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

[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.