TL-191: After the End

Thomas Dewey (Democrat): 1945-1953
Harry Truman (Democrat): 1953-1961
Hubert H. Humphrey (Socialist): 1961-1973
Joshua Blackford (Democrat): 1973-1981
Morgan Reynolds (Republican): 1981-1989
Leo Enos (Socialist): 1989-1993
Thurston DeFrancis (Democrat): 1993-1997
Patrick Gutierrez (Republican): 1997-2005
Sergio Hernandez (Socialist): 2005-2013
Alfred Astaire (Democrat): 2013-2021
Thanks


Also very great timeline. I took a lot of inspiration from yours into my own version of after the end.
 
The trajectory of the TL admittedly changed as it was written. Supported by the German Empire, and victorious in both Great Wars, Austria-Hungary ultimately endured and prospered, even through domestic political conflicts, the strain of the interwar business collapse, and periods of violent unrest in the empire’s Balkan territories.

Had you gone through with an Austro-Hungarian collapse, it would have huge repercussions for Europe as a whole, especially if it became a Yugoslav style collapse. Namely coinciding with the 2nd Russian Civil War means that the Germans and the rest of the EC won't be too focused on the final fall of the Romavos, not to mention the intervention in South Africa would've been butterflied due to Germany being far more hesitant following them cleaning up A-H's messy collapse. Although if anything, a violent Civil War there is all the more likely as well assuming the Americans don't have the stomach for intervention following the Fourth Pacific War.

Interestingly, a messy Austro-Hungarian collapse could also butterfly away Abdul Hamid III's rise to power in the Ottoman Empire and the worse excesses he approved of near the end of the Empire. Although granted, he only came to power due to his brother dying in a horse riding accident.
 
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What is the state of sci-fi and fantasy in TTL by 2021?

Is there a close equivalent to Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones as well?
 
Had you gone through with an Austro-Hungarian collapse, it would have huge repercussions for Europe as a whole, especially if it became a Yugoslav style collapse. Namely coinciding with the 2nd Russian Civil War means that the Germans and the rest of the EC won't be too focused on the final fall of the Romavos, not to mention the intervention in South Africa would've been butterflied due to Germany being far more hesitant following them cleaning up A-H's messy collapse. Although if anything, a violent Civil War there is all the more likely as well assuming the Americans don't have the stomach for intervention following the Fourth Pacific War.

Interestingly, a messy Austro-Hungarian collapse could also butterfly away Abdul Hamid III's rise to power in the Ottoman Empire and the worse excesses he approved of near the end of the Empire. Although granted, he only came to power due to his brother dying in a horse riding accident.

There certainly are numerous instances in this world where things could have developed differently. Of course, a version of TTL where Austria-Hungary is on the verge of political disintegration by the 1960s, instead of the politically stable and wealthy ally of Germany of TTL, means that things must have diverged long before the ‘60s.
 
What is the state of sci-fi and fantasy in TTL by 2021?

Is there a close equivalent to Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones as well?

Science fiction, as of TTL’s 2021, remains a very popular genre in many countries, including in the USA and German Empire. This is tied in to continued public interest in space exploration, and the ongoing contest between competing blocs of countries to establish a permanent presence in Low Earth Orbit, on the Moon, and Mars.

One of the major differences in general in world cinema compared to our world has been the lack of a trend towards mega-franchises that occurred in OTL Hollywood. For example, this world never had any real equivalent to the James Bond or Godzilla franchise, although movie serials are certainly present as far apart as the US, Germany, Russia, Brazil, China, Bharat, ect.

The closest equivalent to Star Wars in this world is the quartet of movies directed by US filmmaker Ella Nunez: Planet of the Flotsam (2005), Moon of the Villains (2008), Star of the Harlequins (2011), and Galaxy of the Smugglers (2014). Each movie focuses on a different segment of the series’ fictional galactic society. However, there is no equivalent in this series to either the “Hero’s Journey” or to the mysticism/Light Side-Dark Side conflict from OTL Star Wars.

There is no equivalent to OTL Star Trek, and such a TV series and franchise likely would not be successful in TTL’s 2021. Audiences in various countries, including in the US and German Empire, would likely not be able to accept the premise of a powerful, benevolent Federation not being backed by a powerful military force.

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Fantasy, as of TTL’s 2021, has developed on a very different trajectory compared to our world. JRR Tolkien, while managing to survive the First Great War, did not lead a happy existence afterwards: he returned to a Great Britain shattered by military defeat and territorial loss, and later found himself under suspicion during the Silver Shirt years due to his background as a Catholic of German heritage and professor of Germanic languages. Tolkien wound up as an exile in New Zealand, where he eventually completed a single epic novel: The Fall of Numenor, published in Australia and New Zealand after the end of the Second Great War, but not published in the US until TTL’s 1980s. This novel is widely seen as an allegory for the fall of the British Empire in this world. Tolkien never completed any other major works of what could have been an alternate Legendarium.

As of TTL 2021, a genre referred to as “American Fantasy”, which emerged in the mid-1990s, tends to dominate the US market for fantastic literature. In terms of themes, settings, and story lines, many American Fantasy stories might be best described as what would happen if you combined the setting of OTL’s Wizard of Oz with the themes and overall brutality from OTL’s A Song of Ice and Fire. For instance, the 1995 novel widely considered to have launched American Fantasy as its own distinct genre, The Terrible Land of Iz, by Linda Straubing, has a similar plot to that of the OTL horror movie The Night of the Hunter.

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On a side note, as of TTL’s 2021, there is no close equivalent series or franchise to Doctor Who or Harry Potter.
 
Post-war, other than planning, initiating, and waging a war of aggression (crime against peace) and conspiracy thereof, what other war crimes would he be convicted of specifically in your view? Based in this it looks like he was handed down a life sentence. My observation is that like the Wehrmacht IOTL, the CS Army will definitely not be clean. I myself can think of a plethora of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in my head-canon for Patton to be convicted of but not enough to be handed down the death penalty.
George Patton spent the last fifteen years of his life in Fort Custer, Wyoming - a military prison for high-ranking ex-Confederate military officers. Although afforded a degree of respect from his Second Great War opponents (namely Morrell and Ironhewer), the vast majority of Americans never forgave the general who had led Featherston’s treasonous Operation Blackbeard.

Patton spent the rest of his life reading (or re-reading) every military history that he could get his hands on and writing his memoirs, which would be published posthumously. He died in 1959.
 
Even though you tend to use less RL persons in your timeline and go toward creating more fictional characters, what would George Lucas be doing ITTL? Also, are horror movies popular as they are IOTL?
Science fiction, as of TTL’s 2021, remains a very popular genre in many countries, including in the USA and German Empire. This is tied in to continued public interest in space exploration, and the ongoing contest between competing blocs of countries to establish a permanent presence in Low Earth Orbit, on the Moon, and Mars.

One of the major differences in general in world cinema compared to our world has been the lack of a trend towards mega-franchises that occurred in OTL Hollywood. For example, this world never had any real equivalent to the James Bond or Godzilla franchise, although movie serials are certainly present as far apart as the US, Germany, Russia, Brazil, China, Bharat, ect.

The closest equivalent to Star Wars in this world is the quartet of movies directed by US filmmaker Ella Nunez: Planet of the Flotsam (2005), Moon of the Villains (2008), Star of the Harlequins (2011), and Galaxy of the Smugglers (2014). Each movie focuses on a different segment of the series’ fictional galactic society. However, there is no equivalent in this series to either the “Hero’s Journey” or to the mysticism/Light Side-Dark Side conflict from OTL Star Wars.

There is no equivalent to OTL Star Trek, and such a TV series and franchise likely would not be successful in TTL’s 2021. Audiences in various countries, including in the US and German Empire, would likely not be able to accept the premise of a powerful, benevolent Federation not being backed by a powerful military force.

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Fantasy, as of TTL’s 2021, has developed on a very different trajectory compared to our world. JRR Tolkien, while managing to survive the First Great War, did not lead a happy existence afterwards: he returned to a Great Britain shattered by military defeat and territorial loss, and later found himself under suspicion during the Silver Shirt years due to his background as a Catholic of German heritage and professor of Germanic languages. Tolkien wound up as an exile in New Zealand, where he eventually completed a single epic novel: The Fall of Numenor, published in Australia and New Zealand after the end of the Second Great War, but not published in the US until TTL’s 1980s. This novel is widely seen as an allegory for the fall of the British Empire in this world. Tolkien never completed any other major works of what could have been an alternate Legendarium.

As of TTL 2021, a genre referred to as “American Fantasy”, which emerged in the mid-1990s, tends to dominate the US market for fantastic literature. In terms of themes, settings, and story lines, many American Fantasy stories might be best described as what would happen if you combined the setting of OTL’s Wizard of Oz with the themes and overall brutality from OTL’s A Song of Ice and Fire. For instance, the 1995 novel widely considered to have launched American Fantasy as its own distinct genre, The Terrible Land of Iz, by Linda Straubing, has a similar plot to that of the OTL horror movie The Night of the Hunter.

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On a side note, as of TTL’s 2021, there is no close equivalent series or franchise to Doctor Who or Harry Potter.
 
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Well David tends to use less real-life figures after Humphrey and began using more fictional characters of his own to develop his own story, but I see your point. Lucas would still exist ITTL in my opinion as the POD would probably not affect his family background. He was born in California and of mixed European heritage.
I doubt Lucas exists ITTL... the last real-world figure in this timeline who I can think of was Hubert Humphrey.
 
Post-war, other than planning, initiating, and waging a war of aggression (crime against peace) and conspiracy thereof, what other war crimes would he be convicted of specifically in your view? Based in this it looks like he was handed down a life sentence. My observation is that like the Wehrmacht IOTL, the CS Army will definitely not be clean. I myself can think of a plethora of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in my head-canon for Patton to be convicted of but not enough to be handed down the death penalty.

Indeed, I suspect that the atrocities committed by the Confederate forces under Patton’s command while in Ohio and Pennsylvania, when coupled with his central involvement in launching the Confederacy’s war of aggression, would result in at least a postwar life sentence.
 
Even though you tend to use less RL persons in your timeline and go toward creating more fictional characters, what would George Lucas be doing ITTL? Also, are horror movies popular as they are IOTL?

George Lucas doesn’t exist in TTL. However, a rough analogue to the Lucas family does exist in 2021, spread across southern California. Members of the Lucas family have been small business owners, mechanics, reached the middle management in factories and served their required time in the US military, with an informal tradition of working in positions related to construction, maintenance, or logistics. The Lucas family is a conservative family that votes for the Democratic Party in every presidential election, but otherwise doesn’t get involved in politics.

As of 2021, no one in the Lucas family has attended any of the premier US film schools: either those in the California University “Network”, or the East Coast film academies with their prestigious (and exclusive) technical facilities and German-language exchange programs.

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The horror genre is rather different in the US and Germany in 2021 compared to our world. In TTL’s Twentieth Century, nothing as iconic as Psycho was ever produced. Due to differences in the timing of changes to existing censorship systems, differences in audience tastes, and no real trends towards large scale franchises, there is no real equivalent in this world to series like OTL’s Friday the Thirteenth or Nightmare on Elm Street.

Horror movies in both the US and Germany tend to be closer to psychological thrillers than anything like OTL’s slasher movies. There is also a tendency (depending on the director or writer) to use horror as social commentary. Those US horror movies with a supernatural aspect tend to be centered around hauntings or ghosts; in these kinds of movies, there’s usually a revenge element to them.

In 2021, the newest wave of horror fiction in the US is emerging on the New York theater scene, stemming from the surprise smash success of the 2018 John Lastra play Insect. This form of horror, as vividly portrayed in Lastra’s play, focuses on the total psychological destruction of the protagonist due to utterly insane circumstances.
 
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That does make me want to ask: Was the Hays code still a thing in this world and/or what were film standards/censorship like through the 20th century? Also, what is Internet Censorship like in different countries ittl compared to otl?
 
That does make me want to ask: Was the Hays code still a thing in this world and/or what were film standards/censorship like through the 20th century? Also, what is Internet Censorship like in different countries ittl compared to otl?

In the US, in the early Twentieth Century, there was a Code of Conduct adopted by the major film studios. However, it wasn’t along the same contours as the OTL Hays Code; the Code of Conduct was much more of an inter-studio agreement on common standards (which would, in theory, assist the film industry as a whole better resist pressure from outside pressure groups). The Code of Conduct’s precise enforcement still varied by studio, however. A lot of US movies from TTL’s 1930s are more analogous to the OTL “Pre-Code” period from our world’s early Golden Age of Hollywood than anything else.

The Code of Conduct was weakened by the Second Great War, like the Hays Code was after OTL’s WWII. The existential threat posed by Featherston’s CSA, and the horrors of the Destruction made the prewar debates about policing film content seem rather pointless. By the outbreak of the Fourth Pacific War in 1967, the Code of Conduct had been scrapped by the major studios in favor a ratings system not dissimilar from our world’s US system.

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As of TTL’s 2021, the ComboNet is generally widespread around the world, and no country attempted to establish anything analogous to the OTL system of control in place in the People’s Republic of China. On the other hand, there’s also more of a tendency, including in the US and Germany, for the relevant government agencies to view online activity as something to serve a country’s national interest.
 
Indeed as well. Combine that with the Army working in conjunction with the FPG, then we're bound to see atrocities including, but not limited to: execution of POWs/unarmed soldiers, unlawful execution of partisans and political enemies, reprisals against civilians in security warfare, forced disappearance, and assisting in executing African-Americans and anyone deemed "undesirable", or deporting them to concentration camps down South or to be used for slave labor.
Indeed, I suspect that the atrocities committed by the Confederate forces under Patton’s command while in Ohio and Pennsylvania, when coupled with his central involvement in launching the Confederacy’s war of aggression, would result in at least a postwar life sentence.
 
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Speaking of directors, does Steven Spielberg exist too ITTL? If so, his early life would be marked by growing up in a post-war Cincinnati with his family or was he born somewhere else after the war.
George Lucas doesn’t exist in TTL. However, a rough analogue to the Lucas family does exist in 2021, spread across southern California. Members of the Lucas family have been small business owners, mechanics, reached the middle management in factories and served their required time in the US military, with an informal tradition of working in positions related to construction, maintenance, or logistics. The Lucas family is a conservative family that votes for the Democratic Party in every presidential election, but otherwise doesn’t get involved in politics.

As of 2021, no one in the Lucas family has attended any of the premier US film schools: either those in the California University “Network”, or the East Coast film academies with their prestigious (and exclusive) technical facilities and German-language exchange programs.
 
Speaking of directors, does Steven Spielberg exist too ITTL? If so, his early life would be marked by growing up in a post-war Cincinnati with his family or was he born somewhere else after the war.

A long time ago, back when David answered a question about Barry Goldwater IIRC, he said that 1922 was his cutoff for using OTL figures. In short, it's likely anyone you're going to ask about has been butterflied.
 
More on film, what the status of Hollywood's big movie studios (e.g. Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount, Disney, MGM, United Artists)? Are any European filmmakers famous as they were ITTL? Like Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl, Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, and Federico Fellini to name a few. Speaking of Chaplin, I could definitely see him making a TL-191 version of The Great Dictator.
 
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Speaking of directors, does Steven Spielberg exist too ITTL? If so, his early life would be marked by growing up in a post-war Cincinnati with his family or was he born somewhere else after the war.

Steven Spielberg doesn’t exist in this world. However, there is an analogue to the Spielberg family, which as of TTL’s 2021 still mostly lives in the Midwest. Members of the Spielberg family can be found throughout the private sector in a variety of fields; one member of the family founded a successful electronics manufacturing and distribution company in the 1980s that is currently headquartered in Chicago. Members of the Spielberg family have served their required time in the US military generation after generation.

As in the case of TTL’s Lucas family, no members of the Spielberg family have attended any of the premier US film academies.
 
As with the case of Donald Trump, what's TTL's Trump family doing? Considering Frederick Trump is still banished from Germany for draft dodging, does him and the family business have a real-estate empire for generations thereon after? Any members gone to be involved in politics or stay with business dealings?
 
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