   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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For some reason, the reason I will never volunteer to run a con website again comes to mind… 🙂
rule one of graphic arts/coding: never work for free, Don’t have to charge em a lot (i mean i’d do it for 1-5% over cost which is a major pay cut) but NEVER WORK FOR FREE!
because if you charge them they won’t ask for the stupid/impossible
And they’ll recall you exist. I was once asked to do a website, set up the whole framework, and asked the chairman et al for content. Bupkis for two months followed by a phone call “Hey, I just found someone to run the website!” He’d completely forgotten about the whole thing… So I said “that’s nice”, scrubbed the protosite, and never offered to do one for that con again.
This would be a good way to maybe ask Unagi Con to pay some of Bork Con’s lost cash.
By the way, now that you mention it he has showed up. It’s kind of funny because he was always a background character and now he is in a pickle and oddly enough at the mercy of Lynn.