WARNING: This, my final post for 2025, is a long, meandering, and sometimes painfully personal blogpost. Consider yourself forewarned! đ
According to Google, the movie Brokeback Mountain was released in Canadian theatres on December 23rd, 2005, almost exactly 20 years ago from today, as I write this blogpost:
I did not go into the movie theatre to see Brokeback Mountain until 2006, accompanied by a couple of gay friends. At the time, I was aged 42, and still somewhat new to being an out, gay manâat least, compared to those who came out in their teens and twenties. I went in cracking jokes, but by the end of that movie, I was sobbing in my theatre seat. Brokeback Mountain touched me, moved me, and spoke to me in a way few other movies ever have. (I later bought it in DVD, but I still cannot bear to rewatch it, even twenty years later. At times, I felt as though I was suffocating while watching Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar navigate a clandestine gay relationship in rural Wyoming over the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s.)
You see, I grew up following the dictates and expectations of my family and my church, and I married a woman I knew from my Lutheran church youth group when I was 24 and still a virgin. We lived through a disastrous two-year marriage in Toronto, until we separated. I came home to Winnipeg, landed a job with the University of Manitoba, and continued to suppress my sexuality by throwing myself into my work, until I experienced my first serious job burnout, and landed up in psych ward for treatment of clinical depression. Afterward, with the help of regular talk therapy with a psychiatrist. I finally faced the truth that I was gay, coming out to myself first, and then coming out to my friends and family in my early thirties. I had had what so many people in my age group experiencedâa truly wrenching coming out experience, where I felt that something was wrong with me, that I had something shameful to hide. Watching Brokeback Mountain brought all that back to me, to work through again, perhaps on a deeper level the second time. Great art has that ability to awaken feelings inside of you that you never knew you had. (Brokeback Mountain should have won best picture at the 2006 Oscars, instead of Crash, and you absolutely cannot convince me otherwise.)
Fan Fiction: stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet (called also fanfic).
Slash Fiction: is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex (also known as slashfic).
Brokeback Mountain ignited an absolute firestorm of fan fiction and, of course, the characters of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar were tailor-made for slash fiction writers and readers (ironically, many of whom were straight white women). The slashfic varied in quality from superlative to abysmal, but the most popular stories (often posted to Livejournal, and running to dozens of chapters, even full-length novels at times) had thousands of passionate readers leaving comments, sparking long discussions.
During 2006 and 2007, before I had ever heard of a virtual world called Second Life, I dove deeply into the Brokeback Mountain fanfic community. While I was tempted to write my own slashfic, I knew that I could not compete against so many amazing, beautiful stories I had read on Livejournalâstories that brought me to both chills and tears at times. Instead, armed with plentiful screen captures of movie stills, and a rudimentary knowledge of PhotoShop, I turned my hand to creating tribute images (sometimes serious, sometimes funny). Below is one example; you can read this 2019 blogpost to see the rest.
Yes, I was obsessed. So, shortly after I first discovered Second Life (in a story I recount here), I found a service in SL that generated a classic system (i.e. non-mesh) avatar skin based on a single selfie, a full front-facing head shot. You can probably guess what happened next, right?âŚ
Yep. I fed the best photos of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger into this SL service to create Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar avatars for role-play purposes! The results were pretty poor compared to modern, fully-mesh Second Life avatars, but more than sufficient for my purposes. Eventually, I decided to delete my Jack and Ennis avatars, once the fanfic fever had passed, and I had taken sufficient amusing pictures, and engaged in some Brokeback Mountain role play with other Second Life users (one memorable highlight was encountering a French-speaking group of Brokeback fans who threw Jack and Ennis the wedding they never could have in the movie!). I am sure that I still have the pictures from that crazy event tucked away somewhere, but I canât be bothered to dig through all my hard drives to find them and post them here. Just use your imagination; I sure did. đ
I have often written before on this blog about how Second Life (and other metaverse platforms) tend to be havens for LGBTQIA+ people, particularly for those who have not completely come out of the closet as queer people, for personal safety or for other reasons. This is especially true in an era where trans peopleâs rights are being attacked in particular. Here are links to a few blog posts I have written in the past:
- LGBTQ Spaces in Social VR and Virtual Worlds: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Places in the Metaverse
- The White Pearl SalonâA Home for the Trans Community in Second Life (and in Real Life!)
- Social VR Research Alert: You Can Participate in a Clemson University Research Survey of LGBTQ+ Users of Social VR Platforms
- Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Second Pride Festival Freebies and Pride Group Gifts
- and a whole series of posts on doing virtual drag in Second Life: here, here, here, here, and here.
One of the interesting aspects of Second Life (and indeed, most virtual worlds, even games like Fortnite) is that your world (or game) persona can be completely divorced from who you are in real life. You play under a name that is different from your own, and often you choose a look for your avatar that is utterly different from how you look in real life. In Second Life, most players maintain a strict separation between SL (Second Life) and RL (real life), where the people you play with online never get to know aspects of who you are in reality: where you live, what you look like, what you do for a living, etc.
So âcoming outâ has multiple meanings in the metaverse. Itâs not just about embracing your sexuality and whom youâre attracted to, and whom you fall in love with; it can also be about sharing aspects of your real life with people who only know you virtually, as avatars. Many lasting friendships and relationships have had their unlikely but powerful start in Second Life (or some other virtual world or game), as players slowly get to know each other, first only via words between avatars, then perhaps actually meeting up in person. In fact, there is a whole 12-video YouTube series by Draxtor Despres titled Love Made in Second Life, where Drax profiles couples who first met each other in Second Life, and went on to have real-life relationships!
In fact, I first âmetâ Drax when he and I were both part of the social VR platform Sansar, and participated in his regular Sunday morning explorations of various worlds built there, along with many other people. But although we have had many conversations, and each know who we are in real life, weâve never met in person, face-to-face. Sansar was just one of those places where it was not unusual for players to âcome outâ to each other, and reveal the real person behind the avatar, unlike Second Life, where it is still relatively uncommon.
In fact, I very carefully kept SL and RL separate for most of the first years I played, only gradually beginning to associate certain avatars (like my main one, Vanity Fair), with the real-life Ryan Schultz after starting to write about SL on this blog. Is it a risk? Well, yes, of course; coming out always involves some element of risk. But by a certain point, I decided that it didnât make sense for me, as a metaverse blogger writing under my own name, to disassociate myself from many of the avatars I used to explore those same virtual worlds and social VR platforms. In some cases, on some platforms (e.g. Sansar), I even took the same avatar name, Ryan Schultz, if it was available.
And so it was, that my Second Life freebie fashionista friend and partner in crime, whom I only know by their avatar name, Dreamer Pixelmaid, and by the fact that we keep running into each other at SL Pride events (so I assume they are LGBTQIA+ as well), sent me a DM last week on Discord, asking me if I had watched Heated Rivalry yet. I had not. (Tonight I am finishing my second rewatch. I am hooked.)
It turns out that Dreamer and I not only have a shared interest in ferreting out fabulous Second Life freebies and bargains (something we both happen to be very good at!); we also shared an interest in gay romance fan fiction! Soon we were exchanging links to YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, and podcast links, all to do with the outsized reaction which a small Canadian TV show about a gay romance in the professional hockey world (actually, not one but two such romances) was causing, both among the gays and the straights. Dreamer shared the following powerful fan-created music video with me:
I cannot help but compare and contrast what is happening now with Heated Rivalry with what happened with Brokeback Mountain 20 years ago. Both were stories about a secret same-sex relationship developing over time in an unlikely and unfriendly place: 1960s Wyoming for BM and contemporary professional hockey for HR.
But what is different is this: the ripples from Brokeback Mountain were isolated to the queer and slash/fanfic communities, and the movie became the punchline to a joke in the rest of the world, and in much of the mainstream media at the time. But I donât see that happening with Heated Rivalry; if anything, it seems to be getting some attention from the straight community, as well as the LGBTQIA+ folk and the fanfic/slashfic writers. Even straight hockey podcasters are watching the series and commenting on it. The ripples seem to be stronger, and they are going out further.
Another difference is that Brokeback Mountain ultimately ended in heartbreak, whereas Heated Rivalry ends on a much more hopeful note (SPOILER ALERT: even though the two hockey players are still in the closet, at least they are no longer lying to themselves and each other, they have a plan for the future where they can be together, and they have the full support of one playerâs parents).
The show, in fact, has been so successful that a second season has already been greenlit by Crave/CTV, based on a second, already-written follow-up novel about the further relationship between these two hockey players. So yay, we are getting more Canadian-funded ice hockey yaoi! đđłď¸âđđ
As usual, itâs taken me a long time to get to the point, so here it is.
When you come down to it, virtual worlds, social VR, and other forms of the metaverse are all about identity and relationships: who you are on the inside, how you present yourself on the outside, and how you reconcile any tension between the two; whom you choose to be friends with and why, whom you choose to love, and why you love them; and how you navigate the network of relationships around you, both virtual and real. Revealing any of these things to another person, or even revealing them to yourself honestly for the first time, is a form of coming out, where you might risk rejectionâbut also, risk a deeper connection, possibly lifelong. Lifeâs too short. Take that chance.
Twenty years ago, Brokeback Mountain reinforced in me the pain and despair of a closeted life and its soul-killing compromises. Tonight, New Yearâs Eve, Heated Rivalry teaches me that it is never too late to find deep, meaningful friendships and yes, perhaps even romantic love! It was a message which I needed to hear. I am no longer willing to cut down my life to fit other peopleâs comfort levels. In fact, it wasnât until I finished watching the series that I realized that I had even been doing so, and to what extent. (Again, great art makes you realize things about yourself.)
I am going to ask all of you reading these words, my final words to you in 2025, to sit down and watch all six episodes of Heated Rivalry, on whatever television station in your country carries it (Crave here in Canada; HBO Max in the USA, etc.). Itâs even more important that you do it if youâre heterosexual, and donât consider yourself part of the LGBTQIA+ community of which I am a part. In particular, episodes 5 and 6 might just be some of the best television ever made, in my opinion (and yes, I am heavily biased!)
If youâre straight, just think of it as a homework assignment. I want it to spark conversations with your friends and family about how the need for love and belonging is universal, regardless of the gender and sexuality of the lovers; what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in a still sometimes-unfriendly society; and what it means to navigate that coming-out process, both internal and external.
Have a happy new year! See you in 2026.
With thanks to Dreamer Pixelmaid for introducing me to my new show!
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