6 Degrees of Canada

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Fandom
Name(s): 6 Degrees of Canada, Six Degrees of Canada, Canadian 6 Degrees, Canada 6 Degrees, Canada fandom
Abbreviation(s): C6D
Scope/Focus: TV and film projects worked on by a select group of Canadians
Date(s): probably 2005 - present
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6 Degrees of Canada, also known as Canadian 6 Degrees or C6D, is a multifandom fandom that grew out of the due South community. Many fans use the term "6 degrees of due South," but the term C6D was most likely coined in 2005 [1] to describe a wider range of fandoms. Originally, ds 6 degrees included fanfic based on other projects that the actors from due South worked on.

Whether or not C6D is a fandom in its own right or a part of the due South fandom has been a subject of some discussion.

Some attempts to define C6D:

  1. Fandoms that feature someone who was in a production with a due South cast regular.[2]
  2. Fandoms of actors and directors who were not directly involved with due South, but worked with actors who appeared in Due South.[3]
  3. "C6D, which includes anything ever done by a Canadian, to a Canadian, with a Canadian, filmed, written, played or sung in Canada, or mentioning the words Canada, Canadian, Canuck, Arctic, Province, Mountie, Hockey, Curling, Maple Syrup, Chicago, or Rubber Ducks."[4]

Since a large percentage of current Canadian actors have worked together at least once, the scope of C6D is rather amorphous and potentially massive.

A tentative list of fandoms, Archived version included in C6D was posted on the LiveJournal community c6d weekly. According to a poll conducted by akamine chan in March 2008, C6D was generally considered to be based mainly on the projects of seven people: actors Paul Gross, Callum Keith Rennie, Hugh Dillon, David Marciano and writer/directors/actors Don McKellar, Bruce McDonald and Daniel MacIvor. Omphale conducted a poll in June 2008 to further gauge the perception of the limits of the C6D fandoms. For the Due South Canadian 6 Degrees Big Bang challenge, C6D is defined more narrowly as "due South or any other fandom featuring characters played by Paul Gross, David Marciano, or Callum Keith Rennie."[5]

Canadian actors who are NOT considered part of C6D include David Hewlett (who is considered a part of the SGA 6 Degrees fandom).[6]

History

Writing crossovers between Due South and other media starring the actors from Due South has been a popular fan activity since the 1990s.

For example, Northern Comfort, a 1999 fic by Kellie Matthews hosted on the Due South Archive, featured Benton Fraser/Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie's character in Hard Core Logo). A 2002 multimedia zine, It's Raining Men #3, included a Due South/DaVinci's Inquest crossover, as well as non-crossover Due South and Hard Core Logo stories.

The show had been off the air since 1999, so as time passed it was natural for Due South fans to look for other media the actors were in.

ds_noticeboard, started in 2004, featured news and fic updates related to Hard Core Logo and Wilby Wonderful from early on, and mod cesperanza clarified the community rules thusly in a January 2005 post:

The ds_noticeboard, like the dsreporter before it, has always been a place for news, recs, and stories pertinent to DS and the DS Universe. This includes not only announcements about the cast in their new projects (PG in Slings and Arrows, for instance, or CKR in Wilby Wonderful) but also stories in fandoms in which the cast are regulars: so HCL, Twitch City, Men With Brooms, MLaaD, and related fandoms. We also welcome news stories about any of the regular cast members; the goal, really, is to post important info about the broader DS universe. I suppose there's such a thing as 'too far', but I haven't seen it yet, and I'd probably err on the broad side (I know you're shocked.)*g* I'd rather know that Beau Starr was in something than not, and I'd rather have to say, 'No non-CKR HL stories here' than miss an excellent HL/HCL crossover. *g*

...

***The closest thing to an anomaly we have in our system is the posting of links and info about Hugh Dillon qua Hugh Dillon (as opposed to links about the character of Joe Dick) and I'm gonna go out on a limb here as Admin of this Community and say that DS_Noticeboard is Officially a "Friend of Hugh." (F.O.H.)[7]

In a 2007 ds_meta post, brooklinegirl commented on the phenomenon of Canada fandom:

So back when I first got into DS fandom and was reading everything I could get my hands on, starting out in the archive and moving on to recs pages, I noticed a definite trend: that a ton of people who wrote and/or recced Due South fic also recced what seemed to me this random thing called Hard Core Logo. I had never even heard of it, so how could it be a fandom, and why the hell was something about two rock n roll guys who spit and swore and had dirty, rough, kind of mean sex connected with the fandom with the Mountie? I was perplexed.

And I am here with you today to talk about

Because, see, I hadn't yet realized that when you get into Due South as a fandom, you almost inevitably get into Canada as a fandom. That Hard Core Logo was the next step for a lot of people. Because: Callum, sizzling hot even as he pretends to play the guitar so very badly. And then there's Hugh Dillon! And they are so - gay. So very, very gay together.

So you start thinking, hey, what else has Callum been gay in? And then you find Twitch City (which was another confusing thing I had seen on so many Due South rec pages), and you get some more Callum, and a leetle bit of Hugh, and oh, who's this Don McKellar guy? So you go hunting for more (gay) Callum and maybe some Don McKellar, and you get Last Night, with its canonical boykissing.

And you think, hi, Canada. We should go steady.[8]

Canada fandom gained momentum on LiveJournal with several communities dedicated to it, including:

In early 2006 two locked media sharing LJ communities were created, one secret and focused specifically on Due South adjacent content and one less secret and focused on Canadian television generally. The C6D community was international and took a completionist's approach to 6 degrees media viewing at the same time that affordable DVD releases were not available for even some of the better known titles, let alone one-off guest appearances on obscure Canadian TV.

A 2007 post in ds_snippets states that although "[t]here are lots of great due South and 6 degrees comms out there" they wanted a place for short fic.[9]

In August 2007, fans started a weekly movie viewing/chat, called simply "the C6D thing."[10][11] As of December 2009, the C6D thing was still going on a semimonthly basis.[12] During the 2010s Due South Fandom Renaissance tumblr fans also held C6D viewing parties.[13]

Source Fandoms

C6D source fandoms that already have a following are considered part of C6D, but the focus is mainly on the artists that are central to the C6D fandom. For instance, Battlestar Galactica is considered to be a C6D fandom, but fanworks tend towards the Leoben-centric (Callum Keith Rennie's character).

Television

Battlestar Galactica (2003) Bliss
Blood Ties Californication
Chasing Rainbows Civil Wars
Da Vinci's Inquest due South
Durham County Flashpoint
Higher Ground Kingdom Hospital
La Femme Nikita Murder On Her Mind
My Life As A Dog Quality Of Life
ReGenesis Rent-A-Goalie
Shattered Slings and Arrows
Smallville Supernatural
Tales Of The City The Red Green Show
The Shield Tin Man
Twitch City Whiskey Echo

Film

Aspen Extreme Buried On Sunday
Blade: Trinity Blindness
Claire's Hat Cold Comfort
Curtis's Charm Dance Me Outside
Double Happiness eXistenZ
Falling Angels Flower & Garnet
For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down Frank's Cock
Getting Married In Buffalo Jump Gunless
H20 Hard Core Logo
Hard Core Logo 2 Last Night
Lucid Masterminds
Men With Brooms Men With Guns
Memento Murder Most Likely
Murder Scene/Seen Normal
Passchendaele Paris Or Somewhere
Picture Claire Pontypool
Purple Toast Slap Shot 2
The Invisible The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess
The Tracey Fragments The Trojan Horse
Torso Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
Trigger Unnatural And Accidental
Whale Music Whole New Thing
Wilby Wonderful X-Files 2
XXX's and OOO's

Other Media

  • Two Houses (album by Paul Gross and David Keeley)(1999)
  • Give The Dog A Bone (album by Paul Gross and David Keeley)(limited edition)(2001)
  • Love And Carnage (album by Paul Gross and David Keeley)(commercial edition of Give The Dog A Bone)
  • Headstones (Hugh Dillon's band)

Journal Communities

Conventions

The Muskrat Jamboree slash convention has a strong C6D focus, not only in its panels but in organized con games like "Canadian Pictionary" and in its Canadian-themed goody bags. The concom's explanation for the Muskrat itself? "It's a Canadian thing." [14]

Fanwork Examples

Fannish Resources

Canadian Actor RPF

A related fandom, also sometimes called C6D or C6D RPS, is for RPF of the actors. This fandom is sometimes just called Canadian Actor RPF/RPS, but this descriptor is ambiguous as there are Canadian actors who have not worked on TV or film projects associated with C6D, such as David Hewlett. akamine_chan wrote a fandom overview in 2010 for crack_van.

RPF is allowed in some of the C6D journal comms, including c6d weekly (with the caveat that "you must send a notice to the moderator"), c6d_universe, and ds_snippets. It is not allowed on ds_6degrees. ckr_actorfic, a locked comm for Callum Keith Rennie RPF, was created in July 2005. rpf_canada, another locked comm for all Canadian actor RPF (not just C6D) was created in 2007, but proved less popular. Both rpf_canada and ckr_actorfic had moderated membership and statements warning away people who disapproved of RPF.

Callum Keith Rennie, Hugh Dillon, and Paul Gross are the most popular characters in the AO3 tag for Canadian Actor RPF (C6D) (only 50 works total in 2021). The larger Canadian Actor RPF tag listed Callum Keith Rennie as the most popular character in early 2021, but by 2022 he had been displaced by Keanu Reeves.[17]

References

  1. ^ "omphale23's Livejournal C6D poll". Retrieved October 7, 2008.
  2. ^ "ds_snippets - Community Profile". Archived from the original on 2009-09-15. Retrieved October 7, 2008.
  3. ^ "c6d_weekly - Community Profile". Archived from the original on 2009-02-01. Retrieved October 2, 2008.
  4. ^ "c6d_music - Community Profile". Archived from the original on 2008-02-16. Retrieved October 2, 2008.
  5. ^ "ds_c6d_bigbang - FAQ". Retrieved March 29, 2022.
  6. ^ "sga_6degrees - profile".
  7. ^ ADMIN POST : On Topic Posts, Archived version, posted by cesperanza 25 January 2005. (Accessed 11 January 2021.)
  8. ^ The Wonder of Six Degrees by brooklinegirl, Archived version, archive.vn, 24 April 2007 (Accessed 16 January 2021.)
  9. ^ slidellra. ds_snippets rules and discussion, Archived version, posted 29th-Jan-2007
  10. ^ sisterofdream's LiveJournal post Concerning primarily the viewing parties (Accessed October 2, 2008)
  11. ^ also mentioned in ds_noticeboard on 26 August 2007: Viewing Party, Archived version
  12. ^ sisterofdream. The C6D Chat, Archived version, posted to ds_noticeboard 4 December 2009. (Accessed 10 January 2021.)
  13. ^ comment by thisaintbc in a dreamwidth post by aethel, 18 January 2021. (accessed 8 May 2021)
  14. ^ "Mj faq 2007".
  15. ^ AO3 News: Celebrating 40,000 Fandoms on the AO3, Archived version. Published: 2020-11-11
  16. ^ AO3 C6D searchability improvement!, Archived version, posted by sageness to ds_noticeboard, 18 September 2012.
  17. ^ Canadian Actor RPF - Works, Archived version, AO3 fandom tag. Accessed 5 March 2022. See also 28 January 2021 Wayback Machine capture.
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