pretty white twinks kissing won't liberate us

There is something deeply exhausting about watching your identity become a marketing strategy in real time. A concept, made shiny and harmless and consumable for people who will never actually live it.

Every single day I open social media and see another person treating Heated Rivalry like it is revolutionary queer art sent down from the heavens rather than what it actually is: another marketable MLM fantasy packaged neatly enough for heterosexual consumption. TikToks. Edits. Fancasts. Women posting about how much they “need a Shane and Ilya relationship”. Branded candles. Spotify playlists. Hockey jerseys. People speaking about queer male relationships the same way teenage girls in 2014 spoke about Draco Malfoy.

And before someone accuses me of being some bitter anti-fandom puritan, let me make this very clear: I grew up on the internet. I survived the trenches of Tumblr fandom culture. I was there during peak Phan psychosis. I watched people write doctoral-level analyses on why breathing in the same direction meant Harry and Louis were secretly married. I have read enough Frerard fanfiction to qualify for psychological compensation. I know exactly what a fujoshi is because I used to be one before I came out.

This is not new behaviour. But, what feels different now is the scale of commodification.

Fandom culture used to feel at least somewhat underground. It was weird queer kids and lonely teenage girls projecting themselves onto subtext because mainstream media gave them absolutely nothing. There was desperation to it, and even when it crossed boundaries or became invasive, there was still something deeply human underneath it. Queer love existed in fragmented Tumblr GIFs, poorly formatted fanfiction, and half-ironic shipping discourse. It was messy and embarrassing and deeply internet-brained, but it still felt rooted in genuine longing. It has become highly profitable corporate media. There is now an entire industry built around selling sanitised queerness back to heterosexual audiences as long as it remains attractive, non-threatening, white enough, masculine enough, and ultimately digestible.

That is what frustrates me about Heated Rivalry discourse specifically.

Not the existence of the story itself. Not even heterosexual women enjoying MLM fiction. That conversation has existed for decades and reducing it to “women bad” ignores a lot of nuance about gender, safety, fantasy, and projection. A lot of women are drawn to queer male romance because it removes the social baggage attached to heterosexual dynamics. There is no female protagonist to project misogyny onto. No reminder of the exhausting realities of being desired by men under patriarchy. Sometimes it genuinely is easier to consume romance when womanhood itself has been removed from the equation.

I get it.

But understanding something does not mean I cannot criticise it. Because, eventually we need to ask why queer male love stories become wildly profitable primarily when they are mediated through heterosexual women. Why is queer identity suddenly acceptable once it can be repackaged as a fantasy product for straight consumers? Why does queerness become easier to swallow once it is transformed into a polished aesthetic rather than an actual lived reality?

And more importantly, who profits?

Because it usually is not queer people.

It is the publishers. Streaming executives. Merchandising companies. Influencers building entire online brands around fictional gay men while real queer people are actively losing rights across the world. Rainbow-washed capitalism has reached a point where companies will put two conventionally attractive white men on a poster during Pride Month while simultaneously donating to politicians who would rather we disappear quietly.

Instead of engaging with queerness as a lived identity, people increasingly interact with it through the language of fandom culture, where it becomes another ship, another source of content, and another profitable internet fixation.

One minute it is Hollanov. Before that it was Byler. Before that it was Larry Stylinson. Before that it was BBC Sherlock fans insisting every emotionally constipated British man was secretly homosexual. The names change but the cycle remains exactly the same.

1. Find queer subtext.

2. Commercialise it.

3. Mass market it.

4. Sell merchandise.

5. Move onto the next thing.

Rinse and repeat. The process repeats endlessly until queer identity itself becomes detached from actual queer existence and reduced entirely to a profitable aesthetic.

Where are the queer people who are genuinely messy? Where are the butches? The transmascs? The disabled queers? The queers of colour? The visibly gender non-conforming faggots who cannot blend seamlessly into heterosexual society? Where are the lesbians who are not designed to be palatable to the male gaze? Where are the queer people with acne and body hair and complicated politics and actual hardship?

Why does mainstream queer media still overwhelmingly centre attractive, slim, white, masculine cis men who remain just close enough to heterosexual beauty standards to feel safe? Even in supposedly “progressive” media, queerness is often filtered through respectability politics. It has to be soft. Romantic. A little tragic maybe, but never too angry. Never too sexual unless the sexuality remains aesthetically pleasing to straight audiences. Never too political. Never too disruptive.

Queer suffering is acceptable. Queer rage is not.

That is why I keep circling back to the fact that Heated Rivalry was written by a straight cisgender white woman. Regardless of how well researched something is, there are limits to outsider perspectives. There are parts of queer existence that cannot be fully replicated through observation alone. You can write attraction, sex, tenderness, and longing, but there are social realities tied to queerness that come from living with it lodged permanently inside your body.

The fear. The shame. The hypervisibility. The violence. The strange simultaneous loneliness and community of being queer online.

Sometimes queer media written by heterosexual women feels like watching someone reconstruct homosexuality entirely through fandom language. Like queerness becomes an aesthetic moodboard rather than a lived political identity.

The fandom response only intensifies that feeling. Seeing women in their thirties desperately begging for “another Harry Potter level fandom” through Heated Rivalry feels deeply dystopian to me, not because adults should not enjoy fiction, but because it highlights how aggressively corporations mine people’s loneliness and desire for community. Modern fandom fills the gap left by collapsing social structures. People want belonging, escapism, emotional intensity, and connection, so media companies package intimacy itself into consumable franchises.

Now, instead of Hogwarts houses, people assign themselves hockey players. Instead of Gryffindor versus Slytherin discourse, we get Rozanov versus Hollander. The machine keeps moving, and queer people become the aesthetic vehicle carrying it forward.

The irony is that openly queer actors and creators often receive significantly less attention than their heterosexual counterparts within these fandom spaces. Even within “ally” communities, conventional heterosexual attractiveness still dominates desirability and marketability. Queerness is loved conceptually right up until actual queer people become inconvenient, political, imperfect, or insufficiently attractive.

People love fictional gay men.

Real queer people are another story entirely.

Especially while trans healthcare is under attack globally. While anti-drag rhetoric spreads online. While queer education is being censored. While people still get assaulted for being visibly queer in public. While politicians and commentators continue framing us as threats to children.

It becomes harder and harder to stomach rainbow-branded corporations profiting off sanitised queer romance while actual queer communities continue fighting for survival. And maybe this is where people accuse me of being bitter or overdramatic or incapable of letting people enjoy things.

But I do enjoy things.

I love queer romance. I have written McLennon fanfiction before. I love homoerotic subtext, and I understand the appeal of shipping culture when it remains playful and self-aware. God knows Wattpad permanently altered my brain chemistry. I am not positioning myself above internet culture here because I am deeply embedded within it. I understand exactly why people are drawn to these stories.

But there is still a very real difference between engaging with queer stories and consuming queer identity itself as a novelty object.

Because once queerness becomes profitable enough, its radical edge gets removed entirely. Corporations do not want queer liberation. They want queer consumers. They want marketable queers. Attractive queers. Safe queers. Queers who buy limited edition Pride merch and streaming subscriptions and novelty hockey jerseys.

Not faggots.

Not dykes.

Not trans people screaming outside parliament buildings.

Not queer rage.

Just polished representation clean enough to monetise.

I do not want safe corporate queerness.

I do not want another polished Netflix romance where every queer character looks like they were generated in a laboratory designed to appeal to gently left leaning heterosexual women on TikTok.

I want queer art that feels dangerous again.

I want queer people allowed to be ugly and loud and political and sexual and complicated. I want queer stories written by people who understand what it feels like to carry queerness in their body rather than simply observe it from the outside. I want queer representation that is not terrified of alienating straight audiences.

Queer liberation was never supposed to be comfortable for heterosexual society.

And if your support for queer people only extends as far as consuming attractive fictional men kissing while remaining silent about actual queer oppression, then you are not supporting a community.

You are consuming an aesthetic. - Aleesha :3