   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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Welcome to the cesspit where I live called Florida. It’s not as bad as it once was, but there was a point in time where this was the norm.
That poor man…
Once you’ve got your foot in your mouth, you should at least try not to chew…
Yeah, we get this all the time. NYC anime fans despise crossing into NJ for a con even though it’s nigh-impossible to run a mid-sized con in NYC due to costs. Trust me, we’ve checked.
I believe t’s called a “rack focus,” Mark.
What’s a real con? I mean what defines a Fake con from a Real con?
same criteria as gamer girls?
Same criteria as real cheese?
‘Is he personally involved with running it, and take pride in doing so?’ Anything less, not a ‘Real’ Con.
Are he and his staff going to turn out to be from Chicago?
*whistles whle looking off to the side*
You daffy bastard!
That’d be like people from Minnesota and Illinois running a con in Iowa! 🙂
@Berhard, Not quite as crazy as it sounds. Well, maybe it would be, for Milwaukee proper. Congenial (a Racine-area relaxacon) was started by Milwaukee fen and then taken over (relatively amicably as such things go) by Chicago fen who were heartily tired of the existing Chicago con scene. Not sure if it’s still operating, haven’t heard any references to it in a while. The “not a real con” comment was used non-ironically in the 80’s and 90’s to refer to any “media” (television-series- or movie-oriented) convention, because (as the gatekeepers held) “real fans read books”. Book books, not comic books. Comic cons, such as existed then, were more like flea markets or swap meets. Really boring if you weren’t really into it. “Real” cons were not-for-profit, had an art show, a hospitality suite, a masquerade for the costumers, discussion panels, and catered to a broad spectrum of interests….if your interests were literary, that is, because the GoH’s were authors and artists. Now it seems that you have to be a big glitzy (read: expensive) for-profit event with Big Name guests to be “real”…