Cas Stark

Good for Tywin for giving a percentage. I think that is wildly high, if I were to give a percentage I'd put it at 10%. The evidence shows that Meg was given rapturous, positive press in the beginning. Even the fact that she cut her own father off, didn't dent things too much. It was only after the wedding when things began to leak out about her behavior that you started to see a change in the tone of some of the coverage, most notably the Daily Mail. There is much more evidence that her own behavior is what caused the change from positive to negative, rather than her being biracial. It is just not true that coverage of Meghan was negative from the beginning, certainly not compared to Kate Middleton who was still getting razzed for her family's non aristo background right up until Meghan came on the scene. There is a conversation to be had about whether the tabloids pick a royal to 'target' and the fact that that royal is always a woman who married into the family. No tabloids have ever been interested in either of Anne's husbands. But, that's a convo about sexism not racism.

I'm pretty sure this never happened. Her mother has gotten almost completely positive press and her black relatives not only weren't at her wedding but they have been almost invisible in any media coverage. Maybe you are thinking about her father's side of the family, as the Markles indeed have generated a lot of negative press. I read Tom Sykes, he's the royal reporter for the Daily Beast and he leaned mostly pro Harry and Meg until very recently. I'm going to have to file this post under 'gaslighting'.

There is also a very big difference between claiming that media coverage is racist, which has been claimed on this board many times and is routinely stated as a fact by writers, reporters, broadcasts, politicians.....and that some level of racism might be at play in why some number of people don't like Meghan and Harry. The first is, as far as I can tell, objectively false. Despite claims of 'dozens' of examples of media racism, there is barely any coverage that could reasonably be called racist or even racialized. The second, I mean, obviously if you go down into the twitter hellhole you're going to find some racist stuff, duh. Perhaps I have misunderstood that people on this board think that racism plays a major role in dislike of M&H, when what they really meant was that some unknowable number of individuals harbor some level of racist animus against Meghan. In which case, I agree.

Well, you know, everyone gets Markled in the end, no matter who you are.

It's a little odd that [almost] no one else is papped in Santa Barbara except for Harry and Meghan, in the same way it's odd that heads of state, A list stars and other royalty are able to come in and out of NYC without 'near catastrophic' car chases that don't result in even a ticket.... You guys are slipping though. You've made the personal insults, per usual, but have forgotton to mention how weird and suspect it is to post a lot in this thread or to know any details about the subjects.

I'm not even sure I would call the coverage abusive. It was certainly negative, but as Meg and Harry confirmed in their various interviews, those stories were based in fact. It is unknowable whether race was any kind of exacerbating factor. The fact that it's taken for granted as an absolute, instead of an opinion, is sad, but not suprising. It's my opinion that Meghan, like other celebrities and her MIL before her, calls the paps on herself. I understand however that this is speculation and not a proven fact.

I googled 'list of racist articles about Meghan Markle' but lo and behold, no list came up. It was just articles that took the idea of tabloid coverage being racist as a starting point. I did neglect to mention that Meghan thought the Vanity Fair 'She's just wild about Harry' headline was racist..... You know what they say, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

I'm hard pressed to come up with even half a dozen racist articles/incidents of abuse relating to Meghan, let alone dozens or enough to confidently claim that dislike of her is largely/mostly due to her being biracial or even that she somehow faced more/worse negativity than other famous people. There was the straight outa compton headline. There was the Labour radio dude who tweeted the photo of the circus monkey. There was the whomever said whatever in the RF that H now says wasn't racist about their children(s) color. There is the new incident of the ex cops and whatever they said which we don't know. I vaguely remember some C lister had tweeted something racist about Meg when they got engaged. From these thin scraps they built a successful narrative that the British tabloids were so racist that they had to flee the UK for their mental and physical safety and even now, when it is finally acceptable to not like the two grifters, it is almost always mentioned that oh yes, but of course, what they went through with the racist tabloids was terrible, blah blah.

The thing that is so inexplicable is that they could have left as working royals, gotten all the positives without the negatives if they had taken Michelle Obama's 'high road'. Just say that H was never comfortable with the media spotlight and M showed him a way out, M would simply say that losing her voice and control over her own image was more difficult than she thought and was affecting her mental health. They thought they could create a hybrid, but ultimately decided to forge their own path. Who would disagree with that?

You missed my point. He was never that guy, the 'just a lad' was all PR. He was always this guy that we see now...resentful, thin skinned, arrogant, hypocrite. Harry hasn't changed. He drew back the curtain to show us what used to be carefully hidden by his family's PR machine.

Netflix won't renew their contract which is up in 2025. You heard it here first.

The RF PR is criminally underrated. They successfully fashioned his image, using his 'rebellious' nature, to create the just a lad Harry who was second in popularity only to the queen. Now that he freed himself from this evil, its easy to see that he was always a dumb, petulant arrogant jerk with zero self awareness.

I don't understand why it is so difficult to believe that rich, entitled, titled, dishonest, hypocrites would be disliked for their unsavory, dishonest, hypocritical actions and their career of complaining about their families. At this point, the idea that the only reason to dislike Meghan is because she is biracial is just silly.

Dozens of instances of racism in the UK, population 61M. The horror. No wonder they had to flee to the totally not racist United States.

Can't find anything engaging. Rewatched The Tudors on AP. I still love it, despite it's soapyness. I wonder if, given it's incredible amount of gratuitous sex and female nudity, it could even be made today. Young Henry Cavill, Natalie Dormer and 'no I will not have red hair or look fat' J. Rhys Meyers, who should not have worked, but did.

Too bad everyone has sworn off posting about the dynamic duo. So much to choose from...H&M trying to get a ride on Airforce One after the queen's funeral, Netflix buying them a Hallmark movie romance novel, the UK judge quashing most of his case and calling Harry's court claims of a 'secret agreement' by the RF implausible and not credible, Harry Windsor man of the people off playing charity polo [carbon footprint anyone?], more charity zoom calls conducted in tasteful neutrals......Meg as almost the only person who gets papped in Santa Barbara.........

Oh yeah, I've said for years he should never have scrapped the gap. Yes, it worked better for some arcs than for others, but considering he gave a almost the entire back story of Westeros and the various houses in the first 150 pages of GOT, I'm sure with some discipline and creativity he could have easily made the gap work. That would have led to two much better books and possibly he and we would not now be stuck in Winds purgatory.

Remember, you are growing vegetables mostly as a hobby for your enjoyment, you don't depend on the garden for food. The rabbits do. I'd have to vote with your husband on this one. There is a great set of youtube videos about a guy whose garden was getting destroyed and he kept putting up bigger, better fencing and finally installed a camera....only to find it was a hilariously cute groundhog who was eating everything. He eventually changed his mind and decided that 'chunk' should have access to the garden and gave up trying to keep him out. https://www.instagram.com/chunk_the_groundhog/ He's probably now making more money on the chunk video side hustle than it costs to replace all the veggies that the groundhog eats.

I also thought Feast and Dance were much, much inferior to the first three books. Yes, there is still beautiful writing in both books and great plot and characters, but overall, they're both hugely over-written, too much pointless detail, too many new, lesser characters and way too much spinning out of the story and slowing it down to a snails pace. I think the issue with GOT was not so much that the show itself--writing/consulting--was taking up all of GRRM time, but that getting the huge $$ plus becoming super famous, meant that he became distracted. Distracted by now being able to fund a lot of side projects, distracted by the fame, distracted by the lure of more TV/film projects. Also, distracted by the huge upsurge in interest in the stories, where before the fandom was typical fantasy geeks, now tens? maybe hundreds of thousands of people were engaged in the minutia, and that also was a distraction for GRRM. It has ended up having been really a worst case scenario. We're getting toward the tail end of summer, and soon it will be another year without Winds.

That must be from the New Yorker article, I had no idea the huge difference in how the streamers pay actors vs. regular cable.

Just so. And within those 6 novels is a world so dense it makes Star Wars, Stark Trek and Marvel look transparent. You've got the actual story of the Atriedes and what happens in the books, which covers thousands of years. You've got Ix, you've got the Butlerian Jihad, mentats, Duncan Idahoes by the dozen, the Sardukar, the great houses. Dense. Within Dune there is science fiction, space opera and game of thrones. It's very odd that no one has done anything more with this than Dune the first book. and doesn't seem to be any plans for same.

A lot of the characters are archetypes that would fit well with merchandising, witch, hero(s), warrior(s), maiden, even if the material is more adult than Marvel. It just seems in an industry that appears nearly devoid of any organic creativity, that Dune is right there, a vast, vast array of IP.

Isn't Dune just the kind of super dense 'world' that studios might want to create an ongoing franchise around? A whole world of prequels, sequels and interesting side characters and planets.

Yeah, it's certainly not a perfect adaptation by any means. They erred a little too much on the big cool space opera stuff with not quite enough of the human drama.

She cries or almost cries several times throughout the movie. Don't get me wrong, I love Rebecca Ferguson's casting, but I thought they made her a little too fragile seeming. I did watch the trailer for Dune II about 10 times yesterday.