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Old 04-15-2021, 06:35 PM   #5491
malloyd
 
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You'd need to thwart the Meiji Restoration to keep Japan out of Western pop culture.
If not slightly before. The beginning of the Japonisme craze in European art and art collecting is basically simultaneous with the reopening of trade in the 1850s.
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Old 04-16-2021, 07:49 AM   #5492
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If not slightly before. The beginning of the Japonisme craze in European art and art collecting is basically simultaneous with the reopening of trade in the 1850s.
A valid point, but I suspect that a non industrialized Japan would have had a less vibrant and exportable pop culture.
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Old 04-17-2021, 10:46 AM   #5493
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A valid point, but I suspect that a non industrialized Japan would have had a less vibrant and exportable pop culture.
Maybe. Though that may just shift it's influence to how exported styles affect foreign artists than direct product exports.

I think a lot of people underestimate just how big Japan actually is. It's about the size of the US eastern seaboard states, and population is almost always bigger than any country in Europe these last couple millennia - though some centuries France or Germany as a whole may come close.

I think you could make a reasonable case that even now its cultural influence is underrepresented for its actual size thanks to the resistance provided by Europo-American and Chinese senses of cultural superiority. Certainly you can move around which cultural elements catch on outside the country for any culture - a lot of that is down to chance and bizarre momentary foreign tastes - but if you have a global cultural marketplace at all, any culture as big as Japan for as long as it has been seems likely to contribute *something* notable. Sure it might be garden architecture or popular fairy tales or seafood cuisine and not video animation (and kimonos, incidentally a bit of Japanese cultural influence in Europe dating back to the 17th century, though somewhat filtered through south India), but *something*.
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Old 04-19-2021, 05:51 PM   #5494
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Try this one...

Although the USA wanted to help Mexico during the French Invasion, the ACW kept the USA busy. But in this Q5 Parallel the French had far better and more flexible leadership. So as the ACW comes to a close, Lincoln prepares to invade Mexico to help Juárez drive out the French. ( John Wilkes Booth having been eliminated by an African-American Homeline agent).

Homeline's France is livid. They insist that the Mexican invasion is a civilizing mission. Moreover they point out the simple fact that the Woman who killed John Wilkes Booth was not punished, but given rewards called disciplinary action. They demand the right to intervene. Seeking to humiliate the USA, China and Russia back France, Britain, desperately seeking to reenter the EU stays neutral. Mexico sides with the USA in wanting to keep hands off this parallel.

Basically, the PCs are involved in a Homeline Great power dispute being carried out in 1860s Mexico,
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Old 04-19-2021, 06:01 PM   #5495
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Homeline's France is livid. They insist that the Mexican invasion is a civilizing mission.
*winces* That phrasing will create opposition to the idea in a lot of places on Homeline that would otherwise not have cared, or cared rather less. This'll make things rather more complicated than just the Great Powers.
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Old 04-19-2021, 07:09 PM   #5496
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*winces* That phrasing will create opposition to the idea in a lot of places on Homeline that would otherwise not have cared, or cared rather less. This'll make things rather more complicated than just the Great Powers.
Yeah - the French invasion is easy to portray as nineteenth century European imperialism, whatever Homeline Paris might say, and not just Homeline Mexico but all of Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia would agree.

It would have to be a very conservative/nationalist regime in Paris to try to support this France's invasion of Mexico (that brought along its own European king to rule). Such nationalism, exported to other timelines, might be relatively common on Homeline - easy to be so about other worlds - but this is extreme.

And I believe that the U.K. is still part of the EU on Homeline. GURPS Infinite Worlds was written when it was, and there was no indication that the situation had changed. The forces that drove the relatively close Brexit win could have easily been changed by the introduction of parachronics to Homeline, and general increase in wealth.
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Old 04-19-2021, 07:57 PM   #5497
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Yeah - the French invasion is easy to portray as nineteenth century European imperialism, whatever Homeline Paris might say, and not just Homeline Mexico but all of Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia would agree.
It does seem like a really weird position for 21st century France to take, even if it's an alternate France. Does modern France even care about that incident in its history?
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Old 04-19-2021, 08:23 PM   #5498
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It does seem like a really weird position for 21st century France to take, even if it's an alternate France. Does modern France even care about that incident in its history?
A very good question. What sort of crap is going on in HL-France to make it take an extremist stance guaranteed to alienate much of the HL-world, including the Superpower of the USA and even Infinity?

This might lead to a spy-thriller drama in HL-France, as the discovery of a cell of infiltrators from some other timeline (or simply a secret group of French ultra-nationalists) in the heart of the EU leads to car chases and gunfights to save multiple worlds from impending war.
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Old 04-19-2021, 09:57 PM   #5499
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And I believe that the U.K. is still part of the EU on Homeline. GURPS Infinite Worlds was written when it was, and there was no indication that the situation had changed. The forces that drove the relatively close Brexit win could have easily been changed by the introduction of parachronics to Homeline, and general increase in wealth.
This is specifically addressed. IW43, they are still in it. I'd recommend the whole France section on that page to anyone interested in this line of thinking.

Regarding France's policy toward alternate Frances: They are supportive of alternate Frances even when it's unpopular or even dangerous. They're resistant to attempts to target the French government of Bonaparte-4, even though there's evidence of Centrum infiltration (IW114). Their cross-time special forces division has carried out the second-most interventions of any country, after Russia. So what's being discussed here definitely isn't totally out there.
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Old 04-19-2021, 10:45 PM   #5500
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A very good question. What sort of crap is going on in HL-France to make it take an extremist stance guaranteed to alienate much of the HL-world, including the Superpower of the USA and even Infinity?
I always recommend avoiding *any* sort of international conflicts on Homeline, because they inevitably draw attention to the total lack of logic of Homeline politics. If Homeline governments can have differences (about crosstime policy anyway) remotely approaching significant enough to do political stories about, Infinity makes no sense at all. Those same governments would never have stood for its creation, let alone allow it anything like the authority it has to to make the other stories work.

There's a reason crosstime, and most interplanetary settings for that matter, have a unified homeworld. If they don't, you can't do stories about THE time police or THE space patrol, since all the major polities spawn rival ones.
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