Post Civil War Alternate History

As of late, I've had an idea kicking around in my head that I'm reasonably certain would make a really good story. You see, I'm a redditor, and one of my favorite subreddits is a somewhat niche sub called /r/vexillology. Vexillology, for those of you who may not know, is the field of designing flags. Well, as some of you might be very vaguely aware, I come from the Southern United States and have long had an interest in Communism. This has led me to have a fascination with Confederate and Communist symbolism and, thus, I commissioned from the fine fellows of said subreddit a flag combining both. The eventual winner of the post was this:

A coat of arms was even drawn up and I felt really inspired by how much attention had been paid to the initial post. I had written a bit of fiction as inspiration and I'm now feeling more and more compelled to flesh this out into a full fledged story. How does this premise sound?

"In 1863, the Union Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade is routed at Gettysburg, dissolving in a disorganized retreat from Confederate military forces under General Robert E. Lee after a decisive Confederate cavalry raid by General JEB Stuart breaks the Union forces in the area.

With the road to Washington wide open, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, signs the Confederate drafted Instrument of Surrender which recognizes the right of the Confederate States of America to exist and protects the legal right of states to leave the Union as they so choose. Over night, Confederate governments spring up in the border states and the economic and military power of the United States slides slowly into irrelevance. After several decades of Union losses and Confederate gains in the West and in the Caribbean and Mexico, the Confederacy enters the 20th century as the dominant power in North America.

In the 1930s, the South falls on hard economic times as the world plunges into the Great Depression. The South's former slaves, freed by act of President Gustave Tutant Beauregard in 1917 in reaction to fears of reaction by anarchist radicals, are still horribly oppressed and are now denied even the meager wages of the sharecropping farms that have gone under in reaction to decreased demand from factories in Europe and the border states of the Confederacy. Uniting with prominent Southern Communists and dissatisfied veterans of the Confederate actions against Mexico in World War I, they march on Richmond and seize the capitol, executing President Thomas Hardwick and installing a vanguard party, headed by a Stalinst strongman to oversee the Confederacy.

On 5, May 1932, The Confederate States are reorganized into The Soviet Confederacy of America; a Workers' state in direct alliance with the Soviet Union."


Anyway, that's what I've got. The starting date is currently in flux, but I have a general idea of what I want in terms of characters. The latter half of the Civil War, for example, where things dovetail from our established timeline would be narrated by General Lee as he oversees the surrender of Lincoln's Union and the efforts to secure Confederate territories West of the Mississippi from rogue Union generals, Mexican military officers making a bid for lost territories, and bands of Indians who've been forced to try to invade new lands after being pushed from their homes by a desperate and dying Union. Lee, who evidence suggests might have held anti-slavery tendencies, will be firmly anti-slavery in this story, but his convictions will ultimately be swayed by what his civilian liasons tell him is best for his beloved Virginia.

The story would then continue under the presidency of General Beauregard as he battles to keep the Confederacy afloat amid economic crises and threats from the overpowerful constituent states that make up the Confederacy. All the while, the nation experiences explosive post-War economic growth which, despite a (real world) constitutional ban on the importation of further slaves, forces the nation to kidnap more innocents from Africa, fueling the growth of a discontented underclass.

Finally, I will have original characters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries discussing the proliferation of reading skills amongst the slaves, the smuggling of copies of The Communist Manifesto and  Das Kapital by unknown foreign agents to plantations across the South, the "freeing" of the slaves into indentured servitude under the tenure of President Beauregard, reactions to the Soviet revolution of 1917 and finally, the successful revolution of the workers against their former masters.

Characters in that stage of the story would include a labor organizer, President Beauregard, a plantation owner, an indentured former slave, one of the first female politicians in the Confederacy, the Union ambassador to the Confederacy, a hypothetical descendant of General Lee working to spread egalitarian ideals in the Confederate military (a large portion of which will defect during the Revolution), and others.

Overall, I am planning for this to be a very morally ambiguous tale - the sort of thing I've really always wanted to do. Both sides would have sympathetic characters and both sides would have brutal monsters. What I can promise you utmost is this, though. I can provide readers with a thrilling look at what could have been had things just made a sharp left turn at one of the most important intersections in the history of these United States. If enough people show interest, I can actually realistically guarantee that I'll have this written. I already have a very good, very talented, and very enthusiastic friend helping me with the characters, so I think this thing has a shot. I even have a tentative title: Red States.

UPDATE: 1, December 2012: My story has received mention from the good people over at Today in Alternate History! Thanks, guys! Have some additional art, while I'm updating here.

The great seal of the Soviet Confederacy of America, courtesy of redditor Bezbojnicul.

Fuck You, It's Pokemon Time

Alright, no matter what you were doing before, it's unimportant now. Shut your face hole, because we have to talk about something important - something crucial. We have to talk about Pokemon. More importantly, we have to talk about the profound impact it's had on America, on me, on my fiancee, and on the bulk of my friends. See, Pokemon is one of the most important phenomenon in popular culture since Star Wars and no one is really sure why. All that can really be commonly agreed upon is that it is here, it has had lasting influence, and that anyone who hates it is likely a card carrying member of the National Socialist Party. Allow me to elaborate.

It all began in the year 1998, when the first Pokemon games, Red and Blue, arrived on the shores of the United States. Monica Lewinsky was a household name, the Rugrats were the most popular show on children's television, Seinfeld was at the height of its popularity, and the last Beanie Baby had committed suicide in a drunken and drug induced state of depression in a dark and dingy motel room just outside of Texarkana, Texas. America needed hope, and a crazy newfangled Japanese collecting game had been delivered from upon high to fill the gaping hole in our collective lives.

The games caught on more or less immediately, owing to the ubiquity of the Game Boy platform on which it was published and the easy to learn yet difficult to master style of gameplay which was its hallmark. Overnight, a range of stuffed animals, a collectible card game that no one knew how to play, and a Saturday morning anime were unleashed upon the nation to feed its ever growing Pokemania. This is significant from my vantage point, because my friends and I were, at the time, in the prime market for just this sort of thing. See, while it now seems so blatantly commercial, you have to understand that when this sort of thing hits you when you're young it can become a genuinely cherished childhood memory - especially if your childhood was somewhat less than rosy  It was really my first RPG - as was the case for many of my friends, I suspect - and the sense of adventure and discovery that I felt when I first left Pallet Town was only ever equaled upon my first departure from Seyda Neen in Morrowind some years later.

So you have to realize, if you aren't a geek (which, reading this particular blog, you're probably a level 12 nerdlinger so I guess it doesn't matter) that a nerd's first RPG experience is a sacred and sacrosanct thing. It's a hugely important thing that will forever be cherished in some capacity or another, and I think that it is this factor to which Pokemon owes its enduring popularity. So many of us grew up with some Pokemon game or another in our Game Boys and DS(es?) and it's such a sentimental part of so many gamers' catelogues that I highly doubt it will stop for the foreseeable future.

Now, as popular as the games are in the United States, they're an order of magnitude more popular in Japan - the land that festoons airliners in Pikachu paint schemes, produces PokePorn, and has entire stores dedicated solely to Pikachu and his Pokepals. It's my opinion that this owes largely to the Japanese cultural obsession with collecting things, a mechanic which the Pokemon games (and merchandising) are largely dependent upon. After all, this is the country which has several hundreds of varieties of Kit-Kat bars available for purchase at any given moment, with rare Kollectable Kit-Kats fading in and out of existence at any given moment. Seriously, google that shit. It's a real thing. The Japanese love to collect things. I mean, how else would Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon have caught on and lasted there while being merely imitation fads in the United States and elsewhere abroad?

Anyway, while America's Pokemon fever is more or less in remission, Japan still exhibits something akin to fever and rashes upon the release of each new Pokemon game, with television specials and entire magazines devoted solely to the games. Imagine the American reaction to Star Wars in 1977 or Western Europe any time someone mentions the World Cup and you have a general idea of what happens when a new Pokemon game drops. Really, at this point, I imagine that's solely what keeps Nintendo in business. That, and old people who seem to have confused the Wii with a fitness device.

Now, while America is much, much less obsessed with Pokemon than Japan is, I think it's still safe to say that you would be hard pressed find a single nerd (now a much larger and mainstream segment of popular culture than they were in the past) that won't admit to a degree of fondness for the franchise. After all, most of us owned Red and Blue when they came out. A great sum of us can still recall the elation we felt when we finally beat the Elite Four, the bragging that came from the first of our friends to fill out their PokeDex, and the first bastard to own a Game Boy Advance and a copy of Ruby or Sapphire.

The thing to take away from my rant is this: Pokemon has had an enormous impact on the popular culture of the United States and elsewhere, especially Japan. I mean, if you're reading this you can probably tell me which Pokemon was your favorite as a kid, unless you're Elisabeth. Personally, mine was Pikachu. But whatever. It's a huge franchise and it's had an enormous impact on a lot of our lives. It was an integral part of many of our childhoods and anyone who owned it as a child and says they don't look back upon it fondly is a damnable liar. Seriously, man. Just, seriously. I'm done here. Pantsy out.