Timeline Help: Points of View to Cover for a 1960s-1980s TL

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
My American Journey (Colin Powell's autobiography)
A People's History of thr United States

All of those books have interesting stuff about the time period.

Also, someone suggested you do a frustrated nerd... I think Gary Gygax would be better than R. Crumb.
 
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
My American Journey (Colin Powell's autobiography)
A People's History of thr United States

All of those books have interesting stuff about the time period.

Also, someone suggested you do a frustrated nerd... I think Gary Gygax would be better than R. Crumb.


I could do those, though I'd lean more towards Crumb. Gygax is limited; he's just D&D. Crumb is the underground, comics, music, an an outcast who would rather be in the 20s than in the 60s or 70s.

I've also thought of doing a West Coast, California kid. Someone in the cool era where there was the Surf scene and Hot rods. By the way, there is also a California weirdy: Ed Roth.

***

Just a heads up, I'm going to be taking a short vacation away, because this TL is driving me batty. I can't listen to a song without it being taken over by "Hey, where can I use this in the timeline", all the books I have I just think about what I can use for the timeline, and I'm not enjoying anything and just being more or less and incubator for this. So I'll take a nap from it for a bit.

Feel free to still suggest things, and I'll read them later.
 
I should mention I'm having trouble avoiding a "Let's All Go to War" trope where I have everyone go off to 'Nam. I think I'm just going to expand the Vietnam cast to 5 characters from that original 3 to make it easier, though you may not hear from them all as living cast.

I also think I'll add other framing devices, like excerpts from magazines and newspapers and other such things, like what Watchmen had.

Btw, can anyone explain the military to me? I don't understand what battalions, divisions, or anything like that is, nor anything else organizationally.
 
I should mention I'm having trouble avoiding a "Let's All Go to War" trope where I have everyone go off to 'Nam. I think I'm just going to expand the Vietnam cast to 5 characters from that original 3 to make it easier, though you may not hear from them all as living cast.

I also think I'll add other framing devices, like excerpts from magazines and newspapers and other such things, like what Watchmen had.

Btw, can anyone explain the military to me? I don't understand what battalions, divisions, or anything like that is, nor anything else organizationally.

You could ask MacCaulay or Calbear.
 
So I've looked into a few timelines. I'm not sure I've read enough, since I only skimmed, but something it impressed upon me is I really desire flavor. Nothing against those timelines, and maybe I just didn't read enough, but I want to feel like this is a world I could live it, or understand as real and vibrant. I want to understand the soul. And I want to express it through thoughts and feelings of the people, their music, likes, dislikes, films, television, heroes and villains and all that nice stuff.
 
Well, you know I can help with movies and television.

Which I shall appreciate.

A heavy factor I want is life beyond the limits we usually place on it in timelines. We generally just focus on what's happening in politics, or whats happening in music, or whatever the timeline may be specifically focused on.

History is Reality, just a previous incarnation of it. It is the compendium of absolutely everything. What people thought felt, who thought and felt what and what time, their morals, principles, believes, the things they liked and disdained, who liked and disdained what, their music, film, hopes, nightmares, and absolutely everything else. When you look at a specific section of history, it's like cupping your hands around your eyes and peering down at a timeline. Everything else is still there and informs it. And I wanna incorporate all of that, so it feels like a world. That's why the characters are there. And even that can't make you feel it all. Though if you use your imagination, maybe you can see how you'd be in the world and truly understand it as life, just a different one.

There's also the issue of Happiness relativity, which I want to bring up. I will be destroying this world. And yet, the people will still find happiness and be happy just as much as anyone in the normal world can. Because the average person lives their life. And doesn't get hung up on President Robert Taft or Elvis staying in the army. They care about family, getting a job, and having a life. And that will be true even in the face of everything I will put on them and do to their world. And that may go against a common thing of Dystopias with everyone being as dark and sad as their own world. Not to say their won't be people like that in this world. But I really hope I can be successful in showing resilience in the face of adversity.
 
I need to figure out a place for Carl to come from. I was thinking somewhere in the Southwest like New Mexico or Arizona (bit of Barry Goldwater), somewhere like Texas (the Hank Hill part) or somewhere like Arkansas (South, but not too South. Not too North. Not too Midwest). I could also have him from one state but settling in another.

***

Now, on the military characters, as I said, I'll need to expand it to 5 or more characters. I don't like it, since I don't want a cast so big you don't have time to remember who's who or focus on one, but its necessary since Vietnam is perhaps 50% of the reason the 60s were what they were (unfortunately) and the war and its environ were complex and 3 characters just being left, right, and center/Born on the Fourth of July, John Wayne, and Forrest Gump aren't gonna do it*.

So here's characters I'm thinking of adding (feel free to suggest things about them):


  • California kid. Into all that California culture. Beach Boys, Garage Rock, Surfing, Cars, Kustom Kulture, etc, etc.
  • Soldier from Small Town America. Will relate a very normal, straightforward, and from the heart view of the war during his service.
  • Soldier who loses friends in Vietnam, return home to pissed off Hippies, leading him to join the right wing.
I probably need to do something with the Navy and Air force as well (either giving those to one of the characters or making new ones).


*Btw, I'm worried about the black character being a racist caricature and being Forrest Gump level stereotyping. I mean, I was thinking of making him the poor one, and putting the drug problem on him. But, who else would I put that on? If I put that on the Lefty guy coming back from Vietnam, that's also FG charicaturing because then it'll be like I'm saying all Liberals from Vietnam are just homeless junkies. But I don't wanna say all blacks who served are that either.
 
I need to figure out a place for Carl to come from. I was thinking somewhere in the Southwest like New Mexico or Arizona (bit of Barry Goldwater), somewhere like Texas (the Hank Hill part) or somewhere like Arkansas (South, but not too South. Not too North. Not too Midwest). I could also have him from one state but settling in another.

***

Now, on the military characters, as I said, I'll need to expand it to 5 or more characters. I don't like it, since I don't want a cast so big you don't have time to remember who's who or focus on one, but its necessary since Vietnam is perhaps 50% of the reason the 60s were what they were (unfortunately) and the war and its environ were complex and 3 characters just being left, right, and center/Born on the Fourth of July, John Wayne, and Forrest Gump aren't gonna do it*.

So here's characters I'm thinking of adding (feel free to suggest things about them):


  • California kid. Into all that California culture. Beach Boys, Garage Rock, Surfing, Cars, Kustom Kulture, etc, etc.
  • Soldier from Small Town America. Will relate a very normal, straightforward, and from the heart view of the war during his service.
  • Soldier who loses friends in Vietnam, return home to pissed off Hippies, leading him to join the right wing.
I probably need to do something with the Navy and Air force as well (either giving those to one of the characters or making new ones).


*Btw, I'm worried about the black character being a racist caricature and being Forrest Gump level stereotyping. I mean, I was thinking of making him the poor one, and putting the drug problem on him. But, who else would I put that on? If I put that on the Lefty guy coming back from Vietnam, that's also FG charicaturing because then it'll be like I'm saying all Liberals from Vietnam are just homeless junkies. But I don't wanna say all blacks who served are that either.

Re Vietnam: would this be a spoiler, but are you still considering putting American military intervention in Cuba in the 60's as well? If so, that could be an important distinguishing factor between the soldiers. Also, with the black guy, you could make him really conservative, or Catholic, just ideologically different than most African-Ameicans.
 
Re Vietnam: would this be a spoiler, but are you still considering putting American military intervention in Cuba in the 60's as well? If so, that could be an important distinguishing factor between the soldiers. Also, with the black guy, you could make him really conservative, or Catholic, just ideologically different than most African-Ameicans.

I'm considering a range of possibilities.

On the Black Soldier, that'd be the opposite problem though: I'd go from making him possibly a caricature to a token character, whose something just to be something, and to not be the normal something.
 
I'm considering a range of possibilities.

On the Black Soldier, that'd be the opposite problem though: I'd go from making him possibly a caricature to a token character, whose something just to be something, and to not be the normal something.

Well, you have to commit to something, then. Just write him truthfully, as a fully fleshed out human being.
 
Well, you have to commit to something, then. Just write him truthfully, as a fully fleshed out human being.


Well, I want him to be middle of the road. But I'm debating the drug and poverty thing.

The things is, everyone needs to be something. To represent something. And while they can't be extreme stereotypes ("I'm Carl. Nixon ftw! Screw abortion! Let me punch this Vietcong in the face with my penis!") they have to be the person that represents some facet. And I'm fearful of Forrest Gump syndrome.
 
I don't know if I said this before, but it's something I thought up recently (again, maybe, after forgetting I already thought it up?) and I'm kinda hammered on liquor to not really be able to look back.

So, the thought is this:

Every one of the cast of characters needs to personify of a facet of the times, like Civil Rights, Women's Lib, the Blue Collar, the White Collar, Vietnam, and so on. The evolution of the cast as we follow their personal lives through the times will represent the state and evolution of those parts of the American civilization which they represent.

To keep things up to date, younger cast members will come into the timeline as it proceeds forward to tell of their times. This will mean 20-somethings will reflect on the 80s. Simultaneously, the 40-somethings from that 60s era when the timeline first started will continue giving their own narrative, thus showing the latter years from the perspective of those from the earlier years, and highlighting the changes in time.

By the way, the 80s portion of the timeline will be separate from the 60s/70s. I consider the 60s and 70s to be its own beginning and end of a period, with the 80s as a beginning of a new era, while keeping in mind that the 80s is still a continuation of that 60s/70s period as history is gradient and nothing is really ever over or begun cleanly (and once again, we get back to the 40-somethings talking about the 80s to highlight that).
 
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