Pizza and Promises (And wow, meta of a kind!)
I am almost finished marking! Only 15 papers left to go, folks, and then I am free! (For two weeks, until it starts all over again. And then there will be exams after that. Eeeek! But we're not talking about exams. We are keeping things positive and healthy). To celebrate my impending done-ness I am eating leftover pizza, and in honour of Ray Kowalski I ordered pineapple on my pizza. It is delicious. I have no idea why people think pineapple is a strange pizza topping. It's good! It'll be even better the next day when it's cold. Mmmmm cold pineapple.
Okay. Enough about the pizza. I have some big meta plans a'brewing owing to j_s_cavalcante's fabulous new fic Red Like Bleeding and some discussions dessert_first and I have had about the way this fandom handles characters of colour. I just...good lord, the notion of a meta post frightens me. Mainly because I'm worried that it'll land me on fandom_wank or at least fandom_meta, both of which terrify me. And I'll also have to qualify some of what I'll say by delving into my own complicated racial background, which might require some kind of flow chart and a crash course on immigration trends in northern Canada at the turn of the previous century. *winces* So we'll see.
In the meantime, I think I'll talk about Fraser and Ray Kowalski and why they are my OTP (even though I wrote Fraser/Vecchio when I first started out, and then I went and committed Ray/Ray, too, but in a hate!sex kind of way). So maybe I'm less OTP-ish than...kinda slutty? Hmmm.
Anyway, when omphale23 visited in the summer she let me raid her computer for music, and then she selected even more music and burned it onto a couple of CDs for me to peruse at my leisure. This expanded my (really, totally pathetic) music collection by quite a bit, and I've been working through it slowly and loving pretty much everything. Yes, even the bandom stuff. *cough*
What does this have to do with Fraser/Kowalski, you ask? Excellent question. I was listening to Carbon Leaf's Life Less Ordinary today (right-click to download), and I thought the lyrics were interesting as applied to the whole Fraser/Kowalski thing. (Yeah. At least this time it's not George Michael). I'm slutty about the pairings in this fandom, like I said, and I'll read and enjoy pretty much anything. Threesome fics? Bring it on. Vecchio/Kowalski? Yessir. Vecchio/Fraser? catwalksalone can tell you I have a strange and unusual reason for not reading those stories, but it's nothing to do with a lack of fondness for the pairing. Fraser/Kowalski may be a bit like disco in this fandom (it's everywhere) but I think what appeals to me about the pairing is what's captured in that Carbon Leaf song.
I think the best love stories are about what happens when someone is shaken out of their own small world and connects with a person who challenges them. Someone who "shakes the bones," who tears into the other person's life and wakes them up. I think Kowalski did that for Fraser. You've got a shy intellectual from a pretty repressed and unforgiving environment. You've got a demonstrative, fiery, crackle-and-pop guy who also happens to be a little insecure and a little clingy. Put them together and watch the sparks fly. And underneath all the binaries - north/south, poet/warrior, logic/instinct - there's a wonderful similarity between Fraser and Ray, a bone-deep compatibility and a fundamental respect for one another that's essential to any good romance. I don't get the same vibe from the other pairing combinations (they've got their own appeal, which I'll probably discuss some time in the far future) but I really like the suggestion that beneath all the surface conflict and strife Fraser and Ray are two guys who get each other, who compliment each other, and who inspire one another to take a chance on a new kind of adventure.
I also like the notion that Ray shakes Fraser out of himself. Being a repressed intellectual from the Great White North myself, I tend to identify with The Fraser more than The Ray. And while I know Fraser has just as much to offer Ray, Ray brings with him a lot of what Fraser is missing from his life. Companionship, warmth, uncomplicated affection (once it's earned), loyalty and excitement...all of this is part of the Kowalski package, and it makes me happy to consider that, yep, this is stuff Fraser desperately needs, and that's what he gets. (In some permutations, anyway, but I'm talking about why the pairing makes me happy, here. I'll do another post about why they make me ache sometime soon). Together they both get to strike out on a great adventure, and Ray gets to live with Fraser's oddness and his decency and his kindness. They both end up with a life less ordinary after the credits fade, and...well, this is uncritical meta. I'm just saying it fills me with a lot of love. Which we could all use more of, y'know? And this is why I nod and smile when people talk about due South as their happy place. I've broken the boys in fic before and I'll break them again, but my vision of the pairing is fundamentally a happy one, a positive one. They've got the kind of love that shakes you up in a good way, and it's why I keep returning to their stor(y)(ies) again and again.
So what about you? Why do you groove on your OTP? This whole rambling post was less "meta" and more "squee", but I realize I haven't talked with any of you about why you like F/K (or Ray/Ray or V/K/V or V/F or any of the other acronyms) and now I'm all curious. So tell me why you love your Boys!
Also? Listen to that song, and let me know if you think it's a) a good song for Fraser/Kowalski and b) if I should write a fic inspired by the lyrics. Because I haven't done any happy F/K stuff. And I should, right? Because they're happy.
Okay. Enough about the pizza. I have some big meta plans a'brewing owing to j_s_cavalcante's fabulous new fic Red Like Bleeding and some discussions dessert_first and I have had about the way this fandom handles characters of colour. I just...good lord, the notion of a meta post frightens me. Mainly because I'm worried that it'll land me on fandom_wank or at least fandom_meta, both of which terrify me. And I'll also have to qualify some of what I'll say by delving into my own complicated racial background, which might require some kind of flow chart and a crash course on immigration trends in northern Canada at the turn of the previous century. *winces* So we'll see.
In the meantime, I think I'll talk about Fraser and Ray Kowalski and why they are my OTP (even though I wrote Fraser/Vecchio when I first started out, and then I went and committed Ray/Ray, too, but in a hate!sex kind of way). So maybe I'm less OTP-ish than...kinda slutty? Hmmm.
Anyway, when omphale23 visited in the summer she let me raid her computer for music, and then she selected even more music and burned it onto a couple of CDs for me to peruse at my leisure. This expanded my (really, totally pathetic) music collection by quite a bit, and I've been working through it slowly and loving pretty much everything. Yes, even the bandom stuff. *cough*
What does this have to do with Fraser/Kowalski, you ask? Excellent question. I was listening to Carbon Leaf's Life Less Ordinary today (right-click to download), and I thought the lyrics were interesting as applied to the whole Fraser/Kowalski thing. (Yeah. At least this time it's not George Michael). I'm slutty about the pairings in this fandom, like I said, and I'll read and enjoy pretty much anything. Threesome fics? Bring it on. Vecchio/Kowalski? Yessir. Vecchio/Fraser? catwalksalone can tell you I have a strange and unusual reason for not reading those stories, but it's nothing to do with a lack of fondness for the pairing. Fraser/Kowalski may be a bit like disco in this fandom (it's everywhere) but I think what appeals to me about the pairing is what's captured in that Carbon Leaf song.
I think the best love stories are about what happens when someone is shaken out of their own small world and connects with a person who challenges them. Someone who "shakes the bones," who tears into the other person's life and wakes them up. I think Kowalski did that for Fraser. You've got a shy intellectual from a pretty repressed and unforgiving environment. You've got a demonstrative, fiery, crackle-and-pop guy who also happens to be a little insecure and a little clingy. Put them together and watch the sparks fly. And underneath all the binaries - north/south, poet/warrior, logic/instinct - there's a wonderful similarity between Fraser and Ray, a bone-deep compatibility and a fundamental respect for one another that's essential to any good romance. I don't get the same vibe from the other pairing combinations (they've got their own appeal, which I'll probably discuss some time in the far future) but I really like the suggestion that beneath all the surface conflict and strife Fraser and Ray are two guys who get each other, who compliment each other, and who inspire one another to take a chance on a new kind of adventure.
I also like the notion that Ray shakes Fraser out of himself. Being a repressed intellectual from the Great White North myself, I tend to identify with The Fraser more than The Ray. And while I know Fraser has just as much to offer Ray, Ray brings with him a lot of what Fraser is missing from his life. Companionship, warmth, uncomplicated affection (once it's earned), loyalty and excitement...all of this is part of the Kowalski package, and it makes me happy to consider that, yep, this is stuff Fraser desperately needs, and that's what he gets. (In some permutations, anyway, but I'm talking about why the pairing makes me happy, here. I'll do another post about why they make me ache sometime soon). Together they both get to strike out on a great adventure, and Ray gets to live with Fraser's oddness and his decency and his kindness. They both end up with a life less ordinary after the credits fade, and...well, this is uncritical meta. I'm just saying it fills me with a lot of love. Which we could all use more of, y'know? And this is why I nod and smile when people talk about due South as their happy place. I've broken the boys in fic before and I'll break them again, but my vision of the pairing is fundamentally a happy one, a positive one. They've got the kind of love that shakes you up in a good way, and it's why I keep returning to their stor(y)(ies) again and again.
So what about you? Why do you groove on your OTP? This whole rambling post was less "meta" and more "squee", but I realize I haven't talked with any of you about why you like F/K (or Ray/Ray or V/K/V or V/F or any of the other acronyms) and now I'm all curious. So tell me why you love your Boys!
Also? Listen to that song, and let me know if you think it's a) a good song for Fraser/Kowalski and b) if I should write a fic inspired by the lyrics. Because I haven't done any happy F/K stuff. And I should, right? Because they're happy.