What doesn’t kill you makes you... stranger
I'm interested in writing a story that involves this trope, but I'm not sure how to implement it while also having it make some sense. Doesn't help that I don't know much about politics. Any tips?
Edited by TheOtakuNinja Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?
—blinks—
Well, now I just got a pretty innocuous edit reverted by a moderator with no explanation. I should add that I obeyed the dictate by Fast Eddie and did not make any substantive change in the Real Life section—all I did this time was re-word the line referencing the Civil War to something that I thought was more punchy and concise. And it got reverted, without explanation. Weird. I guess the message is that I am not to edit this trope at all—but then that doesn't explain why my edit adding the Alaska Independence Party was allowed to stand. Oh well.
Edited by gallium Hide / Show Replies
Don't read too much into it.
I rarely visit the forums to avoid the cynicism ooze.
Don't read too much into it.
I rarely visit the forums to avoid the cynicism ooze.
I just took a lot of material out of the Real Life section. Many of the entries in that section, which was quite long, were about new states being formed by subdivision of states or certain parts of adjoining states combining to make a new state. This is not what this trope is about—this is about the United States being broken up into multiple independent nations. For example, the Confederacy was a definite real-life instance of this trope, an independent nation breaking off from the USA. The State of Jefferson, which was also mentioned in this section, was not any kind of attempt to make an independent nation, but a movement to create a 49th state (there were 48 at the time) from northern California and southern Oregon). Therefore I removed the section about Jefferson and many other parts of that section which referred to new states being created.
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The divisions need not be nations. Not sure how you got that idea. It is the Divided States of America. I restored the material
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
I got the idea from the trope description.
A highly symbolic move is to break up the Union.
That has one specific meaning, to break up the United States into multiple independent nations. If I chop up California into two new states or make a new state out of the Chicago-Milwaukee metro area, the Union is still intact and (presumably) prosperous, it just has more states in the flag. And I would submit to you that the word to italicize if one is going to italicize a word in the title is "divided". It's the Divided States of America.
In any case, I'm not going to argue with the guy who owns the website so I guess the page stays the way it is. However, if the trope is being used in the manner that you write above then the explanation at the top needs to be revised and clarified to make that meaning clear.
The "Playing With" folder provides further evidence that Fast Eddie was incorrect to revert my edit.
- Basic Trope: The United States splits into two or more nations
That is clear and unambiguous and means that all the examples I deleted of internal divisions amongst states—California splitting in two, the proposed state of Jefferson, Michigan's UP forming its own state—do not belong in this article. Scroll down the "Playing With" page and every line item is some variation on "The US is divided", which is clearly not applicable to, say, making a new state called North California.
Further evidence—and in other circumstances, I'd regard this as the clincher—is provided by the "Averted" entry under that same "Playing With" page.
- Averted: The US is still one nation with 50 (or more) states.
So scenarios where the USA forms more states but is still united is directly stated to be an aversion of this trope. Thus that material should not be on this page, and Fast Eddie was incorrect to restore it.
However, while all tropers are alike some tropers are more alike than others, and Fast Eddie has decided that the material I deleted—Real Life instances of division of a state into new states or creation of a new state from parts of adjoining states, with the USA remaining intact as a nation—should stay on the page. Given this it seems like the thing to do is to rewrite the trope to conform to Fast Eddie's desire for what is listed as examples. So the trope definition needs to be revised and clarified to state that internal divisions within the United States count as examples, and the "Averted" section under the "Playing With" tab needs to be revised.
I completely agree with gallium. It is clear from all of the introductory text that this is about the US breaking up, not internal reorganization. At no point did the examples I removed include the federal government not being in charge, nor the people cease being American citizens, or any thing like that. That's explicitly what this trope is about.
I'm thinking of writing a story that would be a Deconstruction of certain expectations of this Trope. An Alternate history where The South won the Civil war, but 50 years latter Slavery was peacefully phased out (Something which many Historians agree was already inevitable) and in fact people of African descent have more freed in the Confederacy then they do in The Union.
Partly because Blacks are less of a minority there and so have more political influence. But also because certain Bitter attitudes of Modern Southerns I believe are more the result of Reconstruction then of them inheriting Pre-Civil war attitudes. It was the rich Plantation owners who wanted Slavery before the Civil War, most soldiers fighting in it didn't understand or care what the reasons where, they where defending their homeland from an Invasion.
If someone's already done something like that I'd be interested in knowing.
Edited by MithrandirOlorin
LimitedPatients
Does this trope count if they achieved independence from Britain, but don't get much further before splitting up?
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Internet Critic & More
I definitely believe that BC would join with Washington, as we feed so much off of each other by the border.
However, the 'liberalness' of that new nation would be up for debate, seeing how only the heavily urban areas of the PNW (Mainly Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, & (I think) Vancouver) are dominated by liberal, and for the currently-US cities, they still hold a fairly large amount of conservatives. All of the rural areas - which there is a lot of - would be conservative and would fight against the liberals. If it didn't become a split nation (like current US) or a moderate nation, I would have to say that it would split up further.
PNW politics is complicated.
"I'm the Internet Critic, and <insert slogan here>."
Ok, the fact that everyone assumes that the northern states would join Canada just bugs me. Sorry Canadians, you are great, but any state in the USA would be far too individualistic and proud to go join another country if they hypothetically broke off of this one.
Can this trope apply to other countries? The example I'm trying to place has Cornwall breaking off from England to become a republic
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