Really. If at any point the government asks you to “Report your Neighbors”, that should be a pretty damn good sign to shut the hell up.

As a federal employee from a different agency, if I ever responded to a media inquiry in such a manner my boss would totally fire me (and yes, Feds can be fired). That response reads like a WaPo comment and not official remarks from an exec branch agency.

Everyone should call and ask if the person answering has a moment to discuss ethics in games journalism.

I’m going to prank these guys weekly with the plot line of some sci-fi alien movie. First one up: SPECIES!

I could see a very dear-to-my heart male friend doing this. He sometimes genuinely laughs at things that are horrible (and that don’t intersect with his life in anyway), or makes jokes, and when I call him on it, he calls it gallows humour.

My friend had to have her sons through IVF. Initially her doctor only put her on infertility treatments and they couldn’t figure out why things were not progressing better since she was ovulating just fine. Over a year later they finally had her husband tested. He virtually makes no viable sperm. Though she did…

Yeah, like how far down the Handmaid’s path do we have to go before we are allowed to “warn” men about what is happening? I feel like we’re already far enough, thank you very much.

UGH

But if they god forbid did feel inspired by the current events to make this, he’d be angry?? Jeez, women having opinions on what’s going on and concerning their livelihood, how awful of them!

You can also let him and anyone else know who got angry about the words used in the trailer - they are straight from the book word for word. I know this because I am 4/5 through the book right now for the first time. So when I saw the trailer I was like... why the outrage? Atwood wrote those lines. They weren’t…

Did you explain to him that everything that is done to the Handmaids in the story has actually been done to women at some point in history, somewhere in the world?

The only people I know who think it is unrealistic are men.

Reading the book, I interpreted Offred’s definition of rape (and not-rape) more as a reflection of the culture she’s living in. Like... she doesn’t get to call what happens to her rape because it’s state-sponsored. It’s like her saying she used to have another name, but not telling the reader what it is (major…

I want to ask neontaster, who generally enjoys dystopian fiction but hates sociopolitical intrusion, if there has ever actually been any work of dystopian fiction ever that wasn’t a sociopolitical commentary.

Or not familiar with our history, or the history of other nations.

It’s definitely not a take I expected. But it’s legit because his wife is a feminist! He asked one feminist so that’s definitely what it means! Don’t worry about the actual author’s statement of what it means or the eleventy billion other people who have read it! This one feminist says it’s a rape fantasy, so it must…

I binged the first three episodes yesterday morning and I now regret it because it was so good I want to be able to savor it and drag it out until the next episode is released.

I really hate the “it’s TOOO topical” point of view. When was it written? It still applies? Then it’s not TOO topical. That means we haven’t really progressed. I’d argue we’ve regressed.

“It’s a rape fantasy”? God knows sexualizing rape is a depressingly common trope, but I’m having troubling imagining how anyone could confuse the cold, clinical rapes in The Handmaid’s Tale with erotica.

I tend to think that it’s also just a phase... can’t do the same thing forever. I wonder if it’s inspired by having children and just the idea to her (and our generation) that family photos have this aesthetic. It’s what we grew up with.