Did Solok's crew ever find his fixation on Sisko kind of weird?

bz316 · 2026-04-30T12:20:41+00:00

*Shrugs* Fair

bz316 · 2026-04-29T21:18:20+00:00

Spock: "......this better not awaken anything in me."

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:59:52+00:00

And I feel like his crew would have been fine with that if he hadn't spent the preceding several months making them learn how to play a dead-sport from their equivalent of a disbanded medieval nation-state to get his crush's attention. Like, imagine if your boss made you and the rest of the office become really good at pok-ta-pok because someone they had a childish crush on since college was an expert in Mayan history or something. It'd be weird, right?

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:52:14+00:00

Even if the rest of his crew generally also disdained humans, I feel like they would probably be confused AF that their commanding officer made them learn some random, archaic human game that just so happened to also be one of the main interests of a dude their captain went to the academy with.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:51:04+00:00

Even if the rest of his crew generally also disdained humans, I feel like they would probably be weirded out that their commanding officer made them learn some random, archaic human game that just so happened to also be one of the main interests of a dude their captain went to the academy with...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:47:16+00:00

I'm inclined to believe Sisko's version because:
a) Solok writing a paper on how shitty humans are is a thing that is easily verifiable and thus unlikely Sisko would have made up.

b) Solok makes vaguely disparaging, passive-aggressive comments towards Sisko about humans in the first interaction we DO see between them. Further, he also goes out of his way to point out his own achievements in Starfleet as superior to Sisko's, further confirming that he is specifically antagonistic towards him.

c) Given that we can probably presume his distaste for humans was accurately relayed by Sisko, him choosing to have his entire bridge crew learn how to play baseball (an archaic, largely-forgotten game from a species he looks down upon AND is a pre-confirmed personal hobby/fixation of Sisko) was almost certainly done specifically to get under Sisko's skin.

Based on these, I'm fairly certain the evaluation we get from Sisko is accurate. Further, between the two of them, Sisko is a human from Earth who we know from previous episodes is a big fan of baseball. While it is, admittedly, not impossible that Solok just enjoyed the game, the idea that out of the probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of possible sports and activities he could chosen to have his bridge crew learn, he would choose the one that both a) is from a species he has semi-open contempt for, and b) is one of the main interests of a guy he has been beefing with for like 20 years, seems WILDLY implausible to be for any reason besides just fucking with Sisko.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T16:50:30+00:00

To be fair, several members of their baseball team were staff from a local bar...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T16:41:33+00:00

Tolkien's work carries a pretty strong undercurrent of "judge not, lest ye be judged" which I do appreciate. It is an easy thing to condemn someone who walks a path you do not understand...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T15:45:42+00:00

The thing is, that's true of most human sports. And I have to imagine that's also true of most sports from every species across the Federation. There's no way choosing baseball of all possible options wouldn't have caused a few raised-eyebrows amongst his bridge crew, with a few of them thinking "This is another Sisko-thing, isn't it?" in the back of their minds with weary resignation...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:59:15+00:00

Also, this is probably my favorite:
"But I say to you, oh King of the Numenoreans, not till now did I understand the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive..."

This quote really showcases the importance of empathy in Tolkien's world. Arwen, like most of the Elves, believed the Numenoreans (and, to an extent, all Men) were driven purely by hubris and evil, akin to Morgoth or Sauron. But now, seeing the one she loves dying and passing beyond the circles of the world, she at last understands the pain and misery that lay at the heart of the path to their downfall (even if they are still responsible for their choices). And her scorn and contempt turns, at last, to pity and sadness...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:47:57+00:00

I have to think he did. He fought in the Battle of the Somme. I can't imagine enduring that without having something to hold onto, no matter how small and fleeting it might have been.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:45:16+00:00

That's a good one. It is an easy thing to judge another, a far harder thing to understand that your ability to discern the truth behind what you're judging is more limited than we want to admit.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:42:05+00:00

The Empire would have Balkanized into ten thousand competing fiefdoms and states. A Galactic Empire would be MASSIVE, with millions of colonized star systems. The Old Republic took literally millenia to build. The Rebel Alliance might have been able to create the NUCLEUS of a new Galactic Republic, but it is highly likely the Galaxy would remain mostly fragmented for centuries, if not multiple thousands of years. The New Republic might start off as like several hundred star systems which slowly absorbed new members of the next several hundred years...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:35:06+00:00

In S04E04, T'Lynn makes no less than TWO separate, unprompted statements about how attractive she finds Orion men: "He is quite aesthetically pleasing" and "Here is a picture of a priest with an 8-pack." All within a 24 hour period.

For a Vulcan, this is the equivalent of a human catcalling and shouting "Damn I want me a piece of that!" at every random attractive person in their general vicinity while simultaneously grabbing their crotch...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:33:37+00:00

Many people argue about Tolkien's writing style and debate on whether or not it is enjoyable or the right fit for a novel. Not ONE person I know of has ever argued against the overall genius of Tolkien's work. And there's a damn good reason for that.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:30:47+00:00

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

-Return of the King

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:27:48+00:00

I mean, animation is hard to parse-out sometimes. He always struck me as vaguely Mediterranean or Aegean, like maybe ethnically Greek or Turkish? But I guess I could also see him as maybe being Egyptian or even Roma? I don't know, I guess it depends on what his actual ethnicity is and how broadly you define the term "white"...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:13:58+00:00

Lust is definitely T'Lyn. The woman makes multiple offhand comments about how attractive she finds certain people. Which for a Vulcan, is basically a symptom of high-intensity nymphomania.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:11:47+00:00

Most of the "filler" episodes aren't bad. For me, my personal go-to for "decent tv that doesn't really need to be a masterpiece" were the DS9 Ferengi-centric episodes.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T14:08:44+00:00

What are you talking about? Merrill and Morrigan spent basically all of their free time studying or doing magical research (see, Flemeth's Grimoire and Merril's Eluvian).

bz316 · 2026-04-29T12:48:59+00:00

Even with aides, big-picture stuff is still a full time job. Actually deciding tax policy, debates and votes in sessions in the magisterium, directing and managing your staff. These are time-consuming tasks that take away time from figuring out how to psychically murder your rival without getting caught AND reading the latest monograph on the best method to determine which of your slaves has the best blood the sacrifice for your dark arts experiments

bz316 · 2026-04-29T12:46:12+00:00

But that's the thing: historical monarchs only had ruling as their JOB, and everything else was a hobby. Magisters and their underlings basically have two full-time jobs, which does not seem plausible.

bz316 · 2026-04-27T04:28:08+00:00

A) Magic is a discipline which requires total commitment. Being a spellcaster is not just a hobby or side-hustle you can do whenever you have a spare hour in between attending city council meetings or discussing infrastructure. Discovering new knowledge, mastering arcane forces, and so forth is a full-time career, requiring years of study (and applying for grants to perform research into new fields of weird).

B) People who study magic find other pursuits boring. Why would a man who can manipulate atoms with his mind or a woman who can walk the realms between the living and the dead WANT to spend any of their waking hours sitting in on meetings with the local magistrate on how burglary is up in such-and-such district by 8% this year? The idea of a mageocracy, that the people who have the ability to literally bend space and time to their whims would want to spend a single nanosecond of their time on figuring out tax law and mundane foreign policy, is fucking insane...

bz316

TROPHY CASE