Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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Welcome to AH.com fiction
Broke
Telling events via characters and narration
Woke
Mechanically listing events like a goddamn history textbook.
Think of it more as a Wikipedia article or a history textbook than a real story, and you're good to go.
Let's not forget that if one can succeed by the dice, they can also be defeated by the dice. Here's hoping that when the big confrontation with Drakia happens they get hammered hard by the dice rolls.
It sounds more like either
- A person from ITTL who somehow ended up in our world and is explaining his world's history to us.
- Someone who documents multiple timelines.
In the case of this timeline, yes. It's certainly jarring, and while I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the... shall we say, informality of it all, I Iike the story enough to stick around.
I guess I was speaking more about most other TLs on this site than this one in my previous statement.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
You're going to have to explain this one.
You know that wasn't deliberate- I was trying to channel Hoxaist Albania- but looking back I can see what you mean.
It was a war to the knife, desperate, courageous, and glorious for the defenders. The butcher's bill was high enough to shock the Drakians- they went in with equipment and tactics designed for lightly-armed insurgents and got their nose bloodied. It helped the rebels that there was some help from the rest of the world, weapons and ammunition smuggled in under the table, etc. that the battered Drakian Navy couldn't stop.
Was it worth it? Well as @Workable Goblin pointed out the region didn't have much in the way of irreplaceable resources or super strategic locations (access to the Arabian Gulf maybe). Drakia went all in out partly out of concern that if they let the Middle East go it would inspire rebels elsewhere, but mostly for reasons of ideology and pride. The Noble Race cannot allow itself to be defeated by inferiors, it must punish traitors to the Empire, letting territory slip from their hands would be a setback to the Final Society.
Quite so, although no one went as far as sending special forces to help train the insurgents.
He's a controversial figure, Perdue had some fairly successful economic programs and he restored civilian oversight to an out-of-control military. But yeah, he messed up a lot of stuff.
I'm a big fan of technocracy! I'm not planning on doing much with it in this particular TL, but Japanese Imperial Democracy has some technocratic elements.
Good thoughts from both of you.
We'll talk about high-energy physics when we get around to touching base with the current state of technological progress in the Separate-verse.
Well.... the Arabs haven't forgotten that during the Crucible the Zionists fought with Drakia against the Arabs in exchange for their own princely state. The Judeo-Arab Revolt helped ease some of the bad feelings from that but they're not gone and the Arabists remember.
A very good analogy.
I like how you put this- Japan is trying to copy the tactics the US used to unify North America to unify East Asia and South Asia. But the American system isn't perfect- once it ran into people who point-blank refused to integrate it started having problems. And the situation in Asia is very different from North America.
Yeah, one of the reasons why I went with Geoism as a major ideology ITTL in the first place was because I had an idea for a Khmer Rouge-esque Georgian regime.
According to where I found the picture it was a colorized photo from the 1950s. Perhaps it was miscolored. In any case let's say that the Separate-verse recognized that yellow is a better color for visibility than red earlier on than OTL- we didn't recognize that until the 1960s and didn't implement it wide-scale until the 1970s and 80s.
A committee took over running Russia after he got it and calmed things down considerably. They've run right up into the consequences of reality and are currently trying to straighten out the mess to some degree.
The hazards of covering the Drakaverse! But that's a good suggestion, you can certainly tell which countries I'm focusing on and which I'm not. Let me see what I can...
Friggin amazing, I love it. Cannon. Good catch with Burma, btw.
Brazil's relationship with Drakia is... strained to say the least. Rio has sheltered escaping Bondsmen and dissidents fleeing the empire and Drakia has ambitions towards the Brazilian African islands.
...
I'll take that as a compliment on the verisimilitude of my writing. I hope that's not too confusing- you are still living in OTL!
There's got to be a good meme for this, but I can't find one.
Oh it's not that bad- you're reading it, you must be here for a reason.
Now I'm offended.
That is a fair stylistic question.
There are a lot of TL writers who write as if their TL came from in-universe sources- @Thande does this with LTTW, so does @Jared with LoRaG. Thande uses multiverse travelers to provide an OTL perspective and analysis, both Thande and Jared also use footnotes to provide explanations of things. @Al-numbers does this as well with his excellent TL about Sarawak. There's also an approach I've seen- I believe that @Napoleon53 uses it on occasion for WMIT- to provide some explanation/exposition in a post following the main chapter post. Some people like to write TLs entirely in prose (I did this when I first started out here), some like to mix and match prose and textbook-style- you do that @HeX with AMPU, and Napoleon does it for WMIT- and there are plenty that are just textbook/encyclopedia-esque. All of the TLs referenced here are excellent in their own way.
When I started this TL I decided to do something that I had experimented a little with, but hadn't really done before. I was going to integrate my commentary directly into the main narrative and I was going to make the tone snarky. I was also going to do the whole thing textbook style.
Why do it like this? Well partly because that was how the idea formed in my head, but mostly because I wanted to. I'm writing this TL as something fun to do in my free time. I'm... dealing with some exhausting bullshit right now, one element of which is the fact that I have three preps for three classes I've never taught before, only one of which is history, and that's for a combined 7th/8th grade class for which content is so far down my list priorities (classroom management comes first, second, and third) that I find my lesson plans boring. Writing this TL is one of the few things I genuinely look forward to when I have a free moment. It's a chance to scratch my history itch, a chance to have fun with some low-stakes creative writing. I find textbook style a lot more enjoyable to write than prose (I'm autistic, don't judge me), and the thought of working out all of the details needed for in-universe sources is exhausting. It's easier to explain things in the text than to footnote the explanations, it makes more sense in my head, and the snark is a nice release. I also love seeing people commenting, whether to discuss elements of the TL or just to say that they're enjoying it (constructive criticism is fine too- it means you care enough to make suggestions).
Point is- I'm genuinely sorry if the tone is jarring or difficult to follow at times. I have on occasion just started gushing about what I think is a fascinating point in OTL history before relating it to TTL, and I can see how that could be confusing. I may not be doing it in the future, but right now it's just something I'm enjoying and having fun with.
Besides, this is a Drakaverse cover- a little informality is merited I think.
I hope I didn't come off wrong there--I didn't mean "jarring" in a bad way. It's "jarring" in comparison to what one might usually find on this site, which is by no means a bad thing.Point is- I'm genuinely sorry if the tone is jarring or difficult to follow at times. I have on occasion just started gushing about what I think is a fascinating point in OTL history before relating it to TTL, and I can see how that could be confusing. I may not be doing it in the future, but right now it's just something I'm enjoying and having fun with.
Besides, this is a Drakaverse cover- a little informality is merited I think.
Oh it's not that bad- you're reading it, you must be here for a reason.
I'm not gonna lie part of the reason I keep coming here is for the Alternative writing styles and exercises in Pure worldbuilding. Other than Watchmen and Stephen Kings Carrie I cant think of any piece of fiction that includes extensive in universe newspapers, scientific texts, and meta fiction.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Not at all, I hope my response didn't come off wrong either.
It's nice to read, but a headache to make.
Harry Potter has quite a few articles from various wizarding publications, if I recall correctly.
That was certainly a horrifying and heartbreaking last update. Unfortunately, with no help from the US/Grand Alliance, it also wasn’t a surprise.
To echo what others have said, Perdue’s reputation will likely worsen, if and when Drakia emerges for most Americans as a true existential threat.
I’m assuming that the recent war and rebellion is being spun by Aurica for the Drakians as a glorious, divine victory over the perfidious Yankee Machine State (never mind that Drakia wasn’t facing a committed and fully mobilized USA/Grand Alliance). This seems to be what this timeline is building towards. I only hope the outcome isn’t the same or worse than in the original story.
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It seems we’re being set up for this world’s version of the Eurasian War, possibly featuring a revanchist/expansionist Drakian-Russian alliance of convenience, other European powers willing to challenge the US-led world order, and a Japanese Empire planning to put an end to US influence in Asia and the Pacific.
So far this timeline has done a good job of paralleling the original Drakaverse timeline without copying it. Given that in the original story the Japanese were able to extend their reach at one point to parts of Central America, I wonder if the continuing violent unrest in that region will factor at all in the Great Pacific War.
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I also can’t help but wonder what Arthur Klein’s fate will be in the Country of the Dragon (this isn’t unlike if, say, Admiral Yamamoto had defected to the US after the Pearl Harbor attack). Will the Drakians pump him for information before a show trial/execution? Will Stoker hold a triumph featuring a Klein newly “converted” to Drakia’s state faith and worldview? Or does Klein have something else entirely planned?
To echo what others have said, Perdue’s reputation will likely worsen, if and when Drakia emerges for most Americans as a true existential threat.
I’m assuming that the recent war and rebellion is being spun by Aurica for the Drakians as a glorious, divine victory over the perfidious Yankee Machine State (never mind that Drakia wasn’t facing a committed and fully mobilized USA/Grand Alliance). This seems to be what this timeline is building towards. I only hope the outcome isn’t the same or worse than in the original story.
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It seems we’re being set up for this world’s version of the Eurasian War, possibly featuring a revanchist/expansionist Drakian-Russian alliance of convenience, other European powers willing to challenge the US-led world order, and a Japanese Empire planning to put an end to US influence in Asia and the Pacific.
So far this timeline has done a good job of paralleling the original Drakaverse timeline without copying it. Given that in the original story the Japanese were able to extend their reach at one point to parts of Central America, I wonder if the continuing violent unrest in that region will factor at all in the Great Pacific War.
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I also can’t help but wonder what Arthur Klein’s fate will be in the Country of the Dragon (this isn’t unlike if, say, Admiral Yamamoto had defected to the US after the Pearl Harbor attack). Will the Drakians pump him for information before a show trial/execution? Will Stoker hold a triumph featuring a Klein newly “converted” to Drakia’s state faith and worldview? Or does Klein have something else entirely planned?
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I'm wondering: in the vanilla Draka series, the Citizens make sure to treat their serfs very kindly unless they revolt, and the serfs in turn have a lot of Happiness in Slavery (barring the ones who were recently enserfed). What do citizen-serf relations look like ITTL?
And another thing (sorry for the doublepost): I made a TV Tropes page for this thing at long last. Anyone care to add to it?
Definitely not like that.
Jesus is that really in the original books? I thought the entire point of the Draka series was to make a non-nazi evil faction for Alternate History.
I mean when the serfs try rebelling they impale them.
The point was that the Draka aren't evil for the sake of being evil, but they're also very pragmatic, and know when not to be evil as well as being unhinged psychos. It honestly comes off as even more disturbing than "evil slavers who abuse them every waking hour".
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It is a rather interesting situation and does provide Drakians quite few options depending how they choose to use him. I feel that although he obviously isn't liked in Drakia, at least keeping him alive might be beneficial, if for nothing else than just showing how merciful Drakians are towards their enemies. It's not like you will have rows of Americans defecting to Drakia but it still might be useful not to treat him too badly. He will probably tell quite willingly everything he knows about American secrets and do anything Drakians ask from him anyway.
In the books, as I dimly remember, the "Happy" serfs depicted were domestic and the sex was consensual.
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