fredbassett

Title : The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Lester, Ryan, Stephen, Nick
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Written for

primeval100 challenge 773, Ghosts From the Past

Lester had long since stopped worrying about the shadows.

He knew they meant no harm.

Ryan’s insubstantial but still somehow solid presence conveyed a silent warning if there were problems within the military team. He’d been slow to warm to the new captain but there was grudging respect now.

Stephen was a quiet reminder that a good manager should resolve conflict within the team, not let it fester.

Nick Cutter kept him honest. Stopped him from taking action that compromised the present or the future.

And together they combined to keep Helen at bay.

Lester was grateful for the shadows.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

purplecat

Hello! What brings you over here all of a sudden?

From:

fredbassett

Back up in case LJ goes down. I;d not done it for ages so decided to see if I could get it to work.

Took many, many attempts but final succeeded with the entries. Not managed to get comments over yet, but that's less of an issue.

I don't intend to leave LJ unless I absolutely have to.

From:

purplecat

I had just paid my LJ subs before the invasion, so I'll be staying another year, but unless something changes either in Russian policy or in LJ ownership, I think I'll be leaving for good next February. I was already concerned that I was giving my money to a Russian state-controlled company because of their laws around LGBTQ matters, and I'm even less happy about it now. And it's changed ownership so many times, that I feel like the people I may have had any sense of loyalty to in terms of the company are long gone. But each to their own. I'll miss you guys when the time comes.

Luckily I'd managed to do a journal comment import before LJ stopped accepting connections from Dreamwidth. No one seems to know why importing still sometimes works, but I don't think anyone expects it to continue to do so for much longer. I wouldn't count on being able to do an import again.

Edited Date: 2022-03-05 09:20 am (UTC)

From:

fredbassett

Likewise re having just paid. I've thought about it a lot, and for now I'm staying.

I'm glad I've got back journal backed up. I'll try re the comments, but that's not the biggest issue, and I'll post my entries manually to keep it up to date.

To salve my conscience, in addition to anything I donate to Ukraine, I will add the same amount of the LJ subscription to any donation.

Bigtitch is keen to leave LJ, but I think she'd largely lost interest there and has wanted to move to Discord for a while. While I'm there for another fandom, I don't think it has the same community aspect. Running the gift box exchange via there wouldn't have worked, for instance. I have set up a Discord for denial in case of the nuclear option - metaphorically, I hope, not literally, and we'll pass the link around when/if that happens.

For now, the rest of us seem to be staying put.

From:

purplecat

There is a primeval_denial comm here - that could be used in conjunction with the Discord for managing challenges. AO3 also has quite a lot of support for challenges, though I think it would be difficult to run a Giftbox style challenge through it - though you could have a collection for the challenge for people to post fic into - then you just open up the whole collection on the reveal date, rather than people having to individually remember to unhide their posts.

From:

purplecat

I've been thinking about how we could organise around somewhere like Discord, but use AO3's tools for most of the exchanges, challenges, and meta posts (using AO3's share function to cross-post the announcements/headers to Discord) and then maybe the primeval_denial comm here when we specifically needed something we used to get on LJ (like screened comments for Giftboxes). I think it would work!

I don't know what people's feeling are about meet-ups - but trying to have a meet-up some time this summer, with an explicit plan to discuss ways forward might be worthwhile.

From:

fredbassett

It could be made to work, but I;m concerned that the complexity of multiple platforms will be off putting. I certainly don;t relish the thought. Not everyone still active on the comm uses AO3 and only Bigtitch and I, and you, by the sound of it, uses Discord.

I think we'll have to wait and see how things develop and if people are able to make more use of DW and AO3.

Frankly, I doubt they're be an appetite for a physical meet up this year. Covid is still a nuisance and we're well into the problems of planning around Mr FB's elderly mum. When it comes to decisions, we might need to use zoom, but I suggest we leave it for now and see how people get on with back ups etc. I;ll also do a bit more customising on DW Denial if I can. I must say, it seems very antiquated now after LJ, and I never thought I'd say that!

From:

purplecat

I mostly use Discord because sometimes students use it, but I can't say I hang out there much. Not quite as bad as Tumblr for organising information, but not great either. I guess it depends what we want in terms of organisational tools.