#st:disco

[astralbondpro]

I really, really like Ethan Peck as Spock. You will never, even with a billion lifetimes be able to top Leonard Nimoy. That version of Spock is a cultural icon, so why bother even trying to be THAT? Go a different direction, and take a different approach. And this version of Spock is one I absolutely am falling in love with the more time we have with him. I know guardians of the precious canon will come in and have a lot of things to say but... fuck 'em. I'm just here to be entertained, and I very much am.

[mai-komagata]

I would KILL for a short trek of owosekun and detmer on the iss enterprise alone having the time of their life. I need this so badly.

[nerdstrings]

Captain Christopher Pike is an infosec nightmare.

His command code string is 2-4-6-8-10. Like what

M’Benga insinuates it’s been this way for a long time and Pike has never changed it

The man is walking around with command codes that IT set for him by default and told him to reset the first time he logged in and he just. Never did that.

The Serene Squall pirate crew tortured him for this code. They could’ve just fuckin’ guessed it in one go.

But they didn’t know that and their mistaking this man for a competent firewall led to him great-british-baking his way into a mutiny incitation and escape. anyway

Pike is Starfleet’s best, a Boy Scout, who is also gonna get them fuckin’ hacked

This man is sooo socially engineerable

He has never once completed a required infosec course

I know this because he walks onto the USS Discovery and expects them to just hand him command. Because he’s nice and he said so and obviously he means it, scout’s honor. Nevermind that an official fleet communique has never arrived, or that his identity is entirely unconfirmed

He’s so wonderful because he’s so kind and trusting but he is so phishable for the same reasons

The human brain has spindle neurons that are associated with emotion and social behaviors. On earth, these evolved separately in only three types of creatures - great apes/humans, elephants, and dolphins. Cetacean Ops is a thing; Elephantid Ops is not. Presumably the dolphins keep their shit together and the elephants don’t. And then there’s the highly-decorated human captain of the fleet’s flagship just. Being an exceptional representative of his species while literally letting fucking anyone onto the bridge of his ship

He’s the type to repeatedly dismiss a notification about required password trainings every single day for months on end

Una sees it once and is like umm you know they fire people for not doing those, right?

But he knows about Discovery, what are they gonna do? Let him just leave?

So no, he never even gets reprimanded

No wonder he and Section 31 hate each other. They know this guy is a complete security idiot. Meanwhile, Pike thinks making someone buzz in with their own badge is rude and a morally gray area

Too many spindle neurons, that one

[indignantlemur]

Larger size: HERE Done and glazed! The commission for @the-lady-general is finally finished and I'm so proud of it!

The flowers are tuberoses, which in the language of flowers mean dangerous pleasures - which seemed terribly fitting, for the mirror universe. I had a lot of fun trying to combine art nouveau elements with the very stark art deco theming of the character design, and I think I managed to strike a reasonable balance between the two! I had to take a few liberties with some parts of her outfit, since finding high quality images of our dear Emperor's armour and base layers in anything other than godawful dramatic lighting was a very challenging. More than once I'd made an educated guess, discovered that someone took of a pic over where the costumes were actually being displayed in proper lighting, and realised I'd gotten something really quite wrong. I had to go back and completely redraw something probably a dozen times, but I think it was worth it in the end!

Also, can we talk about how art deco is apparently evil now, because I am here for that. I love that so much. That is too perfect, and I will be incorporating that into future mirror 'verse art.

[dedalvs]

Kopikon is coming!!! Kopikon is a conlang conference to be held at Georgetown University on September 23rd, 2023. It's a live in person event, but I'm now happy to report WE WILL BE LIVE STREAMING! The link above is your live stream link! Save it, and come check it out on September 23rd! The schedule is below:

10:00 a.m. Opening remarks by Jessie & David

10:15 a.m. Sally Caves

10:45 a.m. Carl Buck

11:15 a.m. Break (20 minutes)

11:35 a.m. Sylvia Sotomayor

12:00 p.m. David Peterson

12:30 p.m. Lunch (90 minutes)

2:00 p.m. Paul Frommer

2:30 p.m. John Quijada

3:15 p.m. Break (30 minutes)

3:45 p.m. Music (Jillian and Andrew Aversa)

4:15 p.m. Jessie Sams

4:45 p.m. Break (15 minutes)

5:00 p.m. Biblaridion

5:45 p.m. Marc Okrand

6:30 p.m. Closing remarks by David & Jessie

Thanks for your patience! We look forward to you tuning in!

[teaktty]

fuck i love Zora from Star Trek Discovery

why do i feel so much like they are me?

[nonstandardrepertoire]

i hope all the gimp suit girlies are having a good time with Discovery season 5's Breen arc

[lesbiancalkestis]

Wishing you all a blessed Discovery Season 5 Premier Day ❤️❤️❤️

.

[the-birth-of-art]

[batnsons]

i’ve reached season 2 of star trek discovery and my love christopher pike is here and he is beautiful. he’s everything i hoped for and more

[astralbondpro]

Star Trek: Discovery // S02E08: If Memory Serves

[green-mug-tomato-juice]

what the fuck you guys st:discovery season 2 is so awesome. like this is the first time i've watched a show made in the last 10 years and enjoyed it so fucking thoroughly. and i never believed it would be because season 1 was such a mess but this is so fuuucking amazing. the characters are great and have amazing chemistry and the cast is so talented and the pacing is great and the overarching plot is great but the episodes in themselves are still amazing. also why did there used to be so much hate for tilly. I LOVE TILLY. tilly the best. she's like a very intelligent human version of neelix. i love how even the side characters get their moments. i love the humor i love watching tyler and pike bicker i love the context in which the word gay was used for the first time in all of star trek canon like i was hollering fuck you (affectionate) michelle yeoh. as much as i love the drama like for once it doesn't feel like it's just for the sake of it but it's actually meaningful and well executed. i love the emotional exploration of the characters, i love how they all get to feel stuff about what happens on them without the show dwelling on it too much. i love how the plot manages to be batshit insane and still make sense. idk if the whole show is gonna be this good (i doubt it) but BOY i never expected this of new trek or any new series. season 2 of star trek discovery i love you. this season combines all the things that made old trek amazing with all the potential new trek has and did some marvellous storytelling. i am done for i love this season

[jennawynn]

Chronotrek: Disco season 2

Episode 1

ooooh new intro!

oh not a new intro. lol

We got new uniforms. Very colorful.

lmao their EV suits are even more colorful. Those are terrible looking. they look like Mylar balloons.

Haha talk shit get hit Connelly.

ah poor Saru. Captain then not then captain then not lol

So Spock was chasing the same red dots as Pike? But sooner?

Episode 2

I feel bad bc I didn't get a chance to do my play by play on this one but... what the fuck.

Episode 3

No, don't bring Tyler back...

Why does Michael call Sarek 'Father' in conversation with him, but she says 'Amanda' instead of Mother? Seems the more obvious emotional connection would be to her, rather than him.

Oh, they gave the klingons their hair back, huh? lol

Ha, she says 'mother' when she's exasperated though. I guess she switches back and forth quite a bit for both.

I gotta say... even as a mother, the whole "I will have a fiercer title, call me Mother" thing made me roll my eyes.

Episode 4

"I can fix that analogy with duct tape, too" lol I think I like Tig's character.

Saru's gonna make me cry. You know... they didn't like each other much in the beginning, and then he actively disliked her later in season 1. I love that they've grown into a friendship since then.

Hey, he's not dead!

Episode 5

Fuckin Georgiou lol I'm glad they still get to use Michelle Yeoh though.

Poor Tilly's having a rough week.

Hey they unburied the gay. And made him out of mushroom. And showed his bare ass on tv.

Episode 6

hmmm are the Ba'ul also Kelpian? Is that why they won't show us what they look like and why 'you don't even know what you are' is a thing? Do they remove the ganglia and then they become this aggressive, fearless, isolationist society? The kelpians are just... adolescents?

Half right :joy:

Ok, I gotta stop watching while I play Starfield cause I don't have time to actually write things about it lol

[honourablejester]

While I’m thinking about it, let’s have a look at the various central ships/stations of the series and what how they operate has to say about the state of the setting around them:

The Enterprises under Archer/Pike/Kirk: punchy first contact exploration vessels, designed primarily for the early exploration/conflict phases of the Federation, where the Alpha Quadrant is wilder and its borders more fluid/undiscovered. Go new places, meet new people, talk to them if possible, fight/run if not possible.

Discovery: Somewhat unintentionally (?) an experimental black ops vessel during the early/mid exploration/conflict phases in the Alpha Quadrant, and then transported to a future where the Federation has collapsed and accidentally created a very similar environment for them to operate in.

The Enterprise under Picard: a really weird mix of exploration/first contact vessel combined with a mobile diplomatic summit? Which are two functions you really wouldn’t think would go together, because you really shouldn’t be ferrying foreign dignitaries into war zones. While previous ships (Kirk’s Enterprise) have escorted dignitaries before, they were mostly functioning as military-esque escorts for them. NCC-1701-D/E is an actual mobile summit location, like a floating UN building. TNG era vessels seem to be operating in a more developed secondary phase of the Federation, where the Alpha Quadrant is fully nailed down and Starfleet is functioning primarily as a stabilising/consolidating force, while also patrolling and nudging outwards on the borders, and documenting more unusual phenomena that the Federation now has more detailed time for.

Deep Space Nine: Contested border outpost running a dedicated skirmisher warship as force multiplier/secondary defense. The Alpha Quadrant is beginning to slightly devolve again at this point, and other Quadrants are beginning to press the borders. DS9 represents a phase where the Federation/Starfleet is having to hold onto the Alpha Quadrant as much by pure force as diplomacy, as outside forces press their borders inwards, rather than them pressing outwards.

Voyager: An unintentional colony ship which, despite being chronologically one of the later vessels in the continuity, functionally harkened back to the pre-TOS era early human colony ships by virtue of being flung half way across the galaxy while in the process of being hijacked. As a result, she gets to largely ignore the diplomatic devolution of the Alpha Quadrant, and goes back to feeling like a pre-Federation vessel, the kind of thing ENT/TOS era ships used to run into (minus most of the more involved social experiments that had developed by the time TOS era Starfleet had caught back up to her colonies)

And yes, when you lay it out like this, you can really tell that TOS was inspired by westerns, the old ‘wagon train to the stars’. Star Trek is quite colonial, as a setting. To be fair, space opera. Kinda goes with the territory.

can you imagine if they had consistent senior staff meetings on ds9 but were required to shoehorn in the entire main cast like they do on voyager. like you’re at a conference of high ranking officers with your colleagues and the mean little goblin that runs the local dave & busters is also there

[wufflesvetinari]

i need to convince myself i'm making SOME progress with this godforsaken short story so i'm going to post a bit of the draft here. just to say it exists, three friggin weeks later

-

Red smoke like a sunrise, the air of this strange planet choked in the soot of our victory. The battlefield bright with mech debris: fertilizer drones commandeered from our home colony, reprogrammed, weaponized. Sent with us in the forward dropships; keyed to our command. 

We would not have bombs, otherwise. We would not have poison.

We are farmers. We are a gentle people.

Our organic-glass tubing spreads like strawberry runners over the scorched alien terrain, its density determined by algorithm. At home, this latticework would have delivered nutrients and treated the soil. It would have brought life to barren ground, a resource available to all by sacred human right. Enshrined in our charter and constitution: life. The right to it.

But the dose makes the poison. My new compound spreads quickly; contaminates enemy soil.

Some of us have fallen. Our exosuits, designed for solar satellite repair work, apply coagulant and brace bones. Our respirators, meant for deep-sea environmental preservation missions, work to filter out the blight we’ve brought. In this way our fragile psyches are insulated from the shocking scent of death. 

But not the topography of it. Not its shape.

We’ve pulled the enemy out by the root. The General told us we didn’t have a choice. They’d tortured our ambassador, destroyed our lunar seed vaults, attempted a blockade. They were coming for us. We had to. 

We had to.

The General strides across ruined plains, his body like a scar against the sun. A sharp and sudden light reflects from some piece of him: his exo, his command glove, the clasp of his cape. The light of him drives straight through me.

He is a colossus. He saved us. He needs me and he saved us and I want to go to him, but I can’t even stand. 

Smoke plumes rise like distant grain silos. I vomit into my respirator, trapped with the scent of myself; the scum. I fade.

-

“Can I ask what you’re making, sir?” Lieutenant █████ asks, sitting in the patient bed next to mine. Since the surgeons woke her an hour ago, she’s done nothing but yank on her fingers like she wants them removed: first the right hand, then the left.

“A gown for a newborn,” I croak past a damaged throat. “My wife’s in the third trimester back home.”

 “Oh. Is this your first?”

“The first I haven’t carried myself.” I wrap homespun wool around my hook, offered by our neighbors in exchange for my help reprogramming their fertilizer lattice during the last dry season. I brought skeins of it with me in the forward fleet; an entire basket in my quarters. “I owe my older boys new sweaters. They need clothes whether there’s a war on or not.”

█████ giggles, a little manic, as though I’ve told a joke. 

Her hemp bag boasts the emblem of the Weather Shaper’s Syndicate: a civilian expertise that earned her a hasty officer rank in my Specialist Corps. Her leg ends just above the knee, but she’ll be fitted with a biosynth soon. The doctors probably completed a full vitamin rebalance when she was under. Probably countered a genetic susceptibility or two, just because they could. 

“At least there isn’t anymore,” she says. When I look at her, she clarifies: “A war. We ended it? Just now? Or at least once the talks end.”

When I give her no answer, she goes back to pulling at her fingers. Her sunken eyes dart from my bandaged ribs to the baby’s sleeve taking form under my hands. 

The medi-ship’s plant wall generates a cocktail of pristine air and corticosteroids. Beneath us, the wreckage of a planet turns.

She tries again: “It—it was terrible. As inhuman as they tell you in the ethics practicums as a kid, like something out of the old world. I saw—but the General said it was worth it. To protect everyone. Back home?”

Her gaze asks for my authority as a substitute for forgiveness. She looks very young, and I become very angry.

“What was worth it?” I say it calmly. I don’t know why I say it at all. 

“I…the General said—”

“Which part do you mean? Specifically.”

Her smile trembles; she presses the button for pain reliever. She doesn’t fully understand it yet, the scale of what we’ve done, but her body feels it like a fever. 

I make my voice bright and effusive. “No need to be so modest. Your team did well punching holes in their ionosphere. Between that and the typhoon seeding, how many did you take down before the dropships even landed?”

“Sir?”

“Let’s talk in planetary percentages. Let’s talk in long-term damage.”

Our founding charter, the General’s steel voice says in my head—like he’d said to the Colony Council, two years ago—allows for militia muster in self-defense. It allows for the ethical deployment of minimum effective force. If you grant me the authority—

I smell my own vomit again, its own kind of ghost.

“Sir—Commander ██████,” the weather shaper says faintly. “I carried out your orders.”

“You did.” I rip back a row to fix a dropped stitch. My sheets are hand-sown and clean. “You’re right. He’s right. We had to protect ourselves.”

A gift box looms at the foot of my bed. It had taken me some hours to work up the courage to open it. Inside sits a bottle of wine from my home syndicate—the General knows I like good wine—and some kind of complicated artisan decanter, constructed as a tangle of glass roots as tall as my forearm. 

The decanter leans by design, like a lurching soldier. It casts sharp-twisted shadows. It traps the light.

Swift recovery, my friend, the letter says, his cursive a series of slashes across the page. My heart races like a north-rabbit in flight. Like lying in the melting snow of a battlefield, watching his presence eat up the horizon like an Alexander of our own making. Like the line between love and fear.

I ask a nurse to decant the wine for his team as my thanks. The liquid works through branching blown-glass roots. A maze of red, like the fertilizer lattice I programmed to poison a hundred thousand miles of enemy farmland. Like strawberry runners.

-

I do not want the decanter. 

Its complex and scarless surface speaks to the work of a master artisan. At home I would have had to trade a lattice designed from scratch in return for a product so fine. But people—people who meet him, understand him—give the General things for free.

I visit the General’s quarters on the Plethora, my ribs still aching, planning to explain that my dogs would just knock his gift from its shelf. That my boys play rowdy. That the house my great-grandfather built in the first days of the Colony is small, each space designed for function (solar power and a heat pump and green-growing walls). The better to keep to the Charter; give back to the land.

Instead, I stand at his doorway and fail to knock. I’ve found I can’t picture his face anymore, not outside of that one half-conscious moment: the battlefield, the hard red horizon. 

A superimposition of my other memories. An invasion.

The door slides open and I jump. His shadow swallows mine. His massive shoulders fill the doorway.

He looks at me and I’m wrung out clean, a piece of fabric on the line. His eyes are deepest green. 

“██████,” he greets me softly, and invites me in.

[mymindtoyours]

Missed you all! I have been working hard on inktober drawings the past weeks. Every prompt will be the panel in a ST:Disco mirror sketch comic, ku ku ku! Last months I practiced drawing kisses based on a few tutorials. Here are results based on different pairings!