Thereâs still time to make it to this yearâs con. Itâs going to be a good one!
Due South was a staple of late 90s slash fandom and predictably popular at Escapade. It was a fun buddy cop show about a mountie and two different Chicago cops named âRayâ, Ray K and Ray V, or as I like to think of them:
The Cute One and The One Who Can Act
The series started out by teaming Fraser up with Ray Vecchio, salt of the earth local Chicago cop with the stereotypical big Italian family and a sadly prescient surname. After two seasons, the show got canceled. Fans went nuts trying to get it renewed. For once, their beloved show actually came back!
But as often happens in these situations, some of the actors had already moved on. Ray Vâs actor left the show and was replaced by âRayâ K for reasons too stupid to need exploring at this or any other juncture.
(Okay, look, heâs undercover as Ray V so Ray V can go undercover with the mob. They look nothing alike. Ray Vâs family has to play along with this. Like I said, itâs absurd.)
Incidentally, if you see fans using some version of âFor reasons that do not need exploring at this junctureâ, thatâs a Due South reference.
Fraser/Ray V already had a following amongst slash fans of the later zine era, but Ray K hit just at the right time. It was 1997: the public was getting online, and fandom was expanding rapidly. Free mailing lists and online fic archives were possible on a scale they never had been before. And Callum Keith Rennie is awfully pretty, isnât he?
I think you can guess what happened next.
Overnight, the new juggernaut with The Pretty One dwarfed the old ship. The show changed tones somewhat, and later viewers who were pimped in through the new ship didnât always even bother to watch the first two seasons. Remarks were made about the shipability of the balding one. Fans who felt like their efforts to save the show were what eventually got it renewed felt betrayed both by canon and by fandom.
Massive butthurt ensued.
So virulent were The Ray Wars that there are places on LJ/DW where to this day you cannot talk about Due South without instantly restarting the fight. If there was one silver lining it was the many snarky Livejournal icons proclaiming: âI swing both Raysâ.
Iâm bi and I like terrible dad jokes. I am required to love that.
Sample lulz from isis, though made by lozenger8. I know like 50 of you had these damn icons, but itâs probably been 15 years since I actually saw one used.
Escapade Due South panels include:
1996: Perfectly happy couple, or the worldâs most dysfunctional relationship? And where does the wolf fit in?
1998: Is 3rd Season an AU? (Get that strange manâs hand off my Mountie! Is Due South like M*A*S*H* - strong and secure enough to survive the loss of a major character? Or will Fraser wake up and find Ray Vecchio in the shower, and the third season just a dream?)
1999:Â Can this Fandom Survive with Two Rays? (No matter what you say, theyâre both good for Benny. And bad for him. Is there room in Bennyâs universe for two loves? Maybe neither of them is right for him. Turnbull, anyone? )
2000: Season ž (Fraser/Kolwalski: whoâs really in charge here? Whoâs needier?)
2002:Â Swinginâ both Rays (Fraser cares for both of them, so why canât we? Is it possible to accept all seasons as canon? Is it necessary, or desirable, to go beyond OTP in order to embrace all the wonderful characters Due South offers?)
2003: Small Fandom or Monster in the Closet by Alice in Stonyland, Sharon Marais (This panel will discuss both viewpoints; audience is encouraged to share their stories and opinions.)
2014: Due South Retrospective (Letâs stage a dramatic historical reenactment of the Ray Wars for the benefit of those who missed it the first time around! Or we could skip that part and just talk about how awesome Benton Fraser is.)
2017:Â due South: For Reasons That Continue To Need Exploring At This Juncture (Whether long-time fen or new to this fandom, an opportunity to give and get fanworks recs, share links to social media due South community sites, display show-and-tell due South memorabilia, squee about canon and about fanon. May also include topics that are Canadian Six Degrees (AKA Six Degrees of due South).)
2018:Â Do Slash (Rey Fraser/RayV? Fraser/RayK? Ray/Ray? Fraser/Ray/Ray? Red ships, green ships, other dS ships? Letâs show the love for any of them! Share fanworks recs! Reminisce about how we first found dS slash! Discuss dS slash zines (plus some announcements about NEW dS slash zines).)
Personally, Iâve seen exactly three episodes of Due South: The first one, the first one with Ray K thatâs a huge callback to that, and the one where Fraser fakes his death. (What? A girl has needs, okay?)
As pretty much a bystander, I gotta say⌠wow, the potential between the Rays is so interesting.
Hereâs Ray V off on this deep cover mission for ages and ages while Ray K is pretending to be him and hanging out with his family and his old partner. Imagine the loneliness and insecurity of knowing youâve been replaced at home. Imagine the mindfuck of stepping into some other guyâs life and feeling like a fraud. Ray K ends the series riding off into the sunset with Fraser⌠while Ray V marries Ray Kâs ex wife. Whut?
It is no surprise then that my very favorite Due South vidâand it has a lot of competition because this fandom is known for viddingâis Phoenix by Scribe. Itâs a constructed reality of Vecchioâs time undercover. (Helpful of that actor to have been in like 800 mafia canons!) I saw this at Bitchinâ Party a number of years ago and was blown away.
Due South has tons of great fic, making it another great older fandom to check out. The big archive was the Due South Archive, but like so many other great slash archives of ages past, it now resides conveniently on AO3.
I suppose Due South must have had a het arm of the fandom at some point, but if so, I sure donât know where it hung out. Fanfiction.net has like 800 stories, as compared to AO3â˛s 12,580.
Countdown to Ray Wars 3.0: