User Tools

Site Tools


timelines:look_to_the_west

This is an old revision of the document!


Look to the West

There's a feeling I get
When I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving

In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking.

Background

Thande's first, and so far only, major timeline. It was started in January 2007, after Thande had already been on the site for two years, but some glimpses of it were provided by a series of brainstorming maps posted on the Map Thread some months before. However, Thande radically changed the conception of the TL several times between then and writing the TL proper, so the maps bear little resemblance to the eventual TL.

The original version of the TL would have featured an alternate George III of Great Britain who became obsessed with the Americas and fought in the Seven Years' War under an alias. Thande eventually rejected this for being too romantic. However, the title was more appropriate for that conception than it is for the eventual result.

The TL includes numerous references and cameos to other AH.commers and their works, and is written from the perspective of a multiverse exploration team from Chris' Multiverse War series.

As of summer 2016, the timeline has reached the end of the 19th century and is still ongoing.


The POD

In 1727, George II was crowned King of Great Britain. He had the usual Hanoverian feud going on with his son, Prince Frederick, and in OTL considered exiling him to the American colonies, but relented. However, in TTL thanks to an embarrassing incident at the coronation, he goes through with it and Frederick gets exiled to his namesake town of Fredericksburg in Virginia.

This starts a chain of events which ends up with an increased British (and European) interest in the Americas, more transatlantic links, and an earlier strong American identity.


Look to the West is a fairly expansive work of alternate history. Because of this, it has so far been divided into several “volumes” (like what you'd expect from an epic historical novel series). So far, three volumes of the story have been fully completed, in a total of two long discussion threads :

Thread I - Original thread, includes accompanying discussion of the posted chapters. Volume I and Volume II of the saga.

Thread II - Original thread, includes accompanying discussion of the posted chapters. Volume III of the saga.

Thread III - Original thread, includes accompanying discussion of the posted chapters. Volume IV of the saga.

Look to the West : Definite Version - A chapter-only, no discussion compilation of the first three volumes, with some minor edits and additions here and there. Unless you're interested in the discussion that accompanied the writing of the first three volumes, you should simply read this story-only thread.

In addition to these, there is the current installment of the timeline:

Thread IV - Representing Volume V of the Look to the West saga. Until this current volume is finished and the thread closed, please use the chapter guide available below (in the media section) for better orientation in the volume's chapters.

As of August 2013, final versions of the chapters from Volume IV and eventually Volume V are slowly being posted in the timeline's “Definite Version” thread. Currently, the porting of Volume IV to the Definite Version thread has been finished.

Finding Your Face: A Tale from LTTW - A spinoff story set in this timeline, written by othyrsyde.


Chapters

Chapters of the current volume - A list of updates with the timeline's chapters, for greater convenience of reading.

(Only includes a list of chapters from Volume IV and V. For earlier chapters, please read the Definitive Version thread.)


Timeline of Events - A chronological, year-by-year overview of events and developments in the Look to the West timeline.

Media - Maps, flags, infoboxes and artworks from the Look to the West timeline.

Nations and territories - Nations, countries and polities appearing in the Look to the West timeline.

Dramatis Personae - Characters, historical as well as fictional, appearing in the Look to the West timeline.

Glossary - The alternate terminology and vocabulary appearing in the Look to the West timeline.

Wars - Military conflicts that occured in the Look to the West timeline.


The name of the timeline is often abbreviated to LTTW.

Due to Thande inadvertently giving two characters similar backstories in two close-together chapters, the timeline has become nicknamed the “Look to Burning Down People's Houses TL”.

Roberto is Thande's official mapmaker for LTTW, a fact that he takes great joy in, and loves to flaunt it around. Nugax, Alex Richards and others later took over some of Roberto's map duties, as he's busy these days.

Thande is particularly fond of alternate terminology (see that page and the glosssary for some examples from this TL). You can generally assume that if something was invented or thought up after the POD of 1727, it will have a different name in this TL than in OTL.

There are numerous hidden references and in-jokes to OTL history and culture and various AH.commers have cameos throughout the timeline.


Awards

The timeline has won a total of 5 Turtledove Awards in the following categories:

Due to a streamlining of rules in 2016, it's improbable that the timeline will ever receive another award, as it's won numerous times already.


Publication

A Volume I book version of the timeline, titled Diverge and Conquer, has been published by Sea Lion Press in January 2016. Thande made a post explaining which people helped him prepare the book version. The Volume II book, titled Uncharted Territory, was published in October 2016.


See Also

timelines/look_to_the_west.1492088455.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/03/29 15:19 (external edit)

Donate Powered by PHP Valid HTML5 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki