All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
I started thinking: how did Telchar make Narsil in the first place? (…
Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time … )
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells
Narsil is a first-age sword. It’s a dwarf-sword, not an elf-sword. (Though, potentially, using some Noldorin technology, since it was made by Telchar of Nogrod, presumably during the period when Nogrod, Belegost and Thargelion were at the height of wealth and technology, when Curufin was learning Khuzdul, and Caranthir was trading with the Dwarves.)
It’s probably about six thousand seven hundred years old.
Let me consider that for a bit. 6700 years. 6700 YEARS.
It’s older than Stonehenge is now. It’s older than the Pyramids. It’s far older than the oldest known coins. If we had a sword that was 6700 years old today, it would have to be made of stone, because that’s well before the start of the Bronze Age.
I can’t think of any metal object in the real world that is still in use after 6700 years.
And it’s being remade from Narsil to Anduril in Rivendell, which means, I’m guessing, that those two guys hitting it are smiths escaped from Eregion that Elrond swept up and managed to rescue during his insanely-risky post-fall-of-Eregion attempted rescue mission. Eregion, of the jewelsmiths. Eregion of the Rings that can avert entropy.
And later, Anduril seems to know what it’s hitting, and be able to flash light at just the right moment…? Maybe it can do what Sting does and detect enemies.
…mighty spells…
Maybe you DO remake the damn thing by hitting it with a very carefully tuned hammer while reciting poetry? In the absence of a treatise on the practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking it seems as valid a theory as any.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
Arthur C Clarke’s third law says.
No doubt Galadriel would argue with the use of the word ‘magic’ on the grounds that it isn’t sufficiently distinguished from the deceits of the Enemy, but we don’t all have the advantage of having studied with Aule, Galadriel.
… I love this scene!
I have always wished to read On the Practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking. Because this is not how iron-based metals work. Ferrous metals neither work that way in the sense of “function” nor do they work that way in the sense of “to bring to shape by gradual process.”
If I try to consider it as steel, I have the following issues:
If that is a (forge)weld, you are hammering too hard and will break it.
If that is a weld, where is your flux?
It’s not even the right kind of weld for a high-impact tool (i.e. a sword), so even the idea of welding in this way is wrong, but we’ll ignore that since it’s apparently what they are doing. (Re-forging a sword is exactly what it says on the tin, forging again.)
Good temperature-color for shaping, not hot enough for sticking (welding)
Lawsy, someone teach that boy how to aim his hammer
Or maybe give him a proper smithing hammer?
Or some muscles? That ain’t how your swing that (estimated) 3-pound hammer.
The sparks always give me a special shudder because if your steel
comes out of the fire sparking, you’ve burned it and have to REMAKE YOUR
STEEL (or cut off the burned bits)
Never mind how that steel isn’t hot enough to spark white
What are you even doing?
If I try to consider it as a whitesmithing situation (gold, silver, etc) then I have even bigger issues, so that’s a no-go.
Ergo, either “magic metal” or “metal that has had magic applied to it.” A metal we have no access to or steel that has had enchantments applied so that it no longer functions molecularly like steel.
(It’s Tolkien, why not both? I’ve always headcanoned something like a mithril-alloy with magical enhancements.)
In spite of all that, 10/10 for feels. Bonus points for atmosphere and working at night. (Leaving aside ideas that starlight might help with Elven enchantments, a dark forge is properly historic and the still used by many of the best swordmakers.)
And now 11/10 for the idea that those are
Eregion
smiths.
Reblogging because I secretly hoped @ilsa-fireswan would have Thoughts on this!
Why does no one ever acknowledge that Keith dropped out and went all rebellious because he was depressed and grieving over Shiro?
When people talk about him dropping out it’s always framed as either “it was inevitable due to his hothead nature” or “it was a natural pull by the lions that caused him to leave” but he specifically describes the “disciplinary issues” and “feeling lost” only starting up after Shiro was declared dead.
He didn’t drop out because he can’t work on a team, he can clearly work fine when Shiro is safe beside him. He was depressed. He had depression. Losing the person most important to you, especially when there’s evidence that the organization you work for is covering up details of his death, can make people a bit moody.
so the stormtroopers right. if they think u didnt fire ur blaster they inspect it & if you didnt they send you for reconditioning.
maybe. thats why. they never. HIT. anything.
they dont want to be punished but they dont really want to hurt anybody.
maybe.
DUDE
well this is an entirely strange new level of sadness
This has been observed in conflicts through out the last century and a half or so, Soldiers deliberately firing high and missing.
Oh. My. God.
Trooper QG-3148 was a sergeant placed on the Death Star a scant five months ago, but they had wanted to be part of the Imperial Forces since they were a small child. They were the best shot in their squadron with blasters, second best with rifles and had never missed a target when deployed.
So when that kid running around with the Princess crossed their path trying to escape, QCG3148 lined up the first shot to take them out…. and missed. The Princess with no world and her rescuer dashed off down another corridor and QG-3148 gave chase slowly. Couldn’t make it seem like they weren’t chasing the rebels, that would only put QG-3148 in trouble.
In every hallway they passed, troopers were marching in time, blasters at the ready. But no shots hit and none of the rebels were harmed. No words needed to be spoken between the ranks; they had all seen the destruction of the planet Alderaan and knew what needed to be done.
It was a secret between the Stormtroopers that the brass buttons had no notion of; orders were to be followed unless they proved to cause harm to your brothers and sisters. Veteran trooper CC-2224, nicknamed Cody among the troops, was adamant every Stormtrooper followed this creed before clearing them for duty. It seemed that every Stormtrooper on the Death Star remembered that lesson; many of them had families on Alderaan, after all. And now they were hurting.
well, shit. and that explains why hux’s stormtroopers CAN hit what they aim at. i mean, i haven’t seen tlj yet, but in tfa i quite clearly recall them rolling over that village like a lawnmower over a tennis ball. with a single exception, they were not firing to miss.
because they’ve been, as hux said, indoctrinated since birth. i imagine stormtrooper culture in the first order looks a lot more gung-ho than it did in the empire, because brendol hux was kind of a twisted genius in the brainwashing department, and armitage improved on his methods.
which brings us back to finn being a precious gem, because he was raised to be all HOOAH GET SOME but he still said no.
After three (3) years since the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) dir. Anthony and Joe Russo, I still don’t understand why the Captain America exhibit was held in the Air and Space Museum. Steve Rogers is not even a pilot. The only time he ever manned a plane, and he nosedived it straight into the Arctic.
I have definitive, rational answers from both filmmaking and museum-curating perspectives. Y’all ready? Buckle up; try not to crash the plane into the water before we reach our destination.
Here’s the short version if you don’t want to read below the cut:
1) Filmmaking reason: using visual metaphor to remind the audience of the previous Captain America film’s events and Steve’s identity through the lens of history, science, and the military.
2) Filmmaking reason: using visual allegory to echo The First Avenger and foreshadow events of The Winter Soldier, specifically the theme of “Steve Rogers Versus Planes of Doom: Bad Things Happen (The Sequel).”
3) Museums curation reason: museums move exhibits as needed according to renovation schedules and capitalizing on popularity for visitation numbers.
4) Museums curation reason: museums try to stick to their themes, but they don’t have to adhere to them entirely. They can have the occasional exhibit “for fun.”
5) Steve Rogers did have relevancy to Air & Space because he prevented it from going down the Darkest Timeline path when he took out one of those Planes of Doom.
6) Filmmaking reason: Aesthetic and emotional buildup.
7) Parallels reason: Captain America fits into the Air & Space museum’s themes of “ingenuity and courage, war and peace, politics and power, as well as society and culture.”
frodo and sam’s love for each other is literally the only thing keeping middle earth from just spontaneously combusting
No, but like, that’s literally it. Gandalf straight-up says to Elrond this Quest can’t succeed by force or wisdom, but by friendship. If Frodo and Sam hate each other even a little, Middle-Earth is doomed.
And it gets more terrifying when you realize that one of the strongest powers of the Ring is to turn people against each other, and that even if it didn’t, the Ring and the Quest still put Frodo in a psychological state where he can barely keep himself sane, let alone love anyone or anything other than the Ring. In fact, I’m fairly sure the Ring tried to persuade Frodo to kill Sam far more often than the books shows – the Ring tends to encourage murder, from what we see. Instead of listening to the Ring, Frodo somehow manages to keep in the back of his mind that he can trust Sam more than he can trust himself, and I have no idea how Frodo can resist the temptation to think his trust is misplaced.
And sure, one could say, “Oh, but Sam has to understand it, so it’s not all that bad” but you have to remember Sam is a plain, non-Tookish hobbit with no inclination or skills for adventuring around and yet he has to become the entire Fellowship. Name one thing the Fellowship did for Frodo that Sam doesn’t also do. He has to advise, guide and protect him as well as keep his hope alive and remind him of who he is. The amount of pressure he’s under is incredible, and unlike, say, Aragorn, he has no experience to draw from. Plus, Merry and Pippin tend to rely on each other, while Frodo relies on Sam, but Sam himself hardly seems to have anyone to turn to for strength. I’m not saying Frodo doesn’t support him as well as he’s able – actually, Frodo is remarkably consistent about taking care of Sam from Book I to Book VI. But what Frodo is capable to offer (see the paragraph above) is far from being all that Sam needs. And actually, in the last stages of the Quest, Sam is basically living a one-sided relationship under the worst possible conditions, and that his devotion doesn’t even waver despite that just blows my mind.
That the Quest was successful is one of the most incredible and beautiful things that Tolkien wrote. Frodo and Sam walked straight into the Land where no love can exist and managed to become closer to each other than they had been. It’s the biggest fuck you Sauron probably ever got. No, seriously. Frodo and Sam beat a Maia basically by cuddling a lot and talking about food. Like, what the fuck??? I mean, if I told you someone could write a 1000 pages novel in which a pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally, would you believe me?
It’s classic Tolkien: the surprise element (i.e. flawed creatures can be incredibly noble even under unspeakable distress) might overcome even the most carefully thought out plots devised by powerful evil lords. (See also: the entire Silmarillion, pretty much.)
Talking about Keith and hobbies a little more, it definitely bothers me where it feels like in popular fanon his only two hobbies are knives and cryptids when in canon he’s shown zero interest in the latter (if anything, I think his personality would gel really badly with conspiracy theories) and the only knife he cares about is pretty obviously because of its obvious sentimental significance to him- he takes to swordsmanship but through the show and the comics the two things he’s wanted to have for himself were 1. a dragon and 2. one of the Olkari mecha walkers and he flat-out ignored what the knife merchant in s2e7 was selling in order to focus on identifying his own knife.
Hobbies Keith does seem to have:
Swimming! Remember he wanted to check out the pool as much as Lance did in in s2e5.
Seems to be pretty athletic all around considering his form taking on the Garrison employees in s1e1 and that he’s later the only one shown taking up independent training (though it’s heavily implied Lance is also doing so in secret)
Explicitly likes the outdoors (s2e4) and finds it peaceful, was basically camping in the desert given how bare-bones the shack is; shown to be very attentive to his environment since as soon as he clapped eyes on the fraunhofer line he immediately recognized its similarity to a rock ridge he’d seen before.
Research– clearly heavily looked into and studied the ‘weird energy’ to try and understand it- even triangulated its position.
This is the part I think wouldn’t gel at all with conspiracy theorists because from what I’ve seen, so much conspiracy stuff relies on bad science and leaping to conclusions and Keith very obviously… doesn’t do that? He doesn’t overlook things, he documents very carefully and thoroughly, and he has a literal supernatural sense of truth sometimes, the idea of holding onto something that’s blatantly false in the presence of solid contradictory evidence is just… not a Keith thing to do.
We see places in s1e1 where he’s ripped stuff off his board, telling us he discarded ideas. And the only time he even suggests what might be responsible for the energy is when they’re standing right in front of an obvious alien machine.
Quite possibly photography- after all he did take all those pictures of the cave markings himself implying he has a decent camera, and since he has physical pictures, he either printed them, or took them using an actual film camera and developed them himself, which takes talent, especially given his limited resources- if he put together a makeshift working darkroom.
OH I WANNA ADD!
Genuinely likes flying/piloting. Especially challenging stuff. Just look at the Hoverbike and how excited he was to chase Rolo through the asteroid field in s1.
Reading. It goes kind of hand-in-hand with the research part, but the amount of books he has in his shack suggests that he feels comfortable around them. Considering how technologically advanced Earth already is, he would have probably had an easier time finding books/articles relating to his research online – he seems to like having a physical copy of them though and doesn’t destroy them for the sake of research. He copies everything down by hand before attaching it his board (the “digitally written” stuff on the board isn’t ripped at the side, they are probably printed articles/copies).
A mild interest in technology. The mentioned mecha walker from the Olkari. Hoverbikes. He has kept the one he has on Earth fully functioning and he has a hoverbike poster up in his room when there are plenty of other posters (or maps) rolled up in the corner. The interest might just be there because of his interest in piloting stuff though.
(there is also an extra photo of a canyon or something on the hoverbike poster – chances are that he took it for his research, it turned out to be useless but he liked it too much to discard of it. or it’s a hobby pic!)
There’s also that stuff from storyboard artists that showed Keith drawing, so I think he likes drawing as well as photography.
Great additions! So yeah, conclusions: Keith is an artsy outdoorsy boy.
Considering the Olkarian Walker, the dragon he was interested by in the comics, the hoverbike and “SICO” poster, I wonder if his interest is specifically in vehicles? It’d go with, as @keiths-stupid-mullet said, his propensity to show off a little with his piloting.
aka
“Look for the Force, and you will find me” and the Giant Middle Finger towards
the Chinese Inequalities
So a couple of weeks back, I saw this
video of an interview of Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, in which someone asked them
about Baze and Chirrut’s relationship. They said a lot of things, mostly
teasing, but the video ended with Donnie smiling and saying, “They’re very good
brothers.”
My immediate, visceral reaction is bull-fucking-shit. And a sense of
absolute glee because I know he knows
that he’s talking bullshit.
I’ve been thinking for the last couple
of weeks about why it’s bullshit.
This post is the result. It’s pretty long, so: tl;dr Chinese culture is about extremely structured and strict societal
relationships, and Baze and Chirrut’s smashes that all into pieces to show how
people can be equal and not fit into boxes.
Disclaimer: I
grew up in a staunchly Chinese family in a Chinese-majority country and grew up consuming media from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. But I did not grow up in any
of those places. My country of origin is pretty damned Westernised. If I get
anything wrong, please tell me.
I have brought my tl;dr to a new fandom and I still keep it under a cut.
what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??
Wait wait I might actually have an answer
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit like waaaay before he even dreamed up the idea for Lord of the Rings, so when he DID dream up LotR, he had a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. Like plotholes galore
Like for example in the first version Gollum was a pretty nice dude who lost the riddle contest graciously and gave Bilbo the ring as a legit present and was very helpful and it was super nice and polite and absolutely nobody tried to eat anyone because this is a story for kids and that’s very rude
But that doesn’t work with LotR, so Tolkien went back and re-released an updated version of The Hobbit with all the lore changes and stuff to fix everything that didn’t work
This is the version we know and love today
BUT rather than pretend the early version never existed, Tolkien went and worked the retcon into the lore
If you pay attention in Fellowship, there’s a bit where Gandalf is telling Frodo about the ring and he mentions how Bilbo wasn’t entirely honest about the manner in which it was found
To us modern readers, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, so mostly we just breeze by it–but actually that line is referencing the first version of The Hobbit
The pre-retcon version of the Hobbit is canonically Bilbo’s original book. The original version with Nice Gollum is canonically a lie Bilbo told to legitimize his claim to the ring and absolve him of the guilt he feels for his rather shady behavior
Then the post-retcon version is an in-universe edited edition someone went and released later to straighten out Bilbo’s lies
So it’s 100% plausible that the in-universe editor who fixed up Bilbo’s Red Book and translated it from whatever language Hobbits speak was a human who knew about Christmas Trees and tossed the detail in to make human readers feel more at home, because that’s the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you have a translator editor person dressing up a story for an audience that doesn’t know the exact cultural context in which the original story was written
Tolkien was a medieval scholar and medieval stories are rife with that sort of thing, so like… yeah
Not only all that, but Tolkien was also working within a frame narrative that he wasn’t the real author, but a translator of older manuscripts; so, in-universe, the published The Hobbit isn’t actually Bilbo’s book, but rather Tolkien’s copy of an older copy of an older copy of an older copy of Bilbo’s book. So when errors and anachronisms came up, he would leave them there instead of fixing them, and he may have even put some in intentionally; what we’re supposed to get from the “Christmas tree” bit is that the first scribe to translate the book from Westroni to English couldn’t come up with an accurate analogue for whatever hobbits do at midwinter.
Yes. Another example of tolkien doing this is him using, for instance, Old High Gothic to represent Rohirric – not because the people of Rohan actually spoke that language, but because Old High Gothic had the same relationship with English that Rohirric had with Westron (Which is the Common Language spoken in the West of Middle-Earth). There’s tons of that stuff in the book.
Like, Merry and Pippin’s real names (In Westron) are Kalimac Brandagamba and Razanur Tûk, respectively (to pick just one example of this). Tolkien changed their names in English to names which would give us English-speakers the same kind of feeling as those names would to a Westron-speaker. Lord of the Rings is so much deeper than most readers realise.
tolkein’s entire oevre is just one epic in-joke with the oxford linguistics department imo
So… I have a guilty love of the prohibition era. I’dd never want to LIVE then, but int terms of really interesting social dynamics, fashion, art and narrative possibility, its really, really interesting. During the ‘Would-Bacta-work-as-lube?“ question posed by @poplitealqueen a few months ago, I set about scouring-SCOURING, I TELL YOU– Wookieepedia and all my SW-related material to find out what Bacta actually COST, and how it operated, to answer the question of whether it was economically and practically feasible. And I found out that:
1. It apparently makes ideal lube, as long as you don’t mind the smell of Pineapple.
2. It’s basically ultra-thick saline with suspended nutrients and ACTUAL BACTERIA in it.
(so, these next couple conclusions are made in the face of conflicting canons, but it’s the one that makes the most sense for how shit plays out)
3. Bacta is the GMO reconstruction of Kolto, which is a psuedo-parastic microorganism that may or may not be related to midichlorians that alters it’s DNA to turn into the host’s cells. (IDK it’s science fiction, roll with it) Kolto was the more effective substance, able to treat things like cirrhosis, brain damage, etc,- but was wiped out by a virus during the KOTOR era as part of a plot to get rid of the Jedi.
Good job guys.
So Bacta is the GMO they managed to cobble together afterwards with the remaining info they had, and while it’s pretty miraculous as a traumatic injury treatment, it doesn’t do chronic diseases like Kolto did
4. Bacta is literally grown in cultured vats, much the way insulin is farmed today.
5. While it’s heavily regulated in the TPM era, because it’s MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, it’s still really easy to grow once you get your startup costs out of the way.
6. The expensive part of bacta is the administration devices- bacta doesn’t do well in tubes, so you either need to keep a small live colony (a bacta tank ala ESB), or flash-freeze them in the ultra thick saline, and have a small…bacterial microwave, essentially, to thaw bits of it out for use.
7. During the clone wars, Palpatine subsidized the crap out of the bacta industry so he’d have enough for his army and the worlds loyal to him- post 66, he was a punitive asshole who controlled all “legitimate” (but not necessarily well-run) bacta production, and would just not ship it to worlds he didn’t like.
The point I’m getting at is- The conditions are PERFECT for there to be a massive Bootleg Bacta trade starting in TPM and going all through the empire (and into TFA probably, we’ll see what the timeline looks like once this all shakes out) Just thing- ALL the shenanigans people got up to with bootlegging, but with bacta.
People with illicit ‘stills’ in the basement, people doing insane planetary runs to get it to worlds in need- or pirating Imperial ships for the stuff. Kids going to school with an “ice pack” in their lunch bag, only to give the frozen bacta to their Rebel-sympathizing teacher. Imperial Facilities get raided by Bacta Pirates, not for the shitty imperial strain, but literally to pull the piping and saline tanks out of the walls.
Of course, some people are gonna be unscrupulous and cut corners with their vats, resulting in horrible mutant strains that do god knows what (but that’s another plot bunny). Or Strains of bacta that are more refined and effective, because much of the scientific Community was not friends with Sheevy P, even before the war.
AND CLONES WOULD KICK ASS AT BACTA FARMING- because a LOT of bacta farming happened On Kamino, and hell, it was probably part of chores to tend to the tanks. “Feed the vats so your brothers can live”
The HARD part about starting your own farm is 1. finding/making suitable vats 2. GETTING YOUR HANDS ON A GOOD STRAIN.
Kix becomes an unintentional fucktillionaire distributing the Kamino strain. He wasn’t even charging, people just kept giving him money.
“Uncle Jesse’s Extra-Viscosity Varmint Grease” is the joke name of the best strain. Kix is SO MAD that drunk Jesse named it that but you know? No imp inspection officer has ever wanted to open those barrels.
The things people pretend to be shipping instead of bacta though, which might actually include booze:
"Booze! Twelve million gallons of Zanbar Blue!“ “Oh that stuff is gross. Carry on.”
Also, the REALLY enterprising people who figure out how to start mixing spice in with their bacta- and create a medical revolution in the process. Glitterstim is a bad idea to snort, but the trace amounts in the “Candy Cane” strain heal nerve damage! "Pineapple express” is a strain that essentially acts as a topical PTSD treatment "Beskar Berserker” is a strain that has some pretty awesome painkiller/amphetamine combo, and while it was meant to keep people from coding, it becomes REALLY popular with former ARC troopers.
Hera gets Kanan a strain called “second sight” after he loses his eyes. She did it because it was supposed to be good for treating optic injuries and numbing visual hallucinations… they find out later it’s basically bacta + Midichlorian chow.
Anyway, this was a fun thought, please feel free to play with it if you want and tell me all about it
This is such a cool idea! If anyone decides to run with this, here are some facts about bacteria-growing to consider in case it helps (I’ve worked in a bio lab).
Bacteria can be frozen down at around -70˚C with a bit of glycerol (presumably the “ultra thick” descriptor of the saline). This doesn’t hurt the bacteria and it can be re-grown simply by scraping a bit off the frozen tube and rubbing it on an agar plate. You then pick the colonies that look right on the plate and grow only those ones.
It’s really hard to grow the bacteria you want and only the bacteria you want. The good bacta strains have probably been engineered to have resistances to some cheap and common antibiotics. The plates, ultra thick saline and any growth broth would contain these antibiotics to help limit bad/useless strains.
It’s an ongoing struggle to keep everything reasonably clean and sterile to prevent bad/useless strains from growing. There’s probably space-technology that makes it easy and the illegal stills may or may not have access to them.
Bacteria that interact with human bodies grow best at 37˚C (internal human body temperature) and when they’re shaken. The vats would absolutely be as sealed as possible. They would also have to be purified out of the growth broth and put in the ultra thick saline for use in humans.
Lots of bacteria are kind of smelly when they grow up to large numbers. A well-seasoned lab person can tell if the good kind or bad/useless kinds have grown just by the smell. Pro-tip: some bad/useless kinds smell rank.
OH MY GOD YOU ARE THE BEST
I’m running another EotE game soon and bacta-farming is almost certainly going to come up.
The concept of humanly toasty vibrating tanks is HILARIOUS tho, becuase we have a cat-dude in the party.
I figure that if SW has whatever magical tech that keeps kamino’s pristine halls pristine despite being occupied bu appx 5 million teenage boys, your average bootlegger can keep a few hot vibrating tanks reasonably clean. Space Windex or whatever.
hot take: the capitalist cultural construction of “humans are naturally greedy and self-centered” is just an attenuated version of the feudal christian construction of “humans are inherently sinful”; both are designed to make people internalize cultural problems and externalize morality.
building off that hot take: western individualism (the American Dream, meritocracy, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality) is actually a hopelessly sentimental cultural fantasy that stems from this toxic capitalist conceit, and it’s high time we start admitting in our personal lives and in our public policy that humans actually live in dynamic and overlapping webs of inter-dependency
it’s this capitalist mindset that makes my struggling with disabilities ten times worse.
“you’re a parasite for needing assistance, why don’t you just work harder? you don’t deserve help.”
just moving along like everyone else 