Introductory Post
The Colossus of the New World
A Collaborative Graphics TL
A Collaborative Graphics TL
"When we get a good quote to open the TL
It will go here, for all to see.
For now this spot waits, filled with empty words.
It yearns for its moment. Its time to shine.
It's gonna be waiting for a while though.
Did I trick you into reading this?
If so, don't post about it.
Feel free to reply for other reasons though.
So it begins."
- Wenceslaus Velda*
It will go here, for all to see.
For now this spot waits, filled with empty words.
It yearns for its moment. Its time to shine.
It's gonna be waiting for a while though.
Did I trick you into reading this?
If so, don't post about it.
Feel free to reply for other reasons though.
So it begins."
- Wenceslaus Velda*
Introduction:
Alright. Here goes nothing. There have been quite a few large-scale worldbuilding projects on this site, and they all seem to follow a similar theme: the United States (or some part of them) remaining under British rule. Here I want to flip that on its head, and have the US take almost all of British North America in the revolutionary war.
How much of this have you planned already?
Very little. The idea is that I will work with all of you (all 0.5 of the people that are likely to become interested in this) to paint a complete picture of this alternate world through maps, wikiboxes, news snippets, flags, and logos. I will be the final authority on decisions, but I will try to work with what the majority of people here want.
What does the map look like?
Right after the revolution it looks like this:
(light blue is territories, red/salmon is Britain, I've excluded the mosquito coast due to laziness)
The modern map is still a work in progress, as I am not enough of an expert to figure this stuff out on my own, for example I'm not sure how expansion into Mexican lands would go so I've left it out of the US for now.
I am open to suggestions for how to fix the internal and external borders here.
What's the POD?
The plan is that there will be a few related ones. Firstly, British sailors and naval officers stationed in the Maritimes behave worse than OTL, pushing the local population (who OTL wasn't happy with the taxes, but relied on and was largely friendly with the sailors and officers of the British navy stationed there) over the edge. Also the Quebec act is not passed, but taxes are increased a bit further (keeping the English-Speaking colonies as angry as OTL but not pitting them against Quebec since that hatred kind of prevented the absorption of all of Canada). Newfoundland is too connected to Britain at the time to break away and I like the idea of it as the last bastion of British rule in North America. If you think this is too unlikely and have a more plausible suggestion, please tell me.
So how is this going to go?
- We write up a brief summary of the timeline, since without that, we can't know what the world will be like. (by brief I mean like just covering big global events or events that are big for the US)
- Begin to flesh out the US
- Create a better map of the states and, maybe counties, and the electoral districts,
- History of politics in the US (lists of presidents, political parties, evolution of suffrage over time, etc.)
- Fill in the details - everything from foreign political parties to pop culture, demographic maps and statistics of the US and the world, sports, television, literature, music. If you have a lot of knowledge about the development of the popular culture of the US, you'll be more or less left to your own devices.
- Since all the cool kids are doing it, once we have a considerable amount of detail, and I get some free time, we'll run a presidential election, with news posts detailing the stances and statements of various candidates, maybe an rped presidential debate if someone wants to do that (I'm not interested in doing it myself, but I wouldn't stop anyone if they want one), and a survey (either a separate thread with a poll or just asking people who they would vote for), which will help us decide and for the fun of it (though ultimately it's in-world plausibility that determines the winner).
- After that (if we even manage to get that far), we keep going. More detail won't hurt. Maybe after a while we run a German or British, or I don't know, Kiwi election.
Rules:
- To paraphrase my 10th grade civics teacher (this is all I remember from that class): "This thread is not a democracy, it's a benevolent dictatorship". I will ask for your input for everything, that's what makes this fun, but I always have the final say
- Anything that is threadmarked is cannon, anything that is not threadmarked can either be ignored or is new enough that my lazy a$s hasn't gotten around to threadmarking it
- Please run your ideas for wikiboxes by me and the general public before posting, because I don't want you to put in all that effort only for me to tell you that your idea doesn't fit in with the direction I see the world going in (with graphics it's of course different, since I need to see them to pick them)
- don't be intentionally rude or offensive
- If enough people get involved and this actually goes anywhere, I will delegate certain fields to other people
- Finally, but most importantly, keep things plausible. please.
Table of Contents:
- Wikipedia-inspired material:
- Vexillology:
- Maps:
- History:
- Miscellaneous/Other:
* If you were wondering, Wenceslaus Velda is a rough Anglicization of the name of the historical figure my account is named after (yes, Velda is actually an English last name, it comes from a proto Germanic word related to the Slavic words Vlad and Vlast). It is just a placeholder for the name that makes it look, at first glance, like there is actually a quote there.
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