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If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Got the link via @finalducc

Ziyal is also just very much a compelling character in her own right. A woman who lost her childhood and is unprepared for adulthood, and finds herself caught between being seen as a naive child and a traitor on both halves solely due to the circumstances of her birth. People push and pull her in different directions, trying to fill her head with their own ideals and philosophies.

She seems to compulsively cling to an idealised vision of her awful father, something she obviously used as a coping mechanism in her bleakest moments during the years in the labour camp.  She’s drawn to Garak because of what he could represent for her— and I think it’s very crucial there that two characters so heavily defined by the dynamics with their fathers having such strong incestuous overtones with them have a relationship dynamic which muddies familial, platonic, and romantic affection on both halves— and while she also wants Kira to play house with Dukat to fulfil her fairy tale of a happy family she’ll never have… but she still knows she can’t make Kira do that.

She knows something is wrong and off and uncomfortable, and you can see her trying to suppress that feeling when it comes to her dad, over and over again… and when she finally pushes back, finally lets herself admit that her father is never going to be the ideal she dreamed of… her whole life gets cut short.

The Butterfly Boy: a Fairytale.

A fairytale about the feeling of waiting on the edge of massive existential societal tragedies you are powerless to prevent, the way that we scapegoat the victims of broader societal failures as if they were the Cause, and the way that we treat children who will never grow into a "conventional" adulthood.