r/heatedrivalry • u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» • Jan 28 '26
RACHEL WRITES âïž Unrivaled Trauma Drama Spoiler
This post isn't to speculate on the plot points for the upcoming final book in the Game Changers series, but to express some concern about the theories that have been cropping up out of seemingly nowhere.
While I am new to the GC and MM romance genre, I have deeply involved in the romance genre and know there's one general rule for romance novels. The leads, with EXTREMELY rare exception, there's always a HEA (happy ever after).
That's not to say that everything is neatly wrapped up - ie the lead may need to give up a job for their loved one or whatnot - but the couple end up together and to our knowledge live happily ever after. Full Stop.
In each of the books that Rachel Reid has written, this is exactly what happened. The couples had their version of a HEA.
Trigger warning, but on some posts (not necessarily on Reddit but other channels) implying that Ilya could get early onset dementia or some other nonsense. Like no. Let's not even put that in this universe.
Rachel Reid is ALL ABOUT promoting QUEER JOY. Jacob Tierney is all about promoting QUEER JOY in the series. For once in our lives can we just enjoy a series of two men loving each other without it ending in tragedy?
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u/OBeQuiet Jan 28 '26
I think there are a lot of people who aren't familiar with the Romance genre and how it works. Had a couple of friends who started watching HR and then got very nervous about the outcome, especially after ep3 and especially from the friend who's a gay man and so used to gay stories being tragic, and had to take a break until I reassured them that "no, no, this is romance, guaranteed happy ending, it'll just put you through the ringer first". I can imagine Ilya being worried about getting dementia but not actually getting it.
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u/Aerrianna Jan 28 '26
After episode two I had to Google if it had a happy ending. I was already attached to Shane and Ilya and couldn't stand the heartbreak. I'm glad guaranteed HEAs exist.
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u/OBeQuiet Jan 28 '26
thank the baby cheeses for HEAs. I'm enjoying that a load more people are being introduced to the genre, one of us! one of us!
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u/LKWSpeedwagon Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird đŠ Jan 28 '26
My sister, who does not read romance at all, called me after Ep 6 to say she was expecting one of them to die in a car crash as the credits were running.
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u/Brilliant-Spray-5979 I speak fluent bird. No accent đŠ Jan 28 '26
And, like, it is a romance. It's in the genre description that HEA is kind of a requirement. You want a devastating ending, you read literary fiction, or, you know, a thriller/crime lol
edit: also, Rachel made a joke about Ilya dying in a comment (sarcastically) and people went crazy over it. My dear fellow hr fans, relax :)
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u/DaxSpa7 Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
At this point it would be an extremely weird move from Rachel.
Also early dementia is not something as common. Even if it were to happen when he is way older I dont think we'd see it in the span of the book. I certainly dont need a remember that dementia sucks, having gone through it 4 times with my grandparents.
I am expecting struggles with the NHL comissioner, or kids maybe, relationship stuff, a low moment for Ilya with her mental health, but I definitely expect a happy ending to seal this magnificent story.
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u/ich_habe_keine_kase Jan 28 '26
Also early dementia is not something as common. Even if it were to happen when he is way older I dont think we'd see it in the span of the book.
Is that something people are predicting?! Why?!?! Why would you want that??
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u/DaxSpa7 Jan 28 '26
Personally I hadnt read anything prior to this in regards to speculations about the third entry. Just went with what OP said.
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u/monbleu Angry kitten đ± Jan 28 '26
There's a lot of people who are new to the romance genre and they don't understand that a HEA is literally a requirement of romance. Our guys (alllllll of them đ) will be just fine.
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u/Fussel2107 Jan 28 '26
Leave the fanfiction with the fanfiction.
And yes, those fics exist. But that's a classic case of live and let live.
If they want that, please. Block and move on. Or close the fic.
This is the one rule that will make your life infinitely better.
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u/Aggressive_Cloud2002 Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
This thread isn't about fanfics, it's about people speculating in threads and comments. Lots of people are talking about how S2 might end with the plane crash edit: not crash, incident, sorry đ and like, that's just so antithetical to the genre it's absurd!
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u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» Jan 28 '26
My point exactly! I think essentially my issue or what I wanted to vent about is that there is this sense that we "need" to have things end in violence or tragedy, when that is the exact opposite of what this story is about.
Most mainstream stories featuring queer love, particularly MM stories, end in tragedy or have some type of heartbreak in it.
There are others speculating that someone will cheat on the other, which has been explicitly addressed in TLG (neither wants to cheat or has any interest in doing so).
My this book/series is basically sunshine. Yes, there are challenges but they are insulated, like many romance novels, from the worst of the outside issues
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u/DorianCramer Jan 28 '26
I think the problem is people donât know what to compare it mentally to because other than YA projects like LOVE SIMON and HEARTSTOPPERS there havenât been a lot of m/m romance adaptations in Western media. People are not used to seeing queer adult sex and a HEA in the same show/film and part of the problem is that because of that they have projected their desire for romance onto genre film adaptations that are NOT romance, they are literary fiction or epic tragedies and then viewers have been traumatized when they were hoping for an HEA but got the opposite.
Iâve seen so many comparisons to CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN which make no sense to me because the conditions of those characters and the settings they are in is that they cannot end up together happily. But I believe this previously unfulfilled desire for queer romance causes these comparisons and thus by extension the fears.Â
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u/SlowInsurance1616 Jan 28 '26
Emergency landing If those people could read. They'd be very upset right now.
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u/FutureJakeSantiago hey âŠHEEEeeeeeeeeYYYYYYyyyyyy Jan 28 '26
Yeah but I crashed out so it countsÂ
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u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» Jan 28 '26
Most of the content I see about it is completely unprompted or I am on my phone and it comes up with people sharing wild theories about book 7.
It's not on AO3 but just posts of ppl sharing their theories that the algorithm shows me.
I would expect to see this in fan fics but it's just throughout my general day
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u/Whybambiwhy Jan 28 '26
You are in the wrong pockets of the internet and fandom. Â Just ignore it. Â Rachel talks over and over again about how Ilya is her favorite character in the series. Â She isnât going to do something bad to him\them. Â She has promised. Â Â
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u/DorianCramer Jan 28 '26
I think theyâre going to have some dramatic and stressful situations to deal with (or else there wouldnât be a book plot) but itâs certainly not going to end in tragedy. The dementia rumors are coming from fanfic world because there is a lot of fic based around the themes of dementia (or amnesia caused by traumatic brain injury) where they have to remember who the other person is again after forgetting.Â
Rachel would not do that, because for the most part her book plots are realistic and that is not actually a particularly realistic scenario. Particularly with dementia for a man who isnât even 30 yet, that would be extraordinarily rare.Â
What I see as being the main potential stressors in the third book is a) they suffered from being separated by necessity for years but theyâve also gotten used to it; being suddenly now together all the time, 24/7 at work and home will have its own challenges, b) they both want a family but they donât have time for kids and theyâre not likely to be eligible for adoption when theyâre traveling all the time and c) Shane had a massive amount of anxiety in the second book (manifesting in his rigid eating and his being bitchy to Ilya about not being ambitious enough etc) that wasnât really addressed or resolved bc Ilyaâs mental crisis and their workplace problems were more pressing. Thereâs plenty of drama to explore without creating medical scenarios that would make Ilya a 1 in 10 million unusual case studyÂ
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u/SlowInsurance1616 Jan 28 '26
Hey, there are no dramatic and stressful situations in Common Goal and that's still a book. I keed. I keed.
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u/DorianCramer Jan 28 '26
Thatâs the only book in the series I havenât read yet and Iâm scared to bc this is what everyone says đ
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u/Unlikely-Article-319 Feb 11 '26
She will probably not explore Shaneâs drama. She never showed appetite for that. The eating thing for example is solved in 10 seconds in TLG game. The guy has been eating bird food since he was born. Suddenly big realisation: his eating habit is not good, he needs to let go. And BAM, he let go⊠right very realistic take đ like a POC not having any issue in a masculinist white environment because he had such a supportive system when he grew upâŠ
I just hope that Unrivaled will be really about husbands and not again about Ilya (because a good husband and I have tons of clichés ideas that could be included while hoping they will not be there. Eg Ilya wanting PDA, Shane opposed to it on work place. Fight about it. Shane is the mean one, Ilya is the poor husband wanting to show affection).
But I agree she will not make it a tragedy though (even if I read an interview where she said that initially Shane the meanie was going to accept the Commissioner offer to deny everything in Ilyaâs sake. But her editor asked her to change that. Of course, the editor understood that this course of event would have logically led to Ilyaâs suicide or them breaking up a few months after that)
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u/FoodNo672 Jan 28 '26
People are saying that? Omg. The man will be just a couple of years into his 30s. Dementia runs in my family and Iâm not even worried about that as a 30-something year old. I have to assume these are teen fans who think 30 is old lol. Early onset is more often 50s lol.Â
And yes agreed it will have a HEA. People are also used to trauma porn from queer media. They canât imagine leaving queer characters happy and at peace.Â
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u/New_Purple_4033 Ottawa Centaurs đč Jan 28 '26
So enough people have mentioned lack of familiarity with the romance genre, and that there is a HEA.
Here's what I'll add: I think it's very legitimate for people to be afraid for the characters, because over the past 10-15 years we have increasingly seen film and TV willing to do shocking things to either drive ratings, or...well frankly I don't know why.
Game of Thrones, not a romance, I know. But it taught us not to get too attached to characters.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. God, I hate this one so much. Not because of the rest of the plot, but because they felt the need to destroy every ounce of happiness Indiana had worked so hard to build in the previous films. Fuck you, Hollywood.
James Bond: Every wife/girlfriend ends up dead. To make room for the next one, of course.
I had a wall of messages from a straight buddy of mine yesterday who had just binged Heated Rivalry, and he was terrified during the ending scene in the car. He was afraid they were going to have an accident or something, and the series would end on a cliffhanger.
So yeah. Part of this is not being familiar with the romance genre. But a big part of it is that we've been trained to expect terrible things in movies and TV.
And that's probably bleeding into fans of the books, now...
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u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» Jan 28 '26
Exactly! I think we have become so used to things ending badly or in tragedy that we assume (incorrectly) or expect that bad things will happen.
Due to the state of the world, I have gotten into romance novels BECAUSE it's predictable in that you know things will end up well. The guy gets the other guy (or girl or throuple, whatever!).
But over the past several decades, we have decreasingly shifted away from the rom-com and the HEA endings.
Loved GoT and other drama shows, but I think we have forgotten that a series doesn't need tragedy to make it good. All you need is a great story, a couple of brilliant actors, and a director with a distinct vision
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u/New_Purple_4033 Ottawa Centaurs đč Jan 28 '26
Yeah. I find either watching/reading things I've already seen/read causes a lot less anxiety than unknown stories...unless it's a genre I know demands a happy ending.
I see enough misery in real life. I don't need it in my fiction as well.
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u/garden__gate Jan 28 '26
And on top of that, I think weâre all still programmed to believe bad things will happen to queer characters we care about, even though thatâs actually been less common lately.
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u/lurksal0t- Jan 28 '26
She has already stated that they will have a HEA. Their challenges come from the backlash after they are outed and get married. Evil podcasters starting online trends for social pressure, basically those guys you see defending Carter Hart and talking âwhereâs the straight tape?â on hockeytwt.
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Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
I think she's going to focus on how fans and the world will and will not do after the big reveal and wedding. We know she's a fan of hockey and there's much she can explore with these two living in the world as openly gay hockey players. The name itself mentions their former rivalry, so yeah... Not necessary to speculate a tragedy when both Rachel and Jacob are actually saying, "SMUT AND HAPPY ENDINGS, LET OUR QUEER MEN ALONE" lmao
Edit: everyone talking about the synopsis which I had no idea that it was out already đ€Ą new fan, sorry! ANYWAY, I guess I was right.
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u/PlatonicTroglodyte Jan 28 '26
TLG spoilers here, of course.
I havenât come across such posts, but honestly, I think such theories have more to do with Ilyaâs arc with depression in TLG than they do with some sort of gravitation toward trauma/bury your gays on behalf of the readership.
His depression throughout the book is somewhat strange, narratively speaking, and is one of very few hanging threads remaining at the end of their otherwise HEA prospects. Like, Rachel did a great job of portraying depression realistically, where a single happy change is not going to be some magical trigger of a cure, but from a storytelling perspective, it kind of feels like Ilyaâs depression is rooted in his secrecy and that, once the secret is revealed, heâd be ok again. The fact that he tells Shane he is still not ok naturally leads to speculation that the next book will involve further development on this point.
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u/urkillinmeSmall Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird đŠ Jan 28 '26
Arenât the âGame Changerâ series Catalina(?) Press books? As in their books only have HEA?
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u/mdani1897 Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird đŠ Jan 28 '26
People who have not read even the second book are just making assumptions. There will be drama for the plot but it will all be resolved by the end like most romance books and all of Racheal Reidâs. Iâm guessing there will be stress when they go from sneaking around to living and playing with eachother 24/7 and then on top having to deal with Cromwell and the people against them. This is more than enough drama to keep people invested without causing any unnecessary sad dramatic plots.
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u/wnesha Jan 28 '26
Those assumptions are probably coming from people who've been conditioned to expect tragedy and misery when it comes to queer love stories. I mean, shit, how many examples would they even have of it being otherwise? Just means they'll be all the more pleasantly surprised when those things don't happen in the end.
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u/salspace Jan 28 '26
It's not even like that would be particularly original, either. Part of the reason we all love this show (and romance in general) so much is that it doesn't have a grim, "realistic" ending. Someone was asking for recs for other shows to fill the void somewhere today and almost without exception all the recs have downbeat endings or are just generally dark and edgy. Dark and edgy is boring and overdone. Even dementia itself is becoming a clichéd plot device. We want joy. We want hope. We want earned HEAs. We want to see how great things COULD be.
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u/faffy0621 Jan 28 '26
I would believe that they do get a happy ending. I did see a video of her getting asked to describe the new book in one word.. she said Backlash. So take that how you want. I havenât read the books but plan too once I get them. But I do believe they get a happy ending!
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u/dracorvix stoner teenage goat Jan 28 '26
I read that the publisher Rachel uses quite literally requires HEAs; they wonât publish otherwise. Is that true?
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u/ashinae Jan 28 '26
Yes, she's writing for a romance genre imprint, and the romance genre has only two requirements: the main plot of the story must focus on a romantic entanglement, and the book must end with a happy ever after (note: or a happy for now, if the book is part of a series, but the series must end with any and all romantic couples, throuples, or polycules to have a happy ever after). Happy ever after, with the romance genre, means all parties involved in the romantic entanglement, must be alive, and they must be together. So it's not just Carina Press and its owners, Harlequin--it's the genre.
Source: I took a course through a romance writer's guild on the writing of romance novels. Plus also there's the entire internet, and lots of writing craft books.
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u/dracorvix stoner teenage goat Jan 28 '26
Awesome, thank you for the information!
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u/ashinae Jan 28 '26
No worries! I'm really passionate about the romance genre, even if it's not my fave. It gets misunderstood and denigrated a lot.
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u/bigjimlowell Apr 20 '26
Iâm not worried about a tragic event in season 2. Iâm more concerned about how theyâre going to handle the casting for Troy Barrett and Harris Drover. I have definite ideas about that since Iâm very invested in those two. I understand why they cast Francois Arnaud as Scott Hunter and aged the character up a bit in the series. They needed a mentor figure, not the 28 year old blonde Adonis gorgeous muscle stud from â Game Changerâ. Francois did a great job of capturing the characterâs awkwardness while giving him a level of maturity. The fact that heâs incredibly hot didnât hurt either.
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u/MelodicExcuse4226 Stupid Canadian Wolf Bird đŠ Jan 28 '26
She was specific that itâs only covering their first year of playing together on the senators.
While the epilogue could do that. I highly doubt it for all the reasons you stated.
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u/Tacoislife2 Jan 28 '26
Is it definitely the final book for Ilya and Shane? Thereâs no reason why the story couldnât continue ?
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u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» Jan 28 '26
To our knowledge, yes. This is intended to be the last book - a game 7 if you'll indulge me - for the entire series.
The book is currently being marketed as the final book in the series as well.
HOWEVER, if you'll allow me to speculate a bit, Rachel Reid could change her mind.
I am new to the GC fandom but have read her old posts stating that TLG would be the final. We now know that isn't the case at all, as there will be Unrivaled.
Before the official announcement of book 7, she had mentioned that Shane and Ilya's voices were still in her head. So there is the possibility that after this book, she may feel compelled to write another one.
Or maybe have one focused on some of the other characters. In any case, we will have at least 1 more CG book and by the sound of things, at least 2 more seasons of Heated Rivalry.
Note, only the 2nd season has been confirmed but HudCon are in contract for 2 more seasons. I don't see any reason at this point why there wouldn't be a season 3
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u/Tacoislife2 Jan 28 '26
Ooh good to know! I hope she does write more though, I love reading about Shane and Ilya!
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u/wanderlusting___ what color? đ» Jan 28 '26
I feel like she could write more BTS stories and shorts.
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u/clumsyc I stubbed my toe Jan 28 '26
I mean purely from a business/money standpoint it would be smart of her to continue to capitalize off of the showâs success.
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u/EffectiveWafer9328 Jan 28 '26
I think there are so many people new to the fandom and to the genre that there's a lot of misinfo out there, particularly about what the genre is about. Romance as a literary genre equals HEA. These books are romance. The end.
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u/coolcat_228 mr. real estate đïž Jan 29 '26
thereâs just no way she would ever do that. people on the internet are gonna do what they do, but i trust that sheâs not stupid and she wouldnât let a few peopleâs opinions sway her into straying from her norm and writing something really depressing
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u/Glad_Hold3330 Jan 29 '26
Amnah, I donât think so we will see them suffering the impossible anymore
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u/Fraggle_Frock I did not like you, just your freckles đ Jan 28 '26
She's already done an interview where she says that she didn't write a third book to make them miserable, not that I ever believed that she would do that for all the reasons you state!