   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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What kind of hat is that? The ears can bend when you have some anxiety.
It’s a normal hat that happens to exist in a comic. Like Max’s hair, it doesn’t need to make sense.
It could also be a modified version of those ears that move based on your brainwaves. I’ve forgotten the product name, but you can buy them.
Yet it isn’t! 😛
Now I want to kit-bash a hat that actually does that.
Maybe once Necomimi comes down sufficiently in price…
Necomimi [sic]
We havn’t -lost- anyone doing this… but there was the one time a guy got placed into a carefully labeled and properly recorded crate. We knew right where he was the whole time.
That happened to Duct Tape boy once…
Got caught in one of those earlier this year – seems the decision was made to extend the con to the end of Sunday, figuring we could stash everything in the temporary storage room. Alas, it turned out that we didn’t HAVE that particular room for more than a few hours after we closed down before the hotel had to make it up for something else coming up Monday morning. Good old missed communications. This will not happen next year. 🙂
I love how Sarah’s hat ears droop when she gets upset, it looks adorable.
In my experience, tear-down goes a *lot* faster then setup, at least if it’s well organised. I don’t know whether this would work at anime cons: but at the Free Software conference I mentioned before, at the closing ceremonies they always ask people to stay around a bit if they can, to help out with the tear-down — and there are always some who do. (Including myself: I really like helping out with carrying stuff — it’s an easy way to make myself feel useful…) This way everything tends to be over within like 1 1/2 hours or so.