FORKNI-L

FORKNI-L Digest - 7 Apr 2001 to 8 Apr 2001 (#2001-117)

Sun, 8 Apr 2001

There are 13 messages totalling 538 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Idle thought (3)
  2. Janette and HF(was: Idle thought) (4)
  3. LaCroix evil? (was LC's view of fatherhood)
  4. Kezia's questions (was: LC evil?) (2)
  5. Yippee!  I got us a convert!
  6. Janette and HF
  7. Nature of vampires (was: LC evil?)

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Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 14:47:26 -0700
From:    Sunny LaCountess <countessa2000@y.......>
Subject: Re: Idle thought

--- Marel Darby <Frostsaint2@a.......> wrote:
> I choose to believe that 'The Human Factor' was not just another
> hallucinatory episode for Nick. <g>
>
But maybe it was a halucination of Janette. Anyway like Kyer once said 'It
was someone's knightmare' and I totally believe that. To me Janette is and
always stays LaCroix's daughter.

=====
Countess -- Devoted Knightie, Immortal Beloved, Dark Trinity, with UF and
Enforcement tendencies

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Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 18:03:34 EDT
From:    Jeannie Ecklund <Gersknightlady@c.......>
Subject: Re: Idle thought

In a message dated 4/7/2001 2:48:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
countessa2000@y....... writes:

<< But maybe it was a halucination of Janette >>

I kind of liked that episode.  What better way to put a twist on the whole
show.  Janette who never wanted to become human, falls in love and becomes
human. Nick still too afraid to try it.  Maybe he didn't love Natalie enough.
 If he had he could have loved her and the love would have tempered the Beast
as it did for Janette.  She'd said before that she had never been able to
stop once she started to feed.  Obviously her love for Robert changed that.
The fact that she was brought back across at the end made the whole thing
status quo.  I think she would forgive Nick after a time.

May be LaCroix is incapable of real love.  Real love destroys the Vampire.
(I don't really believe that :)  but it goes with the above stuff.  I think
he loved Nick but didn't have the pure st love.  Love strong enough to let
Nick go.

Jeannie

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Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 15:42:10 -0700
From:    Sunny LaCountess <countessa2000@y.......>
Subject: Janette and HF(was: Idle thought)

--- Jeannie Ecklund <Gersknightlady@c.......> wrote:
> I kind of liked that episode.  What better way to put a twist on the
whole show.  Janette who never wanted to become human, falls in love and
becomes human. Nick still too afraid to try it.  Maybe he didn't love
Natalie enough.<

I know that there are some people who like that ep. and I'm sorry that I
sometimes go over my head rejecting it, but to me, the idea that the cure
had been so simple seems unacceptable. It implies that Nick not only
didn't love Natalie, but he also didn't love any of those other women we
were shown during the show’s flashbacks like Alyssa or Amelia. And after
we are told so many times how long he had been searching for the cure, the
fact that someone else who wasn't even looking virtually *stumbled* upon
it puts him in a very bad light.

=====
Countess -- Devoted Knightie, Immortal Beloved, Dark Trinity, with UF and
Enforcement tendencies

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 15:48:29 -0700
From:    Sunny LaCountess <countessa2000@y.......>
Subject: Re: LaCroix evil? (was LC's view of fatherhood)

--- urtikit@m....... wrote:
> >Of course they...is there even a question?
>
> On *this* list?  Of course! Almost *everything* gets questioned.
> That's half the fun!

Yes, but if you are understanding the question along the same lines as I
do, then this subject must be discussed offlist or McL will come after us. :)=

=====
Countess -- Devoted Knightie, Immortal Beloved, Dark Trinity, with UF and
Enforcement tendencies

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Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 20:32:55 -0000
From:    Barbara Vainio <bevainio@w.......>
Subject: Re: Janette and HF(was: Idle thought)

Sunny LaCountess wrote:

> we are told so many times how long he had been searching for the cure, the
> fact that someone else who wasn't even looking virtually *stumbled* upon
> it puts him in a very bad light.
>
And perhaps that's the point.  Nick spent so much time looking for the cure
outside himself that he never learned that it was inside him all the time,
just waiting to be "stumbled over".  Just like trying to find your house
keys when you've mislaid them.  You run around crazy, searching here, there
and everywhere, but don't find them until you stop looking and sit down to
rest, and there they are right in front of you.

I think it also reflects the discussion we've had many times about
forgiveness and love being earned versus being given and received freely.

Barb

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 7 Apr 2001 21:25:03 EDT
From:    Dolpfin220@a.......
Subject: Re: Janette and HF(was: Idle thought)

In a message dated 4/7/2001 7:34:19 PM Central Daylight Time,
bevainio@w....... writes:


> And perhaps that's the point.  Nick spent so much time looking for the cure
> outside himself that he never learned that it was inside him all the time,
>


I've just had this image of Nick as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz....  If this
is so, I'd put LC in the position of the Wizard, Nat as Auntie Em, Janette as
Glenda, Screed as the Scarecrow, and Vachon as the Tin Man.  I just can't
decide who is the Cowardly Lion or Toto....

There's no place like home, there's no place like home.... <G>
Janet

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that,
you've got it made. -Groucho Marx


------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 03:58:00 EDT
From:    Julia Kocich <JKocich@a.......>
Subject: Kezia's questions (was: LC evil?)

> 1) Is LaCroix evil by our standards?  (Any souls brave enough to say No to
>  this one?)  And if so, by which set of standards  - religious, moral (*not*
>  the same thing!), social, legal....?

Without getting into a discussion of our standards of evil,
I'll argue LC's side <g>. LC is an FK vampire, which I, at least,
consider to be a different, well, species than humans. He
seems to be older, wiser, and more proficient at being an
FK vamp than others; if one posits that the condition
of *being* an FK vamp automatically equals being evil, then
I don't see LC as being particularly more evil than other FK
vamps. And I think that LC certainly sees FK vamps as a
separate, superior, species. It's the philosophical reason that
he can't understand Nick's wish to return to that lower, mortal,
species.
>
>  2) Is LaCroix evil by his own standards?  <VEG>....

Good question. I think he certainly takes pleasure in having
OTHERS think him evil, and plays up that image to the hilt.
But does he consider himself evil? Only in connection
with Divia, I think, and that's a subject he's carefully avoided
thinking about for two millennia. I'm not sure any being can
consider itself "evil" without being ironic about it. People,
and vamps, always have their reasons: being evil is never
one of those reasons. Divia's condition of evil helped her
survive and wreak her vengeance, but it wasn't the *reason*
for her actions. LC has too much pride to allow himself
the excuse (for his own actions) of "well, Divia was evil,
so all my actions are due to her." (And I wouldn't buy that
line of reasoning, either <g>.) Cheap and simple chains of
causation aren't what I like FK for.
>
>  3) Has his definition of evil changed over the last 2 millenia?

Again: Divia seems to be the one part of reality that LC
considers evil. That knowledge may be what's tinged
his complicated relationship to existence (and parenting <g>)
since that time. As for human evil, I think he merely considers
it folly, like cats rolling in catnip. Does he consider Jack evil?
Or was he just a bad meal? He may not have chosen to bite
Hitler, but neither does he consider it his business to put him
out of business. That's vampire indifference to mortal suffering,
but I'm not sure I'd label it evil. (Before you howl, think of the
mortal suffering we are all indifferent to, all the time, because
it's happening elsewhere, in a different language or religion.)

Best,
Julia
jkocich@a.......
"Life is complicated. Ideas are simpler. That is their attraction." --
C. Raine

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Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 02:28:25 -0700
From:    StormBorn <smolly4@q.......>
Subject: Re: Kezia's questions (was: LC evil?)

Okay.  That's it.  I'm going to take my worthless brain down to the pawnshop
and try to get a fiver for it, because Julia just said everything in one
post that I believe in regards to this whole line of debate, clearly and
succinctly.

Brava!

Molly/StormBorn
Cousin, Ravenette, Dark Trinity, Seducer, Forum Fanatic, FK Pagan
Abnormally fond of dead guys
smolly4@q....... or stormborn@l.......

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 10:56:55 EDT
From:    Marel Darby <Frostsaint2@a.......>
Subject: Re: Idle thought

countessa2000@y....... writes:
>  But maybe it was a halucination of Janette. Anyway like Kyer once said 'It
>  was someone's knightmare' and I totally believe that. To me Janette is and
>  always stays LaCroix's daughter.

Yes, I agree, to a point. Perhaps the emotional trauma she suffered
temporarily altered bodily functions -- like Nick being able to eat in NiQ.
And when she was about to die, Nick, believing in her delusion, did all that
would have been necessary to change mortal to vampire -- entering the
fantasy and changing her perception of herself as mortal, if you like. At
any rate, whatever happened then, even if she had been truly mortal
and Nick brought her across again, it wouldn't (IMO) override the
emotional imprint of having LaCroix as her father for a millennium.

At the very worst --joint custody? <g>
Marel

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 09:15:01 -0700
From:    StormBorn <smolly4@q.......>
Subject: Yippee!  I got us a convert!

(Behind on the rest of my mail, but just had to send this)  I'm on a
miniatures list, SmallStuff, and I accidentally included my full FK sig in a
post I made.  A woman emailed me, 'her curiousity going into hyperdrive' as
she put it, and I 'splained.  She went and checked out a couple of sites and
wrote me that this sounded like her type of series!

So I sent her a few links and told her how to sub to forkni-l.

Molly/StormBorn
Cousin, Ravenette, Dark Trinity, Seducer, Forum Fanatic, FK Pagan
NA Forever!
Abnormally fond of dead guys
smolly4@q.......

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 11:26:00 -0500
From:    Margie Hammet <treeleaf@i.......>
Subject: Re: Janette and HF(was: Idle thought)

At 03:42 PM 4/7/01 -0700, Sunny LaCountess wrote:

>the idea that the cure had been so simple seems unacceptable. It implies
>that Nick not only didn't love Natalie, but he also didn't love any of
>those other women ... like Alyssa or Amelia. And after ... how long he had
>been searching for the cure, the
>fact that someone else ... virtually *stumbled* upon it....

Good point.  And surely there must have been other vampires besides Janette
that fell in love at some point.

That's why I came up with my theory that the cure has to do with the reason
why someone became a vampire in the first place.  For Janette, it might
have to do with her distrust of mortal men.  For Nick, some have suggested
his loss of faith; I think it also includes a fear of death (he nearly died
in the Crusades, something brought out in a scene in Last Act that I think
was only in the Canadian version).  For LaCroix, I think it might have to
do with arrogance.  (Thinking about his defiant statement in AMPH, "The
gods can't destroy me!)

Bring 'em back alive!
Margie (treeleaf@i.......)
Cousin of the Knight ~ N&NPacker
CotK Site -- http://lavender.fortunecity.com/evildead/879/

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 10:15:05 -0700
From:    StormBorn <smolly4@q.......>
Subject: Janette and HF

Countess wrote some good stuff, and then Marel added:
>>Perhaps the emotional trauma she suffered temporarily altered bodily
functions -- like Nick being able to eat in NiQ. And when she was about to
die, Nick, believing in her delusion, did all that would have been necessary
to change mortal to vampire -- entering the fantasy and changing her
perception of herself as mortal, if you like.<<

Aha!  That's believable...unfortunately, the very idea of the Ultimate Femme
Fatale turning into Ms. Suburbia just doesn't wash with me.  To me, the true
Janette is the pragmatic yet passionate vampiress capable of dealing with
both Nick and LaCroix while remaining herself.

Marel also added:
>At the very worst --joint custody? <g>

ROTFLMAO!  I can see it:  whilst LaCroix and Nick are arguing over proper
parenting techniques, Janette slips on something slinky, climbs out the
window, and goes for a joyride!

Molly/StormBorn
Cousin, Ravenette, Dark Trinity, Seducer, Forum Fanatic, FK Pagan
NA Forever!
Abnormally fond of dead guys
smolly4@q.......

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 14:46:53 -0400
From:    Brenda Bell <webwarren@e.......>
Subject: Re: Nature of vampires (was: LC evil?)

At 09:51 PM 4/6/2001 -0400, Portia wrote:

>And each life cut off short cuts off all that life's potential for
>great deeds, profound thoughts, simple decent interactions, small gifts of
>the heart that would improve the life of or give comfort to another.  To
>paraphrase: no man is an island; the death of each man diminishes me.

Again, this presupposes that one's worldview considers Death as an ending
to more than just the physical body. I'm sure you will find people on this
list who believe they have communicated with, or been communicated to by,
their deceased loved ones...

>Others have led wars, but Hitler strikes me as
>superlatively evil b/c of the nature of the death he brought to these
>individuals, and the manner by which he did it -- an arbitrary and anonymous
>death sentence for an "accident of birth,"

(Here, I start to play Devil's Advocate -- mostly because I find it
important to try to see all points of view of a situation (even the most
cheesily unlikely) to understand why things happen(ed) the way they do
(did)... )

The primary difference between Hitler and his predecessors was that Hitler
was able to order these deaths in assemblyline fashion... Even in today's
times, we see wars of racial annihilation (most infamously a fairly recent
one in sub-Saharan Africa in which over a half-million of the minority
tribe were massacred, and of course the whole Bosnian scene...)

>Then I imagine some of the most obnoxious, disagreeable
>people I've known, and acknowledge to myself that even they had qualities
>that I recognized as admirable (no matter how few and far between).

In which case, Hitler's decisions were supposed to make scarce resources
more readily available to the people he (pretended to be?) accountable to,
and to bring political and economic strength to a nation which had been
ground down between the heels of all the major Euro/Atlantic powers as a
result of the Treaty of Versailles... In those, he succeeded to a point...
(Unfortunately, at the expense of many of my people, and many of many other
peoples... )

>Can we hold LaCroix et al accountable to a human standard regarding
>reverence for human life?  In my mind, yes -- "the child is father to the
>man" and the human is sire to the vampire, ultimately.

Hmm... now you have me thinking about the philosophy of the "Nietzcheans"
in "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" <http://www.andromedatv.com>... Consider
the possiblility that Lacroix is, in effect, a Social Darwinist, selecting
and choosing those humans he considers best able to survive (the
strong-and-not-coddled-with-luxury) to remain as humans, improving the
breed, and those he considers best able to assist him with his mission, and
giving them the gift of surviving over a long enough period of time to make
that mission come to fruition (i.e., he makes them vampires). Of course, it
is most likely that Lacroix isn't aware that this is what he is doing, or
that he realizes that this is the result of him following his own
aesthetic, gustatory, and moral codes, but dismisses the effect to enough
of a degree to not feel guilty about it...

>The kinship is undeniable; vampires are altered humans who prey upon
>their physically disadvantaged kin

Physically disadvantaged? FK Vampires cannot go out in daylight, cannot eat
but an extremely limited number of foods (fresh human blood; some fresh
animal bloods; some bloods mixed with wine), cannot love, cannot reproduce
(in the usual fashion), cannot have sex (in the usual fashion)...

>with a mindset of "my needs before and despite any others."

Or perhaps, "I need this to survive. Also, I am as powerful as a god and
therefore, given both the permission and the responsibility to act as a god
for the benefit of mankind."


(Okay, I said "Devil's Advocate" before... here, the Devil gets into it,
literally. I am definitely curious about the theophilosophical side of
this, but I realize the potential of such a response chain to quickly
disintegrate. Don, McLisa -- please let us know if/when responses to this
need to go privately, or off to another list such as KoC!)

>It is ultimately a selfish and morally bankrupt lifestyle.

Depends what you make of it. Rather than moral bankruptcy, vampirism can
represent many lifetimes of supreme, and extreme, responsibility. Who is to
say that Satan and his minions, if you believe in their existence and their
theological responsibilities (take your pick of religions and
denominations), do not have any less responsibility than G-d (singular or
Trinity) and His minions (angels, etc.) in achieving an end goal of
developing a post-Apocalyptic humanity that is stronger, more merciful,
more G-dlike (and more G-d-loving)? Surely, G-d has delegated to the "Dark
Side" the responsibility of destroying or rehabilitating (depending upon
your theology) those who don't follow the precepts He has imposed upon
humanity (or upon those humans who accept Him, depending on your theology)...

If indeed the Adversary and his minions are entrusted with such a... should
I say, "sacred"? duty, could not FK vampires be part and parcel of how that
duty is accomplished?


>Once someone has gone down that dark road, is it easy to change?

And does someone, once changed, have to "go down that dark road"? In some
ways, Nick is an experimental case of that...

With all this talk of evil and the Devil in the middle of Christian Lent, I
have to wonder how Jesus would have dealt with the temptation of having
been turned into a vamp?

>it's never easy to make amends for wrong decisions and for self-centered
>actions, and sometimes the consequences for those choices are tragically
>high -- but in that case, who should pay?

And do we know for sure that Nicholas is the only vamp who pays that price?
It seems to me that the others do as well, but they are better at
repressing and surpressing the guilt, and at rationalizing their actions.


Brenda F. Bell   webwarren@e.......   /nick TMana     IM: n2kye
Arctophile, computer addict, TREKker, stealth photographer...
         UA, PoCBS, FKPagan; Neon-Green GlowWorm
HugMistress of the Ger Bear Project https://members.tripod.com/~TMana/
Gerthering 3 Photos:  https://members.tripod.com/~TMana/gertherng/
Visit the Fiendish Glow at http://home.earthlink.net/~webwarren/glow/

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End of FORKNI-L Digest - 7 Apr 2001 to 8 Apr 2001 (#2001-117)
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