The AI ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fanfiction Witch-Hunts By Mikayla Maeshiro

By Mikayla Maeshiro

Along with tens of millions of other people, my mind has been consumed by the hit television show, ‘Heated Rivalry.’ It has been too long since a queer television show has been made with care and consideration without the heteronormative filter regarding the queer experience, as the director, Jacob Tierney, is a gay man himself. ‘Heated Rivalry’ was so refreshing to end the year of 2025 with, and yet it still is relevant half a year later, as it wholeheartedly deserves.

With any popular piece of media comes a strong fanbase, and Heated Rivalry’s is no different. From personal experience, fan interactions move at such a constant, non-stopping pace that if a person is offline for more than a day, there is a likelihood that an inside joke or reference will fly over their head purely based on a blip of a missed moment. But there is one topic that I have observed being consistently discussed since this past summer: the infamous Heated Rivalry fanfiction ‘witch-hunts’ due to the use of AI.

It is common for popular media, such as television shows, movies, and video games, to have fan-written works as a way for lovers of the media to alter, add, or imagine entirely new content relating to a fictional universe or its fictional characters within it. This has existed for decades, possibly even centuries, before ‘Heated Rivalry’ was even published as its original novel format, yet its popularization occurred during the internet age of fandoms. Many websites have been developed to be the digital home for writers to publish content to share with other fans. One of the outstanding sites for fanfiction is Archive of Our Own, also commonly referred to as AO3. Its notoriety stems from it being a completely free-to-use website since it was available for public use in 2009.

The 2020s have been defined by the rise of generative AI. It is reasonable to assume that anyone who writes on digital documents has encountered AI-based suggestions, whether it was to simplify the wording of their email drafts or to change the grammar of their school essay. The shift from AI being used for suggestions of formality to being used as shortcuts for the sake of laziness has been seen in the last half-decade or so, and is a very widespread issue that should be both prevented and seriously criticized. When it comes to AI shortcuts in fanfiction, specifically in the ‘Heated Rivalry’ fanbase, this is no exception. Before season 1 of ‘Heated Rivalry’ aired on November 28, 2025, there were exactly 802 works under the Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov tag on AO3, which specifies that it is a fan-written work about their relationship in some capacity. As of completing this blog post on October 23, 2026, there are 52,780 works under the very same tag, yet I am certain the number will be drastically different by the time someone fact-checks this number. This is clear evidence of just how fast-growing the ‘Heated Rivalry’ fandom is, as well as just how popular fanfiction is within the fanbase. With this considerable number in mind, it begs the question of just how many of the supposed fan-written works were truly written by a fan, or generated by AI for sake of ‘content.’

In many Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov works within AO3, the first clear signs of AI-assisted/generated works was obvious incorrect details regarding the characters or the universe, such as the two fictional hockey players’ teams being completely different than the pre-existing canon, the Montreal Metros/Voyageurs and the Boston Raiders/Bears (show/book team names). There were also observations from many readers of distinct and far-fetched mischaracterization of the two main leads, which led to those works labeled as AI as well. As time passed, the accusations moved from the obvious ‘AI hallucinations,’ as notoriously coined in the anti-AI communities, to styles of writing. Fan-written works are labeled as AI-assisted/generated due to being ‘too clean,’ such as no spelling, grammatical, or other human-made errors within the work. There were suspicions when it came to the pace of updating multi-chaptered works, citing that it would supposedly be unlikely for a real person to create so much content at such a pace based on update progression. Other accusations were due to a ‘predictive arc,’ where it would closely follow classic story narratives with a neat, perfect ending.

While many AI-assisted/generated fanfictions within the ‘Heated Rivalry’ community do have these traits, it does not bode well for the accusations to be made based on smaller details of a person’s style of writing or self-editing of their works because it leads to hunches based on personal opinion, rather than understandable evidence that shows use of AI. Due to this, many of the accusations are incorrect, yet their impact on fanfiction authors and their works’ reputation are still significant. Moreso, this ‘witch-hunt’ is hurtful to many ‘Heated Rivalry’ writers with beloved fan works, who receive hate comments or even death threats because one user mentioned their work on an online thread that related to ‘possible AI fanfictions’ based on a hunch. In response, they remove or delete the popular fan-fiction work from public access to avoid any additional hate comments, or they delete their entire account, oftentimes due to declining mental health from the onslaught of negativity.

I direct-messaged numerous users on Twitter (I personally refuse to call it ‘X’) who are well-known writers on AO3 with works that are notoriously fan-favorites within the community for a comment on the prevalent issue. I was hoping to get a firsthand perspective of individuals who may have been affected or witnessed others affected by the ‘witch-hunts.’ Thankfully, a few did reply, and the following is their comments, only edited for grammatical clarity or formality:

“This is a topic that affects many of us, even the people that hate [AI] like i do, because [it’s] slowed down the amount of works being published for FREE. [Y]eah, there’s many of them that COULD, emphasis on, be AI, but it’s become a witch hunt, as you said. [I]t’s made a lot of my dear friends scared of publishing their own fics, even though they KNOW it’s not [AI]. AI is a problem we have to tackle, of course, but to put the blame on people is not the right route, in my opinion.” - @snoopyilya, AO3 author

“[I] have not [...] gotten any [AI] accusations on my fics, so [I] don’t think [I] have much input to share on this as some other writers might. [I] think all [I]’d be able to say is [I] think the witch hunts are sooo exhausting [...] and [I] agree [I] haven’t seen this in any other fandom either[,] it’s literally crazy.” - @fleezerweezer, AO3 author

“[I'm] in a [D]iscord dedicated to [Heated Rivalry] fanfiction and a lot of the time there’s talk about [AI]. [F]or me, when [I] was uploading two of my fics, [I] was pumping out writing fast and uploading chapters at random intervals quite close together. [F]or me, even though [I] knew my writing was 100% done by me, [I] was really scared of getting [AI] accusations because of this and expressed that a lot to my friends, [...]” - @lstyrswshs, Twitter user

These quotes are just specks within the large-scale impact of how the rapid escalation of the AI-assisted/generated fan works within the ‘Heated Rivalry’ fanbase has disrupted what the original purpose of fan-written works was: community-building, at its core. As a AO3 writer within ‘Heated Rivalry’ fandom myself, my motivation for publishing any new content is always rooted in an exploration of creativity and imagination. I am fortunate to not have received any notions of AI accusations, but regardless, it is disappointing to see other authors get teared down or burnt out by anonymous users coming for their throats based on half-baked evidence, fueled by the fear of being fooled by AI.

I would die on the hill that fanfiction is the glue of any fandom, so for the hostility within the ‘Heated Rivalry’ fanbase stemming from the fear of AI within fanfiction is unfortunate to observe. It is sad to see the chaos and divide caused by generative AI, and it is even sadder to imagine if these cutting of corners will become increasingly more difficult to detect, and cause an outburst of additional false accusations to innocent writers.

There is some light within such a gloomy topic as this. In the past months, many AO3 users have created a code for others to add onto their accounts that can detect AI within a fanfiction’s HTML code when open on its page, turning bright red when detected, to weed out the disingenuous works, which is very effective. The code never has any false positives, because the AI platforms, such as Claude, has a hidden CSS tag contained within its generated responses, so when a person copy and pastes the AI-assisted/generated work, the marker is collected alongside the rest of the generated content. Hence, any user who does not use AI in their work will never receive any false positives.

But the productive responses to the ‘Heated Rivalry’ AI ‘witch-hunt’ are so much smaller than the hurtful. AI detectors on fanfiction sites may exist, but the awful effects of the false accusations remain. Well-known fanfictions are still deleted, and those affected authors may never write again due to the misdirected anger. If AI can torment the fans of the infamous gay hockey show, it is frightening what additional chaos it may cause in other communities.