Due South season 1
Nov. 17th, 2012 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesse... okay I'm charmed. Really charmed.
-So more thank anything I'm enjoying the show's setting. I was born in Chicago, grew up in northern Michigan, and spent an awful lot of time mucking around in the Ontario parts of the Canadian Shield, so the setting of the show and my home turf tend to overlap. It's actually making me homesick like crazy for proper northern winter - even though it's still a bit chill here in Indiana, it's not the same. I can remember, the winter when I was five it snowed so much that my family dug a series of rooms and tunnels in the drifts in our backyard, and I would spend whole afternoons crawling from snow-room to snow-room. So I have that affinity ready-set.
-the tone is so weird. It's like they took a set of inherently comical characters/plotlines - fish out of water, Perfect Person interacting with Real Life, odd couple, psychic pet wolf, ect. - and then played them all totally straight. The writing, scoring, editing, all of it, total serious drama deadpan. It's brilliant.
-Fraser. Okay, so the music in the pilot (and whoever mentioned the music in my last post, oh my god you were so right, the scoring is impeccable and also everything I listened to in middle school, Loreena McKennitt what the hell) cues his reference as Clark Kent, but he's not superman, he's a Disney Princess. He's dirt-repellent and he has a talking animal companion and he always does the Right Thing and he's got Bambi eyes. Can't you picture him, up in the Yukon, doing the Fraulein Maria spinny dance and singing "Part of Your World"? Because I can. But then he's also deliciously neurotic and fucked up.
-RayV. I'm kind of drawn on RayV, guys. I think I'm having the same problem with him that I had with Dyson on Lost Girl - it's not natural/easy for me to sympathize with cop characters, but I can get over it if they're either a. attractively hyper-competent or b. genuinely dedicated to justice in an abstract sort of way. RayV isn't dedicated enough to policework to trip my competence kink (tho Fraser does that in spades, holy shit) but he also uses his identity as a cop to his own personal advantage. And he keeps making kinda racist/sexist remarks. It's really frustrating, because I'm gaga over Fraser, and I want a slash ship, and RayV kind of works for me - I really enjoy the interaction between Fraser and the Vecchio family, the sort of instant adoption into the whirl of chaos thing - but I'm still not quite feeling RayV as a character. He seems kind of like a wasted opportunity.
-in point of fact, I think I was doing the first part of this season wrong, because I kept coming out shipping Fraser/Elaine.
-Fraser's dead. This works for me SO. HARD. Because it's so much like the American Spiritualist ideas of the afterlife I was raised on - our dead are always with us, and sometimes that gets really irritating and we wish they'd go away. It took a moment for the penny to drop, but I definitely went soft for the momentary materialization of Fraser's grandmother, who I'm assuming is the woman who raised him. (of course Fraser was raised by librarians. That revelation may have been the moment when I first fell for the show.)
-with the representations of poverty and community and gentrification and just oh yes. Yes yes yes.
-episode 1.10 hello surprise youthful Mark Ruffalo! Bruuuuuuuce <3 (even if his character in the show is not so heartable).
-Victoria's Secret. On the one hand, I enjoyed the het romance. On the other - so I can really really see where people read Fraser as gay. I dunno, I almost want to read him as asexual. It seems like, in order to write him a love interest, the writers had to ascend to a pretty high level of Romanticism - it's all very Courtly Love, the Mountie and his Ladylove. I think it's telling that they couldn't make the relationship work in the show's more realist registers. And then Ray shot Fraser and I was perfectly happy - I really really want fic about Fraser working through the depressive funk he ended up in in the finale, because what we got in the show was gorgeous and I want more!
Making a beeline forcesperanza's work in this fandom now. Best part of picking up classic fandoms = the ability to wallow in years' worth of excellent fanwork yay!
-So more thank anything I'm enjoying the show's setting. I was born in Chicago, grew up in northern Michigan, and spent an awful lot of time mucking around in the Ontario parts of the Canadian Shield, so the setting of the show and my home turf tend to overlap. It's actually making me homesick like crazy for proper northern winter - even though it's still a bit chill here in Indiana, it's not the same. I can remember, the winter when I was five it snowed so much that my family dug a series of rooms and tunnels in the drifts in our backyard, and I would spend whole afternoons crawling from snow-room to snow-room. So I have that affinity ready-set.
-the tone is so weird. It's like they took a set of inherently comical characters/plotlines - fish out of water, Perfect Person interacting with Real Life, odd couple, psychic pet wolf, ect. - and then played them all totally straight. The writing, scoring, editing, all of it, total serious drama deadpan. It's brilliant.
-Fraser. Okay, so the music in the pilot (and whoever mentioned the music in my last post, oh my god you were so right, the scoring is impeccable and also everything I listened to in middle school, Loreena McKennitt what the hell) cues his reference as Clark Kent, but he's not superman, he's a Disney Princess. He's dirt-repellent and he has a talking animal companion and he always does the Right Thing and he's got Bambi eyes. Can't you picture him, up in the Yukon, doing the Fraulein Maria spinny dance and singing "Part of Your World"? Because I can. But then he's also deliciously neurotic and fucked up.
-RayV. I'm kind of drawn on RayV, guys. I think I'm having the same problem with him that I had with Dyson on Lost Girl - it's not natural/easy for me to sympathize with cop characters, but I can get over it if they're either a. attractively hyper-competent or b. genuinely dedicated to justice in an abstract sort of way. RayV isn't dedicated enough to policework to trip my competence kink (tho Fraser does that in spades, holy shit) but he also uses his identity as a cop to his own personal advantage. And he keeps making kinda racist/sexist remarks. It's really frustrating, because I'm gaga over Fraser, and I want a slash ship, and RayV kind of works for me - I really enjoy the interaction between Fraser and the Vecchio family, the sort of instant adoption into the whirl of chaos thing - but I'm still not quite feeling RayV as a character. He seems kind of like a wasted opportunity.
-in point of fact, I think I was doing the first part of this season wrong, because I kept coming out shipping Fraser/Elaine.
-Fraser's dead. This works for me SO. HARD. Because it's so much like the American Spiritualist ideas of the afterlife I was raised on - our dead are always with us, and sometimes that gets really irritating and we wish they'd go away. It took a moment for the penny to drop, but I definitely went soft for the momentary materialization of Fraser's grandmother, who I'm assuming is the woman who raised him. (of course Fraser was raised by librarians. That revelation may have been the moment when I first fell for the show.)
-with the representations of poverty and community and gentrification and just oh yes. Yes yes yes.
-episode 1.10 hello surprise youthful Mark Ruffalo! Bruuuuuuuce <3 (even if his character in the show is not so heartable).
-Victoria's Secret. On the one hand, I enjoyed the het romance. On the other - so I can really really see where people read Fraser as gay. I dunno, I almost want to read him as asexual. It seems like, in order to write him a love interest, the writers had to ascend to a pretty high level of Romanticism - it's all very Courtly Love, the Mountie and his Ladylove. I think it's telling that they couldn't make the relationship work in the show's more realist registers. And then Ray shot Fraser and I was perfectly happy - I really really want fic about Fraser working through the depressive funk he ended up in in the finale, because what we got in the show was gorgeous and I want more!
Making a beeline for
cesperanza's work in this fandom now. Best part of picking up classic fandoms = the ability to wallow in years' worth of excellent fanwork yay!
no subject
Date: 2012-11-17 10:02 pm (UTC)You can't read Cesperanza until later. Her Ray is the other Ray, Ray K.
There is actually quite a lot of Fraser/Elaine fic!
And there is asexual!Fraser fic too.
Please keep posting as you are moved to; I love hearing people talk about this show.
Did you watch Hawk and Handsaw yet????
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 03:26 pm (UTC)If you've got links to Fraser/Elaine, I wouldn't say no!
I did watch "Hawk and Handsaw," and was both deeply thrilled and somehow disappointed. I loved the Shakespeare, I loved the fact that the mental patients were communicating the truth, but I wanted the episode to play a lot harder. You've got the threat of depressant drugs hanging over a possibly schizoid and suicidal protagonist, and you don't do anything with that? Effing Stargate played that one better!
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 04:50 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed how it developed Fraser's back story mostly I guess!
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 09:27 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed how it developed Fraser's back story mostly I guess!
ETA: I never collected Elaine/Fraser recs, but they are out there. I have a due south tag for the recs I've collected.
I would also send you to Keerawa. She wrote all kinds of fantastic due South.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 12:31 pm (UTC)You must prepare yourself for the Ray Dilemma. I'm okay with RayK but I love RayV with a love that knows no bounds, even though he can be really awful sometimes, because I get why he's awful and how he has spent so much time hiding all his squishy bits under machismo and violence but how that's still his core strength and his weakness and argh the FEELS. But if you end up preferring RayK, the good thing is there's a lot more fic about him.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 03:27 pm (UTC)I like your reading of RayV and I shall adopt it as my own.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 03:36 pm (UTC)RayK is really lovely, as a character, I mean, not physically. I like how breakable both of the Rays are, even though their internal conflicts are completely different. Because I just like being kicked right in the pericardium, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-18 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-19 02:51 am (UTC)It's interesting because one of the reasons I like RayV is that he's a regular guy cop--he's not a hero out for justice, he's a guy trying to get by in the world as he understands it, which is a world where you have to grab what you can or somebody else'll take it from you. RayV's dad/childhood/neighborhood . . . yeah. I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying this is his worldview and it makes sense. RayV makes sense to me. I can see where it would make him less relatable in some ways, but I do love that choice. Plus, then we get RayK, who has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT issues.
Yeah, I read Fraser as more ace than anything else in canon, though as we get on in the RayK seasons I read that, too. If I'm going there, I tend to read RayV as Fraser's best friend and RayK as the slash, but YMMV.
If you are already hungry for fic, I shall link you to the recs page where I get most of mine: http://bifictionalbedlam.slashcity.net/recs/ Their dS recs are many and generally good, with the occasional bad link. Ooh, also, everything by Resonant, but especially Teeth of the Hydra: http://trickster.org/res/
Fraser is so very much a Disney Princess.
Onward!
no subject
Date: 2012-11-22 08:49 am (UTC)