ds30below

[ds30below]

A thank-you post

It's somehow been seven weeks! We got over 200 contributions, which is crazy! And that's just counting tumblr—I know some of you must have been doing your own thing elsewhere.

❗30 Below is never over. The AO3 collection stays open, and I'll keep sharing your contributions—so I encourage you to keep going.

30 Below wouldn't have been possible without @stanfordsweater, who held my hand and taught me the ways of modding; @nigeltde-fic, who got me into due South and is there for me in all my efforts; the dS discord gang, who cheered me on starting from the very first idea; and every single one of you who joined the fest by creating, commenting, spreading the word, or just following along. It's been a joy I can't begin to describe—seeing your enthusiasm and community spirit.

If you liked 30 Below, check out other dS things you can do:

🐢write some snippets

🐢join the @duesouthbigbang

🐢come hang out on discord

You can always get hold of me @flownwrong/emotionalrisotto on discord/flownwrong on DW. I hope to see you all around for other shenanigans!

🐢fest info

🐢all themes & prompts

🐢helpful resources

🐢navigation

#mod post #ds30below #due south #benton fraser #ray vecchio #ray kowalski

[ds30below]

A modest entry to Canadian Six Degrees

A very small part, basically a cameo.

In Barney's Version (2010), the main character is a television producer for a Mountie soap opera called O'Malley of the North.

Guess who plays the Mountie?

I love Paul's expressions in his second scene.

The film is tragi-comic, with a heartbreaking ending. It's streaming for free on CBC Gem, which you might need to be in Canada to access.

@ds30below

#barney's version #paul gross #c6d #paulgrossaddict

[ds30below]

a soundtrack playlist + anniversary quiz by shade_nightwalker

shade_nightwalker compiled every song used in dS (or at least those that are available on YT) into a convenient playlist for whenever you need to return to the soundtrack.

Plus, the new quiz is up—it's 30 questions, anniversary edition, and very fun.

Enjoy!

#music #games #due south #shade_nightwalker

[ds30below]

Are you Benton? Tragic F/V AU: Ray Vecchio has suffered a serious brain injury in the line of duty which, among other things, has affected his ability to remember and recognize faces. When he sees on the news that there has been an incident at the Canadian Consulate, he rushes to the scene. Unfortunately, he struggles to discern any familiar faces amongst the strangers in the crowd. The only thing he knows for sure is that his husband's name is Benton.

#au #fraser/vecchio #due south #gayvecchio

[ds30below]

woof 🐺

#art #ray vecchio #diefenbaker #due south #kseniayahz

[ds30below]

"Make it look like a freak lighting accident"

It’s been years since I’ve revisited Due South, but the @ds30below event sparked my interest again, and I decided to watch a few episodes with my bud @flownwrong  to celebrate. We watched three episodes that stuck in my mind the most over the years after being absent from the show for so long: Bird in the Hand, Eclipse, and The Ladies’ Man, and I found all three to be a very rewarding rewatch, even though my memory of the rest of the series is a bit hazy.

Bird in the Hand: 

When we started our mini marathon, I didn’t realize that this was the only ep of the three where Fraser’s dad plays a role, and I forgot how solid Pinsent was at pulling comic relief duty. The scene where he popped up demanding that Fraser murder Gerard immediately after Gerard was droning on about how Robert’s dogged nobility was his ultimate downfall had me rolling, as did the bit where he—probably correctly— asserted that Ray would shoot Gerard for him if Fraser really asked him to (aww). One thing in particular about his character  that struck me while watching this episode were the moments where he actually interacted with the environment around him in a way that impacted people other than Fraser by implanting the idea to retreat in McFadden’s mind and having Gerard attempt to grab his hand while dangling in the air. In my memory, it was a lot more ambiguous whether Robert was actually a spirit or a figment of Fraser’s imagination, so that ended up being kind of a fun twist for me. 

Since the other two episodes we watched were very Ray K centric, I’m glad we did one that had a focus on Fraser’s emotional state. The scene where he confronted Robert about stubbornly refusing help in life and  said “I never loved anyone as much as I love you” while Robert was still trying to find ways to derail the conversation is a fan favorite for a reason; it’s a rare, intensely vulnerable moment for Fraser and I really enjoyed the way that Paul Gross pulled back from it a little. In another show with another character, it’s easy to imagine a scene like this being a more blatant, emotional showstopper, with the neglected son saying this in a fit of tearful anger that’s meant to make his father rear back in surprise. Instead, Paul Gross delivers the line in an understated way that’s almost more like puzzled frustration, as if Fraser is trying to piece something together about himself instead, which I thought was a really nice touch to the scene that made it feel very Fraser. I also love the cunning way that Fraser brought it back around just a few minutes later by weaponizing male emotional repression in order to freak out everyone else in the room and gain the upper hand (as well as have an opportunity to annoy Ghost Dad by calling him short) while also delivering some genuine truths: Gerard really did break his heart. 

Last but certainly not least, I adore how Ray kept trying to take care of Fraser throughout the episode in his own grumpy, special way. Sure, trying to orchestrate some Fraser-on-Gerard police brutality didn’t end up being the most well received suggestion, but it’s sweet that he acted extra vengeful to make up for Fraser’s dutiful restraint. I also forgot that the “Mentally Deficient” sticker gag and the tape recorder conversation were both in this episode. The Bickering Married Couple vibes between them were always such a classic part of the show, so it was nice to see that on display. 

Bird in the Hand really held up strongly against my fond memories of it, and I was a little surprised at how easy it was to slide back into this world and be immersed in it after being away for so long. Sometimes I guess you actually can go back home again.  

#meta #benton fraser #robert fraser #ray vecchio #due south #freudyou

[ds30below]

<З

#art #fraser/vecchio/kowalski #due south #kseniayahz

[ds30below]

a quick screencap sketch of Ray and Fraser on the Bounty. On AO3

#art #benton fraser #ray kowalski #due south #mific

[ds30below]

The underside of Due South, some cool and some really ugly

#just listened to some of the haggis interview and was surprised by his take that tv characters shouldn't change but remain stagnant#and that was a point of contention between him and marciano who wanted ray to develop as a character#and once again i have to say thank goodness for dm. i am with him completely. characters should always be evolving. like...that's the point#but to haggis' point i guess this was in the early 90s before more serialized tv started to take off and become more prominent#it was still largely episodic where they hit the 'reset button' on characters from episode to episode#so dm was ahead of the curve. lol#it's strange to me because they built such a compelling arc for fraser in s1 especially. i guess it was just a happy accident??#anyway i look forward to checking more of this stuff out

The stuff I've watched and read makes Due South behind the scenes conflicting within me to share or talk about, to say the least. Due South is happy making and positive from a watch perspective I think versus it's actual production grind and wildness, and I'm big on wanting to stay positive and enjoy the show's show-ness not it's rather fractured reasoning or many authorial explanations right now. Too many peeps opinions or intents and ideas. I'm sticking with my own lol.

For the various creators though, I really like/d David Shore. He seems to have taken good writing from his time on the series.

And always love the music choices by Jay Semko & co. Series had great music decisions.

____

Paul Haggis and Kathy Slevin as creators: The fallout of both is just sad. Because I believe neither I think. Hollywood has awful, creative but awful, morals and peeps.

She had this really cool blog though that I think goes with a lot of beats they were exploring in the series.

Successful Screenwriting | by Kathy Slevin (wordpress.com)

And the rant one against bro which seems to have disappeared so... yay?

This is sad. Historical to share I think, but ow.

#meta #extras #due south #pigtailedgirl

[ds30below]

sneaking in to the very end of @ds30below with: Fraser + RayK + RayV + text posts

bonus Welsh:

#ds+text posts #benton fraser #ray vecchio #ray kowalski #harding welsh #due south #redgoldblue

[ds30below]

30 Below: Go Wild! (April 22-∞)

And finally we arrive at the actual anniversary date!

This week's only goal is to do whatever your heart desires. There are no prompts. 

Think of it as amnesty period, if you'd like. Only there's still no deadline and no pressure! The whole year is anniversary year. You're never too late. The AO3 collection is open indefinitely and I will be sharing everything tagged #ds30below or mentioning @ds30below.

Your mod herself is going to catch up on participation after fest proper ends, feel free to follow her example :)

❗Note that if you're reblogging something as a contribution (e.g. responding to meta), you'll need to mention @ds30below in your reblog, since it won't show up in the tag search.

Happy anniversary, my friends!

🐢fest info

🐢all themes & prompts

🐢helpful resources

🐢navigation

#icymi #mod post

[ds30below]

fic lists & links by viciouscats

So! Recs. We love them. @ds30below saw some wonderful lists, old and new. Here's another gem of a resource i wanted to share:

LJ user viciouscats used to keep vast and detailed masterlists of dsc6d fic, sorted by themes/tropes/characters.

masterlists: wordpress (archived) // LJ ds masterlists tag (older versions) // lists of dS authors // LJ index post (check out lists by other people at the bottom)

recs: due South // wilby wonderful

if you look at the tag index on the right of the wordpress blog, you'll find more fun stuff at the bottom, under "Links"

A lot of this stuff is no longer up, but some of it is available via Wayback Machine (prepare for a rabbithole though). Some of the fic mentioned may very well have been archived on AO3 later, so work search by title+fandom is your friend. Have fun!

#due south #c6d #wilby wonderful #slings and arrows #hard core logo #recs #fic #flownwrong

[ds30below]

@ds30below

gleaned from Twitter

, the first broadcast of Due South dates from April 23, 1993 on CBS

Thanks for sharing RetroNewsNow

Note : Other sources give April 26, 1994 as the date...

#we can have two anniversary dates! #extras #due south #paulgrossaddict

[ds30below]

Happy 30th Anniversary to Pilot Dief

Some screenshots (of poor quality because 90s television) of the first wonderful Dief, Frankie. He was such a great actor and cutie pie, and the one Dief I could believe would be half wolf <3

#diefenbaker #due south #frankie the dog #allofthebeanz

[ds30below]

ride_4ever's meta recs

Crossposted from Dreamwidth with permission

A fun list of meta/resource recs below the cut. Some of them have been shared before, all of them bear citing again. Personally, I am deep into backreading ds_workshop, which is extremely fun and helpful when it comes to writing.

"For Canon Appreciation Week of the due South 30th Anniversary "30 Below Fest," one of the suggestions was to rec some meta of canon.

Earlier this month, shade_nightwalker wrote a sweet bit of meta called "You Must Remember This". Read it at DW's due South Virtual Bar.

fox did a time-and-labor-intensive gift of love to due South fandom by creating an annotated transcript of every episode of the show. See fox's "Return to due South: index of annotated transcripts" at fox's DW.

dS meta by truepenny was originally on LJ. That account has been deleted and now appears on DW as truepenny: entries tagged with due south. It covers the pilot episode through the second episode of the last season. (Do note that truepenny stopped short of going to the end of the final season. And perhaps new comments on those posts might inspire her to complete the meta for that season?)

For a meta-specific dS comm on LJ, there's ds_meta.

Additionally, somewhere you'll have to hunt around a bit because they contain meta but also contain other dS topics, are these two LJ comms: ds_discourse and ds_workshop."

#recs #meta #due south #resources #ride_4ever

[ds30below]

On my DW, I posted a very long history of my dS fannishness and how I originally got into dS. It's probably going to bore most people because I iz old. But it has links at the end of it to some early (pre-AO3) dsc6d RPS and bad!Ben pages (via the Wayback Machine), with instructions on how to bring up the pages' text (it's light text on a light background - on a laptop, Ctrl-A is your friend with these pages! on a smartphone, you have to touch and drag the entire page with your finger or stylus). Ah, fandom. Even with the unfortunate Ray Wars (I'm a veteran - no gory details), it's still my happy place... plus the war was actually a really short part of the fandom, considering how long dS fandom has been around! 30 years, I can't believe it... but here I am — and happy to be.

#witness accounts #due south #callum keith rennie #forever knight #c6d #verushka70

[ds30below]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: due South Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio Characters: Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Ficlet, Anniversary, due South: 30 fics for 30 years, Not Beta Read Series: Part 4 of due South: 30 fics for 30 years Summary:

Ray could hardly believe that it had been thirty years since the Mountie wandered into that holding cell…

#fic #fraser/vecchio #due south #gayvecchio