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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“Garbage Person?” She’s improving. It used to be “Garbage Monster.”
Then again, maybe the Grouch Anti-Defamation League complained.
Scrappy’s paraphrasing.
She’s used a wide variety and spectrum of garbage based insults most likely.
For reference, their first meeting.
http://www.unconventional-comic.com/2016/12/the-switch/
The next strip he talked about her like she wasn’t there, and based on how casually he threw out the “like us” comment to Scrappy, I figure he’s probably made other borderline bigoted comments he thought he could get away with. Sarah’s not being unreasonable here.
That’s a fair argument. When it comes to webcomics that jump between the perspective of different characters I tend to err on the side of caution and only consider what is directly presented or explicitly implied. We haven’t seen much of Terrence’s negative behavior outside those occasions, so I was willing to at least try giving him the benefit of the doubt…
I’ve met people who come off as a total tool upon first impressions, but later found out they’re just woefully bad at interacting with people and social situations in general. I knew a girl in high school who came off as a snobby brat who bragged about everything, when it turned out she didn’t really have friends her age and spent most of her time with her rather well-off folks and their equally well-off friends. She literally just had no clue that talking about the stuff she got to do during the summer (Disney World trip, the occasional cruise) would be seen as bragging to people less well off.
That said…Terrance does seem to get more flaky as things go on (this said after seeing the following page).