"I was doing laundry one night in late November and looking for something to do to pass the time. Too restless for film and too tired for a novel, I settled on an episode of Heated Rivalry. Two hours later, I abandoned the laundry and all common sense. It didn't take long for me to turn into a literal one-person promo machine, bordering on evangelist, telling everyone to just watch the damn show."
"For me, a bisexual woman born in the former Yugoslavia and raised in Ukraine, Heated Rivalry triggered a reckoning. Watching a character like Ilya Rozanov-queer, Slavic, and shackled to his homeland despite living in "the West"-unleashed a memory spiral I thought I'd kept neatly well shut. Throughout much of Eastern Europe, queer people are visible only when it's politically convenient."
A late-night viewing of Heated Rivalry became an obsessive escape that quickly turned into evangelism and emotional upheaval. The show's portrayal of Ilya Rozanov, a queer Slavic character tied to his homeland despite Western residence, unlocked suppressed memories for a bisexual woman from the former Yugoslavia raised in Ukraine. Queer visibility across Eastern Europe is often conditional and politicized: Serbia used an openly gay prime minister to polish its image, and Ukraine's queer community has joined frontlines hoping for acceptance. Russia has intensified repression, outlawing LGBTQ+ movements as "extremist" and pursuing charges against platforms distributing queer content, while viewers access the show via piracy as resistance.
Read at The Walrus
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