iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

i'm sure other people have many complaints, and there were some things that slightly detracted from my enjoyment, but compared to what i enjoyed and appreciated about the season, they were minor. everybody's got their own balance lol

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

and like. we've always had those ruminations about "what if the universal translator doesn't work, how do you bridge the gap with deeply alien life" and here we are chewing on that. BUNCH OF NERDS (affectionate)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

(okay no villains is somewhat loosely stated, in the sense of "sympathetic and humanly comprehensible but deeply selfish and deluded motives" we got one, but nobody who's, like, here primarily to deliberately harm the protags or the federation)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

at least in the EVERYTHING MUST BE THE HIGHEST STAKES DRAMA AT ALL TIIIIIIIIIIIMES, IF IT IS NOT TURNED UP TO ELEVEN IT DOESN'T COUNT modern tv space

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

like look. it's really easy to tell a story about blowing up enemies in the name of diplomacy and group science projects, because it's really easy to tell stories about solving things with violence. it's actually really hard to tell stories about solving things WITH diplomacy and science projects

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

in the spirit of this account turning exclusively into one piece of star trek commentary per calendar year, god damn, the fourth season of disco actually kinda blew me away. most thoughtful writing i've seen from trek in a while. no villains. solve things with diplomacy and group science projects

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

what folktails nonsense is this! no dancing on shift!

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

nothing i have ever watched has made me notice cinematography as much as star trek discovery

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

there is SO much love in that woman. there is dizzying infinite amounts of love. and it’s all platonic.

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

i recognize that it’s easy to assume that everyone with that haircut must be a lesbian, but to me tbh, kira nerys has the energy of an unwitting aro-ace who keeps awkwardly attempting to date within the found family she assembles around herself pretty much by breathing

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

today she eats bonito flakes and raw chicken in celebration in front of my dorky dvd shelf

the same cat, less scrawny, with her face in a blue and white china bowl, absorbed in delight. there are some weeb ass dvds behind her

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

ten years ago today, i brought this sweet baby home. she was much skinnier and had an eye infection but purred for me so much right away 🥰

a photo of a very colorful calico-tabby cat. she is sitting in the corner of a room in front of a mirror, a little scrunched up and unsure

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

still not happy with the paint job on the deflector dish, but idk if i can do better or want to commit to wiping it and starting over

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

test lighting is finally getting there! look, it’s actual cerritos progress pics

a photo of a hand holding the unpainted nacelle of a model starship, the uss cerritos. there are long stripes glowing a bright diffuse blue and a glowing red cap on one end

another photo of the nacelle, showing the back end also glowing blue

another photo, this time of the engineering section. the deflector dish glows blue from within behind copper segments

a photo of the saucer section of a model starship. large segments glow from within so that once it’s painted, windows can be scraped out to let the light shine through. a few spots glow blue for accents

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

i need to finish my starship first but aaaaaaa, the POTENTIAL! i look forward to figuring out where the heck i can put little plastic robots 😁

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

GUNPLA IS LIKE A QUARTER OF THE PRICE I EXPECTED IT TO BE??? THEY HAVE ORIGINAL FIGURES THAT ARE JUST MECHS YOU PUT TOGETHER FOR FUN AND HAVE SUPER CUSTOMIZABLE BITS???????? well damn, i might need to go build some of the mechs from my book, maybe then i'll want to edit it 🙃

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

(i drifted into some gunpla videos and that shit is on a WHOLE NEW LEVEL, like i don't even go here and now i kinda daydream of building one because little pieces go together mecha move brain go brrrrr)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

(tho lbr the people capable of making the transforming version with the third nacelle might be bandai and only bandai, and trek isn't lucky enough to be licensed to them) (these masterful armchair opinions brought to you by spending WAY too much time watching modeling videos on youtube 🤡)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

and by "my sanity" i mean "my painting skills" the cerritos is PROGRESSING goddamn it, i'm just moving so slow and gingerly with the electronics bc i'm terrified of fucking up

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

anyway, it would be really awesome if the powers that be took Star Trek: Prodigy seriously enough to release a model kit for the Protostar, and even more awesome if some after-market fan producer did a resin-cast tiny bridge set, but also it might be good for my sanity that they haven't

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

also, as a belated addition, the moment of "ok now we're gonna get a chase sequence with a bunch of Generically Brown aliens on technicals in a desert with puke-yellow light balance for no conceivable reason other than it's 2002" bodied me

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

some of the space battle maneuvering was downright cool. commander donatra can stay. look, i gotta look for things to like, because that was otherwise nonsense well, i did this to myself with open eyes, so now i bitch about it on bluesky as my allotment of two-handed typing for the day 🙃

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

i knew it was bad, i even knew some details, but i didn't fully comprehend how dumb it would be like the only storytelling decisions in that ENTIRE movie which made sense were a) deanna's princess dress and b) maneuvering the ship to balance out which parts of the shields were faltering

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

my right shoulder has been real bad recently so i'm trying to use that arm as little as possible until the appointment, so i'm doing a lot of sitting around bored decided to finally watch star trek: nemesis, because sometimes boredom results in masochism, and wow

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Sarek hit her feels. like damn, those social dynamics of everyone around him trying to insulate, manage, downplay, refusing to admit the scope of the dementia...shit's real

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

(i am also SO CLOSE to being able to put together the lighting for the cerritos and then actually being able to assemble her properly. if only amazon would send me the right size of led strip connector. third time better fucking be the charm)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

i've been doing TNG's Greatest Hits with my partner and we were literally one day off from watching Best of Both Worlds on the anniversary... ...so yeah, we did two episodes today :D Sarek and BoBW1. time for bangers.

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

also i was today years old when i realized that galaxy quest came out between insurrection and nemesis nemesis didn't break the pattern after all. it was an odd number. it was eleven :D

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

i love how i see this immediately on the tail of going to use said app and discovering heroku hosting is down 🙃 hiii!

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

…on further contemplation, it’s possible that the correct focus for this is jake sisko, intrepid reporter

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

(i'm about halfway through the third season of disco, for the record. it's not quite scratching the itch—not just because it's obviously not at that point in history, but for assorted other reasons. but maybe that could change idk yet)

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

and yeah, i don’t have answers to a lot of that but goddamn would i watch the hell out of something that did and i think it's something a lot of people might need

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

a show which brings to life—which shows, and not simply tells—a world that lives up to the ideal? how do you heal a warped and wounded utopia?

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

a show which is in conversation with all the dramatic plot points that have led up to this tipping point in history, but which also has enough of its own story to not be simply a giant pile of denouement for previous storylines that desperately needed it?

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

how does a generation that’s grown up in this new world build a better one anew? and how do you even wrap those ideas up in a character-rich tv show that’s fun to watch and also tucks in the occasional wacky space adventure?

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

how do they break out of the austerity death spiral, rebuild a culture of trust, and muster the courage to act with goodwill? how do they own up to the war crimes against the dominion and the discrimination against synthetic life which have gnawed at their ethical foundations?

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

how do two massive organizations, their people, their culture rebuild and regrow after almost forty years of tremendous loss, trauma, and systemic damage? how do they keep from ossifying into exactly the same sort of cruel, controlling culture they wanted to surpass?

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

and yet it's star trek that idea is still there, waiting if not, we might as well give up and make a different sci-fi show

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

sectors of space abandoned by the federation have fallen into vicious chaos at this point, you could legitimately ask if the idea of a better future ever even existed or if it was just blind optimism or sheer propaganda put forth by a very self-serving organization at the peak of its power

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

starfleet's regressed into a fully military organization, curling in on itself in reactionary rigidity, and by the time of st:picard, there’s been no real indication that it’s fully recovered its former functions or spirit

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

after the terror of the borg Invasion cracked the shell of paradise and the grueling conflict of the dominion war tested every ethical principle held by those institutions, the destruction of utopia planetia seemed to be the final blow to the peaceful, optimistic, exploratory spirit of humanity

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

by the start of the 25th century, starfleet and the federation are clearly in crisis, and the start of the 25th century is exactly where i want to go. it's a very specific point in the timeline that's been built up for decades, both in and out of world

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

it would require the kind of slow, consistent, thoughtful, multi-faceted, and deeply political worldbuilding and character work that DS9 achieved and it would require an act of radical imagination which is more difficult in this time of constant crisis than ever

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

so okay, apropos of nothing, the new star trek show which I crave in my soul is one which would be perhaps impossible to write in this day and age it would require time for long-form storytelling without the constant pressure for intense drama and apocalyptic stakes

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

the fifth horseman of the apocalypse rides again

the meme where the guy from Scooby Doo takes the mask off the tied up villain. masked is labeled "AI" in scare quotes. unmasked is labeled "exploited labor."

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

I Am An Emotionally Unregulated Middle-Aged White Guy And I Know What's Right (But My Dog Is Cute) his whole daddy's astronaut boy intro felt SO much like somebody looked at farscape and went "john crichton would be better if he didn't get character development"

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

...that have also become much more airy and comfortable, and then after another hundred years you see everything touchscreen-flattened and sleeked out into the enterprise D also the cali-class engineering pod totally feels like a visual shout-out to the nx-01 and i kinda love that

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

but like, back to the visual design - it feels like, despite the decades between production designs not lining up with in-universe timeline, you *can* draw a line from this analog submarine spaceship vibe, through the still blocky-with-knobs-and-switches designs a hundred years later...

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Eren Branch @rootandbranch.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

and so far that's visual design, dr. phlox, and mayweather. i want to like hoshi more but man did they make some Choices there also the in-universe use of "boomer" has aged hilariously given that the show itself feels like it's made by and for your boomer dad

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