But I was a joan-come-lately to this fandom--I only started watching the series in May, and it was another two months before I started this website. In the intervening three months I struggled to catch the series and catch up with no local LFN fans to supply me with tapes or watch them with me, and unlike Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I couldn't seem to hook my roommates and friends. In fact, my best friend had an extraordinarily strong reaction to LFN and simply cannot watch it. She practically winces when I talk about it. It's not that she doesn't believe me when I enumerate the series strengths and admit their weaknesses. She just doesn't care for it, and I've come to accept that LFN isn't everyone's cup of tea. Incidentally, the same friend has a similar--if not quite as virulent--reaction to Vr.5, another dark, intense series that I adore.

So I watched the bulk of the first season alone, with no one to discuss the series with. In this age of newsgroups, AOL folders, and mailing lists (and I used to run two TV discussions lists myself), I had forgotten what it is like to watch a series without any preconceived notions or outside influences--nothing to prevent you from forming your own opinions, theories, and likes and dislikes. The downside of course being having no outlet for you to discuss these same opinions with other like-minded fans. For that matter, no forums to meet other like-minded fans. Luckily, I have friends Leslie and Amber. Unfortunately, the state my life is in, I don't talk to them nearly as often as I should.

And then there was the fanfic. I should probably begin by saying that while I am writing fanfic for a series, I tend to not read much of it, partly out of fear that I will unconsciously steal story elements from other writers, and partly to keep from becoming distracted by comparisons with other writers' work. So with the exception of one or two pieces, some of them by friends, I haven't been reading a lot of the fanfic out their, another reason I say I exist in a vacuum, albeit in this instance a self-imposed one.

The minute I started watching Nikita, I knew fanfic was inevitable. But it took War to give me the idea I needed to sit down and actually get inside Michael and Nikita's heads. And in fact, I had already had several pages of notes--dating back from the week I first put this website up--that eventually this fall turned into the argument in Nikita's flat in Janick. My friends laughingly refer to the obsessive need to write fanfic as "having people" meaning that the characters voices are so clear inside your head that they start stalking to you trying to get you to write the stories they want you to tell. I do not have people (thank heavens) but I can understand how some of my friends can end up that way. I "heard" these characters remarkably clearly, and hope that I've been able to translate that in my fiction.

A few quick general notes on fan fiction here: Despite popular opinion, television being a collaborative medium means writing fan fiction for a series is not easier than creating your own original characters and premise. In its own way, it is harder, because you have to remain consistent with what has gone before, the tone and spirit of a series, while telling a brand new story. The only thing harder is actually writing a script, which has to do all that, and do it in 50 pages with the story divided into 4 acts, a tease and a tag. Pacing for scripts is so utterly different from the pacing of a short story, or even a novella, and I for one salute anyone who is able to consistently turn out good, filmable scripts in a fortnight. I've never been able to do it (not in a fortnight, that's for sure!).

Why write three short vignettes instead of jumping straight into a short story or novella? Vignettes are a form I usually take when I first jump into a fandom--and a useful way of testing the waters. They are slices, brief scenes in which the momentum that moves the story forward is usually provided by emotion rather than the devices of a plot. They have a simple format, with the conflict coming from within the characters rather than from the outside, that allows the fanfic writer (and in this case, they are almost unique to fan fiction because the writer can safely assume the reader has the same level of knowledge that the writer does, and therefore doesn't have to explain the premise, go over the plot points, or set the stage) to examine in detail the subtle emotional constructs using words rather than pictures (ask me someday about POV shifts in fanfic being the logical literary version of the reaction shot--it'll be entertaining, I promise. I'm very passionate on the subject).

Last general note: All fanfic writers read fanfic for love and enjoyment just like everyone else, but with the question "Is she better at this than I am?" lurking in the back of our minds, needing to be answered. Everyone is judged as potential competition. Anyone who tells you different is most likely lying. We need those big egos to keep us from folding at the first sign of a contrary viewpoint. Which is not to say we won't fall down weeping with gratitude at the first sign of constructive feedback. Just be forewarned that while we want you to tell us what you liked and didn't liked and why, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll agree with you. In the end though, even those monumental egos can be set aside if it means putting out the best possible story. The quality of the work we put out names on supercedes all else, even pride.

Okay, on to why I wrote the three stories I did, specifically...i.e., welcome to the actual interesting part of the essay (and, according to my editor, the part that actually has a definable structure. I love my editor, she keeps me from making too big of an idiot of myself in public).

With The Cat I wanted to delve into Michael's mind--a place more familiar to the audience than to any of his fellow fictional character. As far as they are concerned, Michael is a cipher--completely unreadable. The audience alone has seen everything, has been let in on the secrets, and been asked to judge for themselves what they are seeing. After all, the audience are the only ones who know just how many times Michael has placed himself as a buffer between Nikita and Operations. Nikita has no idea just how much he has risked for her, but we the viewing audience do and it makes his character extraordinarily more complex and sympathetic than if we were limited to knowing only what Nikita knows. At the same time, almost all that we know has been communicated in visual terms. With a look, rather than dialogue. We are left to interpret Michael's thoughts through his expressions, body language, and how the other characters treat him, interact with him, and what they say about him or don't say in equal measure. So The Cat was my way of getting side the head of the cipher and trying to examine his motivations, and while not justifying what he has done, at least shed some light on the whys.

Janick was another Michael piece that I simply could not not write after War. The idea of Michael having a son just took hold of me and dropped me from a tall building, and there was no stopping me once I started. The bulk of it was written in a day. I hope that doesn't show too badly, by the way. But Janick for me was as much about Nikita--how she is able to trust Michael again and again despite the lies or maybe because of them. How she is able to keep her hope in the face of despair, and how Michael has lost that ability. How she is able to still forgive. Nikita in my mind is a creature of quicksilver emotions--all valid, all true, but ever changing, and I wanted to try and show that without taking their relationship anywhere dramatically new--just a teeny step farther than the series had shown it to me at that point. And considering how we went from her swearing she'd never trust him again in War to dancing cheek or cheek in Mercy, I am satisfied that the reader can slip Janick in-between them without having to do any mental cartwheels to make it fit with series continuity.

I am one of those fanfic writers who wants to have her fiction fit series canon, and while I know that, writing for a living show (i.e.. a show still in production) that is impossible (for example, I am dead sure that second season will no doubt blow Janick right out of the water in terms of canon), I made that conscious choice with Janick. In inventing a bit of history that would no doubt be displaced by series canon eventually, by taking facts that had only been hinted at on the series, and supplying the details that I believed fit the Michael I took away from the series as a fan and a writer, I was sacrificing the potential long term for the definite short term. But seeing as how I live in the short term, the possibility that the story might eventually be proven wrong by official canon seemed remote enough to justify the sacrifice.

Purgatory on the other hand, was an exercise in ambiguity. It is literally a moment out of Nikita's life, and despite how many of you who've asked, I'm not going to elaborate on who the mystery man was, because to me the importance of the story was in actually examining the life she had come from, and how much Section had changed her. Before Section, Nikita's existence was about survival. Section gave her a chance to actually live, but at the cost of her conscience. She suddenly had the luxury of moral dilemmas. I find the concept fascinating, though I for one hope in the coming season that we will see more of Nikita than simply her conflict with Section's operating procedures.

Anyway, the story I'm currently working on (and the reason it's taking so much time to write) is a Birkoff story that actually involves a real plot (laugh), and I'm terrible about plots. So it's taking a while. Once it's finished, I'll probably sit back and wait and see what grabs me next. But I thought it might be nice to actually explain myself a bit, and give readers a sense of who I am that the impersonal nature of the site probably doesn't get across. Basically, I am in love with words, in love with language and the power of it. You can wield it with the precision of surgeon's scalpel, and force people to follow you as you try and think around corners in a world of straight lines. So, that's at the core of why I can't not write, and why I've written what I have so far. I hope this hasn't been a total bore for all you stalwart readers who've made it this far, and I thank you.

Incidentally, if you'd like to sample any of my work in other fandoms, check out LJC's Fanfic Library.