whooooooo-dunnit?

I read and watch a lot of stories about idealized love stories and I often enjoy them too! I spent my entire childhood believing that the teenagers who got together in the media I consumed would stay together forever. And then as I got older, I was naturally introduced to more stories about romances that didn’t work out. Still, it’s hard for me to think about those as pragmatic, most of them have this desire for sadness in them. They would make me feel as though the devastation was the point, that the narrative was forcefully bent toward the saddest outcome.

Past Lives doesn’t make me feel this way. Nora doesn’t stop talking to Hae Sung because of an unforeseen tragic circumstance. She makes a choice and goes through with it. Hae Sung puts it best during their conversation at the end of the film. She is the kind of person to leave. And he loves her because she is that kind of person. The “what-if” isn’t in wondering about if circumstances were different. No matter what, she would have chosen her plays over anything else. Her husband even notes that so much of how their relationship happened is because he fit so well into the life she wanted. The whole reason this film is called “Past Lives” is because that’s the only way to ponder about whether Nora and Hae Sung could be together.

Spock and Data + stumbling drunk out of turbolifts

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

Me: No thank you, we don’t need a female character created solely to no homo the biggest gay ship in fandom history

SNW: It’s Christine Chapel and we are going to explore the nature of denied attraction from both sides this time, expanding on the framework provided by tos and showing that this was not an unrequited pining situation but a difficult choice made by two equals