"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
I literally couldn't have kept everything straight without you last time, and your illustrations and chapters on Africa/Middle East were fantastic.
One thing I never understood in the last version nor in this one is how Pennsylvania managed to inherit the entire Ohio Country, and Indiana. Wouldn't Connecticut, which presumably never dropped it's claims, contest that bitterly? And wouldn't the other states feel threatened by Pennsylvania becoming so disproportionately powerful? As a Pennamite I'm happy for the wank, but it don't seem to make much sense.
Honestly another thing I planned on addressing was more state details. I'm almost certainly changing that. I basically knew EXACTLY what I was doing with WMIT's main plot the entire time and wanted to focus on it. It actually started around 2010 or 11 as a very short story I wrote for school where a guy named "Uncle Joe" is ruler of a USA that lost the ACW and has become a militant backwater Oceania-Lite. Now that I know basically what I'm doing for sure this time, I can focus on the small details instead of wanting to plow ahead to get to my favorite parts.
Regardless, glad to see your back at it. Pulpy though it may be, WMIT is my favorite timeline on the site.
I hope to see more fleshing out of the American Exceptionalist Church.
Thank you so much! I actually love pulp, and while WMiT is believable and not really ASB, it was always intended to have a pulpy flair and a definite *style*. It's not a long series of events, it's entertainment.
I actually am bringing in the AFC really early in the Redux as soon as the Napoleonic Wars are over.
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Might we see more of everybody's favorite Austrian Adolf von Branau in this redux?
And while we're at it, might we see an alternate Lavrentiy Beria? I feel he would fit in well with this world's environment.
And while we're at it, might we see an alternate Lavrentiy Beria? I feel he would fit in well with this world's environment.
Maybe we could have an Imperial Japan-esque power or two in East Asia which the NUSA sees as the equivalent to "Honorary Aryans"?
xsampa
Banned
China played the role of Imperial Japan in the original Madness and had a rivalry with the NUSA over American Corea IIRC.
I thought the RU was the Imperial Japan expy, since they had the Great American-Pacific Co-Prosperity Sphere and occupied Korea. Though, China did get really militant once it got its independence.
While I'm here, I'd like to ask, how different is Latin America going to be from the Classic TL? Is Brazil-Rio de la Plata still going to be a thing?
The RU basically wound up being a twisted clusterfuck expy of the Axis Powers, North Korea, and the USSR. There was a bit of each in that insane shitshow
Potential idea: While not officially allied or anything, the South gets involved in some landplundering with the RU in the Caribbean/Latin or South America/Africa/wherever. As a result, the upper classes start falsely believing that they and the RU are kindred spirits against the “inferior of society” ie anything not Anglo-Saxon. Roll on a few years and the South is bogged down in squashing rebellion in the conquered lands and are too distracted and too mistaken in the belief the RU is coming to help that they don’t expect to be stabbed in the back
I never really got into the original due to the grimdark (which I generally dislike), but this looks detailed and well-thought-out indeed. I probably won't be reading the reboot, though, just because the original got depressing.
SuperZtar64
Banned
If Shicagwa doesn't return i'm gonna be angry. If my glorious home city is going to be in the hellhole that is the RU, it might as well be a powerhouse!
I hope that in this timeline that Great Qing not only makes an attempt at modernizing its army (as it did in OTL, even before the Sino-Japanese War, and I can search for and provide sources for this at request) but also make a better stand against the Western Powers (if a Missionary War does occur, that is). L would also like to see a slightly more turbulent and restless political situation in Great Qing, as it's government and peoples gradually became more turbulent and restless in OTL as the empire neared its demise (examples include the Taiping Rebellion and the botched "100 Days Reform")
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xsampa
Banned
Mongolian/Uyghur nationalist/rebel movements might be a realistic form of this, stirred on by Russian agitation. Russia wanted Xinjiang and Mongolia OTL and supporting these movements would help weaken China.
This could work with an even more Han-icized Qing Empire--AFAIK a major barrier to Westernization was that it infringed on the official narrative that the Qing were an Inner Eurasian state in the vein of the Mongol Empire and her successors, a narrative which necessitated a Janissary-esque socio-political elite in the form of the Bannermen. Maybe Madness' severe European incursions (which honestly make the Opium Wars look like mud-flinging) leads the Qing court to rely more and more on the primarily Han Chinese Yongying rather than the Eight Banners?
In the end, Han Chinese would dominate the new Qing state both culturally and politically. The Qing would essentially abandoning any pretense to being native Inner Eurasian rulers in Mongolia and be able to undertake full scale Meiji style reforms.
Nap, if you want to expand your TL and add characters, may I suggest Ranavalona I, the Mad Mother of Madagascar? With just a little exaggeration, she would fit nicely into this TL. This RL tyrant makes guys like Chuck Oswald and Joe Steele look like wannabes; if you want a ruler to be a serious pain in Napoleon's and France's backsides, she'd be perfect.
(The link is to her entry on the Rejected Princesses website; if you are looking for ideas for lesser known people of history, this is an excellent site.
WARNING: the article I linked is Very Dark; it gets so bad the author had to invoke cute bunnies to ease the trauma, screaming "OMG THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN!!!")
(The link is to her entry on the Rejected Princesses website; if you are looking for ideas for lesser known people of history, this is an excellent site.
WARNING: the article I linked is Very Dark; it gets so bad the author had to invoke cute bunnies to ease the trauma, screaming "OMG THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN!!!")
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