Very old muse inquiries
OOC: Crossposted from muse_academy today.
Muse Inquiries #4 and 5: Vice and Trust
1. Does your muse indulge in any vice? Are there several?
By the standards of the Q Continuum, interacting with mortals on their own level, while doing nothing to hide his nature as an omnipotent being, is a vice, unless he has been directed to do so by the Continuum. We would perceive the fact that he enjoys tormenting members of less powerful species as a vice, but that's not entirely how Q and his kind see it; tormenting members of a less powerful species in order to gather information about them, help them overcome a problem without risking their worshipping him, or perform a test on them, is considered perfectly acceptable, especially if directly authorized by the Continuum, whereas actually falling in love with a mortal and trying to live with them would be considered not only a vice, but a deeply embarrassing one.
What Q does *not* indulge in is the vice of being worshipped as a god. This is probably the most common vice among his people, considered essentially equivalent to smoking among us -- it feels good for the Q doing it but it's harmful to the mortals that do the worshipping and can be harmful long term to the Q, but it's so common that it's almost socially acceptable. Q considers those who enjoy being worshipped to be "losers", but this is largely a psychological defense against the fact that the Continuum considers what *he* wants to do with mortals -- actually interact with them on their own level -- to be a far more embarrassing vice.
2. Is your muse addicted to any vice, physically or psychologically?
Q is extroverted, wants attention, and needs constant novelty and stimulation in his life, but his growing emotional isolation from the rest of the Continuum has prevented him from getting his needs filled with his own kind. So he has become more or less addicted to personal interaction with mortals, to the point where he has become so obsessed with particular mortals that he's attempted to reproduce with them, or rigged tests behind the scenes in their favor.
3. How far would they go to have their desired vice?
He has risked execution (although he claims that he didn't realize the risks, this is probably not entirely true) to spend time with mortals -- he tried to get Picard to let him join his crew, despite the fact that firstly, two Q had been executed for living among mortals without using their powers, and secondly, he was *already* in trouble with his people, having been asked to leave and not come home (since in the very next episode we see him, he's been thrown out of the Continuum and deprived of his powers, which could very well have resulted in his death and certainly would have if the sentence hadn't been rescinded, he was plainly taking significant risk in doing this.)
4. Do they engage in illegal types of vice? If so, do they suffer consequences?
Technically speaking, nothing Q does is ever *illegal*, just significantly frowned upon. He does suffer consequences, sometimes social and sometimes much more severe, for his obsession with mortals.
5. Do their vices create problems in their interpersonal relationships? Have their loved ones tried to get them to quit?
It's unlikely that Q's loved ones would attempt to get him to *quit* so much as they would mock him for his obsessions in hopes that if they humiliate him enough he might *choose* to quit. The Q don't do impassioned interpersonal pleas; they apply social control by humiliating other Q. But yes, Q's vice does create a certain distance between him and most of the Q who care about him.
6. Is the vice realistic, given the background, socio-economic status and stature of the muse? Be honest. For example, do you have a broke, blue collar muse indulging in high class call girls and Cristal, while snorting pure cocaine? Or is he drinking beer, getting a corner streetwalker and smoking crack?
The vice is canon -- Q is clearly established to be obsessed enough with mortals to try doing things like living among them as himself (something that later we find out a pair of Q were executed for refusing to stop doing) and reproducing with them. The fact that it is a vice is easily extrapolated from canon, given what happened to Amanda Rogers' parents. Would an omnipotent entity *actually* be obsessed with human beings? In my opinion, probably not, but I gotta work with what canon gives me.
7. Has your muse ever kicked a vice? How did you write and play that?
No. Q's vice is actually enormously important to being able to write him; he would have no motivation to spend time with the other characters in the Star Trek universe if he wasn't obsessed with humans, so I'm not interested in writing him trying to kick the habit.
8. What triggers a craving for the vice? Is it something they indulge in for sexual gratification or out of depression? How does that hunger begin?
Q is very bored. And also lonely. He doesn't fit in well with his own kind, and besides, he's known them all for billions of years and there's not much left to say or do. Other mortals, however, don't seem to intrigue him as much as humans do. He frequently talks about being bored in canon, and we've seen that the Q Continuum is so boring that it drove at least one Q to want to kill himself, in canon, so that's the best explanation for why Q is so interested in mortals.
9. What damage does the vice do to their physical being? What damage SHOULD it do?
In one sense, Q's vice doesn't do him any damage at all, physically. He's immortal and nigh-invulnerable. It's difficult to imagine how his interest in mortals, particularly humans, could really do him harm.
In another sense, it does him a lot of harm. It lowers his social standing in the Q Continuum, has contributed to a situation where he was thrown out of the Continuum and left to die, and makes him emotionally vulnerable to death and aging in a way that an immortal who only spends time with other immortals wouldn't be. Q will outlive everyone he cares about who's not a Q, and this does him a lot of emotional harm.
On the other hand, his vice has also allowed him to revolutionize the Continuum, gain significantly higher status, and have a child, when the actions of humans indirectly led to a civil war breaking out in the Continuum and directly led to Q's side winning. So there have actually been tangible benefits as well.
10. Link to a fic or roleplay thread that shows your character indulging in a vice, and talk about how that came to play out.
These are separate AU ficlets I wrote for a fic covering 17 AU's.
17 Things: Mermaid: Q destroys himself for love of a human being. No one ends up happy.
17 Things: Prisoner of Love: Q saves his mortal lover's homeworld, and is imprisoned by the Continuum for it.
17 Things: Unexpected ConseQuences: Q's clever plan to get William Riker, a human, to join the Q Continuum ends up backfiring on him badly.
1. Does your character have trouble trusting others? Why or why not? Do they have a history or event in their past that would explain trust issues?
Q has significant problems trusting other Q. He doesn't fit in well with them, he fiercely maintains his independence, and they're not a nice, friendly species; they all hold each other at a distance by being abrasive and mocking each other. But Q in particular is so good at it that he's made enemies, and has had terrible things happen to him as a result -- including the Q equivalent of violent gang-rape, when five other Q ambushed him, invaded him, pulled his defenses down and attempted to rewrite his personality by force. Q had trouble being fully open to other Q before that; afterward it was almost impossible for him.
2. What does it take for someone to gain your character's trust?
It's easier for a mortal, because Q has sufficient power over mortals that he feels more safe in trusting them (that being said, even with all his power he once froze a mortal solid for pulling a phaser set on stun on him, despite the fact that most likely a phaser set on stun couldn't have harmed him, and explained his action by saying "Knowing humans as thou dost, Captain, wouldst thou be captured helpless by them?") For most Q, it would probably be virtually impossible to regain Q's trust, if they've lost it. This has impacted his relationship with his "older brother", who engineered his being thrown out of the Continuum (in order to save him from a worse fate, and Q knows it, but that doesn't help much) and his "companion" and primary lover, the mother of his child, who left him and the child, claiming that Q had ruined the boy.
3. Is your character trustworthy?
Q doesn't believe he is trustworthy. So he works very hard to make sure that no one trusts him, because if no one trusts him, he can't betray a trust. Ironically he's probably a lot more trustworthy than he thinks he is, precisely because he finds the notion of betraying a trust so painful that he'll make sure people don't put their trust in him in the first place.
4. What would it take for your character to betray the trust of someone close to them?
The greater good, the fate of the universe, or facing significant pain and/or personal suffering on his own part. Q's not really particularly brave in the face of pain, since he suffers it so rarely.
5. Can your character forgive a betrayal of trust from someone close to them?
Yes, but only to a certain extent. Q believes it is important to try to forgive other Q their transgressions, just because it's so hard to carry around a grudge for eternity, but he admits that he has a hard time actually doing so.
6. Does your character's personal moral ethic (or lack thereof) allow them to "bend" trust issues with others in a manner that they would never allow others to do to them?
Q ends up in a weird position with the mortals he genuinely likes, because having worked so hard to make sure that they don't trust him, he then gets upset that they don't trust him. But in general Q isn't particularly hypocritical; he tolerates more betrayal than he actually commits, due to his efforts to make sure no one trusts him in the first place and his belief that if you're stupid enough to trust someone you had it coming when they betray you.
7. Does your character present a public image that invites trust in other? How much of that is deliberate?
No, Q's public image is of a totally untrustworthy trickster and narcissistic hedonist, and all of that is deliberate. Q chooses not to present himself as trustworthy in any way.
8. Does your character have a job/occupation/position that requires trust?
Q is a devil's advocate, a tester and trickster who forces people to endure unpleasant "tests" as a way of learning about their species or forcing them to learn something. His job actually requires that people don't trust him. If people thought that he wasn't really going to hurt them, they wouldn't take his tests seriously and his effectiveness would be impaired.
9. Does your character manipulate or use trust for personal or financial gain?
No. Q enjoys tormenting people; he has a bit of a sadistic streak, and likes to scare people. So he mostly gains by people *not* trusting him.
10. When caught in a betrayal of trust, how does your character react?
When caught betraying someone else's trust, Q will generally either run and hide so he doesn't have to confront the person he betrayed, or lash out at them for trusting him in the first place. When he is betrayed by someone else, Q tries to hide how hurt he is, but not very successfully.
Muse Inquiries #4 and 5: Vice and Trust
1. Does your muse indulge in any vice? Are there several?
By the standards of the Q Continuum, interacting with mortals on their own level, while doing nothing to hide his nature as an omnipotent being, is a vice, unless he has been directed to do so by the Continuum. We would perceive the fact that he enjoys tormenting members of less powerful species as a vice, but that's not entirely how Q and his kind see it; tormenting members of a less powerful species in order to gather information about them, help them overcome a problem without risking their worshipping him, or perform a test on them, is considered perfectly acceptable, especially if directly authorized by the Continuum, whereas actually falling in love with a mortal and trying to live with them would be considered not only a vice, but a deeply embarrassing one.
What Q does *not* indulge in is the vice of being worshipped as a god. This is probably the most common vice among his people, considered essentially equivalent to smoking among us -- it feels good for the Q doing it but it's harmful to the mortals that do the worshipping and can be harmful long term to the Q, but it's so common that it's almost socially acceptable. Q considers those who enjoy being worshipped to be "losers", but this is largely a psychological defense against the fact that the Continuum considers what *he* wants to do with mortals -- actually interact with them on their own level -- to be a far more embarrassing vice.
2. Is your muse addicted to any vice, physically or psychologically?
Q is extroverted, wants attention, and needs constant novelty and stimulation in his life, but his growing emotional isolation from the rest of the Continuum has prevented him from getting his needs filled with his own kind. So he has become more or less addicted to personal interaction with mortals, to the point where he has become so obsessed with particular mortals that he's attempted to reproduce with them, or rigged tests behind the scenes in their favor.
3. How far would they go to have their desired vice?
He has risked execution (although he claims that he didn't realize the risks, this is probably not entirely true) to spend time with mortals -- he tried to get Picard to let him join his crew, despite the fact that firstly, two Q had been executed for living among mortals without using their powers, and secondly, he was *already* in trouble with his people, having been asked to leave and not come home (since in the very next episode we see him, he's been thrown out of the Continuum and deprived of his powers, which could very well have resulted in his death and certainly would have if the sentence hadn't been rescinded, he was plainly taking significant risk in doing this.)
4. Do they engage in illegal types of vice? If so, do they suffer consequences?
Technically speaking, nothing Q does is ever *illegal*, just significantly frowned upon. He does suffer consequences, sometimes social and sometimes much more severe, for his obsession with mortals.
5. Do their vices create problems in their interpersonal relationships? Have their loved ones tried to get them to quit?
It's unlikely that Q's loved ones would attempt to get him to *quit* so much as they would mock him for his obsessions in hopes that if they humiliate him enough he might *choose* to quit. The Q don't do impassioned interpersonal pleas; they apply social control by humiliating other Q. But yes, Q's vice does create a certain distance between him and most of the Q who care about him.
6. Is the vice realistic, given the background, socio-economic status and stature of the muse? Be honest. For example, do you have a broke, blue collar muse indulging in high class call girls and Cristal, while snorting pure cocaine? Or is he drinking beer, getting a corner streetwalker and smoking crack?
The vice is canon -- Q is clearly established to be obsessed enough with mortals to try doing things like living among them as himself (something that later we find out a pair of Q were executed for refusing to stop doing) and reproducing with them. The fact that it is a vice is easily extrapolated from canon, given what happened to Amanda Rogers' parents. Would an omnipotent entity *actually* be obsessed with human beings? In my opinion, probably not, but I gotta work with what canon gives me.
7. Has your muse ever kicked a vice? How did you write and play that?
No. Q's vice is actually enormously important to being able to write him; he would have no motivation to spend time with the other characters in the Star Trek universe if he wasn't obsessed with humans, so I'm not interested in writing him trying to kick the habit.
8. What triggers a craving for the vice? Is it something they indulge in for sexual gratification or out of depression? How does that hunger begin?
Q is very bored. And also lonely. He doesn't fit in well with his own kind, and besides, he's known them all for billions of years and there's not much left to say or do. Other mortals, however, don't seem to intrigue him as much as humans do. He frequently talks about being bored in canon, and we've seen that the Q Continuum is so boring that it drove at least one Q to want to kill himself, in canon, so that's the best explanation for why Q is so interested in mortals.
9. What damage does the vice do to their physical being? What damage SHOULD it do?
In one sense, Q's vice doesn't do him any damage at all, physically. He's immortal and nigh-invulnerable. It's difficult to imagine how his interest in mortals, particularly humans, could really do him harm.
In another sense, it does him a lot of harm. It lowers his social standing in the Q Continuum, has contributed to a situation where he was thrown out of the Continuum and left to die, and makes him emotionally vulnerable to death and aging in a way that an immortal who only spends time with other immortals wouldn't be. Q will outlive everyone he cares about who's not a Q, and this does him a lot of emotional harm.
On the other hand, his vice has also allowed him to revolutionize the Continuum, gain significantly higher status, and have a child, when the actions of humans indirectly led to a civil war breaking out in the Continuum and directly led to Q's side winning. So there have actually been tangible benefits as well.
10. Link to a fic or roleplay thread that shows your character indulging in a vice, and talk about how that came to play out.
These are separate AU ficlets I wrote for a fic covering 17 AU's.
17 Things: Mermaid: Q destroys himself for love of a human being. No one ends up happy.
17 Things: Prisoner of Love: Q saves his mortal lover's homeworld, and is imprisoned by the Continuum for it.
17 Things: Unexpected ConseQuences: Q's clever plan to get William Riker, a human, to join the Q Continuum ends up backfiring on him badly.
1. Does your character have trouble trusting others? Why or why not? Do they have a history or event in their past that would explain trust issues?
Q has significant problems trusting other Q. He doesn't fit in well with them, he fiercely maintains his independence, and they're not a nice, friendly species; they all hold each other at a distance by being abrasive and mocking each other. But Q in particular is so good at it that he's made enemies, and has had terrible things happen to him as a result -- including the Q equivalent of violent gang-rape, when five other Q ambushed him, invaded him, pulled his defenses down and attempted to rewrite his personality by force. Q had trouble being fully open to other Q before that; afterward it was almost impossible for him.
2. What does it take for someone to gain your character's trust?
It's easier for a mortal, because Q has sufficient power over mortals that he feels more safe in trusting them (that being said, even with all his power he once froze a mortal solid for pulling a phaser set on stun on him, despite the fact that most likely a phaser set on stun couldn't have harmed him, and explained his action by saying "Knowing humans as thou dost, Captain, wouldst thou be captured helpless by them?") For most Q, it would probably be virtually impossible to regain Q's trust, if they've lost it. This has impacted his relationship with his "older brother", who engineered his being thrown out of the Continuum (in order to save him from a worse fate, and Q knows it, but that doesn't help much) and his "companion" and primary lover, the mother of his child, who left him and the child, claiming that Q had ruined the boy.
3. Is your character trustworthy?
Q doesn't believe he is trustworthy. So he works very hard to make sure that no one trusts him, because if no one trusts him, he can't betray a trust. Ironically he's probably a lot more trustworthy than he thinks he is, precisely because he finds the notion of betraying a trust so painful that he'll make sure people don't put their trust in him in the first place.
4. What would it take for your character to betray the trust of someone close to them?
The greater good, the fate of the universe, or facing significant pain and/or personal suffering on his own part. Q's not really particularly brave in the face of pain, since he suffers it so rarely.
5. Can your character forgive a betrayal of trust from someone close to them?
Yes, but only to a certain extent. Q believes it is important to try to forgive other Q their transgressions, just because it's so hard to carry around a grudge for eternity, but he admits that he has a hard time actually doing so.
6. Does your character's personal moral ethic (or lack thereof) allow them to "bend" trust issues with others in a manner that they would never allow others to do to them?
Q ends up in a weird position with the mortals he genuinely likes, because having worked so hard to make sure that they don't trust him, he then gets upset that they don't trust him. But in general Q isn't particularly hypocritical; he tolerates more betrayal than he actually commits, due to his efforts to make sure no one trusts him in the first place and his belief that if you're stupid enough to trust someone you had it coming when they betray you.
7. Does your character present a public image that invites trust in other? How much of that is deliberate?
No, Q's public image is of a totally untrustworthy trickster and narcissistic hedonist, and all of that is deliberate. Q chooses not to present himself as trustworthy in any way.
8. Does your character have a job/occupation/position that requires trust?
Q is a devil's advocate, a tester and trickster who forces people to endure unpleasant "tests" as a way of learning about their species or forcing them to learn something. His job actually requires that people don't trust him. If people thought that he wasn't really going to hurt them, they wouldn't take his tests seriously and his effectiveness would be impaired.
9. Does your character manipulate or use trust for personal or financial gain?
No. Q enjoys tormenting people; he has a bit of a sadistic streak, and likes to scare people. So he mostly gains by people *not* trusting him.
10. When caught in a betrayal of trust, how does your character react?
When caught betraying someone else's trust, Q will generally either run and hide so he doesn't have to confront the person he betrayed, or lash out at them for trusting him in the first place. When he is betrayed by someone else, Q tries to hide how hurt he is, but not very successfully.