Yes, I am wearing a horrible sweater. Don't ask.

(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.

Family

(For musing_way.)

"Do you have any family?" the child asked him.

Q is startled by the question. He's simply never considered it, one way or another.

What does "family" even mean, in this context? He examines the child's mind. To her, family means a unit of genetic continuity -- parents, siblings, grandparents. She's thinking of her own family, of a little brother and an older sister, of the parents of her parents, of the siblings of her parents and their children, her cousins. It's a small unit, isolated in her mind from the rest of her species, a special little group of "us" in a sea of "them."

Q does not have anything like that.

( What is family? )