me + Richard Armitage fan selfies: musings on self, presence, and the proximity question [intermediate]
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Continued from here. Please see all caveats and qualifications in previous discussions.
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III. Fan selfie as performance for Richard Armitage
[Right: a fan candid I really like that also demonstrates some of the odd combination of social and parasocial features of these photos that I discuss below. Her story here.]
If, as I postulated toward the end of the previous post, the “fan selfie” requires him to pose, and thus involves a kind of performance for Armitage, what are the typical components of the performance? Not all the elements mentioned below appear in every picture, and others that don’t strike me so forcefully may be evident to readers. But these pieces manifest themselves regularly enough for us to suppose that, depending on context and circumstance, Richard Armitage employs a series of typical moves when photographed with a fan (or in some of these cases, an interviewer, fellow actor, etc.) This taxonomy is not highly precise, but I’ve tried to impose some order on my perceptions by distinguishing between three common physical moves to make the picture function — purely on the level of someone viewing it afterward thinking, “this picture is okay” — and three moves that are physical but also involve a sort of emotional or pseudo-emotional component.
I suppose if I were a psychologist I might call the last three elements a sort of body language or gestural repertoire that (intends) to encourage parasocial interactions. (Yeah, everybody take a deep breath, I remember that discussion, too. Nothing about what I am saying here is intended to retract my rejection of the utility of that term when it’s used to police fans, as it has been in the Armitage fandom and who knows where else. I’m using it here solely in a descriptive way, to mean interactions in which one person believes herself to know a great deal more than the other.) The last claim is complicated simply because (if I understand correctly what I’ve read), when we talk about the production of these images in conjunction with their examination by non-present viewers, we’re talking about at least two, possibly three, vectors of interaction. When the fan meets Armitage and has the picture taken, the relationship slides, however briefly and superficially, onto the social level. The picture functions for the identity and memory of the fan as a document about an interaction with Armitage at that point, but the interaction itself occurring between two people who are actually present, so that the social rules of politeness, etc. apply specifically. (This change in the interaction is one of many reasons why the fan won’t say to Armitage’s face many of the things she might think about privately or blog about extensively.) But for the viewer of the images in the streams that follow these appearances, the interaction with Armitage continues to be parasocial. There’s a social moment (two people who are physically next to each other being together), and two parasocial moments, one for the person in the photo with Armitage and one for the non-present viewer. (I think.) Because of the complication between our position as viewers, social moments, albeit very temporary ones, end up working for the consumption of the fan in the parasocial interactions. Both the fan and Armitage are thus acting in ways that reflect that social moment and are thus quite probably reflexive, culturally determined, automatic, and spontaneous, as well as responding to the demands of the parasocial interaction of the photo. At the same time, Richard Armitage knows that these photos may potentially be seen by large groups of fans outside of the social encounter, and thus may be hypothesized to be undertaking steps to create certain effects.
[Left: Hobbit actors at Armageddon 2013, Wellington. Source.]
These points — about compositional moves, poses, and the role of social and parasocial moments in fan / actor photos — are potentially easier to see and thus relocate later if we look at intentionally posed photos with Hobbit actors and fans. Here’s a stream of photos of fans with Aidan Turner and Dean O’Gorman and, alternately, most of the dwarf actors, from Wellington Armageddon 2013, which the pictured fans posted on FB after the event. Click through them and see just how exactly and precisely Turner and O’Gorman reproduce their facial expressions in the vast majority of the photos. Every now and then they are asked to mug for the camera, but even the expressions when they are mugging on take on troped features, usually ironic versions of expressions that are social in the first interaction and enhance a parasocial interaction for the non-involved viewer. A photo like this only works because we know that the trope is used ironically — as implicated viewers or intense fans, we might not be able to stand our feelings of repulsion or jealousy otherwise. (I’m still asking myself how I would feel if a stream of photos of fans with Richard Armitage like this one of Turner and O’Gorman appeared somewhere where I could see it — which is a distinct possibility if he ever attends a fan convention, where it’s common practice for fans to pay for this sort of photo opportunity.) Similarly, look at the mannerisms typical of the large group photos — open body postures, smiles, and most of the actors, but William Kircher in particular, who has the seat next to the “fan” position, leaning toward the fan. These are brief and purely superficial social interactions that happen to involve a photo — and one suspects, in the case of pictures that occur with small children or infants, many of the moves are purely reflexive on the parts of their participants — but their performance enhances the parasocial interaction of the viewer from afar, and, one assumes, for the fan who leaves the social moment and takes them home and rejoins the parasocial interaction. It’s also worth asking, fellow parasocial interactors, how we feel while and after seeing these, particularly if we are fans of O’Gorman or Turner. I found that if my mood was good when I looked at them, seeing them made me happy, but if my mood was not good, my reactions were much more mixed.
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Roughly generalizing: the first three pieces of Armitage “fan selfie” performances are physical motions undertaken to make the photo “work” compositionally. They have other effects (some of which are tied to the second group of elements below) but their rationale is, in my opinion, mostly logistical.
Not a selfie, but a candid that demonstrates the point about fitting into the photo frame: Richard Armitage, Jed Brophy, Aidan Turner and Jed Brophy at the end of pickups for The Hobbit films, July 2013. Tweeted by Brophy. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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First, Richard Armitage is rather tall, and he has to fit himself into the frame at a height appropriate to the camera lens. The relational perspective is thus not absolute — Armitage does not have to do this while posing with people who are roughly the same height or wearing shoes that increase their height to make it closer to his, but he may have to depending on the position of the amateur photographer with his/her camera. The utility of this step is most obvious with children, as in this shot with Maxwell Newman, who played the child that Heinz Kruger threw into the reviewer near the beginning of Captain America: The First Avenger, or the little girl in this photo.
But he also does it in settings with adults, perhaps because if he doesn’t, photos like the one below may be the result. Armitage is so much taller than the rest of the men in the photo that the bottom of his hips ends at approximately the waistlines of his immediate neighbors. The purpose of this photo seems to have been to document the shared visit to the site, so that, beyond recognizability, the faces of the participants are less important — but that strategy wouldn’t work in the selfie, which is all about the self, an important piece of which might be said to be located or inhere in the facial features.
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Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage, Peter Jackson and Ian McKellen at Orakei Korako Thermal Park, presumably sometime in 2011 (picture surfaced in December, 2012). Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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Here, he’s trying harder, as the photographer seems to be more interested in the faces (and has possibly told the subjects to “squeeze closer together.” Look how Armitage has to place his legs to get himself in the picture. (Hugo Weaving is attempting the same thing, via the pose discussed below.)
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Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, unidentified woman, Elijah Wood, and Richard Armitage, Zealandia, November 26, 2012. Photo tweeted by the park. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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Because most people are shorter than he is, one rarely sees Richard Armitage standing equally on both feet, in physical equilibrium, in the fan selfie. He frequent chooses some version of the contraposto (a pose where body weight is leaning only or primarily on one leg), which simultaneously has the effect of increasing the dynamic appearance of these photos, and shortening his total stature by a decisive inch or two, as below.
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Richard Armitage with David Weiner, during press blitz for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Los Angeles, December 4, 2013. Photo tweeted by Weiner. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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The pose above is one we’ve seen with more than one male (for example, here, as well, or with Todd Snyder, here.) The position of the legs makes Armitage look more excited to be in the photo, and more energetic, even as it brings him closer to level with the other person in the photo. Contraposto is not the only strategy for doing this. In this photo below, he’s not standing in controposto — Armitage is leaning against the background of the photo — but it has the same effect, to bring his head down to the level of the woman in the photo, in this case making him look charmingly nonchalant.
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Dan Voss and Richard Armitage, during press tour for Hobbit DVD release, Sydney, Australia, March 2013. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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Other physical poses (especially crouching, or ducking) that achieve a similar effect, and in these, and in his body language in the photo above, Armitage reveals the close relationship between the physical move “into” the frame by the large man who explodes the frame if he doesn’t do so, and the second typical performance feature of the photo with a fan solicited by the fan: use of body language to make him look physically open to the person in the photo. Above, he juts his left leg forward, so that he appears closed off to the outside of the photo and open to the inside of it. Although he’s not touching Voss with any part of his body below his hip, his legs appear open with regard to her posture, as if he might twist his body in her direction. (He does the same thing in the second fan photo, here.)
Either as a consequence of this need to make himself fit into the frame, or simply because it’s another important feature of the intimate quality of the fan selfie, Armitage has to incline his body somehow toward proximity with the other person. We see this in all the photos above with men — Armitage seems to be drawing them physically closer. Or, consider this photo of Richard Armitage with his scale double, Mark Atkin.
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Mark Atkin and Richard Armitage, photographed at Ian McKellen’s fundraiser Christchurch theater repairs after the earthquake, Wellington, July 23, 2012. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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Armitage is close to a foot taller than Atkin, so the crouch used here to fit into the frame is a matter of practical necessity, but it also has the effect of making the people in the picture appear emotionally closer. Here’s an example of the lean-in in a fan selfie from Pinter/PROUST; here’s another. Note in particular the tilt of the head in the direction of the fan with whom he’s being photographed as a gesture that fits him into the frame, makes him look closer to the fan, and finally — very importantly — make him look like he’s participating intently and eagerly in the photo opportunity.
Third, most of these pictures involve a side hug that terminates in a grasp along or of the fan’s shoulder. I have the impression that Armitage shows a slight relative frequency of standing to the left of the fan, so it’s often Armitage’s right arm on the right shoulder of the fan. When posing with a professional colleague, in contrast, there’s a strong probability that Armitage will be standing to the right of the other person in the photo, so it’s his left hand on the woman’s ribcage or hip. (I wonder, but don’t know, if this pattern, which I must emphasize is not absolute, has something to do with the tendencies of professional photographers, gender issues in professional photography, common stances in poses as related to ballroom dancing, or brain lateralization issues — apparently selfies are slightly more likely to grab the left side of the poser’s face for that reason.) At any rate, the shoulder grasp, vs. the hip or rib cage grab for colleagues, is something that’s occupied Agzy, Guylty, and me at various times [Guylty, if you read this and have a link to your tumblr post, can you link it in the comments?] and the hand on hip is a typical pose for a dance pair that implies intimacy or at least comfort.
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Richard Armitage and Wendy Kingston, Sydney, 2013. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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Fans, in contrast, men, or less familiar “colleagues,” get the firm grasp around the shoulder, and several fans have described this “squeeze” as one of their favorite parts of meeting him and having their picture taken with him. The gesture is different, but it is no less potentially intimate — as we see above, if Armitage can settle a female fan under his shoulder, the picture can look almost as if he were sheltering a girlfriend and about to introduce her to you at a party. It may not hurt him that, as someone said to me once in comments, Armitage frequently creates the impression that he’s more ready to touch or embrace someone, including a journalist or fan, than the average British man. Based on my limited contact with people who work in theater, I tend to think of this as a theatrical mannerism, a variation on the grand gesture of embrace, a concerted willingness to draw people into a group, but whatever it is, fan selfies where Armitage is not touching the fan or the fan seems reluctant to come into physical contact with Armitage still fall into the minority.
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George Stromboulopoulis with Richard Armitage, December 3, 2012, Toronto. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com
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[sorry — I needed to chop this up somewhere. I have to edit points four, five and six and they will appear sometime tomorrow.]
Me + Richard Armitage 
[…] OK? Continues here. […]
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me + Richard Armitage fan selfies: musings on self, presence, and the proximity question [a bit on evidence] | Me + Richard Armitage said this on January 27, 2014 at 7:56 am |
There’s a lot in this post, so much, in fact, that I had to write notes to remember which points I wanted to come back to… And *um* I have a lot to say about photography always, so maybe it is best if I split up my remarks into individual comments so that the discussion flows easier (should there be one)?
As a general remark I must say that “fan selfies” are a tricky subject to discuss. While they obviously are used as documentary evidence of an event having taken place, we miss some important information (unless the fan in the frame has given us a verbal account together with the picture). We can’t often tell, however, who exactly has taken the image, what kind of camera they used and what the surrounding circumstances were. These have implications for various reasons: I like to know who took the picture because whoever physically takes it has the control over the moment of shutter release and thus “decides” over the actual content of the image. The hardware can be important in the sense that the subjects may pose differently depending on which camera is used (i.e. I do not make much of an effort to pose for a cameraphone image because I know its resulting images are lower in resolution, mostly blurry and shot from an awkward angle. But that could be my unique opinion as a photographer.) And the circumstances are important to know because it tells me how much time there was to take a picture. If there are less people around, there are no time constraints and the scene is observed by fewer people, there may be more freedom to adjust to a pleasing pose for both subjects. Mind you, some of that is evident in the examples you posted here. The “selfies” with interviewers look better in that respect – obviously less distraction, better cameras (?), taken from further away, no time-constraint.
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yeah — this is almost an academic analysis — not a very good explicatory text. It would have had to have been much longer and/or chopped up into smaller pieces (those Armageddon pix alone deserve three thousand words).
Agree that important info is missing. I would add — the relationship of the photographer to the subject(s) and their comfort level. But as a historian, I’m pretty used to that. We are always making judgments while conceding that some information we’d like to have is missing.
There’s always a question in my mind as I move toward what I want to say about these photos, insofar as ultimately I don’t think that for what I ultimately want to say, the hardware question is all *that* important. Reading these images from the postmodern perspective, they are textual effects so how they are made is not so important as what they may be perceived to be showing. Intentionality is irrelevant, seen from that perspective (and that includes all the things that affect the making of the photo, including the decision of when the shutter falls). However, speaking from a more structuralist interpretive perspective to develop a semiotic interpretation, which is part of what I’m doing when I establish a sort of “canon of physical moves,” I do need to go into the whole question of how signs are produced and there the intentionality and the components of what go into making a photo are certainly relevant. So, yeah, I agree that much less is being controlled via a rudimentary photographic device as opposed to an advanced one. I’m not sure, though, assuming that both of these types of photos reveal in different ways that a gestural canon exists and is being motbilized (indeed, the juxtaposition of the photos highlights it, as what we see happening on that level in one genre of photos is reproduced in another. I didn’t say it here, but certain aspects of how Armitage performs the contraposto are akin to what you’ve called the “superhero” pose on the red carpet.)
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Of course I look at this topic completely different from you. The question of intent and intentionality is central for me – whereas the parasocial effects are something that a (pro?) photographer disregards. She influences them, for sure, by what she captures and how she does so, but probably is more concerned with the immediate aesthetic effect and metaphorical message. (Hardware is not that important, conceded.)
Intent and intentionality are central, even when we just look at the actual making of the image (and disregard the intent behind the physical posing). The WHY is always more interesting than the HOW, I suppose. And in this case intent and intentionality are closely linked to identity. Because that is what these images are about – they are identity markers, both for the fan who not only documents an event but also identifies herself as someone who is obviously interested in Armitage (however superficial that may be), as well as Armitage who is identified as a celebrity “worth” taking a picture of. There are two status messages in this – for the fan and the celeb. And the intent of the image is to capture these. The exact status is then “acted” through the pose.
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But I would argue, if you know that the picture is for dissemination to a group of people who are interested in the subject, but don’t know him well, and you care that your subject looks sympathetic to the viewer, you care on some level about the parasocial interactions possible on the basis of the photo, even if you don’t call them that. People aren’t sympathetic as an independent quality, they are sympathetic to or for someone or some people. If you were photographing Armitage professionally, I assume you would think about this, wouldn’t you? Even if it were specifically to reject the task of facilitating parasocial interactions? To make him look mean / distanced / unattainable / detached / alienated? (which would probably undermine itself anyway)
While I don’t disagree that intentionality is closely linked to identity, that’s primarily from the perspective of the fan as someone in the photo, and it’s not something I can get at especially well as a viewer of these pictures. (So here’s the historian speaking again — if I can’t populate a factor with data, I acknowledge and factor it out. This is why I stated in the immediately previous post that I’m not talking about Armitage’s feelings or inner state of mind in these photos, only about what he does in them. Evidence available is insufficient to establish emotions or intentions beyond the very general. There are also personal prejudices here in that I tend to find photos uninteresting and I’m surprised by how fascinated I happen to be by this particular subset of something that I don’t usually examine with any attention at all. My reaction has been extreme this time and I needed to finally get at that.) Some of them have stories attached when I see them, some do not. I think we can assume, in terms of intentionality, the fan wanted to meet Armitage and document the meeting, s/he wanted to look good / happy / sympathetic / [fill in other positive attribute] in the picture, s/he wanted Armitage to do so as well, s/he wanted to have something to take home, and that it says something about him/her to have the photo. Possibly also — she intended to share the photo, although it’s not clear that all fan selfies actually get shared beyond very small circles.
Beyond that it’s hard to say and the most abstruse possibilities have to be considered. For instance, what about the fan pix with O’Gorman and Turner kissing the fan — there were charges in that fandom that the fans sought to get those pix “only”/on purpose in order to obtain better material for slash Aiden manips. That’s not a likelihood I would automatically consider as an interpreter. To come closer to home, maybe it’s about getting squeezed by Armitage / getting physically close to him, and having that experience, and not about the photo at all except as a talisman, a kind of worry stone that evokes the memory. Or there could be other things going on — to prove to your jealous sister that you are the kind of person who can be photographed with Armitage — and so on. The stories don’t necessarily help insofar as they also tend toward genetic tropes. (Not that tropes can’t be a piece of identity, indeed someone like Stephen Greenblatt would say that identity is *only* tropes, but there’s a sense in which a lot of these stories feel like they feel they have to say certain things, confirm certain impressions.) The fan writing them may not state all her motivations because some are potentially embarrassing or things we don’t say for fear of being disciplined in the fandom (“this is the closest I’ll ever get to getting in his pants”), and some are potentially obscure to the narrator of the story herself. No one ever tells her whole story, and the fluidity of identity means that words don’t really capture it completely anyway. I don’t think the contours of this problem are substantially changed when the person in the fan selfie is someone I know or someone I know well — it just changes my perspective on it. I’m especially happy for you (or, hypothetically, jealous of you, or whatever mix of reactions I have), but I never know what is really happening in your mind, only what I think about and how I evaluate what I see of your behavior. In other words, I don’t really believe we’ll ever establish much of solidity about “why,” though it can be interesting to talk about it (and the meta-level, analysis of why people talk about the things they do, being an exception to that), so analytically I focus on “how” because it’s a process I can put my words on. I can then ask about its relevance to other parallel processes as they concern me and how the manifestations of other people’s identity markers influence mine.
I think I don’t want to talk about status yet because that is part of point four, which I’m editing right now. So in a bit on that topic, okay? You know I love to talk about status.
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oh — re the “story” that goes around them — that’s the part that I most enjoy reading from my perspective as a fan — but I don’t think it’s entirely relevant to the use of the image as a support for a parasocial interaction. Most of these images circulate separately from their stories. What’s interesting to me is how the images themselves develop a troped quality that in turn determines our boundaries for what a successful image is, and how obedience to (or transgression of) the trope affects our perception of the photo(s).
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Fan selfies are *a* trope for sure. But do you think the Armitage + fan selfies are a different trope than those in combo with any other male celeb?
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I have no idea. I don’t really look at any others. Presumably not but it doesn’t matter to me for the purposes of this analysis.
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my point in introducing the Armageddon evidence was not that it was the same or different than Armitage — rather, I picked it mostly so that we could see an example of how the posing worked in situations where fans approach celebs for pictures — dozens of images in which the same action is replicated. That’s a much more controlled atmosphere, for sure, so the effect can be more reliably reproduced.
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although I suppose different people have different issues they have to accommodate — Dean O’Gorman has the opposite problem to Armitage, he’s at the same height or shorter than a lot of the people he’s pictured with. Short man syndrome and all that.
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Re. the “Armitage Crouch”: an interesting observation that he does so regardless of having to do so in order to keep himself in the selfie frame (that is when the object distance is really short due to the fan in the frame extending her own arm to take the picture) or not (when a third party takes the image and has more scope for framing). Apart from the subliminal message in that, I am wondering whether that is an aesthetic awareness of photographic representation, or betrays his own insecurities about his height?
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Could the crouch possibly be a “habit”? It seems he is photographed with people shorter than he is 90% of the time in selfie-land. As a tall person, I automatically slouch when I am getting my picture taken with other people. At this point, after all the selfies Richard has posed for, could he have “muscle memory” when being photographed? Or maybe his “go to” crouch comes naturally at this point. He might have to remind himself to stand up straight (something my mother was always nagging me about) when a tall fan poses with him. It seems a rarity from most of the examples I have seen.
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yes, hence the discussion of the “reflexive” or “automatic” quality of some of these moves.
I think the dance training must also play some role in the question of the unconscious dialogue about whether to crouch in or stand straight in any particular setting.
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Both, I’m sure. That is — the pose in these selfies is so strongly regularized that you think he has to be aware of how he looks, but that’s an awareness that stretches over years of being photographed that precede this kind of photographic experience on his part. This is why I refer in the post to “reflexive” or “automatic” moves. The animated GIF in the post at the beginning of that series illustrates that kind of thing. He appears to do certain things automatically.
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It is interesting though, that the crouch is done regardless of who is in the photo with him and in which context they are taken. Doesn~t matter whether it is with someone he meets on an equal level (friends, journalists) or in a situation that is biased in terms of status (fan encounter). I suppose that is the “automatic” move you are talking about. (Maybe similar to ourselves adopting a preferred pose and facial expression when we are photographed – a mirror-tested representation that we are happy with…)
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it would be interesting to see what would happen in a candid like this if he were shorter than the other person (not sure i have ever seen one. He’s so rarely photographed with men in a fan pic. I guess, if we could see the selfie that is being depicted in that animated GIF, that might be one possibility).
re: automatic — it’s interesting to me to watch my nieces being photographed candidly, which they are a lot (they are cute, way cuter than any of their elder family members were at that age — like some weird combination of genes finally mixed up in the right way). My younger niece does this thing my SIL calls “Gremlin face,” which is not especially attractive, but I think reproduces things she was taught to do at a very young age in photos. I can imagine, if you’ve seen yourself photographed a lot, you have that level of “things you were taught to do” and “things you tell yourself to do” and at some point some of the latter become some of the former, i.e., automatic on some level. I can’t imagine that Armitage spends a lot of time looking at fan candids he appears in — and one big “thing we do not know” that plays a huge role in what’s going on here is his own personal experience of candids / selfies, which one presumes would influence his behavior — but at the same time, he probably has some level of concern about his appearance in such situations to use both intentional moves or things he’s thought about along with his reflexive moves. I.e., I’m making a both / and argument again.
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Re. the “Right Shoulder Grab”: That may be caused by practicalities: If the fan takes the image herself, and assuming that most people are right-handed, that is the logical position to assume so that the fan has the right hand free to take the picture.
(I looked for the link to my tumblr post about the tight waist grip but unfortunately that post fell victim to my recent purge of all images and edits that did not originate from my own pictures… Maybe it still exists as a reblog on other people’s tumblr…)
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good point. Very sorry your post has been lost!
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Love love love this post – can’t wait for the rest.
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Thanks. Soon. I think there are 2-3 more pieces form what I can judge right now.
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Mark Atkin is darling. That is all.
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I agree. Though also, I believe, 4-6 in shorter than me … sadly … I also think I remember talk about a girlfriend from when Meri et al met him for the Wellington premiere.
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🙂 uhmm
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One photo shoot: Is not Mr. Armitage a bit shorter than Prince William? It was just a fleeting photo. And no idea from which angles shot. But is it one time in which Armitage had no need to “slouch” into a photo. Or was it circumstances of the formal meeting that had him indicating the princes’ status to Armiage, as an Englishman? Just a question.
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yes, good point — I think William Wales is 2-3 in taller than Armitage. I don’t know if I saw any photographs, though — just screencaps. Does anyone remember if there was a photo that we saw?
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I love your musings … can’t wait for more 🙂
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Comments that seek to spread unhappiness are no longer being approved. This qualifies as trolling according to the comments policy. You know who you are. Since I assume you have seen this remark before, I am going to consider this fair warning. The next time you troll, I will publish your comment so everyone can see what you like to do when you think no one notices. Don’t like, don’t read.
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[…] in order to understand the topic. Inter alia, some texts are confessional; some informative; some analytical; some biographical; some persuasive; some poetic; some fantastical; some erotic; some satirical; […]
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Generic convention, generic invention, or: RPF as biography by other means | Me + Richard Armitage said this on February 14, 2014 at 11:16 pm |
Servetus and Guylty I enjoy your musings and dissections very much. I’m new to the RA fandom after having viewed North and South on Netflix in Feb. [Anything RA has seemed to take me out of my real world since the death of my estranged husband in Feb.]
Thereafter it seems I can’t get enough of RA’s info so I’m going backwards in my quest. Your blog has been so informative and I like the depth and balance of your comments Thank you very much for all this reading pleasure.
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Thanks for the comment and welcome — and I’m sorry for your loss. I think a lot of people turn to Armitage in a moment of bereavement — he definitely creates a different world to enjoy. And thanks very much for your kind words.
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[…] have a draft of that and there was a sort of direction there. I’ve got a lot more material for analysis of fan selfies now. Maybe I should start there, since I am enjoying these pictures so much. I wanted to finish […]
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Time to write some actual prose about Richard Armitage, I think | Me + Richard Armitage said this on July 8, 2014 at 5:56 am |