I have just joined the new oldschoolfic community, which is dedicated to out-of-production fandoms, including FK.  Sign-ups for their first ficathon close on 05/20/08, assignments by 05/25/08, defaults by 06/20/08, and posting by 07/06/08.  As the fairly generous writing timeline includes some holidays, I am very seriously considering playing, but I need to ask the moderator just a couple of questions first (the instructions say that the prompts are "pairings," so I'm not clear on whether gen is wanted).

The fandoms mentioned so far are listed, but there are no restrictions on out-of-production fandoms -- except that they may not include presently uber-dominant fandoms that need no help to keep going strong (like LotR and HP) -- so if you don't see it yet, ask for it, and see if you spark someone's memory.

But mostly just ask for and offer FK, right? ;-)

On Friday, abby82 posted a selection of FK colorbars.  I'm not familiar with this genre of fan art -- anyone want to fill me in? -- but her FK ones are a great deal of fun.  (And they remind me that I need to get back to my quotations concordance project one of these days.)

Additionally, it turns out that Medie extended her comment-fic fest through midnight tonight (05/11/08), so you still have time to whip up an FK entry! ;-)  FK prompts here.  (I'm sorry I didn't know earlier, to pass the news on.)

The May recommendation-of-the-month went up Monday night, featuring Amanda's "Legacy" (2003), a worthy spin on the convention of Nick meeting a descendant of Natalie in an alternate future.  In this twist, the descendant learned about Nick at Natalie's knee, so she's the one with secrets, not him.  (The story reminds me just a little of "The Last Act" -- not the episode "Last Act," but Erica's final play.)

In April, fkfic-l saw two new stories posted:

• "Keeping it Together" (1 Part) by Ell H.
• "Starwort" (6 Parts) by me

In passing, I note that this May is the ninth anniversary of the recommendations project.  It is also, of course, twelve years since the first airing of "Last Knight."

I posted two contributions to medie's week-long "Because We're Awesome"/"About the Girls" comment-fic fete today:

• "La Ville-lumière," a graphic for the prompt "Janette : Paris"
• "Clearing the Air," a traditional drabble (100 words) for the prompt "Natalie and Tracy : Talk"

I spent all my spare moments this week chewing over the MBIAV drabble; by contrast, the Paris graphic came smoothly and quickly on Friday night.  I'm not sure whether I should send the drabble to fkfic-l, or compile a cycle of drabbles or something else to make it worth the list's time.

There are two hours yet to midnight Saturday (the end of the event) here in the Pacific time zone, and more yet in Alaska, and Hawaii, and west to the dateline.  So more FK contributions may appear.  At the moment, however, it seems that abby82's "Cutthroat Business" (for the prompt "Janette : Business") is the only other FK posting.

medie has posted her official "Because We're Awesome" ("About the Girls") drabble-a-thon venue here.  The game is: write and post theme-appropriate comment fiction (drabbles, vignettes and ficlets) inspired by the prompts through Saturday 05/03.  There is a huge volume of prompts in a wide variety of fandoms.  In the interest of encouraging Forever Knight inspiration, I'm pulling out the FK prompts for quick reference here.

( The FK and FK/Crossover Prompts )

wiliqueen revived the "DVD Commentary" meme, sharing her thoughts on her 2008 BT fanfiction "Five Times Coreen..." (story / with commentary) and her 1993 FK fanfiction "To Drive the Cold Winter Away" (story / commentary to come).  She asked for mine on my 2006 FK story "A Little Salsa Picante."

I put my commentary on my site this morning (story / with commentary).  Thank you, Wiliqueen, for reading the story, and for being curious for more!

Please bear with me through one last post here about this story.  I sent "Starwort" to fkfic-l early this week, then archived it on my own site.  It's my longest fanfiction in almost five years, and my first starring Fleur in almost seven.  My sincere thanks to those who helped it come into being, and those who have let me know that they read it!

	•	Title:	"Starwort"
	•	Length:	~14,000 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L April 20-22, 2008
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	While Fleur is pregnant with Andre, a stranger named Lacroix arrives uninvited at a hunting party.
	•	Setting:	1236, Artois
	•	Characters:	Fleur, Lacroix, Original Characters
	•	Quotation:	"How my ladies would laugh, to hear I had a successful flirtation and don't even remember it."

Via havocthecat, I learned that medie is holding a week-long "About the Girls" comment fic festival -- like the femme_fic ficathon on a different scale -- beginning Saturday.  (In fact, she's calling it a "drabble-a-thon," which charmingly conveys the scale, but I'm old-school enough to define drabbles specifically as 100-word stories -- the haikus of fanfiction! -- so I thought you might get the idea better if I called it as I saw it.)

Two of you that I saw had already posted FK prompts there -- go abby82 and falcon_horus! -- and, encouraged by Havoc, I just joined you here.  Anyone else want to play?  I doubt I'm going to manage to participate -- timing, life, stuff -- but FK does have such magnificent characters to show off...

Medie is screening to hold her place as she compiles, so I thought I would also save mine here, for myself for reference.  ( Drabble-Sized Prompts )

Inserted 04/27/08: The official drabble-a-thon post is here.

I've begun posting "Starwort" to fkfic-l, which means it's really, truly done.  The list is still Broadway. ;-)  This incarnation of Fleur has made me think about those versions of the character that I've written so far, and those I have yet to try.  Of course references to Nick's sister pop up in most of my fanfiction, but in these pieces, she's present in her own voice:

2008	"Starwort"	Human Fleur
2001	"Grievances"	Meta Fleur
1998	"Fireweed"	Vampire Fleur
1998	"Whence the Truce"	Ghost Fleur
1996	"Billets Doux"	Epistolary Fleur

So what's next?  Not that my next story will necessarily feature Fleur, but I think I will not go seven years between again, either.  I have a small idea for a story with Ghost Fleur and Alyssa.  And I have ideas bursting out my ears for a parallel Vampire Fleur universe (not the same as in "Fireweed"), one of which I had the first glimpse in '96, but which never went anywhere past the first few chapters, because I thought of it as a novel I could never get all the way around (the murder mystery scenario is the hang-up).  I've recently come to think of it as a universe instead, and it has exploded like a seed pod.  I still need a solid cop-plot for the central present-day structure of the original story, though.

[04/20/08 6:04 PM: Edited to add links, by request.]

Just found a typo in the opening sentence of "Starwort" as posted to the ficathon.  Edited it immediately.  Covered in embarrassment.  No wonder only two people read it.  Aaaargh.

Inserted 04/23/08 11:23 PM:  Three more typos now rooted out.  After posting to fkfic-l.  Sigh.

Inserted 05/12/08 04:51 PM:  And another one.  C'mon typos!  Come out and face me!  ;-)

wiliqueen revived the "DVD Commentary" meme, and shared commentaries on her classic Forever Knight fanfiction "Color of the Night" (pure story / commented-upon) (second-ever entry in the recommendations project, by the way), and on a stirring portion of her recent Blood Ties fanfiction "Five Times Coreen Fennel Did Not Kiss Henry Fitzroy..." (pure story / commented-upon), and has generously promised me comments on one more FK scene to be named later, to boot.

Honoring the meme exchange, I hereby make a similar offer: pick any of my fanfiction (list), and I'll repost it with a "DVD commentary."  (However, I must add a caveat; if you choose a larger story -- especially one so big that I divided it into chapters or sections -- please choose just a scene, not the whole thing.  This is a little meme, not a giant project to consume the next several months, right? ~g~)

In other news, my last beta reader kindly came in on "Starwort," and I will make her adjustments -- she recommends a specific small new scene in the middle of the long conversation scene, among a few other tweaks -- and then start preparing the story for fkfic-l posting (that is, dividing it into <500-line ASCII posts wrapped at <60 characters-per-line and counting them; I love the list dearly and devotedly, but optimal list posting is both an art and a chore).

Icons.  My FK activity this week was creating a small flock of NatPack icons for wiliqueen.  I hope at least one strikes her fancy; any that do not catch her eye, I will recycle for general "up for grabs" consumption for any other icon-deprived NatPackers.  (I'll mark them so, when the time comes.)  I hope I'm building my icon-making skills as I go; it's a new craft, and I have a lot to learn!  In and around the new icons for wiliqueen, I also created just a few more for myself, including this (Gratuitous Icon Post!) one with Natalie, Nick and the Caddie from "The Fix."

Fanfiction.  Writing "Starwort" (that long Fleur story) for the ficathon was a bit of a "high," and I'm experiencing a low in its wake.  A friend who did not have time to beta before the ficathon is taking a look at the story now, and will let me know what I can fix in her areas of expertise before taking the story home to fkfic-l.  Trying to figure out where to begin a completely different new story, and not succumb to the morass of not writing for fun (only work), I'm playing with hearts_blood's request for a NCIS/FK crossover for her birthday; we'll see.

Analysis.  The last forkni-l digest I read came on March 22.  That's not far behind, by my standards these days, but there was this one post that week to which I would really like to respond -- at length, citing a whole alphabet soup of episodes, in the good old way -- but I can't well do so until I catch up on all the digests since, to see if someone has beaten me to the punch.  Ah, well.  Key thought?  The thing the poster assumed is true, well, it appears only in Lacroix's dialogue, and only after first season.  This leaves the very strong interpretive possibility that, as Nick and Janette's dialogue in the first season explicitly contradicts Lacroix on this point, Lacroix is either mistaken or lying, and either way, most probably trying to manipulate Nick!  Ah, well. :-)

I'm pleased to announce that when the femme_fic "We Love Female Characters" ficathon queue released late Friday night, the line-up boasted two FK stories!  (I admit that I was simultaneously grateful at that many and disappointed at that few, but I knew perfectly well that it was a wildcard in this game.  I can be angstily ambivalent -- I am, after all, a Knightie. ~g~)

The two FK contributions are:

• "Starwort" by me.  Features Fleur, Lacroix and a small crew of supporting original characters, plus references to Nick, Janette and more.  Written to a prompt by falcon_horus.  Will go to fkfic-l and on my website later this month.
  
• "Could They Choose Between" by havocthecat.  Features Janette, Natalie and Nick, with references to Grace and Schanke.  Written to a prompt by amilyn.  I hope Havoc will choose to share this one with fkfic-l in the future, too.

Of course there's a lot of very nice non-FK fanfiction, but this is my FK blog, so I'll leave that for you to discover (try the by-fandom index).

batdina posted an icon meme on Friday, and agreed to play it with me.  Would you like to join in?

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick up to four of your icons.
2. Make a post of your own (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts, in a spreading spiral of icon squee!

( Batdina selected my Tracy, Natalie and IB icons. )

I mentioned that the retrospective was over, so yes, indeed, this is a new one!  The idea crept up as I was getting ready for church on Good Friday; I wrote it that night.  This is the second-to-shortest FK piece I have ever posted, so perhaps much_madness will consider it another reply to her nudge for "ficlets."

	•	Title:	"Pro Terra Sancta"
	•	Length:	~1,200 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L March 23, 2008
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	On Good Friday, Schanke inadvertently reminds Nick of the Crusades, and Natalie notices.
	•	Setting:	1993 Toronto, Stonetree's Precinct
	•	Characters:	Nick, Natalie, Schanke
	•	Quotation:	"I pointed out that we indispensable public servants don't all get the four-day weekend that schoolgirls and saleswomen do, but did they listen to me?"

With April Fools in mind, the FK recommendation-of-the-month project features McLisa's caper, "To Each Hiss Own" (1994), a response to the "Put down the snake and we'll talk" challenge.  One of the things I enjoy about this little lark is considering it in light of when it was written: the summer before second season, as the long hiatus following the original cancellation wound down to the happy close of renewal, when rumors about a new captain and precinct were blister-your-fingers hot.

In March 2008, these new stories graced fkfic-l:

• "Embodiment of Faith" (4 Parts) by volta1228
  
• "Pro Terra Sancta" (1 Part) by me
  
• "Lamb Chop" (1 Part) by hearts_blood (AF: I did look on your site for a linkable copy...?)

It is good to see new fiction on the list!  Even when I'm behind in reading, I am so happy to see it post.

So the first thing I did after submitting my "We Love Female Characters" ficathon entry to the happy limbo of the moderated queue over at femme_fic was to switch out the image on my home desktop.  For two months, I've been looking at the characters who star in that particular story -- screenshots and manipulations at home, a symbol at work -- and it's time for a change!  I popped up a favorite from the tag of "Feeding the Beast" (image via NT's esteemed Knightwatchman), with Nick, Natalie and Schanke looking at his canvas -- Schanke pontificating, Nick credulous, and Natalie skeptical.

Didn't we use to have a term for the three of them together, an equivalent to the "Fang Gang" for the other character triad?  I can't seem to remember it.

I'm going over my femme_fic ("We Love Female Characters") ficathon story draft one more time today, trying for as much polish as I can achieve before posting to the community this weekend.  As part of that, I've just transcribed the key dialogue from those episodes on which the story most draws, including every word ever spoken by my favorite neck-of-the-week, the most canonically pertinent guest character we ever received (such that I am joking by lumping her into that category, naturally).  The transcriptions below are exact; I did not omit even those lines that make me throw rolled-up socks at the screen, and you know these episodes have their share of those!  But I love them anyway, as shown by the 14,000-word draft continuing them that I'm scrubbing right now, and striving to make evoke these very lines.

If I've written the story well, no one will need to rewatch any episodes in order to understand it.  But reviewing FK canon is always a delight, right? ;-)  I will get these quotations properly sorted into my FK Concordance after the ficathon story is on its way.  (Gracious, but transcribing is so much easier with the DVDs than it was with tapes!)

Transcribed excerpts, in reverse chronological order:

( Crazy Love ) ( Fallen Idol ) ( Be My Valentine ) ( Near Death )

Happy Easter!  With this installment, we come to the end of my little fanfiction retrospective.  From now on, it's new or nothing!  (Unless I retype two or three dusty 'zine properties, perhaps.)

In December, much_madness challenged me to produce something short on a deadline, noting that she enjoys vignettes and "ficlets," and that I rarely write them.  She's right.  I have a tough time letting FK scenarios go when they're still small.  In reply to her, and inspired by something wiliqueen said while analyzing Blood Ties, I managed this:

	•	Title:	"Steamer Trunk Space"
	•	Length:	~1,400 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L February 7, 2008
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Between the scenes of "Father's Day," Janette packs for the trip in pursuit of Nick.
	•	Setting:	1925 Paris
	•	Characters:	Janette, Lacroix
	•	Quotation:	"Prudence often dimmed and drifted, when it came to Nicolas."

I'm two weeks behind on reading forkni-l digests.  This is ordinary, and nothing at all compared to how far behind I am on fkfic-l.  The thing is, I've finally learned that I don't need to reply on forkni-l; I can lurk.  (No, really, I can! This isn't fkspoilr days. ~g~)  But on fkfic-l, I feel very responsible to offer some sort of minimum feedback on every piece I read, no matter what, so I put off reading until I know I can make time for feedback as well.  It's a vicious circle, spiraling nastily from an attempt to create a virtuous circle.  Letters-of-comment can be infinitely frustrating to write in ways acceptable to fandom, but they're also the indispensable fuel for the fire of more stories in an out-of-production fandom.  If you don't tell someone you're reading her stories, she may not know anyone is reading her stories, and she may therefore not write any more stories.

And we must have more stories.

Did you know that all twenty-two first-season FK episodes are now available, individually, for download on Amazon unbox?  I found out this week, when I sent a season as a gift.  This should be very convenient for anyone who misplaces a DVD, or who wants to carry an episode handily on a player of some sort.

Speaking of of the FK DVDs, I've been thinking again of taking a thin-tip Sharpie and writing the episode titles on each disk.  Highlander, among many other series, managed to come out with the episode titles printed; I can't imagine why FK didn't -- though of course I'm still deliriously grateful for the DVDs, after so long supposing they'd never come.  (The first season DVDs didn't arrive until October 2003, you know, more than seven years after cancellation.)

I can puzzle through the numbered (not titled) DVDs from memory for most of first and third seasons, even now, as the order on the disks is the order in which the episodes aired, and with which we lived for all the years without professional recordings.  But oh! Second season!  For example, I know the production number for "Crazy Love" is "13" but, to me, it's the finale of season two, not something in the middle.  Season two originally aired in nothing like the production order we see on the DVDs, and this makes an interpretational difference I'm still trying to wrap my mind around.  A Raven friend once said that she didn't care whether season two ends on "Crazy Love" (aired order) or "Blood Money" (production order), because both end with Nick in Janette's arms.  However, I think it does matter.  In my imagination, it's still "Crazy Love" that moves Janette to leave, not "Blood Money."  I see the arguments for "Blood Money," as the milder of the two, better supporting the eventual explanation in "The Human Factor" flashbacks.  But Nick's failing to visit the Raven for months (cf. "Black Buddha, Part 1") has always seemed to me supported by the rawness and guilt of "Crazy Love."  I've been meaning to write a story about that for ages...

Ah, well.  The immortal DVDs trump mortal aired order, and here we are.  In need of episode titles handwritten across the DVD labels.

I began the first draft of this story from Nick's perspective, and then started over again from Natalie's to find it worked better, though entirely differently.  The coda from Lacroix's perspective wasn't on my outline; it just appeared, as Lacroixian things sometimes do.

If this weren't a retrospective, I wouldn't have identified the voices like that, because my hope was for the reader to speculate, for the first few paragraphs, that it is Janette.  But of course the character list below shows that Janette isn't here.  I'm wary of detailed headers for that very reason (spoilers) and I'm glad fkfic-l still does not require them.  That preference seems to be my old-fashioned oddity, though, doubtless because there is ever so much more fanfiction than there used to be -- which is a good thing; don't get me wrong! -- and people in more active fandoms need more ways of sorting through it all.

	•	Title:	"Last Minutes"
	•	Length:	~3,100 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L October 24, 2007
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	At a wedding reception, Natalie ensures Nick's secret is kept.
	•	Setting:	c.2011
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Lacroix, Urs, Serena, Lily Toeffler, Catherine Barrington, Others
	•	Quotation:	"If most vampires persist in thinking of psychokinetic hypnotism as a magic spell, it's no wonder they don't use it to its full potential."

This is not a crossover.  It's a parody.  But it has a smattering of parallel spoilers for the third season of the revived Doctor Who, because I inflicted on Nick and his Professor When show all the spoilers I was unable to duck in real life.

Our beloved brick is so good for this kind of humor, isn't he?  I had almost forgotten!

	•	Title:	"Professor When"
	•	Length:	~3,700 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L on August 30, 2007
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	It seems everyone has seen the new season of Nick's favorite show -- except him.
	•	Setting:	Second season
	•	Characters:	Nick, Lacroix, Schanke, Janette, Merlin, Natalie, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Nick sighed. Putting away killers to atone for his sordid past was all fine and good, but no one should have to work on premiere night."

For March, the FK recommendation-of-the-month project features Dorothy's novel "Evidence" (1998), set shortly after "Trophy Girl."  The Reese subplot (in and around a serial-killer cop plot, Renaissance flashbacks and some Natalie psychology) makes me think again that as Dorothy is most often publicly praised for her N&N romance content, her spot-on rendering of Reese is perhaps an underappreciated gift to the fandom.

In February 2008, fkfic-l happily saw these two new stories posted.

• "What Would Happen" (an FK/Smallville crossover, adult) (1 Part) by abby82
  
• "Steamer Trunk Space" (a Janette vignette) (1 Part) by me

At least, I presume it was happily.  I was happy at the advent of new fiction, even though one of the stories was my own.  I would be happier if there were more, always.  Fandom does not live by discussion alone.

This retrospective is rapidly catching up with me, as we come to "Better Late," written just last summer.  I have only three more stories from then to now to list.  Good thing I have a new one underway!

In fact, "Better Late" is not, in all ways, quite as new as last summer.  I first drafted a version of it in 2002; it was from Nick's perspective, shorter, and more conventional.  My perceptive beta-readers didn't like it.  So I set it aside, and did not seriously pick it up again until spring 2007.  In addition to being from Natalie's perspective, the final version has flashbacks, and a presence by Lacroix, that were nowhere in the original.  I believe it's stronger for the changes.  I'm bemused that it took me so long to grow into a capacity for those improvements.

	•	Title:	"Better Late"
	•	Length:	~6,100 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L on July 30, 2007
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Natalie suspects more behind a change in their daughter's custody arrangements than her ex-husband Nick has said.
	•	Setting:	2012 Toronto
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Lacroix, Others
	•	Quotation:	"One reason of many for not telling Joanie had been to keep her innocent by the Enforcers' code if they ever came for Natalie and Nick.  Silence was safety."