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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 1st, 2023

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  • I really don’t have any problem with any of these types of achievements in general. Even the super basic ones that you get by starting a game are useful to determine what percentage of people who own the game have actually played it beyond the menu screen.

    The best achievements are ones you get for being clever, skilled, or dedicated. Or when it’s an unhidden achievement for something you didn’t even know was possible. Like the BG3 achievement for saving the goblin Sazza - just seeing it was possible made my next play through more interesting.

    I do appreciate long ending achievements, but only if they indicate a significantly different playthrough. Good ending vs. bad ending works when that’s the result of many decisions and not just an option you chose ten minutes from the end.


  • My dad likes Dire Straits, Clapton, The Police, Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison. I know a few more from what he’s told me later in life, but those were the casettes/CDs he had around when I was a kid.

    When I was a teen I tried to introduce him to the Pixies, but he looked like I was making his ears bleed.

    It was my mom that introduced me to Pink Floyd though, which is really the only musical common ground I have with my parents (although I will definitely get whiskey drunk and belt out Dire Straits on occasion, or sing along to Orbison).




  • I don’t have any issue with seeing young adults growing and dealing with trauma. This episode has a lot of pieces working together in the overall storyline, I just don’t think it was that compelling within the episode.

    The drama class half of the episode didn’t really go off. Maybe because I only know the play from what the episode told me about it, but I think it’s more like the actual growth part got cut off. We spend time with drunk Tarima (yawn) and then short cut the cadets actually performing the play with each other. That would have been the climax of that story, them getting into character, relating to it, working through it and reaching some sort of understanding or catharsis but that scene gets hand waved. Probably needed a full 45 minutes to do right too.

    Or the Sam story, which was closer to the mark but still failed to create tension or consequences and ended up getting resolved neatly with a happy ending. Give Sam half an episode to be dead, for people to be sad, and the Doctor half an episode to reflect on it, resolving to do better before tying it up with a bow and it could have been great.

    I love that the show isn’t constantly balls to the wall action and we’re getting a lot of character focus but the story juggling bit this episode in the ass and it isn’t the first to be trying to do too much and fumble the execution.


  • Yeah, I think this one didn’t come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and done more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled “yeah right!”. Lo and behold a minute later it’s resolved happily. The drama class and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.

    Probably one of the worst eps, but I’m happy to say that’s actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I’m flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that’s the real trauma here)

    Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I’m here for it.



  • I’m a little late to the party, but this episode is everything I wanted from modern Trek.

    I’m loving that the cadets are competitive but ultimately supportive of each other. I love that we spent an entire episode focused on Jay’den’s backstory and the Klingons, without any tedious martial arts or (real) space battles but the stakes were still plenty high. I found the resolution, and the message (not letting go of the past, but letting the present in) to be excellent Trek.

    Caleb is also proving to be a bit more of an academy-era-Picard style character (great at a lot of stuff, but arrogant) rather than the sort of troubled genius vibe in the first bit of the show. I am looking forward to seeing him, and the other cadets, developed further.

    Holly Hunter is doing great, bringing her own style. Loved she had a history with the Klingon guy and advocated for her student. I get why she’s rubbing some the wrong way, but she is masterfully handling the people around her, leading with empathy, and has been very effective.

    Also love we got some classic Klingon music from the movies, it was a nice nod.

    Overall, I think this show is finally taking real advantage of the far future timeline. It is a little silly that major diplomacy is being effected at the Academy but because the Federation is still finding its feet again and the fact that the world has been mixed up from 90s Trek, it makes the Academy a much more interesting lens on the world than it would have been if it was set in the TNG-VOY timeframe.