How did I come to due South fandom? Well, to take a phrase from Ray Kowalski:
"I took this bus, I drove this car, I got on this train, I walked down this street, I turned this corner, I opened this door, and I stepped into...."The year was 2009. The setting was a Thanksgiving dinner in Chicago to which I was invited by a casual acquaintance who knew that no family member of mine would be inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner. Seated next to me at the dinner table was the MIL of my casual acquaintance, who said to me “I hear that you appreciate Shakespeare. There’s a Canadian TV show you should see -- it’s called Slings & Arrows....” And there it was, the moment that began the sealing of my fandom fate -- OH CANADA! -- I would soon be learning that “Canada is the country that is a fandom”. Slings & Arrows totally grabbed me, and my first exposure to Paul Gross was nothing short of experiencing a paradigm shift, and then I felt that I had to go in search of his other shows. So I went from Slings & Arrows in 2009 to due South in 2010 to discovering online fandom community (via stumbling onto a slash fic) in 2011.
And here's how due South led me to slash. I had finished watching the show, and having been introduced in the final episode to the notion of "the hand of Franklin, reaching for the Beaufort Sea" I did a Google search on the phrase "the hand of Franklin". Well! The top hit I got in my search did not go to a history website -- it went to a fic entitled "The Hand of Franklin" and the reference was to
Sam Franklin. It was Sam Franklin/Ray Kowalski dubcon with eventual Fraser/Kowalski.
And here is the first fic I ever read, the first slash I ever encountered, the fic that pimped me into fandom community:
The Hand of Franklin by
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akite.
