2017 at “me + richard armitage” in review

Let me preface this by thanking all the regular readers and commentators here.

Richard Armitage as Claude Becker on the set of Ocean’s 8, 2017.

With the year almost over, here’s a list of the “top ten,” measured by number of page views, in 2017, of 1,072 total posts (if I haven’t miscalculated).

1. “Richlee fantasy in mourning?” January 10, 2017. [Passworded to prevent those from who don’t care for the topic from seeing it casually; if you didn’t read it at the time and want to, the password is in the subject line.] Armitage’s intimate life is a perennial source of fan interest and speculation.

2. Netflix bought Brain on Fire. Whew.” February 17, 2017. Initial report that Netflix purchased distribution rights for the film in the U.S. — which, however, it seems to have no plans to distribute in the foreseeable future.

3. “Detailed summary of the plot of Pilgrimage [HUGE SPOILERS],” May 6, 2017. Summary of film after seeing it in Tribeca at the end of April. Kind of cool: someone wanted to translate it into Russian.

4. “Top ten things that are not Richard Armitage’s fault,” September 10, 2017. Spoof post written after Armitage apologized for writing long emails to the writers at PaleyFest, and illustrated with some pictures from a fellow fan.

5. “Richard Armitage joins Ocean’s 8,” January 17, 2017. Pure news report, but the first news was exciting!

6. “Protected: Gossip and durable or slippery fantasies –or, part 1 [pw=slippery],” September 8, 2017. [Passworded to prevent those from who don’t care for the topic from seeing it casually; if you didn’t read it at the time and want to, the password is in the subject line.] My speculations on the meaning of RichLee for my fantasy life.

7. “Richard Armitage’s Christmas message 2018,” December 20, 2017. Tweets reposted without commentary, but fairly extensive discussion in comments. Interesting that a post that’s been there for ten days has gotten almost as much attention as some from January.

8. “Richard Armitage in bed in handcuffs in Ocean’s 8? [spoiler],” August 30, 2017. A rumor that showed up in two places after an initial rough cut preview in Los Angeles. (More interesting to me now, as a number of trolling rumors showed up after the second rough cut preview.)

9. “That is a pretty serious deletion,” January 8, 2017. Richard Armitage disappears all his tweets regarding the project “Miles,” announced in late 2017 and apparently withdrawn from in the context of his late entry into Ocean’s 8. 2016’s top ten were very much about Armitage’s tweet deletions; either he moderated himself this year or we got less interested in them.

10. “Richard Armitage and Charlotte Kirk in Oceans 8 candid,” February 20, 2017. What it says on the tin. Most discussion of Armitage’s selfies (although I post them all here) seems to have moved over to Twitter.

Permit me a few thoroughly unscientific reflections:

This is the first year in which passworded posts were significant in terms of hits, which is interesting, because WP is supposed to prevent them from being indexed in search engines and I don’t distribute them on any other platform, either. Then again, I passworded more this year than I have in the past, as well.

The biggest fan excitement overall this year was for news about Ocean’s 8, with many / most of the posts in the initial tier below the top ten also relating to this topic. That, despite the fact that we got at least some (varying) access to three of Armitage’s projects from 2014-5 that we’ve awaited for what seems like forever. This may have something to do with the variable distribution of them; I suspect those of us who are unwilling to watch illegally (for whatever reason) simply haven’t seen some of these, which makes discussions harder. Or it may have been that the genres for Pilgrimage and Sleepwalker (most visited post: #41 in rankings) were a turnoff to some fans.

In terms of Armitage’s ongoing commitments, the top post about Berlin Station published this year (the episode recap of 2.6) was only #31 in the rankings. Suggests that many are not watching, and those who are watching aren’t that interested in discussing it (here, anyway — I know there were discussions among German fans that I didn’t follow). My impression is that fan interest in this show is surprisingly low — again in part because it’s so hard to see it in the core regions of the fandom (especially the UK). Australia just got it legally two weeks ago. Most people seem happier with the pictures than with the plot.

What else got left out? It surprised me that despite the hugely positive general reception of Castlevania, the highest a related post managed in the rankings was #120. Some of this had to due with me only writing about it in detail once, with most posts limited to information delivery. But I wonder if (given the euphoria I witnessed on Twitter) this is finally a project that hit bigger outside the Armitage fandom than inside it — something I suspect he’s been looking for for awhile. There was almost no interest in news on audio projects in the top one hundred posts for the year, although this may have something to do that I haven’t written a detailed post about any of them in years. Hmmm. That might change this year as all of the beginning of year projects are audio-based. And, finally, also relatively little interest in any of Armitage’s stage plans. This is probably a place where my own interests diverge strongly from those in the fandom at large.

For purposes of comparison, here’s the rundown from this time, last year.

~ by Servetus on December 28, 2017.