Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
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In my personal world building, I called it "our sanctuary, their home" which takes double meaning with the presence of native aliens
What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?
- Thread starter Silent Runner
- Start date
- Post-1900
- Location
- The observable universe
So may I ask what is this TBO timeline and why is it considered cringe? I keep seeing the name but have no idea what it is
Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
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The first parts were fine, and it can be summed in a reddit tier meme or a comedy app tier gif caption. Germany conquers Europe, but America goes fuck it and glasses it with nukes. Then things go pants on head stupid with SS run Caliphate and a Sino Japanese imperial communist empire. He also made salvation war, which turned the invasion of hell into rivet counting bullshit. He does not know or desire to write a story with "stakes" or "competive balance"
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Coiler
ROURKE
Series of web-forum serials turned self-published books by analyst Stuart Slade. It's basically long done by now, especially the crazier parts.
For the books themselves, starting with this , it starts out like this.
Halifax ousts Churchill in a parliamentary coup in 1940, Britain sues for peace. Then it falls in a 2014 Crimea-style (that's really the best way to describe it) sneak attack. The Eastern Front happens, the US enters the war and fights directly on the Eastern Front alongside Zhukov's decommunized Russia, the Germans hold Britain and manage to stay along the entire length of the Volga for years even with ferocious fighting, and it seems like a horrible stalemate. Then the US unleashes its stockpiled fleet of B-36s, and Germany is nuked into ruin.
That's the first and least objectionable part. Ok, Stuart from the get-go had no concept of "drama" or "balance", and there's still a lot of contrivances there, but it's a sort of "give Germany the breaks, and see what good it does them as long as the US enters the war."
_ _ _ _ _ _
Then it goes to goofytown. Via the pop-history "absorbs its conquerors" trope, China and Japan merge into Communist Imperial Chipan (really), which proceeds to face the US in the Easy Mode Cold War. Chipan has all the historical USSR's weaknesses (and then some) but absolutely none of its strength. The Germans somehow manage to hold out in Russia for about a decade despite their supply lines being long nuked and retreat into the Middle East, where they throw in their lot with sympathetic nationalist parties-
-no, they ally with this terribly researched "Caliphate" (keep in mind this book was published in the mid-2000s, and it started as a serial for a very right wing audience) that basically exists to turn the Middle East into a giant target. The "Caliphate" has to have the Germans do everything that requires even the slightest bit of competence and even they get crushed by American Air Power. Again. The Falklands War still somehow happens at exactly the same year it did IOTL, only with more toys on both sides. Throughout all this, there are immortal Mary Sues, including presidential advisor "The Seer", the closest the series has to a main character. Almost all of the OTL presidents still happen in the exact order so that the Seer can either praise or berate them.
With the Evil McNamara sidelined, the B-70s can fly free, and there's this giant Strategic Air Command, and everyone loves it for ending World War II and it's totally uncontroversial. And all sorts of space stuff with the Evil Inept NASA sidelined, and there's forum username inserts in every book.
It's not as uniquely bad as I first thought. For instance, Crusade has a main character plopped in a position of power as an author mouthpiece, a tangled set of plots, and an implausible Middle Eastern superstate that can only beat up a few local jobbers before getting easily stopped by Awesome American Weaponry. What does Executive Orders by Tom Clancy himself have? A main character plopped in a position of power as an author mouthpiece, a tangled set of plots, and an implausible Middle Eastern superstate that can only beat up a few local jobbers before getting easily stopped by Awesome American Weaponry. And it's actually better literarily than a lot of pure "TLs", because as flat as they are, it at least tries to have a plot and characters.
Where it still stands out is the one-sidedness. The worldbuilding bends over to keep the Americans from being mildly inconvenienced, and every book is filled with what amounts to "The Americans are awesome!", "The Americans are ruthless (and therefore awesome)", and "Well, whatever our military can do, it's not going to be as awesome as the Americans!". One "action" scene in Crusade even has the specific line "it really wasn't fair.". At the beginning of one book, we see the Chipanese high command lamenting how their strategic arsenal is utterly pathetic compared to the Americans. You get the idea.
_ _ _ _ _ _
The series attracted a lot of notoriety that it probably isn't that deserving of in hindsight (see above) because of how Stuart constantly threw down the gauntlet and was a general Internet Navy SEAL Tough Guy. While they were written, the stories were clearly panderfics done on a whim, but afterwards, no, they had to be Super Serious Stories About Serious Issues[1]. For instance, Crusade , my introduction to the series, is obviously just a "stomp the 'Moslems' " story to anyone who reads it, but became a tale of how bad decisions can lead to a lose-lose situation.
Then after the Salvation War Incident on SDN[2], he more or less retreated back to his own registration-locked forum. The TBO books live on, but they're old hat now.
[1]ie "See, it's criticizing Massive Retaliation, not crudely celebrating it! Honest! The gore in the Salvation War is meant to show the horror of modern weapons and be an anti-war story! Honest! Really!"
[2]Kid torrents a story that was already freely available on a publicly accessible forum around the same time people on SDN were starting to criticize the Salvation War series and peek behind the curtain at Stuart's own HPCA forum (they saw a Baen's Bar, let me put it that way). Stuart flipped out and had this story about how it was a jealous religious fundamental who cost him a gigantic advance with a conventional publisher that no one believed. It cost him his remaining support on SDN and he was kicked out.
I had to read this part of your post several times to see if this was real...it sounds like satire!
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- Location
- Croatia
So far, it sounds like a HoI4 game where everyone just picked an odd path in their focus tree.
...that's not how either nations or ideologies work. WTF? How does one come up with this?
Edit: Though, admittedly, while I wouldn't put something so impossible into a 'serious' Alt History story myself, I wouldn't mind making an interesting map out of it or arranging for such a state to exist as part of a multiplayer game for the sake of balance.
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Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
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If I wrote a timeline with a similar premise, I'd hit it with that reality ensues twice. First being the wanked out Axis conquering much of Eurasia being glassed by American nukes, second being the long term consequences of having to occupy everyone not in the Western Hemisphere*. Economic recession as much of the GDP is going into the military and trying to put everything from London to Tokyo back together.
*I stole it from "a world with half the population" and it's covers*
*I stole it from "a world with half the population" and it's covers*
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
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- Middenland
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- She/Her/Hers
While AH will always hold a place in my heart for being a site that did a lot for me and furthered my interest in and knowledge of history, at the same time, we have to be honest that there are a lot of problems with it as a community.
And that a lot of these problems are especially concentrated in discussions of non-Western nations where a lot of misinformation, ignorance, and sometimes just outright prejudice tend to inform opinions. And the problem is, it isn't solely confined to historical assessments, but it tends to be an issue in discussions of contemporary politics as well.
I distinctly remember a thread about land redistribution in South Africa where a whole gaggle of posters, including an actual white South African, were sitting around hooting and hollering about how South Africa was going to be the next Zimbabwe.
I mean, I tend to dislike any discussion that is dominated by people griping about how bad things are and how they can only get worse, but when you think of a forum comprised largely of white Europeans and North Americans having a thread where large numbers of them are pissing and moaning about how bad they think ANC is... it starts to come across as having some unfortunate undertones.
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- Location
- Rex, NC, USA
I bet that audience must have felt very betrayed when he wrote The Salvation War.
- Location
- Brazil
I bet you haven't see the best thread in AH.com's history.
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
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- Middenland
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I haven't but that's not surprising.
AH has been on something of a gradual downward spiral for a while now. If you just browse Chat or After 1900 (can't really speak to other parts of the forum) there's a much higher proportion of "junk" threads with poor or limited analysis than there once was. And there seems to be a noticeably higher rate of trolls.
Though, it's unlikely that there are significantly more or less trolls and people with extreme (mostly far-right) views than before (though I would argue that there are a fair amount of pronounced Trumpists who either joined or revealed themselves after 2016) but rather...
A lot of AH's really talented, knowledgeable, and intelligent contributors have either been banned or driven off the site in recent years. The slow but steady departure of this contingent is generally bringing down the overall level of discussion and knowledge on the site. Coupled with the fact that Ian is getting a lot more blatantly crankish about his personal views and politics.
It's not that there hasn't always been a certain underbelly of regressive views on AH, it's just becoming a lot more apparent now.
Anchises
Le Charismeur
- Location
- Germany
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- He/Him
@Heavy W. Guy
Fully agreed. Its really shocking how many well informed people have been banned or have basically left the site.
Fully agreed. Its really shocking how many well informed people have been banned or have basically left the site.
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
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There have been some legitimate bans, of course, there are plenty of posters with decent knowledge who nonetheless start acting like complete jerks and never change.
The problem is though, as others have brought up, the staff tends to deal with problems in a way that encourages an escalating cycle of bans. To the point where it's really not about solving anyone's problems or offering them a genuine chance to make things right, but rather they just kick the can down the road with a warning or a kick until the poster inevitably explodes again.
There are a lot of situations with posters who are obviously locked into a cycle of punishments that is ultimately and inevitably going to result in a permanent ban. In some situations, it's obvious that this is self-inflicted, but I have to wonder if this is always the right response. And a lot of kick messages from Ian in particular come across as extremely rude and abrasive. Ian says things in his mod messages and responses that others would get kicked for if they said to another poster. So why is it okay for him and wrong for others?
We can't always, if ever, prove it because of their hidden nature, but there are a fair amount of posters who later get banned for sending insulting PMs, which leads to a fair amount of speculation that Ian deliberately sends insulting PMs to certain posters who have been recently kicked and then bans them when they lose their temper.
Hell, the reason we can follow kicks and bans so closely on AH is because of the Hall of Infamy, and while it took me a long time to realise it, it occurs to me that it's probably not the best for the community to have a place where even productive posters will have their worst mistakes preserved (and mocked) for all time.
The problem is though, as others have brought up, the staff tends to deal with problems in a way that encourages an escalating cycle of bans. To the point where it's really not about solving anyone's problems or offering them a genuine chance to make things right, but rather they just kick the can down the road with a warning or a kick until the poster inevitably explodes again.
There are a lot of situations with posters who are obviously locked into a cycle of punishments that is ultimately and inevitably going to result in a permanent ban. In some situations, it's obvious that this is self-inflicted, but I have to wonder if this is always the right response. And a lot of kick messages from Ian in particular come across as extremely rude and abrasive. Ian says things in his mod messages and responses that others would get kicked for if they said to another poster. So why is it okay for him and wrong for others?
We can't always, if ever, prove it because of their hidden nature, but there are a fair amount of posters who later get banned for sending insulting PMs, which leads to a fair amount of speculation that Ian deliberately sends insulting PMs to certain posters who have been recently kicked and then bans them when they lose their temper.
Hell, the reason we can follow kicks and bans so closely on AH is because of the Hall of Infamy, and while it took me a long time to realise it, it occurs to me that it's probably not the best for the community to have a place where even productive posters will have their worst mistakes preserved (and mocked) for all time.
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Coiler
ROURKE
As for how the brain drain has affected actual TLs as opposed to discussion, I know it has, but I fear any claim of just how much would be too susceptible to nostalgia and survivorship bias (after all, there certainly were bad and low-effort TLs in the past).
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
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- Middenland
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- She/Her/Hers
Well yeah, there will always be low-quality works on a site that dedicates itself to user fiction and the like. But the problem is, when the best people with the most intelligent, interesting, and well-researched works leave, it tends to degrade the quality by making poor quality take up a larger proportion of the site than before. It's not that AH never had things like bad TLs or zero-content natter threads like "ASB: What if all humans turned into sugar cookies?", but rather that they are now a lot more noticeable.
Having a good site with dependable discussion and quality content is hard and the problem is that once it starts to slip, it can be very hard to regain.
Redditredcoat
American Loyalist
- Location
- Long Island
Tbh it was way too Mary Sue ish for me. A lot of Sarge's TLs were entertaining to read but in a dumb fun way. I've said this before but I'd like to read an SI story where the SI is a malicious actor or bad at his job and inadvertently makes things worse.
Don't want to wade into the newer conversations too much since they're mostly dead but I don't see anything wrong with Calbear's opinions besides the fact he's somewhat dated in HS opinions thanks to his age and somewhat uninformed about Japan. As for this idea that AH has somehow gone further right I say the opposite
Do you just think that because transphobes and Pinochet/Argentine Junta memes aren't welcome on AH?
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
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- She/Her
So, they've banned both the helicopter jokes? Geez, what sort of ultaleft lunatics run that site?
I think the fundamental problem is that AH.Com's method of moderation was perfectly workable a decade ago when it was still a comparatively small site but the problem is that several of the moderators have left and the rules haven't really been formulated nor has the range of action to keep things civil been developed in a more productive way. SV is very good in that regard. Also I think there is too much tendency among the current crop to try and copy Jared, Thande, and Jonathan Edelstein, which to be fair is a problem that a lot of genre fiction has - everyone wants to be the next Martin, Tolkien or Rowling. This leads to people trying to bite off far more than they can chew writing global history and often exploring countries that they only a minimal understanding of. I will admit I was an offender in this regard as well.
Coiler
ROURKE
This isn't helped by the ever-increasing demands of fans who insist on knowing every single thing that happened to every single person or place or organization, as well as the obvious advantages of playing to the crowd in that regards. Or the brain drain making fewer people notice or care about inaccuracies. The epic fantasy analogy is a good one, because like that, it's one where the original "trend-setter" relies a lot on legitimate depth, and thus the shallower imitators end up reflecting more and more of its weaknesses and less and less of its strengths.
- Location
- The Chaos Timeline
It's not that there were never right-wingers on AH.com, up to and including real nazis. Check out the Hall of Infamy on the wiki. And I have to know because I reported some of them.
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
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- Middenland
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I can't boast to have as long a time as you on the board, but there was always a certain seedy underbelly of either outright rightist trolls or people who were smart enough to not discuss their more prejudiced opinions... at least until they overplayed their hand and got caught. I distinctly remember one conservative poster who finally slipped and used racist dogwhistles against African-Americans in a Chat thread and well... that was that.
That said, I can say to have been on AH around the time of the 2016 Election and I can definitely say there is a noticeable increase in the amount of pro-Trump posters and alt-right trolls. Some of these people undoubtedly filter onto the forum much as they filter onto any other online space, but I have to suspect that quite a lot of them come from within AH's own userbase and take Trump's election as a sign that they're free to act with impunity.
And, honestly, it's somewhat encouraged by board policies (such as those prohibiting false accusations of bigotry) and the staff's increasingly glaring blindspots and a certain obsession with "civility" which allows people who ostensibly follow the rules to slip through the cracks even though they clearly goad others with their prejudiced views.
It's a pretty good illustration of how AH's staff's obsessive focus on the letter rather than the spirit of the rules and a certain sense of "We know what's best!" actually tends to create a lot of problems for the site.
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- He/Him
I notice there tends to be one of a few problems with most TLs and stories, I mean besides the general dry rivet counting TLs, those have been around since the beginning.
1. The Story had a natural end point, and it kept going on. An Age of Miracles: The Revival of Rhomaion clearly has an end point with the death of Andreas, the "Little Megas." While the story started before Andreas, it's clear he was the focus of the story. Problem is the story goes past that point and while I don't think it's bad, it never reached the same levels of interesting. This is also where the annoying trend of "And things get dystopic as heck" trend comes in because a lot of people, at least they used to, go to making things dystopic as their story goes on. Because it's simpler and more interesting to a lot of people.
Now I should note I don't feel like dystopias are automatically bad, one of the TLs I've been meaning to read is Twlight of the Red Tsar and it sure sounds dystopic as heck. But a TL starting off pretty normal and taking a hard turn into basically techno-thriller land is rather frustrating. You can make the world of a TL different without it automatically being worse or better.
2. The Story's scope is too broad. I notice a lot of people want TLs to cover the more or less the entire world in fair detail, like more focus on where the TL diverged sure but people kind of want an overview of the whole world. Problem is history is too freaking broad for one person to talk about every part of the world in detail. I have a fair amount of knowledge of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, The American Southwest pre-contact and a few other places and time periods. I claim no expertise but I think if I had an idea I could write an interesting TL about the Minoans. I don't know a thing about Indian history really so I couldn't really talk about it in more than broad terms. And I think that's fine, as long as you don't get stupid stuff like Imperial Communist Chipan or something dumb like that it's okay for parts of the world to be out of focus. There's a reason big HOI4 Mods like Kaiserreich and The New Order have teams of dozens or even a hundred people. Cause no one person is going to have a decent enough knowledge of the world to flesh out every region.
This also creates the problem that the more places you cover in detail in the more plot threads you have to manage and those plot threads can create their own subplots and pretty soon you have an unmanageable garden of a plot and you're starting to understand why We haven't had a new ASoIAF book in over half a decade.
People realizing that they're not writing a history of the world since the POD would go a long ways to improve TLs.
3. The TL has an interesting idea, but it doesn't really know where it wants to go with that idea. There's a story I really liked that dealt with idea of Joan of Arc being completely immortal. I really enjoyed it but the story ended pretty suddenly in part because it really felt like the author was very quickly realizing they didn't know where to go with the plot after the initial changes.
1. The Story had a natural end point, and it kept going on. An Age of Miracles: The Revival of Rhomaion clearly has an end point with the death of Andreas, the "Little Megas." While the story started before Andreas, it's clear he was the focus of the story. Problem is the story goes past that point and while I don't think it's bad, it never reached the same levels of interesting. This is also where the annoying trend of "And things get dystopic as heck" trend comes in because a lot of people, at least they used to, go to making things dystopic as their story goes on. Because it's simpler and more interesting to a lot of people.
Now I should note I don't feel like dystopias are automatically bad, one of the TLs I've been meaning to read is Twlight of the Red Tsar and it sure sounds dystopic as heck. But a TL starting off pretty normal and taking a hard turn into basically techno-thriller land is rather frustrating. You can make the world of a TL different without it automatically being worse or better.
2. The Story's scope is too broad. I notice a lot of people want TLs to cover the more or less the entire world in fair detail, like more focus on where the TL diverged sure but people kind of want an overview of the whole world. Problem is history is too freaking broad for one person to talk about every part of the world in detail. I have a fair amount of knowledge of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, The American Southwest pre-contact and a few other places and time periods. I claim no expertise but I think if I had an idea I could write an interesting TL about the Minoans. I don't know a thing about Indian history really so I couldn't really talk about it in more than broad terms. And I think that's fine, as long as you don't get stupid stuff like Imperial Communist Chipan or something dumb like that it's okay for parts of the world to be out of focus. There's a reason big HOI4 Mods like Kaiserreich and The New Order have teams of dozens or even a hundred people. Cause no one person is going to have a decent enough knowledge of the world to flesh out every region.
This also creates the problem that the more places you cover in detail in the more plot threads you have to manage and those plot threads can create their own subplots and pretty soon you have an unmanageable garden of a plot and you're starting to understand why We haven't had a new ASoIAF book in over half a decade.
People realizing that they're not writing a history of the world since the POD would go a long ways to improve TLs.
3. The TL has an interesting idea, but it doesn't really know where it wants to go with that idea. There's a story I really liked that dealt with idea of Joan of Arc being completely immortal. I really enjoyed it but the story ended pretty suddenly in part because it really felt like the author was very quickly realizing they didn't know where to go with the plot after the initial changes.
- Location
- The Chaos Timeline
If "civility" becomes a problem... people may get rightfully angry if e.g. false-accused to be alt-right. To be fair, last time this happened the mods reacted well.