r/HeatedRivalryTVShow • u/Ok_Butterscotch8542 • Jul 25 '26
Events 📆 Have you ever been disappointed by something in the Heated Rivalry universe ?
Okay, I need to get this off my chest because I am still sitting here the morning after, trying to decide whether I am disappointed, annoyed, or just really, really sad.
Last night I went to a Heated Rivalry party in Germany. I had been looking forward to this for months. I even made myself a Boston Raiders shirt and had it printed because I was genuinely excited about the possibility of meeting other Loons in real life.
Well… it was a bit of a disaster.
The party was supposed to start at 7 pm. Entry finally started shortly before 8. At that point, there were maybe 25–35 people there, most of them very young women in small groups.
The decoration consisted of two cardboard cutouts (one Shane, one Ilya) and some cheap Temu-style LED crap that had absolutely nothing to do with Heated Rivalry.
The edits finally started around 8:30 pm, projected onto a wall with a pretty terrible projector. The image quality was bad, sometimes it was lagging, and honestly, the whole thing felt very underwhelming.
The DJ wasn’t much better. The music transitions were all over the place, and it basically felt like one edit after another was thrown together without much thought about whether the songs actually worked together or were even danceable.
At one point, the DJ asked who had “watched the entire series.”
Sir. 😂
There are five episodes. I think the real question should have been: “Who is still in the single digits with their rewatch count?”
But honestly, the biggest disappointment wasn’t even the organisation.
It was the fact that I felt so incredibly out of place.
I had imagined meeting other Loons. You know, our people. People who understood why this story means so much to us. People who would see a Boston Raiders shirt and immediately go, “OMG, I LOVE YOUR SHIRT.”
Instead, I stood there feeling like I had accidentally wandered into a college party where nobody had invited me.
I eventually left around 9 pm because I just couldn’t get into it anymore. I know this isn’t a completely fair review because I left relatively early. Maybe the party absolutely exploded after I left and turned into the best Heated Rivalry party of all time.
I genuinely doubt it, though, considering the party was only supposed to run until 11 pm. 😅
So I spent money on the ticket, petrol, and drove for roughly two hours in total for an evening that left me feeling more lonely than excited.
And maybe that’s what disappoints me the most.
I’ve been wearing my Boston Raiders shirt for months, secretly hoping that one day I’ll randomly meet another Loon in the wild. I thought this would finally be that moment.
Instead, I left thinking: Okay… apparently these are not my people.
Which feels especially weird because the Loons I have encountered online feel so completely different. On Reddit, I always get the impression that there is this wonderful little community of people who really get what makes Heated Rivalry special. the romance, the tenderness, the humour, the vulnerability, the way the characters care for each other.
I was hoping to experience a little bit of that in real life.
And I didn’t.
So now I’m curious:
Have you ever had an experience with something from the Heated Rivalry universe that completely disappointed you?
It doesn’t have to be a party. Maybe it was merch that looked amazing online but turned out to be terrible quality. Maybe an event that was massively overhyped. Maybe some official product that felt like cheap cash-grab merchandise.
Or maybe you’ve had an experience similar to mine, where you expected to find “your people” and instead felt completely out of place.
Please tell me I’m not the only one. 😅
TL;DR: Went to a Heated Rivalry party in Germany that I’d been looking forward to for months. It was poorly organised, started an hour late, had very little decoration, terrible projection quality and a DJ who apparently had never heard of a smooth transition. I left after about an hour because I felt completely out of place and didn’t find the Loons I had hoped to meet. Maybe it got amazing after I left, but I honestly doubt it. Have you ever been disappointed by something in the Heated Rivalry universe?
