F3, Day Seven! One voice to thrill them all, and Armitage to bind them!

March 18, 2012, is Laetere, or Mothering Sunday in the UK, when it was originally the custom for people in England to visit their home (or “mother”) parishes in honor of the Virgin Mary and the “mother church.” Although it doesn’t seem to be the big commercial event in the UK that it is here, since the early twentieth century, Mothering Sunday also includes the secular celebration of mothers: what we in the U.S. call Mother’s Day.

Happy Mothering Sunday / Mother’s Day to Mrs. Armitage as well as to all the mothers who mark this day! The roses at left are for you all!

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Welcome to the seventh and final day of FanstRAvaganza 3, with nineteen new posts planned for you to enjoy!

Some posts are scheduled to appear automatically, while others will be posted manually. Not every link may be live until the end of the event day at 23:59, London time. Links to all FanstRA 3 posts appear here at the end of each day, too!

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F3 Day Seven in the tagteams: Last, but definitely not least!

In freeform: Agzy shares her favorite Richard Armitage paper doll (steamy!) • Ana Cris examines Lucas North’s tattoos through Maori tattoo culture • Jas Rangoon premieres her new John Bateman fanvid • In fandom, jazzbaby1 thinks RA fandom is just groovy! • C.S. Winchester asks “naughty or nice?” in a picspam • Mrs. E.B. Darcy thinks about Armitage’s future after TH to wrap up the Hobbit chain  • Jo Ann offers the last King Richard Armitage post, on Richard III and the Tudors • In fanfic, Maria Grazia reviews and compares works by the authors she’s interviewed • Gratiana Lovelace wraps up the event with a guest post by Melissa the Mouse! • Links to all FanstRA 3 posts appear here at the end of the event!

and in the core:

Traxy with her F3 wrapup (alert: adult topic) • Fanny interviews Wattpad author whatcatydidnext (beware: potentially NSFW) • Jonia profiles her top RA relationships • mulubinba on The Impressionists locations and trivia • bccmee with one final game for everyone to enjoy • cdoart on Armitage, his historical interests, and what they suggest to women • fitzg guests at Confessions of a Watcher with a letter from a lady of Manchester regarding new technological developments in the cotton industry • RAFrenzy wonders what’s coming • and Natalie with a new SFR adventure • Links to all FanstRA 3 posts appear here at the end of each day!

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F3, Day Seven at “me + richard armitage”?

In coordinating the schedule for this event and looking over the posts, I was hit by one main thing. We had comparatively more offers of general or fandom/related posts — and of posts focusing on people’s favorite chaRActers, as opposed to processing his most recent roles (last year this time we were still dealing with the Spooks 9 / John Bateman storyline, for instance, and John Porter’s fate was still at least hypothetically up in the air). I assume this constellation of posts transpired because we haven’t seen Armitage on screen in anything new since the (depressing) beginning of Strike Back 2. In the mix of topics for F3, I felt like Guy of Gisborne came out on the short end of the stick, relatively speaking, although I know he’s a favorite character of many people.

So I wanted to write a little bit on the “durability” of Guy of Gisborne. Will he last?

And I tried for several hours to write a very thoughtful, comprehensive, analytical post. Nothing doing. Another time. The most important things are the hardest to write.

I decided, instead, for this, which is mostly just impressionistic, random thoughts and not important at all.

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Durable Guy of Gisborne (Richard Armitage) undergoes acid scarring at the hands of the Sheriff (Keith Allen) in Robin Hood 1.8. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Guy of Gisborne is pretty durable. Before he was killed at the end of series 3, he had really taken and survived a great deal of abuse. Along with Mr. Thornton, Guy is the Armitage character with whom I identify most personally. (I also have a lot left to write about him.) So I, at least, would be sad to see him fade from the consciousness of either Richard Armitage fans or the general TV viewing public. But as time marches on, some changes are inevitable. I noticed recently that the “robinhood2006” website has disappeared, and although my perspective is anecdotal, since I don’t try to survey all of the different sites for fanfic, most of the new Armitage fics I’m running across are not about Guy. Mr. Thornton was a role for the ages. Was Guy of Gisborne? His enmeshment in slapstick, cheap melodrama, and camp suggests a tendency to think not.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) responds vocally to being fatally knifed by Isabella in Robin Hood 3.13. Richard Armitage always gives it his all, losing himself in the fury of his own unconsciousness to the role. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Guy himself is starting to show signs of nervousness at his possible displacement, as in his interview yesterday at The Armitage Effect, when — confronted with the prospect that Thorin Oakenshield would join the Sloth Fiction ensemble — he frowned and showed a distinctive lack of enthusiasm about the possibility. And then, events in judiang’s therapy session last night seem to suggest that a great deal of Guy’s current psychological problems relate to his fear about competition from Thorin! It would seem that fedoralady’s granting of SND (“so not dead”) status has not fully assuaged his worries. Guy is nervous about Thorin.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage hangs on from the ramparts of Nottingham Castle as the Sheriff (Keith Allen) twists the sword he’s put into Guy’s thigh, in Robin Hood 3.6. My cap.

I doubt Armitage worries about it, though. Though I wonder. In fact, I spend too much time wondering about what is in Richard Armitage’s mind. This is definitely a question I’d ask him in some bizarro world where I’d both be able to interview him and get over my frighteningly potent inhibitions about it: You admitted to moments of frustration about the scripting of the character at least once (can’t find the reference, but it was something about how Guy would be made to do something evil and there would never be any explanation). How do you feel about Guy of Gisborne three years on? Do you ever think about him, apart from when you’re asked in an interview, and say something so ridiculous that I can’t even think that you really believe it? Or are you slowly pushing him from your mind? When you say you suspect that you will still think about Thorin in six years’ time — is there an implication there about characters you don’t think about any more? Honestly, this is one of the most intriguing things you’ve ever said, and you’ve said a few.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) takes a slug at the altar at the hand of Marian (Lucy Griffiths) in Robin Hood 1.13. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Whatever Guy thinks, whatever Armitage thinks: It seems at least plausible that the advent of Thorin Oakenshield may push Guy of Gisborne further from our memories as viewers. On paper, the characters have some similarities — they both occupy a quasi-medieval mythical world, for instance, and they are driven by broadly similar motivations and concerns; they seem, if the pre-production vlogs give us any indication, to be engaged in similar amounts of action; and they both play key roles in an ensemble cast. It was not accidental, to my mind, that the role of Guy of Gisborne was one of the things more frequently cited by Tolkien fans suspicious of Armitage’s casting in the The Hobbit. Tolkien and LOTR fans were worried about what the Guy character might portend for Armitage’s depiction of Thorin in the negative sense — they were afraid that all of the worst kitschiness of Robin Hood was now threatening their beloved project. Maybe, for them, Guy was too durable. It would not be unreasonable if there were a positive version of this very transition in the minds of Armitage fans. Some of his characters were not even touched by F3 participants. Not that those characters are despised — they’ve simply been, well, superseded.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) under threat from the superheated blade of the sword of Robin (Jonas Armstrong) in Robin Hood 1.8. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Even though the thought of these characters’ similarities tickles the back of my mind, I’m not worried about an overwhelming similarity between them on any level (and neither, obviously, was Peter Jackson). To me, the people who read Lucas North and John Porter as overly similar aren’t watching very carefully. Yes, it’s a stereotype that occurs to some viewers, and it may even be a stereotype that matters in the minds of people who cast, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate or that I or anyone else should feel compelled to care about it. What I worry about, though, between Robin Hood and The Hobbit is the oversimplification of silliness vs. seriousness. Because The Hobbit will definitely be read as “serious.” And that fact, in turn, will mean any attempt to read Robin Hood as serious will have a higher hurdle to get over. I’ve said before that I read Armitage’s performance in Robin Hood as expertly treading a very fine line between pantomime and life lesson, and I want to explore that more, and I fear sometimes that The Hobbit will make that impossible. It will make Robin Hood recede into the distant past of Armitage’s television actor days, and even Armitage fans will concede its transitory quality — though I still have things to learn from Armitage through Guy.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) recovering from water torture at the hands of Robin (Jonas Armstrong) in Robin Hood 2.3. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

On Guy’s physical durability, I just can’t resist: Honestly, I can’t imagine that the real medieval ages could have been anywhere near this physically challenging! (And I wonder what Mr. Armitage thought when he read these scripts for the first time — “oh, goody, another slugfest with Jonas Armstrong!”? “Oh, sweet, I get beat up by a girl!”? “Super — Guy gets it again!”? Punctuating those hypothetical sentences was difficult. I wonder how Armitage would have done it.)

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) falls victim to a tranquilizer dart from Robin’s father in Robin Hood 3.10. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Some people will surely maintain that Guy will persist in our awareness simply because he looks so good — even when he’s dirty and nasty. I don’t deny this, but still, what always remains from Guy with me, even when I’ve switched off the screen I was using to view him, is not so much his looks as the nuances of his body language. I admit that before I turn on any episode of Robin Hood, I am always asking myself how I can possibly be watching it (and again!). And the answer is always: the extreme seriousness with which Armitage always took his role. The way he combines the grace of a dancer, conforming to the camp of his costume, with the superciliousness of the petty bureaucrat on the make, obsessed with his own importance, and the way he mixes these in his body language with the constant reminders of his own awareness that Guy is not all he wishes he could be, that he does not yet have the status and power he seeks, that his desire to regain his position is constantly driving him forward and egging him on, even as it reminds him forcefully and with scorn of his inadequacies and failures. Dear Friend would say no one plays humiliation like Armitage, and Guy has so many different kinds of humiliation to signal, even as he plays his position of evil henchman and wannabe knight on the make. The energy that goes into the spectrum of gestures and expressions he gives Guy is, in itself, electrifying. The main thing, I think, that makes Guy durable: the fact that his own emotions, his own drives, his own securities, will never die.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) sliced across the cheek by Robin (Jonas Armstrong) in Robin Hood 3.1. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Thorin is nobler than Guy. When Armitage says that Guy thinks he’s quite a fine thing, however, I can’t help but agree — no matter who Thorin is or becomes. Because Guy is so unbelievably subtle. From an actor who plays the entire spectrum of masculine anger, pride and humiliation with subtle drawn strokes and unbelievable subtlety, we’re given so much to observe and reflect upon here. Yes, Guy is durable in the sense that a cartoon character is — throw him off a cliff and he bounces right back. But had Armitage made him merely into a durable cartoon, there’s no way the Robin Hood writers would have turned to the extensive treatment of his past that they provided in series 3 in general and episode 3.10 specifically. They had to do this because Richard Armitage also made him durable in the sense that real humans are — humans, like Guy, who have to keep on living despite abandonment, conflict, betrayal, unfulfilled ambition, and spurned love.

Durable Guy (Richard Armitage) looks up after having been propelled by an explosion from the mouth of a cave in Robin Hood 1.9. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

Somehow, despite his worries, despite my worries, I can’t help but think or at least hope that Guy will survive the Thorin explosion. There may be a brief defection, as Armitage fans rush over to meet and greet the new chaRActer — and it seems likely that those who love beardplay may be ineluctably drawn to the dwarf and his luxuriant facial follicles. But I think, and expect, that this particular blow may knock Guy down or daze him for a moment — but that he’ll pick up his head, shake the dust off, and: continue to enchant us.

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My favorite of the charities Richard Armitage has raised money for on JustGiving is Childline. If you liked this post or appreciate Armitage’s work, please consider making a donation of yourself. Demand for the service in most of the UK is up, and in some places only a portion of calls can be answered. As always, many worthy causes deserve our support, but this week I’m blogging to draw attention to this one. Thanks for listening.

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In freeform: Agzy shares her favorite Richard Armitage paper doll (steamy!) • Ana Cris examines Lucas North’s tattoos through Maori tattoo culture • Jas Rangoon premieres her new John Bateman fanvid • In fandom, jazzbaby1 thinks RA fandom is just groovy! • C.S. Winchester asks “naughty or nice?” in a picspam • Mrs. E.B. Darcy thinks about Armitage’s future after TH to wrap up the Hobbit chain  • Jo Ann offers the last King Richard Armitage post, on Richard III and the Tudors • In fanfic, Maria Grazia reviews and compares works by the authors she’s interviewed • Gratiana Lovelace wraps up the event with a guest post by Melissa the Mouse! • Links to all FanstRA 3 posts appear here at the end of the event!

~ by Servetus on March 18, 2012.