The Cousins of the Knight (Angie Lotto's faction site)

Tn Angie'sCotK — Screen capture of the main page of Angie Lotto's faction site for the Cousins of the Knight, as restored and archived.

Angie Lotto's website, The Cousins of the Knight^[1] (now at http://www.foreverknight.org/AngiesCotK/cotk.html), was the first faction site for the Cousins of the Knight (CotK) faction of Forever Knight fandom.

Site History[]

Angie Lotto, one of the founders of the CotK, began work on their faction site on 11/05/96, debuting the site officially at http://www.lashersystems.com/fk/cotk.html in the spring of the following year. However, Angie became more involved in the GSS subfaction of the Cousins; and updates to the site were discontinued in 1998, the last being on 10/04/98.

Although the website lingered on the Net for another year or so, it was replaced as the official faction site by one created by Lisa Harvey. (This also has the name, The Cousins of the Knight.) An archived copy of the original site can be found on the Wayback Machine. It preserves the stories, but no screen captures or graphics.

In 2013, it was decided to restore the site and add it to the Forever Knight Website Archive. In undertaking the restoration, Greer Watson had to replace the graphics, in some instances by locating or recreating the originals, in other instances by using substitutes. (It was not possible, however, to identify the pictures that had been in the photo gallery, which was therefore left unrestored.)

Contents[]

The main page of the site contains a description of the CotK faction, with additional information on a separate FAQ page.

In addition, the site includes:

a small fiction archive
episode critiques (for a limited number of episodes)
a small screen capture archive
bio and credits for Nigel Bennett

And links to the Cousins of the Knight Favorite Quote Page and Bonnie's Bedtime Stories websites.

Fan Fiction[]

The stories archived on the site are:

"LaCroix Takes the Wheel" by Diane Trap
"None So Blind" by Diane Trap
"Eternal Champion" by Cousin Tippi
"Eternal Champion 2" by Cousin Tippi
"Mortality" by Eric McCann
"Pidgeon" by Carrie Krumtum
"To Lighten the Load" by Marcia Tucker
"Blood On My Hands And It Tastes of Family" by Gehirn Karies
"Dream Advocate" (in two parts) by Gehirn Karies

Site Design[]

The top of the main page of the site is dominated by a large image of the original CotK faction symbol, flanked by columns. This recurs on many of the internal pages.

The sections of the table of contents are separated by a divider in the form of a long sword, which alternates with its reverse (one facing left, the other right). This reflects the image of crossed swords in the CotK logo. Elsewhere in the site, a slim double-headed lance-shaped divider bar is employed on some pages.

The site is overwhelmingly dark in tone, with relatively little colour (except in the photo archive, obviously, and in also various banners that appear at the bottom of the main page).

Restored, Recreated, and Replaced Graphics[]

The faction symbol, webring graphics, and lance-shaped divider bar (used on some of the internal pages of the site) were located elsewhere. However, in order to produce a website that would be enjoyable to fans, it was necessary to recreate or replace other graphics.

To replace:

the original divider "sword.gif":
- a sword-shaped divider of similar dimensions that would show up well on a dark background
the original divider "sword2.gif" (which had the same dimensions as the other sword divider, and alternated with it):
- the mirror image of the sword divider, pointing the other way
the original graphic "column.gif" that flanked the faction symbol on either side:
- a picture of a classical architectural column, in light grayscale to match the faction symbol, resized to the dimensions of the original

To restore the background, "cotkbackground.jpg", the faction logo was used with colours reversed, i.e. dark grey on black (rather than light grey on white).^[2]

References[]

↑ There was no written title on the main page of the site, which instead was headed by the faction symbol. As a result, the site could also be called Les Cousins du Chevalier, French for "The Cousins of the Knight", since that is the name written on the ribbon in the symbol.
↑ Although the reversal of colours to produce the background graphic was a guess, it was a reasoned guess. From the name, "cotkbackground.jpg", it was inferred that the graphic should be specifically "CotK" in some way. This was taken in conjunction with the odd appearance of the faction logo: it was uncommonly pale in comparison with the others, which are either black-and-white or include a full range of grey tones. A comment in an e-mail from Margie Hammet, one of the faction founders ("Thinking about an earlier website is giving me strange feelings about some ghostly sort of thing.") was encouraging. In a later e-mail, after it was added to the archive, Margie wrote that, once she saw the restored version, she remembered the site.

[1] There was no written title on the main page of the site, which instead was headed by the faction symbol. As a result, the site could also be called Les Cousins du Chevalier, French for "The Cousins of the Knight", since that is the name written on the ribbon in the symbol.

[2] Although the reversal of colours to produce the background graphic was a guess, it was a reasoned guess. From the name, "cotkbackground.jpg", it was inferred that the graphic should be specifically "CotK" in some way. This was taken in conjunction with the odd appearance of the faction logo: it was uncommonly pale in comparison with the others, which are either black-and-white or include a full range of grey tones. A comment in an e-mail from Margie Hammet, one of the faction founders ("Thinking about an earlier website is giving me strange feelings about some ghostly sort of thing.") was encouraging. In a later e-mail, after it was added to the archive, Margie wrote that, once she saw the restored version, she remembered the site.

[1]

[2]