‘Why Are You So Into This?’
Short summary
A writer documents her obsessive nine-month dive into reading fan fiction about two NHL players from Rachel Reid's Heated Rivalry series, discovering she's not alone in a fandom where thousands are sacrificing sleep and productivity for endless variations on the same love story.
- The author read roughly 14 million words of Heated Rivalry fan fiction in nine months—the equivalent of 200 novels—often at the expense of sleep, work, and real-life responsibilities.
- The fandom (called "Loons") exploded after the HBO Max adaptation premiered in December, with fans reporting they're reading constantly throughout their days and nights, sometimes on 4-5 hours of sleep, while scrolling endlessly for new content.
- Archive of Our Own saw about 225 new Heated Rivalry fan works posted daily in the five months after the season finale aired, creating an inexhaustible supply that makes it nearly impossible for fans to stop consuming the content.
Full summary
The author has read roughly 14 million words of fan fiction centered on Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—characters from Rachel Reid's *Heated Rivalry* novel and its HBO Max adaptation—in just nine months. That's the equivalent of 200 full-length novels. She consumes this content obsessively: first thing in the morning, last thing at night, during work breaks, while walking dogs, even at the hospital. The fan fiction ranges wildly in premise—the characters appear as Love Island contestants, 7-Eleven workers, yoga instructors, a kitten and his adoptive owner—but she reads them all because she can't stop. After watching the first two episodes of the show in December, she spiraled completely, buying merchandise despite tariffs, listening to the actors narrate smut repeatedly, and joining the fandom community (self-named "Loons") on social media.
She was initially embarrassed by the compulsion, especially since she's an adult with two jobs—working at The Cut and teaching a graduate course on pop-culture journalism. But the obsession hit at a vulnerable moment: she was burned out, navigating long-distance with her partner for the first time in their 13-year relationship, and exhausted from juggling work and grading. Reading Shane and Ilya's relationship became an escape hatch. She knew it wasn't entirely healthy—the fan fiction became a way to hide from frustration and resentment rather than confront real-life problems—but the fantasy felt too good to stop.
Other fans she speaks with report similar experiences. One 39-year-old named Elizabeth says the obsession has cost her sleep and billable work hours, and she's shocked at how completely the series rewired her sense of self. Before Heated Rivalry, she thought intense fandom was weird. Now she can barely remember having a personality outside of it. The characters' desperate, anticipatory love for each other—the way they see and meet each other's needs—taps into something the fans crave in a way that borders on unhealthy, but they can't bring themselves to leave the fantasy.