Hudson Williams, right, and Connor Storrie star in Crave's Heated Rivalry.HO/The Canadian Press
When Crave’s gay romance Heated Rivalry premiered as a scripted series in November, it didn’t just mark yet another adaptation making the leap from page to screen. It signalled a long-overdue reckoning with fan fiction as one of the most influential – and persistently misunderstood – storytelling ecosystems of our time.
The series began as a Wattpad hockey romance inspired by the legendary (and, of course, platonic) rivalry between real-life hockey players Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Then, it evolved into a beloved novel penned by Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid and, now, a mainstream television property. That trajectory places Heated Rivalry in familiar company. Fan fiction and self-published stories have already quietly fuelled major franchises, including Fifty Shades of Grey, After and The Kissing Booth. Even Wicked, arguably one of the most successful stage-to-screen adaptations of the past two decades, operates on the logic of revision and imaginative extension that defines fan work.
“Transforming bestselling novels into movies or series remains a highly profitable strategy,” says Adrien Rannaud, an associate professor at the University of Toronto who studies fan culture.
What’s notable about Heated Rivalry isn’t that it was adapted, but that the industry is now willing to openly acknowledge fan fiction as a viable source of intellectual property.
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For decades, fan fiction has been dismissed as unserious – mocked for its excess, amateurism and emotional intensity. That stigma is inseparable from who writes it. Fan fiction, after all, is a form of non-professional writing, largely self-edited and self-promoted. It circulates within online reading communities such as blogs, forums and fiction archives, and exists on the margins of the literary institution by design.
“What interests fan-fiction creators is not aesthetic or literary originality,” Rannaud says, “but the way they use traditional frameworks … to explore themes that matter deeply to them.” Take for instance, the well-worn tropes of enemies-to-lovers or a classic slow-burn. Even the specifics follow a pattern: Almost every character has sexual tension with someone, everyone’s eyes are referred to as “orbs” and there is always a hero for every damsel (of any gender) in distress.
Crucially, many fan-fiction writers exist on the margins, too, as women and queer people. That exclusion can help explain both society’s dismissal of the medium and its endurance. Fan fiction thrives because it fills gaps left by mainstream publishing and media – gaps relating to desire, interiority, queerness and pleasure.
Charlotte Stevens, a senior lecturer in media and communications at Birmingham City University, notes that romance itself is routinely devalued despite its massive market success because those stories are associated with women and non-binary creators and consumers. The “huge revenues and diversity of stories, readers and authors” generated by romance are often overlooked, she says, in favour of legitimizing other genres such as literary fiction, and brushing off “chick-lit” as lesser-than.
Viewed through that lens, Heated Rivalry’s appeal is hardly mysterious. Fan fiction, Stevens argues, is fundamentally about “people writing the stories that they want to read” – that is, the kind that mainstream media isn’t producing.
Heated Rivalry shows fan fiction has always been powerful – and now the rest of the world is finally willing to admit it, writes Sadaf Ahsan.HO/The Canadian Press
In this case, that means an emotionally rich gay romance centred on professional athletes, a narrative combination long treated as niche, risky or commercially implausible. Yet, Heated Rivalry arrived with a built-in audience already fluent in its language and has quickly become a massive global hit, taking social media by storm.
To its critics, fan fiction’s flaws are obvious: sprawling word counts, a lack of editing that would make Jack Kerouac proud, uneven prose, indulgent plots and, yes, tons of smut. To its defenders, those qualities are not bugs but features.
“There is always a playful dimension, a sense of freedom in experimenting with the literary codes of a specific genre,” Rannaud says of fan-written stories. “At the same time, fan fiction carries a political dimension, as it allows authors to shape narratives according to the social models they wish to explore. In many ways, fan fiction is preoccupied with challenging what is considered acceptable at the centre of literary production.”
That, he adds, can lead to the creation of queerer, more emotionally expansive imaginings of institutions such as professional sports.
The sex, too, is often misunderstood. JSA Lowe, adjunct professor of film at the University of Houston - Clear Lake, notes that for audiences unfamiliar with romance conventions, the explicit intimacy can feel excessive. But that reaction misunderstands the genre’s purpose. “In romance, whether it’s written or filmed, sex scenes are the primary way character gets revealed,” Lowe says.
Intimate scenes are essential when the story is about bodies, power, vulnerability and being seen. Within fan-fiction communities, that experimentation – which can include unique partner dynamics and hierarchies, kink and even gender-swapping – is rarely lone work. Stevens emphasizes the importance of “beta readers,” peer editors who offer feedback, catch errors and help writers think through story beats.
“The community and collaborative aspects are at the core of this ecosystem,” she says, describing an environment where writers are supported, cheered on and challenged by fans and readers.
It’s a model of earnest creative development that looks very different from the solitary genius myth still prized in traditional literary culture. Perhaps the most surprising shift is how fan fiction is now being evaluated beyond fandom spaces. For example, some employers now encourage applicants to submit fan fiction as part of their portfolios for writing roles.
Rannaud says he has seen growing openness to creative portfolios that blur traditional boundaries. Creative writing, he argues, can demonstrate “the ability to respond to prompts while exercising creative freedom, as well as the values and themes you choose to engage with.”
That logic will sound familiar to anyone teaching writing today. For many young writers, fan fiction functions both as a guilty pleasure and a training ground. It rewards consistency, character work and stamina – skills formal writing programs don’t always prioritize. It also builds something MFAs can’t guarantee: an actual readership, and one that is intensely committed. The next time you’re on a flight, pay attention and there’s a good chance you’ll notice one of your seatmates is devouring fan-fic on their e-reader, not the next big bestselling novel.
There is also something distinctly Canadian about Heated Rivalry’s reception. Lowe notes that some American viewers have appeared unsettled not just by the show’s sexuality, but by its comfort with centring queer narratives. Canadian networks such as Crave, she points out, have a longer track record of supporting this kind of storytelling, including other work developed by series creator Jacob Tierney, such as Letterkenny and its spinoff Shoresy. Consider, too, CBC’s Sort Of or OUTtv’s Slo Pitch.
As fan fiction continues its migration from the margins to the mainstream, its success challenges long-held assumptions about which stories deserve a platform and who gets to tell them. What Heated Rivalry ultimately reveals is not that fan-fiction has suddenly become respectable or worthy, but that it was always powerful. The rest of the world is just finally willing to admit it.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the professional credentials of JSA Lowe, who is now adjunct professor of film at the University of Houston - Clear Lake.