Pop-culture in TL-191

[Historyman 14]

Mmm. Perhaps "Empire" and "Rebellion" would not be the right terms to go for in this case. I can see what you mean though and I understand the misgivings.

You see in actuality I think in this timeline an alternate Star Wars that resembles more like the Clone Wars may be more appropriate. The whole conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Interplanetary Systems may be a better analogue as a first set of star wars films in terms of the factions fighting.

Of course there would have to be some radically different stories and circumstances here. For example the "Republic" may not use clones, but relies on a massive yet diverse army - similar to the Rebellion in OTL, but on a larger and more conventional scale. Basically, if the Rebellion had the manpower and funds the same as the Galactic Republic. The "CIS" would perhaps not use droids, but chooses to rely solely on "stormtrooper" like soldiers - possibly clones, possibly just humans.

For me, I'm just imagining if George Lucas made a radically different "Clone Wars" type movie in 1977, that combines elements of "A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Revenge of the Sith", the "Clone Wars" animated show and just kind mashed it together. Perhaps the "Empire" wouldn't even be called the Empire or perhaps the "Republic" wouldn't even be called the Republic, same goes for the CIS and Rebellion. Heck, filming locations, settings, and other things maybe different as well.

If you have your own thoughts on this please share of course! After all this is basically transforming Star Wars, one of the biggest and most successful franchises out there, so it won't be easy to do

I just like the idea of a "Space Pittsburgh" with Admiral Ackbar yelling "SPRING THE TRAP".

I think the thing to remember the Union was the underdog for an good while. It lost the War of Secession, it had that screw up that was the Second Mexican-American War, it spent years getting ready to take bloody vengeance on the Southland and the British and Freach. And I honesty think it be an fear of the South trying to take over and dominate the North along with the Redcoats. (And then Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party...)

So I do see and agree with @Joshua Ben Ari ideas, and my own being the Rebels being German and Northerners fighting the 'Redcoat' Empire and the Stone Feather Confederation.

 

[pattontank12]

Moving on beyond Star Wars another franchise I could see also appearing in timeline 191 would be GI Joe. With the elite soldiers facing off against dangerous terrorists striking accord with most Americans.

 

[Sunstone77]

Moving on beyond Star Wars another franchise I could see also appearing in timeline 191 would be GI Joe. With the elite soldiers facing off against dangerous terrorists striking accord with most Americans.

All you really need to do is change the Baroness’s accent from vaguely Eastern Europe to southern

 

[Odinson]

All you really need to do is change the Baroness’s accent from vaguely Eastern Europe to southern

Or Japanese

 

[KazuyaProta]

Yellow Perill strikes back?

 

[Deleted member 82792]

What do you think Spider-Man would be like?

 

[oshron]

What do you think Spider-Man would be like?

probably recognizably similar, though Peter Parker the civilian persona might be a bit tougher if the Union is still practicing conscription at the time he's created, which would suggest that he gets conscripted and trained at some point even if he's not involved in a full-on war. then again, they could try writing around that by simply using the typical floating timeline of comic books to keep him in high school indefinitely. there could be an interesting anti-Confederate angle by way of association with Anansi, a traditional African trickster figure who typically appears as a spider (if it isn't canonically, the "spider totem" that Spider-Man is linked to could be specifically connected to Anansi ITTL)

as long as i'm here, one idea i've had for a Union-Confederacy dynamic with Captain America expys is that there could be a Captain Union and Captain Confederacy who actually work together after a stint as rivals, and ITTL it could be that they're created in an effort to promote post-Reconstruction unity between the North and South. the civilian identities i came up with for each of them allude to the national personifications of the Union and Confederacy and their flags, as Bill Stripe (Billy Yank + Stars and Stripes) and John Barr (Johnny Reb + Stars and Bars), though i prefer the original one i came up with for Captain Union from before i was aware of Billy Yank, where he was Sam Stripe based on Uncle Sam

 

[mspence]

Manhattan Vice

TV Series (1984-1989)

Starring:

Gary Cole as James "Jimmy" Burnett
Philip Michael Thomas as Ricky Tubbs

The flashy series follows the adventures of two undercover NYPD detectives as they battle drug dealers and other criminals on the gritty streets of New York City. The action sometimes takes them to the Confederacy itself (usually filmed in New Jersey as a stand-in) where they take on Southern smugglers.

 

[Underboss_3]

As a Southerner, I take offense to the idea that anyone would consider my homeland to be as backward and inhospitable as New Jersey

 

[Ellis MacVey]

As a Southerner, I take offense to the idea that anyone would consider my homeland to be as backward and inhospitable as New Jersey

Well, keep in mind that the Union does, at this point in history, still have very bad feelings towards the South...

 

[Sharque]

How would a TV show like House of Cards play out ITTL? Like I don’t believe that the entertainment industry would like to show the flaws in the US government, especially when they conquered a whole country to the South.

 

[THeaven]

The 1981 Clemens award winning comic book mini series Colonel Union: Year one by Frank Miller and David Manelchei

 

[Odinson]

View attachment 449218
The 1981 Clemens award winning comic book mini series Colonel Union: Year one by Frank Miller and David Manelchei

I actually have that issue of what if. It's one of my favorites actually.

 

[Sunstone77]

I actually have that issue of what if. It's one of my favorites actually.

Same. It's where I got the idea of Bucky Barnes and the White Skull

 

[THeaven]

Same. It's where I got the idea of Bucky Barnes and the White Skull

I kinda figured that's why I used the What if cover

 

[Sunstone77]

Here’s a thought..
Considering how many nuclear weapons were used in Tl-191 and the American public’s first hand experience with the power of the Atom and radiation, it’s almost a given that there would be no Atomic fad like OTL. In addition, without the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will never a Godzilla movie to kick start the Kaiju/giant monster movie genre (except for maybe King Kong if it still gets made in the 30s).

 

[oshron]

Here’s a thought..
Considering how many nuclear weapons were used in Tl-191 and the American public’s first hand experience with the power of the Atom and radiation, it’s almost a given that there would be no Atomic fad like OTL. In addition, without the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will never a Godzilla movie to kick start the Kaiju/giant monster movie genre (except for maybe King Kong if it still gets made in the 30s).

as a contrast to this, i remember seeing a post once suggesting that a version of Godzilla could still come to be ITTL, but as an American film inspired by the nuking of Philadelphia. i'd say there's a fairly important distinction between Godzilla and alot of other atomic-based fictional characters, since Godzilla himself is supposed to be representative of the atomic bomb whereas some other characters, like the Hulk, are "only" empowered by such things, radiation is a means to an end in those cases.

with Godzilla in mind, though, i came up with an alternate version of the character for earlier drafts of my ASB ATL (the concept is in limbo at the moment) as part of a Cuban equivalent to kaiju media as a whole since i had decided to use Cuba as an analogue for Imperial Japan as part of a Third Spanish-American War, complete with Havana being destroyed by American bombardments, though it was chemical weapons instead of a nuke, and subsequently being forced to demilitarize with a proxy for the JSDF being formed instead. the character i came up with was going to be called "Monarder" (can't remember why i chose that name, though--this was before i had elaborate profiles for my internally-fictional characters ) based in part on extremely early concepts of Godzilla IOTL where he was a giant fire-breathing gorilla. maybe TTL's closest equivalent to Godzilla could be based around that? it might even work alongside King Kong.

speaking of Kong, though, i'd buy it if the original 1933 film and some later sequels/remakes still exist ITTL--it's not like the whole concept of Kong is especially tied to OTL history like how, say, Casablanca is. the way i see it, it'd be dependent on if Merian C. Cooper and the other filmmakers would be affected by the POD. interestingly enough, though, a quite look-over on Cooper's Wikipedia page indicates that he was from the South, so i guess King Kong would be a Confederate movie ITTL and therefore probably wouldn't result in the climax taking place at the Empire State Building. maybe a few casual slurs thrown out by the presumably Confederate American protagonists towards the Skull Islanders, but that wouldn't really be enough to affect the film in any meaningful way.

 

[Sunstone77]

I know the whole “Britain=Tl-191 Japan” is cliched, but it would be interesting if this timelines Godzilla came from England. A monster, not unlike Nessie but vastly bigger, awoken by military testing in the North Sea and lays waste to London, a commentary not just on nuclear power but Britain’s own history of imperialism.

I imagine it would have a strong Quatermass feel to it. The final scene of the movie after they defeat the beastie is wondering the main scientist character commenting that the monster may not have been alone. Cue the camera gently panning over the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs and the implication that this was only the beginning

 

[Sunstone77]

That's funny. I made my own TL-191 version of Captain America over on the Photos of Featherston's Confederacy thread.

Neat. Of all the otl superhero’s, Caps identity is so tied to WWII and America, he’s the most affected by any change to them and we all want to take a crack at seeing what he’d look like.

Some other comicbook ideas I’m considering explainding upon:

-a black Batman written by an escaped African-confederate living in the North. Said Batman would be revolve around protecting the black ghettos in a fictitious confederate city from thugs and Freedomites.
(A Daredevil like hero might actually work better for this)

-a carribian or Latina influenced Wonder Woman

-a Canadian Hulk

 

[jack_donaghy_is_the_shado]

as a contrast to this, i remember seeing a post once suggesting that a version of Godzilla could still come to be ITTL, but as an American film inspired by the nuking of Philadelphia. i'd say there's a fairly important distinction between Godzilla and alot of other atomic-based fictional characters, since Godzilla himself is supposed to be representative of the atomic bomb whereas some other characters, like the Hulk, are "only" empowered by such things, radiation is a means to an end in those cases.

with Godzilla in mind, though, i came up with an alternate version of the character for earlier drafts of my ASB ATL (the concept is in limbo at the moment) as part of a Cuban equivalent to kaiju media as a whole since i had decided to use Cuba as an analogue for Imperial Japan as part of a Third Spanish-American War, complete with Havana being destroyed by American bombardments, though it was chemical weapons instead of a nuke, and subsequently being forced to demilitarize with a proxy for the JSDF being formed instead. the character i came up with was going to be called "Monarder" (can't remember why i chose that name, though--this was before i had elaborate profiles for my internally-fictional characters ) based in part on extremely early concepts of Godzilla IOTL where he was a giant fire-breathing gorilla. maybe TTL's closest equivalent to Godzilla could be based around that? it might even work alongside King Kong.

speaking of Kong, though, i'd buy it if the original 1933 film and some later sequels/remakes still exist ITTL--it's not like the whole concept of Kong is especially tied to OTL history like how, say, Casablanca is. the way i see it, it'd be dependent on if Merian C. Cooper and the other filmmakers would be affected by the POD. interestingly enough, though, a quite look-over on Cooper's Wikipedia page indicates that he was from the South, so i guess King Kong would be a Confederate movie ITTL and therefore probably wouldn't result in the climax taking place at the Empire State Building. maybe a few casual slurs thrown out by the presumably Confederate American protagonists towards the Skull Islanders, but that wouldn't really be enough to affect the film in any meaningful way.

It might have been something I posted, I think I had Jimmy Stewart direct it? He might have been an American expy of Ishiro Honda.

This is one of the ideas I keep returning to. My plan was to do a detailed summary of cinema of TL 191, but the author in ttl would've been beaten to the punch on A-listers. So he would've researched and written up articles on B-movies and the glorious cheesy films from the Twenties to Sixties or Seventies. I haven't come close to fleshing it out but some more of my ideas included:

George Melies doing French versions of Metropolis or Nosferatu
F.W. Murnau flourishing in a more long term tolerant Germany and adapting a TL191 German All Quiet on the Western Front and J'accuse (1938)
Akira Kurosawa and others relocate during interwar periods to the US, Brazil, or other places.
Bela Lugosi stays in Austria-Hungary, Boris Karloff in Britain or perhaps stuck in occupied Canada, Vincent Price's family is Confederate, and Lon Chaney Sr. lives long enough to film at least part of a talkie Dracula.
Sergei Eisenstein flees Imperial Russia and cuts his teeth on film-work in Japan or Germany before working for ttl's Paramount, maybe being financed by Joe Kennedy Jr.?

There's more but the little grey cells aren't running the best right now.

If I do get around to this, I'll still have Godzilla be Union American. Kong would Confederate I think, initially propaganda perhaps directed by D.W. Griffith, but Robert Howard and Merian Cooper aim higher for it. Perhaps the Brits can make Gorgo more of a hit? I could also see ttl's H.P. Lovecraft relocating to Scotland postwar and working on the Cthulhu-verse, maybe with tips from Aliester Crowley.

The game may be a foot, ladies and gentlemen.