#where I stop and pause at Christian terminology

[boysnberriespie]

Trying to figure out what makes some certain types of fantasy fiction feel off kilter when they allude to specific Christian concepts lol

[apricops]

writing prompt: the political climate of [your choice of historical period] expressed in the form of office drama

[Interior - an anachronistic office building, equal parts The Name of The Rose and Parks and Rec. Holy Roman Emperor MAXIMILIAN I is in the background, listening to a PETITIONER. Court musicians nearby are playing something soothing as MAXIMILIAN I visibly tries not to lose his shit.

In the foreground, several people are seated around a table. The table is piled high with semi-organized stacks of papers, labeled “Habsburgs,” “Denmark,” and “???” There is a tired-looking COURT LAWYER who is skimming through a document, seated across from a Fancy-Lad DUCAL ENVOY and an old, gray-bearded, Prussian-looking MARGRAVE, who is half-asleep. The COURT LAWYER skims over a few pages in tense, frustrated silence before finally speaking.]

COURT LAWYER: So King Christian I is his own vassal?

[Cut to the COURT LAWYER doing that talking-to-the-camera-like-The-Office thing, because I have never written a TV script before and am fuzzy on the terminology.]

COURT LAWYER: The Holstien case… is hell. The cadet branches just pop up like… like pimples! One minute it’s Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, then it’s Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, then—

[Snap cut back to the table, making it clear the COURT LAWYER could have gone on for hours. The DUCAL ENVOY gestures to a document and starts to explain.]

DUCAL ENVOY: That, ah, that’s from a different case. You see, our illustrious house was rewarded for our service against the Ottomans during the Siege of Thessalonica.

[The MARGRAVE snaps awake.]

MARGRAVE: The Ottomans? Where? Drive back the Turk! Get me the garrison commander! Murm, and a stuffed pastry or two…

[Everyone ignores the MARGRAVE, who falls back asleep after a few more rambles.]

COURT LAWYER: Wasn’t the Siege of Thessalonica a total failure and humiliating defeat on our end?

[The DUCAL ENVOY makes a “yeah, but I’m gonna get mine” gesture. The camera tilts to zoom in on MAXIMILIAN I, who pauses to give a you-are-the-first-to-die-in-my-fantasies glare at the DUCAL ENVOY, then puts his normal expression back on and resumes listening to the PETITIONER.]

[The COURT LAWYER sets the document aside and picks up another one, then winces.]

COURT LAWYER: For god’s sake, Schleswig-Holstein-Liga?

DUCAL ENVOY: I think that one’s just a soccer league, actually.

[The PETITIONER leaves. MAXIMILIAN I signals to the court musicians to stop playing. Suddenly, there is a sense silence. MAXIMILIAN I stands up, takes a deep breath, and screams.]

MAXIMILAN I: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[He pauses to breathe in again, then starts to storm offscreen, shouting.]

MAXIMILIAN I: *offscreen* If you rat bastards are going to wave forged documents in my face, at least have the goddamn decency to put in a little effort! The Habsburgs wrote the book on forgeries! Don’t TREAT ME LIKE A CHUMP!

RANDOM RETAINER: The, uh, the emperor will not be seeing any more petitioners today.

[The DUCAL ENVOY stands up and, taking his cue to leave, scoots away, opposite the direction the emperor left.]

[Cut to MAXIMILIAN I doing the talking-to-camera thing. Time has clearly passed, and servants are busy cleaning up rage-smashed furniture.]

MAXIMILIAN I: How come everyone who’s on my side sucks? The dukes, the electors, the rich territories, they’re always busy scheming and trying to fuck me over. But an abbey full of old nuns? Oh, we’re on your side, emperor! Anything you want, emperor! Here, here’s a pair of old sandles, that’ll keep the French from conquering Naples!

MAXIMILIAN I: *heavy, wistful sigh* I bet the Sultan doesn’t have to deal with shit like this. I wish I could be like that… with a harem of women, and not having to take any sass from anyone… this is getting edited out, right?

[Snap cut to interior – Topkapi Palace. Ottoman Sultan BAYEZID II is trying not to look guilty as his mother, GÜLBAHAR HATUN, lectures him.]

GÜLBAHAR HATUN: It’s been months, sweetie. Months!

BAYEZID II: *trying not to get snippy* I know, mother, but things have been crazy at work lately, and—

GÜLBAHAR HATUN: That’s what you say every time! I know you’re the head of the House of Osman, but you’re still my little boy too.

BAYEZID II: I’m sorry, it’s just, I’ve been on campaign, mom. I can’t just drop everything and come visit whenever I want. If we don’t control the Peloponnese, how are we going to have enough naval power to compete with the Venetians?

GÜLBAHAR HATUN: *crossing her arms* You care more about those Venetians than your own mother! The woman who gave birth to you!

[In the background, a HAREM LADY scoots by, trying not to be noticed, dressed in expensive but modest clothing. Cut to her doing the talking-to-camera thing.]

HAREM LADY: Look, I don’t know what those horny Austrians told you I did, but I just copy poetry, alright?

----------------------------------------------

Postscripts:

This was delayed because it started with me going “Schleswig-Holstein? That is a funny name, I’m going to use that for this ask, because it is funny” only to find out that it has been involved in insanely complicated legal disputes for basically eight hundred years. I decided to get around the issue by not dealing with it.

Wiki-ing told me that Gülbar Hatun did, in fact, send letters to Bayezid II complaining that he was always too busy emperor-ing to visit her.

I spent too much time and attention at first trying to get the date-overlap right with things but stopped caring after a bit because it was against the spirit of prompts

[sdr19899]

*****

For the last couple days, I've been reading tons of comments about how Trump has caused everything that's happening right now.

The thuggery.

The bombs.

The embracing of Nationalism.

The racism.

The denial of facts.

And the list of reprehensible things goes on and on.

But Trump causing all this?

This is a foolish belief.

Trump didn't cause these things. Trump simply made it permissible to openly engage in these ideas and practices.

Trump makes no attempt to correct them. He instead finds value in them. He simply revs the engine to a roar, that was previously idling quietly.

The true problem here in truth, are the people who've found a messiah in a man like Donald Trump.

They are on your friend list.

They are in your workplace.

They are in your family.

They gleefully revel in the Civil Cold War of which he fans the flames.

They WANT this hatred and ugliness. They've always wanted it.

This is why they speak of "finally having a President with balls.".

They hid their true intentions for years behind paper thin masks of 'Christianity' and 'American Patriotism', so that any interrogation of their positions left them feeling as if they held the moral high ground simply by default.

Regardless of the fact that they very much didn't, even by the most generous of moral metrics.

They hated the idea of gays being married, because in reality, they just don't like gays.

But they conveniently used edicts in The Bible as their defense publicly.

Edicts that they are more than willing to ignore in their own lives when they pertain to their own behind closed door behaviors, and even behaviors that aren't hidden away from public scrutiny.

They were the same people that told you that Trayvon Martin got what he deserved for not just kowtowing to a wannabe cowboy zero with no legal authority over him, when said zero decided to stalk him in the dark of night because he looked 'suspicious' simply for being black.

When they couldn't find real pictures of the 'thug' Trayvon they needed to support their narrative...they created them.

This black young man was where EVERYTHING was believable, even while every bit of common sense said otherwise.

They're the people who believed every single conspiracy theory about a President who was also black.

They burned great amounts of calories trying to diminish him, his dead mother, his wife, his children....they called him a liar about his birthplace, they suggested he was an active agent for Islamic terror, the even rewrote history so that he himself caused our economy that was already in ruin before he was ever sworn into office.

When they couldn't find real scandals to support their narratives about him, they created them.

This black guy was where EVERYTHING was believable, even while every bit of common sense said otherwise.

They're the people, women included, who celebrated the appointment of man to the highest court in our land, that openly lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about what common terminologies that we all know the meaning of, meant, because it lent great credibility to the accusations that he was an aggressive sexual deviant in high school and college, and assaulted a woman named Christine Blasey Ford.

A woman by the way, that they had no pause in ridiculing, branding a liar, and spreading false information about, just because they believed it 'owned the Libtards'.

This white guy was where NOTHING was believable, even while every bit of common sense said otherwise.

They are the people who will profess that a Slovick gold digger, who took pornographic pictures with other women, and who casually overlooks the fact that her husband cheats on her with pornstars, and then lies about having paid for their silence, is the 'classiest First Lady ever', while they figured out how Michelle Obama was a secret transsexual.

When they couldn't prove their assertions about Michelle Obama, they created photoshopped evidence to support their narratives.

This black woman was where EVERYTHING was believable, even while every bit of common sense said otherwise.

They're the people that in response to the massacre of school children were immediately inclined to attack and ridicule the young people whose friends they would never speak to again, and the families who could now only be complete in photographs of days gone by.

But thoughts of this don't even enter their minds as quickly as posting pictures of their guns do...while they profess to be devout followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

They're the people that when a white man murdered 58 people from a window in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, and injured 500 more, told you that it was too soon to discuss guns, while once again claiming their facade of moral high ground by demanding you show respect to the victims families and not politicize their losses.

Yet strangely when Mollie Tibbets was murdered by an illegal, the conversation about building walls was able to start immediately, and no respect for the victims family needed be shown, EVEN when her father demanded they stop using his daughter for their racist narrative.

Many of them, mysteriously after 50 years on this planet, still can't even navigate their way through constructing a coherent sentence.

Spelling eludes them.

Punctuation eludes them.

Proper capitalization is seemingly tantamount to a challenge to solve the fucking Rubik's Cube to them.

But they'll assure you that they understand the intricacies and subtle nuances of geopolitics and economic projection much better than you, libtard cuck, with all your fancy book learnin'!

And you pointing out that you can't even understand the point that they're attempting to make because their post looks like a grammatical and punctuational ground zero, will cause them to claim that "that's all Libtards can do is attack grammar!", even if you're not a dyed in the wool Liberal.

And they'll be angry after reading this...if they do.

They'll be pissed that I called them racists.

I'm not saying they're definitely racist...I'm just saying it's unlikely that they're not a racist by their clear disdain for brown skinned people, and that the man they adore is also adored by card carrying White Nationalists and Neo Nazis, because he thinks they're 'fine people'.

They too celebrate finally having a President 'with balls'.

But I guess that's just a quirky coincidence.

Silly me. There I go believing liberal lies again.

They'll be pissed that I called called them frauds about their Christianity. I'm not saying they're definitely frauds, I'm just saying that they don't follow any of Christ's teachings as I know them to be. The ones I spent many years of my life learning about in Catholic School.

And let's leave Jeezo out of it...their basic human decency seems to be for shit too.

And these are just the vocals ones.

The ones who stay silent while knowing how fucked up this all is, are worse. They keep quiet just to not be aligned with 'libtards', even when they know the 'libtards' are right about this madness.

But hey, how 'bout that stock market, bro?

Oh...oh that's right, we aren't talking about that now.

I guess what I'm saying is...I wish they'd stop with the ruse, and just admit what they really are.

I'm tired of pretending these are 'good Christian Americans'.

They're racially driven hate mongers who are willing to believe in fantasical idiocy to be 'right', and who have labeled truth 'intellectual elitism' so that they can pretend their moronic viewpoints carry any currency at all in adult conversation.

No decent person...no truly good intended person, would celebrate this man and the stupidity and hate he panders to.

So again, I wish they would just admit what they are, and then we can at least have honest conversations, or openly acknowledge that they aren't worth attempting to have.

But they're too cowardly to say it out loud and in the open.

So it's not really Trump, it's these people that are the problem.

Any racist hate monger could have been their Trump.

Anyone.

So if you want to know why they're laughing at, or flat out denying the domestic terror over the last couple days, while instead focusing on the brown skinned people in the 'caravan', you already have your answer.

They've been giving it to you for years.