Where do I submit it, I can’t seem to find the thread.The honor is all yours, I'll be happy to second
Where do I submit it, I can’t seem to find the thread.The honor is all yours, I'll be happy to second
Need a second for Gary Hart as Best Character, if anyone's interested. Honestly it was really hard to choose! Colson gave me chills, but that's like when they gave Judi Dench an Oscar for ten minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love. Phil Hart's been great, and I've loved learning about Jane Briggs. Of course Dick and George are both amazingly evocatively written. But there's something about the Gary Hart and the cranky-Josh-Lyman-of-it-all...
I also reckon we can find a best quote in the best-written TL of the year, what do you say, fellow readers?
“People died, George”
-Phillip Hart
From Chapter 3. Gives me goosebumps.
I nominated it let’s hope it gets the ‘Dove!It's very kind of you to think any of them are Best Character material! I could see the case for Hart on the Josh Lyman level (although I like Josh better, Josh understands that he has neuroses where much of Hart Gary's public persona is an act of denying that fact) and it's very cool. If anyone has thoughts of other folk who also qualify feel free to share those too. Yeah, Jane Briggs Hart is one of my very favorites, a remarkable person and a magnificent soul, actually both of the Hart Phils are the bee's knees. George himself, too - the deeper I have dug in creating this little world, the more I've learned that George and I have apparently spent much of my life never quite meeting up but moving towards each other. A kindred spirit it turns out, in a number of ways. Yeah Tex Colson is always fun to write, with those big glasses on him he's kind of our Smeagol/Gollum for the proceedings. And my man-crush on S A R G E is well documented. We've just barely seen him some but as time goes on I expect we'll see more of Doug Coulter who's also a personal fave from my OTL historical research. Given how well you (@Expat) write mid-level operators, who are some of my favorite characters also, Hart Gary makes total sense.
I will confess that one means a lot to me too. At that point I was writing a lot of material that I'd plotted out very neatly. Then I got into that scene where the X-File bomb has just gone off and everyone's trying to reckon with it. And - all y'all writers out there know these moments - Phil Hart just came to me and told me what was going on with him, what he was going to think and do and say. That didn't come from me mapping out and parsing and tooling around in people's behavior patterns to come up with an outcome. I had not beforehand been sure Phil Hart would say anything in that scene. Then he came to me, as your characters sometimes do, and revealed what he thought and said, and became the fulcrum of that whole scene. Some of the absolute best fun in the writing game is when your characters are real enough that they tell you what's next, rather than you (me) being all stagey about it.
Three pages of onion paper and a National Security staffer’s haunted soul. Operation ACE.
My personal favorite line from this whole shebang is probably:
Yes said: ↑
Three pages of onion paper and a National Security staffer’s haunted soul. Operation ACE.
But I suppose that's less a quote than just a descriptor. It still gives me some chills, though.
I assume from the House results and a lack of an Independent victory that darling Louise won up in Massachusetts?
Mizz Loueez does indeed make it for the moment unfortunately. All politics is local; in the three-way ruck of the presidential more latent Wallace voters come out to the polls in her district and that helps put her over, that and the fact McGovern skipped campaigning for the independent slate unlike, say, how he handled the Mineworkers ITTL.
[Shuffles in]
Hi.
[Fidgets]
So. I might have, um, sort of created a TV Tropes page for this timeline. Please feel free to add, alter, correct and do what thou will.
[Shuffles in]
Hi.
[Fidgets]
So. I might have, um, sort of created a TV Tropes page for this timeline. Please feel free to add, alter, correct and do what thou will.
Where we're going, we don't need memes ...
But seriously: thank you very much. I'm rather fond of that place and there are some legendarily good entries for AH.com TLs over there. That's quite distinguished company and I'm grateful and actually, really kinda humbled by that level of hard work. Wow.
Dude, NICE!
I wonder where we put the slogan "McGovern with Hart" on there...
You're telling me you built a timeline...out of a McGovern victory?!
"Well, I figured for a timeline, you oughta do it with some style..."
On a separate Trope, I'm half interested, half concerned whether there's a way to classify wheelchair-bound George Wallace as Draco in Leather Pants...
It occurred to me that January 1974 is approaching in the TL, and I don't see why this event from OTL would be butterflied away:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Paracel_Islands
But the foreign policy of the McGovern Administration TTL, differing from that of the Nixon Administration, may have wider effects re: this particular crisis. Also of note is that the North Vietnamese OTL did not congratulate their ally at all for their victory, and they ultimately inherited S. Vietnam's quarrel with the PRC over the islands.
Well he IS super dreamy...
Gary Sinise took a stab at this in the 90s but I somehow doubt it stands up today. No, more likely he's a Mr. Potter