Heated Rivalry is everywhere right now. It is trending, it is renewed, it is talked about, it is dissected, it is shipped, and it is celebrated as proof that queer stories can be mainstream hits. It has become the latest example people point to when they want to argue that queer television has finally “arrived.”And in one sense, that is true. The show is successful, visible, widely discussed, and genuinely loved by a large audience. It has heart, heat, chemistry, and emotional depth. It gives people something joyful, dramatic, and intimate to hold onto at a time when queer rights and queer safety feel politically fragile. All of that matters. All of that is good.But it also proves something far less comforting.The success of Heated Rivalry does not just show that queer stories can thrive. It shows which queer stories are allowed to thrive easily, quickly, and with institutional support. It shows which stories are framed as safe investments, which ones get patience, and which ones get to grow into long-running cultural moments instead of being treated as experiments.So does Heated Rivalry prove that queer TV keeps choosing MLM stories over WLW ones? Yes, it does. Not because MLM stories should not exist or because they are somehow undeserving, but because the industry response around Heated Rivalry reveals a clear hierarchy of protection and attention.Men-loving-men stories are increasingly positioned as central, profitable, and expandable. Women-loving-women stories are still positioned as niche, risky, and temporary.This is not an argument that WLW shows do not exist. They do. They are being made, they are creative, and they are meaningful. But their existence is not the same thing as their security. And the gap between those two things is where the exhaustion lives.Author’s note: Reader discretion advised. This piece reflects my opinion. I’m not criticizing MLM shows or denying WLW ones. I love Heated Rivalry; the issue is the unequal support these stories receive.Heated Rivalry as proof of what the industry protectsHeated Rivalry did not just succeed, it was positioned to succeed. It came in with a clear sense of audience, a clear marketing lane, and a confidence that the story was worth investing in long term. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostThe show blends romance, sex appeal, emotional longing, and a high-stakes sports setting in a way that feels accessible even to viewers who are not part of the queer community. That matters because accessibility, in industry terms, often means profitability.Heated Rivalry centers on two attractive male athletes whose relationship exists inside familiar tropes: rivalry, secrecy, tension, yearning, forbidden intimacy. These tropes are already popular in straight romance and fan culture. Heated Rivalry simply swaps the genders of the couple while keeping the emotional grammar intact.That makes it easy for large audiences, especially straight women who dominate romance consumption, to step in without feeling disoriented. The show becomes safe, hot, emotional, and marketable all at once.This is not accidental. This is structural. MLM romance has been shaped over years to fit into familiar frameworks that already sell. Heated Rivalry benefits from that history. It is not just queer, it is legible. It is not just romantic, it is optimized for fandom culture, social media virality, and shipping behavior. That makes it valuable.The proof is in what happens around it. Heated Rivalry was renewed early. It was promoted loudly. It was framed as a success story almost immediately. The same pattern appears with other MLM or MLM-adjacent shows like Heartstopper, Interview with the Vampire, Overcompensating, and more.Even when these shows differ wildly in tone, age range, or genre, they share one thing: the industry treats them as safe bets.This safety is not about queerness alone. It is about whose queerness feels profitable, attractive, and culturally digestible. MLM stories often allow straight women to participate as fans without threatening their own identity or desire.They can enjoy intimacy without competing with a female character, without having to compare themselves, and without confronting their own position in romance narratives. The men become objects of desire, not rivals.This does not make these stories bad. But it explains why they are protected. The industry is not just choosing queer stories, it is choosing the version of queerness that travels best.Where WLW stories exist but struggle to survive while shows like Heated Rivalry constantly get renewedWLW stories do exist. They are being made. They are thoughtful, daring, emotional, messy, political, intimate, and creative. Shows like The Hunting Wives, Pluribus, and Wayward prove that there is no shortage of compelling women-loving-women narratives. But they live in a very different ecosystem than shows like Heated Rivalry. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostThese shows often arrive quietly. They are marketed softly. They are framed as niche, risky, or limited. Their queerness is frequently treated as a complication rather than a selling point. Even when the storytelling is strong, their survival feels uncertain from the start.The Hunting Wives offers a sharp, provocative look at desire, repression, power, and secrecy through a central sapphic relationship. It is messy, political, erotic, and socially aware. It does not sanitize queer desire. It places it inside a hostile cultural environment and lets it become dangerous, intoxicating, and destabilizing. That is brave storytelling. But brave storytelling is not always protected storytelling.Pluribus centers a complicated older lesbian lead whose grief, desire, anger, and resistance shape the emotional core of the show. It refuses to flatten queerness into something decorative or inspirational. It allows a queer woman to be strange, unpleasant, grieving, lustful, and human. That kind of representation is rare, and it is risky, because it does not aim to be universally comforting.Wayward builds a world where queer relationships shape power, conflict, and community. It treats queerness as structural, not symbolic. It lets queer characters exist inside flawed systems, not outside them as moral mascots.These shows do something important. They refuse to make WLW palatable by shrinking it. And because they refuse, they become harder to sell, harder to protect, and easier to cancel.This is where the exhaustion comes from. WLW stories are not failing because they are weak. They are fragile because the industry treats them as optional. They are given less time, less margin for error, and less patience. When they stumble, they fall. When MLM shows like Heated Rivalry stumble, they are corrected, renewed, or reframed.The difference is not in quality. It is in institutional faith.Cancellation culture and the fragile life of WLW narrativesThe cancellation history of WLW led shows tells a consistent story. Warrior Nun, First Kill, I Am Not Okay With This, Fate: The Winx Saga, The Wilds, Willow, and others all struggled to survive beyond early seasons, regardless of fan support, cultural conversation, or viewership spikes. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostThese cancellations do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in an industry that is constantly calculating risk. WLW stories are treated as riskier because their core audience is perceived as smaller, more specific, and less profitable. This is not about whether queer women show up, they do. It is about whether executives believe that queer women alone are enough.This belief becomes self-fulfilling. When WLW shows are canceled early, audiences become hesitant to invest emotionally. Why commit to a story that may disappear? Why build a fandom that may be cut short? That hesitation lowers engagement, which then becomes justification for cancellation.Meanwhile, MLM stories like Heated Rivalry or Heartstopper benefit from broader crossover appeal. Queer men watch them. Queer women watch them. Straight women watch them. The audience pool is larger, and that protects the show.This is not a moral judgment. It is a market structure. But market structures shape culture. They decide whose stories grow roots and whose remain seedlings.For instance, the waiting for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo adaptation captures this sentiment perfectly. The rights exist. The demand exists. The cultural appetite exists. But the project remains stalled, floating in development limbo. That delay is not random. It reflects uncertainty. It reflects hesitation. It reflects a lack of urgency around centering queer women at a blockbuster level.The message becomes clear even when it is unspoken. Queer women are welcome, but not central. Included, but not prioritized. Visible, but not protected.That is not progress. That is containment.What this pattern reveals about whose desire is valuedAt the heart of this pattern is not just queerness, but desire. Whose desire is allowed to be seen as universal. Whose desire is allowed to be marketable. Whose desire is allowed to drive stories. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostMLM stories like Heated Rivalry often allow desire to be objectified safely. Two men desiring each other does not disrupt heterosexual female fantasy — it often enhances it. WLW desire does something different. It recenters women away from men entirely. It removes men from the emotional and erotic equation. That is more destabilizing.For instance, Byler, a non canon Mike and Will ship in Stranger Things, became a fandom obsession with theories, edits, and emotional investment that treated it like the show’s real heart. Meanwhile, Robin and Vickie, an actual WLW couple written into the story, never received the same fixation or cultural weight.It is not about which ship is better. It is about which kind of queer story people are trained to elevate. MLM shows like Heated Rivalry get imagined into importance. WLW stories struggle to be noticed even when they are canon.When women desire women, they stop being objects and become subjects. That shift is more threatening to traditional storytelling hierarchies. It asks audiences to reorient empathy, attention, and identification. It asks straight women to look at women not as mirrors but as others. It asks men to look at women without being invited in.That makes WLW stories culturally heavier. Not because they are more political by nature, but because they refuse default frameworks.So the industry responds with caution. It offers WLW stories but hedges them. It greenlights them but watches them nervously. It celebrates them briefly but does not build them into long-term franchises.Heated Rivalry did not create this imbalance. It exposed it. Its success makes visible the uneven ground beneath queer media.And that is why the exhaustion is not with the show. It is with the pattern the show fits into.Heated Rivalry proves that queer stories can thrive when they align with structures the industry already trusts. It also proves that those structures still favor men loving men narratives over women loving women ones. WLW stories exist, they matter, and they resonate, but they are asked to survive on thinner ice.This is not about taking space away from MLM stories like Heated Rivalry. It is about asking why that space is so unevenly distributed. Until WLW narratives are given the same time, patience, budget, and belief, queer television will remain unbalanced, no matter how progressive it appears on the surface.The work is not just to include queer women, but to trust them enough to let their stories last.Stay tuned to Soap Central for more.