Life! (Not Immortality)

oldschoolfic, the ficathon for canceled fandoms, is back with a "Springtime Serenade."  This new game combines a "lyric wheel" (all prompts are song lyrics) with an exchange (you write to fulfill another player's request).

In response to the distortive non-player voting last time, their mod will create an eligible-fandoms list from past requests by people who have posted stories in the community (FK and HL should both be in).  As always, the minimum length is 1K words, but players may break that down (two 500-word stories, ten 100-word stories, etc.).

Schedule:

• 02/01-02/14: Submit lyric prompts.
• 02/15-02/29: Sign up (3 requests: 2 listed fandoms, 1 wild-card)
• 03/01: Assignments sent
• 03/30: Stories due

Unfortunately, oldschoolfic and rarewomen have the same due date this spring.  I'm already committed at Rarewomen.  However, there's a window between Rarewomen assignments arriving and Oldschoolfic sign-ups closing; if my Rarewomen assignment immediately clicks, such that I'm sure I'd finish early, I'll seriously consider playing Oldschoolfic, too.  So far, I've never missed an Oldschoolfic game.  I'd hate to break that streak.

According to the listserve's automatic acknowledgments of my recent stories, 247 people presently receive posts on fkfic-l.  That may be dispiriting, remembering the days of 2K+ subscribers; I've watched it drop over the years.  But, really, that's not at all bad for an old-fashioned email list celebrating an obscure television show canceled in 1996!

For anyone interested: On Posting to FKFic-L.

honor_reid has asked for recommendations of high-quality Nick/Natalie stories with endings that grant the characters, if not a happy-ever-after, at least an "ordinary-ever-after."  So many FK stories conclude sadly, bittersweetly, suddenly, or tucked back into canon that she'd appreciate directions to some more definitively hopeful endgames for her favorite couple.

I can think of some stories (listed below), but I bet that you all can think of many more!  After all, I'm a gen fan at heart; most of you are romance fans.  And where I lean IB and Les Mis, many of you are N&Ners!  So please pitch in, if you can.  And yes, please mention your own work, if it matches.

(I may harvest stories mentioned in comments for future recommendation-of-the-month use, so you know.)

( list with links )

When celli kindly beta-read "A Hunt by Any Other Name," my fandom_stocking Janette and Natalie stuck-in-an-elevator story, we chatted about the challenge of bringing those characters together.

The nature of Forever Knight keeps Janette and Natalie apart.  Whether we diagram the characters as a linear continuum, or overlapping circles, or atomic shells, the story structure puts Nick in the middle and Janette and Natalie to either side (with Lacroix and Schanke a step beyond them), representing Nick's different worlds, his dual nature.  Canon embodies some themes by physically anchoring Janette in her club and Natalie in her lab, while moving Nick between them (how much the club and the lab are respectively full of life and of death, and the thematic questions and reversals in that, is a fascinating topic of its own).

If I'm counting correctly, canon puts Janette and Natalie in the same scene in just 9 episodes (out of 70), for a total of 10-12 separate scenes (depending how you count scene interruptions).  They're together in the Raven 6 times, the loft 2, and once each at the morgue and a crime scene.  In aired order — which, in second season, is not production order, and not the order on the DVDs; grateful as I am for the DVDs, their order still irritates me — they are: ( list )

Did I forget any?

[Addendum: Per pj1228, I forgot "Close Call." It's now listed. Thanks!]

In December, hearts_blood offered "Kiss-Fic."  I requested "Forever Knight, Nick/Urs, the twelve days of Christmas, '95-'96."

Late last week, she treated me to an untitled ficlet (G, ~600 words) in reply.  "He let Urs sleep in his loft sometimes, when she got tired of the Raven."  I think I may be the only Les Miserables (i.e. Nick/Urs) partisan, so I am triply gladdened when generous people not only write FK, and for me, but with my favorite rare pairing!*  I am tickled by her tucked-in answer to how Urs, in "Ashes to Ashes," has Nick's door code.

(She also wrote a Nick/Natalie ficlet (G, ~300 words) for MysticalCat7.)

* Have you read Leela's spectacular Nick/Urs "Theory of Lost Things" (PG, ~3K words)? Go! Do! ♥