“We are being forced to live through really sh*t times, so read that romance book and dream of happily ever afters…”
–Matthew Hubbard
I used to be embarrassed to admit that I read romance novels. The habit began with my mother’s Harlequin romance collection and a particularly boring summer when I was 15. With only one friend and an unrequited crush on the newspaper delivery boy, these novels offered the same kind of escapism that my Star Wars novels offered: different universes where extraordinary things could happen to ordinary people.
There’s a common perception that romance novels are treacly and most often involve a female protagonist being saved by a secret prince, a fire fighter, a billionaire, a dragon, or a 500-year-old fae. I suspect that’s why I was first attracted to these types of stories as a teen. The possibility, however unlikely, that someone would swoop in and take care of both me and all of the hard things in my life.
I continue to read these stories, encouraged by the resilience of the main characters. They are, for the most part, doing just fine on their own. But now I feel relief looking at their relationships. Some of these characters remind me of my own life—that I, too, have people standing by my side, helping me solve problems that are overwhelming. I am grateful to share my current burdens, even though I do sometimes wish one of us was a secret billionaire. Or would finally marry that secret Italian prince. But I digress.
My embarrassment about my affinity for romance stories became almost nonexistent this spring, thanks to my students. All of us were caught up in the Heated Rivalry (HR) television series, based on the Game Changers books by Rachel Reid. I wasn’t prepared to fall into the world of high stakes professional sports combined with stories of LGBTQIA+ identity and love. I binge watched the first four episodes with a friend and went home to watch the other two episodes that same night. I was mesmerized that the show embraced the imperfections of relationships and how important community is—that we do not have to be alone.
The following week, I played the show’s soundtrack in my classroom while waiting for students to arrive. As they settled in, I heard a louder-than-usual buzz and looked up from my lectern to see students talking with one another and laughing and looking at me with their heads tilted. A student finally asked how I knew about Heated Rivalry, and I let go of any embarrassment over my consumption of romance. It is so rare to share media between my generation and theirs and it seemed we all sensed this was a special moment. Our mutual love of the show and the novels opened new avenues of discussion for us, especially conversations around finding community. In the show, in my classroom, and in our every day lives, people need to know there is at least one other person just like them, or that someone is willing to stand up for, and beside, another person.
As the weeks went on, we discovered that we had even more in common thanks to online communities. We discovered a community on Threads (which people jokingly refer to as tHReads). Fans share scene-by-scene breakdowns of the episodes, discussions with the author and the director, compare literary analyses of the texts, and share fan fiction. Fan fiction can be contentious in the writing community. A creator takes characters developed by an author and builds different stories for these characters. For example, HR hockey players become astronauts, or fraternity brothers, or exist as similar characters on a timeline different from the original work. Some of the best writing I’ve read in the past 12 years has come from fan fiction communities. Before HR, you would have found me reading Star Wars and Harry Potter fan fiction, some of which has now been published on its own merits and have made best-sellers list (see The Love Hypothesis and Alchemized). Fan fiction gives people a creative outlet and lets them celebrate characters and stories they love.
My students admitted that they, too, adore fan fiction, and this discovery dissolved another generational barrier. Some of the artists in my classes created images inspired by the show as well as imaginary book covers for fan fiction works. Others wrote and published their own fiction. We shared publishing platforms like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own (AO3) and I was invited to view a few Tumblr pages.
These discussions happened before and after my class on conspiracy theories, which I created as a media literacy class. Every day we would learn more about the Epstein files and revisit conspiracies like Pizza Gate, while also questioning which sources were legitimate. After classroom discussions and debates, I often walked back to my office wondering about this odd time in history. We struggle to pay for groceries and to identify truthful media while simultaneously finding some semblance of joy in what one of my students referred to as “that cool gay hockey show.” This dichotomy has not escaped any of us.
Community is key in both instances. Our classroom community gave us space to stop and question what is going on in the world while also celebrating queer joy found in popular media. My students and I could show up for each other in meaningful ways by simply sharing a love of a particular story and the culture that has grown around it. I had to let go of my embarrassment and open myself up. The students had to trust that my intentions were real and not an attempt to ingratiate myself with them. This semester made me fall in love again with the world around me. In all its mess and complications, there are still people willing to be vulnerable and share a little more of themselves than they normally would. We find each other, eventually.
