ATL "cool bad guys" in lieu of Nazis?
- Thread starter Alkahest
- Start date
Incognito
Banned
Eh?
I realize he is a controversial figure but that shouldn't be a reason not to discuss him. If we're not allowed to talk about controversial historical figures on this site there is little to talk about here
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I thought Dr. Brown wore a bullet-proof vest?
Eh?
I realize he is a controversial figure but that shouldn't be a reason not to discuss him. If we're not allowed to talk about controversial historical figures on this site there is little to talk about here
With the first, this is beyond most controversial figures, lets just put it that way.
Incognito
Banned
...are you a Ukrainian nationalist? If not, why would you find him "beyond most controversial"? Seriously, if we can have TL and discussions about Jesus and Mohammed, I don't see how Nestor Makhno can be MORE controversial.
It takes a man with big balls to risk castration.
or one with nothing to lose....
With the first no. For why, it isn't the bad he did, but rather how muddled accounts of him are.
Sorry, should've made that clear.
Yeah, thats the problem with leading an armed insurrection based on hardcore revolutionary logic deep in rural Ukraine with only the Bolsheviks and a few Whites to relay info to the outside world.
I've read from relatively unbiased sources that he was everything from Robin Hood to Pol Pot.
Though taking Occam's Razor, combined with their 'jolly roger' flags and the oddly bohemian appearance of a lot of the soldier involved, just kind of assumed they were land pirates.
Yeah, thats the problem with leading an armed insurrection based on hardcore revolutionary logic deep in rural Ukraine with only the Bolsheviks and a few Whites to relay info to the outside world.
I've read from relatively unbiased sources that he was everything from Robin Hood to Pol Pot.
Though taking Occam's Razor, combined with their 'jolly roger' flags and the oddly bohemian appearance of a lot of the soldier involved, just kind of assumed they were land pirates.
Exactly, with the 2nd part. Some have claimed he's anti-semintic even though there's evidence that he actually killed soldiers for anti-seminitism, and so on. So really, his account is too muddled to be very useful for a topic such as this.
Besides, do his troops really look, "cool," enough to justify being the new bad guy?
Exactly, they could make great anti-heroes or anti-villains, depending on the writer, however Nazi replacements, definitely not.
I think that for a villain to replace the Nazis, they have to lose. And go down in blood and fire.
Think about it. The Nazis only lasted for 12 years. By the time their nature was beginning to penetrate American consciousness, they were overruning Europe. Beating them required the greatest military commitment in history. And they perished utterly at the very finest peak of evil and atrocity. Their leaders were killed, comitted suicide, or fled into hiding. And fiction has had a free hand to fantasize endlessly on what they would have done if they had won.
Compare to the USSR. The Nazis never had time to mellow. Their grand plans for Eastern Europe never had time to collapse into squalid failure. Their super-science never had a chance to be surpassed and PWNed by US tech. The Nazi Reich never lasted long enough to decay. And they went out in apocalyptic battle, rather than going out like a punk and collapsing ala house of cards. They will forever in historical memory be as they were in 1940-1945.
Any villain you co-exist with for decades becomes less exceptional. Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it breeds normalization. Any Great Enemy sane enough to co-exist with us (I suspect we would have had a full WWIII if the Nazis had survived and kept to their old habits) will be negotiated with, traded with, and will become a subject of debate between the Coexistence and Final Battle factions. The Great Evil must perish bloodily so it can go into myth, rather than shuffle off stage senile and arthritic, or end up principally as a menace to the US small manufacturer.
Bruce
Think about it. The Nazis only lasted for 12 years. By the time their nature was beginning to penetrate American consciousness, they were overruning Europe. Beating them required the greatest military commitment in history. And they perished utterly at the very finest peak of evil and atrocity. Their leaders were killed, comitted suicide, or fled into hiding. And fiction has had a free hand to fantasize endlessly on what they would have done if they had won.
Compare to the USSR. The Nazis never had time to mellow. Their grand plans for Eastern Europe never had time to collapse into squalid failure. Their super-science never had a chance to be surpassed and PWNed by US tech. The Nazi Reich never lasted long enough to decay. And they went out in apocalyptic battle, rather than going out like a punk and collapsing ala house of cards. They will forever in historical memory be as they were in 1940-1945.
Any villain you co-exist with for decades becomes less exceptional. Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it breeds normalization. Any Great Enemy sane enough to co-exist with us (I suspect we would have had a full WWIII if the Nazis had survived and kept to their old habits) will be negotiated with, traded with, and will become a subject of debate between the Coexistence and Final Battle factions. The Great Evil must perish bloodily so it can go into myth, rather than shuffle off stage senile and arthritic, or end up principally as a menace to the US small manufacturer.
Bruce
In my timeline in its infancy, Britain considers Americans and US-backed Nazis to be pure evil. (Nazi Germany=OTL North Korea). Best explained through the Anglo-Canadian Godzilla-esque "Uncle Sam" franchise.
America has a less-cheesy film from the '80's called Redcoat Dawn. Blatant propaganda, but actually quite a badass movie. Movies featuring "Evil Mounties" and "Evil Aristocrats" rake in the million$ in Hollywood.
America has a less-cheesy film from the '80's called Redcoat Dawn. Blatant propaganda, but actually quite a badass movie. Movies featuring "Evil Mounties" and "Evil Aristocrats" rake in the million$ in Hollywood.
Nah, we never really have French villains outside of stuff set in the Napoleonics and the like.
I don't think Scots make as cool villains as Nazis. A kilt, tam o shanter and claymore don't match sub machine gun, jack boots and coal scuttle helmet.
I beg to differ, the French are always and everywhere the villains of the piece, even when they're the designated heroes.
Evidently, the question is when.
What's the subjective present-day date of the ATL? What is the subjective POV?
For instance, some mentioned that the Ottoman Empire would be a villain, but it's too weak. He probably was thinking 1870 to today, i.e. when that empire was in decline. But if the date is 1520, oh my! They're unstoppable, their dress code is exotic and lavish, their army is fanatical and disciplined, and if the POV is European, they're evil evil evil. Cruel and unusual punishment, loot kill rape, enslavement and conversion, and they also kidnap and enslave your children to turn them against you. Someone mentioned the Draka as good villains. Well, the Draka's slave soldiers are called Janissaries, now, who invented that term?
For a 2012 villain and again from a Western POV, I'd say someone who is just as fanatical, oppressive and bent on conquering the world, giving others a choice between death and conversion to their foreign set of rules. Their uniforms could easily be quite exotic and dehumanizing. If you add a willingness to use kamikaze tactics and let them acquire mass destruction weapons too, they're pretty scary.
The audience is important, too. We history buffs might perceive how frightening the Spaniards could be to the English at a certain time in history, or the Persians to the Greeks, or the Aztecs to some of their neighbors. But the average reader?
I can kind of see a world where almost everybody in modern Western society agrees that the British Empire was irredeemably evil. Colonialism is pretty horrific when you aren't ignoring it, and Kitchener did invent concentration camps in South Africa fighting the Boers as it was.
Maybe combine WWI spinning out of the Franco-British conflict in North Africa near the end of the 19th century, with Britain and Germany fighting France and Russia, and get William Jennings Bryan in the White House. Neutrality in this alt-Great War, and an anti-Imperialist president could create the conditions for anti-British films in the early film industry in, let's say Menlo Park as a replacement for Hollywood (Edison invents everything ever that Tesla doesn't in AH, right?).
The British Empire is the largest, most powerful force in the world and in a few short decades will fall into flame as the United States and heroic allies China, Japan, etc. support rebellions in Ireland, Africa, India, etc. And without WWII vets and developed trade union movements and middle-class intelligentsia (police officers, teachers, doctors) among the native populations, decolonialism is gonna be a lot more nastier for the colonial subjects; effectively filling in the Soviet Union style wave of bodies role in the anti-British side.
With that everything else works. The Special Relationship never had time to really manifest any great cooperation that would stick out in the history books, Britain was the "colonial oppressor" of the United States itself way back when, and if the Great War starts in the 1890's then there is a great chance you can have Victorian style British military uniforms last longer. Having curbstomped the French near the turn of the century, there might never have been a real incentive to modernize and get helmets and whatnot, leading to ostentatiously dressed British soldiers fighting Americans, the first modern fighting force, in the 1930's alternate WWII.
Jacobite victory TL, where depraved Scottish aristocrats support divine right
A Jacobite victory TL could combine disgust of a long-lasting absolutist monarchy with casting Scots scotting it up stereotypically as the depraved aristocrats cliche du jour, and combine it again with the Catholic menace and French and German stock villains cliches. The House of Stuart, allied with France, with familial ties to the Germanies.
Maybe combine WWI spinning out of the Franco-British conflict in North Africa near the end of the 19th century, with Britain and Germany fighting France and Russia, and get William Jennings Bryan in the White House. Neutrality in this alt-Great War, and an anti-Imperialist president could create the conditions for anti-British films in the early film industry in, let's say Menlo Park as a replacement for Hollywood (Edison invents everything ever that Tesla doesn't in AH, right?).
The British Empire is the largest, most powerful force in the world and in a few short decades will fall into flame as the United States and heroic allies China, Japan, etc. support rebellions in Ireland, Africa, India, etc. And without WWII vets and developed trade union movements and middle-class intelligentsia (police officers, teachers, doctors) among the native populations, decolonialism is gonna be a lot more nastier for the colonial subjects; effectively filling in the Soviet Union style wave of bodies role in the anti-British side.
With that everything else works. The Special Relationship never had time to really manifest any great cooperation that would stick out in the history books, Britain was the "colonial oppressor" of the United States itself way back when, and if the Great War starts in the 1890's then there is a great chance you can have Victorian style British military uniforms last longer. Having curbstomped the French near the turn of the century, there might never have been a real incentive to modernize and get helmets and whatnot, leading to ostentatiously dressed British soldiers fighting Americans, the first modern fighting force, in the 1930's alternate WWII.
Jacobite victory TL, where depraved Scottish aristocrats support divine right
A Jacobite victory TL could combine disgust of a long-lasting absolutist monarchy with casting Scots scotting it up stereotypically as the depraved aristocrats cliche du jour, and combine it again with the Catholic menace and French and German stock villains cliches. The House of Stuart, allied with France, with familial ties to the Germanies.
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