#ray kowalski/benton fraser

[lupines-slash-recs]

Rec: Katabasis by Aria

Title: Katabasis Author: Aria Canon: Due South Pairing: Stanley ‘Ray’ Kowalski/Benton Fraser Rating: Mature [R] Word Count: 16,878 Summary: “I talked to your dad, I went through this place called the Borderland,

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[sammaggs]

3x01 Burning Down the House | Continuous

THIS IS ALL ONE SHOT!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS ALL. ONE SHOT.

A nearly two-minute walk and talk in the precinct set with NO CUTS. For TWO MINUTES.

This is TWO FULL YEARS before The West Wing, which popularized the long hallway single shot walk and talk.

Genuinely hard to convey how difficult a shot like this is to choreograph with so many different moving pieces. As one continuous take this shot is WILD. It means everything—including the push in to Ray and Elaine, the pull back out to include Fraser stepping precisely back into frame, the ACTUAL LIVE DOG, the walk into the bullpen with all the extras cutting in front of camera, the gag with the ink—all of that is in ONE GO, NO FUCK UPS.

INCLUDING!! One of the best pieces of acting in the ENTIRE SERIES right here:

THE love at first sight moment. In the MIDDLE of all this.

My favourite thing about this is imagining Gordon Pinsent standing patiently in the bullpen waiting for his moment for the 45 times it took to get the first ninety seconds of this shot clean.

Oh I will never be done being obsessed with this show. The level of stagecraft involved here alone is insane. Paul Gross the man you are,

Happy 27th birthday today, Burning Down the House (Sept. 14, 1997)!! You are still iconic🇨🇦🍁

due South Long Shots [one] [two] [three]

[eaion]

DUE SOUTH S03E02 - Eclipse

[thepunkpanther]

"Does this conversation seem strangely familiar to you?" "Oddly, yes." @ds30below's 30 BELOW FEST: canon appreciation week DUE SOUTH x BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

[mortmere]

"The Sea Wolf"

A scene from an imaginary naval adventure, featuring the Royal Navy officers Fraser and Kowalski and the courageous sea wolf Diefenbaker who has (again) saved the day. Wolves are very good swimmers btw, unlike Ray. 

I had long planned some kind of due South Age of Sail AU picture with Fraser and RayK, just to get them into these uniforms. My original plan was, of course, to let the boys kiss (in a more tropical setting!), but the good boi Diefenbaker wanted to be in the center of things and all Fraser gets now is wolf kisses.

The uniform style is based on the later seasons of the Hornblower TV series.

[tgtbata]

oh canada for @flownwrong 💛🎂

[ds30below]

30 BELOW FEST: celebrating 30 years of due South

What Is 30 Below?

On April 23rd, 1994, a certain television movie aired in Canada. The rest is 30 years of amazing, rich and lovely history — still going in 2024.

30 below is a fest to celebrate this anniversary, run by @flownwrong. Whether you’ve been here from the get-go or just joining the fun — this fest is for you. Let’s spread the love for the wonder that is due South!

info ���

🐢30 below will run from March 11th (The Eleventh Of March!) until April 23rd (the pilot airing date!)

🐢each of 7 weeks will have a theme, complete with prompts to help you get going; themes will go up on February 18th

🐢you are free to use any, all or none of the prompts and themes! they are optional and are here to inspire, not restrict

🐢this event accepts any contributions:

all fanworks: meta, art, gifsets, photo or video edits, fanmixes, fic, rec lists… anything you feel inspired to create!

community interaction: comments, shout outs, liveblogging, asks, etc — don't forget to post about what you got up to so we can all share the joy!

🐢contributions will be reblogged all throughout the fest, and you're never too late — the whole year is anniversary year!

🐢it's preferred that you post your themed contributions during the corresponding week, but you're welcome to share whenever!

🐢please mention the fest (@ds30below) and tag your post #ds30below so i can share it! I will be tracking the main #due south tag as well.

❗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.

🐢if you're not on tumblr, post wherever you're comfortable and let me know! (flownwrong on DW, emotionalrisotto on discord, ask/message here)

🐢you can also submit your contributions using the submit button on this here blog

— knock yourselves out, and happy 30th birthday to our favourite show!

🐢themes & prompts

🐢helpful resources

🐢navigation

[gayvecchio]

[allofthebeanz]

Was fooling around with pixel art for the first time and I think these came out adorably!

@ds30below

[redgoldblue]

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

bonus Welsh:

[lupines-slash-recs]

Rec: Running to Glacier Point by Julesmonster

Title: Running to Glacier Point Author: Julesmonster Canon: Due South Pairing: Stanley ‘Ray’ Kowalski/Benton Fraser Rating: Teen [PG] Word Count: 18,403 Summary: After being injured in the line of duty, RayK heads to Canada to get

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[sammaggs]

1x02 Diefenbaker’s Day Off // 2x08 One Good Man // 2x13 White Men Can’t Jump to Conclusions // 3x01 Burning Down the House | Normalized

due South does a main character re-casting better than any other show on TV, and they do it by playing with television's own accepted meta-narrative.

Recasting a character has a long tradition in television, creating a viewership that knows and understands the storytelling short form at play. As viewers, we realize that sometimes actors aren't available to reprise a role (or simply aren't interested in it anymore); but, for the sake of the story, sometimes the show needs that character to come back. So we lean hard into suspended disbelief and just go with it. After all, the characters in the show accept the parareality of it—why shouldn't we?

Of course, the most famous example of a character recast would be the Dick/Darren disaster on 1960s sitcom Bewitched, when Dick York was unceremoniously replaced by Dick Sargent in the role of Darrin Stephens. ("The Dick Wars" would have gone absolutely insane).

it was... not successful

But they weren't the only ones to do it. Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince, Becky from Roseanne, Daario Naharis from Game of Thrones, Greg Serrano from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (pain, agony)—recasting characters but maintaining the fiction is a storied tradition in TV. New actor, same character; totally normalized.

And shows continue to do it, even today, with a—uh—similar dedication to fucking it up doing it poorly.

why must we be punished like this

due South even engages in this trope itself in season 2, when hard-hitting investigative journalist Mackenzie King is recast and they don't even try to find an actress who looks similar. In 1x02 Diefenbaker's Day Off, she's played by brunette Madolyn Smith-Osborne; in 2x08 One Good Man, she's been replaced by blonde Maria Bello, and nobody talks about it.

yeah i'm absolutely the same person, obviously

Everyone diegetically (within the world of the show) is just like, oh yeah, that's hard-hitting investigative journalist Mackenzie King. Totally. Only non-diegetically (outside of the world of the show) does the viewer go "No, that's not the same person." Internally, the fiction proceeds as usual.

So what would happen if, say, Samantha Stephens turned to Dick Sargent and said "You're not Darrin," when everyone else in the show continued to treat him as though he was? Or if Jaskier told Geralt that he knows he's not actually Geralt, and everyone treated him like he was delusional?

Or if Fraser, even, had recognized Mackenzie King as someone entirely different, and everyone treated him like he had a hole in his bag of marbles because of it? Of course that's Mackenzie King; even her boss knows it. No, she's never been a brunette. What are you talking about?

And that's exactly what happens in Burning Down the House.

the rays vecchio

Diagetically, everyone else treats Callum Keith Rennie's character as though he is Ray Vecchio. "Oh, good, you found him," says Det. Huey. Elaine, Franchesca, literally everyone else both at the station and outside of it treat Callum Keith Rennie Ray Vecchio as though he is David Marciano Ray Vecchio. They're acting exactly as any other TV character would in the face of a recasting: as though absolutely nothing had happened.

Except for Fraser.

Fraser's specific brand of parareal Canadian plot magic means that he's immune to the recasting blindness; he's acting as an agent of the viewer, voicing our non-diegetic concerns. Fraser is (as he so often is) a character with one foot outside of the narrative. He's just always been like this and he doesn't know why.

oh this man is infuriating and hot, fuck. shit.

And for a character who already thinks he is likely insane (he sees the ghost of his dead father! He communicates with his deaf half-wolf! He is instantly committed to a mental institution upon voicing the actual true story of his life!), this is very extremely distressing. Fraser thinks he's actually lost it this time, because everyone else in due South is acting like a TV character, and Benton Fraser is acting like a viewer.

This is so brilliant on so many levels. They just fully lampshade the damn thing. It allows our protagonist to speak for disgruntled or confused viewers. It engages at a postmodern level with television as a medium with a storied history (and due South is incredibly postmodern; nearly every episode is or contains a reference to another piece of media). It's written from the perspective of someone who loves and is knowledgeable about TV tropes.

And it gives us an entirely new Ray while still maintaining respect and loyalty to the original, something no other straight (lol) recast could ever do.

Genuinely one of the most clever, witty, well-crafted hours of television ever made. I could write essays about so many different parts of it. And I guess I will!!!!!!

It’s Burning Down the House week in our dS Stacked Rewatch!

[eaion]

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

How Ray Got His Groove Back by Aristide and Bone, due South, Fraser/RayK

A quintessential due South RayK fic and a classic of the fandom for a reason! I knew when I started this whole crazy adventure of binding fanfic that I wanted to make hard copies of things across the fandoms that have been a part of over the years, and due South will always have a special place in my heart, since that's where I met my wife.

I'm to be able to share this fanbind with @the-cimmerians just in time for Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day! (And thanks to @renegadeguild for encouraging us all to share with the authors we love this day in particular.)

The title of How Ray Got His Groove Back is a riff on the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the fic even has its own fanlore page. Because it was imported into AO3 from another archive as part of an Open Doors initiative, you too can enjoy some genuine vintage formatting as part of the reading experience! (Get your pre-AO3 mailing list flashbacks right here...)

The spine is Duo magpie bookcloth, and marbled paper found by chance in a household gift shop last winter (I wish they'd restocked it!), and the lettering is stencilled acrylic paint.

I leaned into the romance novel vibe for the typesetting, using the notorious yellow paper of the great paper misorder of 2023 for an aged paperback vibe, and a flowery frame for the cover. Gelli-plate printed endpapers, and a hand-sewn double-core endband in hot pink and purple thread to match.

And about that marbled paper and the stencilled title... this was the book where I discovered that the other paper I had stencilled on with no problems (mulberry fibre Lokta paper, it's lovely) is the exception rather than the rule, and some emergency repairs were needed when the stencil vinyl started to pull up the paper. I did my best with some paint and a fine-tipped maker and a pencil, but hoo boy. We won't be trying that again with this paper.

I'm glad to have this piece of personal fandom history, and also to say, happy Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day, Aristide & Bone!

[mortmere]

Mountie and Soul

(Stacked Rewatch / Timestamp Roulette Art Challenge)

I'm really happy with this one! It took less than an hour and I had zero problems with it. Mused on shoulder holsters and other leather goods while I worked. And Ray's incredibly beautiful neck. And Fraser's perfect S3 hair - it was never better. ;)

Earlier today, I spent much more time on this little shit that didn't want to co-operate and ended up really layered and messy. But I definitely learned something from it, so it's all good.

[tgtbata]

two buddies for @nigeltde-fic and @flownwrong <3