Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So I'm just going to come out and say it: My favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is "Conundrum." It's episode fourteen of season five, and I just deeply love it.
I don't know if it's because I literally just assumed Erich Anderson's Commander McDuff was a random Enterprise officer of the week (which we saw quite often during the show) when I watched it as a kid during the original run, so the twist actually worked on eleven year old me. I don't know if it's because I just like a good "everyone has amnesia" story. I don't even know if it's just because it's a good Ro Laren episode. I don't know if it's just because we learn that Starfleet doesn't give a crap about lasers.
I just like it. It's neat.
And I rewatched it last night, and feel that it holds up -- which is why I found it deeply weird that the folks who wrote the episode actually think it's not that good. My favorite episode of the entire seven season run of the show was a failure according to the folks who wrote it.
And maybe, as a writer and creator, I should remember that.
Like the hardest part of releasing creative works to the public is that often, after a while, I'll start to judge those things far more harshly than when I first made them. Or I'll compare it to the potential I thought an idea had in my head. And if I don't reach that potential, I'll think of it as "bad" -- when it might just be slightly different than that idea. I have one hundred percent published stories that I thought were just sort of okay and later had someone tell me how much it meant to them to read it.
*cough*I Hate November*cough*
So I should make sure I remember Conundrum. That one of my favorite things to rewatch is considered one of those failures by its creators. That the things I make might have value, just not in the way I originally thought they should.
It's just sort of how things work out.
Remember that on April 5th at 11AM Eastern/10AM Central you can join me for the Critical Thinking Witches' Collective's April Brew virtual event! Attendance is free, and you can register here!
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Got to ask here: Why was Terrence added to Bork Con staff if he was this incompetent?
Forgetting his ego issues, someone made a big mistake recommending Terrence and approving his addition. The weird thing is it doesn’t seem like anybody has any prior experience with him and someone just about had to.
Bork Con has open meetings where anyone can join general staff. It’s not an uncommon thing
Sometimes the con’s parent organization insists that you let someone be on staff even though you already have a list of ways he’s already screwed things up and caused problems and they’re going “But he means well and he’s so energetic!” so you go along with it because you’re trying to get them to agree to a bunch of cool things they have to approve like having the talking elevators speak Japanese for the weekend and you’re trying to choose your battles wisely and you have to hold your tongue when they throw him out two years later for all of the new problems he’s caused and you don’t show up at their meeting yelling “I TOLD YOU SO!” when they complain that he copied the entire organization mailing list and started using it.
It happens a lot in the business world, too. There’s the obvious cases of someone who is just borderline competent enough and just good enough at staying on the good side of the right people to remain employed for years despite being worse than having no one in the position at all. But there’s also random new hires who can make it through an interview just fine, and seem to do okay in training, but then turn out to be utterly incompetent whenever no one is actively watching them to make sure they don’t screw up. It’s actually really hard to tell who is going to work out and who isn’t until you see them work, which is why the death of the middle-manager position is so bad long-term for companies, even if they don’t realize it.