Post by Cadet Q on May 27, 2009 17:11:36 GMT
Q
When I'm with her I'm confused
Out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as the weather
She's as flighty as a feather
She's a darling! She's a demon! She's a lamb!
Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay,
And listen to all you say?
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
– "How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?" from The Sound of Music
This is the second character for Lakshmi Patel.
NOTE: Because my character is a Q and therefore has the same name with the rest of her species (they are all named "Q") I will be referring to my character as "Cadet Q" and referring to the race that she belongs to as "the Q" or "other Q", whenever I mention them within the same general area of the profile. I hope this'll clear up any confusion, but I'm expecting that it won't.
[/size]—
CHARACTER'S NAME: Cadet Q
AGE: Because Cadet Q is, or was, a member of a race of immortal, extradimensional beings, she is ageless. Physically, she takes on the appearance of a 22-year-old.
GENDER: Female
PHYSICAL PROFILE
For the Q, one of the more exasperating traits of limited and primitive races who live outside the Q Continuum is their inability to understand anything that originates from the Continuum itself, particularly its inhabitants. While the Q are powerful and are capable of manipulating time, space and universal states of nature, they are unable to make the limited and intellectually inferior comprehend the Q in their natural state.
So it is with great displeasure and exasperation that the Q must assume corporeal and restricted forms whenever they choose to enter normal space, so as not to overwork the limited perceptions of inferior races. Cadet Q herself was punished by her superiors to assume Human form.
Whenever they are forced to come into contact with lesser beings, some Q assume the shape that most represents their personality and mentality. As a Human, Cadet Q takes on the appearance of a slight young woman with bright blonde hair pulled cleanly back into a bun. Her elfin face tapers to a definite point and befits her impish and occasionally malevolent nature, while the spark in her blue eyes is very telling of her boundless intelligence, as well as a sense of self-superiority cultivated by billions of years of omnipotence. Her lips are expressive: they are quick to turn up into a cheeky grin whenever something amuses her—and she likes to amuse herself at the expense of others—and are quick to turn downwards in a sour pout whenever she is confronted with what she considers to be imperfections and limitations of her own human body.
What bothers Cadet Q the most about her body is her height—or the lack thereof. She stands at a pitiful five feet, though if she were to straighten her back a little and to hold her chin a little higher, she might be able to crack five feet and an inch. Nearly everything about her seems diminutive and pixie-like: her movements are light-footed, erratic and airy. She also has small feet and small hands—physical attributes that, along with her height, contribute to an already well-established Napoleonic complex. There is one consolation which affords Cadet Q the luxury of vanity, however: her physical appearance is considered to be a rather attractive one by Human standards. Though of course, she wouldn’t dream of trying to attract anyone, let alone a smelly, narrow Human male.
—
BIRTHPLACE
Cadet Q will tell you that she does not have a birthplace, simply because she had never been "born". She, like the other Q, have merely existed. The questions about one's birth date and birthplace are for the lesser and inferior beings to answer for they are subject to the constraints of birth and mortality. What a pity.
That being said, this particular Q had simply existed within the Q Continuum—an extradimensional plane of reality that is beyond the comprehension of...well, everyone else—for billions of millennia prior to her banishment.
CAREER TRACK: Undecided
—
PERSONALITY
While Humans remain an intriguing species to Cadet Q and her kindred, there are few things about the Human race and culture that actually impress and delight Cadet Q, one of which is the song How do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? from the musical The Sound of Music. While such a song could hardly be considered the pinnacle of Human creativity—which is dreadfully primitive in itself—Cadet Q enjoys it because the lyrics, despite their painful and almost insulting simplicity, remind her of herself.
Like the restless and incorrigible Maria Von Trapp of Hammerstein’s musical, Cadet Q is volatile, flighty and unpredictable. However, unlike the sweet-natured Maria who was willing to impart her musical knowledge to a gaggle of seven spoiled, bratty children, Cadet Q is far less willing to impart her own knowledge to other people. She would be wasting her time; they simply wouldn't be able to comprehend it. She finds the greatest joy in intentionally (and unintentionally) confusing others, causing mischief and stumping the intellectually-challenged, particularly Humans, Vulcans and all manner of species and individuals who wrongly view themselves as shining bastions of intellect. In fact, if Cadet Q had taken the role of Maria Von Trapp herself, she would've been more interested in sending Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and Gretl to the Delta Quadrant and maroon them in the middle of Borg space...just to see what would happen to them.
This is not to say that Cadet Q is an antisocial sociopath. She's far from one! She loves to have fun, especially when "fun" involves knocking planets out of orbit or trapping hapless humans in the same 30-second time loop. Cadet Q loves to talk, particularly if the topic is about herself. She is also genuinely intrigued by the different races and species that inhabit normal space, and is often amused and delighted by them—particularly whenever they engage each other in interplanetary civil wars and struggle and fail to survive natural disasters. She does not empathize with the lesser beings; why would she have to? She'd only be wasting her time. She prefers to laugh at their sheer and amusing inferiority. She likes to be entertained.
There are very few mysteries, if any, left in the universe for Cadet Q and her kind to explore. As omnipotent beings, they've examined and scrutinized every bit of subspace and normal space, created and explored multitudes of alternate timelines and even tampered with the universal laws of physics. Now she's bored; she's been all there and done all that. Everything in the universe is inconsequential and predictable to her: if a black hole threatens to consume an entire solar system, the Q can easily intervene. Cadet Q herself can literally dismantle a galaxy and set it to rights with the snap of her fingers.
But it can become so overwhelmingly boring.
Of course, this was Cadet Q before the Continuum banished her, stripped her of her powers and made her mortal. Her Human form is only a shell, however; even without her powers Cadet Q is as incorrigible, carefree, unpredictable and as infuriatingly narcissistic as ever. It's difficult to be humble after all those years of omnipotence.
Naturally, she still views herself as superior to her fellow cadets, and likes to believe that her past as a Q alone is enough to spark glares of envy and stares of admiration amongst her peers. She'll tolerate them enough, and is happy enough to socialize, and carry on rapid, almost nonsensical conversation with the smart, the stupid and the stupidest. She's not about to detached herself from the rest of her peers, however limited and narrow-minded she believes them to be. Remember: she loves to talk and will do so with whimsy and wit. She'll engage in playful banter with just about anyone, and will even attempt it with the Commandant without hesitation.
Cadet Q is capable of friendship and attachment towards other people besides herself; she's not completely selfish. In fact, she has been close friends with a fellow Q for eleven billion years! However, she'll only extend the hand of genuine friendship to the most interesting of of people. Unfortunately, in an Academy populated by boring, button-pushing bipeds and buffoons, there are only a select few who are worth her interest and attention, and even fewer individuals who can capture them and keep her riveted. She has a very short attention span.
Cadet Q won't be quiet and passive about her perceptions of other people, either. She is blunt, forward and baldly honest because she has no solid sense of politeness and social decorum. With a brisk tilt of the head and a vapid, harmless smile, she'll tell you that you're ugly, or that you're smart but she's smarter without realizing that she has insulted you. She doesn't realize that her some of her actions, even the trivial ones, can have dire consequences.
Furthermore, the concept of mortality meant nothing to her when she was part of the Continuum, and it still means nothing to her now. Cadet Q will tell you that she is all-knowing and omnipotent, when in reality she has never known nor understood the gravity and inevitability of death. She does not know that death is one of the things that makes one ostensibly Human, that makes someone live life, instead of simply existing. Cadet Q has never known drive, ambition, or hardship, because everything had come to her so very easily before. She doesn't yet realize that her divine intellect isn't enough to help through what will be the most challenging four years of her whole life. She's still so very naive.
It is rather bold to call a former omnipotent Q who has lived for countless millenia naive and fallible.
Bold, but true.
—
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
To recount all of Cadet Q's life history in detail would be impossible; you can't take billions of years worth of exsistence and condense it into a readable novel, or even a library. To be sure, Q's life history is a rather exciting one, particularly when she was younger and went around provoking an intergalactic civil war a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
But that is a story better told at another time.
Let us instead focus on the events that led to dissent and disorder within the Continuum, and to Cadet Q's banishment to Earth and to Starfleet Academy.
For billions of millenia, the Q lived in perfect, synchronized harmony. The Continuum itself was an extradimensional plane of existence that remained in a constant and unchanging state. Nothing revolutionary happened within the Continuum and nothing evolved. There was no need for anything to, for the Q believed they had already reached the pinnacle of evolution. Consequently the Q did not believe that they needed to better themselves and that their near-omnipotent state was sufficient.
One particular Q rebelled against this belief. This Q (whom we shall simply call "Q") often took the form of a male Human and visited the Federation starships USS Enterprise-D and USS Voyager, as well as the Federation space station, Deep Space 9. While Q caused mischief and grief upon the Humans he had come into contact with, he developed a curious fondness and admiration for them. While Humans were considered to be a primitive race, Q realized that humanity's sheer perseverance and desire to better itself and evolve would allow them to surpass even the Continuum itself.
Q was inspired to rebel against the Continuum after he helped another rebellious Q—who called himself Quinn—commit suicide, because Quinn was tired of immortality and wanted to explore the last great mystery left: death. Q began to campaign for Q individuality after Quinn's death and a civil war erupted within the Continuum. Two factions fought against each other: a faction that believed the Q should retain the status quo of the Continuum, and another faction that sought to disrupt the static, unchanging state of the Continuum.
Prior to the start of the Q Civil War, Cadet Q had spent the last eleven billion years with a male Q companion (who will hereafter be designated by his Human surname, Quintero). They weren't lovers in the human sense, though it could be said that Quintero was her best and closest friend. With the mischeivious, adventurous and well-traveled Quintero, Cadet Q was willing to re-explore the universe because his openness and ingenuity could make her view it in novel and different ways. When the war began, however, Cadet Q fought for the faction that supported the status quo of the Continuum, for she herself believed that the Q's unchanging state was a significant difference that set the Q apart and superior from all other races.
Quintero himself fought for the opposing side. When the war was over and the Continuum's status quo was restored, Quintero left the Continuum, traveled back in time to the 1960's where he settled down in England, Earth. With Q's help, he became Human and called himself Magnus Quintero, much to Cadet Q's extreme displeasure.
Cadet Q tracked her former companion down so that she would bring him back to the Continuum to face judgement. However, after encountering Magnus at his cottage in rural England, Cadet Q could see that he was happy. While Cadet Q herself could not understand Magnus's choice of abandoning immortality and omnipotence, she commited a rare act of selflessness: she set her distaste for humanity aside enough to hide her friend from the Continuum, who had remained unaware of the fact that Magnus had turned against them.
For the next seventy-two years of Magnus's life Cadet Q often traveled back in time to visit him. Magnus Quintero made the most out of his human life: he married, had many children, traveled the world, fulfilled his lifelong desire to be an RAF pilot, and died at the age of ninety-three. They remained close friends even if she didn't buy into Magnus's claims that living life as a Human was far more exciting than existing as a Q. When Magnus passed away, Cadet Q lamented her loss, though her distaste for humanity and mortality intensified.
When Cadet Q returned to the present after attending Magnus's funeral in 2037, she was apprehended by the Q, who had discovered her treachery. For her actions, Cadet Q was sentenced to life as a Human.
Shortly after her banishment to Earth, Cadet Q encountered Q, the one who had begun the Civil War within the Continuum and was therefore indirectly responsible for her current situation. Q, who had also visited Magnus during his term as a Human, struck a deal with Cadet Q. If Cadet Q made an effort to adopt humanity's creed of bettering herself and keeping peaceful contact with other races, then Q would bargain with their superiors to return Cadet Q to the Continuum.
So it was for this reason that Cadet Q applied and joined the Academy—not out of a true desire to help other people, but because she believes that it is her one-way ticket back to the Continuum.
—
Name of Celebrity: Sasha Pivovarova
Avatar: i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj69/hoopdihoop/SmallAcorns/Q.png
—
SAMPLE ROLEPLAY
She couldn’t believe that this was happening.
One moment she was in the Continuum pleading for forgiveness, and the next moment she was standing in the middle of a vast desert, underneath the bright, unyielding glare of a noonday sun.
She looked down at herself and saw that she had taken the form of a Human, just as her superiors said she would be. She blinked her eyes in disbelief, yet the feel of hot sand shifting between her pale toes and the heat of the desert sun burning her skin told her that it was painfully real.
But she couldn’t believe that she was sweating.
It was so very disgusting: beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and neck. She hated the wet and slickness of them; though it was incomparable to the sensation of burning sand scorching the bottom of her feet. She tried hopped on the spot in order to relieve herself of the heat.
Nothing happened.
She tried to snap her fingers, already knowing the answer. Again, nothing happened. She couldn’t believe that she was powerless now; powerless, marooned, abandoned and weak.
Q couldn’t believe that she had become ostensibly and irrevocably Human.
Yes, I know my sample is short, but after writing out such a long profile... >_>
