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Discuss this article by @SpanishSpy here
I think it behooves us as a community to take more proactive measures to open ourselves to a less rarefied subset of humanity than mostly white middle-to-upper-class dudes. Otherwise we're likely to remain stuck with this idea that (alternate) history is about the power games of the few, and everyone else is just there for atmosphere.Alternate historians, as a community, tend male, white, and middle-to-upper-class. People with at least one of those attributes are at serious risk of seeing politics as nothing more than a hobby where teams win and lose according to arcane rules
I think one reason for this, which I noticed writing LTTW volume VI (which is an homage to Turtledove's style) is that if you don't see things at a high political level much, then you don't have to explain the broader course of a war. If your ordinary grunt in a trench only sees his immediate part of the front and hears garbled reports of what's happening elsewhere, you don't have to worry about people saying "but the Ottoman Empire would never declare war over that!"This is one of those things to me that, like conventional WW3s (very weird analogy, I know), is over-represented in online alternate history yet not everywhere else. Even if only in an ideal, most other fiction does try (even if it doesn't succeed) to make relatable characters. Turtledove frequently makes low-level people as his viewpoint characters, as do a lot of other "AH as a setting" works. Even Team Yankee, one of the most star-spangled WW3 novels, devotes some room to the main character's powerless wife.
For a lot of internet alternate history, I think political background (which I'm not denying could be a part) comes second to just a misshapen experience. If your main (if not only) sources/inspirations are Paradox games where there's just a list of important political figures and vignettes or other TLs with the same structure, then that's what you're following. That it's significantly easier to write doesn't "hurt" either.
The line you quote certainly seems to nail down why we encounter so many "horse race" political TLs.In this very insightful article, one sentence in particular seems to me particularly thought-provoking:
I think it behooves us as a community to take more proactive measures to open ourselves to a less rarefied subset of humanity than mostly white middle-to-upper-class dudes. Otherwise we're likely to remain stuck with this idea that (alternate) history is about the power games of the few, and everyone else is just there for atmosphere.
One thing that has long made me uncomfortable with AH is how much of it skews in favor of imperialism in general, and Western hegemony in particular. Comparatively little thought is given to the people on the wrong side of the proverbial Gatling gun.
This specific kind of perspective is what in French we call "Fabrice à Waterloo", after a famous passage from Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma. It's the idea that the grunt in the midst of the actual fighting has a narrow view of what's going on, and a very different one from that of the historian analyzing the event with the benefit of hindsight and access to multiple sources. It's certainly useful for an AH writer in that they can dispense with omniscient narration and just go for a raw action-based sequence.If your ordinary grunt in a trench only sees his immediate part of the front and hears garbled reports of what's happening elsewhere, you don't have to worry about people saying "but the Ottoman Empire would never declare war over that!"
This specific kind of perspective is what in French we call "Fabrice à Waterloo", after a famous passage from Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma. It's the idea that the grunt in the midst of the actual fighting has a narrow view of what's going on, and a very different one from that of the historian analyzing the event with the benefit of hindsight and access to multiple sources. It's certainly useful for an AH writer in that they can dispense with omniscient narration and just go for a raw action-based sequence.
For a lot of internet alternate history, I think political background (which I'm not denying could be a part) comes second to just a misshapen experience. If your main (if not only) sources/inspirations are Paradox games where there's just a list of important political figures and vignettes or other TLs with the same structure, then that's what you're following. That it's significantly easier to write doesn't "hurt" either.
the ones that do have access to vast resources have a story justification for it in that it allows for bigger-scope, higher-powered stories
You don't say.W.E.B Griffin's blunt admission that he did a lot of them because to him "Rich people are more interesting than poor people."
Now the challenge, when one is writing about people from a different class/race/etc., is to make sure to do one's homework beforehand, and preferably to run it by people from the group in question for any bloopers. I didn't see the film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, nor in fact have I read the book since by all accounts J.D. Vance has a dodgy ideological axe to grind, but I read in the reviews that its depiction of poverty is wildly off the mark.Poor people have more constraints on them, certainly. In my view, that makes them more interesting precisely because they have greater obstacles to overcome.
I knew about your class background, which you brought up on a previous occasion, but not about your Jamaican grandmother until Gary told me.For what it's worth, I'm mixed race. One of my grandmothers was Jamaican.
And, for the record, my childhood and young adulthood was that of poverty.
This is one of those things to me that, like conventional WW3s (very weird analogy, I know), is over-represented in online alternate history yet not everywhere else. Even if only in an ideal, most other fiction does try (even if it doesn't succeed) to make relatable characters. Turtledove frequently makes low-level people as his viewpoint characters, as do a lot of other "AH as a setting" works. Even Team Yankee, one of the most star-spangled WW3 novels, devotes some room to the main character's powerless wife.
For a lot of internet alternate history, I think political background (which I'm not denying could be a part) comes second to just a misshapen experience. If your main (if not only) sources/inspirations are Paradox games where there's just a list of important political figures and vignettes or other TLs with the same structure, then that's what you're following. That it's significantly easier to write doesn't "hurt" either.
Who could forget that Black character of yours to whom the Evil Globalists had issued a literal Ethnic Entitlement Card?On one hand, showing characters from multiple different social classes and suchlike can allow you to develop a broad timeline
The question comes down to whether the story is taking priority, or the history.
The author has to decide what is relevant and what isn't. What is the purpose of the writing.