The King in Yellow and Other Stories: A President Lovecraft Weird Fiction Timeline in Several Acts
- Thread starter Born in the USSA
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Glad you think so! I had a free day and decided I made you all wait long enough. The Emerald Tablet will likely be as far in the future as we get unless I have a really good idea for a oneshot set later on, though I'll be backfilling new details with my addenda as I have time.
The Trismegistus was huge, the better to provision ten thousand colonists and a hundred and fifty crew members. Five of those enormous Void Steeds bolted onto the outside, coils of rotating quarters (still cramped, this isn't Star Trek, but still) and cargo holds, multiple redundancies to avoid any unforseen problems, the works. The full scientific acumen of the entire planet poured into crafting an atomic missile and launching it at Mars. Sending most of the equipment ahead earlier drastically helped cut weight.
That's high praise! Thankfully the environmental collapse is nowhere near so serious as in the Separateverse. There's still an Amazon rainforest and a large percentage of Antarctic ice and natural pollinators but the mass poisoning of fisheries was the most intensive concern. Thankfully arcologies and renewable power were innovated to deal with population transfers and then had the happy accident of allowing a united world to prepare for true climate apocalypse before it got to that point.
Also although Antarctica is a officially a World State project, given the preexisting claims most of the boots on the ground are Fascists. Marie Byrd Land is the new District of Byrdia (obviously), the massive conflicting blob of Argentinian, Chilean, and Brazilian control is a joint America Unida-Estado Novo area, the Norwegian zone is administered by the Alliance as a whole, the Oceanian Zone was transferred to SEAR, and what in OTL is the New Zealand zone belonged to the Franko-Norman Empire and was given to the Comintern. Given the greater amount of living space Luna is much more clearly a World State Mandate and the division of settlements between terrestrial powers is far more equitable. Here's a pic of the OTL situation for reference:
Pretty much 😂 aside from the fact that expansion allows for a productive use for all the nukes and incentivizes the structure of international cooperation it also helps relieve population and resource pressures.
In accordance with the new semi-parliamentary nature of the Cabinet under the 26th Amendment the minority party has adopted the Westminster-style shadow cabinet system. If the House changes hands there usually isn't a full shift in the Cabinet but the vote of no confidence can be used to replace a few key people under an antagonistic president, though the seats for the NIB and HASTUR chiefs are typically left to their normal term limits out of a sense of tradition and decorum, since those were the only two with actual codified term limits to begin with and they're expected to behave nonpartisanly.
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Was busy working on a short story for an SLP collection so I've been away from this a bit. Any new questions come to mind?
Is there anything similar to Mmorpgs like World of Warcraft by this timeline’s 2020?
There are! There's a pretty popular one based on the Prismatic Dynasty cosmic horror shared universe I'll eventually mention in the relevant addendum and there's a uchronic shooter that's basically Call of Duty set in a universe where the Franco-British were the aggressors in the Second Clash of Civilizations as well as the Third. There's also a fantasy one based on Hitler's story cycle (since he fills the Tolkien cultural niche) and a whole ecosystem of more regional properties.
It's inspired by a DBWI where Hitler and Tolkien switch places, and I figured since Tolkien is the 2CoC British leader here figured I may as well go all in:
Hitler remained in Austria/Danubia and got increasingly bitter as communism expanded.
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Tangentially related to the broader King in Yellow project, I've been giving some idle thought to an altered list of presidents for Demimonde, the science fantasy story-within-a-story version of this TL for my Power Without Knowledge timeline/Oubliette novel. As a quick refresher, Aleister Crowley discovers industrialized goetia, there's fearsome critters and human subspecies running around, and the 2CoC is fought against an earlier Franco-British Empire. Without further ado:
*Edit- Also since I've decided that within my novel Demimonde will have a sequel called Dreamachine (set during the 1976 election) I've added some new presidents, though that's not to apply the fallout from 1960 is any less literal 😉
- William McKinley (National Union, 1897-1905)
- The point of divergence with the main timeline is in 1904, when Crowley moves to the US and parleys some family money into a business venture and sets the world onto a path of occult climate change.
- Charles Fairbanks (National Union, 1905-09)
- William Jennings Bryan (Populist, 1909-17)
- The Populists are a bit more manic at this point in the TL, with the nature of the new industrial revolution really riling up their Christian fundamentalist wing.
- Beekman Winthrop (Independence, 1917-25)
- William Randolph Hearst is his vice president and has turned into a fire breathing lion creature. It's surprisingly less of an issue than you might think, though he loses his own bid for the presidency.
- Warren G. Harding (National Union, 1925-33)
- Howard Philips Lovecraft (Independence, 1933-53)
- The new "sciences" are able to treat his cancer, so he remains president and wins another term, with Clark Ashton Smith as his veep throughout. Among other things he founds the reborn Knights of the Golden Circle (standing in for the Church of Starry Wisdom here), leads America through the Second Clash of Civilizations as per usual and devotes his postwar presidency to establishing relations with the tzitzimime and addressing the issue of goetic contamination, and eventually dies in 1960.
- Earl Long (Populist, 1953-58)
- William Dudley Pelley (American Workingmen's Party, 1958-61)
- Pelley is just the straight up leader of the token esoteric racist party here rather than an author and was chosen as part of a coalition against the Independence Party, only for a different version of Long's assassination to put him in the Oval. America's in for a rough couple of years.
- Robert E. Howard (Independence, 1961-69)
- Mack Reynolds (Independence, 1969-73)
- Billy Graham (Populist, 1973-7X)
*Edit- Also since I've decided that within my novel Demimonde will have a sequel called Dreamachine (set during the 1976 election) I've added some new presidents, though that's not to apply the fallout from 1960 is any less literal 😉
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Here's a little something to give you all a taste for my Prismatic Dynasty addendum 😂 I caught covid so I'm a bit out of sorts but I'll try to get it done before too long since you've all been so patient! In the meantime are there any lore questions or areas you all might like to see explored in an addendum?
As of right now I'm seriously committed to:
- The Prismatic Dynasty, about the state of modern cosmic horror and its modern media
- The Brazen Bull, dealing with the American banking system, the Virgin Islands, and Ceylon
- The Gray Ghost, about the vastly divergent Civil War
- Manila Dreams, about pinaymation, the Filipino comics/animation industry.
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I'm on the mend, first couple of days were hell on earth though. Got a lot of work to get caught up on next week but I should be free to do an update after that. Any questions or areas of special interest in the meantime?