MadNatters

Forever Knight Faction
Name:	MadNatters
Abbreviation:
Date(s):	1997 - present (inactive since c. 1999, still listed in sigs to posts on ForKNI-L)
Leaders:
Founder:
Type:	reaction faction
Focus:	Natalie Lambert
Wars:
Community:
URL:
Faction icon for the MadNatters, created by Greer Watson in 2012.
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The MadNatters were a faction of Forever Knight fandom comprising fans who wished to declare an affiliation with the character Dr. Natalie Lambert, but were not members of the original Natalie-affiliated faction, the NatPack.

History

Originally, activity within Forever Knight fandom was oriented to the FORKNI-L mailing list. However, by the late '90s, it was possible for factions to develop a stronger sense of individual community through e-groups (or, later, Yahoo!Groups) and chat rooms.

Traditionally, to become a member of any Forever Knight faction all a fan needs to do is declare the affiliation; moreover, one can declare as many affiliations as one likes. However, the original faction for fans of Natalie, the NatPackers, decided to admit new members to their community forums only if they had no other affiliation.

As a result of being denied membership (whether for this or some other reason), a group of fans formed their own separate Natalie-affiliated faction, which they called the MadNatters. Their mailing list went up in July 1997, and was active for a couple of years. The name of the faction presumably reflects their reaction to the NatPackers' exclusiveness.

The MadNatters were a group of folks who were devoted Natalie fans but not part of the NatPack; the majority of us claimed another faction as our "first loyalty," as it were. We got our start as a email loop, though quite a few of us also met on IRC almost every night, especially when episodes were being broadcast, just to yammer. (This was, of course, WAY before the days when AIM--at the time the only IM client of note--was available to anyone other than AOL users.) Anyone was welcome to join the loop or the chats. The MadNat mailing list has long since gone into a deep and probably irrevocable sleep, [...].

-- Stephanie Babbitt, in a post to FORKNI-L 13 Jun 2008.[1]

Although the MadNatters are inactive, there are still fans who consider themselves to be members.

Faction Icon

In 2012, Greer Watson created an icon for the MadNatters as part of her project to create a set of icons for all the Forever Knight factions. The design reflects that which she had previously used for the NatPack icon, and therefore composits a screen capture of Natalie with one of the notebook in which she records her experiments on Nick, includes a caduceus as faction symbol, and employs a background of the tiles from the set most associated with the character, the morgue in the Coroners Building. However, a different caduceus and a different page of the notebook were used. In addition, the picture of Natalie shows her in an assertive state of mind, to reflect the "Mad-" in the name of the faction; and, unlike the NatPack icon, the one for the MadNatters is not circumscribed by a border, which is intended to symbolize the more open membership of the group.[2]