Met Gala glamour lasted about five minutes before the shipping discourse returned
The Heated Rivalry star has spent the week dominating timelines after making his Met Gala debut alongside co-star Connor Storrie.
But, the conversation has quickly shifted from fashion discourse to fandom behaviour after a blunt response he posted on Threads.
Replying to a since-deleted fan post, Hudson Williams wrote: “Rpfing gotta stop yall.”
“RPF,” short for “real person fiction,” refers to fan-created stories, edits, theories and full-blown relationship investigations built around actual people rather than fictional characters.
What starts as harmless shipping can quickly evolve into internet detectives analysing eye contact like forensic evidence.
And few fandoms are currently doing that harder than Heated Rivalry fans.
The chemistry between Williams and Storrie’s characters, Shane and Ilya, has fuelled months of speculation online, with some fans blurring the line between on-screen romance and real life.
Williams’ real-life relationship with tattoo artist Katelyn Larson has only intensified things.
Earlier this year, fans accused him of “hiding” the relationship, and when he publicly confirmed it on Valentine’s Day, some immediately dubbed Larson “our strongest soldier”, knowing the controversy to come.
The deleted Threads post that appears to have triggered Williams’ response paired one of his Met Gala afterparty photos with lyrics from Rihanna’s ‘Woo’, implying lingering feelings for someone else while dismissing a current partner.
Subtle? Not exactly.
As Heated Rivalry continues to explode, the situation is becoming a perfect example of modern fandom culture: full of admiration, projection, and people forgetting actors are not actually the characters they play.
