Alternate History: V,W

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article here

 

[Thande]

Why can't 26 divide into 3 neatly eh? I suppose you could have gone full AH and added a letter that's dropped out of English in OTL like thorn or something...

 

[Charles EP M.]

On the face of it you'd think an expanded global focus would be good but yeah, in practice, there be dragons. And if you just want stuff to imply a wider weirder world, a throwaway random line about Czechoslovenia (as a 2006 Doctor Who tie-in site did for an AH story) goes further than thousands of words.

"But Charles, haven't you been guilty of--" Never mind that now!

 

[Coiler]

And if you just want stuff to imply a wider weirder world, a throwaway random line about Czechoslovenia (as a 2006 Doctor Who tie-in site did for an AH story) goes further than thousands of words.

It's the "Tolkien's Distant Vista" effect, and a hint of mystery goes a long way.

 

[RyanF]

Why can't 26 divide into 3 neatly eh? I suppose you could have gone full AH and added a letter that's dropped out of English in OTL like thorn or something...

The humble ampersand, could be the first step on the way to its integration as a fully fledged member of the alphabet.

On the face of it you'd think an expanded global focus would be good but yeah, in practice, there be dragons. And if you just want stuff to imply a wider weirder world, a throwaway random line about Czechoslovenia (as a 2006 Doctor Who tie-in site did for an AH story) goes further than thousands of words.

"But Charles, haven't you been guilty of--" Never mind that now!

Or, from a visual medium and sticking with Doctor Who: the too good looking to be an accident map in the animated reconstruction of The Faceless Ones that shows independent Kurdistan, East Austria, and the western occupied parts of Austria in West Germany.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Or, from a visual medium and sticking with Doctor Who: the too good looking to be an accident map in the animated reconstruction of The Faceless Ones that shows independent Kurdistan, East Austria, and the western occupied parts of Austria as West Verma y.

All right, who here was on Faceless Ones, own up

 

[Max Sinister]

Wikiboxes are better than nothing - just not much better. People may have put work into it or not, but often it seems like they were just throwing random stuff into it.

And if you just want stuff to imply a wider weirder world, a throwaway random line about Czechoslovenia (as a 2006 Doctor Who tie-in site did for an AH story) goes further than thousands of words.

Czechoslovenia would me make think "WTH happened to Austria?" Unless we're talking maybe about an ATL where Otakar Przemysl won and became HREmperor.

 

[Hendryk]

There is nothing innate to the wikibox timeline that leads to those problems, its more the nature of amateur writers, but the two things are often linked. Partly because to an extent micro fiction like the wikiboxes are ways of expressing ideas about plausible diversions to history without having to write a story.

But inevitably people who don't really care about plausibility adopt those methods because it's easier than actually writing a story with characters and a plot. But because there's no characters and no plot there's nothing to distract you from the lack of plausibility. They've used a method designed to show their historical workings and if the historical workings don't make sense, it focuses on that in a distracting way. Which is why the very worst amateur fiction tends to be in this format, because it focuses on the bones of it, rather than the heart or gloss.

A very good summary of the problem with wikiboxes. Used sparingly to illustrate a broader TL, they're a useful tool. As standalone elements they are almost completely substance-free, just decontextualized pictures and made-up numbers.

 

[Geordie]

Why can't 26 divide into 3 neatly eh? I suppose you could have gone full AH and added a letter that's dropped out of English in OTL like thorn or something...

You could have a series on alternate orthography, although I haven't quite followed Gary's format.

Æ - Using alternate names (Ælfred, etc.)
Þ - þe olde anachronisms
ß - große napkinwaffe

 

[Max Sinister]

ß - große napkinwaffe

Leaving the shoehorning aside: What's a napkin weapon? Why napkin, of all things?

 

[Hendryk]

Leaving the shoehorning aside: What's a napkin weapon? Why napkin, of all things?

It refers to something hastily scribbled on the first available piece of paper, customarily a napkin. Napkinwaffen are derisively called that way because that's as far as they made it in OTL.

 

[Max Sinister]

After having gone through a lot of vignettes/wikiboxes on AltHist FANDOM/ex-Wikia, I'll say: Even that way will look implausible often enough. Choosing obviously random politicians as head of state/government (or worse: obviously mixing first and last names of RL politicians), turning center-right politicians into nazis (in surviving Nazi Germanies, but still), and such.

 

[Thande]

It refers to something hastily scribbled on the first available piece of paper, customarily a napkin. Napkinwaffen are derisively called that way because that's as far as they made it in OTL.

Analogous to 'Powerpoint rockets' in NASA history.

 

[Sideways]

On the face of it you'd think an expanded global focus would be good but yeah, in practice, there be dragons. And if you just want stuff to imply a wider weirder world, a throwaway random line about Czechoslovenia (as a 2006 Doctor Who tie-in site did for an AH story) goes further than thousands of words.

"But Charles, haven't you been guilty of--" Never mind that now!

My favourite was Catholic China in a story I wrote, people debated how it had come about and why and what it meant for the setting and in reality I'd labelled the wrong country Catholic but whatever it wasn't relevant so fie, China is Catholic now.

I don't mind the trinket mode of history sometimes - occassionally its just fun to throw out a random idea with no idea how it works. Sometimes the exploration is the point and there's nothing wrong with exploring it simply in low energy AH

 

[Gary Oswald]

My favourite was Catholic China in a story I wrote, people debated how it had come about and why and what it meant for the setting and in reality I'd labelled the wrong country Catholic but whatever it wasn't relevant so fie, China is Catholic now.

I don't mind the trinket mode of history sometimes - occassionally its just fun to throw out a random idea with no idea how it works. Sometimes the exploration is the point and there's nothing wrong with exploring it simply in low energy AH

I do like it when you venture into this forum, cos we have something of a group think here at times about narrative trumping exploration and if there is no story there is no point and it's nice to see alternate viewpoints argued instead.

 

[Jared]

I do like it when you venture into this forum, cos we have something of a group think here at times about narrative trumping exploration and if there is no story there is no point and it's nice to see alternate viewpoints argued instead.

If we're doing different viewpoints, my favourite AH remains exploring big, sweeping worlds where the point is that lots has changed and where a reader can immerse themselves in the changed world. A story (or lots of stories) can be told in those worlds, but sometimes the world itself is the story. This is why I'm still a fan of the timeline format, since it's well-suited to exploring such worlds.

I do like stories too, but the difference is that good stories can be told in lots of genres. I don't need a story to be AH to be a good story - but I can't explore a big, sweeping changed world as easily without AH.

 

[Sideways]

I do like stories too, but the difference is that good stories can be told in lots of genres. I don't need a story to be AH to be a good story - but I can't explore a big, sweeping changed world as easily without AH.

With the last vignette contest I very much set off thinking "what story can I only tell in the AH setting I have in mind". I think that's often the challenge of narrative story telling. Do you want to explore the mind set of a Canadian who grew up under Russian occupation? If so you need a world where Canada was occupied by Russia.