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Alternate History General Discussion

Yokai Man said:
Again,I cannot state how stupid RFR is as an idea done un ironically like here.
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Having Bucharest become a rogue state ruled by a junta of football team owners sounds like something out of either a goofy HOI mod or New Deal Coalition Retained. It has that kind of political uh, "randomness" to it.
 
Coiler said:
Having Bucharest become a rogue state ruled by a junta of football team owners sounds like something out of either a goofy HOI mod or New Deal Coalition Retained. It has that kind of political uh, "randomness" to it.
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A lot of Romanian dystopian novels/novellas are like that-random social group/minority takes over and turns the country into a dictatorship/failed state.

Here are a few examples:

Octavian Paler-Life on a Train station: cobra tamers take over a city and institute a dictatorship,acting like all conquering horde towards the neighboring places and being unable to be stopped.

Voicu Bugariu-The God of Apathy: an incredibly racist novel where the Roma people take over Romania due to multiculturalism and become the majority,destroying the racial purity of Romania. The pure white Romanian minority rallies under a charismatic figure and starts murdering people til a fash state appears out of the rubbles of the civil war.

Sebastian Corn – Vonu: In a Romania transformed from a national state into a prosperous, world-successful corporation that sells clones,religious fanatic terrorist barbers are plotting an assassination.

Mircea Daneliuc-Water in Boots: the Chinese diaspora in Romania are all secretly Chinese spies who overthrow the Romanian government in 2000 and install a puppet government similar to that of China of the time ideologically.

There’s also one where racist taxi drivers overthrow the government and install a fash Government with the sole purpose of murdering Roma people.
 
I will admit that, even if bad for a serious story, the Footballist Republic would make for a great cheap thriller antagonist. Granted, part of it comes from having already written an evil sportswriter and an evil sports betting tout. Another part comes from the NYC area sports teams not exactly having the best-run front offices.
 
With its 25th anniversary approaching, I'll be writing about the Dark Skies TV series over on Medium for Bryce Zabel's Trail of the Saucer strand (Zabel being, for full disclosure, co-creator of the series). You can check out the first article, an overview of the series and its legacy, now. Dark Skies certainly seems to get overlooked in discussion of screen AHs, though I suspect that's in large part due to how it ties into UFO lore and people going "conspiracy thriller" instead of "ah, that's AH." An example of "setting, not genre" in my view. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?
 
M_Kresal said:
With its 25th anniversary approaching, I'll be writing about the Dark Skies TV series over on Medium for Bryce Zabel's Trail of the Saucer strand (Zabel being, for full disclosure, co-creator of the series). You can check out the first article, an overview of the series and its legacy, now. Dark Skies certainly seems to get overlooked in discussion of screen AHs, though I suspect that's in large part due to how it ties into UFO lore and people going "conspiracy thriller" instead of "ah, that's AH." An example of "setting, not genre" in my view. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?
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The show itself might be connected to a potential ATL in the real world, as I've brought up about 40 times before I think. Jeri Ryan's husband at the time, Jack Ryan (no, not the Tom Clancy uber-spy), later divorced her, and the somewhat sordid details came out (apparently against both their wishes) just as he was running against Obama for the Senate in 2004. Ryan dropped out about a week later. He was already behind in the polls by a considerable degree, so it probably wouldn't have made much difference if the records weren't released, but still, it's a possibility. And either way, it's weird to draw a line from Dark Skies to Obama (maybe) not having a political career on a national level.
 
The Jeri Ryan thing is over-stated. There's really not much way that someone with Obama's skill would have lost in a blue state in a presidential year that Kerry won by ten points. A more interesting divergence and a "Be careful what you wish for" is to have Obama actually win the House race he lost (although, like Ryan four years later, was behind and highly unlikely to win from the start).
 
Also I like the idea of an "alternate contemporary" story with this Bucharest Football Hooligan Junta set during the pandemic. I can see them, like Belarus, Nicaragua, and Turkmenistan IOTL, just forcing the play to continue and trying to capitalize on being one of the few leagues still running. Naturally, the gamblers all flock to it out of desperation, and uh, I have a suspicion that all this punter money would lead to shady antics. Just a hunch, you know?
 
Matt said:
This proposed sequel to Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings is getting awfully close to the Yellow Peril trope, Mr. Feige.
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I don't know if I should explain the joke, but it's actually a reference to these bizarre table tennis matches in Russia and Ukraine that continued running around the clock even at the depth of the Spring 2020 sports drought, attracted gambling dollars en masse, and, even more bizarrely, kept doing so even after regular sports returned.
 
I found this interview of boxer Zab Judah, and besides being good in its own right, his dismissive attitude when asked about a what-if fight between a prime Tyson and Riddick Bowe (about a minute in), reminds me of the stereotypical "academic historian who scoffs at alternate history".

 
I’m beginning to understand why there isn’t more 20th Century Middle Eastern based Alternate History because the minute you go ‘What If Nasser was assassinated in 1954?’ you open a box of all sorts of different ideas, people and events related and now changed due to this.

I can now see why @SpanishSpy read a number of books to talk about Israeli-Palestine conflict for the Alternate History podcast.
 
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