Ellis MacVey
Donor
This is an idea I had today that's really weird, but is honestly stuck in my head. I kinda want to do a TL based on it eventually but worry it'll get in the way of my current project.
The basic idea is a timeline that lacks a specific point of divergence or inciting incident, but rather gradually gets more and more disconnected from the way things happened in our world.
It's going to be heavily 90s-themed, and serves as both a love letter and a scathing critique of the decade before I was born. I also intend it to be a little weird and almost dreamlike, with a lot of things that happened in our timeline just... not happening in this one without explanation, though things just happening that didn't in our timeline are relatively rarer.
Here's a basic outline of what to expect from the TL, in no particular order:
The basic idea is a timeline that lacks a specific point of divergence or inciting incident, but rather gradually gets more and more disconnected from the way things happened in our world.
It's going to be heavily 90s-themed, and serves as both a love letter and a scathing critique of the decade before I was born. I also intend it to be a little weird and almost dreamlike, with a lot of things that happened in our timeline just... not happening in this one without explanation, though things just happening that didn't in our timeline are relatively rarer.
Here's a basic outline of what to expect from the TL, in no particular order:
- 9/11 doesn't happen and the 2000s are basically just a continuation of the 90s because of this.
- Al Gore is elected president in 2000 instead of Bush.
- Russia remains a (very dysfunctional and corrupt) democracy. This will be important later. No spoilers.
- A lot of people in the West in the 1990s and early 2000s believed the economic liberalization of the People's Republic of China would coincide with political liberalization. In this timeline they're somewhat correct, but it is a very long and rocky road to true democracy in China...
- A lot of music genres that died out in the late 90s or early 00s... don't.
- The 2008 financial crash happens a few years later than 2008.
- With America less directly involved in the Middle East, efforts at democratization are somewhat more successful in the 2000s. Whether democracy-minded Middle Easterners are able to build on this success or all their work is undone in the 2010s remains to be seen.
- In the United States, the Reform Party and the Libertarian Party play a bigger role in politics than OTL
- I want South Africa to become a major player but I'm not sure how or what role they'll play.
- Because I'm the girl writing the timeline, expect LGBT rights - especially trans rights - to play a major role in this timeline.
- Most of these are things that happen in the 2000s because the 2010s are a huge turning point in this timeline. While I feel like in our timeline, every decade after the 90s was things gradually getting worse little step by little step and most of us had at least started to wrap our heads around it by the time the pandemic hit, in this timeline things go from the 1990s' "Things are only looking up and we are living in the end of history" mindset to the OTL!2020s' ethos of "HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE WHAT THE FUCK" almost overnight and stay like that for basically the entire decade, whereas maybe this is wishful thinking but I actually feel like things are getting better in our timeline and it's only 2023.
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