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Least favorite alt-history story?

Elektronaut said:
*I've said this before, but if your title is NUKE THE BASTARDS: PRESIDENT DREW CAREY AND THE WAR IN FINLAND then you need to get a new title. You've already told me most of the plot, why would I want to read it?
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Buddy, that’s the title of my latest self-published series on Amazon. I won’t take such an insult laying down!

Cleveland Rocks! President Drew Carey for a third term!
 
I don’t… hate it — but A Hippie In The House of Mouse has been growing out of favour with me.

It’s treatment of Whedon and OJ Simpson and their whole thing was probably my line in the sand with it. It felt very white washy.
 
TheKennedyMachine said:
I don’t… hate it — but A Hippie In The House of Mouse has been growing out of favour with me.

It’s treatment of Whedon and OJ Simpson and their whole thing was probably my line in the sand with it. It felt very white washy.
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Pop Culture Timelines are kind of a non starter for me. I feel like any time they try to have some "real world impact" it gets very cringy. Or they never get to it at all.
 
Japhy said:
I don't think that's worthwhile either.
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It's one of those things where in theory it should be interesting, but in practice it just ends up being "They created a sequel to my favorite show, and the show cast my favorite actors, and the critics loved it, and it ran for 12 seasons, and, and", or in other words fanfic.
 
napoleon IV said:
It's one of those things where in theory it should be interesting, but in practice it just ends up being "They created a sequel to my favorite show, and the show cast my favorite actors, and the critics loved it, and it ran for 12 seasons, and, and", or in other words fanfic.
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Yes. Or in the case of something like Reds the whole TL is derailed in the name of making Star Wars reflect theory.
 
The Henson thing was interesting as a timeline about corporate politics in Reagan’s America.

As it gradually devolved into ‘here’s another five films with a slightly different cast’ it lost momentum, and the appalling take on metoo was a terrible misjudgement.

It wasn’t so much that there was an earlier reckoning- wish fulfilment, but plausible enough- but that any particularly beloved geek creators didn’t become predators because of, I dunno, the healing power of Henson.

Some very good stuff in the board room sequences though.
 
The flaw that does in pop-culture timelines is the same as any other timeline: writing "and then the thing I liked happened and it kept happening and it was great and everyone loved it", where real pop culture, like politics/warfare/trains, has things going wrong and people who once were doing well start doing badly.
 
napoleon IV said:
It's one of those things where in theory it should be interesting, but in practice it just ends up being "They created a sequel to my favorite show, and the show cast my favorite actors, and the critics loved it, and it ran for 12 seasons, and, and", or in other words fanfic.
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There's a few factors at work. As someone who's worked in "creative content" industry myself and has had a lot of my family in the same, I tend to regard pop culture timelines with a sour feeling. If I had to list them exactly, they'd be...

  1. Author wish fulfillment. I don't need to explain this.
  2. Audience wish fulfillment. Similar to author wish fulfillment, but one thing fairly unique to pop culture timelines (or timeline AH in general) is fans wanting to know the whereabouts of (obscure figure ____) and the author humoring them. And well, you aren't inclined to say "No, she became a seamstress instead and lived in obscurity" even if that would be a potential butterfly.
  3. Not really getting how things work. Basically, every project that comes to fruition - even solo projects by solo creators - has some kind of friction and tradeoff. A lot of things happened on a knife edge IOTL, and pop culture is extremely volatile. You can excuse this in a conventional story if done for literary reasons, but if you're just providing a summary, it's a lot more glaring. Especialy since there's...
  4. Less pressure to make something negative and tons to make something positive. The audience wants alternate Undertales, not alternate Duke Nukem Forevers. They want "This but with my AWESOME OCs".
  5. The whole thing being a shortcut to art. I actually think it's worse/more pronounced in pop culture TLs because it often is sufficient (if not ideal) to describe an event briefly. But to describe a work of art briefly-it goes back to what you said, which is "this thing that I think is awesome happened." The shortcut effect of timeline AH at its worst.
Anyway, a lot of this is just internet chatter and I've stopped being mad about it (someone who writes "and then this X-Men movie starred Kenneth Branagh as Arcade end update" is not someone who'd have been writing award-winning literature if they weren't sidetracked into pop culture AH), but I'll admit it does feel irritating as someone who knows how much effort goes into genuine creative content to see someone just cut the line.
 
SenatorChickpea said:
The Henson thing was interesting as a timeline about corporate politics in Reagan’s America.

As it gradually devolved into ‘here’s another five films with a slightly different cast’ it lost momentum, and the appalling take on metoo was a terrible misjudgement.

It wasn’t so much that there was an earlier reckoning- wish fulfilment, but plausible enough- but that any particularly beloved geek creators didn’t become predators because of, I dunno, the healing power of Henson.

Some very good stuff in the board room sequences though.
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The MeToo thing was just ... uh, very wild.

I liked it better when it focused more on the idea of how Henson's hippie idealism turns Disney into a different kind of beast.
 
Charles EP M. said:
where real pop culture, like politics/warfare/trains, has things going wrong and people who once were doing well start doing badly.
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You always manage to convoy that in your pop culture tls. That and you being an actual writer are the reasons they're so good.
TheKennedyMachine said:
It’s treatment of Whedon and OJ Simpson and their whole thing
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A thing I've noticed while hatereading is that they're very biased about which celebrities they like and don't like. So Vince McMahon,R.Kelly, and Andy Dick get punished by Henson of Nazareth while Whedon and Depp get redeemed or not have their moral failing not even acknowledged. Then there's the shit they do with Samantha Smith,JonBenet Ramsey, and Judith Barsai which bugs me for the same reason shit like "Israeli prime minster Anne Frank" does is . It's putting words into the mouth of dead children. Also they make creepy face ai pics of them. I guess just going "Judith Barsai later goes into voice acting" is better than "Hi I'm Judith Barsai let me talk about how Tim Burton and Jupiter King Henson helped me.". The main point is bunk too because no way Henson would want to run a big corp like Disney. Dude just wanted to make movies.
 
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Qaz_plm said:
I mean,I'm right everywhere else. He was killed by just the stress of dealing with Disney so if he ran the motherfucking thing he'd drop dead pretty quick and that's based off "otl sources" too. so ultimately it is still bunk even if "olt sources" said he want to.
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That deal with Disney had more to do with Eisner rather than Disney itself. Pre-Eisner Disney is like a completely different beast than post-Eisner Disney.

Plus, Henson was dealing with Paramount and shit years before Disney — so, if that didn’t kill him …
 
TheKennedyMachine said:
That deal with Disney had more to do with Eisner rather than Disney itself. Pre-Eisner Disney is like a completely different beast than post-Eisner Disney.

Plus, Henson was dealing with Paramount and shit years before Disney — so, if that didn’t kill him …
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Okay, compromise time: Rocket Men at the summit of Space Mountain: Elton John and William Shatner Buy Disney
 
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