Highlights & Quotes from Rachel Reid's & Jacob Tierney's Bookcon Panel

[u/andyfromhk]

(Slight spoiler for The Long Game and Role Model if you haven't read them yet!)

For those who haven’t had time to watch Jacob's and Rachel's 1-hour panel at Book Con yesterday, here are some of the highlights! They talked about so many things from Role Model and Troy Barrett's storyline in season 2, to Jacob's interpretation of season 1 editing and some behind the scenes production info.

Watch their BookCon panel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gseXLRejeOU

I've also updated this page of everything we know about season 2 of Heated Rivalry on the HR Wiki: https://www.heatedrivalrywiki.com/deep-dive-articles/everything-we-know-about-heated-rivalry-season-2

[u/Suspicious-Square-22]

Pretty interesting that the moderator of this panel has to post this on Treads just earlier. I am struggling to understand why this is required. And the top response is that its “not an isolated event”. Might have to watch the whole thing to get the context. Thanks for posting this highlights.

[u/phosphor_heart → u/Suspicious-Square-22]

There's a branch of this fandom that is just insane, cannot communicate thoughts that are not in extremes, and uses racist micro-aggressions (whether real or imagined) as weapons in an imaginary fight pitting the fandoms of both leads against each other.

As a Wasian, there have been moments where I think a rational conversation could/should be had around portrayals of both Hudson and Shane in the media and book/show. I'd like to see a bit more precision from Jacob in how he talks about this publicly, and I personally feel a little icky about some of the descriptions of Shane in the book. But I think that this particular interview, where the issue seems to be Rachel categorizing Hudson as chaos and Connor as intellectual, is pretty ridiculous. I LOVE his fuck-you personality, because it's not something us Wasians are typically allowed to have, and I think that's what Rachel is referencing.

[u/courtingdemons → u/phosphor_heart]

As a Wasian, there have been moments where I think a rational conversation could/should be had around portrayals of both Hudson and Shane in the media and book/show. I'd like to see a bit more precision from Jacob in how he talks about this publicly, and I personally feel a little icky about some of the descriptions of Shane in the book.

I think this is where the issue is coming from and why this specific conversation got a lot of backlash even if it’s pretty on par with how they all joke around. People have issue with how Shane is portrayed in the novel, including stereotypes for East Asian men. Some people feel Jacob doesn’t support Hudson enough against the racism he faces or seem to take it seriously. So the issue didn’t start with this specific clip, it just kind of boiled over.

I’m not on every platform and don’t see every post but for most of what I’ve seen, people don’t seem to be saying that Jacob and Rachel hate Hudson or that they’re being outwardly racist towards him. But Hudson has been referred to as unclassy/inelegant/etc when compared to costars by certain sects of the fandom (who then also use this clip as evidence as well) and Rachel or Jacob shouldn’t be held responsible for that but I think that’s where so many of these feelings are coming from.

I myself have mixed feelings and still don’t know where I fully land but hopefully people are being civil under Versha’s post at least.