Alternate History General Discussion

So this has come up several times in private, and I'm punch drunk enough to ramble about this in a semi-public setting.

In Big High-Concept TLs (I'll explain later), there's a general criterion as to whether I will probably enjoy a given TL, and when I brought it up in a Discord conversation she was in, @Turquoise Blue named it the Omnibus test, after the "man on the Clapham omnibus". Basically, can the author describe a day in the life of some apolitical citizen in the TL's primary setting? Bonus points (or an added requirement, depending how I'm feeling) if the author and the apolitical citizen have hardly anything in common - basically, someone who you can have a full conversation with without touching on anything the TL author is interested in.

Not all TLs are really Omnibus-applicable, of course - limited scopes, such as pop culture timelines, aren't exactly relevant to it when presumably the overarching conditions in any given average person's life are the same. I suppose a question along the same lines for pop culture TLs is: can the author think of a work that is well-made but that they would not personally like?

One of my favorite TLs is probably The Stomach of Man Under Socialism - while the TL itself is written in a limited scope, the broader worldbuilding is broad enough to apply the Omnibus test, which I'd say it passes with flying colors. The focus isn't political, it isn't military, it's, well, it's about food, and I fully trust the author to be able to think of some bloke going about their day in this communist USA.
 
My creativity has fizzled away a bit this week. I've tried writing a couple of new TLs (all of whom involved a particular person becoming head of government) and all of them were abandoned after one or two posts because I was not passionate enough about the idea.
 
NotDavidSoslan said:
My creativity has fizzled away a bit this week. I've tried writing a couple of new TLs (all of whom involved a particular person becoming head of government) and all of them were abandoned after one or two posts because I was not passionate enough about the idea.
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It happens to us all! Just take a break for a bit and let yourself recharge.
 
One curious idea I had is based on the TLs that propose a way for the US to win Vietnam by extending operations into the Laotian panhandle to the Thai border in order to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

This works, but at the same time the Pathet Lao still win the civil against the royalists in the rest of the kingdom, but obviously they can't control the south. The results in an extremely rump Royalist state which in practice is a bizarre South Vietnamese-American co-dominium. And then once the peace accords are signed and the US leaves, South Vietnam now just has this rump state as a sort of mini-empire.
 
MernStahl said:
One curious idea I had is based on the TLs that propose a way for the US to win Vietnam by extending operations into the Laotian panhandle to the Thai border in order to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
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There was serious planning for it (OPLAN El Paso). The problem even in purely military terms is that it's a nightmarishly long logistical shoestring for the Americans and southerners, but much easier and closer to home for the northerners. Which means it will inevitably become a politically damaging attrition sink for the Americans and has the smaller but non-zero possibility of an even more damaging battlefield defeat.
 
Coiler said:
There was serious planning for it (OPLAN El Paso). The problem even in purely military terms is that it's a nightmarishly long logistical shoestring for the Americans and southerners, but much easier and closer to home for the northerners. Which means it will inevitably become a politically damaging attrition sink for the Americans and has the smaller but non-zero possibility of an even more damaging battlefield defeat.
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Cheers, I did not know about this. Reading about, it does seem formidable (although I think doable if they had been willing to go all in rather than half-hearted), but I have to wonder if the cost would still have been less than what the US ultimately sunk into Vietnam with their existing strategy. But hindsight is 20/20.
 
An idea I recently had that I don’t know how plausible it is that I wanted to share:

Enraged by the passing the Anti KKK plank,the Dixiecrats split from the party and run their own ticket,winning all the OTL electoral states won by Davis and the Democrats only managing to win New Mexico,their worst performance ever.

As Smith still gets nominated in ‘28 (hard to see how he doesn’t,he was really popular and if the party wanted to back an Anyone but Al candidate they would have done that OTL and they didn’t),the South as a result gets viewed as less integral to the Democratic coalition,especially after the Dixiecrats officially become a party (maybe the Southern Democracy Party,idk),dominate the South in every way and Al manages to win the nomination again in ‘32. In return,Smith becomes slightly more openly anti racist since,well,there aren’t really any Southerners left to alinate that don’t share his views.

The main question on my mind (beyond the obvious one) is “how can the SDP go on?”. Does it officially become the third party of American politics or is it absorbed after a while by a GOP more willing to appeal to them earlier than OTL?
 
Yokai Man said:
An idea I recently had that I don’t know how plausible it is that I wanted to share:

Enraged by the passing the Anti KKK plank,the Dixiecrats split from the party and run their own ticket,winning all the OTL electoral states won by Davis and the Democrats only managing to win New Mexico,their worst performance ever.

As Smith still gets nominated in ‘28 (hard to see how he doesn’t,he was really popular and if the party wanted to back an Anyone but Al candidate they would have done that OTL and they didn’t),the South as a result gets viewed as less integral to the Democratic coalition,especially after the Dixiecrats officially become a party (maybe the Southern Democracy Party,idk),dominate the South in every way and Al manages to win the nomination again in ‘32. In return,Smith becomes slightly more openly anti racist since,well,there aren’t really any Southerners left to alinate that don’t share his views.

The main question on my mind (beyond the obvious one) is “how can the SDP go on?”. Does it officially become the third party of American politics or is it absorbed after a while by a GOP more willing to appeal to them earlier than OTL?
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There were still some southern politicians, such as Theodore G. Bilbo and Eugene Talmadge, that were violently racist, so this third party would be pretty esoteric and split between the race baiters and politicians who preferred dog whistles.
 
Hello, everyone!
How are you?
I have a question about my timeline, when should I release it?
On one hand, I did not write as much as I wanted, on another hand, I fear that I might lose my interest in it if I post it sooner.
What should I do?
 
SultanArda said:
Hello, everyone!
How are you?
I have a question about my timeline, when should I release it?
On one hand, I did not write as much as I wanted, on another hand, I fear that I might lose my interest in it if I post it sooner.
What should I do?
Click to expand...

Ideally I would say have at least a few updates ready to go and more mapped out although if you're already worried about losing interest it might be best to try it as a vignette/short story first.
 
The Red said:
Ideally I would say have at least a few updates ready to go and more mapped out although if you're already worried about losing interest it might be best to try it as a vignette/short story first.
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Well, one of my main problems is that my timeline’s first few chapters are the most problem ones, background information.
 
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