And one more thing...Why I love Due South
Thanks, brooklinegirl for letting me put in my final two cents.
Dear Due South,
It's not often I write love letters.
I loved you at the first; but it was only after you'd gone I began to appreciate what you'd meant to me. I remember coming across that old VHS tape of Ladies Man, one dreary day in 2002. The way my heart lurched at your familiar images, your words, at your Mountie and your detective -- well, I knew our love was eternal. We were Meant To Be.
I know that lately I've strayed from you, first with those spies I used to hang with when I was an adolescent (just chalk it up to nostalgia for the 60's) and then with a couple of English coppers who shagged me and bolted. And lately, embarrassingly, I had those flings with Japanese teenage death gods and samurai and ninjas. Look -- it was just a mid-life crisis, okay? It’s not like I traded the Riv or the GTO for a red convertible. Each time, you've been kind enough, or foolish enough, to welcome me back, your (Paul Gross) arms open wide, your heart welcoming.
Sometimes I don't know why you let me return.
And sometimes, my dear, to be fair, you've been difficult to love.
You don't agree with that? Silly Due South. You've routinely broken my heart, you know - with your casual bait & switch antics. You want examples? Fine! You gave me a Mountie of achingly honorable intent, with almost painful vulnerability, and provided him (and me) with a sarcastic, warm, cranky opposite complete with annoying but wonderful family and suspicious morals. You gave me a female superior officer and a hot kiss on top of a train. And then? Just when I thought nothing could spoil my happiness, after you've lulled me into thinking you'd stay as perfect as you were during Victoria's Secret or The Deal or Juliet is Bleeding -- just then, when I turn to you, I see -
--you've changed!!!
Gone is the Mountie's awkwardness in Chicago; instead I find a superhero snark machine. Gone are the sharply-realized scripts --in their place is a surfeit of lowbrow jokes. Gone is the smart lady Mountie and her smoldering UST; in her office is a stereotype, a desperate, love-struck caricature. I find...goofiness. I find Dewey, for heaven's sake. Gone is my balding, flawed foil; at his desk sits a different cop, a Ray Vecchio I don't recognize, one with an entirely different nature and experimental hair.
I find…
. . .that I love this new guy. I find his interaction with the Mountie is - different.
I find Ladies Man, Odds, I Coulda Been a Defendant. Eclipse. Strange Bedfellows. Call of the Wild. I find a ride off into the sunset that makes me cry and is the best ending I could ever have imagined for two men I have begun to think of as meant to be together.
I find slash.
I find Ray/Ray.
I find Ray Vecchio after Vegas.
You did this to me, Due South. You made me what I am today, a wibbling, gibbering fool for you. Is it any wonder I love you, even though you bring me heartache?
But let me stroke your (Paul Gross-sized) ginormous ego even more: you've given me fandom, and cons, and conversations, and chats, and fannish gatherings, and brunches, and squee and LiveJournal and ds_flashfiction and Exwood and Due Slash and End of the Road and Simply Ray and Kellie and Beth and Lynn and TRACEY! and Nan and ALL of Speranza's stories and all of China_shop's, and Aerye's Ray/Ray and Resonant's and Hth's, too, and Hard Core Logo and Wilby Wonderful and Men With Brooms and Paul Gross Arms, and a love for Canadian actors (all 32 of them, including Don McKellar, but I'll try not to hold that against you) and more and more and more and more and --
You've given me wonderful, talented, warm-hearted, generous friends for life.
You've developed me as a writer. You've made me yearn to do better, for your sake, when I write. Oh, sure, you've made me do unspeakable things, shameful things for you, like writing Ray Kowalski wingfic and inter-species love between Dief and Ray's turtle (twice, more's the shame). Suffice to say, you turned me on to crack, of a variety I don't even see with my teenage-Japanese-samurai-ninja-death-gods. Oh yeah, I've done dirty things with you, Due South, like read incest fic and like it, and write threesomes involving Welsh and Dewey/Turnbull fic, and commit Bad!fic on purpose. I've even listened to the soul-killing songs of Evanescence, in your service to your will.
I am your minion, Due South.
I am your slave.
I love you.
And though I may stray, as I have in the past, I promise I will come back to you, over and over again.
If you'll have me.
Love,
Shay
Dear Due South,
It's not often I write love letters.
I loved you at the first; but it was only after you'd gone I began to appreciate what you'd meant to me. I remember coming across that old VHS tape of Ladies Man, one dreary day in 2002. The way my heart lurched at your familiar images, your words, at your Mountie and your detective -- well, I knew our love was eternal. We were Meant To Be.
I know that lately I've strayed from you, first with those spies I used to hang with when I was an adolescent (just chalk it up to nostalgia for the 60's) and then with a couple of English coppers who shagged me and bolted. And lately, embarrassingly, I had those flings with Japanese teenage death gods and samurai and ninjas. Look -- it was just a mid-life crisis, okay? It’s not like I traded the Riv or the GTO for a red convertible. Each time, you've been kind enough, or foolish enough, to welcome me back, your (Paul Gross) arms open wide, your heart welcoming.
Sometimes I don't know why you let me return.
And sometimes, my dear, to be fair, you've been difficult to love.
You don't agree with that? Silly Due South. You've routinely broken my heart, you know - with your casual bait & switch antics. You want examples? Fine! You gave me a Mountie of achingly honorable intent, with almost painful vulnerability, and provided him (and me) with a sarcastic, warm, cranky opposite complete with annoying but wonderful family and suspicious morals. You gave me a female superior officer and a hot kiss on top of a train. And then? Just when I thought nothing could spoil my happiness, after you've lulled me into thinking you'd stay as perfect as you were during Victoria's Secret or The Deal or Juliet is Bleeding -- just then, when I turn to you, I see -
--you've changed!!!
Gone is the Mountie's awkwardness in Chicago; instead I find a superhero snark machine. Gone are the sharply-realized scripts --in their place is a surfeit of lowbrow jokes. Gone is the smart lady Mountie and her smoldering UST; in her office is a stereotype, a desperate, love-struck caricature. I find...goofiness. I find Dewey, for heaven's sake. Gone is my balding, flawed foil; at his desk sits a different cop, a Ray Vecchio I don't recognize, one with an entirely different nature and experimental hair.
I find…
. . .that I love this new guy. I find his interaction with the Mountie is - different.
I find Ladies Man, Odds, I Coulda Been a Defendant. Eclipse. Strange Bedfellows. Call of the Wild. I find a ride off into the sunset that makes me cry and is the best ending I could ever have imagined for two men I have begun to think of as meant to be together.
I find slash.
I find Ray/Ray.
I find Ray Vecchio after Vegas.
You did this to me, Due South. You made me what I am today, a wibbling, gibbering fool for you. Is it any wonder I love you, even though you bring me heartache?
But let me stroke your (Paul Gross-sized) ginormous ego even more: you've given me fandom, and cons, and conversations, and chats, and fannish gatherings, and brunches, and squee and LiveJournal and ds_flashfiction and Exwood and Due Slash and End of the Road and Simply Ray and Kellie and Beth and Lynn and TRACEY! and Nan and ALL of Speranza's stories and all of China_shop's, and Aerye's Ray/Ray and Resonant's and Hth's, too, and Hard Core Logo and Wilby Wonderful and Men With Brooms and Paul Gross Arms, and a love for Canadian actors (all 32 of them, including Don McKellar, but I'll try not to hold that against you) and more and more and more and more and --
You've given me wonderful, talented, warm-hearted, generous friends for life.
You've developed me as a writer. You've made me yearn to do better, for your sake, when I write. Oh, sure, you've made me do unspeakable things, shameful things for you, like writing Ray Kowalski wingfic and inter-species love between Dief and Ray's turtle (twice, more's the shame). Suffice to say, you turned me on to crack, of a variety I don't even see with my teenage-Japanese-samurai-ninja-death-gods. Oh yeah, I've done dirty things with you, Due South, like read incest fic and like it, and write threesomes involving Welsh and Dewey/Turnbull fic, and commit Bad!fic on purpose. I've even listened to the soul-killing songs of Evanescence, in your service to your will.
I am your minion, Due South.
I am your slave.
I love you.
And though I may stray, as I have in the past, I promise I will come back to you, over and over again.
If you'll have me.
Love,
Shay