The Falling Rain: A Graphics Timeline

[Veranius]

The bidding process to host the 1946 Olympiad received seven bids for host cities by their respective Olympic National Committees (ONC), with ultimately the British bid for London/Glencoe being selected at the 42nd IOC Session in Montreal.

The bidding process for the Olympiad begins with a convocation by each individual ONC about six months before the bid deadline, wherein a decision is made as to propose a bid for the Olympiad. Each bid is comprised of two cities, one for the Summer Olympics and one for the Winter Olympics, though joint efforts between two collaborating nations is not uncommon. The bid are then presented to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in time before the bid deadline, wherein the list is refined over the subsequent year and a half before a decision is reached an announced at the Closing Ceremonies of that year's Summer Olympics, thus giving host cities four years to prepare. Following the 1951 IOC Reforms, the decision date would be pushed four years earlier, thus giving host cities eight years to prepare.

The awarding of the 1946 Olympiad to the United Kingdom marked the second time the United Kingdom has hosted the games, following the 1910 Olympiad in London. The bidding process saw the waiving of the long standing policy to refuse bids from members of the First Compact, with two bids of constituent nations (Gracchian Italy and Sorelian France) accepted. The policy would be fully abandoned following the 1951 IOC Reforms, though it would take until 1970 for a former First Compact nation to be granted the Olympiad (the 1978 Olympiad in Milan/Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy).

With the outbreak of the First European Civil War in 1941, much worry emerged over the status of bids by European nations involved in the conflict. As such, Sorelian France, Gracchian Italy, and Arminian Germany would be the first nations in Olympic history to withdraw their bids following the bid deadline, followed shortly after by Yugoslavia upon their entrance into the war. Thus, the choice came down to either Finland, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and with Finland's quasi-belligerency in the war and the disaster of the 1942 Olympiad in the United States, the United Kingdom won by a landslide. By the time the games occurred, the war was all but over, and significant trepidation filled the air as competitors glanced across the Channel at the vast restructuring Europe was undergoing under the boot of Arminian domination.

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Another of the oldest Olympic sporting events, tennis has been present in every Olympiad since the inception of the modern Olympics. Royal tennis, the ancient favored sport of European monarchs like Louis X of France and Henry VIII of England, was included in the roster of the 1898 Olympiad in Athens at the insistence of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who even participated in the tournament (only to be eliminated in the first round by a French peasant, Matthieu Parmentier, who would go on to win at every Olympiad until losing in 1910 to the American aristocrat Jay Gould II). Lawn tennis, meanwhile, was invented by the Victorians in the 1870s, and has seen a vast outgrowth in popularity in the years since, with some of the most-watched events of the 2038 Olympiad being the singles finals of the lawn tennis tournament. Of the current reigning Olympic tennis champions, this is the fifth gold medal for André Blake of New Caledonia (now honorary Chief Officer of Sport in the Hudson's Bay Company), and the fifth time that two sets of siblings hold doubles titles: the siblings Kerry and Louisa Chopin of the United States, and the fraternal twins Juan and María Palacio of Mexico.

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Bids from the Association for the American Olympic National Committee:

• 1910 = New York City, New York
• 1914 = Richmond, Virginia
• 1918 = Chicago, Illinois
• 1922 = St. Louis, Missouri
• 1926 = New York City and Saranac Lake, New York
• 1930 = Minneapolis, Minnesota (for both)
• 1934 = Wilmington, Delaware / Cleveland, Ohio
• 1938 = Detroit, Michigan / Altoona, Pennsylvania
• 1942 = Baltimore, Maryland / Bear Mountain, New York
• 1946 = Green Bay, Wisconsin / Marquette, Michigan
• 1950 = Raleigh and Asheville, North Carolina
• 1954 = Hartford, Connecticut / Plattekill, New York
• 1958 = Seattle, Tacoma / Glacier, Tacoma
• 1962 = St. Louis, Missouri / Duluth, Minnesota
• 1966 = San Francisco and Yosemite, California
• 1970 = New York City and Bear Mountain, New York
• 1974 = Cincinnati, Ohio / Tomah, Absaroka
• 1978 = Richmond and Hot Springs, Virginia
• 1982 = Chicago, Illinois / Boulder, Arapaho
• 1986 = Philadelphia and Scranton, Pennsylvania
• 1990 = Bellingham and Whistler, Tacoma
• 1994 = Denver, Arapaho / Aspen, Sierra
• 1998 = Boston and Wachusett, Massachusetts
• 2002 = Trenton, New Jersey / Bear Mountain, New York
• 2006 = Portland, Oregon / Reno, Nevada
• 2010 = New Orleans, Louisiana / Mentone, Alabama
• 2014 = Indianapolis, Indiana / Duluth, Minnesota
• 2018 = St. Louis, Missouri / Jackson Hole, Laramie
• 2022 = Detroit and Marquette, Michigan
• 2026 = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania / Bear Mountain, New York
• 2030 = Providence, Rhode Island / Cleveland, Ohio
• 2034 = New York City and Saranac Lake, New York
• 2038 = Atlanta, Georgia / Gatlinburg, Tennessee
• 2042 = San Diego, Colorado / Flagstaff, New Mexico
• 2046 = Denver, Arapaho / Aspen, Sierra
• 2050 = Charleston, South Carolina / Sapphire, North Carolina
• 2054 = Seattle and Enumclaw, Tacoma
• 2058 = Santa Fe, Mescalero (for both)
• 2062 = San Francisco, California / Tahoe City, Eureka

 

[Veranius]

The Fires of Vesuvius​

The Fires of Vesuvius was a planned disaster epic, set to be released in 1953 and directed by Patrick Schofield right off the heels of his breakout hit The Dead and the Dying. Set in the Campania countryside on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, the film was supposed to dramatize the last days of Pompeii before its destruction in the eruption of 79 CE. However, the film was never released, for it was never completed: in the midst of production, Mount Vesuvius erupted, blanketing the southern Gulf of Naples once more under feet of ash, and killing large numbers of the surrounding inhabitants.

According to the script (which hadn’t been finished once shooting began), the story was centered around Marcus, a Roman centurion played by Tom Ridge, as he attempted to win back the love of his life Antonia, played by Jennifer Jenkins-Smith, from the wealthy patrician Titus Scaevolla, played by Charles Griffin, and the famous charioteer Lucius Pompeius, played by Lance Houston. Among the scenes planned was a recreation of the Siege of Masada, where Marcus would be introduced as a soldier in Emperor Vespasian’s army, as well as an epic chariot race through the streets of Pompeii. Pliny the Younger, played by Lionel O’Connor, and Pliny the Elder, played by Howard Hawke, were to have large roles as well, with a key plot element being Pliny the Elder’s attempted rescue of the civilians of Pompeii. The destruction of Pompeii was planned to be achieved through the mass use of miniatures and forced perspective, an extremely ambitious and unprecedented attempt.

Buoyed by the success of The Dead and the Dying, Franklin T Frankfurt gave Schofield the go-ahead to create another lavish epic for the American population; with the choice being between a film set in the Revolutionary War and one set in ancient times, Schofield chose Rome, allegedly claiming that he was done with gunpowder (presumably after an incident in The Dead and the Dying where a blast charge failed to go off at the proper time, nearly killing three stuntmen). Despite the hesitancy of the US federal government, Frankfurt and Schofield managed to secure permission from the Caesarian government of the Italian National State to shoot the film on location, something that was easier than expected to do due to the massive Roman Revival undergoing in Italy at that time. Hahn and Lehman, the rulers of Arminian Germany, likewise gave their support to Frankfurt and Schofield, in an effort to improve relations with the Americans following the First European Civil War as well as to promote investment in the war-ravaged West Mediterranean.

Production was plagued with issues from the start. The Caesarian government was unwilling to allow the filmmakers access to the archaeological zones surrounding Pompeii for fear of damage, particularly as Schofield intended to use the ruins as his set. Thousands of poor Italians frequently mobbed the areas where filming was underway in an attempt to secure a lucrative on-set job, and poorly trained local extras oftentimes ruined takes on account of their ill-discipline and excitement on being in an American film. Four horses died in an accident preparing for the chariot races, an accident that also destroyed two precious 80mm camera lenses. Earthquakes too plagued production, destroying takes and sets alike, in addition to unnerving the cast and crew.

And then Vesuvius exploded.

In its first eruption since the 17th century, the mountain blew itself apart once more in an event eerily similar to the eruption dramatized in the film. In the resulting chaos, Schofield and Ridge were both killed overseeing evacuation efforts, and much of the production material was abandoned to the onrushing pyroclastic flows. Pompeii was buried once more, taking with it the movie sets meticulously built over the course of two years of fraught production. Though the overwhelming majority of the cast and crew survived, the loss of the director and lead actor, as well as close to half a million feet of film, killed the project in its tracks.

The disaster had the effect of destroying the nascent disaster film genre until 1983’s Close Encounters revived the genre with a bent towards space. The disaster also nearly bankrupted the United Makers Consortium, which only managed to survive thanks to re-releases of The Dead and the Dying. Additionally, the disaster provided a major impetus for the United States’ involvement in the Second European Civil War, for the Caesarian government refused to turn over Schofield’s and Ridge’s corpses back to their families and appropriated whatever proprietary film equipment had survived.

No attempt has been made to complete or remake The Fires of Vesuvius. A documentary, The Volcano’s Shadow, was released in 2005, which included clips from whatever film had survived, but nothing more has been done. Much like the “Prescott Curse” that plagues attempts to remake The Dead and the Dying, the “Vesuvius Curse” hangs over any attempt to make a movie centered on ancient Pompeii and even efforts to re-excavate the ruins themselves. And so even more ghosts now haunt the environs around the now-slumbering Vesuvius.

 

[farmerted555]

View attachment 734297The Fires of Vesuvius​

The Fires of Vesuvius was a planned disaster epic, set to be released in 1953 and directed by Patrick Schofield right off the heels of his breakout hit The Dead and the Dying. Set in the Campania countryside on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, the film was supposed to dramatize the last days of Pompeii before its destruction in the eruption of 79 CE. However, the film was never released, for it was never completed: in the midst of production, Mount Vesuvius erupted, blanketing the southern Gulf of Naples once more under feet of ash, and killing large numbers of the surrounding inhabitants.

According to the script (which hadn’t been finished once shooting began), the story was centered around Marcus, a Roman centurion played by Tom Ridge, as he attempted to win back the love of his life Antonia, played by Jennifer Jenkins-Smith, from the wealthy patrician Titus Scaevolla, played by Charles Griffin, and the famous charioteer Lucius Pompeius, played by Lance Houston. Among the scenes planned was a recreation of the Siege of Masada, where Marcus would be introduced as a soldier in Emperor Vespasian’s army, as well as an epic chariot race through the streets of Pompeii. Pliny the Younger, played by Lionel O’Connor, and Pliny the Elder, played by Howard Hawke, were to have large roles as well, with a key plot element being Pliny the Elder’s attempted rescue of the civilians of Pompeii. The destruction of Pompeii was planned to be achieved through the mass use of miniatures and forced perspective, an extremely ambitious and unprecedented attempt.

Buoyed by the success of The Dead and the Dying, Franklin T Frankfurt gave Schofield the go-ahead to create another lavish epic for the American population; with the choice being between a film set in the Revolutionary War and one set in ancient times, Schofield chose Rome, allegedly claiming that he was done with gunpowder (presumably after an incident in The Dead and the Dying where a blast charge failed to go off at the proper time, nearly killing three stuntmen). Despite the hesitancy of the US federal government, Frankfurt and Schofield managed to secure permission from the Caesarian government of the Italian National State to shoot the film on location, something that was easier than expected to do due to the massive Roman Revival undergoing in Italy at that time. Hahn and Lehman, the rulers of Arminian Germany, likewise gave their support to Frankfurt and Schofield, in an effort to improve relations with the Americans following the First European Civil War as well as to promote investment in the war-ravaged West Mediterranean.

Production was plagued with issues from the start. The Caesarian government was unwilling to allow the filmmakers access to the archaeological zones surrounding Pompeii for fear of damage, particularly as Schofield intended to use the ruins as his set. Thousands of poor Italians frequently mobbed the areas where filming was underway in an attempt to secure a lucrative on-set job, and poorly trained local extras oftentimes ruined takes on account of their ill-discipline and excitement on being in an American film. Four horses died in an accident preparing for the chariot races, an accident that also destroyed two precious 80mm camera lenses. Earthquakes too plagued production, destroying takes and sets alike, in addition to unnerving the cast and crew.

And then Vesuvius exploded.

In its first eruption since the 17th century, the mountain blew itself apart once more in an event eerily similar to the eruption dramatized in the film. In the resulting chaos, Schofield and Ridge were both killed overseeing evacuation efforts, and much of the production material was abandoned to the onrushing pyroclastic flows. Pompeii was buried once more, taking with it the movie sets meticulously built over the course of two years of fraught production. Though the overwhelming majority of the cast and crew survived, the loss of the director and lead actor, as well as close to half a million feet of film, killed the project in its tracks.

The disaster had the effect of destroying the nascent disaster film genre until 1983’s Close Encounters revived the genre with a bent towards space. The disaster also nearly bankrupted the United Makers Consortium, which only managed to survive thanks to re-releases of The Dead and the Dying. Additionally, the disaster provided a major impetus for the United States’ involvement in the Second European Civil War, for the Caesarian government refused to turn over Schofield’s and Ridge’s corpses back to their families and appropriated whatever proprietary film equipment had survived.

No attempt has been made to complete or remake The Fires of Vesuvius. A documentary, The Volcano’s Shadow, was released in 2005, which included clips from whatever film had survived, but nothing more has been done. Much like the “Prescott Curse” that plagues attempts to remake The Dead and the Dying, the “Vesuvius Curse” hangs over any attempt to make a movie centered on ancient Pompeii and even efforts to re-excavate the ruins themselves. And so even more ghosts now haunt the environs around the now-slumbering Vesuvius.

Me in TTL's 2022: I'm gonna tempt fate and make a Pompeii movie in Naples.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

1. Did the first movie that had sound release later than IOTL?
2. What was the first Olympiad that was televised?
3. Is the AACC still around as of 2041?

 

[dakkafex]

The Fires of Vesuvius

I love this, it's so weird and grim and a bit off-kilter, down to the aftermath helping to precipitate a US military intervention, I love it.

 

[Veranius]

1. Did the first movie that had sound release later than IOTL?
2. What was the first Olympiad that was televised?
3. Is the AACC still around as of 2041?

Talkies come about later due to the Great Depression striking earlier, though only by a few years. By the late 30s talkies are the norm.

The 1950 Olympiad (Cairo/Davos) had some minor broadcasting, but the first to be truly televised around the world was the 1958 Olympiad (Cologne/Garmisch-Partenkirchen).

The AACC is Edison's filmmaking company - as much as I dislike Edison, it is hard to overstate his importance in cinema history. It was always designed as a monopoly, and survives longer than it should have thanks to patronage by people like President Longmile. Hull takes the first swings at the AACC to crack it, but MacDonald is the one who breaks it with the equivalent of the Paramount Decision (due to the AACC trying to take over United Makers after the Vesuvius disaster and reimpose an effective monopoly). As a result of this, the US government henceforth becomes quite wary of cinema monopolies, and thus the current media landscape here is more fractured than what we know (there's no Disney equivalent, for instance).

Also, it is worth keeping in mind that LA/Hollywood does not exist, and Florida is a lot less developed too. If you want to make a movie here, New York City is the place to go.

I love this, it's so weird and grim and a bit off-kilter, down to the aftermath helping to precipitate a US military intervention, I love it.

Thanks! The whole inspiration of this in particular was reading up about the insane production of Ben-Hur and realizing that no one died while they made it, and then thinking that I could do better.

 

[Veranius]

The Victorious Few​

After the disaster of The Fires of Vesuvius, United Makers fell into a sharp decline, exacerbated further by the outbreak of the Pacific War later in 1953. With the mass mobilization of American society towards the effort of defeating Dark Ocean Japan, creative filmmaking fell away, replaced by swaths of propaganda films intended to rile up the American public against Japan. And with prominent actors either conscripted or serving the government in other manners, it was deeply unfeasible for non-propaganda films to be made.

Yet despite it all, United Makers survived. Their direct competition, the All-American Cinematic Corporation, had thrown their entire weight behind the US government, attempting to restore the power they had held under the Longmile Administration and regain their cinematic monopoly. But the MacDonald Administration wasn’t having it, and in the landmark Supreme Court case United States vs. Raritan Productions, the AACC was broken. Split into nineteen smaller production companies, the subsequent scrambling by other cinematic organizations to claim the now up-for-grab resources spared United Makers from any further onslaughts of hostile takeovers, something the AACC had tried to do in the aftermath of Vesuvius.

When the Pacific War came to a close in 1959, cinema had changed, but none knew it yet. The optimism emblematic of the films around the time of The Dead and the Dying was gone, replaced by a hollow bitterness comforting itself with jingoistic enthusiasm. The brutal fighting across the Pacific and into the Japanese Home Islands had given the entire world collective trauma. But at this bleak hour, there still was a sense, an urge, to do something right, that the mass bloodletting had been for something greater than oneself. And it was out of this sentiment that The Victorious Few came into being.

Writer George Terrell had come across Taejo Hanazawa’s samurai epic On the Billowing Wind while stationed in Occupied Japan, and, being an avid fan of The Dead and the Dying, thought hard about the similarities between samurai and Wild West gunslingers. Upon his return to the United States following demobilization, he approached Franklin T Frankfurt with a proposition: to remake On the Billowing Wind, but set during the Conquest of the Southwest. Frankfurt, eager for anything to reverse his company’s declining fortunes and still enthusiastic about westerns, agreed, and gave the project to an old friend of his, James Rowland. Setting up shop on the outskirts of Tucson, Pimeria, Rowland got to work.

The story itself is a rather simple one. A village, threatened by bandits and ignored by an apathetic government, hires seven mercenaries to help defend themselves. After several misadventures, everything climaxes in a grand spectacle of a battle, whereupon all the bandits are defeated and only one of the mercenaries survives, typically the first one hired. Following the smashing success of The Victorious Few, the story archetype has since been adapted into numerous other genres, from deep space to medieval Europe to superheroes.

The motley crew assembled in The Victorious Few are as follows: Beckett Grandison, the team leader and former US Marshal, played by Nathan York; Wyatt Wells, a US Army sapper, played by Lee Smith Tanner; Henry Bullock, a young sharpshooter, played by Gary Faber; Thaddeus Boyd, a former outlaw seeking redemption, played by Tyler Hancock; Gideon Crawford, a expert knife-thrower, played by Tobias Ord; Kincaid Ewing, a Confederate cavalry officer, played by Joseph Dean; and Hector Serrano, a Mexican rancher and cattle-rustler, played by Diego Elvira. They square off against Arthur Morgan, a notorious outlaw who has evaded the law numerous times before and slew Serrano’s entire family, played by Charles King in one of his most notable roles in his long career. Rounding out the cast is Mayor Antonio Vargas, a kind and sympathetic authority figure, played by Adrián Quesada, and Rose Vargas, the mayor’s daughter and love interest of Henry Bullock, played by Paloma Wolfe.

The smashing success of the film and the samurai-inspired story has been used by historians to separate Classical Western, emblematic of The Dead and the Dying, from Neo-Western, emblematic of The Victorious Few, and often called the “Golden Age of the Western”. The Neo-Western phase lasted until the late 1970s with the advent of the Sour Westerns like The Stranger From the Desert, known for both their biting critique of the western genre and their general trippiness. Third-Wave Westerns revived the public’s interest in the Wild West starting in the early 1990s, with a primary feature of Third-Wave Westerns being Space Western television shows like The Final Frontier. The Third-Wave is known to have ended around 2008, when The Final Frontier broadcasted its final episode, and the genre subsequently transformed into Fourth-Wave Westerns around the late 2010s, with a primary focus on the Modern Western genre. The Fourth-Wave collapsed as a result of David Teller’s ardently pro-rural militia efforts, which made the western setting unpalatable for studio executives working in Red states. However, as of the current moment Fifth-Wave Westerns have been noted to be emerging, most hugely popular notably the television show Revelry, all about a malfunctioning western-themed theme park that has raked in massive profits for the once-struggling BCA (Broadcasting Corporation of America). Time will only tell if the Fifth-Wave has the staying power of other western iterations, but it is clear the western is as American as apple pie and civil war.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

1. What's the oldest movie studio still in existence as of 2041?
2. How long was Charles King's acting career?
3. What's the equivalent to OTL's Oscars?
4. Does The Victorious Few have any sequels or remakes?

 

[Veranius]

1. What's the oldest movie studio still in existence as of 2041?
2. How long was Charles King's acting career?
3. What's the equivalent to OTL's Oscars?
4. Does The Victorious Few have any sequels or remakes?

Probably United Makers, I'd imagine they'd still be extant in one form or another.

Charles King is the Christopher Lee/Steve McQueen of this universe, with well over 50 years of acting in his career, and The Victorious Few was around the middle. He was one of the key big names signed on to the film, alongside Nathan York, the Burt Lancaster of this universe.

The Oscars here are called the Marias, named after the Black Maria, the first film studio in the world in both OTL and TTL. It's orchestrated by the Association for American Motion Pictures, and is far less attuned to the popular pulse than the Oscars are, with a heavy focus on rewarding niche artistic filmmaking. The AAMP has a deep nostalgia for the AACC, and thus is deeply opposed to any film produced by a company not descended from the AACC as well. Stuff like The Victorious Few would get heavily snubbed, if acknowledged at all.

The Victorious Few, much like The Magnificent Seven, gets remade numerous times in each era of westerns, and this is facilitated by the fact that there is no curse on productions of it, unlike The Dead and the Dying.

 

[farmerted555]

What's the film rating system ITTL?

 

[Veranius]

What's the film rating system ITTL?

It goes like this:

E - every audience (everyone) = equivalent to a G rating
G - guided audiences (10 and above) = equivalent to a PG rating
T - teenage audiences (13 and above) = equivalent to a PG-13 rating
M - mature audiences (17 and above) = equivalent to a R rating
L - limited audiences (18 and above) = equivalent to a NC-17 rating
A - adult audiences (18 and above) = equivalent to a X rating

 

[farmerted555]

It goes like this:

E - every audience (everyone) = equivalent to a G rating
G - guided audiences (10 and above) = equivalent to a PG rating
T - teenage audiences (13 and above) = equivalent to a PG-13 rating
M - mature audiences (17 and above) = equivalent to a R rating
L - limited audiences (18 and above) = equivalent to a NC-17 rating
A - adult audiences (18 and above) = equivalent to a X rating

Mnemonic device for this: Edgar Goes To Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

 

[Veranius]

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"The Teller Administration had already been suffering immensely in 2035. The outbreak of the Staten Island Crisis in February saw incredible vitriol infect the Lower Hudson Valley, blowing a minor conflict over tax obligations into one of the gravest constitutional crises since the Civil Wars. And the Twin Fires in March destroyed in a stroke the agricultural capabilities of the Pacific Northwest and Upper Rockies as well as key shipping ports in Puget Sound. The drastic budget cuts Teller had inflicted on the Department of Emergencies meant that his administration's response to the disasters was criminally negligent - sparking calls for yet another impeachment trial.

Then came Hurricane Delilah.

One of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to strike the US in history, it cut a swath of destruction all along the Northeast. The storm surge effectively turned places like New York City into a modern-day Venice, forcing NYC Mayor Horn firmly away from his efforts to reclaim Staten Island. The worst damage however would come to the Susquehanna Valley, where close to 20 inches of rain was recorded in some select places. Cities like Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Harrisburg suffered extensive flooding, washing away hundreds of homes. One of the more macabre elements would come when a historic cemetery in Forty Fort saw close to 2,500 caskets get washed away, leaving body parts scattered throughout the town. The overall damage would have been much less had floodwaters not overtopped the Conejohela Dam at Manor Township, Lancaster County. The dam had been built alongside the Holtwood Dam and the Conowingo Dam as part of a major flood control effort during the Longmile Administration a hundred years prior, and despite attempts by later administrations to revamp the dams (such as a major undertaking done by the Castro Administration), Teller had ordered all work ceased. When the Conejohela Dam failed, it created a massive cascade that destroyed Holtwood and Conowingo, and effectively scoured the area around Havre de Grace, Maryland, down to the bedrock.

As a result of yet another massive disaster, Teller's third impeachment would proceed with utmost haste. However, attempts to pin the blame on Teller proved impossible thanks to a mysterious fire at the Department of Records that destroyed millions of key documents from Teller's first term (a fire that later was proven to have been orchestrated by Teller himself). Still, Secretary of Emergencies Michael Landis was convicted of embezzlement and negligence, removed from office, and barred from holding public office ever again. Yet relief for those ruined by the flood would only come after the Third Civil War overthrew Teller and Mulligan, once the Fraser Administration opened the long disused taps of emergency relief."

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In honor of the impending 50th anniversary of Hurricane Agnes - and yeah, the cemetery thing did actually happen.

 

[traveller76]

Did New York City ever recover from this?

 

[Veranius]

Did New York City ever recover from this?

New York City is a bit of a mixed bag. To offset the loss of Staten Island, the city annexed southern Westchester County (Yonkers, New Rochelle, and Mount Vernon) as well as western Nassau County (Hempstead and North Hempstead). However, the more low-lying areas like in Lower Manhattan and around Jamaica Bay saw lots of forced evacuations to further up the Hudson Valley to make room for flood control systems. The settlement of the Staten Island Crisis also dealt with compensation payments for that.

 

[Veranius]

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"No presidential administration has ever approached the level of deceit, debauchery, and disaster like that of David Teller's. Elected in a near-landslide in 2028 against incumbent Roberta Castro, due to resentment against the ruling Republican Party exacerbated by the lingering Cytherean Depression, he quickly made his mark in Washington, quietly purging large sections of the civil service while engaging in pointless antagonisms with key allies like Mexico and the United Kingdom. His most notable purge occurred in the Department of Exploration, where he effectively killed the Odyssey Program and all-but ended manned exploration of Venus. The media greatly exaggerated the so-called "Friday Night Massacre" in the DOX, so much so that Republicans in Congress opted to use that as the means for beginning Teller's first impeachment.

Impeachment in the United States is a rare thing, rarely used and even more rarely successful. While many presidents have undergone impeachment inquiries, few have stuck, notably the impeachments of Simon Cameron and Schuyler Colfax. More often than not, the threat of impeachment is used by Congress to bully presidents into not vetoing crucial bills, a practice began during the presidency of Evan Charles Evans Jr, who was beholden to a strongly Republican Congress after he ascended to the presidency following the assassination of Henry Longmile (who had enduring several impeachment inquiries himself, most notably after his decision to run for a third term). That David Teller endured five impeachments, even one posthumously, is by far a record in American politics.

Time and time again, Teller's Populist allies in Congress were able to ensure no impeachment effort reached the requisite two-thirds majority in the Senate, though the margin of failure grew ever closer as time went on. After his first impeachment, Teller was largely clean, only to fall under scrutiny again after the 2032 election where rampant voting fraud was claimed (and later proven) to have occurred. This time, the process netted victims, claiming Teller's Postmaster General and other key leaders of the Postal Service, on whom Teller was able to deflect blame. Much the same occurred once more when, in the catastrophic aftermath of the Twin Fires and the Great Susquehanna Flood, Teller's Secretary of Emergencies, Michael Landis, was convicted and removed. Further efforts proved futile, including one effort to impeach Teller over his inability to resolve the Staten Island Crisis, but public support for impeachment waned despite ongoing chaos, all thanks to an efficient propaganda machine Teller ran through his personal and quasi-private Truth Broadcasting and News Service. His fourth impeachment, however, was a much closer affair, sparked by Teller's decision to call in the US military to clear the streets of the Douglass Commonwealth during the 2036 summer civil rights protests. The failure of this impeachment attempt gave Congressional Republicans the chance to appoint Antonio Harris as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a move that likely saved American democracy, as Harris ensured that the US military stayed loyal to the Constitution during the Third Civil War and did not join the coups of Teller and Mulligan.

Teller's fifth impeachment was rather unprecedented in many respects, with the main one being that Teller was dead, killed during the First Storming of the White House in the midst of the war. Still, House Speaker Emily Williamson thought it prudent to go forth with the impeachment, in order to set a precedent in these unprecedented times. The rump Congress, almost uniformly Republican, Alliance, and Ecological (due to the darkly ironic murders of many Populist congressmembers during the Fall of the Capitol), voted unanimously on all articles of impeachment, thus posthumously convicting Teller, securing his legacy as the worst president of all time. In consequence of this, John Breckinridge, the Traitor-President and formerly the worst president of all time, has seen a sharp jump in approval, mainly through the notion that Breckinridge largely prevented the widespread chaos and death seen during the Second Civil War that could very well have occurred during the First.

Nonetheless, David Teller remains the only US president to be impeached five times. Let us pray he remains the only one."

 

[Veranius]

Edward Richard Fraser (born September 4th, 1989) is an American astronaut, politician, and the 51st and current president of the United States. Previously, he represented the state of Vancouver in both chambers of the United States Congress, where he played a key leadership role in the Third American Civil War.

Born and raised in Douglas, the capital of Vancouver, Fraser attended National University at Tacoma's main branch in Olympia, on account of the small size of National's Vancouver campus. He continued his study of geology at Sierra State and Kanawha, managing to conduct field work in the Cascades, Rockies, and Appalachians. Following the completion of his thesis, he joined the Department of Exploration in the hopes of conducting geology experiments on the Moon and, with all luck, Venus too.

In 2024, when the Odyssey 9 flew to Venus, Fraser was on the Moon as part of a six-month training tour, having been selected as part of the crew of Odyssey 11. When the disaster struck, Fraser was instrumental for advocating for the completion of his mission's tour rather than immediately evacuating back to Earth. discerning correctly that the disaster was not mechanical in nature, but rather from sabotage. As a result of this and other actions taken to delay his tour's evacuation, Fraser was quietly removed from the list for Odyssey 11 even before the mission was ultimately cancelled thanks to public backlash. Fraser used the intervening time on Earth to update his thesis with new research gained after the rescue of the Odyssey 9 survivors, and was in the process of expanding the thesis into a book when the Friday Night Massacre occurred.

Newly elected president David Teller orchestrated the mass layoff of two-thirds of the Department of Exploration's employees, including Fraser, in November 2029, right after the next year's budget had been passed, with the ostensible goal of appropriating the now unneeded funds allocated to the Department for nefarious purposes. Fraser's national standing rose when he took to the stand during Teller's 1st impeachment, swiftly becoming a vocal critic of the administration. Republican Party leaders pushed for Fraser to use his momentum and run for office and unseat key Teller ally Donovan Tamblyn, as part of a national effort for a "Blue Tsunami" to undermine Teller's control of Congress.

Fraser's campaign was a success on account of massive fundraising support from key Republican backers and he was inaugurated at the start of 2031 in the 122nd United States Congress. Initially following the party line on account of his inexperience in politics, he soon found his own footing, using his charisma to great effect on frequent media campaigns deriding the administration's space and climate policies, swiftly becoming even more famous. When Vancouver Senator Octavia Cerniglia was severely wounded in what would later be determined to be an attempted political assassination by the Teller Administration, Fraser threw his hat into the ring to succeed her, and subsequently won the election in 2032, becoming the youngest senator in Vancouver's history.

His tenure as Senator invited even more attention to his national profile. Taking a leading role in Teller's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th impeachments, Fraser gained a major reputation for tough questioning and unflagging optimism in the future of the nation, and thus became a major threat against Teller. Three assassination attempts were launched against him during his tenure, all of which failed to cause even any amount of harm whatsoever to anyone other than the perpetrators.

With the Republican establishment rallying behind a second attempt for former Vice President Franklin James to ascend to the presidency, Fraser decided that it was time to jump in himself. Initially cast as a dark horse, Fraser saw a rapid rise in momentum as the primaries continued, as progressive candidates withdrew and threw their support to him, rather than to James. At the 2036 Republican Convention, conducted while Teller's 4th impeachment was ongoing, neither James or Fraser achieved a supermajority of votes in the first round, crushing James's hopes for an easy victory. An agreement soon was brokered - James's running-mate choice of Joanna Thompson would become Fraser's running-mate, as opposed to his pick of Alabama's Philip Rhodes, in order to unify the party amongst unfounded rumors that Fraser was thinking of a third-party run. Fraser left the decision up to Rhodes, who accepted upon the condition of becoming Fraser's Secretary of State.

During the tumultuous 2036 election, Fraser was frequently the target of attacks by members of the various militia movements sponsored by Teller and Mulligan, eventually forcing him to cease campaigning in-person and retire to his home in Vancouver for the remainder of the campaign. On Election Day, Fraser received the largest popular vote in American history, over 120 million votes, and easily swept to victory, rebuilding the Red Bounds and flipping several key states like Arapaho, Nevada, and Mescalero. In the subsequent Third Civil War, Fraser was instrumental in evacuating the Capitol during its fall to pro-Teller and pro-Mulligan forces, personally rescuing many of the key House and Senate leaders. To protect his own safety, he returned to his home in Vancouver once more while the war raged on, returning to DC only when allowed to by Chairman Antonio Harris of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Fraser's administration thus far has done much to rectify the wrongs of the last eight years. Relief to those who suffered from the Twin Fires and the Great Susquehanna Flood has now finally arrived, and the Staten Island Crisis likewise was swiftly resolved. The Troubles have continued to rage on, however, despite the numerous times that Fraser has declared Teller's Army of Redemption to be wiped out. His reelection campaign in 2040 was a much calmer affair than 2036, and Fraser was able to increase his margin of victory. The future now looks bright for Fraser's second administration to begin.

 

[mymatedave10]

Nice, and I see the author is also a fan of a RPG web series run by voice actors.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

What are the major broadcast television networks of this timeline?

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Is this timeline still active @Veranius?