A Lightkeeper's Log

Title: New Yesterdays, New Tomorrows
Author: muccamukk
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Yar, Troi, Picard, Guinan)
Rating: Teen (Contains: Spoilers for 3.15 "Yesterday's Enterprise")
Word Count: 3,300
Notes: For pleonasm for rarewomen, thanks so much for the great prompt. Thank you also to Nenya for beta reading, even when she'd rather have been watching Defiance.
Summary: Tasha escapes the destruction of the Enterprise C, but what does it mean to be back on her own ship when the war she remembers never happened at all?

Hmmm... I'm not rocking this show as hard two episodes in. I felt like this episode had pretty massive pacing problems, one of the main characters just vanished, and the dialogue isn't really getting any better. However, Graham Greene!

( Spoilers )

Overall, mixed bag. Will keep watching for Irisa and Graham Green.

Then we watched the first episode of Da Vinci's Demons, which wasn't very good. I guess it's nice that Alexander Siddig and Elliot Cowan are getting work?

[The Lugubriously Titled] Star Trek: The Next Generation: Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman
I went into this book with all the good will in the world, and came out feeling pretty grumpy. For something billed as the fruition of 20 years of sexual tension between Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher, it certainly didn't have a hell of a lot of romance in it. They probably only had five pages where they were in the same room together. Granted, there was a certain amount of pining, but nothing that happened seemed to warrant a change in status of their relationship.

Instead, we got several hundred pages of Romulan politics, about which I did not care, and a lot of running about with original characters, about whom I also did not care. Beverly spent most of the book failing to escape or getting rescued, only to have a designated girl fight in the climax, ( spoiler )

What's the test, if you replace the female character with a carrot, and the events of the book do not change, then you need to rethink your female character?

I remember liking Friedman when I was fourteen, but I also remember being a pretty uncritical reader back then. Apparently, anyway! The prose wasn't that great, using a lot of trite phrasing, and I totally called most of the plot twists chapters in advance. ( spoiler )

It took me FOREVER to read this book, and I only got through it in the end because it's due back at the library, and I skipped most of the Romulan politics in the back third.

I'm only giving it two stars because of a cute Admiral Janeway cameo.

Can anyone rec me P/C fic that's actually decent?

But I plan to lie down until the feeling passes.

Mostly I want a place where I can just post pictures and pithy remarks without feeling like I need to make a whole post that says stuff, and things. But every time I go on tumblr, it pisses me off, so I think I won't.

I'm trying to gather momentum to get up to the hospital and visit a sick friend, then hit the library, then meet Nenya for lunch, then go to the bank like a goddamn adult. I just got in from volunteering though, and my mental space is more on a "Fire bad. Tree pretty" sort of level.

Here's a picture of Tasha Yar and a kittycat.

Out the door. Any minute now.

Two posts that completely summarise my feelings towards life right now.

One

Two

I was excited because I thought someone had written new Sinbad fanfic, but it turned out to be a repost of something I'd read on fandom_stocking. I really must finish that one Rina fic.

Have poked at my rarewomen signups for I think the last time. I'll doubtless match on something. I know I'm the only match on at least three requests. -chews nails-

Having watched a season and a bit of The Mentalist in four days, I think my frustration at Jane's off-handed determination to destroy not only his life but the lives of everyone around him is outweighing my desire to keep watching. May try watching at a slower pace later.

I am reading Mirror Dance, where at least the self-destruction will hopefully lead to character growth. I'd started it and then taken a break due to it being so dark, but am trying again.

I should put the time into reading library books and doing excruciatingly boring union coursework. Oh, PSAC, I love you, but man, your web page...

Should make dinner and go out for live music. Bill Johnson is at the local jazz bar tonight.

Thank you for writing me a story! I love presents generally, and putting work into something for me makes me very happy generally. I'm pleased that we have fandoms in common, mystery author, and I look forward to seeing what you end up writing!

A few general likes and squicks before I talk about my fandom. Erm, obviously, I'm not expecting all of the following. Just write what you like, and if you want ideas, check out the list. Since you clearly have excellent taste in women, I trust to your judgement.

Likes: I love angst and h/c, I also love action/adventure and humour. Tropes of which I am fond: time travel, amnesia, mind control, AUs (both where they're all pirates or in space, or where someone turned left when in canon they turned right), wrongly accused of crimes, thinking someone is dead, abandonment issues, loyalty in the face of all odds, and h/c generally (especially emotional h/c). I like women being good at their jobs, but I prefer relationship and character-focused stories, or at least a lot of emotional-engagement when it comes to case fic. People interacting and connecting makes me happy. I like gen (especially about friendship and/or mentors and students), het and femslash. I like porn, including D/s and bondage.

Squicks: I don't have triggers, but I can be upset by strong sexual violence and graphic torture (aftermath of torture is okay). I really don't like downer endings. I'm not super fond of pregnancy stories, but if you want to include canon pregnancy, that's okay. If you write porn, I prefer porn with plot over PWPs. I also don't really like extensive blood play, or any scat or golden showers. I don't like mentor/student, or other sexual relationships with a strong disparity in power. I don't really care for AUs about school, bands or coffee shops, or D/s or a.b.o universes.

Fandoms: ( A-Team (2010), Babylon 5, Dor (2006), Captain Britain and MI:13, Daughters of the Dragon, and Sinbad )

Original: cheerful alien xenobotanist/grumpy electrokinetic librarian
Original: Winter Scene
Elementary AU: Joan/Carrie
My Little Pony: FIM: Twilight Sparkle/Rarity
Discworld: Polly Perks & Maladicta

Okay, I'm going to stop procrastinating this instant, I'm not even going to write out the long and impressive list of things I've been doing as means of procrastination (see above as an example), and write.

Made it about thirty minutes into the first episode of Labyrinth (The mini series based on the Kate Mosse book, not the idtastic Jennifer Connelly-David Bowie musical), then bailed due to a combination of generalised irritation and lack of caring. It managed to have both Bucky and Draco in it, which should have warned me off from the start. The fact that I pitched the book at the wall ten pages in should also have been a bad sign, probably. I was hoping the film would be less silly. Sadly not. They also managed to make the archaeology even worse. I also find a) feuding sisters, b) highly-sexualised evil women, c) basically anything to do with the holy grail but especially pertaining to d) lost books of secret revelations, extremely tiresome. I should probably just avoid Cathar-related material entirely, which is too bad, because the Cathars seemed cool.

Though seriously, what was up with the "Gnostics" Christians? They're like the Loki of early church history. There's two camps: They were wrong wrong wrongity wrong, and had very bad no good beliefs, and they probably shouldn't have been slaughtered wholesale, but still WRONG! OR (and no middle ground here), they were poor misunderstood woobies who were right and alone knew the true meaning of meaning, but the more powerful forces of greed and evil oppressed, murdered and then misrepresented them. Oh, and they weren't called gnostics, that's just a label the Holy Mother Church slapped on them while they were misrepresenting them. I've pretty much never met or read anyone who wasn't firmly in one camp or the other, and a lot of the discussion seems to descend into flame wars pretty quickly.


On that topic, I finished Growing into God: A Beginner's Guide to Christian Mysticism by John R. Mabry (who really didn't like the gnostic Christians, except the Valentinians, who he says weren't gnostic anyway), which was mostly pretty good, if not quite what I expected. I thought this would be an academic history of mysticism and an outline of the major beliefs. This was more of a self-help books for aspiring mystics.

Given that, I found it pretty useful. The prose was chatty and accessible, with a Q&A appendix for each chapter, clarifying many points I'd wondered about within the chapters. I read it straight through, but I'd recommend reading by topic: the chapter, the Q&A, then the quotes by mystics.

It's definitely a beginner's book, which is where I am on this topic, and it's orientated towards people who are or can be part of a Christian community. I found that last point a little frustrating because I was looking for something an unchurched person can do (in that there is no church in my area).

Still, I did find the book insightful, and will probably read it again.


I tried to read Pegasus by Robin McKinley, but didn't finish. It just sort of meandered about with no declarable plot, and considering I'd been spoiled that there was no proper ending and no sequel in sight, I gave up.

I'm currently reading a Marcus Borg book about reading the Bible, the memoirs of a Palestinian-Canadian war reporter, and several books on diesel engine repair (one of which likes to explain everything through mathematical equations, which I don't find deeply helpful).


I'm trying to decide if I should just go right ahead and rewatch Sinbad immediately or wait a bit. I guess there's no word on a second season? I have ordered a library book entitled When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty By Hugh Kennedy as period research. This is going to be one of those FML fandoms, I can tell. I can't believe I'm doing period research for a show that fails basic geography. (They got from Basra to Malta between one episode and the next, in a boat, in 800 CE, without apparently taking the time to sail around Africa). I just really like the characters, okay?

May rewatch Highlander a bit while I'm deciding.