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Least favorite alt-history story?

I'd heard glimpses of the war in it but then I read @Coiler's article & bloody hell, what???

It makes even LESS sense when read.

And you get awful events only thrown in to offend, like Justin Trudeau dying to save the life of Ted Cruz during the fighting, and being rewarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for this.

Or fucking South Africa and Rhodesia sending troops to fight.

IN GREECE.
 
Probably means a review of NDCR I did on Fuldapocalypse.



There's a wikibox that has 61,000 South African and 55,000 Rhodesian troops participating in a battle in Greece. For a less politically dicey but still numerically excessive one, you have 93,000 troops from the Republic of Ireland fighting in Central Europe in another wikibox.
Wait, what 55,000 Rhodesian troops, in OTL World War II 10,000 white Southern Rhodesians (15% of the white population) mustered into the British forces during World War II, if this 55,000 number is correct almost 50 % of the Rhodesian white population serves and the total strength of the Rhodesian Security Forces which in OTL 1978–79, consisted of 10,800 regulars nominally supported by about 40,000 reservists.
 
Man, between reading the comments on it in this thread, the similar thread over on Sufficient Velocity, and that review my interest in reading NDCR has absolutely plummeted. Which is a shame, since some of the events that I read about on the TV Tropes page actually interested me (Ted Bundy covering up his crimes and completing his law degree, Yukio Mishima going into politics, etc) as alternate history concepts, but to hear that their execution was awful really does suck. But then, I probably shouldn't have expected much when the one mention I found of Mishima's homosexuality (which was a defining part of who he was as a person imo) was that it was just a rumor used in an attempt to discredit him.
 
Wait, what 55,000 Rhodesian troops, in OTL World War II 10,000 white Southern Rhodesians (15% of the white population) mustered into the British forces during World War II, if this 55,000 number is correct almost 50 % of the Rhodesian white population serves and the total strength of the Rhodesian Security Forces which in OTL 1978–79, consisted of 10,800 regulars nominally supported by about 40,000 reservists.

There would likely be some Shona and Ndebele people included in that figure as the entire country "united against Communism", i.e. embraced what was in essence the OTL internal settlement. See also: 'Mandela for Apartheid'.
 
Wait, what 55,000 Rhodesian troops, in OTL World War II 10,000 white Southern Rhodesians (15% of the white population) mustered into the British forces during World War II, if this 55,000 number is correct almost 50 % of the Rhodesian white population serves and the total strength of the Rhodesian Security Forces which in OTL 1978–79, consisted of 10,800 regulars nominally supported by about 40,000 reservists.

Queen Nixon in... is pretty much The Chewbacca Defense: the TL, in that it tries to overwhelm you with sheer craziness.

There would likely be some Shona and Ndebele people included in that figure as the entire country "united against Communism", i.e. embraced what was in essence the OTL internal settlement. See also: 'Mandela for Apartheid'.

Man, imagine. All that people had to do to get black people accept racism was go 'But COMMUNISM!' If only this had been attempted IOTL.

😅
 
Man, between reading the comments on it in this thread, the similar thread over on Sufficient Velocity, and that review my interest in reading NDCR has absolutely plummeted. Which is a shame, since some of the events that I read about on the TV Tropes page actually interested me (Ted Bundy covering up his crimes and completing his law degree, Yukio Mishima going into politics, etc) as alternate history concepts, but to hear that their execution was awful really does suck. But then, I probably shouldn't have expected much when the one mention I found of Mishima's homosexuality (which was a defining part of who he was as a person imo) was that it was just a rumor used in an attempt to discredit him.

I mean, Mishima plotted and attempted a far-right coup against the Japanese government in OTL. That was probably the reason he was included in this timeline in the first place - it has a habit of whitewashing far-right figures and regimes. From Gerhard Frey, to George Lincoln Rockwell (though apparently they took him out), to Sanjay Gandhi, to Pinochet, to Rhodesia, to Apartheid-era South Africa, the timeline seems to have a habit of sanitizing dubious individuals and regimes in the most offensive way possible - so long as they're on the right wing of the political spectrum, of course.
 
I mean, Mishima plotted and attempted a far-right coup against the Japanese government in OTL.

It should pointed out that it was very badly plotted and attempted--the man was likely looking for an excuse for his ritual suicide, having just completed his Sea of Fertility novels, which he viewed as his masterpiece, and thus wanted to go out on a high note.

It was by most accounts an ugly death. What makes it most ironic is that the novels are about what is almost certainly a delusional effort to recapture a past which may be completely imaginary, not the first time Mishima dealt with that subject.

He knew himself very well.
 
I mean, Mishima plotted and attempted a far-right coup against the Japanese government in OTL. That was probably the reason he was included in this timeline in the first place - it has a habit of whitewashing far-right figures and regimes. From Gerhard Frey, to George Lincoln Rockwell (though apparently they took him out), to Sanjay Gandhi, to Pinochet, to Rhodesia, to Apartheid-era South Africa, the timeline seems to have a habit of sanitizing dubious individuals and regimes in the most offensive way possible - so long as they're on the right wing of the political spectrum, of course.
Honestly, from my understanding of the Mishima Incident (I still need to read the two biographies of the man that I own) it was less a legitimate attempt at a political coup on Mishima's part and more an elaborate spectacle done as a precursor to his own meticulously-planned suicide. In other words, a symbolic act of the kind that he himself wrote about and believed in.

That being said, I can see how the other creative decisions made could've been handled with more tact but were instead handled crudely and offensively. Which is a big yikes from me, even with my own political views (though those views are hardly concrete or set in stone). 😬
 
That being said, I can see how the other creative decisions made could've been handled with more tact but were instead handled crudely and offensively. Which is a big yikes from me, even with my own political views (though those views are hardly concrete or set in stone). 😬

I really don't know how one could use tact to sanitize the legacy of Nazis and right-wing despots.
 
I really don't know how one could use tact to sanitize the legacy of Nazis and right-wing despots.
I'll be honest, that's poor wording on my part. What I meant was that the morally dubious figures/regimes featured could've been portrayed with the proper respect that such serious topics deserve, rather than how they ended up being portrayed in NCDR. In other words, not showing them as whitewashed and sanitized or as thinly-veiled apologia
 
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I really don't know how one could use tact to sanitize the legacy of Nazis and right-wing despots.

I don't think in theory, there's anything hugely wrong with positing that figures who committed atrocities otl could have not done so thanks to different life experiences/broader political trends. It's just the format he chooses to use made nuance and depth impossible.
 
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