Map Thread XIV
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But the birth of an aboriginal child has no tangible connections to a British sperm and egg.
Quantum mechanics are weird.
Even ignoring that, given a couple years the weather will be differeint in England, resulting in people having different patterns of activity and so forth.
I dunno. This may depend on the perspective, but it definitely seems to be more of a Type II from what I've seen of it over the years.
I disagree. The only thing that seems to be arguably in the Type II category is Revolutionary France and the steampunk-ish nature of ot, but even that seems to be well-justified by the author in terms of plausibility.
True. Or, vice versa, the American Revolution could fail, but a devastating tornado outbreak might still occur in the North American Midwest on April 3/4, 1974, for example.
It's a bit complicated, but in a nutshell, this is how it typically goes.
Type I-"Hard" Timelines-TLs that are rather well researched and are able to strike a strong balance between divergence & staying within believability-Male Rising is one of those rare TLs.
Type II-The middle category-Most TLs in general. This is arguably the broadest category of them all, and can vary widely from high Type II(For Want of a Nail) to lower Type II(Decades of Darkness), or somewhere in the middle(the classic Ill Bethisad).
Type III-"Soft" timelines-basically, where the absolute "Rule of Cool" timelines are, as well as TLs that rely incredibly heavily on either excessive butterfly nets or divergence, as well as most dystopias. This would include most Nazi victory TLs, as well as What Madness Is This?, or even George Orwell's 1984. Not to mention many of the TLs on the AltHistory Wikia.
Type IV-All the undeniably implausible timelines out there. Possibly the rarest category of them all, but might include CSA: The Movie, or even the Drakaverse(although often categorized as a Type III).
I'll have to disagree with you on Ill Bethisad. It has far too many parallelisms to remain within the bounds of plausibility (for instance, the POD is in antiquity, but we get not only a recognizable Tsarist Russia but a Russian Civil War around the same time as OTL, with the same warring factions as OTL, and the EXACT SAME GODDAMN PEOPLE).
Anyway. As far as the butterfly effect goes, here's my two cents: technically, everything after the POD should be different in accordance with chaos theory; however, writing a good story takes precedence over plausibility.
The same way it has in real life, a mixture of carrot and stick, the carrot being us supporting them and giving the ruler personally stuff and the stick being that 'If you don't side with us we'll replace you'.
Events are not hyper random, unless something changes that actually effects something else it's not just going to change.
Though of course, if we bring in the Multiverse the entire argument either way is moot since every possible set of events will happen in infinite variations, but..
So, assassination? Bribing locals to overthrow him? Or just send the troops into Mecca? Curiously, the US's practice of replacing third world leaders over the last seventy years has often not worked out for the best in the long run. Somebody should look into that.
The difference being there is literally no other power to support any opposition (re: coups not working, which I'd argue they did many times, just what resulted was not good, even if it did serve the U.S.'s interests) so it's a case of 'Our Way or the Highway'.
Determined how exactly? I thought we went over this- changes don't just magically happen.
The only reason Analytic and Co. even give is 'because one thing is different, everything else will be' without any explanation whatsoever. So basically handwavium. I already made a post responding to this point of view and its total lack of evidence, that changes spread out like ripples from a point of divergence- they don't just happen for their own sake. Oh and many changes don't even ultimately have significance- not every ripple in a puddle creates tsunamis in Asia and not every forest fire triggers runaway global warming that destroys all life in Eaeth.
Even the original chaos theory proponents admitted that chaos had deterministic elements and is not just 'lol random'. I'm not going to go into another pointless debate though if people blindly insist that every tiny thing *must* result in something big even though the evidence shows us otherwise.
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I was going to continue this, but I finally read the whole thing and it's clearly a pure American wank where nothing ever goes wrong for Smug Asshole America. So whatevers.
Isaac Beach
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Is handwavium a thing now? I've never seen it before but it's been used in like four different threads today.
Isaac Beach
Banned
Huh, can't say I've ever seen it before. Then again I've only been here a year so that probably has something to do with it.
The WiP I posted a few days ago is now basically finished, excluding the legend and annotations. So I figured I'll share it here now while this iteration of the thread is still open. You can expect the genuinely complete version this weekend, probably. Anyways, enjoy, and feedback is still greatly appreciated.
What was the fate of European possessions in China? The treaty ports and such swallowed up by the Chinese or Japanese or are they just not shown due to their miniscule size? And what about the Soviets? Not sure how long it went on for, but when the Bolsheviks publically announced they were canceling all unequal treaties with China they refused to actually go through with it, and demanding keeping the TransManchurian Railroad. Speaking of Red's, what about the Pink of Lithuania? Are they socialists or of some sort? Always thought the Pink was more extremely forms of Communism in these maps to represent Mao, Pol Polt, the Shining Path, and others. I could be wrong. Ahh, and was the annexation of Namibia by South Africa accepted by the world here?
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