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Digest - 20 Jan 2007 to 22 Jan 2007 (#2007-16)

Mon, 22 Jan 2007

There are 5 messages totalling 350 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Suicide and the Pipe Bomb from OtLo (4)
  2. ADMIN: FORKNI-L Rules

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Date:    Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:18:40 -0500
From:    gwatson2 <gwatson2@r.......>
Subject: Re: Suicide and the Pipe Bomb from OtLo

Debbie points out:

>  As I recall the
>person bringing in Nick's body  told Natalie the robbers had thrown  the
>bomb at him.  In  which case it wasn't his decision to be blown up.

In the scene in OtL, Eddie (the assistant who brings the body bag into
Natalie's lab) says, "He was trying to stop a gang robbery.  Someone tossed
him a pipe bomb for his trouble".
        So, yeah:  the bomb was definitely thrown at him.  But consider the
instinctive reaction of most people in that situation (e.g. soldiers and
grenades).  As a rule, if they don't totally freeze, they try to run away,
don't they?  Outrunning a bomb would depend on the speed with which it
detonates, and the speed of reaction.  But vampires have very quick
reflexes; so it's fair to assume that Nick could probably do it.  So why did
Nick let himself be blown up?  ("Let" is surely the right word.  We *know*
how fast he is, and that he can fly.)

Truth is, we don't know any details of the robbery.  Eddie told Natalie very
little about the circumstances.  But if, say, the gang were robbing a
grocery store (or something like that), there were likely other people
around.  These would, of course, be regular ordinary mortal humans.  Their
reactions would not be as lightning fast as Nick's, being only human.
        Now Nick, since he was trying to stop the robbery, was probably the
one closest to the gang.  That means that, if he were to fly away from the
bomb (which he probably could have), it would have meant exposing the humans
to the blast.
        Did he actually *throw* himself on the bomb, or simply not get out
of the way?  Either way, it would be deliberate--and very much something
that Nick would do.

Greer
gwatson2@r.......
http://ca.geocities.com/gwatson2@rogers.com/index.html

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Date:    Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:01:44 -0600
From:    Nancy Kaminski <nancykam@c.......>
Subject: Re: Suicide and the Pipe Bomb from OtLo

> gwatson2 wrote:

> But consider the instinctive reaction of most people in that situation (e.g.
> soldiers and grenades).  As a rule, if they don't totally freeze, they
> try to run away, don't they?

Not necessarily so. Unless the gang had actually said, "we have a pipe
bomb" (something I find extremely unlikely to be a gang weapon, by the
way) and use it to threaten the store owner, the instinct of anyone
having something thrown at them is to catch it. I myself have given
into this instinct: a coworker who said, "Here!" and threw a small
object at me. I clutched at it and caught it. No, not a pipe bomb, a
Dilbert toy. <g>

(This pipe bomb business is one of the few things I have always
thought was completely silly---c'mon, a gang that uses a pipe bomb to
rob a store? Or carries one around? They're notoriously unstable,
liable to go off unexpectedly, they're not very scary-looking, and not
exactly practical. I would have preferred the explosive device to be,
say, a grenade (every so often you read of someone finding a souvenir
grenade brought home by a soldier that has to be defused by experts).
I can see a gangmember playing with the pin on the grenada, taunting a
victim with it, and then when an interfering vampire stops his fun,
tossing it at him.)

> Did he actually *throw* himself on the bomb, or
> simply not get out
> of the way?  Either way, it would be deliberate--and very
> much something that Nick would do.

I agree. Although I see it more as Nick instinctively catching the
bomb, realizing what it is, and making a conscious decision not to
drop it, throw it away, or escape to leave the mortals to suffer the
brunt of the explosion.

Nancy Kaminski
nancykam#c.......

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Date:    Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:17:39 -0500
From:    Don Fasig <argent@c.......>
Subject: ADMIN: FORKNI-L Rules

I was brought up in Indianapolis and McLisa lives there now so...go
Colts!

If you need a hand or have any questions please don't hesitate to
contact me, Don Fasig listgardener@p....... or Lisa McDavid
mclisa@m........

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

Date:    Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:57:19 -0800
From:    "Amy R." <akr@l.......>
Subject: Re: Suicide and the Pipe Bomb from OtLo

In the digest of 1/20/07, Debbie Clark <dittany121@h.......> wrote:
><<However in the case of the pipe bomb, I doubt he had time to think
>it through.  As I recall the person bringing in Nick's body told
>Natalie the robbers had thrown the bomb at him.  In which case it
>wasn't his decision to be blown up.>>

      Certainly it is overwhelmingly more likely that the bomb took
Nick by surprise, as you note, both because of the specific
circumstances, and because no flashback pattern suggests Nick taking
potentially fatal risks where they could reasonably be
avoided.  ("Near Death"-present would be the point of divergence,
though he did also briefly talk about ending his life at the window
with Natalie in "Last Act" before asserting his familiar conclusion
to Erica's ghost.  And of course there's the "Hunters" flashback, in
defense of Janette and Lacroix.  Little enough in eight centuries.)

      However, if someone wanted to take the scenario to render a new
fanfiction, I think there's ample room in canon.  The "Only the
Lonely" flashback exchange goes:

NATALIE: Who is it and what happened?
EDDIE:   They couldn't find any ID.  The people who saw him before
the explosion said that--
NATALIE: Explosion?
EDDIE:   He was trying to stop a gang robbery.  Someone tossed him a
pipe bomb for his trouble.  It's a real mess.  At least there's not
much of a face to look at.

      Eddie is repeating what he's heard, and not necessarily from
first-hand witnesses, given he's a morgue technician, not a uniformed
officer or detective.  If a writer wanted to, in support of a story,
I think she could very reasonably suppose that the situation was more
complicated than Eddie's report of it.  Nick likely stumbled into
that gang robbery completely by accident, but, then again, he may
have had a greater involvement with the people on either side of the
incident, and had more than a split second to decide how to intervene
... if it would make a good story!  :-)  After all, "Father's Day"
makes the point that he is not unacquainted with organized crime (and
what are gangs but infant Mobs?), and "Dark Knight" gives him that
acquaintance with Topper, Jeannie and Dr. Dave, making the point that
his connections are not limited to either the law-enforcement or
vampire communities.

      Again, just having fun thinking through the possibilities. :-)

~~~
Amy R., Knightie
akr@l.......
Bright Knight: http://users.LMI.net/akr/fk/

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

Date:    Sun, 21 Jan 2007 22:07:26 -0800
From:    "Amy R." <akr@l.......>
Subject: Re: Suicide and the Pipe Bomb from OtLo

In the digest of 1/19/07, Greer Watson <gwatson2@r.......> wrote:
><<... it is usually taken as implicit in BB2 that Vudu's final bomb
>killed the Inca ...  So, if Nick *were* to have made the assumption
>that the pipe bomb would kill him, it wouldn't be at all a dumb
>thing for him to assume.)>>

      Off-list, Dot astutely pointed out that decapitation by bomb is
not a stretch.  It wouldn't even take the fire of the explosion for a
bomb to be fatal to an FK vampire, just the severing of the neck.

><<He must have known that he would *look* dead. ... Would he then
>dare take the risk of presuming that the pathologist in question
>would not be a resistor?>>

      Excellent point!  Fascinating!  You're absolutely right.  If
Nick had time to think his way through the bomb scenario, he would
have worried about the people picking up his pieces -- police, EMTs,
morgue technicians, pathologists.  He would have worried about his
own reaction to them, when he's in desperate need of blood, and of
course about Enforcer reaction to them, as you note, should they be resistors.

      Given this, if Nick had time to think his way through the
consequences before acting, he would not have let himself be blown up
unless 1) he really expected to die, or 2) there was no other way to
save lives.

      Or -- and this is a comedy scenario only, not in any way a
valid canon possibility! -- 3) he knew Natalie would be the one on
shift, and he did it all on purpose to get to meet her in that way.

><<The COD would be so obvious--extreme trauma caused by bomb
>damage--that the chance of anyone bothering to do further tests that
>might reveal his vampire condition would be tiny.>>

      And he might have presumed he would go to ashes anyway.  Canon
overall is notoriously noncommittal on when that does and doesn't
happen, but it's the first-season standard.

><<why would he sacrifice himself like this.  And the answer surely
>does lie in the word "sacrifice".>>

      Yes.  We know from what Eddie (the morgue technician) told
Natalie that there were witnesses to the gang robbery, perhaps a
crowd, all of whose lives would have been in danger (Natalie, OtLo:
"You ended up on my examining table because you tried to help
people").  Whether Nick fulfilled any or all the ideals of knighthood
in his mortal life beyond what we see in "Queen of Harps," he
nevertheless soaked in the cultural cult of the institution all his
mortal life -- stories of Richard II, Roland, Charlemagne -- and for
some time after.  As the Church had given up trying to end the
internecine battling in Europe and instead domesticated it (somewhat)
into knighthood, the first stated responsibility of the knight was to
protect the weak.  Wherever and whenever he got it, that's Nick at
his best -- finally killing Lacroix only to defend Alyce (DK2),
insisting on defending Janette ("Hunters"), trying to defend the
woman in the "Avenging Angel" flashback, rescuing Bernhard from the
Stasi as he gets the Toeffler family out of East Berlin ("1966"), and
many others.  Surely catching the pipe bomb falls into this category.

      Even, or especially, if he thought it could kill him.

><<But what if he died to save others?  Surely such a sacrifice would
>be redemptive? [as seen by Nick]>>

      And that has to be a concern for Nick, as voiced by Erica's
ghost.  This is firmly before "Fever," so it is yet unimaginable to
him that he could ever die except by his own hand, someone else's
hand, or perhaps the end of the world.  It's not a matter of enduring
until his time comes; his time passed in 1228.  He's stuck here,
without intervention.  His "Last Act" caveat ("Not by my own hand")
to his original rejection of his own death ("No") must be an
acknowledgment of that.  He's thought about it.  Perhaps a great deal
of thought followed -- or preceded -- the pipe-bomb incident.

      Which, suddenly, in light of last week's news about moving the
hands on the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight, makes me
think about some of the dialogue from "A More Permanent Hell" in
light of the Cuban Missile Crisis and other moments of WWII and Cold
War history.  Surely the vampire fears of Asteroid 6748 had to have
been first experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if not
shortly following Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  The younger vampires at
the Raven may not have thought it through before, but surely the
concepts would not have been new to Janette and Lacroix?  Perhaps
what they did in AMPH is precisely what they did at the time of the
nuclear confrontation ... perhaps Nick was not around Janette and
Lacroix at that time ...

><<In truth, there is nothing redemptive about the end of LK:  Nick
>seeks his death in suicide by proxy, at a time of despair.>>

      Yup.  I thought differently at the time "Last Knight" first
aired, but that was long ago.  While technically well executed, LK is
a failure for most every character in it, a tragedy for the
first-season ethos, and entirely rejectable for love of the
story.  (Crime piled on crime against the characters, without end:
even if Nick must commit suicide, if he believes murder a sin, how
dare he place that on Lacroix?  Even Lacroix.  Only if he counted it
a coup-de-grace, perhaps ...)

      Thank goodness for fanfiction.  :-)

><<It makes more sense that the line, "Not by my own hand", should be
>interpreted to mean "by the hand of another, in battle (or the
>equivalent), on the side of right, saving others".>>

      Well put!  And the importance of this intention would support
his repeated choices to work in law enforcement (AN) and war zones
(UTV, FaFi, CRCH, OtLi), as his fascination with humanity tilts him
to anthropology (DK, SD, FaFo).  And it does not dislodge the
interestingly underexamined possibility that Nick, at various points,
perhaps even with that pipe-bomb, might enthusiastically embrace what
he sees as a legitimate end, if it happens to fall in his path.


~~~
Amy R., Knightie
akr@l.......
Bright Knight: http://users.LMI.net/akr/fk/

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End of FORKNI-L Digest - 20 Jan 2007 to 22 Jan 2007 (#2007-16)
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