In 1997, Paul Verhoeven brought us the legendary TV show "Starship Troopers". Based heavily off the series of novels by Robert Heinlein, it stayed true to the novels, while depicting a gritty and realistic perspective of a bug war. It also featured on-screen power armour, which the movie won several special effects awards for. It was followed by two spinoff TV shows, "Starship Troopers: Hero of the Federation" and "Starship Troopers: Marauder"; as well as two highly successful anime series "Starship Troopers: Invasion" and "Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars".

The movie is critically acclaimed for staying far away from the genre of parody and satire, which many assumed Verhoeven would turn the movie into.

Joss Whedon. He did *Justice Leauge*, of course, everyone knew that.

But what his younger fans didn't know was that Whedon had gotten his start doing television shows.

Of his two most original works, there's the fan favorite, *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, and the massive hit called *Firefly*.

The studios loved Whedon's western sci-fi drama, and it remained on the air for seven whole seasons.

*Buffy*, however, was regarded with deep suspicion. Though it was an adaptation of earlier work, studio executives didn't trust the premise enough to bother marketing the show properly. The episodes were aired out of order on Friday nights, and eventually was cancelled.

Fans rallied, begging for more content from Whedon. A few comics were released, as well as a film, but the show's most loyal fans still hunger for more.

Also, Sarah Michelle Gellar manages to work at least one reference *Buffy* into every one of her later projects.

He was kind of the bad boy of the entertainment scene back in his time, was Tupac. Hugely popular, hugely populist - and not always in a good way - but after his untimely death, his work mostly got forgotten. It's sad, really. They're powerful portrayals of life back then. But so much black history is erased.

You have to remember that popular culture wasn't like it is now, with instant downloads and stans on social media. The work was what mattered. And it should have stuck around, it certainly deserved to, but it didn't. You can blame racism for that, a lot of academics in the field certainly do, but some of it is simply the passage of time. Some of it, though, has to do with how he was eclipsed in fame by the notorious Christopher Wallace and his works.

But it's not my place to comment on black history, is it? I'm a white girl from Current Year. I don't get to lecture people on black British playwrights of the Early Modern era. No, I'll listen to 90s rap music, and mourn the shootings of Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare, gunned down too soon, too soon, too soon...

In the mid-80s, J. K. Rowling started publishing her Harry Potter series with her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The series sold reasonably well, though it didn't really take off in the mainstream. Sales were steady enough that publishers kept coming back for the rest of the story though. These days, Harry Potter is a cult fantasy classic.

Meanwhile, in the late 90s, Diane Duane, who up to that point had been a lightly successful author, got a big break with the first book of her new Young Wizards series, So You Want to Be a Wizard. The book was wildly popular and practically flew off the shelves. The sequels continued the trend, and the series rapidly became a cultural phenomenon.

Inevitably, a movie series was produced. Due to Duane having significant input on the scripts, the films were a good adaptation of the books while also being good movies in their own right. (This also ensured that Kit stayed Latino, much to the relief of the fandom.) Sker'ret had the animators simultaneously looking forward to the interesting project and groaning about how much work all this guy was going to be.

New York City, despite only being a secondary location, saw a spike of Young Wizards-related tourist revenue, much to the annoyance of New Jersey (who got fewer tourists than they'd like) and commuters who want those damm kids to stop standing in the middle of everything to take selfies while holding broken car antennas. There are now signs pointing to the worldgate platform at the relevant subway stops.

(CrossingsCon remains, of course, a massive annual event, with smaller cons all around the globe)

It should be noted that the books weren't without controversy, mainly due to their handling of religious themes and mixing magic in with all this. The canonical gay and ace characters didn't help reception among the fundamentalist crowd either.

There was also, however, an uproar from the autistic community on the release of A Wizard Alone/. Once the issues came to light, Diane Duane, much to the annoyance of her publisher, had printing stopped and copies pulled where possible (partly out of her pocket) so she could fix the problems. Fans generally like version 2, which took a few months to get into shape, better.

The spinoff Feline Wizards series, released somewhat recently, was well-received among the fans that it's getting a movie adaptation too.

The free to play cash grab mobile game is, sadly, still a thing, much to everyone's annoyance. Can't have everything in the AU dream.

(Credit to Gnanz for the book re-release idea)

- Tomash

So. King Arthur, right? Now, way back in the day, he was a lot simpler, and for that matter, so was everyone around him. But then those turn-of-the-millennium fanfic writers had to go and make everything so much more complicated - and among the things they put way too much time into headcanoning was the backstory of prankstress supreme and local magical icon, Morgan Le Fay the archtraitor himself, Mordred.

You see, those wacky dudes in their silly robes couldn't just let Camelot be an idyllic place full of heroic knights and fair ladies, of course not. They had to make social commentary. And how did they do this? Through the traitor, Mordred. You see, according to their headcanons, Mordred isn't power-hungry or just plain evil - he's genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor and powerless. He wants to see them brought up in the world, which is why he originally joins King Arthur. However, as he witnesses the faults of the other knights, his faith in Arthur begins to wane, and the last straw is when Arthur runs off to fight a war with Lancelot that doesn't even need to be fought while leaving his kingdom without its ruler. Thus, Mordred, heavy of heart, decides he must take the crown and rebel against the king for the good of all.

Now, in the modern era, some have begun to be more interested in the character of Morgan La Fay, and due to some placing her as his mother, this leads to an unfortunate tendency to have him lose some of his depth as a character. Some writers manage to pull of having both as interesting characters, but they're in the minority, and recently they've been favoring Morgan over Mordred, with various authors posing their own explanations for where she comes from and why she hates Arthur so much.

The results of this adjustment start small. It begins with a little more sympathy for the rebel and the traitor in literature, but when Arthurian canon becomes really popular, sometimes the effects are pronounced. For example, rather than the phrase 'devil's advocate', some people - primarily in the U.K. and its former territories - will use the phrase 'Mordred's advocate', which, while often espousing similar positions, is more in line with somebody arguing in favor of doing that which is illegal or goes against custom or conventional wisdom because they view it as a more moral way to proceed, rather than merely attempting to test an argument.

OhsweetbabybunnieswhydidIdothisdon'tkillmeBritishBoardersplease

Kamen Rider would be the flashy one being adapted into Power Rider, and Super Sentai would be the serious younger cousin virtually unheard of in the U.S.

If Doctor Who was a standalone cult classic movie featuring characters traveling through time and space in a phone box, while Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure became a decades-spanning TV show featuring characters traveling through time and space in a phone box.

In 1910, French author Gaston Leroux published the novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. It was a beautiful love story about a misunderstood musical genius who pined for a backup opera singer, who herself was more drawn to her childhood sweetheart. Despite being violent and threatening, the unnamed Phantom was shown to be a tragic figure, produced by an abusive upbringing due to the disfigured face he was born with. The novel featured numerous musical numbers, with the lyrics written right within the narrative—some clearly diegetic, but others used to to further to plot or reveal the inner conflicts of the characters.

The novel was quickly translated to multiple languages and spread around the world. It was praised for the clever literary device of using lyrics to express the feelings of characters who produce or perform music for a living. More importantly, it was hailed as a metaphor for not judging people by their appearances, as the Phantom is actually described as having a very small blemish on one side of his face. All the other characters, however, react with disgust and fear, despite the Phantom being apparently quite handsome, and having a beautiful singing voice.

1925 saw the still beloved silent film adaptation, where Rudolph Valentino played the Phantom. Although the technology of the time failed to allow for Leroux's original lyrics to be included, the director opted to keep music woven into the experience by making the entire film a dance number. The film's enduring fandom is a testament to the creativity used in developing the dance routines for the film.

Leroux's sequel, Love Never Dies, was weird and panned by critics at the time. It is largely forgotten now, though most fans agree the lyrics to "Beauty Underneath" sound really cool.

Then, Andrew Lloyd Webber came along. The news that he was working on a stage musical adaptation of the novel was met with excitement. But then, in 1986, it released, to the confusion and disappointment of the world. Despite his plays being known for their musical numbers, Webber had elected to neither adapt Leroux's original lyrics, nor to produce any of his own. Instead, his presentation of the novel's story was a purely dialogue-driven narrative, and featured many strange changes besides. The mysterious Phantom had now been given the uninspiring name "Erik." Christine, lauded in the novel for having a very active role for a female character in the time period it was published, had been diminished to a much more passive, damsel-in-distress role, with Raoul taking over a lot of her duties. The popular character of Madame Giry had been reduced to a cameo as a crazy old crone near the end of the story, while her most important contributions to the plot were transferred to a new character of Webber's original invention, only referred to as "the Persian." (Critics joked that with the Phantom receiving a proper name, Webber must have felt a new character called only by their description must have been needed.) But worst of all, though, Webber undermined the original story's message against discrimination based on looks; Erik's mask covers his entire face, garbling his words throughout the entire show, and the face beneath the mask is now a mess of prosthetics that make the character's skull seem to be showing through his flesh. While some argue this change was simply to make the horrified reactions from the original novel seem more realistic, the slate of other changes in Webber's version make this argument fall a little flat.

Webber's Phantom became one of the shortest-running shows on Broadway, and has never returned to the stage, although to be fair, it does have a small but dedicated fanbase to this day. It's Leroux's original novel, however, that has survived the test of time and remains the definitive version of the story to this day.

—doctorlit suspects our Phantom mini in this timeline would be the toy cymbal monkey, rather than brass grasshoppers and scorpions