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Least favorite alt-history story?

I think my least favorite AH is the one where Chris Chan becomes a school shooter

Jesus.

There's always been an undercurrent of AH as personal attack on people you don't like, see 'Dominion' and 'the SNP will collaborate with the nazis just like they are now' or 'Rodham' and 'wouldn't hilary be better off if she just hadn't married that stinking Bill' but that's a new level.
 
There's always been an undercurrent of AH as personal attack on people you don't like, see 'Dominion' and 'the SNP will collaborate with the nazis just like they are now' or 'Rodham' and 'wouldn't hilary be better off if she just hadn't married that stinking Bill' but that's a new level.
There was one where Ian Montgomerie becomes a UN political commissar and rigidly enforces ideological conformity on the protagonists, who, as freedom-loving straight white males, obviously chafe under the yoke of global socialism or something. I forgot the details.
 
Jesus.

There's always been an undercurrent of AH as personal attack on people you don't like, see 'Dominion' and 'the SNP will collaborate with the nazis just like they are now' or 'Rodham' and 'wouldn't hilary be better off if she just hadn't married that stinking Bill' but that's a new level.
I have to say even when I’m writing about people I don’t like, at least I have them be normal levels of petty and bad instead of moustache twirling levels of evil (which is impressive given that one of them is an unprincipled New Labour empty suit and the other stole money from a Miners Union so...).

Like I don’t get having the things you don’t like be these comical sinister villains or whatever. Write them as incredibly flawed beings and leave it at that.
 
I add, coming from AH.com its called Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck of the East : A story of World War 2 in Tibet, a TL where the author seems to claim everything happens thanks to good investigation and resources, and butterfly effect so big it would darken the Earth, but still the author claims that everything that he has created can happen, all due the butterfly effect.

Something like that is limited by its format.

There's no story, no characters. When the format is 'July 1941: this happened, August 1941: this happened' all you are offering is a chain of events. If that chain of events isn't plausible then you have nothing else to distract the audience from that.

Whereas if you write a pulp style story of nazi guerrillas in Tibet working with anti colonial forces in british india, you have enough action and an intriguing enough setting that nobody would care about the plausibility.
 
Whereas if you write a pulp style story of nazi guerrillas in Tibet working with anti colonial forces in british india, you have enough action and an intriguing enough setting that nobody would care about the plausibility.
That would be similar to Afrika Reich, which is fairly unrealistic but works because it’s setting is fascinating and it’s pulpy in just the right amount for you to ignore it’s plausibility.

So yeah, I could see that style working.
 
That would be similar to Afrika Reich, which is fairly unrealistic but works because it’s setting is fascinating and it’s pulpy in just the right amount for you to ignore it’s plausibility.

So yeah, I could see that style working.

God imagine having like Bose in the room with like the RSS guys trying to make a free india real.
 
Here's the update in all of its tremendousness, from not knowing how gun shows actually work to literally missing the mark on Chris Chan's whole personality (we know quite literally everything about the guy, more than we do of say, Hitler, - from book reports to childhood friends etc. so there's really no excuse in turning Chris into a school shooter as nothing suggests a murderous personality aside from just anger that emerges from being a brat all your life). I literally do not understand why the author couldn't have just made someone up to be the shooter


David Ruprecht: So far it's been a very good start to our day here on The Price Is Right, we've given away a trip, we've given away a car, let's see if we can keep this winning streak going with our next contestant! Rod, who's it gonna be?

Rod Roddy: David, I've got a good feeling about... Jason Spradlin. Jason, come on down!

*A young man seated with about a dozen other young men from a college group jumps out of his seat, excitedly high-fiving his friends before rushing down to Contestants' Row, he makes his way to the spot that had just been occupied by the previous contestant to play a pricing game*

Jason: Aw right, yeah!

David: You're excited, aren't you?

Jason: I'm ready to win!

David: And I'm ready to reveal the next item up for bids!

*The curtain rises on a Game Boy Nova, displayed with ten games, including Street Fighter III: The New Age, Pokemon Moon, Little Andrekah, Rayman, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, along with some lesser titles*

Rod: It's a portable video game console! The Game Boy Nova, from Nintendo, features advanced 3-D graphics to bring a new world of video gaming fun right into the palm of your hand, a pair of state-of-the-art speakers for lifelike sound effects, and a camera to take pictures when you're out playing on the go. Comes with Super Mario Nova and ten other games, the Game Boy Nova!

David: And it's time to bid on that Game Boy Nova. Greta, what's your bid?

*The camera pans to an older woman, who is looking at the crowd, not sure what the newfangled game machine costs.*

Greta: Umm....erm.....that much? All right, um, I'll bid 600 dollars.

David: All right, Travis, what's your bid?

*The camera pans to a tall 30-something wearing a t-shirt with his fire department's local emblem on it.*

Travis: I think I'll bid 675 dollars, David.

David: Charlotte, what do you bid?

*An attractive blonde is thinking for a moment, eyeing the console and the games.*

Charlotte: I'm gonna bid...400.

David: And now Jason.

Jason: *sees Charlotte's bid and is smiling, he knows what to bid right away but he's eyeing her up and down and looking kind of guilty about it, it's clear he wants to bid 401 but this girl is really pretty* Well.... uhhhh....um.... *laughs nervously* Well, David, I uh..... *is about to speak*

*The Price Is Right is interrupted by a CBS Special Report. Dan Rather appears on the screen.*

Dan Rather: *looking very solemn* This is a CBS News Special Report. We're going live now to Midlothian, Virginia, where it appears that there has been what is being described as a mass shooting incident.

*A live video appears on the screen, showing dozens of students running out of a high school with their hands above their heads as police officers swarm the scene.*

Rather: It's being reported now that several students have been injured, but police are currently unsure of the exact count of casualties or of the identity of the shooter, who is said to still be in the building. Police have entered the building and are actively searching for the shooter.

-from a CBS broadcast at 11:16 AM on February 14, 2001

(...)

Dan Rather: We can now report to you that there have so far been eight people confirmed dead and ten people confirmed injured in the shooting incident at the high school today. As you can see on the screen, there are not only a massive amount of police vehicles but also a large amount of ambulances, and...there you see on the screen a student who is being wheeled into an ambulance.

*A student is laying on a gurney, awake and conscious and talking with paramedics as blood runs down his arm. Meanwhile, several police are seen outside the school, talking to one another.*

Rather: Right now we are hearing from police that the shooter, and at this time we believe there was only one, has been found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the school's cafeteria. We do not have the identity of the shooter at this time, though it is believed now that the shooter is not, as was previously reported, a current student at the school.

-from a CBS broadcast at 11:37 AM on February 14, 2001

(...)

*The camera switches from an overhead view of the school to a police press conference, where the chief of police is speaking.*

Police Chief: And we can now confirm that there have been 21 people killed, including the shooter. *there is a very quiet but audible gasp from the reporters as this number is read* We have 19 injured people that have been taken to area hospitals, six of them in critical condition. We can now also positively identify the shooter as a Mr. Christopher Weston Chandler. This individual was 18 years old and graduated from this school last spring. Mr. Chandler was found in the school cafeteria, where nine other bodies, including eight students and a school resource officer, were found. He had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the side of his head. We believe that Mr. Chandler originally entered the school and went to a classroom, where he shot several students and a teacher. He then went down a hallway, continuing to discharge his weapon, until reaching the cafeteria. By then, SWAT teams had been called in, and were surrounding the school and preparing to enter when Mr. Chandler took his own life. We will now be taking questions at this time. (Reporter: "Do you believe he had any help, considering the number of people who were killed?") We have no reason to believe that any other person was involved in this terrible crime. This appears to us to have been the work of this one individual. (Reporter: "Do you have a possible motive?") Right now, we don't want to speculate on what Mr. Chandler's motive could have been. We will be spending the next days and weeks dissecting all aspects of this tragedy and we will certainly be speaking to many of the people who knew Mr. Chandler to learn why he did this and if at any point he could have been stopped.

-from a CBS broadcast at 11:50 AM on February 14, 2001 (also broadcast on all the major broadcast and news networks)

-

Dan Rather: And...we can now report that one of the injured students has died at a local hospital, during emergency surgery. That brings the total number killed, including the shooter, to 22. That makes this the worst mass shooting incident in America since the shooting in Killeen, Texas nearly a decade ago.

-from a CBS broadcast at 1:47 PM on February 14, 2001

-

"It was about 11 in the morning, maybe a little before that. I was in honors English class, it was right before lunch and Ms. Rhimes was teaching us about the Harlem Renaissance. We were studying a poem, going back and forth discussing what it meant when the door opened. Of course back in those days nobody kept their classroom locked, what was the reason for it? There'd been school shootings before, but....two, maybe three killed tops? You heard about them on the news from time to time but it was never a big deal. The door opened and we saw somebody come in. He looked....well he looked nervous but he also looked very angry. He was shaking. Ms. Rhimes, she seemed to recognize him and said 'can I help you?', but with somewhat of a stern look on her face, like it was someone who she'd had issues with in the past. I'll never forget the look on his face when he turned toward the rest of the class and took out that gun. Then he just started firing. Randomly, right at us, seemingly targeting the girls but I saw a couple of boys go down too. Immediately, Ms. Rhimes, she...she lunged at him, but she wasn't fast enough. He turned toward her and fired, twice. She went down.... but not all the way down, she kept coming at him, she tried to tackle him but she just seemed to make him stumble back a bit. But.....but that gave us all the time we needed. Somebody rushed over to the window and yanked it open, tore out the screen and leapt outside into the grass. He turned toward us as we ran for the window and fired a few more times. A bullet went right past my head....I didn't look back. I heard the screams, I felt somebody's blood splatter on me but I didn't dare look back. I heard him reload, but by then I was already outside, and two of my classmates fell on top of me. I didn't hear him fire anymore....I guess he must've gone into the hallway by then. I could hear some of the people who'd been hit, crying out... I....I didn't stay behind. Some of my classmates stayed behind to help them to their feet but I....I was too much of a coward. I just kept thinking, 'what if he comes back?' ....I'm sorry."
-a former student's account of the Valentine's Day Shooting from the February 11, 2011 episode of ABC's 20/20, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the event

-

"The American people have seen tragedy before, both from natural disasters and from acts of mass murder like today's terrible killings. We can't let fear and anger divide us, but must instead let courage unite us. We must come together with the people of Midlothian, who have lost sons and daughters and friends and loved ones. In times like these, the grief can be overwhelming. But in this dark hour, we won't forget the 18 students and three staff members who died in today's tragedy. We won't forget the courage of Shonda Rhimes, the brave English teacher who threw herself at the shooter so that her students could survive. We won't forget the courage of the first responders, the brave police officers and paramedics who put themselves in harm's way to prevent an even greater loss of life. We will pray for those still bravely recovering from their injuries. And we will help the victims and their loved ones heal."
-from Al Gore's speech on February 14, 2001, addressing the nation and the day's tragic events

-

"You know what it is, Al. We know that shooter played video games. We know he played a lot of them, including what looks to be a terrible violent game about fighting angels in the service of the devil. The shooter mentioned it in the note he left behind!"

"We also know that it was too goddamn easy for him to get his hands on an assault rifle. How the hell could someone as messed up as him get a hold of a weapon like that? Where'd he buy the thing?"

"The FBI's still trying to figure that out, but you know we've already got the NRA on our asses about the assault weapons ban. We can't expand it further."

"That gun should've been included in the ban, he couldn't have killed that many people with just a pistol!"

"I'm telling you, Al, this video game thing is the one thing the Republicans agree with us on. We should've banned violent games eight years ago when we had the chance."

"We can't ban violent games without violating the First Amendment. You know that, Joe. And besides, a lot more people play them now than they did back then."

"And back then we didn't have some psychotic nutjob hopped up on Sega charge into a school and kill 21 people. I'm telling you, this'll be the only time we can get it done. I'll go back to some of my friends in the Senate. At the very least, we can make it illegal to sell them to kids."

"Well... I guess my wife would approve."


-from a conversation between Vice President Joe Lieberman and President Al Gore in the Oval Office on the morning of February 15, 2001

-

"Fuck."
-SoA president Reggie Fils-Aime, upon learning that mass shooter Christopher Weston Chandler was a massive Sega fan and had recently played Arbiter of Sin 2

-


In the immediate aftermath of the Valentine's Day Shooting, there was of course an immediate controversy about violent video games after learning that the killer had played such titles as Unreal Tournament and Arbiter of Sin 2. Indeed, in his note, he had called himself "the Devil's servant" and that he would "kill angels" in his service, rhetoric that seemed to clearly be inspired by the game. However, Chandler's motives go deeper than just inspiration from a game. Indeed, the main target of his rage seemed to have been the teacher he killed. Shonda Rhimes started her career as a struggling screenwriter, who had written several spec scripts for television and film and had also written some plays, but after her attempts to break into Hollywood failed to pan out, she moved to Virginia and took a job teaching English while continuing to pen scripts on the side in the hopes that one of them would be her big break. She taught several English classes at the school, but was most devoted to her honors students. She originally met Chandler in her remedial English class, and though she initially tried to help him realize his potential as a student, his repeated rude behavior and sexist remarks regarding women caused repeated classroom incidents, including an incident where Rhimes recommended Chandler for suspension after she caught him stalking a female classmate on numerous occasions. She was said to be "very disturbed" by what Chandler, in one of the journals investigators found after the shooting, called his "girl quest", in which he tried repeatedly to find a "boyfriend-free girl" to date. Upon seeing that he was making some of his fellow students very uncomfortable, Rhimes pulled Chandler aside and strongly suggested that he cease such activity, which seemed to be the cause of the initial tension between the two. During the shooting, Chandler seemed to target female students: of the 18 students he killed, 14 were female.

But violent video games weren't the only target of popular outrage after the shooting. The fact that Chandler was initially reported to be autistic (though this was later determined to be untrue by most psychological analysts) led to an unprecedented backlash against autistic children, including those who showed signs of Asperger's syndrome. The anti-autism backlash become so severe that Doug Flutie, quarterback of the Buffalo Bills and father to an autistic child, led a national PSA campaign demonstrating that autistic children were no more dangerous than other children, and are in fact much less likely to commit acts of violence in school or elsewhere. Despite the numerous PSAs, the shooting incident has had an effect on the perception of autistic children that continues somewhat even to this day. The anti-Asperger's backlash was also so severe that for a time, the offensive term "sperg out" became a synonym for committing a psychotic rampage, much like the term "go postal" entered the popular lexicon after the Edmund, Oklahoma postal worker massacre of the late-1980s. The backlash against autistic children also fueled the "anti-vaxxer" movement amongst a number of celebrities and so-called experts that also persists into the present day. While violent video games, which by 2001 had become a mainstream segment of popular culture, found millions of ardent defenders amongst the American public, autistic children had far fewer people to speak up for them, and the backlash against them remains one of the biggest tragedies to stem from the 2001 Valentine's Day Shooting.

-from an article on Gawker.com posted on February 14, 2016, commemorating fifteen years since the Valentine's Day Shooting

-

"Congress continued to debate two bills stemming from the mass shooting at a Virginia high school two weeks ago. The first, a bill that would fine stores for selling violent video games to minors, has stalled in committee pending the results of a preliminary study linking violent behavior to the playing of violent video games. Fears of a Constitutional lawsuit from the multi billion-dollar video game industry, along with impassioned urges for restraint from Oregon junior senator Ron Wyden, have kept the bill from coming to a vote, and it's likely that debate on the bill will persist throughout the spring session of Congress. An expanded gun control bill that would close the so-called 'gun show loophole' and add more assault weapons to the list of banned guns has been blocked as well by Republican members of the House of Representatives along with some Democrats from more conservative states. It was reported that shooter Christopher Chandler purchased the weapon he used in the massacre at a local gun show, and did not have to pass any kind of background check, which might have brought up his mental health issues and school disciplinary problems. Republicans have said to be open to debate on closing the loophole, but that the Second Amendment must be kept in mind."
-Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News, February 28, 2001

-

March 1, 2001

"You have a nice house," said Howard Lincoln, looking around at the pictures on the living room wall. "Guess getting your ass kicked for the better part of a decade pays pretty well, huh?"

A hearty laugh from Lincoln's host followed.

"Well, ask any professional boxer and he'd agree with that," said Tom Kalinske, offering Lincoln a beer. "Though I never made as much as Mike Tyson did."

Lincoln kindly refused the beer and looked across the couch at Kalinske.

"Never thought I'd be kicking back with you after all this time," said Lincoln, "though now that you're retired I guess it's okay."

"So....this again," said Kalinske, looking down at a newspaper headline on the coffee table. It read: 'Congress Considers Video Game Legislation'. "Guess they're not coming after you this time though, are they?"

"The son of a bitch was obsessed with Nintendo and Sega," said Lincoln, shaking his head. "They even found a hand-drawn Nintendo Power magazine in his house. Can you believe it? He did his own Squad Four comic and everything. Had the heroes meeting up with some fucked-up hybrid of Sonic and a Pikachu."

Kalinske laughed, though he tried to stifle it. He needed a good laugh after all the news he'd been hearing, but didn't think it appropriate.

"So...do you think games made him do it?" Kalinske asked. Lincoln shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

"Hell if I know," he replied. "Guess he had issues with one of his old teachers."

"He had issues all right," said Kalinske. "...he won one of our contests seven years ago."

"Excuse me?"

"Sega did this contest, send in some postcards or something, we'd pick one, you'd get a thousand dollars worth of Genesis games. He won. ...he seemed like a nice kid."

"They all do."

"...my oldest is in high school, my younger two are gonna be in high school soon, I just.... I just couldn't help but think, 'what if it had been them?' I always tell them, you see something like that you run, but...if somebody just starts shooting out of nowhere...."

"Every parent in America has asked themselves that same question these past couple weeks," said Lincoln. He leaned back on the couch, trying to get comfortable, but while physically he could accomplish it, he was having trouble achieving the same level of comfort in his mind. "We can't blame ourselves for this. Millions of people play video games every day and they don't shoot anyone. This guy, he was messed up in the head. He would have done this anyway. Games just gave him an excuse."

"...are you gonna fight? If they call you up before Congress again?"

Lincoln sighed. His head felt heavy. He put his fingers to his temples and rubbed the sides of his forehead.

"Yeah. I mean, it's my job isn't it?"

"And what are you gonna say?"

"The same thing I did last time," said Lincoln. "Our video games are an expression of the creativity of their creators. They're art, and they can't be censored."

"Yeah....but this time they'll probably have some parents who would disagree."

Lincoln groaned, thinking about one of the news reports that showed one of the parents of one of the young victims waving a copy of Velvet Dark above her head and shouting 'this filth made him do it!' over and over again. Chandler didn't even play Velvet Dark, the parent had probably just bought the game because she heard it was popular, just to use as a prop on TV. Or maybe someone had even given it to her.

"You know what? I'll take that beer," said Lincoln, picking up the bottle from the coffee table and using a bottle opener to pop off the cap.

-

In a law office in Tampa, Florida, a man sat across a desk from a husband and wife. The wife was wiping tears from her eyes. 15 days after the death of her daughter, and it still felt as raw as it did on that day.

"Don't worry. We'll get them. We'll get them for what their games did to your daughter."

"I know he did it because of those goddamned games!" shouted the wife, weeping as she was comforted by her husband. The man leaned across the table and took the woman's hand.

"I swear to you and I swear to God Almighty that we will make those filth merchants regret the day they ever started allowing murder simulators into the hands of children," said the man, looking straight into the grieving woman's eyes. "They will pay in the civil courts and they will pay in the halls of Congress. I will get justice for your daughter."

"Thank you, Mr. Thompson," said the husband, shaking the man's hand. "I don't know what people like us would do without your help. You're the only one who listens to people like us."

Jack Thompson nodded. He had six other grieving couples ready to testify before anyone who would listen. These violent video games had to be stopped, and he was going to be the one to stop them.
 
Bose was very secular - wanted a 50% Muslim quota in parliament despite the fact that Muslims did not make up anywhere near 50% of India's population. Not exactly an RSS guy
I know I'd just figured the SS would be drawn to the RSS and would try and force Bose to work with them. It's very unlikely, but ironic.
 
I'd assume laziness insert x figure to y thing is easier than original people.

Well if all you're going to do with an original character is to make her a school shooter who dies in the only update she is present in, then may as well make it a fictional character instead of using someone from real life who doesn't show any murderous tendencies, as that just seems, well, very much in bad taste
 
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Well if all you're going to do with an original character is to make him a school shooter who dies in the only update he is present in, then may as well make it a fictional character instead of using someone from real life who doesn't show any murderous tendencies, as that just seems, well, very much in bad taste
For the record, as much as I personally think it's a grift/bullshit, Chris-Chan does identify as a trans woman now. Not that it matters much when it comes to her behavior/persona, as she's still absolutely mental, but it's the principle of the thing.
IGNORE THE ABOVE, IT WAS ALL A FUCKING GRIFT TO TRY AND FUCK LESBIANS.

That's just the same thing as when Michael Crichton used the name of a reviewer who panned one of his books for a character who raped a baby in the next one (the baby was uninjured thanks to the reviewer's extremely small penis)
what the fuck.png
 
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That's just the same thing as when Michael Crichton used the name of a reviewer who panned one of his books for a character who raped a baby in the next one (the baby was uninjured thanks to the reviewer's extremely small penis)
For the record, as much as I personally think it's a grift/bullshit, Chris-Chan does identify as a trans woman now. Not that it matters much when it comes to her behavior/persona, as she's still absolutely mental, but it's the principle of the thing.


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If memory serves he included the 'small penis' detail because no man would ever admit to being the character with a small penis in a libel court.
 
Well if all you're going to do with an original character is to make him a school shooter who dies in the only update he is present in, then may as well make it a fictional character instead of using someone from real life who doesn't show any murderous tendencies, as that just seems, well, very much in bad taste

It really is unsettling. A lot of us could potentially be hauled up ethically for what we've written about historical figures and living politicians/artists/journalists etc in AH, especially the weirder ones - If Gordon Banks Had Played has, IIRC, Iain Duncan-Smith doing nasty shit in Northern Ireland and starting a standoff with the Irish Army - but there's public figures and then there's a rando on the internet being turned into a background mass murderer as a joke.
 
It really is unsettling. A lot of us could potentially be hauled up ethically for what we've written about historical figures and living politicians/artists/journalists etc in AH, especially the weirder ones - If Gordon Banks Had Played has, IIRC, Iain Duncan-Smith doing nasty shit in Northern Ireland and starting a standoff with the Irish Army - but there's public figures and then there's a rando on the internet being turned into a background mass murderer as a joke.

One of the first TLs I’ve read in full was Zhirinovsky’s Russian Empire, and that was because it was one of the first results when you search up Zhirinovsky on Google. I’ve always wondered if Pellegrino ever did have to deal with Russian Nationalists as a result of this.
 
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