heated rivalry + chasing wife crematorium
Happy New Year!!
In an effort to be less precious about my blog posts, I’m just blogging about things.
I finished watching all of Heated Rivalry!!! I already knew I was going to enjoy it. I love how the main story/plot is just their relationship (SOOO MANY SPICY SCENES). It really felt like a true BL type of story come to life. I also used to read in the hockey rpf fandom back in 2013 as well, LOL, which added a fun layer to my experience of it. ALSO SPORTS!!
I hope that if any sort of continuation happens it’s more like Bridgerton style where each season features a different main couple. I just don’t want drawn out Grey’s Anatomy style drama lol. Just let the characters live happily.
Lots of enjoyable moments, but here are a few specific ones I loved:
- On-off situationship that spans across multiple years/seasons HAHA
- Ilya being charmed by Shane wearing glasses (GAP MOE!!)
- ROSE!! I would have loved to see more Shane & Rose besties moments - which you would probably see more snippets of in fanfics, etc in typical fandoms.
- Scott & Kip were cute too, their story is more sweet and reminds me of how Soren & Maris are straightforward and cute in a similar way 🥺.
Also now there is a more ~mainstream~ media where people are exposed to BL ha ha ha. I just think about how one day Omegaverse tropes will come into mainstream media ha ha ha ha.
I also follow an (separate) author who writes original m/m fiction set in her own alternate reality hockey world - Taylor Fitzpatrick of YCMAL.
Fun fact: I did make a hockey AU version for Soren & Co (prior to me making Soren/Maris officially a unit). But now their main "canon" sports AU is Soren being a soccer player and Maris being a beat reporter.
I met up with my friends b0xeds0y and kumabrows when they were in town for the break to get some coffee (yummy) and yap and draw. Box and I like very similar tropes/dynamics in BL pairs so it’s always so fun to chat about that.
It's always an interesting to chat with someone that likes the same tropes as me b/c one of my best friends (Arinthe) and I have both liked BL in the ~20 years we've known each other but have complete opposite tastes. So we never have overlapping fandoms/pairs.
I learned about the “chasing wife to the crematorium”/“wife chasing crematorium” trope that I’m a sucker for. I haven’t really read a danmei or watch a lot of cdrama but I can see the VISION!!
This reddit user has a pretty good explanation of the trope. Fully quoting here:
In Chinese, the trope is called 追妻火葬场. It originates from the saying 傲娇一时爽，追妻火葬场 (Tsundere is proud for a while, chasing his wife in the crematorium - loosely translated).
At first, the male protagonist ignores his partner, who loves him deeply. He is very arrogant and indifferent, and often even abusive to his lover, but once he finally loses her, in order to get her back, he will do a lot of groveling.
Initially it was a web slang for regular BG novels and TV dramas.The crematorium metaphor amplifies the stakes, which satisfies readers who crave justice for wronged female characters. Shui Qian Cheng (SQC) made it popular in danmei with her 188 Boy's Team series (Professional Body Double, etc). Here usually the MC is the shou and the ML is the scum/slag gong.
In several danmei novels, the author described the 'crematorium' as the ML's body was almost burned to ashes, but he finally returned from the abyss when the MC softened up and re-accepted him in his life (after tons of groveling and begging, and sometimes even body harm - the ML sacrificing himself for the MC when he saved him from an accident, or stood in front of a bullet for him, etc). Afterward, during the crematorium process, the ML literally became a "licking dog" for the MC.
So it's just like a crematorium - once it's fully burned, the love is no longer recoverable, so the ML has to go through a "trial by fire", to do all the groveling and repentance before it's BE for the couple.
For BE novels (like The Decade of Deep Love, etc), the phrase is 真火葬场, which means "REAL crematorium." In this case, the love is burned to ashes - meaning he can't recover the MC, usually because the MC died or because the novel becomes 换攻 (change of gong) or 换受 (change of shou if the MC is the gong). This basically means the MC ends up with the second ML.
Edit - as a fun sidenote, the term 追夫火葬场 means chasing the husband in the crematorium (it's when the shou is the bad one in the relationship and has to do the chasing back). It's not as popular as 追妻火葬场, but it still exists.
Lots of bad things about that trope but I enjoy the fantasy (also let me emphasize it’s a fantasy and not something I would ever want IRL HA HAHA). I don’t think I have specific stories to point to at this moment but I enjoy yelling at the scum ML and trying to figure out if I want the protagonist (tbh I would read both BL and M/F version of this trope) to end up with the scum ML or not.
I don’t think I have any OCs with this trope - the closest I would have to an obsessive male lead is Z (Zed) who is obsessive about Ci and not a good person (but a very handsome/charismatic person that is able to hide that side of him in public). HE’S CRAZY and they are not endgame.
- OC Log updated
- Fanart Log updated