Q (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
qcontinuum) wrote2009-10-19 02:52 pm
qcontinuum) wrote2009-10-19 02:52 pm
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Nobody asks me these things.
OOC: Crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 302: Answer a question that you're never asked.
Why, I'm doing pretty well today, thanks for asking.
I'm fine, thanks, how about you?
Oh, you know, same old, same old. But hey, I appreciate you asking!
Except no one does.
"How are you today, Q?" "How do you feel?" "How's it going?" No one ever asks me those questions. And you know, I'm getting a little miffed about it.
The Q won't ask, of course, because they already know. They can see, right on my surface, exactly how I'm feeling today, and what my general opinion of life, what I'm doing, and the person who's asking me is. Or, I'm concealing it or lying about it, in which case they know I won't give them a straight answer if they ask. Whatever another Q sees on my surface, that's the answer I'd give to any question about how I feel, so they hardly need to ask.
But mortals have no excuse. They ask each other all the time! It's part of their common greetings, for the sake of all. Yet whenever I show up to visit a mortal, all I get is "What do you want, Q?" "Q, I have no time for this." "What's going on, Q?" "Why are you here?" "Go away, Q." So selfish. It's all about them, them, them. What about me? Just because I'm omnipotent, immortal and invulnerable doesn't mean I can't have a bad day. But no one ever asks how I'm feeling, or what's going on in my life. Honestly, they call me arrogant, and yet they're the ones who think that the life of an omniscient godlike being revolves around them. My entire life, in their opinion, must consist of trying to get a reaction out of them. It's ridiculous. They have no empathy for me whatsoever, no concept that I'm a person with thoughts and feelings. I just exist to be an obstacle for them, their personal plot complication or deus ex machina.
Honestly, it's just like the way children treat their parents. (And I should know this, because I have a son, whose mind I can read more easily than I can read any other Q's, and he thinks my entire life revolves around him, too.) They can't imagine that I'm a person, because I'm so powerful in relation to them, all they can see is what impact I might have on their life. Never occurs to them that y'know, maybe I'd like it if someone asked how I felt or how I was doing, just to be friendly. Would it honestly kill any of the mortals I interact with to be friendly?
Prompt 289: Cheer someone up.
Prompt 291: Take someone out.
Now I know what you're going to say, here. You're going to say, "But Q, you're an asshole who never does anything nice for mortals, so they don't even like you. Why would you expect them to be friendly with you?" And I'm going to say, au contraire, sometimes I am in fact perfectly nice to mortals.
There was this one time that Picard was sitting around moping because his crew was going on shore leave, but he had convinced himself that he had too much paperwork to do to go himself. Actually, the problem was that he'd just heard that some woman he used to date, Nella Darren, had been killed when her ship ran afoul of some Jem'Hadar warships, so he was really depressed about all the people who'd died on him, all the way back to Jack Crusher and up to and including his brother and nephew. And I knew that if I showed up and offered to take him somewhere fun, he'd refuse, because first of all it would hardly work to punish himself for surviving by denying himself shore leave if he went somewhere fun with me instead, and secondly, he always refuses me.
So I just didn't give him the opportunity to say no.
I dumped him on a British sailing ship from the 17th century, fighting the Spanish and exploring and all that jazz, as the second mate. Dumped everything he needed to know into his head, so he wouldn't run into problems trying to help run a sailing ship; he was a big fan of running around on them on the holodeck, but that's not remotely the same thing as actually being there. I assured him that he wasn't going to interfere in the timeline in any way, no matter what he did, and played the role of the ship's chaplain (people took religion seriously in those days, and who better to play the role of a priest than a god?) so he could come talk to me whenever he wanted to unburden his soul, or whine at me that he needed to go home, whichever came first.
I let him stay aboard that ship for three months. In that time, more than two-thirds of the crew died, in various combat engagements, or of disease, or being swept out to sea during high storms. You might think that this was an impossibly morbid scenario to throw someone who was already depressed into, and viewed from a certain perspective, it certainly was. Viewed from another perspective, however -- the perspective Picard was coming from -- it actually reassured him. Humanity has always sought to explore, to defend its territories, to expand into new areas, to establish commerce and trade relations with those who aren't like them... and they've always been willing to die to do it. Death, even violent death, is part of the human condition, and even leading a soft life aboard a gigantic starship with a holodeck and an infinitely huge menu of food available from the replicator and medical technology that can cure almost anything that won't kill you instantly doesn't change that. Living in the hard conditions of an ancient sailing ship, experiencing their lack of medical knowledge and adequate entertainments and available sex partners of a preferred gender, seeing so many of them die, and seeing also how strongly the survivors felt about continuing to live their lives the same way, continuing to sail the seas and explore and fight the Spaniards and everything else they were doing... all of that made him remember that everyone in Starfleet who dies is dying for the opportunity to do the same thing, only in the future with better food and painkillers. It was all very inspiring to him and whatnot, human condition and ad astra per aspera and all that philosophical jazz about the meaning of human existence that he just eats up with a spoon.
And then when I took him home at the exact moment we left, he was more than happy to go on shore leave. I mean, after three months in the 17th century, a 24th century vacation resort was practically next door to paradise. And then his crew were happy because he was going out to have fun and not moping in his room, so it worked out for everyone.
But you know, while Picard did thank me for the perspective... he still doesn't ask how I'm doing when I show up.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG
theatrical_muse today.Prompt 302: Answer a question that you're never asked.
Why, I'm doing pretty well today, thanks for asking.
I'm fine, thanks, how about you?
Oh, you know, same old, same old. But hey, I appreciate you asking!
Except no one does.
"How are you today, Q?" "How do you feel?" "How's it going?" No one ever asks me those questions. And you know, I'm getting a little miffed about it.
The Q won't ask, of course, because they already know. They can see, right on my surface, exactly how I'm feeling today, and what my general opinion of life, what I'm doing, and the person who's asking me is. Or, I'm concealing it or lying about it, in which case they know I won't give them a straight answer if they ask. Whatever another Q sees on my surface, that's the answer I'd give to any question about how I feel, so they hardly need to ask.
But mortals have no excuse. They ask each other all the time! It's part of their common greetings, for the sake of all. Yet whenever I show up to visit a mortal, all I get is "What do you want, Q?" "Q, I have no time for this." "What's going on, Q?" "Why are you here?" "Go away, Q." So selfish. It's all about them, them, them. What about me? Just because I'm omnipotent, immortal and invulnerable doesn't mean I can't have a bad day. But no one ever asks how I'm feeling, or what's going on in my life. Honestly, they call me arrogant, and yet they're the ones who think that the life of an omniscient godlike being revolves around them. My entire life, in their opinion, must consist of trying to get a reaction out of them. It's ridiculous. They have no empathy for me whatsoever, no concept that I'm a person with thoughts and feelings. I just exist to be an obstacle for them, their personal plot complication or deus ex machina.
Honestly, it's just like the way children treat their parents. (And I should know this, because I have a son, whose mind I can read more easily than I can read any other Q's, and he thinks my entire life revolves around him, too.) They can't imagine that I'm a person, because I'm so powerful in relation to them, all they can see is what impact I might have on their life. Never occurs to them that y'know, maybe I'd like it if someone asked how I felt or how I was doing, just to be friendly. Would it honestly kill any of the mortals I interact with to be friendly?
Prompt 289: Cheer someone up.
Prompt 291: Take someone out.
Now I know what you're going to say, here. You're going to say, "But Q, you're an asshole who never does anything nice for mortals, so they don't even like you. Why would you expect them to be friendly with you?" And I'm going to say, au contraire, sometimes I am in fact perfectly nice to mortals.
There was this one time that Picard was sitting around moping because his crew was going on shore leave, but he had convinced himself that he had too much paperwork to do to go himself. Actually, the problem was that he'd just heard that some woman he used to date, Nella Darren, had been killed when her ship ran afoul of some Jem'Hadar warships, so he was really depressed about all the people who'd died on him, all the way back to Jack Crusher and up to and including his brother and nephew. And I knew that if I showed up and offered to take him somewhere fun, he'd refuse, because first of all it would hardly work to punish himself for surviving by denying himself shore leave if he went somewhere fun with me instead, and secondly, he always refuses me.
So I just didn't give him the opportunity to say no.
I dumped him on a British sailing ship from the 17th century, fighting the Spanish and exploring and all that jazz, as the second mate. Dumped everything he needed to know into his head, so he wouldn't run into problems trying to help run a sailing ship; he was a big fan of running around on them on the holodeck, but that's not remotely the same thing as actually being there. I assured him that he wasn't going to interfere in the timeline in any way, no matter what he did, and played the role of the ship's chaplain (people took religion seriously in those days, and who better to play the role of a priest than a god?) so he could come talk to me whenever he wanted to unburden his soul, or whine at me that he needed to go home, whichever came first.
I let him stay aboard that ship for three months. In that time, more than two-thirds of the crew died, in various combat engagements, or of disease, or being swept out to sea during high storms. You might think that this was an impossibly morbid scenario to throw someone who was already depressed into, and viewed from a certain perspective, it certainly was. Viewed from another perspective, however -- the perspective Picard was coming from -- it actually reassured him. Humanity has always sought to explore, to defend its territories, to expand into new areas, to establish commerce and trade relations with those who aren't like them... and they've always been willing to die to do it. Death, even violent death, is part of the human condition, and even leading a soft life aboard a gigantic starship with a holodeck and an infinitely huge menu of food available from the replicator and medical technology that can cure almost anything that won't kill you instantly doesn't change that. Living in the hard conditions of an ancient sailing ship, experiencing their lack of medical knowledge and adequate entertainments and available sex partners of a preferred gender, seeing so many of them die, and seeing also how strongly the survivors felt about continuing to live their lives the same way, continuing to sail the seas and explore and fight the Spaniards and everything else they were doing... all of that made him remember that everyone in Starfleet who dies is dying for the opportunity to do the same thing, only in the future with better food and painkillers. It was all very inspiring to him and whatnot, human condition and ad astra per aspera and all that philosophical jazz about the meaning of human existence that he just eats up with a spoon.
And then when I took him home at the exact moment we left, he was more than happy to go on shore leave. I mean, after three months in the 17th century, a 24th century vacation resort was practically next door to paradise. And then his crew were happy because he was going out to have fun and not moping in his room, so it worked out for everyone.
But you know, while Picard did thank me for the perspective... he still doesn't ask how I'm doing when I show up.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG