Ok I have wayyyyyyy too many things to talk about in general and no real way to start talking about any of them without things bumping into each other, so I think I might as well start here, and just kinda… work around some stuff I guess.
Alright, so… here goes.
*Cracks knuckles*
So… the Maranos. Well, I’m not really even sure of where to begin talking about them, anymore, honestly. I mean, holy fuckballs, what a topic. I started another post about some stuff that veered into them and Christ, I literally couldn’t pull away, since… Jeebus.
Hooboy.
Well, then.
Them’s an interesting family. Wayyyyyyy more interesting than I had surmised.
Uhm, well, some thoughts: when watching Gargoyles again lately, I was struck with the realization that the most interesting episodes in regards to yours truly were written by a woman named Lydia Marano. The Avalon miniseries, for example, which I wrote about extensively on this blog before. At first, I had dismissed this as coincidence. Time, though, has revealed that this isn’t. Also- City of Stone, The Mirror, and The Gathering– all of which contain the same symbols themes and style that I see repeated, over and over again, across virtually everything that Laura and Vanessa do.
Thus Lydia Marano, like Ellen Marano as I talked about previous, obviously knew about me wayyyy before I knew about her, and, I suppose, was trying to get me into a certain position.
Ok, now- here goes, this might get kinda weird, but if you follow the logic it makes sense, incredibly.
I noticed in Saving Zoë plenty of references to an Italian sister duo of actress Laura Morante and writer Elsa Morante. In the case of Elsa, Laura Marano even went as far as to copy some of her famous poses, and at one point in the film when Vanessa Marano was admiring herself in a mirror some penmanship in the same style of Elsa Morante’s writing was splashed across the screen.
Creepy, wow, lol. IDK, should I continue with this? Hell, why not lol.
Alright, back to Elsa- one of her masterpieces, Lies and Sorcery, features a young Italian woman named Elisa as the protagonist. Fans of the Gargoyles series may recognize that name, as Elisa is the protagonist of that series as well interestingly enough. Here’s Wikipedia’s summary of Lies and Sorcery:
“House of Liars (Italian Menzogna e sortilegio) or Lies and Sorcery (2023 translation) is a novel by the Italian writer Elsa Morante published in 1948, set in Southern Italy at the turn of the 20th century, describing a family’s escape from increasingly dire financial and social circumstances into wishful thinking and delusions. The narrative covers three generations of a family in decline, blending elements of the fairy tale as well as the social novel and the coming-of-age-story.[1] In the year of its publication the novel received the Premio Viareggio.[2]“
Huh. Interesting. Well, I’ve not read it, but…
Well, at this point you might be wondering why I’m doing this, lol. It’s because it’s 1) There, and 2) Awesome. Just wait till you see where this goes. Trust me, it will blow you the fuck away.
Well, so, I linked Laura and Vanessa to Laura and Elsa for those reasons amongst others, of course. Interestingly, I also linked them to the great Spanish philosopher Gregorio Marañón of all people. I mean, that one I was not expecting, but it was literally right there. It kind of made me think that perhaps my earlier supposition was right- that these Maranos were THE Maranos, in other words, the people that because of their extreme wealth and power comprised a world unto themselves- the Marrano diaspora- something hinted at several times in Saving Zoë, natch.
As an aside, I did just notice right now that besides Elisa, the other protagonist of Lies and Sorcery is Anna. Elisa, Elsa, and Anna… Frozen? Huh, interesting. Yeah, my hunch is that this family is verrrry powerful. Like Collins level powerful. Rothschild powerful. And I have more evidence to prove it.
In listening to Laura’s (Marano, lol) album the other night, I noticed that one of her songs was apparently a duet with her sister. Uncredited, tho. I was surprised. But… there it was. And you can imagine my surprise when I listened further and realized that there was a duet with her former label mate Taylor Swift, too! Yeah literally. Uncredited! I was floored. Look, I swear it’s on there! It’s the song that prominently features the Taylor Swift-esque violins. And unless I’m hearing things, Olivia Rodrigo guests on a song as well. It’s like… you have to look for it, but it’s there. Seriously, it’s fucking baffling, unless you view things like this from the reality of these people being so unbelievably powerful that they are above routine celebrity concerns.
How powerful do you have to be to have a new song featuring Taylor Swift on your album and then not bother to mention it? Really, really fucking powerful, that’s how powerful. Intuitively- what I surmise is that her album is a laundry list of tracks that include guest vocals from the whos-who of young Hollywood- this track has Olivia Holt, this one has Meg Donnelly, this one has Lucy Hale, this one has Kathryn Newton, etc. But of this of course I could be very wrong.
But in general I suspect Laura is on a higher plateau, power-wise, then the people that comprise the top 50 or 100 or whatever artists on Spotify. Just a hunch.
I think this is absolutely fascinating. What a discovery. It’s like finding something unique, like a new element or something. Truly awesome.
My brainstorm is this: I think the Maranos / Marranos are a part of former(?) Italian nobility; in researching the “Marrano hand sign” I came across a study on a government website (NIH.gov) about it that showed Cosimo de’ Medici flashing it and I’ll be damned if he didn’t look like a transgendered clone of Laura. The facial resemblance, the posture, the similarity in the hands, the basic energy, everything, it was stunning and somewhat creepy, but also telling.
To bring all of this home, I think I was wrong earlier about Laura’s song The Valley being about Laurel Canyon, now, I think it’s about Moreno Valley, CA, since Moreno is probably a derivation of “Marano”, kind of like the high school in Austin and Ally, San Marino, which is also the same. The wiki for Austin and Ally says otherwise, but they are wrong lol.
There is an episode of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil that is replete with references to the Marano family (the sisters, Ellen and Lydia too, and maybe others!); it is Gone Baby Gone / Beach Day. Weird stuff, this. I suppose the beach in “Beach Day” is Marano Beach in California. In Gone Baby Gone, the big bad is a weird Luciferian demon hidden behind a magic mirror that is definitively inspired by Puck from Gargoyles. (Mirror symbolism again. What is it with these people and mirrors? Even when I don’t try to point it out it comes up again and again.)
At any rate, I feel as though I’ve cracked the code. To end this train of thought, you might want to look up a place called Marano di Napoli in Italy, and check out it’s crumbling castle. I have a hunch it may have been relevant in this discussion at one point- especially since the icon for Austin and Ally in the Disney+ app was clearly modeled after the fresco in it’s chapel.
And, to place the capstone on this essay, consider the fittingly titled The Royal Treatment– only consider it from a different point of view- that of Laura’s character Lauren being the Royal, and Prince Thomas being the uhm, common shlub, trying to navigate and understand the world of royalty with all it’s twists and turns.
So, Laura, with all of that said, how did I do?