"Badlands"/"Better Days," Old Fanvids and Nick

The fkficfest/fkficfest prompts went out very late last night, and, just a little sleep deprived, all day I've been alternately giddily hopeful and heartburningly worried about the matches. If anyone received prompts that she would really rather not write, I hope that she reaches out. We're just so diverse in FK! The only taste that we all share is for this extraordinary show and its phenomenal fandom. Mystery, history and horror; adventure, romance and metaphor; dark, bright and red all over ;-) ... you'd hardly know that we were watching the same series!

In that spirit, I wanted to share a happy mistake that my MP3 player made recently, and what FK reflections it brought. For some reason, the gadget piled all of my many assorted "Greatest Hits" albums into one giant playlist, alphabetical by song title. I would never have put Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel and Bing Crosby together on my own, but it's actually the most delightful playlist ever! I'm loving it. By coincidence, however, alphabetical chance spins Springsteen's "Badlands" (1978) and "Better Days" (1992) right together, nothing between, and I keep hearing them as one song in two chapters: an anthem for first-season Nick and all of first-season FK. (Or perhaps it's first season and then the original hiatus that I think I hear?)

Part of my reaction comes straight from a "Badlands" FK fanvid that I'm very, very lucky to have on a VHS tape that I really need to dub to digital somehow before it goes the way of all celluloid. I'm sorry to say that I don't know who made the lovely vid. Dubbed and redubbed and passed around, if it ever had a title screen, it had lost it by the time it reached me. But I love it, and I imagine you would, too. While its raw materials and editing standards are of course VHS vintage and might not pass muster today, it indelibly makes its case for a Nick determined to live now, to live forward, to know and count the true terrible cost but to never stop pushing. Clips of him on the beach over Elizabeth's ashes. Clips waking sweating blood. Clips with Janette. Love, hope and faith... someday. Clips of him with Natalie, with Schanke, with Joan. I haven't actually watched the vid in a few years (the VCR is in the closet), but it unforgettably showed me Nick through that song and that song through Nick. For me, that's the sound of first season. (No offense to Mr. Mollin.) That's the sound, even more than Mr. Mollin's, that reminds me how much I love this story and everything it promised.

( Playlist of that VHS Fanvid Anthology )