From gay-baiting to neurodivergence: The author of “Intense Rivalry” tackles fan theories and controversy

Rachel Reid didn’t do that She intends for anyone to write a dissertation on the homoerotic minor league hockey franchise.

Then again, the Nova Scotia author is behind Game changers The series could never have anticipated the level of hype that accompanied the television adaptation of its books: Hot competition.

The show, commissioned by Canada’s Crave and distributed by HBO Max in the US, premiered in late November and quickly became a massive hit. It’s Crave’s first-ever original series, and it’s also climbed to No. 1 on HBO Max. Season 2 has already been greenlit.

If you haven’t watched it yet, you know someone who does. (Full disclosure: I threw up Hot competition— a holiday-themed party last week, which meant playing it on mute in my apartment for vibes.) From Reddit to BookTok, the show and its source material have also sparked plenty of discourse, ranging from speculation about main character Shane’s neurodivergence, comments about race in hockey, and accusations that Reed prefers the sly Russian Ilya to Shane.

“I did not expect this book to be analyzed this way The Great Gatsby When I wrote that. “It’s really just a hockey love story,” Reid, now a New York Times bestselling author, told me over Zoom with a laugh. However, she is flattered by the time people spent theorizing. “I admire some of the things people have really researched. I feel like some of them make me seem smarter than I am.

The show also attracted criticism from I love Los Angeles star Jordan Firstman, who told Vulture that the intimacy depicted on the show is “not the way gay people have sex.” He went on to say that lead actors Hudson Williams and Connor Story should come out if they are gay. The actors, who Williams described as “best friends,” have posted flirty videos with each other and even have matching “sex sells” tattoos, but neither has revealed their sexual orientation. “A gay man would say that,” Firstman told Vulture. “I don’t respect you because you care so much about your career and what would happen if people thought you were gay.”

Paid colleague comments Hot competition Actor François Arnault claps back on Instagram, commenting: “Should the sex that closeted hockey players have look like the sex that gay men have in LA?” (The first man has since apologized and the dispute appears to have ended.)

Here’s what Reed had to say about all the rhetoric surrounding everyone’s favorite game of hockey and why so many women are obsessed with the genre.