How Would You Even Go About Using That Thing Properly? It Doesn’t Look Very Practical. 

The Black Medici Prince

I really wish Medici had a fourth season covering the life of Alessandro de Medici and a young Catherine de Medici. The Emperor’s sack of Rome would be amazing to see on screen. It’d be Game of Thrones level of destruction!

He could be played by the guy that played Grey Worm in Game of Thrones!

I’d pay to see it!

“Oppenheimer should at least represent Japanese voices” actual Japanese filmmakers have made dozens of movies about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including at least two anime films off the top of my head, that you would’ve bothered to watch if you actually cared about this beyond winning discourse points. Not to mention all the Japanese science fiction that is obviously inspired in some way by trauma over the bombing, including the entire genre of kaiju films. Do you really think there's anything those works haven't said that Christopher Nolan would add? Or maybe, in fact, the lack of focus there in Oppenheimer is The Point, since the real-life Manhattan Project (which the film is critical of) certainly wasn't consulting "Japanese voices"? Anyway, In This Corner of the World is a great film about the life of a young woman from Hiroshima in the waning days of WWII that you can currently rent for $1.99 on Amazon Prime. It's animated by the same studio that did Yuri!!! on Ice and it's based on a 3-volume manga that is also terrific and available both physically and digitally in English. If you actually want fiction that depicts "Japanese voices on the atomic bomb" I would start there. If you actually care about diverse perspectives in media you'd also care about the people making that media and look to what actual Japanese people are saying about this rather than expecting American and British creators to spoon-feed it to you.

Sanditon seems like it might do better on a bigger budget streaming service.

Vote for Sanditon on Hulu

Hulu subscribers, you can vote for Hulu to pick up Sanditon - like they picked up The Mindy Project. You need to log in, then go to Ideas and search for Sanditon. Then vote!

https://community.hulu.com/s/ideas

Alessandro de’ Medici Alessandro de’ Medici, called “Il Moro” (“The Moor”), was born in the Italian city of Urbino in 1510. His mother was an African slave named Simonetta who had been freed. Alessandro’s paternity is uncertain. Most sources name Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler of Urbino. But Alessandro might also have been the son of Pope Clement VII, the brother of Lorenzo II who became the head of the Medici family after Lorenzo’s death. Clement VII chose the nineteen-year-old Alessandro to become the first Duke of Florence in 1529. Pope Clement at that time was at odds not only with the Florentines who had driven out the Medici family in 1497, but also with the emperor Charles V. To solidify the allegiance that the papacy owed to the Holy Roman Empire, Alessandro was named Duke of Florence and promised the emperor’s daughter Margaret. With the help of Charles V, Clement could restore the rule of the Medici family in Florence in 1530 and make Alessandro the first reigning Duke. Supported initially by the best families, Alessandro became an absolute prince, overthrowing the city’s’ republican government. According to most historians the young duke’s reign did not begin very well. His arrogant personality, the bad behavior of his entourage, and his licentiousness – with both women and feasting – soon gave Alessandro an unsavory reputation. In addition, he made some highly unpopular political decisions including limiting the number of remunerative positions in his government. This decision alone forced many patrician families to go into exile and become enemies of his rule.  Alessandro’s situation grew worse when his protector and benefactor Clement VII died in 1534. In response he took more repressive measures against his enemies, probably due to his growing fear of them and uncertainty of his support. Meanwhile, resistance against Alessandro’s reign grew among the exiles and even his cousin Ippolito plotted against the Duke. When Ippolito died unexpectedly in 1535, speculations arose that Alessandro had poisoned him. In June 1536, however, Charles V visited Florence and married his daughter to Alessandro, consolidating the Duke’s position. Nonetheless one year later, Alessandro was murdered by his own cousin Lorenzino, who fled to Venice and was hailed among the exiles as the “New Brutus.” Sources: T.F. Earle and K.J. Lowe, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); J.A. Rogers, World’s Greatest Men of Color, Volume II (New York: Macmillan, 1972).

I am having more fun with this than should be allowed

Gorgeous!

Your kiss of life has opened my eyes

The place where my heart breaks, you have mended

Your gift of love has given me life

My sorrow and heartache, you have ended…

books i read in 2021: “evelina” by frances burney ★★★★☆

“I revere you. I esteem and admire you above all human beings. You are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half. You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women. And you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling.”

D*NY stans think battle of bells will be between cersei & joncon. I've seen ppl theorising that KL will be ashes when Dny arrives in Westeros because cersei will blow it up with wildfire ("as KL is her city" 🤭). Dny stans substitute cersei in every theory that is negative for dny (they call cersei as Aerys 2.0 🤭)

*GRRM over the years talking about aunty, her pets and burning cities to the ground*:

A Dance With Dragons spends quite a lot of time in Essos, which is kind of the analog to Asia and the Middle East in the world the story takes place in, as opposed to Westeros, which seems to owe a lot to Western Europe. When I was reading about Dany, who has become a light-skinned, foreign ruler of an exotic land, it reminded me of The Man Who Would Be King, the Sean Connery and Michael Caine movie that is based on a Rudyard Kipling story. Do you think about these parallels — colonialism, the “white man’s burden” — when you’re writing? I’ve said many times I don’t like thinly disguised allegory, but certain scenes do resonate over time. Other people have made the argument, which is more more contemporary, that it might have resonances with our current misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m aware of the parallels, but I’m not trying to slap a coat of paint on the Iraq War and call it fantasy. When civilizations clash in your books, instead of Guns, Germs, and Steel, maybe it’s more like Dragons, Magic, and Steel (and also Germs). There is magic in my universe, but it’s pretty low magic compared to other fantasies. Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.

—GRRM - Vulture - 2011

“I mean battles and wars interest me too - and medieval feasts interest me. And you know I’m creating a whole world here and every facet of it. As I get to it I try to approach it as realistically as I can, but ultimately as I said before, it’s it’s the human heart in conflict with itself. It’s what makes Cersei Lannister the way she is, and is she capable of learning and changing? What drives Dany? With Dany I’m particularly looking at the… what effect great power has upon a person. She’s the mother of dragons, and she controls what is in effect the only three nuclear weapons in the entire world that I’ve created. What does it do to you when you control the only three nuclear weapons in the world and you can destroy entire cities or cultures if you choose to? Should you choose to, should you not choose to? These are the issues that fascinate me. I don’t necessarily claim to have answers to these. I think exploring the questions is far more interesting than just me giving an answer and saying to the reader, here’s the answer, here’s the truth. Now think about it for yourself, look at the dilemmas, look at the contradictions, look at the problems, and the unintended consequences. That’s what fascinates me.”

—“Interview exclusive de George R R Martin, l'auteur de Game Of Thrones” de -Le Mouv’- 2014 - [Transcription]

How do you analyze this question of power? I think I was struck by the reading of the Lord of the Rings. I find that Tolkien is a little simplistic on the subject: at the end of the book, Aragorn becomes king, and we learn that he ruled in a wise and just way for a century, for he was a good man. But I read history books, I'm contemporary news, and I'm convinced that being a good man is not enough to make you a great leader. Because governing is a delicate exercise that makes you constantly make difficult decisions, solve problems where there is no good solution, that would solve everything by magic. Those are profound questions for the human race. And then there is the war, another subject that is close to my heart, I was a conscientious objector at the time of the Vietnam War, and this question still concerns me. I look at what is happening in the Middle East, with the Islamic State, and I can not help wondering: who are these monsters, these modern orcs? Who can be sympathetic to them? And yet, fighters say thousands to join them. More seriously, what motivates them? And how should we fight them? If I were Daenerys Targaryen. I could ride on my dragons and eliminate them in the flames. But is death the only solution we have to offer? How react to another who is so radically alien to us? These questions are very difficult - and I do not pretend to have the answers. Because there is no simple answer to these questions.

—Lire Magazine - April 2015

He was asked to comment about the differences between the book and show characters, particularly Daenerys. GRRM ignored all the other characters and talked only about Daenerys - he said that the show one is older because there are laws in USA that prevent minors from having sex scenes so the decision was made to age Daenerys. Otherwise, book Daenerys and show Daenerys “are very similar” and “Emilia Clarke did a fantastic job”. (I guess he can’t really say negative things about the show, can he?)

—GRRM Q&A - St. Petersburg, August 2017

GRRM: “People read fantasy to see the colours again,” he says. “We live our lives and I think there’s something in us that yearns for something more, more intense experiences. There are men and women out there who live their lives seeking those intense experiences, who go to the bottom of the sea and climb the highest mountains or get shot into space. Only a few people are privileged to live those experiences but I think all of us want to, somewhere in our heart of hearts we don’t want to live the lives of quiet desperation Thoreau spoke about, and fantasy allows us to do those things. Fantasy takes us to amazing places and shows us wonders, and that fulfils a need in the human heart.”

The Guardian: And the dragons?

GRRM: “Oh sure, dragons are cool too,” he chuckles. “But maybe not on our doorstep”.

—The Guardian - November 2018

Esquire: How will Fire & Blood deepen our understanding of Daenerys and her dragons?

GRRM: This is a book that Daenerys might actually benefit from reading, but she has no access to Archermaester Gyldayn’s crumbling manuscripts. So she’s operating on her own there. Maybe if she understood a few things more about dragons and her own history in Essos, things would have gone a little differently.

—Esquire - November 2018

Sitting down with news.com.au in New York City, Martin dropped dark hints to the suffering awaiting the war-torn world of Westeros as the battle for the Iron Throne reaches its peak.

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.

‘THE POWER TO DESTROY’

“She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in ‘Fire and Blood,’ we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.”

—GRRM - Fox News Channel - November 2018

John Howe: Can I ask you why Dany is a princess and not a prince?

GRRM: I made this choice a long time ago, I think I wanted to play a little with the genres and reversed things a little, and of course in my head the expression "mother of dragons" is much better than "father of dragons". There is also this link with the woman who gives life, who transmits lives, carrying a gigantic power of death, of fire, of destruction. There are very powerful metaphors in there.

—Dragons! (2/4) Dragons d'Occident, la figure du mal [2018] - Video - Translation (last quote).

WELT: Again: We know what will happen to the Mother of Dragons. How do you want to surpass that in a novel – with an alternative literary version?

GRRM: Counter question: How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? In Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the Wind” she had three children. But in the cinema version of the novels she only had one child. Which version is the only one valid - the one with one or the other with three children? The answer is: neither. Because Scarlett O'Hara never existed, she is a fictional character, not a real person, who would have had real children. Or take “The Little Mermaid”. We know her from the fairytale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen and from the Disney movie. Which one is the true mermaid? Well, mermaids do not exist. So you can chose the version that you personally like the best. Changes are inevitable in this process. Even if the adaption is as faithful to the literary source material as it was the case with “Game of Thrones”.

—GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (“Die Leute kennen ein Ende – nicht das Ende” - WELT 2020) - Translation.

[…] The role of Daenerys is a difficult role, particularly in the pilot, because Daenerys begins as a frightened little girl. She’s thoroughly dominated by her brother, who humiliates her and sexually assaults her. He’s selling her to this fierce guy and she’s frightened but during the course of that comes into her own power. She suddenly grows from a girl to a woman and starts to realize that she does have power and authority. There’s a transformation that’s incredible the entire course of the show. You have to find an actress who can do both parts, who can be very convincing as the scared little girl in the beginning, but also very convincing as the “I’m gonna kick your ass and burn your city to cinders” woman that she becomes by the end. It’s challenging and it was a hard part to cast.

—GRRM - Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers by James Andrew Miller (NOVEMBER 23, 2021). Full quote here.

The Targaryens are also an ancient house but they're not an ancient Westerosi house. They knew that destruction was coming to Valyria and went far away from the capital city and the settled on the volcanic island of Dragonstone. They were dragon lords in Valyria. Now dragons are really formidable and they can turn the tide of a battle. It flies, it's difficult to hit, it breathes fire, against which most knights and men at arms have little or no protection. So if you have dragons, that's were the nuclear option analogy comes in. You're hard to mess around with. So the dragons and fear of dragons was one of the things that made the Targaryens very secure in their power.

—Before the Dance: An Illustrated History with George R.R. Martin | House of the Dragon (HBO) - August - 2022

*aunty stans*: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Read more here:

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Queen of Ashes

For the real Madame Du Barry … is a very different person from the popular Du Barry of the pamphlets and romances and contemporary biographies.

… On three occasions did she intercede on behalf of condemned criminals, and each time with success; she gave generously, lavishly; not only during the days when she had the Treasury to draw upon, but in later years, when her means were relatively small; nothing roused her to such indignation as the sight of cruelty or the neglect of suffering; she was the best of relatives, the most loyal of friends.

–Madame Du Barry by  H. Noel Williams.