"If you want to be horrified about World War I I'm sure Rose can recommend you a lot of excellent poetry I'm too much of a philistine to appreciate."

"It could be useful for when it comes up in classes. And also Being Cultured."

"But I think the movie is... trying to make you as invested in Moritz and Melchior and Wendla as in the war. Because it's about all the awful things we do to teenagers. Teaching them that school is the only way they can be successful, not telling them about sex-- that's not fake, by the way, there are people in Gilead who become handmaids without knowing that artificial insemination isn't how babies are always made--"

"I--uh-- how do they expect them to have their own children?"

"They read a book about it when they're engaged?"

"That seems. Late." Why is Gilead like this.

"Can't have sex if you don't know what it is. --Unfortunately, this works less well than one would hope."

"Unless no one knows and no child ever asks 'Mummy, what are those two dogs doing?'-- Gilead."

"The dogs are fighting, obviously. --And, you know, even if they know, if you want to have sex but you're not supposed to you can just put yourself in a position where sex happens and you said 'no' and it's not your fault--"

"...Gilead has a talent for consistently exceeding expectations."

"It's an incredibly fucked country and they think we're bad because we have sex workers and polygamy and gay marriage and sexually active fourteen-year-olds."

"At least your fourteen year olds know what sex is!"

"They know what sex is, and what their options for preventing pregnancy and disease are, and they know there are kids of sex other than PIV, and they know sex is better if they communicate with their partners, and they know that if they tell their partner to stop their partner is supposed to stop right away, and they can masturbate and look at porn, and if they don't want to be pregnant they can have an abortion safely, and if they want to continue their pregnancy and give it up to someone else we fucking pay them--"

"I's not ideal but it's a whole lot better than the alternatives ...I don't know how we would have handled the fertility crisis. Marry younger? But that's not without its risks."

"That's what the Catholics do. That and banning contraception and abortion. --It's hard because if women marry young they can't really have jobs, and most teenagers make really bad decisions about whom to marry. You do kind of wind up stuck with someone if you have a kid together but it's less stuck, Asher lives in a different state from Tree."

"I'd say the answer to that would be not to let the teenagers make the final decision, but I doubt you would approve of that."

"I'm not sure parents make a better one? I mean, it depends on the parents, my moms are great, but also because my moms are great if I told them to decide for me whom I should marry they'd say 'well, tell us who you like and we'll decide to let you marry that one.' And lots of parents are just awful, even in Cascadia."

"Just because someone is not good at a responsibility doesn't mean they don't have it? And-- I was lucky, but there were things I didn't consider with my marriage and my parents did, and they were important."

"Like what?"

"In more general terms, our match was-- fine? But it wasn't ideal, and when you're talking about something as permanent and that affects as many people as marriage does, then 'not ideal' matters.

--And more specifically us getting married might have increased the risk of rebellion. And that was thankfully not the case! But I also was not weighing that heavily enough."

"--honestly I am very curious how that worked."

"The very practical version of what happened, without the squishy feelings, was that Leng Peishan was the leading general in the Southwest. An important border. Also constantly smouldering, politically speaking. And it was getting worse.

And Leng Peishan was getting old, possibly sick, and he was not communicating with the capital much. Pretty much the only family he had was his granddaughter. A brilliant granddaughter who I am definitely not biased towards.

...I'm not sure of how it is in Cascadia, your military is probably very different, but that's. A highly concerning combination. There was too much risk that he'd try and secure himself a legacy in the worst way possible.

The smartest move would be to marry his granddaughter to some young, trustworthy general who he could pass his army onto when the time comes. And another military family would have been better option tied to be tied to the Leng family.

...but it turns out he wasn't planning to rebel anyway. And one of the few things he and his granddaughter agreed on was neither of them appreciated her being used as a pawn to stop him from doing something stupid, and that she should get to marry whoever she wants." A small, sad smile. "As I said, I was very lucky."

"Our military is half the nukes and half people who are supposed to train everyone in guerrilla warfare if we're invaded, we're not capable of doing offense. --I have to say that does seem like a point in favor of letting people marry whomever they want and also passing along generalships in some way other than nepotism."

"I mean if you've managed to get it set up so there isn't such a thing as a military family, then maybe. ...I have other examples of ridiculous love matches, but I'm pretty sure you'd approve of them anyway."

"I have very ridiculous love matches. My husband hit on me constantly for two years and I didn't notice and also thought I hated him for being so intelligent and attractive and charming. And Rose I fell for on Tumblr and then I paid an enormous sum of money for a coyote to rescue her from her abusive husband and bring her to Cascadia."