Monogamy *is* a lame excuse. Or something.
OOC: Reposted from theatrical_muse from 9/18/2006, 46 of 50.
What are your thoughts about monogamy?
That it makes no sense whatsoever.
I mean, I understand envy. I'll freely confess that when, for whatever reason, I can't get someone I want, and someone else can, I am hard put to refrain from turning my romantic rival into a seven-toed Bedelikan sloth. (In fact I did turn Beverly Crusher into a dog once. Wasn't much of a change, if you ask me.)
But if you're romantically involved with someone, whether that involves sordid mortal reproductive rituals or pure, unsullied unity of mental energies or however you want to do it, what does it matter if they're doing the same thing with someone else? What, there's only so much sex to go around? I guess if they do it with someone else enough that it's cutting into your couple time with them, then yes, you'd have a point. But if you go away for a week, or a month, or ten thousand years, and they manage to find their own fun with someone else while you were gone, why would you care?
There are Q in the Continuum -- my ex among them -- who consider a Q having any strong emotional connection with a mortal whatsoever to be a dire transgression. That makes sense. Annoys me immensely, but I understand it. Our emotional connection with our fellow Q is what generates the Continuum, and that in turn is what makes us omnipotent and immortal, and if I seriously thought that a few Q blowing off their fellows for the space of a mortal lifetime or two was going to weaken the Continuum (which I don't, obviously), I would be against it too. But none of us have any problem with Q we particularly like having especial fondnesses for other Q, and I don't get why mortals are perfectly comfortable with their friends having other friends but so terribly upset about their lovers having other lovers.
What is the lamest excuse you've ever given for something you've done?
This is similar to asking me what I'd do if I could do one totally irresponsible thing. There's just too many to choose the lamest. I mean, when your fellows have forbidden you to do everything you consider fun, you get really, really creative with the lame excuses over the course of a billion years or so. However, here's an example that sort of fits in with what I was discussing above.
I've mentioned, earlier, having a bit of a thing for a certain human starship captain. Ahem. Well, I recall turning up on his doorstep offering to give him a present, after he'd more or less saved my life, the only time up to that point it had ever been vulnerable. I admitted to him that I owed him a debt. He essentially slammed the door in my face -- told me to pay my debt by leaving. Hah. Like that was going to happen. I always enjoyed the fact that Picard never behaved as if he was particularly afraid of me, but sometimes it was irritating, the extent to which he refused to recognize that I really could de-evolve him into a sea slug if I felt like it. And then, to make matters far worse, his girlfriend showed up. And she was a thief!
Now you have to understand that Picard is Mr. Morality Incarnate. I chose him as the exemplar of humanity precisely because he seeks to embody humanity's highest ideals. So the idea that he was in love with this woman who was, by his standards, patently immoral... well, it would have been funny if it hadn't been juxtaposed with him trying to throw me off his ship. I mean, I'm omnipotent. What could she offer him that I couldn't? I even admitted to him that I could take a female form if I wanted, although I phrased it as that I would have done it to throw him off balance if I'd known it would have had such a profound effect. (Which, I suppose, is also a lame excuse.)
Finally I decided to demonstrate to him what a really bad idea it was to rub my nose in the fact that he was capable of desiring a weak, inferior human who fell far from meeting his moral standards while at the same time refusing to give me the time of day. I threw him, his crew, and his girlfriend into a scenario taken from human folklore, Robin Hood. The setup was that his girlfriend was being held prisoner by the local constable (me) and being executed because she refused to marry some ugly lout of a nobleman. He was supposed to try to rescue her and get his fool self killed, at which point I would step in and observe that he was an idiot, that he'd gotten himself killed for love, and that fortunately he amused me enough that I would bring him back, thus demonstrating my superiority and absolving my debt for his saving my life. (Also, getting him back for throwing me in a brig. I was going to forgive that in the light of the life saving and all, but since he was being an asshole...)
Only the girl wouldn't follow the script. She agreed to marry the lout! This amused me. I like watching mortals use trickery and subverting the paradigm they're supposed to follow. Then she used the fact that she was willing to marry the guy to get a message to Jean-Luc, and he would have successfully rescued her (I was going to let it happen, given how amusing her audacity and deceit were) if they hadn't wasted all the time I was willing to give them bickering. So I was going to go through with the "execution" (and there they were, still bickering; on the one hand, I thought it demonstrated that Picard trusted me much more than he'd admit, that he was so unafraid of me killing him that he was willing to fight with his girlfriend while going to his death; on the other hand, it demonstrated that he wasn't taking me seriously, either, so I thought I probably would actually kill the girl just to shake him up.) Then his crew came in and rescued him. By the parameters of the game I'd set up, he'd won, so I let him go -- but I pulled aside his gal pal for a little chat.
As I've mentioned, Vash intrigued me. She wasn't particularly scared of me either, an attitude I find both infuriating and refreshing from mortals. And unlike Picard, she could see the value in having an omnipotent best buddy. So I offered her the deal Picard had turned down -- I would take her anywhere in the universe she wanted to go, show her anything she wanted to see. (This was not altruism on my part. After you've been around five billion years, the universe can be an incredibly boring place. The most excitement I generally get is helping mortals I find worthy of me to explore it, seeing things through their eyes.) And she accepted.
Of course I had to let her say goodbye to Picard. And they both demanded I pretend to give them privacy. I can see them whether I'm manifested in a human form in the room with them or not, but I guess the prospect of my spying on them in my godlike, bodiless state bothered them less. But I did want to remind them that I could watch them if I felt like it. So I popped in while they were making kissyface. The lame excuse was that I claimed to have forgotten my hat. (Since I manufactured the hat from the ether of nothingness in the first place, and they knew it, and knew I could have either teleported the hat or simply made a new one... it was as deliberately lame an excuse as I could come up with.)
(And I will state, for the record, that I didn't start doing things like making men Vash was interested in fall asleep until after she had decided that our deal was off and she no longer wanted to take me up on my generous offer. I didn't care who she slept with before that.)
What are your thoughts about monogamy?
That it makes no sense whatsoever.
I mean, I understand envy. I'll freely confess that when, for whatever reason, I can't get someone I want, and someone else can, I am hard put to refrain from turning my romantic rival into a seven-toed Bedelikan sloth. (In fact I did turn Beverly Crusher into a dog once. Wasn't much of a change, if you ask me.)
But if you're romantically involved with someone, whether that involves sordid mortal reproductive rituals or pure, unsullied unity of mental energies or however you want to do it, what does it matter if they're doing the same thing with someone else? What, there's only so much sex to go around? I guess if they do it with someone else enough that it's cutting into your couple time with them, then yes, you'd have a point. But if you go away for a week, or a month, or ten thousand years, and they manage to find their own fun with someone else while you were gone, why would you care?
There are Q in the Continuum -- my ex among them -- who consider a Q having any strong emotional connection with a mortal whatsoever to be a dire transgression. That makes sense. Annoys me immensely, but I understand it. Our emotional connection with our fellow Q is what generates the Continuum, and that in turn is what makes us omnipotent and immortal, and if I seriously thought that a few Q blowing off their fellows for the space of a mortal lifetime or two was going to weaken the Continuum (which I don't, obviously), I would be against it too. But none of us have any problem with Q we particularly like having especial fondnesses for other Q, and I don't get why mortals are perfectly comfortable with their friends having other friends but so terribly upset about their lovers having other lovers.
What is the lamest excuse you've ever given for something you've done?
This is similar to asking me what I'd do if I could do one totally irresponsible thing. There's just too many to choose the lamest. I mean, when your fellows have forbidden you to do everything you consider fun, you get really, really creative with the lame excuses over the course of a billion years or so. However, here's an example that sort of fits in with what I was discussing above.
I've mentioned, earlier, having a bit of a thing for a certain human starship captain. Ahem. Well, I recall turning up on his doorstep offering to give him a present, after he'd more or less saved my life, the only time up to that point it had ever been vulnerable. I admitted to him that I owed him a debt. He essentially slammed the door in my face -- told me to pay my debt by leaving. Hah. Like that was going to happen. I always enjoyed the fact that Picard never behaved as if he was particularly afraid of me, but sometimes it was irritating, the extent to which he refused to recognize that I really could de-evolve him into a sea slug if I felt like it. And then, to make matters far worse, his girlfriend showed up. And she was a thief!
Now you have to understand that Picard is Mr. Morality Incarnate. I chose him as the exemplar of humanity precisely because he seeks to embody humanity's highest ideals. So the idea that he was in love with this woman who was, by his standards, patently immoral... well, it would have been funny if it hadn't been juxtaposed with him trying to throw me off his ship. I mean, I'm omnipotent. What could she offer him that I couldn't? I even admitted to him that I could take a female form if I wanted, although I phrased it as that I would have done it to throw him off balance if I'd known it would have had such a profound effect. (Which, I suppose, is also a lame excuse.)
Finally I decided to demonstrate to him what a really bad idea it was to rub my nose in the fact that he was capable of desiring a weak, inferior human who fell far from meeting his moral standards while at the same time refusing to give me the time of day. I threw him, his crew, and his girlfriend into a scenario taken from human folklore, Robin Hood. The setup was that his girlfriend was being held prisoner by the local constable (me) and being executed because she refused to marry some ugly lout of a nobleman. He was supposed to try to rescue her and get his fool self killed, at which point I would step in and observe that he was an idiot, that he'd gotten himself killed for love, and that fortunately he amused me enough that I would bring him back, thus demonstrating my superiority and absolving my debt for his saving my life. (Also, getting him back for throwing me in a brig. I was going to forgive that in the light of the life saving and all, but since he was being an asshole...)
Only the girl wouldn't follow the script. She agreed to marry the lout! This amused me. I like watching mortals use trickery and subverting the paradigm they're supposed to follow. Then she used the fact that she was willing to marry the guy to get a message to Jean-Luc, and he would have successfully rescued her (I was going to let it happen, given how amusing her audacity and deceit were) if they hadn't wasted all the time I was willing to give them bickering. So I was going to go through with the "execution" (and there they were, still bickering; on the one hand, I thought it demonstrated that Picard trusted me much more than he'd admit, that he was so unafraid of me killing him that he was willing to fight with his girlfriend while going to his death; on the other hand, it demonstrated that he wasn't taking me seriously, either, so I thought I probably would actually kill the girl just to shake him up.) Then his crew came in and rescued him. By the parameters of the game I'd set up, he'd won, so I let him go -- but I pulled aside his gal pal for a little chat.
As I've mentioned, Vash intrigued me. She wasn't particularly scared of me either, an attitude I find both infuriating and refreshing from mortals. And unlike Picard, she could see the value in having an omnipotent best buddy. So I offered her the deal Picard had turned down -- I would take her anywhere in the universe she wanted to go, show her anything she wanted to see. (This was not altruism on my part. After you've been around five billion years, the universe can be an incredibly boring place. The most excitement I generally get is helping mortals I find worthy of me to explore it, seeing things through their eyes.) And she accepted.
Of course I had to let her say goodbye to Picard. And they both demanded I pretend to give them privacy. I can see them whether I'm manifested in a human form in the room with them or not, but I guess the prospect of my spying on them in my godlike, bodiless state bothered them less. But I did want to remind them that I could watch them if I felt like it. So I popped in while they were making kissyface. The lame excuse was that I claimed to have forgotten my hat. (Since I manufactured the hat from the ether of nothingness in the first place, and they knew it, and knew I could have either teleported the hat or simply made a new one... it was as deliberately lame an excuse as I could come up with.)
(And I will state, for the record, that I didn't start doing things like making men Vash was interested in fall asleep until after she had decided that our deal was off and she no longer wanted to take me up on my generous offer. I didn't care who she slept with before that.)