Oh my, time certainly flies when you're not having fun.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 11/9/2004.

I have just spent what feels like several millennia dealing with Continuum politics.

Someone had the brilliant idea that we should implement representative democracy. I mean, really. I posted about the Continuum and democracy earlier, but let me briefly reiterate that the only form of government that works for the Q is full democracy-- *none* of us will ever be in 100% agreement with anyone we might choose as a representative, and unlike mortals, who will shrug and console themselves with the notion that nobody's perfect and there's too many stupid mortals to make true democracy work, we know better. When a form of government has worked well for five billion years, changing it just for the sake of changing it is downright idiotic.

Wait, did I just say change is bad? Dear me. I *need* to get out more often. Every time I do this political thing I feel as if more of my true self is slipping away and I'm changing into someone I barely recognize.

( A pack of silly questions )

I grace you with my presence once again.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 12/31/2004, 22 of 50.

I'm not sure why I keep coming back here. I must be bored.

Of course, I'm *always* bored.

( A pile of pointless questions )

Opposites

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 1/24/2005, 23 of 50.

What would a description of your *exact opposite* be like?

Obviously, stultifyingly boring. Rigid, humorless, uptight, full of false modesty, nauseatingly cloying and falsely friendly...

You know, I actually know some Q that fit this description. But typically, that kind of combination of rigidity and overly solicitious concern for what everyone else is doing with their lives is more often found among mortals. Or perhaps Organians.

Far far away

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse 1/27/2005, 24 of 50.

What's the furthest away you've ever been from the place you were born/created? How did you get there? Why did you go? Did you return or even want to come back to where you came from?

What's the furthest away I've ever been? As far as there is.

( So far away... )

Everything and nothing

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 3/16/2005, 25 of 50.

What can you say is truly yours?

I'm not sure I really want to think about this question.

The truth is... nothing, really.

It's the bargain we all make as part of the Continuum. Without the Continuum, we're powerful and difficult to destroy, certainly, but we would neither be as invulnerable as we are nor as nearly omnipotent.

We exchange a part of our individuality for immortality and power. Most of us aren't bothered nearly so much by this as I am, but then, most of us don't have the, shall we say, interesting relations with the rest of the Continuum I have always had.

I can have almost anything I want, instantly. But I don't actually *have* anything. Including myself. Everything I have, everything I *am*, is on loan from the Continuum, and they can take it back any time they want.

Which is why it's a good thing that I'm currently one of the people running the joint, but I don't expect that to last forever, or even more than a few dozen millennia.

What in your life are you most dissatisfied with?

That is. I'm glad I fought for greater freedom within the Continuum (and rather more glad that I won), but what I really want is to be *free* of them. To be wholly myself, and not of them, and to interact with the others where and when I choose. And that can't happen. A Q who is not part of the Continuum is crippled, and I wouldn't accept being less than I am, even if it means I must be part of something more than I am.

SO I accept it. I am part of the Continuum, and I always will be. I've stopped rebelling against it. But that doesn't mean I'm particularly happy about it.

In which I state the obvious

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 3/31/2005, 26 of 50.

If you could change one person's mind about something, who and what would it be?

I'm tempted to bring up Kathy and my attempt to convince her to have my child, but as it happens, she was my second choice anyway, and the kid I had with Q is working out reasonably well. So naah.

No, I'll go for the obvious. If I could change one person's mind about something, I would convince Jean-Luc Picard that...

...that what? That he should trust me? He shouldn't, and I'd think less of him if he did. That I'm not his enemy? I think he already knows.

Maybe, that when I said he was the closest thing I had to a friend, I actually meant it.

Maybe, that a human who became a Q wouldn't have to become corrupted by power like Riker did.

Maybe, that I...

Maybe that I talk too much. Some things, I'll keep to myself, thank you very much.

Scary stories.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse 4/9/2005, 27 of 50.

If you could do one totally irresponsible or even bad thing with absolutely no consequences, what would it be and why?

Just *one*? My whole *life* used to be like that.

Which leads me into my next topic.

What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you?

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? But then, they never probably had to deal with losing friends and family, becoming crippled and blind, and facing death, all in the same day. I mean, if they *had*, and they still think it makes you stronger... well, they're idiots. Wiser, maybe. More cautious? Definitely. But stronger? No, I can pretty much declare that I was *stronger* before it happened.

I am, of course, talking about the single day I was human.

( Why being human is the SCARIEST THING EVER )

This entry refers to the events of Star Trek:The Next Generation episode "Deja Q".

Some serious thinking

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 4/15/2005, 28 of 50.
This is actually an unusually decent crop of questions. I'm amazed.

Describe what your "happily ever after" would be like.
( Happily ever after ended a few billion years ago... )

What does the word 'love' mean to you?
( A score of zero in tennis. )

Have you ever regretted a wish you made? Why/what happened?
( Regrets are for people who can't see how screwed up their alternate realities could have been )

What is so important to you that without it, life would not be worth living? Why?
( Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. )

Catchup: it's not just a vegetable.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 5/15/2005, 29 of 50.

So I come back after several decades of your time spent trying to teach my boy how to teleport, and find that in my absence I was invited to a party. And that unfortunately during that party I was, in fact, present in this universe, and I can't actually be in the universe at two different moments without a lot more effort than I want to go through for a party thrown by mortals... and now I feel so damn old. I missed a party because I was with my kid. Goddamnit, I'm a soccer dad. This was not what I pictured when I planned to shake up the Continuum by having a child...

Anyway. ( Questions! )

Trout?

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 6/18/2005, 30 of 50.

If you could meet any famous personality, living or dead, and smack them in the head with a large trout, who would it be?

I have to pick just *one?*

I did once smack M'thaa of Anteron in the cranial carapace with a tubat, which is more like a crab than a trout, except that it has an endoskeleton instead of an exoskeleton and its skin is soft and squishy. Really, he was asking for it. M'thaa, I mean, not the tubat.

When in your life did you feel the most alone?

After one of my best friends tried to murder me and I spent forty years in solitary, sensory deprivation, recuperating. My people put me there because in my weakened, damaged state, I wouldn't have been able to protect myself from unscrupulous other Q who might want to forcibly alter my mind and personality (I was famed for my charm even then. :-)) It was the right thing to do, but I came very close to going insane. I could hear the Continuum, distantly, but I couldn't communicate back -- no matter how loudly I called, no one could hear me.

I was pretty damn lonely when I lost my powers, too, especially when Picard threw me in the brig, but that was a day, not forty years, and I was mostly surrounded by people, just people who didn't like me very much. And considering that they didn't like me all that much in the Continuum either back then, I didn't see much difference.

And speaking of trout...

OOC: Reposted from q_tm from 7/21/2005. Not directly a Theatrical Muse post.

I am letting the stress get to me entirely too much. It is ridiculous that I should get upset over a mere mortal's opinion of me, as ignorant and ludicrous as that opinion may be. Particularly since it's not as if I went out of my way to present myself in a friendly and positive light to this person, who is, after all, an idiotic and limited creature. And a voyeur. But... things haven't exactly been going well for me lately.

See, it all started when my kid blew up a solar system. Again. For the third time. And this one was inhabited. When you're a Q, "oops" does not cut it as the excuse for the *third* time you did something. And being as that it is a *royal* pain in the proverbial derriere to put an *inhabited* solar system back together -- you can't just re-assemble it, you have to roll back time and grab all the beings that lived there before they got fried and pull them forward to after you reassembled their world, and then erase their memories if they were sentient enough to have memories, and all that -- I was not happy with this little stunt at all. So I confined him to the Continuum, as I can't stick him in a black hole any more now that he can manipulate the gravitational constant with the best of them.

( So he makes matters much worse... )

Ineffable, eternal, glorious, and BORING AS ALL HELL.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 7/15/2005, 31 of 50.

Describe the place you grew up.

Oh, how can I even begin?

( The Q Continuum in a nutshell. A very large, multiverse-spanning nutshell. )

Paternal joys, such as they are.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 8/3/2005, 32 of 50.

At what moment in your life did you feel most proud?

( Pride and joy... actually, no, I'm not being sarcastic this time. )

The story of my life.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 9/11/2005, 33 of 50.

Talk about a time you realized that someone close to you was not the person you thought you knew.

This only has to happen oh, about several dozen times or so, before you start to expect it. *Nobody* I know is who I think they are, and why should they be? I'm not who they think I am either. And if I really knew them all that well, they would bore me to tears, so it's just as well. But there have been some times that stand out particularly in my mind.

( Does anybody know anybody, anyway? )

Betrayal (and a bunch of other really silly questions)

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 9/29/2005, 34 of 50.

Most people wish that I...

...would go away and leave them alone.

I don't know why. I'm a funny, entertaining guy. An entity could get a complex from this kind of thing, you know.

What is the one thing about yourself that you don't want anyone ever to know?

Oh great and glorious creators of questions for this place, answer me one question: if I didn't want anyone to ever know something about myself, WHY WOULD I TELL YOU?

If you could find out one single fact about every person you met, what fact would you want to know, and why?

I already can find out rather more than one single fact about every person I meet. And whenever I meet someone, the first fact I find out about them is: are they worth my time?

I mean, I might be immortal, but I'm still never going to get back those ten minutes spent in the company of Z'oodra Lugorg. Or the day or so I spent on testing William Riker.

Have you ever experienced something you couldn’t explain? Write down your brushes with the mysterious.

I know everything. Therefore, no, I've never experienced anything I couldn't eventually explain.

Have you ever betrayed someone's confidence? Has anyone ever betrayed you?

The thing about betraying someone else is, they have to have trusted you in the first place before you can betray them.

( How to avoid betraying anyone, and still be completely hedonistic, impulsive and irresponsible )

I'm going to go for a theme here.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 11/17/2005, 35 of 50.

OOC Note: Locked from any Star Trek universe socks. Q doesn't care if people from other universes read this, but he doesn't want it getting back to a certain Trek character.

It's been a while. I'm tired of dancing with myself. The entire reason I answer these things is because I have explored the entire universe, and I know everything, except the things about myself I've refused to know. The only thing I have left to explore is my own mind. ...And heart, I guess. Although I don't really have a heart. Except when I'm in a humanoid form. But you know what I mean.

- Heart's Desire: Think about something you once wanted so badly but never acquired. Write about how you think your life would’ve been different if you had received what your heart desired.

- What do you look for in a romantic partner?

- The first time I saw...

- Talk about something you did that made you feel ashamed of yourself afterwards.

- Write about losing control.

There is a point to grouping these questions together.

( Deep breath. Wait, I don't breathe either. )

Sappy topics, oozing with hearts and flowers.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 12/31/2005, 36 of 50.

I'm not usually the kind of person to wax eloquent on the values of forgiveness and kindness. Mark your calendars, this may be a red-letter day.

( Forgiveness and kindness? If there was any more sap in this I could make maple syrup and pour it on my pancakes. )

It's not easy being a rebel.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 2/9/2006, 37 of 50.

The advantage to only getting around to these when the mood strikes me is that then I can go all thematic. Certainly, given the repetition of questions about trust, betrayal, and so on, sometimes one needs to go for a theme or else risk having to repeat oneself, and I do so hate to repeat myself.

( Oh, heavy is the burden of being me. )

You want fries with this catchup?

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 3/22/2006, 38 of 50.

Ah, I've been entirely too deep and thematic lately. Time to answer a handful of completely pointless questions that have nothing to do with each other!

( A big pile of catching up )

Ah, that was fun.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 4/2/2006, 39 of 50.

I may have mentioned before that April Fools' Day is one of my favorite holidays. Humans are normally such a stuffy, serious race, attaching such tremendous weight and import to their silly little lives and customs. The fact that they have a holiday to celebrate trickery and misrule is simply delightful. So yesterday I took my son to the Renaissance (no, not the Renaissance Fair -- traveling in time to a holiday in a different year when it's *not* that day today is cheating, but traveling to a holiday in a different year when it's that holiday today is just good clean fun), where he actually managed to *not* get himself accused of witchcraft this time (to be fair, the people of the Renaissance weren't entirely sure they were unsophisticated enough to believe in witchcraft.) He played the role of a traveling magician and did a few very impressive tricks (well, impressive to mortals; to the Q they were about as remarkable as driving your car to the grocery store to get milk, but then again, in the Renaissance that *would* have been pretty impressive.)

After that, we dropped in on a former playmate of my son's -- admittedly, a not entirely willing former playmate. (When my son was a tad younger than he is now, he picked up on my fascination with humans, and particularly with a specific human starship captain, and snagged a human starship captain of his own to play with. Unfortunately, being a child, he wasn't exactly all that nice to his toys, so my not-yet-ex-then and I had to step in and take him back to the Continuum or he'd have killed the poor guy.) We turned their ship computer sentient and had it fall in love with the captain, infested their engine room with pink and chartreuse tribbles, and made the Vulcan science officer speak in iambic pentameter for the rest of the day. Good times, good times. The really funny part was when the starship captain figured out it was my son behind the whole thing, and gave him a stern talking-to, which included the line "Do your parents know where you are?" My son attempted to explain that I had actually *brought* him on this trip, but since I positively refused to manifest when he asked me to, it was a rather amusingly embarrassing situation for him. No, I'm not above playing practical jokes on my own kid, either.

What are you happy about right now?

That is. It's not often I get to have much fun lately -- the kid takes up so much of my time -- but he's finally old enough now that I can enjoy a little father-son bonding with him, take him out for excursions and the like. And as much fun as it is to play tricks on people, it turns out it's even *more* fun to have someone young and impressionable to share your amusement with. Teaching my son what constitutes a really funny joke is even more pleasurable than playing the joke out itself. It's also still quite a lot of fun to torment human starship captains, and I can't do that with my usual starship captains any more since I've actually developed some empathy for them (oh, the horror). I can't play tricks on Kathy or Jean-Luc without feeling bad about it. Jim Kirk, however, really deserves a few more jokes played at his expense.

So let's talk about fun and mockery.

( How fart jokes brought down an emperor, and other stories )

Perception

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 4/26/2006, 40 of 50.

Perception: Generally speaking, how do you think others perceive you?

Ahem.

(taps a microphone that has suddenly materialized out of nowhere) Is this thing on? Okay? Good.

(backup singers materialize out of nowhere, as the music begins)

( With apologies to Denis Leary... )

Motherhood is highly overrated.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 5/16/2006, 41 of 50.

I only know two mothers from my own species, since we've only ever had two children.

( Why Q mothers are lousy )

More tasty catchup.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 6/2/2006, 42 of 50.

A whole pile of silly questions.

( Am I supposed to take any of these seriously? )

Comfort, and the lack thereof.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 7/8/2006, 43 of 50.

( What does 'comfort' mean to you? )

( What is your favorite retreat from the world?, and others )

Some questions that have no relation to each other

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 8/11/2006, 44 of 50.


'What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.' Do you agree or disagree? Why?

( Depends. )

Have you ever woken up in the morning and not remembered what you did the night before?

( What is this obsession you people have with sleep? )

More silly questions

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 8/20/2006, 45 of 50.

I'm bored. Time to answer more silly questions!

( No, know, no. )

Monogamy *is* a lame excuse. Or something.

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 9/18/2006, 46 of 50.

( On the topic of love, romance, and why mortals are idiots. )

The weight of history, or something like that

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 10/24/2006, 47 of 50.

Ancestry and inheritance mean something rather different to immortals than to mortals, I imagine.

( Eternity has its own problems )

Human nature

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 11/21/2006, 48 of 50 posts.

Name one thing about human nature that puzzles you. (Or your own species/race, if you are not human and don't wish to do this on humans.)

I have to limit myself to just one thing? There are so many! I mean, I'm vastly more knowledgeable than nearly anyone else in the universe, and yet, humans are so ridiculous I could write a book about it.

( Naah, I can't stick to just one. )

This is a trick question, isn't it?

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 12/29/2006, 49 of 50 posts.

What is your worst quality as a significant other?

Am I supposed to take this question seriously? I mean, by definition, everyone who thinks I have bad qualities as a significant other must have questionable taste, to reject a being like me. Am I actually supposed to care what such beings think?

(sigh) Very well, as a thought exercise I'll *try* to pretend to take their objections seriously.

( Dumb things that beings with no taste in lovers have said about me )

Waiting for blah

OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 2/7/2007, last of 50 posts.


What are you waiting for?

The inevitable, I suppose.

( All good things... )

My new fun pastime

Well, as you can see, I've caught up with myself.

A few thousand years ago (I think by the time systems mortals count by, it was only three or four, but really who can pay attention?), I noted that I'd found alternate iterations of myself, and in particular I wondered if q_tm might be my future self.

He was. I was. Oh, your language just is terrible at these concepts.

Anyway, for a while, I had completely forgotten that I used to use this primitive system to interact with mortals when my kid was too little for me to leave him for any length of time and too dangerous to mortals for me to bring him on any excursions. I ended up re-finding the system (this is what happens when you try very, very hard to avoid remembering all of eternity... things you'd have actually preferred to remember slip through the cracks too), and found this nifty nexus of... well, questions. With entities from all over the multiverse, answering the questions or having little snippets of their memories presented within the nexus as answers.

Here's the thing. I have explored the entire universe. Now that my son is an adolescent, he's not exactly fresh and new either. I need something new to learn. So I thought at first I'd check the place out because there might be something new to see, and then I started answering the questions because I dearly love the sound of my own voice, and then I discovered that I could use them as a tool to actually explore myself. I mean, the Q don't ask me deep probing questions and I'd just lie to them anyway if they did. There are a lot of things I discovered I never really think about myself unless someone actually asks me.

And then I answered a question which made me face the fact that in the long run, my existence will be utterly pointless and futile. Unless I die. In which case it will be equally pointless and futile but I won't necessarily live long enough to notice.

At this point I decided I was sick of introspection, and ran off to go do something more entertaining. And then my kid got old enough to start getting into *serious* trouble. And now I'm stuck babysitting him more or less full-time again, as part of a bargain I made with the Continuum to keep them from taking his powers away.

So... I consolidated my identities on this silly system, and here I am again. Miss me?