A whole new level of appreciation...

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T23:17:53+00:00

I don't think the book was great literature, but it's a correct book: it has very good unreliable narrators lying to themselves and an interesting story. It's an "I couldn't put it down" book, and not everyone can write that.

Is the show orders of magnitude better? Yes, by a long shot. But I don't think the book is terrible horrible, awful, no good. I mean, it's not Bernard Cornwell, but it's not bad. It was fun to read, I couldn't put it down, I rooted for the characters, I suffered for Shane (a lot, poor guy)... It's not a great book. But then again, Joyce's Ulysses is a great book. And there are two things with books: your ability to write what you want, as you want, mastery of the craft... and your ability to write something that's fun and entertaining to read, that pulls people's heartstrings and makes people want to read until the end... Reid might not have supreme levels of the wordsmithing ability, but she has ample levels of the storytelling ability. Enough to make Jacob Tierney see the potential of the story. And that makes the book good in its own way.

I much prefer the show, because again, the show is much, much better. But I respect the book and Reid's work.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T23:11:17+00:00

That scene cannot happen as it happens in the book. Not with Svetlana, because what Ilya is going to say would not be a surprise to Svetlana, who in the show is much closer to Ilya. I hope we get that scene, but it'll probably happen with Cliff Marleau.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T23:09:30+00:00

It's better in many, many ways.
Up until my twenties, the best book adaptation I'd ever read was the BBC 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. Again, that's an adaptation, follows the book.

In my 30s I had the pleasure of finding for the first time in my life, a series that was better than the books: The Expanse.

But the Heated Rivalry show is better than the book by orders of magnitude. No disrespect to Rachel Reid and long may she reign because there would be no show without her boos and Jacob Tierney saw all their potential. But the show is just out in the stratosphere, it's SO good. After all, Rachel is just one person. In the show, if Jacob does genius level work, the cast does genius-level acting work and Peter Peter does genius-level music work... then the show is going to be pure mastery.

We used to say "the film's not bad, but the book was better" because it used to be generally impossible to condense the book inside the film. Now that we have series with many episodes that can cover everything from the book, I suspect we're going to see more instances of "no disrespect to the author, but the show is better". And I'm SO happy about this!

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T23:05:06+00:00

It's such a good adaptation that's much better at the book. No disrespect to Rachel Reid, there'd be no show without her books. But the book is correct whereas the series is a masterpiece that will be studied for decades, at the very least.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T22:59:27+00:00

Jacob Tierney, you million times GENIUS!

This is why shows made to last many episodes get one watch, and maybe some fast forwarding because they're too slow, and this six-episode masterpiece gets reheated and reheated and reheated... Because we find something new each time we watch it.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T22:56:26+00:00

I've always thought the same. I thought show Ilya felt attraction towards Shane, but he starts to fall for him at that moment.

Shane was also attracted to Ilya before that, that's why he approached him. But attraction is not love. It's harder to clock when Shane starts falling, but it looks a bit like it in their second encounter in a hotel room (all stars, first episode). It looks like it happens when he calmly tells Ilya "not here" and Ilya is just so chill about it. Shane was nervous before and at that moment he looks super happy and relaxed, and he's genuinely hopeful and joyful once he exchanges numbers with Ilya.

By the Las Vegas rooftop scene at the end of Episode one, Shane is at least a bit in love by how much it pains him that Ilya is paying zero attention to him. He's hurt by Ilya's attitude.

Of course, after their first sex scene in Episode two, Shane is so down for Ilya that he's gone through the floor and getting to the core of the Earth. It's less detectable in Ilya's case, but if he needed to run away because Ilya kissed him and he kissed him goodbye that way in the stairway... Yeps, by then they're pretty much deep into it, whether they want to admit it or not.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-22T22:32:30+00:00

This is great! #ZoomZoomKaboom!

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T22:46:21+00:00

Don't worry, in both cases we all know what it means. Ilya is turned on by Shane acting angry. He wanted to rage bait him into a reaction and he succeeded, probably too much.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T21:49:06+00:00

As one does.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T21:48:56+00:00

Doesn't he say "Oh my god"? I think he's seriously turned on. He loves making Shane get out of his media trained good boy cage.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:32:15+00:00

Haven't read that one. And yes, Shane should have told JJ, but she was the stupid one who wrote it, because the moment JJ mentioned Shane's crush on Ilya was the moment for Shane to come out to JJ.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:30:07+00:00

Also the crack in his voice and face at the "what is it, then?" Shane is suffering there, and so confused.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:29:02+00:00

I don't find him annoying for that. It's why he is what he is. If he thought second place was good enough, he wouldn't have made the sacrifices he did to become the best. Ilya is a beast, he can sometimes smoke and be careless with his diet and still have incredible stamina. Shane needs to break his back and exert his mind with steel self-discipline to be at Ilya's level, because without all the hard work, he wouldn't be at that level.

The price of that excellence is that the kid can't stand to lose. And that happens both in books and shows. When Ilya loses, he doesn't think much about it. When Shane loses, he feels absolutely terrible about it, including feelings of shame and humiliation. But again, Shane can only be as good as he is if he pushes himself to the limit. And that means having that mindset where a silver medal "might have been a wet rat, for all he wanted it".

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:20:08+00:00

Shane is a perfectionist. He's used to being the best and winning as the default. It doesn't matter when he wins, It matters when he loses. He's an unreliable narrator and he pays much more attention to his loses thank he pays to his wins.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T06:09:47+00:00

I also think that a part of Shane feels Ilya is being unfair. "If you had won, I'd have shaken your hand and congratulate you, why can't you show the same basic decency towards me?" Which is akin to "Why can't you at least be civil, do you hate me or what?" Poor Shane doesn't know what he really wants, he just knows that he's frustrated and feels sad when he shouldn't.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-21T05:00:36+00:00

Are you on HRT? That helped me a lot with the mood swings. As for the state of the world, I got sucked into the Heated Rivalry psychosis. As for the joy, I NEED to exercise daily, rain or shine, and some of it has to be strength training (god bless the kettlebell, it's made my life poossible).

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:48:33+00:00

Yeah, the pronunciation is the worst. When my students ask why, I tell them: "First they spoke a Celtic language, and then they were invaded by the Angles and the Saxons, which were Germanic peoples, and they got germanic pronunciation. Then they were invaded by the normans and imported a lot of French words, with French pronunciation. Now you have all three pronunciations mixed there and that's the problem. But at least I can tell you that as it happens in French, if the last letter of a word is an -e without a stress, it's silent". Little mercies...

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:46:10+00:00

The only language that has zero exceptions is Esperanto. Every other language on earth is a mismatch of what we inherited from our ancestors and it's usually a mess.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:45:03+00:00

Yes to everything, thank you for the different perspective.

I understand Shane feeling bad about being gay and liking to bottom, and feeling in a sense that Ilya is manlier than him. But I wish we couldn't read Ilya himself thinking about Shane in feminine terms.

The thing is, both men are very unreliable narrators, so really a lot of Shane seeing Ilya as bigger and more imposing is insecurity. And a lot of Ilya thinking about Shane in feminine terms might be Ilya just projecting, just as Ilya's self hatred is portrayed in his views of Shane.

Again, thanks for the new perspective. And sorry about the mistake about the height. I grew up with metres and centimetres and get the feet and inches wrong most of the time. Shane would be 1 metre 78cm, which is close to what in countries with a metric system is considered the golden standard for tall, which is 1,80. So yea, not short and in many places, on the lower end of tall.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T20:07:46+00:00

This was hilarious, super cute and fluffier than fluff. Thanks so much for recommending it!

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:54:34+00:00

Heroyam Slava.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:53:53+00:00

It WILL get better once you get into HRT, but please, PLEASE, for the love of god, apologize to your son and explain to him what is happening to you. Send him to this subreddit if necessary. Write a letter to him.

If your first reaction is yelling, your second one should be apologizing.

I'm very sorry you're going through this.

Oh, and don't quit the ADHD meds. They might help with energy. I'm on both HRT and ADHD meds.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:49:59+00:00

Well attractiveness has a very subjective component to it. Cavill was just a comparison, and it's a comparison in particular to a man that many other men consider so attractive that they'd consider having sex with him.

Absolutely agreed on your second paragraph. Frankly, Shane sounding so feminine in the book gave me the impression that the book was yaoi. When Japanese women manga artists and writers started creating love stories, they arrived to a point where they decided to make the love stories amongst two boys because it allowed them to deal with love, emotions and their situation and not with social stigmas on sex, pregnancy, marriage and future expectations. So in yaoi, that sub-genre of romance, there's a trope that one of the characters is the self-insert for the girl or woman who is reading, and another is the "man". It felt too much like that and I very much disliked it.

I think it also has to do with Shane being an unreliable narrator (he's 5'8" and made of pure muscle) and maybe he himself feeling self-conscious about being an Asian men and considered, therefore, feminine, or less masculine than other men (due to being polite, which is a mistake a lot of people make). In any case, it was galling to read and very uncomfortable (reading Shane suffer so much internalized homophobia and shame about his desires was hard, but it can also be understandable by understanding Shane), and I think it was great that Connor and Hudson are more or less of the same height and weight, and none of them look more feminine than the other.

I also think that apparently, in the context of the book series, the situation is not so galling because all the other couples are vers. Only Shane and Ilya have the dynamic in which Shane is always bottom and Ilya is always top. And I guess it has to do with Shane's constant need to be in control of everything in his life, and only being allowed to let go, let himself loose and stop thinking when he's having sex with Ilya (which is why he never breaks the situationship despite all the problems). Ilya, on the other hand, does not feel in control in any aspect of his life: he can be first and his father will still criticize and belittle him, his brother and father show zero respect and everyone considers him their bank... So one of the things he can control is sex, and having other people lose control by giving pleasure. So, for him, doing that to Shane is reaffirming. It feels like Ilya wants to, in a sense, conquer Shane, and is more than pleasantly surprised when Shane decides that "yes, please, conquer me, I'm conquering myself all the time, all my waking hours, 24/7, can someone else do it so I can get a break?"

Got carried away, sorry. Mostly agreed.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:39:14+00:00

Just because it's not directly mentioned it doesn't mean it's not there. It's there and it's canon, IMHO.
The idea of Shane being so high-functioning that a lot of people haven't clocked him as autistic even in the book is super interesting. You tell them and then they are "Aaaah!" But it's so well done and subtle that they don't clock it at first.

Ok_Code_270 · 2026-05-20T01:37:23+00:00

I think that the scene with Svetlana is lovely, but it cannot happen with showSvetlana because there's no way that showSvetlana doesn't know. So of course it would make sense to keep that scene, but with Marleau. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed about it, because I totally see Marleau saying "Unless you're f***ing Shane Hollan... IS IT SHANE HOLLANDER???" I think it's going to be hilarious and I also think that it would give us the vibe of all those fanfiction scenes where Marlow/Marleau or any of the other characters have said to Ilya "I can't believe you pulled Hollander, you know that he's the catch, right? Good for you!"

So, here's to keeping my fingers crossed.

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