"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
By Durin's beard! If Goebbels keeps writing stuff like this, his Eldritch Saga is going to be a massive success. Keep it up, Joey!
Seriously, I loved the chapter.
Seriously, I loved the chapter.
I know the chapter overall and the previous mentions of Goebbels make it clear that this timelines version of him is more like an expy of OTL Lovecraft, but this quote and the mention of his anti-fascism made me picture a Goebbels that in addition to being the equivalent of Lovecraft is also majorly anti-totalitarian and the equivalent of otl Orwell, which I think would be incredibly amusing and ironic considering what a huge role he played in nazi Germany in real life. Even though it’s way more likely that he ends up just making propaganda for Europa instead or staying a cosmic horror author, the idea of such a major figure in an otl totalitarian regime becoming one of the most major (and quite possibly one of the only) anti-totalitarian authors in this timeline is incredibly amusing too me.
Ironic things like this are like half the reason I read WMIT? so I am for this.
(Other half of course is general high-quality.)
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Joey Goebbels is one hell of a writer ITTL. That was pretty damn chilling.
Also, if y'all want to see how I envision your average Cokie law enforcement officer, or hell your average Cokie, look to the one and only Sheriff Buford T. Justice of the 1977 classic Smokey and the Bandit
What we're dealin with here, is a total lack of respect for the law. She disrespected the law, she disrespected me, mah authoritah. And that ain't nothin but pure and simple ole fashioned Illuminism!
Also, if y'all want to see how I envision your average Cokie law enforcement officer, or hell your average Cokie, look to the one and only Sheriff Buford T. Justice of the 1977 classic Smokey and the Bandit
What we're dealin with here, is a total lack of respect for the law. She disrespected the law, she disrespected me, mah authoritah. And that ain't nothin but pure and simple ole fashioned Illuminism!
The real twist ending!
Just as the madness reaches peak intensity and it seems nuclear war is inevitable, Rod Serling comes around the corner and narrates!
Lol. RIP Jackie Gleeson*, I love that movie.
*(and everyone else, I think Sally Field is the only actor that played a major character who's still alive......that's sad)
I had been meaning to write more about Goebbels for a long time, and I'm glad you guys like it! Funny enough I do see him as this TLs Orwell.
What innovations, scientific, medical, or technological, do you guys see happening in the 30s, in particular up until the bombing of Cuba?
How about astronomy? It'd be interesting to see how the Union or the Council of Jehovah interprets the stars also will an American still discover Pluto in TTL?
Another thing would be head transplants or Pavlovian conditioning, or hell why not organ/head transplants like Demikhov's experiments. I can see the Union seeing such science as a way to achieve immortality by transplanting heads on to super human pinnacle bodies, with the strongest in the Union willing to donate their bodies after death of course to possibly become the new body of the Atheling.
I'll drop in a second for more astronomy news, given that both Neptune and
I would also enjoy the occasional ominous offhand reference to advances in atomic physics - this was the most productive time of Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Fermi among others, and there's something wonderfully ominous about knowing the monstrous Bomb is going to be in the hands of an insane state soon but not knowing exactly when until it happens.
Antibiotics were just getting discovered around now OTL, and I can absolutely see any of the states (RU, Europa, even Britain or the Illuminists) keeping penicillin (or a similar compound) a national-security secret even from their own civilian populations until the war breaks out. Of course, I imagine this would go hand in hand with nightmarish developments in biological and chemical weapons (Ireland, maybe?), so when the next big one breaks out there is going to be absolute desolation even before the nuclear urn is poured out.
With the big centers of innovation being separated for so long by political enmity, it would be hilarious to see both the RU and Europa develop "unbreakable" cypher machines-- not due to any great qualities of the machines, but simply because they take such different approaches to computing or even mathematics itself that neither side even really understands how the enemy's machine works.
I imagine we could see an update on psychoanalysis, astronomy, and medicine. Perhaps about famous scientists who received the League of Nations Nobel Prize expy in those fields? And the showcase their European culture. And I indeed intend to foreshadow nukes. We haven't heard from Midas Goldstein in a while have we?
Maybe the LoN's achievement prizes could be called Triumphs or Ovations, as a callback to Rome. Or maybe there is some Germanic equivalent concept that could be used instead?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_triumph
Inspired by Local58, I am going to try to make a (noncanon) Emergency Alert Video. It would be a message from the president announcing total disaster of some sort. As seen in my Madnessverse trailer, I can do a pretty spot on JFK impression. BUT I will also attempt to figure out how to load it onto my 1960 tv console and in turn make a video of that! How meta would that be?
That's a great idea!!
That's a great idea!!
They could just borrow the German word "Sieg" which means Victory or maybe they could perhaps use "Champion" I think this works so you can have "Champion of Literature", "Champion of Physics", or "Champion of X", it also helps that Champion is derived not just from Latin but the Latins borrowed it from the Germanic tribes (the word meant like a place to fight or something and what loyal brave American TTL doesn't love a good fight) also Champion just sounds so Pinnacle.
Would he by any chance be going further into madness by this point, perhaps he gets the Peacemaker idea from having a little too much LSD.
Honestly I wouldn’t be shocked if Contingency was how the RU would react to large-scale uprisings or invasion and occupation.
Also as an unrelated side note, I do wonder how the Union organizes its historiography of the world, I wouldn't mind having a couple of chapters solely being extracts of an in-universe history book with like the history of Rome and Greece in relation to the Republican Union as its successor, because I do wonder how the RU with its celebration over Anglo-Saxons and Germanic heritage also pride itself on the Roman Empire and Greece. Especially given Rome and the Greeks negative opinion and (in Rome's case) violent relationship of the Germanic tribes or the Germanic tribes sacking Rome. Do they perhaps see the Germanic tribes like the Visigoths or Vandals or whatever as scourges sent by God for Rome's "miscegenation and debauchery" and becoming enlightened by Rome or how about their pagan origins of such pinnacle men such as Julius Caesar or perhaps Augustus.
Revisionist history will probably claim the Germanic tribes that triggered Rome’s fall were the source of southern & Eastern European Inferiors and that they supplanted they true pinnacle Greco-Romans but left behind pinnacle men in Northern Europe who assimilated the surviving pinnacle Romans into themselves
With the flu and the casualties of war I think medical technology and biological weapons will be developed. Mechanical and electronic computers may have a start for record keeping. With the destiny road and the integration of the new territories logistics will be developed more. Europa may lead in better personal armor and tactics to make up for losses in the previous war.