AH Title and Description Game

[StarlightAxolotl]

"The Emerald Isle represents the eternal flame"

The Story of the flight of an exile from Iran, long after the Islamic Conquests, arrived to Ireland and led the rebirth of the Faith in Ireland. Conceptually based on a game of Crusader Kings played by the author which they then adapted into a proper work of Alternate History, despite it’s implausible nature. It was eventually abandoned on Chapter 31 for unknown reasons.

Thine Commonwealth of Right; The Sagas of the American Constellation

Torch in the Mist (or; the Tale of Admiral Washington)

Caesar of Africa

 

[ordinarylittleme]

The Story of the flight of an exile from Iran, long after the Islamic Conquests, arrived to Ireland and led the rebirth of the Faith in Ireland. Conceptually based on a game of Crusader Kings played by the author which they then adapted into a proper work of Alternate History, despite it’s implausible nature. It was eventually abandoned on Chapter 31 for unknown reasons.

Thine Commonwealth of Right; The Sagas of the American Constellation

Torch in the Mist (or; the Tale of Admiral Washington)

Caesar of Africa

"Caesar of Africa" was a sarcastic moniker for the queen of Eswatini, Italian-born Elisabetta Sandrelli, known for her ambitious political reforms and steamy relationship with the king

"Women, don't play no games"

"She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore"

"You know I used to be on fire"

 

[StarlightAxolotl]

"Caesar of Africa" was a sarcastic moniker for the queen of Eswatini, Italian-born Elisabetta Sandrelli, known for her ambitious political reforms and steamy relationship with the king

"Women, don't play no games"

"She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore"

"You know I used to be on fire"

(This is the AH Titles and Descriptions thread, not the Explain the AH Quotes thread.
-JustStars)

 

[ennobee]

Dear Arminius, Please Kindly Return the Legions Which You Currently Hold Possession Of

Written by user @RepublicSamNarco between 2018 and 2020 'Dear Arminius, Please Kindly Return the Legions Which You Currently Hold Possession Of', subtitled 'The worldwide history-poprap scene after Hamilton' is a pop-culture timeline playing in 'the present' or rather in a slightly different late 2010's

Told in a series of newspaper articles, interviews and theater reviews from the vantage point of the year 2025, the timeline describes an alternate present in which Lin Manuel Miranda's Broadway hit Hamilton became an even bigger phenomenon and sparked a whole genre of 'historical rap musicals'.

The timeline starts with a 2025 German newspaper magazine interview describing in-depth how Lin Manuel Miranda himself is now directing a play in Berlin. The play is a double-portrait of the famous battle of the Teuteburg forest and the history of the German song 'Als die Römer frech geworden', a song about the battle that since it's inception in 1821 never really could decide whether it should use the battle to parody the 'current' German wave(s) of jingo-nationalism or just celebrate them to coat-tail into popularity on the prevailing national sentiment. And so the musical promises a wild ride through the restauration of the 1820s, the 1848 revolutions, the Keiserreich, the Weimar cabaret culture, the Nazis and the postwar reckoning, the two Germanies and the reunification woes of the otherwise Wilde nineties... interspersed with a rapping Arminius and a fobbish Roman Emperor Claudius. The timeline's title (Dear Arminius....) comes from a song that the emperor Claudius, here a clear mirror of the comical King George III in 'Hamilton', sings while Miranda is getting interviewed by a Berlin journalist.

Lin Manuel Miranda, by the way is currently in Germany because in his "one and only true love, his hometown New York" he is now ' blacklisted by the MAGA culture warriors' who are in this timeline calling the shots in a USA where "President Ivanka in just one year made America great again... the greatest banana republic the world has ever seen" (*) Tellingly, it is noted that during the interview the actor playing Claudius is made up to look like a comical Donald Trump in a purple toga... Just to set the mood.....

And from this starting point the author takes us on a review of the last 10 years in world- and theater history. While 'world history' mostly consists out of barbs at "President Ivanka and her father too"(*), the timeline's real beauty lies in the description of the various American, UK, French, Belgian and even one Greek and one Finnish play each based on the success of 'Hamilton', each copying it's formula of highlighting -in pop and rap- another national figure or historical event.

Readers in particular loved the posts about the musical 'Marie Antoinette, ne perd pas ta tête' (Marie Antoinette, don't loose your head). An analysis of 'Lilienthal-Ein Berliner Ikarus' (... where a 55-year old Gustav- and an even older Otto Lilienthal rap in pure Berleener dialect about how open and cosmopolitan their city is-in 1890...) brought a hailstorm of suggestions what German actor should play what part. In comparison, a (fictional) Finnish play having painter Axeli Kahlen-Kalella rapping the national epos The Kalevella just got fan mail from Finish rappers and Scandinavian death metal affectionados.

So over the next two years (2018-2020) the author continued on the formula And treated the reader on such pearls as 'Goya Y Napoleon', 'Burton vs. Speke','Einstein in Belgium' and 'Il Doge Dandalo' . In the meantime world history marches on... on a slightly different path... as in this timeline Lin Manuel Miranda goes fully progressive following 'Hamilton'. Contrary to OTL, here he disses his movie work for 'Mary Poppins II' and instead writes a poignant poltitcal musical about the Armistead mutiny... This one however bombs because he overdid the political agenda. Worse, the backlash against his openly anti-MAGA message starts a new culture war... and in this one the reactionaries - "fueled by president Trump's media machine"(*)- not only won but for their reward also got to reshape the American art and culture scene to their liking.

Readers posts ridiculed the political timeline laid out by @RepublicSamNarco, but l.o.v.e.d. the musicals'. So the timeline continued with an unnamed Belgian production in which the last 6 of the so far 7 Belgian kings diss the dirt on each other's rule- in Brussels dialect rap. Readers seamed to love it, especialy the idea that the cast had 6 male actors, but only two women so the two had to play multiple roles depicting each king's wife and mistress in chronological order. Also the author kept on dropping tidbits about Miranda's new Berlin play, sometimes posting whole rap exchanges between Arminius, Varus and emperor Trump eeh Claudius to overall positive response from the readers.

However the author also continued his political timeline which slowly divided the world into two camps: one in which historical rap theater blossomed and nudged its audience to look beyond headlines and quotes and think for themselves and another one controlled by increasingly right-wing totalitarian governments. Poland, Hungaria and France fall to the totalitarians. This is demonstrated by the musical 'Jeanne d'Arc' in wich nominal Joan of Ark seemingly fights the English, but in reality aims at today's Muslims, easterners and non-Europeans in France as well as their "collaborateurs in media, education and city halls" (*). In the meantime in the US, the current president is flaunting every constitutional restraint and getting away with it because "for everyone who doesn't step out of line, life actually looks really great"(*) the 2020 elections by times looked like a redo of the 1933 elections in Germany, the one that legally brought Hitler to power despite being married by open street battles between Nazi and Socialist-Communist youth groups. And so over the next four years the president and his party remold the country in their image, silencing dissenters and streamlining the media into their own propaganda machine. Therefore, despite all the controversy, the 2024 election of Ivanka Trump was never really in doubt. Even before the last votes were tallied, Lin Manuel Miranda fled to Germany.

Off course, 2020 did not see any street fights and shootouts between Maga and socalist youth groups. Instead it gave us COVID, lockdowns, BLM marches and eventually an election that saw Trump defeated by the slimmest of margins, but still by the rule of law.

2020 was also the last year author @RepublicSamNarco posted new content to his timeline. More even, although his account remains active, he does not seem to have posted anywhere since July of that year. According to some, this means that he fell victim to COVID, especially as he is rumored to be an Geman retiree living in Italy, in one of the regions hardest hit by the virus. Other reader take a more optimistic attitude, interpreting a cryptic message in his last post as meaning that he was actually contacted by a German theater company to write one of the theater pieces he invented in this timeline for real.

(*) all quotation are copied verbatim from the original post and therefore @RepublicSamNarco's own words, not mine

Next up:
Okay, I got ninja-ed here, so I will just repost the previous challenge:

• "Women, don't play no games"
• "She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore"
• "You know I used to be on fire"

 

[ennobee]

Ok. A quickie.... As right now:

"You know I used to be on fire"

I AM on fire, fired up and mind still racing. So:

"Women, don't play no games"

An alternate timeline, spoof of the series by @RepublicSamNarco (the post right above) in which instead of Lin Manuel Miranda writing 'Hamilton', the husband-and-wife pair ' Manuel and Miranda Lin' write the stage play "Alexandra Hamilton, a woman's history", in which nominal miss Alexandra takes the role of Alexander Hamilton and tells the story of the founding of the US from a woman's perspective. The title "Women don't play no games" again comes from a song of said musical. This one being the equivalent of OTL's "Not givin' away my shot" both in prominence, reception and pop culture bankability.

And just like @RepublicSamNarco's 'Dear Arminius', in this timeline the genre takes off with theater makers all over the world now writing plays in which the male lead is replaced by a female counterpart. And so, sporadically from 2018 on, the timeline treats us to reviews of 'President Eleonore', 'Antonia and Cleoon Patros', 'Horacia Nelson' (Featuring her lover Emile, Lord Hamilton) or 'Diedra Rodrigues Y Fritz Kahlo' and off course the inter-European megaproduction movie "Raymonde de la Roche fights Louise Bleriot", currently being filmed in France by Lucie Besson. (Posted 2018 in response to Luc Besson's megaproduction 'Valerian and the city of the 1000 planets'.)

Reaction from the readers was overall positive although not overwhelming and certainly far away from the one 'Dear Arminius...' was getting. Still, it was good enough to continue writing. Also what's more, readers now started suggesting titles for the next play. And so continue writing the author did and continued to treat us to pearls like "How Cassie Clay became Fatima Ali" or 'The secret live of Stevie Jobs and Stephanie Wozniak"'

In contradiction to the 'Dear Arminius....' timeline, "Women don't play no games" tones down the political timeline shaped because or in spite of the genderbending musical 'craze'. Instead, again as a parody of 'Dear Arminius' , the timeline as a side plot treats the reader to a media feud between Miranda Lin and Ivanka Trump because the political right's backlash against 'gender theory and feminism now infecting our theaters and tv screens' also forever barred her shot at the presidency.

Even after the 'Dear Arminius' timeline shut down in 2020, this timeline continued to the suggestions of its fans. The last entry was a November 2021 review of "Disney's Lucie Skywalker" wich gathered 22 likes and seven more suggestions for a new play.

Next up:
Write at least 3 paragraphs about a fictional AH.com timeline with one of the following titles:

• An irreverent tale from the court of the empress dowager Ohwata Kiuti (read aloud)
• A Die Hard Dynasty
• Titus Aromaticus, a well-fragranced tragoedia
• The glow-in-the-dark knight
• In this parts, there be dragons

 

[Alias_The_J]

A Die Hard Dynasty

A pop-culture TL in which Die Hard is explicitly sold as a Christmas movie and released in December 1988.

The troubles begnab when a series of delays prevented the anticipated July 1988 release date. This ensured that the film, which already had low expectations, would likely be unable to make money back for FOC within the year of its production; hence, the decision was made to slightly reqrite, reshoot, rescore and reedit the film in order to explicitly use the Christmas backdrop in th efilm in order to market it. Much to the surprise of everyone involved (and a lack of competition at the time), Die Hard actually became a hit, making $120 million at the box office against a $35 million budget.

This commercial success helped lead theaters and studios inot different marketing strategies for marketing, writing and production, especially as concerned holiday releases. The result of thi was a lot of holdial releases bing released throughout

I did not mean to post this yet, as you can probably see from the number of typos. I'll edit it.


The Platonic Reality of Floating-Point Nazis

The Galactic Republic Help Desk

Peak Oil Ascendant

 

[Xandeross]

The Galactic Republic Help Desk

On July 25th, 1969, one day after Apollo 11 returned from the Moon, an alien probe flashed into existence in orbit above the Earth. It announced that it was the first emissary in a series of missions that would prepare the people of Earth for full contact with, and (eventually, hopefully) formal admission into, the 'Galactic Republic'. Pandaemonium ensues.

A comic ASB TL, the story follows two main plotlines. One the one hand, there is the meltdown in the streets as the general population tries to come to terms with this sudden announcement (broadcast to virtually everything capable of receiving radio signals simultaneously) with rioting, UFO cults, and bad takes on late night talk shows galore. On the other, there are the leaders of the world as they struggle with each other... and with the probe's automated response tree, as they try to navigate the labyrinth of options to just get in touch with an actual person already.

Eventually, after weeks of chaos and uncertainty, the greatest minds humanity can muster manage to vanquish the automated help desk system and get in contact with... a disinterested intern, who dumps them back into the automated system as soon as possible. When the assembled leaders of the world finally manage to extract some actual help from the Galactic Republic Help Desk, it is revealed that the whole thing was a clerical error, the probe wasn't supposed to be dispatched yet, terribly sorry for the mix-up, let's just get that sorted out. The probe vanishes. The Earth stands flabbergasted. The TL ends.

Erik's Lands: A Saga of the New World
or
The Republic of the Internet, and other doomed utopias
or
Machiatto Mayhem

 

[ThatOneGuy]

Erik's Lands: A Saga of the New World

A timeline where Erik the Red's colonization of Greenland leads to an earlier discovery of the New World. Erik himself is killed rather quickly after landing in Eriksland, having picked a fight with a group of natives who killed him and his group. This began a low intensity war between the Viking settlers and locals, who they referred to as skraelings. After the failure of the Greenland colony though the Vikings slowly achieve an accommodation with the natives trading fishing techniques and shipbuilding talents for peace and advice on how to survive. As time goes on the Vikings of Eriksland look less like Scandinavians and more like the natives as the two communities marry into eachother. However, the Erikslanders do go back to raiding, though this time for food which is hard to grow in the area during the winter. Native oral tales tell of strange white men in strange boats descending from the sea, stealing food stores and leaving just as fast. Meanwhile Eriksland, limited to OTL Newfoundland, survives until 1500 when British explorers land in Eriksland to find the Jarldom, a unique blend of native tribal traditions and old Scandinavia. The area is colonized by the British who, in recognition of the man who found the area, named it Eric's Land. The TL ends with an excerpt from an academic text detailing the fusion of cultures in Eric's Land which, over the centuries of British, Viking and Native inhabitants form a chimera of a culture taking aspects of all three. The people speak English, but with Skraelingr (a fusion of old Norse and native languages) as a usual second language. Christianity is the islands sole religion, but after the Eriks Saga is found, a ITTL Erisklander saga from 1200 detailing the regions religious fusion, the old religion makes a limited come back among what ethnic Skraelings remain. The TL was lauded for its detailed description of the Skraeling religion and culture and even inspired a few people to claim to convert to Skraeling themselves, though others on the board doubted their sincerity. What criticism the TL did endure was mostly focused around the hand-waving done in the early entries to explain away just how the natives and Vikings made peace and how the Vikings survived the first few years however, with the rest of the TL being as good as it was, few people minded in the end.

Way Up North in the Land of Traitors

Abandon All Hope: An Alternate [insert country/region]

or

Gators, Gumbo and Gatling Guns

 

[Xandeross]

Gators, Gumbo and Gatling Guns

A timeline of a continuing French Louisiana. Although the exact point of departure is never fully explained, Napoleon managed to avoid being sucked into a Spanish quagmire and continued to maintain some degree of control over Haiti in cooperation with Toussaint Louverture. As a consequence, the Napoleonic Empire didn't fall (although wars with Britain and Russia ultimately forced Napoleon to bitterly curtail his ambitions) and Napoleon maintained a greater interest in the New World. While a Louisiana Purchase still happened, the French retained control over much of the most valuable and well settled territory, especially the lower course of the Mississippi and the all-important port of New Orleans.

The timeline focuses on the development of French Louisiana and its relations with the United States and the French metropole. Immigration from across Europe and the United States and the value of the Mississippi trade ensured that the colony grew prosperous. However, tensions with America were constant, as the United States still desired expansion and the South in particular viewed the territory as fertile ground for the growth of their 'Peculiar Institution.' Only generous trade agreements and fear of war with the powerful French Empire forestalled invasion.

Meanwhile, following the death of Napoleon I in 1835 the French Empire began to come apart at the seams. Napoleon II proved to be a fraction of the man his father was, and he soon became a puppet of the generals, who maneuvered behind the scenes to gain supremacy over each other. The resulting corruption and mismanagement eventually triggered uprisings and revolutions across the French Empire, with Louisiana gaining its independence after a fairly brief struggle in 1852. Of course, this meant the way was clear for the United States to invade...

On the other hand, the US has been having interesting times of its own. With the South's 'natural' expansion halted by Louisiana, while the North continued expanding (since the US had been able to acquire the northern reaches of Louisiana) tensions over slavery and the balance of power between the states had climbed faster than OTL. That Louisiana had become a haven for escaped slaves since the French Empire had re-outlawed slavery only inflamed passions in the South, with frequent clashes between Southern militias chasing "escaped property" and Louisianan border patrols.

The question of the invasion and annexation of Louisiana was the tipping point. When a Congressional declaration of war narrowly failed to pass the Senate, several individual Southern states raised their regiments to pursue a private filibuster. The North decried this as nothing short of treason. Fighting between pro- and anti-slavery militias broke out in the border states. In Louisiana, American immigrants raised pro-annexationist militias... which promptly started fighting between themselves over whether Louisiana was to be a free or slave state. By the time the professional Louisianan military (swelled with fanatical black volunteers) repelled the first over-confident Southern incursions, it was obvious where the situation was headed: full blown civil war.

Three grueling years later, the South was crushed and freedom declared throughout the land. With the climax concluded and the author out of steam, the TL sped through a hasty dénouement to the eventual annexation of Louisiana in 1869 as a 'special associated nation'.

Gatling guns did not actually feature at any point in the timeline. The author admitted to coming up with the title before knowing exactly what would actually happen in the timeline.

The Republic of the Internet
or
Machiatto Mayhem
or
The Canals of Mars: A Space Race TL

 

[Kylia]

The Canals of Mars: A Space Race TL

An ASB Future TL where it turns out the Moon and Mars (and Venus) had breatheable atmosphers, ala those old Planetary Romance novels. The Moon landings during the Cold War thus turn into a race to colonize the moon, completely changing the face of the Cold War - both sides spend less time focusing on the Third World, and more time building up their moon bases. Among other things, that means the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan never happened.

The USSR still ended up collapsing under the weight of it's own corruption and mismanagement, but with the strains being different, the Soviets didn't collapse until 2001 - specifically, in an attempt to be clever by the author (but it didn't quite land as well as he hoped) on September 11, 2001 is when the Soviet Union actually broke up. Russia inherited the Soviet moon projects, but they quickly got sold off to private, plundering oligarchs as the post-Soviet Kleptocracy devolved into a basket case economy. In this TL, no Putin rose up to take over Russia, and the Russian Republic, though thoroughly corrupt, continues to exist - rather than one big strongman, it's a few hundred oligarchs trading control of the arms of government based on who can buy who faster and keep them bought, largely.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world didn't just let the USSR and the US have free reign on the moon, and the second third of the TL focuses on China and the US rattling sabers over the Sea of Tranquility (especially once Oil is found there), the efforts to make space elevators viable - one of the things about this TL is the way advancements in the field of space-related engineering has gone up, while in other areas, technology has lagged behind relative to IRL, due to changes in government funding and societal focus.

The last third of the TL starts in 2035, when a joint Chinese-Indonesian project launches the first manned Mars mission just weeks before the EU-US Project. Rovers previously Landing on Mars proves that the planet has a breathable atmosphere, and the infamous canals of Mars did once hold water. The planet had held a civilization of some sort, though interestingly no bodies were found by any rover - the technology of the civilization never seems to have gone above Roman levels. All the surviving ruins point towards a largely humanoid species, but smaller than humans.

However, soon after landing people, both sides discover that the inhabitants of Mars went underground when the planet dried up on the surface, and that was several thousand years ago - underground, the Martians (an indeed humanoid species that tops out at four feet tall and is markedly lighter than the average human would be at that height, and they don't physically resemble humans much otherwise) are now at late 19th century levels of technology, packed into a dense network of tunnels, caverns and vaults, divided into a number of competing alliances and factions. The US, China, India and the EU soon start picking sides within a few years of First Contact, in what critics back on earth start calling 'Space Imperialism' as the race to secure control of Martian mineral deposits is on.

The TL ends in 2067, with a war breaking out between two major martian alliances (one backed by China, the other by the EU) that indirectly threatens to break out into war on the Martian Surface between the two sides and thus even worse spill out to Earth.

The Assimilated Skies of Fabricated Reality
OR
Four Weddings and a Transvestite
OR
In The Original Klingon: A Shakespeare Timeline

 

[Evan]

Bump. I like this game; let's bring it back.

In The Original Klingon: A Shakespeare Timeline

A story in the Star Trek universe where a splinter group of Klingons winds up with a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. In a takeoff on the planet with Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, they seize on how well Shakespeare represents Klingon passions, acclaim him as of course having been a Klingon himself, and structure their entire culture around him. The story includes some somewhat-more-typical alternate history stories, as the Klingons try to construct the rest of the story behind Shakespeare's histories and tragedies while knowing very little actual Earth history.

Several generations later, shortly after peace between the Federation and Klingon Empire, this planet is rediscovered - and of course, due to his experience at talking down similar parallel-history cultures, Admiral Kirk is called in to reintroduce them to the wider galaxy.

Harps in Their Hands

 

[Xandeross]

Harps in Their Hands

A TL detailing the growth of a nonviolent civil resistance movement in British controlled Ireland through the late 1800s and early 1900s. Known as the ‘Harpists’ due to the use of the harp as a symbol (and their habit of blocking the streets in front of government buildings with ranks of men playing harps). The Harpists proved successful enough in paralyzing British rule and attracting international sympathy that Britain granted Ireland the status of a semi-autonomous Dominion shortly before the outbreak of WWI.

The TL goes on to detail the ups and downs of the Harpist Party in Ireland’s devolved parliament and the ongoing struggle for greater independence in the face of overbearing British interference up to 1972, when a fully independent Ireland formally exits the Commonwealth and casts off the last symbolic remnants of colonial rule.

Machiatto Mayhem
or
The World Turned Inside Out (or, the Scramble for Hollow Earth)
or
Refugium: an ecological timeline

 

[LuckyLuciano]

The World Turned Inside Out (or, the Scramble for Hollow Earth)

ITTL the Chola empire never collapses and continues to colonize. After establishing a firm foothold in the Philippines, they seek to establish greater trade relations with Japan. During one such mission to the farthest reaches of Japan, a fleet is swept up and carried across the Pacific towards Alaska. Trawling the coast, they eventually come across the mouth of the Columbian River. There they meet the Salish, who they misinterpret as the Icho (Ezo) due to Japanese descriptions of them as bearded men. (Tamil has no z, the closest being ch, and the romanization swaps the e for an i). What follows is a colonization of this new land spearheaded by the Chola empire. As the Chola empire spans India, Malaya and the Philippines, these are the first settlers in the new land. Some Japanese colonies are also founded but these are eventually absorbed into Cholar America. When Ming sends out Zheng He, as a result he also travels to the Americas and travels further South then the Chola, interacting with the natives of Mexico and discovering their grand cities of gold. As a result, the Ming, in competition with the Cholas, settle around the Colorado River, expanding their influence into Mexico. Chola Influence extends from the Alaska to California while the Ming claim dominion over Mexico, and continue to make tributaries out of existing native states. When Columbus arrives the Ming and Chola empires have already expanded their colonies into those roughly analogous to the Spanish and British Empire, but on the other side of the continent. The continent is termed Atalan by the Chola, as they consider their continent to be the top of the world, and the new continent to be the bottom of it. As the Cholar colonies expand west past the Rockies, they encounter the Mandan who claim to have be descended from those who emerged from a subterranean world of great wealth. Similar stories exist among the Apache and Hopi of the Ming colonies, sparking the so called scramble for Hollow Earth between their respective explorers. The Europeans meanwhile are unable to expand into the Americas due to by the time of the arrival, the Icho have already built a resilience to old world diseases and armed themselves with modern weaponry and horses. The only sizeable influence of Europe on the Americas outside of the occasional trading post is relegated to the Caribbean. Hence a world turned Inside Out.

The End of History, 500 Years Early
How We Almost Lost Des Moines
Reject Humanity, Return to Monkey

 

[Frank Hart]

The End of History, 500 Years Early
How We Almost Lost Des Moines
Reject Humanity, Return to Monkey

A timeline where genetic modification went badly, maize was still the first plant that was genetically modified, and first marketed in 1996. Due to the poor side effects not being known immediately, the soil in significant parts of the world, and most apparent in Iowa, slowly became poisoned until the United States government had to fund a cleanup operation in the state in 2021 and issue blanket bans of GMO maize just to restore the environment.

Des Moines itself only narrowly avoided significant soil poisoning, and the initial, botched decontamination there led many to ponder how they only almost lost Des Moines.

The Peace Equation
Sacrifice Freedom for a Cause
Where There is Hydra, there is no Justice
A Failed Security Detail

 

[LAHistorian15]

A timeline where genetic modification went badly, maize was still the first plant that was genetically modified, and first marketed in 1996. Due to the poor side effects not being known immediately, the soil in significant parts of the world, and most apparent in Iowa, slowly became poisoned until the United States government had to fund a cleanup operation in the state in 2021 and issue blanket bans of GMO maize just to restore the environment.

Des Moines itself only narrowly avoided significant soil poisoning, and the initial, botched decontamination there led many to ponder how they only almost lost Des Moines.

The Peace Equation
Sacrifice Freedom for a Cause
Where There is Hydra, there is no Justice
A Failed Security Detail

A Failed Security Detail

Gerald Ford is assassinated in early 1975 after a secret service agent fails to protect him and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as the 39th President of the United States of America later that day. Rockefeller plans not to run for election but tries to get some stuff passed however he is blocked by Democrats who have a majority in both houses. Rockefeller is forced to use executive orders in order to get things passed but only tarnishes the Republican name further. In the 1976 Election the Republicans nominate Ronald Reagan to run against Jimmy Carter and due to the Republicans being unpopular Carter wins the election.

Carter Presidency is much of the same as in OTL but ends up winning a second term due to the Republicans unable to produce a a well known candidate. Carter is able to start gaining popularity again after the Iran Hostage Crisis ends but is assassinated in 1981 and Water Mondale becomes President. Mondale’s presidency is largely uneventful but is nominated as the Democratic Nominee for the 1984 Election but loses to George H. W. Bush. Bush is able to end the Cold War and wins re-election and brings the country into a new era.

The Owl and the Donkey
“Good Day Madam President”
Very Good Feelings

 

[Alias_The_J]

A Failed Security Detail

Timeline where Gerald Ford is assassinated and Nelson Rockefeller becomes President.

The Owl and the Donkey

Just as an FYI, in this game most TLs are at least a couple of paragraphs (or equivalent) long; because of this, there are also usually multiple titles given.

 

[LAHistorian15]

Just as an FYI, in this game most TLs are at least a couple of paragraphs (or equivalent) long; because of this, there are also usually multiple titles given.

Edited.

 

[Imielin]

“Good Day Madam President”

Good Day, Madam President is a 2004 English film, directed and written by the Cinematic Cooperative, one of the largest film studios in the post-junta Republic of England.

Good Day, Madam President depicts the life of the first female president of England, Aqsa Khan - birth and childhood spent in the United Kingdom after her parents immigrated from Pakistan in search of new life. Her teens were dominated by the tough life under the royal military junta, during which she experienced anti-Pakistani discrimination that caused her to join the Respect Party - an illegal anti-dictatorial, socialist party mostly supported by the British Muslims. When the Irish independence activists assassinated dictator Lord Mountbatten, the new general appointed by the Queen to rule over the United Kingdom organized mass trials for the political opposition. By that time, Khan was a well-known critic of the regime and a humanitarian aid worker cooperating with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - her 10-year prison sentence for aiding the IRA organization was protested by many voices from the United States, Western Europe and the Soviet Union. After one of her hunger strikes, he was released from prison and renewed her work against the regime by joining Fighting Solidarity, an organization dedicated to establishing democracy by force. When the regime finally fell by the late 1990s, Khan's stance in the House of Common Deputies aided the establishment of modern English socialism. By 2001, she was elected as the President of the English Republic, ushering in a new era of diplomatic relations with the European Federation and other countries in the British Isles. Her assassination by the far-right National Group triggered one of the greatest civil disturbances in the young republic.

The film was widely criticized by the right-wing and conservative politicians due to claims of support from the Conservative Party for the undemocratic junta regime. Some claims of police brutality against protesting mineworkers during the Long Winter of 1978 were condemned by the former police officers. Nevertheless, the film is now considered a classic of early English cinema.

The film included a cameo of Professor Rowan Atkinson, a renowned specialist in the fields of control theory, most known as a creator of the Atkinson Method of self-tuning control.​

How To Marry an Alien Princess?

We Fight and Die Together

The Final Betrayal

 

[Evan]

How To Marry an Alien Princess?​

The former Romanian royal family enthusiastically joined the mid-twenty-first-century Mars colony, and also joined the early-twenty-second-century movement for greater Martian autonomy and self-government. That movement fortunately played out in the press and public opinion almost exclusively; the only force ever used was when Elena of Romania famously shoved Director John Musk away from the livefeed microphone. As the Martian settlements were still not self-sufficient and depended entirely on Earth-produced spaceships and mostly on Earth-produced computers, they argued only for autonomy; nobody ever seriously proposed independence.

During the autonomy struggle, as a publicity stunt, Nicholas of Romania declared himself Emperor of Mars. His "enthronement speech" (in addition to mentioning his actual royal blood) included frequent allusions to Emperor Norton, and it was received similarly - nobody treated him seriously, but he was greeted in the halls as "Emperor" and his imperial speeches were widely watched on both Mars and Earth. After autonomy was won, he was elected to the Council of Mars, where he served quietly without any references to his claimed Imperial title (or, for that matter, to his Romanian royal title.)

However, when Nicholas's daughter Angela (visiting Earth for her college education) fell in love with Prince David of Wales, the press immediately seized on her being the "Imperial Princess of Mars." She took it with good humor, though she insisted that only her (still-claimed) Romanian titles be used in her presence. However, they both did object to the tabloids referring to her as "An Actual Alien Princess!"

I Love California So Much I Hope There Will Be Six of Them

 

[ennobee]

Sorry, not quite ready to let this thread die yet. So allow me this little quick and dirty entry just to throw out some new challenges:

I Love California So Much I Hope There Will Be Six of them

I Love California So Much I Hope There Will Be Six of Them​

… originally started out as a timeline-in-a-week challenge by AH member @Headmaster_Humbledore in the spring of 2019. It tells the story of an alternate Howard Hughes infatuation with Los Angeles, Hollywood and basically everything California. So when in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression Hughes has to return to his hometown of Houston to rescue his struggling oilfield business Baker-Hughes-ToolCo, he not only transforms BHT into a world class high-tech company, he also transforms Houston into a copy of Los Angeles and Texas itself into a copy of California.

Next to mingling in Texas politics to make the Texas business climate a copy of the Californian one, he also succeeds, in 1940, to have a young John Knutson Northrup build his new aircraft factory in Corpus Christi and sets up Alexander de Severski, freshly booster out of his own New York aircraft factory, with a research facility in Galveston. Most importantly, when buying and taking over RCO pictures, as a first measure, he moved their headquarters to San Antonio, practically making the city Texas' new Hollywood.

However, his pipedream of making his home state a mirror of glorious California was cut short when in 1945, Hughes, for reasons only known to himself, decamped for Las Vegas, where again he started to transform the city into a copy of his Los Angeles and Hollywood. The author stated that before the end of his life, Hughes would try the same during his residencies in Christchurch, New Zealand (Apparently he did stay there in this timeline) Marrakesh (idem) and finally Cancun (as OTL). Because by Hughes' own admission :"I Love California So Much I Hope There Will Be Six of them"

Though he author states that: 'Not all of this efforts succeeded completely through a combination of different starting circumstances, resistance from local government and local population and finally Hughes own increasingly erratic behaviour', he never fully got to explore this aspects because, mirroring the Hughes story, a combination of misjudging the amount of writing necessary, and his increasingly erratic penchant to get drawn into tangents: Although he did manage to lay out the complete premise of the timeline in the first page, it took him ten more pages to get to the point where Hughes leaves Texas for Nevada. By that time the 'timeline in a week' was already going on for 22 days. And although he subsequently posted some short vignettes about Howard Hughes and the New Zealand aircraft industry, Nevada's movie industry before and after 'CSI' (*) and Hughes and George Lucas in Marakesh, @Headmaster_Humbledore never really succeeded to take the Hughes timeline out of Texas. Instead he increasingly focused on the movies, actors and scandals that came out of his 'Hollywood on the River', San Antonio. Even after 1945, when the timeline states that Hughes had already left Houston for Las Vegas, the author kept posting detailed updates on the latest rumors coming out of RCO's movie sets in San Antonio and Fredericksburg and the struggle for emancipation of Texas' Latino movie stars.

In one particular instance @Headmaster_Humbledore even brushed aside a question on whether Hughes in this timeline still built the 'Spruce Goose' and whether it was still built in Seattle as OTL or in Brownsville, Port Arthur or Texas City by referring to the competition between Igor Sikorski's 'Paul Bunyan' (A reference to his 1910 giant four-engined Ilya Muronmetz) and Severski's 'Galveston Giant' before posting a detailed update on Cary Grant starring in the RKO San Antonio movie 'Jet Fighter'.

Eventually, after 2 1/2 months and 19 pages rambling on about Texas, @Headmaster_Humbledore announced would take a sabbatical trying to refocus on he original premisse of the timeline. Instead, in the summer of 2020, apparently in the midst of a Covid lockdown, He reappeared with a new timeline: "Hollywood on the Guadeloupe, a short history of the New Braunfels Fertitta Studios and the Texas film industry, 1935-present" this timeline is still ongoing sporadically with reviews of the latest Texas movies and studio developments being posted every 5-6 weeks.

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