brightknightie | Entries tagged with character:foreverknight:cohen

I'm playing

halfamoon '22 as a recommendations challenge...

For the fifth theme, "Borders," I recommend one of the very best Forever Knight Captain Amanda Cohen stories. These borders are personal, emotional, and cultural. We know so little of Cohen's private life and motivations in canon -- really, just enough to know we don't know. This story picks up the slivers of Cohen's backstory, weighs the absences, and runs them brilliantly home... all within the frame of an annual precinct winter-holiday party.

"Rondeau" by

tolakasa
~2K words
G

Last week,

skieswideopen was generously chatting with me about FK characters, and she asked whether I had ever read the Yuletide story about the Cohens. "The Cohens?" Yep. "Rondeau" by

tolakasa (2012; ~2.4K words; G, gen; Cohen, Nick, Schanke, Natalie, OCs). Well, I hadn't. I'd missed it.

You shouldn't miss it. It's completely unexpected and yet completely within canon's borders. It's both surprising and thoroughly in character. Most importantly, it endows Captain Amanda Cohen with some of FK's main themes — secrets, guilt, identity, starting over — in ways that could have bound her intimately into the core storyline. And while I'm no expert, the author seems to me to handle the Jewish-Japanese-Canadian stuff (which intimidates many of us from writing Cohen, I suspect) with authority and panache.

(This is only the second "Cohen's personal life" story that leaps to my mind just now. The other is by

lisamcdavid, many years ago, and very different in every way.)

Crosspost http://brightknightie.livejournal.com/180682.html

What's Good? For March, I am bittersweetly pleased to spotlight Diane E.'s "The Last Vampire" (1995, PG-13, ~5K words) in the recommendation-of-the-month project. After Diane's death last month, I reread all her FK fanfiction. While she is justly known for her comedy, this, her one drama, is my own favorite of hers. This Nick goes public with his vampirism under the pretense that he is the last of his kind; he becomes the sole focus of media attention, scientific scrutiny, back taxes...

The day after his first dinner at Schanke's, the lawsuits started arriving at the precinct. First, from people he'd arrested last week, last month, last year—all suddenly claiming "the vampire" had hypnotized them into confessing to crimes they hadn't committed. Then, every suspect he arrested, even the ones he caught red-handed, filed a police-brutality and wrongful-arrest complaint.

-----
What's New on FKFic-L? February saw one story: "Diamonds...and a Girl's Best Friend" (1 post, 6KB) by greerwatson. In March so far, one story has appeared, and lisamcdavid has posted an invitation for FKFic-L War proposals.

Crosspost http://brightknightie.livejournal.com/129231.html

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.

Crosspost http://brightknightie.livejournal.com/124324.html

What's Good? As we head into summer, I recommend

james's "In the Beginning, James Created..." (1995, rated R), the first complete-AU fanfiction I ever read. This story makes Natalie the vampire cop, and shuffles all the other characters by matching rarely-observed affinities. But while different characters fill the roles, the relationships stay with the roles. I see a serious interpretive argument underneath the funhouse ride of this AU; I enjoy that.

I don't want to spoil the story's biggest mind-bender, but I'll hazard that no one but

james could have imagined it for us. It's weird. And it's worth a thought.

What's New on FKFic-L? The fiction email list did not see a single new story in May. But nine have dropped in June to date! So there will be a list here next month.

Crosspost http://brightknightie.livejournal.com/74012.html

On Friday, havocthecat wished for picspam of "awesome women." In response, I made this batch of new userpic icons featuring female FK characters together. The exercise brought home how rarely the women are on screen at the same moment, even when they are the only two characters in the scene; typically, FK's camera moves back and forth, from one character to the other, instead of showing them together. (Cohen with Natalie was harder to run down than I expected, and of course the only recurring female character with whom Urs ever shares a shot is Divia.)

Available if you would like them:


01. Natalie and Grace	02. Natalie and Janette	03. Brianna and Janette

( 10 More )

The original screenshots for most of these come from Nancy T.'s Knight Watchman. I tried to drop by Kristen H.'s Knight Vision, too, but it's gone! This of course means I've let my links go way too long unchecked, and I should run backward through forkni-l digests until I learn what happened. (If I heard of this and forgot, I shall be covered with embarrassment, but don't let that stop you from reminding me. ~g~)

Recently, in FK on my Friends List:

Potential Fanfic! On October 3, ithildyn considered the c.1849 flashbacks in FK's "The Code," and how to cross FK with Magnificent 7. Does the idea of Chris/Janette strike your fancy?
Upcoming Ficathon! On October 3, the oldschoolfic moderator confirmed that she is planning an end-of-year prompt-a-thon and story exchange. (This is the community for out-of-production shows like FK.)
New Fanfiction Posted! On September 30, the current "Back-to-School"-themed oldschoolfic ficathon was due, and there are two FK stories this time! (Naturally, there are also nice stories for other fandoms.) For FK, we have:
- "Twenty-Five Minutes" (G) by abby82 for the prompt: "the girl in the photo on Captain Amanda Cohen's desk" (~800 words).
- "Fearful Symmetry" (PG) by me, for the prompt: "In 'Spin Doctor,' Nick says he had some remarkable students; how did he say goodbye to them?" (~7K words).
Ficathon! DVDs! On September 22, abby82 mentioned the galpalficathon FK prompts (available now, ficathon due November 16), and that the The Border (with CD and NB) is coming soon to R1 DVD.
Meme! On September 17, ithildyn posted an FK quotation meme.

Also, voting over at the

forsaken_fandom awards is open through Monday, October 13 (Rules, FK List, FK Ballot).

My meta-parody "Grievances" is one of those few pieces that have never yet made it to fkfic-l. I archived it on Bright Knight in 2001, but as far as I knew, no one read it until tv_elf recommended it on her LJ two years ago, when several people kindly commented on it.

It was my first attempt at comedy (well, since my contributions to the My Parental Units Invaded Earth and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt FK/DS/XF humor zine, anyway).

•	Title:	"Grievances"
•	Length:	~2,900 words
•	Date:	Summer 2001
•	Rating:	G
•	Summary:	Canonical characters organize to protest the working conditions in fanfiction.
•	Setting:	Where characters await stories
•	Characters:	Vachon, Fleur, Janette, Lacroix, Schanke, Cohen, Stonetree, Nick, Natalie, Others
•	Quotation:	"Bad day on the fic list? Let me guess -- you spent an entire shift making love to Tracy Vetter for no emotionally established reason in no logically explained manner, and you need an aspirin and a shower?"

Putting this fanfiction retrospective back on chronological track, the next story up is "England's Rose." It seems peculiar now, over a decade later, on this side of 9/11 and war and all the rest, the volume of grief lavished on Princess Diana's loss. But at that time, much of a generation saw a mirror crack, and felt their reflection shatter. Natalie is part of that generation.

FK's timeline warps to accommodate this story. "Nobody dies, nobody ever dies," so that the entire cast can register reactions.

•	Title:	"England's Rose"
•	Length:	~5,572 words
•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in September 1997
•	Rating:	PG
•	Summary:	Princess Diana's death distresses Natalie and reminds Nick of Queen Caroline.
•	Setting:	August 31 and September 6, 1997; Flashbacks 1981 and 1783
•	Characters:	Natalie, Sara, Grace, Schanke, Nick, Janette, Lacroix, Urs, Vachon, Screed, Tracy, Cohen
•	Quotation:	"Natalie had turned nineteen the summer of the royal wedding, and there had been something inescapably exciting about watching this girl, her own age, walk onto the world stage."

Fluff. Utter, unremitting fluff. My first fiction response to "Last Knight" was apparently thoroughgoing denial wrapped in sappiness and sprinkled with humor. Eeep! A few years on, this would have been satire, but at the time, I meant it just as it is.

•	Title:	"Happiness Is"
•	Length:	~1,700 words
•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in June 1996
•	Rating:	G (m/f)
•	Summary:	Natalie and Nick chat about friends and family, happily ever after.
•	Setting:	"Nobody Dies; Nobody Ever Dies"
•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, references to everyone else (that's right: everyone!)
•	Quotation:	"How about you, Natalie Lambert Knight, love of my eight hundred and four years? Are you happy?"

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Entries tagged with character:foreverknight:cohen

Halfamoon '22 Recommendation #5: Borders (FK, Cohen)

FK Fic Rec: "Rondeau" by Tolaska

FK Recommendation March 2012

Cohen's Daughter is Mentioned in "Amateur Night"

FK Recommendation June 2010

FK Icons to Pass the Bechdel Test

What You Guys Have Been Up To

FK Fanfic: "Grievances"

FK Fanfic: "England's Rose"

FK Fanfic: "Happiness Is"

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