Looking over the icons I've made—both the ones that I've already posted and the ones almost ready, but not quite—I realize that I've got most of the character-based factions done...albeit with a few significant exceptions...but very few of the many couple factions, in which Forever Knight fandom abounds.

This clearly must be addressed.

So here are four more icons, three of which come from true couple factions and the fourth from a "trio faction" (if there is such a term). Two of them were quite straightforward, since the dominant motif is right there in the faction name. For the others, things got a little more elaborate.




Heartbreakers:

There seem to be two quite different factions for the slash pairing of Nick and Vachon. The first was created back during Season Three, when people were presented with a group of new characters and promptly set to work creating factions for them. A number of names were suggested for a Nick/Vachon faction, of which "Heartbreakers" proved successful. On FORKNI-L, Knightie Katrinka still lists it as a secondary faction in her sig., so clearly the name is current. Nevertheless, a second faction, NightHaven, was created several years later. There's a small NightHaven website, which says, "No longer the only missing faction from the Forever Knight fandom..."—which isn't quite true (there are plenty of "missing" factions!), but does indicate the general inactivity of the Heartbreakers at that time.

All this means that, if the NightHaven is still extant, I owe them an icon—and presumably a completely different one, since they have a different history. However, it's the Heartbreakers who are celebrated in this icon.

There are a couple of nice pictures of Nick and Vachon together, this being (to my mind) quite the prettiest. As for the symbol: well sticking in a broken heart was more or less inevitable, wasn't it, given the name of the faction?




CERKPerks:

The pairing of Tracy with LaCroix was remarkably popular with the DP, in particular. So I decided to plunder their icon, blending elements from it with the CERK logo that appeared in scenes at the station. The CERK logo is therefore nestled between the ears of the white rabbit—save that I removed the lightning flash from the former and staked the bunny with it!

Since the CERK sign provides half the name of the faction, I picked the "Perks" off the DP icon, too.

This took up a good deal of the space, so I decided to put the pictures of Tracy and LaCroix at the side. However, as they never shared a screen together, some assembly was required. When I looked through my pictures of LaCroix and found one in which he was looking UP, I got an idea—and was then lucky enough to be able to match it with a picture of Tracy looking DOWN. A marriage made in...heaven?




Dark Hearts:

The Dark Hearts are one of those small couple factions that seem to exist primarily in sigs. and as labels for fan fiction. I don't think there was ever a Dark Heart chat room—though I may be wrong, since I postdate the main enthusiasm for Forever Knight. Why did the Dark Hearts never take off? Well, pairing up new characters with each other is an obvious move, but Urs was never as popular as Javier Vachon: that may account for it. As well, though couple factions usually claim to be about the relationship in all its aspects and don't require romance in their stories, there is a definite tendency in that direction—and Urs is by way of being Javier's daughter, after all. Of course, vampire relationships can be very complicated.

There is one lovely shot of the two of them together. It looks very romantic, though—you know the scene—he's really greeting her, and then promptly sits down. I paired it with a heart, whose colour I had altered. It's actually not that dark; but all purple shades have a dusky quality when compared to the bright red or fuchsia that one expects in a clipart heart.




Dark Trinity:

This is probably the biggest of the factions here: the Dark Trinity are Nick, LaCroix, and Janette; and their relationship down the centuries affects all of Nick's actions in the present day.

Perversely, there are only a handful of pictures of the three of them together. Scenes of them together, yes. Screen captures, no. It's hard to fit three people in close proximity without having one or a pair dominate the shot; and, all too often, one is clearly in the background. Or off screen, and seen in the next screen capture on his (usually his) own: Nick and Janette versus LaCroix, or Janette and LaCroix versus Nick.

I also needed something to symbolize the three of them; yet, so far as I could make out, no official faction symbol had ever been created. There was a short-lived faction page: it only exists now on the Wayback Machine, and has no graphics; but the "alts" on the pictures suggest that they were either publicity photos or screen captures, with no faction symbol.

So I decided to try to find a way to combine symbols for the three of them. In the end, I came up with this:



As you can see, it has a sword for Nick, on which is superimposed a silver version of the Cousins symbol, with—dead centre—a little raven for Janette. All of this is then superimposed on a gold biohazard warning symbol. This actually serves to tie the whole thing together. It's triple-curved shape echoes the "trio" aspect of the relationship: no one character dominates in importance, at least not from the perspective of a fan. As for the "biohazard" bit: well, they're all vampires, aren't they? To humans, they're very much a "biohazard", if not of the usual sort.

As with the CERKPerks, the size of the symbol meant that it would have been very hard to combine with a single screen capture, even if I had found one I really liked. So instead, I picked out three individual pictures and ran them down the side.