Forever Knight and Fandom Reminiscences

[switchbladeeyes]

Just some navel-gazing about Forever Knight and fandom of yore.

• It's been a weird week for me. Getting a lot of intense nostalgia and feeling like I'm time traveling thinking about the show and fandom of long ago.

• I started watching the show in (I think) 1994... whenever season 2 first aired. I didn't see season 1 until a few years later when the Sci Fi channel started playing re-runs. I remember finding the fandom online and being excited to find other people who watched the show.

• I was on FKFIC-L and FORKNI-L back in the 90s. My recollections, vague as they are, are totally positive. This was all before social media, and the internet was both a wild west, but also in a lot of ways, a really nice place to be, especially that particular fan community.

• I was sad to read on the Forever Knight wiki that Susan Garrett passed away many years ago. I did not know. She was a such a talented person and very kind and involved at the time I was knocking around on the mailing lists.

• I had completely forgotten about the FKFIC-L faction wars, but I was cruising around the FK wiki and stumbled across info that refreshed my memory. I perused the working links on the wiki because, after remembering the wars even existed, I was 90% certain I had participated in at least one. And I found it. OMG... time traveling in the mind for sure. I spent time reading through some of it and, wow, what a trip and a half. I laughed so hard. What an absolute chaos of fun. I recalled some fandom jokes and read names I had forgotten. Really digging into the very back of the Lost and Found of the my memories.

• I did write fan fiction back in the day, but I no longer have any of it nor do I remember many specifics about what I wrote. What I do remember is that it was (intentionally) quite silly/humorous.

• I went to an FK convention/auction in 1997 and recently looked through mementos that had been stashed in a box for a very, very long time. I'm still (loosely) in touch with a couple people I got to know at that event. Anyway, even just browsing through that stuff set off a lot of recollections. I'm going to sit down at some point and look through it all more closely.

• Relatively speaking, I wasn't really involved the fandom for very long back in the day (maybe like 3-ish years). But it was my first fandom and reflecting on it all these years later has unlocked many, many pleasant memories. And however small the fandom is these days, it makes me very happy to have found a piece of it again.

Comments

[thefruitbat]

Happy to hear that this trip down Memory Lane is such a happy one for you. :) I've been reading through some of the wars some time ago and really wish I could have participated back then. It also made me understand some of the more inside-jokes and fan-lore.
FK is not the first fandom I've read fics in, but the first I really started writing for, and it has been such a wholesome experience so far. Everyone is supportive and encouraging, people share bits and pieces of experiences with writing and/or conventions/auctions/campaigns.
When I read on other platforms, that there are fans leading the unfunny kind of wars on each other, just because they don't like what others write, I feel so effin' happy, that that's something outside "my" fandom, and I hope it will always stay that way.
I's good to see that after so many years of the show not being on anymore, there are still people who remember and "keep the Knight alive". :)

[switchbladeeyes]

Wholesome then, wholesome now :-)

So awesome that culture has endured. Glad you've experienced encouragement and support.

I participated in other fandoms until like maybe the mid/late 2000s and there was definitely some bizarre drama, particularly in the bigger fandoms. No thanks to all that!