Four missing words from an online video featuring Heated Rivalry stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams have created a firestorm among the beloved Canadian series’ fandom, as well as prompted an apology from an audio erotica app.
Quinn, an app that delivers fantasy smut directly into listeners’ ears, has issued an apology on social media, as well as committed $25,000 to Trans Lifeline following the removal of the word “trans women” from a video published earlier this month featuring Storrie and Williams.
In a new project, Storrie and Williams play rivals yet again: the pair voice Finn (Williams) and Dane (Storrie), two fae princes from rival courts who are having a forbidden affair in the Quinn original Ember & Ice. The first two episodes debuted on December 30 with the third and final episode premiering over the weekend. The first two episodes have been listened to over 1.3 million times, per Quinn. But promotion for the series has led some to condemn the service.
The controversy began with a video, now deleted from Quinn’s Instagram, in which Storrie and Williams were interviewing each other about the success of queer male romance stories, such as Heated Rivalry, among women. While there was no issue when Quinn initially posted clips, fans requested the entire video. “We’ve never had demand for the full Quinn interview before,” the app wrote to social media on January 3 when they posted a longer version on YouTube. It was here that eagle-eyed fans found a discrepancy.
“Even just women, you know, there are straight women, there are gay women, queer women, it feels like a giant term to be like, ‘I know exactly!’,” Williams says in the short version. He continued, “I heard someone online say, when you see a hetero couple, you are forced to relate with the woman character, and that comes with a lot of restriction. And a lot of writers are writing very conventionally, outdated tropes, old archetypes. Getting to watch two men, they’re not forced into a box of: here, this is your person to relate with.”
Fans quickly pointed out that, in the expanded version of the same interview, Williams explicitly mentions trans women, in between mentioning straight women and gay women.
