brightknightie | FK Fanfic: "Fearful Symmetry"

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FK Fanfic: "Fearful Symmetry"

I posted my second oldschoolfic story to fkfic-l this weekend. A few scenes have been rewritten since the ficathon, but it's largely the same. I'm grateful to abby82 for the ficathon prompt! And I'm obliged to my beta-readers (see the story's endnote, as always).

"Fearful Symmetry" is entirely from Nick's perspective. I don't often narrate from Nick's point of view, and that's curious to me. I've been wondering from where that comes (among what the series presents, what I'm any good at writing, and what people seem to like to read).

•	Title:	"Fearful Symmetry"
•	Length:	~9,900 words
•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L November 1-2, 2008
•	Rating:	PG (gen)
•	Summary:	As the asteroid panic gets a second wind, Nick revisits his experiences during the 1950s Red Scare.
•	Setting:	Flashbacks to 1954 ("Spin Doctor"). Present after "A More Permanent Hell."
•	Characters:	Nick, Natalie, Lacroix, Janette, Others.
•	Quotation:	"He had been so proud to be awarded tenure last year, to be recognized as a worthy and wanted permanent member of the faculty."

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I'm enjoying reading it, although it's distracting me from NaNoWriMo very effectively.

Thank you very much for reading it! My apologies to your NaNoWriMo project. :-)

Thank you! I really love Professor Girard stories; it's one of my favorite incarnations of Nick from the show. There's so much material there, as opposed to his usual "do I kill this person or try to protect them until LaCroix eventually kills them?" Nick.

Someone should do an Indiana Jones/Professor Girard crossover, as they were both investigated by HAUAC, the most interesting and believable segment of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Question: I'm kinda new to this fandom. Where am I supposed to post stuff other than FFnet? (I have a following in another fandom there and it would be inconvenient)

I see that you found fkfic-l, with the first installment of your WIP "Corpus Aristotelicum"! Oh, it's great to see a new story starting! And Aristotle is a too-much-neglected favorite.

But I see the old email list ambushed you on formatting, turning many of your punctuation marks into raw code, as the post reached me. I'm so sorry. The listserve seems to still expect ASCII. Depending what email application you use, the solution might be to strip out all formatting before sending to the list, either by turning on a setting in your application, or by saving the post as a plain TXT file before pasting it into an email (that's what I do). If you're put off by how the first one went through, you can ask Don or Lisa for permission to re-post it; they usually give permission readily with such cause. Please don't let it put you off posting future parts of the story.

>"I really love Professor Girard stories; it's one of my favorite incarnations of Nick from the show."

Do you have some to recommend? I remember reading many Nick-as-professor stories, but none specifically in that slice of his history from "Spin Doctor." That would be a lot of fun to see -- especially now that I'm on the other side of my own attempt at it.

(Thank you very much for reading "Fearful Symmetry," and thank you for letting me know you did! I'm glad it fit into an incarnation you enjoy.)

>"Someone should do an Indiana Jones/Professor Girard crossover, as they were both investigated by HAUAC,"

That would be incredible. :-) So many possibilities! Ordinary exchanges where both are on their chosen academic/normal ground and not their involuntary hero/extraordinary ground, or discussions of the unpublishable/no-one-will-believe mystical side of certain artifacts, or Jones blundering into a cure for vampirism ... and where did Nick first hear of the Abbarrat, the "book of miracles," anyway? That sounds like something Jones would be involved in. :-)

I love that Nick loves archaeology and anthropology. It's another expression of his love for humanity, of course, and this hunger for knowledge is something in common with his sister, discovered late, long after her death, but it's also a rich layer of accomplishment that has nothing whatsoever to do with his vampirism -- it cannot be helped or hurt by what makes him different, so I imagine it is a refuge to Nick and a puzzle to Lacroix.

>"Question: I'm kinda new to this fandom. Where am I supposed to post stuff other than FFnet?"

First, welcome!

Second, as you discovered, the primary forum for FK fanfiction is still the fkfic-l listserve. There were 273 recipients when I posted "Fearful Symmetry" there (I have my subscription set "ACK," and that trivia is part of the automated return post). That's so very much smaller than it was twelve years ago at cancellation, but as far as I know, it is still the largest gathering of FK-reading fans.

I do not know of any self-archiving forums for FK; sorry. I guess we're pretty old-fashioned. (We were cutting-edge back when the show was still on the air, but as people moved on to other things over the years, I guess we stagnated technologically.)

The Former FTP Site (http://www.fkvoyage.com/fkfanfic/) archive (the original fkfic-l archive; hasn't been FTP in years) is atill active. Please let me know if you would like the email address (by private message) of the proprietor of that archive. I'm afraid I can't speak for any of the other general archives; I'm just not in touch with their proprietors, and many have been abandoned.

I would recommend asking this question on the forkni-l discussion list! Someone there will know more than I do. With fkfic-l, forkni-l is still the heart of the fandom, though much smaller, slower and quieter at this end of history.

I'm sorry I don't have a better answer. But again, welcome!

If you're put off by how the first one went through, you can ask Don or Lisa for permission to re-post it; they usually give permission readily with such cause. Please don't let it put you off posting future parts of the story.

I did that and reposted it (and parts 2 and 3 of 12) but since I'm a new member they have to approve all my submissions, and apparently they don't check that email address very often, because I usually have to wait like 4 days to get approved.

Do you have some to recommend? I remember reading many Nick-as-professor stories, but none specifically in that slice of his history from "Spin Doctor."

Murder, Past Perfect
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3314626/1/Murder_Past_Perfect

Oh, and "Vengeance is Thine" by Jean Graham, though her site recently went down.

Jones blundering into a cure for vampirism ... and where did Nick first hear of the Abbarrat, the "book of miracles," anyway? That sounds like something Jones would be involved in. :-)

(in the waiting room outside the committee office)
Jones: Did I ever tell you about the time I found the Abbarat?
Girard: What's that?
Jones: An ancient book of miracles that could make evil good and all that.
Girard: Really?
Jones: Yeah, mentioned vampires and everything. All nonsense of course.
Giraded: ...And where did this book go?
Jones: Well, first it was almost crushed by the falling pillars of the ancient Sumerian temple that was slowly collapsing, then I had to rescue it from the hands of the greedy double-agent I thought was my sidekick, and then Nazis had it for like a WHOLE chase scene but eventually someone threw it in the back of my van and then, like all important history-shattering artifacts, I dumped in some storage bunker somewhere.
Girard: URGE TO KILL RISING.

I do not know of any self-archiving forums for FK; sorry. I guess we're pretty old-fashioned. (We were cutting-edge back when the show was still on the air, but as people moved on to other things over the years, I guess we stagnated technologically.)

Yeah, I haven't had to use Textpad to put in hard line breaks since I ran a SWAT Kat archive in 1997.

>"Oh, and "Vengeance is Thine" by Jean Graham, though her site recently went down.

She moved her site here (http://jeangraham.150m.com/fk/foreverknight.htm). She posted about it in the 11/05 forkni-l digest; I'm often months behind on the digests, but I actually happened to look inside that one.

Thank you for the reminder! I'm updating my links now.

I might be subscribed to the digest. I'm pretty sure it's just individual posts. I did get Fearful Symmetry in my email, but I'd already read it on your site.

Thanks for the help! And yes, there needs to be more fanfic on Aristotle. So much potential material there - a vampire who actually likes Nick and yet doesn't want to seduce him.

>"I might be subscribed to the digest. I'm pretty sure it's just individual posts."

Well, just to be clear, there are two email lists: forkni-l (for discussion) and fkfic-l (for fiction). Both can be set either "mail" (individual posts) or "digest" (one daily post consolidating all individual posts). I believe the default is still "mail" for both lists, so if you haven't changed your settings, you'll be getting indivudal posts. Jean posted her remark about moving her website to forkni-l (the discussion list).

And I usually run way behind on both lists. :-)

There used to be more lists in the family -- fkspoilr for spoiler discussion, fkv4s-l for the Virtual Fourth Season, I think a few others -- and they all grew from the original forkni-l. The fiction list was the first to split off, when the volume of stories overwhelmed the discussion. That's unfortunately no longer a concern, but they're still conveniently two lists.

This Forever Knight/Indiana Jones crossover comment-fic is hilarious! I laughed and laughed. Thank you so much for sharing it.

>"but since I'm a new member they have to approve all my submissions, and apparently they don't check that email address very often, because I usually have to wait like 4 days to get approved."

I'd forgotten about that. Ouch. I believe they usually set new subscribers to not need authorization after three posts.

>"Yeah, I haven't had to use Textpad to put in hard line breaks since I ran a SWAT Kat archive in 1997."

:-) Yep, that's about when we froze up tech-wise. "Last Knight" broke a lot of hearts.

However! I have just now remembered that Mel was talking a few years ago about converting her archive, http://www.fkfanfic.com/ , which is the biggest FK archive, to the self-uploading format. I do not know if any progress was made on that.

"Last Knight" broke a lot of hearts.

I was actually into Forever Knight a little bit when it was rerunning on sci-fi channel and I was in high school, but then I saw Last Knight, and was so disgusted I never bothered to finish watching the whole series until I downloaded it in August.

There's an interview on the season 2 DVD with James and Ger, where they comment on LK and how they wanted to make it even more tragic, and kill everyone on-camera, but the network wouldn't let them because it was considering making a TV movie. Also, they were way, WAY into Anne Rice at the time and considered murder-suicide a good "redemption" plot.

Most telling line by Ger: "Last Knight. The fans seemed not to like it at all."

Hey, I found another Aristotle fic.

http://www.fkvoyage.com/fkfanfic/bradley_jill/hastings.txt

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FK Fanfic: "Fearful Symmetry"

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Jean G.'s Site

Re: Jean G.'s Site

Mail and Digest Settings

"and then, like all important history-shattering artifacts, I dumped it in some storage bunker"

Re: "and then, like all important history-shattering artifacts, I dumped it in some storage bunker"

Re: "and then, like all important history-shattering artifacts, I dumped it in some storage bunker"