Meta-news: Due South Meta

[mekare]

At least I hope it is news to some of you. There is a Tumblr with some interesting Due South meta, which is also incorporating thoughts from truepenny's episode essays from time to time.

duesouthmeta

I especially liked this one, which takes Due South as an alternative to writing a superhero story (from December 2017). It's a topic which I have thought about a lot, especially since Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman ran in a similar time frame (1993-1997) and also told the story of a genuinely good man.

Excerpt:So, this is mostly about Superman. See, lately there’s this weird assumption that you need to rework his character to make him interesting in the movies. You can’t have a guy with godlike powers helping people just cuz, you need to imbue the character with depth, which usually means a trauma, an internal conflict, a space to grow and change and have an arc. Also you have to make him Batman. All of this may or may not be directly blamed on Zack Snyder, Ayn Rand and misconstrued Joseph Campbell, but let’s leave these guys alone, they’ve had enough already.

What we won’t leave alone is that one Canadian buddy cop show from 20 years back which I love to bits and which presents us with a perfectly functional alternative approach to writing a superhero story.

Comments

[jiokra]

I completely disagree with the first poster because he does have an arc, evidenced that Fraser in the pilot is not the same Fraser in Call of the Wild. The story begins with a sad, lonely Fraser haunted by his mother's death, the strained relationship with his father, and the tragic relationship with Victoria. He closed himself off from having intimate relationships with people and became a workaholic (a lone wolf, so to speak), but through his experiences in Chicago and the people he met there, he's opened himself up to love and being loved and has grown into a better person. Fraser does have an arc, it just isn't the same as an action movie superhero's. It is instead about a lonely man who's been abandoned a lot learning to open himself up to new experiences and trust people again.

Fraser does not need to grow and change and have his world shattered by some bullshit third act revelation, because it’s not him who does the growing, it’s everyone around.

The third act revelation is Ray Kowalski. Certainly Fraser didn't need to change for RayK, but Fraser wanted to because he needs to let people into his life. Up until RayK, Fraser met new people and encountered new experiences that reminded him that love and compassion in his personal friendships and acquaintanceships is possible. Before Chicago, Fraser was seen as that weird guy people gossiped about before he entered a room, but through RayV, others at the precinct, Francesca, and Thatcher, Fraser learned that people can love him for who he is. He still, however, presented a polite, agreeable image to his new friends in Chicago, making himself heard and seen but rarely in a manner to push people away. Even when it's something like Francesca's unwanted advances, he's tempered and polite, never stepping out of line and thus never giving people cause to abandon him.

He doesn't experience true unconditional love where someone doesn't run away from his ugly sides but digs in deeper until RayK. Because Fraser is so jaded, this had to be strongly reinforced during MotB through various arguments and disagreements with RayK, and in CotW, it had to be strongly reinforced again by having RayK join Fraser on a lethal adventure in Canada. Notably his father and Victoria hurt his ability to trust in memorable ways, so a lot is needed to help Fraser realize people can be trusted. Either consistency like RayV or obstinate loyalty like RayK, and its RayK's loyalty which provides the world shattering revelation that even if Fraser exposes the bitter, angry need inside him to be loved, people aren't going to run away. Instead someone might say, "Finally! We're communicating! Thank god. You were driving me insane back there holy guacamole. I love you, too." That couldn't have happened without characters staying static to a certain degree in S1 and S2, thereby affirming to Fraser that people can be trusted to be good friends, and RayK's stability in S3 and S4 affirming to Fraser that people can be trusted in more intimate relationships.

This arc is reinforced close to the very end of the series, when Fraser's father is passing on. Fraser is tearing up and tells his father -- who's a ghost! -- that he thought his father was forever. In that moment, a character who opened up the show by heading off to Chicago to solve his father's murder, after the history of abandonment by this father giving Fraser the impression that time with him is fleeting and transient, believed that his father was forever like a child who's never had their world shattered with the uncertainties of the world. After Chicago, Fraser let himself be vulnerable and trust that he could rely on his parent to always be there for him. Which is absurd, since his father was dead for 99% of the show, and yet happened because of Fraser's character arc. Robert Fraser's abandonment during Fraser's childhood was a huge wound that prevented Fraser from leading a happy life, and at the very end, not only had this wound healed, but Fraser learned to trust his father, too.

[mekare]

I agree with you and inconclusionray, the second poster.

Fraser does have an arc, it just isn't the same as an action movie superhero's. It is instead about a lonely man who's been abandoned a lot learning to open himself up to new experiences and trust people again.

Absolutely.

he's tempered and polite, never stepping out of line and thus never giving people cause to abandon him.

I never thought about this second reason for him being so polite. But it absolutely makes sense to do it out of self-protection as well.

I haven't watched to the end of season 4 yet, but I have seen MotB and I feel like there he is at a point where he dares to argue with Ray (who of course is always pushing back) which he probably wouldn't have done if he felt sure Ray wouldn
't bother with him if he stepped outside the 'polite Mountie' persona.

I also disagree with the first posters assessment of Fraser as He’s already this out of nowhere towering beacon of hope who may need to catch up on American slang and customs, but other than that comes pretty much perfect out of the box.

Fraser has such bad habits around communication, emotional honesty that are not good for him and the people around him, he is far from perfect. That's what makes him interesting. His devotion to duty at a great cost to himself (although I believe he does have the bad exmaple of his father in mind) is at times really scary.

[mekare]

Oh and now I looked through the Tumblr notes (argh I hate that they don't have threaded comments because you overlook things easily) where iokheaira responded to the first poster:

I would ONLY object to one thing, which is that Fraser doesn’t have an arc, in that his arc is to *become more solidly himself* despite being tossed into and surviving in a complicated, difficult, frustrating world that often doesn’t have any good answers. He constantly gets offered opportunities to slack off or let things slide or just.. be mean, and he keeps rejecting them in favour of Doing The Right Thing, Whatever That Is At The Time, over and over again. And the hook is that it’s not always simple or easy and he doesn’t always get it 100% right at the first go or even at all, but he keeps on doing it anyway, and eventually things do work out.

And THAT’S why I love the show so much.

[ride_4ever]

TYK for posting this! I have a Tumblr account, but clearly there are dS-related things -- like this duesouthmeta! -- that I have been missing!

Also, I'm tracking this post because jiokra's comment shows me that there may be extensive discussion going on here.

[mekare]

Please feel free to join in :-)

[ride_4ever]

I will probably only post brief comments or possibly just follow the discussion without commenting. It's a matter of prioritizing my fannish time. I'm under a lot of fic-writing pressure now because of zine deadlines plus what-all is involved with the two fancons I'm about to attend in Nevada and in Illinois.

[mekare]

Oh I see. Good luck with the deadline projects!

[ride_4ever]

TYK! (Depending on making deadlines, I'm looking to get Fraser/Kowalski fic accepted by the three zines for Con*Strict, It's Raining Men, and Body Heat. )

[mekare]

Are they multifandom zines?

[ride_4ever]

Con*Strict and It's Raining Men are multifandom. Body Heat will be the seventh volume in the all Fraser/Kowalski Body Heat series.

[juniperberry]

Most of my interaction with the due South fandom has actually been through tumblr, but yay for bringing that discussion to DW!

I think the original poster was largely concerned with contrasting Fraser's arc of character growth with the newest Superman movies, which basically suck (I guess? I haven't seen them). His point was, I think, less about Fraser overall and more about how it is possible to write morally good characters without making them perfect or boring.

That said I totally agree that Fraser has a character arc, but it isn't a dark and gritty arc--more that he's coming out of this darkness that he's been in (isolated, few friends, alienated even from his coworkers) and finding friends and family in this place he thought he'd never fit into. But yes, love the meta! Bring me more meta!

[mekare]

Sorry to be so late in replying! If you find any interesting meta on Tumblr too, please post it here! There isn't that much metaing happening on here so I'm always looking for new stuff, (and maybe I'm going to write one on Fraser and music some time)...

less about Fraser overall and more about how it is possible to write morally good characters without making them perfect or boring.

I agree. Though they oversimplified a bit to make their point because, as you andall of us here are in agreement, Fraser does have an arc. I liked this: he's coming out of this darkness that he's been in (isolated, few friends, alienated even from his coworkers) yup that's it.