What am I going to do with my life now that HOTD ended...

...and I won't see this face anymore

Oh I feel the cold and emptiness in my chilly little heart😞

Okay, I said some of this in tags of another post but that post doesn't actually have to do with this issue so I'm making another post.

Disney is not part of the production and writing of the new episodes and season of Doctor Who. Doctor Who is currently being produced by Bad Wolf and BBC Studios Production. Disney+ has exclusive streaming rights to new Doctor Who episodes for audiences outside the UK and Ireland. This is to make the show more accessible to international audiences (whether it's doing that is definitely debatable). They have streaming rights in the same way that Max (formerly HBOMax) has streaming rights to S1-Flux of NuWho. Disney doesn't have control over the content of the show, just what they stream on their platform. (Considering HBO used to have a minority stake of shares in Bad Wolf before their shares got bought by Sony in December of 2021, a year before they started producing the 60th anniversary specials, I don't think they had any influence on the production of the RTD2 episodes.)

I'm clarifying this because a lot of people are complaining that Disney is affecting the show even though both BBC and Disney, in their announcements of the streaming deal have paragraphs where they specify exactly who the producers, studios, and writers are for the new specials and season.

Whether or not you liked the writing and subject matter of the 60th specials, you should know who is actually making the show. (In my personal opinion, I don't think Disney should get credit for RTD genuinely trying to have good trans and bi rep in Doctor Who when they can barely give us crumbs in their media. Whether or not y'all think he's successful at that is your opinion.)

I also want to address Whoniverse. Whoniverse is the BBC giving the overall Doctor Who Franchise an official name and logo. If you access BBC iPlayer, you can now find all the episodes (NuWho and Classic), behind the scenes videos, spin-offs, specials, and commentaries in one place.

That's kind of it. Whoniverse is just the same stuff we've been watching and talking about and interacting with for decades but now they're all on the same page on an official website. And they have a new logo.

TLDR: BBC makes Doctor Who. Disney Branded Television distributes it internationally. Whoniverse is basically a logo.

Well, I think it’s time to create my own list of thoughts and wishes for season 3 of Titans

(I am well aware that some of these points are merely a wishful thinking but a girl can dream, right?)

First of all, the official stuff we found out so far:

- Redhood - I know Jason was treated poorly (to say the least) in s2 and that is a legit reason to be angry at the team but please let this transition make sense. Curran is putting a lot of work into it and I am sure his performance will be amazing, but storywise I really hope it’s not gonna end up being done in a “bratty kid throwing a tantrum” kind of way.

- Barbara Gordon - I don’t want to hear anything about a love triangle, got it? She’s being introduced as Dick’s ex for a reason. There might be some little things thrown in here and there like we had with Dawn in s1 but a full blown drama? We don’t need that shit! And besides, it’s been said she won’t be very happy to see Dick, neither she’ll be thrilled about Nightwing and Company running around her city.

Unless they turn it all into a comedy where instead of Kory being jealous - it’s the kids! Gar and Rachel going completely feral whenever Barbara gets close to Dick, giving off you’re not our mom so get out vibe and Kory lets them because she finds it hilarious (this season is supposed be *lighter* and *more fun* as I’ve heard, right?)

- Scarecrow - I am VERY intrigued to see that character. He’s supposed be locked up and working with GCPD but I do hope we’ll get to see him in action. I’m not really into comics world, I had to do my research on him, but from what I’ve found… Damn, fear toxin torture that show their biggest fears and nightmares would be awesome for my angst crave

- Blackfire - personally I don’t find a reason to panic. I know that the treatment of both Anna and her character, especially in s2 was unacceptable, I 100% agree with that. And it does give a reason to worry for s3. BUT why am I not worried?

1. Damaris Lewis has been promoted to a series regular a long time ago

2. Even with all the stuff happening in Gotham, Blackfire is still set to be the main villain - we had the same situation in s2. Cadmus was brought up to introduce Conner, even though Deathstroke was the main villian. So whatever is happening in Gotham, it’s for the introduction of Red Hood while Blackfire remains main villain.

3. Look at what Anna has been saying and the vibe she’s giving off! Would she be this happy if Kory wasn’t getting more screentime? Would she be getting calls from the showrunner about creating Kory’s background and having a chance to pitch him ideas like incorporating her native culture in building the world of Tamaran? WOULD SHE SAY WITH A HUGE SMILE ON HER FACE THAT THIS IS THEIR BEST SEASON YET?

So don’t worry too much about our girl. I’m sure she’s getting her time to shine. Even if it ends up being not as much as we would want, it’s still progress from last season.

And if the writers follow a similar schematic as for previous seasons, I see it going like this:

Blackfire = Deathstroke = Trigon (Main Villian)

Gotham stuff/Redhood = CADMUS/Conner = The Organization/Nuclear Family/Angela (side villian/introduction)

Scarecrow and Barbara = Doctor Light = Amy Rohrbach and Nic Zucco (plot device, appearance in 1-3 eps at most)

I might be wrong though, so don’t hold me on that. Because there’s also another storyline that needs to fit in between all of this

- Rachel on Themyscira - I am sure they won’t show as much of the island as they were originally planning for the same reason they moved the team from San Francisco to Gotham - weather conditions in this time of year resulting in lower temperatures, shorter and less sunny days. All of that wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for filming being pushed back due to Covid. I also had a feeling from the beginning that Rachel won’t come back victorious, or at least she will come back alone, with Donna showing up on her own later or at the end of the season. Now, with an information of the possible use of Lazarus Pit, it all makes even more sense. All my knowledge about those pits comes from Arrowverse so correct me if I’m wrong, but is Donna going to struggle with Blood Lust because of that? It is possible imo.

- Roy Harper and Tim Drake - I don’t have much to say about them, really. I’m excited to see Roy but the only valid reason for him to show up is to grieve Donna and maybe share his condolences to Dick or something like that. We don’t need more OG Titans drama. And Tim… well, new Robin in town will catch Jason’s attention and definitely spark some jealousy, evolving into a feeling of being ditched and abandoned, further confirming his belief of being a “reject”. All of this will only push him further to Red Hood.

Now, for the things I personally want to happen…

- Dickkory getting together - even if it happens in the finale, we need to see the progress! I don’t want this to happen off screen during the possible time jump. I want to see them supporting each other and being there for each other. I want to see Kory being his right-hand (wo)man and them leading the team together. And most importantly for me - the one thing that really brought them together in s1 - a continuation of their co-parenting of the younger Titans.

- Gar’s trauma being adressed - and I’m talking BOTH SEASONS. He really struggled with killing that guy in s1 and what CADMUS did to him made it all worse. He needs to talk about this with someone (and I hope that someone is Dick). And I really want to know if what happened to him is gonna have any lasting consequences.

- Donna and Dick need to talk things out - the worst thing about her death for me is the fact that these two didn’t get the chance to talk about what happened. Donna wasn’t a saint either and I find her behavior in the second half of s2 very hypocritical. It almost felt like this Donna and s1 Donna are two different people! She and Dick have a very strong bond and a lot of history. I’m sure they’ve had their fair share of fights in the past. I really hope they will sort this thing out and get back to being this amazing duo I fell in love with in s1.

- Rose and Jericho - I really want to see how this relationship will work and progress with them not really knowing each other but sharing one body.

- Growth and progress in Kory, Rachel and Gar’s powers - I think I don’t need to elaborate on that. I want to see Kory and Rachel fly, Rachel using more of her powers and discovering stuff like teleportation and telekinesis, Gar turning into other animals (lets pray HBO MAX will provide a decent budget for all of that). And obviously, following that…

- Supersuits for those three! - do I need to add more? I don’t think so.

- And can we get rid of Hank and Dawn? - I liked them in s1, tolerated them at the beginning of s2 and by the end I just wanted them gone. They are completely useless. Honestly? If I were to pick one… Hank can stay, we can still do something with him. But Dawn can go and don’t come back for all I care. I only need her for one more thing I’d like to see but more about that later.

And now the two most important things for me…

- MORE CORE FOUR FAMILY MOMENTS - this was the magic of season 1 that we only got some crumbs of in 2x01 and then it disappeared completely. I am in desperate need of Dick and Kory co-parenting their two superpowered teenage kids. And can someone FINALLY call Dick a DAD?! I would pay fortune to see that happen.

- Relationship progress between the Core Four - all the possible variants, but especially with the kids. It’s already been pretty much established that Rachel is Daddy’s Girl while Gar is Mama’s Boy. And it was nice to see Dick and Gar growing closer during season 2 while Rachel poured her heart out to Kory. But I was VERY MUCH with Gar and Kory when they both asked Rachel “Have you talked to Dick?” because girl YOU AND YOUR FATHER NEED TO TALK! A lot has happened, okay? (Not just because I am an absolute sucker for this dynamic and they are my favorites, but… get ready for a rant) I really want to go back to the way things were in s1 where they had at least one scene together every episode, where they talked and bonded a lot, where we actually could see the progress of this relationship. We’ve been stripped of that in s2. A little bit at the beginning, something at the end (I’m still mad Rachel didn’t get any closure for that nightmare that scared the hell out of her and yet had no influence on further events). I want to see Dick really embracing that role of a father, stepping up to responsibilities he kinda forgot about in s2. It would be nice to see a callback to his conversation with Dawn in 1x02 about how he’s “not taking her in” because “he can’t do family”. I’d love for Dawn to throw one big “I told you so!” in his face (and Dick agreeing she was right all along). I want to see Rachel leaning on him for support and encouragement while also growing independent in her own way. I also need to see more physical affection. Hugs are great and we always want more of them, but a touch of hand on the arm or cheek, or a forehead kiss would kill me. And I dream about a verbal “I love you” everyday…

Well, I think it’s all for now. Nothing else comes to mind atm. I might update this list as time goes on and we get more details…

The New York Times is literally a propaganda outlet and Timothy Egan is a deceitful chode. His every word drips with the anxious desperation of the Democrats who know their goose is cooked.

Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

Because powerful oligarchs that own their government murder them with impunity when they do.

>March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.

>There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.

>The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell, 16 years old, was killed, and dozens more men were wounded. Bennett was hospitalized for his injury.

> All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

Yeah, just look how well that’s worked out, you fucking idiot.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature. 

The same Republicans that got their breakfast ate by the dottering windbag cheetoman? The same Republicans that are unpopular with over half the fucking country? The same Republicans which have shown majority support for Sanders’s policies in the past? Those are the Republicans you’re talking about, right, Timothy, you fucking asshole?

I’m not worried about the Russian stuff — Bernie’s self-described “very strange honeymoon” to the totalitarian hell of the Soviet Union in 1988, and his kind words for similar regimes. Compared with a president who is a willing stooge for the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a little vodka-induced dancing with the red bear is peanuts.

Nor am I worried about the legitimate questions concerning the candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, who ran a Vermont college into the ground. Again, Trump’s family of grifters — from Ivanka securing her patents from China while Daddy made other promises to Beijing, to Don Jr.’s using the White House to leverage the family brand — give Democrats more than enough ammunition to return the fire.

This is fun. Due to a complete lack of incriminating conduct, little Timmy has to invent wrongdoing to libel Jane Sanders. I suppose he’s relying on his readers being too stupid to read the article that he himself links, another NYT hitpiece that desperately tries to paint Ms Sanders as a shady character without anything in the way of tangible proof.

>Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders’s lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed. And while doubts remain about the contribution pledges claimed by the college, the lawyer has said that neither Ms. Sanders nor her husband was even questioned by investigators, indicating a lack of significant evidence of a crime.

>After Ms. Sanders’s ouster, the college’s troubles worsened. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. A few years later, when it did begin selling, it was to a consortium that secretly included at least one member of its board, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

>There is little question that the college’s 2016 demise can be traced to Ms. Sanders’s decision to champion an aggressive — critics say reckless — plan to buy the land. But with potential students put off by the lack of a campus, and with many such colleges struggling at the time, her move was the academic equivalent of a Hail Mary. Her allies said she never had a chance to fulfill her vision.

>“Jane made an audacious gambit to save the college,” said Genevieve Jacobs, a former faculty member. “It seemed to be a moment of ‘change or die.’”

>In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan.

>“They went a completely different direction in every way than what we had proposed and decided upon as a board — with the bank, with the diocese, the bonding agency,” she said. “They didn’t carry out any of the plan. It was very confusing and upsetting at the time.”

The TL;DR seems to be: Jane Sanders tried to save a struggling school with an audacious but risky plan that ended up being aborted when she was let go by by a board, some of the members of which may have had a stake in seeing it fail. At the very least, a much more complex situation than the aspersion of “running it into the ground.”

Trump bragged about sexual assault, paid off a porn star and ran a fraudulent university. He sucks up to dictators and tells a half-dozen lies before he puts his socks on in the morning. A weird column about a rape fantasy from 1972 is not going to sink Bernie when Trump has debased all public discourse.

No, what will get the Trump demagogue factory working at full throttle is the central message of the Sanders campaign: that the United States needs a political revolution. It may very well need one. But most people don’t think so, as Barack Obama has argued. And getting two million new progressive votes in the usual area codes is not going to change that.

“Ah jeez, ah fuck, he has no sexual indiscretions that I can dredge up and his Feminist polemic against pornography and the rape culture that it engenders is old news, and if I actually reported on it honestly people might actually read it and support his ideas. Oh, well, you see, despite the incredible groundswell of support for just such a thing, Barack Obama, the man that gave the banks trillions of dollars and then allowed the state apparatus to function as their gestapo-cum-storm troopers, says we don’t need one!”

Timothy Egan wants to dismiss “two million new progressive votes” after doing a little gaslighting. His Democrat masters don’t want people to remember that it was Obama’s promises of Hope and Change after 8 years of Republican tyranny that generated a record breaking voter turnout. They would also like you to forget that 2016 was a 20-year low in voter turnout. Do you think those things are related, Mr Egan? Do you think that there might be some connection between Obama taking advantage of the desperation of millions of people, betraying them, and then those people not fucking showing up next time, causing your party to lose to the dimwit that they themselves boosted to the position?

Give Sanders credit for moving public opinion along on a living wage, higher taxes on the rich and the need for immediate action to stem the immolation of the planet. Most great ideas start on the fringe and move to the middle.

But some of his other ideas are stillborn, or never get beyond the fringe. Socialism, despite its flavor-of-the-month appeal to young people, is not popular with the general public. Just 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively, a bare uptick from 2010, compared with 87 percent who have a positive view of free enterprise, Gallup found last fall.

“Just” 39 percent of Americans, up 4% from 2016. This is ignoring for the moment that due to Americans’ piss-poor education system they have no idea what “Socialism” means aside from “more government.” Looking at the breakdown of results, it seems as though they just asked people off the top of their head what they thought about X, no definition or elaboration given. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the actual numbers on specific issues, you can see exactly why Egan has to play this deceptive bullshit: of respondents 18-34, 52% have a favorable view of “Socialism,” as opposed to 47% supporting “Capitalism.” This is in sharp contrast to the 35-54 and 55+ cohorts. 65% of Democrats have a favorable view of “Socialism.” Those with a “Liberal” ideology are even more in favor at 74%, Timothy Egan, you massive shithead.

What’s more, American confidence in the economy is now at the highest level in nearly two decades. That’s hardly the best condition for overthrowing the system.

"The highest level in nearly two decades.” That’s faint fucking praise right there.

You can see the tremendous fucking crater caused by the crash in 2007/8, a reversal of a whopping -81 points from the previous year. With many economists forecasting recession beginning either this year or the next, we’ll see how long the confidence lasts. 

So-called Medicare for all, once people understand that it involves eliminating all private insurance, polls at barely above 40 percent in some surveys, versus the 70 percent who favor the option of Medicare for all who want it. Other polls show majority support. But cost is a huge concern. And even Sanders cannot give a price tag for nationalizing more than one-sixth of the economy.

A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016. Eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Sanders plan, is hugely unpopular with the general public.

“Medicare for all is really unpopular, except when it isn’t.”

Hmm, you know? Hmmm.

As for fracking, from his own link:

>A November poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that only 39 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters saw a fracking ban as a good idea, even as nearly 7 in 10 of those same voters said they supported the idea of a “Green New Deal” for the environment.

Democrats are whinging on the jobs “lost” to a fracking ban as though it exists in isolation. 39% might support a fracking ban, but 70% support the GND, which could potentially offset the “job loss” with industry that has the potential not to leave their state as a fucking environmentally ruined horror show. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but not living in a cesspool of polluted air and water tends to be pretty popular, Timbo.

More shellgames from Mr Egan regarding abolishing ICE.

> Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided. 

That sounds bad. Maybe it’s not such a good ide

>But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE.

Oh.

Sanders is a rigid man, and he projects grumpy-old-man rigidity, with his policy prescriptions frozen in failed Marxist pipe dreams. He’s unlikely to change. I sort of like that about his character, in the same way I like that he didn’t cave to the politically correct bullies who went after him for accepting the support of the influential podcaster Joe Rogan.

Democrats win with broad-vision optimists who still shake up the system — Franklin Roosevelt, of course, but also Obama. The D’s flipped 40 House seats in 2018 without using any of Sanders’s stringent medicine. If they stick to that elixir they’ll oust Trump, the goal of a majority of Americans.

Democrats lose with fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. Three times, the party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

“Failed Marxist pipe dreams.” Aaaaay lmao. You should also have an inkling something is wrong when you have to go all the way back to FDR to find someone that supports your point. Talk about “poison pills,” Obama proved himself to be as much of a snake as the rest, and the effects of that resonated in 2016 when the Dems ran on a platform of “that’s a nice country you have there, you wouldn’t want Trump to get elected, would you?” How did that work out? You ran one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—after very blatantly rigging the primaries against Sanders to do so—against one of the most unpopular capitalists in the country, and lost, dipshit!

Ironically, I think Timbob’s closing statement will prove true, though not in the way his clown ass intends. Shills like Egan are doing everything they can to try and poison public perception against Sanders and his policies, who only proves increasingly popular as time goes on, so much so in fact that the DNC is already biting its nails and muttering to itself about ways it can try and cheat his supporters again.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

They deny it in the article, claim that changing the rules would be “bad sportsmanship,” but one would be a fool to believe them. If anything, their ambivalence towards relying on Superdelegates would make me even more nervous at this stage. Politico wants it to seem like the DNC is bent on playing fair, but more likely than not they have no intention of changing the convention rules because they believe there’s no need. With Warren’s flagging support and the luke-warm response to Biden, I doubt they’re overcome with optimism of beating Sanders in an honest primary. With all the shenanigans from last time’s primaries in mind, it’s likely that the machinery to rig the results their way is already in place—the primary could already be over before it even begins.

Your list of reasons to hope for Gendrya is so damn beautiful. I wanna like print it and frame it.

Haha, thank you! And the thing is, that’s not even all of the reasons.

There’s stuff I’d forgotten. Let’s go over them because I can’t help myself. And I’ve gotten a few new followers with cute gendrya references in their urls. 

Until she got back to Winterfell, Gendry was the only person Arya has ever willingly shared her identity with who wasn’t about to die. And we all know how important her name is to her. Ooh, and notice Hot Pie still calls her “Arry” and Jaqen and The Hound normally addressed her as “(a) girl” and the Brotherhood usually called her “little lady.” Gendry called her Arya though (when it was safe to do so). 🥰

NED MET HIM AND LIKED HIM! She won’t get that with anyone else.

Also in season 7, Arya has more than one scene where she chugs alcohol. When she was little, she stressed several times that she thought it was gross. There was even one bit where she gags on the smell of rum but Gendry is psyched to drink some. Really hammering it into the audience’s heads that Arya is an adult now in the same season Gendry finally gets off his fucking rowboat?

 And we also see that Gendry has hardened a bit- smashing faces with a hammer like it’s no big deal. He’ll be able to keep up with Arya and they’d look awesome fighting together. “Baratheon and Stark will fight their common enemy together, as they have done many times before.” 👏

He has seen some shit, from blood magic with freaky leeches to zombie polar bears. Arya’s bag of faces will just be par for the course. 

Oh, and you know what else? Arya’s last chapter in agot ends very abruptly with Yoren grabbing her her hair and she glimpses a blade. In the show, they add some bits from acok— probably to give viewers some closure for Arya in case the show wasn’t renewed. That could have just been Yoren promising to drop her off at Winterfell. But they included her meeting Gendry, too. Which meant casting Hot Pie, Lommy, Biter, Rorge (got around properly casting Jaqen by covering his face)… Maybe they didn’t want her story to end without meeting Gendry? 

They also have Gendry defend her from Hot Pie much more aggressively than in the books, making it feel more like a “meet cute.” He’s also pretty chatty and friendly to her by Gendry’s standards, all while they’re framed in an “it’s us against the world” kind of way:

Even when I first watched that episode ( before I cared about their relationship), I thought that that scene was implying that he’s her future love interest.

The foundation is there. In their interactions. In the subtext. They built it pretty consistently and I doubt they’re going to waste it. The biggest tip-off to me is that Gendry is officially the last important person in Arya’s life that doesn’t know she’s okay. D&D love to troll and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing by not having Gendry mention her. 

 Arya and Gendry are very popular and always have been, even when he vanished for like, three and a half seasons. HBO seems pretty hell bent on making a spin-off series or two, so they’ll probably be looking for ways to keep viewers happy and easy ways to throw them a bone. Making a fan favorite ship endgame or strongly implying it is definitely a good way to do that… Especially since a lot of other ships will probably have to sink in this last, great ship war.

I’m not expecting a whole lot. Some tension, some Significant Looks™, possibly a bit of cute awkwardness after hugging or accidentally touching hands. Hopefully a few moments of Sansa loving the hell out of the situation. Maybe a very quick kiss but I’m trying not to get my hopes too high about that. But I am cautiously optimistic that if we don’t literally see them sail off into the sunset, they will at least make plans to do so. 

Honestly, if they both survive, I will be happy with crumbs. Hah. 

Peonies and primroses in Pennsylvania fair

Word count: 6780 Rating: G Pairing: Winters/Nixon

Summary: Harry is excited. He’s on a holiday from work, Dick has been discharged from service, and Nix let it slip in a letter that he was planning to visit, so Harry seized the opportunity to tag along and make it a reunion.  Disclaimer: This is a piece of fiction based on the HBO drama series and the actors’ portrayals in it. This has nothing to do with any real person represented in the series, and means no disrespect. A/N: This is a sequel to my fic “Dear lover”, found on my blog but not linked here because Tumblr hates links.

*

Summer, 1952

Harry was excited. He had been looking forward to this week since late winter when the matter had been agreed upon via letters, and now that the day had finally arrived, he was ready to go. Kitty watched him with amusement. “I’d ask you if you packed everything you need, but since you’ve packed and repacked thrice, it would be a stupid question.” Harry just grinned at her. She was right: the suitcase had been sitting by the door since yesterday. “Thank you for your concern,” he said, “and for your patient supervision.” 

She huffed a laugh and turned back to the kitchen. “Is your friend going to stay long enough for coffee?” 

Harry glanced out of the front window to the driveway for the umpteenth time, still seeing no car, and absently answered: “Uh, I don’t know. You never really know with Nix. I asked him to just pick me up on the way, but he’s never been one to turn down a treat either.” Harry followed Kitty to the kitchen and sat down at the table. There was a coffee cake under a glass dome, baked only yesterday and iced this morning, and it was clear that Kitty wanted to present and serve it to a guest, but whether this was the occasion or not was unclear. Kitty seemed to sense that and directed one of her sharp looks at Harry, tilting her head. “But you’re both very anxious to get on the road to see your friend, aren’t you?” Harry smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.” He didn’t need to explain it to her: he had told her more than enough in the letters he had written from overseas, and shared enough pictures, postcards and letters from Nix and Dick for her to understand. Kitty smiled knowingly. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it?” Harry sighed. “Yeah, I haven’t seen Nix since -45, or Dick since he moved back to Pennsylvania. And now it’s going to be all three of us again.” Just thinking about it brought a bright smile to his face, and again he glanced outside to search for the car Nix had described. “Really, I’m so glad Nix mentioned this visit in his letter. It didn’t even occur to him to pick me up even though I live along the way, that dog.” “He always seemed a bit aloof,” Kitty noted. Harry grinned. “He is, but it’s part of his charm. Dick always says he knew he was in trouble from the moment he befriended him.” Kitty gave an indulgent little laugh, a sound that both joined and separated her from their boyish habits and experiences. After only half an hour, a beautiful blue Buick finally turned on the Welsh’s driveway. Harry could barely keep himself from darting up and running to the door, but managed to stay put long enough to watched the car park and a dark-headed man get out of it. Kitty laughed at him when he skipped to the door and yanked it open before Nix got the chance to ring the doorbell. With a grin on his face, Harry took in the man in his early thirties standing on his doorstep, a finger reaching for the bell and now frozen in surprise. “Lewis Nixon,” Harry said. Nix’s surprised expression melted into a familiar smile, now worn on an older face. “The one and only,” he said, opened his arms and welcomed Harry’s enthusiastic hug. They hugged tight for a good while and gave each other friendly slaps on the back before Harry pushed Nix at arm’s length to properly look at him friend. “You look good, Nix,” he said, “and haven’t changed a bit.” He wasn’t lying either, there was the same mischievous gleam in Nix’s brown eyes that hadn’t faded in seven years, his hair was combed back, and his face was clean-shaven with the bluish touch of five o’clock shadow already there. He might have been older now, more distinctively mature rather than boyish, but Harry couldn’t tell. It was Nix just as he remembered him. The corner of Nix’s mouth tugged upwards in a lopsided smile. “You’re just the same too. It’s good to see you, Harry.” Harry grinned, and Nix returned the expression. When they had grinned at each other enough while hanging on the doorway, Harry remembered himself and with a slap on Nix’s arm invited him in. “Come on! We can be on our way as soon as we’d like, but come say hi to Kitty at least.” “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Nix said. “I listened to you yapping on and on about her too much to miss the real deal.” Nix didn’t take his jacket off and Harry didn’t offer to take it, guessing that they’d be leaving almost right away, but Nix did take a good look around the house when Harry took him to the kitchen. Kitty was standing by the kitchen counter when Harry and Nix stepped in and came to meet them with a charming, curious smile on her face. “Welcome to our home, Mr. Nixon. I’m Katherine Welsh,” Kitty said and offered her hand in a greeting. Nix gave her one of his charming smiles, took her hand and gave it a graceful shake. “Mrs. Welsh, it’s an honor to finally meet you. Harry spoke of you so much.” “And he wrote about you,” Kitty countered, “only good things, I promise.” “So he lied! Good man,” Nix said and laughed, let go of her hand and put his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Kitty didn’t laugh, only smiled and gave Nix a sharp once-over that he bore with resilient ease. “Will you be leaving right away or would you like to stay for coffee?” Kitty asked, looking between the men. “I baked a coffee cake.” Harry glanced at Nix, still not knowing their plan and wondering how Nix felt about it; he had always been restless when things really mattered, and seeing Nix here without Dick in his tow was strange enough to remind him that this was supposed to be a quick stop on the way. “We do have a lot of road ahead of us still, ma’am, but cake sounds wonderful,” Nix said, swinging on his heels. Kitty tilted her head. “Are you in a hurry?” Nix shifted again, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets. “Well… Not exactly, no. But you see, it has been a long time since we’ve seen our friend, and we did agree to go directly to him, so it feels a bit strange to linger.” Harry took another look at Nix and suddenly realized that he looked tired. It was the same strain he had gotten used to seeing during the war and thus didn’t immediately recognize as unusual now, but Nix really looked like he had been driving all night. A memory surfaced, a whole collection of them, of Nix looking like that, shifting and anxious and restless, and Dick leaning into his space to bump shoulders or just gazing at him with that reassuring calm of his, and Harry wished they were already there so Dick could do it now. Kitty looked at Harry and Harry looked at Kitty, and Kitty nodded. “I’ll pack you some cake and coffee on the road then.” Within half an hour with Harry’s suitcase, packed lunch and cake, some sandwiches, and coffee in a thermos, Nix and Harry were on their way. Nix drove even though Harry had offered to. As soon as they settled on the highway with only smooth open road ahead of them, Nix relaxed with only one hand on the wheel of gestured towards the plastic boxes of Kitty’s baked goods. “Give me some of that cake, will you?” Harry threw him a surprised look but got the box out anyway. Nix had never been a person with a sweet tooth before. “Sure. Kitty’s an amazing cook and baker, I bet you’ll like this.” Kitty had cut the cake into ready slices and Harry handed one to Nix, who took a large bite out of it, neverminding the crumbs falling in his lap. “I bet. I saw that cake the second I stepped into your kitchen and haven’t stopped thinking about it since,” Nix said, mouth full. Harry laughed, filled with pride. “She’s amazing. I think I’ve gained a dozen pounds just eating her food.” “Yeah, I can see that,” Nix noted playfully, eyes gleaming. “I’m the same. Ever since I stopped drinking I’ve been craving pastries. If it’s made of wheat and hopefully chocolate-covered, I will want it.” Harry broke a slice of cake in half for himself. It had a sweet coffee-chocolate icing, and Harry marvelled at Kitty’s skills as he inhaled the rich, spicy smell of the cake. “You quit for real then, huh?” For some reason Nix looked awkward for a moment, swallowing the cake and half shrugging. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. It just… Well. I don’t drink, but I do eat to make up for that.” He gave a laugh, light and ironic. “First when I stopped drinking I lost some weight, and then gained it all back when I started eating. There’s a balance in the universe, I suppose.” “That’s good to hear. Now you and Dick can go about frustrating barkeepers by ordering plain lemonades together,” Harry chuckled. Nix laughed with him, but afterwards started to chew on his bottom lip, almost nervous. Harry watched him from the corner of his eye for a moment and didn’t have to wonder what that was about. Bringing up Dick was like that, and Harry could empathize. All three of them had been so close back then, and that feeling of camaraderie didn’t fade with time, but distance felt weird. When Harry had last seen Dick he had felt it as strongly as before, all of it, like they could just go back to army right then and there, and Harry would still be as willing to take a bullet for Dick as he had been back in Europe. Nix and Dick had been as thick as thieves and close friends already when Harry had joined their posse, so he could only imagine what Nix was feeling right now. Harry looked at the road ahead of them instead of Nix when he said: “So how long has it been? Since he moved out?” Nix didn’t answer right away even though he certainly knew the answer. Hell, Harry wouldn’t have wondered if he knew the exact number of days. “Four years,” Nix said finally. “He moved out four years ago when the job didn’t turn out that well, and he moved back into his home state. We’ve been writing some, but because he was called back in service and all that we haven’t seen each other since when he left New Jersey.” Harry had enough tact to not ask about the job. He had about a hundred theories, but if he was perfectly honest he didn’t want to ask Nix about his family; every time it came up it was like pulling a trigger on one of Nix’s moods. “Well, you were getting a bit old for living together like that," he joked. "I really don’t get it, after army I certainly had had enough of bunking together with other smelly guys.” Nix snorted. “Harry, if all guys are smelly, then how on Earth can you ask your poor wife to share a house with you?” “As a group! Guys are smelly as a group!” “Sure, sure,” Nix admitted but with a smirk on his face. “Lucky for us, two is hardly a group.” “Maybe you’re right there,” Harry said with good-natured humor. Besides, Dick had always been very meticulous with his hygiene anyway, so maybe their living situation had been amicable as long as it had lasted. That brought another thought back in Harry’s mind: “I can’t believe you almost ditched me from this visit!” he said, slapping Nix in the arm. “Hey, ow, I’m trying to drive here!” Nix whined. “And I didn’t try to ditch you, you already saw Dick a few years ago! It’s my turn now.” Harry scoffed, then laughed. “He’s my friend too, you selfish ass! We both used to see him every day, it’s not like once every few years is going to suddenly be enough!” “Yeah,” Nix said, suddenly sighing so heavily his breath trembled. “Yeah, I know.” Harry sensed something strange in the air between them, something dark and aching and impossible to pinpoint, so much like Nix’s moods which he thought had been left behind with his boyhood and drinking. He slapped his arm again, gentler this time. “Oh, don’t be like that. We both know you’re his favorite anyway, so there’s no reason to pout. I want to see my buddy too, is all.” Something about that seemed to comfort Nix, because a smile was back on his face again. Harry took out more cake for both of them. “Come on. It’s not that long a way to go either. We’ll be there in a few hours.” The car seemed to speed up a little bit, Nix straightening up on the driver’s seat. “Yeah.” * Dick had moved back in Pennsylvania, near a small city with lots of open fields and forests around it, and a view towards distant mountains that were blue against the horizon. Nix had a map of the area that he asked Harry to read for him, and when Harry folded the map open, he saw a route already planned onto it with a pen. They drove through the city and into the outskirts, through fields and across a river, past scattered houses with yards and big gardens. Harry pointed out the right turn, a smaller sand road off the main road, lined with giant oak trees, and they drove that road all the way to its end. At the end of the road, surrounded by a meadow and a half wild orchard, was an old two-story house, freshly painted with a sharp dark-tile roof and a homely looking porch. They passed a letterbox that read “Winters” on it, and Nix took the car slowly to the driveway that was only tire tracks in hay and grass. While Nix drove, Harry kept his eyes on the house. It looked nice and large, and he would have bet that Dick had painted it himself. While they were still driving down the driveway, Harry saw the front door swinging open and a man stepping out onto the porch. There was no mistaking Dick Winters for anyone else, not with his unmistakable posture, height and still bright red hair. For some reason Harry had expected him to be wearing his uniform, but despite that thought his blue jeans and plain button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows were a natural fit. The front door left wide open behind him, Dick watched them from the porch with no shoes on and a bright smile on his face. Nix parked the car and while he was still busy shifting the gear off, turning the engine off and gathering his things, Harry was already up and out of the car, waving at Dick. “Hey! It’s been forever, buddy!” Harry greeted him, strode right to the house and jumped the few steps up to the porch. Dick gave him a warm smile. “Hello, Harry,” he said and leaned down to hug him. Hugs from Dick were a rare thing, he was always very formal and proper even amongst friends, but apparently after two years apart and in front of his own house he was much more relaxed, and Harry accepted the hug with joy. “It’s been too long,” he sighed when they pulled apart. “Yes, yes it has,” Dick said in return, and then his eyes darted back towards the car. “Welsh! I’m not carrying your stuff for you!” Nix shouted from behind the car, popping the trunk open. Harry barked a laugh and skipped back down to go get his suitcase. Nix’s impatience was even funnier considering that he had dragged probably three times more stuff with him than Harry had, the small suitcase barely even fitting in the trunk of the car with Nix’s bags and travel chest. Nix was hovering by the car, one of his bags swung over his shoulder and pretty obviously hiding behind the trunk’s hood and the tail light. Harry frowned at the nervous display, and for the first time it occurred to him that Nix himself might not have been entirely blameless in what had caused Dick to leave New Jersey. Harry wondered had there been some sort of a falling out, some bigger crisis or an argument between the two, but immediately after he figured that had it been something serious Nix wouldn’t have come in the first place. And even if there had been something bad between then, it would have taken place four years ago, and now was now. It was all about clearing the air.   So Harry settled on direct action, slammed the car’s trunk shut, grabbed Nix by the lapels of his jacket and dragged him behind him to the house. “Now, wait a moment…” was all Nix managed before he found himself being pulled up the front steps and essentially thrust right in front of Dick. Harry could barely hold back his grin. He glanced at Dick, whose expression was utterly unreadable but his eyes were welling with emotion, and then at Nix who was lingering on the steps, acting almost coy. “Hi, Lew,” Dick softly said, his hand raising in a small wave despite their proximity. Nix looked flustered, looking up at Dick through his lashes. “Hi.” Harry huffed a laugh before striding into the house, leaving the two at each other’s mercy. The house was old, probably from the previous century, but recently renovated, the paint on its walls clearly fresh. It was a nice house with dark wooden floors, big windows and a lot of open space. The hall gave way directly into a roomy kitchen, where Harry could see clearly new cabinets, a large masonry oven and a stove, and by the window a good-sized dining table. He peeked into the living-room as well, seeing a fire place, a tea table and some armchairs, a plush green carpet on the floor and an empty china cabinet in the back. There were stairs in the hall leading upstairs, where Harry assumed the bedrooms were. He set his suitcase down by the stairs and shook off his coat. The house seemed pretty well furnished, but there were also signs of how recent the move had been: various necessary things were still missing. There was no coat rack, for example, only one of the chairs from the kitchen with a pile of coats and sweaters and a few hats on it, there were carpet rolls by the living-room doorway, and boxes stacked up by the stairs. Dick was clearly still in process of moving in and making the house his own, but still it already had a homely feel to it. Harry had his coat folded over his arm and was glancing around when Dick and Nix stepped inside. Whatever had been between them outside had vanished, both smiling easily.     “Oh, just… Put that wherever,” Dick said, spotting the coat over Harry’s arm and gesturing towards the clothing pile on the chair. “I’ve only just started settling in, renovations delayed the furnishing and so on.” “I think we’ll manage,” Harry said, tossing his coat on the top of the pile. “It’s a really nice house, Dick.” Dick smiled, pleased. “Yeah? I thought so. It needed, and probably still needs, some work, but I really liked the location, the garden and the fireplace.” “How many rooms do you have?” Harry asked. “There’s the kitchen, the living-room and the bath downstairs, and four bedrooms on the second floor, plus a small attic chamber.” Harry nodded, impressed. “That’s nice. There’s room for a family here.” Harry’s chest grew warm just thinking about his friend having a family of his own. Dick would be amazing at it, and he would deserve all of it. The garden would be a perfect place for kids to play in. Dick smiled, proud and happy. “Exactly. A family,” he said, glancing at Nix. Harry wondered if family was a sore subject for Nix, but couldn’t figure out a tactful way to express his lack of judgement about his situation. He could only hope that Dick could communicate it well enough with a look, as he often did with Nix. But Nix didn’t look offended or called out at all. He was circling the hall and peeking into the rooms like a dog in a new house he was curiously inspecting. You could almost see his tail wagging. Harry and Dick exchanged a look about him, and then with a fond shake of his head Dick cleared his throat. “Do you want to see the house some, Nix?” Nix started and gave a laugh, a bit awkward like he had got caught doing something forbidden. “Yeah, sure. Although I can already tell you need some curtains here.” Dick laughed and showed them around while also appointing them rooms to put their things down and settle in. The kitchen and the living-room were pretty well arranged, but with a closer look both had a strong mark of generous relatives and a helpful mother on them, and the upstairs were clearly more a work in progress. Still, Dick had his own bedroom, a guest room, and an office with a couch bed. Harry took the guest room while Nix dropped his stuff into the office. They had dinner at home, mashed potatoes with chicken roasted in the oven and a side salad. Dinner turned easily into coffee and biscuits, which continued so long that the day turned into evening, they got hungry again and made sandwiches to take with them into the living-room. Conversation was just as easy as always, now maybe even more so because they all had so much to tell. Only a few years had passed, but many things had happened and changed, and letters could only express so much. Harry talked eagerly about his job in the school system, about all the students and the curriculum he was trying to get approved both by the higher-ups and the teachers, and mused on how he, a former unruly school boy, had now joined the ranks of the school staff and was forced to consider his past antics in a new light. Nix confessed to similar escapades during his school years but without any remorse. Predictably Dick had been a model student, and Nix briefly teased that had they known each other in school he would have lured him in trouble. Dick had a new job in the city and he seemed excited about it. He managed personnel, and getting to use his organizational skills in practice brought him a great deal of satisfaction. He didn’t mention New Jersey at all, and neither did Nix, and Harry didn’t ask. Harry had taken a bottle of whiskey with him, but now found he had no one to share it with. Nix shook his head. “Yeah, no, I quit over a year ago. I think I told you.” “Yeah, you did, but… Completely?” Harry asked, brows raised. Nix shrugged with a half a smile. “Yep. There was really no middle ground there for me. It was either keep drinking or kick the habit for good.” “Damn. Who do I drink with now?” Harry sighed. Nix’s smile was almost a grimace. “It wasn’t really good for me.” Harry bumped their knees together. “I hear you. I’m happy for you, Nix, but drinking alone is no fun either.” Dick took half a sandwich from the plate and turned to Harry. “You may drink in my house. It’s allowed.” Harry considered this. “Well, maybe a glass or two, even though it’s not that fun. It’s not like I drink much at home either.” Dick went to fetch him a glass from the kitchen. Harry filled it, then mindfully placed it as far away from Nix’s corner of the table as he naturally could. “Kitty doesn’t like you drinking, huh?” Dick asked when Harry took a sip of whiskey. Harry smiled fondly and felt a tug of longing at the mention of his wife. “No, she sure doesn’t. We haven’t really talked about it and she isn’t that forward about it, but she doesn’t like to see me drunk, so I limit myself to a glass every other weekend, if even that. It’s so easy to forget about when you don’t do it that often.” Nix scoffed. “Oh, I wish. My first three months dry were hell. I didn’t have a wife to keep me straight either.” Harry smiled sympathetically. “I bet Dick took that upon himself, huh? Wrote you weekly letters of moral support and brought you back in the fold?” The traces of grimace vanished from Nix’s expression and his eyes lit up. He waved his hand dismissively, and that was all Harry needed to know that he had hit the nail on the head. He laughed. Dick grinned too. “Merely simple words of encouragement to support what was already there,” he noted, and Nix’s smile stretched into a grin as well. Dick’s eyes twinkled. “Despite the distance and my service, I always have time for my men.” Nix snorted and shook his head, blushing. “Oh, right! How are the young American soldiers nowadays?” Harry asked. Dick took a moment to think about it, sighed and shook his head. His expression turned nostalgic. “Not like we were,” he finally said. “I don’t think there will ever be another bunch of guys as dedicated and fine as we were.” “Cheers, I’ll drink to that,” Harry said, and Nix clinked his soda bottle with his whiskey glass. “I’m officially discharged now,” Dick said. “That’s it for my time with the army, for real and certain this time.” “Everyone still calls him Major though,” Nix said to Harry, who chuckled. “So, what’s next for you then?” Harry asked. “My civilian career and tending to my garden,” Dick said. Harry rolled his eyes at Dick’s avoidance. “That we already covered. I meant on the social front. Still no date for Dick Winters, huh? No babies about to take up those bedrooms?” Dick had grown up and gained enough confidence around this talking point that he didn’t blush, but instead returned Harry’s look with one of his noncommittal, blank ones. “No kids. I’ve already explained this to my parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, my little sister and most of my friends.” Harry raised his hands in a peace offering, dropping the subject. It was a difficult one for him as well, so he left it. “How about a wife? I bet there’s a line by now,” he asked. Dick huffed, finally flushing a bit and dropping his gaze. “That would be the logical first step to kids, at least. But no, no wife.” Nix sniggered, slumping down on his chair most likely in order to reach to poke Dick in the shin. “Not from the lack of trying either, on everyone else’s part, that is. His mother and all the nice ladies at his church are taking waiting numbers for their and their friends’ daughters and nieces.” Dick threw him a look and rolled his eyes. Harry joined in the teasing. “Your bedroom is for two, though. Are you sure there’s no one to take up the extra space?” Despite his blush, Dick managed to smirk. “Even if I were to take someone to my bed, that doesn’t make that person a wife.” Harry sputtered and laughed and Nix inhaled his soda, ending up spitting half of it out in the following coughing fit, making Harry laugh harder and Dick grin. The evening went on. They played a few rounds of cards and stayed awake defying their growing exhaustion. Harry downed three glasses of whiskey and with his lowered tolerance dozed off in one of the armchairs, and so did Nix despite not having had a drop of alcohol. Harry kept drifting in and out of dream, vaguely aware of Dick quietly moving about and taking dishes to the kitchen, and even more vaguely aware that when the flowers of the wallpaper started to look like real plants blooming from the walls, he was asleep. He toed that fine line, sinking into the cushions, enjoying the light buzz of alcohol and the joy of being with his two closest friends, and observing the living-room wall bloom with peonies and primroses and deep green wines, covering everything and gently pulling everything into their world. Quiet words drifted into Harry’s dream. At first they didn’t register at all, too soft and nonsensical to be anything but a dream. “Lew. Wake up, Lew... Lew… Hey, hi. Hi.” “Mm hi.” “Shh, Harry’s asleep.” “Yeah, me too.” The words were soft, almost muttered, the voices so gentle and smooth that they seemed to belong in the dream world with the flowers. “How do you like the house?” “It’s perfect. Just… perfect. I love it.” “I’m glad.” A beat of silence, short as a breath and still like hours in the dream. “I wanted to carry you over the threshold.” A quiet laugh. “You are… So much.” “Too much?” A humming sound. “No, just right. Just perfect.” A shifting sound from a chair, the cushions shuffling against clothing. “Come ‘ere.” A deep sigh filled the room, a strangely layered sound, and it took Harry’s dozing brain a moment to realize it came from two people at once. It was a strange sound, both like the air being knocked out of someone as well as a sound of deep contentment. “I’m so happy to see you again,” Nix whispered, his voice strangely muffled. Dick sounded a little strained. “Yeah, you too. I missed you so much.” The words were finally registering to Harry, not only as coherent sentences with meaning, but also as things spoken by familiar voices that he recognised as his friends’. Their voices were quiet and soft, gentle like they sometimes briefly were when they seemed to talk about something just between themselves despite having company, but the words were something Harry hadn’t ever heard from them before and they didn’t fit the picture. Puzzled, Harry listened, and after a moment risked turning his head towards the voices a bit and cracking his eyes open ever so slightly. Nix was still in his chair where he had dozed off, Dick was standing right next to him, and they had their arms around each other. Nix had his arms wrapped tightly around Dick’s middle, his face pressed against his stomach, Dick’s shirt covering half of his mouth and muffling his words. Nix had his eyes closed. “Don’t ever leave again.” “I won’t,” Dick reassured softly, “don’t you either.” Nix nuzzled against Dick, his palms flat against his back. “I won’t, I promise. I won’t ever leave you. I’ll stay right here with you, I swear.” “At our house.” Dick sounded almost giddy. His hands were cradling Nix against him, one sunken into his hair and gently combing through it again and again. Nix smiled and pressed his cheek more firmly against Dick’s stomach. “Yeah. Our house.” Another pained sigh sounded in the room. Nix’s brow furrowed, and like caught in a flood of some emotion he turned to fully bury his face in Dick’s shirt, mouth open in a trembling gasp and his hands grasping at his back. “I’ve been so lonely, Dick,” he said in a small voice. “I missed you. I’ve missed you for years, and it feels like I still do even though you’re right here.” “Oh, darling.” Dick sank down to sit on the armrest of the chair in a fluid motion as if spurred on by Nix’s tone alone, and as smoothly he wrapped his arms around Nix, pressing his head against his chest instead of his middle. Dick’s hand stroked Nix’s back, up and down in an urgent caress, and his head came to rest on top of Nix’s, fair cheek to black hair. “My darling.” They stayed together like that, and Harry watched them through his lashes. They swayed a bit, rocking from side to side while wrapped around each other, tight but gentle, in an embrace that despite everything didn’t seem tight enough for them. They stayed like that for a long while, both with their eyes closed, Nix pressed against Dick and squeezing him to him, and Dick leaning over him like wanting to shelter him. They remained like that even when the flowers and vines faded back into the wallpaper and became just pictures again. Harry was wide awake but closed his eyes again. He didn’t think anything, just concentrated to staying still and inconspicuous, afraid of intruding on this moment that he was definitely not welcome to. “Are you tired?” Dick asked quietly. Nix mumbled something into his shirt. Then, “yeah. I was too anxious to see you again to sleep, and then I drove all day.” Dick hummed, his voice thick with affection. “Poor you. You should go to bed.” “We really should.” “Do you think we should wake Harry and tell him to go to bed?” Harry was uncomfortably aware that both of them were looking at him then. Nix made an agreeing noise. “We probably should. He’ll mess up his back like that.” Despite agreement, neither one made a move to get on with it, and for a long while it was quiet. For such a long while in fact, that despite the tension and the shock Harry felt himself drifting off again. The next thing he knew was that he was nudged awake. Dick was shaking him by the shoulder. “Hey, buddy. You should go to bed.” Harry blinked and looked around. The living-room was dark, and Nix was nowhere to be seen. Harry let himself be pulled up from the chair, stretched until something in his back popped, and then followed Dick upstairs and into the guest room. As he got into bed he wondered briefly if he had dreamed it all. When Harry woke up the next morning and got dressed, he still wasn’t quite sure if he had dreamed it or not. He was almost entirely sure that it had been real, he had been awake to hear and see it after all, but… But. He stared out of the window and felt the gears in his mind grinding. There was some sort of a mental block in his head just refusing to comprehend any of it. He had seen and heard that. It felt like everything had just been called into question, and every single thing, every single interaction and factoid was now re-evaluated in the light of this new information, and all of it formed one mess of a puzzle in Harry’s mind. How had something like this slipped by him for so long? Or how had they managed to hide it? Harry thought about Nix and Dick and tried to see their friendship as something different and more. He had seen them wrapped into each other in a manner that was definitely not simply friendly. Nix hanging onto Dick like that may have been excusable if he was drunk, which he wasn’t, but Dick holding him like a bride, stroking his hair… Harry rubbed his hands over his face. How had this escaped him was the question. Maybe it was because neither Nix or Dick matched his mental image of men like that, but that was a flimsy excuse for not seeing what was going on right in front of him. How had their friendship got into that point? How had Harry missed something like that? He had always known that Nix was special to Dick, that there were Dick’s friends and then there was Nix, but somehow it hadn’t added up. Another disturbing thought arose in Harry’s mind: had he known all along, but chosen not to see it? Was he that cowardly that he would let himself live on in denial rather than face the truth? And if he could deny it, did the truth even matter that much? Or did it matter so much in fact, that denying it was the only way to cope? He thought about Nix’s soft, openly vulnerable voice confessing how much he had missed Dick. He thought about Dick stroking Nix’s hair. Suddenly Harry felt himself flushing. Four years they had been apart and only yesterday been reunited. No wonder Nix hadn’t wanted Harry to tag along, he must have been looking forward to the reunion and wanted it to be private. He rubbed his face again. Whatever the case was, he would have to face them both and go have breakfast. He could tell by the sounds around the house that at least Dick was already awake.   It turned out that he was wrong. Both Dick and Nix were awake, but only Dick was actually preparing breakfast and Nix was sitting at the table, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Good morning,” Dick greeted Harry with a bright smile, ever the morning person. “Have a seat.” Harry did. There was a pot of oat meal on the table, as well as a selection of homemade jams, a bowl of sugar and butter on a plate. Dick was making toast in a pan on the stove and brewing coffee while at it. Harry made himself a bowl of oat meal with butter and a spoonful of strawberry jam. “Did you sleep okay?” Dick asked. “Yeah,” Harry answered and wasn’t lying. It was being awake that was giving him trouble. “Do you want toast with that?” Dick asked. “Sure. Thanks.” “Give it a minute and you can have these slices.” When the toast was done, Dick served two slices to Harry and put two more in the pan. It was a beautiful summer morning outside, and from the way the sun was shining from the blue sky one could tell it was going to be a hot day. Harry watched Dick make two slices of toast for himself, then pour three cups of coffee. Dick set his plate on the table, then brought the coffee cups over. He handed Harry one, then made one cup with milk and sugar, and another with only a dash of milk. He set the other cup in front of Nix, touching his arm to get his attention. Nix opened his eyes and was happy to find a cup of coffee in front of him. They shared a smile, and Nix took a clearly pleasurable sip of coffee, slightly more awake but his eyes still drooping. Dick was leaning his cheek on his hand and watching Nix with a fond smile. Then he caught Harry watching him from the corner of his eye and the smile was contained. Harry took a bite of his toast and shrugged. “Go on, be happy in your own house. It’s allowed,” he said, teasing being an easy and familiar routine to fall back on. Dick cast his eyes down and smiled. He took a sip of his own coffee and glanced at Nix again. “Yeah, I know. It’s not that, it’s just… Well. It’s good to be home, you know.” Harry nodded. “Yeah.” And he did know. He glanced out of the window into the half wild garden that Dick was only starting to tame. It would be a lot of work, all on top of the usual fuss with a day job and maintaining an old house like this one. “You really going to have a family here, Dick?” Dick turned fully to Harry then, perhaps hearing the several layers of the question. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if he did; Dick was always prepared for everything, after all. But Dick met his gaze head on, steady and unwavering. It looked like he turned the question over in his mind, but just to amuse Harry. He seemed like he had the answer ready already. Dick nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have a family. Maybe it’ll be small, but it’ll be loving and good.” Harry stared back at him and took another bite out of his toast. Dick studied him intensely then, like he was looking for something, and Harry allowed him. After a moment Dick seemed to find what he was looking for, because he nodded to himself and returned to his coffee. “You know what they say, Harry,” he said, “homes are not found, they are built. Families as well.” “Yeah.” Harry tasted his oat meal with the jam. “This is really good.” Dick nodded. “My mother and sister will get the compliments.” It was a warm, cozy kitchen, and the breakfast was sturdy and delicious. Coffee and occasional nudges from Dick together were slowly waking Nix up. The sun was already high up. It was going to be a beautiful day.

King Of The Castle: At Home With Dominic West

As the star of HBO's The Wire and The Affair, Dominic West made his name playing conflicted Americans battling their demons and struggling to find their places in the world. And cheating on their women. In real life, he's a self-deprecating father of four from outside Sheffield, and among his chief preoccupations is how to preserve the 800-year-old Irish castle inherited by his wife.

"Excuse me," says Dominic West, "I’m just going to wipe this so you can sit down and you won’t be infected with disease." About seven crumbs on his otherwise clean kitchen table disappear with the swipe of a tea towel, and he gets back to the business of making lunch. We’re in the kitchen of his house in Wiltshire, where he lives with his wife Catherine and their four children.

His head turns from cupboard to cupboard, like he’s watching a tennis match. “Where has the rice gone? Would you like rice?”

Yes please, if that’s what you’re having.

“I am, if I can fucking find it.”

He fucking finds it and a pan of rice goes on the hob next to the pan of leftover beef stew. “So I’m on the cover?” he says, looking out of the window. “But doesn’t that mean you’ve got to try and make it interesting?”

In 2000, Dominic West joined an Argentinian circus. This was the year before he auditioned for and won his breakthrough role of Detective Jimmy McNulty on The Wire and the year after he had a single line (“The boy’s here to see Padmé”) as a guard of one of those science-fiction sliding doors in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He was 30, five years out of drama school and father to a one-year-old daughter.

The circus, De La Guarda, had a show, also called De La Guarda, at the Roundhouse in Camden. It was the hottest ticket in London that year. The audience entered the round to ambient music under a low paper ceiling. Performers would burst through the paper, on ropes, and eventually a pounding live soundtrack accompanied a dozen or more roped performers as they ran around the walls of the circular venue. Water rained down. Some audience members would be lifted into the air; others, perhaps more fortunate, would be pressed into urgent dancing with attractive, adrenalised Argentinians unclipped from their shackles. Or indeed, West himself.

‘What’s amazing,’ says Keira Knightley, ‘is that Dominic can play characters who should be total dickheads, yet he manages to give them a point of view and his own incredible charm. It is a great skill’

“Why did I do it?” says West, somewhat incredulously. “You saw it! Wouldn’t you want to run away and join that circus? It was such a sexy show. I saw it in London and New York, then heard they were auditioning in London and I had to do it. I did a lot of shows in five months with those amazing men and women, then they went to Vegas. It was a disaster there. The water. People dressed up for a Vegas show — of course they didn’t want to get wet.”

West didn’t want to go to Vegas. But he would end up spending a lot more time in America, filming five seasons of The Wire and four seasons of The Affair, with a fifth and final one due to start filming a couple of days after we make lunch.

“The toughest part of making these big episodic American television shows is missing my family and the boredom,” he says, gearing himself up for the process to begin again. “Sitting around waiting and not being bored is hard. There was a time when I had a play in the West End [Butley, 2011] and was learning Iago [for Othello] and I had more on than usual. That was hard work, but the harder that aspect of the work gets, the more enjoyable it is. Actual graft is what’s great about acting. That’s something I relish, because most of the time, it’s about coping with tedium.”

To stop himself being bored on set, West likes to have fun. “You can’t not have fun with him,” says Keira Knightley, soon to be seen alongside West in the film Colette. “I think fun is something that Dominic brings to everything. He very much likes a night out, is always up for a laugh and is, in the best way, wicked. And he is a phenomenally good actor, he really is. So effortless.”

“For a lot of us,” Knightley says, “who do actually need to concentrate when we’re working, it’s, ‘How are you that good when you're chatting and joking until the very last second?’ Even I had to tell him to shut up so I could concentrate. Which I had to do quite a lot.”

West is not about to shut up. And he’s not the only one. “I just did a thing with Olivia Colman [a BBC mini-series adaptation of Les Misérables] and: fuck me! Ha ha ha! The whole thing is like playing top-level sports with her. How frivolous can you be up to ‘Action!’ and then be amazing. She doesn’t do that consciously, she is just really fucking good. She is way, way, way better than me. I had to stop listening to her because she is so funny.”

Then a more serious thought occurs. “Malcolm Gladwell’s thing about 10,000 hours [the writer’s theory, from his book Outliers, that to be expert in any field requires that exact amount of practice time]? I worked it out and I’ve had at least 20,000 hours. I’ve acted so much now I can turn it on and off, and that’s maybe where the humour thing comes in. I have had an awful lot of practice at this.”

Dominic West first got the taste for drama when he was nine years old. His mother, Moya, gave him a part in her amateur production of The Winslow Boy, at Sheffield University’s drama studio. His father, George, had a factory in Wakefield that made vandal-proof bus shelters. George’s father, Harold, a managing director of a steelworks in Barnsley, fought in WWI and was wounded at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. “After, he wrote a note to go with his medals,” says West, “that said, ‘Here are a few mementos from a deeply happy part of my life’.” West has found documentaries commemorating the centenary of the Armistice “deeply moving.”

He is the sixth of seven children, with five sisters and an elder brother. They grew up in a large house on the edge of the Peak District, about 10 miles southwest of Sheffield. He boarded at Eton and hated it to begin with. “I was very homesick, had no reference to it, didn’t know anyone who had gone and I felt I was in the wrong place.” Inspiring teachers and school plays gave him something to be excited about and set him on his path.

“It’s pretentious to say, really, but my acting education was defined by doing Hamlet at Eton, reading Ulysses when I was doing my English degree at Trinity College in Dublin, then War and Peace, which we put on at Guildhall [School of Music & Drama in London]. That’s it, really. All I learned anywhere.”

Legend has it that in the audience watching his Prince of Denmark was Damian Lewis, a couple of years behind West at school, and later the star of Band of Brothers, Homeland and Billions. So taken was the younger lad by what he saw that he decided to become an actor.

“Categorically: no,” Lewis tells me, over the phone from Los Angeles. “I had always acted at school and always enjoyed it. Me thinking it was something I could do more seriously didn’t happen until I was 16 years old, after seeing Dom do Hamlet. He was very charismatic. A big, booming sonorous voice, especially for a 17-year-old. I was very taken with him, he was very captivating up on stage.”

Since graduating from Guildhall, West has worked solidly. He is not a huge movie star but is highly successful and versatile. There aren’t many men who could convincingly play both Fred West and Richard Burton, as West has done. He won a Bafta for his Fred West. He’s most memorable as Jimmy McNulty, not least because he and The Wire are so good, but also because constant reminders of those two facts have become standard reference points in the increasingly vast conversation about the New Golden Age of TV.

He has, in his own words, played “a long line of philandering cads”, from McNulty on to Hector Madden, the Fifties news anchor in two seasons of The Hour for the BBC, to Noah in The Affair and Willy in Colette. “What’s amazing,” says Keira Knightley, “is that he can play characters that should be total dickheads, yet he manages to give them a point of view and his own incredible charm, so you sort of forgive them for how terrible they might be. It is a great skill.”

But he is far from typecast. His five film roles previous to Willy in Colette are: Lara Croft’s dad, a sort of country-gent Indiana Jones, in Tomb Raider; a quietly pompous pyjamas-wearing modern artist in the Swedish film The Square, which won the Palme D’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival; Rudder, a comic-relief Cockney sea lion in Pixar’s Finding Dory; a Teflon swine of a CEO opposite George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Money Monster; and, in Genius, Ernest Hemingway.

There have been stage successes, including star turns in the West End. Following up the blockbuster and critically lauded play Jerusalem, the writer Jez Butterworth and director Ian Rickson could have done any play with anyone on any stage. They chose Dominic West to star in The River, a short, intense play with one man and two women in the 90-seater upstairs room at the Royal Court Theatre in London, for which West won universal praise.

‘It is a bad thing to be self-deprecating. It’s quite an English thing, which you become very aware of in America. People don’t understand: why do yourself down? I sort of agree with it, now’

“Dominic is able to unleash his unconscious in a really ‘present’ way,” says Ian Rickson. “It allows him to fuse into the darkness of Fred West, for example, or the troubled soul of McNulty. In terms of archetypes, he has a trickster quality hiding a warrior/lover inside. That’s exciting. There’s very little ego and a lot of generosity of spirit. He actually has a refreshingly comic sense of himself, so he does really value the opportunities he has, and doesn’t take them too seriously.”

West feels he does and he doesn’t. “I suppose deep down there’s a feeling that what I do isn’t desperately serious. It might have been Mark Boxer, the cartoonist, who said he went to some lunch for cartoonists, an awards maybe, and he was having a piss and the guy next to him said, ‘Cartoonist. It’s not a real job, is it?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not. Isn’t that great!’ He took great comfort from that and I feel the same about acting. But there is something in me which feels, partly because I have been doing it all my life and did as a hobby before I did it professionally, that this is not a serious job for adults.”

Perhaps this is why he’s so self-deprecating. Twice during our conversations, he says that he’s not a “real actor”, bringing up Daniel Day-Lewis’s commitment to doing an accent the entire time he makes a film, on and off set, and his own inability to match that; and pointing out Robert De Niro’s weight gain for Raging Bull. For Colette, West wore a fat suit.

And yet, during our conversations, he trots out seven perfect accents and imitations: Mick Jagger, the German film director Werner Herzog, Northern Irish, Irish, Australian, New York and a deep, thespian-type voice to convey mock indignance. He’s not showing off. Some of the voices were to make anecdotes funnier and others were just as anyone might do an accent subconsciously when you think of someone with an accent. You know, for fun.

But he can be serious. “It is a bad thing, to be self-deprecating,” he says, a little bit disappointed with himself. “Maybe it’s an educational thing. It’s quite an English thing, which you become very aware of in America. People just don’t understand why on earth you would do that. There are enough people who would do you down, why do yourself down? I sort of agree with it, now. It is tiresome.”

Clarke Peters, who played Lester Freamon in The Wire, and Othello to West’s Iago on stage in 2011, has a different view of his friend’s dilemma. “As good an actor as he is, his self- deprecating comments are his truth. He would prefer to be playing than talking about himself; exploring a character, discovering nuances, dissecting a character’s arc, is where he’s comfortable. Presenting all that unseen work is nerve-wracking. And actors are never the best judges of their own work. So, to be safe from criticism and microscopic scrutiny, self-deprecation is the best defence."

The fat suit in Colette was no cop-out. “I was then about to play Jean Valjean,” West says, more forgiving of himself now, “a man who has been in prison for 19 years, so there was a clash of waistline imperatives.” He plays the lead in a song-free, six-part Les Misérables — the project in which Olivia Colman out-joked him — the BBC’s first big drama of 2019, with the opening episode broadcast on New Year’s Day.

According to Keira Knightley, the extra padding, and a walrus moustache, did not mute West’s physical attractiveness. “Nobody looks good in that,” she says, “but he somehow manages to be dangerously sexy through it. It was a main conversation between the rest of us on set: how he managed to ooze sexuality while he was farting in two fat suits. Quite extraordinary. I can’t think of another actor who might be able to do that.”

Sarah Treem, the showrunner of The Affair, could not conceive of anyone else but West as her leading man, Noah Solloway. “He didn’t audition. I wrote it with him in mind,” she says. “I was a huge fan of The Wire and I just loved how complicated he could be — both likeable and unlikeable at the same time.”

The Affair begins with Noah, a married father of four, embarking on a fling with a waitress, Alison, played by Ruth Wilson, and then follows the fall-out for the two of them, their spouses and extended families. West, Wilson and the wider cast are terrific, as is the show’s central conceit of telling the story from the point-of-view of different characters, usually two in each hour-long episode.

“Dominic is so good at playing all different facets of Noah,” Treem continues. “His intelligence, his lust, his insecurity, the pain of his childhood, his love for his children. He lets Noah be a very complicated, sometimes deeply generous, sometimes horribly selfish, man.”

West concurs, with a caveat. “I have had difficulty wondering why someone who I can identify with — he’s my age and has a bunch of kids — would do the things he does. Sarah, a very brilliant woman younger than I am, looked at me with a raised eyebrow when I said, ‘Men my age just don’t do that. Why leave your wife and kids for a waitress and start another family?’ She told me the stories of several real people who had. Not that I want my characters to be sympathetic, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and I have struggled with Noah in that regard.”

West has five children: a daughter, 20, with former girlfriend Polly Astor, and two sons and two daughters aged 12, 10, nine and five, with his wife, the landscape designer Catherine FitzGerald. It is Catherine’s beef stew we have been eating for lunch, their children’s clothes drying on the Aga behind us. On a smaller table in a nook in the corner of the kitchen, next to some half-completed maths homework, is a pile of dad’s hardbacks: The Flame by Leonard Cohen, William Dalrymple’s retelling of the Indian mutiny of 1857, The Last Mughal, and Changing Stages, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright’s history of 20th-century theatre.

Out in the driveway, a small child’s BMX has been discarded in front of mum’s Audi A3, in perfect position to be crunched into the gravel next time the car sets off. At lunch, West didn’t know where the rice was because he and his family have only lived in this house, a former brewery in a Wiltshire hamlet, for a few weeks. They used to live in Shepherd’s Bush, in a house that once belonged to another actor from Sheffield, Brian Glover.

“I have led my family out of London slightly against their will,” West admits, “and quite legitimately want my children to be around plants and animals more than they perhaps might be in London. My wife said I’m trying to create my childhood home here and I said, [now, the thespian accent] ‘No I’m not! Preposterous! What do you mean? It’s nothing like that!’”

His wife’s childhood home is Glin Castle in County Limerick, Ireland, a true country pile (15 ensuite bedrooms, 380 acres, secret bookcase doors) that, in various versions, has been in her family for nearly 800 years. (It’s the house you can see in the background of the photographs on these pages.) She and West want to hold on to it. To do so, the house needs to become a going concern as an events and private hire venue to cover its annual £130,000 running costs.

“I do like history and I do like old buildings,” West says. “I’m also conscious of my wife’s father and his and her legacies. He worked in conservation in Ireland, to try and preserve these old buildings, which were out of favour for many years. It’s up to us to try and keep that going, because when they’re bought by hotels and the like, they’re often destroyed.”

This Christmas and New Year, he says, “we have a super-A-list celebrity taking it. Who, I can’t possibly divulge. Actually, can you do us a big favour and put the website, please, at the end of the piece? ‘Glin dash castle dot com.’ It would make my life easier.”

It’s time to do the school pick-up. “We can keep talking in the car,” he says, and leads the way to a silver Chrysler Grand Voyager. “It has,” West says, buckling up, “the biggest capacity of any people carrier.”

Precisely something a turning-50-next-year dad-of-five should say. “I have no problem getting older,” he says. “For male actors of my age there is less emphasis, and I have already started to play the dad of the lover instead of the lover. The pressure is off. Some swami said that the key to happiness is ‘I don’t mind what happens.’ You mind less about things, let go of them. Turning 50 is great. My daughter is also turning 21, so we should have quite a party.”

He has regrets. “I suppose I wish I had played more Shakespearean roles.”

What about the old-man ones? “Only Lear is as good as the young ones.”

What about not being James Bond? “Fuck no! I’m delighted now that I didn’t get it.”

Auditioning for Bond, in 2005, West turned up in a T-shirt and tatty jeans. “I remember the director, Martin Campbell, saying, ‘Thank Christ you haven’t turned up in a tux like everybody else’. It was for Casino Royale. At the time, I really wanted to get it. I love Bond, and I was the right age for it. They asked me, ‘What do you think should happen with Bond?’ And I said something deeply uninspired like, ‘I think he should go back to being more like Sean Connery’. I thought then that it was the best job you can do. Now, I’m not so sure. You have a year-and-a-half of hell doing publicity.”

West pulls up opposite the school. “Wait here. Enjoy the smell. Kids’ banana skins,” he says, opening the driver’s door. Puzzled, I sniff the air. There is no unpleasant aroma. The interior of Dominic West’s car smells perfectly fine. But, of course, he claims otherwise. He’s a terrific actor and a thoroughly likeable chap, but that self-deprecation still needs some work.

Colette is in cinemas on 11 January; glin-castle.com (https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a25557268/dominic-west-interview/)

Attention

By Bob Lefsetz . Bob is a longtime music lawyer with links in all streams of music who has been a perceptive commentator on the music world. His analysis of the music business is brutally on-target. When he is not commenting on various artists and music, he offers insights on how things are changing and how to change with them, which can be applicable to business and the investment world

Originally published at the Lefsetz Letter, Feb. 28, 2017

Attention Is the number one commodity in today’s world. Unless you can get it, you cannot proceed.

1. You don’t get multiple bites at the apple.

Since attention is scarce and stretched, if someone checks you or your product out and is not closed, chances are they will never check it out again. Which is why you should not launch before you are ready and when it comes to a product many companies release first iterations as betas, signaling the customer should expect rough edges. If the concept is good, if the utility is reasonable, people will put up with bugs in betas.

2. You can’t spread the word, your users must.

Advertising is crippled. As is press. They can cause a limited amount of awareness but people today are turned off to ads, never mind DVR’ing TV shows and watching HBO and Netflix, they employ ad-blockers on their web browsers and if you’re paying for advertising you’d better have a monster launch with a ton invested otherwise it’s a no-go, and it still may be a no-go if you spam everybody. Because you can’t reach everybody and people are wary of advertising, they don’t believe it, they need to hear it from their friends.

We all need to hear it from our friends. Who we might know in person or might just know online. It’s about trusted filters. And those filters guard their credibility wisely. Credibility is everything in the attention economy. If you can’t be trusted, then you’re probably going to be ignored. You’re building your reputation every day online, and all the bread crumbs are there for everybody to see.

We don’t take a look until our friends/trusted filters tell us to. And oftentimes, we have to hear from multiple friends/trusted filters that something is worth checking out.

3. Overnight success is history.

MTV blasted acts to the moon and they fell to Earth just about as fast. If you can gain major attention in today’s world right away chances are you’re going to immediately fail thereafter. Because few things live up to the hype and the hype causes backlash and in today’s world it’s not about stagnation but evolution, what does version 2.0 look like, how good is the follow-up song. When the bar is set so high to begin with chances are you cannot jump over it the second time around and people will stop paying attention.

Better to grow slowly.

4. That which is big may not be anointed as so.

Forget the awards shows. Hell, look at the Oscars, those pictures they were honoring all had mediocre grosses at best. And the media is a tool of the companies purveying. Other than politics and wars, where newspapers have full time reporters, the rest of what comes over the transom as news is really glorified press releases. So you read about something and then it has no traction thereafter. Because it’s not that good and there is no base to sustain it and the press is not that powerful.

No one has come up with a metric to detail what gets attention in today’s economy. Except for maybe Netflix subscribers and Facebook usage, but as for art...

We’ve got grosses in film. Ratings in television, but the best shows aren’t rated. And we’ve got streams in music. All these quantifications are relevant (and ignore the weekly “Billboard” chart, it’s out of touch!) But how to quantify the success of “Hamilton,” which for over a year played in only one theatre and has had no Top Forty success, but is referenced by Seth Rogen at the Oscars, sung along to by Melinda Gates... “Hamilton” has yet to peak and unlike so much other art it crosses ethnic and political boundaries, it’s one of the few things that appeals to all. But there’s no chart, just a lot of press which doesn’t resonate.

But when someone tells you about their favorite “Hamilton” song... Then you feel the bond and know how big it is.

We all have our own internal chart now. We determine whether something is big or small. And we do this by gut feeling. Hell, the media missed the Trump phenomenon completely. But based on the blowback I was getting online I knew something was up. Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters. If you don’t think something is that big, despite the press hosannas, it’s probably not.

5. Don’t hammer the audience.

If you spam us every day looking for attention we ignore you. Launch and then follow up. New songs/more product is much more important that more publicity. Satiate the core, which wants more. It’s the core who will spread the word. But if you drop an album and promote it for two years you’re missing the point. You’re going after the looky-loos, the least committed people, your core is burned out on your new work and abandons you. You need to keep the attention of the core. And the more you say “Look at me!” the more you are ignored, or made fun of. Sure, there’s train-wreck attention, where someone blows themselves up and we all know about it, but it lasts for about a day.

6. Don’t have airs.

The most successful people in today’s economy are accessible. Look at Mark Cuban, responding to the hoi polloi’s tweets. He could run for President and win, he’s more credible than Trump and on TV every week too. So come down off your throne and get in the pit and mix it up a bit. People want to be able to touch you, even if it’s only online.

7. Respect your audience.

You’ve got no time and they don’t either. Even babies are scheduled, we’re all overwhelmed. It’s a privilege to get someone’s attention, you’re not entitled to it. Ask for it nicely and thank people for giving it and don’t ask for too much. Ask people to listen to one song, not an album, if they like the one they’ll ask for more. If you send ten, they probably won’t listen at all. You don’t want to overload people.

8. Pull economy.

You cannot push, that’s positively last century. Sure, you can grease the skids, pour some oil to get something started, but it’s only working if people are demanding more. And if they are not, you don’t have a marketing problem, you have a product problem. Marketing has never meant less. It’s seen as phony and manipulative. You lead with your product. And it’s either growing or failing. Either every day more and more people are watching your YouTube video or you need to make another one, that’s different.

9. You rarely feel like you’re winning.

With everybody clamoring for attention and traditional news outlets challenged you oftentimes don’t know whether you’re winning or losing. Which is why today it’s about stamina and follow-through. When someone hypes you on the work of a twelve year old, laugh and ignore it. The “artist” doesn’t have enough experience to understand the game, they just want fame. And those seeking fame first and foremost are losing out in the attention economy, because it’s not about the one time buy, but a continued relationship. And when there’s no there there, people move on. So you’ve got to polish your product and create new ones and stay in the game, constantly tweaking what you’ve got and trying new things, and if you’re getting more attention you know you’re on the right track, if not, back to the drawing board.

10. Evolution

This is where we are today. Tomorrow will be different. Virality is a thing of the past. As in faking it to get everybody to pay attention, it rarely works anymore, we’ve seen the trick and if you’re trying to goose the process for instant success you’re on the wrong track. Today it’s about an overwhelming number of messages, tomorrow it’s about the winnowing down of those messages. What will this look like? Will there be new gatekeepers? Will so many outlets fail that the ones remaining have more power? If you’re not reevaluating and pivoting on a regular basis you’re being left behind. Now, more than ever, what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. So you have to keep experimenting. But success remains tied to attention. Your goal is to get people interested, dedicating their time, giving you their money. And the more sunlight there is online, the less fakery there is too. So, instead of promoting, you should be practicing. The truth is we’re all looking for great stuff 24/7 and if we find it we tell everybody we know. Let it be you we are telling everybody about.

Beyoncé’s Lemonade Suckers

By David Himmel

“You have to get older to leave your legacy.” — Lady Gaga

Since 1994, I’ve had the Oasis song, Supersonic playing in my head to some degree. That was when I first heard the band and immediately began devouring the music with a voraciousness only a teenager can display.

Oasis has been a favorite band since. Though I stopped buying the group’s albums after Standing on the Shoulder of Giants because I thought the quality had slipped, the first three albums and every B-side that came from those recording sessions remain in a place of fondness and reverence. So when the band released box sets of Definitely Maybe, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now, I didn’t pause a second to purchase them. Well, my then girlfriend and now wife, Katie, bought me Definitely Maybe for my birthday but only because I made such a fanboy fuss over it that she would be remiss not to. She was a good girlfriend and that’s part of the reason why I married her.

These Oasis box sets were released to coincide with the 20-year anniversary of the original release of Definitely Maybe and then (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. They came with a big black book of stories about the band and the making of the record, retrospective writings and photos, and collectible items like post cards, pins, tote bags and key chains, and 180-gram, remastered vinyl LPs, a few vinyl singles and a three-disk CD set with the remastered album as well as demos, B-sides, live cuts and alternate recordings. And, of course, digital downloads of all of this. Well, not the tote bags. You can’t digitally download a tote bag, ya goof.

Your opinion of Oasis doesn’t matter. These were fantastic purchases for fans who were still in love with the albums and had a feeling of nostalgia for what the music represents as well as an interest in how the music and the band holds up today. It would be a great purchase for newer Oasis fans, too, looking to get all of the band’s offerings in one fell swoop. All of this for the low price of $200 per box set.

Now, on the other side of my musical marital bed is my wife. Where I have attended services held by Oasis' Noel and Liam Gallagher, Katie is a cardinal in the Church of Beyoncé. So when Lemonade was released on April 26, 2016, she went, understandably, ballistic. She bought the digital album and watched the HBO film on repeat for several days. It was even part of the entertainment at her bachelorette party—naked dues in the afternoon, black feminism in the evening. The film remains delete proof on our DVR.

Lemonade is a helluva work of art. The way Bey released it, the way the HBO film complimented and added to the album, the way it was so personally raw… Lemonade went on to collect awards and praise easier than my Roomba collects my dog’s hair and my wife’s hair ties and my Cocoa Krispie cereal crumbs. Regardless of what you think of the music or the film or of Beyoncé, it’s hard to deny the immediate impact of the album.

You see, this isn’t about the quality of the music. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate Oasis or Beyoncé. This is about the illusion of self-importance. And in the 1990s, there were no two men more obsessed with their self-importance than Noel and Liam Gallagher. In the 2010s, that title goes to Queen B.

Just 16 months after Lemonade disrupted the world of pop culture, Beyoncé released the limited-edition box set, How to Make Lemonade. It’s a behind the scenes look at, well, the making of Lemonade. A 600-page book weighing in at 15.8 pounds—yes, I put it on our bathroom scale. The book was hyped as having never before seen photos of the inspiration behind the album. There’s a double 180-gram vinyl LP as well as digital and visual downloads. No tote bags, however, unfortunately for Katie and her like-minded cardinals. She’ll have to keep using my Oasis tote.

When How to Make Lemonade went up for pre-sale, Katie logged on and paid the $300. She was excited to get the vinyl and the additional downloads. But when you consider the economics of commerce, the thing she and all the others really paid for was the 600-page, 15.8-pound coffee table book of which I am confident after a few flips, will become the world’s most high-end dust collector ever brought to market. I know this because we have a lot of heavy coffee table books that live nowhere near our coffee table. They live on the lowest level of our bookshelves—blankets of dust covering their hard covers, which protect their pages of glossy, beautiful art and history. Hell, that’s exactly the condition of my Oasis box set books. The dust is so thick on those things, the Gallagher Brothers could easily cut it, line it up and snort it like some kind of rock history powder drug.

But before I buried those books where they belong, I flipped through them and read the stories and took in the photos and enjoyed looking back on the past 20 years while listening to my favorite songs from a time when things were different. Very different. The music now, the retrospective now, provides new shape and new experiences and engagement. That’s the best part about those Oasis box sets—they are time capsules. That’s the best part about all box sets. Box sets bring in the best and more of your previous life and remind you of what you were and what you can be. Usually, by the time these things are released, we’ve forgotten ourselves. Maybe we’ve forgotten the songs and the bands who made them. We need these box sets all these years later.

Beyoncé’s How to Make Lemonade does none of this. And not because it doesn’t have the ability to do so but because it hasn’t given itself enough time to be able to do so. It hasn’t earned enough street cred.

This is not the album’s or box set’s fault. Of course, not. This is Beyoncé’s doing. And for a woman who understands the intricacies of brand and impact, she should have known better. But she also understands the intricacies of brand and impact, and above all, she understands how important she is. And she knows how her followers, like lemmings to the edge of the earth, will follow her anywhere and do whatever she says and buy whatever she sells. They are loyal, they are always hungry for more of what Queen B is dishing up, even if it is 15.8 pounds of gruel. Beautiful, glossy-page gruel.

How to Make Lemonade was a cash grab. And as a result of this grab, Beyoncé blew the opportunity to surprise and excite the world in 20 years when, in the case that it happens, she needs to remind the world of how incredible she was.

Yes, Oasis can be accused of the same thing—cash grabbing. But if that were true, and there may be some truth to it since there’s no way any of the guys are pulling down the dough they were two decades ago, they had good reason. Because, well, they aren’t pulling down the same dough they were two decades ago.

I’ve read through How to Make Lemonade. It’s rich with beautiful images and surely offers a look into the making of the album. For a superfan, it’s an orgy of joy and brilliance. For the casual fan or studious sociologist, it provides insight into the struggle of black women through imagery and Malcom X quotes. And it provides insight into the pride and relevance of the black woman through imagery and Hattie White Quotes. (Hattie White being Beyoncé’s husband, Jay Z’s grandmother—the woman who inspired the title of the original album.) And she’s made a case for the pregnant woman, too, as there are photographs of her on tour while pregnant with her twins. She makes that look easy. As if any woman could do it. And that’s what Beyoncé’s feminism has always been about. (“Who run the world? Girls!”) Of course, it helps if you’re Beyoncé. And it helps to have a perfectly curated photo album helping you make your case.

Although, the book isn’t all that perfectly curated. The foreword written by Michael Eric Dyson states in part: “Beyoncé pushed herself harder, and with greater velocity, and morw [sic] e [sic] force, under incalculable pressure, and with greater skill, arguably, than anyone ever.” I had to read it over several times to make sure that I was seeing what I was seeing. “morw e force.” Maybe it’s a Latin phrase I don’t know. Or maybe it’s French, I thought, giving Beyoncé and a Dyson and a pop culture blitz of this magnitude the benefit of the doubt. I looked it up in the dictionary and online, and came up with nothing. It’s not Latin or French. It’s a typo. The closest thing you’ll find to “morw e force” is in the Urban Dictionary, which defines only morw as: “to express that someone is fat in a specific area on their body. use hand gestures to signify where exactly this area is located. usually used when somone [sic] walks by with a weirdly huge ass, or abnormally huge area of body fat usually hanging off body due to force of gravity. also usd [sic] to make fun of people we don't like.” So there’s that. But if that’s what Dyson intended to convey, it doesn’t work.

How to Make Lemonade was a cash grab. And as a result of this grab, Beyoncé blew the opportunity to surprise and excite the world in 20 years when, in the case that it happens, she needs to remind the world of how incredible she was.

Full disclosure: I’ve published plenty of writing that has gone to publication and print that has typos. It’s not often, but it happens. Mistakes happen, even to American Royalty like Beyoncé. But this is Beyoncé we’re talking about here. This project had more people involved in its ideal perfect design than any book I’ve worked on or any magazine or newspaper article I’ve ever written. The worst part is that Beyoncé herself is listed as the book’s editor in chief and creative director.

I can’t help but think, having been in the position of editor in chief and creative director—yes, on smaller scales—had Bey not rushed to get How to Make Lemonade out the door, she might have caught that mistake. Thing is, there’s not a ton of text in the book either so it’s hard to blame text-eye fatigue. It’s unfortunate. It's the price of rushing—forcing—legacy.

I recognize that Lemonade carried with it a message of importance—engagement, public unrest, blackness, feminism—and I applaud that, especially when compared to—by my own doing—Oasis albums about being a rock star, doing cocaine and drinking. But impact and influence, when true, only become more so with time. Bey has not given Lemonade time. Whatever fruit Lemonade—and Beyoncé as a whole—may go on to bare, what she has to give us right now is only just barely ripe.

Beyoncé’s Lemonade Suckers

By David Himmel

“You have to get older to leave your legacy.” — Lady Gaga

Since 1994, I’ve had the Oasis song, Supersonic playing in my head to some degree. That was when I first heard the band and immediately began devouring the music with a voraciousness only a teenager can display.

Oasis has been a favorite band since. Though I stopped buying the group’s albums after Standing on the Shoulder of Giants because I thought the quality had slipped, the first three albums and every B-side that came from those recording sessions remain in a place of fondness and reverence. So when the band released box sets of Definitely Maybe, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now, I didn’t pause a second to purchase them. Well, my then girlfriend and now wife, Katie, bought me Definitely Maybe for my birthday but only because I made such a fanboy fuss over it that she would be remiss not to. She was a good girlfriend and that’s part of the reason why I married her.

These Oasis box sets were released to coincide with the 20-year anniversary of the original release of Definitely Maybe and then (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. They came with a big black book of stories about the band and the making of the record, retrospective writings and photos, and collectible items like post cards, pins, tote bags and key chains, and 180-gram, remastered vinyl LPs, a few vinyl singles and a three-disk CD set with the remastered album as well as demos, B-sides, live cuts and alternate recordings. And, of course, digital downloads of all of this. Well, not the tote bags. You can’t digitally download a tote bag, ya goof.

Your opinion of Oasis doesn’t matter. These were fantastic purchases for fans who were still in love with the albums and had a feeling of nostalgia for what the music represents as well as an interest in how the music and the band holds up today. It would be a great purchase for newer Oasis fans, too, looking to get all of the band’s offerings in one fell swoop. All of this for the low price of $200 per box set.

Now, on the other side of my musical marital bed is my wife. Where I have attended services held by Oasis' Noel and Liam Gallagher, Katie is a cardinal in the Church of Beyoncé. So when Lemonade was released on April 26, 2016, she went, understandably, ballistic. She bought the digital album and watched the HBO film on repeat for several days. It was even part of the entertainment at her bachelorette party—naked dues in the afternoon, black feminism in the evening. The film remains delete proof on our DVR.

Lemonade is a helluva work of art. The way Bey released it, the way the HBO film complimented and added to the album, the way it was so personally raw… Lemonade went on to collect awards and praise easier than my Roomba collects my dog’s hair and my wife’s hair ties and my Cocoa Krispie cereal crumbs. Regardless of what you think of the music or the film or of Beyoncé, it’s hard to deny the immediate impact of the album.

You see, this isn’t about the quality of the music. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate Oasis or Beyoncé. This is about the illusion of self-importance. And in the 1990s, there were no two men more obsessed with their self-importance than Noel and Liam Gallagher. In the 2010s, that title goes to Queen B.

Just 16 months after Lemonade disrupted the world of pop culture, Beyoncé released the limited-edition box set, How to Make Lemonade. It’s a behind the scenes look at, well, the making of Lemonade. A 600-page book weighing in at 15.8 pounds—yes, I put it on our bathroom scale. The book was hyped as having never before seen photos of the inspiration behind the album. There’s a double 180-gram vinyl LP as well as digital and visual downloads. No tote bags, however, unfortunately for Katie and her like-minded cardinals. She’ll have to keep using my Oasis tote.

When How to Make Lemonade went up for pre-sale, Katie logged on and paid the $300. She was excited to get the vinyl and the additional downloads. But when you consider the economics of commerce, the thing she and all the others really paid for was the 600-page, 15.8-pound coffee table book of which I am confident after a few flips, will become the world’s most high-end dust collector ever brought to market. I know this because we have a lot of heavy coffee table books that live nowhere near our coffee table. They live on the lowest level of our bookshelves—blankets of dust covering their hard covers, which protect their pages of glossy, beautiful art and history. Hell, that’s exactly the condition of my Oasis box set books. The dust is so thick on those things, the Gallagher Brothers could easily cut it, line it up and snort it like some kind of rock history powder drug.

But before I buried those books where they belong, I flipped through them and read the stories and took in the photos and enjoyed looking back on the past 20 years while listening to my favorite songs from a time when things were different. Very different. The music now, the retrospective now, provides new shape and new experiences and engagement. That’s the best part about those Oasis box sets—they are time capsules. That’s the best part about all box sets. Box sets bring in the best and more of your previous life and remind you of what you were and what you can be. Usually, by the time these things are released, we’ve forgotten ourselves. Maybe we’ve forgotten the songs and the bands who made them. We need these box sets all these years later.

Beyoncé’s How to Make Lemonade does none of this. And not because it doesn’t have the ability to do so but because it hasn’t given itself enough time to be able to do so. It hasn’t earned enough street cred.

This is not the album’s or box set’s fault. Of course, not. This is Beyoncé’s doing. And for a woman who understands the intricacies of brand and impact, she should have known better. But she also understands the intricacies of brand and impact, and above all, she understands how important she is. And she knows how her followers, like lemmings to the edge of the earth, will follow her anywhere and do whatever she says and buy whatever she sells. They are loyal, they are always hungry for more of what Queen B is dishing up, even if it is 15.8 pounds of gruel. Beautiful, glossy-page gruel.

How to Make Lemonade was a cash grab. And as a result of this grab, Beyoncé blew the opportunity to surprise and excite the world in 20 years when, in the case that it happens, she needs to remind the world of how incredible she was.

Yes, Oasis can be accused of the same thing—cash grabbing. But if that were true, and there may be some truth to it since there’s no way any of the guys are pulling down the dough they were two decades ago, they had good reason. Because, well, they aren’t pulling down the same dough they were two decades ago.

I’ve read through How to Make Lemonade. It’s rich with beautiful images and surely offers a look into the making of the album. For a superfan, it’s an orgy of joy and brilliance. For the casual fan or studious sociologist, it provides insight into the struggle of black women through imagery and Malcom X quotes. And it provides insight into the pride and relevance of the black woman through imagery and Hattie White Quotes. (Hattie White being Beyoncé’s husband, Jay Z’s grandmother—the woman who inspired the title of the original album.) And she’s made a case for the pregnant woman, too, as there are photographs of her on tour while pregnant with her twins. She makes that look easy. As if any woman could do it. And that’s what Beyoncé’s feminism has always been about. (“Who run the world? Girls!”) Of course, it helps if you’re Beyoncé. And it helps to have a perfectly curated photo album helping you make your case.

Although, the book isn’t all that perfectly curated. The foreword written by Michael Eric Dyson states in part: “Beyoncé pushed herself harder, and with greater velocity, and morw [sic] e [sic] force, under incalculable pressure, and with greater skill, arguably, than anyone ever.” I had to read it over several times to make sure that I was seeing what I was seeing. “morw e force.” Maybe it’s a Latin phrase I don’t know. Or maybe it’s French, I thought, giving Beyoncé and a Dyson and a pop culture blitz of this magnitude the benefit of the doubt. I looked it up in the dictionary and online, and came up with nothing. It’s not Latin or French. It’s a typo. The closest thing you’ll find to “morw e force” is in the Urban Dictionary, which defines only morw as: “to express that someone is fat in a specific area on their body. use hand gestures to signify where exactly this area is located. usually used when somone [sic] walks by with a weirdly huge ass, or abnormally huge area of body fat usually hanging off body due to force of gravity. also usd [sic] to make fun of people we don't like.” So there’s that. But if that’s what Dyson intended to convey, it doesn’t work.

How to Make Lemonade was a cash grab. And as a result of this grab, Beyoncé blew the opportunity to surprise and excite the world in 20 years when, in the case that it happens, she needs to remind the world of how incredible she was.

Full disclosure: I’ve published plenty of writing that has gone to publication and print that has typos. It’s not often, but it happens. Mistakes happen, even to American Royalty like Beyoncé. But this is Beyoncé we’re talking about here. This project had more people involved in its ideal perfect design than any book I’ve worked on or any magazine or newspaper article I’ve ever written. The worst part is that Beyoncé herself is listed as the book’s editor in chief and creative director.

I can’t help but think, having been in the position of editor in chief and creative director—yes, on smaller scales—had Bey not rushed to get How to Make Lemonade out the door, she might have caught that mistake. Thing is, there’s not a ton of text in the book either so it’s hard to blame text-eye fatigue. It’s unfortunate. It's the price of rushing—forcing—legacy.

I recognize that Lemonade carried with it a message of importance—engagement, public unrest, blackness, feminism—and I applaud that, especially when compared to—by my own doing—Oasis albums about being a rock star, doing cocaine and drinking. But impact and influence, when true, only become more so with time. Bey has not given Lemonade time. Whatever fruit Lemonade—and Beyoncé as a whole—may go on to bare, what she has to give us right now is only just barely ripe.