"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
Their "stab in the back" myth.
And also kinda how you can see why the Bolsheviks were upset over legit mistreatment before they went full Stalin. Lol
This chapter was great! The AFC's fleshing out really sheds new light onto how and why the Union went crazy. If I didn't know what they did later on, I would actually root for the poor bastards.
Here's kinda the way I read it, and I'll try and explain via metaphor. It might be horribly contrived, but I'm doing my best here.
Imagine the RU as an underdog high school. They get beaten in sports all the time, their rivals are richer and more successful than they are, and everything is just going badly. The AFC is basically the school's cheerleaders/band/etc, holding a giant ass pep rally to keep people's hopes up for the next big game. Everyone knows they could still lose, but the whole point of the rally is to inspire hope that losing isn't the only option.
Md139115
Banned
Thanks! I think what makes it "work" so well is that it's not out of place at any time in American history. Heck, I can walk into a mega-church tomorrow and start preaching this and people would be invading X country by that evening. Despite that though, reading it over, it seems a lot more tame than I was imagining it in my head. I should probably sharpen the emotion a bit more and cut down on some of the cerebral-ness.
Thanks!! It's a very heavily modified of a a stained glass window that's a dual-tribute by both America and Britain.
Hey, not every sermon would be "INVADE ALL THE BASES," they've gotta have a message. Things that sound happy and Christian, like "what the Lord's love and redemption means to me" and "what freedom means to me." No one would follow the religion if it was "kill all foreigners" every bit of the speech. It's gotta be uplifting, if anything to humanize our main villains of this TL, who aren't even really the RU leadership, but the American People themselves who willingly went down this path believing it to be right. The average citizens are a bunch of downtrodden, forgotten, and depressed poor people who want a better life. By the time the 1900s roll around, the Union will have been completely radicalized into committing glaring atrocities, and any sympathy will likely end, but you'll be able to see why they got to that point and how every generation was more radical than the last. Also, I have considered writing basically after Everett dies that most all of the AFC leadership actually don't really believe in anything, but use the religion as they see it as the way to justify foreign wars, colonization, and a tool to keep the people in line and distract them from the gradual elimination of their true freedoms.
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While I certainly think that the majority of MDP bosses will not really believe in the Church in a literal sense beyond a certain point, I actually find it rather unlikely that the leadership could end up becoming closeted atheists. Even in cults where the cult leader knows that he made the whole thing up, at a certain point even they start buying into their own bullshit. And besides, people like the Reverend Prophet Billy Graham clearly believe in the whole thing. I think it would be interesting if their were a tension between the Church and State.
Oh absolutely! I didn't mean that none of them believe it or that they vocally say they don't believe the church's teachings, but there's probably a lot of Jimmy Swaggarts floating around the AFC. lol The leadership of the AFC will always be pro-Burr and the whole nine yards, but I think it would be interesting to study some characters who either are having moral dilemmas about the whole caboodle or people who simply are in it for the fame and fortune.
This is going to be sweet, I can tell already. Like being able to watch a movie again for the first time. I love the pictures—I didn't realized it until somewhat recently, but a big part of why this timeline always felt so vivid was the pictures. It felt like I could see the horror happening, or at least picture it in my head. As a sidenote, I think this is almost the exact anniversary of when I finished WMiT for the first time, since next week I’m going to the same annual event I went to on the day I finished it. I seek to remind everyone that this timeline actually has itself a wiki that has barely been touched in a very long time. Now might be a good opportunity to turn it to life!
Let me also take this opportunity to paste in something that I wrote about the original WMiT back in March on this thread:
I'd also like to point out that the original timeline has its own wiki, which almost no one has done anything with in five years. Now might be a good time to restart work on it!
Let me also take this opportunity to paste in something that I wrote about the original WMiT back in March on this thread:
I'd also like to point out that the original timeline has its own wiki, which almost no one has done anything with in five years. Now might be a good time to restart work on it!
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This was a great summary of WMIT you posted! Thank you for your kind words! I agree, most TLs without illustrations seem to be really boring to me (nothing against the really good ones who don't need them of course). Part of the fun is seeing the alternate world. And I'm sure plenty of people have thought this TL implausible, and it is, but it's not outright ASB to me. Since I was 17 I've been writing this trying to craft a unique, totally different, crazy dystopia cranked to the max, but without the supernatural or ASB elements of Fallout, Bioshock, and the like. This Redux will be more believable, but the purpose of the TL was never to be 100% plausible, it's intended to be 100% entertaining, horrifying like a train wreck, and not quite ASB but super-duper just plain fun gritty American horror. I enjoy writing pulpy mostly-"plausible" alternate history. Without the pulp factor, there wouldn't be much entertainment to be had in this TL. It would just be depressing and void of meaning. For instance, if I had a more realistic candidate found the AFC than Burr, such as any nutcase fictional character I could say as being butterflied in, it would be more realistic. Would it be more fun? Absolutely not. For other plot points I feel fictional characters are realistic and necessary. But Burr's connection OTL to Jonathan Edwards was to juicy not to utilize.
Basically I follow the rule of cool, but not outright fabrication. I research for hours before writing anything new. Right now I'm studying the birth of Mormonism to get a better understanding over how a religion like the AFC might function as the "American Religion." The best thing I can say about this is I picture this entire storyline as one flowing Ken Burns documentary playing in my head. I know how I want it to be and what messages I want to convey and how to skirt the very fine line between just depressing (like 1984) to depressing and entertaining (TL191, Fallout, Wild Wild Country, etc). The only thing I care about is fun. If I'm not having fun, the readers aren't having fun. I just want to entertain people and give them something to think about and dissect in their minds. There are so many expys, allegories, references, quotes, and images it would take an eternity going through the Madness Classic just to get them all. The biggest problem of Madness Classic was I didn't convey WHY the US/RU/NUSA hated the Inferiors and its neighbors so much. I'm making that much more plausible this go-round. This TL is the baby of everything I know about history, politics, war, and peace, and Madness Redux will be twice as good as Classic!
Also, that Wiki is indeed something I've been on lately planning how to possibly expand it in the future.
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Willard Crawford I believe is fictional if I recall. (Madness is bleeding over into actual history for me for a second lol). However, he was one of the earliest characters I created and he's not nearly as interesting or important as Burr. He was just there to do the job. I considered using an OTL founding father to overthrow the Federalists this time but went with Crawford for old times sake. Obviously some fictional characters are necessary for a good alt-hist to make sense, but if I can use a cool character from OTL who readers would enjoy, I'll go with that.
EDIT: I kind of want to do write-up on Willard Crawford now. Lol Flesh out his character arc.
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SuperZtar64
Banned
The wiki (which I have already begun editing) has some info on his early days, don't know what the source is considering that you made the character lol.
But yeah, I think he could definitely be an interesting character. Knowing more about him would definitely make it more interesting to know what his reaction would be if he saw the 1956 RU
The wiki (which I have already begun editing) has some info on his early days, don't know what the source is considering that you made the character lol.
But yeah, I think he could definitely be an interesting character. Knowing more about him would definitely make it more interesting to know what his reaction would be if he saw the 1956 RU
That's fantastic! I bet he would be terrified. I honestly picture him as the Second Coming of Washington. A troubled and flawed hero simply standing for what he honestly believes and who truly loves his country. Man, the opportunity for full-on biographies in WMIT is staggering.
