Tell us how you found us!

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

How did you discover due South? Did you watch it on it's original run? Or stumble across a rerun? Did your friend(s) drag you here? Did you find the fic first (and then the fandom, and then the show - like me)?

Did you fall for the Mountie? Or for Ray, or Ray? Was it the deaf half-wolf that made you melt? Or the story-telling? Or the supporting cast, who ran the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous? Was it the humour, or the magical realism, or the Fraser-whumping that got your attention?

Tell us all about your journey to Chicago! Leave a comment on this post, or link us to your own post.

Comments

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

For reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture I found due South through the fanfic! I followed a trail of meta to Speranza's Chicago's Most Wanted (http://archiveofourown.org/works/241899), which may be the most ridiculous way EVER to be introduced to a new fandom, with Fraser having no idea who he is, or about the policeman Ray, who is Ray, but is not Ray, might be, but there you are.

I never looked back!

[desireearmfeldt]

Wow, yeah, figuring out DS via fic is quite confusing, what with the multiple Rays and all...and entering via crossover, as I did, is even more baffling. :)

Now I'm trying to imagine reading Chicago's Most Wanted without context. On the one hand, amnesia, and various other reasons why characters are explaining the situation to each other. On the other hand, a lot of key moments that depend on reader's knowledge of canon (like why "Stanley Kowalski" would confuse Fraser so thoroughly).

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

Hi! I found due South via fanfic. It was 2001 and I'd been trawling through fic recs pages on the sites of authors I liked, when I stumbled upon a rec for Unguarded Protectorate (http://www.mrks.org/~bone/duesouth/aristide/unguarded.html), by Mairead Triste and Bone, and with one fic I was hooked! The writing is so wonderful I managed to feel so much for these two men I had never met and knew nothing about. But I wanted to know all about them.

I obsessively read my way from recs page to recs page, ending up at the due South Archive (http://www.squidge.org/dsa/) and dueslash (http://www.dueslash.com/new/). I wrote my first fic (and got a lovely comment on it from a BNF!). I found the DS Reporter (http://dsreporter.livejournal.com/), and discovered the fandom on LJ. This was 2002, and fandom was taking over there in a big way. ds_flashfiction caught on fire, and sparked a hundred little communities and personal journals. It was AMAZING!

Then I convinced a friend with Foxtel (pay TV) to record the show for me (it was airing at 4.20am), and - FINALLY - watched my first episode! It was "Flashback," the episode filled with many tiny moments of the early seasons, and for me it was like watching all those key scenes from fic at once. I felt complete! *g*

I've been hanging around these parts a long time, and I've loved almost every minute of it, thanks to the wonderful people who've been (and are still) part of the fandom.

♥

[bghost.livejournal.com]

Wow... I am reading unguarded protectorate now! Complete coincidence. I can see how that would hook you into the fandom. Beautifully written.

[catlady-waiting.livejournal.com]

I watched the show, when it aired, on the television, in 1994! of course just the first 2 seasons because i'm a silly american and that's all that happened here. Luckily by the time it was cancelled I was completely absorbed in The X-Files so i wasn't as heartbroken as I maybe would have been. The complete story of my pre-teen involvement with dS will be posted sometime soon this weekend as soon as I can find that school project from 1995. (I hope it is in that one box in the attic, but it is a pain in the ass to get into my attic, so i'll get there eventually)

But how did I end up here, on LJ, writing about dS? How did i overcome my forgetting this lovely show as the late-90s television world shifted and as I grew up and went to high school and found other obsessions? How did I, PhD candidate in English Literature, end up writing explicit slashfic when I should have been submitting that Dickens article to academic journals?

It all started with a psychological question, and the 3rd time watching Battlestar Galactica. I found myself experiencing, well, let's call them Troubling Feelings regarding Leoben (played, of course, by Callum Keith Rennie) and I wanted to figure out where those Troubling Feelings were coming from. The obnoxious Freudian that I am, I figured I must have been exposed to him in childhood or pre-pubescence, and his image had left an indelible mark on my psyche. So I asked IMDB what he had starred in in the past... and due South was one of the things! I fondly remembered the show, and my obsession with it, and my school project about it, but couldn't remember CKR being in it. So I did more research on the internets. Turns out (as we all know) he only appeared in the 3rd/4th season, which did NOT air in the USA. I had not solved my confusion about where my obsession with CKR came from, but I was on the trail of something altogether more fascinating.

Somehow I ended up searching the CKR / Callum Keith Rennie tags on Tumblr, and I discovered various folk reblogging photos, including some screencaps from due South! I had never been involved in any fandom, but I knew fandom existed, and I had never read any fanfic (I assumed much of it was "50-Shades"-esque and thereby shoddy) but I knew that it existed. Then one of those delightful photo-rebloggers on Tumblr - deputychairman herself! - started posting fic recs and fic she had begun to write... and it was GOOD. it was really good, and it was also REALLY HOT. I knew then I had to find and watch that mysterious canadian season of the show. So I downloaded all of due South and re-watched everything - sometimes recalling specific episodes! somehow managing to have forgotten all about Victoria's Secret (repression is real, kids) and then being suddenly OVERWHELMED with the way the camera treats CKR/RayK in his episodes. I started formulating an academic thesis about cinematography, detective fiction, the male gaze, and female writers of slashfic. I was posting my rambling metacommentary on tumblr, and the dS tumblr community (the inchoate "Virtual Bar") sort of adopted me? Then someone (was it seascribe? was it deputychairman? was it EVERYONE ON M-F-ING TUMBLR?) talked me into writing fic. Which I did! (my first fic, "Their Airy Purposes" is here on AO3 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/890735)) dear heavens. I can't even first-person POV again if i tried. how did that come out of my brain?

I've been pretty behind in all the fic I've meant to write this semester because I've actually managed to write the first chapter of my dissertation, which is NOT (unfortunately) about homoeroticism in detective fiction.

That'll be my 2nd book, eh?

[wihluta.livejournal.com]

I think I found dS because a friend I had met through House MD gave me the episodes and told me I HAD TO WATCH THIS!!11!!!!1!

I think it all went downhill from there... LOL

dS is still my happy place that I find when I need to be calmed down and cheered up.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

I first saw the show on CBS in the early 90s as I was bored and looking for something to watch. At least, I think it was CBS. There was a lotta CBS Style crap on all the channels back in those days. Everyone was doing it back then, back before CBS made it their stock and trade. Anywho, I saw the episode, thought it was fun, then promptly forgot about it. Wasn't until the reruns hit TNT in the late 90s that I got to see the whole series. My first reintroduction was Vecchio and Fraser fighting badguys on snowmobiles in Canada at the cabin with candlestick. Is that a Clue reference? Why, yes, yes it is. I missed a lotta episodes after that, saw RayK, hence forth to be called Ray, with Benton on a couple episodes, and thought they were together, missed a bunch more, then wondered what the hell happened when I returned and found Vecchio again. It took me a while to realize, and six months after I started reading the fanfic (which was 3 friggen years later), that Ray was the second Ray and not the real Ray. I had a Fraser moment.

That's the problem with watching a show in syndication or reruns, and not from the beginning.

It was the Mountie Slayer that really drew me back into Due South. By the time I got into Mountie Slayer, I had moved on from Due South fiction after having read all the long stories in the two archives. Don't ask, just know there were 2 main archives that hosted DS Slash. I had caught the tail end of the Ray wars and was tired of the bickering, even though I was in no way involved because I was still reading/writing Het at that time. When I started reading Mountie Slayer, they were only on the third book and still posting regular updates. I joined Sergechat, where they made their original postings before putting on the archives or other lists. I miss Mags and Karra. I miss all the girls.

Sergechat gave me 3 years of Due South and the opportunity to write my own DS fic. I was terrible at it, but those great ladies still liked me. Don't ask me to spell the Duck Brothers names, I'm not even sure how. HD&L Gardino. My love of Ray was sealed by that group. Vecchio was much better with Stella and Ray was better with Frase or Renfield or both. Or that one Dief/Ray werewolf fic. Or that other Dief/Ray Werehuman fic.

Holy shit, this was a weird fandom. Until Supernatural came along, at least. Oh, man, Supernatural. Never have I been so happy that I wasn't the only one. Holy shit, Supernatural and Due South. You guys gotta stop mainlining the good stuff. I'm into Ray/Frase A/B/O, and that shit might not even exist...yet.

Excuse me, I have a search to complete.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, It exists! It exists!!! (http://archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search[query]=Kowalski+Omega)

[sassyinkpen.livejournal.com]

I got into Due South out of curiosity.

I saw a lot of references to it, and posts by fan friends where there was some crossover, etc. I was in Sentinel at the time, and also still virtually hanging out with some friends from an older fandom who had moved into Due South. So I was always hovering around the fringes. I even resisted for a while because I needed another fandom like I needed a hole in my head.

Then I went to Zcon and got a LOT more exposure to it, because it was huge there. (If anyone else remembers, this was the Zcon where someone (I'm sorry I don't know who) came to the dress-up party as a PERFECT Miss Fraser. It was amazing. I recognized her on sight just from pics I'd seen posted on the net.)

Shortly after that, I caved. I don't recall if I started with fanfics or anything first, but I know I watched my first several eps while visiting a friend in Canada.

Also - I remember being in a store buying one or more of the seasons, and I'm almost dead certain I was with a bunch of fangirls. Con shopping maybe? I wish my mind wasn't swiss cheese.

Anyway - I knew I would fall for Fraser. I was not prepared for how damn hard I fell for Vecchio. I knew I would like Kowalski when I got there, because he was so popular. I was also not expecting to get sucked into Ray/Ray like I did......but oh, MAN. That pairing is what's drawn me back in again so much.

I am massively in love with the fans and the fandom because they are so incredibly witty and clever and funny.

[grey853.livejournal.com]

I watched when it first aired and then got to see the third season with Callum Rennie when it showed up on TNT a few years later in syndication. I got into the fanfic online after the Ray wars were over.

At first it was all about Paul Gross and the quirky adventures of the Mountie. By the last season I was hooked on the team of Fraser and the new Ray. I will read Fraser and RayV if it's gen, but not slash. I see him more as a brother and friend to Fraser.. Now I only read and write Fraser/RayK.

[desireearmfeldt]

Hello! I'm not sure we've ever spoken, but I've read some of your stuff, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to wave hello and do my bit to try to get some mingling going on at this here party. (Actually, I'm abysmal at mingling. :) )

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I remember watching the show on television but I don't remember if it was when it first aired or in reruns. My twenties are...kind of a blur? Heh. I think it was reruns, though, because I remember RayK. I'd always been a fan of episodic shows and police procedurals (thanks, Mom!) and the fact that this show was both and had what I thought to be the most beautiful man on the planet was the final perk on a very easy sell for me.

One of the things I loved most about the show was the sensitivity with which it was written. I appreciated how the writers treated different demographics with respect--like how older people were allowed to maintain their own agency (even if they sometimes misused it), and how native people were shown with loving humor but never mocked. I was friends with a sizeable group of transwomen at the time, and also had acquaintances who did drag, so I was incredibly touched by the delicate and honorable way Ms. Fraser was handled in Some Like it Red. I had never seen a portrayal of a cis man (not that I knew that term yet) portrayed in drag without some sort of crude joke attached. That was, I think, the point where I absolutely fell in love with Benton Fraser and the show. And I have always been a sucker for magical realism.

I wasn't aware of even the concept of fandom, and I didn't know another soul who watched the show, but man I loved it. Fraser and RayK were the first characters I ever shipped. I didn't even know about shipping but their relationship so resembled every other antagonistic love story I'd ever seen, I just filled in the blanks myself.

Since I wasn't in the fandom, I completely missed the Ray wars, which is good since I have a low tolerance for people who get petty and argumentative over imaginary things. I didn't get into fandom (any fandom, really) until a few years ago and started reading the fic (I'd been reading fics in other fandoms for a few years before that).

So glad I did. I really like it here.

[sassyinkpen.livejournal.com]

I adore what you say in your second paragraph there, about the sensitivity and respect. It's so very true and one of the things that makes it so wonderful.

I'm a sucker for magical realism too - it's what makes it possible for the show to careen around from deep drama to slapstick comedy to heartwarming to absurd....and still seem completely plausible. (to a degree, at least)

[desireearmfeldt]

LIke a number of others, I came to Due South via fic by a somewhat circuitous route.

(I'm curious, now, how many people come to a fandom via fic and watch/read the canon afterwards; and whether it's more/less true for Due South than other fandoms, DS being a historic/influential fandom much more so than the show is a historic/influential show.)

I'd pretty much always known about fandom & fanfic, but had always figured it for not my thing. A couple of years ago, some RL friends of mine were posting to LJ about Yuletide, and the idea of fic for random things like Dead Poets Society and Lord Peter Wimsy intrigued me so much that I went browsing through the Yuledtide fics. At some point I stumbled across Miles Vorkosigan fics (possibly also via RL friends' LJ, I forget the details). Around the same time, various people recommended that I watch Slings & Arrows because I'm a theatre geek & director. I had mixed feelings about Season 1, but by then I'd been doing enough poking around on AO3 reading random Yuletide stuff to wonder if there was S&A fic, or maybe I stumbled across it in some other way. Anyway, the fic made me like the show more, so I went back to watch the rest of it. Eventually I accidentally read some S&A/Due South crossover fic, and when I figured out what was going on and looked up Due South, I remembered having vaguely heard of it before. Anyway, I liked Paul Gross in S&A so I figured I'd check it out.

My memory has apparently gotten very fuzzy already, because I can't quite make the sequence of events make sense. I must have been reading DS fic before watching the show -- I was certainly both reading and writing before I'd watched very *much* of the show, because after watching a few episodes, I started having get-togethers with a friend to make our way slowly through DS, until the point where I was entrenched enough in fic writing that I felt the need to watch the rest of canon quickly so I'd have all the info at my disposal. Anyway, I figured out what DS was, and started reading fic, and what with one thing and another I'd been lurking around AO3 reading this and that for a year? less? I forget... When one morning I woke up and wrote a DS fic. It was a sequel to spuffyduds' This Is A Story That I Tell Myself, which really doesn't need a sequel, so I'm not sure what possessed me. Having always felt that stories should finish when they're done and most sequels would have been better unwritten, I jumped into transformative fiction in the deep end, with a sequel to a transformative work. I've been confused but enthusiastic ever since...

Anyway, since I'd been lurking on AO3, I figured, the thing one does with a fic is post it to AO3, so after some angst about wandering into a community of strangers and announcing myself by messing with the work of an established and popular author, I got myself an account and posted. As I mentioned over in the meet-and-greet, the community immediately embraced me and so I remained, finding that writing fanfic within this community did a lot of great things for my existing fiction-writing hobby, and meeting a lot of fun people.

[akite.livejournal.com]

Though I'm not active in dS fandom much anymore, I still lurk around here and there. Like so many others, I came into the fandom through the fanfic. I remember seeing the ads for due South when it originally aired, but I didn't watch it then. Another fan I knew from Star Trek Voyager fandom gave me some recs back in 2001. I was so disenchanted by Voyager by that time, I was ready to jump into something new. I did with both feet. I'm not sure what stories other than With Six You Get Eggroll and Chicago's Most Wanted that I read early on, but it was basically anything F/K I could lay my eyes on. At that time the only place in North American that was airing due South was a cable channel in Canada. Luckily, I knew someone that taped episodes for me on VHS and mailed them to me. I was total smitten.

Oh, those good old days! The Ray Wars were over for the most part (though there are still some rabid Kowalski haters out there), and due South fandom was buzzing with mailing lists and then Live Journal. I got my own LJ in 2004 so I could post and comment in all new new communities popping up. 10 years later, the fandom (and me too) is quieter, but we're still here, and I still have my very first due South icon.

[desireearmfeldt]

It's so interesting to hear from folks like you whose names are familiar as authors but who I haven't crossed paths with "live..." I always feel a little sad to have missed the heyday of DS fandom-on-LJ, except that realistically, I know it would have just squashed me flat. I can't handle that much internet! The low-key-but-regular pace these days is about as much as I can take. But it's odd, wandering around the ghost cities of once-active comms and looking at all the cool stuff that was going on, "back then," which is not so very long ago... :)

[bluealbertaskys.livejournal.com]

For me I found it through LJ's Interests search.

After the friend who introduced me to LJ mentioned it could be used not just as a diary or blog, but to join in with things related to your favourite shows I jokingly said "yes but I bet no-one will be talking about Due South on here", she showed me how to search for things on here and I had to eat my words pretty quickly as there was a small but thriving community well established here by that point.

That was in 2004.

I've always had a bit of a fangirl crush on the Mountie since I watched the first series of the show back when I was in school, and Kowalski had me at the words "Fraser! Buddy!" when he turned up.

[glass-moment.livejournal.com]

The very first due South thing I was exposed to was a podfic of Hawks and Hands, which was a seriously bizarre way to enter the fandom- it made everything else seem like a fandom about hockey players that was inexplicably filled with cop AUs. F/K didn't do a lot for me, so I sort of fell out of reading it for a while, until I discovered Ray/Ray and OT3 fic and then I was instantly in love. After frantically reading everything I could get my hands on I found myself starting to plan a Ray/Ray fic in my head, at which point I figured I'd better see the damn show before I started writing it. :-)

[desireearmfeldt]

I think you win the prize for most disorienting introduction to the series via fic so far!

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

I made a random curling reference one day, which prompted a friend to show me the curling scenes from Asylum, and I was intrigued. She showed me more clips--buddy breathing is the only one I remember--and isiscolomailed me the second two seasons and a handful of the first two on a jump drive. I mainlined the last two seasons, and as much Fraser/Kowalski fic as I could get my hands on, and then started branching into OT3, and decided I really needed to watch the first two seasons. Whereupon I pretty much immediately fell head over heels for Ray Vecchio, and haven't stopped capslocking about it since.

[china_shop]

Aww, I want to go through this post waving to people! Hi, wihluta! Hi, akite! Hi, keerawa and grey853! /dork

mergatrude sent me here to add my 2 cents', but actually I don't think I can come up with a better explanation than I did here:

- My fannish history
- My Top 10 Fannish Moments (circa 2008)

I was in the fandom from August 2004 to the end of 2009, and in that time I wrote a ton of fic, modded challenges and comms, and most importantly, met many many awesome, awesome people and learned a lot about being in fandom. I don't participate anymore, but I still use my DS icons fairly often. That's something, right?

[imwalde.livejournal.com]

I was a young teenager when the show first aired, and watched it (but how faithfully or completely, I cannot remember). Enough to remember the main elements (wolf! cops! mounties! politeness! jumping off of things!) when the DS resurgence was happening on LJ. I kept seeing it on my flist, and began to be a casual fic reader at that point. Then my best friend showed me Slings and Arrows, which I LOVED, and Paul Gross love bloomed. When soon I moved to a new city, where at first I only had one friend and thus lots of free time, I bought the DS DVD sets, (re)watched (don't think I'd seen the Ray K eps), and began consuming much more fic, which luckily coincided with the boom years of DS on LJ. Any remember stop_drop_porn? Good times.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I liked a lot of the Fraser and Vecchio episodes in their first run, but then due South went on and off the air for a while. While channel surfing years later over a few weekends I found and watched a few Kowalski episodes, though I had no idea what had happened and who the new guy was. (I didn't get to see any explanatory episodes!)

Years after that, 1997, I entered internet fandom through The X-Files, which worked out well until the show started sliding downhill at high speed. In 1999, another XF fan writer who also getting increasingly frustrated with XF decided to indoctrinate me into Kowalski due South in a marathon binge session. Ironically, she moved on from dS fairly quickly but I ended up writing fic for years. It helps that I entered the fandom during the e-mailing list years, when my Inbox would be stuffed with dS conversation, meta, and fic daily, mostly from the serge list. I ended up being part of a wave X-Files fans fleeing what started to feel like an abusive source material to show up in due South.

It's been years since I've written dS fic, but I still think of RayK and Fraser at times and miss them. I'm big on dialogue, and they have very interesting ways of talking, particularly Ray.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

*Dies* Oh, dear lord. You do exist! I have loved your work for over a decade. Man, you and the girls of Serge made my early days of slash fandoms so wonderful. I was reading your fic the other day and wondering if you still wrote.

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

I...don't actually know how I got into dS. I think it might have been through a mention of Slings and Arrows from a fellow fan, because I'm deeply into Shakespeare. And then I found out that a lot of the same actors were in a Mountie comedy thing. Except I'm pretty sure I watched due South first. And I got our library at home to purchase it on DVD, but I can't decide now if I did that so I could watch it or after I did. Also, it may have been mentioned in some of the academic writing on fandoms that I had read, but I also might have found it by trying desperately to find decently-written queer porn on the internet...

Basically I have no idea, but I'm really glad I'm here.

BUT. When I did watch it, I immediately identified Fraser as a more human version of Captain Carrot from the Discworld. He wants things to be right, so hard. Dief is an adorable snarkmuffin, Vecchio is fun when he's exasperated and sweet when he wants to be, and Kowalski is yummy. I really like the earnest attempts to portray POC and especially First Nations characters accurately and respectfully, while still allowing them to be human and screw up sometimes. I really freaking love Elaine, especially in her graduation scene. I appreciate the magical realism.

[bibliokat.livejournal.com]

I gotta jump in to say, Fraser and Carrot, yes!!! I watched due South before I read Discworld. When I first met Carrot, I immediately loved him because he was so Fraser-like!

[bghost.livejournal.com]

I watched it when it first aired in the UK, and had an unrequited love thing for Vecchio. When the 'new Ray' turned up I thoroughly wanted to hate him for all of five minutes, but he is just so purty... And by Eclipse I was pretty much in love with him too. But Vecchio was my first dS crush. Strangely enough, took me longer to fall for Fraser. Don't get me wrong - I liked him, admired him - just didn't quite have the feels I did for RayV and his wonderfully generous heart and garallous family.

Then, of course, VS slayed me.

dS has always seemed to me to be a story about love, and that is what stays with me. I didn't get into the fandom until a couplenof years ago, when I stumbled across the show on reruns, and I thought, how the hell did I forget THIS? I tried to be moderate, and watch it as the episodes aired, but I caved, bought the boxed set, and watched the lot. Fortunately for me, my son loved it too, so we watched it together. You know you have done a good job as a mother when your teenage son's favourite Christmas present was a matchbox riv.

Anyway, so here I am, two years after joining online fandom, with two dS tattoos (one shared with another dS fangirl, the irrepressible Ride_forever) and more writing under my belt than I could have imagined. I have been published before, but I am prouder of my dS output than anything else I have written. Even though I cringe at some of my earlier efforts, they were written with a huge amount of love.

And like I said earlier, that is what the show is about.

But isn't it weird how I ended up writing things I never thought I would? The fandom has challenged and stretched me as a writer, for which I am grateful.

And by the way.... HELLO to everyone on this thread. I have read and loved so much of your stuff. I love our fandom.

[desireearmfeldt]

But isn't it weird how I ended up writing things I never thought I would? The fandom has challenged and stretched me as a writer, for which I am grateful.

The fandom has gotten me both reading and writing various sorts of things I'd never have thought I would. (Explicit sex scenes! Who'd'a thunk it?) There's something about having both the examples of what can be done, and the semi-structured sandbox to play in, that inspires one to try new things.

[mmmarmalade.livejournal.com]

I fell in love with DS from the moment the pilot aired. I absolutely loved the show, and loved it even more when CKR joined. It made me laugh like nothing else, and yet also had beautifully poignant moments that wrenched my heart. Fraser was so perfect and yet so damaged at the same time, he was utterly irresistible.

[phenyx-tp.livejournal.com]

I actually caught the premier original showing of Due South in the U.S. - I fell in love immediately. I even paid (out of my own pocket) for a subscription to T.V. Guide so that I could scan it every week to find out when the show would be airing (because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it - the show jumped around so much - and that was long before the digital/searchable guide on my television today.)

The first time I saw Call of the Wild, I actually cried at the end. Not because it was sad, but because I felt like I was never going to see my friends again. They were moving on and I was being left behind. Thank goodness for the tenacity of this fandom!

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

Don't even get me started on CotW, I still get weepy when I hear Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage." I found it years later on youtube and about wore out my mouse clicking the button to hear it again and again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVY8LoM47xI

[ladyana5.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the inquiry! It was approximately early 1999 when i became very aware of "due South". I felt like I was coming in on the end of a fandom that was beginning it's way out, due to the "Ray wars" and other fandoms becoming more popular. At first, I was VERY attracted to Benton Fraser, but then I kept exploring until I discovered slash! OMG! I became a convert a.s.a.p.! I came to LOVE Ray Vecchio! I devoured every F/V, m/m fanfic I could get my hands on and was lucky enough encounter truly talented writers on the way. I learned how to be a (slash) writer this way, to know to do research, to channeling my emotions as a catharsis. I will always be grateful to DS for helping to shape who I am todeay!

[sam80853.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I'm not around much anymore but you never forget your first love, do you? dS was the first real fandom for me and when I say 'real' I mean the whole shebang with hooking up friends, writing stories - just everything there is.
I did watch it when it was first aired and how can you resist the Mountie from the great white north? I even moved to Canada - Yukon, to be exact. I did not find my Mountie yet, though:). Anyway, dS was just the first step. Everything Paul Gross and CKR related came with it. I think I sat to everything CKR has ever done, and it's not all pretty is all I'm gonna say:)

I still remember when I posted my first story on ds_flashfiction; quite nerve-wrecking but people, like our Mountie, were and still are very friendly and supportive. Thanks for that btw. Great people in this fandom in general and I made some friends I will never forget!

<3

sooooooooooooooooo late to the party

[mizface.livejournal.com]

*sigh* story of my life, as of late. BUT, better late than never, yes? YES!

I found dS, as did many folk, through fanfic. In my case, through a Sentinel/dS crossover fic for the Sentinel slash virtual seasons. It was Fraser/RayK (by the end), and intrigued me enough to seek out more.

I found Speranza's fic almost immediately, got hooked, and needed to track down the show itself. Because I'd only read F/K fic, and only kind of knew who RayV was, I fully expected to, at best, tolerate him until RayK showed up. I was completely wrong - fell for RayV hard and fast by the end of the pilot. However, I see his relationship with Fraser as more brotherly than slashy - the eps didn't change that. I remember being so very, very sad when I got to BDtH, even though it was RayK's first appearance.

I think for me the reason I fell for the show, and continue to love it, is the hopeful feeling present throughout it. Benton Fraser expects us all to be better people. Just expects it, like it's a given that everyone wants to and is capable of being a Good Person. And yet, he's not naive (though he plays it well when he wants to). I love everyone in the show (though some only because of fanfic - looking at you, Stella), love the magical realism (love that this show taught me that term), love ghost dads and multi-lingual deaf half wolves, and ridiculous plots and pretty much everything about the show.

I also love the fandom, which welcomed me with open arms, and has for the most part been incredibly tolerant and supportive. I've found dear friends and my braintwin. I've felt safe enough to push myself, to write more, to post longer fics (beyond anything I ever could have expected), to post art, to be a mod and co-mod, and to go to cons and even run panels there. I am more techno-savvy than I've ever been, and while there are other fandoms I lurk around, this is my Happy Place.

Re: sooooooooooooooooo late to the party

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

HAI!

I feel like I should make a "Hands up if you found your brain twin in DS Fandom!" post, some days. *g*