Legenda 47: stuff worth reading

[Legenda offers a brief, non-inclusive index of stuff I noticed and enjoyed since the last episode. It doesn’t usually include materials presented on the major fansites, which I love dearly, but which are linked in the sidebar. Because I always forget or just miss stuff, please add additional pieces of interest via link in the comments.]

Feature:

The big story this week was all the things. Coffee, t-shirts, coins, stamps! (Get stamps and coins from New Zealand Post here. They take credit cards and deliver internationally, woe is Servetus, who already succumbed bigtime to the merchandising machine for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.) I used to feel worse about this sort of collecting; then I read this article about souvenirs and fake souvenirs and felt better.

Would you pay $11k NZD for three gold coins, one of which has Mr. Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield on it? I don’t think this picture looks much like him, but even so, I’m strangely tempted to say yes, so it’s good that I don’t have that kind of money available. No criticism of you, by the way, if you buy one of these things. One sort of hopes that profits will be folded into NZ government revenue and pay for things like roads and schools. I collected stamps as a girl and I’m licking my lips over this sheet of Armitages. Even if I never will get to use one myself. AgzyM asks what it’s like to see yourself on a stamp. I myself thought it was cringeworthy until someone pointed out that they’ll appear on airplanes, too. There used to be a rule in the U.S. that you had to be dead to make it onto a stamp. I wonder if that’s still true.

Anyway, all noodling aside — I’ve had three days of serious difficulty concentrating — I do want to make one plea: For everyone who’s going to buy any of this stuff, this is a time when we can really turn our private vices into public virtue. So if you want some Hobbit bling, do check out whether it’s available on amazon, and if so, use the Amazon affiliate links for the UK and U.S. located at RichardArmitageNet.com. They donate all commission generated from these purchases to charities Mr. Armitage profiles on his JustGiving pages. (If you look at the pages, you can see their donations recorded.) I’m always wishing I could give Mr. Armitage something for all the pleasure he’s brought me. This is the only really meaningful thing we can give him, I think, and know with certainty that it’s appreciated not only by him but benefits others. So let’s remind ourselves to use those pages!

Here’s their Hobbit store for the UK.

Here’s their Hobbit store for the U.S.

If you’re going to buy, check them out — there are posters, t-shirts, puzzles, calendars …

You can do the same via Richard Armitage Online — which donates commissions via cheque rather than JustGiving. Details (enter the portal) here.

RArchive:

• The Lils are back in “We Don’t Need Another Hero!”
• Little Guy fascination continues despite the demise of the screen character — here, he makes a new fan. At Little Guy Friends Network (you will need to join the group to see the posts): Little Guy has had some other adventures at a Little Guy convention in Australia and in the Orkneys. And speaking of vacations — Little Guy wants to go to Egypt. Find out why.
• The Hobbit funnies.
• Armitagemania gives yet another fan courage to (re-)explore her creativity.
• At Heirs of Durin: More Hobbit stuff we can buy. Also at White Rose: film cels to buy.
• Also at Heirs of Durin, a kind of geekiness I totally endorse: deciphering Bilbo’s contract.
• Via someone on twitter (sorry — I lost track of the original tweet, but thank you, whoever you were): Fans organize a $125/ticket benefit Hobbit pre-party in Wellington. Stars anticipated to attend.
• On the whole question of whether Armitage improves or destroys concentration, Zan hopes it’s the former and not the latter.
• How do you see the Hobbit poster?
• FedoraLady made a new slideshow vid.
• JasRangoon noted the appearance of the dwarves on coffee / tea packaging in Germany this week. Thorin’s on the classic cappuccino. My translations of some of the funnier product descriptions are in Jas’s comments. Thorin Oakenshield’s wife bought some of the packages, but couldn’t obtain Thorin. And Agzy has further merchandising ideas. For a clue as to how Mr. Armitage might regard all this stuff, we can look back at what he said about Robin hood (messages of July 24th and Sept 11th, 2006).
• A comment on the Kyle Pedley review of the Hobbit trailer.
• Do you need a “Keep Calm and Enjoy the Armitage Army?” T-shirt?
• #GuyWatch on Twitter continues on Fridays and Saturdays in October. Here’s the tweetchat room.

Fanfic:

• How Ladywriter spent her birthday, part one.
• GB’s “One Last Try,” goes to chapter 8. The cliffhanger from last time is replaced with an even better one.
• A beautiful ficlet set before the beginning of Robin Hood series 1, “Tell Me” by lillianschild. On the contemplative level, a worthy successor to bookishy — I love reading what’s in people’s minds when it’s presented with so much lushness and complexity. (No, not explicit.)
• h/t someone on FB who may not want to be identified: “Taking her there with me,” explicit fic about Mr. Thornton and Margaret’s wedding night and the days afterward. Throws historical plausibility to the winds, but hot as heck, nonetheless.
• At RAucous: “Hot August Night,” part 3. [Explicit; RPF.]
• On the political and rhetorical role of rape in fanfic.

On tumblr:

[Note that tumblr is announcing a service interruption for Saturday, October 6th, 2012.]

• Remember Mezz’s statements during F3 about the progress of her creative endeavors? You can follow them now, here, at her new tumblr, where she presents some of the results of the photo editing she’s been learning. Yay! Another Armitage fan succumbs to following her bliss.
• If you’re not familiar, I also want to introduce you to Guy-lty Pleasures’ “*Oooof* of the Day” series. Here’s the most recent one. I love these analyses of pictures (she’s a photographer). More about this soon, I hope.
• Richard Armitage signs your computer screen! (I’m thinking: creative use of animated GIF?)
• Two beautiful John Porter GIFsets by mabelalexa. One and Two. I also love her photo edits of Porter here.
• “I have lost the ability to can.” The kind of play on English grammar peculiarities I love; “can” is part of an incomplete modal (its infinitive is “to be able to”).
• Beautiful animated GIF of Guy in prison.

OT, collateral attractions, and stuff I think about:

• Cat Winchester’s painful memories of what got her to stop drinking. Brutal but courageous.
• Gangnam Style: Do you think Mr. Armitage has tried this new dance craze?
• A blogger confronts his anonymous troll (who, it turns out, was not so anonymous).
• On free labor in the modern social media sphere — more and more often, it’s just fine not to pay the people who make your work possible. Or, as they say: there’s no Internet without the (unpaid) “intern.” Particularly interesting in light of this report on TORn that Warner Bros. has “shut down” development on a fan-developed, volunteer module of the game Skyrim. Who controls whose work and on what basis?
• Top 100 actors since the 1980s in terms of total (not-inflation injusted) revenue generated at the box office for all their films. I was surprised to find Alan Rickman so high on this list, but Harry Potter explains a lot of it. LOTR actors are not high on this list.
• On the necessity of a fresh start each day for everyone; on when not to push forgiveness.
• I’m craving this, but there’s no way my mom would ever eat it. Oh well! These look great, too.

~ by Servetus on October 6, 2012.