Remove ads

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

VoidTemplar said:
Almost every single Socialist America TL I have read or come into contact with has Britain turn into some sort of thoroughly morally black right-wing authoritarian state or set it up for such. Reds!, The Glowing Dream, Crimson Banners Fly, even TLs and scenarios that don't have Red America, but are "merely" America-centric have tendencies to do that. See here almost every single TL that deals with a Second American Civil War fx.

It honestly sometimes feels like the author has sometimes been writing the TL with one hand elsewhere because they wanted to make their ideological utopia, and afterwards tried to work backwards towards a conclusion. I can respect that, but then they shouldn't write some variation on "It is realistic" or even call it AH in the first place and park it elsewhere like the general fiction section
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is kinda silly. Reds! UK is still an Empire by the modern day, and thus is still evil, but it's not actually an authoritarian state internally.

It's just a typical anticommunist democracy, complete with Red Scares and their intelligence agencies playing games and subverting democracy.
 
Last edited:
Having read The Glowing Dream, I find it well-written, but deeply flawed, with a definite lack of understanding of the era's politics and the late Third Party/early Fourth Party System.

Especially the Democratic Party's speed-collapse thanks to a more violent Pullman strike, which has me going...



Cause, yeah, sure, this will do it. Sure, being seen as the Party of Treason during a civil war didn't, but this, this will be the death blow...
 
VoidTemplar said:
It honestly sometimes feels like the author has sometimes been writing the TL with one hand elsewhere because they wanted to make their ideological utopia, and afterwards tried to work backwards towards a conclusion. I can respect that, but then they shouldn't write some variation on "It is realistic" or even call it AH in the first place and park it elsewhere like the general fiction section
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Just because it doesn't appease your apparent desire for Britain to always be presented as the good guys opposed to a German and/or Russian menace doesn't mean that it's somehow inherently unrealistic as timelines go.
 
Space Oddity said:
Having read The Glowing Dream, I find it well-written, but deeply flawed, with a definite lack of understanding of the era's politics and the late Third Party/early Fourth Party System.

Especially the Democratic Party's speed-collapse thanks to a more violent Pullman strike, which has me going...



Cause, yeah, sure, this will do it. Sure, being seen as the Party of Treason during a civil war didn't, but this, this will be the death blow...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Honestly that's a better critique. It does kinda rush that. It's easy to see that Democrats being associated with or tarred with a more violent Pullman Strike (while being unwilling to actually appeal to labor rights*) could lead to them majorly declining over time, or starting to lose ground again after their recovery or so on... but instead it's kinda pushed harder than the situation warrants in terms of the speed of some of those events.

*Democrats being associated with Treason lost them a lot of votes... but also won them a lot of 'ex' Traitor votes. Getting the blame but not the support would kinda suck.
 
The Laurent said:
Honestly that's a better critique. It does kinda rush that. It's easy to see that Democrats being associated with or tarred with a more violent Pullman Strike (while being unwilling to actually appeal to labor rights*) could lead to them majorly declining over time, or starting to lose ground again after their recovery or so on... but instead it's kinda pushed harder than the situation warrants in terms of the speed of some of those events.

*Democrats being associated with Treason lost them a lot of votes... but also won them a lot of 'ex' Traitor votes. Getting the blame but not the support would kinda suck.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

See, this is where it falls down. "The Democrats, after doing this, could never, EVER do an about face on the issue." Uh yes, they could. We know they could, because they did. And not just on this, but on one of the biggest issues of the day. Grover Cleveland was a Sound Money man who pushed the Gold Standard and killed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. And in 1896--while Cleveland was wrapping up his term--the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Free Silver platform.

And of course, you're saying 'Well, come on, that's just bimetallism, no where near as big a deal as labor disputes'--yeah, for most voters at this time, the currency debate was a bigger deal than labor disputes.
 
Space Oddity said:
See, this is where it falls down. "The Democrats, after doing this, could never, EVER do an about face on the issue." Uh yes, they could. We know they could, because they did. And not just on this, but on one of the biggest issues of the day. Grover Cleveland was a Sound Money man who pushed the Gold Standard and killed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. And in 1896--while Cleveland was wrapping up his term--the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Free Silver platform.

And of course, you're saying 'Well, come on, that's just bimetallism, no where near as big a deal as labor disputes'--yeah, for most voters at this time, the currency debate was a bigger deal than labor disputes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I never said 'could never, ever do an about face'. I phrased what I said pretty carefully. I said they 'could' decline due to their stances on this, and I'd go further and say that they might not be able to fully make the switch, or might be torn by infighting on it considering the situation.

Parties can do an about-face, but they can also try to do one, trip, stumble, and fumble their way through the attempt.

We've seen parties before with basically every reason to change tacks fail to do so for a variety of reasons. We've seen them successfully do so, as well.
 
Last edited:
VoidTemplar said:
Almost every single Socialist America TL I have read or come into contact with has Britain turn into some sort of thoroughly morally black right-wing authoritarian state or set it up for such. Reds!, The Glowing Dream, Crimson Banners Fly, even TLs and scenarios that don't have Red America, but are "merely" America-centric have tendencies to do that. See here almost every single TL that deals with a Second American Civil War fx.

It honestly sometimes feels like the author has sometimes been writing the TL with one hand elsewhere because they wanted to make their ideological utopia, and afterwards tried to work backwards towards a conclusion. I can respect that, but then they shouldn't write some variation on "It is realistic" or even call it AH in the first place and park it elsewhere like the general fiction section
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The UK and the succeeding Franco-British Union in Reds! behave less evilly than the UK did historically. There's no Munich betrayal, no Malaya Emergency, no Indian great famine. And rather than being reduced, like it was IOTL, to a bald man fighting another bald man over a comb, it remains prosperous and serious global power into the 21st century.
 
Teen Spirit said:
On the theme of bad china maps. This map of Europe if it was more like Asia has some weird implications

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Terra Novan said:
So Britain is Japan, Norway is North Korea, Sweden is South Korea, Corsica is Taiwan, Russia is Mongolia, and Italy is Vietnam?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Another reason this map is bad I think that bears mentioning is there is basically no way for anyone to keep Corsica alive. Unlike Taiwan, any attempt to save Corsica is dependent on going through either Suez(if it exists) or the Straits of Gibraltar. The PRE can explictly cut off all access to the med here. Worse...both Italy and the PRE would be looking to take Corsica.

Plus...its a very short distance from Corsica to Sardinia. If Italy still has Sardinia, its unlikely that Corsica would have survived because that implies Italy still has a navy as of the time they went socialist and said navy stuck with them.
 
For the life of me I can't remember what the book was called but it was about Hitler and some of the other nazis moving to America after failing to take control of Germany and their descendants starting a homegrown fascist movement.

Anyone heard of it?
 
Agreed. I mean, the concept may not be all that good, but the presentation looks pretty awesome. Now I actually want to know the story.

Also, what's the Americas like here? Is the US waiting on the sidelines to swoop in and take out the winner? Or are they 100% isolationist?
 
So, anyone wanna pick on GURPS timelines? I don't have all, but I have some.
 
What the fuck is Shambala and why doesn't it have any ports? I've never seen a map where the major superpower doesn't have any coast lines. I figured that it's kind of important
 
Terran Allias said:
What the fuck is Shambala
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Shambhala - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

As for this Shambala, a mad fever dream of a man who thought he was Genghis Khan reincarnated, and believed he was helping his victims by killing them because they would reborn as better person in next life.

In RL, he was just one of dime-a-dozen White warlords. Here, he apparently received TNO-level buff.

EDIT:

Terran Allias said:
and why doesn't it have any ports?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It actually has several, check the Chinese coasts. I think they are Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau.

And Japan is in an Imperial Union with Shambala, whatever that is. Plus the allies that basically covers the entire Asia. So it does have an access to the sea.
 
Last edited:
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top