On the topic of the thread itself
I think people are too reluctant to write hybrid and original cultures, which is quite sad because they're some of the best things that can come out of the genre
The way I see it even during wanks where there's alt colonization or alt conquest going on the focus will be on the same nationality/ethnicity getting the benefits
I dont think thats due to some sort of x-centrism, though our idea that x people = y culture has a part in this, but its more so overly relying too much on the OTL paradign and what countries "do exist" as well as wanting to avoid their works getting called ASB for having a non-OTL polity or for mixing two groups that "would never work together"
Like let's be real for a moment, while the concept of a english colonization of the Americas may not be strange to a world that diverges from ours during say the Middle Ages, could something like the country of the United States of America ever have been written about if it didnt exist today?
Could an ATL author had taken their pen and thought "today I am going to write about this China-sized english rogue state that became a Constitutional Republic following the model of Ancient Rome while keeping the mercantile prowess of the phoenicians in the 1700s and name it my favorite italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci" ?
Perhaps, but hardly with this mindset
And Im not saying you have to make it as "weird" to us as the US might be to another timeline, but creative names and new nation-states have so much untapped potential
Like if for example you have the Dutch get the Philippines, why cant that be it's own unique nation?
Its always spanish this or english that, some old world conqueror got this and not that, but not what kind of place these new nations that would sprung from that would be