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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I laugh, but still, yeah I can see how that’d get old quickly. Some people just can’t seem to take getting a no too well – they have to pick at it until there’s a reason that they can understand. I guess hoping it’s something they can change or do to change the answer? I dunno. I understand the “But I want to know what’s up” impulse really well, I’m nosey as all hell by nature – but that’s one of those times you have no right to demand answers.
Not experienced a lot of it personally, but used to hear plenty about it from a female friend of mine that wasn’t into guys. She had to deal with a tonnn of “Why not?” and either explain herself repeatedly or have people figuring she was somehow a jackhole for not explaining her sexuality to a random individual.
90 percent sure? I was 100% sure Tracy was already hitting on you, Ruth…
Ruth is never more than 90% certain, as reading signals is a learned, unnatural behavior for her.
No one owes you an explanation of their sexuality, and you owe no one. Unless maybe you’re in the middle of a relationship, then communication is likely a good thing, but still ‘owe’ doesn’t seem the right word.