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Anarcho-Occultist's Way Too Soon Wikibox Thread

Tracy Turnblad
Tracy Turnblad Larkin (February 16, 1945-July 10, 2007), better known by her birth name Tracy Turnblad, was an American singer, dancer, actress, producer and activist. Turnblad was born in 1945 to Wilbur and Edna Turnblad. Wilbur Turnblad was enlisted in the US Army and had been deployed to Europe, before being injured in a Velociraptor attack during the D-Day landings and subsequently being honorably discharged. In the postwar era, the Turnblads struggled financially, with Wilbur working in various jobs including as a construction worker, a delivery person for the local office of the Worldwide Wicket Company, and a mailman. The couple also faced marital strife after Edna Turnblad donated a large sum of money to Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of the cult movement known as The Cause. However, by the time Tracy was 8, the family’s luck took a turn for the better when Wilbur reconnected with a friend from the war, James Francis Ryan who had enjoyed some success after writing war memoirs and publishing them in 1949. Ryan gave Wilbur a loan that enabled him to buy a storefront with an apartment above for his family to live in, which Wilbur was able to turn into a decently successful novelty shop during the 1950’s, allowing his family to at last gain a degree of financial stability.

It was in this more stable atmosphere that Turnblad began to move in the direction that would earn her celebrity status. From a young age, her parents were by no means lax, but were reasonably willing to indulge their daughter’s desire to engage with even controversial forms of entertainment–most notably the music of the likes of Conrad Birdie, Nick Rivers and Tommy Johnson. This exposure to music would prove immensely formative for Turnblad and would drive her broader media consumption, becoming an avid viewer of programs such as National Bandstand and The Corny Collins Show, the latter of which was produced in Baltimore itself. In 1962, Turnblad made the fateful decision to audition for the show, which ultimately added her to the cast despite controversy surrounding her expressing support for racial integration and the fact that she, unlike other dancers on the show, was noticeably overweight. Turnblad participated in a protest to integrate the show, during which she faced criminal charges for assaulting a police officer with a sign. However, she managed to avoid arrest (thanks in part to the Baltimore Police Department being called upon by Colonel Richard Strickland to help recover an escaped Deep One) and ultimately her efforts succeeded in getting the program racially integrated.
This chain of events-alongside Turnblad entering a relationship with her costar Link Larkin-helped make her much more famous.

In addition to continuing as a dancer, Turnblad began a music career with Polymer Records, with her first album You Can’t Stop the Beat just barely falling short of sales for the Rutles’ album All You Need is Cash in 1965. This album was followed two years later by Avalanche, which compared to her first album was much more politically charged. Turnblad had always been sympathetic to left-wing causes but as the Vietnam and Sarkhan Wars escalated, she became increasingly vocal about issues besides civil rights. Her friend Maria Vazquez-who she met through her music career-helped expose Turnblad to left-wing thought that was rapidly gaining popularity with younger generations. Turnblad began interacting with many prominent figures within the New Left including Sal Paradise, Jim Stark, and Raoul Duke. This radicalization caused something of a rift between her and Larkin, leading to a brief separation in 1968.

In 1968, Turnblad would end up endorsing the ‘14 or Fight’ campaign spearheaded by rock star Max Frost. However, Turnblad ended up continuing to support the campaign of Johnny Fergus in that year’s presidential race even when the Republicans nominated Frost himself for the presidency. Turnblad had acquaintance with Frost from earlier in her career and thus did not trust him, her fears being vindicated when on taking office he converted America into an ageist dictatorship. Frost filled his administration with many unsavory characters-for instance, Horace Bones and Tom Weathers acted as his enforcers in DC. Turnblad, meanwhile, was aligned to more moderate left-wingers such as Philip Banks and Judy Burke who opposed Frost and, ultimately, reluctantly cooperated with the Syndicate of the Men in Black to remove him from power. Turnblad after this chain of events drifted more towards the center-though still remaining firmly liberal and endorsing the campaign of Prez Rickard in the 1975 special presidential election. She would remain active in advocacy for the rest of her life, denouncing the Cyclops administration’s response to the AIDS epidemic, performing at a benefit concert for Tectonese refugees and supporting groups dedicated to women’s rights.

The bulk of her life, however, would remain dedicated to her entertainment career. After reuniting with Larkin, she recorded another album titled Without Love in 1972, which ended up doing less well than her earlier work. Turnblad had began her career in an era where the distinction between pop and rock was blurry. Now, however, with the rise of stars like Daisy Jones, Dewey Cox and Eddie Wilson helped make the rock genre more distinct. Turnblad’s music, meanwhile, was more bubbly and didn’t hold the same appeal as contemporary rock. Still, Turnblad and Larkin maintained a distinct following, even being invited to perform ahead of the inauguration of Charles Palantine in 1977. In the 1980’s, however, Turnblad’s career as a singer began to decline. The emergence of bands like the Hex Girls, The Queen Haters and Crisis of Conformity heralded the rise of the punk and metal genres, which while some long-time bands made a jump into (Josie and the Pussycats being the most notable success), Turnblad was unable to do. While she maintained a core following, she was rapidly eclipsed by newcomers to music.

Turnblad ultimately accepted this with grace, moving towards producing instead of performing. She would serve as a point of contact between several new artists and various record labels-the most notable beneficiaries being Ziggy Stardust, Cassandra Wong, the band Love Handel and Maddie Vidal. In doing so, Turnblad eventually met the young but ambitious Gustavo Rocque, who aspired to form a label of his own. Leveraging her contacts, Turnblad played a key role in founding Rocque Records and helping the label find its footing in the 1990’s. In 1996, Turnblad’s husband Link Larkin was killed during the Harvester invasion while visiting his parents in Washington DC. Turnblad, heartbroken, nonetheless lived more than a decade past that point, even resuming a music career in 1998 with a more mournful style than previously. Turnblad ultimately died in 2007 during the invasion of Earth by a parallel world’s Cybermen. She was survived by her son Bryce Larkin, who died in 2009. The Tracy Turnblad Conference Room in Rocque Records’ headquarters is named in her honor.

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References
Hairspray, Dino D-Day, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Master, Saving Private Ryan, Bye Bye Birdie, Top Secret!, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Grease, The Shape of Water, Cthulhu Mythos, This Is Spinal Tap, The Rutles, The Ugly American, West Side Story, On the Road, Rebel Without a Cause, Fear and Loathing, Wild in the Streets, I Drink Your Blood, Wild Cards, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Bridge to Teribithia, The X Files, Men in Black, Prez, Whoops Apocalypse!, Alien Nation, Daisy Jones and the Six, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Eddie and the Cruisers, Taxi Driver, Scooby Doo, SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Archie Comics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Wayne’s World, Phineas and Ferb, Freaky Friday, Big Time Rush, Independence Day, Doctor Who (Army of Ghosts), Chuck
 
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The Ingsoc Party
The Ingsoc Party was a British political party responsible for promoting one of the most harsh, brutal and authoritarian systems of governance in existence. The Ingsoc Party has its origins during the tumultuous period between the World Wars. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, fascism was on the rise across Europe. Benzino Napaloni’s Fascists and Adenoid Hynkel’s Nazis came to power in Italy and Germany. Austria fell under the control of Moe Hagelkorn’s Moronikan League and Rufus T. Firefly seized control of Freedonia. In Britain, the fascists were not in power, but still asserted themselves with vigor. Roderick Spode and Oswald Parham’s Saviours of Britain advocated alliance with Germany and Italy against the Soviet Union, to protect the integrity of the white race. It would be a member of this movement, Rudolf ‘Rud’ Whitlow, who would pioneer the doctrine of Ingsoc. After visiting the fascist-aligned Meccania and meeting with key government officials, Whitlow saw the potential for autocracy based on abandoning a pretense of it being anything but. Whitlow thus broke from the Saviours and formed the English Socialist Party in 1939, which advocated ‘national renewal’ via open embrace of dictatorship as a means to purge the ‘weak and decadent’ from society. Those defined as such by Whitlow included socialist intellectuals, the handicapped, Jews and the ‘idle classes’ of nobility who had riches, but did little with them. Whitlow’s party turned on Germany as World War II began, which spared it the scrutiny the Saviours would experience.

The English Socialist Party contested the 1945 general election, but ultimately lost to Labour under Zilliboy Shinbags. However, Whitlow would subsequently gain a major coup for his party in the form of a truly gifted spokesperson: Sir Harold Wharton. Wharton had served in World War II with distinction and was a gifted orator compared to the bookish Whitlow. Moreover, Wharton was an ardent supporter of Whitlow’s ideology. Wharton would thus become the public face of the party. Wharton, unfortunately, also had a number of idiosyncratic ideas. He was the one who suggested rewriting the English language to be more ‘efficient’, forcing the party’s name change to the Ingsoc Party. Wharton also advocated the overthrow of the British monarchy, even conspiring with a group of sentient pigs who had formed a system not dissimilar to Ingsoc on their farm to dethrone Queen Anne II during her coronation. Wharton’s plot failed, but neither he nor the Ingsoc Party ever were caught carrying out this scheme. Subsequent British governments viewed Ingsoc as a minor nuisance–occasionally worth monitoring but far lesser threats than terrorist groups like SPECTRE, THRUSH or KAOS. However, in the 1960’s, an aged Wharton would focus on targeting ‘abnormal’ humans. Specifically, the rise of the so-called ‘Tomorrow People’ gave Ingsoc new life as an anti-mutant–and ultimately more broadly human supremacist organization, with aliens, Moureau sapiens and Toons joining the list of acceptable targets.

Ingsoc’s activities in the 1960’s often involved acts of violence and intimidation. Members of the Ingsoc Party would attempt to assassinate noted British space programme pioneer Bernard Quartermass for advocating steps to prepare for diplomatic contact with certain aliens rather than embracing a uniform position of hostility even in the wake of the Triffid invasion. Ingsoc embraced Gordon Zellaby as a martyr embodying the ideals of their ideology for his sacrifice to stop the Children of Midwhich, despite Zellaby’s own document antipathy towards the group. Despite ostensible socialism, the Ingsoc Party viciously denounced attempts to carry out decolonization, with several Ingsoc-connected individuals actively attempting to sabotage negotiations that paved the way for the independence of the former British colonies of Talgalla, Zamunda and Namibia. The rise of the 1960’s counterculture gave Ingsoc yet another useful rival. Wharton accused the movement of being communist, anti-British and tied to occult movements. Many Ingsoc publications sought to connect figures popular with the counterculture (most notably Mick Turner) to the likes of Oliver Haddo and Kosmo Gallion. Despite this public hostility to the occult, Wharton was quite close to Lord Summerisle, the leader of a pagan revivalist cult who some have suggested convinced Wharton that human suffering in some way could draw in power. Clashes between Ingsoc supporters and left-wingers such as anarchist Dennis Menace, Jr. were common in the late 1960’s.

By the 1970’s, Wharton was in ill health and the Ingsoc Party seemed to be failing. Not only did they not secure power, but the victory of Iorweth Jones’ Labour Party over Michael Rimmer’s Conservatives in 1974 seemed primed to pull Britain hard to the left. However, the Ingsoc Party got a lucky break in the form of US President Ferris Fremont. Fremont, a member of Hydra’s Secret Empire, viewed the Ingsoc Party as natural partners for Hydra and, ostensibly in the name of anticommunism, funneled CIA monetary support to the party. This program, overseen by Fremont advisor Henry Killinger, helped renew the party’s fortunes. They were aided by the surge in alien activity negatively impacting Britain-the near-destruction of the planet by the Vogons, a narrowly averted meteorite-harnessing invasion attempt by a race of energy beings and incursions by the Daleks, Sontarans and Cybermen in particular. By the time of Wharton’s 1979 death, the Ingsoc Party had managed to elect a few members to Parliament, despite the party’s far-right bent meaning even Joan Carpenter’s Conservative Party shunned them. However, when the 1979 election ended in a hung parliament and the Scottish Liberation Army provoked a political crisis by seizing Fort William, Conservative MP Sir Timothy Hobson ousted Carpenter in a leadership challenge and formed a coalition with the Ingsoc Party to form a government.

Hobson’s autocratic leadership did not last long, but gave the Ingsoc Party their first taste of real power. Even though Carpenter, on reclaiming her position at the helm of the Tories, broke the coalition, held a snap election and whittled down the Ingsoc presence in Parliament, the party was emboldened. With the party’s decline electorally, leadership fell into the hands of the party’s most consistent electoral success: Jim Jaspers. Jaspers, however, had a secret: he was a mutant. Despite heading a party so rabidly anti-metahuman that Bolivar Trask denounced it, Jaspers possessed reality warping powers which had helped him win. Still, his full power was not fully present-until an opening arrived. In 1984, the superhero Miracleman reemerged after decades in seclusion seeking to take over the world and usher in a utopia. Miracleman succeeded in ousting Carpenter, but before consolidating his rule or expanding it globally the American superhero Doctor Manhattan intervened. The clash between the two extremely powerful superheroes in Britain happened concurrently with the escalation of hostilities between the U.S. and USSR in the Strait of Hormuz, beginning World War III with the Soviet awakening of Cthulhu. This gave Jaspers the opportunity to strike. As reality was already creaking around him, Jaspers took in some of the others’ power and, with the power he absorbed from Miracleman, Doctor Manhattan and Cthulhu, was able to rewrite the world.

In the world Jaspers forced into being in 1984, he was the unquestioned ruler of Britain-its totalitarian Big Brother. Society was organized into a caste system based around proximity to Jaspers-the ‘Inner Party’ holding more power than the ‘Outer Party’ and both holding control over the vast number of Proles. His government maintained control with an iron fist. Mass surveillance was the rule, enforced in part by now-compliant artificial intelligences such as Colossus and all sentient nonhuman life present on the planet was in the process of being wiped out by Sentinels. The same fate was in store for detested racial and religious minorities, with Jaspers using the leftist political philosopher Emmanuel Goldstein to help maintain a high level of anti-Semitism. Dissidents were tortured by Jaspers’ ‘Ministry of Love’ under the supervision of Gerald O’Brien. The English language was altered to comply with Wharton’s simplification and idioms such as ‘wrongthink’ and ‘doubleplusgood’ prevailed over more traditional idioms. Jasper’s reach extended across the Anglosphere and into South America and Africa, but even beyond that his influence was felt-the USSR now ruled from Siberia to Spain under an unrelenting Stalinist regime that in the new history took the continent during World War II and Asia fell under the tyrannical rule of Cthulhu cultists as Jaspers’ offering to make Cthulhu halt his awakening, condemning billions to a nightmarish existence under the rule of ‘obliteration of the self.’ A three-way global war was ongoing, but condemned to continue for eternity given the desire of all three factions to maintain a balance of power.

And yet, Jaspers’ regime failed to last. Largely this can be traced back to some carryover from the original timeline retaining memories instead of simply accepting the new world. The SCP Foundation had a number of contingencies to address these sorts of reality alterations and it was not long until other stragglers of the old world emerged. Among them were Captain Britain, Doctor Fate, Astro Boy and Buckaroo Banzai. All of these individuals would clash with the Ingsoc world order, with Captain Britain ultimately confronting and defeating Jaspers. In the process, he freed Doctor Manhattan from captivity and the superbeing restored the world as it had been. The overthrow of Jaspers had major consequences. Jaspers was jailed-the alteration of reality only having restored normalcy, not removed his government altogether from history, with many still aware of Jaspers’ tyrannical oppression. The restored Carpenter government had Peter St. John forcibly intern most metahumans within the country in the name of national security (a policy that lasted until the ascension of Jim Hacker to the position of Prime Minister) and members of the Ingsoc Party in Parliament were largely forced out.

This was not the end of Ingsoc’s influence, however. Ingsoc Party member Adam Susan would go on to form the more traditionally neofascist Norsefire Party, which would dominate the far-right scene for much of the 1990’s. Some individuals possessing the ability to recall past timelines (often referred to as ‘reading Steiner’) claim Norsefire managed to for a time replicate Jaspers’ achievement by rewriting history to rule Britain as a fascist state, though this was undone by unclear means, restoring our own world with Francis Urquhart’s premiership. Beyond Norsefire, however, the Ingsoc Party has cast a very large shadow. The Shepherd Party formed by supporters of the cartoon bear Waldo in 2017 incorporated a number of Ingsoc talking points and based their surveillance program while in power off of Jaspers’ mass surveillance. The remnants of the Ingsoc Party were among the parties who joined the Four Star Party under Vivienne Rook, which Rook embraced despite widespread condemnation. Even beyond Britain, many others have taken inspiration from Ingsoc-David Jefferson Adams’ Chief of Staff Jake Rivers cited Harold Wharton as a major influence on his own beliefs and social media websites like Chirper, Cooksta and The Circle have in internal memos compared their talent at data harvesting favorably to the Jaspers regime’s universal monitoring. Jaspers’ regime also gave the name to the reality series Big Brother, a controversy that dogged the show until it was canceled following the deaths of most of its then-current cast alongside its host and several past contestants during the 2003 London zombie outbreak.


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References

1984, The Great Dictator, You Nazty Spy!, Duck Soup, Jeeves and Wooster, The Autocracy of Mr. Parham, The Holy Terror, Meccania: The Super State, Michael Cummings Political Cartoons, Billy Bunter, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Animal Farm, The Man from UNCLE, James Bond, Get Smart!, The Tomorrow People, The Island of Dr. Moureau, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Quartermass Experiment, Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Real Ambassadors, Coming to America, Performance, The Magician, The Wicker Man, Dennis the Menace. In the Wet, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, VALIS, Marvel Comics (Secret Empire, Captain Britain), The Venture Bros, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, They Came From Beyond Space, Doctor Who, The Devil’s Alternative, Scotch on the Rocks,The Guardians (TV Series), Miracleman, Watchmen, Countdown to Looking Glass, A Colder War, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, SCP Foundation, DC Comics (Doctor Fate), Astro Boy, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Albion, Yes Minister, V For Vendetta, House of Cards UK, Steins;Gate, The Curfew, Black Mirror, Years and Years, Shattered Union, Trigger Warning, Cities: Skylines, Dave the Diver, The Circle, Dead Set, Shaun of the Dead, The New Statesmen
 
Fuck yes, anarcho-menaceism. Gives a whole new meaning to “red and black bloc”.

Lots of solid welding here as usual—balancing out Dr Manhattan with Jim Jaspers, Escalation ‘84 making it Literally 1984, having Wharton just be kind of a weird guy to explain why Ingsoc wants various weird things-that-are-metaphors-for-WW2-era-UK-policies—but I’m not entirely over the idea of a TV producer naming a hot new reality TV show after an esoteric fascist ideology. Very much a pre-internet-era mistake.
 
Fuck yes, anarcho-menaceism. Gives a whole new meaning to “red and black bloc”.

Lots of solid welding here as usual—balancing out Dr Manhattan with Jim Jaspers, Escalation ‘84 making it Literally 1984, having Wharton just be kind of a weird guy to explain why Ingsoc wants various weird things-that-are-metaphors-for-WW2-era-UK-policies—but I’m not entirely over the idea of a TV producer naming a hot new reality TV show after an esoteric fascist ideology. Very much a pre-internet-era mistake.
Glad you liked it!

I felt like Wharton being eccentric fit not only Ingsoc’s specific hobbyhorses but the broader trend of far right people being very very weird on a personal level. This is the same ideological sludge that in reality gave us such ideas as Hitler as a divine avatar of the Hindu gods (Savitri Devi’s esoteric Hitlerism) or there’s an underground kingdom of enlightened beings called Agartha whose system is perfect (Alexander St. Yves’ synarchy, which is admittedly a 19th century concept). I also figured that Jaspers did not share most of these eccentricities but saw them as useful for his actual belief that he should reign supreme over at least half the planet.

And yeah in-universe the name ‘Big Brother’ is enough to make the show more controversial than many other shows (basically until The Running Man becomes a thing it’s the most controversial reality show of the 21st century). It probably would’ve been cancelled just a season or two later if not for the zombies.
Does this mean Walter is the TTL-equivalent of Jacob Rees-Mogg (or William.)
Most likely.
 
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