Sadly, the World War 2 universe was recently bought up by Disney, which has plans to reboot it, possibly eliminating or greatly altering fan favorites like Erwin Rommel or the Yugoslav partisans.

Option B: George Lucas never divorces his first wife, who was responsible for editing the original Star Wars from a 155 movie into a 180 one. Because of his successful marriage, Lucas has somebody he trusts who can edit his creative ideas into a more refined product. Not only are Episodes 5 and 6 even better, but the prequel films are well-received as well. Lucas never becomes hated by Star Wars fans, and never sells the franchise to Disney.However, he and his family have made it clear they think further spin-offs would ruin the franchise, so they have made it clear that no additional Star Wars films will be made.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35036871)

Option B: American historians, inspired by “Hidden Figures,” now credit a black “hidden figure” for the achievements of dozens of famous white Americans. George Washington’s military tactics are credited to his valet, William Lee, many phrases in the Declaration of Independence are attributed to Jefferson household slave Mary Hemmings, and so on. Like with Option A, the evidence these hidden figures deserve substantial credit is limited, but it has become extremely popular to teach about them in school, and many of them receive public monuments, Oscar-winning biopics, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35036882)

Even though both sides of World War 2 had epic facial hair, a side effect of the Nazis’ use of it is that mutton chops, long bears, and other flamboyant facial hair are associated with far-right political groups. Ironically, Orthodox Jews are sometimes attacked by antifa who assume their beards are a radical fascist statement.

Option B: A popular series of Victorian novels and their film adaptations spark a huge revival of 1700s fashion trends, which remain the dominant style today. Biglawyers all wear breeches instead of trousers to the office, and an elaborate knee-length justaucorps is a must. High-status men powder their hair and wear wigs for formal occasions, providing a major boon to baldmos. However, there is one quirk: Due to a historical error in that popular novel series, it is believed that people in the 1700s powdered their wigs whatever color they wanted, rather than specifically white. So people today routinely sport brown, pink, or neon-green wigs, even in serious contexts. Historians were recently frustrated by a television show which portrays George Washington with a dark purple wig.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35036970)

Option B: Believing that the Tiananmen Square protests were caused by Western culture, the Chinese government bans all Western movies from theaters. While China still has a robust piracy scene, this keeps American filmmakers from filling movies with content intended to appeal to the China market. So instead, studios are trying hard to pander to AFRICANS, in a simultaneous effort to attract actual Africans and guilt-ridden white libs. Gratuitous film scenes are set in Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Lagos. African exchange students with names like “God’s Power” and “Goodluck” appear in films set in America. In the film version of The Martian, NASA is aided by the Congolese Space Program rather than the Chinese. Most people consider this trend really annoying, but it seems to be working so studios keep doing it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037018)

Option B: In an effort to distinguish America from Britain, America’s founding fathers enthusiastically promoted the adoption of American Indian cultural practices. This has lasted to the present, with a variety of effects. Houses often resemble Indian lodges and teepees. While Christianity remains the country’s main religion, more than ten million people practice Indian religions and it isn’t considered exotic. Instead of hitting up nightclubs, it’s common to attend Friday-night “powwows” with your bros. Having Indian blood is considered prestigious, so behavior like Elizabeth Warren’s is common.

In addition, due to more humane policies in the 1800s, Indian tribal governments control more territory and have significant wealth and power. On the downside, they tend to be corrupt and anti-democratic, and there is a fierce political debate over whether they should be abolished.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037078)

Excellent hypo, ty

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037147)

Option B: Thanks to the appointment of strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court, the SCOTUS issued an unexpected ruling that, under the Coinage and Contract Clauses, neither the federal nor state governments are allowed to create paper or electronic currency. Instead, official currency must be in coin, and must be made of gold or silver. As a result, U.S. currency still utilizes gold and silver coinage with all the hassle that implies. An attempt at a unified private paper money system run by large banks fails, so instead America has a dizzying array of dozens of different paper currencies, offered not just by banks but also by major companies from General Motors to Amazon. XO has thousands of threads speculating on which paper currencies one should invest in.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037108)

Honestly, it would not be much different than my life is now. My wife has gone through phases of wanting an expensive home in Ventura county already. Was pushing to make an offer on a foreclosure near the beach there a couple months ago.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037201)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megali_Idea#/media/File:ParisPeace-Venizelos-Map.png

180, right? Not necessarily. While Greece seizes these lands, there is no forcible expulsion of Muslims. While many voluntarily leave for the rump Turkish state, not all do, so Greece has a substantial Muslim minority throughout the 20th century.

The issue, of course, is that by 2017, this “substantial” minority is getting pretty big, and now is now about 30% of the population. Religious violence in Greece is routine and the Hagia Sophia was recently badly damaged by a suicide bomb that killed 78 people. Tons of Turkish illegal immigrants live in the country, and spread from there to the rest of Europe. On the plus side, Greece’s obvious difficulties have made the rest of Europe slightly more wary of mass Muslim migration, though they haven’t yet reached the point of actually blocking it.

Also, ethnic Greek expats around the world are considered a substantially more snooty bunch than they are today.

Option B: Italian unification totally failed. The Italian peninsula is still a bizarre hodgepodge of republics and tiny principalities. Some are in the EU, some aren’t, and traveling through Italy is even more of a mess than it is now as a result. Many states either had or still have bizarre governments; Florence’s communist regime only collapsed in 2006. The Papacy still owns most of Lazio; by now the Pope is a constitutional monarch who cedes most authority to an elected prime minister, though the Pope can still veto legislation he regards as incompatible with a Christian state.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037310)

Also, in order to placate the Dutch minority, Super-Spain’s government fought hard against the decolonization of the East Indies. As a result, Bali, New Guinea, and several other small Indonesian islands are still owned by Super-Spain, and the European territories have a substantial blob of Indonesian immigrants. Also, Indonesia had a communist government from 1977 to 1992.

Option B: France decisively won the War of the Spanish Succession, and was able to create a unified Bourbon monarchy. The monarchy survived the French revolution in weakened constitutional form, and Spanish and Catalan culture were both substantially Francofied during the early 1800s. Today, France remains Europe’s most powerful state, and French language and culture compete with the Anglosphere for global supremacy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037749)

While the arena has lasted for more than 2000 years, though, its days could be numbered. Many libs are starting to campaign against it on the grounds that it is barbaric, and while they remain a minority, that minority is growing. Also, there was recently a major controversy where several black gladiators refused to salute the American flag before beginning their mortal combat.

Option B: Early-modern animal-based sports and games never lose popularity. You can still go watch a bear-baiting on a Friday night, and both cockfighting and dogfighting have a major television presence. Goose-pulling (where you try to yank off the greased head of a live goose) is a popular Olympic sport. Instead of going to a bar, one of the best ways to meet chicks is to go fox-tossing, where you pair off with women and use a sheet to throw foxes in the air (not flame this was a real sport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_tossing )

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35037860)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35038402)

Option B: The Confederate States of America win their independence in the Civil War. However, things don’t go well for it. Under international pressure, slavery is finally abolished in 1895. Due to different birthrates, low immigration from Europe, a brief stint of importing additional slaves from abroad, and the annexation of Santo Domingo in 1877, the Confederacy is majority-black by 1920. The country loses a war with Spain over Cuba in 1905, and generally lags way behind the North economically thanks to its continued agricultural focus (the boll weevil doesn't help either). In the 1970s it lapses into full-blown racial strife and there are horrific massacres of both whites and blacks. The conflict is resolved by granting more political rights to blacks, but in response many whites emigrate. Today, the CSA is about 75% black and is an unstable basketcase. Amnesty International believes there is a major genocide risk for both major populations.

The United States of America, on the other hand, is only 2.5 percent black, though there is a rapidly-growing illegal immigrant population arriving from the CSA.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35038162)

Flash forward the present, and America has only about 230 million people, but is still overwhelmingly Protestant and Western European. The black population is proportionally slightly higher, and the U.S. leans somewhat more to the left.

Option B: Douglas MacArthur runs for president in 1952 and wins as a conservative Republican. He aggressively escalates the Korean War. At the cost of 250,000 U.S. lives, the U.S. unites Korea, and while it doesn’t overthrow Mao’s regime it fucks up China pretty hard: Tibet and Xinjiang become independent, and a non-Communist South China is established in four southern provinces following a U.S.-backed invasion from Taiwan. China remains divided today, and South China is somewhat less wealthy than Korea (which is about as well-off as modern S. Korea).

Thanks to all the destruction from the war, the U.S. accepts a large number of Chinese and Korean immigrants, so the U.S. is now about 15% Asian.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35038391)

Option B: The Great Western Schism is never resolved, so there are two papacies in Avignon and Rome competing for the allegiance of the world’s Catholics. The Reformation still happens, but is substantially weaker because the Roman papacy incorporates many reformist ideas in order to sustain the support of Germany princes. After 500 years, there still is almost nothing to distinguish the two doctrinally, but each papacy still holds that adherence to the other is totally heretical. With so little separating the two institutions religiously, support for each papacy has become associated with other political causes that really have nothing to do with religious causes. Irish nationalists support Avignon because England has historically backed Rome. Socialists and republicans tend to support the Roman papacy, while monarchists and capitalists are more supportive of Avignon (which was closely tied to the French monarchy for centuries). In the United States, Dwight Eisenhower was the first Avignonist president and this was a major breakthrough in American race relations.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35039628)

Latin never quite entrenches itself as a shared language, but it's an official language of the EU and most bureaucrats speak it, and a sizable minority of progressives insist on raising their children to speak it as their first language. Left-wing jurisdictions almost always mandate it as part of the school curriculum, while some conservative areas have banned it outright.

Option B: Nationalist conservatives in the West develop a strong political attachment to traditional musical instruments. Rejecting the standardized symphony orchestra as the work of an internationalist elite, these conservatives insist that children primarily learn to play music on what they regard as the traditional instruments of their people. In Finland, almost everyone learns to play the kantele. In Ireland, harps dominate. In Wales, the Crwth is a big deal. These preferences can create some odd political divisions. For instance, conservatives almost always enroll their children in harpsichord lessons, while getting piano lessons instead is a definite SHITLIB tell.

The upside of this is that popular music around the world is extremely varied, though of somewhat lower-quality, since old instruments are often obsolete for a reason.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35039869)

I'd prefer to preserve the political valence of Latin as is, and I'm okay with somewhat lower-quality music if it is more varied since, as a practical matter, the quality of music is only relevant to people ages about 14-24.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35040965)

In reference to this bizarre obsession of the left, XO nicknames left-wingers "pooplibs."

Option B: In a spirit of vindictiveness against Texas, U.S. libs become obsessed with "forgetting the Alamo." It initially is half-serious and half-joke, but this being libs the purity spiral quickly grows out of control, and soon left-wing websites argue that mentioning a "certain religious structure in San Antonio" is linked to fascism and white supremacy. School textbooks in lib states are purged of references to the Alamo, unhinged Twitter and Facebook mods censor photos of it, and a few people have lost their jobs because visits to the Alamo that are now viewed in a very different light.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35039990)

Thanks to the victory, Charles achieves his goal of total victory in the Great Northern War, and Sweden's Baltic empire is not just preserved but enlarged. Sweden ends up fighting and winning a few more wars against Russia to preserve its empire, which causes it to view itself as a bulwark of Western, Protestant Europe against exotic foreign enemies. Even today, modern Sweden tends to be quite xenophobic; it refused to join the European Union because it would not accept free movement into Sweden, and it has come under fire for refusing to accept any migrants from the Middle East.

Option B: The Royal Navy catches and sinks the Goeben and Breslau at the start of World War I, and Winston Churchill doesn't alienate the Ottoman Empire by seizing the two dreadnoughts they purchased. These two factors are just enough to keep the Ottoman Empire out of World War I, and as a result the empire lasts until after World War II. At this point, pan-Arab nationalism becomes too powerful a force, and major uprisings occur against Turkish rule. Eventually, Turkey cedes independence to Western Armenia and Kurdistan (the Armenian Genocide never happens here), as well as a vast Arab state to the south which eventually unites with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Israel does not exist, but many Jews do live in Palestine as part of this Arab state. This enlarged Arab state is extremely wealthy and powerful because of the sheer amount of oil it controls. Radical Islam is less of a problem overall, but political Islam is formidable and there are major worries that a Muslim Brotherhood party will win or seize power and turn the country into a superpower theocracy overnight.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3843608&forum_id=2#35040340)