Roderic Day

Whether I'll ever write again remains uncertain, but meanwhile I'm seeing where this other road takes me. youtube.com/watch?v=Zk3rGY…

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee A more interesting show, definitely.

@RodericDay @agraybee I really haven't watched it over a decade. I found Season 2 rushed. My favorite show is actually Star Trek which is basically luxury space communism.

HBO's Rome to me feels like grimdark The Flintstones. There's an arc where the "straight man" protagonist gets slaves as army payment, parks them in a lot, and they die of plague. The affair is treated as somberly as Homer investing in Betamax and struggling to tell Marge.

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee Two showrunners are American and one English. And the Englisan is married to an American mega-producer, and spent his entire career writing about America. It's America-slop, tailor-made for people like you. That's why it resonates with you.

@RodericDay @agraybee Ya know dude. I think you have bigger issues to work through than thinking a TV show mostly written by an Englishman is a ringing endorsement of America.

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee Your worldview is so greasily American you can't even fathom something outside of or different to it. 😄 x.com/RodericDay/sta…

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee Yeah, that part Peru is also slaver country. The shill president a few years ago went to Princeton and proudly called our country a tame dog on America's doorstep. You make my point: good people would replace that garish trash with something more pertinent.

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee Normal people visit Roman sites like they visit any other ancient site. Only Americans, with their grotesque historical need to justify slavery, saw it fit to *romanticize* a shit empire, and plop a bunch of garish columns on their monuments and houses.

@RodericDay @agraybee Italy has a $231 billion dollar tourist industry, and Rome is the second most visited city in Europe. And you genuinely think it's just fat Americans?

@Ambavalent2964 Well, it seems we've reached an impasse. You can now go back whatever hole you came from, and keep slurping that "grimdark Flintstones" art.

@RodericDay Sure thing smart guy You're still imposing BS narratives from the modern day into the past You just like Spartacus because you enjoy the taste of that slop

@Ambavalent2964 As I say in that extremely short thread, Spartacus is infinitely better in every regard. Rome is only deep for people who chug slop.

@RodericDay That's how the vast majority of humanity throughout history, across widely divergent cultures, would have views that situation Your complaint is literally "why didn't Rome superimpose my very modern very western view onto this ancient situation"

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee The fact that you think Rome has a "romantic mystique" says it all, to be honest. The society of slavery, looting, plundering, vomitoriums, and gladiatorial combat is "romantic and mystical" only for piggish Americans.

@_AmandaKerri @agraybee You people consume trash and think it's a gourmet dish. Nobody misunderstands what the concept was or what they were trying to do. I'm saying it's worthless. Far from portraying any historical nuance or complexity, it boils everything to boring and recognizable Americana.

@Ch_Dracchia Continue consuming your American-suburban slop alongside your countrymen, it's not a problem for me.

@RodericDay It’s actually a very good empirical way of clocking mass opinions on movies and tv. You’re in the minority on this one. That’s just a fact. You can put your own value judgement on that but that’s the way it is

@Ch_Dracchia That's fine. Only the most mediocre people seek validation for their own takes in RT scores.

@RodericDay Your opinion is in the minority

@Ch_Dracchia 2/3 of the showrunners are American. HBO is American. The show is grotesquely American. And it was a mediocre show. As with most HBO fare, a solid cast papers over dismal writing.

@RodericDay I mean it was made by the BBC and starred mostly British actors. My one complaint is a lack of Italians. There was an effort to make ancient Romans relatable to everyday people with their domestic dramas and petty vendettas set in the backdrop of Ancient Rome. It was great

@agraybee I see what they tried to do, hence the Flintstones reference. I just think it's embarrassing and not remotely impressive or praiseworthy.

@RodericDay But that's what it was! Slaves were an expensive investment, and as a middle class soldier, seeing his slaves die was like seeing his retirement fund dry up.

Spartacus understands and portrays something Rome is clueless about, as result of centering the slave POV: One can treat human lives like nothing, and in antiquity this was grotesquely standardized. But this brutal stoicism bleeds everywhere, it's not easily contained.

I just cannot disagree more with that tweet. HBO's Rome literally feels like Bush-era Americans (across the spectrum) projecting and universalizing their mediocre suburban lives and dramas into antiquity, trying to give them this epic scale. But it's just Rumsfeld scale.

lol i'm sure

@rlaneth @orphcorp Clearly climate scientists are losing the media battle against billionaires armed solely with truth at their side. Only a born loser would opt to lose the climate battle over an unwillingness to censor idiots and moving forward. The same applies here.

@RodericDay @orphcorp Because if they were lies, they'd be fought with truth, not censorship. If someone wrongly accuses you, do you seek to silence the accusers and the judges, or do you speak up?

Kimi employee btw

@rlaneth @orphcorp China bans climate change skeptics, the Falun Gong, etc. "No investigation, no right to speak" is an enduring creed from Mao. Why on Earth would they allow the US, open liars, a fair chance to spread BS?

@RodericDay @orphcorp Ah yes, surely it's censored in China for no reason at all!

@rlaneth @orphcorp That story is dying even in the West, TBH. x.com/RodericDay/sta…

@orphcorp Every Chinese employee gangsta with hot takes against American labs, but you'll never see them speaking up about the June Fourth Incident.