Those were well worth the wait EBR - really excellent work there in creating something that feels like a real strike into something new, but whose development still feels rooted in the history and world you've built up to this point. Situationism feels believable as a historical and political moment & feels like it gives a fair shake to the irl currents of thought it borrows from without feeling like too clear a stand-in for them or totally accepting of their premises. Keep up the good work at a pace that makes sense for you!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I agree, I love the divergent politics of this timeline
Question: Have the Drakians come up with a reward or bonus system for serfs and bondsmen? Things that are addictive but not crippling like alcohol, tobacco or certain narcotics? What about licensed pleasure houses so the secret police can receive tips from informants and overhear rumors?
Yes, very much so. There are "privileged" classes among the Bonded- domestic servants, workers with valuable skills, and of course the "chain dog" enforcers. Incentives for such persons range from being "paid" in scrip that they can use to buy small luxuries and better living conditions for themselves and their family members to having sexual access to Bondswomen in a labor camp brothel. Alcohol, tobacco, and other mild intoxicants may be among the options for small luxuries mentioned.
And of course, moving further down the path from being a (usually white or mixed-race) Bondsman towards National status or even Citizenship, is another incentive.
Was that part about “Truth, Justice, Freedom, and Reasonably Priced Love” a reference to Discworld?
Of course it was.
For some reason, I keep laughing every time I see this picture. Just look at his face!
I love that picture for the same reason.
For those who don't know, that's a photo from when the OTL Communist Chinese government had a police officer follow the Excessivist artist Ai Weiwei around with a camera, videotaping everything he did to intimidate him. Weiwei responded by hiring his own guy to videotape the officer who was videotaping him, and then going about his business.
Great double update. And the rolls add a touch of randomness that somehow works with (and not against) the story.
I wonder what would have happened in the Great Pacific War, had America rolled better against Japan. I guess the USA could have got a few more States…
Another one in a long list of nice chapters!
Thanks! Certainly there would have been at least two more states after the war (Singapore and the Pacific islands).
Since apparently everyone is doing it, and I'm not one to be left out:
I love the rolls, as it adds to the story by having things not feel determinate. One of my gripes I've always had with TLs is that over time the story gets predictable. Usually they reach a point where it's obvious that the "focus" nation or Namesake is going to suceed always. The rolls make the TL feel like "real" history where they leave possibilites open to wonder. The Great Pacific War is a great example.
I agree, I enjoy TLs that don't feel railroaded. Another example without dice is What Madness is This?, it's clear that Oswald will be president and the New United States of America will be formed, but the redux has so much new material and room for reader input that it doesn't feel like a retread of 1.0
Thanks dudes. I agree that knowing where the TL will end up isn't necessarily a bad thing- after all you all know that this TL will end with Drakia either defeated or disintegrating under the weight of its political, social, and economic systems- but you need lots of wonder and mystery in the getting there to drive it along. Napoleon uses lots of "wonder" in the delightful craziness of WMIT to keep things interesting, I brought the dice on board for the added mystery.
I wonder what is the current population of Drakia (Whites/citizens, bonded and others)? Does the citizens have a higher natural population growth than the bonded?
20 million in 1950, I'll try to remember to work numbers for 1965 into the next chapter. The citizens (whether white or honorary) have a much higher population growth rate than the bonded by virtue of the bonded having a
negative growth rate. Ulysses Kobold's reforms have improved things by dramatically reducing the number of new Bonded Drakia needed to regularly acquire to keep things stable. It's still negative, but in the sense of -0.2% population growth per year instead of -3%. White Drakians have a generally high rate of population growth thanks to government pro-natalist policies and things like the Dragon's Nest's extensive network of schools hosting not merely unwanted Drakian children, but orphans and unwanted white children acquired from abroad.
Considering what Drakia is like I can see them having a thing to encourage citizen families to have more children. Mixed in with various Communist Romania styled laws... with similar results.
They might be doing some mass sterilization of the bondsmen population to gradually lower their population or kill them via destructive labor & Holodomor styled famines.
Very much yes to the first, no to the second. In order to remain remotely competitive with free industry in Europe, America, and Asia, the Bonded Labor System has to operate at a level that
consumes human beings.
I'm curious if we could see the Dragon's Nests expanded to actually creating children when test tube babies become a thing. It's no homo drakensis but the Nests already operate an extensive network of creches and for lack of a better term have wombs to rent. Intentional speciation strains credulity but if Citizens are expected to donate sperm/eggs (where prudent) a eugenics program can reach new heights.
Is Algeria and Libya citizen majority?
No, especially not since the Great Wars when those regions were major targets from Pan-European bombers.
Yes, although it's also important to consider the issues which would be caused by Drakia's cultivation of various collaborating groups and the enmities that's caused over the years. In the map EBR posted, it's already been directly confirmed that some of the princely states hate each other, so it's far from a given that all of them would immediately jump ship and try to survive on their own without the protection/backing of the Empire. After all, they wouldn't be in their current positions if not for some level of compliance, so even if some of the more peripheral or hot-headed groups try to break away, the savvier princes and tribal leaders doubtless know which side their bread's buttered on. Many of them might achieve a much greater degree of autonomy in such a scenario, with some even becoming du jure independent nations, but if the Crucible and the Judeo-Arab Rebellion have showed us anything, it's that the Drakian colonial apparatus is more resilient than it seems at first glance. If they are to permanently collapse at some point (and I certainly hope so), I think it will require foreign intervention to support breakaway states and major disunity among the white ruling elite, if not the Citizen population as a whole.
Is there any guesstimate on the birth rate of Drakian Citizens from 1900 onwards? And also, I do not know if they are crazed enough like the Yankess of Madnessverse to have their Citizen population doubles every 25-30 years?
White citizens or citizens total?
The Drakians seem to have taken control of Antarctica. I wouldn't put it past them to be mad enough to actually attempt to terraform the place.
Nah, it's just Kobold trying to sate the expansionism of the Drakian hawks without getting drawn into a major war before the empire is ready. Flags and a few outposts.
I think that the logic ot TTL suggest a new attempt at Pan-Europe upon a non-Rex basis.
The free european countries are surrounded by the Pact of Blood on every side (Britain, Russia, Rhomania, and Drakia itself) and must be feeling very nervous about it; the non-Societist parts of the continent are utterly dominated by Germany and France, which should by now understand that "divided they fall".
It may be that France gravitates more toward the US, while Germany might be interested in working with both America and India.
You kind of already have that in a sense? The Pan-European Pact continues to exist, but with the exception of Lithuania all of the members have ditched their old Rex governments. France is still Rex and not an official member, but there's no question that if a war between the Pan-Europeans and the Pact of Blood started they'd immediately get involved.
I'm sure the Rexists had predictable views about race for late early 20th century Europeans but they weren't a white supremacist movement, they were a movement that happened to be white supremacist. There weren't enough non-white people in the core Rex countries for white supremacism to be the base of a political movement.
They seem to have been fairly standard mix of cultural reactionaries with a corporatist economic strategy and an aggressive foreign policy steak. I'm sure they'd have been fairly unpleasant to any non-white colonies they controlled but probably more from a loot the place bare place than death camps galore.
Yup, that's essentially spot on. They looked down on non-white races (including groups like Jews and Roma), but they weren't interested in genocide. Think Portuguese Angola or French Indochina.
You know out of morbid curiosity, I wonder how Free China would react to Accelerationist France from Red Flood.
I think they'd be initially quite positive towards a fellow "artsy" revolutionary government, but deeply repelled once they looked closer.
That chapter on Situationism was absolutely wild. I wholeheartedly agree that the collapse of British Situationism was all but inevitable considering its disorganised nature. It could have been written much less anticlimactically, though. However, given the existence of the number 20, you must have devised a much more competent leader and a rank-and-file revolt/officer's coup or two for it to succeed, and I surmise that 10 would have only made it succeed at Scotland. Aside from that, It's tragic that the Central Europeans couldn't take have fun from to their admittedly apt paranoia, though.
Anyways, how did the legislation for those abominable Chinese provinces go? They must have surely debated it and appealed against it several times due to the resulting administrative clunk it would make but Free Chinese being Free, I could still see them voting for it after a really convincing and powerful closing words against it, all just for the literal shit and giggles.
Also, that Chinese map could make for a really good flag, though with its current situation, I would expect it to change every few years.
Another thing: With the upcoming digital revolution, how would the individualistic, anti-commodification nature of Situationism would mesh with social media? While they would surely decry selling of data, I doubt it would receive the same backlash on other inanities like vines that people love so much here. With the Situations being poised to be a regular and established fixture in the time of digitalisation, I suppose the people would really hate for a company to own any part of internet provision services.
And even before that, what would be the nature of TTL's internet like? Would it be like the decentralised, LAN-centered internet that people dreamed sometime due to the net neutrality controversy? Would it take the same vetting that other technologies such as genetic engineering and AI have faced, or would those be concerns be ignored or virtually unknown like IOTL? I'm hoping for the former, but the lazy attitude that this generation may potentially have parallels to our 90's where the latter had happened.
Some good questions.
-The legislation for the "abominable Chinese provinces" was by a legislature controlled by political radicals who wanted to transform the world giving dramatic speeches about erasing provincial loyalties and encouraging national unity, and why should they draw provinces one way just because that's how it's always been done?
-I think the Situations would love the OTL Internet's ability to mobilize large number of people anonymously for different causes, but they would hate the emergence of slacktavism and corporate social media. Not sure about their position on internet privacy.
-We'll (hopefully) talk a little about TTL's internet soon
Would the Drakians try clandestinely recruiting Whites and people with skills to smuggle into the country? Maybe a 'rat line' for European collaborators to come home?
The Empire had open routes for new immigrants, although they can get a little clandestine when it comes to scientific experts and that sort of thing.
I also have a funny idea, but with Japan being so nationalist and revanchist and the Confederation of East Asia being a conservative democracy, does that mean that China and the Confederation will be the birthplaces of anime (which can be crowdsourced) and K-pop (which was inherently corporatric with its talent agencies), respectively?
Brilliant! Consider it cannon.
Whenever I see your name I know it's going to be an amazing timeline. Superb work
@Ephraim Ben Raphael
Aw, I'm touched.
A reply has been delayed by unavoidable unpleasantries. Nevertheless, thank you for writing up this extensive elaboration on your actual ideas behind the ideology. It sheds more light on it, in a way that wasn't apparent (to me, at least) from the original post. Treating your explanation as "word of god", I retract my previous criticisms, and await how you will go on to depict this movement.
Without seeking to drag it back up, let me please add that I didn't mean anything I wrote about situationism in the heinous way that Burton K Wheeler insisted on (mis)interpreting it. His accusations against me ("violence is an appropriate way to deal with art"; "fascist") are horribly misplaced, and certainly do not match up with what I actually wrote or intended to convey.
I look forward to future updates of this TL, and I enjoy it very much. If I contributed to even a temporary derailment of the thread, I apologise; that was not my intention. Please see it as a testament to your skill in writing engaging ideas and ideologies,
@Ephraim Ben Raphael, to the extent that we may engage in heated discussions about them!
(Your map with extra info, which I saw in the map thread, is also great. I couldn't like it during my 'holiday', but I'll rectify that presently.)
Not a problem at all.
I'm glad you liked the map and I appreciate that heated discussions are a sign that people are emotionally invested in my writing- this is good!
So how's this for Sociatist Britain?
Beautiful
