Earthers and Spacers
Earthers hate you.
They don’t know why. They might not admit it, not even to themselves.
But they do. They hate you in the way a divorced man hates his ex-wife, a well of resentment and unmet expectations. You may not be happier than they are — they have a lot of things you don’t, after all — but you can see a future for yourself that doesn’t involve them. You can move on. They can’t.
Earthers feel like they’ve given you something you don’t understand or care about. They expect you to appreciate the favor, to be grateful and fall into place. To hold up your end in an unspoken bargain. Your desire to do otherwise feels like betrayal.
Whenever an Earther talks to you, there’s a cloud of barely-concealed bitterness, the kind that’s been built up over years and decades. They feel abandoned by you. They’re a little bit afraid of you. The better ones try not to show it. The worst revel in it.
Spacers
Spacers hate you too.
The compliant ones, at least. They sacrificed again and again, knew their role and played it well. They’ve built up a tolerance for humiliation, mistook it for duty. They have a high regard for themselves, but only because it makes the abuse go down easy.
To them, your refusal to bow looks like petulance — or weakness. They did what they were told, so why can’t you? Do you think you can play by your own rules? Why do you complain so much, are you mocking them?
They judge and belittle you, but there’s a hint of jealousy beneath the contempt. Buried under a thousand broken promises, a small part of them wonders if it was all worth it. If it was worth trading their dignity to be one of the good ones.