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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Hypothetically we all could learn to speak Dutch or German, or French, or Cantonese, or South Korean, or Turkish(which I once could understand better than English at one point in my life it’s a long story and you would have to message me on Facebook for that one), but you know, we’re too tired and busy to learn them. Also technology is coming out so we don’t have to learn new languages.
Which is slightly sad. People tend to think better and make more logic choices when working in a second language. It’s one of the best things you can do to boost your brain power.
Granted, but it is a pretty vast investment in time/effort, especially if it’s not one you’re going to use constantly. Otherwise it seems to often fade after a while, ‘specially if it’s not one you learned as a kid. Those usually stick, but a language learned later in life – as I found out with my Spanish – gets realllllllly rusty when you don’t use it for a long while. I can still sorta stumble along in baby talk, but that’s about it. Rarely used these days barring sometimes grabbing a La Opinion to read or something, and written Spanish I find by far easier than speaking it. Heck I can probably read like a 5 year old instead of like a baby!
*helps that La Opinion seems to be written mostly in fairly simple Spanish. Always figured to accommodate readers from many different countries/Hispanic cultures at once