#alt-history

[internationalvigilantes]

One Year Later...

So it's been a bit! Exactly one year since I started this account, and not much has happened! Seemingly!

First thing's first, today's a holiday! It's been exactly 7 years since The Patriots was first created back in 2017 and exactly 1 year since I started the website! (I know it says 2 up there but I'm tired and making this at midnight alright?), it was so long ago when I threw together a cheesy communist supervillain to paper and built a show around him! Which eventually became a web-comic after I realized the animation industry is hard and evil and scary right now!

Ain't he cute!

As I said on my main blog I have answers, not INTERESTING answers, but ANSWERS!!!!

>The Patriots is still happening! Just a whole litany of life stuff's been going on, attempts at college, invoicing, as well as me realizing that making a web-comic is a LOT harder than a lot of folks make it seem! Since I first launched the website (with help from the ever lovely @docilepillow), Episode 1: Boston Commune has been wholly edited twice! Episode 2: Generation Evil! has finished its first couple drafts, and much more recently Episode 3: Rip & Terror has FINALLY been outlined after months of mulling! A bit more obvious: Patriots art still happens sporadically via my end of month art-dumps over on my main blog, though like most of my projects I have been sluggish to put together an area where all the characters and their biographies are spread out (Commie King, the first character and namesake of CK Day, doesn't even have an article!), which is where I segue into articles!

>The site is not abandoned, just outdated! I've been thinking of redesigns and perhaps simplifying how I do bios so you can get the regular scope of the character as well as it being just Easier for me, the hardest part of course is always the ref itself, but I've also thought of a myriad of other updates to the characters themselves (hint: a simpler description of Red's powers and the dropping of Lucy's boyfriend maybe probably!), honestly with my creative process expect edits to be a normal occurrence! The Patriots kinda-sorta-sister-series, Phenomenal! Made waves during Artfight over The Patriots themselves this year, and I look forward to giving them bios too, just...not here, duh, but I feel like that's worth mentioning. TL;DR stay tuned for Commie King's long-awaited biography wowza

>WHAT NOW!!?? Well, I'm still working on it! That's it really! The Patriots is just slow, that's just how I operate, but it's my brainchild and it's very special to me, as much as it is just a bunch of niche stuff in a blender making an even more niche smoothie. Trust me, with recent events, I have even more a mind to work on my silly superhero action comic, it's always on my mind, but it IS happening! Yeah!

Er, that's it Gootbye!

[stephanieburgis]

Coming August 5th in ebook and paperback! Preorder here.

[canonicalnonsense]

Episode 7: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Today, Jo and JoJo read His Majesty’s Dragon, the first book in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. It is an alternate history that asks the question: What if the Napoleonic wars had dragons? This episode was a joy to make and we hope it encourages you to pick up this series!

[fordphilipsfictionlibrary]

Devour (Part I)

Everything ached. 

Jeanie tried to ignore the stiffness in her joints as she rolled onto her side. Dawn hadn't broken yet and that meant she might have a chance at getting everything handled today. Summoning what little strength remained in her tired bones, Jeanie forced herself out of bed and painfully donned her farm clothes. She made her way out of the bedroom and carefully descended the stairs to the double front doors. Stepping into her worn boots, she took a moment to survey the farm before she attempted to care for all of her livestock while the sun was still up. 

The farmhouse was built right up against the tree line of the forest that marked the southern border of her land. Surrounding the house was her sprawling garden, dormant now that winter was closing in, but still impressive in its own way. Before Joseph and Lonnie had died, her husband and son had managed entire fields of crops, but since their deaths, Jeanie had rented the land out to neighbors and built herself a vegetable garden that met all of her personal produce needs. Beyond that were her most important sources of meat and income; the chicken coop, the pig sty and the barn. The chicken coup was the easternmost building, the barn lay directly north of the farmhouse and the sty sat farthest from the house to the west.

Each day, she had to make her rounds feeding the animals, cleaning their pens as best she could and refilling their water troughs. At fifty years old, Jeanie was not equipped to handle these tasks alone day in and day out. Her feed was delivered by her renters every Monday and a couple of local boys cleaned the barn, coop and sty reasonably well every couple of weeks in warm weather and about once a month during the coldest part of the year. During these semi-regular visits, Jeanie would head to town to look for supplies and check in with a few familiar faces. Outside of these visits and excursions though, Jeanie was on her own, and the daily workload was more than enough to keep her constantly on the brink of exhaustion.

She started at the chicken coop, throwing out seed, checking for eggs and cleaning up the feces and feathers left behind by her eleven hens and single, decrepit old rooster. Then, as she did at each stop on her circuit, she fetched a pail of water from the well near the barn and carried it back to the coup. The first trip was never bad, but each one after it became more and more arduous as her body tired and aches that never seemed to completely go away flared back to life. Her next stop was the barn where she brushed, fed and milked her two cows before mucking a section of the cramped space and making her second water run. Third was the sty. Here she fed and watered the pigs, but she left the cleaning to her two young helpers. Mucking for this lot was far too strenuous for her and the five pigs she had were large. Jeanie did not intend to give any of them the opportunity to trample or trap her in the stinking mud of their foul abode. This third trip to the well was far and pure agony for her arthritic hands. They barely had the strength to stay clenched over the bucket's handle as she trundled painfully from the well to the sty.

Even with her livestock taken care of, her work was still far from done. Hobbling over to the well for the final time, she filled a bucket to the brim and carefully walked it back to the farmhouse. Pouring a fourth of the water out of the bucket for her own use, she brought the rest to the single-horse stable attached to the east side of her home. Inside was Joseph's favorite horse, and her only remaining transportation, Red. The massive horse was old, but still strong and an easy ride. This visit with Red was usually the highlight of her day and today proved to be no different.

Slumping into the rocking chair she'd moved from the porch to the stable years ago, she slid Red's bucket toward the horse with her foot and Red lowered his shaggy head to drink. Red was a solemn beast, always had been, but he had seemed even more so since Joseph and Lonnie had passed. Their deaths had come unexpectedly and in quick succession. Lonnie had gone off to fight in Mexico while Joseph and Jeanie stayed behind to work the farm without him. Then, on one of Joseph's long trips to try and sell livestock at the various towns and markets across the territory, he had fallen ill and Jeanie had learned by letter that he had died at an inn and that she could either fetch his body herself or send men to do it for her. As if this shock hadn't been enough, she’d received word of Lonnie's death in Mexico two days later as she’d set out to collect Joseph.

Jeanie knew that if she'd been back home in North Carolina, living in a little house now left empty by the deaths of her entire living family, she would have died, either by her own hand or due to total apathy. Out here though, on the fringes of civilized life, she hadn't had that option. The animals still needed tending and to do that she needed to keep up the farm as much as she could, as cheaply as she could. She had received some money from the government after Lonnie's death and the doctor who had watched over Joseph when he'd expired had sold the remaining livestock, later sending Jeanie the full amount of sale. The total sum hadn’t been much, but it had been enough. It was seven years now since her husband and son had left her behind here on the frontier and the pain still felt as fresh as it ever had. Only the farm and her animals kept her going.

During the spring, summer and fall she had a decent amount of comers and goers to her farm and the constant human contact and things to be handled kept her distracted well enough. The winters were always hard though. It wasn't just that her personal work load almost tripled, though that was unpleasant to say the least, it was that she felt less human. Visitors came more seldomly and stayed only as long as they had to before fleeing to escape the frigid winter winds. When she wasn't running herself ragged trying to keep the animals cared for, she was trapped inside, alone, to nibble on her rationed food stores and read the same books over and over again as she waited for winter to give way to the distractions of spring. Resigning herself to that familiar fate again this evening, she patted Red on the head, gave him a light kiss on the cheek and returned to the farm house for a few hours of relaxation and a quick meal before bed.

Out of her boots, her feet radiated with pain as she walked gingerly to the kitchen. Her pantry was decently stocked with a host of pickled vegetables, various cured meats and a bit of cheese and butter. Many loaves of hearty bread were available as well, so she tore off a crust and cut herself a wedge of cheese before taking a seat at the kitchen table. She kept her eyes down at her food as she ate; looking up always brought visions of the men who had once shared this table with her in a happier time. Better just to focus on the food and then move on to bed. She needed every bit of sleep she could get.

Even after finishing her meal, Jeanie let herself rest before attempting the stairs. Descending each morning could be painful, but the ascent each night, especially in her current state of exhaustion, was downright dangerous. About twice a week she lost her footing or had a knee buckle under her, but so far she had avoided tumbling down the beautiful, but steep, farm house steps.

Tonight was not a good night. She made it halfway up before she felt the trembling creep up her right leg. Bracing herself against the creaking banister, she felt the leg go out from under her and did her best to ease down into a seated position on the steps. She had no idea how long she was forced to sit there, half asleep, waiting for her leg to stop twitching and flexing.

When it finally did, she more or less crawled up the remaining steps before standing tall and doing her best to make it to her bed uninjured. She made it safely this night, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she wound up lying in a heap at the bottom of those steps. She only hoped it happened when someone was supposed to check in, not in the middle of a damned snow storm.

Pulling her tattered comforter back, she laid down in her cold, stiff bed. Looking up at the pitch-black ceiling, Jeanie tried to find some small ounce of comfort in her current existence, but found none. Like every night since his death, all Jeanie felt was Joseph's absence. Trying unsuccessfully to push the image of the man’s face out of her mind, she drifted into troubled sleep.

(Part II)

[grivz]

"And look at all zis vatter! There's so much vatter here!"

[gallifreyandistress]

Antonio got a tad bit silly. hehe. A bit of "offensive" lore from my alt-histoty universe. i translated it trough a translator, so it sucks, srrrry. "Vivaldi is a clearly mentally unhealthy person. promoting conspiracy theories and believing that everyone in the world has been " distorted", since the passing of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Being one of those entities that were closer to Father Jamal (Jamal was the one who created Earth.), Father Muammar (the one, who created the society) and Mother Mabrouka (the mother of this Universe herself) - they can live forever without changing appearance. (although in the beginning, in the Archean Eon, they did not have that appearance.), he witnessed the death of both of them. After that, he decided to create the "Nabi". A system that allowed him to see all of humanity. And then, it dawned on him that all humans are rotten, and everything must be turned into Archean eon once again. as those who followed the path of Jamalism. including Antonio himself believe"

Father Jamal looks like a huge paint-white mass that hides under a huge robe and a white turban wrapped around his face to cover it. (tldr: he's literally a huge colorless fat blob, yay.)

And if awakened, gets somewhat... apocalyptic. The first thing that happens is that humans are completely "dumbed down". Their minds shut down and they're not just like animals, basically they're like huge amoebas. But despite the brain death, people are alive. After that, it takes a week-long process, something akin to melting.

People are essentially melting back into the primordial soup from which they came.

And that's what the Jamalists worship. For them, it's the purest existance ya'll. :p

please just ban me from this website.

[liberaljane]

🧵 THREAD: This #PrideMonth, don’t forget that the fight for queer liberation didn’t start or end with marriage equality.

💪✨ We need to keep fighting for our rights.

Here’s are a few examples:

💋 Before the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, same-smex smexual activity was illegal in fourteen U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military

👶 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t adopt in all 50 states. Before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, laws varied wildly by state.

🏳️‍🌈 Before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosmexuality as a ‘mental illness.’ In December 1973, a vote was successfully held to remove it.

🗳️ Before 1974, there were no openly gay elected officials. That changed with Kathy Kozachenko, who became the first openly gay American elected to public office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

🎖️ Before 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” banned LGBTQ+ people from serving openly in the military.

💍 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t get married in all 50 states. At the time, laws varied by state, and while many states allowed for civil unions for same-sex couples, it created a separate but equal standard.

💼 Before 2020, employers could legally discriminate against queer and trans employees. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[labelleizzy]

[foxehrobot]

Book Review: The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

I heard about this one on Tumblr, but I do not recall the source. It was short, there was no wait at the library, and it was a good idea.

This story follows Creeper, a young girl living in alt-history steampunk New Orleans in the civil war era.

Which honestly if I'd read that before popping it on to my tbr I definitely would have read it. I'm a sucker for urban fiction that's not set in fucking NYC or a look a like, steampunk or no, and alt-history ACW by a Black author? Yes, please.

The setting is fantastic. Haiti freed itself, freed (it seems) the rest of the Caribbean, and so too, did New Orleans, becoming a cosmopolitan free city-state in a very different North America. The American Civil War has stagnated and is continuing in an ugly stalemate, California was settled by Russians, and the orisha have real power. Creeper carries the orisha Oya, and I give the book props for never introducing Baron Samedi, which would have been an easy go-to for people who don't know much about orisha.

This is a novella and is quite short, so I won't go deeply into the plot. It was fine. The book seems to be skewed for a younger audience than myself, but it doesn't shy away from neither violence nor the awful realities of the world it is set in. My real gripe is that it was too short. I would love a full novel in this world and I've wishlisted the rest of the author's works in case I can find something similarly gripping.

I highly recommend this one. It's short, it won't take you long.

[blended-ice]

Ody through the ages

[rosieandthemoon]

Talisman Candles - Catherine Sieck

[fuzzy-oooze]

writing the point of divergence from Blackpowder Engine and our world. it's not set as far into the future as you may think.

I thought I was overestimating the impact of operation Paperclip on cold war science when writing as up 'till this point I've been imagine the nazi scientists just being like "oh we totally made a super ultra death ray, give me 500,000,000 dollars and a secret lab on a Hawaiian beach and I'll show you maybe" but, no, they directly inspired MKUltra which means that my alt-history for Blackpowder Engine works just fine.

the TL;DR is that even in Blackpowder Engine Operation Paperclip and Ronald Reagan ruined everything. instead of just claiming to have orbital lasers (at least I've been told he did that) he made them build a real death ray, sure it has bigger than a cargo container, had to be mounted on top of a old lighthouse, couldn't stay focused for long enough to cross a football field, and fried it's own circuits whenever it fired but it was certainly A energy weapon every made. Also instead of MKUltra there was Project CYAN, which was experimenting into cybernetics and mostly just made a big pile of septic corpses, and the Montauk Project which aimed to see the effects of electromagnetism (from electroshock to radio) and hypnosis on the mind in the hopes of discovering some method of mind control, memory manipulation, indoctrination, and the awakening of psychic powers (as it was also a co-project to Project Stargate).

[grivz]

[purblethinkin]

Thought I'd kick off Black History Month by drawing these cool dudes! 🫶🏾 🫶🏽 🫶🏿 🫶🏾

[prokopetz]

What fascinates me about those shitty CTRL+ALT+DEL edits that keep circulating on Tumblr is that a lot of them are legitimately better examples of two-dipshits-on-a-couch gamer humour than the actual CTRL+ALT+DEL. Like, the "you have lived an illustrious life – may none recall it" bit is a dead perfect execution of a punchline that could have come from a two-dipshits-on-a-couch gamer comic circa 2005, in a way that its source material, which actually is a product of that era, never achieved. I won't say that this is an example of parody that comes from a place of love for its genre, but at the very least it's coming from a place of understanding.

[tyrswed]

This mech is based on an alternate timeline I've envisioned for how the Rasalhague Dominion forms which makes more sense, to me, for the character of the Rasalhaguer peoples. What ended up happening effectively put Clan Ghost Bear into the same position as Kurita was in over them, which is something no Rasalhaguer would accept. Especially not the ones who'd been living under occupation.

Even after the 3071 Combine-Dominion War which was used as leverage to improve the situation of Rasalhaguers, that only managed to net them a permanent 1/3rd minority in their own Parlament, with the Tauman (Clanner military, not including the rest of the KungsArme) taking 1/3rd, and the Clanner civilian casts taking the last third. The Clanners are a minority by population and a conquer at that, and so this and the previous arrangements are completely unacceptable. If the writers paid any attention to the lore, they'd have remembered that the Rasalhaguer peoples had fought for SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS (24 generations), to free themselves from the Draconis Combine. All the while they'd resisted Kuritas best attempts to forcibly assimilate them and destroy their culture. The Rasalhaguer culture is very strong and would not die out a mere single generation after they'd gotten free.

To this end, I propose this change:

The "deal," if it can be called that, which was accepted in current canon is rejected and a third deal is reached: The Ghost Bear Tauman becomes a semi-independent entity within the KungsArme, similar to the U.S. Marines to the U.S. Navy, as a sort-of SpecOps section while also providing a Warrior to each KungsArme Lance to turn it into a Star and taking on a specialized role within the Lance. Sort-of like attaching a Green Beret or Navy Seal to a normal fire team. The Khans would be First-Amongst-Equals with the rest of the generals of the FRR, but still have to listen to the Prince Elect. Ghost Bear would give back full control of the systems and worlds they stole from Rasalhague, as well as handing over the means of producing and understanding ClanTech. Finally the Clanner Civilian Casts would cease being tied to the Khans and to Ghost Bear and become regular civilians.

In exchange the Khans would be permitted to assign a number of advisors to the Parliament to help them to achieve Ghost Bears primary goal as a Warden-faction Clan: Prevent another full-scale war like the Amaris Civil War or the Succession Wars. Using Rasalhague's position and new-found technological advantage to leverage peace in the inner sphere. These advisors would be allowed to speak with the Parliament only in full view of the public to assuage fears of them becoming a shadow-government.

This accomplishes the primary goal that Ghost Bear had in proposing joining with the FRR in the first place: get the Rasalhaguers they were occupying to stop trying to resist their occupation and start promoting peace (by force as necessary) in the Inner Sphere.

Now, this would still not be great as far as most Rasalhaguers would be concerned, but it's a lesser enough evil that there wouldn't be a universal rejection over it.

To smooth things over, I would have Ghost Bear secretly from the Rasalhaguer peoples issue a challenge of possession for the Rasalhague System and all systems within 1 jump of it against Clan Wolf, who held Rasalhague at the time. They would keep this a secret from the FRR so that no one would get angry at them if they failed. After all, if you're told that someone's going to try to get your things back for you you'll be upset if they fail when you're expecting success; but if you find out after they fail that they tried you'll just be happy they tried at all. To accomplish this, and for symbolic reasons, Ghost Bear would enlist the aid of the best 15 pilots the 1st Tyr could afford to send, but to keep it a secret they have to use second and third-line mechs. This results in a trinary of Hatchetmen, Hussars, Trebuchets, and Firestarters/Wolfhounds being deployed with clan-tech upgrade packages as the first wave to hit Rasalhague proper. Clan Wolf, of course, hasn't have learned their lessen from Tukayyid yet, and would try to underbid the "freebirths" that they see as a direct insult to them. This would cost Clan Wolf Rasalhague, at significant losses to the 1st Tyr Trinary, suffering 11 mechs destroyed and 9 mechwarriors KIA. The proper Ghost Bear forces would suffer similar, but not quite as heavy losses.

Due to the successful employment of the Hatchetman the development of the NSM Norseman begins shortly thereafter, reaching first successful production in 3073.

As a result of the integration of Ghost Bear into the Free Rasalhague Republic, Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon would forcibly re-locate all of the remaining Rasalhaguers under their occupation to the FRR to prevent them from continuing to rebel and jack-up infrastructure and manufacturing. This causes a massive housing crisis but gives the KungsArme some breathing room when the Draconis Combine attacks the year after in 3071.

Artist is @pencilbrony

NSM-4B Norseman 3073 design 50 ton chassis 350 cXL 6/9 movement with the med shield. 7/11 without. 9 tons of Heavy Ferro armor 1x Hatchet 1x Medium Shield Shield and Hatchet are ejectable and the mech's equipped with Battle Fists so that if/when its weapons are broken it can keep going. 4x cHeavy Medium Lasers 12x cDouble Heatsinks Triple Strength Myomer Quirks: Battle Fists(2 points), Cowl(4 points), Rugged (2 Point), Stable(2 points), No Ejection System(-2 points), Non-Standard Parts(-1), Poor Targeting (Long)(-4) [+3 overall]