You have to understand that Forever Knight was not my first fandom. That dubious honor probably belongs to Star Trek, or Star Trek: the Next Generation, both of which I'd attended conventions for long before FK went on the air in 1993. It isn't even the first fandom where I discovered fanfic (Quantum Leap, Beauty & the Beast) or the first one I wrote fanfic for (Real Ghostbusters in 1991 - but that's a whole different bibble). It isn't the first fandom I participated in on-line; I was on the Prodigy X-Files, MST3K, and Kung Fu: the Legend Continues boards just a bit before I discovered Forever Knight had become a series. So it wasn't the flush of discovery that sucked me into this so deeply, the way it does with many fans when they first find out that hey, someone else gets obsessed with TV shows and likes to write about them too! They like the ones I like! Let's talk about them for hours and write a million stories and get really silly together!
It wasn't even solely the quality of the show, which was... uh, erratic. Lizbet said it best: "There was just something... hypnotic (if you'll pardon the use of the phrase < g >) about the whole show. It wasn't style over substance, but somehow the style became the substance, in a not-insulting way. It was like a very vivid dream, the kind you have when you've got 102 temperature and are way doped up on Nyquil, where nothing needs to make sense and all the colors are darker and richer, the stakes are higher, and every choice could be the last."
Yeah, like that. *Exactly* like that.
When I compare the best FK episodes to Buffy, or Angel, I can see huge, huge flaws:
not to mention the ending. Which we'll get to in a bit.
And yet, some of the stuff that made it mediocre was what made it great, when I was in the online fandom. Because lack of continuity can translate into an opportunity to set it right, in fanfiction. Because character assassination by the writers of the show usually inspires really good fiction from the fans, who have to either justify, negate, or qualify a bad episode. Because any kind of melodrama, if done right--- and the producers did it right more often than they did it wrong--- will stir up strong feelings, either to mock it or identify with it.
Forever Knight had a talented cast, incredible direction, an incredibly intriguing premise, great mood music, and good locations and settings going for it. The world --- Nick Knight's world, the world of an 800-year-old vampire trying to atone, desperately wanting to become human again, trying to fit into the modern crime-ridden world as a cop --- *worked*. The scripts, cumulatively speaking, didn't. The plots frequently (not to put too fine a point on it) sucked. But taken individually, there was wit and poignancy and a struggle for redemption in the show's episodes, and that makes up for a lot of sins.
All of which I thought was a lot of fun when the show premiered. And so did a lot of other people. Again, compared to Buffy the show wasn't that great--- but that's not fair. This is pre-TV Buffy, post-Movie Buffy, when the best thing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Donald Sutherland as Merrick. This is post-"Interview with a Vampire" and "Lestat" publication, but before the movie, which you either loved or hated. The last vampire show before this was the kiddie-compromised "Dracula: the Series." Or maybe "Dracula 1977", if you want to go back further to a real drama. Any fantasy, vampire, or other occult fan who stumbled across this show found a lot to like in it; it was a regular fix of the fantastic.
The writers mocked the vampire mythos as often as they worshipped it, which made everything go down easier. For every over-the-top "Give in to your true nature, Nicholas" we had to put up with from Lacroix, there was an "Immortality is no excuse not to floss" from Nick, or a "He is a wolf, they are *poodles*" from Janette, or "Did you just think to yourself, 'Oh, today would be a good day to spontaneously combust?'" from Natalie. The flashbacks, often done at surreal 45-degree angles, were as engrossing in telling Nick's backstory as the present-day adventures of Nick the Homicide Cop, and sometimes they were better. Fred Mollin's music pervaded everything, like a modern-day opera, and sold the scenes that were less-than-convincing better than the actors ever could. You couldn't believe some of what was happening on-screen, sometimes, but you *wanted* to.
So here was this really great (but intrinsically flawed) show, and I'd found these people who also liked it, through a listing at the back of a 'zine I bought.
And they were all crazier than I was. It was cool.
The FORKNI-L list wasn't one of the big Internet lists that are so common now; only eight years ago, most lists were privately hosted through paid or college web servers. FORKNI-L's server was at Penn State, and it was cranky, limited, and occasionally crashed (because the List Hampsters got tired of running on their little wheels). The list population never rose above about 800; but I think the percentage of regular posters was far higher than it is on most BB's or posting boards, or current Internet lists. Everyone was new to the internet, not everyone had the computer space to handle the volume of mail, not everyone had regular access to a web browser, so it was this little self-contained world with its own rules, even more hermetically sealed than the lists and BB's of today.
Man, I sound like such a geezer... but bear with me, I'm making a point. Flame wars erupted fairly regularly. There were factions supporting the different characters, not the different relationships on the show--- that came later-- and they were *passionately* supported. Everything was a bit simpler and less civilized than most mailing lists would put up with these days.
In this kind of atmosphere, you get to know people really, really well. Especially when they're all posting a lot. Especially when they're having Wars.
I won't go into the backstory on how the Wars evolved--- you can check _here_ (Perri's link) for that. Basically, they were a cross between a role-playing game, a writing game, and an open email party online, held about twice a year. Like working on a play, or building a house, or planning a bank robbery, or doing anything else horrendously difficult and complicated, everyone got to know everyone else even better, as they tried to write each other into a semi-thought-out storyline revolving around events in Toronto, dealing with Nick, Natalie, Lacroix, and the other characters of the show, as if they were real, and the fans could meet them. Coordinating imaginary events involved a timekeeper, an archivist, several faction heads, mercenaries, list in-jokes, an ultimate goal for each War, and the exhibitionist tendencies of an entire list to see who could get the silliest in the shortest period of time.
Yes, I know that sounds insane. And by the end of two weeks of this, most people playing were at least sleep-deprived enough to need a nice rest break with some good drugs. And I met some of my best friends this way. It's very easy to open up and talk with someone who has shared your play world; it's even easier if they're complimenting your writing, while you're being amazed at theirs. You start exchanging emails after the War about your stories, and theirs, and then you get onto what kind of music you like, and what kinds of books, and other TV shows you're addicted to, and before you know it, you have a new friend. I hadn't managed this in other fandoms, I think, because I wasn't on any lists that were that chatty, that imaginative, and that connected before. I'd made a couple of scattered friendships across the other boards, but I have no idea where those people are these days; the medium (posting boards) or the fandom simply didn't encourage it. Whereas I can pinpoint in cyberspace and the Real World where most of the FK fandom I hung out with five years ago are today.
I have to give props to Susan Garrett as one of the inspirations for this fandom; not only did she suck in a lot of people through the power of her gifted fanfiction writing, but she was also a mature and intelligent presence on the boards. She encouraged other people to write; and they encouraged others. She came up with the SOS-FK charity drive idea. If you read the FK Archives, the ratio of drek/good-writing is about the same as it is in other fandoms--- but the bar on what is good writing is a lot higher, and even the lesser writers got better with time, a lot faster than in other fandoms. The feedback from that list for fiction writing was incredible. The Wars helped, as a writing exercise, to get people to improve, to try, to open up about their own reactions and feelings, and as a result, we had a burgeoning group of optimistic, serious writers on that list.
There were crazy people there, oh yes. There were people who I executed in effigy in my stories, and ones I mocked in others. There were a couple people who drove everyone who read their posts freakin' insane. But as a whole, the FORKNI-L list was smart, articulate, funny, and fearless. If they hadn't been, I wouldn't have gotten as hooked as I was on the list and the show; my obsession would have burnt out when things started going downhill. Having fellow obsessed who could encourage me, who I respected, and who were willing to do strange things, kept the fire burning far longer than would otherwise have been possible. I don't know if the show just attracted a higher caliber of fan, or if so many people, having been sucked in through Susan Garrett, came with high expectations, and a wish to fulfill them. Or if the Wars just made everyone 'click' together easier. It's a question for an anthropologist, really.
Please understand that none of us --- well, okay, 99.99% --- were not confusing reality with fantasy. We knew the differences between real and unreal, we were just having fun stepping over the boundaries and playing jump-rope with the lines. We didn't want to be vampires. We didn't want vampires to be real. Most of us didn't even have any semi-lofty ambitions about visiting the set, meeting the actors, getting a walk-on, or having our spec script approved by James Parriott. We just liked to play make-believe in Nick's vampire-ridden Toronto. We had a proprietary (non-financial) interest in the place. It was our playground.
Which was why it hit so hard when the Powers That Be (non-Whedon version) decided to trash it.
As I said at the beginning, FK had continuity problems, it had character problems, it had plot problems. For the first two seasons, these were bearable, because as bad as things sometimes got for Nick --- as discouraged as he became in his quest for humanity --- there was usually a spark of light somewhere to keep him, and the audience, believing in a happy ending. His friendship with his homicide partner, Schanke; his friendship/romance with Natalie; his relationship with Janette, his lover/sister/friend for over 800 years. Hope, in other words.
A lot of Nick's struggles were reflected in the history of the show. By mid-1995 FK had been almost cancelled twice, going off the air for a year in between first and second seasons, only to be revived due to fan letter-writing and campaigning. I missed both of those resuscitations, but by the time the third campaign rolled around, there was already an engine of appeals in place. Roswell and Pretender fans may think they invented the internet-backed letter-writing campaign, along with tabasco sauce and Pez packages to show their support. FK had already done it before, sending Spam and other candygram packages to encourage renewals. So we thought we were hardened, ready for anything. And okay: maybe the struggles gave us another reason to identify with the show, too.
At the beginning of third season, the show changed networks, going from syndication to USA, and gaining a new level of upper management. Then the Powers That Be killed off Schanke in an airplane crash, and Janette left town without saying good-bye, leaving her bar, the Raven, in Lacroix's hands. Okay. Ow. For Nick, and the audience. The Powers That Be simultaneously brought on two other characters to fill in the slots, and possibly appeal to a 'younger' demographic--- something which alienated many of the fans, even though most decided to make the best of it. Tracy Vetter became Nick's partner, and Javier Vachon typified a 'slacker' vampire in lust/friendship with her. We adjusted, grew to kind of like the new characters while still missing the old ones.
Then, in November 1995, they announced they were going to cancel the show. Without showing the last six episodes.
That. Bit.
I jumped into the campaign to help Save FK too --- I wrote letters, I wrote fanfic, I followed the real-world campaigns via email. Several list delegates went to NATPE, the National Advertising for Television (and something else I can't remember) convention, in Las Vegas in January of 1996, and distributed flyers and information to the advertisers there, stating that the demographics and ratings that had led to its cancellation were skewed (which they were) and that FK deserved to be saved. (This is the so-called Sixth List War, the one that took place in Real Life). This impressed a lot of people. We raised over $20,000 to charity, and donated it to Pediatric AIDS, in the name of Forever Knight---- the first fan charity to do that in an SOS (Save Our Show) situation. List members came up with vows and Lent-type sacrifices to the TV gods, in order to keep FK alive.
Here's where it got ugly.... The Powers That Be did not want us to save the show. They had cheaper, more profitable things to spend their money on (like La Femme Nikita). The producer, reportedly, did not want us to save the show (he had a network deal--- one which only lasted him a year). The actors may have wanted to have the show (and their jobs) saved, but after almost four years of yo-yo-ing around, they couldn't have wanted it *very* badly. We were a very, very savvy fandom. We knew from ratings, from NATPE, from consumer power. And we basically decided to keep campaigning, and not let up. We felt we deserved those last six eps, and a renewal, and we were not going to shut up about it just because the people holding our show hostage wanted to cut its throat. We had been insulted at the beginning of Season 3 with an increase in T&A programming when the show went to USA; we had been betrayed when they killed off and sent away two of our long-standing characters. Being told that we hadn't delivered on our part of the TV-show-consumer deal, as the audience, made us very mad. And we were vocal about this, oh yes.
We had to take what we could get, though; after a lot of effort, all that work, they only gave us those last six eps. We weren't happy about it--- we weren't satisfied--- but we tried to be philosophical. It was okay. They weren't going to renew it, but they were going to give us an ending. Closure. A good-bye.
Wow, did they ever.
In the course of the last episodes, they:
* Killed off a well-liked recurring character, Screed (a friend of Vachon's) * Brought back, re-humanized, killed off, and re-vamped Janette against her will, leaving her (and the audience) bitter and alienated * Killed off *another* recurring character, Urs, in a stupid way for being in the wrong place at the wrong time * Killed off Vachon, again, wrong place, wrong time --- and tragically, they made Tracy kill him in order to end his pain and save her life * Killed off Tracy, in a stupid shooting incident that shouldn't have happened * Left us with the sight of Lacroix lifting up a shillelaigh to stake Nick, at Nick's request, because he'd accidentally drained Natalie to the point of death, and wanted to die with her. The last image we saw from FK was a sun going down, as Lacroix recited the final lines of "Romeo and Juliet."
Oh, *thank you*, Powers That Be, for closure. Yes, let us rejoice. That was *exactly* the ending we were looking for, that we'd been holding out for, that we sat through three seasons of tormented angst and desperation for. Oh yeah.
The only bigger bloodbath in scifi TV history is Blake's 7, which, being British, always had the bitter and dark thing going on. The ending of Forever Knight was definitely a kiss-off to the fans.
And yet....
Honestly, when I look at Season 3, it all hangs together. Starting with killing off Schanke, and sending away Janette, Forever Knight just got darker and darker, and Nick lost more control, slipped farther into depression and the abyss with every episode. A Knightie Wallowing Death Spiral, to quote Cath. And Natalie's character was on the same bad road, although her integrity was gutted more viciously and pointlessly, and was thus harder to reconcile. Angst, despair, guilt, leading into more angst, leading into more stupid mistakes, more reckless actions, more alienation and loss. All of which is enjoyable if you believe that there's light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not a subway train come to smash you flat on the third rail of denial.
The hell of it is, it could've gone either way. They left the show, and the fans, with just enough hope for Nick (and the show) to hang on and keep believing, keep watching, keep crusading, even with all the signs and portents about what the ultimate outcome would be. Just like the very, very last image *could* have been the Very Bitter End, or... it could have been saved by a TV-movie, if that deal hadn't failed to materialize. They deliberately left us hanging. Just in case.
The Powers That Be Bite.
So not only did they end our show, they polluted our playground with the way they chose to end it. A lot (oh, a lot a lot a lot) of Last Knight fan fiction got written in the summer of 1996, denying, changing or softening the ending to the show. Some of it was funny, some of it was tragic, some of it was believable, some of it wasn't. Another War was scheduled, in order to save all the characters who had been killed off, and in that virtual reality, nobody died. Nobody ever died. (to quote the Cleopatras and Not Dead, Dammit! club members on the list)
I wrote some denial fic (_Consequences and Spare Me This_(link)). I played in the 8th War. I wrote a happy, silly, birthday fic thank-you for Susan Garrett called _My Evil Twin is a Vampire_(link). I started watching a fluffy, upbeat show called Due South (which had been semi-cancelled, and thus was safe, and couldn't hurt me again), putting a psychic bandage on the outraged feelings where FK had been.
If you're a fan, the show you love and share with your friends is your safe place; it's where you retreat in your head when real life is either too boring to stand or too hard to think about. Fans pay their bills, live their lives, have relationships, and have other hobbies. Most of us are grown-ups, and are not avoiding reality on a regular basis. But if you're really obsessing on a show, even temporarily, the characters become real to you; and it's a mental cushion against the unavoidable. To have that ripped away from you is gonna hurt, even if it's not a hurt you experience in your real world. If you're a fanfic-writing fan, it's where you practice your writing skills, it's where you analyze character development and portrayal, it's the thing you play with like a shiny toy, a tricycle to practice your imagination skills on. Having that poisoned is going to leave a bad mental aftertaste in your writing, too.
To finally put FK to rest in my head, I wrote Exiles. It took me eight months (August 1996 through March 1997) of steady, non-stop writing, excessive viewing of Due South, days of lost sleep, a million phone calls to Dee for plotting help, more phone calls to Cath for other plotting help, a couple thousand emails of betaing and encouragement, and when I was done, I had a 1.3MB monster of a crossover novel. I'd managed to extract Natalie from the emotional and physical mess the series left her in. I gave Janette some peace. I resurrected Vachon (because it was a silly way to die). I gave eulogies for Schanke, Tracy, Screed, and Urs. And while I didn't give Nick closure, I at least saved his stupid life. Lacroix... well, Lacroix I left alone (always the safest thing to do). I also managed to get Benton Fraser over his disastrous love affair with Victoria, and shanghai my beta-readers into the story under various aliases as a way of thanking them for helping me out.
After two month's worth of rewrites and publication stuff in 1998, I brought it out in 'zine form at MediaWest '98. It sold out. Yay. A lot of other people wanted to see Natalie happy too. No awards won, very little profit made, but just selling out, getting comment letters on it -- that was worth it.
So, FK gave me: friends who love writing and television and ongoing dramatic criticism as much as I do. Increased knowledge that I could write, write well, and that other people liked my writing. The concrete proof that I could finish something that was novel-length, if I put my mind to it. A whole sub-set of in-jokes that still make me smile, five years later. It gave me increased Internet and computer savvy, increased media awareness and criticism exposure, and it altered my fashion sense a bit, too (I still want most of Janette's wardrobe).
It has also made me permanently gun-shy of getting too attached to a TV show, or too optimistic about an SOS campaign. It made me cynical about the Powers That Be and their motives, which are not always as simple or as straightforward as financial gain or ratings. And despite all my writing that was inspired by it, I am still, somehow, slightly, edgily bitter about how the show ended. The scar tissue still pulls when it rains. Woulda, coulda, shoulda... had a happy ending.
I read the BB's and lists these days for other shows, and I find myself rolling my eyes at the more naive or intense fans, wanting to tell them my war stories. Tell them not to expect too much; to build their mental strongholds against the invasion of their playgrounds by the Powers, just in case. To not take it too much to heart, if their characters get hurt or used in a way they don't like. I want to tell them they've got it easy, compared to anyone who was a fan of Forever Knight.
Then I think that if they're lucky, they'll make friends and fight battles and tell stories that matter as much to them as ours did to us. And maybe they'll get to win. And I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone.
Back to the Flutterings / Back to the Chaos Horizon
