Question of the Week: The Ray Wars?

[cin1607]

One of the other things that came out of our CON.TXT panel was the idea of posing a "Question of the Week" as a way of hopefully digging a little deeper on some topics that either have been only lightly covered, or have happened long enough ago now that it could take a group discussion to jog everyone's memories when it comes to details. One of the first examples that got batted around the room was Due South's Ray Wars.

What happened?

Those of us on the committee who spent time in Due South came in, as cordelia_v noted, after the smoking corpses were already cleared from the battlefield and we understood that it was really bad, but people were tired of it and just wanted to get back to the fun aspects of fandom in whatever safe zone they had chosen. And maybe people are still weary of all that? Or still leery of it? Because if you look at the entry on the wiki, it's very restrained. It sounds a little like an argument over tea. (I suppose Fraser would downplay it a bit.)

There are a couple of great perspectives from some fans that also came into the fandom towards the end of the war, but for those of you who lived through it all, what really happened? Who joined the fandom at the start of season three with the new Ray?

Comments

[akamine_chan]

People currently in the due South fandom are still very, very leery of any mention of the Ray Wars. We huddle in our safe spaces, being extra careful, extra polite, for fear of starting another iteration of the Ray War.

There was a small skirmish over a year ago that resulted in even more fear and the loss of many good people from the fandom.

[smilingslightly]

I haven't even been in the fandom properly for over a decade and I'm still twitchy.

[shayheyred]

Here are a couple of anecdotes from the later Ray Wars:

I joined the fandom about 2001 and it seemed to me the Ray/Ray wars were pretty much over...but that was just on the surface. I entered the fandom as a Rayk/Fraser shipper (in fact, this was my first slash fandom) but originally had watched the show because I loved David Marciano, so I was conflicted to say the least. Ray Vecchio the First was a classic character, and looking back at the series as a whole, the first two seasons are better written and better produced than the latter two. But that does nothing to dispel the Greatness of Callum Keith Rennie. I just never saw the slash with Ray V/Fraser, though post-Vegas Vecchio continues to fascinate me with what might Vecchio have become? How would he have changed?

Some years later - around 2004 - I wrote a short Ray V story about him in Vegas, and amid some nice comments was one from a Ray V/Fraser shipper, who complimented the story in language that clearly bashed Ray K - things like "finally someone realizes the wonderfulness of Vecchio as opposed to that loser Kowalski" or some such. Well, that kicked off 50+ comments of renewed Ray Wars fighting, and that was just my journal and one silly little story. I know that it was not just happening on my journal, but numerous other incidents relating to other stories sparked everywhere.

A couple of years after that, a RayK/Fraser shipper who is well known complained in her journal that she'd stumbled upon a story that was not properly labeled, and she -- oh horrors! -- had had to endure reading a bit of RayV/Fraser before she knew it, and furthermore, Ray/Ray shippers were sheep who were just trying to be trendy (I paraphrase, but that was the gist). People flocked to her journal to accost her, and she fought back. I got an email from her because I'd taken that last point personally (I do ship Ray/Ray, too, and Frannie/Turnbull and F/V/K and a whole bunch of other stuff, in fact)and she was wondering why I was reacting that way. And on and on it went. There were mass unfriendings, etc. etc.

By now I think the newer DS fans are more openminded - those wot like RayV write about him, those wot like RayK do the same - and often the twain DOES meet, and in a friendly manner. The grumpy folks will remain so, and many other fans have moved on to start wars in SGA, Supernatural, or any of a host of other sources. The beat goes on!

[ghost_lingering]

I just never saw the slash with Ray V/Fraser,

Yes, this. Where *is* it? I started reading dS before I watched the show and pretty much all I could find was Fraser/RayK so that's what I read, but now that I've seen the show I'd love to go back and find all of the Fraser/RayV stuff that I never saw. Were most of the stories on mailing lists or have they been locked down?

[melannen]

Yes, this.

I started reading Fraser/RayK five years or so ago as I stumbled on it, and then some Ray/Ray and OT3, and then I actually watched the show starting from S1, and realized that there was *so much* to RayV that I had completely missed by just following the visible fandom. Where is all the RayV indeed?

(The impression a newcomer/outsider gets is that the Ray wars are over, and Kowalski won by a landslide...)

[shayheyred]

Have you tried the Exwood archive? There's lots of Ray V stuff. Try ds fanfiction and look at the archive, too.

[china_shop]

I just googled and found a F/V recs list here, for starters, at least. :-)

[drlense]

(sorry to poke my head in, I followed a link from a friend's journal)

From what I understood from someone who was a witness, it was all on mailing lists, back when the first two seasons of the show aired and there was a HUGE F/V following.

The show got canceled, and the fans fought fought FOUGHT to get the show back, and they won!! And then it was announced that David Marciano wasn't coming back, and here was this new Ray, and some people were REALLY unhappy with that, and didn't like the new Ray OR the "joke" that he was supposed to BE Ray Vecchio, and they clashed with the fans that were starting to like Ray K BETTER, and it was a HUGE mess.

There was a RECENT round of Ray vs Ray unpleasantness (a year or two ago?) and that was so INCREDIBLY unpleasant that it was easy to see how the original Ray Wars could have been so damaging.

[cin1607]

No apologies necessary! We'd like to hear from everyone! :)

[china_shop]

There's a recs list here. (Found randomly via google, but the stories I recognise on it are good. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

I was there through it all and it was nasty and brutal. Nothing worth stirring up again.

[starrcat]

I didn't mean to post as Anonymous - forgot to log in. Sorry.

[shayheyred]

IAWTC. My memories of it are now pretty mellow, but then again, I came to it later.

[cin1607]

I understand--and I don't really mean to pick at people's scabs, but I just feel that the passion and the pain and the upheaval of that period isn't really adequately expressed on the wiki in a way that people just reading the entry would really get and I'd like for it to be. Fans are passionate people, and just because we want a plural point of view on the wiki, doesn't mean we want it to be cold or clinical. That doesn't strike me as the fannish experience anywhere, much less with regards to this topic.

Having said all of that, I'm certainly not going to force anyone to talk about it if they don't want to. But I'm hoping some people feel like they can.

[starrcat]

It certainly was passionate. People who were brought together by the things we saw in due South, such as politeness and appreciation of others, seemed to sink to the lowest levels. I left the main list when someone attacked another list member for her inaccurate grammar. As the list member under attack was from French speaking Canada and English was a second language, the attack was particularly insensitive.

It is that kind of thing that made it all so awful. Yet some of my closest RL friends came out of due South parties organized through that list. So definitely the good and the bad. I prefer to dwell on the good for obvious reasons. And I hate seeing the old arguments resurface which I have seen a couple of times.

In any event, a very long, boring answer that I hope gives some insight without starting a new round of arguments.

[akamine_chan]

The last bit of unpleasantness was a little over a year and a half ago, and like drlense mentions above, very unpleasant. Fans fled the fandom or went into hiding, mass defriendings occurred and very bitter feelings were left behind.

I did keep track of the various posts that were detailing the issues here, if you want to see some of the arguments first hand.

The whole Ray vs. Ray thing is still a very volatile, touchy subject and most fen are afraid to even mention it for fear of sparking another angry debate.