due South Recs Redux

The fandom appreciation challenge assignment for today is to point out your favourite "other media" recs, so here are just a few of the amazing fanvids out there.

Title: Be Gentle With Me [vid - link takes you to comprehensive list in Voiceless's journal. Her due South stuff is right at the top of the entry]
Author: voiceless009
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: Uh, 3min? *g*
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

I'd just pointed out another one of Voiceless' fabulous dS vids, "Can't Stop This" in my journal a couple of days ago. Viewed together, you can get a pretty good idea of what an amazing visual artist Voiceless is. "Can't Stop This" is a sexy, frisky little romp, a cheeky homage to the men's-room fumblings and kinky hijinks that make PwP F/K fics so much fun to read. But V happens to be an amazing visual storyteller, as well as someone who wants to wink at us via Final Cut: there's a hilarious narrative at play in "Can't Stop This" that works in concert with the 'look! she makes the Boys seem dirty!' snickering, and that's part of what makes the vid so thoroughly rewatchable. But "Be Gentle With Me" is, for my money, equally as enjoyable. I'd compare it to heresluck's amazing "In the Mirror" vid; what heresluck does for RayK in that 4min tour-de-force, Voiceless does for the F/K relationship here. It's a wonderful portrait of their friendship and romantic potential, and I love the way she utilizes editing tricks and the lyrics of the song (and dudes, if anyone can hook me up with an MP3 of The Boy Least Likely To's single, I will forever be in your debt) to illustrate that damaged-but-optmistic sense of second chance hope the Fraser/Kowalski romance offers us. As much as I like it when they're wounded and wary (and, okay, occasionally dismembered) F/K always feels more authentic when it's presented as an act of trust: one person, having been beaten down by life in the past, takes a risk and and says, "Hey, I'm trusting you to take care of my heart." (Ray/Ray hits me the same way, but on a different register, if that makes any sense). Anyway, seek out this vid, young squires, and be amazed.

Title: That's All [vid - link takes you to SD's dS vid site. It's listed as the second entry on the page]
Author: sdwolfpup
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: R (it's suuuuuper suggestive, okay?)
Length: ~3 min (my sense of time - everything is 3 min long)
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

What can one say about SD? Yes, she's an excellent writer, a bringer of squee, a funny and warm and endlessly supportive friend...and one hell of a vidder. She created an instant fandom classic with "You Can Call Me...," wherein due South collides with Paul Simon's classic from Graceland, and the result is like a warm hug on a cold day. (YYCM always makes me cry, 'SHOW!' and make a *smooshcake* noise when I watch it. You know the noise). SD's vids are always characterized by great use of humour, an absolutely flawless gift for matching musical cue/lyrics with editing to create the perfect emotional response, and an ability to cut to the core of these characters and tell us a story about them in just under 3min. I think that, while I love YCCM, "That's All" is SD's best dS vid. It's a technical marvel, crafting a whole narrative about the rise and fall (and rise) of Ray and Ray's troubled romance featuring characters who have just a scant few minutes of screen time together in the series. SD utilizes some technical wizardry, including the clever use of film clips from another source (*cough* Dante's Cove *cough*) and a jaw-dropping splitscreen technique to amp up the sexual tension, and she perfectly encapsulates the testy, sexy and tumultuous connection that keeps drawing us fans back to the Ray/Ray well. I think catwalksalone said it best: this is the Rays in all their confused, angry, fucked-up glory, and this is the vid I've used to demonstrate why the pairing works to skeptical fangirls. (*waves to omphale23*) I'll close by borrowing some advice from SD's own essential article on providing feedback for vids (that'd be Vidding Feedback 101) and share my honest response to her work: it knocked my socks off. And it made me download a Genesis song. You have much to answer for, SD! :-)

Title: Pavlov's Bell [Link to Butterfly's vidding index]
Author: Butterfly
Pairing: F/K (F/V too, if you squint)
Rating: PG
Length: ~3 min! I think!
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

This one's been around for a while and I was torn between reccing it and Sisabet's "Icebound Stream," which everyone and their deaf half-wolf has probably seen by now, but in the end this angsty and sometimes painful look at Fraser's past mistakes (and its message about the importance of moving forward) won out. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of dS vids set to Aimee Mann songs in this fandom, and I think Butterfly made a perfect choice: she does wonderful things with the interplay between lyrics of this sad, dryly amused song ("History shows/that's how I nearly fell...") and scenes from episodes like "Victoria's Secret" and "Burning Down the House." What I admire most, verbose creature that I am, is that there's no fat on this one at all: it's lean and mean and carries a pretty big emotional impact. If you like your Fraser-centric vids to be a little on the angsty side, I'd also recommend "Lord I Have Made You A Place In My Heart" by the fabulous laurashapiro, which you can find with the rest of her vids over here (and many thanks to sdwolfpup for the link).

Alright! I hope you found something new in that mix. Up next: podfics you have to listen to.

My three story recs for Day 2 of the Fandom Appreciation Challenge. The goal was to rec three stories that are at least six months old. Here's what I came up with:

Title: In Chicago the Weather is Warm
Author: estrella30
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: ~2000 words
Why I'm reccing this fic:

estrella30 is a terrific writer and she's penned a number of fandom classics, but I've always admired this story for its unique perspective on the events following "Call of the Wild." It's a rare Fraser-POV story (in second person, no less!) and we get four months of Fraser pining for Ray and finally deciding that a life half-lived isn't a life at all. I really like E's take on the issue of duty here, and what the North means to Fraser in that sense. It's an interesting story and a quick read. Give it a try if you haven't yet read it.

( A brief excerpt )

Title: Guns Don't Kill People
Author: qe2
Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~8,000 words
Why I'm reccing this fic:

As a veteran of the fandom, qe2 has a lot of terrific story credits to her name. I usually associate her stuff with smoking hot porn and great RayK character pieces, and so this story is a bit of a departure. It's a dark and complex look at Fraser's battle with depression, and the way in which Ray helps him get through it. "Guns" is a remarkably brave story, and Q does an excellent job of illustrating Fraser's emotional impulse to cut through numbness using sex and connection. The incendiary NC-17 scene halfway through left me pretty shaken: it's absolutely spot-on, in terms of Ray and Fraser's trust issues and their exploration of bondage, and the emotional details--anger, pain, tremulous hope, love, compassion--ring out clear as a bell. It's not exactly an easy story to read, but it's an amazing look at the F/K dynamic that also happens to be rich in psycho-sexual drama.

( A brief excerpt )

Title: even the dreadful martyrdom (a thousand times remembered)
Author: omphale23
Pairing: F/V
Rating: R
Length: 2,600 words
Why I'm reccing this fic:

This was an unlikely story for omphale23 to write. She'd signed up for my beloved Team Angst for last year's dS Match challenge, and I'd jokingly suggested she try writing Fraser/Vecchio (she had Vecchio issues). O took on the challenge and this beautiful, sensitive and lyrical piece was the result. The structure is extraordinary: O takes us through Ray's childhood and his present relationship with Fraser, and then, when things reach a climax, time move backwards again, into Fraser's childhood and his relationship with Ray. We see Fraser and Vecchio fall in love, find each other, and fall apart, and the way time and memory wears on each of them. Fraser finds a new strength to ask for more, to demand open, honest love, and we discover the reasons why Vecchio can't give him that. Each fragment reveals a new truth, a new, brilliant insight into these complex characters, and the both the beginning and the end of the story come as devastating blows that carry the result of devastating truth.

( A brief excerpt )