The Everyday Anarchism podcast had an episode, Tolkien's Romantic Anarchy, that gave me very many thoughts & feelings that I'm going to barf out here.
Yes, Tolkien is a Catholic fossil who built a world of eugenic-flavored world of racialized and patriarchal hierarchy, but you can tell he didn't want to live in Minas Tirith with the courtly remnants of the Numenorians. He wanted to live in the Shire, where the fanciest gentlehobbits still had relationships with their farmer neighbors and gardeners.
They were talking about how most people, conservative, liberal, or progressive, idealize that village life with lots of relationships and nature. (Put a pin in that.) Because obviously that's how the fascists reel em in, the weaponized airbrushed fairytale picture of the free, good life, where the men are men, and the slurs and the scapegoats are pushed out.
But in trying to avoid that pitfall, we leftier people lose out on that joy of second breakfasts and frolicing around in waistcoats and dirndls. I am that bitch whose algorithm is narrowed down on all the hobbitcore and cottagecore and crafting content and is dangerously close to the tradwife pipeline. I live in the tension where I'm next door to the fun cosplay queers but also the conspiracy theorists who want me trap me in the kitchen as a pregnant household appliance.
But because the people yearn for the village life, we need that playful imagination to apply to urban living. We need a nice version of RETVRN in small towns where they have the freedom from car dependence (choo choo MF) and aren't desperate and scrabbling to afford the cheapest shit shipped in from overseas. My ass is from a long line of sedentary dirtstratchers, but I'm fascinated with how long humanity lived (and is sometimes currently living) in semi-nomadic patterns for millions of years and what that might look like in the modern age with a preference for plumbing and lugging all the sweet, sweet modern gadgets around. (I'm not in the camping hobby, so I don't know what kind of hobbyist infighting they have about low-tech or high-tech.)
I need people to do more of this creative play with me, preferably people who are better about getting them words out and published on AO3 or other platforms. (I quit Wattpad a million years ago, and I don't know what good options there are for original fics.)
It me