What is it about alternative history/speculative fiction that

>>78944979
There's two kinds of alternate history stories.
1) The ones that require the viewer to know a bit about history, and as such will not be of interest to most people, or possibly even piss them off, because there will be things in there that they think are stupid or wrong, even though it's not, or a play on something they don't know about.
Or 2) The ones that have no real depth to them, and could be good for a laugh or two, or a short bit of engagement, but it will piss off actual history buffs, and eventually bore people who don't know much about history, because chances are, the reason they don't know much about history, is because they don't care about it.

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Because it only works when it's ridiculous.

>>78944979
>dude what if le nazis won

It gets fucking old, man. Show me a "what if the roman empire was still around". Show me a "what if America turned Western Europe and Japan into colonies after WW2". Show me "what if Africa/Asia/Europe/The Americas didn't exist". For fuck's sake at the very least I still haven't seen a good "what if the revolutionary war failed".

>>78945434
>Show me a "what if America turned Western Europe and Japan into colonies after WW2". Show me "what if Africa/Asia/Europe/The Americas didn't exist"
they suck

>>78945434
I'd really like to see a series about France never selling the Louisiana purchase.

because it didn't happen, therefore there's no reason to speculate

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>>78945227
WATCH IT COMRADE

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>>78944979
Things went the way they did for a reason.
"Alternate History" usually means over-exaggerating, or blowing out of proportions something that happened, disregarding some side of the story.

>>78945506
The Americans would have just invaded the lands during the Napoleonic Wars anyways. The entire reason Napoleon sold it in the first place for so cheap was because those lands were totally indefensible

>>78946014
>Things went the way they did for a reason.
That's a pretty dumb statement. There are literally tens of thousands of watershed moments throughout history which altered the course of things significantly.

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>>78945879
We had an agreement

>>78946147
"watershed moments" are just random occurrences used as symbols. The flow of History is dictated by billions of factors every second. Changing even 100 of them would not alter the general flow. You need to pile up coincidences on coincidences, to have a recognizably, drastically different outcome.

Having a constitutional monarchy in the USA? Sure. But having some foreign country cross the Atlantic and conquer them all? Always laughable.

When it's done properly, differences are trivial, so why bother. When it's done spectacularly, it always contains extreme, gross inflation of facts.

>>78944979
Because fiction writers are rarely also experts in history. Alt-history is usually just retarded shit that would never happen.

>>78945534
Rick and Morty!

>>78946368
>muh determinism
Of course there are ridiculous scenarios, but even minor changes in history would have large ripples. What if Antony and Cleopatra defeated Octavian at Actium? What if Ghenghis Khan had been killed in his youth? What if Washington hadn't given up power until he died? All of these things would have changed history immensely, and those are but a few examples.

>>78946222
I will always be greatful for Red Alert 2 for introducing me to Ray Wise

I like speculative fiction
kinda sad that there's so little of it in films and tv

>>78946573
also seconding this. based president dugan