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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hey Julie how’s that black eye lynn’s about to give you feeling?
I’m sorry Trae but that last line made me laugh. I have seen many people come and go and I have seen a lot of friction and I have been around many women that used that word so often to illustrate a point. I told you I’d find humor in this.
Maybe you shouldn’t admit that the grossest thing I’ve ever written in a comic amuses you?
Just a tip.
It’s just a word. The word made me laugh. I live in an area where women call each other whores quite often. Whether they are or not, it’s a word thrown around and that’s what I find funny. Because I have met many 16 year olds that called other women whores.
Langland, that is the most depressing thing I’ve read all day.
It is what it is I guess. I have an oddballl sense humor and I’m not always the most sensitive person out there.
Context matters. There are contexts where a word like that wouldn’t bother me either, but it’s fairly clear that it is being said here with the explicit intent to be hurtful. Whatever context would potentially make it funny, this isn’t it.