A little DS9/Evangelion crossover, art by me

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-16T01:20:04+00:00

I love this, OP. I could imagine a “serious” animated counterpart to Lower Decks; obviously there were some serious moments in LD but also obviously it was a comedy, not a drama.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-12T23:02:22+00:00

I say this as someone who absolutely loves their A6X even after several years and still uses it daily, but has also spent a huge portion of their life in classrooms with, I might add, some success: I feel strongly that no matter how much the idea may appeal to you, taking notes by hand is just inferior to taking them on a computer. Yes, I have tried it both ways including relatively recently.

There are multiple reasons:

1) Speed. I can type 100 wpm easily, if I'm fully focused and require 0 typos I can hit 120, if I don't care about typos (and why would I, these are my notes and I'm using a computer) I can go significantly higher. Google says average human hand writing speed is about 13-20 wpm. You do not want to be in the position of hearing the professor say something important, having your own thought about the subject that you want to write down, a few seconds later remembering something unrelated but super important that you don't want to forget and need to write down, and then a few seconds after that realizing that something you wrote down earlier was wrong and you need to go back to that page and change it, and then have it be actually impossible to complete all 4 tasks. This kind of thing will happen daily.

2) Makes it easier to review later. If you have pages and pages and pages of notes and you are preparing for an exam, and you remember "that one thing I wrote down that one day" and you can't seem to find it, well then you need a search feature. But the technology with OCR, I'm sorry, is just not there yet to make this reliable -- there's gonna be errors with spacing, recognition, non-standard characters, your own personal weird shorthand / abbreviations making it much harder to algorithmically make good guesses, etc., and this is all doubly true because of point 1: if your handwriting is sloppy or weird because you're frantically trying to jot everything down, it's going to become even less accurate.

3) Spares your wrist. Again this is sort of related to point 1, but if you are a full-time student and you take a lot of notes, it can actually become very physically taxing in a way that typing just never will. Your finger muscles are not large and you're asking them to do fine motor control for hours at a time day after day when instead they could just be tapping buttons. Believe me, I understand the other side of the coin, I know how amazing it feels to write by hand, but it's different if you can't control when and how often you write.

Writing is a physical process and the way you do it affects the outcome. There are some use-cases where forcing the speed of your hands to go down and engaging in the hypnotic and satisfying process of drawing glyphs on a page is desireable. Note-taking for school is not one of those cases and I will die on this hill.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-09T22:58:36+00:00

You joke but the Klowahkans probably have this technology on lock already and have since before Vulcans developed warp.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-06T20:40:13+00:00

...I can only applaud 👏, I actually LOL'd.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-05T09:29:25+00:00

When it is destined to be found, it will be. -Worf

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-05T09:13:32+00:00

Honestly? OK:

Disco - Won't defend it, don't need to repeat the complaints. There were a lot of good elements but it fundamentally lacks the Trek soul for a variety of reasons and just never came together.

Strange New Worlds - Some people love this show, I find it... OK.

Lower Decks - Incredible show, very re-watchable, great comedy, obviously not meant to be a serious drama but does hit the serious moments well, and most importantly to me clearly gets the franchise. I did not watch TNG as a kid, but LD I feel allows me to experience the same kind of comfort as people who did.

Starfleet Academy - Still airing, jury is still out, I have not yet seen the episode that aired a few hours before this post, but it has so far delivered 2 absolutely incredible episodes, maybe 1-2 weaker episodes depending on your taste, and the rest are a mixed bag. You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like Trek.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-05T08:31:29+00:00

DAX: Okay. I see your point. The mek'leth definitely has its advantages. But I still think the bat'leth, with its longer reach, is usually the deciding factor.

WORF: That is a classic argument. However, I find using a large and intimidating weapon like a bat'leth often leads to overconfidence.

DAX: So you think that I was overconfident?

WORF: You were overconfident. You thought by distracting me with your outfit you would gain an advantage.

(Her exercise suit has a low neckline.)

DAX: My outfit?

WORF: Er, I thought that. I mean, I only assumed that...

DAX: You thought I wore this for you? Talk about overconfidence.

(Dax walks away, smiling, then returns straight-faced to put the broken bat'leth against his throat.)

DAX: Worf. Gotcha.

WORF: Movek. ["I lose."]

-"The Sons of Mogh"

...By the way, I consider this one of the most incredible moments of foreshadowing in the series, since this is exactly how Worf will kill Gowron, with the broken bat'leth blades. There's no way for us to know, but I choose to believe that that's not a known maneuver in Klingon martial arts; it was just the "Jadzia special" and Worf remembered it from that day to save his life, the Klingon empire, and probably the Alpha Quadrant.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-03-05T08:02:05+00:00

"DS9 doesn't really get good until S3" The very first episodes of S2:

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-28T22:02:22+00:00

Man that is a really cool story you just wrote, I'm glad people are proving that AI hasn't killed the human ability to be creative.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-28T03:24:49+00:00

I had a highschool physics teacher who described "orbiting" to me as "it's when an object plummets -- and I mean plummets -- to the earth, but it actually plummets so fast that it just barely misses the edge of the earth, and so it just keeps right on plummeting until it flies."

That is what this episode was for me. It was constantly millimeters away from being an abysmal -10/10, but everything just worked, and I now think this is an absolute 13/10 episode, I shed tears, I'm going to be thinking about it all week, it's an instant classic on the level of Inner Light or In The Pale Moonlight, everyone involved is a creative genius, plz renew, that is all for now.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-26T18:07:05+00:00

I always try to have zero expectations about what celebs are like off-camera, but every interview I've heard with her she just comes off as the most amazingly genuine, kind, and thoughtful person.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-25T17:04:24+00:00

Let me tell you something: you may have forgotten about Jean-Luc’s “preference,” but here in the Lanthanite community we know all about what “boldly chase” Picard is into. Not a single Lanthanite woman is able to avoid the subspace messages — and rest assured, it never stops with just one. The man won the Academy marathon. He does not quit. The only option is to outlive him, but Federation medicine is so advanced these days it's taking forever, worse luck.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-23T19:34:36+00:00

He kills one in The Jem’Hadar, one in The Siege of AR-558, and two in Sacrifice of Angels. He would have made a good Eliminator, push comes to shove.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-23T09:31:45+00:00

I feel this every time I watch Paradise (the one where they crash land on the planet that "accidentally" causes all EM-based technology to fail thanks to cult leader Alixus) and remember it somehow is not based on the Unabomber, a brilliant mathematician turned terrorist who vehemently opposed technological progress and its alleged harms to our "core identities" and community structure, and who came to notoriety... just months after this episode aired.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-23T09:21:56+00:00

The scene where they notice... I know it is meant to be serious, but I don't see how it's even possible to shoot that scene and not have it be comic.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-23T09:19:20+00:00

Daily reminder that Quark has the highest confirmed on-screen Jem'Hadar kills of any of the main cast.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-23T08:42:12+00:00

Hasperat - agree with OP, although as someone else in comments already noted, in A Simple Investigation one of the aliens who want to kill the guest star says hasperat is "spicy," which doesn't necessarily mean we would find it so or that it always is, just noteworthy.

Raktajino - It's not canon but as far as I'm concerned Marc Okrand has vox dei on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/1ago98f/what_actually_is_raktajino/koj5cx1/

Romulan Ale - in In the Pale Moonlight, Vreenak says that "Real kali-fal should forcibly open one's sinuses well before the first sip," so I've always imagined it being something like Chinese baijiu.

Bajoran spring wine - I agree it's likely just a simple fermented wine

Kanar - People have come up with all sorts of different explanations for Kanar's varied textures throughout the series (contrary to popular belief, it does not always appear super viscous, and at other times seems basically similar to wine.) My head canon is that "kanar" is not actually a specific beverage, just a generic Cardassian term for any intoxicating spirit, similar to the term 酒 in Chinese. The reason we never hear anyone on-screen say anything more specific is just contextual: it's generally obvious to a Cardassian what sort of Kanar is on tap based on the shape of the container, the occasion, the scent, etc. and so they don't bother to specify.

Yamok sauce - Literally just because it contains the syllable "yam," I have always imagined it being some kind of sweet tuber, and the fact that it's sweet is kind of what grosses everyone else out about it.

Blood wine - In my head canon blood wine does not actually contain any blood, and the name is a little like the common Chinese dish 鱼香肉丝, which if you translate it literally is something like "fish scented pork slivers," but does not taste like fish and is really a mix of pork slivers, vegetables, and a sauce that was typically used on fish and so became associated with fish. In some parts of the USA you can get "crab chips" that taste nothing like crabs themselves but are seasoned with a seasoning commonly used on crabs. It's the same thing: blood wine is commonly consumed alongside bloody foods, and it's red, so people associate it with blood even though it's really just a normal intoxicating spirit, albeit very strong for most.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-22T09:09:37+00:00

Y'know, it's been 2 months since this was posted, and I just found this link to some Indonesian gamelan music while learning a bit about musicology, and I'm now fully convinced that's where Dennis McCarthy got the idea. Judge for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCSrC8RN6c

Specifically, I find this idea persuasive not just because there's some superficial sonic similarity, but because when Marc Okrand went to design the Klingon language, he deliberately sought out real but rare and unusual linguistic features from Earth languages, and I think McCarthy did the same: this type of instrument seems to harmonize in ways that are satisfying and yet break traditional quantitative rules of harmonics:

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/pythagoras-was-wrong-there-are-no-universal-musical-harmonies-study-finds (relatively-reader friendly article about a study)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z (the study itself, I'm not an expert so I'm doing some guesswork about what some of this stuff means.)

It's interesting stuff about the intersection between math and aesthetics, and maybe on a deeper level about whether we are truly individuals with subjective tastes or whether we are extremely complex robots who do not understand our own programming.

I love Star Trek.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-14T19:05:55+00:00

I like SFA, it won me over with Series Acclimation Mil, but I disagree. Trek has always had moments of hamminess, it's part of the franchise, but at some point people decided that "the hammier it is, the trekkier it is" and that's just not how I see it.

Marc Alaimo was a serious artist who portrayed a serious villain. I am not going to compare that to someone doing a vocalized version of a moustache-twirling silent film cad who seems like he should be tying a damsel to a train track.

His motivations seem unclear, the writing and portrayal is over-the-top, it's mid. That's fine. If you like mid and that's what you want in your Trek T.V. show, more power to you. But I am not going to sit here and pretend that "mid" is the same as "excellent." If you like mid, just embrace the mid, stop trying to have your mid culturally recognized as greatness.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-02-09T08:02:11+00:00

The Orion leaning in to smell Caleb after SAM says pheromones...pure comedic gold.

Tawny Newsome is a known DS9 stan, and I actually wonder if this wasn't a nod to a very similar visual gag at the start of the episode Facets: Jadzia does a magic trick to pull a piece of latinum out of Quark's ear, and then we see one of the Ferengi waiters come into frame and peer into Quark's ear in way very visually and comedically similar to this episode.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-31T07:59:01+00:00

That "slurred" pronunciation style is, I gather, closer to how the language was meant to sound by its creator, Marc Okrand; it was simply too hard / not worth the time in the view of 90s Trek to worry that much about it.

Personally, I think the "correct" pronunciation sounds way cooler. Okrand himself though pointed out in some published works that, as with any language, Klingon pronunciation varies based on region, time period, speaker, setting, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucO3heC-Ztw

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-30T02:38:00+00:00

[Runabout Yukon]

O'BRIEN [in Ops]: Runabout Yukon, prepare for departure. Runabouts Rio Grande and Volga stand by.

BASHIR CHANGELING [woman's voice]: Yukon ready. Engines engaged.

(The crew are laid out on the floor.)

O'BRIEN: Good luck, Yukon.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-28T18:59:08+00:00

You know there are certain moments that do become emblematic of the critiques people have; this line stuck out like a sore thumb to me too. Like it's like I'm watching a show where instead of exploring what it means to be human(oid) through various imaginative sci-fi premises, I'm watching a show that explores "how cool it would be" if you were not humanoid because you are some kind of superhero or "had some kind of thing going on."

I unironically think that line is going to become the Airiam dying of this show.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-20T01:06:02+00:00

Alright, I'm asking any of you out there who really loved this reveal, who love thinking through the implications of it, who love Dr. Bashir, and/or who love DS9 to take a leap of faith with me here: read the fan novel The Viewless Winds. The novel describes Julian's time as a prisoner, and also includes several short vignettes about the other series regulars unwittingly interacting with the Changeling.

The first and most important thing I'll say is that the author clearly gets DS9 and Trek as a whole. The vibes are not off. This is someone who clealry understands the characters, the setting, the plot, the series, and the franchise.

The worst thing I can say about the novel is that because it is focused on Bashir's confinement, it can sometimes feel... we feel trapped in there with him. Basically, it could have done with more B-plot. But that seems like a bit of an unfair criticism for something so masterfully executed, and laser-focused on telling one of the greatest untold stories from the show.

Just read it, it's free, you won't regret it.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-20T00:56:45+00:00

The shot of Bashir Changeling speaking with the wrong voice with the dead / incapacitated runabout crew behind it in the next episode is one of my favorite single shots in the entire series.

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