the earth's collapse, we finally meet

Jacob Tierney discusses the demanding physicality of Connor and Hudson's Heated Rivalry roles:

"What I always knew about this show—and what I like in general—is behavior is more interesting to me than dialogue.

Especially with characters like [Shane and Ilya] who are almost never talking about the topic. They are talking around things. They are full of bluster. They are bragging or showing off or being defensive. …

So it's way more about their behavior. It was so much more physical, what I would tell them to do. Because I was like—this dialogue, this scene is like 2½ pages, and not one thing you're saying matters. I don't care about it.

What I care about is what your body is doing up against that wall, and when you decide to approach him, and the way you're going to touch him, and at what point. And when you're going to let him off the hook emotionally or when you're going to hook him emotionally. That stuff is so much more important, and that you pace in around what is written. And that is deeply physical.

The best acting to me is always physical and the best platform you can give an actor—as a writer, I think—is physical stuff… I want to see what your body is doing. Your body will tell me more than your words ever will. Your eyes will tell me more.

But like, especially with these characters, because they're athletes too. It's like physicality will be everything. And that was also why these roles were so demanding, you know? There's the physicality of the intimacy, and then there's the physicality of the hockey. Everything is physical in this story."

Transcription via @heatedrivalnews

Like: “imagine you can’t swim and someone pushes you into a pool so Shane dives in to rescue you” and it’s the gif of him from the wet tee shirt photo shoot and Ilya is like would u save me Hollander and Shane is like no I’d be the one pushing you

have you noticed that it's "trans men are men" and "trans women are women" but "nonbinary people are valid?"

have you noticed that it's "love trans women" and "love trans men" but "respect nonbinary people?"

have you noticed it's "brothers" and "sisters" but not "siblings?"

have you noticed that it's "transfem" and "transmasc" but not transneutral, transandrogynous, or otherwise?

have you noticed that nonbinary characters are sorted into "masc" and "fem" but not allowed to be anything in-between or outside?

have you noticed that it's "lesbian" and "gay" but not cenelian, or enbian, or gai, or strayt, or any other nonbinary-focused attraction label?

have you noticed that it's "yaoi" or "yuri" but any nonbinary equivalents are jokes?

have you noticed that everything is this or that?

have you noticed the binary?

have you noticed?

have you noticed?

have you noticed?

It started when he was a kid and he was trying to help everyone get better at hockey including the opposing teams players, he would say something like “your stick grip is weak” or “you’re slow on your right” (idk i don’t know hockey very well ESPECIALLY little kid hockey) but he says it totally deadpan because little Shanebug doesn’t understand tone yet.

This makes the other teams so mad! They try and fight him constantly! Little bitty baby hockey fights and then Yuna sits him down in middle school after the first fight that he actually gets hurt (black eye and bloody lip) and asks him what he is saying to make everyone fight him?

“Nothing mean I swear mom!!! I’m trying to be nice and help correct their form”

And suddenly Yuna gets it and explains to Shane that not everyone but especially not the opposing team likes to have their flaws pointed out to them even if it’s coming from a good place and how that could be seen as chirping.

So he stops for a while, then his coach for world juniors tells him to try and piss off Rozanov enough that they can draw a penalty. So Shane does what he does best and points out a flaw at each face off. Jokes on him though because Ilya is actively changing those things and getting better every face off because he is taking it for what it is, advice.

Which pisses Shane off, he thinks his chirping tactic won’t work now that he is older. So he points out at his first scrimmage at practice in Montreal that the center who has been there for years (who he is probably replacing) is favoring his left side is staying too far left to compensate (again I don’t know hockey so I am trying to translate things I know about soccer lol)

And the center loses it on him! Immediately yelling about the lack of respect and how a rookie makes it to the MLH and thinks they are hot shit.

So Shane realizes his chirping DOES work just not on rozanov and becomes a menace he studies game tape specifically to find holes in his opponents game and pre prepares chirps and it fucking works because all these men are so far up their own asses that they just get mad instead of using the advice.

Crystal can’t focus on the case because she’s busy having an absolute meltdown over an exam she has the next day, that she absolutely has to get a good grade on. And she’s been out of school for months, and her memory’s spotty, and she’s been so anxious about it she could barely bring herself to pick up her books, which she barely remembers how to use anyway, and she is, quite frankly, terrified.

And Charles does his Thing, all “you’ll do amazing, Crystal!” and “it’s just a test - that you’re gonna do great on!” and she goes back to her apartment feeling somehow even worse.

In her apartment, she clicks the light on and immediately screams, because there’s a damn ghost sitting on her bed, ankles crossed, hands folded primly.

“What time is your exam tomorrow, Crystal?”

“What the fuck - I don’t - 9AM,” Crystal says, far too exhausted and miserable to argue or snipe, and slumps on the bed next to Edwin, fully clothed.

“I will be there at 8:45,” Edwin says, and Crystal’s brain spins. “I have already arranged an excuse so Charles will not know where I am.”

Crystal’s eyes blink back open, then blink several more times. “What?”

“I do not need to sleep,” Edwin said, “so I will spend the next few hours reviewing your books to ensure my knowledge is up to date. You said it was multiple-choice, so you won’t need to translate my idiom into your own. I do recommend, however,” he said, with a touch of awkwardness, “that you transcribe a few answers incorrectly, for… verisimilitude.”

Crystal stared up at him. “Edwin,” she said slowly, “are you… are you offering to cheat for me, and lie to Charles about it?”

Edwin twitched. “I did not lie to Charles,” he said. “But I will not deny I misled him, yes. Crystal,” he said, and turned to face her head-on, pulling his legs up on the bed. “You are not learning anything, with all of - ” he gestured at her books and notebooks, which she would deny the tear stains on to her deathbed - “this. It is only causing you distress. There is no inherent virtue in suffering.” He said the last sentence like it was a mantra he’d repeated a thousand times, trying to get himself or Charles to believe it.

Crystal shook her head, still dazed. “You, Edwin Payne, are offering to cheat on a test for me, Crystal Palace?”

Edwin huffed. “I am offering to use my skills to relieve your distress and ensure your ability to maintain your work at the Agency, which is the same thing I always do. I am simply doing it in a different location.”

Crystal would deny the tears dripping down onto her cheeks now far, far past her deathbed. “Thanks,” she sniffled.

This is SUCH a good catch & I've been wracking my brain abt this all day, bc once you start pulling on it, the Rose/Lily distinction basically maps onto the entire logic of Heated Rivalry, esp the tension between heteronormativity and queerness, performance and authenticity. 🤔

From my extensive googling, here's what I came up with:

1. Floriography

In Western flower language, roses and lilies are among the most symbolically overloaded blooms, and they point in opposite directions. The flowers don't just symbolize the relationships. They reproduce the conditions those relationships exist under.

🌹 The rose governs public love: courtship, desirability, legibility. It announces "this is a relationship" in terms the world recognizes. That's why roses feel heteronormative. Culture has absorbed them into a script of visible, socially sanctioned romance. Even the sub rosa tradition (a rose hung above a table meant secrecy) adds a layer of performance. With a rose, even secrecy becomes theatrical.

🌸 The lily carries a different register: purity, devotion, grief (!), rebirth (!!). Lilies appear in liminal spaces like funerals, religious iconography, moments of transformation. They're not about spectacle but interiority. Historically less fixed than roses, they map less cleanly onto a single romantic script. That ambiguity makes them feel less culturally policed. More open. More queer, if not inherently, then at least structurally.

So already:

Rose = visible romance, social love, being chosen and displayed.

Lily = hidden devotion, transformation, the private weight of grief.

2. Mythology

Both flowers emerge from love myths, but radically different kinds of love.

🌹 The rose is tied to Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of romantic/erotic love. According to myth, the first rose bloomed from her tears or the blood of Adonis (love and suffering intertwined).

🌸 The lily comes from a stranger myth: when Hera nursed Heracles, droplets of her milk fell to earth and became lilies. So the lily is maternal, bodily, intimate: love as origin, as creation, as something that flows from the divine body itself and cannot be separated. Later Christian tradition attached the lily to the Virgin Mary: purity, secrecy, sacred interior life. And because lilies dominate funerary imagery, they also carry death and rebirth, grief as the shape devotion takes when love outlives its object. (Side note: the lily's maternal origin is only even more important when considering that Irina's death starts the novel's butterfly effect. More on this later.)

Thus:

Rose = love performed outward, tied to desire and suffering, beautiful on the surface but prickly with thorns and all.

Lily = love held inward, part of your body, tied to origin, grief, and transformation (!!!).

3. The inversion

This is where symbolism becomes structural imo. In the novel:

"Lily" is a false name (Ilya saved under a pseudonym...also similar letters btwn Ilya/Lily) → but encodes a love that is emotionally real, private, transformative.

Rose is a real person (Shane's public girlfriend) → but her relationship is performative, socially legible, ultimately empty.

So we get a complete inversion:

Lily = fake name, real love Rose = real name, fake love

The text assigns the culturally correct symbol of love (the rose) to the incorrect relationship, and the ambiguous, grief- and devotion-laden symbol (the lily) to the true relationship. To me, that's the novel quietly arguing that queer love here is structurally incompatible with the forms through which love is usually recognized (which is so fucking sad 😭😭).

4. More on Lilies & Ilya

As mentioned, lilies are tied to mourning, devotion, and rebirth. These states happen in liminal privacy, exactly where Ilya and Shane live.

Irina's death haunts the narrative as a quiet foundation. If she hadn't died, Ilya never would have been desperate to leave Russia. Without that desperation, he wouldn't have clawed his way to the NHL. And if he hadn't become a first overall draft pick, a star, Shane never would have introduced himself to such a "mediocre" player. No CCM. No anything. Irina's absence sets every wheel in motion.

Then there's Grigori. The first "I love you" is spoken in Russian, in a dark tunnel, immediately following his father's death. Mourning/grief doesn't just surround Hollanov. It opens the door for love to finally be spoken. The lily's grief and rebirth, together, in one moment.

Beyond his parents, the lily fits Ilya's character painfully well: his emotional repression, the sense that loving Shane is both life-giving and destructive. And lilies, unlike most flowers, bloom from bulbs underground, hidden before emerging. That's almost too on the nose for a closeted relationship...

5. Rose vs. Rozanov: phonetics

This is slightly unrelated to your question, but it's another observation I've had in the back of my mind for a few days now lol. The sound similarity between Rose and Rozanov turns "rose" into a kind of linguistic stand-in, like a the name Shane can say in public that approximates the one he can't, even though the desire is always underneath.

The etymology is quite fascinating too: Rozanov means "son of rose." So when Ilya stops being "Lily" and becomes Ilya Rozanov once again to both Shane and eventually the world, Shane gets that rose/romance/loudly loved symbol back, but in another form. Reclaimed, transformed, full circle. Rachel Reid has confirmed the similarity in name wasn't a coincidence, which makes the whole structure feel deliberate, even inevitable.

6. TLDR;

In Heated Rivalry, roses = public, performative love. Lilies = private, grief-laden, transformative love. The novel inverts them: "Lily" is a fake name for the real love (Ilya), while Rose is a real person for the fake love (Shane's girlfriend). The lily's mourning haunts the narrative through Ilya's parents, and phonetically Rose echoes Rozanov ("son of rose"), meaning Ilya eventually reclaims the rose symbol transformed. The flowers aren't decoration. They're the story's emotional architecture.

some of the rooms have fully stocked pantries with cooking equipment, some have movies like the one described above, some have books you're allowed to just take but people always put back- every day people bring things from the outside. artists often set up galleries there. there are rooms with mattresses and hammocks set up for people to sleep. one of the room is just a place where people leave shoes for the fun of it.