pellaeonthewingedlion replied to your post “Even our sense of time comes from them” boy I love that sort of...”
Can I ask why? He acts as if belters would be a conquered and colonised people instead of settlers from earth
Oh I’m not saying I agree with that whole conversation, I just love the worldbuilding aspect of it -- the idea that even being so far from Earth for so long, they’re still using Earth measurements without really thinking of it. What’s a year on an asteroid? What’s a day if the rotation is man-made? I just think it’s super interesting to see the little details like that, the inability to break so many generations of habit that stem from a planet most of them have never and will never set foot on.
At the same time, I see Dawes’s point? One of my favorite things about this whole series is that you rarely find someone who’s just straight up wrong. Everyone has their opinions and their fears stemming from very real places, like Dawes -- he’s right in that Fred and Holden are still both technically Earthers, and Dawes has never known anything but the Belt, and the Belt has continuously been dealt a hard hand. Mars has their independence, but the Belt is still under Earth’s thumb in a lot of ways, having to send so many of the resources they acquire straight back to Earth instead of putting them to use.
They’re settlers from Earth, sure, but they’ve been out there so long and changed so much (both culturally and physically) that their only real ties to Earth are the continued laws in place. So of course they’re getting pissed about it, the Belters are their own people but, unlike Mars, they’re not allowed to act like it. Until the recent events, the OPA was never considered much more than a terrorist group by most, but now they’re finally being listened to.
So I might not agree entirely with what Dawes is saying, and I definitely don’t agree with his methods, but I see where the guy’s coming from.
