Amanda Rogers

I'm tired.

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:30:39 GMT

I didn't even think we *got* tired. But I've never had a major project before. I want a vacation soooo bad.

Started working with the Ocampa, carefully. Have not been so careful with the Kazon Nistrum. I think I sort of, um. Well, okay, I did all like fire and glory and told them I would smite them unless they left the Ocampa alone. Okay, not subtle. Not subtle at all. But I had to do something about the raiding parties. Aside from dropping big rocks out of the sky onto their heads, 'cause that's just mean. And subtle was not working. And they're lucky I didn't get mad enough to *actually* smite them, because I almost did. Man, they are frustrating.

Now there are Kazon women praying to me to make their husbands be nicer to them. Eep! That... was not what I was after.

Being a goddess is really hard work. Oh, and I've had to pay attention to B'fario too since I'm the maiden goddess there. There are some Q who are gods on like hundreds of worlds or something. How do they do it? I am so stressed and I've only got two species, plus another one I didn't mean to get.

I waaaant iiiiice cream. And Risa. And handsome young men to give me backrubs that I don't really need but they feel good anyway. And a hot tub. Or maybe a whole hot lake. Maybe I'll go swim in a volcanic spring. Or a volcano. (Though hot lava's hell on your hair.)

i am sooo embarrassed.

Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:47:39 GMT

*Sigh*

What is it about cute guys that makes me act like a complete idiot?

See, I, um, might have mentioned that there's this guy, who's an individualized Borg, who I happen to think is really really cute, except that the Borg sort of have this history with us. As in, they're scared silly of us. So I was going back and forth and back and forth about whether I should even talk to this guy or if I'd just scare him. And I decided, okay, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? So I went to talk to him. And, uh, he's scared silly of me.

And it does not help that qcontinuum is telling him we wipe out civilizations and he should be scared of me! Everyone, say it with me now: JERK!!!

Oh, I wouldn't want to be unoriginal. How about "ASSHOLE?" Or "BASTARD?" Or "GUY WHO CAN WHINE THAT HE WANTS A BABYSITTER UNTIL THE END OF TIME BEFORE I DO HIM A FAVOR EVER AGAIN?"

You know it's not like I was gonna put him on trial for the crimes of his species or anything like that. I just like hanging out with cute guys! Is that so wrong?

Breathing a sigh of relief.

Thu, 22 May 2003 18:56:23 GMT

After seeing what's been going on with doctorbashir, ezridax, smiley_miles and botanist_keiko? Wow, I am so glad I did not get involved with that. Julian's awfully cute, but... so not worth that level of angst. I'd almost think someone with a penchant for relationship tricksterism was messing with them but... nope, doesn't look like anyone is. Except maybe the_prophets, but who knows what they're up to.

Charlie now has a livejournal too-- _charlie_x_. I'm a little surprised by that, but I guess I shouldn't be. Poor guy gets awfully lonely. And yes, Wes, I think it would be cool for the three of us to hang out sometime. Can you get to the Delta Quadrant? I've been spending a lot of my time lately on the Ocampan homeworld. (If you can't, no big thing-- I *am* a Q, transportation's no issue for me-- but I made this nice pretty oasis and I want to show it off. :-))

Also, and I have to confess this is really silly of me considering the circumstances, but there's this guy on the system who is SOOO CUTE. Except he's, uh, he's a Borg, actually. But a really cute Borg! With a personality! (Individualized Borg. I'm not dumb enough to fall for real Borg. Unlike *someone* I could mention who tried to marry the Queen. Well, ok, it was an ex-girlfriend who'd been assimilated and turned into a Queen, but that was a ridiculous way to de-assimilate her.) I'm thinking about going to visit, except that the Borg sort of view us as, well, uh, scary? Like, really scary? Like, "we can't assimilate that, so run away?" So I'm trying to get up the nerve.

I've been so busy!

Sat, 19 Apr 2003 17:02:21 GMT

Been working on my test plan for the Ocampa, and I think I should run an intervention on the Kazon too. They don't belong in space-- they were tribal desert warriors when the Talaxians sold them old junker spaceships in exchange for dilithium, and now they've managed to export a completely primitive lifestyle and philosophy off their home planet and all over the region. At this point there's too many of them to banish back to their home planet and I think I'd have a hard time getting an authorization for an interdict anyway, so I have to go about it another way.

I'm *thinking* I may encourage a women's rights movement. I don't know of any species where there isn't an actual biological difference in the intelligence of the sexes (such as the Kzinti, where the females are stupid, or the Kittarin, where the males are) that successfully got into space under their own power while still repressing half their population. The Ferengi also bought their warp technology, and the Klingons and Cardassians have always encouraged women to be scientists, so even though they favor male warriors they don't restrict women from intellectual pursuits. On the other hand, I do have an obvious bias here, being the only member of the Q Continuum who is female (technically none of us have gender, but I'm so strongly gendered in my own mind, due to having grown up female, I can't get away from thinking of myself as a woman, even though I could be anything), so I could be wrong. harrykim? kathrynjaneway? chakotay? Anyone from Voyager? You all had significant dealings with the Kazon; do you think I can get them to expand their minds out of a primitive desert warrior mindset by running an intervention to promote women's equality in their society? Or am I biased?

Why Q raised as humans are useful to the Continuum, part seven hundred and twenty three.

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 19:49:34 GMT

It turns out that I have another useful skill: namely, sitting with people that my elders have completely offended, smiling and nodding and agreeing with them that why yes the Q Continuum has a long way to go and we obviously need to grow and change and improve and wouldn't it be nice if we could overcome our violent tendencies? Apparently even Q who are *good* at diplomacy (don't laugh, there are some) are too proud to deal with offended omnipotents of another race by agreeing with every bad thing they say about the Continuum until they calm down.

It doesn't hurt that I was raised to have great respect for the Organians; the peace treaty they enforced between Klingons and the Federation in the 23rd century for about 20 years had a profoundly beneficial effect on both races. The Klingons were under Q interdict at the time and were being punished, but being drastically humiliated hadn't actually brought them into line yet and so they were still behaving in a very underhanded, backstabbing, sneaky way for a people who overall prefer open combat to treachery; the Federation was still working out the bugs in "we have a military except it's not military" and could have been permanently pushed toward a much more warlike footing if there had been a war then. The Organian Peace Treaty actually heavily influenced my decision to join the Continuum and shaped my notion of what omnipotent beings ought to be doing with their powers.

Ironically, once I got past the human perspective (which is that Organians are nice and stop wars, and Q are jerks and expose people to the Borg), I found out that the Continuum is much more like I thought the Organians were than the Organians actually are. The Continuum takes an activist stance toward the development of mortal races, and actually goes out there and *does* stuff, all the time, to try to help less advanced races develop. The Organians could care less that mortals blow each other up as long as they don't do it on *their* planet. They set up the peace treaty because they were annoyed; meanwhile, a significant part of the time, Q pretend to be annoyed so they can accomplish a beneficial result without making people dependent on them.

But it is true that the difference between the Organians and the Continuum is like the difference between a peaceful, quiet farming commune where everyone more or less shares the same beliefs about everything, and New York City on Earth. Q are loud, obnoxious, argue with each other all the time, fiercely independent, opinionated, egotistical, and highly diverse. Organians... aren't. The Organians' attitude toward us used to be that we were just annoying, but a legitimate pathway of development for higher beings nonetheless. Now, since we had a civil war, they think we've taken a drastically wrong turn and that we needed to enforce more conformity of vision (they see it as agreement, not conformity... I guess I am a Q at heart after all). Naturally very few people in the Continuum agree. After a certain Q whose specific identity I shall not mention except to say that HE IS STILL A REALLY BIG JERK managed to get so offended at the Organians' patronizing attitude that he actually *threatened* them (put this in perspective: omnipotent beings have *never* had an interspecies war), the Organians were *really* upset and apparently were thinking about getting together with the Douwd and Melkotians and a bunch of others and acting to contain us. This would not be good.

So they needed someone to calm the Organians down. Unfortunately when you're omnipotent you have a tendency to believe that your perspective is the only possible perspective. The Continuum is actually better about this than any of the others, because we contain so many perspectives within ourselves. Organians haven't evolved to disagree about anything in billions of years, so the notion that someone could legitimately disagree with their opinions doesn't sit well with them. On the other hand, the Q, being arrogant, just *can't* sit still and smile while beings at our own level condescend to us, patronize us and tell us we really suck. So this was getting very ugly because even the sensible Q were taking the tactic of trying to convince the Organians that they are *wrong* rather than trying to calm them down.

It helps to be born human. I'm proud of my people, but hey, I'm the first one to admit that in a lot of ways we *do* suck. So when the Organians kicked us all out I went back and apologized profusely and listened to them rant about what children we are and how we should never have been allowed to gain omnipotence while still preserving so much internal conflict and our spiritual development is lacking and blah blah blah, and I agreed with them, and told them how much I respected them based on my human upbringing, and told them all about my campaign to make the Continuum a somewhat nicer place, and they patted me on the head and told me I was a sweet girl and agreed that the Continuum is going through a rough spot but we'll probably emerge the better for it and evolution is painful and so on and so on.

So I get lots of extra points, and the Continuum as a whole has recognized their debt to me, and someone came up to me and told me how sorry they were that they voted to kill my parents because it was obvious their idea to make me was brilliant and they should have been allowed to live to see me do this today. That made me happy. (re-reading this, I realize how weak it sounds; by human standards, I'd think voting to kill someone's parents would be something you'd never forgive them for. But I know why the Continuum voted to kill my parents; I disagree, obviously, but I don't hold it against them.)

Q is being a mean horrible JERK!

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 17:05:58 GMT

I guess this doesn't surprise anyone.

He's mad at me for telling wes_crusher about his motives in the whole giving will_riker the powers of the Q thing so he's trying to embarrass me by talking about all the people I slept with. Like first of all he has any room to talk? And second of all I admitted I was Mary Sue and pretty much dated everyone, already? And third of all like he *cares*? He's just picking it because he thinks it will embarrass me in front of *humans*. No one in the Continuum cares.

Well, *two* can play at that game.

He *still* has a big crush on kathrynjaneway but he thinks if he admits it she'll stop being nice to him! *And* he also has a big crush on another starship captain I could mention.

qcontinuum, you have millions of years more dirt on you than I will ever have! So I have more ammo if this is Embarrassment War. So shut up!

Arrgh! The revenge of the busybody Q

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 14:17:27 GMT

So the other day I posted this about getting the upper hand when a very annoying Q whined at me about not telling humans how Q powers work. I thought I'd won that one, but it turns out she was just regrouping. Today I found out what her revenge is.

She's convinced some of the higher-ups to assign me to a cusp species-- a species that's on the verge of evolving into a higher form. Normally this is a great honor and she pretty much sold them on it with saying I deserved it for meritorious service blah blah blah. Only, it's the Ocampa! And I have to submit a test plan within a year!

harrykim is the only person who I *know* probably reads my journal who knows what species I'm talking about so for those of you who aren't on Voyager: the Ocampa are a short-lived (not by my standards, by *anyone's* standards-- their lifespan is about nine earth years, and can be pushed as late as fourteen with proper diet and advanced medical treatment) species with enormous psionic potential. One of the species has in fact actually transformed into an energy life form and we expect more to start going. If they don't die out first. See, their planet sort of got completely wrecked by this alien called the Caretaker (the guy who kidnapped Voyager in the first place, actually), so he decided to take care of them and make sure they got food and water while he tried to fix their planet. Trouble is, he also suppressed their reproduction so two parents produce only one child in their lives (in ten generations their population has dropped from 10 billion to 20 million), retarded the development of their psionic abilities, kept their life span at 9 years despite having the technology to increase it to 14, and made them totally dependent on him. Then he died and blew up his technology so some nasty sexist jerks called the Kazon couldn't get their hands on it. (Well, actually, Voyager did, but they did it because the Caretaker *would* have done it except they sort of messed that up.) And let me point out that the planet is *not* fixed.

One generation after the Caretaker's death the Ocampa are running out of the supplies the Caretaker left for them. They have not got the first clue how to take care of themselves. They don't know how to farm in idyllic conditions, let alone on their desert world. They have said nasty hostile sexist aliens hovering around their planet trying to find a way to break into their sealed compound and steal their stuff, and they don't know thing one about defending themselves. We expect a massive die-off. Lack of resources, small population, hostile aliens, short life span and retarded reproduction and this species, which could be on the verge of transcending their physical bodies and joining the ranks of the galaxy's noncorporeals, could also be about to go extinct.

So the Ocampa badly badly *badly* need someone to test and guide them. Okay, I understand that. But if someone comes in and is all kindly and benevolent and loving god, well, they already *had* one of those and he totally held them back. Someone has to come in, convince the Ocampa that God is dead (well, theirs is, anyway), and terrorize them into using their brains, developing their psionic abilities, and fixing the awful things that have been done to their species before it's too late.

But they're so cute! They're like a fluffy puppy dog species! They never hurt anybody, and they're so innocent, and sweet, and I'm Q enough to *know* they need someone to come in and be all bad and mean and demonic so they actually learn how to put up a fight, but I'm too human to want it to be *meeee*. Being mean to the Ocampa is like kicking puppies. Except someone has to do it or they'll *die*. But why does it have to be me? There are a lot of Q that are better at being mean than I am! I can do test and guide when I can come in and be all wise benevolent godlike alien come to teach you blahdy blah, but I've never *done* mean, I don't want to ever do mean, I may have mentioned that I am *not* a jerk, so why can't they send a jerk to do it? Admittedly the most talented jerk I know has another really important job to do, namely WATCHING HIS KID SO I DON'T HAVE TO DO IT, but there is really no shortage of jerks in the Q Continuum. I'm not *good* at mean!

I have to find a way to weasel out of this. I mean, this species *needs* the Q. I've never seen a species that needs the Q worse. And the reason they need *us* in particular so badly is that we are the only omnipotent beings who a. help species in need of omnipotent intervention and b. do it in such a way that the species learn to take care of themselves instead of looking to omnipotent gods to do it. But we do it by being complete assholes, and I just *can't*. They're too *nice*. And if I can't then I'll end up being too nice and they'll worship me and they totally will not learn what they need to and then goodbye, Ocampa and their shot at evolving.

Q is so mean. Just because she wants revenge on me for scaring her, she may have doomed an entire cusp species by making the Continuum pick the wrong Q. They should send *her*, she's obviously a jerk.

Um.

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 00:37:31 GMT

I have a kid dumped on my doorstep.

He says his dad has gone to visit Captain Picard and that he told him I would take care of him. Well, if Q's giving an itinerary at least he probably isn't abandoning the kid. Probably. He's blocking, so I can't sense whatever it is he's doing or thinking, but the kid seems cheerful enough.

Argh. I suppose I deserved this. I guess it really was awfully Q-like of me to essentially leave his dad to sink or swim despite the fact that he repeatedly begged me for help.

Uh? Wes? Any hope I could beg you to help me out? I *could* bring him to his dad, but since his dad is presumably on the Enterprise right now, that would be a bad idea. And I haven't babysat anyone since I was 13 years old. And I'm going to have to be fighting my Q instincts on this one. And Charlie has never met a child before in his life and isn't much more mature than one himself, so he's no help. I know you probably haven't had much more contact with kids than I did when I was human, but I desperately need someone who has *any* clue of how to handle kids... and keep in mind my entire species is incompetent at it...

Busy day!

Mon, 07 Apr 2003 17:53:39 GMT

So I put on my "guide of lesser species" hat and posted something to poor jellobitch (and I gotta think someone in the Federation set her up with that name) in my I Am A Wise And Powerful God voice and not my I'm A Twenty-Something Human Woman voice. I was studying Q history and it just hit me how much we were once like the Changelings. Well, except that when we conquered half the galaxy, we did it because we felt like it and not because we were scared that if we didn't they'd kill us. So I wanted to try to help her out; she's so scared of what will happen to her people, but what they've agreed to explore is the best path they could follow right now for their future evolution. If they are like what we once were, it stands to reason someday they could become like us.

In fact, in another funny way we were also sort of like the Cardassians. Everyone out for the benefit of the species as a whole, everyone arguing with each other over how exactly to do that. Lots of internal conflict and power struggles. Conquering the galaxy for glory and because we thought we could improve the lives of the people we conquered (which is a stupid, stupid idea.) Also, the whole "insults = flirting" thing.

It amazes me, given where I come from, how much we're *not* like humans, though we do have (or had) the one thing in common: the will-to-power, the desire to improve and grow. Which bugs some people. Today I had a conversation that goes sort of like this:

Q (imagine, if you will, a high school librarian type): You can't be going around telling humans how our technology works! That's against the rules!
Me: Is that so. (mental equivalent of filing nails)
Q: You're insolent. Q (guy who visits Enterprise and Voyager a lot) has corrupted you. You don't know how to take orders.
Me: Who's giving me orders? Does a single Q still have the ability to give me orders just because she's older than me? Because I'm pretty sure I shot some people to keep that from happening. (bored menace, though I don't do it nearly as well as Q does)
Q (scared, pretending she's not scared): Are you so irresponsible you'd want to start another war?
Me: Another war over me telling humans how we do things? Sure, because they're going to be figuring out how to change the gravitational constant of the universe any day now. (sprightly, pretending I'm not sarcastic, being totally sarcastic)
Q: A former Borg has access to the information now.
Me: And she'll run right out and tell the Collective.
Q: Why not? A former human is running right out and telling humans. (ouch, that stung)
Me: Are you as scared of humans as you are of the Borg?
Q: (insulted, dander up) I'm not *scared* of humans *or* Borg. I'm telling you to show some common sense.
Me: Okay. I won't tell them how to do anything that the Borg could figure out from the description.
Q: That is not the point!
Me: What is the point? You're boring me.
Q: You sound just like him!
Me: And you sound just like you forgot we fought a war.
Q: This is getting circular. Fine, do what you want, you obviously know everything. (stomps off)

Wow. I didn't know humans had risen that high in the Continuum's estimation. Maybe because everyone knows that the reason I had the highest kill rate during the war is because I was born human, and used to the idea that I could possibly die, so it didn't paralyze me. Maybe because humans with the weapons Q (war goddess type, mom of the kid) modified are the ones that forced the peace. Or maybe it goes back further. Maybe they were scared of humans before my mom and dad decided to play human, and the species they picked had as much to do with the decision to kill them as having me did. It's the same reason we watch the Borg with concern: species that have the same quality of growth we did, the same will to improve and perfect themselves, are the most likely to end up our neighbors. And we have to make sure they don't get there before they're ready for it. There has only ever been one time a species with omnipotence made war with another such species (as opposed to having a civil war, which also happened just one time and guess who the lucky species was), and it was people who developed tech to warp reality long before they'd given away their desire to conquer. Apparently we annihilated them completely. Apparently, it was close.

But *I* have faith in humans. (Not so much in the Borg.) I don't think humans have a desire to conquer *now*, and I think they know better than to muck with reality warping just yet. So I'm not worried. (As for the Borg... we routinely delete everything from their databanks we think they could use to understand us, so why Q was so worried, I don't know. We're *already* keeping an eye on the Borg.)

(By the way, I am really not nearly as flippant about the war and the people I killed as I sound... I am actually really miserable about it whenever I think about it, but letting most Q know you feel guilty is a great way to open a giant hole in your armor and let them shove a broadsword right through. I don't talk to them about how I feel, because that would be really dumb.)

I know the pieces fit...

Mon, 07 Apr 2003 01:25:23 GMT

There's something fundamentally broken about us and I don't know how to fix it. Humans can turn to a counselor, but Q aren't really good at seeking advice and help. From anyone. I mean, it's not my responsibility to fix an entire society, and I'm not fooling myself into thinking it is... but I'm the only one who came recently from a different species, the only one who should have the ability to think outside the structures that have governed Q thought for billions of years.

So they'll be mad at me for airing the dirty laundry but I don't care. We're broken. There's pretty good evidence we were broken before the war. In fact, since geordi_laforge reminded me, the Continuum originally wanted to kill me. Sight unseen. Knowing I was Q. (When I got here I found out really that was never in question. The tests were, could I control my powers without letting my human id rule them, the way many humans have gone after being given great power, and was I willing to join the Continuum. If the answer to either one wasn't yes I was to die. And they only agreed to that much because Q argued with them that they couldn't kill me without testing me first. Plus, Q lied about "you can be human if you just give up your powers." A convenient tornado or very localized hull breach would have taken care of me if I'd tried to stay human, but he had to tell me that so it'd be an accurate test.)

So, things sucked before the war. And they got suckier. I remember being attacked by a mob while I was hanging out in my own little pocket of the Continuum, bothering no one. They got offended that I went to sleep, and humans had allowed Quinn to die, and they couldn't control their hate. Q thoughts become reality. That was when I got involved with the war, which hadn't happened yet but sides were forming up.

We don't have that now. We aren't controlled by a relatively small number of Q who are so afraid of change they reflexively stomp on anything new. But the price we paid... is discontinuity.

Q-- the one who's got a journal, I mean-- just took off and disappeared a little while ago, into the cracks between. It isn't the first time he's done it-- we've all been using the cracks to get some privacy-- but I caught a flash of a total emotional meltdown before he broke contact. I'm not worried for his safety-- there's phenomenally little that can harm a Q, even disconnected from the Continuum, now that we're not shooting at each other-- but I am worried for his emotional state. And everyone's. Because he's not the only one to do something like that. And the cracks shouldn't exist. They're places where the Continuum is discontinuous, where we are quite literally broken and our power to sense each other constantly doesn't go through. The war happened because of the cracks, and the cracks widened because of the war, and we aren't putting the pieces together because we don't know how.

I found this while spelunking through the 20th century for cool stuff to listen to, and it could be our theme song.

As best as I've been able to figure out, we solved a problem most energy beings resolve by either maintaining strict separation between themselves or allowing themselves to blur into a uni-mind. We did it by developing, as a species, a fierce set of personal defenses against blending into the others. The result of this is that we, as a species, attack weakness in our fellows rather than comforting it; we mock, we taunt, we push boundaries, we insult each other, all so that we can maintain enough emotional distance to prevent from turning into a uni-mind and losing our individualities. Under it all the Continuum was supposed to provide a baseline default, a sense that we are all brothers and sisters, that we all love each other no matter how nastily we poke. I didn't have any siblings myself but I saw how friends with brothers or sisters acted with their siblings. There's love underneath, but there's competition and taunting so we can maintain distance. That's how it's always worked.

And then we started shooting each other.

The defaults are mostly gone. Some Q still trust and love some other Q, in smaller groupings, but there is no overall continuity. In a way there *is* no Continuum any more. And we don't know how to rebuild it. It hurts, all by itself, that we're so divided, and so many of us have emotional scars from the war. But if anyone grieves, if anyone breaks down under the strain, everyone else knows. And we don't treat weakness very well.

You know, if we were humans, people could go get some privacy when they break down. Or someone would reach out to them and say it's okay to cry. Or they could go see a counselor. Or they could go get drunk and talk to a bartender. We basically can't do any of those things. Well, I can, because I grew up around humans, but they can't. So no one has figured out any kind of constructive way to deal with it when we're hurting.

I swear my whole species needs therapy.

I don't know what to do about it. I try to model an example, but they think of me as the Second Youngest, the Youngest Adult. They sort of ignore me and just write off everything I do as "Oh, that wacky Amanda, raised by humans!" Q is no help-- he knows about the problem but he's *part* of the problem. He wishes we could remodel ourselves to be more like humans in that way, in being able to put the pieces back together, but he has umpteen zillion years of being a prickly pear and he's one of the most nasty sarcastic defensive ones there is. He has no idea how to not act like a Q. So he's off hiding right now and I think something must have hurt his feelings or maybe he was just thinking too hard about something that's painful to remember and he doesn't want any of us to know about it.

I wouldn't laugh at him. But I'm the only one. And he acts like I'd laugh at him just as much as the others would.

I'm sorry. I've ranted long enough. It's just-- what we are, what we've achieved, is so beautiful in so many ways. We can be so much. But the one thing we lack, that humans have, is the one thing that may kill us in the end.

Hi, universe!

Sat, 05 Apr 2003 04:57:33 GMT

Q has one of these things, and I was going to use his after he was a real jerk when I asked him to relay a simple message, since he's the one who named his journal qcontinuum like he somehow speaks for all of us. I hate when he does that. But it turned out I couldn't break into his journal (which I can hear him snickering about halfway across the Continuum), so I decided, okay, I want one of my own. Because there's something very important I want the universe to know about the Continuum: we aren't all jerks. No, really, I mean it. I'm not a jerk. I've been called a few other names in my time, but not a jerk. Q acts like he's speaking for the Continuum as a whole, and as a result, lots of people think we're basically the Jerk Continuum. It's not true! Some of us are nice.

So, here I am! Q, born Amanda Rogers, aka Mary Sue (or Anastasia Glorifia, or Raven Darkclaw, or Alys Shadowfire, or you get the idea), Aspect of the Maiden on B'fario, former Starfleet intern, perpetual teenager for the past 3,000 years by having joined a species that grows up a whole lot more slowly than the one I was born into. And war hero, sorta. Though we're all trying really really really hard to pretend the war and the stuff that led up to it didn't happen. (My entire species is in denial. We have PTSD. Help! I need to find a counselor who does omnipotent beings!)

Anyway, I see Captain Picard (timenchanter) is on here, and Counselor Troi (cnslrdeannatroi), and a whole lot of people I don't know... yet. Don't worry about me randomly dropping in, though; unlike, oh, say, everyone else in my species, I was raised by a species which has the concept of doorbells.