Most vivid Richard Armitage fangirling moment(s)?

In honor of the anniversary yesterday — for those who were fans a year ago, remember what we were doing yesterday? — and in response to Agzy’s question.

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All of my most vivid fangirling moments come from the Richard Armitage fandom. Armitage isn’t the first thing I was a fan of, but everything else has been minor, mild, trivial in comparison. With the possible exception of my crush on Mr. Taycher, my junior high school band teacher. Hmmm.

And when I ask myself about vivid, so many moments come to mind. My first fan meetup. Watching the Captain America premiere red carpet via live streaming. Seeing Richard Armitage’s name trend on twitter for the first time. Watching the production diary of Richard Armitage in the powhiri. Getting to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D HFR after waiting for so long.

But I’m pretty sure the most vivid moment(s) — it depends on how you define the singular here — came on November 28, 2012. It actually started a day earlier, with all the deplaning pictures, and the press snippets that showed a newly confident Richard Armitage, and of course, those jeans! Those jeans! Pictures were popping up all the time. Jonia was a major source. On the 28th there were press conferences. I wondered how Armitage was processing it all. Watched the pictures of the Maori welcome.

And then, when all that was over and we were just waiting for the premiere to start, about two hours ahead of it, I gradually had the feeling that some kind of convergence was occurring, as if I was setting in a nest of machines or receivers that were all aimed in the direction of Wellington and sending information back to me and us in the huge, huge wave and we were all cheering and yelling and screaming “Richard Armitage!”

And that set me up for my most vivid fangirling moment. Because I was one of the ones who was screaming. I described myself on the brink:

I’ve locked myself in, very securely, to a place where no one expects me to be. No chance I’ll be waylaid by Pesky tonight. Here, in my own little world, I’ve connected to myself to a [… ] reliable data stream, set up two computers, and synched all the relevant accounts with each other, so I can flip from tab to tab and cross-platform post […]. Two and a half years ago years ago, approximately — February 25, 2010 — I didn’t know how to do many of these things, or where to look for this information. Now I’m immersed in a group of data scroungers, everyone looking for the latest index of Mr. Armitage’s footprint, somewhere.

I’ve also eaten a light meal and stocked up a caffeinated drink or two in case it becomes necessary. I’ve been to the bathroom. “Time Passages” by Al Stewart is playing softly in the background, on infinite repeat. Something I do to keep myself calm — there’s something about repeated piano riff and the syncopation involved in it that achieves that. Or maybe the line about the things that you lean on being things that don’t last?

There was a certain paradox to that. My office is housed in a buildings that was marked as a potential bomb shelter during the Cold War and my office is in the very center of it. You know the kind, with the walls of multiple cinderblocks. I have to go through four fire-rated doors to even see a window from where I sit (which is why I don’t spend much time there, frankly). The building is still an emergency shelter. So it’s weird to say that in a situation of such isolation, a place set up to be isolating, I felt as connected as I’d ever felt in the Armitage fandom. As I wrote:

I’m data-synched to all these other people from Wellington to Los Angeles who are looking at the same sites and joining the same stream and thinking the same thing, this huge psychic emotional connection that’s giving rise to the oceanic feeling. It’s one part nerves, one part anxiety about the data connections collapsing, one part delightful anticipation of what he’ll be wearing, one part identification with him or what might be in his mind, one part looking forward to the exchanges we’ll have while it’s happening. Maybe that’s not even everything. Lots of stuff. Sexual thrill. The feeling of being at one with a huge group of people.

And that was the prelude for this. After seeing Peter Jackson, Martin Freeman, Philippa Boyens, and James Nesbitt — this, my first glimpse:

Those are my caps. They’ve been replaced by better images but they’re the ones I’ll always remember. Maybe it was good I was in that isolated building all by myself, so that even the janitors couldn’t hear me screaming!

The night after that is a bit of a blur. More information, better pictures, more commentary. The #TeamThorin fans got to see Armitage, though we wouldn’t hear their report until a little later. Tweeting, chatting, squeeing, capping, downloading, uploading, blogging … all over the place.

And then finding out the next morning that there’d been a message from Mr. Armitage to coincide with all of this. (Some people were still up, but I had to teach the next day, if I recall correctly, so I’d gone home and to bed.) That he’d thought of us while we were thinking of him. Priceless. The icing on the cake. I had been moved to tears a few times the evening before, but that morning — that end to it all — moved me once more. That message fueled my steps for days.

So, that’s my most vivid Richard Armitage fangirling “moment.”

Panta rhei, so things will be different this year. We’re not at the fever pitch of last year, not only because there’s been less Armitage press leadup in comparison to the previous year, but, I think, also because we didn’t spend a  year and a half on near-total news embargo apart from what Peter Jackson told us. And we’ve also had this worldwide moment of togetherness several times since then — at the later premieres of that film, at the live event for the release of the Unexpected Journey DVD, and of course, most recently, at the November 4 live event.

Still, when Armitage steps out of his transportation and onto the red carpet in L.A. in whatever Ilaria Urbinati dresses him in, I’m looking forward to a revival of that intense feeling of connection with everyone else who’s watching and cheering him on, with that oceanic ecstasy. To that moment of pride, triumph, glee, and unabashed love.

~ by Servetus on November 29, 2013.