Catching up on some questions I missed
OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Actually, there were quite a few questions I missed while I was gone for a year or so your time, but I can't be bothered to answer them all. Some, however, are interesting enough to take on.
Of course, it's amazing to me how many of these questions have no bearing on my existence whatsoever.
But what's life without a little bit of challenge? I picked out some of the least stupid of the stupidest questions, to see if I could actually come up with an answer that makes sense for any of them.
Prompt 198: If you could have any mutant/super power, which one would it be, and what would you do with it? (If you already have a mutant or super power, what one would you trade it in for?)
I am for all intents and purposes omnipotent, immortal and invulnerable. There *aren't* any superpowers I don't have, and having them all, why would I ever want to trade?
However, since I'm trying to answer in the spirit of the questions and not simply dismiss them as unutterably stupid, I will take this to mean: if I couldn't be omnipotent, what superpower would I want?
First, of course, we need to define the *base* set of powers. All mortal creatures have some sort of power, even if it's only the power to reproduce and engulf food a la an amoeba. A Terran rat would look at humans' 20/20 vision the way humans look at Kryptonian x-ray vision. A Vulcan doesn't consider telepathy a superpower any more than human women consider the ability to make human men drool and lose most of their intellect a superpower, and they feel about equally ambivalent about using such an ability, for similar reasons. So what's the base set of abilities that we define such that anything on top of it is a "superpower"?
For simplicity's sake, since most of the people reading this are humans, humanoids, or familiar with humans, I will define the base set of abilities as those possessed by Terran humans, and anything more than that as a superpower.
Now, superpowers break out into, essentially, five verbs: the power to know (telepathy, clairvoyance, enhanced sense of smell beyond human norm), the power to do (telekinesis, super strength), the power to go (time travel, teleportation, flight), the power to live (regeneration, immortality) and the power to be (shapeshifting, illusion.) Of those, if I could only have one, I'd take the power to do. Telekinesis, even if I can't have it at the level where I can create an entire planet with a single thought, would be preferable to any of the others, assuming I can't have more than one. The power to know produces great boredom if you know too much, and doesn't offer many opportunities for self-defense; the power to live isn't interesting all by itself, and I'd rather have a short life full of fun than a long boring one if I can't have a long fun life; I already have the power to be and hardly ever use it, preferring to present myself in different aspects through force of personality and acting skills rather than out-and-out shapechanging; and I was really torn on the power to go because I enjoy that one a lot, but the basic human set of abilities *does* include the ability to make tools and use them to go places. I mean, it's a tossup, and I might be persuaded to take the power to go instead of the power to do… but the power to go is the power to go *somewhere*, and then once you're there what do you do with it? Ordinary human going abilities are better than their doing abilities.
So I'll take telekinesis or something closely related.
Prompt 180: If you could completely start your life over from scratch, what would you do differently the second time around (if anything)? Why?
I don't believe in regrets. You are who you are because of all the things that have happened to you and all the things you have done. If you did something different, you wouldn't be the person you are today, and often, if you were the person you were then, you couldn't have done anything differently. It's not that I don't believe in free will - I do. But I believe that what we freely choose to do is constrained by our natures. I *could* become a missionary and go about the galaxy spreading peace, love and understanding, but I *wouldn't* because that's not who I am. Doesn't mean I don't freely choose not to do that - no one is forcing me not to be a missionary - but my own nature dictates what I will freely choose to do.
I hurt a friend very, very badly once. But I did it because she hurt me, and she hurt me because I was trying to protect her and she took it wrong. If I knew then what I know now, maybe I could have made a different choice... but I wouldn't want to start my life over from scratch knowing everything then that I know now. My god, how tedious would *that* be? The great joy of my existence is that I can remember what it felt like *not* to know everything, and there's no mistake I've made in my life so awful that I would give up that joy simply to rectify the mistake.
Would I choose to have been a different person if I could be remade and live my life over from the beginning?... mostly, no. If I had a little less of a temper I might not have done some particularly mean things I've done to people that I regret, but on the other hand, I might have rolled over and been a doormat more often. If I thought harder before I took actions I might not have done some spectacularly dumb things, but then again, I'd be a less spontaneous person in general and that would make me less fun to be around, and my life would have been duller. So no. Everything interconnects. There are things I have done that I regret, but I did them because it was my nature to do them and if I hadn't done them, it would have been because I was a different person with a different nature, and I don't want to not be me.
Now if I could go back in time and tell myself not to do certain things, sure, there are things I would try to talk myself out of. But I'm a stubborn ass with a rep for never listening to other Q, so why would I listen to my future self? Probably I'd have done exactly what I did the first time around even if I-in-the-future was able to go back and tell me-in-the-past not to do it. (And in case you're wondering, this is one of the very few exceptions to the rule of omnipotence. Q are so large and have such a profound impact on the timestream and there are so few of us in our *own* timeline that we cannot do this; a Q going back in time to change their own or any other Q's actions would create a paradox that could destroy the Continuum, although we can freely move around in and alter *your* timeline. But I've given mortals, who *are* allowed to change their own pasts without it destroying everything, the opportunity to change their own pasts... and it never works out well for them, so I don't imagine it would for me either.)
Prompt 190: "You've temporarily turned into a child" -- what do you do?
Prompt 172: If you could pick anyone in the world, alive or dead, to be your parents, who would it be and why?
Firstly, I don't have parents and I was never a child. So these are rather alien concepts to me.
But alien concepts can be fun. So let's try a little thought experiment. If I were suddenly turned into a child, what would that mean? A human starship captain of my acquaintance was temporarily turned into a child, but only physically -- his mind was unaffected, and while he ended up changing his behavior, it's because his species are so utterly convinced that behavior which is appropriate from an adult looks ridiculous when a child does it and vice versa that he was forced by social opprobrium to stop acting like a starship captain, and then playact at throwing a temper tantrum in order to save his crew from some Ferengi.
Now, see, this wouldn't happen to me. Because I have no inherent form, and I don't care about anyone else's social rules. If I wanted to appear as a child and act like a child, it would be because I felt like playing the role of a child, and if I wanted to appear as a child and act like an adult, it would be because I wanted to mess with mortal minds. "You've temporarily turned into a child" only makes sense in my case if it affects my mind as well - if in my very essence I somehow became a child, or thought I had become a child. Which means I would have some serious amnesia going on, because I'd have to forget five billion years of knowledge, and probably my very identity. And that means I probably wouldn't know I have powers, or how to use them properly. Which means I'd need someone to take care of me while I was running around thinking I was a child, which means we're back to that parent question.
Well, mortals know how to be parents better than the Q do, for the simple reason that most of them *had* parents. But what mortal would understand how to educate and guide an omnipotent child? If I figured out my powers I could annihilate them because they wouldn't let me stay up late and eat Twinkies for dinner. Besides, I don't actually know any mortals I'd trust with the job. As funny as the thought of inflicting my child-self on Picard is, the fact is, mortals consider it a truism that they turn into their own parents when they have kids, and having seen how he interacted with *his* father… just, no. Likewise, while I thought Kathy Janeway would have made a fine mom for *my* child, the fact is that she's a stern martinet who's addicted to rules and who will steamroller any man who she'd actually agree to sleep with. She would have worked for my kid's mother because my kid would have had me for a dad, but since I wouldn't have me for a dad (hell, no; I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm pretty sure that I'd be a terrible father if there were any other fathers in the Continuum to compare me to), and she would never pick a dad for me who could stand up to her, there would be no one to encourage my natural desires to break rules and have fun. So Kathy's out. And, as I said, there are no mortals who I think would really know what they were doing regarding the raising of an *omnipotent* child anyway. So my parents would have to be Q.
Well, aside from the paradox involved, I'm out. As I said, I don't know what I'm doing and I don't think I'm a very good father. My ex is far, far worse than I am, having abandoned our son and said very cruel things to him in the course of doing it, so she's out. And we are the only living Q who have ever been parents.
But I'm allowed to pick dead people, and there were other Q who were parents, they're just dead. Our first Q child ever was born to two Q who'd taken human form, who were then killed, and grew up as a human named Amanda before I recruited her back into the Continuum. Amanda's mother was, from my perspective as an adult Q, an idiot. She was so besotted with love for her baby and so irresponsible and cavalier with her obedience to the Continuum that she was killed for it. But from the *baby's* perspective… she loved that little thing to distraction. And I don't know how she would have related to Amanda as Amanda grew up, if she'd lived; I mean my ex loved our baby when he was born too. But from what I saw, she'd have done anything for that kid. And she had a great sense of fun, and would never have held back on letting me explore the wilder side of my nature if I'd been her kid. So I guess if I had to be a child and I could pick any person, living or dead, for a mother, I'd pick her.
Of course, the fact is she *did* die. And her boyfriend, who would have thrown Amanda under a bus in a heartbeat if it wouldn't have upset his lover so badly, was an idiot for the love of an adult Q, not an idiot for the love of a baby, and that makes it worse. I don't want that moron for a father. If he hadn't been so willing to follow her dumb ideas, and had actually put up an argument, maybe they'd both be alive.
I have an, mmm, older sister is probably the best way to describe her -- a Q created in the first wave, after the Continuum already existed but before there were a large number of new Q created in it. And she's always been something of a nurturer -- her role within the Continuum was to train and educate the new Q that would come along. I mean, we were created as teens, not children, but we still needed someone to watch over us, keep us from being complete idiots and guide us into better control over our powers. My sister has a terrible habit of falling in love with mortals, she's overly fond of mortal children, and despite all this she has managed to argue with a straight face that the Q should have no contact with mortals because we're bad for them. So she's something of a hypocrite. But she takes no crap from anyone, she doesn't let fellow Q get away with stupid ideas on her watch if she can possibly talk them out of it, and while she actually likes kids, she's not so besotted with them as to be a dumbass about it. If *she* had been Amanda's father and not the guy who actually was, Amanda would never have been lost to the Q for eighteen years of thinking she was human, because her parents wouldn't have died. She would probably be the best choice to counterbalance Amanda's mother's over-softness toward her baby. So if I have to pick a Q to be my father, I pick her. (And yes, I do realize that according to your silly binary gender rules I should not be picking a being I refer to as female to be a father, but the Q don't have gender so my sister can damn well be my father if she wants to be. She just prefers a female avatar because she's obsessed with romantic love and she likes kids. Among most mortals, that's considered a feminine role.)
Actually, there were quite a few questions I missed while I was gone for a year or so your time, but I can't be bothered to answer them all. Some, however, are interesting enough to take on.
Of course, it's amazing to me how many of these questions have no bearing on my existence whatsoever.
But what's life without a little bit of challenge? I picked out some of the least stupid of the stupidest questions, to see if I could actually come up with an answer that makes sense for any of them.
Prompt 198: If you could have any mutant/super power, which one would it be, and what would you do with it? (If you already have a mutant or super power, what one would you trade it in for?)
I am for all intents and purposes omnipotent, immortal and invulnerable. There *aren't* any superpowers I don't have, and having them all, why would I ever want to trade?
However, since I'm trying to answer in the spirit of the questions and not simply dismiss them as unutterably stupid, I will take this to mean: if I couldn't be omnipotent, what superpower would I want?
First, of course, we need to define the *base* set of powers. All mortal creatures have some sort of power, even if it's only the power to reproduce and engulf food a la an amoeba. A Terran rat would look at humans' 20/20 vision the way humans look at Kryptonian x-ray vision. A Vulcan doesn't consider telepathy a superpower any more than human women consider the ability to make human men drool and lose most of their intellect a superpower, and they feel about equally ambivalent about using such an ability, for similar reasons. So what's the base set of abilities that we define such that anything on top of it is a "superpower"?
For simplicity's sake, since most of the people reading this are humans, humanoids, or familiar with humans, I will define the base set of abilities as those possessed by Terran humans, and anything more than that as a superpower.
Now, superpowers break out into, essentially, five verbs: the power to know (telepathy, clairvoyance, enhanced sense of smell beyond human norm), the power to do (telekinesis, super strength), the power to go (time travel, teleportation, flight), the power to live (regeneration, immortality) and the power to be (shapeshifting, illusion.) Of those, if I could only have one, I'd take the power to do. Telekinesis, even if I can't have it at the level where I can create an entire planet with a single thought, would be preferable to any of the others, assuming I can't have more than one. The power to know produces great boredom if you know too much, and doesn't offer many opportunities for self-defense; the power to live isn't interesting all by itself, and I'd rather have a short life full of fun than a long boring one if I can't have a long fun life; I already have the power to be and hardly ever use it, preferring to present myself in different aspects through force of personality and acting skills rather than out-and-out shapechanging; and I was really torn on the power to go because I enjoy that one a lot, but the basic human set of abilities *does* include the ability to make tools and use them to go places. I mean, it's a tossup, and I might be persuaded to take the power to go instead of the power to do… but the power to go is the power to go *somewhere*, and then once you're there what do you do with it? Ordinary human going abilities are better than their doing abilities.
So I'll take telekinesis or something closely related.
Prompt 180: If you could completely start your life over from scratch, what would you do differently the second time around (if anything)? Why?
I don't believe in regrets. You are who you are because of all the things that have happened to you and all the things you have done. If you did something different, you wouldn't be the person you are today, and often, if you were the person you were then, you couldn't have done anything differently. It's not that I don't believe in free will - I do. But I believe that what we freely choose to do is constrained by our natures. I *could* become a missionary and go about the galaxy spreading peace, love and understanding, but I *wouldn't* because that's not who I am. Doesn't mean I don't freely choose not to do that - no one is forcing me not to be a missionary - but my own nature dictates what I will freely choose to do.
I hurt a friend very, very badly once. But I did it because she hurt me, and she hurt me because I was trying to protect her and she took it wrong. If I knew then what I know now, maybe I could have made a different choice... but I wouldn't want to start my life over from scratch knowing everything then that I know now. My god, how tedious would *that* be? The great joy of my existence is that I can remember what it felt like *not* to know everything, and there's no mistake I've made in my life so awful that I would give up that joy simply to rectify the mistake.
Would I choose to have been a different person if I could be remade and live my life over from the beginning?... mostly, no. If I had a little less of a temper I might not have done some particularly mean things I've done to people that I regret, but on the other hand, I might have rolled over and been a doormat more often. If I thought harder before I took actions I might not have done some spectacularly dumb things, but then again, I'd be a less spontaneous person in general and that would make me less fun to be around, and my life would have been duller. So no. Everything interconnects. There are things I have done that I regret, but I did them because it was my nature to do them and if I hadn't done them, it would have been because I was a different person with a different nature, and I don't want to not be me.
Now if I could go back in time and tell myself not to do certain things, sure, there are things I would try to talk myself out of. But I'm a stubborn ass with a rep for never listening to other Q, so why would I listen to my future self? Probably I'd have done exactly what I did the first time around even if I-in-the-future was able to go back and tell me-in-the-past not to do it. (And in case you're wondering, this is one of the very few exceptions to the rule of omnipotence. Q are so large and have such a profound impact on the timestream and there are so few of us in our *own* timeline that we cannot do this; a Q going back in time to change their own or any other Q's actions would create a paradox that could destroy the Continuum, although we can freely move around in and alter *your* timeline. But I've given mortals, who *are* allowed to change their own pasts without it destroying everything, the opportunity to change their own pasts... and it never works out well for them, so I don't imagine it would for me either.)
Prompt 190: "You've temporarily turned into a child" -- what do you do?
Prompt 172: If you could pick anyone in the world, alive or dead, to be your parents, who would it be and why?
Firstly, I don't have parents and I was never a child. So these are rather alien concepts to me.
But alien concepts can be fun. So let's try a little thought experiment. If I were suddenly turned into a child, what would that mean? A human starship captain of my acquaintance was temporarily turned into a child, but only physically -- his mind was unaffected, and while he ended up changing his behavior, it's because his species are so utterly convinced that behavior which is appropriate from an adult looks ridiculous when a child does it and vice versa that he was forced by social opprobrium to stop acting like a starship captain, and then playact at throwing a temper tantrum in order to save his crew from some Ferengi.
Now, see, this wouldn't happen to me. Because I have no inherent form, and I don't care about anyone else's social rules. If I wanted to appear as a child and act like a child, it would be because I felt like playing the role of a child, and if I wanted to appear as a child and act like an adult, it would be because I wanted to mess with mortal minds. "You've temporarily turned into a child" only makes sense in my case if it affects my mind as well - if in my very essence I somehow became a child, or thought I had become a child. Which means I would have some serious amnesia going on, because I'd have to forget five billion years of knowledge, and probably my very identity. And that means I probably wouldn't know I have powers, or how to use them properly. Which means I'd need someone to take care of me while I was running around thinking I was a child, which means we're back to that parent question.
Well, mortals know how to be parents better than the Q do, for the simple reason that most of them *had* parents. But what mortal would understand how to educate and guide an omnipotent child? If I figured out my powers I could annihilate them because they wouldn't let me stay up late and eat Twinkies for dinner. Besides, I don't actually know any mortals I'd trust with the job. As funny as the thought of inflicting my child-self on Picard is, the fact is, mortals consider it a truism that they turn into their own parents when they have kids, and having seen how he interacted with *his* father… just, no. Likewise, while I thought Kathy Janeway would have made a fine mom for *my* child, the fact is that she's a stern martinet who's addicted to rules and who will steamroller any man who she'd actually agree to sleep with. She would have worked for my kid's mother because my kid would have had me for a dad, but since I wouldn't have me for a dad (hell, no; I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm pretty sure that I'd be a terrible father if there were any other fathers in the Continuum to compare me to), and she would never pick a dad for me who could stand up to her, there would be no one to encourage my natural desires to break rules and have fun. So Kathy's out. And, as I said, there are no mortals who I think would really know what they were doing regarding the raising of an *omnipotent* child anyway. So my parents would have to be Q.
Well, aside from the paradox involved, I'm out. As I said, I don't know what I'm doing and I don't think I'm a very good father. My ex is far, far worse than I am, having abandoned our son and said very cruel things to him in the course of doing it, so she's out. And we are the only living Q who have ever been parents.
But I'm allowed to pick dead people, and there were other Q who were parents, they're just dead. Our first Q child ever was born to two Q who'd taken human form, who were then killed, and grew up as a human named Amanda before I recruited her back into the Continuum. Amanda's mother was, from my perspective as an adult Q, an idiot. She was so besotted with love for her baby and so irresponsible and cavalier with her obedience to the Continuum that she was killed for it. But from the *baby's* perspective… she loved that little thing to distraction. And I don't know how she would have related to Amanda as Amanda grew up, if she'd lived; I mean my ex loved our baby when he was born too. But from what I saw, she'd have done anything for that kid. And she had a great sense of fun, and would never have held back on letting me explore the wilder side of my nature if I'd been her kid. So I guess if I had to be a child and I could pick any person, living or dead, for a mother, I'd pick her.
Of course, the fact is she *did* die. And her boyfriend, who would have thrown Amanda under a bus in a heartbeat if it wouldn't have upset his lover so badly, was an idiot for the love of an adult Q, not an idiot for the love of a baby, and that makes it worse. I don't want that moron for a father. If he hadn't been so willing to follow her dumb ideas, and had actually put up an argument, maybe they'd both be alive.
I have an, mmm, older sister is probably the best way to describe her -- a Q created in the first wave, after the Continuum already existed but before there were a large number of new Q created in it. And she's always been something of a nurturer -- her role within the Continuum was to train and educate the new Q that would come along. I mean, we were created as teens, not children, but we still needed someone to watch over us, keep us from being complete idiots and guide us into better control over our powers. My sister has a terrible habit of falling in love with mortals, she's overly fond of mortal children, and despite all this she has managed to argue with a straight face that the Q should have no contact with mortals because we're bad for them. So she's something of a hypocrite. But she takes no crap from anyone, she doesn't let fellow Q get away with stupid ideas on her watch if she can possibly talk them out of it, and while she actually likes kids, she's not so besotted with them as to be a dumbass about it. If *she* had been Amanda's father and not the guy who actually was, Amanda would never have been lost to the Q for eighteen years of thinking she was human, because her parents wouldn't have died. She would probably be the best choice to counterbalance Amanda's mother's over-softness toward her baby. So if I have to pick a Q to be my father, I pick her. (And yes, I do realize that according to your silly binary gender rules I should not be picking a being I refer to as female to be a father, but the Q don't have gender so my sister can damn well be my father if she wants to be. She just prefers a female avatar because she's obsessed with romantic love and she likes kids. Among most mortals, that's considered a feminine role.)