Due South Workshop

ekaterinn thought the blend of first and second person narrative worked very well in the first sections, where it brought "a certain wistfulness to Fraser wanting Ray." However, she thought the sex scene needed more intimacy than the style could support.

zebra363 thought that the style in which the story was written put her as a reader at "too great a distance from [the characters'] emotions" to allow her to fill in the blanks very successfully. She pointed out several places in which she found Ray's actions confusing, including the spot where Ray asks Fraser why he's telling the story about Steve. She said "If the story had been written in a way that permitted it, I'd've loved more detail about what was going on in both their minds."

She also felt the end of the story, though happy, did not seem to follow clearly from what had gone before.

pearl_o agreed that the ending could have been stronger and had a clearer journey to it. However, she said that she'd intended Ray's questioning Fraser's Steve story to be "less a rejection and more sincere". She felt that Ray knew Fraser usually had a reason for telling his stories, and he wanted to know what it was in this case.

china_shop liked the story's voice, saying she finds it "lyrical and poetic, particularly in the sense that you have to look beneath the surface to dig out the meanings of things."

She questioned Ray's overall crankiness in the story, saying that although the style of story didn't allow for glimpses of what was going on in his head, she felt there could have been some hints for the reader (even if they were misinterpreted by Fraser) that he was feeling some tenderness. She felt that the obliqueness of Ray's emotions here "also undermines Fraser’s essential character", because he and Ray generally communicate very well in canon, and because Fraser is "a student of human behaviour". She thought he would at least question Ray's actions here.

She liked Ray's asking Fraser why he was telling the Steve story, saying it was a "subtle and lovely" way for him to attempt to find out if Fraser was trying to declare himself.

She liked the fractured timeline as well, and the story's dreamlike feel. But she said that "overall, I’d like more hints about what’s going on beneath the surface. Or maybe there are lots of hints, and I'm simply refusing to accept them. Huh. Maybe I really just want what’s going on beneath the surface to be happier and more hopeful than it really is."

(Updated and reposted, because I couldn't edit the original one. Weird!)

Thanks to everybody who participated in the discussion! New story coming up tomorrow.

zebra363 didn't really believe RayV's attraction to RayK, saying that she needs convincing for this pairing, and that didn't quite happen here. She liked the short segments, but felt the transition to kissing was too abrupt, supporting china_shop's suspicion that she didn't linger enough for the tension to build. china_shop felt that relying on the readers' investment in a pairing is one of her weaknesses

zebra363 wondered about the sentence "Ray had liked Stevie, liked her a lot, which meant he’d never gotten to know her." She decided this meant there were things about Stevie RayV would have disliked if he'd gotten to know her, rather than implying that it isn't possible to like anyone you know well! china_shop said it was supposed to be about Ray not being in a position to trust anyone in Vegas, because opening himself up would be dangerous. zebra363 could see that interpretation, but thought the line "Ninety percent of the nice guys—and girls—in Vegas were cons" backed up her reading.

china_shop responded: "It's more that the dangers were present and the stakes were high, than he was *sure* she was a con." She wondered if a slight rephrasing of the preceding sentence would have made this meaning clearer.

kijikun liked Ray's voice and the end of the fic. She thought the ambiguity around Stevie's gender when she was first mentioned was cool, but wished it had lasted longer. She also wanted more detail about RayV's visits to the psychiatrist. china_shop agreed that she might have missed some opportunities to delve deeper.

Sorry I'm so late with the summary this week. I've been moving, and have actually not had access to the internet for the past...five days? Decade? Something like that. *g*

Anyway, my apologies. And now on to the discussion...

gurrier thought that Ray's behaviour in the poem was in character, but that the voice sounded off--too analytical for Ray, not instinctive enough. She liked the structure of this line: "So I'll change my hair, lose the glasses, wear the leather, get the tat" but wondered if it might sound more Ray-like if it was more staccato--if the commas were periods, for instance. She also thought Ray might use less formal wording in places, and kijikun later agreed.

gurrier thought the last line of the poem described exactly how she imagined Ray to have been as a teenager, and that it was a nice set up for his growth as a character in Due South.

kijikun also thought that Ray's actions in the poem were in character for him. She thought that the issues with Ray's voice might be resolved if the poem was not narrated from his point of view, but from an outside viewpoint instead.