Comparisons with OTL (Superpowers)

Understanding of an alternate history is given context by comparisons to Our Timeline. The Real World is the golden standard and model against which all plausibility is measured. As the only known world, OTL is an objective arbiter of what can happen in any timeline. It's science is the science of other worlds, it's history is the backdrop to a point of divergence and its events are the parallels to alternate happenings.

A proper and thorough comparison does not work on a merely chronological level. If I compared what happened in 1912 in the Alternate Timeline to events of OTL in 1912 then I would make a useless comparison. Apples to oranges as the idiom goes. But if I look at feminism in the ATL modern age and put it against feminism in Our world then fundamental differences between the histories are illuminated. This is the comparison that I desire.