I love good guys

I had FK's "Amateur Night" on while I did some other things tonight.  I pulled up short when I heard Captain Amanda Cohen say, "My daughter jumps rope."  "My daughter"!  This means that a) Cohen canonically, indisputably, has a daughter, and b) I have failed to fully absorb this fact for an awful lot of years.

"Amateur Night" is nobody's favorite episode.  I think it's underrated and deserves respect as a Schanke vehicle (with some intriguing Natalie tidbits on the side), but even I rarely rewatch it.  What do we all rewatch?  "A More Permanent Hell."  Everyone has seen AMPH a dozen times, and AN a couple, so we absorb that Cohen has photos in her office in AMPH, and miss that AN tells us who one of those photos depicts!

Okay, maybe none of you did that; maybe it's just me. ~grin~  Certainly, fanfic usually depicts Cohen as the mother of a daughter (on the rare occasions that Cohen's personal life wins a mention).  If only I had studied Cohen back when I was writing character FAQs, I would have learned better.  I have always known that Cohen has that photo of a girl in her office, but from time to time, from forkni-l to here, you'll find me ruminating on the question of whether the girl is Cohen's daughter, niece, sister, or herself as a child (alongside similar questions about the photographed couple with the leis).  Well, one question answered, anyway!  Cohen has a daughter, and she is at least as old as the girl in the picture, and still young enough to jump rope.

Pet peeve warning.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but seeing modern Nick called "Nicholas" in discussion and essays (and some present-day stories) gets my hackles up.

Born "Nicholas de Brabant," he has chosen to be "Nick Knight."  Only Lacroix unfailingly calls him "Nicholas" in the present.  (Even Janette occasionally calls him "Nick," although she does much prefer "Nicholas" in her French "Nicolas" pronunciation.)  Yes, characters are likely to be most comfortable with the name in which they met him.  Yes, "Nicholas B. Knight" is canonically his legal name in the present.  But for us to habitually call modern Nick "Nicholas," as Lacroix does, is to reject Nick's self-definition, to join Lacroix's party, to subtly deride Nick's values and worth.  It belittles him and, with him, the series of which he is the hero.

This creaky old peeve pokes up its head now because I posted to the AO3 for the first time.  (I wanted the FKFicFest collection to include my contribution.)  Overall easy and good, but it seems as if the archive's tags, especially as they appear in the filter function, are cumulative, so whoever gets there first gets to decide which words are used, how they're spelled and how they're capitalized.  (For example, "LaCroix" instead of "Lacroix.")  Well, all the pairings use "Nicholas" instead of Nick.  This irritates me.  You do what you want on your stories, naturally, but adjacent to mine?  "Nicholas Knight/Natalie Lambert."  "Nicholas Knight/Janette Ducharme."  ~wince~ 

I know that the archive cannot — and should not be asked or imagined to! — accommodate all the intricacies of factions and interpretations and so on (not to mention the complications of Rick Springfield's Nick Knight versus GWD's).  But I do wish that whoever had gotten there first had chosen to use "Nick" instead of "Nicholas."

Ah, well.  On the subject of AO3 use, I discovered that if you accidentally select multiple author names when loading a story, you cannot later delete the extra(s).  This is a known bug and I'll be patient until a fix is found; I just wanted to share the caution so no one else makes that mistake.

I've tended to picture Natalie's lab as a simple rectangle, but of course it's not.  Varying a little season to season and episode to episode, it's usually arranged about like this: ( Map of Natalie's Lab )

What caught my attention is that it's not the walls jogging in and out that my memory had oversimplified.  Instead, in conversation with celli about her femme_fic story, I realized that I have habitually, mistakenly, imagined the exam table as parallel to the counter (with the desk thus on the same wall as the counter)!  I went back through many screenshots (most courtesy of Knight Watchman) and worked out the map above, pushing and pulling at my longstanding mistaken impression.  Why had I pictured the exam table sideways?

Wide shots of the lab are rare, of course, but that's not the key.  I concluded that it really comes down to FK's tete-a-tete filming style, in which conversations between two characters do not usually show both on screen at the same time when that would require the camera to back up to capture both.  Instead, the camera more often flips from framing one character's torso to framing the other's, showing each against his/her own background throughout the conversation.  Of all the scenes in Natalie's lab, so many frame Natalie against her desk and Nick (or Schanke, Grace, Tracy) against the counter, with no hint of the wall space between.  My imagination had discarded the "missing" wall, the one with the chalkboard on it.

Interested in sharing reflections on some favorite Knightie moments?  These would be episodes, scenes or recurrences that are pro-Nick in his canonical hopes and goals: times he got it right, times to root for him, times he gave his all.  By definition of the traditional Knightie affiliation, these would be celebrations in accord with the Knightie Creed (quoted in the subject line).

Yep, this game is pretty self-indulgent (unless there are any other Knighties around?).  If you post on your blog for your own FK affiliation, I'll do my best to contribute!  But here... I'm a Knightie.  Revisit, reaffirm, restore?

No rush.  The post will be here whenever.

( My Favorite Knightie Interlude )  ( And Runner-up )

So what are your favorite Knightie moments?

I know that I said that I wouldn't do a "personal favorites" list from fkficfest, and would stick most sincerely with urging everyone to check out the masterlist and tags to find the stories that will inspire and enthrall your unique FK imagination.  The ficathon game was privileged to see loads of gen and N&N, some IB and Seducer, a dash of UF and Nanette, and more...

But may I make just one exception?  I would like to commend to your enjoyment the beautiful "Theory of Lost Things" (PG-13, 3000 words, Nick/Urs, flashback Janette) that leela_cat wrote to match my very own fkficfest prompt.  Her story is well-written, thoughtful, canon-aware and lovely, building a rare pairing with delicacy, grace and realism.  It also immensely satisfies me, personally, reconnecting me with a possibility that once shone in my love of FK, but which became tarnished through no fault of its own.  I don't expect that this pairing calls to many the way it calls to me.  I do think that the story makes its own striking case for a choice that could have broken free of third season just in time to earn all the characters a different chance at happier fates.  The story filled me with enthusiasm for what could have been.

Nominally, Nick/Urs is the "Les Miserables" couple faction.  ( Some Thoughts on Nick/Urs, in Canon and Out )