Episodes Witch, Please

We had to go to the cottage!!!In this episode, Hope Rehak, (writer, educator, and the mind behind beloved Substack "Obsessions This Week") joins Hannah and Marcelle for a giddy and downright delectable conversation about the Canadian television hit, Heated Rivalry. The episode begins with us holding space for everyone's personal relationship to the series (*spoiler: we love it*), then promptly jumps into a rundown of how the show materially came to be! We discuss the popularity of MLM (men-loving-men) fiction written largely by women and trans men — and the correlated rise and mainstreaming of the romance genre. Hope introduces us to the idea of the androphillic gaze (listen to learn!) and offers a quick rundown of the state of fanfiction today. Hannah then offers some theory through Carlee Gomes' 2023 article, “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire." What follows is a rich conversation about the myth of political perfection in media, the desire for esca