new dS story: Being Ray Kowalski
I am overjoyed to finally unveil the story that has been variously referred to here as "the genderfuckswappy thing" and "the Rae story"! It's been over a year in the writing, and it's my longest story by over a factor of two (OMG!), and I really, really hope you all enjoy it.
Being Ray Kowalski
due South: Fraser/Kowalski, 50,300 words, NC17, genderfuck
Summary: Rae Kowalski wakes up one morning in an alternate reality where she is, and apparently has always been, a man.
Warning: The cover illustration is not worksafe. (It's a gorgeous drawing by j_s_cavalcante, and the version in the story is 600kb, so if you are on dialup or at a non-private computer, you may want to turn images off in your browser before clicking the link. But please look at it sometime, because it's amazing!)
The idea that turned into this story came from this post by malnpudl from June 2006, in which she said:
Genderfuck is not usually a big kink for me (though I've enjoyed reading some), but this morning I woke up with a pissed-off Ray Kowalski in my head saying , "I've got a fuckin' pussy, Fraser!" Apparently he'd awakened in a female body, in an alternate reality where he was and always had been female, and where (s)he and Fraser had met, fallen in love, and were married and living in Chicago.
And all I could think was: okay, this sounds interesting, but what I really want is the story of what happens to Rae when she wakes up in "our" due South Chicago!
And so I wrote it.
In some ways this is a Fraser/OFC story; in fact, in some ways (all right, in a whole lot of ways!) Rae is my Mary Sue. I mean, it's a (typically female) slasher's dream, isn't it? To wake up in a male body - and not just any male body, but the body of one of our slash objects. Sex as a man, but from a woman's perspective. It doesn't get much more wish-fulfillment than that!
But this is also very much a Fraser/RayK story, and not just because Rae is the female version of Ray. Fraser loves Ray, but won't admit it to himself until Rae's evident feelings for him force the issue. She (knowingly and deliberately) acts as catalyst for (a future) Fraser/Ray relationship, and although I (also knowingly and deliberately :-) decline to describe what happens when Ray returns to his body, we hope, as does Rae, that Fraser and Ray will finally get together.
This relationship structure is something I've written before in crossovers which hinge on actor identity: Islands (dS/Wilby Wonderful, NC17) is nominally Fraser/Duck but Fraser/RayK at its core, and likewise Out of Exile (Hard Core Logo/Wilby Wonderful, NC17) is nominally Joe/Duck but really Joe/Billy. And in fact I think of this story as a sort of a crossover between "our" due South and an AU version of due South in which Ray is Rae.
As it happens, I started out planning it as an actual crossover, with Kolchak: The Night Stalker (with the action-plot part based on one of the episode descriptions, kind of), because that too was set in Chicago, with the idea that the "real" universe of that show was the alternate dS universe. For various reasons, mostly the relative timing (the show aired in 1974) and the fact that, um, I had never seen an episode and didn't really know anything about the show at all, this didn't happen. But I kept "Carol" (from Carl) Kolchak as a supporting character anyway, and then a couple of my betas pointed out that this would be a distracting reference rather than a clue, so Carol got a new last name to go along with her new plot.
The title, of course, is a reference to theodosia's classic bodyswap story Being Benton Fraser (also novel-length and NC17) as well as to my very first due South story, written for the Vecchio challenge on ds_flashfiction: (Not) Being Ray Vecchio (G rated and nearly gen).
And finally, if you are wondering now what happened with Ray in Rae's world: j_s_cavalcante is writing that complementary story, and personally, I can't wait to read it! ETA 6/13/2009 it's done! Anima.
I owe a great deal to my wonderful team of beta readers: riverlight, sageness, secretlybronte, and most especially j_s_cavalcante and malnpudl, who held my hand from the beginning, encouraged me when I faltered, and helped me hash out large hunks of plot over email and IM. Thanks are due as well to all of you who made squeeful noises whenever I dropped hints about working on this story. I hope it lives up to your expectations.
Being Ray Kowalski
due South: Fraser/Kowalski, 50,300 words, NC17, genderfuck
Summary: Rae Kowalski wakes up one morning in an alternate reality where she is, and apparently has always been, a man.
Warning: The cover illustration is not worksafe. (It's a gorgeous drawing by j_s_cavalcante, and the version in the story is 600kb, so if you are on dialup or at a non-private computer, you may want to turn images off in your browser before clicking the link. But please look at it sometime, because it's amazing!)
The idea that turned into this story came from this post by malnpudl from June 2006, in which she said:
Genderfuck is not usually a big kink for me (though I've enjoyed reading some), but this morning I woke up with a pissed-off Ray Kowalski in my head saying , "I've got a fuckin' pussy, Fraser!" Apparently he'd awakened in a female body, in an alternate reality where he was and always had been female, and where (s)he and Fraser had met, fallen in love, and were married and living in Chicago.
And all I could think was: okay, this sounds interesting, but what I really want is the story of what happens to Rae when she wakes up in "our" due South Chicago!
And so I wrote it.
In some ways this is a Fraser/OFC story; in fact, in some ways (all right, in a whole lot of ways!) Rae is my Mary Sue. I mean, it's a (typically female) slasher's dream, isn't it? To wake up in a male body - and not just any male body, but the body of one of our slash objects. Sex as a man, but from a woman's perspective. It doesn't get much more wish-fulfillment than that!
But this is also very much a Fraser/RayK story, and not just because Rae is the female version of Ray. Fraser loves Ray, but won't admit it to himself until Rae's evident feelings for him force the issue. She (knowingly and deliberately) acts as catalyst for (a future) Fraser/Ray relationship, and although I (also knowingly and deliberately :-) decline to describe what happens when Ray returns to his body, we hope, as does Rae, that Fraser and Ray will finally get together.
This relationship structure is something I've written before in crossovers which hinge on actor identity: Islands (dS/Wilby Wonderful, NC17) is nominally Fraser/Duck but Fraser/RayK at its core, and likewise Out of Exile (Hard Core Logo/Wilby Wonderful, NC17) is nominally Joe/Duck but really Joe/Billy. And in fact I think of this story as a sort of a crossover between "our" due South and an AU version of due South in which Ray is Rae.
As it happens, I started out planning it as an actual crossover, with Kolchak: The Night Stalker (with the action-plot part based on one of the episode descriptions, kind of), because that too was set in Chicago, with the idea that the "real" universe of that show was the alternate dS universe. For various reasons, mostly the relative timing (the show aired in 1974) and the fact that, um, I had never seen an episode and didn't really know anything about the show at all, this didn't happen. But I kept "Carol" (from Carl) Kolchak as a supporting character anyway, and then a couple of my betas pointed out that this would be a distracting reference rather than a clue, so Carol got a new last name to go along with her new plot.
The title, of course, is a reference to theodosia's classic bodyswap story Being Benton Fraser (also novel-length and NC17) as well as to my very first due South story, written for the Vecchio challenge on ds_flashfiction: (Not) Being Ray Vecchio (G rated and nearly gen).
And finally, if you are wondering now what happened with Ray in Rae's world: j_s_cavalcante is writing that complementary story, and personally, I can't wait to read it! ETA 6/13/2009 it's done! Anima.
I owe a great deal to my wonderful team of beta readers: riverlight, sageness, secretlybronte, and most especially j_s_cavalcante and malnpudl, who held my hand from the beginning, encouraged me when I faltered, and helped me hash out large hunks of plot over email and IM. Thanks are due as well to all of you who made squeeful noises whenever I dropped hints about working on this story. I hope it lives up to your expectations.