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Reds Official Fanfiction/Weird History Thread

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Jason Schmidt-Larsen​

Crimson Garters, based on Bruce Marshall's The Fair Bride and directed by Nunnally Johnson, follows Sister Alexandria Delacruz (Dolores del Rio), a Trinitarian nun, who escapes from Nationalist territory during the Spanish Civil War along with the prostitute Luz (Bella Flores). Bruce Marshall, a citizen of the FBU, was initially Roman Catholic and fairly right wing. His break with mainstream Catholicism occurred when he was forced to flee the French State to Red Spain after speaking out against several massacres committed by PPNCF blueshirts. Marshall's encounters with both Republican and Nationalist forces, as well as his increasing interest in liberation theology, led to his adopting a deeply religious form of anarchism and his eventual friendship with JRR Tolkien. Both The Fair Bride and Crimson Garters reflect this worldview, portraying the Spanish Republic as a deeply flawed and authoritarian state acting out of fear of an even more monstrous foe. Mr. Marshall reportedly approved of his novel's adaptation, saying that while there were many departures from the original, and he wasn't fond of the adaptation's changing Father Arturo's gender, Crimson Garters still conveyed the message he'd put so much effort into delivering.

Let's start with the obvious: Here we have a story that criticizes mainstream socialism, and yet the UASR invests in a very polished film adaptation. Why? To put it simply, not only was Crimson Garters made in the hopes of improving relations with the FBU, it was also made during the Second Cultural Revolution. Both of these circumstances made self-criticism an important requirement. By making a production that criticizes Stalinist policies, Johnson proves FBU sources wrong about the rumored suppression of artistic and political expression in the UASR and other socialist countries. At the same time, he plays into the zeitgeist of questioning official narratives to dismantle oppression. Other themes meant that Crimson Garters was not received as warmly abroad as Nunally Johnson hoped.

The adaptation's use of a nun as a romantic lead, while loosely based on the true story of several novices who joined a female militia during the Spanish Civil War, would be a controversial decision from the beginning. The frank portrayal of a sapphic relationship would attract scrutiny on its own, but the fact that the lovers were a nun and a prostitute, respectively, drew the ire of conservative Christians across the FBU. At the time, there was significant pressure for writers to follow certain moral guidelines. This meant portraying religious figures as being fundamentally good people who kept their vows, as well as treating prostitutes as either villains or misguided victims who were forced into a life of iniquity. As Crimson Garters breaks both of these rules, it was ripe for censorship.

Sister Alexandria's internal conflict is, of course, another factor. To recap, Sister Alexandria is being held for questioning by Nationalist forces due to her Trinitarian leanings, until a Republican bombing raid allows her to escape. Meanwhile Sanjurjo's morality police close down brothels and deport Luz to a concentration camp. Sister Alexandria, fleeing to Republican territory, mistakes the prisoner convoy for her pursuers and opens fire with a stolen submachinegun. While Luz survives due to having stumbled and fallen, some of the other prisoners (and the fascists escorting them) are not so lucky. This posed a huge problem for censors. Here we have one of this film's main themes, that lashing out in fear causes undue harm to the innocent. Scenes of the Red Terror are interspersed with Sister Alexandria's flashbacks to draw direct parallels, Sister Alexandria's guilt drives the emotional conflict and prevents her for falling for Luz until the second half of the film, and her shame leads her to reject an award for heroism in the climactic scene, fleeing with Luz to anarchist territory and an uncertain fate. This is the linchpin of Crimson Garters, and yet it involves a supposedly holy woman killing innocent people out of fear. Here was a scene that the FBU absolutely had to remove, and yet they could not do so without rendering the film a disjointed, incoherent mess. Initially there was an attempt to substitute a different scene where the violence was less visible and more implied. However, even the implication that a nun killed innocent people proved to be too much for the board of censors. Combined with the difficulty of finding and censoring every flashback, completely banning Crimson Garters turned out to be their only option.

Crimson Garters found a second life in private home cinemas across the FBU, and on television as changing morals allowed censorship standards to relax. Nonetheless, its early ban prevented it from becoming as popular as it is in the Comintern. Today, young people mostly know it as the source of a VIIF used as a reaction to something especially frightening or disgusting: A short clip of Sister Alexandria's frightened face as she rears back and opens fire; the gun often replaced by a flamethrower or other more destructive weapon. This semiobscurity is a truly shameful fate for an amazing film that highlights the horrors of any war, even a supposedly righteous one. I strongly recommend catching a rerun or downloading the film to watch on your own time.

8/10 stars​
 
Raiho-kun said:
Made a (very) speculative map for the world of Reds! in 2023:

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What are the two leftwards Comintern flags? The Chinese and Soviet I recognise but the other two elude me. They seem to be some sort of Panamerican Union and African Union flags for the associations of states in Africa and Latin America. If that's the case, where is North America? Is it not one of the four major powers of the Comintern?
 
Imag3HQ said:
What are the two leftwards Comintern flags? The Chinese and Soviet I recognise but the other two elude me. They seem to be some sort of Panamerican Union and African Union flags for the associations of states in Africa and Latin America. If that's the case, where is North America? Is it not one of the four major powers of the Comintern?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Top-left: China
Bottom-Left: Soviet Union
Top-right: Congo
Bottom-right: Pan-America (ie. All Latin American Socialist powers)

In case anyone's curious about the AFS flags....

Top-left: Australasia
Bottom-Left: Franco-British Union
Top-right: Bharat
Bottom-right: Egypt-Sudan

Basically just the four most powerful countries in each bloc (sans America, which is the flag-map in the middle)
 
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Here's one that occurred to me the other day and erupted back into my thoughts:
  1. Huey Long doesn't die, escaping the liquidation of the Senate and going on to a career as an opportunistic revolutionary and Democratic-Republican mover and shaker.
  2. The Popular Alliance bungles the 1950 election, with Labour losing some seats but maintaining control in the FBU.
  3. The WCP doesn't split at the right time, allowing a newly consolidated DR-FLP under Huey to form a minority government.
We don't know enough about the Horn War for me to make solid predictions, but so far "D-R/DFLP minority government" and "FBU doesn't immediately weasel out of its postwar commitments" seem like they'd both be fertile PODs for timelines TTL and having both at the same time has the potential to completely derail the course of the Cold War, so I thought it would be an interesting development 🤔
 
Raiho-kun said:
Top-left: China
Bottom-Left: Soviet Union
Top-right: Congo
Bottom-right: Pan-America (ie. All Latin American Socialist powers)

In case anyone's curious about the AFS flags....

Top-left: Australasia
Bottom-Left: Franco-British Union
Top-right: Bharat
Bottom-right: Egypt-Sudan

Basically just the four most powerful countries in each bloc (sans America, which is the flag-map in the middle)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Question why wouldn't Alberta be included in the Socialist American Union on the map? Wouldn't they have a stronger link to the U.S. culturally, given the reason they were added to Canada because the British were afraid of the U.S.A grabbing them due to their similar culture.

Also Northern Yemen was socialist during the Cold War IOTL. Do you think the UKA would intervene to stop that in the Reds timeline?

Overall great map, hope to see more.
 
Putting these here since I don't want to clutter up the main thread anymore lol, but here are some further evolutions on my M-47 concept and what a possible service rifle (and derivatives) for VOSCOM would look like.

So, below is a "family portrait" of the modern M-47A2 (with rail system) compared to its original version, the venerable M-47 machine carbine.


As stated previously, aesthetically it's a slightly modified M-14 upper married to an AK-style receiver (in the case of the OG M-47) and the lower receiver of the G-36 (for the A2). I also drew from the FAL for the length and the carry handle (rare on assault rifles but I think it looks cool lol). I like to imagine that some version of the OG (maybe and/or chopped down version, TTL's AK-47SU perhaps?) becomes like the unholy love child of the AR-15, the FAL, and the AK-47 in its ubiquity.

Next is the M-24 EMR (Enhanced Marksman Rifle), an M-47 designated marksman/sharpshooter derivative that's chambered for the larger 7.76x39mm round, as well as the MA-10 carbine. The MA-10 is the standard issue long arm for local Red Guard's, Militia's, Civil Defense groups, etc. and some variation of it is the rifle most Americans familiarize themselves with during national service.


The M-24 and the MA-10 replace the M-14 and the Mini-14 ITTL, respectively. The M-24 is essentially identical to modern M-14 EMR/DMR derivatives, just with some slightly altered furniture drawn from the SVD and MP-5. The MA-10, on the other hand, is a dolled up Mini-14 with a 20 round magazine. I winged it on the color scheme - I figured Red Guard and Civil Defense groups would have some kind of funky color scheme to differentiate themselves from the military, so why not EMS colors? I also added some new sights to the MA-10, both to accommodate the upper rail system and because I figured the "civilian" (for lack of a better term) variant would have a larger, more user-friendly rear sight.

In any case, enjoy, and feedback welcomed!
 
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And now, because I'm an absolute madman, I give you the M-47's counterpart in the FBU, and the standard rifle of the AFS - the EMC70/CMAE70 ("Enfield Machine Carbine for the 70's", in French "Carabine-machine de la manufacture d'armes Enfield"). Chambered for the 5.45×39mm round, it succeeded the LSLR1 (Redsverse's version of the L1A1, which was just a very British FAL) and, despite early failures, is now widely adopted across the AFS. While it was more accurate and more powerful than the M-47, it proved to be far less reliable. Subsequent improvements, however, have refined the design into a number of derivatives.



Yes, it is basically a bullpup M-16. I figured since VOSCOM gets the unholy love child of the Mini-14 and the AK as its long arm, why not go for the allohistorical layup and give the AFS the offspring of a drunken one night stand between an M-16 and an SA80. I don't know if the firearms of the AFS have been detailed, so my broad strokes headcanon is that it was developed as the first truly universal AFS standard rifle (where before it was a hodgepodge of national long arms with some ammo standardization). Like OTL's M-16 it's rollout was...not great...but like OTL's M-16 the it was refined and reworked into a highly adaptable and capable rifle.
 
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