I just finished The City We Became by J.K. Jemisin. Fucking brilliant. Quoting my goodreads review:

16 hours+ for the audiobook and only four days. That's a quiet indication that I couldn't put the, ah, headphones? down. The performance by Robin Miles is such that you feel the differences between the characters. And that third act surprise? that was aces.

I love this book. The way it shows people in power 'getting away with things' just by following the rules in place but also by letting those who need power not get it because they can't find anyone to enforce the rules? I feel that way frequently. And the way that people in power are allowed their...the word escapes me at the moment. But basically when you don't want to offend someone by telling them their idea is stupid and they're stupid for having it - legit stupid mind you, not just something you disagree with - so you don't say anything and then the idea is approved and acted upon? I feel that hard.

The same can be said of people with horrible opinions. The Borat movies show this to a degree where you have people in an awkward situation and just agreeing with him because he's the customer. Sure there's the possibility they're terrible people as well but also he just said he's going to buy $1k worth of stuff so yes sir, the sky <I>is</I> rather green today. This is most evident with the artists, especially manbun. The way the whole scene goes down with the social media posts and how they talk all the way up to the actionable line but dance around it? Polite society won't call anyone out on that because you can't just assume they mean the worst, they could be uninformed. They're never uninformed, they always know where the line is.

I saw a comic a few weeks ago - maybe it was a tweet? - anyway, the gist of it was there are two people arguing, left and right. The person on the right says "why don't you meet me in the middle? and the person on the left takes a step forward, because they want to be seen as ready to compromise. the person on the right takes a step backward and says "why don't you meet me in the middle?" The point being that the person on the left is so concerned with seeming nice and ready to work together that the person on the left will always bring them to their side eventually by all the damn compromises.

Also you can look into the names all you want, that's just where they were positioned. But if you're seeing it politically, well, maybe that's because that is also true.

The characters in the book are mostly fleshed out very well. I say mostly because there's a time or two when you're like "really?" Manbun for one, but then I'm not as online as a lot of people so maybe that's more truth than I'd like to admit.

Spoiler: I actually like how the entire group fails, it's a welcome change from happy ending books. The real world doesn't work that way, so why does most of fiction? I did however see the way out even while it was being set up, but all that was is me constantly running odds on storyline potentials while I'm reading, kind of like Queens and numbers. But it was well-earned in the story and didn't feel cheap.


In closing,
any ideas why a video linked as a shortcut is put into the post as an embedded video?