TTU: Era: Schism And Stalemate

Era: Schism And Stalemate

Eras of TTU

Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Pre-Changes
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Dragon In The Streets (12/96)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! The Shock Settles In (12/96)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Nation On The Brink (1/97)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Schism And Stalemate (1/97)
5 From Causes To Crusades (2-8/97)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Winter Of Discontent (8-12/97)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! A New World Order (1998+)
Sorry, but you did not specify a color for highlighting! Over The Horizon (2007+)

Thursday, January 9, 1997 - Wednesday, January 29, 1997

Starts with: The Meeting
Ends with: Brogi Accident

Era Summary

The combined voice of two thousand theris and mages gave one response to The Executive Order: "No. And if you make us, there will be war."

There very nearly was.

But ultimately, The Meeting's show of unity and resistance held. Both serious analysts and popular media panicked, fixating on wild but suddenly plausible scenarios about teleported nuclear bombs, shapeshifting terrorists and even (less plausibly) pets rising up against their owners. Redwing promised Americans that theris would take no action unless the government did something stupid, and milked the controversy over the Order for all it was worth.

Americans don't take well to being threatened, so the government initially rattled a few sabers -- but the White House was ultimately unwilling to start a war that could end with the Capitol a smoking crater. Redwing refused to budge, and the Order was rescinded as gracefully as circumstances would allow.

It was an incredible victory for theri rights, but it came at a high cost. The brinkmanship poisoned the political atmosphere, giving anti-theri groups a rallying cry. Another weekend of unrest rippled across the nation, with demonstrations taking a darker and more directly anti-theri edge. Hate crimes, too, saw an immediate spike.

Politicians, bowing to popular anger, scrambled to pass nakedly discriminatory and restrictive laws -- dancing the razor's edge of theri war and human uprising. Redwing proved equally unwilling to start a war that would decimate the country he loved and permanently stain theris as mass murderers, and backed down himself after issuing a few veiled warnings.

As is usually the case with symbolic laws, politicians' solutions were largely unconstitutional or unenforceable. Ultimately, courts would largely block the most excessive of the new laws, and rein in the rest. But while those challenges were being brought, the atmosphere for theris was decidedly more ominous, and the national mood was accordingly much more tense. Those with the greatest stake in the fight were fully mobilized, not wanting to risk outright conflict but not willing to back down. The standoff between theris and humanity's self-styled defenders would remain motionless for weeks and bitter for months.

Against this backdrop, SANE and The Guardian Knights would coalesce -- the first of many human organizations driven by a theri-related agenda. Others would follow. The Meeting was a landmark that spurred many to action.

This era's end was a landmark, too -- of an entirely different sort. Denny Brogi's teleportation accident at first received very little attention, and was seen as a mere curiosity by those who did notice. But that one moment of carelessness would cascade into The Death Of Teleportation, and by raising fear of safety concerns, would broadly alter the magical -- and political -- landscape.

Major Events

The Meeting

Writing Tips

While Dragon In The Streets may have caused more uncertainty and even panic, this era is the leader in terms of raw fear. Humans fixate on the threat of Redwing's war; theris fixate on the threat of internment, and later the political backlash. With the stakes so high, everyone finds it easy to assume the worst of their opponents.

History would definitely record The Meeting as a two-edged sword. It prevented an era of open theri repression (and possibly even a broader slide into fascism), but it also left Americans frightened of revolution -- and seeing therianthropes as a threatening force beyond anyone's control. The wording of Redwing's declaration, with its mention of war, was ready evidence for those looking for evil intentions; Redwing and other major theri figures would spend the next few months trying to fight fundamentalists' and reactionaries' "I told you so"s.

Like Vietnam, the divisions drawn in this era would be felt for at least a generation after the immediate conflict faded. The possibility of open war evaporated quickly, but such things as the Gold Murders (and later, the Human Evolution Front manifesto) kept alive the dire warnings that theris had shadowy plans to subjugate humanity under an iron claw. Even a decade later, some of those wounds would still be fresh; America's opposition to the New Atlantis Raising would be based in no small part on the distrust and paranoia that began in 1997.

In short, don't overlook the full impact of The Meeting. Politically, it would be as pivotal as The Changes themselves were, and it would cause nearly as many problems for theris as it solved. In this era, the backlash is as strong as it ever will get, and theris are on the receiving end of a great deal of (both anonymous and face-to-face) hostility. The chasm between theris/mages and the unchanged seems almost unbridgeable.