Random: Weekend before U.S. Thanksgiving edition (and obsession update, kind of)

• Good luck to Mr. Armitage and everyone else (many of our North & South favorites including Tim Pigott-Smith, Lesley Manville, and Rupert Evans!) performing in the Old Vic Gala benefit this weekend. May you raise lots of money and enjoy your intensive experience. Congratulations to all the lucky ticketholders who’ll get to see it, as well. We hope all the performers and spectators have a great time, and look forward to hearing all about it!
• Following up on his letter of condolence to the family of the late Betty Pattison, as Richard Armitage Online reports, Mr. Armitage recorded a brief message and reading for the memorial service held this week. I can only reiterate my previous comments. You consistently behave like a true professional and a mensch, Mr. Armitage. You may not like the word “fan,” but you nonetheless make me proud to be one of yours. Another thing I owe to Ms. Betty Pattison.
• Speaking of people who do good things to make the world a better place, it’s time for another thank-you and shout out to the people who aggregate the Richard Armitage news for us, especially Richard Armitage Online, Richard Armitage Central, and Richard Armitage Net. I suspect that none of you ladies are any less busy than me, and yet you manage to keep your sites tidy and up-to-date with all the things the devoted fan wants to know. Without y’all, I’d have little or nothing to write. You have my heartfelt gratitude and that of thousands of other fans as well.
• Article profiled today on RAC on facebook (“The Smart Girl’s Guide to the Sexiest Men Alive“) mentions Mr. Armitage as the prospective “it” British actor and someone Americans will be coming to know soon. I do hope broader segments of the American public become familiar with Mr. Armitage’s work, but part of why I’m so drawn to him is that he seems very emphatically not about being “it.” He wants to give his best performance, not to be the flavor of the month. So bring on the fame, bloggers of the world, but let’s keep in mind that the goal for him is not that we make make him “super famous,” but that his work brings him the potential to take on ever greater artistic challenges.
• For readers who’ve laughed at our various attempts here to make sense of our and Mr. Armitage’s diverse English and American accents, an amusing video segment in which the Harry Potter leads attempt to sound American. The real surprise here is that the most convincing attempt is made by the actor who plays Draco Malfoy. I feel compelled to note as an American, however, that I have never said the word “booyah” myself, nor have I heard anyone say it in my presence. In fact I am not sure what it means.
• The Armitage blogosphere is just chock full of so much good stuff. In case anyone does not read RA Fridays at Fly High! this is a good time to start. Maria Grazia’s posts are consistently both sincere and thoughtful. This week a guest blogger talks about Armitage and her professional pursuit of Robin Hood scholarship.
• I’m still wrestling with the end of Spooks 9, and I’m not the only one. Frenz is ranting and ranting and may yet rant some more. I’m not ready for a series post-mortem yet (my thoughts are still disorganized, and my students are job one until December 4th), but I loved that Phylly3 put a segment from the Dallas dream season in her discussion of 9.7. This is quite obviously what we’re all thinking, no?
• Nat was disappointed, too, though she expresses it in her customarily charming way. It’s been fun to read what her guest bloggers have been writing over there since she began her “maternity leave” as well. This post about Richard Armitage and the spectator’s savior complex is really on point, I think.
• CDoart is writing up a storm on the question of her issues with Spooks 9, and her reasons for watching Armitage more generally. She’s a little shy because of writing outside of her native language (unnecessarily!), but these are great posts — really, kudos should hire her as a script tester. Mr. Armitage has inspired so many people to write, vid, draw, think, ponder. This is another great example.
• Please give mulubinba some love. If you don’t already know why you should, you’ll see the reason once you click over there. Her writing’s always been really powerful, and honest, and I’ve always been impressed by the depth and straightforwardness with which she takes on difficult stuff within the fandom, especially problematic moments in the attitudes of fans. Now she turns to her family’s struggles and how Mr. Armitage’s work has supported her at bad moments. This is a model for me as I try to figure out how to explain my own Armitagemania to myself and those of you who continue to be such supportive readers.
• From bccmee via Skully, for those who need a laugh. Or more than one.
• My regular obsession update feature has languished, partially because the last one inadvertently provoked such an odd conversation that it made me feel uncomfortable to expose myself in that way. I don’t guard my pseudonymity here with very much energy because it’s hard for me to see any more why I should. (In the interest of full disclosure: I was a pseudonymous academic blogger for about two and a half years, and I did guard the facade of that identity scrupulously because I felt like exposure had the potential to damage my professional reputation. It took a lot of energy and I didn’t like doing it, and I finally got so much exposure on a particular day through linking to a major academic outlet that I felt compelled to stop that writing. The blog disappeared basically without a trace overnight.) Frankly, until that post, I had basically felt like my Armitagemania was disturbing primarily to me; that is, I didn’t see how anyone could see it as harmful to anyone beyond me, and I thought it might be instructive, amusing, or helpful to others to read about it. That post made me see how someone could understand what I was doing as not only harmful to me but harmful to others as well, and it made me shrink back a little from the actual accounting of what I was doing with my Armitage time and how Armitage was helping me get through the day a lot of the time. I didn’t think that my Armitagemania was harmful to others — just saw suddenly how others could see it that way. A bit of discretion seemed called for. I’m rethinking that now.
• The other issue was that the airing of Spooks 9 was taking up all of my free time — after 9.2 it grew to a 9 to 12 hour activity that had to be performed on Monday nights into the work day on Tuesday. It meant that Tuesday night was a wash as I had basically to catch up on sleep from Monday. The comments were so interesting I didn’t have time to watch more or write more, either. Anyway, I did some Armitage watching in that time, but no significant rewatches. I did see all of Spooks 7 and 8 again in that span, and I think all of North & South at least once, and part of Sparkhouse, but most other Armitage time was spent reading fic and watching videos. I still haven’t seen the last episode of Ultimate Force, for example, which is what I was doing just before Spooks 9 started airing. I have seen a lot more back episodes of Spooks; just got finished with 4.4. Oh, and I started watching Life on Mars, part of the back story to Ashes to Ashes, watching which was just really about understanding Armitage’s statements about how Keely Hawes looks like girls did when he was discovering them. Eventually I’ll get there. As a historian I like to experience things chronologically (grin).
• One good thing that the Spooks 9 blogging did for me was get me to start using the iMovie software on my computer. I am hoping this will pay off big time shortly, during the winter solstice vacation.
• Sloth Fiction 7 just posted. GLEEE! I’m goin’ over there right now to see how the chaRActers salvage the disaster. In other words, Angie’s finally publishing her own indubitably inimitable rant on Spooks 9. I can hardly wait!! After a vile week, Angie always knows how to daub salve on my wounds.
• And today, for the very first time, I said to someone, without swearing him to secrecy, that I am not currently applying for academic jobs that start in Fall 2011. This is sort of the equivalent in my field of Armitage’s acting and the script that underlay it during the interrogation scene in Spooks 9.7 — it’s like jettisoning and igniting everything I used to make up the academic Dr. Servetus, claiming it wasn’t true, and setting up obstacles to the resumption of an identity that hasn’t been me for some time. It stung a little. And it felt good. I hope I can keep this promise to myself, even if I am unsure about what lies ahead. I may need to take temporary work next year as an adjunct professor since this is the only job I ever trained for, but just saying that I’m not applying right now on the tenure track was so liberating.

More soon, readers. I owe you a little something positive after the other night. I’m so grateful to you all, really, more than you may completely realize — that you keep reading this stuff and pop in to say nice things.

~ by Servetus on November 20, 2010.