Q

OOC: Crossposted from Theatrical Muse today.

Prompt 388: Who do you owe an apology to?

"Owe an apology." That's an interesting phrase. It implies that a transaction of some sort has occurred, that an apology is some kind of payment for goods received. That one has the right to demand an apology of another.

I have to question that, seriously. An apology is an expression of one person's regret for their own actions. How can you owe another person an emotion? Your emotions are your own. No one has the right to tell you what to feel, and thus, no one can be owed any emotion, regret or otherwise.

I don't owe anyone an apology. No one did me services in exchange for my freely agreeing to pay them with an apology. It's not likely that I'd take that deal, either, unless I sincerely meant an apology and in that case probably I'd have apologized already... okay, maybe not. I'm not the biggest fan of apologizing at any time, if you must know. But even if I wanted to apologize, the fact that someone else was demanding it of me would make me lose all interest in doing it.

Now. Is there anyone I've harmed, where I regret harming them?

That, I would have to say yes to. But that's not what you asked.

There are those I wish I could undo the harm I'd done to them, or express to them my regret. Generally speaking, I haven't apologized to them, either because they're dead, or because I don't see the point. If I can fix the harm I did, and I regret doing it, then I'll have already fixed it and I don't need to apologize. And if I can't fix the harm, then what good does it do to say some words? That's hardly going to help.

But even if I felt that apologizing would solve anything, even if I were inclined to apologize... I still wouldn't owe one to anyone.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG and VOY

Prompt 386: Do you have children? If not, do you want them one day? Talk about what being a parent means to you.

Yes. I have a son. I mean, I've only talked about him here approximately seven quadrillion times, so I can see how that might have escaped some people's attention, but I admit it. I am a dad.

I'd say "God help me", except that I'm the closest thing to a god I know, so it would be kind of pointless.

( Managing to have no idea what you're getting into is a neat trick for a nigh-omniscient being, but somehow, I pulled it off. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek Next Generation and Voyager

(OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse today.)

Ah, April Fool's Day. My favorite holiday... except in years when I lose a bet with my son and have to wear a hideous sweater. Oh, well, I suppose it could be worse. The last time I lost a bet to him, I had to go to school. For a year. Pretending to be a mortal human teenager. ...I much prefer the sweater, honestly.

Anyway. Advice.

Prompt #380: What is the best advice you've ever received? (Or, if you prefer, what was the worst?)

The worst advice I ever received was to go talk to a Listener about my problems. I mean, I went there, in good faith, to talk to her about some... personal issues I was having, and she locked me out of the universe. I'm pretty sure that most codes of ethical conduct frown on counselors doing that to their patients, or for that matter bartenders doing that to their customers.

And then, of course, there's the general "Q, grow up", "Q, do what the Continuum tells you to," "Q, become completely boring just like the rest of us", and all the other nonsense various members of the Continuum have advised me to do throughout the aeons, but I never took that advice, so I don't even count it. The advice to talk to a Listener, however... I actually took that advice, more fool me.

The best advice I ever got came from my old friend Q, shortly before I gave him the poison he used to kill himself. I'd... reformed, sort of, more or less, after the Continuum took away my powers. Toed the line, followed the rules, obeyed my instructions, you know the drill. And he told me that he missed the old me. That I was certainly a fine, upstanding Q now... but that he wished I was still the irrepressible rebel I'd been. And he challenged me to find a way to defy the Continuum that didn't result in my having my powers taken away.

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean for me to start a civil war, but it turned out to be the best possible thing for me and for the Continuum (well, being the best possible thing for the Continuum is a matter of opinion, but it's my opinion. You wanna hear another opinion, go ask a different Q.)

Muse: Q
Fandom: ST:TNG and VOY
Note: The references to Q losing a bet with his son and having to spend a year as a mortal student are a nod to the fic A Year With Q, a Harry Potter crossover by Morena Evensong.

Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 373: Are you more likely to please others or to please yourself?

The real question is, am I *ever* likely, at any time, to try to please others?

Honestly, yeah, sometimes, but only if it pleases me to do so. I do what I want, when I want, regardless of anyone else's opinions on the matter, and if I refrain from doing what I want it's because doing it would prevent me from having something else I want. For instance, I might refrain from egregiously disobeying the Continuum because I kind of like being alive, having my powers, and not being locked up in a comet or something. However, that doesn't mean that I am trying to please the Continuum at the expense of pleasing myself; it means I'm trying to please the Continuum just enough to not end up greatly displeasing myself.

There are, sometimes, things I might do to please others, but only if making them happy is something that would please me. And even within those parameters, there are things I won't do to please anyone, no matter how much I like them.

My life is all about me. Frankly, I don't see why any of you do it differently. Mortal lives are too short to spend in service to someone else, denying yourself so others can be happy, and Q lives are too long to spend doing things you don't enjoy. Why would anyone prefer pleasing others to pleasing themselves?

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 360: What haunts you/what has come back to haunt you?

What an absurd question. The Q are immortal, omnipotent, and invulnerable. To be haunted is to be tormented by insubstantial things -- memories that evoke guilt, future thoughts that inspire fear. Well, there's no point to fearing the future when nothing can harm you, and as for memories, while I can remember everything that has ever happened to me in the past several billion years with perfect precision, I also have complete control over what I choose to remember.

So I don't have to think about the things that might bother me. Not that anything bothers me, anyway. I'm as immune to guilt as I am to fear. But if I *was* bothered by anything -- for instance, if it bothered me to remember how I destroyed my best friend's life, or how I executed another of my friends under the Continuum's orders, or the fellow Q I killed during the war, then I just wouldn't have to remember those things. And if it ever disturbed me that I might just have seen the creator of the universe end it out of boredom and I have no guarantee that she won't do it again, well, I never have to think about that either.

Nothing haunts me.

Unless I choose to think about it.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG

Crossposted from musing_way, today.

"Let me get this straight," Q said to the entity sitting across from him in the bar.

Actually that isn't accurate at all. To say they were in a "bar" implies that they were in a physical, matter-based location where beings consumed alcoholic beverages in order to alter their mental states. The two entities in question, being non-corporeal, couldn't have been affected by alcohol even if there had been any there, which there wasn't, because the location they were actually in was also non-corporeal, and alcohol, being made of matter, could not have existed there. Neither of them were sitting, because sitting implies the existence of legs and a posterior, and neither of them were speaking English, or any language humans could have comprehended, or, in fact, any language at all, really... as beings of thought made real in energy, they communicated in pure concepts.

They were actually floating together in an anomalous region of extra-dimensional space whose unique properties reflect the thought energies generated by sentient beings back at them, producing an echo/interference effect which is somewhat disorientg, but in a pleasant way, to entities who are normally incapable of experiencing disorientation, thus producing a slight impairment that many entities find disinhibiting and relaxing, as well as a somewhat euphoric sensation. The location is popular among Beings of Power for precisely that reason, and is often filled with entities of different species, all of whom are generally powerful enough to be worshipped by mortals as gods, relaxing and socializing with one another.

In other words, they were both in a place where beings like them often went to hang out, converse, and get buzzed. A bar, by any other name.

And the information that Q transmitted to his temporary companion, which was expressed conceptually rather than in words, translates more literally as "response to your statement: amusement/mild disbelief/slightly less mild disapproval (embedded concept: suspicion that your concept was communicated as fiction for purposes of generating amusement) (embedded concept: if the concept you communicated was true, I strongly suspect that you are a moron): Request more detailed information to clarify that my comprehension of your concept matches your transmission." However, Q himself frequently argues that when attempting to communicate with alien beings about something that happened to him, it is much better to express the events in metaphors that accurately communicate how he perceived the event rather than attempting to accurately render an actual description of the event. Using language that closely describes his actual means of communicating with other entities like himself makes Q sound much more alien to the beings he's talking to than using language that assumes that he is "normal", however the people he's talking to perceive "normal" to be, and translating his experiences into emotionally similar experiences they might have in order to make himself appear "normal" to their frame of reference.

In other words, Q lies all the time to make himself sound less alien than he actually is. It's a Q thing. They all do it. Except for the ones that don't, but mortals never get a chance to talk to them, largely because they're completely incomprehensible.

So. Q was in a bar, sitting next to another entity, and he said, "Let me get this straight..." because Q never describes his own experiences to mortals in terms of what actually happened, and that's the best metaphor to use to describe what happened in terms that mortals easily understand.

( The dying god's a junkie? )

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 344: Have you ever sold out?

I'm five billion years old. I think that at one point or another I've done everything there is to do except die.

( But that doesn't mean I particularly like to think about some of the things I've done. )

Prompt 341: What makes you cry?
Prompt 342: Interruption.

What makes me cry? That's a joke, right? It's beyond absurd to imagine that an entity of my nature, a superior being at the pinnacle of evolution, immortal, omnipotent and essentially invulnerable, could ever be brought so low as to cry, like a mortal infant. The very fact that you'd even ask me such a question proves how inferior

Hey there! Remember me? Your old pal Q? No, not him, the other Q. I was in the area and just noticed Q attempting to pass off some extra-grade, hi-test, hypoallergenic bull on his unsuspecting audience, so I thought I'd drop in and clear things up.

What the HELL are you doing here, Q? You're interrupting me in my own journal? Again? Get your own journal and stop breaking into mine!

Q, old buddy, old pal... what fun would that be? I'm not here to talk about me, I'm here to make fun of you. And when you tell a whopper like "I never cry", you gotta admit, it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I just can't resist.

No. I'm not letting you do this to me again. Go--

( We interrupt Q's usual self-important ranting about what a special snowflake he is to bring you this update! Hey, no, I'm not letting you get control back until I've said my piece. I'm still older than you and besides, seven out of ten Q surveyed really wanna hear me take you down a notch and the other three don't care. )
Muse: Q
Fandom: TNG
Note: The other Q is the one from the episode "Deja Q", played by Corbin Bernsen. He's usually referred to in fandom as Q2.

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.

Prompt 336: What's the worst compliment you've ever received?

"Sometimes I forget you're not human."

I trust I don't have to explain why that is a truly awful excuse for a compliment.

Along the same lines, "Perhaps there's a residue of humanity in Q after all," "perhaps there's more humanity in you than I thought," "that's... almost human of you," and other comments of that ilk. Actually, those are worse. "Sometimes I forget you're not human" could theoretically be a compliment on my acting skills and the success of my mimicry of the human form, rather than actually trying to *compliment* me on sinking to the level of a pathetic short-lived mortal species, but the others were attempts at back-handed praise.

What is it with human starship captains and their love affair with their own species, anyway? Here's one that wasn't directed at *me*, but the circumstances made it absolutely appalling. This human captain's nonhuman best friend dies bravely to save the entire ship, and at his funeral, while delivering the eulogy, the captain chokes up, gets all sad and dramatic, and says, "Of all the souls I've encountered, his was the most... human." Come on! As if intelligence, loyalty, strength of will, or a willingness to die nobly for others' sake are solely human traits. I mean, when I saw that, I was glad the dead guy was too dead at the time to hear the comment. (He got better, later, but I'm not sure he ever found out what his friend said at his eulogy.)

But at least *he* was half human, though he didn't identify with it. Calling *me* humanlike is just insulting. And most of the people who use it to "compliment" me know I feel that way about it (and wouldn't react at all to me calling them Q-like... if I was going to do such a thing, which I never would, because none of them are remotely like a Q.)

Now that I think of it, Amanda got rather upset with me when I tried to compliment her on how much like a Q she was becoming. But that's hardly fair. She *is* a Q, and if she develops as she should, she *ought* to become more Q-like and less human-like.

Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG (with gratuitous TOS references)