sholio | December posting meme: Forever Knight

ride_4ever asked: What first got you into Forever Knight fandom?

That's kind of a two-part answer: what got me into the show vs. the fandom (I mean, to the extent that I AM in the fandom, to which the answer is "kinda").

Okay, so, the show. It was 1992 and I was 15, and it was weird and quirky and fun -- also, there wasn't really a whole lot to watch late at night. I wasn't really into vampires per se, but I did really love what we now think of as urban fantasy; it wasn't recognized as a genre then, but basically weird stuff happening in a contemporary environment. I liked it even before I knew it was a thing.

The season three premiere aired the fall I went off to college, and I still remember quite vividly staying up late to watch it in the dorm lounge, only to feel utterly betrayed by the character deaths in that episode. I think it was rarer then than it is now for a show to just kill off half its cast in one episode, because it certainly made an impression on me. I abandoned it with extreme prejudice and never watched another episode. (I still haven't seen the rest of season three.)

Circa 2005 or so, I got to thinking about the show again, found out it was on DVD, and bought and rewatched seasons one and two, so I ended up having a little mini-FK revival. That's when I discovered there was fanfic for it -- quite a lot, actually, and quite a lot of caseficcy gen, which was basically all I read back then. (It's still what I prefer, but I've since branched out into shippier fic than I used to read at the time.) Actually, looking back on it, I think FK might've been what got me back into fandom after I quit in 2003 -- for complicated reasons, but mainly it had to do with moving, starting a new full-time job, and generally wanting to stop writing fanfic and focus on original stuff instead ... with the result that I basically didn't write at all for a couple of years, because, as I have now realized, my creative brain just doesn't work like that. I used to be mainly fannish about anime, and then when I quit and restarted, it was mostly Western TV shows that I was into, and I'm pretty sure my rewatch of FK was the first thing to grab me in that way.

I never really got into FK in a major way, though. I went through that mini-obsession period in 2005 where I was reading all the fic, and then a few years later I participated in one of

brightknightie's FK fic exchanges (which are very well run, btw; she's a great mod and it was a fun time). I think in order to get back into it now to a large enough degree to write fic, I would need to watch at least a few episodes at a time when I don't really have anything else taking up front-burner fandom space in my head.

However, even though it's not a major fandom for me, I have a lot of fond memories of it, and still enjoy it.