#rain-rome

[txttletale]

youve previously spoken about i was a teenage exocolonist and its confused politics, and i agree, and now im thinking, how would one revise the story so as to improve them?

i think the game would have to either not be so proudly About Colonialism or would have to revise its story so that the theming actually matches the events. like imaginining that my proposed rewrite aims to 1. make the game's politics coherent while 2. changing as little as possible and 3. keeping the game's intended themes, i think the things that are most dissonant and jarring are:

the game not understanding what colonialism is but wanting to very much assure you that It's Bad

the game not understanding what fascism is but wanting to very much assure you that It's Bad

the game not understanding what capitalism is &c. &c. &c.

the bizarre unexamined eugenicist elements

so let's start on the first thing. you would want to lean much more heavily on the colonists as 'refugees' rather than 'colonists' -- the game treats 'colonizing' a place the exact same way as 'living there', and that kind of sucks (a common problem when using 'Space Colonization' as a 1-1 metaphor for actual colonization). so while we want to keep the weird culty aspects of the colony's society we'll ditch most of the colonial intentionality until the Helios arrives. secondly, we need to have the planet's indigenous people, like, actually present and not secretly hiding away as supercomputers.

so, like, let's keep the Gardeners as artificial life forms dedicated to protecting the ecosystem, but let's make them biotech. let's make them giant, imposing trees that reach up into the sky, with root networks that span the whole planet. then, rather than the colony being colonialist because it straight up doesnt know indigenous people exist (because they're secret computer people), we can make a much more interesting conflict by having the colonists be ignorant (and, as the game progresses, willingly ignorant) of the gardeners' sentience. have the raids start after the colony fells one of the trees (killing a Gardener) to make room for their own expansion, maybe really lean into the nasty parts of the colonial metaphor by having the Gardener's wood be the construction material of the new wing of the colony.

then Lum arrives as part of an intentional colonization project from the Earth we fled, assumes military command as in the current story, and immediately ramps up existing exploitation and destructive enviromental practices. his administration deliberately suppresses information of the Gardeners' sentience and spreads propaganda about them being 'monster trees'. have Lum clearly backed by Earthbound corporate interests, seeing the colony as an excercise in extracting value and using fascist dictatorship (usurping elections and the council with a permanent state of emergency and martial law) as a tool to maximize that value.

instead of defeating Lum at the ballot box, you can remove him in a coup. you can keep the getting-the-councilors-on-side minigame, you can even make it a bloodless coup if you don't want to put revolutionary violence in the game (but considering how much other violence there is in there, including terrorism, genocide, and murder, seems like a strange omission tbqh). and dont make him your fucking tiktoker put the guy in Jail. hes killed people sol.

have Sym still have his humanboo interests but also hint at an internal power struggle within the Gardeners, make it clear that there is a real and thriving culture among these indigenous gigantic environmentally networked tree-ecosystem-people, make his motivations for seeking peace more multifaceted.

then make the peaceful resolution to the whole colonialism issue to integrate the settlers into Gardener society rather than the weird siloed reservation thing going on in the base game. the head of the settlement or an ambassador (probably Dys) gets to go to the big fancy Gardener meetings where they decide things, the settlement gets permission from the Gardeners to farm and expand sustainably and is integrated into the ecosystem rather than neatly separated from it. the excolonists stop being colonists and become citizens of the planet.

as for the capitalism stuff, you can just drop that from marz' character, honestly. or if you want to make it make more sense without having to get into What Capitalism Is (which i think would be outside the mission statement of these proposals), make her thing wanting opulence and excess (it already kind of us, the game just keeps saying 'Capitalism'), have her excited when Lum starts giving people the opportunity to have that, then have her moment of excitement turn sour when she looks into Earth history and realizes how destructive this kind of extraction is in the long term.

and the eugenics--i think the simplest case here while still keeping all the cool genetic mutant character tics is just to make the genetic mutations a random glitch in an artificial womb system the refugees were using to have kids in space. this lets you keep the weird and wacky stuff going on with tangent and dys without raising questions like 'hey isnt this society insanely fucking dystopian'.

that's my in-a-nutshell rewrite of the game. obvsies an actual rewrite would need to change some more in-depth things, but i think off the top of my head these are the changes to the narrative that would make the heavyhanded attempts at political commentary work for me (that said, you could also go the opposite route, stop trying to draw parallels to colonialism and fascism and keep all the weird shit as is. but i think that's less interesting and more like stuff that already exists)

#ask #rain-rome #hi rome #i was a teenage exocolonist

[nobeerreviews]

The sound of the rain needs no translation.

-- Alan Watts

(Roma)

#rain #streets #translation #alan watts #travel photography #rome #roma #italy #street photography #quote #sound of rain

[pedrocobo]

Calles de Roma / Streets of Rome

Italia / Italy.

IG: @pedrocobo_foto

© Pedro Cobo

Please don’t reblog to NSFW/18+ blogs

#© pedro cobo #pedrocobo.com #photographers on tumblr #original photography on tumblr #italia #Roma #Rome #street #calle #lluvia #dias lluviosos #rain #rainyday #reflection #reflejos #streetphotography #citiscape #ciudad #citylife #italy #primavera #spring

[ilumies]

#rain #pantheon #rome #italy #architecture #uplouds #video

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Fair at Les Invalides - Henri Evenepoel // Place de Rome at Night - Theodore Earl Butler // Midnight Rain - Taylor Swift

#paris #les invalides #place de rome #midnight rain #midnights #midnights album #taylor swift midnights #midnights taylor swift #taylor swift #tswiftedit #ts edit #art #art history #lyrics #lyric art

[princeofsayan]

Rainy Saturday

By Prince of Sayan

#original #prince #photos #nature #flowers #rome #city #spring #may #rain #saturday

[aura-atlas-ambience]

Ancient Roman Bath ASMR Spa Ambience Changing Environment with Fire, Water and Thundering Rain

Full Video on YT!

#spa #ambience #asmr #rain #fire #water #sleep #3d art #calm #calm aesthetic #campfire #cozy #ancient rome #swimming #auraatlas #Youtube

[mummer]

oh my god.... hi prague hello

#got here and instantly my mood lifted so much omg. its time to get kafkaesque girls #too bad it’s meant to rain the entire time im here. Fucks sake man #and also i can feel myself starting to get a bit sickly but i pretend i do not see it i am NOT sick i am not. #my hotel room is huge for no reason. also the manager lady was like Oh ueah this building is 500 years old ^_^ #it’s WHAT? #im soooo excited i wish i booked here for longer :( #like rome is nice and all but its so touristy. and so hot. i was not feelin it by the end at all

[peggy-elise]

Beautiful Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra 1945 🧡

#old hollywood #beauty #romantic drama #historical drama #ancient egypt #ancient rome #caesar and cleopatra #vivien leigh #claude rains #1940s cinema

[cabbagewithissues]

my contribution to this year’s celebrations

#my art #rain rambles #ides of march #julius caesar #rome #roman empire #et tu brute

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Ough when the bittersweet marimba? hits in “hate us and see if we mind”

#bittersweet songs of all time the vibes the mood #also the lyrics ‘one must wait and go for the throat when hunting leopard’ #washing off the dust like the first rains of the rain season #like yes nuance about subject matter but like fucking vibes of a song #I’m always hesitant recommending ROME to people but I’m obsessed #BUT THE RAINS NEVER SEEM TO COME #TO HAVE YOU HERE TO MAKE YOU SEE THE WILD HOPES WE HOLD ITS ALL OVER #WHAT CARE FOR GLORY WHAT CARE FOR THEE BY NOW YOU KNOW ITS ALL OVER

[txttletale]

do you have any response to people who treat voting like a trolley problem? because that seems to be where a lot of people here are coming at it from. like no faith in electoralism no care for the process, just a decision with a level of four bad and a level of five bad. to be clear thats not the way i come at it but i do think thats how many people think abt it

i mean the response is that, like, voting is not like the trolley problem because it happens more than once and not in a vacuum. it's more like... i don't know, one of those game theory games that unfolds across multiple play sessions. there will be a 2028 election and a 2032 election and the results of the previous elections will inform democratic party strategy, candidate selection, and policy in both of those. if you pledge to always support the democratic party as long as they're better than the republican party, then they can do 99.9% of what the republican party does without worrying about your unwavering support. if you have actual red lines (and this is you, as a bloc, as a group, individual political actions never matter) then the party will in fact think twice before crossing them about whether the hit to electoral support is worth it.

obviously, i'm a communist, i don't think you will ever get anything good out of the democratic party. bourgeois elections are ultimately choices of which representatives will repress you (that's some vintage marxist humour for ya). but if you think it's worth voting at all then you should also be aware of how your vote and the withdrawal thereof can be used to play chicken/hardball with political parties that need it. the right is well fucking aware of this--right-wing labour party members in the UK ran a huge sabotage campaign against the social democrat jeremy corbyn, losing the election and using that loss to oust all the left-wing elements of the party. the tea party have been using threats like this to push the republican party rightwards for decades now.

of course, you will never get something outside of the overton window of acceptable ruling-class politics by voting but if you believe there are meaningful gradations within that window (as, if you plan to ever vote at all, you logically must) then those concessions should still matter and should still be worth pursuing if you're already making the decisions to engage with electoral politics at all

#ask #rain-rome

[charlotte-of-wales]

and Italy is a choice that makes sense but that doesn’t change the fact that shaking hands with people like that won’t be a good look

Frankly, the brf has shaken hands with a lot worse people. Meloni may be a shitty person but she atleast is not a dictator (yeah the bar is basically in hell when it comes to politicians).

still not a good lol especially considering it's William and Catherine, especially considering the past few years, especially considering everything Sunak has been up to recently

#sorry to rain in everyone's parade #at least the pics from the tour will be cute rome is always cute #answered

[vitruvianmanbara]

where in italy did you like the most? and where would you like to visit? :))

ooh it's between venice and rome! venice was so beautiful & mournful, I spent a lot of time exploring by myself just walking and taking pics with my instant camera 🥹 and I really loved rome, I'm most comfortable in larger cities where there's a lot going on, so I felt like I could settle into a comfortable pace there...I'd love to go back to rome again and see visit of the museums I missed and then make my way down to naples hehe

#I had a really rough time mental health-wise until I got to rome tbh but venice was a little respite #I just walked around tears in my eyes behind my sunglasses and it was raining on and off the whole time so. we cried together! 💪 #and every time I wear my basilica perfume it reminds me of this specific church I ducked into while I was there 🥹

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Place de Rome at Night - Theodore Earl Butler // Midnight Rain - Taylor Swift

#simply had to do one of this painting all on its own bc it's just so gorgeous #paris #place de rome #midnight rain #midnights #midnights album #midnights taylor swift #taylor swift midnights #taylor swift #ts edit #tswiftedit #art #art history #lyrics #lyric art

[princeofsayan]

Today...27.03.23

By Prince of Sayan

#original #prince #photos #rome #city #spring #sky #sunset #march #after rain