We live in a post-Heated Rivalry world. Why else would every woman in my office be talking about the Erling Haaland/Jude Bellingham romance?
On X and Instagram alike, the reels show the Viking picking the British player up, throwing him down, crouching on top of him. Bellingham, on the other hand, runs up to Haaland in a clip and stares up at him with a loony smile. He plants a kiss on the rival’s cheek during a press interaction. In one match, sweaty and tired, he rests his weary brow on the Viking’s ample chest. Writers across newsrooms called it a “bromance”; I call them cowards. Every Haaland-Bellingham interaction is straight out of an omegaverse fanfic on Archive Of Our Own (AO3). How else are the girlies to react if not with the feral scribbling of a hundred smutty pages? But fanfics have existed since the first appearance of Kirk and Spock on Star Trek: The Original Series (1966). Several have been turned into films and movies. What did Heated Rivalry change?
For one, it took fanfiction mainstream in a way few other shows have. Ms Mojo posted a reel on Wednesday of Haaland/Bellingham edits overlaid with the audio from the teaser for Heated Rivalry. Videos cast Bellingham as a free-spirited omega and Haaland as a cocky, possessive alpha.I, for one, am upset about the heteronormativity. The real ones know it’s always more interesting to cast the taller, broader man as the omega. If you see tweets with “#NotMyOmegaverse #OmegaHaalandForever,” know it was authored by none other than yours truly.
