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What do you mean WHO, are you kidding me bro?...i don’t know...are you serious? heated rivalry?
292 Plays2 months ago
This week, Amanda, Lau, & Lauren dive into HR THE NOVEL !!!!! We discuss differences in the adaptation, our thoughts on the book as a whole, and our favorite moments. No ep next week, but the week after, tune in for our discussion of EMBER & ICE WITH A LIVE GUEST WOOOO
Thanks for listening! Follow us on our socials:
Threads & Instagram: @sincerookieseasonpod
Email: srspod@protonmail.com
References & Citations:
Breakdown of the NHL Trade Deadline
Francoispilled tweet & reddit (RR hollanov inspo)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Personal Updates
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 the episodes from the Crave Canada television series, the Game Changers novels, and various media surrounding this fan phenomenon. Today we're looking into heated rivalry, the novel. yeah Stay with us for some literary analysis and our thoughts on how the book compares to the series.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hi, y'all. I'm back. Woo. ah Yay. i was not, i I was out to dinner with colleagues last week. So sometimes it's crazy that I have like a real academic job now and I'm still not. And you're just fighting online? ah great I'm not just fighting online. I'm not just some like grad student anymore. and Like people are like, you want to have dinner? And I'm like, whoa.
00:00:59
Speaker
And then the university pays for it. Like, whoa. That's awesome. It's awesome. That's great. you don't pay for alcohol, though, which is the worst part. because That's always really sad for everyone except me.
00:01:11
Speaker
And we respect you being sober so much, Lau. But I needed a drink. But my condolences, Lauren. Yeah, my quarter is ending this week. And then pretty soon, I'm going to be somewhere visiting someone. oh my God. I wonder who. i wonder who.
00:01:28
Speaker
Not me. Okay, well, Lau decided to come to America the week after I'm going to visit Amanda. We could have all planned it together, but here we are. three her planners maybe at the end of the summer or something. Yeah, maybe you guys will come to Chicago. Maybe for my birthday we should do something. we that would be fun. Just one problem.
00:01:48
Speaker
I don't have vacations during the summer. Oh, because your your toilets flush backwards because you're on the other side the world. No, actually, on the wrong deal part of the world because we don't have summer. That doesn't exist. So it's just we get our vacations for Christmas because this is a Catholic catholic country.
Discussing 'Heated Rivalry' Novel
00:02:08
Speaker
And I am getting a few days that I'm negotiating to go on my 10-year anniversary trip with my husband. oh it's being a fight that's
00:02:27
Speaker
anyways anyways moving on okay so today we're talking about heated rivalry the book i was not here last week but i got to listen to amanda and lao's conversation about game changers and of course, I was like, oh, my God, this is what I would have said if I was there. So I'm excited to add in to my two cents about heated rivalry or or hockey novels, hockey romance novels specifically. But as always, we are examining what makes heated rivalry so addictive, like what is in this story and the way that it's given to us for this that allows for this amount of obsession, rewatching. And we're also trying to figure out. Is the book as addictive as the television series? A little. Amanda wanted me to do this because i talked about it last episode that I was on. So like two weeks ago now at this point, the NHL trade deadline
NHL Trade Deadline Insights
00:03:17
Speaker
happened. Yes. Yeah. Since we're not getting regular hockey updates in our hockey show, we have to kind of throw it in here on the side. As I might've mentioned before, someone that I work with is really into hockey and so we get to talk about it during work. But on Friday, the 6th, I want to say March 6th, So a few weeks before this came out, it was the NHL trade deadline. And so he spent all day, he had like a countdown on his laptop. and
00:03:40
Speaker
We were talking about updates and like who was going where and wherever. And i was like, is that also because this is also something that I haven't i don't know if I mentioned last episode, I might have but I was editing another one of our episodes, but I'm I've really gotten into the PWHL right now. It's also known as the P-dub. So that's been very fun. And we can talk about that as well. And I was like, does the P-dub have the same trade deadline? And he was like, I don't know. So I need to figure that out.
00:04:01
Speaker
But yeah, the trade deadline was a big deal. So basically, think in my understanding, it means that up until this point, teams were able to trade players, take on contracts, negotiate different things. But now that this trade deadline has ended, they can't move teams anymore and everyone is locked in. So whoever's going to the playoffs is going. There's no more movement. I think the playoffs start end of April. So that's just over a month and a half away. it's a month. I love that. We have the calendar up in our work and I wrote playoffs question mark on like all the questions in April.
00:04:35
Speaker
So basically what the purpose of the trade deadline is, and if there are trade deadlines in other sports too, and they typically occur right before the playoffs. It's basically a way for, this is, I mean, this gets really complicated, but there's, it's basically a way for like players to be moved around so that the NHL teams don't hit their cap during the playoffs.
00:04:59
Speaker
And it also prevents like teams from paying for like really high, really good players, like right before the playoffs start, because they know that they're going into the playoffs. So like if the playoff dead or the, if the trade deadline didn't happen, you know, like what would stop New York Rangers from acquiring Connor McDavid in order to make a playoff push? So it's not necessarily that who's in the playoffs now is who's going. Right. There is still about six.
00:05:33
Speaker
Like at this point, there's probably about a month left of games before the playoffs start. Playoffs start mid-April. But basically it's that like the players can't move around to other teams. Now there is a caveat to this in that teams can bring up um like younger players like during this time, especially on teams that will not be heading to the playoffs. So teams that are really low in the standings, they will bring up their like um college players who are in the NCAA or their bring over their like juniors,
00:06:11
Speaker
players from Canadian hockey juniors and U.S. juniors teams, or they'll get like players from European teams and they'll bring them over to give them like some experience of playing in the and NHL in a very like low stakes environment.
00:06:27
Speaker
It's also usually because they want them to keep up their conditioning. And the NCAA usually ends in the beginning of March. A lot of European leagues are done by the end of March. A lot of junior leagues are usually done um and moving into playoff stages. so We're coming up on the end of a hockey season before the playoffs start.
00:06:48
Speaker
Playoffs are typically, they're like six to eight weeks. They're four rounds, seven games each round. And you start with 16 teams, then you move to eight, then you move to four, then you move to two. So it's a very similar like bracket style almost to March Madness, but March Madness is bigger. It's a 64 then to then 16. Yeah, it's a little bit smaller in the NHL. There wasn't a lot of crazy stuff happening at the trade deadline actually this time around. I had a lot of hurt and pain in my land because i we lost our captain, Nick Foligno. I heard about this. I mean, the man skates like he's got a piano on his back. which like he's so slow. He's 38. He is, I love him. I love him so much. And he's been a great, great captain for Chicago, but Chicago traded him to go to the Minnesota wild because Minnesota wild is the second team in the Western division right now. So they're basically almost guaranteed a playoff spot unless something crazy happens. And his brother's on the Minnesota wild. So they get to play together. He gets to have like, he's probably going to retire this summer. So he gets like a last chance, like Stanley cup playoff push, which is great. And he gets to do it with his brother. So that's really cute. Cause they've never been on the same team together. yeah.
00:08:07
Speaker
That's really great. Chicago also traded a bunch of people to the Edmonds and lawyer Oilers. um The Edmonds and Oilers. The biggest heartbreak for me is Colton Dock. I just loved him on our fourth line. He was like a real grinder, a real like get in your face, like push you around kind of guy. And he got traded away. He was also very cute. But, you know, here we are. Yeah, I might think my friend wanted to trade the captain of the Maple Leafs or something. I don't know. so yeah. He wanted him to be traded and it didn't happen, which was, I guess, sad.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, the the Toronto Maple Leafs are not good. let's Oh, I know. let's Let's say that first. They're not the worst worst, but they're getting there towards them. Yeah, they're really bad. So yeah, that is definitely like big people that are, did not get traded at the trade deadline and have like upcoming free agency in
Interest in PWHL and Sports Challenges
00:09:00
Speaker
the summer. are going to be, I think Austin Matthews is up.
00:09:04
Speaker
Oh. Or looking to be like potentially traded because he at the Olympics played well. And with the Maple Leafs the way that they are, they're not playing well. And so it's like, it's kind of hard. I'm trying not to say anything nice about him because I think he's a dick. Right.
00:09:21
Speaker
Because he went to all of that Trump shit that USA hockey did. I know. Which boo, Austin Matthews, your mother raised you better than that. Jesus fucking Christ. I know. That's part part of why I wanted to get into the PWHL, but also like women and sports are so much better. Someone in our seaweed brain chat was saying how they just refer to women's sports as sports and then men's sports as as men's sports. um Just because, which also I want to say that International Women's Day only had, first of all, 23 hours in the States, but also the PDAB, the people that had the 24 like jersey number, they changed to 23 because of that when they played on Sunday 8th. So that was cool. But I really want to do segments on the P-Dub and and less on the and NHL. But i need to I need to have better understandings of that. I know the teams. I know most of the players, I think. But i sometimes it's hard for me to keep up with games with how busy I am. But this is a shout out. I don't know if I did it last time, but I'm going to out again. The PWHL, they do stream their games for free on YouTube. On YouTube. Which is...
00:10:20
Speaker
The and NHL, sometimes it's really hard to figure out where to watch a game or how. i know the NBA is worse with that, but the and NHL, it's ah usually like paywalled and it hard to access. like My friend that follows the Maple Leafs, he just listens to the radio because that's free. But the P-Dub, the YouTube chat, very kind people. The moderators are very nice. Everyone in chat has all sorts of pride flags. um They do stick taps. they have There's the big hype-up song in between second and third period. It's called Game Time, but everyone purposely mishears it as Gay Time. Uh-oh! So they're all in chat saying, gay time, let's go, let's get it started. It's a whole thing. The sirens, they all send siren emojis for the sirens because that's like New York's thing. It's it's really a great community. And if you're looking to avoid the disaster that is the NHL. NHL? Yeah. The P-Dub is a very welcoming space. The timeline, and i have they've been getting on my timeline and my with my feeds. and It's been really sweet and like wholesome. like When they push the hockey there are the goalies on the carts, it's really funny because they if you go from the locker room to the arena and they can't really like take off a lot of their gear. so they push them on carts and it's just it's funny so i encourage the p-dub if you're interested in hockey but don't want to be men because hashtag men suck and are bad generally so yeah get into the p-dub every time y'all say captain my brain goes to epic
00:11:37
Speaker
Captain. Oh, Epic the Musical. That's awesome. That's so funny. Oh my god. P-Dub edits to Epic the Musical? I'm here for it. But if you also want to get into the P-Dub, hit me up, you know message us. Maybe I'll add you on Discord. We can like talk about it and and watch stuff together. i don't know.
00:11:53
Speaker
I'm usually pretty good at watching livestream stuff like Twitch and whatnot, so but I would like to to watch Hockey Live and get into it. So let me know. That's my offer. Okay. Exactly. No, let's do it. I love it. I love this for you. i am not very good at watching sports. Well, there's only eight teams in this league, so it's it's a bit easier. It's way less overwhelming. Yeah, it's way less. It's what found out about the Western Conference of NHL.
00:12:14
Speaker
Every time I see like team sports, it's just far too quick for my eyes. Oh, that's fair. Yeah. The puck does get hit a lot. Okay, so our book. Yes, Heated Rivalry. well So this is basically basically the book that covers everything that is in Skip, on the tv show and uh so this is this the second book right because i didn't read it in order yes this is the second book in the game changer universe second book we all know the title heated rivalry yes we have explored this ad nauseum so Yeah. No, exactly, exactly. And do you think people know the characters? Do you think they know their names? Do you? Do you do think they know our main characters are Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozenov? Who are they? For everyone who doesn't know, no, I'm kidding. No, I'm just kidding. We're not gonna get to this. Although, this book does start differently. Yeah! Well
Literary Analysis of 'Heated Rivalry'
00:13:12
Speaker
first. Well first, before we go into it.
00:13:15
Speaker
Regarding that, i was complaining about the structure last episode. I was like, oh, this is too formulaic. And I love that we have a bit of timeline play here. So we start with a prologue that takes us the moment before conflict between these two. So the situation relationship is very well established, but we're starting to have feelings. And so we are freaking out. no And that's the prologue. And then we go back to the day they meet. they meet So we do travel in time a bit, which I appreciate. I love getting like a snippet of the conflict and then starting up with the story. Yeah.
00:13:58
Speaker
And then we have a very linear... timeline after that we go back to when they first met then we have the situationship that lasts for years then we have the gay panic, eterno-normativity and Shane trying to be straight and final finally we have the moment of honesty and vulnerability the love confession and the cottage that we love And the POVs are basically alternated. it's It's quite balanced. Yeah, I appreciate that. I also wanted to shout out, I saw this on Twitter only recently, and I didn't know this. So i'm gonna I'll link it in the show notes, of course, um as we always do. It's from Francois Pild.
00:14:36
Speaker
all lowercase, and it's a screenshot. It says, Rachel saying this four months ago, she's so funny. It's a screenshot from Reddit, which I will find. the The link is in the tweet, but I will link the original Reddit post as well. Rachel is replying to someone asking about Shane and Ilya living in her head before she started writing the story. And she says that she realized while writing Game Changer that a more interesting story would have been Scott Hunter secretly hooking up with the obnoxious Russian player who keeps roasting him. Originally, Ilya had a different name. So she decided to write Heated Rivalry is basically that story. Shane popped into her head one night and she started writing immediately. She wrote the entire prologue for Heated Rivalry in one sitting, she thinks. like I said, I'll link that if you want the full source. But that's wild that that whole prologue we get of them like playing and then meeting up and then and fucking and you're like, whoa, what? At one time, which to me is just nuts because that whole story just explodes from there. So I thought that was pretty cool. So how did you create this book? How did I was gonna say how did we read this how did we come across this book so I've talked about it before on the pod but I think it was 2024 my official count on my Kindle I don't really track books like I don't have a Goodreads or like you guys were talking about something last week I'm like. some kind of book graph yeah story graph i can't like it's better than goodreads because uh goodreads belongs to amazon story graph is independent made by a black woman hell yeah and you know what we love that i've never been one to track my books like i i i just like when i finish a book like the last thing i want to do is like go and write a review on it like You know, like I want to like talk about it with my friends. I'm not like really a big like I'm going to go rate this and think about it like that. I don't know. It's just like, like I'm never really.
00:16:20
Speaker
I have like just recently. This is definitely a tangent, but I've just recently started being like giving kudos on stories that I like on on and on A03. Like it's taken me a really long time to like interact with content like that. So I read this book as a one of the, I think it was 135 hockey romance novels that I read on Kindle Unlimited 2024. Okay. Did you like it?
00:16:48
Speaker
No! It's fine. I was i was i was complaining on about Game Changers last week. No, i literally, like, I didn't like this book. Like, so like not that I didn't like this book so much that I didn't read any of the rest of the series. I didn't like this book, and then I was like, oh, I didn't like that book. I'm not going to read any one other ones in the series. And then it was probably like a couple of weeks later that somebody recommended Role Model to me. And so then I went and read Role Model. I had still not read The Long Game, but like i remember like because I was in like those kinds of spaces in like early 2025 and like spring of 2025, I heard that Heated Rivalry like was going to become a TV show. I knew about it not to be like, I knew about this before it was big. But like, I knew about it for a while. I will say it was not my favorite hockey romance novel. Honestly, when I went to go re-pick it up after I'd watched the first two seasons of the television series, I like remembered how the book started. And so then I was like, oh yeah, i have read this book. Like literally, like, ah like that's it.
00:17:52
Speaker
Like that is all that it has given to me. I was at one point when the show was coming out in order to like console myself from watching week to week. I was reading like the next part of the heated rivalry book that I thought the episodes would cover like religious, like I was reading it over and over again and then like consuming fan fiction about it too. Because yeah, I guess I would say like most of the reading i do is fan fiction in some way, shape or form. And so like, it's, I don't think you should track fan fiction because this is like a whole privacy concern that I've like, talked about a little bit on threads which we could get into when we talk about fandom but yeah like I I've read a lot of hockey romance novels this does probably not even hit my top 10 he did probably the long game is low on the top 10 it's probably like top 15 the long game I think the long game is the best one that I've read in this series so far and role model is the other one that is like is up there like top 15 but it's not my it's not one of my favorites Out of these six and potential seven, I think Role Model is in my top top couple. Amanda, did you remember, did you rate this book or like tell us about your relationship with this book? I know we talked about like you and I talked about how we started reading the series as the TV show started. But what was your impression of this book the first time you read it?
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. As I mentioned last week, I'm very bad about, I'm also bad about like writing books and leaving reviews. Like I know the books that I've read. um and i know general timeframes of when I read things, but it's really hard for me to keep track of. Like even just the other day, I went and backlogged like 80 books in my story graph just because like, well, one, it's we have our book club and our in our Percy Jackson community. saw that. My feed was like, I'm a lamb, I'm a lamb.
00:19:36
Speaker
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I forget that it it does that. But I was like, ah, shit, I gotta do this because it's it's part of that community aspect that I like. And everyone's taught, they like do like their month in review and like whatever else. And like it gives you a trend of how you rate things and what genres you like. And I can appreciate those sort of analytics because that can help me inform what I might like in the future, you know, and just be part of the community. And so I had backlogged a bunch of stuff. But I said it last week, and I do like Heta Rivalry. a bit more than Game Changer. ah like i we we agree that it Game Changer is very formulaic. I think heated rivalry has the different aspects of like more cultural stuff, the mental health stuff, the hidden dynamic, the inherent like but homophobia on on both sides, but especially with like the Russia stuff, and Shane's struggle to come out in general, and like both mental illnesses and Shane's autism. I think that that, for me, adds a lot more and puts it a lot higher. um and that's why I was so involved. But i overall, I'm very bad at rating things. I think I would rate this one maybe like a 3.8 to 4 out of 5. Definitely higher than, i don't know what I officially put on my story graph, but definitely higher than Game Changer. But yeah, I only started reading it because of the show, and I wanted to get more into the universe. I was i had a few other hockey, I mean, I obviously haven't read as many hockey books as Lauren has. I think Lauren lot of
00:20:54
Speaker
Am I obsessed? Is it my special interest? I have read some of them though like when Icebreaker was huge I read Icebreaker and some of those related universes and Ally Hazelwood and like I've read other sport romances etc but this one i only read because of the i really liked the show and also it was a really great distraction when I was moving and then we had started our discord that we have and i was like well shit I gotta read all of them now so I can keep up with everyone and be way more involved and it kind of snowballed from there and yes I do like Roan Model more than a lot of the others um i mean and i will talk about each book at some point way later on but definitely i think heated rivalry and long game are my are some of my top like i really love not in top i think top in the universe it's overall absolutely not i think maybe top 20 ish they're they're not making top 10 but they would definitely be like highlight of the past few years especially with the community that it's given us um but i like the the the dynamics of this book a lot in the others So that's where I would rate it as 3.84 out of 10. Somewhere around. Or not out of 10. Oh my god. po Could you imagine? um Out of 5.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'd rate it as 3.84 out of 10. Lau, how did you encounter this book? Yes. Yeah, I i enjoyed it. This was the first one that I've read. And I was... i I had already watched the two first episodes. So I was really happy just like comparing in my head. Like, oh, the adaptation is so good because I see what you did here. and I was just like going all into like how this informs my experience of the TV show. Mostly. I consume this in audiobook. At like 1.5 speed.
00:22:31
Speaker
because I honestly, as a literature scholar, I read so much using my eyes that I'm quite selective with the materials that I devote to with eyes. And I like to listen to audiobooks while I'm buying stuff, doing errands and all of that. Because if I have to like go from my work to my hobby in the same format, I will probably feel like it's work. So that's that's what I did. Is this my problem? Is that everything is both my work and my hobby? know, I started dividing, like, when I read for work, I read on my iPad, and when I read for fun, I read on my Kindle. Yeah, but I read fanfiction for both, so... Yeah, you need to have different devices. So when you read fanfic for fun, do it in your phone, and when you do it for work, do it in your laptop.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, but it all goes through the same archive of our own account, so my history is whack right now. Yeah, I understand that. But at least your brain has like yeah that change of scenery, you know? i did like it.
00:23:35
Speaker
My favorite is the long game, so far. yeah i found this to be entertaining, and I appreciated that it did play a bit more with the genre, and it was not as shallow as the first one. I felt that everyone had more... depth Yeah. And it was way more complex. We were tackling other issues yeah that weren't just the closet and will they, won't they? So yeah, i i mean, i don't remember what I read in this book and I am afraid to look. Yes, but I probably gave it like a 3.5 or a four because I usually rate books based on the genres and my expectations. Like if I'm reading this book expecting to be entertaining, that's it.
00:24:25
Speaker
I'm going to give you a good rating. Yeah. If I was like looking for the next best work of literature and fiction, well, this is definitely not my cup of tea. Right. Right. So yeah. It's yeah, it's definitely not like groundbreaking. It's definitely not like, I don't know, like mind blowing. Like, I think that I feel like it's pretty like, yeah. I mean, like, truthfully, I came out of this book, like thinking the only like real, well, i clearly I came out of this book and I didn't remember it But now that I've reread it, I found this thread the other day that I think is really funny.
Comparing Book and TV Adaptation
00:25:02
Speaker
And it was about Rachel Reed. And it was like, clearly, Rachel Reed wants to fuck Lestat de Leincourt. And Ilya is her Lestat stand-in.
00:25:12
Speaker
This is not the first time I've heard this. I don't agree. I fully disagree. You can disagree? Okay, wait. Like so much, like so, so much. i think that like, i I don't know, we'll get into this because I i want to address like the unrivaled stuff that we've seen in some of the interviews that Rachel's been doing recently. But I would love to hear your like, i don't think Ilya is Rachel's Lestat stand-in.
00:25:39
Speaker
Listen, I could have a podcast on Interview with the Vampire. mean, literally. Amanda knows this. Like, Mal and I can talk about this for hours.
00:25:51
Speaker
and ah and And I also talk about about it with other folks on the Discord. But I read the Interview with the Vampire when I was 14.
00:26:01
Speaker
This was also like that series was was my introduction to criticizing religion and asking questions about God and about fate.
00:26:12
Speaker
And L'Estat de L'Eoncourt is one of my favorite characters of all time. And I love Sam Reid's interpretation of the character. I hate Tom Cruise for what he did. With that, and although I love Ilya Rosanoff, and I can get white, there's a vibe, you know? There's a vibe. For sure, there's a vibe. There's a vibe.
00:26:33
Speaker
But they're completely different characters. And it's it's it's definitely not it, in the sense that the only thing that they have in common is that they're foreigners. yeah White foreigners that come to like... Who are a little dumb. Quote-unquote. Yeah, who are dummy. Although Lestat is not always dumb.
00:26:51
Speaker
Right, I mean, he definitely has his submissive tendencies. Yeah, his life, his his' run with Akasha was definitely not a dumb. What they have common is that they're white, and I get white blindness, but yeah, they're foreigners, so they have an accent, and they come to quote-unquote corrupt the nice, quiet, racialized, if you take the interpretation of Interviewed with the Vampire that we have in the TV series, yeah racialized boy, who's a good family boy, right? Yes. But it's so not it. And when you get Lestat's perspective, yeah which is coming to us this summer, you're going to see that you don't know Lestat so far. If you haven't read Lestat, the vampire. So yeah, I could go on for hours. I totally get that.
00:27:40
Speaker
But I do definitely think that Rachel Reid likes Ilya way more than she likes Shane. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that it is maybe a little self-insert-y at some times. Really?
00:27:54
Speaker
Wow. Interesting. I think he' is he he's just used as ah as a device so often to kind of nudge people along and poke and prod, not as like a plot device, but as like an omniscient kind of- Oh, I'm talking you about chain is being used. okay. So like- so like Ilya is the fetish. Yeah, well, like, Rachel Reed wants to fuck Ilya, so she's self-inserting herself in the chain. And that's why he's so white passing. Okay.
00:28:22
Speaker
I mean, recon do who doesn't to fuck Ilya Rosanoff? I mean, I also want to fuck Ilya Rosanoff, but that doesn't mean I'm to severely underdevelop my other character. course not! My other character, who's also racial, like, racialized in some way, shape, or form. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Like, I don't know. This is just things that have been percolating because I think we've gotten so much more stuff out of Rachel Reed than when she first wrote this book because this book came out in 2018, 2019. Yeah, pre-pandemic.
00:28:52
Speaker
So I think we have so much more from Rachel Reed than we did when we were initially, maybe some people were initially interacting with it. Anyways. So for this book, we're going to use a similar framing narrative. Framing? Framing?
00:29:07
Speaker
Sure. Well, we have a similar framing device that we did last week with the we'll give you items and then we'll talk about what was different between the TV show and the book, how we felt about them, why that might be, etc. Hopefully you've read and watched the series. If you haven't read the book, that's I think that's probably all right. But Hopefully you have read the book so what we talk about isn't too confusing. But first, to start, as we mentioned, the prologue is different, but the very beginning is so different. So in the TV show, we get the prospect cup when they are 17 to 18. We get Ilya not lighting being able to spark his lighter until he sees Shane. but in the book, as we said, prologue meetup at Shane's sex apartment. And Shane's point of view, which he's thinking he must drop this, they've got to stop.
00:29:49
Speaker
But they basically the prologue at the beginning, they're they're fucking. And that's our intro to them as we're thrown into their, they what their situationship looked like for the rough eight to 10 years or so. Why do we think that changed? I think that the show had to rush through a timeline in such a way that doing time jumps would definitely make people confused that early in the, in the, I think i think that that this sort of prologue works super well for books because it hooks you into a conflict. But I don't think it works that well for a show like Hiddlest Rivalry that has so little time to be like to explore the whole story. And I think that what we're given in that first scene, as I said, when we analyze it for the pod, is just perfect. It's a great way to communicate a lot of the things that the prologue is communicating, and also to go deeper
00:30:46
Speaker
into what the relationship between these two characters is gonna be. Like, the book is very focused on, fuck, we're having sex, and now we're falling love. And I think that the series, because it is mixing the skip and the hauling off, and ah because it is looked at from contemporary lens, so there's a lot that you can, like, redo, it's not focusing, like,
00:31:12
Speaker
exclusively on that, but mostly on vulnerability. So the love is the reason is the reason why you're panicking, but we're talking about trauma, we're talking about vulnerability, we're talking about syncing our codes and languages. And I think this is the kind of changes that a good adaptation adaptation does, because you understand that different mediums need different storytelling devices. yeah And you also understand that the readers from pre-pandemic versus the public for the post-pandemic, you're like also trying to modernize your your story. And i really like that when like we were talking about Interview with the Vampire, I think the new adaptation is gold because yes it takes a magnificent work of art that is the book's of Anne Rice, ah the Vampire Chronicles. And Josh, you can tell that the people that did are great readers because they got to like keep the essence while giving the characters a completely different backstory sometimes. yeah I love what Rick Riordan is doing while revisiting Percy Jackson. for the TV show. were literally talking about this today and I was like, it feels like the book came into my like into my screen. like yeah Like you shook the book and they all fell out. They all fell out like and I'm watching that.
00:32:39
Speaker
like The second season is gold. It's amazing. The way you're understanding understanding what ah your material capacities are for each medium. like In books, you can do whatever you want because you don't have to worry about budget.
00:32:55
Speaker
Right, or like, how is that actually gonna work? Or like... Yeah, yeah. Does that work with the light? does that work with acting? So I... His gaze darkest. How the hell... I've been thinking about that so much. Okay, but Ilya at the bar in episode five, when he sees Steve walk across the room and he like lowers his head, that's his gaze darkening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's great at that. They're both great at doing stuff that I didn't think you could communicate with your face. So yeah, I think we have this this framing device, as Amanda said, of like differences and... Well, it's mostly differences. And but it's not like we're saying, oh, you were not faithful to the book. No, we're just trying to analyze how the series took the or like the original material and started a dialogue with it and a dialogue with the audience.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah. And like a big reminder is that Jacob Tierney reached out to Rachel Reed and said, want to make this into a show. He had a vision. He had a vision. Like, like Jacob Reed or Jacob, ti and Jacob Reed, Jacob Reed reads yaoi. Jacob, you think yaoi stand confirmed? He reads Yaoi and he's like, I have a vision.
00:34:15
Speaker
i have a vision. And you know what? I love that for him because I don't actually, like when I'm reading books, I don't, I can't picture it. You have Aphantasia? I think I have it. i don't, I definitely don't. As long as time I, I used to not, I used to be like, no, I don't have that because I had like an insane roommate who had Aphantasia. And I was like, i don't want to be like that. But now I like think about it more and more. And I'm like, no, I think I do actually. I see the craziest shit in my head. It's awesome.
00:34:43
Speaker
I cannot. I have the thing this thing. I've said that I have issues with nonverbal. And I also said, like, my dyscalculia doesn't help me with dimensions and space. So I do imagine, like, some details, but I don't have an image in my head. But every single time a narrator is describing a face or a gesture or a sound I find myself stopping and trying to do it to understand it so if you see me on public transportation in Bogota making weird faces you know why no I like honestly like it's really hard for me well sometimes sometimes I'm reading books and I'm like I can't like picture like I can't when I read a fan fiction I don't picture Shane and Ilya in my head like is that weird like
00:35:30
Speaker
I never am like, this is exactly what they're doing. Like, they're just words on a page to me. oh And I'm like, is this why i was really bad at word problems in math? It all makes sense.
00:35:41
Speaker
I have really bad auditory processing too. Okay. Now i I've gone from like having a different gay identity now having a different disability. We're going to the whole DSM manual Lauren. The whole DSM manual, we're going to go item by item. Item by item.
00:36:03
Speaker
Actually, one of my friends, Laura, has a DSM because she's a school psychiatrist. And she has a DSM just at her house. I saw it the other day when I was helping her move. So she was like, yeah, my friends and I like to read through it and diagnose ourselves. And I was like, that sounds like so much fun, i actually. That and a few drinks, hell yeah.
00:36:21
Speaker
Hell yeah! ah So anyway, our next item is ah the change is the name of the team, which we've talked about before. And also my colleague that is into real hockey, when we were talking about Hita rivalry one time, i was talking about the name changes. And so sometimes when like a character gets referenced or like, something happens and he's like oh is he on like the metros or the bears or whatever it is it's really funny but uh in the show i guess for like intellectual property or ip purposes they changed it from the voyagers and or voyagers and bears through metros and raiders i don't really understand why they changed the voyager like that one doesn't make as much sense to me the bears make sense because a bruin is a bear say voyager say voyager voyager that's why Why? Well, because they're supposed to be Maple Leafs. Montreal Metros has a ring to it. It has a ring to it. I mean, I guess. Montreal Voyageurs, as you say in English, does that? We're the Canadians, and we call them the Habs.
00:37:23
Speaker
Which look into that wikipedia page and the guy it's like there's like a whole myth surrounding it i've gone on a wikipedia rabbit hole while waiting for samples to run it's a whole thing but they're not called the house because of the habitant some guy just called them that and they went with it it was a whole i don't so we don't know really know why they're called the habs there's a whole their their logo is also has an h in the middle of it Yes, but that didn't happen until after some guy started calling them the Habs. Oh, actually, I remember now. It's because they were the Canadian Hockey Club. It was like an acronym, and the H got in there, and then they went with the Habs. It's something like that. Go read the Wikipedia page. We'll link it in the show notes, maybe, but... it's I'm telling you that it's a mess. and we And we couldn't have all the jokes that we have made about the metros this whole season.
00:38:05
Speaker
If it was named Voyager, so... Yeah. And the New York Rangers are the New York Admirals. and Yeah. The H stands for hockey, not habitants. Exactly. But they had changed it like multiple times over like multiple decades. Well, okay. So in Quebec history, habitants were Francophone settlers who farmed the land along the river and the Gulf. Habitants is attested in French in 1914. But the first man to refer to the team as the Habs was American Tex Richard, the owner of american Madison Square Garden. He told the reporter that the H on the Canadian sweater was for habitants, but it was actually for hockey. ye But they probably called them habitants because they're called the Canadians. So habitants, Canadians. And the reason why they're called, the reason why they're called, yeah, it's colonizer. Habitant, it's basically like inhabitant, but during colonial period, habitation was a plantation. So habitant was the owner of plantation. And you know what So we're joking about white colonizers here. Just make sure that we're all in the same page. We're talking about white colonizers. I love when you teach me something about Canadian history because I just think it's a place with the maple syrup smell of money and you tell me that it's a racist place too. And that makes me feel more better about where I'm at right now.
00:39:22
Speaker
i'm gonna I'm gonna recommend a book that I read this weekend, but I have no idea if it exists in in in in English, but it's called Atouk, elle et nous. I'm gonna link it in the show notes. And I loved it, and it's a great way to, like, and I have ah a couple of books that I've read recently about adoption of Indigenous children by Quebec and Anglophone Canadians. So forth fun stuff. and also about the displacement of indigenous communities in Quebec so I can add to the show notes ah for everyone who's interested in learning why and how Canada is also racist and you know what and you know what So speaking of people that live in Canada, we get...
00:40:12
Speaker
We change their fucking names, which is crazy in the fanfiction because half the people call them the fucking... I know. Like one words, and then the other people call the other. don't know. To me, that's like depending on which canon they're following, as if they're going for more like show canon, they'll go with the show names. But if they're going for more book accuracy, or they're following more of a book plot, they'll go with that. So I don't really know. But in the book, Shane just has a whole building just for sex, where it's like half like renovated and whatever. But in the show, he lives in the building where he meets Ilya. that's purely, as Jacob Tierney said, it's purely because of money. Like that was, yeah like there they had so many locations. Cause I was trying to think about like how many like hotel rooms did they have to go to that were different enough? yeah Like how many, like, I actually have a theory that they have two hotel rooms and they would change the decor.
00:41:04
Speaker
That's exactly what it is. the floor plans are very similar. I know that hotels were not like super, super original in the floor plans, but yeah. it was But like then like Ilya's, what was Ilya's house in Boston because he lives in a penthouse in the book. What was Ilya's house in Boston was also the gym for the first scene after the draft yes i have because if go and watch the house tour on youtube there's the the gym's in it yep yeah and i've seen that someone lives in shane's apartment because they're like what do you mean you casually walk up and down the stairs that like whatever they kissed up i don't know oh yes yeah there's someone that lives there like they borrowed someone's house for it which is a common thing in tv but crazy in the So again, we're making changes depending on the medium and the resources we have. And that's amazing, we love it. Because it worked. They made it work. It's still funny because he owns the other apartment. So we are not losing that whole aura of Mr. Landlord. mr
00:42:05
Speaker
But ah we are giving him less of a landlord um yeah ownership. Because we don't have money. yeah And speaking of the gym scene, we also get a difference of bikes and treadmills. I think we mentioned this in our first episode as well. ah know Then we have Shane's dating history. So in the show- is very different, yeah. His body count is basically Ilya and Rose.
00:42:28
Speaker
um The one who's hooking around with other people is Ilya. But we learn in the book that at the draft, he has a girlfriend that he has sex with and he's hoping she would break up with him.
00:42:41
Speaker
And then he hooks up with a lot of girls after the draft when he's like gay panicking because he masturbated to the thought of Ilia Rosanoff after the gym scene. And he also has sex with two men, two strangers during his time in the situationship. So he is also exploring his sexuality and he's also sleeping around and that's great because we love him not waiting for Ilya all the time to be available. But again, we had two dollars and a dream so how many people can you have to act in like a two second scene to make us know that Shane is hooking up with other people? Right, yeah. right Then we also get Ilya's love for Shane's freckles, which it was only mentioned a couple times in the show, but in the book, Ilya mentions it.
00:43:30
Speaker
Like, basically every single time we're in Ilya's point of view, he says something about Shane's freckles, which is really cute, really sweet. I wish they kind of went mentioned it more in the show, but there's only so much you can do. Oh, when he says, youre they take my breath, and I was like, ah!
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah, because he call he calls him, like, stunning or something, and Shane's like, are you sure that's what you mean? Like, I don't really know. and he's like, yeah, yeah, what would but what take my breath. And and Shane is like, took my bros heart stopped.
00:44:00
Speaker
Stop. Oh, my goodness. Stop. which my mom told me growing up that my freckles were angel kisses and then when i got older she told me i should get rid of them because they're basically just sun damage and that i can have skin cancer and i'm like yeah but i like my freckles yeah yeah bitch what the fuck the duality of mother literally no no exactly what was i oh i just got mine tattooed so i'll probably still get skin cancer from tattoos but you know what you have tattooed freckles yes all of my freckles wow i will send a better picture but just ah damage yeah No, I, like, I don't go in the sun because I'm so fair. Like, fair. Because I'm a fucking maiden. Okay. and I walked five miles yesterday without cream. i don't even I don't even go into the sun that much. Like, i use sun cream and I hide from the sun all the time because Bogota is so high up in the mountains that yeah the intensity of rays are, it's, like, we're probably gonna die from skin cancer here, so. Yeah.
00:45:14
Speaker
I drank like the original Four Locos. heard Bubba's. They used to be like liquid cocaine when I was in very, very big brain development ages. so like 16-ish.
00:45:27
Speaker
Oh, that's why, Lauren. That's why. That really exists. That's why you drink that. So I'm definitely going to be like one of those people that are, you know, like the hernia mesh settlement commercials where it's like, if you had a hernia mesh put in from this time, you you have money. There is money. Your doctor's trying to kill you. It's going to be like, if you drank a Four Loko between 2012 and 2015 while you were listening to Sicko Mode by Travis Scott, yeah you're entitled to compensation I should listen to that again that's I was just reading a fic about uh sorry it was about Shane losing his virginity to his weed dealer Ilya to sicko mode laughing
00:46:13
Speaker
ah That's insane. Like, it's specifically mentioned, but anyways, we can get back on track. The last thing I was going to say was the UV here is high that if you're outside for like an hour, you get burned because it can be like eight or nine during the afternoon out of ten.
00:46:29
Speaker
i on sun computer I put on every day from my computer, guys. and on an open window. Like, I'm really up there with my skin protection. Same. Okay, but before before I start googling do I have a brain tumor... know exactly how.
00:46:47
Speaker
The next item is after the gym scene in the TV show, we have no idea what happens. Like, we jump to a different moment of the year. But in the book, we know that they both jerk off.
00:47:00
Speaker
in their respective hotel rooms thinking of the other. So I always find that to be a juicy, beautiful detail, right? Yeah, I like that. And then we get the shower scene. Yeah, there I mean, we get so much more jerking off content in other parts of this story that like, why do we need this one specifically? Yeah. Yeah. The gay panic of it all, you know? The gay panic of it all. He has a girlfriend, he's wishing that his girlfriend is going to break up with him. And then he goes and jerks off to the thought of his rival.
00:47:33
Speaker
And it's fascinating that he is still like, I love his inner monologue. Like, that it was definitely very gay. He keeps saying that like, oh, oops, that was gay. Oh, no, that was gay. No, literally shame me every day. the same Oops, was gay. No, and I like, I think it could have like,
00:47:55
Speaker
cleared up some of the like questions that we brought up and i know a lot of fans have brought up about the shower scene like how did shane know that elia was even into him like what was the coding there but i also think that like what's one more jerking off scene you know like all right and technically they're minors when that happens so like that's a whole and nother thing is But they're both 16 or 17, I feel like that's fine. Teenage Jacob. About the shower scene. So we dissected this again ad nauseam in our episode. And one of the things that I pointed out is that we have almost no dialogue. And before I discuss how it is book, which is like quite different in that sense, like there's a lot of dialogue. I just wanted to shout out. I don't remember who said this on threads because I saw it one day when I was very sleepy, but I, It then came back to me in my memory. Someone said, like, a lot of the people who are saying that the shower scene was sexual assault from Ilia, because Ilia starts, like, touching himself and looking at Shane, blah, blah, are not familiar with the...
00:49:05
Speaker
history of cruising in gay communities. And I think this is very important to like to signal. is like A lot of the history of gay men hooking with gay men was non-verbal. Like, you will go to a park where...
00:49:20
Speaker
Everyone knew, but nobody said that everyone was looking to hook up and you would just look at a person, that person would look at you, you would go to the bathroom, to the public restroom, you know, enter a cubicle and pray to God that you didn't misunderstood his face and that he will appear at the same cubicle with you and suck your dick. So... There's a lot of like unsaid dynamics because for a long time it was, it could get you in so much trouble to even suggest. And still today, like you could get gay bashed. So yeah I'm not saying that what Ilya did is not dangerous as fuck, but I understand that we're also like, I think this scene in the show draws a lot from the cruising scene and this tradition in the men who love men community and history in the Western world. Like there's a lot of we and and and a lot a lot of the times the rule is like we don't speak. We do things, but nobody speaks to each other and we don't know each other And then the next day, like as soon as we're done, I'm living, you're living. That's it.
00:50:29
Speaker
right So I just wanted to to remind people and and and to teach people who are not familiar with this term. Like, I remember I was watching this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Mexican series that I know is not available in the US, made by Prime Video. It's called Tengo que Morir Todas Las Noches. It's based on Ciudad de México during the 80s. And it tell it tells the story of this gay club in La Zona Rosa of Ciudad de México. And there was a few cruising scenes at the beginning and I was watching it with my mother and she was like, are they going to fuck in the bathroom?
00:51:05
Speaker
as And I was like, yeah, they're cruising. And I had to explain to her what cruising was. Was, yeah. Bathhouses used to be really popular like with the gay community. Exactly. It was also, you know, like, this is why, like,
00:51:20
Speaker
like some of the like spread of AIDS is contributed or like is talked about as like bathosis contributed to the kind of like rapid spread spread through the great community gay community because of things like cruising yep so uh in a world where people have to hide this is what they did to fuck before tinder and grinder existed so This is how it was for those of you who had no idea. But in the book we do get a lot of dialogue like I'm gonna try to read like so. Rosanoff glanced down at Shane's crotch and raised an eyebrow. Fuck off, Shane grumbled. It's nothing. Like what you see, Hollander? No, it's not. I was thinking of something else. Shane wanted to die. He knew he didn't sound at all convincing. Something else?
00:52:09
Speaker
And then later, what are you thinking what were you thinking about? Rosanoff asked, his voice low. Shane swallowed, his throat was bone dry. You, he said quietly. Rosanoff heard him and smirked. He gave himself another stroke. You want to touch me, Hollander? Shane actually just wanted to watch Rosanoff jerk himself off. But not here, Shane stammered. Someone could come in. So we can see like it's a very different form of communication, what we have here. And I actually appreciate both of them. Again, I think different mediums for different stuff. So because in the show, we have we're outside their POVs in that scene, we get to pick up on all the things that are unsaid, but that are happening in the nonverbal communication. Whereas if you have to choose one of the two POVs, it might get a bit confusing to do it non-verbally.
00:53:04
Speaker
Or especially for, not Rachel Reed catching strays in this pod today, but especially for someone who hasn't developed that nuance in their writing yet. Like, I think we see more of that in the long game.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In her later books, I mean, yeah, she becomes, like, like I said, the long game is definitely in, like, some of my favorite, like, hockey novels. Mm-hmm. But this one probably doesn't even scratch the top ten. yeah so It's mostly because of her writing style, you know, and I think, you know, a lot of the plot points and things like that. And she just becomes a better writer. And that's totally fine. Exactly. Because you're you're training the muscle. You are getting better. yeah So I think that ah if she had tried to do what they do in the TV show, it would have been very confusing and not as good. So I i also like to see how we don't have to verbalize and explain everything in this new iteration of the story. And that we can also pay tribute to something that has been done for decades to like survive in a very homophobic world. Like I appreciate the wink wink at the cruising practice and at the history of our queer ancestors. whether you think cruising is good but dangerous whatever it's part of our history it's part of how we survived right exactly um i really like to see it present because their microcosm microcosmos is very similar to what people in the 70s 80s 90s were experiencing in the macrocosm because cosmos because they are in the hockey world where the only way to do this is cruising So it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. I'm reading this like really incredible fic that should be fully finished by the time this episode comes out called I'll Believe in Anything. And it's actually like some of it is about Shane and Ilya being hockey players in the 1980s together. And it has a lot of um like links to the AIDS crisis. Like they talk about it a lot. So yeah. I think a really interesting thing that you brought up is that, Loud, that like in the book we have to say a lot more things and that like using not having language would like be harder to read what was going on in the book. But I think like something really useful that the television adaption does, and I know I'm jumping ahead, but is like creating the Ilya speech in Russia, like Jacob Tierney writing all of that, or like Yuna and Shane having their conversation at the cottage. Like I think those were moments that like fans really wanted in the books. I mean, something that like Rachel Reed does is like anytime Ilya really speaks Russian, she kind of just like says, Ilya says in Russian, which I think is totally fine because unfortunately it is a language that is really hard to like translate because it's both in Cyrillic and then there is like the phonetic alphabet of it. This is something that even like fan fiction people are like struggling with. And a lot of like native Russian speakers are like criticizing fan fiction of right now. that you could just say iis says in Russian instead of finding the Russian word or trying to Google translate, which is wrong all of the time. So I think like i think there is value in Jacob, including part of those in the in the show as compared to the book, because it it helps develop those characters more for us. And if we're likely not going to see... um ilia and shane's agent because yuna is the agent if that doesn't switch because i'm ensuring i'm sure they're probably going to keep christina yang on for the second season that helps us see more into who is yuna as a character too um and so i think there is you know like some parts being omitted from the book to the tv show are fine but other parts being developed for the TV show, I think are great too. Yeah, I think I say this every single time. Jacob Tierney and his team did a great job ah and it's a great adaptation and that's really hard to do.
00:57:11
Speaker
Translating from one medium to another is always a hard task and I am so glad that this worked. Amanda, do you want to take us to the next item? Yeah, some of the smaller differences that ah I don't think they have large show impacts or large differences. It's like Ilya's brother's name changed from Andre to Ametsi. I don't know what that is, but I think it's fine. i don't really a difference. Yeah, I mean, yeah. inconsequential yeah and then after that we get in the following years after the all-stars game before shane's apartment shane is in the show him yeah in the show shane is ghosting most of ilia's approaches via text but in the book they are continuing to meet up in hotels so shane is a bit of a of a ghost uh after that all-stars game i think it's after the first all-star where it's east i think that's
00:58:00
Speaker
I think it's just to prolong the narrative a little bit because I know that Jacob Tierney has said that he didn't want them to have sex in the first yeah show in the first episodes and they have I mean they have penetrative sex the first time that Ilya and Shane are together in the heated rivalry book the other times that they have sex in the show that's not penetrated are still sex like I think like a lot of the differences between like the book and the tv show were to like expand things that rachel reed had already written you know i think early on in her career at this point she's not really i think she does a good job with describing but i think i don't think she's like the most descriptive writer um in these earlier books and so like i think jacob tyranny is filling in some of that and i think she definitely gets better at it in the later books you know but i think
00:58:47
Speaker
um Jacob had some like wiggle room to kind of work with and make things kind of his own. And so that's why I think the show is like, especially interesting for me because it has so much input from the showrunners, as compared to other shows that have been adopted from books. and are really controlled really tightly by the authors.
00:59:07
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and so that ties really well until one of the next points we have is that the first time they have penetrative sex is at Shane's in in the show, is at Shane's years after All Stars, but the book it's a week after All Stars at a hotel, and Shane leaves a big tip because he's embarrassed that bed is dirty, which to mention, this ah this does take place in Montreal. He is like too anxious about Ilya coming over, and so he books a hotel room in Ilya's hotel so that way it's easier for them to hook up and such yeah Also, I didn't know exactly where to put this, but I wanted to comment on it as I was listening rereading and slash listening to the audiobook on 1.8 speed. But the first time, the first Vegas, like rookie of the year scene, Shane is sober in the book and in the show, he's a little drunk and says the tuxedo thing. And so I just wanted to point that out that there that was this like difference. and and It's mostly the same in which Shane isn't understanding why Ilya is upset about wanting to go back to Russia because that's kind of the whole crux of the conversation is that Shane isn't like Shane's like what's wrong like why are you out here like are you really that upset about losing the award and Ilya is like no I don't want to go back to Russia and Shane like it just isn't clicking for him but in the show he had taken up Scott Hunter on those shots which in the in the book Scott Hunter did not offer those shots so And also, they're under 21, so Shane is not, he's completely sober in that first Vegas scene, which I thought was kind of interesting. And I do really, I ended up really, after our discussion on it, I really did end up liking the text conversation, especially as we discussed further about Shane's clothing options and how that ties to his character and his comfortability in who he is and sexuality and his person. I think that the tuxedo comment makes a lot more sense and adds a lot more context for that.
01:00:43
Speaker
And unless you have anything else to add, that ties really nicely into Scott Hunter. That's my next point. yeah i think yeah i i mean yeah we get a lot more scott hunter i think in the show than we do in this book um he's i mean he is like very present um in the tv show um throughout like shane's life at all stars at vegas And I think that's also just because he's, you know, like a part of the show himself. Like his story is a part of the show. Right.
01:01:16
Speaker
Shane interacts with him a lot less, but like everybody knows Scott Hunter. Like he's kind of like Captain America. Like he's kind of like the American boy. He's house full name.
01:01:27
Speaker
Yeah. You know, full name, Scott Hunter. yeah but in the book, we didn't get anything into the Olympics. Right. Exactly. So, I mean, yeah, a lot of like different stylistic choices. We also get like another hockey player mentioned just very briefly in the TV show. And that's Ryan Price. Ryan Price's book is Tough Guy. And there's actually an interaction between Ryan and Ilya. And they're actually friends in Hated Rivalry in the book. I think there's maybe like two reasons for that. One I think is like they didn't know if they were going get lit for a second season. So they didn't want to like introduce this character kind of off screen or kind of on screen, take up a lot of the narrative and then not go anywhere with him. And then maybe also it's like a way to like, maybe they won't bring in Ryan Price, you know, maybe it's going to be too much for them in the second season. Like we don't really know what they're going to do with those extra like common goal and tough guy um I think role model is going to be pretty integral to the part of season, like to season two, because it's so intertwined with the long game. Whereas I think common goal and, um,
01:02:36
Speaker
and tough guy maybe are not as much. um I know that Common Goal has some of the Troy Barrett stuff, but I think we could like easily wrap that short storyline into role model stuff. but Yeah, and I think that role model, a lot of those themes are would be important. I would see Jacob Tierney finding those themes important from like tro like the Troy Barrett arc. I would see Jacob Tierney wanting to write about that and wanting to adapt that.
01:03:05
Speaker
as a way to further underscore the overall like and NHL as a system is a phobic and the overall phobia I think are important. And I also think that that they might incorporate parts of the Ryan Price stuff because of the plane stuff um where we mainly see Ryan Price and Ilya interacting in the in heated rivalry on the plane where Ryan is like all anxious and stuff and then that comes up later in the long game which then triggers another relation ah important relationship milestone for Ilya and Shane and so I could see them including that domino, even if it was like, an maybe we get like a news reference of the like, plane, you know, whatever, or whatever, I'm not I'm not going to talk about but there's an important plane thing in the long game. Maybe in the long game.
01:03:47
Speaker
and Yeah. And you would fly into the Tampa airport ah after that important plane thing happens. Not the Orlando airport, because Ilya's in Tampa and he's not going to drive two hours. but I don't know if we mentioned that on the pod. it Should we explain that context real quick or no? No, I'm just, we're just going to leave it at that. i I had to get it out. Yeah, yeah if the shoe fits, good. If not, carry on.
01:04:10
Speaker
Carry on. One thing that I do really, we've talked about the hands free before, sorry. Yes, we've explained it, but we didn't in terms of this difference, in the show it was just a comment with no context after the first time at Shane's apartment, but in the book we know a lot more details that Shane comes just from giving Ilya a head. And that was a really funny moment for Ilya. Yeah, and I mean, I can see why like Jacob, Jacob did change the language out of this because he said hands free, whereas in the book it's untouched and untouched is very much like a romance novel, like common word to use when you are coming. hands free or without stimulation.
01:04:53
Speaker
So I liked that a little bit more because we also have to remember that like Jacob is a queer man and like he's imbuing a lot of his experience into this and while Rachel Reed may have had input from her bisexual husband and she's queer, like it is very different when you are not the person that is like actually having those queer experiences.
01:05:16
Speaker
One change that I do really love from the book to the show is that Svetlana becomes more of like a real person. Yeah, let's talk about Svetlana. She is definitely like a tall, blonde Russian bimbo in the book. Like that is very much her stereotype. It's kind of how Ilya is like the stereotype of a Russian men in a way. I feel like the...
01:05:40
Speaker
some of the discussions of like Ilya only drinking alcohol and having like very like ah being very emotionally repressed like that's all we really get of like Ilya's background in like ethnicity and so it almost feels like that is also a choice like that when you think of how little Ilya's ethnicity is interacted with and how little Shane's ethnicity or Shane's race is interacted with you can kind of see that maybe she was making a a conscious choice to make it like non-political quote unquote, which is like physically impossible because even saying that something is apolitical is saying being political. But maybe that's where some of this stems from. But yeah, I love that Svetlana was expanded upon like Ilya's Russian background was expanded upon a lot more. i think it was just like, there's a lot of really good cultural things that are in the show that are not in the book. Yeah, in the book, Ilya meets Svetlana buying ah fancy sports cars. Yeah, yeah. and then And then he finds out that she's the daughter of an old Bears player, whereas in the show, they were very close childhood friends, and she is a very big emotional support for him. It's much more parallel to like a Rose Landry for Shane is Svetlana to Ilya. And again, we'll talk about the women of heated rivalry at some point and expand a lot more more than we already have, which you know i love to talk about my queen. But their dynamic is definitely a bit different. In the book, a very specific scene is where Svetlana is like, they're watching hockey and she's naked and she's like, are we going to fuck again? like I'm getting cold. And Ilya shrugs and is like, nah, I'm hungry. You put your clothes on. And she's like disappointed because at that point he like kind of has feelings for Shane. So he's like not as into her. Whereas in the show, like they're still going out clubbing and she's like, ooh, I like Shane and blah, blah, blah. And she's a lot more, she's like, ooh, you and Jane. And it's, yeah, it's a whole thing. And then also speaking of that, they we get the scene in the show of them hanging out the cocktail party, them being Svetlana, Sasha, and Ilya, whereas in the book, Sasha is never mentioned. we get the name ah or We get that it was the coach's son, but we never get a name nor introduction or description or anything. But then we have that beautiful bathroom scene and that whole breakdown of that whole situation. Speaking of Russia, we get Ilya's father and family are a bit different. In the show, he has dementia. In the book, he has Alzheimer's. A little different. um just Just smaller things. I don't really know why they'd make that change, but to me, it's it's a little inconsequential. And in the book, Polina is also always demanding money on top of Alexei slash Andre. So Ilya's getting that hounding... on
01:08:15
Speaker
twofold from from those sides. But in the show, it's just Alexei where Ilya is trying to get Alexei to take care of their father for money. And then also in the book, we don't have a niece that he leaves anything for. His brother just kind of always has mistresses, whereas in the show, there's a bit of a difference there where he actually leaves something for someone else, but nothing for his brother specifically.
01:08:36
Speaker
And well, then we get to a cottage. and we know again we have said this over and over again this episode but the budget was limited um so we don't get like all the perks of the cottage that rachel describes in the book like the cottage in the book has a fucking ice rink okay yeah i i i get why we don't get an ice rink you know like that would be too much i think the cottage that we get on the show is perfect uh but i i always find found it funny like What you can do in books, you can add anything you want a space because you don't have to think about budget. So yeah, Shane has a fucking ice rink. I love that.
01:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, i that is very common for NHL players to have ice rinks in their basements or in their garages or in their backyards. That's more common in like Canada is to have outdoor rinks in your backyards.
01:09:28
Speaker
There is a one i know of from, i think, Colorado Avalanche. He had a full NHL sized ice rink at his house. Oh, my God. Usually the synthetic rinks are like quarter rinks. Like they're not that big. They're really just for you to do like. stick handling on, not that much stuff. And synthetic ranks are what NHLers or PWHL skate on.
01:09:51
Speaker
And that's because mostly a lot of and NHL arenas are shared with basketball teams. And so they have to be able to melt the ice very quickly and then put a flooring over it so they like take down the ice rink like throughout the season oh and that makes sense worrying over it in order to um host basketball games or concerts or whatever at those venues yeah yeah that makes sense i've seen the videos of the ice melting i love it yeah and i mean and like it causes issues on basketball's end too because it can make the floor super slippery um because too much condensation and so it can like actually the bulls the chicago bulls have had like two games canceled or postponed this year because of ice rink issues damn wild well lauren had shared with us a couple hockey players that have rinks at their house and so we'll link those in the show notes if you want to check them out jeff if you're just curious about what that looks like or or who does that or how much they cost because that is money that i will never see in my entire life ever um so Speaking of things in the cottage, but some differences from the cottage, David goes to Shane's for a charger in the show, but in the book it's dishwasher pods, these are inconsequential. I do like Shane's thing of like, oh, you know they changed it and and was the old one, now it's the new one. which for me so then That taking place in 2017 or 2018 doesn't ring as true because like a lot of iPhone had like the lightning cable, but now in the twenty twenty s I feel like that's a nod to like the lightning to USB-C, which I just think is funny. um It doesn't quite fit for the time period, but i think funny And then post-Cottage, or not post-Cottage, but post-Situation with David and Yuna after coming out, basically the episode ends, episode 6, and they drive into the sunset for their happy for now. But in the book, we get sex on the deck and there's a whole conversation there that Lau can read for us and we get the epilogue as well, which we will talk about. But Lau, you typed this all out. Did you want to read it? Yeah. So I love this.
01:11:46
Speaker
And I fully understand why we don't get it in the series. I i am actually hoping that it's one of the stuff we start with next season. it will me very good That would bring us full circle, I think.
01:11:59
Speaker
It starts like this. And when I retire, Ilya said, after I have won 12 Stanley Cups and 13 MVP awards. The hell are you will.
01:12:10
Speaker
And you have been retired for like eight years already because you got very bad at hockey. Shane laughed. Okay. Then i will bring you to that dock out there. i will have hundreds of candles all over it. That sounds like a fire hazard. It's on the water, Hollander. Fucking relax. Will be beautiful. You will love it. The candles. The lake. The full moon. Oh, is it a clear night? Yes, of course. And I will get on one knee.
01:12:37
Speaker
Ilya. And I will say, Shane Hollander, will you please marry me so I can become Canadian citizen faster? I love him. so funny He's so funny. He's so charming. i love him. ah i wish um I wish someone would have proposed to me like that. I was about to say a man and then I was like, ew, why would I ever want a man to do that to me? Ew.
01:13:03
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's, I love that. And then I love that like, long game spoiler. I love that Shane kind of does it in his own way. when he You get your one long game spoiler. This is the one I get. Yeah. This is the one You always make them count. Yes, it's important. I did not expect that conversation or that situation happen that way and I'm very glad that it did. I enjoyed that but I really thought it would be the other way around. End of the long game. Spoiler, by the way. No, that's like middle of the long game. That's not even like the end it. No, I'm saying our... We're done with spoiling.
01:13:41
Speaker
Yes. Oh! Yeah. Sorry, drop that cell phone! but At the end of Heated Rivalry, we also get an epilogue because each book has a prologue and an epilogue, or at least I don't know if every book has a prologue, but they all have epilogues. And in Heated Rivalry, epilogue, which I think is how we'll open season two as a transition point, or some people have been talking about interstitial episodes to hold us over until season two comes out as just like like how Euphoria did where just dropped Brandon which yeah I have mixed opinions on but we get the epilogue of them the press conference of them announcing the arena foundation where they say that you know we've got respect for each other we've become friends and and Ilya gives an impromptu speech about his mother and how she was so strong and she lost her battle and they want to start this foundation as a way for to help people you know win their battles and whatnot and so and then everyone's like wow i didn't know they were friends so we get that as the epilogue
01:14:31
Speaker
Which I would love that they open on, but maybe we just get an in passing like, oh, we they started the foundation and it's like a throwaway line. And then it's referenced from there, which would be a little sad, but I understand. I trust Jacob Turney with my life, so I'm sure he's going to do something beautiful with all this material. I also heard that he is very set on giving us a scene of Shane coming out to his team because that is not included in the books. It's just like said that it happened and he thinks that is a very, and I agree, it's a very important scene for everyone to see because we have lots of representation of people coming out to their parents at this point.
Other Media Discussions and TV Series
01:15:11
Speaker
We have the famous Heartstopper like with the Olivia Coleman, we have... andki and Kit forgot his last name. Connor?
01:15:19
Speaker
Kit Connor, thank you. I was gonna say Harrington, but I was like, that's the one from Game of Thrones. We have this with Yuna and Shane here, but I would love to see more coming out to your peers, especially like your men peers. Yes. Which is...
01:15:37
Speaker
Something that scammed the series that I mentioned last week thus beautifully in almost all of its versions. So I am excited. I had a few quotes that for me were like the highlights of this book. They're a bit of like the same line as the whole candles on the deck and all of that. It's a mix of like cute, romantic and Ilya being Ilya. So these are like my three and they're connected like they they dialogue. So we first have the first time that they call each other beautiful. And we get on the show we do get Ilya saying that she looks pretty but we still don't have like him saying you're beautiful. We do get like the beautiful freckles comment, but we don't get like you're beautiful. We only get Scott saying that to Kip. Right. So, you are beautiful, Rosanoff said suddenly. It was said very matter-of-factly. Shane wasn't sure how to react. They didn't really say things to ah to each other. Not like that. Hottest man in the NHL, according to Cosmopolitan, Shane joked. It was the only way he knew how to talk to Rosanoff, besides telling...
01:16:46
Speaker
yelling obscenities at him. They're idiots. Brosanov said, the spell broken. They put me at number five. Five. It does seem generous. It sounds like one of those times where Shani is like short-circuiting because we're not following the... script anymore and you're saying cute things to me then we have something very similar rosen of love love you need to get late hollander waiting for a quick fuck every couple of months it's not healthy i'm not waiting she shane said it wasn't quite a lie he obviously wasn't 100 straight but having sex sex with women didn didn't repulse him it just didn't do it for him like men did One man in particular. But women were safe and easy and everywhere. And maybe if he kept trying, he might find one he liked to spend more than a single night with. Someone who could finally put an end to whatever this was. Rosanoff turned off the water and reached a hand out. Shane rolled his eyes and took it, letting Rosanoff pull him to his feet.
01:17:46
Speaker
They stood, chest to chest, and Shane watched the water that dripped from Rosanoff's hair onto his shoulders and down towards his navel. Rozenov rested a hand on Shane's face and tipped his head up.
01:17:58
Speaker
He looked at him fondly with a little smile on his lips and then he kissed him. I have ruined you, Rozenov said when they broke apart. No one else will do. God, fuck off. Such a mouth on you.
01:18:09
Speaker
Don't say it. I preferred it when it was on me. Damn it, Rozenov. Shane pushed the other man back against the shower wall and kissed him aggressively. it It was always like this, shoving and cursing each other and battling for control until one or both of them gave gave in and allowed themselves the release they both crave. And finally, this small paragraph, he will sell the building, the sex building, we all know, we're talking about the sex building. And he would stay in his goddamn hotel room when they played in Boston and not sleep out into the night to Rosanoff's penthouse. He would end this and he would move on. He realized that he was making this plan, that he was brushing his fingertips over his lips. They still tingle from the memory of the other man's mouth pressed against them. He knew making plans to end this was pointless.
01:18:59
Speaker
As long as this was being offered, Shane will never be able to say no. Those are my three highlights. And I think they they show so beautifully the conflict and like this back and forth through Shane's POV. Yeah. And how Ilya plays mind games with him all the time. i in in in ah I'm not saying this derogatory. I just love it. Yeah. Those are my highlights. No, i I love those...
01:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree that Ilya is playing mindgames with him, but Shane is never able to say no to him at all ever. Like we see this multiple times where Shane is actively telling him no as he's doing it where he's like, he's saying like, no, we can't hook up right now as he's like getting his stuff to leave. It's so funny. but He just knows how to push his buttons and Shane plays right into it because they both find it so hot. And it's something that I'm trying to understand with them. Like conceptually, I understand it. But to me, if someone pushes my buttons, it's it's so annoying and I don't like it but Shane loves getting his buttons pushed and that's really funny to me I think or at least like Shane has all of these I think I said it last time has the idiosyncrasies that just has Ilya on his knees which I've seen all these edits recently I've like walk him like a dog and it's Ilya just being like walked like a dog behind Shane and it's walk him like a dog walk him like a dog bitch walk him like a dog yeah yeah
01:20:20
Speaker
that one I also think that overall, I saw this tweet, um at the whole the tweet was referencing something else, but it said that the show would get an 80% on Turnitin from the book. And I think that's really great and really funny because it's true. I think the show did adapt a lot of the book, including a lot of the dialogue. And really, i think that's a great adaptation. and I think the 20% that they changed that they added was were great additions um like they really kept the heart of the book but added some really great stuff to the show that made it really beautiful and really like engaging to the audience and i think that's part of why we we find it so compelling i think i mean i think my like two favorite things from the book are when he was like you're like ah he they get changed in the show like it's like
01:21:06
Speaker
the freckles they take my breath part and the um is it agony for you i was thinking about that yeah i I love both of those lines in the book I understand why they were maybe changed a little bit for the show because you know maybe that's not their language or like the language that the characters speak in it didn't seem like right in those moments But I'm glad we still got some version of them. I will say I returned to the TV show a million times and I have yet to return to the Heated Ravelry book. So I think the TV show has been a little bit more addicting for me.
01:21:45
Speaker
What are y'all feeling? Yeah, I feel I'm way more addicted to TV series and the long game book Those are the ones that I was like, i can't stop. The rest of it is fine so far.
01:21:56
Speaker
Yeah, agree. i have better I have other things on my TBR that I need to complete before i do a reread of the series. like I need to give it some some time and distance before I reread the whole series. I think I might, if i slow down on my my fantasy I'm reading right now and I need just something comforting, which the long game being comforting, I don't know about. But if I need something familiar, maybe I'll go back to the long game and reread or relisten or or listen to it. But definitely the TV show is something that I will put on as I'm doing whatever as just like a comforting thing. Like I'm definitely more addicted to the show and it's I feel like it's more quotable. I'm addicted to the mannerisms.
01:22:31
Speaker
Also, i feel like this is amplified by our conversations around it. But they now when I'm rewatching or or seeing clips or whatever, I'm thinking about our conversations about that. And for me, that adds a lot more to it. you know both emotionally but also like intellectually, of like, oh, well, someone has this perspective and I want to like look at it through this lens. um So i feel like y'all have helped make it more a bit more addicting for me. I'm like, I want to see it the way Lauren and Lao see it. you know So that was awesome. this These have been some great conversations about both Heated Rivalry and Game Changer the past couple weeks. I really enjoyed talking about this with y'all, all the differences in the show and why. And both for a budget, but also for theming purposes, i think that they were really, like as we said, really great additions and changes. Some things we are missing, but I think the long game will have some really great stuff for us, especially now that I think the showrunners and writers have a really great connection with the audience and the fans that they're able to understand more about what's important to us and what we're doing. what the fans are wanting and what we relate to. And I think that they'll be able to give a good nod to that or include that in season two of the show. So I'm i'm very excited to talk about that with y'all. But in the meantime, next week, we will be covering Ember and
Upcoming Episodes and Audience Engagement
01:23:42
Speaker
Ice. The-
01:23:43
Speaker
oh Yes, the the audio erotica on the Quinn app, and we will be joined by our very first live special guest. This is going to be so exciting. i'm I cannot wait till next week for us to record that and talk about it. But until then, that has been our coverage of the first two books. I think we're going to cover the books again, in the or ah the other books in the future, but we'll see. But we'll see. Yeah, for sure. If you have a fan note and you would like to send it in about Amber and Ice,
01:24:14
Speaker
Please do. We always love to hear from you. And if you haven't already, make sure to like the pod, leave us comments, subscribe to it, follow us on our social media. We always love to hear from you. We want to interact with you.
01:24:28
Speaker
If you want to watch me be confrontational and call out racists on threads, please do. It's so fun. it's like Yeah, I was going to say, our our threads is a lot more active and has a lot more interaction than our Twitter. And I'm like, huh. And then I was like, oh, right, because Lauren is blowing up a storm over there. It's so funny. Lauren is causing problems. But like, no, no, no, no. Lauren is defending stuff and sometimes Laura goes on comments.
01:24:55
Speaker
Yes. On Lauren's posts. And Amanda is just copying and pasting to the Twitter, which no one follows. Because you need to get off of Twitter. I don't know what to fucking say to you, babe. I curated my algorithm so it's like really it's wholesome stuff it's like hudcon edits it's like pwhl it's brisy jackson it's some of the other content I consume it's really i don't see any of the negative stuff I'm just saying for you good for you Yeah, but also that's to say we don't have a fan mail this week. I know we're going a bit on the longer side. Maybe um maybe for us this isn't on the longer side, but we'll see how it actually shakes out in editing. But if you want to send us any fan mail that's not about Ember and Ice or about Quinn, you want to send us fan mail about anything we've covered so far, I mentioned last time we will get to it, we will talk about it.
01:25:41
Speaker
We want to hear your thoughts and opinions, even if we read it out. So send it our way anyway, even if it's irrelevant, because it's all relevant and it's all connected. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, Looney's, we will see you next time in the erotica world of Quinn. Yay!
01:25:56
Speaker
Hey, y'all. Editing Amanda popping in to let y'all know we will not have a new episode out next Friday, March 27th. We're taking the week off. We've got a lot going on. Hopefully y'all are doing well, but take some time to touch some grass, go outside, enjoy the nice spring weather, hopefully, if you've got it. And we'll see you April 3rd with some brand new content. Bye!
01:26:16
Speaker
Since Wookiee Season is created by Lauren, Lau, and Amanda. The cover art is by Lauren and Lau. Amanda is our editor. Thanks for listening.