The Met Gala was a huge spectacle as always, but it’s what happened behind the scenes and at the after parties that has HudCon discourse spiraling out of control on social media.
Since the moment Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie's intense chemistry in Heated Rivalry graced our screens, fans — who dubbed the pair HudCon — have been speculating about the two men dating in real life.
Some fans of the romance between closeted hockey players Ilya Rozanov (Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Williams) are enamored by the clear friendship between the stars, but a subset of fans have become obsessed with the idea that they are in a romantic relationship both on and off screen.
Social media posts, media appearances, and paparazzi photos have all become fodder for parasocial fans looking for proof that their dating theory is correct.
Williams and Storrie may have arrived at the Met Gala separately, but cute photos and video from the event show the two actors partying together, fueling the intense online speculation.
When the Met Gala’s red carpet started airing, fans were frustrated that Williams and Storrie arrived separately and didn’t interact at all, but when behind-the-scenes photos started leaking, people went wild on social media.
There are photos of Storrie wrapping his arm around Williams, who is resting his head on Storrie’s shoulder, the two men laughing together, and a sexy bathroom selfie.
There is even a now-viral video clip showing a shirtless Williams putting his jacket on Storrie while they both have cigarettes hanging off their lips.
If that weren't enough to fuel the imaginations of fans everywhere, there is also a photo going viral showing the two men with their heads together while Williams sticks he tongue out.
Although the cheeky content from the Met Gala is keeping fans fed, their unmistakable chemistry should only be considered a bromance. After all, Williams has dated his girlfriend Katelyn Rose Larson since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Did Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams do the walk of shame?
Storrie and Williams both changed into sexier outfits for the Met Gala after parties and were both spotted heading back to their separate hotels in the early hours of the morning.
Hudson looked like he had lost half of his accessories in the process and Storrie's hair was no longer tamed. Plus, he was missing the cape he was wearing over his suit at the beginning of the night.
Predictably, this had the toxic part of the Heated Rivalry/HudCon fandom going wild, even going so far as to write on social media that the actor’s state of undress was proof that they spent the night rolling around in the sheets together.
Did Hudson Williams tell fans to stop shipping him with Connor Storrie?
Fans have gone so far overboard “shipping” HudCon that Williams decided it was time to speak out.
After Williams posted a carousel of photos from the Met Gala after-parties on Instagram, fans immediately thought this was a coded message about Williams missing Storrie.
Williams responded by commenting on a fan’s post by writing, “Rpfing gotta stop y’all.” Williams is referring to RPF or “Real Person Fiction,” which is a genre of fan fiction where real celebrities or public figures, instead of fictional characters, are “shipped” or imagined to be in romantic relationships.
Some fans seemed to agree with Williams that people needed to settle down, but others pointed out that the actor has been fueling the rumors.
The press tour for Heated Rivalry leaned hard into the ambiguity about their relationship as the two men seemed to have a flirty rapport and frequently talked about sex and each other’s bodies, and Williams even dared fans to get freakier.
"Hudson, up until recently, was the one creating and pushing RPF — we all saw it. He’s not disconnected from the internet, he knows exactly what’s going on,” one person wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Williams and Storrie have both pushed back on fans assuming they are dating because of their close friendship that includes platonic physical intimacy. In an interview on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM show Radio Andy, Williams opened up about being “frustrated” that physical touch between men is seen as “taboo” and sexual.
“I was always kind of adamant that no matter what people think or want to infer, like, I’m always going to just physically express my love,” Williams said of his relationship with Storrie.
Storrie also broached this topic in an interview with Variety, where he said that people “sexualize our very amicable sign of affection” when he was asked about his friendship with Williams.
"If I have my hand on his leg as we’re sitting down doing a press thing because he’s my best buddy and I love him, and we have that level of comfort. It’s just interesting that that instantly gets turned into, 'They’re more than friends,'" he said.
It’s also important to mention that both Storrie and Williams have kept a lot of their private lives out of the press.
What did Buzzfeed say about HudCon?
However, it’s not just fans who have stepped over boundaries. Buzzfeed Canada posted a since-deleted carousel of celebrity photos from the Met Gala and labeled Storrie “Mrs. Hudson Williams,” a moniker that many fans called out for being both homophobic and misogynistic.
Page Six also published an article about the two men being “inseparable” at the Met Gala after party and claimed that an anonymous source said, “They were weaving through the room hand-in-hand and, at one point, even sitting on each other’s laps, laughing like they had the place to themselves.”
