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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

Everything old is new again, a reader of 8mm to the Left thinks France should have been dismembered in 1870 because it had been too harsh against the counter-revolutionaries in the 1790s.

In retrospect Germany's terms in 1870 were too mild. Tunisia, Corsica, Nice and Savoy to Italy. Enact similar terms on the rump as those that Rome imposed on Macedon after the third Macedonian War. Independence for the Basques unless Spain wants the region. Independent for the Britons. Relations of any one murdered in the Vendee should get massive reparations.
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France did not even control Tunisia at the time but details.
 
Independence for the Basques unless Spain wants the region.
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The "unless Spain wants the region" fucking kills me for some reason. Don't pretend you're promoting national self-determination here just give it to the Bourbons. Hell why not restore Bourbon rule over France if you're getting revenge for 80 year dead Terror victims.

EDIT I am very sleepy and forgot that the whole chain of dominos that led to the Franco-Prussian war involved putting a Savoy on the throne of Spain but the Bourbons ended up restored 4-5 years later and my ad absurdem doesn't work otherwise.
 
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Nerdorama said:
The "unless Spain wants the region" fucking kills me for some reason. Don't pretend you're promoting national self-determination here just give it to the Bourbons. Hell why not restore Bourbon rule over France if you're getting revenge for 80 year dead Terror victims.
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Yeah, why not be consistent and also say "independence for the Britons [sic] unless the UK wants the region".
 
From what I've seen of fantasies about dismembering France between the Revolution and present, at least since Reddit picked up on the whole French language policy thing*, you can usually reliably also chuck in the tearing out Normandy, Picardy, the Occitan regions and the French parts of Waloonia (usually to be merged with Belgian Waloonia after its split in turn, people have heard about FDR flirting with dismembering France seemingly just to fuck with DeGaulle)

One other option I've seen was the 'federalization' of France into 'Gaul', where the French might be the largest ethnic/linguistic group but have to somewhat play 'nicer' with the other ethnic and linguistic group within France's boundaries than OTL (again, massive oversimplification, but its the internet jerking off about punishing France)

Picardy and Normandy (and Anjou I guess) sometimes get given to Britain, but usually the dismemberment of France suffices

*Reddit brains are how we get conveniently and comparatively 'neat' little balkanizations like this

Separate from the fact that there's at least three separatist/autonomist movements i know of not included in this map, and at least one that is functionally impossible, you see the issues I hope
 
king of hybrids said:
From what I've seen of fantasies about dismembering France between the Revolution and present, at least since Reddit picked up on the whole French language policy thing*, you can usually reliably also chuck in the tearing out Normandy, Picardy, the Occitan regions and the French parts of Waloonia (usually to be merged with Belgian Waloonia after its split in turn, people have heard about FDR flirting with dismembering France seemingly just to fuck with DeGaulle)

One other option I've seen was the 'federalization' of France into 'Gaul', where the French might be the largest ethnic/linguistic group but have to somewhat play 'nicer' with the other ethnic and linguistic group within France's boundaries than OTL (again, massive oversimplification, but its the internet jerking off about punishing France)

Picardy and Normandy (and Anjou I guess) sometimes get given to Britain, but usually the dismemberment of France suffices

*Reddit brains are how we get conveniently and comparatively 'neat' little balkanizations like this

Separate from the fact that there's at least three separatist/autonomist movements i know of not included in this map, and at least one that is functionally impossible, you see the issues I hope
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That map seems to be conflating secessionist and autonomist movements. If Normandy is an independent state, than so should Picardy. And if the Savoy separatists are shown, than the Provencals should have a separate state too.
 
The suppossed separatist groups aren't even a majority in some of the regions. Or even a paricularly large minority. Sapmi ruled Trondheim is quite the stretch for example.
 
Ingria's also impossible, since I'm pretty sure there's only 50,000 of them worldwide, equal to less than 1% of St Petersburg's population let alone the rest of the regions that would constitute Ingria, and most of them generations removed from having to leave in a hurry.

Besides, I'm pretty sure there's other autonomist or even separatist flags not on the map (eg, the Unionists up north would almost certainly seek some kind of autonomy even if Northern Ireland joined the Republic, and wikiwalking advises that there's movement for the Albanian half of Macedonia to break away etc)
 
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[/spoiler]

Separate from the fact that there's at least three separatist/autonomist movements i know of not included in this map, and at least one that is functionally impossible, you see the issues I hope
[/QUOTE]
An independent Crete doesn't even make sense.
 
Ed Donnell said:
An independent Crete doesn't even make sense.
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In what sense? I mean, yes, getting a proper separatist movement with an actual shot at becoming independent is unlikely to say the least nowadays, and even in AH (the nominal subject of this thread) it runs into Greek complications for something more lasting and solid than the Cretan State, but as independent state it would be larger and more populous than Malta.
 
Andrensath said:
Also why does Northern Germany get to remain more or less intact?
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Probably because there isn't/wasn't a Wikipedia article on any other autonomy/nationalist movements in Germany at the time I'm guessing (Ukraine is notably lacking either the Donbass republics or the 'Novorossiya' blob, so the map may predate 2014)

The alternative for completeness I guess would be splitting the remains of Germany back into East and West Germanies and remembering the Rheinish state the entente set up during the post WWI occupation?
 
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Hendryk said:
Everything old is new again, a reader of 8mm to the Left thinks France should have been dismembered in 1870 because it had been too harsh against the counter-revolutionaries in the 1790s.


France did not even control Tunisia at the time but details.
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I know this user since they unfortunately frequent the same ASB threads I follow, and they're basically a closet Nazi that's figured how to skirt the letter of AH.com rules (or at least, Ian's interpretation of them). They believe Churchill wanted to genocide Germany with anthrax, have cited David Irving before, and believe that FDR and his entire cabinet was a bunch of Soviet agents responsible for Pearl Harbor and who gave the USSR the atomic bomb. Weirdly, they also are an anglophile that believe Britain was superior to the US in every way in WW2 and also have a hate boner for the US Navy specifically. Frankly, I'm surprised they managed to get kicked, considering Ian reversed their last kick.

It's no surprise this person also wants to dismember France in 1870.
 
hydra1234 said:
I know this user since they unfortunately frequent the same ASB threads I follow, and they're basically a closet Nazi that's figured how to skirt the letter of AH.com rules (or at least, Ian's interpretation of them). They believe Churchill wanted to genocide Germany with anthrax, have cited David Irving before, and believe that FDR and his entire cabinet was a bunch of Soviet agents responsible for Pearl Harbor and who gave the USSR the atomic bomb. Weirdly, they also are an anglophile that believe Britain was superior to the US in every way in WW2 and also have a hate boner for the US Navy specifically. Frankly, I'm surprised they managed to get kicked, considering Ian reversed their last kick.

It's no surprise this person also wants to dismember France in 1870.
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Given how abrasive they are (paired with the Irving thing), I think they will eventually be baited into saying something that more clearly breaks the website's ToS, thus leading to a ban.
 
Hendryk said:
Everything old is new again, a reader of 8mm to the Left thinks France should have been dismembered in 1870 because it had been too harsh against the counter-revolutionaries in the 1790s.


France did not even control Tunisia at the time but details.
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I got bored of that timeline because it seemed like it was going in the direction of "Nazis bad, right-wing German hegemony over Europe good" while also doing the cliché "Germany doesn't go fascist so France does instead."
 
The amount of water people are willing to carry for the Kaiserreich is kind of fascinating, despite having indisputably nicer hats, considering just how much of Nazi ideology was already incubating within the Prussian officer class when WWI kicked off.
 
I guess it's a mix of Imperial nastiness not being as well known to average people, a generic romanticism for dead European monarchies (often more aesthetic than political), and that the Kaiserreich wasn't as brutally totalitarian as the Nazis were; if nothing else, the SPD was able to win a plurality of votes in the 1912 federal election (even if not enough to form a government).
 
Ed Donnell said:

[/spoiler]

Separate from the fact that there's at least three separatist/autonomist movements i know of not included in this map, and at least one that is functionally impossible, you see the issues I hope

An independent Crete doesn't even make sense.
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Given the strictures of an AH future ideology I developed for a timeline, when they finally topple the decadent monsters of the global north the reorganized Europe would look vaguely like this, but they'd also all still be in an ironclad continental federation regardless 😂
 
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I'm not going to lie, that awful 'FDR decides to thoroughly fuck Europe over via surprise backstap' dystopian TL idea of mine was inspired by that map.

It's easy to start at the endpoint/status quo of a timeline and think it's fine, then try reverse engineer your way back to the POD and realize your full of cringe bullshit that might out of context be construed as writing with one hand

edit: to clarify, by 'fine' i mean an interesting place to begin the story, not things are considered or going good
 
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Mister Anemone said:
The reason America in the TL barely survives from the war that ended in an outright (limited) nuclear war is because of a guy decided that copying of the people running The City in Sleepless Domain is an good idea for an nation that is on the verge of collapse from dual invasion.
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What does that even mean? Was there some big lore dump I missed?
 
Terra Allias said:
What does that even mean? Was there some big lore dump I missed?
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Yeah.

Basically, the combined China and Russia (or rather, the Eurasian Union) invades the United States on both sides of the coasts and...well, this is similar to Shattered Citadel. Right after they easily overrun American allies and directly killed the President of America as well in the first day of the invasion.

Eurasian Union is on the verge of winning the war against America if it wasn't for this guy that served directly in the frontlines - and a believer that the "culture wars and suicidal pacifism" that harmed the American power as a whole - take the helm from the military junta, reforms the American society by creating an idea that Americans are an ethnicity instead of an multiple one, manages to kick-out the Eurasian forces from American shores; with much determination after the Americans discovered an statewide-long concentration/death camps within the Eurasian-occupied American territories. He didn't stopped fighting the Eurasian War until the limited-nuclear war happened.

The reason why I have said that "running The City in Sleepless Domain" is because the guy that led the war until its end gave the soul and as an counter-balance to the "body" that is the constitutional-reforms made by President Cortez's that fully reintroduced Christianity into the public after United States loss in WW3 against...you guessed it, Russia and China that led the creation of the Moralintern; with Jacksonist-based Milintern providing the muscle to the former's endless charity programs and spreading their viewpoints (like wiping out LGBT presence - ironically that Transgender managed to survive in the TL due to the invention of Transhuman technologies) to the post-WW4 world and a counter-balance from going outright Gilead as well (with them keeping small LGBT rights like civiv unions...for a cost, that is).

Which is why I compared to The Foundationists and City Defense Department running hand-in-hand in regards to the matters of Mahous and defending their society at all cost, under one banner, to the general situation of the TL's United States of America.
 
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