To a fellow Armitage blogger, upon her “defection”

Dear Snicker’s Mom,

I admit that I read with sadness your “Adieu” post. With you, good things came in small packages. You didn’t post often, but when you did, it was always worth reading. I had chatted with you frequently before you started blogging, and knew you had an amazing sense for the absurd and a lightning-quick capacity to verbalize it, but when you started writing a sort of Onion for Armitageworld, I was enchanted. I envied more than anything your apparent ability not to care what others thought — something I still struggle with. And I was exposed to an endearing zaniness that was inherently loving, but still refused to take prisoners.

My favorite post of yours is “Mum’s Bedtime Story,” and I reread it many times, trying to figure out exactly why it was that I loved it so much. (I note that other readers listed their favorite lines in the comments, so I wasn’t the only one trying to put my finger on the amazing addictiveness of this piece.) I think the humor for me stems from the fundamental paradox of a “real person” (Richard Armitage), whom we subconsciously realize is himself a character (“the narrator”), claiming in turn that he is an accurate representation of himself. Very postmodern without pointing at its own postmodernity, and the kind of joke I love. The piece also plays on a fundamental symptom of Armitagemania for which the CBeebies stories offer a central piece of anchoring evidence: the fantasy that Richard Armitage, the actual Armitage, not the narrator who looks at us so directly in these episodes, could look at each of us just as we are, and be attracted to us no matter what “old thing” we were wearing. Because the insistence on the reality of the narrator complicates our perception of who Armitage is, however, our fantasy is simultaneously fueled (what a lovely idea, to have Richard Armitage in this way) and made less dangerous (of course, we say, reading this, we don’t believe any of this). So the piece gains from the huge charge behind addiction to Armitage while simultaneously making any serious thought about the ultimate valence of the fantasy — what we would have to do, were we to take ourselves seriously — seem silly. The sexual innuendo of the piece (“Let me check this out up here … That was nice” — my second favorite line, because it raises an ongoing question of mine implicitly: is Richard Armitage a breast man? Gosh, I hope so) is thus stylishly and subtly matched up with persiflage of the sexual innuendo (“Dicky wants to paw this foxy lady” — my favorite line, because it suggests simultaneously the absolute end of restraint on both sides that inhabits my fantasies and the ridiculousness of all of that, as illustrated by the exaggerated tones and motion we use when reading a bedtime story to children). The post, and its judicious use of illustrations, make Armitage both child and man for us in our fantasy world — and thus exploit the most potent pieces of our desire for him while making them perfectly safe.

Oh. And.

I want Dicky.

Did I forget to mention that?

If you’ve found a new actor to love — one whom you can adore with all the intensity you can muster, and without the many surprisingly opaque obstacles with which Armitagemania presents the would-be fan — I congratulate you. I hope that this fascination gives you all the energy that you need to make it through the day, that the wishing for fulfillment as joined with the constant realization that it’s all a fantasy powers your days, help you better understand and keeps you moving toward your goals, and makes it easier to smile at times when you’d rather not and to act lovingly toward people you don’t love. I wish for you all the euphoria and the grinning and preoccupation and renewed awareness of capacity to love and feel deeply that the beginning of a fan crush seems to generate. I only have one regret about Armitagemania at the moment, and that’s that I spent so much time convinced it was a sign of some problem, or apologizing for it. I feel this way not least because one thing that reading your blog taught me is that it’s okay to love and to joke and to smile and to pursue one’s own sense of humor — that it’s okay to be who you are, that it’s okay for each of us to be who we are, as fans.

Enjoy. I wish you every, every happiness.

your friend, Servetus

ps. Will you please come back when The Hobbit airs? Pretty please?

~ by Servetus on May 15, 2012.