me + Richard Armitage + Lee Pace, or: The ship that dare not speak its name, part 1

From part 1. If you’re opposed to shipping, please close this window now.

Assume with all fiction linked in this post that it involves RPF / slash / sex. Do not read or click on it unless you are prepared for that. Also, please do not harass the authors. Thanks.

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In principio

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June 11, 2012. I was still chatting a lot back then with a small group of fellow fans, and I remember this coming up.

“Who’s Lee Pace?” I asked.

“Thranduil,” someone said.

“Who’s Thranduil?” I asked.

Cue (virtual) laughter.

I remember saying to someone, “The rumormongers will have a field day with this” and getting lots of agreement and laughter.

***

I had to look Lee Pace up, but the information in the entry meant nothing to me.

“Who’s Lee Pace?” I asked a friend, an amateur film critic, a few days later.

“You don’t know who Lee Pace is?” she asked, a little surprised.

“You know, I live under a mushroom.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve known you for years. [Laughing.] He’s this incredibly talented, very cute actor. He played a pie-maker in a series called Pushing Daisies that everyone loves.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “A pie-maker?”

“He brings dead things back to life.”

“Oh,” I said. “Huh.”

“He’s in the new Daniel Day-Lewis film,” she said, laughing.

Indeed, he was: Lincoln, which was to premiere later that year.

How essentially unoccupied with this matter I was at this point is probably underlined by the fact that I hadn’t realized that Armitage and Pace stood close to each other at the Wellington theater benefit Ian McKellen in June 2012. I was more pleased that Armitage had his beard on. That was the last night that I ever thought mom was even temporarily cancer-free.

***

They’re both at the far right rear of the image. My cap.

***

Right after that, my world erupted in the convergence of mom’s full conventional hysterectomy, my dad’s eye surgery, and the wake of ComicCon 2012, about all of which the least said is probably best.

I didn’t think about it again until approximately a month after the tweet, when someone suggested to me that I read what was being said on the topic at Datalounge. I wasn’t surprised by the discussion and I never especially like the tone of the conversations that occur there (oh, the misogyny — but I’m not in the audience for that stuff anyway). What surprised me then and is still noticeable to me now is the vehemence with which faceless speakers could insist on the accuracy of their perceptions.

***

***

Is it easier to have an identity — to insist on it — if you’re faceless?

It was a theme, those couple of weeks, when an apparent sockpuppet was plaguing Armitageworld. I don’t like things said anonymously, which is why I have a pseudonym, but nonetheless, I probably should be able to reason my way to some kind of sympathy with that position.

A few weeks later, the question made it to one of the blogs.

That blog exchange — in which I didn’t even comment on the central question, in which I wasn’t that interested and hadn’t thought much about, but got slimed anyway — made me realize: No matter what you think, it’s only the done thing say a few things about this topic under your name or your pseudonym. Everything else has to be said in secret. Whispered to your trusted friends. Written anonymously. Orthodoxy may not be questioned — APM here or there, this is a front on which no one is moving. I filed away that thought, too.

***

Thranduil (Lee Pace) before the throne of Erebor, in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. My cap.

***

I saw the Thranduil reveal at the end of August 2012, but I didn’t think about Lee Pace again until I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and while I thought he was strikingly, indeed ethereally beautiful, and did a great job showing us the injured mien of Thranduil, I wondered what all the fuss was over what was essentially a bit part. Yeah, I couldn’t or didn’t make myself reread the book before the film, which was just as well, so I still didn’t know who Thranduil was, and I hadn’t look up any of Pace’s work, either.

But other people who knew something about the story or the actors were watching and sticking data together. Another rumor at Datalounge about Armitage’s appearance in NYC. Then an appearance of both men in the same venue: a post at Awkward Celebrity Encounters about an Armitage sighting at a play Lee Pace was in.

At some point in all of this, I read my first Richlee fanfic. I can’t find again the fic that first attracted my attention, which appeared at some point between the end of the summer and January. (It looks the author of one of them disappeared his/her stories — whenever you see something you particularly like, make sure to make a copy of it immediately.) However, I can more or less describe the story, because it moved me so much — the title was a line from a poem by ee cummings (one of my favorite twentieth-century U.S. poets), and it started off by describing how Armitage liked to look at Pace’s back in the morning after a night spent in bed together.

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Lucas North (Richard Armitage) as he gives up Oleg Darshavin (Emil Hostina), the man who knows his mind inside and out, in Spooks 8.4. My cap.

***

I’d always liked slash but I’d never bothered to think about it. There was a fair amount of Armitage character slash that I’d seen before the fall of 2012, especially in the Robin Hood and Spooks fandoms (Aegri Somnia, a story that a lot of people I know have been stunned by — warning, violent noncon), and there was one very isolated RPF (Out of the Shower — warning, threesome, sex toys) that I’d liked. Aegri Somnia, I thought was a very good reading and elaboration on things that were plausibly, if not necessarily, going on in the subtext of Lucas’ and Oleg’s exchanges in Spooks 8.4. I just thought Out of the Shower was hot — and that was before I had any idea who Hugh Jackman was or how he even looked.

Slash, fine. Character exploration, fine. But this Pace / Armitage / ee cummings story? That story made me stop in my tracks. “I’m not a romantic,” I thought. “Why should I like this stuff? I wouldn’t read more than five lines of a heterosexual romance with this much loveydovitude in it. I’d puke. Why is this okay? What makes this okay? More than anything else, it’s just plain gooey.” That wasn’t how I saw myself reading fanfic, frankly. It wasn’t for the romance. I’ve talked before about what I call the “iconic moment” as the reason that I read fanfic — that phrase or picture that echoes in my ears and mind and stays with me when I’m done reading. Every fic I’ll mention in this series had one of those — and it’s something unique about fanfic to me, because it seems to me that fanfic achieves this effect for me more regularly than “real” fiction (which can also do it, but not anywhere near so easily.)

In any case, in mid January or so, Richlee began to appear on A03, my preferred centralized source for Richard Armitage stories generally and slash specifically. The stories trickled, particularly in comparison to the really popular Hobbit ship, Aidean. (I got in the habit of reading Aidean just because there was so much of it.) At this point, the Armitage RPF available was still rare and fairly general, but I stumbled across a story that moved me, immensely, in exactly the same way as the cummings-ish piece: St_Germaine’s Tonight.

The pieces frames Armitage waiting, blindfolded, in his production lot trailer for an unknown person who periodically notifies him that he’ll be there. Intimate encounter ensues. You’ll notice this story is tagged “Richard Armitage / ?” and at the time of this story, the other character’s identity is not known. In a later episode of the story, however, St_Germaine revealed “?” as Lee Pace, so I’m mentioning it here because it depicts a Richard Armitage and a style of having sex and a potential sexual partner that the author felt fitted the Richlee ship. What the eventual reveal on this story thus told me was that one initial reason that I started enjoying Richlee was that it constituted an Armitage that I found believable. Not in the sense that I thought the real Richard Armitage was open to encounters like this one — I read the real Richard Armitage as much more personally cautious, and this scenario would demand a level of sexual adventurousness that relatively few people in their 40s with established careers can afford. Rather, I found it credible in the sense that I thought the personality of the character was very consistent with one of the Richard Armitages I like to imagine in my own fantasies.

Which one? In particular, the person who requested the story described a”‘Richard Armitage: naked, vulnerable and trusting’ kink,” as its basis, and that aspect of the story is tremendously compelling. There’s a way in which Richard Armitage builds that vulnerable moment into so many of his characters, first of all, and then there are still moments of the “shy, gentle” Armitage whom we see in interviews that hint at a strong capacity for personal vulnerability.

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Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) moves to kiss Margaret in episode 4 of North & South. My cap.

***

Armitage the actor makes that vulnerability work for him in intimate scenes. Obviously the example that leaps to mind is the growing openness of his face as Mr. Thornton moves to kiss Margaret in episode 4 of North & South, but it’s a prominent feature of other characters as well. No matter how manipulative his character is being (and neither Paul Andrews, Guy of Gisborne, Lucas North, or John Bateman, to name a few, have any hesitance to manipulate their partners if it suits them), there’s always a moment at which Armitage’s face shows a second of true vulnerability, a sign that the character underneath is truly, if only very briefly, at risk.

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Paul Andrews (Richard Armitage), apparently responding to fellation, in episode 6 of Between the Sheets. My cap.

***

Richlee tends to show Armitage in these moments sexually, but with a kind of response that indicates a burgeoning of emotion, a sort of bundle of nerve endings that can be pushed to infinite levels of (sexual) receptiveness:

[Richard] feels a mouth suck at his shoulder.

Richard is shaking now, so hard it hurts, his other senses painfully sharp – the heady smell of sweat and sex, the sharp taste of his own blood. He hears their ragged breathing, feels his pulse pound against the fabric drawn tight across his wrists. His legs are starting to ache but he doesn’t care, barely notices, so intent is he on those fingers at his thighs, slowly moving up, up, up–

“Oh god,” he moans […].

He’s stroked hard and fast, the teasing over, fingers at a nipple again, mouth hot on his neck. The suddenness of the onslaught has Richard almost sobbing, panting, he can’t even cry out. His hands struggle against his bonds, straining to find skin to touch; he barely manages to make contact and his frustration just makes him that much harder. The fist pumps […] relentlessly, his nipples pinched without mercy, a hot tongue finding a sensitive spot on his throat.

Richard makes a low keening sound, rumbling from deep in his chest; hears an answering moan and feels the chest against his back shudder. His hips jerk, thrusting hard into that tight fist, teeth scrape his neck and that’s it, he’s gone, mouth open in a wordless shout and coming so hard his vision behind the blindfold whites out, his mind blank to everything but the hand […] and the harsh breathing in his ear.

This sort of appears in a lot of Armitage RPF and RPF slash — the face and sensations of the character out of control, maxed out on sensation. In my mind the pictures in the back of this narration are always the ones from Armitage the actor’s oeuvre that combine vulnerability with a high receptivity to emotionality.

Additionally, the story includes my favorite kind of fanfic conceit; that is, in addition to its literal level and the sexual or romantic energy that powers the story, that these elements in turn embody something vital on an allegorical or metaphorical level about how we perceive Armitage. (I talked about this effect in relationship to another fanfic, here).

if he’s honest with himself, this is part of what gets [Richard] so turned on about this – that he’s being posed and touched and for all intents and purposes, used, all for someone else’s pleasure. A someone he must know, but couldn’t name.

In essence, the author of the story illustrates on the sexual level something we may already believe to be true (or would to be true) about an actor, a person whose job it is to be presented on the screen for the pleasure of the viewer. This Armitage is, sexually, what we on some level we believe him to be professionally — the passive receptacle not simple of our desires to enjoy him, but indeed, of our desires to make of him what we will.

***

Richard Armitage attentively observes his coach during sword practice. Screencap from the extended edition extras of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Source on photo watermark.

***

In a way, the Richlee fanfic ship built itself as it built my interest in it. The next story I saw, St_Germain’s Training Session, described a sexual encounter that occurred after a sword choreography session.

The iconic moment in this story lay in its emphasis on another element I find central to my perception of Armitage — his status as a watcher. His characters do this on television — he’s often the person whose eyes the camera tracks in order to show motion in a conversation; and his standing demeanor in groups tends to suggest that he’s never the steerer of the conversation. He’s a listener, and an observer. The fanfic mobilizes this perception, again on a sexual level, reminding the reader of the way that watching something you’re not sure you can have builds up the excitement around it.

Richard tracks the movements with hungry eyes and unconsciously licks his lips. Watches the long line of Lee’s back as it curls into the drop, the flex of his thighs as he stands again. Watches the way his loose gym pants cling to his ass as he rolls.

Suddenly, Lee turns to look at him. Richard is caught staring, tongue still at the corner of his mouth. He knows he should turn away, pretend to be packing up or stretching or something, but he stands frozen as Lee watches him. Richard can’t seem to tear his eyes from the glisten of sweat on Lee’s throat. His mind jumps to wondering what it would taste like, how that exercise-warm skin would feel on his tongue, against his mouth – and then he’s licking his lips again, and Lee’s eyebrows rise.

Richard suddenly comes back to himself. He blushes, adding to his mortification, and quickly turns away.

First of all, this description of Armitage struck me as essentially realistic or one that I notice in the Richard Armitage that I see in the press and now on the AUJ extended edition extras — someone who watches, attentively, who learns from watching, who enjoys watching, who might even prefer the safety of watching as opposed to the risk of involvement. And someone who blushes — and then can’t control himself for just that split second, a technique he regularly uses in his acting. Secondly, however, it made me think about the whole way that desire takes hold of me when I feel it.

At the time, I read First Taste by pherede and remember not especially liking it. But I mention it here because I revisited it and I think that it tells an important piece of the Richlee ship story — just one that I picked up much later. So I’ll come back to it. Some of these stories were so fanciful (Armitage as impoverished nobleman in a forced marriage with Lee Pace? — that crosses some weird sort of historical fiction line for me) that I didn’t read them carefully.

***

On March 24, 2013, a live web event from New Zealand was broadcast to viewers who’d purchased the first legally available copies of The Hobbit and had the required code. On the whole, it wasn’t as interesting for Armitage fans as for others, but it started to profile the cast of The Desolation of Smaug and showed us a preview scene from the film.

This event was the first time I really took a good look at Jed Brophy and liked what I saw — so charming — but more importantly, it was the point at which I finally got hit with the Lee Pace “thing.” It was this few seconds from his interview, which I was livecapping, that did it.

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Lee Pace, Hobbit live event, my screencap. March 24, 2013.

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I don’t even remember what he said, but  I finally “got” Lee Pace. “He was intensity on wheels,” I wrote. My initial reaction was to this moment — something about the way he tilted his head, and the sort of inherent irony of his eyebrows totally took me in. I think it would be worth asking if I’d have found him so sympathetic had I not read all of these fanfics ahead of time, but I can’t really rewind the spring and test that possibility.

The other memorable moment of that web event involved the glimpses we were shown of the encounter between Thorin and Thranduil, and the way that Armitage’s Thorin flinched in response to Thranduil’s wrath.

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Richard Armitage as Thorin and Lee Pace as Thranduil, scene first broadcast at Hobbit live event, my screencap. March 24, 2013.

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I also remember thinking, boy do those guys have some amazing screen energy together. (Armitage ultimately confirmed this same perception recently, when he remarked in an interview that the scenes between Thorin and Thranduil were among his favorites). I also remember thinking that this scene, if it was as good as this green screen shot revealed, might be an incredible memorable performance. And finally, aware of the ship, I thought — and this is going to feed all of those fantasies precisely because the presence of the green screen behind the scene makes the scene appear simultaneously scenic (as in not real), but not so not real that we fully lose ourselves into thinking that these are the characters. The green screen has the effect of making me think that they are simultaneously Thorin and Thranduil — and Armitage and Pace working together.

I was right about that. On A03, the ship took off precisely on March 24th. And, I’m fairly sure the point at which I started noting one of the major manifestations of the ship — what its adherents call “clothes sharing” started after this.

However, I’m going to stop this post here because it’s three thousand words.

To summarize what I’ve said so far — I initially wasn’t that interested in this ship, but as it kept creeping into my vision, I noticed that it provoked or legitimated certain emotions in ways that were unique to me in the fandom and in my life experience. I noted ways in which especially moving Richlee deftly picked up and magnified facets of my own perception of Armitage as a person and a character. And then, I finally “got” Lee Pace both as an individual of interest and, more importantly, someone who had strong screen interactions with Richard Armitage. The fan fic that appeared after March 24th began a turning point for me.

Next time more discussion of the ship in fanfic, “clothes sharing,” the fan art I started to notice,  and the ways in which the ship further affected my emotional states and what I realized about myself from getting involved in it.

[to next part /interlude].

~ by Servetus on November 21, 2013.