You’re missing the kind where the author’s country of origin and political ideology is responsible for all of humanity’s great achievements and takes over the universe.
The third genre: “What if this random battle went a little differently? Not a whole lot changes, but I hope you’re ready for several pages of hyper detailed war gaming.”
Usual alt-history: what if X major event, followed by list of dates with events Literature alt-history: what if a whole alphabet of minor events, followed by in universe articles, food, culture Hypernerd alt history: X completely unknown peasant takes two steps to the left instead of the right, here's a minute by minute breakdown of how the next month would have gone
@@mediumchThere's one about the Axis being defeated during the battle of Crete, off the top of my head. It goes into great details about the very minor changes that difference causes.
@@7OwlsWithALaptop so it's a Russian book called 'Blue Lard' or something idk how to translate it properly but it's basically kind of a postmodern dystopia and the plot is some reaaaaaally fucked up shit. I can't really tell if it's any good because I haven't read it but it's a one in a lifetime experience for sure
@@7OwlsWithALaptop en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lard here's a wiki article I found about the book, it will probably explain the plot better than I do, but there's still a ton of lore
@@WillyShep1966 Their "_______________That Built America" series is still going and based on real history. One example that made feel old was the "Toys" episode about the Console Wars of the '90's, between Nintendo and SEGA, then Sony entered the picture.
Honestly, I would genuinely love an alternate history novel where everything is absolutely batshit insane, history is so different, so many alternate history scenarios in one. And the protagonist is just some random soldier in a war and the whole book is written like All Quiet on the Western Front, acting like all of this is common knowledge and the reader is just so confused
I myself was apart of the Gothic war of 1961. I was an infantry solider in the 82nd hageldinger division. I remember one of our medics died in the start of the battle and this really made us more careful. Sadly we did lose the battle. We lost because we lost all our medics quickly and a British shaft gun killed a lot of our men. I'm proud to still be alive.
Sci-fi authors in the past had to guess at the future, so many old futurist novels describing the distant year of 2000 read as alt-history. The Man in the High Castle is explicitly alt history, and hints at other alt histories. It might scratch your itch
“My friend said that instead of having hyperwars in the miserable trenches of Antarctica, the high angels and the ascended Kaiser should just get into a fight themselves! No more unecessary erasures from existence on the battlefield…”
@@jsmithy643 H1tler nearly drowned as a child, was saved by a priest who was just passing by, and then was spared by an enemy soldier in WW1 because he was injured and didn’t have a gun, and just so happened to have been assigned to spy on the Nazi party (while spying on them he decided to join instead), and was only put into power due to his powerful way of talking. MF was OP dude
World War 1 major powers : Axis of Posthuman Pangalactic Loyalists : > Austro-Mongolian Caliphate > Neo-Carolingian Empire > Ming Empire > Dai Viet Sultanate > New Carthage Resistance : > Portuguese Empire > Triple Alliance > Mugal Shogunate > Great Chola Satrapies > League of Mages > Moreban We really need this as a hoi4 mod
@@iamdigory Yeah, genuinely. It makes sense that the Portuguese would try to exploit amazonian magic if there existed such (as they exploited many things from the amazon LOL), and the Austro-Mongolian Caliphate makes quite a bit of sense as Austria would be a main target of the Mongols in case Eastern Europe didn't hold them off, and many Mongols converted to Islam.
I love the lore in GURPS Infinite Worlds because the alt-histories are 50% "What if the American Revolution was more libertarian" and 50% "THE NEO-BRITTANIAN ALCHEMICAL BATTLEFLEETS SCOUR THE CRYSTAL SPHERES FOR THE GEMSTONES OF ANGELS"
@@alicorn3924 Generic Universal RolePlaying System. It's a set of rules for tabletop roleplaying games that are specifically designed to be as compatible as possible with as many wildly-different settings and story structures as possible, which several others have tried to do since then, but prior to GURPS the mode was to follow the example of Dungeons & Dragons with settings and rulesets that are baked into each other, giving them arguably more character and immediate, accessible usability, but making them somewhat frustrating and tedious for groups of players wishing to go outside the bounds of already-established settings and stories about going spelunking and fighting monsters in fantasyland. To sell the system in a climate where the state of the hobby was (and really still is) that everyone has some DnD books and knowledge about DnD so it's just easier to find a group to play DnD (or some flavour of Warhammer in slightly nerdier locales), it was necessary to prove its worth, so the publisher has over the years released thousands of pages of supplemental material, most of which just exists to demonstrate how easily you can incorporate whatever off-the-wall stuff you want into the game. This has the (maybe intended; some of those supplementals are explicitly targeted at worldbuilders to help them think about and build their setting in a logical and consistent manner) side-effect of making GURPS material like a bunch of catalogs of off-the-wall ideas for writers.
They went with one steam-Rome ruling half the world in Alternate Earths, and one axis invasion of stateside USA. And one wonky cyberpunk setting where a Christian Japan and slight shakeup of the Age of Exploration changed, and both events are so small that they barely register. The best about GURPS is that they write places for you to actually play in. I can look up what the weird roman steam-car costs.
There is the reverse in the alt-hist community. People who will say that no matter the POD the Axis couldn't have won at any point in any world. Which is strange considering their success and the fact that the Allies took their sweet time to get together.
@arthurbriand2175 it basically is a question of if the us got involved or not, once that happened, ally victory was a forgone conclusion. However what form that victory took could have changed.
Forgetting type 7 here: "Everything before this point in time went completely batshit crazy different to our history but somehow, someway, some-godforsaken-time: it ended up with us exactly the same."
@@Pihsrosnec Not far off. All the ancient mythology of gods and heroes and mages and monsters is all real, but the modern day is, to most people, pretty much the same as our world.
You forgot the absolute omnipresence of Zeppellins. "Jour J" in the thumbnail!! The covers are some of the most beautiful alt-hist art. they're like alternate LIFE magazine covers.
Type 2 is just high fantasy for someone who doesn’t want to take forever making a map (P.S.) one of my favorite scenarios that someone needs to look at is a history where Cortez fails to conquer the Aztecs and then it completely changes the entire colonization of North America
That last one sounds like what would happen if Harry Turtledove and S.M Stirling spent a night together writing with some drugs. And im all here for it
I tought the two types would be the ones that try to look at history through the most objective view possible and the ones where my favourite country/political ideology wins and takes over the world because they are just so cool and epic.
What if you are writing the second but accidentally become the first, namely out of the fact that for the author to push the ideology they would now have to construct a world where the outcome they wanted happened and accidentally reflected some universal human truth when they wanted a screed?
That ending is just as awesome as the DOOM 2016 intro. "They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done." *Heavy Metal Argent music starts playing*
I honestly think the second one would make a pretty badass story. With how much effort and love you clearly put into silly Internet videos I can't wait to read an actual book of yours someday!
The third type. Incredibly meticulous, well researched, and justifiable alternate history writing that makes a very minor change on an event not even most historians know about and somehow makes the story interesting.
@@zinkheroofyoutube8004 He literally just caught a disease (That historians can't seem to come to a conclusion about) and died of that (The broken heart probably helped though)
See, the real thing to do is to take random bits of Type 1 alt-hist and go super hard on them until they're Type 2, while also being conceivably realistic.
The second type example is frankly so cool and I desperately want to read that novel. It’s like the most insane and exhilarating pile of cool stuff for all time.
The Belisarius series, Drake and Flint. EDIT: And also Drake's Raj Whitehall series. Very similar premise, but darker, and mostly co-written with SM Stirling.
I've been falling down a bit of a rabbit hole of the various "punk" genres. Steampunk, dieselpunk, aetherpunk, atompunk, Casette Futurism, and more recently I found out about Solarpunk, although that one still feels like it needs some time to gain some more definition to it. Anyways, my point is that these genres really do provide a more interesting method for making an alternative history timeline. For example. Having those what-ifs are more interesting the more radically different it is from our own experiences (unless exploring those experiences through a fantasy lens is your intended goal). Technology impacts infrastructure, and infrastructure impacts life. So if your society is primarily powered by Nuclear Power Plants, where are they getting the materials to make fuel rods? Who owns them? Who's pro-nuclear? Who's anti-nuclear? How is the power used? How has the world changed when we take something that does happen, and does exist, and turn it up to 11? And if you do it just right people will become so engaged with your story that they can even forget that it's based off a historical precedent. Or you could just put a different flag on a picture and say "what if" right?
My favourite alt history novel, and also like my 2nd fav novel in general, goes basically: what if history fucking stopped. So the novel is set in 1924 but everything is the same as it was in 1908, because even though new technologies are developed because of the event, no major change can happen. English release is supposed to happen, so fingers crossed for that. The novel is "Ice" by Jacek Dukaj.
I wanna hear more about that second story. I'm kinda curious to see how the Overwatchers are taken down... or what if the Overwatchers were the good guys all along?
Most of my alt history stuff revolves around making ww3 happen without nuclear apocalypse, and making countries like Russia & North Korea strong enough not to necessarily win, but to at least put out a good fight And that involves a lot of rewriting of cold war period, along with 1990-2000s period...
Either a deep review of how a minor change effects the timeline, or a review of the limit to how fucking rad and bonkers we can possibly make a setting set on earth
Honestly, Type 2 is way more interesting. Type 1 is just some historian personal fanfic or some tought experiement. As an history nerd, i honestly think that doesn't matter how hard you try, you will never top real life absurdity. Reality is so massively complex that you can't take everything into account. The most complex alt-history will allways have done "a pretty good job'
I had some old buddies at an old job who were both history majors and geeks and we'd have conversations like "what would the world's currency look like if the USA never entered WWII" alongside "Are Tauntaun's from Star Wars reptiles or mammals?"
Correction, there are three types of alt-history. The two mentioned here, the former being sincere albeit not necessarily well researched and the latter being a shitpost, and then there's the third - which is one tiny, miniscule event is changed and due to a series of butterfly effects the entire history of the world becomes completely unrecognisable, and also every single change in the timeline is backed up by at least 700 different citations of actual historical record... This third type is cool.
My favourite alt history scenarios revolve around pop culture IE; .'ogawa shrugs' - Sony's president doesnt push for the development of the playstation in the 90s after nintendo pulls out of their deal, sega and Nintendo are still the 2 big names in the console market in the 21st century, Microsoft sticks to computers .Nintendo and segas deal goes through and they jointly develop a comsole in the 90s, miyamoto dies in a car crash riding his bike, phineas and ferb airs in the late 90s Its nice to have a break from the alternate war or geography scenarios
There's actually around 4 or 5 different types of alt-history, and that's not even getting into the double-blind alt history. (IE what an alt history might think an alt history of their own timeline would look like)
My favourite type of alternate histories are the one's that involve the world wars, specifically WW1. My current favourite iteration of those events is that it's former name being of "The Great War" actually meant the war to end all wars, as it progressed from Trench warfare, to Mechanical warfare, and then finally reaching to _"Earthmoving"_ destruction. Now where have I heard that from you may ask thyself?
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
1: stereotypical "what if" scenario
2: Finno-Korean Hyperwar
now thats not even funny. i served in the Finno-Korean Hyperwar. do you know how many good men died in that war? do you?
@@TheGullableFella My apologies, I had no Idea! Thank you for your service!
@@TheGullableFellaFinnish or Korean. Was an autistic mage in the Finnish navy.
@@TheGullableFelladid you fight in the Sixth Battle of Holy Agartha? i'm a vet myself
@@chillpollo As a vet myself, do you even understand how many balls I've removed?
You’re missing the kind where the author’s country of origin and political ideology is responsible for all of humanity’s great achievements and takes over the universe.
Hello Japan.
HFY vibin' it.
The divine comedy vibes
I also liked the part when Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (łac. Res Publica Utriusque Nationis) never ended and conquered the entire world.
the roman empire will come back
"what if the Austro Mongolian caliphate didn't declare war on the League of Mages?"
What if the gunpowder Empires never united?
The sad(?) thing is that an austro-mongolian caliphate's formation makes a lot of sense with the right divergences. It's not bonkers at all.
Is this a Fate Grand Order reference?
@@arthurg.calixto3338honestly, just remove the Polish and the Austro-Mongolian Caliphate forms itself /j
Do not DISRESPECT MY South East Asian Hyperuniversal Divine Empire Galactic Union Kingdom Republic !!
"What if he was just the pretty good Gatsby"
Okay Raphael Chestang
What if the Meh Mongols
"What if The Great Gatsby was good?"
I think you discovered type 3
Wasn't Great Gatsby supposed to have a different title originally?
The third genre: “What if this random battle went a little differently? Not a whole lot changes, but I hope you’re ready for several pages of hyper detailed war gaming.”
Since you liked hard sci-fi, here is hard alt history
Usual alt-history: what if X major event, followed by list of dates with events
Literature alt-history: what if a whole alphabet of minor events, followed by in universe articles, food, culture
Hypernerd alt history: X completely unknown peasant takes two steps to the left instead of the right, here's a minute by minute breakdown of how the next month would have gone
Any examples of this genre?
@@mediumchThere's one about the Axis being defeated during the battle of Crete, off the top of my head. It goes into great details about the very minor changes that difference causes.
To be frank, Leplace demon-type down-to-the-molecules alt history is probably impossible to write.
Implying I would not read a million word shitpost written by the Type 2 guy
Finno-Korean Hyperwar.
I know a book that is basically this lol.
@@greenteadude8958 whats it called? is it any good?
@@7OwlsWithALaptop so it's a Russian book called 'Blue Lard' or something idk how to translate it properly but it's basically kind of a postmodern dystopia and the plot is some reaaaaaally fucked up shit. I can't really tell if it's any good because I haven't read it but it's a one in a lifetime experience for sure
@@7OwlsWithALaptop en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lard here's a wiki article I found about the book, it will probably explain the plot better than I do, but there's still a ton of lore
History Channel at 1 am vs History Channel at 3 am
Does history channel even have documentaries anymore?
@@WillyShep1966 Their "_______________That Built America" series is still going and based on real history. One example that made feel old was the "Toys" episode about the Console Wars of the '90's, between Nintendo and SEGA, then Sony entered the picture.
Honestly, I would genuinely love an alternate history novel where everything is absolutely batshit insane, history is so different, so many alternate history scenarios in one. And the protagonist is just some random soldier in a war and the whole book is written like All Quiet on the Western Front, acting like all of this is common knowledge and the reader is just so confused
I myself was apart of the Gothic war of 1961. I was an infantry solider in the 82nd hageldinger division. I remember one of our medics died in the start of the battle and this really made us more careful. Sadly we did lose the battle. We lost because we lost all our medics quickly and a British shaft gun killed a lot of our men. I'm proud to still be alive.
Sci-fi authors in the past had to guess at the future, so many old futurist novels describing the distant year of 2000 read as alt-history. The Man in the High Castle is explicitly alt history, and hints at other alt histories. It might scratch your itch
“My friend said that instead of having hyperwars in the miserable trenches of Antarctica, the high angels and the ascended Kaiser should just get into a fight themselves! No more unecessary erasures from existence on the battlefield…”
Would Draka be of interest? Infamous I know, but first thing that came to my mind
There's also a Martian on Earth for maximum science wank
I mean, this is just 40k writing tbh
Type I: Average AlternateHistoryHub video.
Type II: Trench Crusade.
I look forward to the full release still not explaining what a "Meta Christ" is.
Ah yes, the siege of kasr qolant, when the frensh troops couldn't manage to capitalise the castle
Y Es
@@ThatDMan87 Something something cloned Jesus.
type I: average alternatehistoryhub video
type II: average whatifalthist video
Dudes be like "this alternative history is so interesting!"
My brother in Yog-sothoth, you have created a high-fantasy setting.
The nose exhale I had to “Yog-Sothoth”
@@ihavenoideamanCongrats! You now have Nose exhalation microdialect🏅
@@lasajnae9626 Yipee :D
@ihavenoideaman ;D
Praise the old ones
(Especially Yog-sothoth)
"What are the potential implications of this major historical event going another way?" vs "Earth did my worldbuilding for me."
To be Frank, earth' s history can get real insane sometimes, so a really realistic world build in would probably be that alienating
@@minestar2247When you realize plot armor exist in real life. 💀
@@jsmithy643 H1tler nearly drowned as a child, was saved by a priest who was just passing by, and then was spared by an enemy soldier in WW1 because he was injured and didn’t have a gun, and just so happened to have been assigned to spy on the Nazi party (while spying on them he decided to join instead), and was only put into power due to his powerful way of talking.
MF was OP dude
Hey, Earths world building is already pretty cool, just add dragons and shit and then it’s even cooler 😎
@@bigman1163 He was the main character in the prequels
To be fair, if Socrates were less annoying, he probably would have died of old age a week later anyway.
How old was bro
That was definetly his most compelling argument in the Crito.
Wait, he was 71? I just realised I never looked at wikipedia entries of Greek philosophers.
@@fuzonzord9301 Yup, dude was no spring chicken.
I think there would have been a sea battle a week later where he would have died
I would do ungodly things to watch any adaptation of the second half of the video
I'd bring a bathtub-sized tub of popcorn.
@@easolinas1233I'd bring one (1) bathtub sized popcorn
@@crusaderonabike8164 I'd bring a bathtub filled with bathtub sized popcorn
Sounds like Trench Crusade tbh
@@skyfetheranger6066 So like one kernel
World War 1 major powers :
Axis of Posthuman Pangalactic Loyalists :
> Austro-Mongolian Caliphate
> Neo-Carolingian Empire
> Ming Empire
> Dai Viet Sultanate
> New Carthage
Resistance :
> Portuguese Empire
> Triple Alliance
> Mugal Shogunate
> Great Chola Satrapies
> League of Mages
> Moreban
We really need this as a hoi4 mod
I feel like this is a book
This. This shit goes HARD.
I wanna read the second story
Same.
Same here unironically
Yep, and it shows more knowledge of history too.
Yeah for real
@@iamdigory Yeah, genuinely. It makes sense that the Portuguese would try to exploit amazonian magic if there existed such (as they exploited many things from the amazon LOL), and the Austro-Mongolian Caliphate makes quite a bit of sense as Austria would be a main target of the Mongols in case Eastern Europe didn't hold them off, and many Mongols converted to Islam.
Type 2 is basically Warhammer Fantasy
Accurate.
SUMMON THE ELECTOR COUNTS
More like Trench Crusade .
@@anonymeroverlord THE NATION CALLS!
Guilty Gear
@@remliqa more like tunnel jihad
World War 1 but somehow even crazier this time is metal af
The even crazier part is whats so impressive
Yeah, add everything to ww1 despite it being the most everything war in history
Trench Crusade and Never Going Home
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
War Of The Worlds, kind of
I love the lore in GURPS Infinite Worlds because the alt-histories are 50% "What if the American Revolution was more libertarian" and 50% "THE NEO-BRITTANIAN ALCHEMICAL BATTLEFLEETS SCOUR THE CRYSTAL SPHERES FOR THE GEMSTONES OF ANGELS"
Gallatin and Azoth-7 btw
GURPS?
GURPS supplementals in general are an absolute goldmine.
@@alicorn3924 Generic Universal RolePlaying System.
It's a set of rules for tabletop roleplaying games that are specifically designed to be as compatible as possible with as many wildly-different settings and story structures as possible, which several others have tried to do since then, but prior to GURPS the mode was to follow the example of Dungeons & Dragons with settings and rulesets that are baked into each other, giving them arguably more character and immediate, accessible usability, but making them somewhat frustrating and tedious for groups of players wishing to go outside the bounds of already-established settings and stories about going spelunking and fighting monsters in fantasyland.
To sell the system in a climate where the state of the hobby was (and really still is) that everyone has some DnD books and knowledge about DnD so it's just easier to find a group to play DnD (or some flavour of Warhammer in slightly nerdier locales), it was necessary to prove its worth, so the publisher has over the years released thousands of pages of supplemental material, most of which just exists to demonstrate how easily you can incorporate whatever off-the-wall stuff you want into the game.
This has the (maybe intended; some of those supplementals are explicitly targeted at worldbuilders to help them think about and build their setting in a logical and consistent manner) side-effect of making GURPS material like a bunch of catalogs of off-the-wall ideas for writers.
They went with one steam-Rome ruling half the world in Alternate Earths, and one axis invasion of stateside USA. And one wonky cyberpunk setting where a Christian Japan and slight shakeup of the Age of Exploration changed, and both events are so small that they barely register.
The best about GURPS is that they write places for you to actually play in. I can look up what the weird roman steam-car costs.
A chain-gun and a pocket full of incendiary spells, what more could you ask for? Some bubblegum?
all out of gum, but plenty of ass to kick
I would probably ask for some gum to be honest
And a cool innate domain.
All out of bubblegum :(
“I’d like a… super-Germany.”
“How original.”
“With a Second American Civil War!”
“Daring today, aren’t we?”
And a 7 way civil war in Spain
@ That’s a given. Spain will always have a civil war in the Thirties, and Mussolini will always be in charge of Italy.
Honestly im intrigued about the second one
Write it.
Unironically would read that shit
@@TwoMoonsLight Keep it up, maybe you'll be the next big thing in alt history.
@@TwoMoonsLight Of course, remember, even if your writing stinks, it just means the next project will be all the better.
the minis game Trench Crusade is like 90% there
"What if the Axis won world war 2?"
"How?"
"Because I said so."
What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?
How?
Because I said so
There is the reverse in the alt-hist community. People who will say that no matter the POD the Axis couldn't have won at any point in any world. Which is strange considering their success and the fact that the Allies took their sweet time to get together.
@arthurbriand2175 it basically is a question of if the us got involved or not, once that happened, ally victory was a forgone conclusion. However what form that victory took could have changed.
@@arthurbriand2175 they lost the second they thought they could fight russia. if napoleon couldn't do it then the nazis never stood a chance.
@@justinfrank1882also, they failed miserably at trying to defeat England.
Of all things, it’s the dramatic poses he keeps doing during it all that kills me.
Forgetting type 7 here:
"Everything before this point in time went completely batshit crazy different to our history but somehow, someway, some-godforsaken-time: it ended up with us exactly the same."
I'm not super familiar but I'm pretty sure that's the premise of fate
@@Pihsrosnec Not far off. All the ancient mythology of gods and heroes and mages and monsters is all real, but the modern day is, to most people, pretty much the same as our world.
Bright
Ah yes, Bright. 😂
Ancient Aliens basically
My friend made a D&D-based game with the premise "What if during World War 1 the ocean just got _really_ hungry?"
Sometimes, I miss Hungry Water.
One piece lore
Can I steal this?
What even happened? Did the sea level just rise?
@SuperGman117 the body count certainly did
lmao what does that even mean?
Meanwhile, kaiserreich : "Here is lore more detailed than most university level history books for all 54 chinese warlords"
Yet there are still spelling mistakes smh unplayable, KMT ruined forever 😢
Kaiserreich lore sucks
@@jdools4744 it highly depends on the tag
@@jdools4744 which countries have you played/read the lore for
@@jdools4744the gameplay sucks too.
Kaisereduxx is where its at.
You forgot the absolute omnipresence of Zeppellins.
"Jour J" in the thumbnail!! The covers are some of the most beautiful alt-hist art. they're like alternate LIFE magazine covers.
it's the closest thing to an air ship without actually being an air ship.
WW1 setting in alt history = We NEED Zeppelins on steroids
Never noticed, thank you friend !
Zeppelins are sick
Zeppelins are genuinely one of the coolest things mankind has ever invented.
Type 2 is just high fantasy for someone who doesn’t want to take forever making a map
(P.S.) one of my favorite scenarios that someone needs to look at is a history where Cortez fails to conquer the Aztecs and then it completely changes the entire colonization of North America
Your right and it’s beautiful if written well.
oh my god
Where can I find it? I need to find it
@@Myname-cb9ru it's probably something like Trench Crusade.
"What is Socrates was less annoying?" while asking relentless questions was beautiful
I have become the very thing I swore to destroy.
That last one sounds like what would happen if Harry Turtledove and S.M Stirling spent a night together writing with some drugs. And im all here for it
There’s actually third type: when author tries to make the worst dystopia possible but ends up describing real world in next 5 years
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley
Cyberpunk
You are literally the first RUclipsr who wasn't a Mesoamerican scholar I've ever heard pronounce "Quetzalcoatl" correctly. Bravo!!!
I could have had 100 guesses, the right pronunciation still would not have been one of the guesses 😂
I tought the two types would be the ones that try to look at history through the most objective view possible and the ones where my favourite country/political ideology wins and takes over the world because they are just so cool and epic.
How would you even go about doing the first one? we only have the one earth, any change is inherently speculative.
Yeah, both of them are the same thing because there is no way to be as objective as you think, though most are closer to that extreme
Anyone claiming to be writing the first, inevitably actually writes the second.
What if you are writing the second but accidentally become the first, namely out of the fact that for the author to push the ideology they would now have to construct a world where the outcome they wanted happened and accidentally reflected some universal human truth when they wanted a screed?
nobody is ever objective talking about history. except me. america was always a good guy in every situation.
That ending is just as awesome as the DOOM 2016 intro.
"They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done." *Heavy Metal Argent music starts playing*
Type 1: wehraboo fantasies, or, alternate history hub vids
Type 2: finno-korean hyperwar
That's a pretty good way of promoting your upcoming book
"haha this is a funny hypothetical" vs "Im off my fucking MEDS do not fuck with ME"
I know he’s taking the piss but I really want to read this book.
I honestly think the second one would make a pretty badass story.
With how much effort and love you clearly put into silly Internet videos I can't wait to read an actual book of yours someday!
And the Type 1 althist always ends up being Type 2 after a few centuries of speculation
Basically Turtledove's Southern Victory
“I am Tiberius Quetzalcoatl the Ninth” is maybe one of the funniest things I have ever heard said dead seriously
The third type.
Incredibly meticulous, well researched, and justifiable alternate history writing that makes a very minor change on an event not even most historians know about and somehow makes the story interesting.
Ah, I see you, too, have read the Years of Rice and Salt.
I am making this rn. I hate Mstislav the Great and I do not know of Simon is fertile or not
Battle of Hastings.
Battle of Hastings.
Sounds a little bit like the interface web series. The event that was used was a myth but it was an obscure one at least.
So Type II is an alternate history where the actual Finno-Korean Hyperwar never happened
The finno-Korean hyperwar happens in the future of this timeline
holy hell, dude. If you're writing a book, a) I'd totally read it, and b) I'd love to alpha/beta it for you. You have serious writing talent.
this is so much facts
I mean really, the guy doesn't seem to want us to know what his real name is but he's got to be a professional out there
Add me to the list
Type I: Harry Turtledove
Type II: Ancient Aliens (also somehow Harry Turtledove)
type 1: what if hong xiuquan had done a better job studying for his exam
type 2: finno-korean hyperwar
He probably did not bad in the exams but those things are unfairly difficult and most got in through connections
Tale old as humanity
And then there are times where a scenario advertises itself as Type I but is actually Type II.
Necrovision
Any battlefield game
You had me at Austro-Mongolian Caliphate.
"What if Alexander the great was straight" XD
By the standards of the ancient (culturally) Greek aristocracy, he totally was.
@@jic1Eh, not really
Dud literally died of a broken heart because his boyfriend died
@@jic1 they used to make fun of him for being a bottom.
@@zinkheroofyoutube8004 He literally just caught a disease (That historians can't seem to come to a conclusion about) and died of that (The broken heart probably helped though)
What if Alexander the Great was a top?
What if the band Smile never changed its name to Queen and Ziggy Stardust was really an alien ?
Ziggy Stardust WAS an alien
See, the real thing to do is to take random bits of Type 1 alt-hist and go super hard on them until they're Type 2, while also being conceivably realistic.
The second type example is frankly so cool and I desperately want to read that novel. It’s like the most insane and exhilarating pile of cool stuff for all time.
The Belisarius series, Drake and Flint.
EDIT: And also Drake's Raj Whitehall series. Very similar premise, but darker, and mostly co-written with SM Stirling.
What if... I had a girlfriend? 🤔
Impossible
😱
Let's not get too crazy here
😅
Its a bit unrealistic.
0:29 - With Steve Jobs inventing Windows, for a second I thought we were entering the TF2 Realm of like... Abe Lincoln inventing Stairs.
Type 1 : the one asks questins
Type 2 : the one who wanna have fun
Not all type-1's end up as type-2's, but every type-2 once started as a type-1
I've been falling down a bit of a rabbit hole of the various "punk" genres. Steampunk, dieselpunk, aetherpunk, atompunk, Casette Futurism, and more recently I found out about Solarpunk, although that one still feels like it needs some time to gain some more definition to it. Anyways, my point is that these genres really do provide a more interesting method for making an alternative history timeline. For example. Having those what-ifs are more interesting the more radically different it is from our own experiences (unless exploring those experiences through a fantasy lens is your intended goal).
Technology impacts infrastructure, and infrastructure impacts life. So if your society is primarily powered by Nuclear Power Plants, where are they getting the materials to make fuel rods? Who owns them? Who's pro-nuclear? Who's anti-nuclear? How is the power used? How has the world changed when we take something that does happen, and does exist, and turn it up to 11? And if you do it just right people will become so engaged with your story that they can even forget that it's based off a historical precedent.
Or you could just put a different flag on a picture and say "what if" right?
I need a full book of this. The lore is too deep!
You misspelled trilogy
There is no lore! It's pure chaos
You want deep lore, just read up on Warhammer or superhero-comics.
@@minestar2247 I love stories that have minimal plot and just sheer chaos
@@retinazer7652 well, they're probably really fun
Don't forget the alt-history that can tell you the authors political ideology just by reading it
"What if Hitler was a good guy" and they change nothing compared to real world history.
I think that’s just called “alt-history”.
“what if the nazis won”
Type 1: average Alt-History RUclips Clickbait
Type 2: average game of Crusader Kings with mods
type 2 is basically turning crusader kings into warhammer 40k
It's the dramatic poses to the sweet smile at the end journey for me
Genuinely interested in the second premise tho, when’s it come out? 😂
I would buy it for sure
Sometime between 1995 and 2010, from the sound of it.
The second story is LITERALLY a slightly parallel All Tomorrows
My favourite alt history novel, and also like my 2nd fav novel in general, goes basically: what if history fucking stopped. So the novel is set in 1924 but everything is the same as it was in 1908, because even though new technologies are developed because of the event, no major change can happen. English release is supposed to happen, so fingers crossed for that. The novel is "Ice" by Jacek Dukaj.
I wanna hear more about that second story. I'm kinda curious to see how the Overwatchers are taken down... or what if the Overwatchers were the good guys all along?
In real life they are the bad guys.
Type II sounds like a hell of a read. You should work on it
1:07 one of the best quotes ive seen
Most of my alt history stuff revolves around making ww3 happen without nuclear apocalypse, and making countries like Russia & North Korea strong enough not to necessarily win, but to at least put out a good fight
And that involves a lot of rewriting of cold war period, along with 1990-2000s period...
I need alt history fiction recs like #2 because I thought it was all like no. 1
Trench Crusade.
Trench crusade lore is crazy
Code Geass
One side: Barely historical pop drama
The other side: overly historical randomized slop
“What if Genghis Khan was celibate?” is probably the most globally impactful.
"What if Genghis Khan got stabbed in the balls in his first battle?" Seems a more likely scenario with same result
@@Noperare also intriguing.
The second one is me explaining my daydream plots to people
Either a deep review of how a minor change effects the timeline, or a review of the limit to how fucking rad and bonkers we can possibly make a setting set on earth
When i wrote a story for a novel about an alien invasion happening in the 1890s: 0:45
Tell me more! Or was it just War of the Worlds? (Which is a damn good book.)
That last minute felt like hours
The fucking J-Cut with him starting to smile after he said Big Alex was gay I CAN'T.
Michael Kirkbride is a type II alternate historian who just so happens to be writing for a fantasy setting.
I ironically want that 2nd alt history series now.
It has been written
Dude, you can't just drop that second one on us and just leave us hanging like that!
Honestly, Type 2 is way more interesting. Type 1 is just some historian personal fanfic or some tought experiement. As an history nerd, i honestly think that doesn't matter how hard you try, you will never top real life absurdity. Reality is so massively complex that you can't take everything into account. The most complex alt-history will allways have done "a pretty good job'
In my communications class (8am class) there was one guy who was the second one. Non-stop. Everyday. it was entertaining
Type 2 either comes from a passionate author or a madman who carried the same save across all the Paradox games
Number Two is basically The Monument Mythos.
Type one: The man in the high castle
Type two: Finno-Korean Hyper war
I lack the words to express this appropriately, but: Your videos are great.
@@yshwgth but what if his videos weren't great
@@personmcpersonperson2893 Then... Then reality would collapse.
Not gonna lie, the second one sounds way more fun. Also, I can't decide if it would be more complicated or simpler to make.
I had some old buddies at an old job who were both history majors and geeks and we'd have conversations like "what would the world's currency look like if the USA never entered WWII" alongside "Are Tauntaun's from Star Wars reptiles or mammals?"
(a) Still the U.S. dollar
(b) Mammals
@@premodernist_history No way I find you just in a random comment lol
And for (B) They are aliens they aren't mammals or reptiles
@@JcoleMc Are the humans in the Star Wars galaxy not mammals either?
@@premodernist_history Yeah but I think its implied humans in star wars were transported to coursant they didnt originate there .
Correction, there are three types of alt-history.
The two mentioned here, the former being sincere albeit not necessarily well researched and the latter being a shitpost, and then there's the third - which is one tiny, miniscule event is changed and due to a series of butterfly effects the entire history of the world becomes completely unrecognisable, and also every single change in the timeline is backed up by at least 700 different citations of actual historical record...
This third type is cool.
NGL, I'd read that epic science fantasy series
im so happy to see this channel grow. these plots and bits really make my day
Type 2 be like: "Screw it, I'm a fantasy writer now!"
My favourite alt history scenarios revolve around pop culture IE;
.'ogawa shrugs' - Sony's president doesnt push for the development of the playstation in the 90s after nintendo pulls out of their deal, sega and Nintendo are still the 2 big names in the console market in the 21st century, Microsoft sticks to computers
.Nintendo and segas deal goes through and they jointly develop a comsole in the 90s, miyamoto dies in a car crash riding his bike, phineas and ferb airs in the late 90s
Its nice to have a break from the alternate war or geography scenarios
Trench Crusade's lore is exactly like this
There's actually around 4 or 5 different types of alt-history, and that's not even getting into the double-blind alt history. (IE what an alt history might think an alt history of their own timeline would look like)
You're either genuinely inspired to create an interesting scenario, or extremely sleep deprived.
At least, that's how it is for me.
My favourite type of alternate histories are the one's that involve the world wars, specifically WW1. My current favourite iteration of those events is that it's former name being of "The Great War" actually meant the war to end all wars, as it progressed from Trench warfare, to Mechanical warfare, and then finally reaching to _"Earthmoving"_ destruction. Now where have I heard that from you may ask thyself?
You should remove the last sentence just to mess with people who think it sounds familliar
@@nejsonsvejson9861 You're so right
Romatitzlan lore goes hard
"What if Hitler was..."
His brain: "Say 'good'."
"Agent Hitler, FBI!"
0:38 That perfect smile
ok not gonna lie the “trenched have turned Europe into a network of scars” goes FUCKING **HARD**