Ah, the allure of the Dark. What happens when a good girl crosses to the other side of humanity?

The Dark fractions involving Dr. Natalie Lambert postdate the creation of the original faction symbols, which left me with a problem: how do I symbolize a vampire Nat (for, as a rule, that is what "Dark" means in a Forever Knight context). In particular, how should I modify the NatPack symbol, which is a caduceus?

Two options immediately suggested themselves: replacing the stylized bird's wings with bat wings, and bringing the twined snakes to life. My first impulse was to do both.

I googled bats; I googled caducei. I trimmed and gilded the wings from a live bat silhouetted against the night sky. I cut out the snaky parts of a black magic symbol—all fangs and flickery tongues. I assembled the bits. I tweaked, and tweaked, and tweaked again.

I selected an absolutely gorgeous picture of Natalie all dolled up to meet Nick at Azure (and we all know how that ends), and retinted her eyes to a delicate shade of green.

I put all this together with a logo and made my icon. And I tweaked that.

And then I let it sit for a while, while I brooded. Time is the essence of self-beta'ing.

And then I started over. This is what I finally decided to use:



As you can see, I kept the picture of Nat. It was symbol that I redid.

You see, the more I looked at my first attempt, the less happy I felt about the modifications I'd devised for the NatPack caduceus. It would, mind you, have been a great symbol for Medea's fans. However, I didn't think the Dark NatPackers considered Natalie to have turned evil; I suspected, rather, that they considered her to have embraced the positive side of the vampire condition.

So hissy snakes were out. Bat wings, on the other hand, still appealed to me. I was not happy, though, with the gilded real wings: they didn't really blend well with the caduceus, which is more stylized.

Stylized bat wings? I considered this, rejected the cartoon sketches that dominate Halloween graphics sites, and turned instead to a different, but varied source: Batman symbols, of which there have been many versions down the years. I picked one with a suitable wing shape, gilded it, and slid it in place. It looked quite effective. (No, really!) It would have been absolutely perfect for...fans affiliated with a Batman/Nat crossover faction.

So I replaced the bat wings with a dark version of the angelic wings I used on the NNPack icon. Then, to finish the icon off, I trimmed out the Batman cowl and slipped it between the wings—and tweaked the ears, hinted at a nose, and added a pair of red eyes. Just so it wasn't quite so Batman, you understand. (Not that you can see much of this at icon-size.)

This left the lower right corner. It needed something, but what? I turned to the mailing list for help. I can only say that there seem to be few Dark NatPackers left around. However, I did get suggestions...from the guys on list. This is interesting in itself, for fandom is overwhelmingly female. Even FK fandom, which has always had a significant minority of active male fans. But the people who chimed in with suggestions were Tim Ph., waltd, and Andrew C. The ideas varied from the sublime to the gorblimey, and included some that I'd already tried. However, Andrew's notion of a sunset background and/or black roses hit the spot. The sunset actually went on the Dark Nick and NatPack icon. However, I slipped a black rose wallpaper behind the Dark NatPack icon; and that went perfectly with the crimson rose and (oft-used) wineglass of Ribena that I fitted in the lower corner.

So here, again, is the Dark NatPack icon:



Since it is hard to see the details of the symbol at this size, here's a larger version of it:




Dark Nick and NatPack:



The trickiest part of doing icons for any of Natalie's factions is dealing with the caduceus. It is both broad and long, and hence hard to position. A central location would be ideal; but then where do you put the other things? The screen capture, in particular, needs to be reasonably large. I tried shifting my lovely picture of Nick and Nat leftwards, and rightwards, and finally put it dead centre (always at the bottom of the icon, obviously).

As for the caduceus, I originally intended to modify the symbol I had made for the NNPackers, and hence replaced the golden angel wings with dark ones, and the blue/gold/silver ribbons with ones in red shades. However, Andrew's suggestion of black roses immediately gave me a different idea. I skewered a fine large rose on Nick's sword, and fitted that down the centre of the dark-winged caduceus. The twined snakes were trimmed off, and superimposed (rather small) on the section of the sword above the rose.

Again, a large version of the symbol may help you see the detail:



I might add that people often suggest that I alter pictures to add fangs or change eye colour. It might interest you to know that I did just that in the picture of Nick and Natalie that I used. The dainty little fangs do not show up, not even when the design is enlarged to 350 pixels square. One would have to use dramatically corny fake fangs for them to be visible when the picture is reduced so far. (Remember, there are other things that also have to be fitted in: I can't size the picture of Natalie to fill the whole icon.)

Here's a detail of the bottom left corner of the icon. Much smaller than this and the fangs just...disappear! As it is, you have to look pretty hard to see them.



All this doing and redoing was a pain in the neck, of course—both frustrating and damnably time-consuming. However, it was worth it in the end!