What's Good?  Opening a new year, I'm pleased to get to spotlight lastscorpion's "Full of Grace" (2011, PG, ~7K words) in the recommendation-of-the-month project.  I try not to plunder fkficfest/fkficfest for recommendations; we've all just recently read those!  But last week, I chatted with someone who had never read a rich Grace Balthazar story, and this fantastically canonical epistolary tale from FKFicFest '11 not only shapes a rounded life for Grace, it builds an arc of her relationship with Natalie, and explodes into its climax.

Dear Mom,
        Something terrible has happened, something unbelievable. I'm going to need to tell you the whole story in writing, so I can get it clear in my head. Then I'll call you in a couple of days, when Natalie's well enough to travel, and ask you if I can please take her home to you and the family for a while.

-----
What's New on FKFic-L?  December saw no stories on the email list.  January so far has seen one (the shorter of the two FK Yuletide pieces).

I wrote this vignette for wiliqueen in the 2010/2011 fandom_stocking event.  On her wish list, she said that she likes to read "women being awesome," "friendship," "supporting characters," and "irreverent humor... in the face of catastrophe."

	•  Title:	"The Book Club Auxiliary" (also on AO3)
	•  Length:	~1,000 words
	•  Date:	Fandom Stocking 01/06/11, FKFic-L 03/31/11
	•  Rating:	G
	•  Summary:	Grace visits Natalie in the hospital.
	•  Characters:	Grace, Natalie, Other
	•  Quotation:	"Grace read a chapter of the new Weiss novel aloud, and then another, and then put in a bookmark and excused herself for a trip to the washroom while the nurse checked Natalie's vital signs and necessities."

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~)

What's good?  I'm proud to begin the new year of the recommendation-of-the-month project with amilyn's novella "Slippery" (2003).  Undeniably harsh, the story dramatically explores what might happen if, one of the times he tells Natalie to get away and she doesn't, a blood-stoked Nick unintentionally lashes out -- with his muscles (rather than his fangs).

   "How long before someone in your department ends up with you as one of their cases -- just like you had to cut up Maggie Dwyer and God only knows how many others like her?"
   "That is enough!" Natalie interjected, her voice sharp. "That was very different. This... this was an accident. He did not mean to hurt me. I know that, and he knows that."
   "Oh, really?" Tracy caught Natalie's eyes. "Then why is he scared silly he's going to do it again?" Tracy paused, looking for a long moment at Nat, then added carefully, "And why are you?"

What's new?  In December, fkfic-l saw three new stories, a filk, and one piece identified as a repost (which is technically against the list rules without permission, so I wouldn't advise it as a trend).

• "Disclosures" (6 posts) by pj1228
• "Dashing Through the Snow (Vampire Style)" (filk) (1 post) by Kristen F.
• "Birthdays" (1 post) by Walt D.
• "Snowy Knight" (1 post) by J.L.K.
• "Milepost" (1 post) by me

There is also a six-post story that began in December, and has finished in January.  So this month so far is not empty, but not crowded.

And now this retrospective comes to my first story solely from Natalie's point of view.  "Time Out for the Living" was a nominee in the 2000 FK Fanfiction Awards, an honor that still surprises and delights me.

	•	Title:	"Time Out for the Living"
	•	Length:	~6,700 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in March 2000
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Unsettling phone calls, uncanny dreams and an unexpected day off push Natalie to examine her life outside the lab.
	•	Setting:	Between first season and second
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Richard, Grace, Sidney, Sara, Amy
	•	Quotation:	"Since Richie died, she had kept herself busy, and busier, until all the times in which these thoughts might have caught up with her had been squeezed out and away."

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."