AU Fiction
The wiki is confirmedly awesome. Having a knowledge base really helps, so now I have a great repository of Zalamath history, which prior to last week hadn’t been detailed at all
Now, on to business. Two things have compelled me to become interested in today’s subject: V For Vendetta and Lux. V For Vendetta is, first and foremost, a graphic novel written by Alan Moore (which I haven’t read). However, they recently made a movie out of it, which I saw and liked a lot. Now, it’s got themes of oppression, identity, and other stuff, but one of the things I really liked about it was the backstory, which has stuff about Britain’s descent into fascism over the course of the early twenty-first century. Basically an alternate future-history type thing.
And Lux… well, Lux is a super-addictive shareware Risk clone with a huge wealth of maps. I’ve been playing the assorted maps, and wondering what it would be like to actually have a direct narrative of a global war based on location and history, rather than just fighting over Scandinavia or Maine. And here’s where the alternate history part comes in: I don’t think it would be interesting if it was set in this world, so I’ve made some history changes, the idea of which were inspired by V For Vendetta. (Not that it’s about fascism. I just like alternate universe stuff.)
My idea for the backstory is that when Australia was first discovered and used as a penal colony, a man named Anthony Cartwright was framed as a first-class thief and sent there to work. Of course, being framed, he was more than a bit vengeful, but couldn’t do anything more than stew and build bridges for years. That is, until those wacky Americans, and those zany French, had their revolutions. Now, words of this got around, and eventually he started preaching to his fellow inmates about prison uprising. This was more successful then he expected when the surrounding Aboriginies, eager to reclaim Port Jackson, heard about this from inmates and agreed to help. There was a quick revolt, and before the British could send a fleet, Port Jackson had been stormed and a well-defended base had been established, using stolen items.
The Britsh realized it would be too much work to retake and rebuild, and having just established colonies in other areas of the Pacific, weren’t hurt much financially, so they agreed to a peace treaty and in a few years entered into a calm and content trade relationship. Cartwright was hailed as a hero, and the Aboriginies were embraced as brothers and sisters.
When the Philippines, and Indonesia, and Cambodia and Thailand all came out of colonial governments and needed help, Australia was there to help, having just picked up a lot of US work in the Pacific war against the Japanese. The Pacific islands joined in a weak union with Australia, and eventually this coalesced into a super-nation known as the Oceanic League, encompassing Indonesia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, and most of Southeast Asia. This rivaled the US and the USSR in power, and eventually, by way of seeming like a threat, forced the European Union into country status quite quickly. Peace reigned for numerous years – no Vietnam or Korean War – until the early 21st century.
Which is when my story picks up. The only problem is… I don’t know what to put in it…
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