Obscurity can make a subject boring, can it not? Especially if the one place kids learn about dinosaurs is in class.
Look to the West Volume V: To Dream Again
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Obscurity can make a subject boring, can it not? Especially if the one place kids learn about dinosaurs is in class.
The fact that half of your nods to OTL are stuff like this is one of the reasons we like this TL. Screw realism, because LTTW
Having some experience on the subject of children, I think they'll still be fascinated by GIANT MONSTERS even if the monsters in question are Terror Chickens instead of Terror Lizards.
Kaiphranos
Donor
I guess the counterargument is that there are plenty of prehistoric monsters that aren't particularly well known - not as many kids go wild for Megacerops or Liopleurodon as they do for T. rex. (And maybe we're culturally primed to find giant extinct animals exciting.) I can imagine a world where dinosaurs are less sensationalized, or less of a cultural phenomenon. I would expect that kids in LTTW don't dislike dinosaurs per se, it's just that they barely remember them from that one-day lesson as part of a Grade 9 geology class.
See I'm not sure you can butterfly away the dinosaurs that easily as pop culture icons. They are the perfect combination - many are gigantic, all of them are exotic and unlike other prehistoric monsters like the placeoderms or synapsids, they are recent enough that there is an excellent fossil record available for everyone to marvel at. But okay, let's try and make it work. One thing in our favour is the fact that there was a group of ancient animals that were as much headline grabbers as the dinosaurs - the mammals. Let's say that remains of the indricotheres and a few other giant mammals are found earlier, whilst the remains of the sauropods and the giant therapods don't turn up until latter than OTL. This is achievable, there is enough mayhem in England and the western OTL US that maybe nobody really cares to go digging up old bones, especially when there are really impressive remains coming out of Mongolia and other parts of Asia in form of the biggest land mammals that ever lived.
Actually another thing that both interests me and fills me with dread is the effect that the conflict between societism and diversertarianism is going to have on paleontology and especially the theories on the origins of humanity.
teg
Actually another thing that both interests me and fills me with dread is the effect that the conflict between societism and diversertarianism is going to have on paleontology and especially the theories on the origins of humanity.
teg
All this has me so hype to see just how f-ed up Diversitarian culture is, especially the old Russian administration that keeps on getting alluded to as too extreme even for the truth-denying ASN.
Here we go derailing the thread with palaeontology again. 
I vote we make this a heritage point of controversy. I mean, I wanto to riot.
I like teg's idea about mammals.
EDIT: "the truth-denying ASN"? What am I forgetting again?
I vote we make this a heritage point of controversy. I mean, I wanto to riot.
I like teg's idea about mammals.
EDIT: "the truth-denying ASN"? What am I forgetting again?
Bulldoggus
Banned
I wish we had mandatory state-sanctioned riots. Gets out the bad energy.
At least they're honest about it.
Dinos are boring. Never @ Me.
I always kind of thought of HPoC's as a parody of the weird niche historical arguments we get up to on here
But if you take them seriously they are pretty nuts.
I wonder how videogames will be called in this timeline. Something that uses the word "ludo" for example. Ludovisor or ludoscope come to my mind. How about how videogames would be developed with Diversatarianism going on? Every component of the videogame will have to be different (including levels, enemies and maybe more than one character for example) as a subliminal message to the children that difference is good and should be embraced? One thing for sure: they won't have dinosaurs since that ain't got to be attractive for kids ?)
Bulldoggus
Banned
Oh don't be silly, it's a healthy way of weeding out personal nationalisms and the like.
I was going to say that video games ITTL wouldn't necessarily be overtly ideological: after all Tetris isn't about the glories of socialism and Pac-Man isn't about glorious democtatic freedom.
But the Diversitarians and Societists probably really DO cram overt ideology in all their media like the US stereotype of Soviets.
Considering that the ideologies of this TL are based on culture instead of economics, unlike OTL, I think that the culture war through media will have a pretty important role. For what we saw of media on the 20th century, the Diversitarian goverments take it pretty seriously. I don't see something really ideological or preachy but maybe a goverment reglamentation that videogames should have diversity on their components.