The Second Coming of Trotsky
------
[cr. 2026-08-03T10:28:26H]
Trotsky tries using what he thinks is a forward spell
he bursts into flames and turns into a pile of ash
various Trotskyist theorists are scrambling around trying to figure out what to do, if they should look for some way to revive him or not. some think it would empower and complete the Fourth International, some think it's the kind of thing Stalin would believe in which is unfair and would unbalance it. they can't come to a consensus
then Jackson shows up
and says, no, I want you to revive him, because I need a rival that's worthy of my power [*db]
the Fourth International theorists all look at each other and are finally like, huh, okay, I guess we'll do it then.
various people from the Fourth International throw together a pile of names that are handed to the remaining relatives, and Jackson leads them through the ritual to rebuild Lionspark, creating a Trotsky clone that has all of his potential as a Marxist theorist / alchemy user / Advance Form but is a new individual. when he is generated he is physically the same age as Jackson. [*c] Jackson's mastery of the Duginist neo-nazis' dark arts that were going to be used to oppress him has allowed him to create another nearly impeccable copy of someone's genome and grant a truly amazing gift to the Fourth International, although nobody expected it out of him either morally or skills-wise.
I love this on a symbolic level because on the surface it's funny to see this very "anime" trope you'd think is unrealistic smash into scenarios from Communist history, but below the surface, it's actually an interesting reflection of the concept of ages of world history and how at a certain point both Stalin's Marxism and Trotskyism have to reinvent themselves from the beginning to be of any use in the new post-1991 age.
that is the meaning of these characters to me. Jackson and Trotsky #2 are like the embodiment of a completely new age where both Stalin's Marxism and Trotskyism have to abandon all their previous assumptions and start over from only what they observe and what models they observe actually fitting real history and predicting _each other_ — a new age where meta-Marxism replaces the Marxisms of old but allows them to reconstruct each other.
it's funny to see, like, the concept of using particular known figures in historical fiction turn into mythical hypostatization where Stalinism is just incarnated as Stalin and Trotskyism is just incarnated as Trotsky like named Marxist tendencies had their own local-gods or something. I don't think I would want to do this clone thing for other theorist characters in the Ironblood setting. I think I just want it to be Stalin and Trotsky, and other theorists die when they die but some of them can live a long time if they don't die in a war of some sort. the lifespan of the characters is a plot device more than a serious sci-fi mechanic, where I want to keep around some characters of every tendency so I let some of them live absurd lengths of time to not have to create more characters, but I will take other characters and find different solutions like the conceit of Stalin and Trotsky clones, or any number of other ways, including just the more normal and realistic option of characters nominating new theorists inside the same tendency as their successors. or, you know, publications or social structures of a given swatch alignment, when we're being realistic about this.
------
[cr. 2026-08-03T10:28:26H]
"tiger"
Spero Cyrus Lucas
"jaguar" Xaguar Iaguar Giaguaro Oselotl[!]
Castilian: language from the region of Castile and León. in Spanish it's [x] (J), in Castilian it's [ʃ] (X)
Elijah - bible name that proclaims allegiance to God but hilariously implies there are other gods
Atlas - hilarious after what anticommunists have done with it
James - nominated by fans of James P. (Patrick) Cannon. gosh I never knew what the P stood for. but knowing it is almost kind of cursed.
James Jacob Jakov Jakob Diego Xacobu Koba
Asturian: regional language in Spain.
Koba - some Stalinists think they're being funny and get behind the whole Jacob variants thing just for the Stalin joke
they pick Xaguar because of the influence of "Xacobu" and thinking Xaguar sounded similar but better.
I have no idea why so many people from Spain are putting in names. maybe some of them are from Mexico or other parts of Europe but just happen to know those names. that kind of thing slowly gets more likely as you get closer to the 2020s.
------
[*db] gosh I'm trying to think of where this idea came from in my mind and I think my reference is _Dragon Ball_ and like, Goku finishing his battles and letting the various evil kings come back to life, all because he gets his ability to do good starting from his sheer power and he kind of doesn't know what being good actually is.
here I think the context is kind of different and it's not quite the _same_ idea.
[*c] which... hmm. are they like real-world clones? do they have a bunch of hidden diseases? I don't really know.
I want to say the neo-nazis got super disgustingly obsessed with finding the purest genome sample to the point they actually did a decent job at creating Jackson more or less free of genome damage. hypothetically if you have enough cells with the same genome in them you could kind of put the genomes together and 'remaster' them into a consensus genome, only if you had any idea how to tell which cells contained errors. in the real world you probably wouldn't be able to guess that perfectly, given only a few cells. but then again, the more cells you had to work with, the more you would simply see the same sequences come up over and over again and the mutations become infrequent in comparison. if you only wanted to revert harmful changes and not attempt to make anything "more perfect", you could hypothetically get to a point where the error rate was so low it would resemble the rate of random mutations when people are born normally.
so... what I imagine is the neo-nazis obsessively making sure they have as many cells as possible to put into the fire and it's like, _hey we found another sample, oh wonderful, there may only be a little bit of the sequence in that one but we need it anyway._ they look totally crazy from the outside, like this is classic black magic, this is pagan superstition, but somehow it works.
the nazi obsession with DNA finally does something good for the world for the very first time ever. but only because Marxists hijacked what they were doing and applied the classic Marxist principle of reinterpreting things (British India, globalization, republics, capitalist corporations, etc.) in terms of their consequences rather than their original intentions.
;=> https://theeverymom.com/boy-names-that-mean-hope/
;=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_(given_name)
;=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castile_and_Le%C3%B3n
; Secundaria Materiae
:: cr. 2026-08-03T10:28:26H
; created
; title created
