04-15-2021, 06:35 PM | #5491 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
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.
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
04-16-2021, 07:49 AM | #5492 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
A valid point, but I suspect that a non industrialized Japan would have had a less vibrant and exportable pop culture.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
04-17-2021, 10:46 AM | #5493 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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*.
__________________
-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 04-17-2021 at 05:11 PM. |
|
04-19-2021, 05:51 PM | #5494 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
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,
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
04-19-2021, 06:01 PM | #5495 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
*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.
__________________
Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
04-19-2021, 07:09 PM | #5496 | |
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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. |
|
04-19-2021, 07:57 PM | #5497 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
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?
__________________
Pronoun: "They/She" |
04-19-2021, 08:23 PM | #5498 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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.
__________________
"When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power." - Sam Starfall from the webcomic Freefall |
|
04-19-2021, 09:57 PM | #5499 | |
Join Date: Mar 2016
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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. |
|
04-19-2021, 10:45 PM | #5500 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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.
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
|
Tags |
ideas to share, infinite worlds, infinity unlimited |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|