WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?
- Thread starter woweed
- Start date
so sonic heroes would be more sonic adventure 2.5 and tails adventure is essentially sonic adventure 3 meets naruto with the meterex plot (HELL YES! this is my dream sonic game! that and a dreamcast era sonic xtreme reboot in the style of adventure 1 with the plot and characters of the archie comics are what i want to see in a sonic game),
the only thing that would make these games better is if it were on the dreamcast
also i wonder if cream the rabbit is still in sonic heroes
maybe shes like what toriel in undertale is as a character that only appears in the tutorial/easy mode (kinda like in sonic advanced)
it would be pretty cool to see the sonic the fighters characters come back in the adventure art style,
after all honey is what got amy rose into lolita fashion after all (which is how i also discovered lolita when i was 14,
because the petticoats looked fluffy like a fox or raccoon tail which added to my furry floof overload aesthetic)
i think billy and mandy arent as popular in the 2000s amongst TTLs zillenials as say codename kids next door, but like with earthbound and invader zim, once those kids grow up into teens in the 2010s it might have a cult following
(similar to the following of courage the cowardly dog after that got cancelled)
sounds pretty cool
the only thing that scares me right now is when geronimo gets to 2007
as that was when modern warfare came out IOTL
which pretty much killed the boomer shooter for a whole 8 years IOTL until games like strafe and dusk were announced by using 90s nostalgia
hopefully when we get to the late 2000s-2010s
we will see more games that are more like quake 2, unreal tournament, jedi knight, portal/half life 2, and the "original" duke nukem forever from 2002
and less like left 4 dead/csgo, segas alien series, star wars battlefront 2016, cod and battlefield 1
hopefully
with the rise of indie games like cave story in 2005 (which may be more popular without 9/11) and a more colorful/quirky and less emo and militarized AAA gaming industry
its possible
One thing I'm curious, how would pop-culture be like if the scene involves wreckage, trash and papers everywhere and missing posters?
We had several movies with those scenes such as Resident Evil, 28 Days Later (both being filmed pre-9/11 and coming out in 2002), and then later, Dawn of the Dead and The War of the Worlds?
0:39-0:46 shows a trash-laden road similar to the roads of Lower Manhattan during 9/11.
The scene where Tom Cruise and his family escape the river only to be rained down by clothing from the people that were vaprozied reminded people of 9/11 as well.
Most of those scenes involving debris flying in the wind or scattered in the road mostly gave people the chills as it reminded them of papers falling from the WTC.
So if movies like these had scenes with trash and debris everywhere, it won't be scene as "traumatic" for TTL?
We had several movies with those scenes such as Resident Evil, 28 Days Later (both being filmed pre-9/11 and coming out in 2002), and then later, Dawn of the Dead and The War of the Worlds?
Most of those scenes involving debris flying in the wind or scattered in the road mostly gave people the chills as it reminded them of papers falling from the WTC.
So if movies like these had scenes with trash and debris everywhere, it won't be scene as "traumatic" for TTL?
I think the great impact of 9/11 was shattering the sense of invulnerability Americans had after the end of the Cold War. A lot of these movies had that sort of theme.
Then again, disaster movies like Volcano were also fairly common around the turn of the century, so I think you might still see disaster films, but ones that more an excuse to dump CGI onto movie audiences.
Oh yes disaster films will still be there. But hits people hard in these zombie and alien films is that scenes showing papers and trash flying or strawn in the street will remind people of the Towers. That ending scene in Resident Evil wherein Alice is seen outside an empty Raccoon City with abandoned emergency vehicles everywhere while papers fly in the distance and the road eerily reminds people of how Lower Manhattan was like during and after the towers collapsed. Same for the Missing People Posters scene in 28 Days Later when Jim was exploring London. The War of the Worlds also had those missing posters in the New England ferry scene.
Only RE and 28DL were filmed pre-9/11 in the examples I mentioned while the rest had influences of it. Dawn of the Dead special features mentions about the zombie outbreak speculated to be caused by bioterrorism from a terrorist group or a rogue state while WOTW had Dakota Fanning's character asking if the aliens were the terrorists.
I highly doubt the Dreamcast would of continued since it ended months before 9/11 so even ITTL Sega still becomes third party.
It wouldn’t be SA3 just a solo character spin-off starring Tails in a space adventure which would lead to Cosmo being part of the video game continuity since the third season would of been likely recycled for Tails’ game. Sonic X season 2 would of likely have Chris and the human characters get pushed to the sidelines in favor of reintroducing classic characters when the tournament arc adapts not only Sonic Battle but Sonic The Fighters leading to a very different season 2 and the show would end with the home arc.
Since Shadow is a one-off character and other classic characters reappearing ITTL this would lead to characters like Blaze and Silver being butterflied away along with the Sonic Boom subseries in the 2010s since the franchise’s tone remains consistent since Sonic 3&K being an action adventure series but it never went into grim dark territory leading to a different 06 which might fare better then OTL.
Cream however would still exist ITTL.
I imagine that Sonic '06 ITTL being more in spirit of the tone as the Adventure Games.
But it would be a bit more lighthearted then OTL. Heck with no 9/11 its visuals might be more cell shaded rather then focusing on realism.
Tbh I think that 9/11 made a lot of entertainment more lighthearted, not less, as there was a perception that people wanted simple escapism. So if anything no 9/11 may have seen sonic go full 90s anti-hero with everything that entails.
Could we have seen a darker Justice League cartoon along similar lines?
So the 2000s could've been known as the decade of doom and gloom, and in a world where 9/11 happened in 2009, people in the 2010s would be like "2000s cartoons were so much more mature."
2000s already were a decade of doom and gloom in a lot of ways, so it would probably just be a different flavor of it. I have no idea what this 9/11 in 2009 scenario is though so I'm not sure.
Let's say Bush against all odds still get reelected in 2004 and everything remains the same as OTL with the 2008 Great Recession and Obama getting elected would the 2010s in terms of pop culture remain the same as OTL?
Unlikely, the war on terror which by that point had been dragging on for a decade has a pretty notable impact on pop culture.
But what about the Great Recession and the polarizing politics under Obama if 9/11 never happened?
Eh, it probably depends on what parts of pop culture you're talking about. Some things remain the same and other things are changed or butterflied away completely.
I should note that without the War on Terror or the Iraq War, the Great Recession probably would not have been as severe as it was in OTL (I know I've stated this quite a few time already, but still).
Indeed, without September 11th, no War on Terror (at least not one starting in 2001 anyways).
Well yes that would happen, but all culture builds upon what came previously, and with a different 2000s pop culture would also change.
I think it is important to note that 9/11, for all its horror and destruction, didn't happen in a vacuum.
If you look at the 1990s and early 2000s, there were more than a few harbingers of what was to come: the first attack on the WTC, the East African embassy bombings, the bombing of the USS Cole, the increasing fanaticism of the Taliban as symbolized by their destruction of those Buddhist statues (assholes).
Even if Bin Laden had been killed, there would've still been violent extremists wanting to tear down America, albeit in a less organized manner.
But if America was subjected to a series of smaller terrorist attacks, would they gradually have worn away at America's sense of invincibility and changed pop culture anyways?
If you look at the 1990s and early 2000s, there were more than a few harbingers of what was to come: the first attack on the WTC, the East African embassy bombings, the bombing of the USS Cole, the increasing fanaticism of the Taliban as symbolized by their destruction of those Buddhist statues (assholes).
Even if Bin Laden had been killed, there would've still been violent extremists wanting to tear down America, albeit in a less organized manner.
But if America was subjected to a series of smaller terrorist attacks, would they gradually have worn away at America's sense of invincibility and changed pop culture anyways?