So I do like Star Trek a lot, especially TNG, DS9, and Below Decks. Voyager and TOS are fine. Space socialism is pretty good and I can’t get enough of it. There are a few common tropes that irk me. tho.
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Baseball is cracker Amerikkkan nonsense - You telling me that all these different species and planets get together to chill, and the vibe they’re gonna channel is Ohio?? Football (soccer) or some version of hockey make a lot more sense, you can pick up and start playing immediately. I can’t imagine Worf wanting to learn all those pointless rules about balls and strikezones and fowls. Sisko is arguably the best captain of any series, and I really get pulled out of an episode every time he drops some awful baseball trivia. It’s only slightly better than Nascar. I actually know one Scottish person who really likes baseball, and he’s literally the worst person I know.
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The tribunal - It’s so damn common. It seems like every season there’s got to be a court-martial, hearing, or appeal against a Starfleet decision. I guess Law and Order is big there. It’s probably a minor critique, but it does reinforce the ideology that Western courtrooms are fair.
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Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.
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Poker in TNG - Poker has to be the worst form of entertainment, and I genuinely like maths. I blame TNG for reigniting the poker craze of the 90s and ruining all my guy friends’ personalities.
Baseball is popular in a lot of countries, e.g. Cuba, Japan
Amerikkkan colonies, past and present.
Edit: Sorry to beat the anti-baseball drum. But I saw the Colin Kaepernick documentary some time ago, and his feelings on baseball rubbed off on me a bit.
Soccer is arguably English (I’ve seen one historian claim it’s Dutch)
Ironically, lacrosse is an American Indian sport but nowadays it’s mostly played by preppy white future CIA agents.
Weird trivia. Lacrosse is the national sport of Canada. Not hockey.
For the record I really don’t like football (soccer), and even more than that I hate the fans that I interact with near daily. I just thing that baseball is super goofy.
It would be nice if there was some culturally neutral international sport, but soccer is the de facto world game same way as English is the world language.
I feel like the two are footie and basketball. I feel like you can go anywhere and find a game and people to play with. It does suck that EPL and European leagues have made football so fucking gross and unappealing, but such is capitalism.
I am very anti-football, but I do want to suggest to the young Americans to get into it a bit. When traveling, I’ve had so many random non-English speaking strangers invite me to a game. It was really rad having village kids in Vietnam spontaneously invite me into their game last year, even tho I am shit.
Haters gonna hate