Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)

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Thomas27

Banned
Recently, the Australian government cancelled the Attack-class attack submarine to move to nuclear attack submarine (SSN) solution in the AUKUS partnership.
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prime-minister

Here’s a little ASB idea I’ve had floating around my head: what if instead of being families which branched off into many smaller languages, Germanic and Latin languages remained two massive lingua franca? I have no idea how this would ever happen, but I thought it’d be fun to write about.

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Germanic and Latin are Indo-European languages that both evolved in Europe during the last few centuries BC. Approximately 520 million people are native speakers of Germanic, the majority of which live in northern Europe, North America, Oceania and eastern and southern Africa. Latin has around 910 million native speakers, slightly fewer than Mandarin, and its speakers are mostly concentrated in southern Europe, Central and South America and western Africa; this makes them the third and second-most widely spoken native languages in the world.

Modern Latin is a modern form of what Roman authors referred to as sermo plebius or sermo vulgaris, meaning ‘common speech’, as it was the spoken and informal form of written Latin. It soon developed as a prominent shared language across the Roman Empire, and after the Empire’s collapse, remained largely in use as a more convenient language that allowed for easy communication. Germanic developed largely in areas that remained out of the Roman Empire, most obviously modern-day Germany and Scandinavia, and after its settlement by the Angles and Saxons, Britain became one of the most prominent Germanic-speaking areas, with the local form, English Germanic, giving it the alternate colloquial name of ‘English’ (though Celtic languages remained prominent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, Germanic became more prominent as a lingua franca).

During the Middle Ages, while the divide between these two languages was strong it was more porous than it is today, which helped allow for variation in languages based on location and colonisation. The most famous example of this would probably be the Germanic influence on Italian Latin in the centuries prior to its unification and the influence of Latin on English Germanic during Norman times (which are sometimes called the ‘Latin Renaissance’ as Britain’s main language during this period was Latin).

The unity of the languages first became a rallying point around the Renaissance, as people grew to see common languages as the most effective way to ensure the spread of education and ideas. As European colonialism began, this belief intensified and the spreading of common languages to unite the globe was a powerful ethical justification for such actions. While these had been largely unsuccessful when applied during the Crusades, they proved considerably more so during colonial conquests, and also contributed to the increased divide between the Latin and Germanic worlds.

Two main factors made English Germanic the most influential form of the language from the 18th century onwards, however: the first of these was the continued expansion of the British Empire, which became the largest colonial empire held by a Germanic-speaking nation, and the second was the emergence of the English Germanic-speaking United States of America as the largest, most populous and by the mid-20th century one of the most powerful nations in the Germanic-speaking world. (Ironically, however, during the First World War public hatred of Germany among Americans led the language to be nicknamed ‘Libertarian’, a name which has stuck among some nationalistic Americans to this day.) Similarly, the Spanish Latin branch of Latin became the most prominent dialect of Latin due to the large expanse of the Spanish Empire, which covered almost all of Central and South America at its height.

Since the end of the Second World War and the founding of the United Nations, NATO and unifying European institutions, the animosity between the languages and those who speak them has steadily cooled; those institutions all use both Germanic and Latin as official languages and bilingualism has gradually become the norm in most areas (a notable exception being the United States, which has remained predominantly Germanic-speaking and does not have Latin as an official language despite considerable international pressure). The teaching of Latin in Germanic countries and Germanic in Latin countries has become mandatory in schools of each other’s countries, and both are widely taught abroad; as of 2021, around 55% of the world’s population speaks either Latin, Germanic or both as a native or second language.
 
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The British President

The British President

Madam President: An ASB look at a flipped gender Presidency
Final
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Ladies, Gentleman and Others
The 44 Presidents of the United States of America
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(The President Song)
America’s president number one, Founding Mother Washington.
Abigail Adams, second president, The very first People’s House resident.
Then Elizabeth Monroe pushed us higher than ever before.
Then Elizabeth Hamilton, number four, Led us through the English war.
Elizabeth Senton is number five, Her Senton Doctrine still survives.
Another Adams, Abigail Smith, Rose to the sixth presidency.
Seven, Rachel Jackson, Was a Fighter For All Rights
Number eight, Angelica Hamilton, pushed American commerce into prosperity.
Dix, nine, passed away, One month after Inaugural Day.
President Tyler, number ten, made peace with the Indians.
Theodosia Burr, eleven, fought the Mexican-American war
Taylor, twelve, of the army, Nicknamed “Rough and Ready.”
Thirteen, Fillmore, in her eyes, Best for all was civil rights
Fourteen, Jane Pierce is here, The Civil War is drawing near.
Sarah Polk, fifteen, fought for compromise till the end
Sixteen, Stanton, Signed the law that freed the slaves.
Seventeen, Harriet Stowe, Started Reconstruction.
Eighteen, Union General Clara Barton, pushed for the rights of American’s
Nineteen, President Harriet Tubman, Pursued the South in many ways.
Alcott, number twenty, Killed while in her presidency.
Next in line, twenty-one. Green Sought reform and got it done.
Susan B Anthony, twenty-two, Remember her ‘cause she’s not through.
Twenty-three, Biddy Mason stood side by with the male population
Susan B Anthony, twenty-four, Ran for the White House, elected once more.
Here’s Willard, twenty-five, The Twentieth Century had arrived.
Annie Oakley, twenty-six, speek softly and carry a big gun
Twenty-seven, Terrell we see carried on Oakley’s Legacy
Victoria Woodhull, twenty-eight, fought to spread democracy
Twenty-nine, Lockwood, Post-World War One, “Normalcy” promised to everyone.
Jessie Tarbox Beals, thirty, stabilised the economy.
Margaret Sanger, thirty-one, Oh no! The Depression had begun.
Eleanor Roosevelt, thirty-two, With her “New Deal” the country grew.
Ilo Wallace, thirty-three, Won with progressive energy.
Earhart, thirty-four, commanded in the Second World War.
Thirty-five, Kathleen Kennedy, Assassinated in sixty-three.
Thirty-six, Betty Freidan., She declared a war for equality
Thirty-seven, Kulp went far, Opening China and the U.S.S.R.
Phyllis Schlafly, thirty-eight, brought stability back once more.
Thirty-nine, with all her might, Chisholm fought for human rights.
Temple, forty, from the West, Taught the world that freedom’s best.
Deer, forty-one, began the war on climate change.
Forty-two, Hillary Clinton, President through the Millennium.
Kay Bailey Hutchison, number forty-three, Strengthened Homeland Security.
Our Forty Forth President Loretta Lynch, fighting for all that is right.
Thank you everyone for reading, liking and supporting this Along the way. ​
 
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164522

Just an idea "what if count Emmanel Dmitrievich Naryshkin was a legitimate son of Emperor Alexander I?"

[OTL Naryshkin considered to be Alexander I's bastard]

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CTTeller

CTTeller

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...'
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prime-minister

I found out recently that Chengdu is a major area of gay subculture for China, so I figured I'd make a little something based on that for my China TL!

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Gaydu is a Chinese drama anthology series created by Wu Hongwei which was first broadcast on China’s CCTV broadcaster in February 2021. It is based around the stories of six characters of different queer identities who live in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan which is known for being relatively pro-LGBTQ. The series’ name comes from a popular nickname of the city among Chinese millennials.

Wu based the experiences of the characters on those of his friends and other queer people he spoke to who had experiences dramatically different to his own, and spent almost five years pitching the series to networks, being repeatedly shut down due to accusations that the series was ‘sensationalist’. Despite this, Wu managed to secure the unabashed support of trans TV host and longtime prominent media personality Jin Xing (who eventually became the series’ executive producer along with Wu).

A big part of the series’ success, however, was by capitalizing on the danmei (耽美- literally ‘indulging beauty’) trend in which queercoded relationships between men are hinted at. What sets Gaydu apart from series like The Untamed (2019) in the danmei genre is that it was written by a gay man and with the intention of explicitly representing a large range of queer communities, rather than being mostly queercoded and largely by and for women. Wu also recruited other prominent queer writers in China including Fan Popo, Zhou Dan and Li Tingting to pen episodes.

The series’ six episodes were:
  • Old Hand, New Blood- Shui, an 18-year-old newly out of the closet, tries to visit Chengdu’s gay quarter for the first time, but is greatly scared and uncomfortable until Caihong, a 36-year-old regular, decides to take him under his wing.
  • Girl’s Night- Ai and Lan, a couple who are the proprietors of a faltering lesbian bar, organise a West-themed ‘girl’s night’ to try and bring in a new crowd.
  • The Other Side- Liang and Xiuying, a bisexual couple in an open marriage, decide to indulge their mutual desire for same-gender sex by pretending to be just friends for a night and hooking up with other people.
  • His and Hers- Qiang and Mei have been encouraged by their parents to enter an arranged marriage, and despite their reluctance they discover something that brings them together- they’re both secretly trans! The wedding will go ahead after all, but instead of being between Qiang and Mei, it will be between Fang and Wei.
  • What Part Do You Have?- while organizing their latest drag show at one of the city’s big theatres, Chang realizes that they’re nonbinary and starts to question what drag really represents to them.
  • I’m Fine, Thanks- a young asexual man called Chao decides to visit a local youth centre in Chengdu to get support with and validation of his identity, and is surprised to find even in a queer space it’s hard to come by.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gaydu proved very controversial for its rather explicit portrayals not only of queerness but of queer sexuality (particularly ‘The Other Side’, which features homosexual sex scenes between both men and women). It also came in for considerable homophobic and queerphobic criticism- a prominent Weibo account called Ziwuxiashi described the series as ‘puerile Western propaganda’ (to which Kevin Tsai, who played Caihong in ‘Old Hand, New Blood’, jokingly replied ‘Do they realize most of the cast haven't been west of Chengdu?’), and CCTV received hundreds of complaints.

Despite these controversies, it achieved excellent viewing figures and was almost universally praised by both TV critics and the country’s LGBTQ community; after its broadcast, tourism within the country to Chengdu increased substantially in spite of the Covid pandemic, as did news reporting on the city’s queer subculture.

In May 2021, Shen Haixiong, the Chief Executive of CCTV, announced that Gaydu would not be commissioned any further and would be removed from streaming services at the end of June. This decision provoked outrage from LGBTQ people in China and their allies, and the ‘save Gaydu’ movement quickly emerged in opposition to the decision. Furthermore, Wu managed to arrange a deal with Netflix to get the series onto streaming services worldwide. This allowed queer audiences in the rest of the world to see it, helped by prominent queer creators and allies on social media; among the most prominent were Russell T Davies, Tony Marchant (creator of the trans-centric British drama Butterfly), the Wachowski sisters, Rebecca Sugar and Noelle Stevenson; speaking up against the cancellation and encouraging queer Westerners to support the series.

This proved extremely beneficial for the show, as it managed to trend for four days on Twitter and almost two weeks on Netflix at the beginning of Pride Month (June) 2021, receiving positive reviews from Western media sources and putting enormous pressure on CCTV to at least reinstate the series if not renew it. Shen not only received backlash from queer and ally audiences, but also from anti-queer ones who condemned him for inadvertently giving the show massive international exposure. He resigned as CCTV’s Chief Executive in mid-June and his replacement, Ha Wen, agreed to immediately rescind the intended removal of the series from streaming. At the end of June, she appeared with Wu at a press conference to announce a second series of the drama, which has started production and is expected to have another six-episode run in early 2022. It is known that the next series will continue to use the anthology format, but it is currently unclear whether any of the characters from series 1 will return.
 
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164522

Some more USA Presidental elections from my Decembrist Victory TL


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President Thomas Corwin died in office in the early 1864, and his vice-president John Bell did not want to run due to por health. So, Emory Washburn, reform-minded Governor of Massachussets, won the Republican Primaries, and next won the elections agains the still-fractured remnants of the Democratic Party and became the POTUS.

1864-1876 in the US saw the finally collapse of the Democrats and rise of the new Populist Party, wich mixted the Jeffersonian Democracy,Jackson and Dorr-style Populism and Wilmot Free Soil Path with European Social Progressive Ideas. In 1868, the Populist John Van Buren (son of the one of Free Soil Party founders, Martin Van Buren, and former Ambassador to Russia), won the Presidental election. Van Buren was reelected in 1868, but died in accident soon after reelection, and his vice-president and sucessor, Charles Cunningham, turn to be quite radical to get a name of"Red Communard" and be expelled from his own party.
 
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