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.
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Barnes you Might want to move you don’t want to get any of the beatdown he is about to get
I think that’s scrappy, also yes he is definitely in the splash zone.
It’s definitely Scrappy–the tags don’t lie.
my bad yea i should have checked the tag
Damn, our meetings get like this but only pre or post minute taking. One the record douchery is rare. Terrence needs some serious ‘correcting’
You know, I used to think Sarah P was being harsh on him. Now I’m seriously starting to think Terrence is a douchecanoe.
It’s hard to tell. We don’t really know who was agitating and who was the reacting. If Terrence was this bad from meeting #1, then yes he is a douche-canoe. But if he’s only a little bad and socially inept, then more responsibility shifts to Sarah.
Unfortunately by now the pattern is set. People usually respond to douchery with their own counter-douchery.
And escalate.
So even if Terrence wasn’t so bad, being badgered constantly by Sarah could leave him feeling that he has license to be that bad in self-defense. Probably both Sarah and Terrence feel justified in being completely rude to each other.
Another factor in this is leadership failure. Veronica should have put a stop to the bickering months ago. Maybe she’s tried. We don’t see enough meetings to really know. This could be the meeting where the personality conflict really explodes, though again, Veronica should have at least attempted to address the conflict before a blow-up *could* occur. Arguably she’s been a bit preoccupied by the con’s finances. These things happen and nobody’s perfect.
Yeah, except here we see him go after Ruth when there hasn’t been any (shown) problems between them before now. That says he’s just a pain to work with, and fits with his comment from June 29th as just a dude who tends to piss people off.
Plus, the blatant sexism in the last panel just makes him a garbage person.
He’s at least a doucheyacht, if not a doucheaircraftcarrier.
Douche ex machina!