Armitageworld is for everyone

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No worries — I can say what I want here, and I will. This blog isn’t going away. It’s too important to me. I wish I felt amused, though.

I’ve been struggling with this question for about two weeks — but now, for the fourth time in a fortnight, I’ve read criticism, not of a viewpoint held by a blogger, which is perfectly okay, and which can open the kind of discussion that most of us invite, but of a blogger herself (including but not limited to me), for being over-analytical, too indepth, too involved in the topic, too detailed.

This is the difference: the first says, “Blogger X says this and I disagree because of reasons.” The second says, “Blogger X is too involved, too detailed, needs to stop overanalyzing and just enjoy things, writes too much, is too intellectual.”

In other words — there’s been another subtle but noticeable emergence of “you’re doing it wrong!” syndrome in Armitageworld lately.

It’s hard to figure out how any of us could be doing it wrong, actually.

We’re all just expressing our (extreme) admiration for an actor in words and art and other media. There are an infinite number of ways to do that. I pretty much love them all — which is why I take the time to put together this list of links each week. Because fellow fans and what they say and do have become just as interesting and valuable to me as Richard Armitage and his career.

All of us do this to meet our own needs. And none of those needs are any more legitimate than any others. When we delegitimate the fandom of others, whether we realize it or not, we’re sawing off the branch we’re sitting on. Escapism, squeee, self-knowledge, technical skill development, creativity in writing and art — they’re all good!

I’ve stopped responding to certain kinds of criticism of me / the blog, but I’m going to continue to plea for peace regarding this vibe, because I care about the feeling in Armitageworld, I invest a lot of time on preserving it to the extent that I can, and while I have never once in three years harshed on someone’s squee, somehow it’s starting to be okay to harsh on my and others’ level of detailed analysis, the extent of our reading, the themes we choose to discuss, and even our vocabulary.

Basically, I don’t go places where I know I’m not wanted because of my mind. Up till recently, little or none of Armitageworld has been a place where I’m unwelcome because I’m articulate. Reading that stuff is hard on my fangirl productivity. It makes me not want to be involved in Armitageworld — one of the most supportive “places” I’ve found on the planet.

I’m not asking people not to engage in critical discussion of what I write — here and elsewhere. I’ve written before about why professors think the way we do in a piece called “On academics and their ‘obsessive’ concerns.” My point at that time was essentially that scholars have reasons for the questions we ask. We’re not involved in the detail level of things for no reason, or because we’re just crazy. I don’t apply any less rigor to my discussion of Armitage than I do to my own work. I expect disagreement with some or even all of it, though admittedly the things that people disagree with often surprise me. For an academic, if everyone agrees with you’re saying, that means you’re behind the curve.

What I wish we would do: Disagree with the point of view expressed. Defend our own opinions with sources, arguments, vigor and verve! This process can be really productive and we all learn from it. I’ve changed my mind about numerous things regarding Armitage simply because someone took the time to have a detailed conversation with me about their points of view.

What I wish we would not do: Attempt to delegitimate the blogger him- or herself for the very fact of writing or thinking in depth about something. Doing that makes people want to stop writing and it makes our world poorer and less diverse.

Liking one thing does not logically necessitate disliking something else. Everyone who writes about Armitage in any place has his or her own purpose and mission. If you like a particular kind of piece, make sure you let the author know that by leaving praise and support! (That’s why I urge everyone to make comments at the links that I post every week.) But liking one style of fandom doesn’t have to happen at the cost of slamming a different style. We went through this battle when the Armitage blogosphere emerged, and we’ve finally put the illusory blogs vs. forums silliness to rest. We thankfully didn’t have a hassle when the tumblr and Twitter folks emerged; there was no (to me) observable problem with tension over the influx of the Hobbit fans into our various worlds.

So let’s keep it that way. Nothing anyone’s doing that I can read, anyway — whether I like it personally or not — deserves to be delegitimated. There’s room for everyone here.

A quote from something I wrote last fall:

What should we keep our eyes on? The thing that brought us here, whenever that happened. The thing that brings out our best qualities — our capacity to rejoice with those who are rejoicing (and the sympathy that that permits, which in turn allows us to mourn with those who are mourning in that season).

What brought us here? Enjoyment of Richard Armitage and his work. That is the main thing that unites all of us, even if we define that enjoyment in very diverse ways. And if we keep thinking about it as our paramount concern, reveling in that feeling of instantly activated love can make our world a better place. Because even if we disagree about all kinds of things — about what it is okay to say or do or think — we can agree that our motivation for speaking or doing or thinking is the immense amount of joy brought to us by this beautiful, talented, considerate, thoughtful guy.

[..]

this is my fan resolution for the next year:

The next time I feel some kind of irritation with fan behavior that leads me to feel the urge to police or disapprove, I am going to ask myself: even if I don’t happen to like this particular thing, what do I share with this fan? Why do I care about this person’s behavior in the first place? And the answer is going to be: I care because we both love Richard Armitage. That doesn’t mean that I have to approve innerly — but it does mean that I have to stop thinking about the outcome and start thinking about shared motivation. … I can easily grant that joy to someone else — even if I don’t like or even understand the specific thing she is doing.

Thanks for listening. Comments are open. But “you’re doing it wrong” comments will be edited / deleted. Thanks for your understanding.

~ by Servetus on May 25, 2013.