In fairness, nothing really rhymes with “hostages.” That must be why it didn’t make it in.

In fairness, doing what feels good instead of thinking about the consequences is fun.

(“The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all/And fuck no, I’m not votin’ for you in the fall/Undecided.”)

It doesn’t even take outside influences to give people unrealistic hopes about repatriation. Just look at Cuban ex-pats here in the US. The connection to what people perceive of as their homeland is powerful enough to cloud judgement beyond good sense, with the result being multiple generations refusing to move on to…

The best summarizations that I’ve heard about the Palestinian struggles following the establishment of Israel as a nation, is that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

C’mon.  Iran is Hamas.

I had already copied that exact quote to make a similar comment about. Tough as it is, none of the ME countries care about the Palestinians. Jordan remembers all too well that they attempted to assassinate King Hussein and overthrow the government for not being sufficiently militant against Israel. These countries all…

Thanks, you Zionist shill! There, now the balance is restored!

Sir, this is the Internet. I demand that you escalate our partial disagreement into ad hominem attacks!

Hamas could end this tomorrow by surrendering. They miscalculated and finally just pushed Israel past its breaking point, and so here we are with no real means to contain the response.

You’re welcome to be wrong about Iron Council. It’s my favorite of the trilogy. Story time: I actually met China Mieville after Ursula Le Guin’s memorial service in Portland. I brought my copy of Iron Council and stalked the stage door. I knew it was a little tacky to ask for an autograph from him because he was there…

Nearly anything speculative by China Mieville, but in terms of ‘filmability’, The City & The City is probably the easiest.

I wonder about that too. I read the first book and found it a slog. The concepts were interesting, but everything around it was not good. The characters were extremely flat and poorly drawn. The whole thing was lacking any humanity, it was a series of thought experiments with some awful dialog in between. 

Thanks! I realize this kind of thing must come up in translation all the time. That one just struck me as so language-specific, I got really curious about it.

Yeah, the books were nigh incomprehensible. I couldn’t finish muddling through.

I agree, the heady sci-fi concepts in the books is what kept me reading but the story and the character were all off to me.

I’ll probably skip it. I read all three books, and I appreciate their innovation, but the problem is that I reject the central conceit of the first book that the whole thing is built on. I read through all of them because I knew it was one of the most important SF series in recent years, but I will admit, it was kind…

Y’know what’s my big judge of a movie’s impact? Fan art.
Barbie had TONS of fan art. Heck, there’s arguably fan art in-universe with America Ferrara’s out there Barbie designs.

Rebel Moon is supposed to be this sprawling sci-fi epic and I have not seen one piece of art for any of the characters in the wild. 

I totally agree. I bailed after the second book because while I found the sci fi stuff interesting the human stuff and characterization was just ... oof.

I agree, the heady sci-fi concepts in the books is what kept me reading but the story and the character were all off to me. I wonder if part of the issue is a translation issue and the fact that I am missing Chinese cultural references.   I am interested to see what this looks like on screen