“Staged” is Here, and so is Armitage Agonistes

I’ve been lurking around the Richard Armitage fandom for a number of months and decided to take the leap. I don’t honestly know how well I’ll do in maintaining Armitage Agonistes, but if the 25 plus hours I’ve spent beginning to learn WordPress and trying to complete my first substantive post ( due shortly?) is going to pay off, I hope I’ll be here for a while. Hours have been spent working with various themes, unsuccessfully trying to get text to wrap around images and embedding workable links – but I have hope. Since I entered the fandom in April, I’ve been scrutinizing the work of Richard Armitage, reading current and archived blogs, fansites and fanfiction (in all flavors) and commenting shamelessly -sort  of free-loading on the hard work and ideas of others.

Unlike many recent fans, it was not Richard Armitage’s role in The Hobbit that drew me in. I hadn’t seen The Hobbit and I had no intention of doing so.  I tried to watch the second Lord of the Rings movie- on TV, with commercials and with no context. I lasted about 15 minutes. So The Hobbit was definitely not on my list, despite it’s reduced price on cable. ( foolish perry, did  you ever think you would be glued to your laptop waiting for a certain trailer to appear on a Friday at 1 P.M. or continually, obsessively checking websites to see if a certain Production Blog had been released?)

For many longer- tenured fans, it was North and South  that changed their lives. I first saw North and South two years ago when I treated myself to a slothful weekend in bed experimenting with streaming Netflix on my laptop.   I’m a marathon sort of viewer. I see something I like and I completely immerse myself in it- I’ll watch every episode of a series before I go on to something else. So, when I embarked on a marathon of BBC period dramas it was inevitable that I would find myself watching North and South. (oops-this pic is a bit larger than I wanted).

I was knocked off my feet- or would have been if I weren’t prone in bed with the laptop on my stomach. I watched it twice, moved on to Poldark, and that was that.

Fast forward to April of this year when I was restricted to bed rest  -this time for legitimate reasons. My brother surprised me with a fabulous TV upgrade and installed a Roku box so I would have plenty to watch over the two weeks. I found Spooks/MI5– which I never was too interested in when it aired on A & E a few years ago. I was delighted to find Matthew MacFadyen as Tom Quinn. I love Pride and Prejudice in all its its incarnations- from the Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson version to the Colin Firth and thought MacFadyen did a credible job in making me see Darcy in a new way. So I plodded through, series after series until I got to the moment when – well, you know when. From the second that black hood revealed Richard Armitage as Lucas North I was lost, gone. “I know that guy! “Who is that Guy” (I’ve read more than a few almost identical fan accounts of that first Lucas North reveal)  This propelled me to my laptop, where I learned that I was indeed seeing again that same  smoldering, smokey Mr. Thornton who so engaged me two years earlier, but I also learned that “that guy” was that “Guy” (of  Gisborne) who would be keeping me company in another 30 hours or so after I finished all of Spooks.  Ugh, I thought , I’m  going to have to watch Robin Hood. I wasn’t sure I could. But we know now, we’ll watch or listen to anything Armitage does. In dry spells I’ve listened to his commercial voice overs, and by the way, the jewelry ones are really sexy,  his voice like a rich veloute. And you know I skipped season 10 and went right to RH.

I couldn’t get enough Richard Armitage, and so, I discovered the world of fandom. my first experience in an E community. I continue to derive hours of pleasure reading and watching what others write , think and create. -So many different backgrounds, countries, speaking a variety of languages, promoting a variety of points of view, styles and interests.( nothwithstanding  that a certain someone believes that we’re all middle aged, well-educated ladies)

So, who am I and what can you expect from Armitage Agonistes? My gravatar tells you a little about me – enough for now. And there’s a hint or two in my language use. From the blog, I hope that at least occasionally I spark something that interests you, a point of view or discrete nugget that you haven’t come across before , particularly in the older work since for me, it’s a new discovery. Mostly everything’s been addressed at least once.  For a while I was hung up on Richard Armitage’s underarm and forearm hair (the color, which looked very blond) and the appearance and disappearance of chest hair. Darned if someone didn’t lead me in the right direction to find out that I wasn’t the first or even the second to think about it.

I have a post in the works on a Lucas North issue. I will master links and wrap around text.(why this image below refuses to cooperate is a mystery. ) I will figure out how to change the time of the post to the accurate time ( it’s 9:10 a.m. here and I’ve been at this one post since 2 a.m. I will explain the Blog title, sort of and-I will answer the buzzer because I’m pretty certain the doorman is going to tell me there’s a package- a certain DVD that may or may not work in my laptop DVD. I’ve been avoiding  my favorite blogs because I don’t want spoilers.

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Empire Express, Raul Colon