Talk:Turtledove's Tropes

While the French army in USA is trekking through the wilderness VR marvels at how efficient they are as foragers. In Worldwar I remember Daniels reflecting that in WWI he'd known great foragers, Americans and British and especially French. Those are the only two I can recall but it seems to me there are others. Should we throw that in? Turtle Fan 04:05, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That's pretty minor. But then again, I dropped Butler sucks, so, who am I to claim something is minor.  TR 05:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I like "Stan the Man" myself. Turtle Fan 05:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Sections
As this list grows quite long, I was thinking: Could we make each point a seperate section so that we can navigate and especially edit the page more easily? Turtle Fan 23:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd thought about that, too, but since we're comparing one or more story, no form of organization really jumped out at me.


 * Do you have any ideas? TR 00:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well on other sites like this I've seen lists of minor one- or two-sentence jobs where every single entry is its own section. For instance, "Minor Characters from The Simpsons" works that way on Wikipedia. Turtle Fan 02:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What do you think? The huge-ass contents box is a pain if you want to scroll but you can always hide it easily enough.  But if everyone hates it, we can roll it back. Turtle Fan 03:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So far it works. Give me a day or so to make sure.  TR 03:28, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Los Angeles: Attacked by Asian Countries
Heaven help me, but a good half-dozen possible "yellow peril" jokes popped into my head when I saw that. TR 21:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Really? I did not have that reaction. Turtle Fan 21:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Haha, I'm reading about the Exclusion Act right now for a paper, so it crossed mine as well. :) Elefuntboy 22:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Washington Destroyed by an A-Bomb
Section 8 is about Washington being nuked in multiple timelines. Subsection 8.1 is a list of other cities for which this is true. Isn't Washington just one among those many? Why not make the list the actual section and add Washington to it? Thoughts? Turtle Fan 03:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I suspect someone added the nuked capitals at at latter date.


 * I actually think collapsing all the a-bomb related concepts into one big section is a good idea at this point. TR 16:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Conquering Canada
Now it's been ages since I read GotS, and quite some time since I even had a copy handy; but I'm fairly sure I recall that by the end of the book, the US is doing well in its war against the British but the latter and their colonists are still in the fight and the Dominion of Canada remains viable. Turtle Fan 20:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * My memory is vague on the issue. TR 20:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * As I recall, the US is doing well in the land war since they managed to reverse engineer AK-47s and have captured a number of Canadian cities including Ottawa and a prairie city (maybe Winnipeg but I may be mis-remembering TL-191). However, the Royal Navy rules the seas and has an effective naval blockade established and has shelled US coastal cities. I also recall a scene with Lee where he thinks Britain will loose the Canadas. I'll check when I have the chance. ML4E 20:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * We can edit that to CS Victory in ACW leads to US invasion of Canada, rather than conquest. TR 21:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Suicide Is Painless
I don't think I'd make this a section of this article, both because the parallels aren't that close and, more importantly, because this is a pretty irreverent article and what I'm going to mention is deadly serious.

HT's terribly glib about suicide. When Hip realized his participation in genocide was evil, of course he killed himself! This was seen as the natural and appropriate course of action. Don't try to find some way to redeem yourself, just pull the trigger! And the hell of it was, what brought him to the decision was being told he was a good man! If he believes that, why is he self-slaughtering instead of looking for ways to make it up to his victims by sabotaging the population reduction from within, or protecting Bathsheba, or something like that? Similar to Dowling's reaction to hearing reports of the suicides of the prominent citizens of Whatchamacallit, Texas. What he was hearing should have been really horrifying stuff--But he reacted with satisfaction! That really pissed me off. Even among all my complaints against TG, that stood out.

Now in The Golden Shrine he deals with suicide in what might be an even more inappropriate attitude: Hamnet had made a stray comment that he would kill himself before usurping the imperial crown. He repeated it to Marcovefa at a later date and she said "No you won't." He said "Try and stop me!" and went off an attempted it--twice!--to prove he didn't have to do what she said! He failed both times, and Marcovefa hinted that God prevented it from happening because He needed Hamnet to play a vital role in His plan. Still--Can we please get a little acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation? The greatest and saddest failure of humanity? Christ! Turtle Fan 20:57, October 21, 2009 (UTC)

Vichy France
There were no references to Vichy France in ItPoME. The whole of the country is occupied. TR 19:24, March 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's got an ItPoME section as I've described it.


 * Huh? No, it doesn't.  "Vichy France ceased to exist after the Greater German Reich and its Axis allies emerged victorious from World War II, and occupied France in its entirety."  TR 21:25, March 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, it's the France article I was reading. Vichy France is mentioned there.


 * If that's all the section says it could probably stand to be deleted. Turtle Fan 21:31, March 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Since we have no idea if Vichy France existed in ItPoME, I went ahead and deleted all the references. It's reasonable to believe Vichy did exist for a time, but then again, we know so little about actual POD of ItPoME.  TR 21:56, March 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * But if there's no Vichy then the Germans annexing all of France rather than dicking around with collaborators is in both Worldwar and ItPoME, and might be another section. Turtle Fan 21:18, March 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, indeed. TR 21:25, March 1, 2010 (UTC)

"France: Harry Turtledove's Bitch." I like it. Simple, forceful, direct. Turtle Fan 23:27, March 1, 2010 (UTC)

Palestine
While I appreciate your joke caption on the map of Palestine and have no objection to it, the Ottoman province was much larger and included modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and parts of Syria. ML4E 04:12, March 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I know. I was debating which map to use, and ultimately chose the path of least resistance.  TR 17:36, March 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * The way which requires less up. That's my favorite as well. Turtle Fan 21:06, March 7, 2010 (UTC)

FDR not a tyrant
I was thinking about this one, but it may be a little broad/esoteric: we have two North American Presidents (Joe Steele and Jake Featherston) who come to the office in the early 1930s, effectively become president for life, and do quite a few thinks that FDR did on the domestic front. Arguably, HT was responding to those who argue that FDR was some sort of tyrant/dictator. HT seems to be saying that, yes, FDR enjoyed a great deal of unprecedented power during his 3+ terms, but if he were really a dictator, he'd have acted like Steele or Featherston. Opinions? TR 20:59, March 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it relies too much on a subjective interpretation of story elements. If it were just Steele, I'd say that was valid (though it wouldn't be multiple timelines) since in that story the choice between Steele and Roosevelt was the critical decision.  But in 191 he was just kind of there; in fact, Flora at one point wondered if he might not have become Featherston himself had he been able-bodied.  So the latter can't fly without a reader making a certain interpretation, and this page is for saying things we can all respond to. Turtle Fan 22:38, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

Stalingrad
Maybe I miss read it, but I was under the impression that the battle of Chicago in World War, and Louisville in How Few Remain were also analogues of Stalingrad? Mr Nelg


 * Chicago probably was. I'd have to reread HFR for Louisville.  TR 00:07, April 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * The general idea behind the battle was big army buries it's self in city. Other army counter attacks on the flanks, circling and trapping the attacking army in city.  That's was basiclly happened in both those battles. Mr Nelg


 * That by itself is a fairly generic theme. It also has to be the climactic battle; neither of those were. Wilcox somehow hung on in Louisville till the war became politically untenable.  The Lizards continued pressing on Chicago after receiving their first ass-kicking.  And in neither case was the attacking army destroyed.  In all the Stalingrad analogs we either know that it was or are at least free to assume.  In your two nominees we know it was not. Turtle Fan 02:47, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Madame President
Slim addition there. However, given HT's patterns, I expect it to grow a little bit. Supervolcano probably affords some possibilities.

And in Gizzie world, Flora was elected president for life in the 1950s, and defeated the angry CS soldier in hand to hand comabt. TR 22:49, April 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Darwin once predicted President Flora, back when he and I were exclusively Crappy Boarders. He said something about how dangerous she'd be because her maternal instinct for protecting her young would extend to the entire country.  Mrs Thatcher didn't set up a mommy state, nor did she try to set one up, in his beloved UK. I wonder why I never thought to bring that up. Turtle Fan 23:13, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

No Israel
The R-Strain concerns a Rabbi deciding whether a cud chewing pig is kosher. Where are the never ending attacks on Israel? ML4E 22:08, April 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * As he's driving along the freeway (of course, it's another SoCal story) for some reason he thinks back through all the conflicts Jews have been drawn into over the millennia. He connects it to the present day by thinking of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, which rage on "with no end in sight." Turtle Fan 23:44, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

Lizards and Jews
The Lizard embassy to Germany routinely protested the Holocaust, yes, and the Jews trusted them. . . about as well as they trusted anyone, after the war. It's been a long time since I read Colonization but I remember that Moishe Russie twice lobbied Atvar to do something to help Jews in Europe. One involved helping out Goldfarb. I don't remember what the other one was. Atvar agreed to do the lesser of the two but not the one which called for greater effort, though it was still extremely little effort for the most powerful being on the planet.

Germany wanted its Jews gone: preferably dead, but it wouldn't have broken the peace with the Race to go after them. Probably not, anyway; and if it did it would have gotten its ass kicked. The other powers would have been less likely still to support them in that goal than they had the goal of taking Poland. The Race wanted humans to like it, and if it couldn't get all of them it wanted enough to shift around and balance out the ones who didn't. The best supply for ingratiated human subjects was people who'd been abused by human governments, and no one had been more abused than European Jews. And they wanted the Holocaust to end. If I were Atvar I would have just offered to take the Jews off the Germans' hands, and the Brits' once they started going down the same road. Turtle Fan 19:34, April 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * That certainly would have been a good political trick; I wonder if HT didn't use because the US, etc, refused safe harbor to Jews in OTL before and during the war.


 * There's also the issue that the Jews of Europe often identifed themselves by their country first, or placed their nationality on an even platform with their idenity as Jews. Atvar could have made the offer, without many Jews taking him up on it.  Then you'd have the governments of Germany and Britain deciding whether or not to start expelling their Jews and looking like jerks. Atvar would certainly have gained some political capital by that offer, anyway.  TR 20:02, April 19, 2010 (UTC)