Look to the West Volume V: To Dream Again
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
I was gonna go "It's a bit implausible that they would name a place in North America after a land in a novel that just happened to be popular at the time" but then I remembered California.
For all we know, had Cook just been more of a fan of Swift, we might have ended up calling Australia and New Zealand Lilliput and Laputa...
For all we know, had Cook just been more of a fan of Swift, we might have ended up calling Australia and New Zealand Lilliput and Laputa...
Thande
Donor
Cool flags! I'm liking what I see, but the one for Westernesse looks in my opinion kinda daft.
Actually, how am I supposed to pronounce Westernesse?
I gotta confess, Westernesse would be perfect if the arrow was dropped.
If the arrow sticks out that much I will edit it out. Maybe use it as a political party logo instead oh wait
Look to the West: OTL basically going "SIMPSONS DID IT!" on everything TTL develops.
I prefer Laputa, if only to make all Spanish-speaking people awkward about going there.
Yes, but for Australia to be Brobdingnag and North Island to be Lilliput and South Island Blefuscu would just make so much sense.
Good point, good point.
Frak, I have a timeline with a PoD in 1769. I'm going to have New Zealand named Lilliput and Blefuscu in that timeline.
Thande
Donor
I see what you did there.
Well at least the legions of Mumbies and their fellow Lincolnshire hordes like it, apparently.
Considering there are barely 2000 Mumbies in the UK, I don't see us forming a horde any time soon.
Y'know, puuuuuure fun and baseless speculation, but... one could assign a color to each Confederation based on those flags' color schemes and heritage.
New England - red (and, y'know, Old England being red, since Yankees can be open on Anglophilia in TTL)
New York - blue
Pennsylvania - white
Virginia - orange (for the Stuarts and Cavalier heritage)
Ohio - purple
Michigan - cyan/light blue (and to represent the Great Lakes, natch)
Westernesse - yellow
Drakesland - green (a nice reference to the Washington and Cascadian flags, as well!)
Cyngia - black (black swans being a confederal animal)
New England - red (and, y'know, Old England being red, since Yankees can be open on Anglophilia in TTL)
New York - blue
Pennsylvania - white
Virginia - orange (for the Stuarts and Cavalier heritage)
Ohio - purple
Michigan - cyan/light blue (and to represent the Great Lakes, natch)
Westernesse - yellow
Drakesland - green (a nice reference to the Washington and Cascadian flags, as well!)
Cyngia - black (black swans being a confederal animal)
Thande
Donor
That's kind of what I was going for, except trying to make it more realistic through inconsistency - like for example I was going to give Michigan a cyan field, but then I thought about the costs of dyes (as opposed to the cheap tyrine purple for Ohio) and thought they would try to create the same effect through stripes instead - and then it was going to be 6 stripes as there are 6 provinces in the Confederation, but that doesn't fit well with a canton, so I increased it to seven with the idea that the committe has the seventh stripe 'represent ALL the people / THE FUTURE / the usual nonsense they make up'.
Similarly note how Pennsylvania changed its canton to the Lonely George but New York has kept the Union Jack, there are in-timeline political and aesthetic reasons for that but most of all I want to avoid the whole 'every unit has a neat flag according to one standard format' thing which sometimes crops up in ATLs but never does in OTL.
That's completely in line with America's terrible state flags barring a few here and there. Also, I'm glad my speculation was actually a bit on the ball.
I had actually intended to ask on New York, so thank you for the explanation - that makes sense! And hey, NYC was the most pro-English area in the northern colonies in the Revolution, so that deep lingering Anglophilia will probably stay on without any Loyalist exile in TTL to drum it out.
Well, the Soviet flags were sort of a bit like that - but not very. (They all had a gold hammer-and-sickle in the top left, they all had a lot of red, and the hammer-and-sickle was always on a red bit).
Thande
Donor
See, there's an exception to every rule
(I always wonder if Georgia got to have the unique impressive sunburst thing because Stalin was from there)
Note how the one for Grand Cape Mount County (there's a tongue-twisted) doesn't have the mini-canton at the top left hand corner...
I'm still reading this trough (I'm currently at Part #183) but I just wanted to say how a great TL you have written here. There are some things I might comment later but I try to catch up with more current updates first.
There are actually still few Finnish-speakers in Upper Peninsula. Many of them have a sort of stereotypical exaggerated American accent you usually see only in Finnish comedies and such. Finns seem to have been generally very slow at dropping off their native language. There was even a small Finn Town somewhere in Harlem which actually continued to exist until the 1970's. Americans can also thank us for Gus Hall and Pamela Anderson.
There are actually still few Finnish-speakers in Upper Peninsula. Many of them have a sort of stereotypical exaggerated American accent you usually see only in Finnish comedies and such. Finns seem to have been generally very slow at dropping off their native language. There was even a small Finn Town somewhere in Harlem which actually continued to exist until the 1970's. Americans can also thank us for Gus Hall and Pamela Anderson.
There are actually still few Finnish-speakers in Upper Peninsula. Many of them have a sort of stereotypical exaggerated American accent you usually see only in Finnish comedies and such. Finns seem to have been generally very slow at dropping off their native language. There was even a small Finn Town somewhere in Harlem which actually continued to exist until the 1970's. Americans can also thank us for Gus Hall and Pamela Anderson.
Pamela Anderson is Canadian, though. She was actually Canada's "Centennial Baby", being the first baby born on Canada's centennial in 1967. So you're only indirectly responsible for her.