#i mean i am irl too now but maybe less intense than my parallel universe counterpart

[cobaltfluff]

was feeling a bit down today then i saw a happy smiling momo and i was so overcome with feelings i teared up a bit

[discotreque]

Disco 3.08: The Sanctuary

This week IRL was a real mixed bag for me: a lot of messy and barely-manageable anxiety about my health, my day job, and uhhhh *gestures outside*—but also I’ve recently fallen in love (from a responsible social distance)—so it’s been equal parts re-writing professional emails to edit the panic attack out of my tone and gazing dreamily at Discord notifications with cartoon hearts in my eyes. It feels like my life is going to hell in the cutest, coziest handbasket—which is to say that Michael Burnham could not possibly feel like a more relatable character to me right now.

I continue to have issues with the writing at a strange medium-level—somewhere between micro, where the dialogue and characters are really good, and macro, where I’m digging the pace of the overall season, it almost feels like something went wrong in the assembly process, and the script ended up a little bit less than the sum of its perfectly good parts. Again.

But that’s such vague criticism as to be nearly meaningless, and it’s hardly the most interesting level to spend time on anyway. If I zoom out, the parallel season arcs of “getting used to the future” and “the mystery of the Burn” are hanging together wayyyyy better than the Red Angel saga did last year.

And if I zoom in? This episode was funny as shit, wtf.

The discourse re: Tilly these past couple of weeks has been bullshit, and I have a whole angry thing to say about it—but honestly, if you can’t appreciate Doug Jones and Mary Wiseman as a comedic duo, I’m not really mad: mostly I pity the lack of joy in your heart.

Everyone on this show is so funny. Doug’s prissy little delivery absolutely slaughters me (“Execute!...?”), Mary will make a face sometimes that has me screaming laughter into my hands, and I’ve gone on before—and will again—about Sonequa Martin-Green’s egregiously underrated comedy chops.

They were obviously casting for folks w/ jokes in the new season too: David Ajada is no slouch in the dry-delivery or the goofy-face department; his energy and chemistry with Sonequa are as suited to comedy as they are to romance (i.e. extremely 🥵). Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz we knew about, but Blu del Barrio—a certified tiny baby!!!—holds their own and lands every smartass whiz-kid one-liner just on the right side of “too precious to stand.” (I almost always at least chuckle, and never roll my eyes, and for a “teen genius” character that’s literally as good as it gets.) And living legend Michelle Yeoh is clearly having the time of her life, omfg.

Disco’s not funny-funny like Lower Decks, but they do funny-on-purpose better than any live-action Trek except maybe DS9. They have such a deep comedic bench they don’t even need Tig Notaro—they have her on just to flex, I presume.

(I don’t know if I’m predicting, per se, that Strange New Worlds—with Rebecca Romjin’s deadpan, Anson Mount’s twinkly eyes, and Ethan Peck’s twinkly-eyed deadpan—is going to have a tone somewhere between Disco S3 and LwD—but I mean... it kinda has to, right? And you know they kept the number for Rainn Wilson’s agent.)

***

At the start of this episode, I was “sure, why the fuck not” about First Officer Tilly; by the end, I was completely on board. And to everyone who’s still wringing their hands about “the real military” this (always from people who have no idea how actual militaries work, lol) and “Lt. Nilsson” that (she... already has a job on the ship? And no character traits besides “stoic” and “furrows brow”? Oh, I get it—she’s skinny and blonde)—y’all are kind of embarrassing me.

“Rank” and “position” (and “seniority” and “day-to-day duties”...) aren’t the same thing, in Star Trek or any IRL military. Yes, the permanent first officers of normal-duty Starfleet ships we’ve seen have usually been command-division officers with the rank of Commander—but not always. Star Trek: Discovery-A, if you will, is a unique show about a unique ship in a unique situation: “B-b-but that’s not how they do it on Star Trek!!!” isn’t a legitimate criticism, not of this—it’s the mournful cry of an entitled pissbaby who isn’t having their hand held all the way to the fireworks factory.

Here’s what an argument supported by the text of the first 37 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery actually looks like: Sylvia Tilly is nervous and lacks self-confidence, but once she gets over herself—which she can do pretty much instantly in a crisis, even when hilariously intoxicated—she is competent as hell. In lower-stakes situations, without intense pressure to focus her attention, she sometimes gets sidetracked by her own insecurities; at her best, she channels that anxious energy into ambition, drive, and being scrupulously organized.

The only person Tilly doesn’t always get along with is Stamets, and even Stamets’s husband thinks he’s an asshole. Since Season 1, we’ve seen her easily socializing with the rest of the crew, who seem to universally adore her. And she’s also happy to leave her social comfort zone at a moment’s notice: she aligned herself with Ash Tyler (miss you, Shazad!) when no one else would, and she instantly befriended Po even when Po was in Weird Feral Alien Princess mode and Tilly had salad in her hair. She doesn’t like confrontation, but she’s brave enough to initiate it anyway if she needs to, and she’s compassionate with other people’s feelings while still setting firm boundaries. (Her graceful dodge of Rhys’s tipsy kiss at the party in 1.07 lives rent-free in my head to this day.)

No, Tilly didn’t finish the Command Training Program—but she started it, which is almost certainly more command training than any of the lieutenants whose names we know, all of whom are Ops or Science personnel with, presumably, specialized non-command training of their own. The same could be assumed for any unseen ranking officers on this science ship with an entirely volunteer skeleton crew.

And seriously, about Nilsson: she’s my #3 background bae after Octopus Head and the lady on Pike’s Enterprise with the spiky red face, but her job is Spore Drive Ops, not personnel. If she’s running after Saru with a holo-clipboard, who’s going to look serious and push holo-buttons when there’s a Black Alert? *drops holo-mic* Drumhead!

***

The stuff on Kwejian, though. Ooof. Ol’ Two-Takes Frakes directed this one, and between the kinetic energy he always adds to the camera and the scintillating performances he evokes, things stayed moving so briskly I almost didn’t notice Book’s entire “homeworld” was a rental house outside Vancouver, a couple acres of adjacent woods, and like six or seven people.

It’s a hot mess in retrospect, but in the moment it gave us the intensity of Book and Kyheem trying to hurt each other’s feelings by poking at 15-year-old wounds, which as a sibling with complicated sibling relationships I found both funny and devastating—not to mention Frakes directing “shaky bridge” explosion falls at an obvious intensity of “10” on an outdoor location shoot. It falls apart at the slightest scrutiny, but I can’t lie, on first viewing I was totally along for the ride.

***

I’m dying to see where this Georgiou thing goes. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to assume she got Cronenberg’d a couple weeks ago, probably to get her under the thumb of this century’s Section 31, and that her arc is going to take Michelle Yeoh off this show in a way that sets up the S31 show. But also, I don’t care so much whether I’m right, I just want to watch Michelle Yeoh—and Sonequa Martin-Green, and also David Cronenberg tbh, and bring back Shazad Latif while you’re at it—get wherever they’re going.

It’s also a fun and interesting direction to take the comically-evil comic relief character and show that her performative moustache-twirling is partly habit and partly a transparent emotional defence against very real fear and vulnerability. We’re all products of our circumstances, and a radical enough change in circumstances can afford almost anyone at least the opportunity to change. I can’t say Emperor Georgiou would have been my first choice of protagonist for that storyline, but it’s not like Michelle Yeoh’s not going to fuckin’ crush it.

***

Miscellany:

So the Burn had an origin point, and now that point is broadcasting a signal that’s somehow both a haunting melody that everyone seems to know—but no one can remember learning—and a Federation distress signal. What the fuck, y’all. I have full-body goosebumps just typing that.

Saru workshopping his own captainly catchphrase with the aid of Tilly’s extreme sincerity and organizational skills is probably the funniest thing that’s ever happened on this show—followed closely by the uncomfortably lingering reaction shots when he’s trying them out on the bridge 😂 (And omg please give Rhys and Bryce the dumbass buddy-comedy C-plots they deserve next season, I beg you.)

I would do a little “prop watch” entry on those Kwejianian(?) bolt-throwing rifles, but I’d have to stop drooling over them first. “Curvy polished hardwood” seems to be New Trek shorthand for “extra sleek and futuristic” (cf. the bridge of the USS Titan in the LwD finale), and I have to say: I am fully into it.

Restating my prediction that we will not see Detmer and Owosekun get together this season, because we will find out that they’ve been together for ages. Everyone knew—Pike even knew!—it just never came up in front of the audience before. That would be one of the cutest ways to do it imho, and one of the funniest too, especially as a meta-joke about how much character development didn’t happen in the first two seasons. (That said, if we get to see their first kiss, I will be screaming with incoherent joy for days, so this is a real win-win for me.)

Speaking of cute: IRL spouses Mary Wiseman and Noah Averbach-Katz, both Julliard-trained actors (it’s where they met!), can’t quite hide their chemistry in the scenes between Tilly and Ryn. I loved seeing Tilly be a hardass when Ryn was rude to the captain, but that sparkle in her eyes didn’t quite match the context <3

And speaking of people who are VERY OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE: that last scene with Book and Michael, and his nervous little “yeah, I said it” eyebrow lift, and her irrepressible giggle as she’s walking away... it was almost too much. Especially right after the queer-family scenes with Stamets and Culber and Adira. My poor heart is going through a lot lately, and I guess I’m just glad Season 3’s emotional intensity is melting it with soft sweet scenes like that instead of kicking it down repeated flights of stairs like Season 1.

***

Next week: everyone stops caring about the Burn and starts trying to solve an even more important mystery—why is this (holographic) dude wearing an early-2360s uniform with an early-2370s combadge?

[jinjojess]

Jess’s Thoughts on V3 Chapter 3

I’m halfway through the game now so I figure I should check in with some thoughts and theories and junk.

My liveblog should have finished its queued posts by now, so this post itself should follow that up shortly.

Character Rankings

Maybe I should start with an updated character ranking?

HaruMaki

Akamatsu

Toujou

Hoshi

Gonta

Chabashira

Yumeno

Iruma

Momota

Shirogane

Ouma

Angie

Kiibo

Amami

Shinguuji

Saihara

1-9: The Actively Like Range

HaruMaki has eclipsed Akamatsu ever so slightly thanks to sheer badassery and how much I love her FTEs, but you can consider them to be pretty much equal.

Toujou and Hoshi are about even too--they both hit my “exhausted hard worker just trying to hang on” and “duty before self” buttons.

Gonta is still wonderful, and I love him about as much as I love Chabashira and Yumeno, both of whom should technically be on the same line. Those two got boosted because of how their relationship evolved--I love that in the end Chabashira shows a degree of maturity in respecting that Angie is important to Yumeno, and I like that Yumeno went from gag lazy character to character struggling with guilt and regret.

Iruma is still hilarious, but she hasn’t had a lot of character-building to do yet so she’s dropped some spots, and I still like Momota a lot, though he’s starting to border on being irritatingly shounen protag-y, and I’m super disappointed in how poorly the game handles the set up for his relationship with HaruMaki. (Famitsu mentioned at one point that HaruMaki had an interest in space, so I thought they’d bond over common interests like actual human beings, but Kodaka decided to take the Stairs of Anime Troposity instead.)

10-13: The You’re Fine But... Range

Shirogane is really adorable and good at stealth snark, so I’m ready to like her, but she just...never gets anything to do. This is why I want her to be the mastermind so badly (more on this below)--I feel like she needs something to elevate her from “meh, I like her” to “wow, she’s great.”

Ouma’s antics were fun in the beginning of the game but are now starting to grate on me. I still find it really interesting that he tells lies often to help the group as a whole, but the fact that he’s constantly at odds with everyone is getting a little tiring.

I’m going to miss doing Angie’s voice on stream. She was never really high up in my ranks to begin with and she hasn’t moved much. I like that she was doing the patented student council president move of seizing total control in the name of public safety, but I would have liked to see a little more variation in her character.

Kiibo’s fine. He’s amusing enough, I just find him to be kinda bland? Hopefully he’ll get more character development going forward.

14-15: The I Don’t Really Care Range

Like I said before, I don’t have anything against Amami really and I think the mystery surrounding him is kind of interesting, but I just overall don’t care much about him. Nothing really draws me in.

Shinguuji was more of a disappointment. I was expecting something really big from him and it just didn’t really measure up. I wanted his talent to be really used to its fullest and while the Kagonoko thing was cool enough, everything about him was just kind of a let down. Even his execution isn't on par with the others we've seen so far (music's good though). Plus after reading DRT2, the reveal about his sister seems kind of tepid in comparison. I get why people are really put off by him, but I can’t care enough about him to really summon a lot of hatred. It’s very similar to how I feel about Haiji--yes, he’s objectively a worse person than the characters I actively dislike, but I will forget he exists after this chapter is over.

16: The It’s Complicated Range

I’m fine with Saihara when the narrative isn’t focusing on him. When he’s just being one of the cast, doing FTEs and hanging out for shenanigans and stuff, he’s totally fine. It’s when the game tries to make me care about his boypain that I need to check the fuck out.

Being clear, I don’t think his story so far is being handled especially poorly (except for the Akamatsu thing, which makes me wonder about Kodaka’s romantic experiences irl), I just find his character type to be really frustrating and annoying personally. I have seen this exact story before, many times, and the sucker punch of being given this yet again when I was offered something I actually wanted is not going to get forgiven any time soon.

Fingers crossed that the ending twist will justify this somewhat, though when it comes down to it, this game is way less enjoyable for me by making me follow around a character I don’t give a flying fuck about at the expense of one I really liked.

Thoughts on Chapter 3 Overall

Okay, onto my thoughts on the Chapter itself.

Like I said, I liked the whole student council angle, though I would have preferred if it got a little more actively oppressive. In Chapter 2 when Gonta is gathering everyone up for the Insect Appreciation Party, that was some intense shit, and I feel like the student council never really reached that level of threat. There’s never a point where Saihara and HaruMaki have to like, make a plan on how to creep around the school without being caught or anything.

Loved what this chapter did for Chabashira and Yumeno as characters. Took this background gag relationship and elevated it to something tragic and character-defining.

Would have liked the victims and the culprit to be less glaringly obvious. This is a common complaint about this game so far, barring Chapter 1.

Liked the murder tricks--this was the first chapter where I didn’t go into the trial with a solid idea of how the murder took place.

In conjunction with that, the trial was way harder, and I enjoyed that a lot.

I hate hate HATE that Kodaka insists on still replicating patterns from the first game--I wanted Shinguuji to get away with killing Chabashira while Angie’s killer got executed, meaning that Yumeno’s character arc would still have some ways to go and not be tidily wrapped up at the halfway point of the game. That would have lent some sense of overall progression, instead of every case being neatly confined to its one chapter (except for the first one I guess).

Also as a result of this, I now have to assume that the next Chapter will involve some heroic sacrifice (which will likely not measure up to Sakura’s, because they never do), the fifth one will touch on the questions left by Amami’s murder, etc. Making your murder mystery series that started by undermining tropes of the genre into a predictable formula is not fun, Kodaka.

Apparently a lot of people have a problem with the motive but I’m pretty whatever about it. I thought it was just silly enough to be a fun red herring, and I assume this discussion about bringing back the dead will resurface later in the game’s climax. Plus it gave me so many opportunities to incorporate Obakematsu.

The way Monokuma and Monodam temporarily switched places was pretty interesting, and I liked the parallel between Monodam’s getting along rhetoric and Angie’s student council thing as oppression through legitimate good intentions.

Mixed feelings on Monokuma lamp-shading the references to the previous games. In a world before DR3, I feel I’d be overjoyed and would use these to look for ways this game connects to the Kibougamine series, but I live in a post-DR3 world (specifically a post-Kibou-hen world), and I am desperate to get away from that series and its baggage.

I think that’s it?

Theories

Right, last up, a lot of people have asked me about theories I have for the rest of the game, so here are some.

Theory #1: Mastermind

So when the character designs were first revealed back in like September of last year, I pegged either Shirogane or Angie as the mastermind. I still am super suspicious of Shirogane based on a few very subtle things:

she’s the first character Akamatsu and Saihara run into in the prologue

she’s suspiciously normal and plain

she doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any kind of in-group other than the student council

hers is the very first secret scene you access in the game (provided you played the demo)

Junko panties, man

when you break for a Scrum Debate, she’s the first to rise (with Amami on the bottom)

HOWEVER, based on how the game doesn’t use 黒幕 (puppetmaster/one behind the curtain) for the mastermind any more, instead opting for the more straightforward 首謀者 (lit. mastermind, one behind everything), I can’t help but suspect that it’s Saihara behind it all. I mean, everyone keeps going on about how the story has to focus on him, so it’s very likely that he’s responsible for this situation and Shirogane ends up being a fake-out mastermind or something.

Theory #2: What the fuck is going on?

I have a few ideas for what exactly is happening here--most of them involve it not actually happening. In other words, the game events themselves are fictional in-universe, either because they’re a literal story reflecting how DR is a fictional property in our world, or because Saihara is just making it up.

Maybe he’s had a psychological break and is hallucinating this. Maybe this is a Shinsekai-esque program generating things to help with his inner issues? Maybe this is all a very long movie (or a TV show, or a game)? Maybe the events of the game are playing out in reality, but Saihara’s such an unreliable narrator that his account is radically different from what is actually happening.

My two favorite theories though, which I’d love to have be right, are as follows:

V3 is a giant rp campaign (not super likely)

V3 is a giant Duel Noir Saihara has set up to get revenge or something (slightly more likely)

If the latter is true, that opens the door for Shirogane to be the “mastermind” who’s actually working for Saihara. His main motivator seems to be guilt and self-hatred, so it’d make sense that rather than pull the strings, Saihara would want to participate and suffer along with all the other sinners.

It’s also possible that the events of the game are presented to us through the lens of Saihara relating what happened to someone else, like the authorities, or the public, or the loved ones of those who died. I’d love that kind of ending because holy shit Heart of Darkness much? Like he feels so awful for whatever reason that he set up this killing game, but then loses his nerve during it, is the sole survivor, and finds that he actually can’t be honest, resorting to a “his final words were your name” kind of lie.

If that happened, it would redeem my faith in Kodaka quite a bit. (I’d still rather play a game not about Saihara, but it would feel like all my suffering would have been worth it.)

As for the glimpses we get between Chapters and from the Memory Light, I kind of feel like a lot of it is fabricated. Maybe not the funeral, but I highly doubt the SHSL Hunt exists, at least not as it was presented in Chapter 2, and this horrible incident Toujou references could very well just be the SHSL kids rebelling or something--i.e., the impetus for Saihara to want to punish all of them to begin with.

Maybe it’s an alternate timeline where society reacts to Junko’s coup by punishing the talented, as I posited way, way back in the day?

Time travel is still on the table too, meaning that it’s possible that all of the characters inevitably die at the end, but Saihara has arranged it so that their consciousness just replays the game over and over in his own self-imposed purgatory.

There’s lots of possibilities.

Theory #3: Future Deaths and Survivors

Momota ain’t making it out of this game, sorry. I thought he might earlier on, but he’s leaning too hard on the “Ishimaru Stock Shounen Protag” button, and Kodaka needs a cheap, easy way to push HaruMaki through the last bit of her character arc, so I doubt he’ll hang on. Not now that he’s gotten involved in motivating Yumeno and stuff too. Sorry, dude, I like you a lot, but the only way you’re getting to space now is via execution.

Also yeah, I think he’s totally going to end up a culprit. It will be in self-defense, or an accident, or some convoluted sacrifice thing like with Gundam, or for some other excusable reason like that, but I just feel like Kodaka isn’t going to give up the change to a) fuck with Saihara again, and b) have another space-themed execution.

I think Yumeno will live to the end, if only because Kodaka has that dumb idea that if someone dies for you you deserve a Get Out of Death Free card. The only way she won’t live will be if Saihara’s the sole survivor.

HaruMaki I think will make it to the end since she’s filling the Main Female Character role. Ditto about the caveat being if Saihara’s the only one to get out.

Iruma is going to get so murdered. It’d be interesting if she’s the heroic sacrifice.

Kiibo is also going to die. I don’t know if he’ll get murdered or if Ouma will goad him into killing someone, but I can’t see him making it out alive. (Also he needs to step it up--Momota and HaruMaki have now been key players in this game, and Kiibo’s the only one from the initial reveal image to not be important).

Ouma I feel like is the type who could accurately fake is own death just to fuck with everyone/flush out an actual killer (we kinda got this a bit in Chapter 3, which could be foreshadowing). Ultimately though I think he’ll die one way or another.

Gonta is up there with Yumeno and HaruMaki. I get the feeling he’ll survive except in the case of Saihara being the only survivor.

Shirogane...uh...if she’s the mastermind, she could die after the culmination of Saihara’s plan, or she could not. She could just ride off into the sunset or something. Otherwise, I think she’ll fly under the radar with Gonta.

Okay, I think that’s everything I had to say about Chapter 3 and the game so far--looking forward to Chapter 4!