Between that and the fact that Supreme Director Winnie is a brainwashed puppet of his Yankee mother, I could still see Kapp going for an alliance with Europa that Philly chooses to overlook rather than the Brits.
"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
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Between that and the fact that Supreme Director Winnie is a brainwashed puppet of his Yankee mother, I could still see Kapp going for an alliance with Europa that Philly chooses to overlook rather than the Brits.
Speaking of occult and eldritch inspired lore, I kind of had an idea for a volunteer Europan commando unit in the coming American war. Either led by or inspired by Goebbels, they name themselves The Nacht Haunts: strange faceless demons that used to torment the author's childhood nightmares.
Norway swoops in, the hero the Germanian fascists need! Decades of marshalling forces and taking foreign intelligence tips from Phildel are finally going to pay off!
“From being the greatest titan of industry, decades of mismanagement had culminated with the Goodyear family just specialising in footwear. And by that, they just survive by underpaying their employee’s wages not unlike how they’ve done with their infees. ... Guess that some things don’t change.”
- Milton Keyness on the Goodyear Family’s fall to irrelevance, 1965
Sorry my bad. I should have expressed myself better: i agree with you that England has no reason to side with Europea, but i think Churcill will act like OTL Francisco Franco and simply stay neutral during the conflict.
I can see him sending "volunteers" to help the eurofascists but i doubt he wants to be involved in another conflict: not only he has nothing to gain from another Great War, but it is pretty clear that his regime survives mostly thanks to the RU's support ( and right now the RU is kinda busy)
My thinking on Carolina is there will be differences between first-generation versus second-generation, city versus rural, conservative versus progressive (for Carolina). Think the Range Wars of the American West between landowners, merchants and bandits (both native and Union support).
Most Fascist societies OTL seemed to go back to some mythical-golden age so I figure that most of the Union and allies would be some Roman Republic/Sparta type style since they can build from the ground up and have the will and resources to do so. Australia and Britain may have some sort of English Revival style. Carolina would be the Old South. Chinese, Middle Eastern, Indian and Asian states will be a blend of old and new with new buildings replacing destroyed buildings. In the Destiny Road article the Union was adopting a more streamlined, sleek Art Deco style.
What ever happened to Margie Custer? Last we heard of her, Joe Steele was holding her hostage somewhere, but I don't remember if her fate has been revealed. Can we assume she's dead? Or will she make an appearance later on?
A couple pages ago, someone mentioned the idea of having the Neutrality Pact try to set up a “Second Cuban Republic” run by freed Infee slaves. While it’s unlikely to last long, I love the idea, and I was wondering as to who the Neutralists would choose as a leader.
Whoever they are, they’d probably be chosen by the Neutrality Pact’s generals, since you can’t really hold elections when you’re in the middle of a guerilla war and 99% of the populace can’t read or write. The Hispanic generals would be most likely to pick someone who speaks Spanish, so they’d need to be at least partially Hispanic descent. To stick with the Madnessverse’s established tropes, they’d probably be someone who IRL led a revolution in an Infee country, such as Ireland. And of course, they’d need to have been born in the RU’s territory. If only there was someone who checked off all of these boxes...
George de Valero, President of the Second Republic of Cuba and founder of the Cuban guerilla group “Soldiers of Destiny”
Whoever they are, they’d probably be chosen by the Neutrality Pact’s generals, since you can’t really hold elections when you’re in the middle of a guerilla war and 99% of the populace can’t read or write. The Hispanic generals would be most likely to pick someone who speaks Spanish, so they’d need to be at least partially Hispanic descent. To stick with the Madnessverse’s established tropes, they’d probably be someone who IRL led a revolution in an Infee country, such as Ireland. And of course, they’d need to have been born in the RU’s territory. If only there was someone who checked off all of these boxes...
George de Valero, President of the Second Republic of Cuba and founder of the Cuban guerilla group “Soldiers of Destiny”
Considering even Soviet mass culture didn't remain stuffy and Stalinist for that long, I don't think an eclectic group like the Illuminists would let that happen either. Getting rid of religion leaves behind a pretty massive cultural void, and I'm not sure if that can be filled solely with old Jacobin slogans or whatever-- so they would do well to accept all the help from they can get. The government may happily approve of cultural trends with origins outside itself, so long as they are not too self-destructive or critical of authority. So for groups that are somewhat out of place in a Christian society, now's the time to shine.
A somewhat high-risk, high-reward experiment would be trying to repackage schismatic religious movements like the Old Believers as "spiritualists" like the ruling clique. It'd be like some weird echo of the Roman "Pax Deorum" policy of harmonizing all faiths with their own polytheism. Though in practice, I think the Old Believers/Doukhobors/other ascetic movements would reject this and try to isolate themselves from Illuminist society by building communes in rural Siberia (Canada is out of the picture, after all) and hoping the state is distracted by concerns in the cities.
The Illuminists' generally libertine attitude (even if it comes at the expense of liberty) could actually let them outpace the Europans and be as experimental as the Americans-- hell, maybe the TTL version of Beatlemania comes out of the Illuminist sphere, in the form of waves of contraband discs and tapes ORRA confiscates eagerly (and then listens to on their off hours). And if some Russian glam-rock makes its way to Britain there'd be all the more opportunity for Clockwork Orange references :^)
Here's some Russian rock music. The lead of this group, Viktor Tsoi, is of Korean descent (his surname is the same as the one that Korean-Americans romanize as Choi.)
And, of course... a German band named for a Mongol Khan singing the praises of the Russian capital. If this is what Illuminist culture ends up looking like, Madnessverse could use a lot more of it.
A somewhat high-risk, high-reward experiment would be trying to repackage schismatic religious movements like the Old Believers as "spiritualists" like the ruling clique. It'd be like some weird echo of the Roman "Pax Deorum" policy of harmonizing all faiths with their own polytheism. Though in practice, I think the Old Believers/Doukhobors/other ascetic movements would reject this and try to isolate themselves from Illuminist society by building communes in rural Siberia (Canada is out of the picture, after all) and hoping the state is distracted by concerns in the cities.
The Illuminists' generally libertine attitude (even if it comes at the expense of liberty) could actually let them outpace the Europans and be as experimental as the Americans-- hell, maybe the TTL version of Beatlemania comes out of the Illuminist sphere, in the form of waves of contraband discs and tapes ORRA confiscates eagerly (and then listens to on their off hours). And if some Russian glam-rock makes its way to Britain there'd be all the more opportunity for Clockwork Orange references :^)
Here's some Russian rock music. The lead of this group, Viktor Tsoi, is of Korean descent (his surname is the same as the one that Korean-Americans romanize as Choi.)
And, of course... a German band named for a Mongol Khan singing the praises of the Russian capital. If this is what Illuminist culture ends up looking like, Madnessverse could use a lot more of it.
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Damn, I love that idea, if for no other reason than we could also see this in Loomie land:
Lemme take a crack at it:
The United States never adopts the Constitution, and quickly falls apart after Washington dies thanks to some election shenanigans. The USA breaks up into the RUA, Maryland, Virginia, Vermont, Carolina, and Georgia. Then, Napoleon manages to bully the American successor states into fighting against Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. He wins, but only after a devastating invasion of the RU by the Canadians. The misery of the US falling apart and the Napoleonic War leaves the RU angry and revanchist. In comes the Prophet Aaron Burr, with his crazy visions of America as the New Jerusalem inhabited by Pinnacle Protestant Anglo-Saxons, Jews, and Africans stretching across the continent. The RU and the Southern nations expand West, like OTL. Carolina loses OTL Tennessee in an ill-advised war. The RU increasingly falls under the spell of Burr's AFC church, and treats those not WASP, Jewish, or African-American as slaves under the watch of tyrannical tycoon Charles Goodyear. Meanwhile, Britain falls apart in the aftermath of the Napoleonic War, even as France and its allies expand.
In the 1850's, the RU falls to the Fascist Abraham Lincoln, who totally rewrites the Constitution, privileges the AFC, and helps the RU more fully embrace scientific and religious racism against Catholics, Irishmen, Slavs, Balkanites, Spaniards, Italians, Hispanics, etc. He allies with Carolina to eliminate Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia. Carolina reclaims its lost land, and the Union takes the rest. Lincoln dies shortly afterward, ushering in an era of weak leaders. Young war hero George Custer topples the government and makes the RU a de facto one party dictatorship (a path it was leaning towards already). He reforms the country, and leads it into a successful campaign of genocide against Mexico. He also builds the Panama Canal, founds Fascist boy scouts, invades Japan (and dubs the Japanese Jewish Betters), Hawaii, and other Pacific islands. Essentially, he builds the RU into a Fascist superpower. He then leads them into war against the Catholic French alongside the British, Aussies, Carolinians, Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians. By the end, the RU covers basically all of North America. He dies during the war (although that's kept secret) and is replaced by his adoptive son Joe Steele. Steele consolidates his authority over the Church, big business, and everyone in general. He is now preparing to invade Hispanic South America for Manifest Destiny.
I think that by the Oswald Era, the Aussies and the Brits will very much be cultural appendages of the Union. That might even be the case now. In that event, Art Deco now, and then whatever craziness follows in Oswald 70's punk land. One fun thought could be to have the Yankees and their culturally close allies have Draka-esque architecture on public buildings, where it's basically this incredibly extravagant and lurid Greco-Roman monstrosity.
The Cokies are of course going to remain tied to the old South. I imagine the Carolina of the future to be a nation stuck in a mix of TTL's 1930's Art Deco and the 1850's. The Cokie Dream is still probably to live with your beautiful Southern Belle and your children in a traditional Greco-Roman style plantation house that happens to sit on the grounds of a large agricultural operation worked for free by black people.
Some other miscellaneous cultural thoughts:
I wonder what American stereotypes of non-American Betters are? I'm sure as far as my beloved Caroline is concerned it's the duality between redneck on the one hand and genteel plantation lord on the other. One thing I remember from the Churchill chapter is how someone (Harding maybe?) heard his British accent and called him a real Anglo-Saxon or something. I could totally see their being a really weird obsession over British men and women as being extra attractive b/c they get their Pinnacle Fluids "right from the source" or some such nonsense.
Although I don't have a whole lot of ideas yet regarding how Illuminist Russia's culture could turn out, I really would love it if it turns out to be as decadent and insane as Yankee pop culture in the future. I think it's a really interesting twist on the OTL trend for dictatorships to build kind of staid, stoic cultures that don't leave much room for self-indulgence. ITTL, we could have both of the big superpowers having massive cocaine fueled parties with thumping music, in between trying to destroy each other.
Finally, although I have the sneaking suspicion the answer is yes, is the Loomie idea of a Superman going to wind up being their version of the Strong Man/Pinnacle Fluids thing?
If the Chuck Oswald story was ever a movie, a sequence with him tripping balls on heavy medication and imagining himself as Zap Zephyr would be perfectly soundtracked to this. Picture Oswald on a yacht at Martha's Vineyard, seeing the helm as the controls of Zephyr's ship. Booze and drugs flow freely as "his hearty Zed Force crew" parties long into the night. The sequence ends with someone pissing him off by accident, he pulls a pocket pistol out, and shoots them in the face as everyone screams.
Thank you soooo much! I have to agree with what everyone else said: write what you love and know. And if you don't know something, don't be afraid to ask other board members for advice or book/research tips. I would never have been able to write this TL without the help of people like Zoid, DocBrown, Murica, etc.
I've wanted to write some general thoughts on creative TL writing so here it is as rambling commentary at 2 am: Write what you love and a lot of other people will love it too (though, of course not everyone). I've said this TL reflects my own personal obsessions and favorites: Star Wars, 1984, Strangelove, Death of Stalin, Napoleonic, American, and Victorian history, weird conspiracy theories, Warhammer, Fallout, Bioshock (likely Outer Worlds in forseeable future, lol). My number one tip: create something that is as unique and interesting as the franchises, books, timelines, and movies you love. Why do YOU like those? Chances are other people like those same things for similar reasons. I was inspired by things like the unique flavor of Fallout
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I believe this is the video! It really stresses cutting or rewriting awkward or uninteresting dialogue. I have also thought of dabbling in screenplays. A guy in my tiny hick town pitched an idea to Disney and they bought it. I'm very jealous, lol.
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Aw man, I totally want a chapter like this now.
As the final strains of Daydream play out, some aliens come out from behind a table. Zephyr lets out a hoot and fires his ray-grinder...
...Bits of bread, meat, and ketchup plaster the wall of the Eagle's Nest. Oswald has shot the tasty burger the Nest's kitchens had whipped up for him. He empties the rest of the clip into the bookshelf. Outside, the servants cower and wait for it all to be over.
This will head off the inevitable Billy Sunday death chapter coming soon. Working on the next chapter now. It's a short story starring Ambrose Jansen.