heated rivalry as and a romance novel. Let's talk about this. And also as like a TV show as a piece of romance, like architecture. So yeah. Does anybody want to kind of take the wheel and go from there?
01:01:15
Speaker
Jump in real quick, just as I was watching the show, Heat of Rivalry also reminded me a lot of Noah's Ark from Logo from back in the day, like the kind of longing and the will they, won't they, I mean, you know, all of the kind of trope-y genres and kind of sighing like, oh, I wish, know, this person were dating, this was my boyfriend that I experienced with Noah's Ark back in the day here. It's been like 20 years, 20 years.
01:01:45
Speaker
um so And then like, you know, the kind of coming back to that that story, but Heter Rivalry, you know, like you've already said, has this long genealogy and trajectory of these type of shows. But I would say specifically Noah's Ark, because it was this kind of romantic genre um type, romantic comedy of a show that is a little bit different than like Queer as Folk or, you know, other other queer shows that came out at the time or, you know,
01:02:14
Speaker
the genealogy of queer shows. And hr that ah definitely fits into that. Header Rival fits into that, but it it definitely reminded me of of Noah's Ark and I'm like, I need to go and dust off my DVDs or find mine. My physical media, I need to go find it again. I do have the analog media sets of Noah's Ark, which was this Black queer friends type of sex in the city in LA and in West Hollywood, you know, and all their adventures in Los Angeles. It was really good on logo for two seasons. And this was logo pre-dragway so you know it was like a little bit different yeah one of it was one of their first shows i think i think it was one of their first original series oh my gosh that's awesome yeah brie was mentioning it earlier when we were talking about it and i was like yeah we always bring up like queer as folk and the l word and stuff but i feel like there have been so many queer shows and like especially like queer romance shows What was that crazy dating show that was like the ultimatum or something like it was like queer couples would go on the show. There was a side.
01:03:24
Speaker
Yes, there was a famous couple that was from that show that lived in Orlando. We were at the same less vixens event. so Everyone was like, oh my God, they're in that show. um This show was like, you would go on it and you would break up with the your partner and you would date other people. The ultimatum, queer love, this is all it's called. It's on Netflix. It's basically like they would go and break up, but they would go on the show with their partners and then they would like date other people and decide by the end if they wanted to go back to their original partner or if they wanted to go with their new partner.
01:03:58
Speaker
And I mean, it's messy as hell. as many queer romance artifacts are. But I mean, like, going back to heated rivalry as like a function of the romance genre, like, I think there are so many tropes that we like, see just kind of created over and over again. And even throughout like the Game Changers novels, you know, like there's the whole series too. My mom, most notably, was like, she was reading all of them in a row and she was like, the sex is the same in all of them. was like, mom, I mean, i guess you don't really read them all in a row. Like, i I guess not. So she's like really, she has like recency bias. But yeah I mean, there are plenty of tropes that are existent in these novels. I mean, enemies, well, not enemies to lovers, ah arch rivals to lovers, as we said.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, and you'll you also have in in in Game Changers, you have like the class divide, like coming from different words. So like the working class versus millionaire. And yeah, that's that's basically a skip.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yeah. That's the trope there. Yeah, and then I think that that that one is one of the most like tropey and like the structure of the story is still very attached to exactly how you tell this love story and you won't like play with anything in the structure. i think Rachel Reed has become more comfortable with experimenting and playing.
01:05:29
Speaker
in later books but that one being the first one is for me like oh this this is a romance novel there's no question about it um my friends that are visiting right now I'm getting them to watch the show for the first time and I give little context and bits here and there are like funny whatever and after we we watched the the skip episode last night and they were like I can't see him as anything other than Captain America laughing laughing laughing So many of the Marvel movies, they're like, all I see is Stucky. And I was like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I ruined it. I shouldn't have said anything. No, I just, I've just been getting texts from Bree that are like, the lesbians gave me allergies. They clocked so fast. They clocked the U-hauling so fast. Like as soon as they were in the bar where he was like, stay, I want you to stay. They were like, U-haul, they're U-hauling. They're U-hauling. was like, oh my God.
01:06:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. All the genres, real, real life or romantic are in that episode. No, Okay. So how do we want to say that it like complicate, do we want to talk about how maybe it complicates the romance genre a little bit? Or do we think it's like very much formulaic? It's along those lines.
01:06:45
Speaker
And we can talk other books too. I think the structure matters, right? So in a romance novel, it's not a serial television show that's told across multiple episodes where you keep stringing along different plot lines, right? The romance novel is this kind of contained thing. It has a beginning, middle, and end. There's an arc to it, right?
01:07:05
Speaker
And so that structure has a certain history that readers definitely expected, you know, that book to follow a certain pattern. And then for the TV show, right, it's turning into more of a serial story. And so, but viewers also expect it to follow serial patterns. Mm-hmm. And so each of them in their own way are following certain norms, right? One is the norm for romance novels. One is the norms for like romance or soap kind of series, right? And and so in that sense, there there are patterns that both of them are following. But I do think one of the things that I find really interesting about heated rivalry is the way that because of the context of their job, it's constantly resisting the perfect tidy ending, right? Even the book,
01:07:49
Speaker
the book can't give you the a perfect tidy kind of ending, at least not the first book, right? yeah So there's this way in which there's this kind of constant push and pull between like giving you the bow at the end that kind of wraps everything up versus kind of needing it to kind of trail off and and never fully resolve everything. i fully agree with that. I think and i think now it it's what is going to be really interesting is that even though these books are like part of a series, and and and I remember asking this last week, like how the existence of the show and this new structure that a show
01:08:27
Speaker
asks for how how is that gonna affect the way Rachel Reed is writing the next book like how are we are we gonna still be like very attached to this is a romance novel or are we like exploring something else What's going to happen?
01:08:45
Speaker
i was i was I was curious to think about whether or not the performances of the actors are going to affect the way that she's going to write the characters. I hope so. So I do think that that is one one of like the magical stuff about adaptation when the source material is still in construction is that they start feeding each other in a way that I don't i don't think we're gonna keep getting like a game changer kind of structure right now because and and and what you're saying here like the context of hockey as an industry is gonna make it really hard for us to continue like just
01:09:27
Speaker
following and and and and and as you said, we haven't been following it to the letter so far either because it's impossible. So I appreciate it One thing I appreciate is that we Like Skip and Holenov do not have.
01:09:44
Speaker
Like the crisis in the middle of the book is not about misunderstanding. Yeah. It's not about misunderstanding. I appreciate that. That is the did not finish for me. Like and as soon as you could have communicated something better and just didn't. You don't understand. i can explain. i hate that.
01:10:04
Speaker
That is something i I would immediately drop it. And i I really appreciate how it's the outside word that makes it so difficult. Of of course, also the inside universe of each character. Like... insecurities and ah context of immigration, of culture, of race, of coming out. But it's it's in a way that you are always aware of the corner that Rachel re is always about to ride herself in. You know, like, how are they going to solve this with hockey being what it is, um which keeps me on my toes and avoids the problem that Amanda was talking about earlier, like, Oh, I already know how this is going to play. like i love When I read romance, I love to know that it's going to end well.
01:10:53
Speaker
That's why I read it. It helps with my anxiety. But I don't know i don't want to know exactly how. And I appreciate that with these stories, I was always surprised on how we get to the... like mostly happy ending for now. Yeah. That was, like, the honestly, the only thing getting me through, like, episode four of the TV show was the fact that it's a romance novel and it has to have a happily ever after. Like, that was, like, after I watched that, because I was watching it, like, as it was coming out, so I had, like, a week
01:11:26
Speaker
between episode four and like even like the end of episode two and between episode four like the only thing that was keeping me alive was like I know that they end up together because it's a romance novel and it has to have a happily ever after and so like I can see how it definitely conforms to that like to that and how I found like comfort in that because I was like if I was watching this and I had no idea what was going on I would be emotionally distraught after episode four and I was still free watch out that's all i gotta say i know you're oh you haven't no i finished it no i finished it will you finished it okay okay all right i get to watch my friends finish it tonight i'm very excited i literally like still even to this day i have to watch like four five and six all right in a row because if i go and like leave time between four and five i get upset
01:12:19
Speaker
but See, I spent the whole TV show actually not trusting that I was going to get a happy ending oh because it was an adaptation, right? And the way the serial works is the serial has to constantly give you a cliffhanger. So I kept expecting. i really watched the whole first season thinking it's not going to end. It's going to end on a cliffhanger. I'm not going to get resolution. So I was so ah relieved by the time we got to that final episode and got to the credits and kind of rolling and the way it kind of trails off like I was just like thank god okay because I was just spending the whole time bracing for the serial tv cliffhanger to happen yeah and we I mean it it does still end with a bit of a cliffhanger but it feels much gentler than it could have been yeah No, that that is for sure. Yeah. it is That is fair. i think a lot of I think a lot of us were expecting it to end when David goes to the cottage and sees them. yeah ah i was I was expecting that at first. And then I was like, nah.
01:13:21
Speaker
The next episode is long enough that we're going to get more than that. But to the last second, I was like, are we going to get the coming out scene? Are we going to get like the parents being okay with it? Or is that the way we start next season? Because of course, what what what is brilliant about ah the long game is that you start in a really good place, right? And that's how you know.
01:13:42
Speaker
It's not going be easy. had to ask Lauren something about, is do do we just need more Canadian produced? because apparently right like yeah i'm serious yes beautiful right right is that the is that the thing because i'm like you katie like there has to be Yeah, there
Influence of Production and Fandoms
01:14:03
Speaker
wasn't. And I'm like, is this the fact like ah that it's Canadian produced? islands you know yeah i mean, I can agree with the Canadian produced and I can agree because like, I don't think this show would be what it is if it was US produced. And like, I would love to like pick y'all's words about that. That's what saying.
01:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, like they would have never put that much sex in this show. Number one. Right. oh like i um i I think Jacob was talking in an interview and he was saying that like they didn't want them to have sex until like episode five when he was giving it to American producers. like Girl, no, it's a romance novel. like It's a romance novel, and that's also like what drives the romance is the hooking up. So what are we... Are we just going to change the whole storyline of the book? Because they're they're going at it. and and yeah but besides Besides the Canadian part, I was just imagining if the French had produced it, we would have more sex.
01:15:06
Speaker
I hate that I muted myself, because the gasp. but I just let out, like, could you imagine? Come on. Come on. so But also the fact that it was like a small project and they didn't know if they're going to be renewed. So that really helped. that I think that this if if it wasn't Crave Canada, but something bigger, being like, this is going to do numbers, this is going to do great. We're going to have a second season. We would have a cliffhanger and we wouldn't have that resolution by the end. Yeah, and I think it's like, I think it's the trust in like letting people create things that are like meaningful to them. And it's like, I don't know, like I hate reboot culture. i hate sequel culture. Like I hate, like I'm i'm very excited to see the Devil Wears Prada too, but it is not it is not my not my want or desire for media. Like I love stories that are just, you know,
01:16:07
Speaker
They stand on their own. They're a little, you know, they're like important to a small group of people, you know, and I love that they told this. And so I think it's not just that it's a Canada creation, but also that it is like, it is something that somebody really cares about. And like, I will shit on Rachel Reed every day. i am her number one hater, as I've already said. But like she did create these really interesting characters to an extent. And Jacob really amplified that. And I think like one of the things that keep coming back to is Hudson and Connor did such good job with them. that is, I think, you know, what drives this show and drives my interest in this show is not only that it's a funny little romance novel, but it's also, you know, it's taking care Their hesitancy, their hesitancy, it's like two seconds of each and every time, but it's so delicious.
01:17:01
Speaker
o I'm gonna watch it again. i love yearning. i love yearning. Yearning is, it's good. and love a reheat. i love a reheat I love a reheat. Okay. Do we have anything else we want to say about romance novels, heated rivalry?
01:17:17
Speaker
Anything else we want to add here? i have a question for our guests. How do we feel? Laurie is going to laugh. How do we feel about watching this with our parents?
01:17:32
Speaker
Okay, so there is a background to this story. I have never specifically, I have sat through half an episode with my mother at one point, but my parents listened to the podcast. My dad has not watched it. My mom has. I don't know. Like, my mom is, like, the person who made me a reader, and so, like, you know, we bond over stuff like this, you know, so I don't think it's weird, but I guess it's weird to laugh. I don't think it's... I don't like to categorize things into weird and not weird, first of all. But I did, like, after you said, like, I did that with my mom. My mom loves when I recommend a series to her and I watch, like, the first episode with her. Yeah. And I tried. um But at some point I had to go. Because the last time we watched a queer show with a gay man, I had to explain to her what cruising was. And...
01:18:27
Speaker
and i was like i was struggling i was yeah uh because she was like are they gonna have sex in the park are they gonna have sex in the bathroom and at some point i was like this is gay culture right to my very straight mother i will say the episode we did watch together was the cottage so it's like the least maybe raunchy of all of them i think i would never watch like episodes one or two or four with my mom but like five or six you know i tried to get my mom to start it when she was here and i think she was too tired but or like there was something going on i think i had to get ready for like a field day but i don't i wanted her to continue it when i was at work so she would like have something to do while i was gone and not you know go through all my cabinets like she had been doing um But I have to follow up with her and see if she finished it because she'll like binge like whatever. Like I know she's seen gay stuff before. And so but like watching it with her, I was like on my phone, like on Sudoku or like on Twitter. I was just like, okay, I'm like on my phone and you're watching on the couch with her. But it's like a o it's hard.
01:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, I was, i think it depends on the parents. yeah I think it kind of, yeah. You know, some parents going to be totally chill about watching this stuff. Some parents are not. I'm not watching it with my dad. That has never happened in a million years. No, I wouldn't watch it with my dad. like I was about to say that. like I tried with my mother, but with my dad, I would never. When I found out that my dad listened to the pod, I was like, yeah, but I like talk about sex. See, my dad's dead, so that's good. yeah
01:20:02
Speaker
and ah and and And I ask this because my family, like, even though we're a Colombian family, culturally Catholic, all of that, my family is, like, very open and back about sex. Like, I got the best sex education I got. I got it at home, not at school. And my father will go into details about condoms and about a lot of stuff. ah To their limited, very straight knowledge, they did their best. And we have never shied a away of talking about that. My mom talks to me about her dates. My father does the same. Like, that's completely okay. But there was something about me having to explain again.
01:20:38
Speaker
culture to someone who's not queer. Yeah. That was getting on my nerves. So as soon as the, as the gym scene started, I was like, I must go. My cat is hungry.
01:20:56
Speaker
no and I get shade for this every episode. So it's fine. My mom would, she watches drag race. It would be fine. Listen, and she knows exactly she knows the thing knows she knows that's good that's excellent we love that she might be a little taken aback but like it's you know okay so i guess i i do have a final question where do you see as like both a person who interacts with romance as like a reader but then also so a person who does like romance as a scholar or you know has connections to it where do you see like romance as a genre kind of going after the popular, like huge popularity of heated rivalry. Like, do we see more romance productions like this in the future? Do we see more novels like this? What do you think kind of is the future of this?
01:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, just real quick. I think right now, generally, the book adaptation is having a moment. Okay. What was I watching? Uncommon Women. What's the Apple TV? Oh, i know what you're talking about. I just looked up Apple TV women show. Imperfect Women. Imperfect Women. It's the auntie in me. I always mess up show names. But Imperfect Women. Yes. You know, like, so basically, I feel like the book adaptation is having a moment. I will say that the way that Heated Rivalry's fandom has, because this is a part of like my book conversation that i'm trying to think about, like how online fandom is also producing the industry in a way. Now, because it's you know digitized and more visible, to the theme. And so I would say that that is happening more and more also from what I'm seeing book talk wise. I think the romance genre in particular, because of PewDiePie, we will go
01:22:46
Speaker
those types of shows will be produced more or romance novels will be produced more just like the imperfect women thriller genre of book is being produced more and more. Right. So I think that that probably will start to change more. If there's a, think I saw something about one of the black romance novel novelists who writes a lot of straight books. Couples is having, i think one of her books is being produced as well. Her name is Kennedy Ryan. But I do think because of how the fandom has really blown this up, that that that's just like an industry thing, but specifically fandom and not just the popularity of it. Does that make sense? Like though that difference. And I'm looking forward to it for sure. But i'm i a little cautious because again, if it's not going to be as good as Heat of Rivalry was,
01:23:40
Speaker
And you Americanize it how American does. I don't know. I don't know. I'm a little... It's going to happen, but yeah, what are to the cliffhangers? What are the like American sensibilities around telling a story that will ruin it, basically? That's what I'm like. I don't know, guys.
01:23:57
Speaker
don't know. Yeah, I kind of, I think I agree with Brie in the sense that I feel like heated rivalry as a phenomenon is having more impact in the sphere of television, maybe than it would be in the sphere of publishing. It's a phenomenon in publishing. But the thing is, it was massively popular in publishing before the TV show came out. And, know, you know, it's not like there weren't a million and MM romances that didn't exist alongside it, right? So in that sense, genre is going to continue to flourish and grow. um it may have gained more readers in the process, but I feel like the shift that I'm more curious about is what's going on in terms of TV. Does this mean we're going to see more queer content? Does it mean we're going to see more romances? Does it mean we're going to see more adaptations? We haven't talked at all about Bridgerton, but Bridgerton is lurking kind of in all of this too, right? It's a big influence that's kind of motivating a lot of these adaptations. So I think in that sense, I suspect the stuff that we'll see that's maybe a little more new or pushing in ah a newer direction is more from TV maybe than from print. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, like
Queer Representation and Cultural Adaptations
01:25:01
Speaker
Bridgerton is also now adopting a queer story, which I know has gotten a lot of pushback from fans of the books and just people in general. And, you know, like we don't see a lot of lesbian relationships on television and it is you know severely underrepresented. There was a lesbian show.
01:25:20
Speaker
that I think Crave Canada was gonna do about softball that may or may not be tabled or shelved or something. And so like just the desire, I think. Also, i think like something to talk about with heated rivalry is I think one of the reasons why this works so well is because of the NHL and how homophobic the NHL is. and how like secretive that makes the relationship and how like interesting and like seductive it makes it. I think telling a story about queer female athletes where they are allowed to be or they are more less homophobic, they are more often in relationships, even with other players, I think it doesn't have the same kind of
01:26:09
Speaker
like broader seductive appeal maybe but maybe this you know opens up the area for more just queer romances in general where everybody doesn't die at the end which we would love we would love we would love that would love that it's amanda loud do you want to add anything about where you think this goes no i think i'm i'm just listening and learning from our guests um I was recommending to be a scam, which i there's not a single week. i i don't I go without mentioning this. But because of how there's an original version and then there's all these retellings across of Europe that retail like sometimes to the letter, the story, and sometimes they go like beyond that or they change it.
01:26:56
Speaker
And it's super interesting how they use social media to engage the public. like Characters have their own like social media and they will post on like real time. And you will get like more of the story if you were following them. So and and there recently, we recently got the the latest season of the newest version that is the Croatian version. And it was really interesting because this was the first queer season of this Croatian version. And it was very tame because of censorship. Whereas we were very used to like scam. It was like scam France, scam Italia, scam Spain, scam ah everywhere. Like in in Europe, it was like full nudity sometimes. or Like it was it was not taint at all because like of how culturally
01:27:49
Speaker
accepted queer sex was and and and nudity and and how we engage with bodies in different kind cultures and then you get Croatia and there was a lot of like shock in in seeing this story that we have been we have seen portrayed like 10 times this love story between queer people we have seen it like at least 10 versions of it and this was the first time that you you barely see them kiss right and sometimes the kisses look like not real kisses and just like using the perspective of the camera so the actors don't have to kiss. So I think it's a phenomenon that it's it's worth studying and it's worth looking into. Unfortunately, the website that had all the versions available with ah all the subtitles just last week had to take everything down because the company that owns every single scam remake
01:28:45
Speaker
ah send them like a season this is a wow so i' I'm gonna I'm gonna have to look elsewhere because of course to watch scam France it's free on YouTube in France I was the Croatian version for free and on YouTube because it was available everywhere so it's on country stuff and and YouTube being YouTube hashag vbn but really like every single season is a love story And it follows like a lot of like coming of age and a lot of the tropes that we have mentioned today. But to me, what is fascinating is to see how they adapted to each culture to make it like more palatable to the public of that country. But everyone is watching all the versions. like
Future of Media Representation and Farewell
01:29:31
Speaker
We know the story that we're going to get. like we We watched the Norwegian original one. So I think when you ask like ah where is the genre going, I think social media is going to have that big impact. Sometimes it's going to be ugly because we're seeing a lot of ugly stuff on social media. But sometimes you're going to have a phenomenon like scam that has like it's more than a decade kid old. So I think that is where like I put all my hopes on those type of projects.
01:30:03
Speaker
yeah i Yeah, bouncing off of that, I think what I hope and what I expect are different things. I hope for more diverse stories. I hope for especially not just MM, but sapphic, but also for me, finding... books and or media that have non-binary characters is really hard, especially ones that have like good plot lines and good like thought out arcs and all that. For me, it's hard finding my gender representation there. And then seeing that portrayed in TV is even harder. I mean, you do have characters like an art flag means death, like Nico Ortiz is non-binary, both IRL and in the media they've portrayed. I think really important. And for me, i think finding that I would hope to that we have more of that in the future, especially as there's a lot more non-binary people in the world and trans people out in the world now. um So seeing trans stories for me would be really transformative and really important. I hope to see that in media. There is this book, oh my god, it's about baseball, it has a trans main character. sent it to my friend and he has it right now, so my mind is slipping me. But that one is really good. But like especially as we get move into Pride and like we see like those Pride sections of bookstores come out, I think perusing that section is going to give me a lot of hope because my expectations that differ from my hope is that as we move towards a more fascist society and where like things are a lot more oppressive these days,
01:31:21
Speaker
I fear that it's harder for a lot of like non-heteronormative people to, or and then like non-white people to like have media and like have good representation. And so like I bounce back, because not like heated rivalry is this phenomenon where we do have this representation, but... Will we get more like in a good way?
01:31:40
Speaker
you know what i mean i just have like that fear of the like will we get more good stuff or are we going to get like everyone's trying to recreate it and thus make something bad and has no respect for the people they're portraying and and it is like just rainbow washing, green washing, or like trying to appeal to those people. so I go back and forth in that I hope there's good media out there that comes of this, especially that is inspired by heated rivalry. like There's a lot of really good like trans heated rivalry fics that are really good. But my fear in our society the way it it is is not not as bright, I fear. That if that was too much of a honor.
01:32:17
Speaker
No, no, no. You're so good. I mean, no, these are definitely all good thoughts to be thinking about as we kind of move into this history and the future of heated rivalry. But thank you to our guests for coming on today. I really appreciate you guys spending your evening with us. I loved listening to you talk. I always love listening to you talk. Do you have anything you want to plug where people can find you if you want them to follow you on social media, ah Google Scholar pages? anything i'm vaguely intermittently using blue sky these days because social media is failing us but i'm i'm katie didn't at blue sky if people are looking for me amazing amazing brie you can find me talking about blackness uh digital scholarship and fandom at those intersections and gender sexuality i'm working on building out some stuff but nothing to share right now
01:33:14
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you again. i really love talking romance novels with you both. And yeah, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you want to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter um at SRSPod or on Instagram or threads at since rookie season pod you can also email us that's s r s pod at at protonmail.com we're always looking for feedback on what we talk about on the show we would love for you to send in anything voice notes whatever just so we can interact with you all make sure to rate the podcast five stars and to subscribe to us and yeah that's all i've got thank you so much for listening and we'll see you all soon
01:34:05
Speaker
Learn and love. Amanda is our editor. You're listening.