The Ratch thing seemed a little on the nose, so I went back and edited it to make it weirder. He was already a serial killer in the first draft, so why not commit and double down?
"Power Without Knowledge...": President Haig and the Era of Bad Feelings
- Thread starter Born in the USSA
- Start date
Another random note: I was looking at the different language families of Africa, since they'll be a factor among many as the Zeitgeist expands and the various Continental Commonwealths finalize their borders with one another, and I'm reminded that given the peaceful resolution of Yugoslavia balkanization as a term would not exist. Since it's still a useful concept* when Cosmicism focuses on devolution and (if necessary) the trading of regions with one another**, the analogue to the term TTL will be afrikaanization, given the fate of South Africa and its spectacular schism.
*Splittism would also work, it's similarly pejorative, but it also lacks flourish so I'm discarding it 😂 Autonomism is the preferred term in actual Cosmicist parlance.
**For a purely hypothetical example, if they came into existence tomorrow a Saharan Cosmicist Commonwealth would be expected to freely trade southern Sudan to a Subsaharan CC, with the latter giving up northern Nigeria under the same logic. It suits both the drive toward regional devolution within formerly independent states and the use of a combination of superstructural factors in addition to geographical ones to determine boundaries between Cosmicist states.
*Splittism would also work, it's similarly pejorative, but it also lacks flourish so I'm discarding it 😂 Autonomism is the preferred term in actual Cosmicist parlance.
**For a purely hypothetical example, if they came into existence tomorrow a Saharan Cosmicist Commonwealth would be expected to freely trade southern Sudan to a Subsaharan CC, with the latter giving up northern Nigeria under the same logic. It suits both the drive toward regional devolution within formerly independent states and the use of a combination of superstructural factors in addition to geographical ones to determine boundaries between Cosmicist states.
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From what I understand splittism is the English translation of the Chinese term for ethnic separatism
Media Matters: The Darkening Sky
One of the most famous "might have beens" in the history of American comics comes down to a single element of pure random chance. In 2008 Warren Ellis was at the top of his game, with half a dozen series out simultaneously, all generating huge reader interest and positive industry response despite his infamous tendency toward schedule slip. Unfortunately a single hard drive crash destroyed all his notes for his unfinished series, and they were all sadly left dying on the vine. Not so in the world of Power Without Knowledge. In a world with a more diverse comics medium Ellis thrived, and it was only a matter of time before movie rights were optioned. The subject of this entry is the history and impact of one of those movies. It's time to talk Doktor Sleepless.
Ten years ago, John Reinhardt left the Pacific Northwest city of Heavenside, leaving his friends and a slew of public domain biohacking tools in his wake. Now he's returned changed, having crafted the moniker of Doktor Sleepless and set about unleashing the subculture that grew around his discarded inventions to bring the city down. As transhumanist gangs and a roving serial killer begin to tear the city apart and a strange and inexplicable disease begins to spread, his ex tries to get to the bottom of where exactly he lost his mind as a second John Reinhardt furiously writes a manifesto from his prison cell and strange alien gods seek to devour humanity.
That brief synopsis doesn't do the project justice, but a population accustomed to cosmic horror and strange philosophy on the big screen and seeing evidence of social decay in their daily lives flocked to it, making the film a breakout success of the 2011 movie season, even netting Bradley Cooper an Oscar nomination for his bizarre and compelling role as Reinhardt(s). The film proved popular enough to gain a sequel in 2015, The Darkening Sky, adapting the second half of the 35 issue series and retaining Cooper in his role(s). The duology and the series that inspired it has maintained mass cultural currency even despite Ellis's fall from grace in 2020. This lingering relevancy is best seen in the rise of the Grinder subculture, an elegant illustration of the series' theme of fixed ideas bootstrapping themselves into lived reality.
In Doktor Sleepless and its adaptation, the Grinders can best be described as a body modification punk subculture. When the tendency began to catch on in the real world the fact that the good Doktor regarded them as poseurs and useful idiots in-text was deliberately ignored, with the ideals of biohacking and resistance to authority, whether social, corporate or government, adopted with abandon. For natural reasons thought leaders among the Grinders gravitated toward the Subversive Party, using posts on libertatia.us and a slew of encrypted social media platforms to proselytize their manifestos and show off their chemical regimens, bathtub CRISPR and implanted sensors and microchips.
Mainstream reaction to the deceptively small but vocal subculture was mixed, from interest to indifference to disgust, and the occasional stories of botched back alley surgeries and grinds gone bad were always sure to make the news. Though too few in number to have an actual electoral impact, the tensions of the 2016 campaign would actually hand-deliver them the perfect vehicle for future expansion. While the Subversive Party had risen up in the wake of Powell's War on Terror and the further enshrinement of the Haig security state, the polarizing Moseley-Braun administration had seen a massive surge of right-wing keyboard warriors gravitate toward the movement, turning what was meant to be a Union of Egoists into yet another extrusion of right wing cultural grievance. This issue would be neatly resolved by the rise of Buchanan and Z-Thought siphoning off a majority of those "members", leaving Egoist-Extropianism the defacto largest tendency within the Subversive movement.
Ten years ago, John Reinhardt left the Pacific Northwest city of Heavenside, leaving his friends and a slew of public domain biohacking tools in his wake. Now he's returned changed, having crafted the moniker of Doktor Sleepless and set about unleashing the subculture that grew around his discarded inventions to bring the city down. As transhumanist gangs and a roving serial killer begin to tear the city apart and a strange and inexplicable disease begins to spread, his ex tries to get to the bottom of where exactly he lost his mind as a second John Reinhardt furiously writes a manifesto from his prison cell and strange alien gods seek to devour humanity.
That brief synopsis doesn't do the project justice, but a population accustomed to cosmic horror and strange philosophy on the big screen and seeing evidence of social decay in their daily lives flocked to it, making the film a breakout success of the 2011 movie season, even netting Bradley Cooper an Oscar nomination for his bizarre and compelling role as Reinhardt(s). The film proved popular enough to gain a sequel in 2015, The Darkening Sky, adapting the second half of the 35 issue series and retaining Cooper in his role(s). The duology and the series that inspired it has maintained mass cultural currency even despite Ellis's fall from grace in 2020. This lingering relevancy is best seen in the rise of the Grinder subculture, an elegant illustration of the series' theme of fixed ideas bootstrapping themselves into lived reality.
In Doktor Sleepless and its adaptation, the Grinders can best be described as a body modification punk subculture. When the tendency began to catch on in the real world the fact that the good Doktor regarded them as poseurs and useful idiots in-text was deliberately ignored, with the ideals of biohacking and resistance to authority, whether social, corporate or government, adopted with abandon. For natural reasons thought leaders among the Grinders gravitated toward the Subversive Party, using posts on libertatia.us and a slew of encrypted social media platforms to proselytize their manifestos and show off their chemical regimens, bathtub CRISPR and implanted sensors and microchips.
Mainstream reaction to the deceptively small but vocal subculture was mixed, from interest to indifference to disgust, and the occasional stories of botched back alley surgeries and grinds gone bad were always sure to make the news. Though too few in number to have an actual electoral impact, the tensions of the 2016 campaign would actually hand-deliver them the perfect vehicle for future expansion. While the Subversive Party had risen up in the wake of Powell's War on Terror and the further enshrinement of the Haig security state, the polarizing Moseley-Braun administration had seen a massive surge of right-wing keyboard warriors gravitate toward the movement, turning what was meant to be a Union of Egoists into yet another extrusion of right wing cultural grievance. This issue would be neatly resolved by the rise of Buchanan and Z-Thought siphoning off a majority of those "members", leaving Egoist-Extropianism the defacto largest tendency within the Subversive movement.
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So, since it's May Day and all, that got me curious about several things. For one, how's socialism and communism and all those centre-left to left-wing to far-left political ideologies reacting and adapting to this whole new ideological rival on the world stage? Are there any new notable political holidays, both Cosmicist and non-Cosmicist? And, well, are there any notable new holidays in general? And by that, said notable holidays can be either international or country-specific. That's all the questions I have for now. Have a good one!
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Fairly well, surprisingly enough. With the fall of the PRC at the end of the 20th Century and the shift in the newly-christened Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics to state capitalism* the global communist vanguard shifted to the Fifth International centered in Latin America. The 5I had chapters active in Antarctica that ended up part of the Cosmicist-led Common Ground and though they lost out in the ensuing power struggle relations remained amicable for a handful of reasons:
- Shared opposition to exploitative northern imperialism
- Overlap in certain policies and goals
- The fact that the rise of the Cosmicist regime in Patagonia toppled several oligarchical governments opposed to the 5I America Unida statebuilding project
Most of the ARC holidays are specific to themselves, though the rest of the Cosmintern has embraced a more raucous Christmas season inspired by their Yule and the Memorial Days weeklong holiday is celebrated all over the alliance, since quite aside from its current role as the ARC election days it commemorates the Rising** that led to the outbreak of the Revolution. The mass adoption of the HE Cosmicist Fixed Calendar also means that they celebrate Fugue Day in leap years.
As for the broader world:
- July 2 is Unification Day in the North American Union
- The Eurasian Union makes a national holiday out of the Vozhd's birthday
- The various Continental Commonwealths have their own slates of national holidays
- November 16 commemorates the history of Paneuropeanism in the PEC
*The USSR eventually gave up the ghost, morphing into the National Bolshevist Eurasian Union
** Itself chosen to commemorate the sinking of the Kanaloa.
Those answers have now made me come up with more questions. That's some new lore I don't recall see in any of the past chapters before. I think. I'll have to go back and reread them again when I have the chance. But enough of that for now. Onwards to the questions! First off is the North American Union. I presume it takes up the US and Canada, right? Hopefully in future chapters we'll be able to have a detailed look into what led up to it. Although, tbh, I'm not really too sold on the date of Unification Day.
Both the US and Canada's independence/national days are in July, the fourth and the first for the former and the latter respectively. If you're going to establish a new union and thus new country, wouldn't it make sense to pick a day which is significant to both constituent parts, if you get what I mean? For example, September 1st is Canada's Labour Day, while in America Labor Day is usually celebrated on the first Monday of September. It would be cool to see the declaration of the NAU in the year where the dates for Labour Day and Labor Day align together, right?
Okay, that's enough talk about the future of North America though. It's time to move onto the Eurasian Union. More specifically, National Bolshevism. I'm assuming that the National Bolshevists are similar to the ones we know IRL (Well, hopefully we don't personally known any NatBols I hope!) they're also different in their own peculiar ways Well, that or they're just communists/Bolsheviks with a more nationalistic streak in them. I again also hope we'll see in future chapters just how they managed to get into power.
And finally, how's China, Korea, and Japan reacting to a big ole country that just by its name alone seems to be claiming all of Eurasia as their sphere of influence? Not very well I take it? Honestly don't expect them to if I'm being honest. But hey, all the more alliances and pacts and treaties and stuff to torture geopolitical analysts and history students in the future, so let's go consider that a win.
Alright, that's all for now, keep up the great work!
Both the US and Canada's independence/national days are in July, the fourth and the first for the former and the latter respectively. If you're going to establish a new union and thus new country, wouldn't it make sense to pick a day which is significant to both constituent parts, if you get what I mean? For example, September 1st is Canada's Labour Day, while in America Labor Day is usually celebrated on the first Monday of September. It would be cool to see the declaration of the NAU in the year where the dates for Labour Day and Labor Day align together, right?
Okay, that's enough talk about the future of North America though. It's time to move onto the Eurasian Union. More specifically, National Bolshevism. I'm assuming that the National Bolshevists are similar to the ones we know IRL (Well, hopefully we don't personally known any NatBols I hope!) they're also different in their own peculiar ways Well, that or they're just communists/Bolsheviks with a more nationalistic streak in them. I again also hope we'll see in future chapters just how they managed to get into power.
And finally, how's China, Korea, and Japan reacting to a big ole country that just by its name alone seems to be claiming all of Eurasia as their sphere of influence? Not very well I take it? Honestly don't expect them to if I'm being honest. But hey, all the more alliances and pacts and treaties and stuff to torture geopolitical analysts and history students in the future, so let's go consider that a win.
Alright, that's all for now, keep up the great work!
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The North American Union hasn't gotten much focus aside from the WORLD AS IT IS map update and a little bit at the end of the 2060 aftermath post. It's the US+Canada+northern Mexico.
Labor Day's a tricky business, since the NAU is opposed to the Fifth International and labor agitation (and Cosmicism) are both part of the Zapatista coalition that the country's respectable class despises. July 2 was a pragmatic choice, since on the one hand it's not on any of the component countries' founding holiday (but close enough to both you can make a long celebration out of it) and there's also some tripe about how "July 2 was when the Declaration of Independence was really signed and Canada was always intended to be a party to it anyway".
They're sort of like OTL 90s NazBols, just less openly Nazi. Basically they combine "socialism in one country" with a strong centralized nationalist state and the idea that that "one country" has just straight up absorbed all of its immediate allies, so there's no ideological disconnect.
China/Korea/Japan are part of the Belt and Road Directorate and extremely opposed to the Eurasian Union project. The ROC has given up the ghost on their shortlived experiment with democracy, unfortunately, and the BaRD is very much a sinocentric vehicle revolving around a China that's gone all in on this little number:
Thanks so much! It's always very reassuring that people find my weird projects interesting 😂
From the flag you posted some time ago I thought they were a Duginist thing.
It was indeed, those he's more of a doctrinaire NazBol TTL rather than having to come up with his own weird gloss on the concept.
Uchronia and Oubliette
As you can presumably guess given the genre I'm writing it in, indie alternate histories (particularly the ones on this site) were a huge influence on my Oubliette concept, so I thought I'd like to talk a bit on that! My interest in uchronia goes way back, I have fond memories of checking out TL-191 books from my local library as a kid and I once gave nearly an hour long book report in high school on The Years of Rice and Salt. The assignment was only for 15 minutes but I got an A so... 😂
I'd originally joined the site in 2015 to read @DG Valdron's Green Antarctica, so I suppose you could say the intersection of Antarctica and alternate history goes way back with me and it's held fast ever since. As I became more invested and began to both seek out more timelines and begin starting my own threads my exploration of the broader uchronian genre became deeply entangled with a profound political shift I was going through at the time, sparking my longstanding interest in divergent ideologies and political systems. Some were certainly better grounded than others but I found them all interesting and it really demonstrated that given a combination of proper material conditions and social trends the movements of the body politic can writhe and spasm in the most interesting of directions.
@Napoleon53's What Madness is This (both versions) and EBR's Separated at Birth resonated with my preexisting tendency to free-associate historical and cultural details and ratchet up the resulting melange to create new and interesting texture for stories, and I hold both creators and their works in very high esteem as pinnacles of that more gonzo approach to the butterfly effect. The Could-Have Been Ideologies thread, particularly the @Crying posts on acceleration, were especially helpful, and @MasterSanders' excellent A Perfect Democracy even gave me an idea that I incorporated into my own vision of the Antarctic banking system! Of course Reds! was important as well, an example of a timeline that combined relatively simple PODs with a thorough grasp of political theory and its impacts on the march of history.
I've also found @Thande's Look to the West (and to a lesser degree several of his oneshots and novellas) incredibly interesting. It should come as no surprise that Societism was one of the heaviest influences on my Cosmicism, though my presentation of the latter as not only positive but an absolute necessity in the face of the Cthulhucene would likely strike him as me reading it wrong 😂 Though the *Zones are actually designed rationally and they preserve ethnoregionalism within the ideal world state, I've mentioned before that I appropriated modified versions of his Internal Completion idea and Doctrine of the Last Thrown into my ARC's economic and martial doctrines, respectively. Hell, the Struggle symbol is even an inverted and refracted Threefold-Eye!
I regard the genre as a broad exercise in hauntology, one that sees not only the ghosts of lost futures aborted by modernity but also the specters of lost pasts and presents discarded on the journey to that modernity. Some are well-grounded, some are tons of fun, some are even both together, but there are a rare few that demonstrate what could be possible with the proper shift in perspective. That possibility has always spoken to the spiritualist in me, I suppose, and I don't see any likelihood that that will change. We'll see how my long-gestating project comes along but as for me, I'm more than happy interacting with these ghosts as I labor on it.
I'd originally joined the site in 2015 to read @DG Valdron's Green Antarctica, so I suppose you could say the intersection of Antarctica and alternate history goes way back with me and it's held fast ever since. As I became more invested and began to both seek out more timelines and begin starting my own threads my exploration of the broader uchronian genre became deeply entangled with a profound political shift I was going through at the time, sparking my longstanding interest in divergent ideologies and political systems. Some were certainly better grounded than others but I found them all interesting and it really demonstrated that given a combination of proper material conditions and social trends the movements of the body politic can writhe and spasm in the most interesting of directions.
@Napoleon53's What Madness is This (both versions) and EBR's Separated at Birth resonated with my preexisting tendency to free-associate historical and cultural details and ratchet up the resulting melange to create new and interesting texture for stories, and I hold both creators and their works in very high esteem as pinnacles of that more gonzo approach to the butterfly effect. The Could-Have Been Ideologies thread, particularly the @Crying posts on acceleration, were especially helpful, and @MasterSanders' excellent A Perfect Democracy even gave me an idea that I incorporated into my own vision of the Antarctic banking system! Of course Reds! was important as well, an example of a timeline that combined relatively simple PODs with a thorough grasp of political theory and its impacts on the march of history.
I've also found @Thande's Look to the West (and to a lesser degree several of his oneshots and novellas) incredibly interesting. It should come as no surprise that Societism was one of the heaviest influences on my Cosmicism, though my presentation of the latter as not only positive but an absolute necessity in the face of the Cthulhucene would likely strike him as me reading it wrong 😂 Though the *Zones are actually designed rationally and they preserve ethnoregionalism within the ideal world state, I've mentioned before that I appropriated modified versions of his Internal Completion idea and Doctrine of the Last Thrown into my ARC's economic and martial doctrines, respectively. Hell, the Struggle symbol is even an inverted and refracted Threefold-Eye!
I regard the genre as a broad exercise in hauntology, one that sees not only the ghosts of lost futures aborted by modernity but also the specters of lost pasts and presents discarded on the journey to that modernity. Some are well-grounded, some are tons of fun, some are even both together, but there are a rare few that demonstrate what could be possible with the proper shift in perspective. That possibility has always spoken to the spiritualist in me, I suppose, and I don't see any likelihood that that will change. We'll see how my long-gestating project comes along but as for me, I'm more than happy interacting with these ghosts as I labor on it.
I had another tweak to add in! I mentioned that the Weathermen got their start in the Battle of Seattle but that confluence with real history has been bugging me so I'm tweaking it. It still has the same name, but rather than a protest over the WTO in 1999 it's a massive protest that disrupts a Second Columbian Exposition Seattle was hosting in 1993. I'm also backdating the formation of Manifest Destiny! to that year. In the meantime while I'm working on other things I'm opening things up to general questions, including about specific media franchises or individuals. If they don't exist I reserve the right to exposit about their analogues.
Just read this TL after seeing it around for ages - what a banger. Incredible attention to texture and mood - this world has a distinct feel of genuine distance to it while still feeling true and compelling. Incredible vibes. Really cool shit.
I'm glad! I always like when people enjoy the weird skeins that just seem to pour endlessly out of my brain 😂
NEW QUESTIONS HOT AND READY HERE FOR THE TAKING
What's the entertainment industry (Mainly America's but other countries which you think are interesting enough to cover as well) look like and how has it evolved?
Is animation getting more respect than it is currently (Fuck you suits and your corporate greed) ?
Does South Korea have the same sort of cultural influence in foreign countries like America as it does OTL?
Is Twitter still a thing or no (Please spare them from such a demonic thing man they don't deserve it) ?
What's the entertainment industry (Mainly America's but other countries which you think are interesting enough to cover as well) look like and how has it evolved?
Is animation getting more respect than it is currently (Fuck you suits and your corporate greed) ?
Does South Korea have the same sort of cultural influence in foreign countries like America as it does OTL?
Is Twitter still a thing or no (Please spare them from such a demonic thing man they don't deserve it) ?
I always enjoy them 😂
While movies aren't quite as long as they were in the eighties on average the trend for adapting more philosophically/emotionally dense material and/or stuff further from the beaten track has kept going strong since Scott's Dune series. Ironically it probably would have burned itself out long ago but there's been a reduction in the rate of studio mergers compared to OTL so you still have smaller more indy studios putting out big movies and Perot's Department of Technology had the knock-on effect of slightly accelerating the development of graphics technology and making it cheaper.
If you mean animation as a genre kind of? It's still mainly for kids by percentage but there's a whole slew of adult animated series/films ranging from dramas to comedies to genre fiction. If you mean as a medium yes, computer animation that looks convincingly hand-drawn is all the rage.
Slightly less, given that it shares its only land border with the poorest nation in Asia. Still, it's a pretty popular vacation destination in the region and has a pretty strong economy all things considered. Subs/dubs of Korean programming are very much seen as a niche thing in the 2020s TTL but that's beginning to change.
Not twitter as such, no, Macondo does have a social media network they're betaing an AR thing on though and it's functionally the same as some unholy Twitter/Facebook fusion.
Media Matters: Ultra Comics and the Rise of the Big Two
Thought of a fun little change awhile ago and figured I'd lay it out 🤔 In 1984 there was actually a very hazy option on the table for Marvel to outright buy DC, but it obviously fell through. Having it go through here but the diversification of the medium still preventing the hegemony of the new behemoth (especially when it comes to movies) would be endlessly amusing to me, as if Marvel ends up with a bigger stable than ever but somehow inherits DC's future bad luck with movie universes 😂 At least partially that'll also come down to the slower pace of film studio consolidation TTL. Under the new schema the "Big Two" of American comics are Ultra Comics (the rebranded Marvel/DC fusion*) and Image (much larger and better entrenched here and also the publisher of the Milestone imprint).
*Though the deal gets started in '84, the actual consolidation of the two properties doesn't happen until the separate Secret Wars/Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover events in '85, which are followed by a canon Amalgam Comics thing and then the separation of the characters but the retention of a single shared universe. The jumble of the acquisition actually helps Moore retain ownership of Watchmen, sowing the seeds of Ultra's greatest competitor.
*Though the deal gets started in '84, the actual consolidation of the two properties doesn't happen until the separate Secret Wars/Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover events in '85, which are followed by a canon Amalgam Comics thing and then the separation of the characters but the retention of a single shared universe. The jumble of the acquisition actually helps Moore retain ownership of Watchmen, sowing the seeds of Ultra's greatest competitor.
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Been giving some thoughts to the paramilitary flags and what started out as an attempt at an ironic concept for the Myrmidon/Z-Thought movement one sent me down a rabbit hole 😅 I won't spoil the design until I have it mocked up but given that I was going to expand the post on historical presidential candidates to reflect the now far larger Citizens Party it helped me settle on the new true* POD for the timeline! Harvey Milk survives his OTL assassination and the world goes off the rails. Fitting for a story about how culture war has driven us all insane 
Muhahahahaha!
*Aside from the industrial strength butterfly net around the state of Frèmont, but again that's a novel-only change anyway for pure narrative convenience.
Muhahahahaha!*Aside from the industrial strength butterfly net around the state of Frèmont, but again that's a novel-only change anyway for pure narrative convenience.
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Some minor tweaks
Aside from the recent backdating of the POD to the attempted assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978 I also went back and updated the presidential candidates post (and defeated parties are listed by "date founded" rather than "votes earned") though it goes without saying that the Libertarians and Citizens don't amount to much. I'll go into the start of their ascendance in the 2016 election update. I've also been mulling over a couple of changes I'll canonize, though they don't effect much so I'm not giving them full posts:
- With Haig in the Oval and suffering from low-key brain damage in 1986 the Compact of Free Association never comes to be, with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau reduced to insular territories instead. There are independence/statehood movements but nothing much has come of it yet.
- With that change in place the Kanaloa Incident takes place in the (by that point) consolidated Territory of Micronesia, coinciding with a large-scale nationalist revolt over mistreatment by the mainland that's usually considered a front in the quasi-Civil War/legislative coup of the early 2060s.
- In the late 90s James Cameron goes through with his original plan to become a US citizen and in the early 2000s the Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment passes, creating a situation where he can be Citizens VP in 2016.
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