I love good guys

I'm playing halfamoon '22 as a recommendations challenge...

Will you excuse a self-recommendation for the fourth theme, "Arts and Letters?" Back in 2012's FKFicFest, I wrote a story run through with music, poems, and songs composed and performed. In the present, Urs and her new band secure a gig at the Raven. In flashbacks, Fleur involves herself with the new poetry of the troubadours.

"Chante à Nouveau" by Brightknightie
~10K words
Teen

Lately, I haven't had the time I'd love to spend on hobbies, but I do amuse myself occasionally thinking about that Nick/Urs story I hope to write.

One thing that has crossed my mind as I try to find this hypothetical story's true shape and scope is that this tale, as it first occurred to me, doesn't come anywhere in the vicinity of passing the Bechdel Test. While that's acceptable for a drabble, vignette or short story, the acceptability diminishes with every step out of the realm of miniature tales. If this is growing toward novella-ness, it must include two female characters interacting with each other about something other than a male character.

Except for being murdered by Divia, Urs never interacts with another recurring female character on screen. I've written her scenes with Natalie and with Tracy before, and I've forever meant to get her a story with Janette, but this isn't that story. This is Nick/Urs defeating Lacroix, blowing up third season and living happily ever afterish. And any interaction between Urs and Natalie, or Urs and Tracy, is almost necessarily about Nick, as he's their sole point of interface ... well, Vachon, too, in Tracy's case.

I could suppose that Alma or Brianna didn't leave before third season, but then their point of interface with Urs is employment by Lacroix. That's no better. Sofia and Serena aren't coming back to Toronto that winter. Janette is, but... And I've already written my version of Urs interacting with Jacqueline after "Hearts of Darkness."

An original character would seem to be the answer. But recurring characters go down more smoothly, as a general rule. Round and round. Just thinking!

As my hopes rise that the season of "crunching" through 16-hour workdays may be ending for at least a little while, I've begun thinking again of that Nick/Urs story idea that occurred to me shortly before the FKFicFest matching.

It would be a "just because" story in the old-fashioned way, written not for any fest, ficathon or game, but just because it appeals to me, and apparently I appeal to it, as it seems to have hung on in my imagination this long, gently suggesting that I write it after all. I have no idea how long it will take with no deadline pressure on — I don't even have a proper plot outline yet, just two indelible scenes in my mind — so it could be years. And I have no idea whether anyone but me will even be willing to read a Nick/Urs story these days. Would you?

(I know of only a handful of Nick/Urs stories ever written. I despise the incident in Ophelia5's famous "With Flowers" series, as much as I admire Ophelia5. I adore Leela_cat's "Theory of Lost Things," which she wrote for me in the first FKFicFest. And Hearts_blood wrote "Warmth" for me! I wrote "Chante à Nouveau" and "Kindred Spirits," myself, although they're so unrequited they don't really count.)

For me, personally, anyway, the unrealized, unexplored possibilities of Nick/Urs appeal massively. I hope that the characters could be stronger together, each giving the other something missing while also having much in common, that Nick's instincts engaged on Urs's behalf could manifest healthily instead of unhealthily, that Urs's longings drawing on Nick's instincts could become growth instead of diminishment. I hope that their coming together could re-route third season — or any earlier time one wanted to set a story — restoring the brilliance of first season in themes, striving and hope, and avoiding the end we received.

I'm sure this is not a new thought, but I haven't been able to turn up a memory of bumping into it before, and I enjoyed toying with it, so I'm sharing.

Have you ever noticed that "Hearts of Darkness" introduces Urs in a manner paralleling how "Dark Knight" introduces Nick? (Of course Urs first appears in "Black Buddha;" by "introduce," here, I mean a wider view accompanied by the night-I-came-across backstory.) That is, in both DK and HoD, the audience is supposed to suspect the protagonist of a murder — Nick, the guard; Urs, Eckhart — until fairly late in the story. (Steeped in canon, we know better; it's easy to forget to suspect them! But the episode texts pile suspicion on them.) In both, the actual murderer is hidden/off-screen, a character whom the dialogue asserts ought not be present: in DK, Janette says it can't be Lacroix, and in HoD, Natalie says it can't be Ellen.* Both episodes end with remarks about the ones who died being "the lucky ones" (DK2 Nick to Natalie about Lacroix and Alyce; HoD Urs to Nick about Ellen) and with ruminations on the ongoing difficulties of the protagonist's state (DK2 Nick to Natalie; HoD Urs to Vachon). And to take the parallel much too far, just for fun, that twitching toe at the end of HoD could be said to align with Lacroix's reappearance at the end of "Love You to Death" (that is, the murderer is not dead after all).

* Structurally, DK is superior for (among many other things) introducing Lacroix early, in dialogue and flashback, even while denying his present presence. HoD stoops nearly to the evil-twin trope basement by suddenly dropping in a third personality in defiance of all that had been previously known of FK vampires. Mystery audiences deserve fair and sufficient clues to figure out whodunnit (even if they can assemble those clues correctly only in retrospect).

In December, hearts_blood offered "Kiss-Fic."  I requested "Forever Knight, Nick/Urs, the twelve days of Christmas, '95-'96."

Late last week, she treated me to an untitled ficlet (G, ~600 words) in reply.  "He let Urs sleep in his loft sometimes, when she got tired of the Raven."  I think I may be the only Les Miserables (i.e. Nick/Urs) partisan, so I am triply gladdened when generous people not only write FK, and for me, but with my favorite rare pairing!*  I am tickled by her tucked-in answer to how Urs, in "Ashes to Ashes," has Nick's door code.

(She also wrote a Nick/Natalie ficlet (G, ~300 words) for MysticalCat7.)

* Have you read Leela's spectacular Nick/Urs "Theory of Lost Things" (PG, ~3K words)? Go! Do! ♥