Dear Arminius, Please Kindly Return the Legions Which You Currently Hold Possession Of
Written by user @RepublicSamNarco between 2018 and 2020 '
Dear Arminius, Please Kindly Return the Legions Which You Currently Hold Possession Of', subtitled '
The worldwide history-poprap scene after Hamilton' is a pop-culture timeline playing in 'the present' or rather in a slightly different late 2010's
Told in a series of newspaper articles, interviews and theater reviews from the vantage point of the year 2025, the timeline describes an alternate present in which Lin Manuel Miranda's Broadway hit
Hamilton became an even bigger phenomenon and sparked a whole genre of '
historical rap musicals'.
The timeline starts with a 2025 German newspaper magazine interview describing in-depth how Lin Manuel Miranda himself is now directing a play in Berlin. The play is a double-portrait of the famous battle of the Teuteburg forest and the history of the German song '
Als die Römer frech geworden', a song about the battle that since it's inception in 1821 never really could decide whether it should use the battle to parody the '
current' German wave(s) of jingo-nationalism or just celebrate them to coat-tail into popularity on the prevailing national sentiment. And so the musical promises a wild ride through the restauration of the 1820s, the 1848 revolutions, the Keiserreich, the Weimar cabaret culture, the Nazis and the postwar reckoning, the two Germanies and the reunification woes of the otherwise Wilde nineties... interspersed with a rapping Arminius and a fobbish Roman Emperor Claudius. The timeline's title (
Dear Arminius....) comes from a song that the emperor Claudius, here a clear mirror of the comical King George III in 'Hamilton', sings while Miranda is getting interviewed by a Berlin journalist.
Lin Manuel Miranda, by the way is currently in Germany because in his "
one and only true love, his hometown New York" he is now '
blacklisted by the MAGA culture warriors' who are in this timeline calling the shots in a USA where "
President Ivanka in just one year made America great again... the greatest banana republic the world has ever seen" (*) Tellingly, it is noted that during the interview the actor playing Claudius is made up to look like a comical Donald Trump in a purple toga... Just to set the mood.....
And from this starting point the author takes us on a review of the last 10 years in world- and theater history. While 'world history' mostly consists out of barbs at "
President Ivanka and her father too"(*), the timeline's real beauty lies in the description of the various American, UK, French, Belgian and even one Greek and one Finnish play each based on the success of '
Hamilton', each copying it's formula of highlighting -in pop and rap- another national figure or historical event.
Readers in particular loved the posts about the musical '
Marie Antoinette, ne perd pas ta tête' (Marie Antoinette, don't loose your head). An analysis of '
Lilienthal-Ein Berliner Ikarus' (... where a 55-year old Gustav- and an even older Otto Lilienthal rap in pure
Berleener dialect about how open and cosmopolitan their city is-in 1890...) brought a hailstorm of suggestions what German actor should play what part. In comparison, a (fictional) Finnish play having painter Axeli Kahlen-Kalella rapping the national epos The Kalevella just got fan mail from Finish rappers and Scandinavian death metal affectionados.
So over the next two years (2018-2020) the author continued on the formula And treated the reader on such pearls as '
Goya Y Napoleon', '
Burton vs. Speke','
Einstein in Belgium' and '
Il Doge Dandalo' . In the meantime world history marches on... on a slightly different path... as in this timeline Lin Manuel Miranda goes fully progressive following 'Hamilton'. Contrary to OTL, here he disses his movie work for '
Mary Poppins II' and instead writes a poignant poltitcal musical about the
Armistead mutiny... This one however bombs because he overdid the political agenda. Worse, the backlash against his openly anti-MAGA message starts a new culture war... and in this one the reactionaries - "
fueled by president Trump's media machine"(*)- not only won but for their reward also got to reshape the American art and culture scene to their liking.
Readers posts ridiculed the political timeline laid out by @RepublicSamNarco, but l.o.v.e.d. the musicals'. So the timeline continued with an unnamed Belgian production in which the last 6 of the so far 7 Belgian kings diss the dirt on each other's rule- in Brussels dialect rap. Readers seamed to love it, especialy the idea that the cast had 6 male actors, but only two women so the two had to play multiple roles depicting each king's wife and mistress in chronological order. Also the author kept on dropping tidbits about Miranda's new Berlin play, sometimes posting whole rap exchanges between Arminius, Varus and emperor
Trump eeh Claudius to overall positive response from the readers.
However the author also continued his political timeline which slowly divided the world into two camps: one in which historical rap theater blossomed and nudged its audience to look beyond headlines and quotes and think for themselves and another one controlled by increasingly right-wing totalitarian governments. Poland, Hungaria and France fall to the totalitarians. This is demonstrated by the musical 'Jeanne d'Arc' in wich nominal Joan of Ark seemingly fights the English, but in reality aims at today's Muslims, easterners and non-Europeans in France as well as their "
collaborateurs in media, education and city halls" (*). In the meantime in the US, the current president is flaunting every constitutional restraint and getting away with it because
"for everyone who doesn't step out of line, life actually looks really great"(*) the 2020 elections by times looked like a redo of the 1933 elections in Germany, the one that legally brought Hitler to power despite being married by open street battles between Nazi and Socialist-Communist youth groups. And so over the next four years the president and his party remold the country in their image, silencing dissenters and streamlining the media into their own propaganda machine. Therefore, despite all the controversy, the 2024 election of Ivanka Trump was never really in doubt. Even before the last votes were tallied, Lin Manuel Miranda fled to Germany.
Off course, 2020 did not see any street fights and shootouts between Maga and socalist youth groups. Instead it gave us COVID, lockdowns, BLM marches and eventually an election that saw Trump defeated by the slimmest of margins, but still by the rule of law.
2020 was also the last year author @RepublicSamNarco posted new content to his timeline. More even, although his account remains active, he does not seem to have posted anywhere since July of that year. According to some, this means that he fell victim to COVID, especially as he is rumored to be an Geman retiree living in Italy, in one of the regions hardest hit by the virus. Other reader take a more optimistic attitude, interpreting a cryptic message in his last post as meaning that he was actually contacted by a German theater company to write one of the theater pieces he invented in this timeline for real.
(*) all quotation are copied verbatim from the original post and therefore @RepublicSamNarco's own words, not mine
Next up:
Okay, I got ninja-ed here, so I will just repost the previous challenge:
- "Women, don't play no games"
- "She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore"
- "You know I used to be on fire"