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[KevinRo]

Interesting. I just don't see how this will keep the same fan base together from GoT. Honestly, it seems like WestWorld might have that in check. Also, if anyone cares, I read Turtledove's books as a teenager. Really cool to think about alternative history as a kid. I had a lot of weird reactions from people when I told them the premise of the books. Didn't realize what a fucked up thing they were thinking. As if I wanted the South to have won. It's super fucking cool to think about how precious our country was at multiple points in history.

 

[fallengorn]

David & Dan running this show? Gooood luck.

 

[KefkaPalazzo]

That concept has a ton of potential. Love alt-history anything.

Just execute it well.

 

[Indrid Cold1]

These guys are pretty weak writers. If it wasn't for the book ip and big budget fantasy I wouldn't be watching game of thrones

Giving them a show removed from either is uninteresting

? "If it wasn't for utterly everything that makes Game of Thrones, I wouldn't be watching Game of Thrones"

Come on lad

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Not necessarily. I guess in their alternate universe, the North collapsed in the 1st war and was occupied, and then tried to secede from the Confederacy themselves years later, unsuccessfully.

Whats the source for this?

 

[Apt101]

Sounds awesome. Not exactly fresh territory in the alt history genre, but it's D and D so like Square I'll please me excited.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

The logistics of this universe already make no sense at all.

I guess that's to be expected from the guys who invented the teleporter in Westeros.

A lot of alternate history falls apart when you think about. There is a reason that the North Won the way it did.

 

[RedSwirl]

Actually, what's the consensus on alt history civil war stories anyway?

I've read a couple here and there, but they're just small stories on the alternate history wiki (the other one) and a person who makes cool alt-history maps on Deviantart. Actually here's a recent one she did on the Civil War. It has the CSA collapsing by around 1900. I think she did another one where a worse Bleeding Kansas has the Civil War kicking off a bit earlier before Lincoln could get in office and just being managed much worse by the Union. In that one I think she has the Confederacy eventually doing away with slavery itself.

Somewhere else I read an article suggesting the Confederacy could have "won" by fighting defensively instead of going out to try to destroy the Union army, that the Confederacy didn't really have to win, it just had to not lose.

Anyway, I don't actually watch GoT and I'm over slave drama.

 

[Poppy]

put me in the initial "this sounds like it could (and likely will) go very badly" camp

 

[molnizzle]

Sounds interesting... but man, this is a hell of a time to attempt something like this. It would need to be handled perfectly, and judging by their track record on Thrones...

 

[Goodstyle]

I swear to God if this show's main lead is a white person, I won't just not watch this show, I will actively despise it. You just know they're gonna put a woke white lady Confederate as the saviour of black people. Expect countless brown hands reaching for her pale ass body in awe.

 

[Incandenza]

I certainly hope they don't feel pressured to produce another twisty, high-stakes, violent pulpfest with this. With a concept this charged you need to be really thoughtful about how you include violence and what it means, which is something I'm not sure they'll pull off.

 

[excelsiorlef]

A lot of people hated Skyler despite being Walts victim while also praising Walt as a bad ass. OP clearly forgets though all of Skylers own wrongdoings that could have made her an unsympathetic character despite not having done the extreme things Walter did.

But it's fiction so really people are okay to like whatever characters they want.

That is besides my point

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Actually, what's the consensus on alt history civil war stories anyway?

I've read a couple here and there, but they're just small stories on the alternate history wiki (the other one) and a person who makes cool alt-history maps on Deviantart. Actually here's a recent one she did on the Civil War. It has the CSA collapsing by around 1900. I think she did another one where a worse Bleeding Kansas has the Civil War kicking off a bit earlier before Lincoln could get in office and just being managed much worse by the Union. In that one I think she has the Confederacy eventually doing away with slavery itself.

Somewhere else I read an article suggesting the Confederacy could have "won" by fighting defensively instead of going out to try to destroy the Union army, that the Confederacy didn't really have to win, it just had to not lose.

Anyway, I don't actually watch GoT and I'm over slave drama.

Harry Turtledove's the Southern Victory (Timeline-191) series and the single Guns of the South novel are the only ones I've read. GotS is time travel stuff and TL191 is where the Union failed to get the plans for the invasion of Maryland like they did in the real timeline.

 

[shira]

fake edit: Oh that civil war

 

[Buckle]

Not looking forward to the scene where a slave owner watches two slave girls go at it while he explains his backstory becuase they think the audience is too stupid to follow a five minute conversation without violence or tits on the screen.

Spoiler

Love GOT but will never stop giving them shit over dumb stuff like that.

 

[Dysun]

Subject matter and D&D don't mix. They have have the subtlety and nuance of the cousin Tyrion describes in jail

clunk clunk

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Actually, what's the consensus on alt history civil war stories anyway?

I've read a couple here and there, but they're just small stories on the alternate history wiki (the other one) and a person who makes cool alt-history maps on Deviantart. Actually here's a recent one she did on the Civil War. It has the CSA collapsing by around 1900. I think she did another one where a worse Bleeding Kansas has the Civil War kicking off a bit earlier before Lincoln could get in office and just being managed much worse by the Union. In that one I think she has the Confederacy eventually doing away with slavery itself.

Somewhere else I read an article suggesting the Confederacy could have "won" by fighting defensively instead of going out to try to destroy the Union army, that the Confederacy didn't really have to win, it just had to not lose.

Anyway, I don't actually watch GoT and I'm over slave drama.

Lee's strategy was a defensive war and not an aggressive war. Gettysburg was a mistakes because it went against Lee's overall plan to win the war.

 

[Brakke]

The logistics of this universe already make no sense at all.

I guess that's to be expected from the guys who invented the teleporter in Westeros.

GRR Martin had a teleporter in the books. How else can Daario get from Meereen to the Iron Islands in time to win the Kingsmoot?

 

[HStallion]

I can't wait for all the scenes in whore houses, the needless rapes, and so on.

 

[Rumblebones]

I gotta pass on this on a conceptual level. I want to see black people in empowered roles. I am. Or saying "enough" to slavery stories, but I am sick of living in a world where generally novel acting roles are given to white people.

 

[Straight Edge]

But will Michael K Williams be in this?

 

[Gaius Cassius]

Wow, this sounds like shit. At first I had hoped that it was based on the Turtledove novels about a time traveler going back to the Civil War and arming the South with AK47's. Causing the union to lose. The books covered the aftermath of it, with Lincoln and the union fleeing to Canada. I mean, the sci-fi element to that would have been vastly better than this.

 

[jfkgoblue]

ah, so that's what goes in that thread. At least in the TV thread we talk about the show.

The two threads are pretty much the same, the unmarked book spoilers just has a little book discussion sprinkled in.

 

[Nairume]

Actually, what's the consensus on alt history civil war stories anyway?

I've read a couple here and there, but they're just small stories on the alternate history wiki (the other one) and a person who makes cool alt-history maps on Deviantart. Actually here's a recent one she did on the Civil War. It has the CSA collapsing by around 1900. I think she did another one where a worse Bleeding Kansas has the Civil War kicking off a bit earlier before Lincoln could get in office and just being managed much worse by the Union. In that one I think she has the Confederacy eventually doing away with slavery itself.

Here was one I did a while back

Let's make the assumption that the CSA manages to persist into modern times without getting absorbed back into the Union or annexed by any other world powers. For shits, let's also make the assumption that world history generally progresses as it did otherwise (namely, the world wars, post-war decolonization, and 20th century industrial globalization). Admittedly, as a historian, I feel like this is a silly exercise to speculate on what would have been but whatever. Let's speculate based on what we know of how things worked for the past 150 years.

Chattel slavery likely would have persisted into the late 19th/early 20th century before external pressures would have led for it to finally abandon slavery in that form. It gets replaced by the sort of forced labor that sprung up and replaced slavery in colonial territories. It's still basically slavery.

WW1 happens and forced labor technically goes away after the League of Nations shows that it's not too keen on it (recognizing it as being slavery by another name), but loopholes present in the articles allow for forced labor to exist if needed for national infrastructure projects and only if there is some form of compensation. CSA suddenly announces a bunch of "national" infrastructure projects. Compensation is interpreted as just enough to keep workers from dying in theory (tons of people still starve and die due to poor housing).

WW2 happens and the UN forms. The forced labor loophole is closed. CSA adopts sharecropping and factory town economics, which is basically what they were already doing under the loophole. This is largely similar to late 19th century US, but Iet's go ahead and assume that the CSA isn't going to be friendly towards unions and progressivism. Since there is obviously going to be a significant population of poor white workers, racism will still be strongly promoted as a way of keeping poor white workers from teaming up with poor black worker in attempting to make any significant change.

Throughout the late 20th century, human rights fight for improvement for workers in the CSA, but the best that they can do is that business owners have to pay their workers in real money. It does nothing to change wages or the economic disparity and living conditions. Apartheid policies are strong, but are maybe starting to weaken up at the end of the 20th century because South Africa finally gives up on it. Racism is still relatively strong and very promoted in order to keep the workers divided.

Modern CSA in this scenario is basically a third world country where a landed elite is propped up by international corporations taking advantage of a massive underclass desperate for employment.

Obviously pins on history otherwise playing out roughly the same, though we probably would have had at least the one World War regardless of the state of the um....States. Either way, I don't really see a CSA that avoids looking like that in some form without a lot of silly hand wringing to try and make it sound like they would have managed to develop into a stable global power.

 

[Azzanadra]

But will Michael K Williams be in this?

Him and Idris Elba.

Conceptually it sounds cool because I love alt history, but D&D are terrible. You want the good show but you need the bad writers.

 

[RDreamer]

The two threads are pretty much the same, the unmarked book spoilers just has a little book discussion sprinkled in.

A little? I checked it out over the last few days and it seems the book thread is almost all comparisons to the book and/or speculation of future books. As a show watcher I'm glad the two are separated. If/when I read all the books it'd be nice to hop in and discuss over there, but I like discussion that focuses on the actual show rather than so much comparisons.

 

[Discotheque]

? "If it wasn't for utterly everything that makes Game of Thrones, I wouldn't be watching Game of Thrones"

Come on lad

I watch a lot of stuff solely because of the people behind the production is more what I mean by that.

In this case they're a big turnoff

 

[AoM]

Lee's strategy was a defensive war and not an aggressive war. Gettysburg was a mistakes because it went against Lee's overall plan to win the war.

Huh?

Have you seen the number of casualties from his battles?

I'm with Gallagher on his goal: to inflict as much bloodshed as possible, to lower US morale so much that the civilian populations no longer supported the war.

And he went north to forage in the Cumberland Valley (knowing that the Army of the Potomac had to follow).

 

[Monocle]

Ehh, I hope this doesn't turn into wank material for conservatives with nostalgia for the time you could openly treat black people worse than animals.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Huh?

Have you seen the number of casualties from his battles?

I'm with Gallagher on his goal: to inflict as much bloodshed as possible, to lower US morale so much that the civilian populations no longer supported the war.

And he went north to forage in the Cumberland Valley (knowing that the Army of the Potomac had to follow).

I should have been clear on that. He wanted the Union to come to him and not the reverse.

 

[Merc_]

Oh boy, I sure do never get tired of stories that involve black people in chains!

 

[Furyous]

*groans intensely*

Every black person that stars in this deserves a permanent mark of shame on their career history.

I am not looking forward to this at all. You don't see other people being forced to relive disastrous alternate history on television akin to this but everyone labels this as art.

Am the only person that can see this being a certain politician's favorite show?

 

[Mike Works]

You don't see other people being forced to relive disastrous alternate history on television akin to this but everyone labels this as art

What do you call The Man in the High Castle?

 

[PhineBuyM3]

Can we get a tv show about the moors whooping the europeans ass instead.

 

[AoM]

I should have been clear on that. He wanted the Union to come to him and not the reverse.

Oh ok.

To an extent, yeah. He knew he had to keep moving.

 

[Yabberwocky]

Eurrrgh, HBO, no.

If Game of Thrones is any indication, I expect this to be handled with the grace of a rhino on rollerblades.

Lawd, yep.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

fake edit: Oh that civil war

To be honest, I actually thought the exact same thing at first.

 

[Busty]

HBO has given a straight-to-series order to Confederate from Emmy-winning GoT creators-writers-producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss. The show ”chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War...,

Stop.

I'm in.


EDIT - Woah. Evidently I did not 'read the room' before posting. If anything this reads like a Liberal's wet dream. I know it has some very obvious 'triggers' for people (for want of a better word) but there's literally no way HBO are pandering to the red states with a show like this.

 

[Big Baybee]

Nah. NAH.

 

[Erevador]

I mean, more power to them... but this one's not gonna fly with me.

Game of Thrones is depressing enough. This will be another level.

 

[Mr. X]

No don't give these folks ideas.

 

[lightskintwin]

*groans intensely*

Every black person that stars in this deserves a permanent mark of shame on their career history.

I am not looking forward to this at all. You don't see other people being forced to relive disastrous alternate history on television akin to this but everyone labels this as art.

Am the only person that can see this being a certain politician's favorite show?

It depends on how it's all executed.

SMH @ saying any black person that stars in this deserves a permanent mark of shame on their career history when opportunities are few and far between especially to be on show of this prestige.

There are plenty of Black shows and/or Black led shows on TV right now, if you're not interested in this, then don't watch it.

If it handles the subject matter poorly, then it deserves all the criticism, but until then I'll wait to see and watch the final product before coming to any judgement.

 

[Bronx-Man]

Can we at least a couple of black characters on GoT in exchange for this?

 

[excelsiorlef]

Stop.

I'm in.


EDIT - Woah. Evidently I did not 'read the room' before posting. If anything this reads like a Liberal's wet dream. I know it has some very obvious 'triggers' for people (for want of a better word) but there's literally no way HBO are pandering to the red states with a show like this.

How is the North lost a liberal's wet dream.

 

[Claude Augario]

I'd have more faith in a Save the Pearls adaptation than this shit. A talented writer could turn that into satire.

 

[molnizzle]

EDIT - Woah. Evidently I did not 'read the room' before posting. If anything this reads like a Liberal's wet dream. I know it has some very obvious 'triggers' for people (for want of a better word) but there's literally no way HBO are pandering to the red states with a show like this.

I can see them going all in with it. The Confederate president is probably gonna look and sound a whole lot like Trump.

If they don't do a "build the wall" sub-plot they're fucking up.

 

[wisdom0wl]

Can it end with the south getting nuked in the 40s/WW2? Like the whole place glassed? I'm lukewarm on this.

 

[Robot Pants]

Sounds more interesting than The Deuce!

 

[Dhx]

Can it end with the south getting nuked in the 40s/WW2? Like the whole place glassed? I'm lukewarm on this.

Because that would be great for the northern sates. Really?