Eh, gentiles love bagels.

"What? You're talking so fast. Is that the subjunctive?"

He also wears them continuously in the flashbacks, but only puts them on to read in Toronto. That's… not how glasses work.

IIRC the trade delegations in the book were from Japan and the description of the women specifically is quite cringy. Not that it changes your excellent point, it's just a different flavor of exoticism.

Or, if they're committed to showing Luke's backstory first, they could have shown us something new. Show a few scenes that make it more obvious that Luke (and cis straight dudes generally) are Missing The Point in this new world. What happened at Luke's job when all the women were made to leave? Surely something weird…

but the historical record firmly says the world-building done in the
show is not only believable - it's already happened elsewhere and
according to established policy framework.

Ah. Once the show got renewed I figured we'd have to branch out to other people's stories, just because there's only so much ritual rape + bored Offred a show can have.

Can we please come home with you? We don't eat much and we're totally housebroken on a schedule.

I don't recall her story about how she ended up at the Red Center being much of anything, just that the GLBT collective she was living with was raided and they took all the women like normal.

Agreed. Luke's thumb twiddling reads as completely realistic to me. My husband does the same thing - everything is FINE until one day it becomes blindingly obvious that it's NOT FINE.

Absolutely, I'm just spinning out the economic possibilities in universe. Since they've chosen this "worldwide fertility crisis" aspect, it makes sense that economies would suffer from the population upheaval.

I don't think Gilead would consider NewOfglen less of a criminal. She was a prostitute, and they put most sexual impropriety on the same level.

The Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War period (1918-1924) were
especially guilty of this, and entire provinces of Russia did fight
back.

Usually in those scenarios they leave the flag be entirely.

What you are describing is precisely the reason Show!Gilead doesn't work to me. They *aren't* acting secretly - they hang people on the outside wall of Harvard, and in the town square, and in a church, and just leave them there. They're not taking 25 years to slowly tighten the noose - at the absolute maximum, 5 years…

I say Utah remains its own thing. Nobody really cares about absorbing them because Utah has to buy food from CA/Pacific Northwest.

How do you figure? She doesn't save herself in the book, either.

This is my personal worldbuilding, as well. The upper Midwest is either absorbed by Canada (we're warm states by Canadian standards!) or completely empties out as people flee to Canada. And Mexico reabsorbs some of its historical territory.

I thought I heard one of the Guardians say something about questioning him. But you're right, it's rather a reach.

I find it helps to think of it as "inspired by the book" rather than a direct adaptation.