![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumPrompt 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.
It isn't exactly like I spent my entire life jonesing to have a kid. On the contrary, most of my life, I couldn't even comprehend why anyone would want one. The way the Q used to reproduce, where the entire Continuum as a whole brings forth an almost entirely fully formed new Q, seemed like a great idea to me. No crying babies, no lengthy period of idiocy, and no need for any one or two individual Q to fall all over themselves taking responsibility for the new one.
And it wasn't even as if there were a lot of kids, or what passed for kids in the Continuum, running around the place. I was actually one of the last created. (Yes, yes, I am the younger brother of practically everyone in the Continuum. Laugh it up, I've heard all the jokes before.) Sure, I kind of liked playing mentor to the younger ones, but you try being everyone's younger brother for a billion years -- you don't actually have to *like* kids to enjoy getting to be the older one for a change. I never had much interest in mortal children (still don't, generally), and there weren't any Q children per se (our new ones were more like teenagers than actual children), so it never entered my mind that I might *want* to have children, or that it would ever be possible.
After Q and Q had a kid, I realized it was actually possible, and maybe even kind of interesting, but then we killed them and ignored the kid for eighteen years, so... it wasn't something I put a lot of thought into. I did find, while I was trying to persuade their kid to come home to the Continuum, that a child who'd been Q her entire life, but had been raised thinking she was an ordinary human, was actually an amusing entity to deal with. I wouldn't have thought so, but... when we've inducted mortals into the Continuum, they're generally adults who already have traits that are similar to the Q, that's why we decide to invite them to join. Amanda *was* a Q, that was never in question (I might have somewhat implied to Picard that it was, but what was in question was her ability to control herself and her powers the way a Q can and must, not her actual Q-ness.) But she had the mindset of a human. It made her very, very different from the other Q, and I've always wanted to find something different from what I'm used to, whatever it might be.
Even then, though, I still wasn't much interested in having my *own* kid. That didn't change until the war. When I realized that having a child was the only way to win the war, at least on the symbolic level, I wanted a child because I wanted to win... and I wanted a child because I was tired of killing my own kind and I wanted someone to love (you never heard me just say that, by the way.)
The thing was... I never actually thought about what it would be *like*.
If I thought about it at all (and to be honest, I'm not sure I did), I imagined, you know, a cute baby. Only a Q, instead of a mortal baby. Or a little child, looking up at me worshipfully. I did not actually picture an entity who was even more irresponsible than I am, except with even less concept of how to actually accomplish his irresponsible desires and even less rationality to what inspired his desires in the first place. I didn't think of someone who would kidnap human starship captains, because Dad likes to play with human starship captains, and then try to kill the hapless creatures for refusing to play with him. Or someone who would declare himself to be a god, and demand that the villagers he appeared to in all his divine glory bring him cupcakes. I didn't picture a being who would randomly switch stars around and then forget where he put them, or would stick his hand in every star he saw and start *eating* them, or refuse to listen to me, or smash planets into asteroids in a temper tantrum.
I never imagined he'd be a person, with his own ideas and his own agendas.
I am so far out of my depth, it's ridiculous.
I mean, I love the kid. I'm not even embarrassed to admit it. You're supposed to love your kids. I had him, I chose for him to exist, I'd be a failure if I didn't love him. (I might be a failure anyway, but not for that reason.) Sometimes he does things that... I can't even describe it. Like I see him, and I feel so much pride and love that it *hurts*. Other times, I just want to kill him.
Mainly, though, I think that someday, maybe a billion years from now, I'm just going to have to laugh about all this. Because my son is the biggest trick the Universe has played on me, the greatest irony of my life, and I caused him to come into being. He's *me*. And I... end up being to him, what the Continuum was to me.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek Next Generation and Voyager
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.
It isn't exactly like I spent my entire life jonesing to have a kid. On the contrary, most of my life, I couldn't even comprehend why anyone would want one. The way the Q used to reproduce, where the entire Continuum as a whole brings forth an almost entirely fully formed new Q, seemed like a great idea to me. No crying babies, no lengthy period of idiocy, and no need for any one or two individual Q to fall all over themselves taking responsibility for the new one.
And it wasn't even as if there were a lot of kids, or what passed for kids in the Continuum, running around the place. I was actually one of the last created. (Yes, yes, I am the younger brother of practically everyone in the Continuum. Laugh it up, I've heard all the jokes before.) Sure, I kind of liked playing mentor to the younger ones, but you try being everyone's younger brother for a billion years -- you don't actually have to *like* kids to enjoy getting to be the older one for a change. I never had much interest in mortal children (still don't, generally), and there weren't any Q children per se (our new ones were more like teenagers than actual children), so it never entered my mind that I might *want* to have children, or that it would ever be possible.
After Q and Q had a kid, I realized it was actually possible, and maybe even kind of interesting, but then we killed them and ignored the kid for eighteen years, so... it wasn't something I put a lot of thought into. I did find, while I was trying to persuade their kid to come home to the Continuum, that a child who'd been Q her entire life, but had been raised thinking she was an ordinary human, was actually an amusing entity to deal with. I wouldn't have thought so, but... when we've inducted mortals into the Continuum, they're generally adults who already have traits that are similar to the Q, that's why we decide to invite them to join. Amanda *was* a Q, that was never in question (I might have somewhat implied to Picard that it was, but what was in question was her ability to control herself and her powers the way a Q can and must, not her actual Q-ness.) But she had the mindset of a human. It made her very, very different from the other Q, and I've always wanted to find something different from what I'm used to, whatever it might be.
Even then, though, I still wasn't much interested in having my *own* kid. That didn't change until the war. When I realized that having a child was the only way to win the war, at least on the symbolic level, I wanted a child because I wanted to win... and I wanted a child because I was tired of killing my own kind and I wanted someone to love (you never heard me just say that, by the way.)
The thing was... I never actually thought about what it would be *like*.
If I thought about it at all (and to be honest, I'm not sure I did), I imagined, you know, a cute baby. Only a Q, instead of a mortal baby. Or a little child, looking up at me worshipfully. I did not actually picture an entity who was even more irresponsible than I am, except with even less concept of how to actually accomplish his irresponsible desires and even less rationality to what inspired his desires in the first place. I didn't think of someone who would kidnap human starship captains, because Dad likes to play with human starship captains, and then try to kill the hapless creatures for refusing to play with him. Or someone who would declare himself to be a god, and demand that the villagers he appeared to in all his divine glory bring him cupcakes. I didn't picture a being who would randomly switch stars around and then forget where he put them, or would stick his hand in every star he saw and start *eating* them, or refuse to listen to me, or smash planets into asteroids in a temper tantrum.
I never imagined he'd be a person, with his own ideas and his own agendas.
I am so far out of my depth, it's ridiculous.
I mean, I love the kid. I'm not even embarrassed to admit it. You're supposed to love your kids. I had him, I chose for him to exist, I'd be a failure if I didn't love him. (I might be a failure anyway, but not for that reason.) Sometimes he does things that... I can't even describe it. Like I see him, and I feel so much pride and love that it *hurts*. Other times, I just want to kill him.
Mainly, though, I think that someday, maybe a billion years from now, I'm just going to have to laugh about all this. Because my son is the biggest trick the Universe has played on me, the greatest irony of my life, and I caused him to come into being. He's *me*. And I... end up being to him, what the Continuum was to me.
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek Next Generation and Voyager