I wish I had been on the list during its glorious days. I only joined around 2002.

>If you set yourself "ACK" (for "acknowledge") before posting, you will get an automated reply post telling you as each of your story posts successfully goes through to the list, and this post will also note to exactly how many listmembers your story part was sent.<

I wasn't aware that function existed! Where do I set it?

These steps are based on Don's "List Gardener" page. If I remember correctly, setting a subscription "ack" (for "acknowledgment") works just like setting "digest" and "nomail" and so on:

• Open a blank email. Leave the subject line blank.


• Address the email to listserv@lists.psu.edu.


• In the body of the email, write "set fkfic-l ack" (without the quotation marks).


• Send the email.

Another handy listserv command is "query fkfic-l." It returns a list of your current subscription settings.

Useful. I didn't know that, either.

"I wish I had been on the list during its glorious days. I only joined around 2002."

And I only joined in 2004. At that time, people were already commenting on how little traffic there was by comparison with yesteryear. Yet, to me, there was plenty of discussion: at least four or five comments daily, and sometimes enough to require a second digest. Over the years I've seen a gradual decline: I still remember the shock when we started to have the odd day when no posts were made. In the last couple of years, though, the decline has become drastic; and sometimes a week or more will go between comments.

Then someone will post something that produces a flurry. So clearly it's not that people—at least, those still on the list (however few they may be compared with once-upon-a-time)—lack an inherent interest in Forever Knight. Rather, no one is starting discussions the way they used to.

I think, when it comes to talking about the episodes and characters, history and setting, a lot of people have that "been there, done that" feeling. How many times, after all, can you drum up interest in a bitch-fest about "Last Knight"?

It's not unconnected with the lack of new people on the list. Last summer, a woman started work at the store where I get my comics (alas, soon to close); and she and her boyfriend had just discovered Forever Knight, which they were slowly working through on DVD. We had qutie a few discussions about the show. It was fascinating to hear her reactions to the changes in Season Three, and recently to "Last Knight". Apart from anything else, she responded very much as fans back in 1995 and 1996 did: it was all new to her; and so her emotions were involved, and she got quite impassioned.

On FORKNI-L, so much has been hashed over and over by the same few people. On FKFIC-L, so many have lost their inspiration and moved on to write in other fandoms. (Or just moved on.)

I know perfectly well that I do all my wiki work at least in part to find out what went on back in the "glorious days". I wasn't there, either.

I agree with you that the increasing lack of traffic on ForKni-L is probably due to the fact that almost everything about the episodes has already been discussed. And the list rules are rather limited when it comes to the discussion of other topics unless they're related to FK. So I'm afraid most believe that the topic is exhausted.

Most people have moved on to other fandoms. In fact, in a world where real-life relationships rarely last longer than 7 years, it is even rarer to keep devoted to one and the same fandom like few of us do. Two more years and I'll be able to celebrate my 20th anniversary of discovering FK!

In that context I find it interesting what keeps us connected to the fandom. There're those who watched FK because they like vampires or the supernatural in general. Many of these have moved on to more recent shows dealing with that subject.

Then there're the die-hards who watch FK just for its own glory. I don't think these will ever stray, but they seem to be only a handful.

What keeps me connected to the show is my interest in other works of the actors. So there's always something new to watch while at the same time I can come back to the basics and rewatch FK over and over again.

But I digress.

How wonderful to meet people who have just discovered FK and experience the novelty of it. I sometimes try to regain that feeling by watching episodes after a longer period of not watching FK. However, I rarely manage to abstain for a very long period. LOL

>"There're those who watched FK because they like vampires or the supernatural in general. ... Then there're the die-hards who watch FK just for its own glory. ... What keeps me connected to the show is my interest in other works of the actors."

As someone who is interested in neither vampires nor actors, I might mention here that many fans (like me) originally came to FK for love of historical fiction, or police mysteries, or morality plays, rather than the supernatural. (Years ago, it was a bit of a running joke how very many listmembers were librarians.)

It's unfortunate, in my opinion, that the Region 1 DVDs were packaged to display the vampire theme overwhelmingly, with barely a hint of the other, equally important, story elements. This packaging recruits new viewers only among those interested in vampires, rather than history, mystery and metaphysics. FK reduced to its vampirism isn't FK at all...

Until Forever Knight, I would have said that I had little to no interest in vampires—or horror fiction in general. It's precisely because FK isn't classic horror that I like it. It was originally touted more as a sort of paranormal cop show (which figures, given that it was part of the Crimetime after Primetime line-up), which was why I tried it out.

It's always annoyed me, too, that most of the publicity for the show has focused on the fangs'n'blood side of the vampire component of the show. As far as the vampires go, "history, mystery and metaphysics" (as you put it) account for a large part of the appeal to me—and character accounts for the rest. And, minute for minute, it's a cop show first!

>As someone who is interested in neither vampires nor actors, I might mention here that many fans (like me) originally came to FK for love of historical fiction, or police mysteries, or morality plays, rather than the supernatural<

Yes, of course I'm aware of that. That's what I tried to sum up in >for its own glory<. FK has so many layers that attract viewers that I found it hard to list them all, but apparently you've managed to do just that. :)

The original appeal for me to tune into the show was immortality. James Mason had been one of my favourite actors at that time (he still is) and "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" was my favourite movie. It's basically about the Flying Dutchman (James Mason) who searches for the woman that loves him unconditionally in order to resolve his curse. He finds her in Pandora (Ava Gardner) in Spain in the 1930s. The movie has historic flashbacks, romance, sacrifice and other similar elements that I found later in FK.

For the same reason I enjoyed Highlander, but I cannot say why this didn't stick with me as FK did.

>It's unfortunate, in my opinion, that the Region 1 DVDs were packaged to display the vampire theme overwhelmingly

They did a bit better with the region 2 DVDs that show at least some photos from the cop element.


Edited at 2012-01-25 09:07 pm (UTC)

Oh, yes! I knew that your "for its own glory" covered them all. I just wanted to specify, in case anyone else comes along and reads.

I'd never heard of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. I'll add it to my list of movies to check out from my local public library. :-) That sounds like the same trope used in the novel Forever and the television seriesNew Amsterdam, compounding elements of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy-tale with the "Flying Dutchman"/"Eternal Hunter"/"Wandering Jew"/"Fourth Wiseman" legend structure of immortality as a curse... William Godwin's novel St. Leon, in which the protagonist is burdened with the Philosopher's Stone, leaps to my mind, but I'm strange like that. :-)

Indeed, New Amsterdam reminded me very much of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, especially when they started quoting Omar Khayyam in one episode, who is also featured in the movie. A pity that this series was cancelled before it could fully develop its potential.